“Hunt, Gather, Parent” – Ancient Wisdom for Raising Children
By Michaeleen Doucleff, PhD
What do ancient cultures have to teach us about raising children? This is the question Doucleff seeks to answer in her book, Hunt, Gather, Parent. Doucleff’s quest for parenting advice began when her daughter was born. She found the western literature ineffective, especially when her daughter matriculated from toddler to opinionated three-year-old.
Doucleff’s quest for answer finds her on a journey across the globe with her three-year-old, Rosie. She visits a Maya village in the Yucatan Peninsula, Inuit families in the Arctic, and Hadzabe families in Tanzania.
Major Takeaways
The TEAM approach, as Doucleff has termed it, consists of togetherness, encouragement, autonomy, and minimal parental interference. When these are all applied, conflict is reduced, cooperation is inspired, and children become helpful agents within the family unit.
The helpfulness element is where Doucleff seems mystified. Everyone in hunter, gatherer communities is expected to pitch in, and this is something each of us can do today. We can ask two-year-old bring this or that or throw something away. The child learns useful skills. Most importantly, they learn how to work together within the family.
A related point is that adults in most cultures don’t argue with children. Fighting with kids only fuels frustration and gives them attention.
Helpful, But Limited
Three limitations: 1) she mostly parents as a single parent – little mention of her husband and the family so she’s set up an apples to oranges situation, 2) she only has 1 child, and 3) she fails to analyze what western families would look like if we accepted the advice of our own parents and grandparents – if we passed wisdom down generationally.
Another simple observation from my own experience parenting four children: They are better outside. Doucleff is amazed at the Maya and Tanzanian children, but she does not seem to observe part of the reduction is stress is simply living outside…
And, finally, it is inherently misleading to pretend parenting in these small villages is all great and all western parenting is all wrong. Not only is the type of information Doucleff has gathered taken out of context, but these places she visits don’t have health insurance, the girls are not co-equals as adults, they are not democratic, many people never learn to read, and a plethora of other not so swell aspects of these communities.
Nevertheless, there is value in reading Doucleff’s perspective. She reminds us of things we know: make your children help, don’t argue with a child (or teen or adult) having a tantrum, remain calm, and don’t capitulate to tantrums.
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