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 From Berkeley's wonderful "Understanding Evolution" site 
<http://evolution.berkeley.edu/>

"Misconception: “Evolution means that life changed ‘by chance.’ ”
Response: Chance is certainly a factor in evolution, but there are also 
non-random evolutionary mechanisms. Random mutation is the ultimate 
source of genetic variation, however natural selection, the process by 
which some variants survive and others do not, is not random.... To say 
that evolution happens “by chance” ignores half of the picture."
                           # # # #

I have come across many sources that suggest that number of 
grandchildren is a much better measure of success than number of 
children. And if your survival past reproductive age increases the 
likelihood of your children surviving (which, whether or not it is true 
today, seems very likely to have been true of early humans) then perhaps 
evolution does "care" about survival past reproductive age?

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