References
“Calvin notes that three out of every four mothers observed at shopping centers carry their infants with their left arms. ‘This has been going on for centuries before shopping centers: a survey of madonna-with-child paintings in European art galleries showed left-armed infant-carrying in 80 percent of the cases.’
The observation could be a trivial consequence of right-handedness; however Calvin points out that fathers do not demonstrate any preference and carry kids with either hand. So he presents the theory of heartbeat pacification of infants—newborns cry less if hospital nurseries pay them tape recordings of beating hears.[…]
Cave men weren’t the only hunters, he points out. Cave women hunted, too, and Calvin presumes they had to keep their babies quiet while they stalked and threw stones at rabbits and birds. One side of the brain usually has better neural machinery for rapid movement sequences. Calvin speculates that mothers with left-brain sequencers [righties] would have been better hunters [faster throws and quieter infants] than lefty mothers who had to hold the kid on their right side.”
– Chicago Tribune, Chicago, Illinois, 31 Aug 1983
