ABSTRACT
The paradox of the natural, which is on the one hand present and experienced but nevertheless somehow simultaneously not known, is present too in the work of one of the well-known proponents of an evolutionary anthropological or sociobiological view of motherhood, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. For Hrdy, animals reproduce, although in different ways and to differing extents, due to mating, which in turn is regulated by a range of evolutionary pressures. It is in revising certain assumptions about the nature of the mating and the evolutionary pressures through re-examining perspectives on gender that Hrdy develops a view of why women might choose to have a child or not, if forms of choice are available to them. Unlike Hewlett, Hrdy does not see the desire to have a child as a “hardwired” urge in opposition to culturally or socially determined career pressures.
