Free The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us Smarter Than We Think by Douglas T. Kenrick, Vladas Griskevicius

protection but also knowledge—about how to find food, treat one’s friends, avoid being eaten by lions or ambushed by the bad guys downriver, and all the sundry problems faced in solving the other fundamental ancestral challenges.In the modern world, people still expend immense amounts of time, energy, and financial resources in raising their children.The costs of bringing up Junior go well beyondfood and a bed to sleep in—the tab includes all those diapers, baby bottles, sippie cups, toddler clothes, babysitters, doctor visits, health insurance policies, toys, bigger clothes, bigger toys, summer camps, bicycles, and college tuition.In the United States, it costs, on average, between $205,960 and $475,680 to raise just one child (throw in a couple hundred thousand extra if Junior manages to get into an elite private college).As if that’s not enough, parents may then be asked to cough up for a big, fancy wedding and a honeymoon, which may result in grandchildren and the opportunity to spend hundreds of hours babysitting, to shell out still more money for gifts, and to help with everyday expenses.
    The kin-care subself not only takes command when you are around your own children but may come into play even when you see someone else’s adorable baby or hear a child crying off in the distance.Note that this is not the subself that leads us to have children (the mate-acquisition subself takes care of that by motivating us to have sex).Instead, the kin-care subself motivates us to help out our offspring, younger siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, or grandchildren.In the modern world, the kin-care system can also motivate giving to helpless strangers, such as starving children in Africa, or even taking care of puppies and kittens.Above all, the kin-care subself seeks to ensure that vulnerable youngsters in need receive proper care and attention.
    REMEMBERING THE SEVEN SUBSELVES BY CLIMBING THE DEVELOPMENTAL PYRAMID
    If you’ve ever taken a psychology course, you may remember Abraham Maslow’s famous pyramid of needs.Maslow pointed out that different human needs become relevant at different phases of our lives, with the lower levels of the pyramid lighting up at earlier ages than the higher steps.Each of our subselves is in charge of one fundamental evolutionary need that neatly fits into a modified version of the pyramid (see Figure 2.1 ).This pyramid also serves as a way to help remember the seven subselves.Envision each of your own subselves coming online asyou moved through toddlerhood and adolescence to your current ripe old age.

    Figure 2.1.A hierarchy of evolved human needs
    Your self-protection subself arrived on the scene around age one, when you became wary of strangers and began clutching fearfully at your mother’s skirt hem if someone outside the family approached you.Your disease-avoidance subself clicked into action a bit later, when you started spitting out strange and novel foods with a look of utter disgust.As is obvious from the way they scornfully reject mommy’s carefully prepared meal or scream bloody murder at friendly old ladies who dare to greet them, little toddlers don’t give a hoot about public opinion.Not until your preschool years did your affiliation subself make its appearance, when you moved beyond parallel play and started seeking out new little friends.
    Before we have friends, we are oblivious to whether we do or don’t “get no respect.”But somewhere around the first or second grade, the status subself comes out of dormancy, and we begin to take umbrage if we’re dissed by the other little kiddies.
    For the first decade of our lives, we couldn’t care less about our romantic lives.But then the mate-acquisition subself is rudely awoken by a surge of hormones.Suddenly we begin obsessing over whether those formerly uninteresting creatures on the other side of the playground might or might not be interested in dating us.After we’ve managed to figure that one out and attract a