Modern life may have made many things easier, but scientists say raising a child isn’t one of them.
A study of modern hunter-gatherer groups suggests that our Stone Age ancestors gave their children better child care than we do today.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge found that Mbendjele BaYaka children in the Republic of Congo were looked after by up to 15 different carers for nine hours a day.
Crying children were cared for by mothers’ support network more than half of the time, giving mothers more time to rest.
The study authors say these results suggest that modern parenting methods may be at odds with children’s evolutionary programmed needs.
Scientists suspect that children in Stone Age hunter-gatherer groups may have had better child care than modern children
The study authors argue that mothers in the West have faced no such pressure and little support throughout most of humanity’s evolutionary history (archive image)
Dr. Nikhil Chaudhary, lead author of the study, says insights into these modern hunter-gatherers could tell us more about the lives of people in the Stone Age.
“We lived as hunter-gatherers for more than 95 percent of our evolutionary history,” said Dr. Chaudhary.
“Contemporary hunter-gatherer societies may therefore provide clues as to whether there are particular child-rearing systems to which infants and their mothers may be psychologically adapted.”
The Mbendjele BaYaka live in the jungles of northern Republic of Congo, where they rely on hunting, fishing, gathering and honey gathering for their livelihood.
Evolutionary anthropologists stayed at Mbendjele BaYaka between March and July 2014.
The Mbendjele BaYaka live in the northern jungles of the Republic of Congo and rely on hunting, fishing, gathering and honey gathering
During these months, the researchers observed the children for twelve hours and recorded how often they were cared for and by whom.
The researchers found that between 10 and 20 different caregivers are involved in caring for a child and that a mother’s support system responds to more than half of her baby’s crying episodes.
Children were almost never left alone and spent long periods of time in physical contact with adults or were closely cared for.
When children cried, they were helped in less than 10 seconds half of the time and in less than 25 seconds 90 percent of the time.
As in the Stone Age, children in hunter-gatherer societies were rarely left alone and received constant care from a wide range of different carers, including older children
Who are the Mbendjele BaYaka?
The Mbendjele BaYaka are a nomadic group of hunter-gatherers living between the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo.
They are a traditional hunter-gatherer society that engages in hunting, fishing, foraging and honey collection.
Some Mbendjele communities have become settled and integrated into the local economy, while many remain mobile and live in the forest.
They live in multi-family camps with 20 to 80 people, which consist of several huts in which nuclear families live.
Older infants and teenagers are also often included in care, which the report’s authors say gives them experience and helps reduce anxiety about parenthood.
This suggests that children may be evolutionarily prepared to expect high levels of attention and physical contact from several different caregivers.
However, in Western countries, the provision of quality child support is limited and child to caregiver ratios are high.
Dr. Chaudhary says: “The nuclear family system in the West is a far cry from the communal lifestyles of hunter-gatherer societies like the Mbendjele.”
“Child care is finally becoming a state budget priority, but there is still much more to do.”
“As a society, from policymakers to employers to health services, we must work together to ensure mothers and children receive the support and care they need to thrive.”
In the study, Dr. Chaudhary and his co-authors: “Parenting manuals that expect babies to play alone for long periods of time or have no physical contact may be at odds with children’s psychobiological expectations.”
This graphic shows the complex care relationships between caregivers (gray circles), children under one and a half years old (blue circles) and children under four years old (green circles).
The study also suggests that Stone Age societies may have better prioritized giving mothers a break.
In Western societies, the authors write, it is common for childcare to be used only to give parents time for work instead of having time for themselves.
This means that parents have no time to rest or recover, in contrast to the parenting practices of hunter-gatherers and our Neolithic ancestors.
They argue that never in all of human history have parents been under so much pressure and received so little support.
Co-author and child psychologist Dr. Annie Swanepoel says that “supporting mothers also has numerous benefits for children, such as reducing the risk of neglect and abuse, buffering against adversity in the family, and improving maternal well-being, which in turn improves maternal care .”
The study was published in the journal Developmental Psychology.
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE HISTORY OF THE STONE AGE?
The Stone Age is a period of human prehistory characterized by the original development of stone tools and covering more than 95 percent of human technological history.
It begins with the earliest known use of stone tools by hominins, the ancestors of humans, during the Paleolithic period – beginning about 3.3 million years ago.
The pace of innovation in stone technology began to accelerate slightly around 400,000 to 200,000 years ago, a period known as the Mesolithic.
At the beginning of this period, hand axes were made with exquisite craftsmanship. This eventually gave way to smaller, more diverse toolkits, with an emphasis on flake tools rather than larger core tools.
The Stone Age is a period of human prehistory characterized by the original development of stone tools and covering more than 95 percent of human technological history. This image shows Neolithic jadeite axes from the Museum of Toulouse
These toolkits were established at least 285,000 years ago in some parts of Africa and 250,000 to 200,000 years ago in Europe and parts of western Asia. These toolkits persist at least until 50,000 to 28,000 years ago.
During the Younger Stone Age, the pace of innovation increased and the level of craftsmanship increased.
Groups of Homo sapiens experimented with various raw materials, including bone, ivory and antler, and stone.
The period between 50,000 and 39,000 years is also associated with the emergence of modern human behavior in Africa.
Different groups sought their own cultural identity and adopted their own production methods.
Later Stone Age peoples and their technologies spread from Africa over the next thousand years.