Parenting Approaches show modern hunter-gatherer groups, such as the Inuit, are sometimes seen as role models for today’s parents, but it’s crucial not to view these cultures as all being the same. Parenting practices differ widely from one tribe to another. The !Kung of the Kalahari Desert match popular ideas of attachment parenting, carrying their babies constantly and indulging them, whereas the Aché of South America follow a practice known as “portable paternity,” where a woman may have multiple sexual partners to ensure her child receives ample support. The Xhosa of South Africa encourage three-year-old boys to fight, believing it will toughen them.

No single hunter-gatherer community can be said to resemble our ancestors’ Parenting Approaches style more closely than another. To counter the stereotype of the indulgent indigenous caregiver, Lancy points to the Hadza people, whose children may experience stricter treatment than in other societies and are expected to be self-reliant from a young age.

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As evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk explains in her 2013 book Paleofantasy, “Contemporary hunter-gatherers differ in their diets, how they divide tasks between genders, their Parenting Approaches methods, and countless other aspects of daily life.” Human beings did not evolve for one fixed way of living or eating. We are in constant flux. Modern hunter-gatherers are not frozen snapshots of humanity’s past—like everyone else, they evolve with the world. We can’t truly know how our ancestors raised their children; we can only observe how people parent now, within their own time, place, and cultural framework.

So where did the popular image of the “indigenous parent” come from? I put this question to Charlotte Faircloth, a lecturer in sociology of gender at University College London. It’s the only conversation I can have undisturbed, as my children are at school.

“There’s a danger in treating the ‘mythical primitive’ as a blank canvas where we project our own ideas,” she explains. “When you look closely at individual cultures and people, their practices don’t match a universal template.”

Yet this reality often gets ignored because it disrupts the idealized “natural” narrative. We prefer to selectively adopt certain aspects of traditional parenting that fit our own preferences. In truth, “Parenting Approaches” reflects more about how we wish to parent than about how people actually do.

History shows that when life circumstances shift, so does Parenting Approaches. For example, after farming began and food became more reliable, mothers weaned their children earlier and had more babies to help with farm work. Wherever safe weaning foods existed, parents took advantage of them. Hunter-gatherers often co-slept due to breastfeeding and limited space, but once homes became larger, children began sleeping in separate beds, and eventually in separate rooms.

In essence, Parenting Approaches practices are shaped by what Charles Super and Sara Harkness at the University of Connecticut describe as “ethnotheories”—the culturally shared beliefs about raising children. We have our ethnotheories today, modern hunter-gatherers have theirs, and our ancestors surely had their own as well.

When I ask Lancy whether there’s anything universally shared among parents worldwide, he pauses before answering: “The one constant is that mothers respond to their infants’ need for food.” But even this can take many forms—breastfeeding, gathering wild foods, or earning money to buy meals. Everything else—who raises the child, how long they are breastfed, how they are treated, and the skills they are expected to develop—varies over time and place. Some of this change stems from shifting conditions; other parts arise from transformations in human culture and behavior itself.

Anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy describes us as “opportunistic” and “adaptable” in how we arrange parenting. Her constant refrain: “It depends.”

If there is no single “natural” way to parent, if parental love can be conditional, and if modern hunter-gatherers are far from perfect, then perhaps we need to question not just the idea of attachment parenting, but even attachment theory itself.

To investigate this, psychologist Heidi Keller at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem examined attachment across cultures, challenging Mary Ainsworth’s widely accepted model. Keller’s research showed that a “secure” attachment, as defined in Western psychology, is not the only route to healthy mental development. For instance, children of the Ivorian Beng or the Cameroonian Nso often greet strangers with ease—behavior the Strange Situation test labels as “insecure.” Keller argues that the way anxiety is induced depends entirely on cultural context.

Modern hunter-gatherer groups, such as the Inuit, are sometimes seen as role models for today’s parents, but it’s crucial not to view these cultures as all being the same. Parenting practices differ widely from one tribe to another. The !Kung of the Kalahari Desert match popular ideas of attachment parenting, carrying their babies constantly and indulging them, whereas the Aché of South America follow a practice known as “portable paternity,” where a woman may have multiple sexual partners to ensure her child receives ample support. The Xhosa of South Africa encourage three-year-old boys to fight, believing it will toughen them.

No single hunter-gatherer community can be said to resemble our ancestors’ parenting style more closely than another. To counter the stereotype of the indulgent indigenous caregiver, Lancy points to the Hadza people, whose children may experience stricter treatment than in other societies and are expected to be self-reliant from a young age.

As evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk explains in her 2013 book Paleofantasy, “Contemporary hunter-gatherers differ in their diets, how they divide tasks between genders, their parenting methods, and countless other aspects of daily life.” Human beings did not evolve for one fixed way of living or eating. We are in constant flux. Modern hunter-gatherers are not frozen snapshots of humanity’s past—like everyone else, they evolve with the world. We can’t truly know how our ancestors raised their children; we can only observe how people parent now, within their own time, place, and cultural framework.

So where did the popular image of the “indigenous parent” come from? I put this question to Charlotte Faircloth, a lecturer in sociology of gender at University College London. It’s the only conversation I can have undisturbed, as my children are at school.

“There’s a danger in treating the ‘mythical primitive’ as a blank canvas where we project our own ideas,” she explains. “When you look closely at individual cultures and people, their practices don’t match a universal template.”

Yet this reality often gets ignored because it disrupts the idealized “natural” narrative. We prefer to selectively adopt certain aspects of traditional parenting that fit our own preferences. In truth, “natural parenting” reflects more about how we wish to parent than about how people actually do.

History shows that when life circumstances shift, so does parenting. For example, after farming began and food became more reliable, mothers weaned their children earlier and had more babies to help with farm work. Wherever safe weaning foods existed, parents took advantage of them. Hunter-gatherers often co-slept due to breastfeeding and limited space, but once homes became larger, children began sleeping in separate beds, and eventually in separate rooms.

In essence, parenting practices are shaped by what Charles Super and Sara Harkness at the University of Connecticut describe as “ethnotheories”—the culturally shared beliefs about raising children. We have our ethnotheories today, modern hunter-gatherers have theirs, and our ancestors surely had their own as well.

When I ask Lancy whether there’s anything universally shared among parents worldwide, he pauses before answering: “The one constant is that mothers respond to their infants’ need for food.” But even this can take many forms—breastfeeding, gathering wild foods, or earning money to buy meals. Everything else—who raises the child, how long they are breastfed, how they are treated, and the skills they are expected to develop—varies over time and place. Some of this change stems from shifting conditions; other parts arise from transformations in human culture and behavior itself.

Anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy describes us as “opportunistic” and “adaptable” in how we arrange parenting. Her constant refrain: “It depends.”

If there is no single “natural” way to parent, if parental love can be conditional, and if modern hunter-gatherers are far from perfect, then perhaps we need to question not just the idea of attachment parenting, but even attachment theory itself.

To investigate this, psychologist Heidi Keller at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem examined attachment across cultures, challenging Mary Ainsworth’s widely accepted model. Keller’s research showed that a “secure” attachment, as defined in Western psychology, is not the only route to healthy mental development. For instance, children of the Ivorian Beng or the Cameroonian Nso often greet strangers with ease—behavior the Strange Situation test labels as “insecure.” Keller argues that the way anxiety is induced depends entirely on cultural context.