Lancy, David F. Raising Children; Surprising Insights from Other Cultures. Cambridge Press, NY. 2017.
- This is a distillation of Lancy’s larger, more academic work, The Anthropology of Childhood, and is a natural companion piece to Doucleff’s Hunt, Gather, Parent.
- The fascination in the Western World with immortality has a correlate with our fascination with “the innocent child.” We need to invent and prolong both, in order to deflect the horrors of the non-Nature world we have created (pg 27).
- Anthropological research generally shows that emotional needs in children are met without any need for extra emotional parenting. Physical sustenance and community only are needed. The catch is that there is very little community (ie alloparenting) in the nuclear family of the modern world. (pg 41).
- Neontocracy: Valuing children in society to perhaps a pathological level, producing selfish, narcissistic kids and neurotic, over-protective/helicopter parents. Eric Fromm once referred to the “golden cage” that parents keep their kids in.
- The idea that children are supposed to be in a state of constant angelic bliss has produced an over medicated culture of fear (pg 83).
- In short, “Most of the suggestions in this book for raising children involve persuading mainstream parents that they could ‘lighten up’ without doing irreparable harm to their offspring,” (pg 109).
Ch 1. Introduction: Leave the Kids Alone
(1) While there is no coercion (the Maniq [indigenous Thailand] believe that trying to shape the child’s behavior will make him/her ill) and no “curriculum,” children effectively manage their own “education.” Indeed, there are no words in their language for teaching or learning.
(1) They have, however, acquired steel knives and machetes which get heavy use. The indulgence of children extends to permitting them, even crawling infants, to handle these sharp tools.
(1) “They play and run with knives all the time. But I never saw a child get hurt when using a knife. On the contrary, at the age of four all children can easily skin and gut small animals.”
(6) Granting a child a great deal of personal space is a practice found primarily in WEIRD society, and reflects the values of a neontocracy.
- WEIRD: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic; which represents about 12% of the world’s population, but as much as 80% of “scientific studies” about humans. The “Western World” defines reality within in its own little bubble, but most human populations and almost all human history on Earth exist outside that bubble.
- neontocracy: child centered rather than adult centered society
(7) Alloparents: grandmothers, aunts, older siblings, neighbors, friends, etc.
Ch 2. Culture and Infancy
(10) Ache foragers in Eastern Paraguay almost never separate infants from their mothers, and babies may suckle whenever they choose; “they are never set down on the ground or left alone for more than a few seconds.” However, anthropologists also report the case of an infant who was buried alive. They were told, “It is defective, it has no hair, besides, its father was killed by a jaguar.” The Ache live on the thin edge of survival and children are readily sacrificed in response to such crises.
(11) Interestingly, there is an inverse relationship between the prevalence of such threats (and effect on infant mortality) and the time, energy, and, above all, money spent on infant care. As our cherubs are more and more likely to survive, we continue to escalate our anxiety and intervention on their behalf. As the actual threats to infant well-being have dramatically declined, imagined and exaggerated threats, such as child abduction, have more than filled the vacuum.
- Bermam's "we have an unhealthy relationship with death." ie, a cultural fantasy for immortality.
(15) These surveys show that the USA rate of teen pregnancy—with predictably bleak outcomes for the child—is among the highest in the world: four times the European Union average.
(20) During the Middle Ages, the sale of surplus children was widespread, e.g. “peasants of southern Italy got rid of their children at the marketplace during a large fair.”
(21) By the 1720s, four-year-olds were employed in French textile mills, and 100 years later, in Lancashire, one-quarter of all ten- to fifteen-year-old girls were making cotton in factories. Restrictions were gradually imposed so that, by 1830, factory workers had to be at least eight years old, yet a working day of over fourteen hours was the norm, and they could be beaten for tardiness.
- “childhood” as a thing to be pampered and elongated may be a modern phenomenon.
- see Paul Shepard for modern civilization as a form of neoteny: that many humans in post-agricultural society are often not fully mature, but are trapped in infantilism or an adolescent state.
- neoteny: the delaying or slowing of physiological development in an organism.
Ch 3. Questions About Infant Attachment
(25) attachment theory / attachment parenting
(26) If the cornerstone obligations of attachment parenting are limited to “co-sleeping,” “on-demand feeding,” and keeping the child in constant contact with the mother, then it is assuredly true that these practices are characteristic of child rearing in most of the world’s 1,000-plus distinct societies.
(26) Anthropologist Gerald Erchak, working in rural Liberia, describes casual nurturance, where Kpelle mothers “carry their babies on their backs and nurse them frequently but do so without really paying much direct attention to them; they continue working or … socializing.” Paradise records, “When a [Mazahua] mother holds a nursing baby in her arms she frequently has a distracted air and pays almost no attention to the baby.” LeVine observed “Gusii mothers [who] rarely looked at or spoke to their infants and toddlers, even when they were holding and breast-feeding them.”
- see Continuum Concept for Physical touch being more important than verbal or emotion attention.
(26) We will see that all the so-called “natural” infant care practices are designed for the well-being and convenience of the mother, and only secondarily the infant
(28) After careful analysis of over 200 cases, the evidence suggests that, for the majority of societies, insufficient attachment is not a problem. On the contrary, I found elaborate models of infancy and childhood that seem to have been constructed expressly to discourage exclusive emotional ties to the newborn.
(28) We have good infant mortality data from a range of societies—from prehistoric settlements, nomadic foragers, and farmers, to complex societies in Europe and Asia. These data suggest that one-fifth to one-half of babies didn’t make it to their fifth year.
(29) These unfavorable odds create a climate that supports withholding emotional investment in the newborn and maintaining a degree of emotional distance.
(30) Most critical is the fact that the new mother was/is also likely responsible for maintaining a household; caring for husband, older children, and parents or parents-in-law; and making a major contribution to subsistence or the domestic economy through, for example, craftwork. The health and recovery of the mother was seen as far more urgent than the emotional health of the infant.
(29) At the peak of her childbearing years the young mother is also a critical contributor to the household economy. Hence most societies embrace “alloparenting” as the means to lighten the mother’s burden and thereby increase her fertility and her productivity. Numerous studies underscore that infants are tended as often by an alloparent—a grandmother, aunt, or older sibling—as by the mother.
(30) The idea of a “stay-at-home” mom is a historical anomaly.
(30) Only since the mid-nineteenth century has the middle class reached a level of prosperity sufficient to relieve a woman of the need to work outside the home or to do paid craftwork in their home. This “norm” was suspended during both world wars and during the Great Depression, and seems to be rapidly disappearing among contemporary middle-class families.
(33) Most societies do not automatically confer personhood upon the newborn. Instead, the child is considered to exist in a liminal or intermediate state between a spirit world and the world of the living (babies aren't people).
- compare to crazy, Christian-based, anti-abortion laws
(37) To sum up the survey to this point, it seems that it is only with the dramatic decline in the rate of infant/child mortality and the conversion of children from chattel to cherubs that newborns are now considered fully human.
(41) The belief [in the Middle Ages] that infants were felt to be on the verge of turning into totally evil beings is one of the reasons why they were tied up, or swaddled, so long and so tightly.
(41) Echoes of these beliefs can be detected in the prevalence of monstrous children as the chief protagonists of so many “horror” movies.
(41) “Attachment theory” and its descendants have created a narrative of infants “at risk” of emotional maladjustment. In my survey of sources from cultural anthropology, history, and archaeology, this perceived risk is absent. It is to be presumed that infants’ emotional needs are met simultaneously with their need for sustenance and nothing further need be done. The survey also reveals that an alternate narrative identifies attachment, rather than attachment failure, as the risk.
- modern culture is always in a state of anxious emergency, and our child rearing is simply one more window into that sentiment.
(42) There’s no cause to see co-sleeping, on-demand nursing, constant contact, parent–child play, and face-to-face “conversations” with the infant (to name a few practices) as natural and essential for the child’s well-being. These practices are unevenly distributed cross-culturally, utilized (or not) for pragmatic ends.
(43) While the contemporary cultural ideal for child rearing now includes the father as a necessary contributor, this has rarely been the case in the past, or in other cultures. In the entire ethnographic record of hundreds of societies, I’m aware of only two (Trobriand Islanders and very small bands of Central African forest foragers) where the father, willingly, plays a significant role in infant care.
(43) In spite of the scarcity of evidence for childcare by fathers, we have found a number of cultures where anthropologists have described a scene in which fathers engage in brief, very public nurturing of their offspring. I’ve labeled this behavior “baby parading.”
(46) It is no longer sufficient to be a “good provider”; a “good” father must also be “engaged” with his children. This tectonic shift in attitudes seems to be driven by at least two factors. One is the increasing participation of women in the labor force. Second, fathers are gradually joining the neontocracy.
Ch 4. Children Playing and Learning
(54) Toys should not be considered nonfunctional. Rather they are small-scale tools which functioned and suffered the same tool use-life as their adult-sized counterparts.
(57) One study relevant to my question looked at “Dear Santa” letters in the UK versus Sweden. The latter bans television advertising aimed at children, the former offers no such prohibition. The results, unsurprisingly, showed that British kids had longer wish lists and requested primarily “branded” toys
(63) Richard Byrne’s The Thinking Ape, "the essence of the Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis is that intelligence evolved in social circumstances. Individuals would be favored who were able to use and exploit others in their social group, without causing the disruption and potential group fission liable to result from naked aggression. Their manipulations might as easily involve co-operation as conflict, sharing as hoarding."
(63) Gary Fine’s ethnography of Little League has become the definitive study of adult-managed play.
(64) Parents also seem to feel that a child’s unguided play will not yield the kind of academic payoff that parent-directed play yields.
Ch 5. Protection vs Suppression
(65) In acting on our increasing and unjustified paranoia about our children’s safety from an array of extremely improbable perils, we are ignoring the far, far more probable harm we may be doing to their development as competent, self-sufficient, and successful adults. We are no longer protecting; we are preventing them from taking advantage of a plethora of opportunities to learn through experience.
(66) When visiting preschools (free and practically mandatory) in Sweden, I was often told, “There is no bad weather, just bad clothing.” And, indeed, every child is expected to play outdoors for lengthy periods each day wearing, if need be (often), sturdy and effective foul-weather gear. These play sessions are not managed, and only lightly supervised by adults.
(68) In our increasingly litigious culture (true, particularly, in the US), we find schools managing children’s activities, not for their benefit or safety, but to stave off potential lawsuits initiated by overly protective parents.
(73) In a comprehensive survey of the ethnographic record, Weisner and Gallimore found that 40 percent of infants and 80 percent of toddlers are cared for primarily by someone other than their mother, most commonly older sisters.
(82) The idea that children should be happy and that their unhappiness should alarm their parents is not, by any means, common among the world’s societies. After all, children are inarticulate, they are weak, they don’t know much, their social status is very low, and they suffer from continual hunger and illness. Why should they be happy? As Heather Montgomery reports from her study in a Thai village, there is “no concept of any golden age of childhood … children are pitied because … they are everybody’s nong (younger sibling/inferior).”
(83) Our assumption that children’s natural state is one of continual bliss, and that any departure from this state requires remediation, has led to a host of unintended but quite damaging consequences. These include the epidemic of child obesity (and accompanying need for blood-pressure medication) brought on by indulging the child with snacks while accommodating their avoidance of active play or the out-of-doors. Heeding the unhappiness alarm has resulted in a tripling of youth on anti-depressants since 1993, and preschoolers comprise the fastest-growing psychiatric-drug-using demographic in the United States.
(84) I think it is time parents reconsidered their assumptions about children’s “natural” state. Should we expect them to wear a permanent smiley face? Might they be better off, especially in the long run, to experience the states of hunger, cold, frustration, failure, and the pain of a scraped knee? Is being “picked last” the same as being bullied? Should their wish list be our shopping list? Must we monitor and strive to adjust their popularity, worry whether their clothes are in fashion, or insist that their teachers acknowledge their “specialness?” Perhaps we might practice a little more “benign neglect.”
(86) Frank Furedi’s book, Therapy Culture, sees “a decline of an ethos of public responsibility and the sacralisation of self-absorption. Contemporary culture continually promotes the ideal of fulfilling your own needs and the primacy of expressing yourself. Feeling good becomes an end in itself—and the individual relationship to a wider moral or political framework threatens to become an insignificant side issue.
(87) Characters inhabiting this world [generally, cartoons and dolls] are…diminutive, but with relatively large heads and very large eyes. Incidentally, this trait of prolonged juvenile appearance is called “neotony” and is thought to provoke a positive, nurturing response from others.
- see Paul Shepard on how modern civilization is an unconscious attempt at personal neotony; arresting human development to reduce the tension created by our monstrous technology. We cannot face the beast we’ve created, so we choose to remain juvenile, unthinking beings, and acquiesce our potential as creative beings into the submission of false gods, be they religious, economic, social, or otherwise.
(88) "snow plow parents” who remove all obstacles and detours in the child’s life course.
- again, prolonging juvenile behavior to preserve some lost sense of innocence.
- primitive children are "working adults" much earlier on. There is no impulse to vicariously live through them in some projected innocent paradise.
Ch 6. Going to School
(100) the bedrock on which culture is based is not the patient transfer of knowledge from parents to children via carefully executed lessons, but, rather, the largely self-initiated, self-paced, and autonomous efforts of eager learners.
(102) The requirement of out-of-context, or context-independent, learning makes formal schooling an evolutionarily novel and “unnatural” experience … Children did not evolve to sit quietly at desks in age-segregated classrooms being instructed by unrelated and unfamiliar adults.
(109) Most of the suggestions in this book for raising children involve persuading mainstream parents that they could “lighten up” without doing irreparable harm to their offspring. These arguments have been buttressed by evidence from other cultures where laissez-faire is more the norm and kids turn out fine.
(111) As Martini notes, “Children learn to ‘talk like a book’ before they learn to read.” And it isn’t just talk; children who enjoy a lengthy period of “emergent literacy” really are much more likely to learn to read before starting formal reading instruction, and more likely to enjoy reading. When quantitative comparisons are made, children exposed to greater amounts of narrative and explanatory talk were advantaged on a number “of language and literacy measures.”
(113) A very recent survey found that 45 percent of US seventeen-year-olds admit to rarely, if ever, reading for pleasure.
Ch 7. The Consequences of Raising Unique Individuals
(115) Heidi Keller, "Euro-American or German middle-class mothers … focus on children’s agency and mental states, preferences, wishes, and needs, whereas mothers with an interdependent cultural model of parenting, such as Chinese or rural Nso mothers, focus on the social context, moral obligations, and respect. These differences are already prevalent in interactions with babies that are only a few months old."
(117) To those who would like their family to avoid this fate, let me recommend the Munchkin Baby Food Grinder (and other brands) available at Amazon for $7.50. Our children’s first “meals,” aside from nursing, consisted of mashed portions of the food we were eating—at the family dinner table (our younger daughter in a “hook-on” high chair). There are other situations where children may benefit from the opportunity to make choices (the library), but should these include diet and important family activities?
(120) Infant mortality from illness, malnutrition, and infanticide has meant that infants are not treated as fully human. Aside from essential care, they may be largely ignored. The Ayoreo explain that should the child die, the loss will not be so deeply felt. Aka infants are not considered to be complete humans, and in fact are thought to be wandering in a very vulnerable existence somewhere between life and death. Aka do not name a child for as long as half a year after birth. A Roman child wasn’t accepted as a member of the family for eight to nine days after birth, when, in the lustratio rite, it was named. Infants may be seen as having one foot in the spirit world and one in the material. Hence the conferral of personhood—including a “real” name—is often delayed.
(123) Among the Yomut of Turkmenistan, when a girl is born, it is common practice to give her a name expressing the wish for a son. Girls’ names such as Boy Needed (Oghul Gerek) or Last Daughter (Songi Qiz) are common.
(132) I distinctly recall a news item relating how a suburban couple in Florida, the Barnards, had gone on strike and moved into a tent in their driveway, refusing to cook, clean, or otherwise care for their teenage children until they agreed to mend their ways and help out with household chores.
(132) I think the disconnect between our expectations for our children and their actual behavior arises due to a few critical changes in child-rearing philosophy. First, as discussed in the introduction to this chapter, we are now raising individuals. By raising unique individuals, we grant children unprecedented authority to “decide” for themselves.
(132) Second, parents are super-busy and take advantage of an array of child-unfriendly appliances and other aids, reducing opportunities to engage children in routine household chores.
(133) Third, children as young as eighteen months “spontaneously and promptly assisted the adults in a majority of the tasks they performed."
(133) I believe that this striving to be helpful, if unrewarded by the assignment of chores, is extinguished. Children, eventually, stop volunteering. Instead, they get a free ride and when, finally, at eight or later, chores are assigned, the window of opportunity is closed.
- see Hunt, Gather, Parent
(135) Approval of the child’s self-initiated efforts to learn is also conveyed by allowing them to quietly observe adult activity and, where feasible, letting them pitch in. Barbara Rogoff and her colleagues have documented this process—which they refer to as “learning by observing and pitching in” (LOPI)—for decades, across many villages in Mexico and Guatemala.
(139) In general, anthropologists do not see any evidence of failure-to-launch syndrome, as just explained. The exceptions are very recent. The most commonly seen cases occur where schooling is introduced into the community and seduces everyone, especially young people, into believing that it will lead to riches, either directly in terms of wage employment “in the city,” or indirectly, through the remittance of wages back to the village from the newly employed.
(141) Failure-to-launch syndrome is real; it is growing rapidly with no end in sight. I see it arising from a perfect storm created by our modern child-rearing philosophy. The symptoms first appear in infancy and grow more virulent throughout childhood and adolescence. Among these symptoms, I’d include:
Parents see infants as all-absorbing of their time and attention. We may direct more speech to our speechless infants than to our spouses. Their many possessions—baby furniture, clothing, toys, and foods—“take over” a larger and larger portion of the domestic space.
From birth, children are afforded very high status; they are not treated as incompetent, incomplete, or in the process of “becoming.” Effectively, they start life on a pinnacle of love, approval, and admiration. There may be nowhere to go from there except downhill.
Parents exhibit an urgency to create unique individuals who are directed to follow their own path rather than tread the well-worn paths of their predecessors.
Parents grant children choices and don’t impose obligations. They can choose not to do (or eat) anything they don’t want to. They can avoid challenges or unfamiliar situations and take the path of least resistance.
Helicopter parents hover within reach, ready to swoop down and morph into snowplows clearing all obstacles in the child’s path.
Parents worry about damage to the child’s self-esteem and act to shield the child from the consequences of stupidity, failure, or non-conformity.
Our “special” children do not need to conform to social rules. They are given a pass on etiquette, politeness, and co-operation. They learn to ask and take from others—not to give. They have difficulty accepting the subordinate role of apprentice or employee and adhering to routines and following directions.
(143) What might be the antidote? Many more challenges, much less supervision.
Children 8. Summary and Speculation
(144) Childhood, as we now know it, is a thoroughly modern invention. It is a gigantic experiment in which current ideas and strategies for child rearing are unprecedented.
(147) From the beginning of humankind and across the world, men rarely commit to lifelong monogamy, may not reside with their wives and offspring, and, hence, may have virtually no contact with their children. The “nuclear” family is relatively rare; far more common are large extended families and households composed of mother and offspring. Polygyny, or families composed of a husband and two or more wives, is extremely common—at least as a cultural ideal.
(147) We regulate many aspects of our infants’ and young children’s lives, including creating a unique environment for them—cribs, nurseries, high chairs. We regulate where and when they eat and sleep. On the other hand, we make many adjustments in our schedule of activities to ensure they are kept stimulated and engaged. More typically, there are no separate eating or sleeping arrangements for children. Infants sleep with their mothers and are fed on demand, around the clock. Toddlers feed opportunistically and/or when others are eating. Although there may be special “weaning” foods, the child quickly transitions to the same diet as everyone else. The infant’s basic needs are taken care of promptly, but otherwise they are largely ignored.
(149) Among the well-educated, there is the presumption that, to mature successfully, children require intellectual stimulation from birth—or even in the womb. Their caretakers aim to “optimize” the child’s development to maximize their accomplishments. This perspective can be challenged by the belief that children are without sense or the ability to learn until at least their fifth year. They are, in effect, unteachable.
(149) We have very low expectations for our children to assist us in our work, household duties, and care of family members. They are free to play or attend school. Village children eagerly participate in “chores,” particularly the care of younger siblings—a role which little girls relish. This sharp contrast may account for diminished pro-social behavior, lack of a sense of obligation and responsibility, and poor work ethic in our offspring.
(151) Much of adult culture, including work, food acquisition, sex, and entertainment is restricted. Our children are perceived as too young, sensitive, or vulnerable to be readily admitted to the adult sphere. On the other hand, parents take special pains to spend “quality time” participating in the child’s world. Dinner table conversations, for example, at least in the US, may be child- rather than adult-centered. Parents “play” with their children in a great variety of contexts (make-believe, games, “roughhousing”).
In the village, adult lives are an open book to be read and learned. The children’s world is generally devoid of adult participation. Adult–child “conversation” would be unseemly. Children are tolerated in adult company if they remain undemanding and unobtrusive. Children learn a great deal from observing other family members as they work, prepare and eat meals, and do craftwork. An exception to this pattern may be found in hunting and gathering societies where very young children may be unwelcome on foraging and hunting expeditions.
I think we can borrow at least one of these ideas, namely that children are tolerated in adult company and can observe and learn, but should remain unobtrusive. The problem with allowing a child to engage with adults in a social gathering is that the setting shifts from an adult-oriented setting (from which the child learns about “grown-ups”) to a child-oriented one. There’s a fine line here where a “mature,” well-mannered child can profitably participate in an adult gathering as long as it remains an adult gathering.
(152) In the neontocracy, the child is given an almost inexhaustible supply of social capital and does very little to earn it. Deference to strangers, those older, kin, and parents is either not expected at all (in the US), or inculcated at a relatively late age.
(152) Most societies tolerate and expect children to engage in rough boisterous play and verbal dueling and teasing.
(153) In recent years, play in the West (especially in the US) has rapidly changed. There is much greater adult involvement in children’s play, ranging from the infant exploring novel objects (guided by a parent) to children participating in football (soccer) that is managed by parents, coaches, and referees. Rules are designed to be learned and then adhered to. Traditionally, children’s play is unmediated by parents, coaches, strict rules, structured playing fields, or “regulation” equipment.
(154) Some of the most memorable play episodes recorded by anthropologists show children successfully parodying adult behavior and discourse. Boredom seems unknown.
(162) Some public schools are now altering their curricula to teach grit and other gritty character traits. In California, a few schools are actually grading kids on grit.
(163) Since 9/11, far more Americans have been killed by toddlers using guns than by terrorists. The number of such shootings by toddlers is climbing steadily and stands at nearly six per month. And the latest statistics show that across the US one child will be killed by a gun, on average, every other day.
(164) Throughout history and in the majority of the world’s cultures, adults rarely play with children. Indeed, there are many societies, carefully described by anthropologists, where babies are fed on demand, protected from danger and the elements, but not talked to or played with—and they turn out just fine. I suggested that in the last two decades, nurture had turned into nature. That is, the childcare practices of the dominant culture had become “natural.” Child psychologists, textbook authors, policy makers, and granting-agency personnel all belong to that dominant culture and tend to see its practices and their behavior as “normal.” However, if childhood is viewed using a multicultural lens, a very different picture emerges.
(165) Evolution Institute at Binghamton University on the theme Restoring Outdoor Play. One of the co-organizers, Peter Gray, writes a Psychology Today blog called “Freedom to Learn,” and one of the featured presenters was Hara Estroff Murano, author of A Nation of Wimps, and associate editor of Psychology Today.
(165) The major difference between the lives of village kids and those of our cherubs is that the former have so much more freedom. From our perspective, this freedom may seem like parental neglect. But, as little harm occurs, and, in fact, a great deal of good comes from this freedom, I thought the phrase “Benign Neglect. "
(166) My experience of these [childhood adventures] wonders was mostly solo with occasional peer companionship, but never with parental oversight. I was “neglected” by my parents and it was wonderful.
(166) My parents felt no necessity to watch me at play, let alone serve as my coach or cheerleader. I was also fortunate that my childhood was overshadowed by my parents’ lingering memories of the Depression and the postwar scarcities. This meant that my “toys” and games were mostly improvised, invented, and self-made. I felt no sense of estrangement or resentment against my parents. On the contrary, I received a great deal of affection and the evening meal was definitely a “family” occasion to share our daily stories.