Like many of you, my social media feed has been full of differing views on the recent and tragic killing of Charlie Kirk. My feed is also flooded with coverage of Putin allegedly provoking NATO into a wider conflict, Netanyahu bombing Gaza and, with it, any chance of peace talks, the Trump administration’s extrajudicial targeting of boats off of Venezuela. The list goes on.
The normalization of men’s violence, the expectation of it, drones on.
I think about what our children are learning about what it is to lead with peace? The stuff of chumps, I suppose. With our high rates of bullying, homicide, sexual harassment and cyberviolence, the extrajudicial violence against immigrants, the threats of violence implicit in National Guard troops on cities that are not facing extraordinary threats – it becomes the norm to think that men’s violence is normal. Baked into who we are.
I recently had the chance to meet evolutionary anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, a former University of California Berkeley professor who studies the evolution of human caregiving. Hrdy’s work has been crucial for understanding and affirming that humans are a species that are fundamentally wired to care. Her work – building on the research of many scientists – affirms that ingrained in all adult humans’ brains is the neurological and hormonal foundation for making the care of others a primary concern. The relational portion of the brain elaborates on these impulses, reading the internal state of others, particularly those in need of care (mostly but not only young children), and responding to their needs, even ahead of our own. In short, humans are a wired-to-care species.
Hrdy explained that human survival as fragile hominid bipeds in harsh environments, where only about 10 percent of infants once lived into adulthood, depended on a caregiver and child’s reciprocal ability to read and respond to each other’s emotional states. This means boys and men do not need to be taught to care or to put the needs of children and others front of mind. They simply need a social context that allows it to happen. Hrdy’s affirmation is crucial at this moment: are we allowing care to happen? What about peace?
Hrdy’s most recent book, Father Time, affirms that contrary to popular belief, men are equally wired to care. Our bodies undergo physiological changes when we’re around children, and adjust to nurture their needs, regardless of if they are biologically related.
There is no simple end to our cycles of (mostly male) violence. The response must be all of the below: reduce polarizing rhetoric, believe in the plurality of who we could be as a country with law enforcement that support and protect, reduce access to lethal firearms – and lean into the best of who we are as humans. That also means teaching care to boys from the earliest ages, nurturing empathy as a strength rather than denying it. We must understand and believe that while we can cause deep harm to each other, we are literally wired to care for each other. That human legacy – that baseline – must prevail.
It shouldn’t sound silly to teach our children that our one true human superpower is our ability to care and nurture.
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