Move Over Helicopter Parents. Meet the Hunter-Gatherers

New research looks at the benefits of more communal parenting styles
By Gina Carey,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 26, 2023 1:30 PM CST
What We Can Learn From Hunter-Gatherer Parents
   (Getty / monkeybusinessimages)

Move over helicopter parents, tiger moms, and bulldozer dads—a new parenting style (that's quite ancient, actually), would like to take the floor. According to the Hill, a new paper in Developmental Psychology takes a look at the merits of hunter-gatherer childrearing through observations of modern societies like the Mbendjele BaYaka of central Africa. They found that parenting styles in Western, developed nations have many contrasts to the communal childrearing practices of hunter-gatherers, most revolving around the number of adults who help care for the child. "The nuclear family system in the west is a world away from the communal living arrangements of hunter-gatherer societies like the Mbendjele," says evolutionary biologist Dr. Nikhil Chaudhary in a release at Phys.org.

While parenting duties in WEIRD countries (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic—so yes, that's the acronym) tend to fall on mothers, and later on childcare providers who are responsible for minding several infants and toddlers at once, hunter-gatherer societies create a pool of "all-mothers," which spreads out the care. As a result, hunter-gatherer children have longer amounts of physical contact with many caregivers (on average 10 people, and in some cases, up to 20). This allows birth mothers to receive more time to themselves, and a chance to recoup energy and take breaks. Physical contact is considered key to infant development, and the paper posits that a benefit of the hunter-gatherer model boosts infants' brain development and feelings of security (while also lowering rates of maternal depression).

The study noted that babies in hunter-gatherer care are held close in slings or wraps for eight to nine hours per day. In contrast, babies in Canada and Holland receive under 30 minutes, or "less contact than has been typical throughout human prehistory." The ratio of caregivers to babies is what makes this possible. A dedicated group of "all-mothers," someone besides the child's mother, is holding the baby at least half the time in hunter- gatherer groups—a far cry from what many lone parents experience on maternity leave. A phrase has been coined to describe the toll holding a newborn has on Western mothers: "touched out." Women experiencing this phenomenon are so overwhelmed by the constant physical contact demanded from them, they recoil from additional touch (even from, say, a loving cat).

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Hunter-gatherer all-mothers can include grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, and older siblings—and the latter are said to gain confidence in becoming parents one day. The ratio of caregivers to babies is 10-to-1, while daycares in the US are almost reverse, set at a maximum of six children to one adult. The researchers say that despite being costly, adopting hunter-gatherer practices could lead to "reduced risk of abuse and neglect, and enhancement of maternal condition and caregiving." And while creating a system of free, enhanced childcare may seem like a radical change in the US, the researchers note that it would be more of a return to what families have done "for the vast majority of our species' evolutionary history." (Read more parenting stories.)

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