Sarah Blaffer Hrdy

To stay fed and manage to still rear their helpless, helpless, slow-maturing babies, mothers needed help.

Unless male and female group members other than the mother, allomothers, had helped to care for and provision babies, there is no way we humans could have evolved.

Fortunately for us,

As brains were getting bigger and distinctively human prefrontal cortices were taking shape, our ancestors were increasingly sharing food and sharing care of children.

Neural circuits, crucial for mutual understanding, co-evolved right along with shared care.

Fast forward to the ever faster-changing modern world.

Mothers still labor to help support their families, as mothers always have.

But many no longer live in mutually supportive communities, with kin far away and even with dads helping more.

Aloe mothers were in short supply.

Good daycare, even if available, unaffordable.

No wonder parents everywhere use devices to keep their babies monitored and entertained.

Already, 40 percent of US two-year-olds have their own tablets.

Soon, robots will be programmed to provide a wider range of services, ranging from bottle feeding to keeping babies safe, warm, cleaned and even educated.

But given the role of engagement with others in the emergence of mutual understanding, is this a good idea?

Think back to our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

still living and rearing children.

Babies then, to stay safe, still needed to be held by somebody, but that somebody did not have to be their mother.

Right after birth, others might reach for the baby.

It allows others to gather around.

She's passed her baby to her own mother to massage its scalp.