Guest commentary: Suburban moms may start aping baboons

But a study appearing in the journal Science has set the book and garden clubs a-twitter. In fact, one can hardly go to Starbucks and order a venti decaf vanilla soy macchiato, or some equally absurd drink, without hearing about it. Everyone who has seen the article in the newspaper is deeply alarmed.

To quote from the report by The Associated Press, "Among baboons, mothers with lots of female friends are the most successful parents, according to a new study that supports the idea that social support is an essential part of being a baboon -- or a human." That last phrase -- "or a human" -- is what is causing the shock waves. It is freighted with significance in the more prosperous reaches of the culture. Many people believe that as baboons go, so go members of the local country club. And in social one-upmanship, nobody wants to be one-upped by baboons.

What makes this report especially challenging is its focus on child rearing.

Nothing could have attracted more attention. In America, children are sacred, much like cows in India, and the deification of the little human rascals rises in proportion to family income. Spoiling a kid rotten is no cheap monkey business.

This phenomenon, which social scientists call Too Rich Disease, explains why certain parents lose sleep at night about getting their children into the best preschools, lest they learn bad habits in the sandbox that may fatally compromise their later applications to Harvard or Yale.

That is why so much desperate attention is now being focused on the example of the baboons studied in Kenya by researchers from Duke University and UCLA.

It seems that baboon mothers who formed networks of female friends were about a third more successful at raising their young than were females who spent more time alone or isolated.

Presumably, those isolated baboon mothers do not succeed in getting their offspring into the best baboon troops, and everybody suffers a lack of self-esteem.

To make the situation more pathetic, the anti-social baboon moms do not go to the most exclusive charity events under the local mango tree.

Their grooming also suffers, because they do not have a female friend to arrange their fur and grumble about the ape-like table manners of their mates. Other baboons whisper snobbishly as they go by, "Poor dear, she married beneath herself. Her spouse is a complete chump, though he acts like a chimp." As for those modern female baboon mothers who seek to continue professional careers in corporate hunting and gathering, no doubt they suffer a lot of guilt and try to overcompensate by enrolling their kids in every conceivable class and program -- creative tree shaking, kicking the coconut or mastering the shrill whistle.

They are caught up in being Super Baboon. Of course, their mates are no help, just loping about with their pals, taking it easy. When asked to fetch some bananas, they just scratch themselves inappropriately and make snorting noises.

Except for the snorting and scratching, the parallels between human kind and baboons are not so close that the overprotective mothers now down at Starbucks need to rush straight out the door to enroll their kids in creative tree shaking. (They can't anyway because it's time for the kids' riding lessons. Or soccer practice.) Of course, certain similarities between baboon culture and our own do exist.

For example, the butts of baboons can be gaily colored, and one doesn't have to go far on an exclusive golf course to see some preppy guy in a pair of bright red pants basically imitating the same idea.

But the differences are quite profound. Baboons do not use cell phones, or indeed phones of any sort. That fact alone ensures that baboons could not thrive among us. Baboons use their jaws to chew twigs and nuts continually.

Humans move their jaws constantly in telephone conversations with no time for twigs or nuts, unless they happen to be part of a trendy diet.

In both societies, female friendship is a powerful force, and the little ones learn their lessons well. All a male can do is goof off and make snorting noises. Why, it's a jungle out there.

Reg Henry is a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.