Childhood living is easy to do, or is it?

Childhood living is easy to do, sang the Rolling Stones. Looking back in history with the abolishment of child labour, physical punishment and huge other improvements in children’s rights this may seem more true than ever before in history. Often it seems that we are spoiling our children too much and producing entitled and selfish brats. On the other hand, we know that the kids aren’t ok, with soaring mental health problems among today’s teens. As any parent knows it’s often tough to strike a balance and that fact that parenting books are popular as never befores shows how much modern parents struggle with parenting. One thing I do believe, childhood living isn’t that easy.

Cross-culturally childhood varies enormously and most kids, given a choice, would probably want to grow up among hunter-gatherers, who have no conception of “spoiling” their kids too much. In  Hunter-gatherer Childhoods: Evolutionary, Developmental, and Cultural Perspectives (2005) Barry Hewlett writes:

For example, Harris (1998:90–96) indicates that, in most traditional societies, weaning is abrupt, sibling rivalries lead many older children to hit younger siblings, physical punishment is widespread, infants are taught little because parents consider infants to be incapable of learning, and girls are preferred babysitters. These generalizations are not true of most hunter-gatherer societies, however. Whereas most of Harris’s characterizations of traditional childcare apply to the Ngandu farmers who are neighbors of and regularly trade with the Aka hunter-gatherers, for example, older Aka children rarely, if ever, hit younger children, physical punishment of children is rare (and is even grounds for divorce), weaning is both very gradual and child-directed, both boys and girls are babysitters, and infants (six- to ten-month-olds) are routinely given small digging sticks, axes, or spears by parents, who instruct them in their use by moving their arms appropriately. Harris appropriately summarized the literature on children in “traditional” societies available to her, but her summary nicely exemplifies the farmer bias in the literature and reflects critical gaps in our understanding of children in hunter-gatherer cultures.

Studies of childhood among San (Bushmen, who are fairly representative for foragers) revealed the following characteristics of childhood among hunter-gatherers:

• Kids are spoilt rotten by their mothers, breastfeed up to age four
• Kids are alloparented (fathers and others) about 25% of the time
• Fathers play a more significant role in parenting in foragers than in other ethnographic communities
• Carefree childhood and not expected to do any work until adolescence
• Mixed age and sex playgroups
• Punishment is rare, physical punishment virtually absent
• No formal, directed learning; learning is observational, imitative and experimental (similar to the “scientific method”) and self-initiated
• Children are never “commanded” or coerced and enjoy almost the same egalitarian status everyone else does
• Absence of adolescent (same-age) peer groups (“cliques”)
• Adulthood comes late for girl, who have their first child at a median age of 19.2 years (menarche around 17 years)

All in all a picture of childhood emerges that is dramatically different from childhood in other societies, including Western ones. Children spend a lot of time not only with their primary caregivers, but also their fathers, other members of the band and above all other kids of varying ages. There is a lot of carefree play, absence of parental coercion and conflict as well as conflict with peers, bullying and overall little competition. Compare that to the life of a typical highschool teen, especially one who is an outsider. While teen suicde has been rising in the West for years, teen suicide is unknown in forager societies. This is, unfortunately only true for foraging people who are still allowed their traditional ways:

Nationally, suicide tends to skew middle-aged (and white); but among Native Americans, 40 percent of those who die by suicide are between the ages of 15 and 24. And among young adults ages 18 to 24, Native American have higher rates of suicide than any other ethnicity, and higher than the general population. (source)

I have argued that past subsistence strategies (foraging, farming, pastoralism) have lead to slightly different mental adaptations and that most people have a tendency towards one subsistence type:

Children who are firmly part of the hunter-gatherer neurotribe would therefore be the ones who would be least adapted to “parental and social control” and therefore show high rates of oppositional behaviour (e.g. in the form of tantrums), in the worst case even be diagnosed with ODD (oppositional defiant disorder) or CD (conduct disorder).

From the above characteristics of San childhood (and from my experience), we can assume that hunter-gatherer type children would be more likely to

• show defiant behaviour
• react more strongly (and defiantly) to punishment
• not be obedient just to please their parents or teachers
• be more self-directed learners and may struggle with directed learning
• have opposite sex friends
• not be a part of a clique or gang or even have loner tendencies
• not conform to peer pressure
• be bullied (because of the above)
• have puberty and romantic relationships later than average
• have a higher risk of mental health problems such as depression and anxiety
• have higher rates of self-harm and suicidal ideation

What this amounts to is that childhood living is (everything else being equal) hardest for hunter-gatherer type children in the modern world. From my experience these hunter-gatherer type children can also be identified early on. These are the kids who in kindergarten tend to observe the other kids rather than take part in the action themselves. A lot of potential problems and misunderstandings can be avoided if parents, teachers, and last but not least these kids themselves are aware of their evolutionary programming.

For more on the hunter-gatherer neurotribe hypothesis check out my book