here are many strategies across the animal kingdom for ensuring a next generation. Some species, like sea turtles and sharks, invest their energy in producing enough offspring initially that if only a few survive--despite no postnatal parenting--they’ve done their job. Other species, like dogs and lions, invest some level of parental care in a smaller number of offspring, hoping that the energetic inputs necessary to bear and raise result in survival of many of each litter. Other species still--including gorillas, elephants, and whales--have one or two offspring at time and invest heavily in their growth and development, giving these major investments of time and energy the best possible chance of survival. All of this happens in a perfect world, a world where species have, over thousands of years, crafted a strategy that replenishes the population and ensures the survival of the genetic diversity we collectively call biodiversity.
As humans, we fall under the latter reproductive strategy, the one employed by other primates and highly intelligent vertebrates. In ecology, we call this “k-selection”. We invest our energy and resources, both literally and financially, in the relatively few babies we do have. And yes, fecundity--the average number of offspring a female has in her lifetime-- has changed over the years in response to improvements in fetal and maternal health, advancements in sanitation, and womens’ reproductive autonomy. There are arguments to be made that we invest too much, that we serve our children on a silver platter what their animal ancestors would have hunted for and that which previous generations of humans couldn’t have even fathomed. I will leave that debate to the parenting experts, if anyone can truly call themselves as such. I have learned through my own deep maternal love that “expertise” looks a lot like bullshit when you’re deep in the parenting trenches. But I am an ecologist. I have a different kind of expertise. In particular, I have the expertise to recognize when changes in the patterns of a population become so untenable that the future of the system is at stake. I have the expertise to examine trajectories across evolutionary timescales, forecasting the consequences of particular changes to the equilibrium model as we look to the future. The fact of the matter is there is no ecological model for the life history pattern American children are facing today. There is no evolutionary equivalent for the slaughter of children, or the blind eye to the dangers caused by rampant gun violence. When the number one cause of death for children becomes the actions or negligence of adults in society, we have doomed our entire population to a slow and painful demise. I am speaking of course of the plague of guns and consequential fatal violence in 21st century America. It seems that not a week goes by that there’s not national coverage of the newest and most devastating tragedy: school shootings, parade shootings, children shooting teachers, adults shooting children. We ride this revolving door of pain and grief, becoming perpetually more numb to the unnaturalness of the entire situation. I got a message today that the brother of my son’s classmate--the older son of his teacher-- was violently shot and is fighting for his life in the ICU. Yesterday, when I picked my son up, I casually wished her a good weekend, which now seems unfathomable. She will never be the same. Her sons will never be the same. And by extension, everyone they interact with, including my five year old, will never be the same. We embrace our daily lives carrying these societal wounds, raising our head high while we silently tolerate the desecration of our most valuable treasures. We send our children to school, deep down wondering if we’ll ever get to hug them again, papering over our deepest fears by equipping them with bulletproof backpacks and stocking classrooms with gunshot wound kits. I work at Northwestern University and the Chicago Botanic Garden, a literal stone’s throw away from Highland Park where on Independence Day 2022, a gunman opened fire and killed seven people, injured over two dozen, and terrorized thousands more. The following Monday, the Garden offered free admission to the healing respite of the grounds, but it was more-or-less back to regularly scheduled activities by Tuesday. We talk about the victims like those who were shot were the only ones affected by that day, numb to the horror and thankful that it wasn’t our child or grandparent or parishioner in the next pew over. But it is. It is all of us. We will continue to suffer the consequences of a collective failure to protect our children. By our actions and our inactions--stuffing thoughts and prayers in literal gushing wounds and attempting to put it all back in the box--we have accepted for ourselves and for our children a life that has no ecological foundation. We have broken the most sacred tenant of primate parenting; that we invest our resources in the protection of the next generation. We have allowed the powerful and patriarchal to disenfranchise our network of mothers--in many other k-selected species, particularly primates, females work together to parent their young--and have allowed the unchecked filling of our homes and communities with lethal weapons. We continue to discuss band-aid fixes like metal detectors and clear backpacks instead of tapping into our animal instincts and raging that the environment we live in is toxic. When you break the laws of biology, the consequences are catastrophic. Mother Nature is fierce and steadfast. She will not spare those of us who cannot recognize and honor her own spirit within ourselves and our communities. We damn ourselves and our children and our children’s children with every grief-stricken tweet and prayer for peace accompanied by business as usual. We must act like our very survival depends on changing course, because species that fail to comply with the laws of biology suffer inevitable extinction.
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Dr. Elsa AndersonCome play in my yard! Archives
January 2024
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