How Humans Raised Children 1000 Years Ago - Dr Paul Turke

How might child rearing look different if parents were educated in evolutionary theory?

Well, I think qu- quite a few ways. Um, p- probably the biggest one and one of the big themes in my book is that we used to live embedded in kinship networks. Um, so we had lots of different, uh, helpers, contributors, uh, helping us to raise our children. Th- you, you know, there are situations now where one parent, usually a mother, gets stuck with three kids in a h- in a home. And, um, uh, it's very different from how things used to work, uh, back in the day, and it puts a lot of stress on everybody, i- children, but parents, parents also. Uh, s- so that's a big thing. Um, kids, when they would go out to play and run around, they would, uh, be in sort of mixed age groups, so they would have... Uh, if you were a three-year-old, you'd have a seven-year-old there, uh, to, to learn from, and you might be helping a two-year-old. And, uh, so the, the sort of the independent child stuff would be different. Uh, so those are two of the big ways that, uh, uh, we've, uh, lived in s- we live now sort of in a mits- mismatched environment.

Mm-hmm. What about... W- what does that say about broken homes or unintact homes increasing, single parents, stepparents, um, what are the implications of that when it comes to child development?

Yeah, I think it puts, uh, s- a lot of stress on, on children. Um, it also... (sighs) You know, the human brain, the child's brain is very malleable, very, uh, very undeveloped when, when baby first appears on the scene, and when we change the environment, uh, the early environment, uh, w- that children are reared under, we sort of miss, I think, some of the cues that lead to, uh, uh, normal development. Now, humans, if anything, we're, you know, we're, we're flexible. We, we can adapt to a lot of different things, so it's not, uh, uh, the end of the world, but if we're, but if we're trying to optimize, you know, we're, we're sort of off the optimum if we're, um, y- under those sorts of stressful situations. And I think it, that has implications for, uh, happiness and, and healthiness and, um, y- you know, just em- emotional, uh, wellbeing, that sort of thing. And, and even things like ADHD potentially, the more spectrum-y things on the autism spectrum. All of that can be affected, I think, by, uh, this mismatch, uh...

Mm-hmm.

... environment, stressful broken homes, the stepparents like you say. Um, so, um, I, I don't know if you want to go into it but there w- there was a group of evolutionary psychologists, uh, Martin Daly and, uh, Margo Wilson who did early work on, uh, uh, stepparenting and, um, you know, they found that, uh, uh, stepparents tend to be... I mean s- most stepparents are great, you know. Of course they step in, they help, they're wonderful, but there, uh, statistically there's more likelihood of a, of abuse or neglect coming from the stepparent, You know, it's the old Cinderella thing. Uh, and so, uh, um, you know, the more our en- our environment is altered from what we used to have where there were always three or four people, so if, if grandma was a bad apple, you know, there were other people to step in. Um, but if it's, if it's just a, a broken home and just one, one mom or one dad and, uh, y- you know, that, that can, that can increase the, in the amount of abuse and things like that, that, that go on. Um, so, uh, that was very influential early work in evolutionary psychology, and some people got upset about it where they're saying, "Oh my God does... Because it's natural, does that mean it's okay for stepparents to abuse kids?" And you know, of course that, that doesn't make sense, that's the naturalistic fallacy and, uh...