topics: |  science | gender | sex

Even the happiest families endure periods of intense conflict and emotional
strife. Read this eye-opening book and find out why. What does evolution
have to do with morning sickness? With the stressful sound of a baby's cry?
With sibling rivalry and adolescent rage? With child abuse? Everything,
says Dr. Robin Baker, whose best-selling Sperm Wars illustrated the
day-to-day Darwinism of human sexual life. Now Dr. Baker teams up with
journalist and children's books author Elizabeth Oram to do the same for
parenthood and family life. They look at a variety of instantly
recognizable family situations and offer evolutionary explanations for
common, often traumatic, events--explanations that not only make clear the
genetic roots of family conflicts but that reveal, in many cases, their
wider reproductive purpose. Highly provocative yet profoundly persuasive,
this compelling book sheds light on the darkest secrets of family life and
brings them out into the open where they can be addressed with honesty and
without judgment.