BIO A 469: Evolution and Parenting
One of my favorite past times is thinking of evolutionary explanations for why humans do what we do. Regardless of how inherently speculative evolutionary psychology, human behavioral ecology and the like are, I enjoy connecting behavior to biology as often as possible. This enjoyment has lead me to classes such as this one, where we spent the quarter learning about the biological basis of parental care and how our ancestors were programmed to parent. We did cross-species comparisons, talked about the fitness benefits of sons versus daughters, and discussed why adoption is a fairly mysterious practice. For our final projects we had to pick a topic related to parenting, do some research, write a paper, and present our findings to the class. I chose to research postpartum depression because it seemed like something that was so very maladaptive, but at the same time fairly common. I remember fighting bitterly with a friend who was also taking the class because he thought it was despicable that I could argue that postpartum depression had an adaptive purpose when it was so clearly detrimental to the infant. Through this class I learned to separate my own emotions and opinions and just focus on the science. I also learned that even when a topic is interesting to me, people can have very negative reactions.
The artifact I have chosen to represent this class is my short presentation of results.
The artifact I have chosen to represent this class is my short presentation of results.