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Uh David, uh good to see you.

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Good to see you too.

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Uh uh You're the Petrazuwski and I'm the Pen Sof.

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And what is this?

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This is Evolutionary Psychology, the podcast.

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And some people have noted that they don't like the screw-ups because it comes across as

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unprofessional.

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Uh for whatever reason, people who listen on Spotify are saying that.

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What do you think about that?

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Hmm.

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Uh yeah, that's a fair point.

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Why don't we just uh cut right to it then and say it's uh actual evolutionary psychology by

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actual evolutionary psychologists and uh point taken.

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Enjoy.

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David, today we have a wonderful guest, Karen Kramer, who is at the University

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of Um Utah, and she does incredible work on following

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actual foragers and finding out how people are spending their time doing

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follows of people and then also figuring out sort of who's doing what.

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And I think one of the most interesting things about this is that it turns out that like

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kids especially are actually contributing quite a bit um and doing quite a bit of the work

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um of sort of parenting and co-parenting.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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It was a really uh fascinating episode that um shed a lot of light into how work gets done

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in a small scale uh society, how how fieldwork gets done.

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Um uh she is a a veteran uh in in the field of uh evolutionary anthropology research giving

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us some really fascinating stories into what life is like uh in a small scale community.

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Um so this was this was a really fun episode.

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Yeah and just sort of the idea that uh how intergenerational, how having multiple

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generations in the same area in the same location is really foundational to human nature in

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that maybe if we're living in these very age stratified places like colleges or like

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schools, it might be very unnatural for us and might have weird consequences.

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And I think that's a a really important thing that I'm still thinking about from this

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episode.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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Me too.

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So without further ado, enjoy Karen Kramer.

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All right.

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Um so today uh we're extremely excited to have uh Karen Kramer who is

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Professor of Anthropology at University of Utah here with us.

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Karen, I know that you've been giving talks recently about the evolution of

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human life history and cooperation specifically between parents and

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children.

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And we've had some human behavioral ecologists on or evolutionary anthropologists on

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talking about human life history.

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We just had Mike Irvin on.

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And I think your work is super interesting in the following context of one

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thing we've talked about is sort of instinct blindness, which is the idea that the things

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that seem obvious to us as humans, it often takes sort of going to a different culture

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or going to the zoo and looking at other animals to sort of see what's actually unique and

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weird and strange about us.

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And in reading your work, I think a lot about that in the sense of we are really

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strange in the extent to which we're cooperative and the relationships we have among our

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family and with our parents and even what childhood is like.

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So this is all sort of a long-winded way of saying, um, can you sort of lay out

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what is the mystery that you're interested in explaining?

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And that I think for me at least, I didn't even realize was a mystery until I sort of read

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your work and saw your work on human life history and cooperation among

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generations.

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Well, I think the uh the the mystery or the umbrella question that I've

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always uh that I've centered around is how there got to be so many of us.

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So we are this really odd life history conundrum where we

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have both increased over evolutionary time, millions of years,

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increased both investment in children, which we see in a change in survival

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rates, not so much of infants but of juveniles, and also in reproduction.

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So, you know, most animals specialize in either surviving or reproducing, and we did

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we did both.

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And so, you know, how does how does how does that happen?

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And that is my interest in cooperation, certainly,

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and how mothers solve the problem of having multiple dependents of different ages at the

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same time, which, you know, really, well, it's hard to ever say humans are unique in

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something because there's always an exception, but we are very unusual in that capacity,

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certainly of supporting five, six, seven, eight dependents of different ages at the same

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time.

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Yeah.

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And both David and I are parents.

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Mine's five and a half.

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David, I keep sorry, I'm sorry, three.

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Three and a half.

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Yeah.

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Three and a half.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Okay.

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Two years apart.

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Yeah.

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And I think, you know, we we really I I certainly experience the software turning on of

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parenting, you know, even for fathering.

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Um, and just there's sort of a lot of we're very altrucial and there's a lot of investment

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necessary.

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Yes.

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Right.

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And the I I guess the when I was coming through graduate school,

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the explanations, I mean, you talked about how when people go when people go to the field,

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yes, your socks get blown off and you are you really have to think about things in other

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ways.

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So when I went to the field, the expectation uh, and it's still something I've spent my

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career kind of um trying to form a new narrative uh about the role of

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children.

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Uh I I think I still have a long ways to go uh in terms of convincing people.

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But the idea was that you know human children are these sort of little pariahs that just

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need, need, need, need and suck, suck, suck, and and all we can do is kind of, you know,

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they're this empty vessel that gets filled up.

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And um that was the theoretic model that I had in mind.

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That was the analytic model that I had in mind when I went to the field for the first time.

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And when you do go to the field for the first time, one of the

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things you do, because you can't just march into a community and start asking about

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reproduction and can I sit in your house and watch what you're doing all day long?

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You have to you have to create a relationship and you have to create loyalty and trust and

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uh etc.

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And so one way at least we used to do it um is that well you would map

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your community physically draw a map of your community because you learn then where

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everyone's learning and what where kinship relationships are.

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You can ask along the way, age and sex of individuals living in different households.

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You get a sense of the community, and people love, well, one, they love looking at maps and

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how you draw a map.

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And two, you collect, as I said, along the way, kind of the reproductive histories about

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what's going on.

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And one of the questions I asked, because I was interested basically in divisions of labor,

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was, do you spend any time in the fields?

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These were Maya agriculturalists, and most of their diet comes from corn, and an

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awful lot of their time supposedly was would be spent in the fields.

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And I would ask men, women, and children this question.

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And it was always, you know, women spend no time, children spend no time, and the dads all

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spent the time.

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And yet every morning I would get up and in front of my little hut, there would walk by the

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women to the field, and tracing behind them were all the children walking behind in the

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field.

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And so one of my first eureka moments was that what

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people say and what people do are very different, which is why I guess I'm I'm committed to

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observational sorts of research because that deception was very clear to me right off the

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bat.

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So, you know, my par my paradigm kind of really had to shift.

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And when I started analyzing my data, you know, what I was observing and my hunches

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certainly manifested.

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And kids were doing an awful lot to support themselves and

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their siblings.

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And as I guess it's kind of evolved in my thinking over time, in the vernacular, I

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guess I would say all those kids are, in a sense, the very engine that supports high

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fertility.

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And, you know, it's it's a perpetuating, interactive, uh, finely tuned piece

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of life history and economic uh machinery.

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I'm very curious about that piece you mentioned, that uh there was a disconnect between

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what people were saying and what people were doing.

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Um so why do you think that is?

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Why was there that disconnect between the narrative of how much time women

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and children spend in the fields and how much time they were actually spending in the

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fields?

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What do you think was behind that?

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Well, I think in that case there must be um there must be a strong norm

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that it's you know men are doing the work in the fields and uh

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I mean I even if they're objectively not even if they're objective even if

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they're objectively not I mean another good example is um

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I I had spent a a day uh sitting in a house doing taking time

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allocation observations and it was the end of the day and

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there's a woman, she's got eight kids, and she's kind of she's tending the fire

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and she's nursing a baby.

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And she says to me, You know, you know, it's getting dark, it's the end of the day.

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I've done my work for the day.

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Would you like to go home?

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And I knew she was gonna she was heating up water to bathe her children, her eight

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children.

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Well, she probably wasn't bathing the older ones, but the younger ones.

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She still had to feed them all.

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And yet, from her point of view, that wasn't, she didn't consider that work.

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She she knew I was there to record what people did in terms of productive sort of economic

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activities.

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But she didn't consider all of that childcare or mother's work or

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cooking to be work.

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So I guess you know, those are two kind of different examples.

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One is that you know, we just have different uh it's difficult when you work in a I didn't

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uh probably speak Maya at that time.

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It's different when you're speaking through a the our common language of Spanish.

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Uh it's you know different when you're dealing with language.

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It's different when you're just dealing with how people perceive certain kinds of words,

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you know, even.

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Do you do you think this was just a a linguistic uh misunderstanding or was there a a

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social reason that they felt the need to cover up how much they were working

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in the fields for I don't know, some social or normative reason.

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I think in the in the first case that I gave of why in an interview format, you know, do

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you work in the field?

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Um, you know, that was probably for some kind of normative reason.

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I I can't really explain why that why that would be.

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They're not a particularly machismo culture.

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Women are valued for their for their contributions.

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But it just was kind of remarkable that and it's also the danger of just asking one simple

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question.

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I mean, the, you know, the fault, the onus was probably on me for not parsing.

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I mean, I just was trying, as I say, that's how you kind of get entree into a community

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is you sit down with families and talk to them as a way to humanize us all and make

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us, you know, on friendly terms.

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And it probably in while I was going to study that, it wasn't my main objective.

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It was just to kind of talk to them.

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So anyway, I think that was, you know, part of it was was the onus is on me.

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If I'm going to rely on interview, my onus on is on me to be able to parse the question in

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a way that you're going to get actually the answer that you want.

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So part of it may be their norms about their own behavior, and part of it may be that I was

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just asking this one simple question to move on to all the other questions so that I can

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move on to my own research that I really wanted to do.

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So it's funny.

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Yeah.

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And I mean, maybe this is the next question that is sort of you have this thing where

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you're like, whoa, this is really different.

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Everyone's saying this one thing, but I go out and look and they're actually going in the

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fields.

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And now you you mentioned that experience.

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And then you you talked about earlier that you're you're you now have a very different

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view.

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Can you sort of walk us through how that experience now leads to this new view where you

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talked about sort of this um the engine of high fertility being being children and thinking

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about children in that lifespan and thinking about them as you're saying, as agents and

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having agency and not just being empty vessels?

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Can you kind of walk us through from that moment that you had that field experience to sort

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of what was the next step for you in your thinking or how are you thinking now about that?

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Well, so you you're in the field for a year, you're collecting all these observations,

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you're you have hunches about you know what you're seeing, um, repetitive patterns,

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and then you come back and you analyze your data.

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And it was um, it was very clear, you know, the the analysis um was very

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clear.

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One difference is most of the arguments up until then were

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spurred mostly by demographers, and they there was this whole

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cost of children, literature, and interest.

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So, how much does a kid cost?

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And you can either sum the calories or demographers sum the dollars, and then you look

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at what they put in, and you know, it doesn't match.

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You know, kids look really expensive, and they do.

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Maya kids, Pume kids, the hunters and gatherers that I work with in Venezuela, you know,

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they look really expensive when you look at one kid.

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But my argument all along was humans have this really odd life history where we

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started where women, mothers, have multiple dependents of different ages.

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And so, even as an economic question, we have to look at it not as one kid going through,

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but what does it look like as economically from the passel of kids going through?

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So any one kid, the five-year-old, the three-year-old, the five-year-old are going to take

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out of the basket more than they put in, but the 12, 13, you know, 15, 17-year-old are

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going to put more into the basket than they take out.

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And so you get from the mother's point of view, she's just thinking about how am I going to

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raise my kids?

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Um, Is, you know, her calculus is not each, you know, I'm gonna each kid is too

237
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expensive, but you know, how can I manage the whole?

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And that's one thing I really tried to bring to the analysis of how we think about kids is

239
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thinking about this kind of this whole this whole product moving

240
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forward as women decide to or not to have additional children.

241
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Right.

242
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And what is it that, I mean, you know, we we are psychologists, but one of the reasons to

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have an integrated, you know, evolutionary behavioral science is that anthropologists

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seeing, you know, ways of living that are on the ground keep us lab psychologists honest.

245
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So what was it that you were seeing in terms of um the expression of sort of care at

246
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different ages?

247
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Was the idea that sort of you're seeing that there's clearly evolved design in kids for

248
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taking care of siblings or like kind of doing alloparenting as well?

249
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Or what was it that you were seeing?

250
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Well, it it changes, it certainly changes with age, but well, I guess some of the

251
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arguments that I've made is that that kids have a low opportunity cost in terms of

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health.

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Uh and so this is unlike other, you know, humans, this is all in the kind of the rubric

254
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of cooperative breeding, but in other species, it's really not until um

255
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the problem about cooperative breeding is why sexually mature individuals stick

256
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around home or the nest or the den or whatever longer after they're they can reproduce

257
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themselves, why they stick around longer and help out help raise their siblings.

258
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And the situation is very different for humans because, yes, by the time boys and girls are

259
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16, 17, or 18, yes, you get to be that rub and and they and they do leave home.

260
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But it's those, it's those juveniles, like maybe even three to twelve, thirteen,

261
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fourteen, who um these aren't this this well, Maya then didn't have um

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formal education.

263
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The Pune, the hunters and gatherers I work with don't have formal any formal education.

264
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So, in a sense, that is their school.

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That is how they're learning their adult skills, is by helping.

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And there's no real opportunity cost because they aren't, they aren't um, you know, they

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aren't looking around for mates and trying to start a family themselves or too young.

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So they're kind of a beholden audience, you know, for that reason.

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You know, that that that is their school, and there are they learn by doing.

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That's how they, you know, I think think that that's one place that anthropology and and

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psychology really overlap is in learning and like how we think about learning.

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There's several of us now that are like looking at learning in traditional societies, and

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it just does seem to be very different in terms of learning from each other and learning

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while doing.

275
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And so again, just back to the idea that there's a low opportunity cost.

276
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That that's interesting that a lot of the childcare is is being done by older

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kids who haven't yet left to go look for a mate or or start a family.

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And a lot of that work is is being done by these kids and they're all learning by doing and

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working with each other.

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Um that's very different from the way things work in a modern society where uh

281
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kids aren't really playing that kind of teaching or pedagogical or child rearing

282
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role, we farm that out to daycare or to uh formal education systems.

283
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Do you think that could be playing a role in why we see fertility levels being so uh

284
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uh low uh in in Western cultures?

285
00:18:37,540 --> 00:18:42,580
Um, and that the cause kids literally are more expensive in Western cultures because uh uh

286
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they don't help each other the way they do um in the in the in the communities you're

287
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studying.

288
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Is this do you think that might play a role?

289
00:18:49,890 --> 00:18:55,650
Well certainly that is a one of the classic um arguments for the demographic

290
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transition is is about the cost of children.

291
00:18:58,610 --> 00:19:03,330
Those were very popular arguments in the 70s and 80s.

292
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And you know I think we've tried to make it more we've tried to make it more nuanced, more

293
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sophisticated, but I think kind of economically it does come back to that, that you just uh

294
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yes, that that that transition makes it again, that engine breaks down.

295
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It doesn't, those all those kids no longer really uh pay for themselves.

296
00:19:23,520 --> 00:19:28,880
I mean, and in essence, what we see is in traditional societies when you spin it out, these

297
00:19:29,040 --> 00:19:33,040
are pretty much paying for themselves, that group of kids within a family.

298
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Right.

299
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And that's no longer the case.

300
00:19:34,960 --> 00:19:40,560
So that's certainly been uh it's certainly a considerable uh I think part

301
00:19:40,880 --> 00:19:44,890
of why you get that um that demographic transition.

302
00:19:45,290 --> 00:19:49,050
I think there's lots of there's lots of other reasons now and it's perpetuated for lots of

303
00:19:49,050 --> 00:19:49,770
other reasons now.

304
00:19:49,850 --> 00:19:52,490
But what do you think some of those reasons are?

305
00:19:52,570 --> 00:19:57,210
I mean we we got into this uh briefly with Michael Gervin um sort of getting his take on on

306
00:19:57,290 --> 00:20:02,490
uh what's going on with this drop in fertility that we see in the Western world uh as uh

307
00:20:02,490 --> 00:20:06,090
countries economically develop you you know you would think from a Darwinian perspective

308
00:20:06,170 --> 00:20:10,730
that greater prosperity would lead to greater fertility but what we see is the opposite um

309
00:20:10,880 --> 00:20:15,600
You mentioned one possible factor where in Western cultures kids don't take care of

310
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themselves to the same extent that they do in other societies.

311
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So that might be one reason why fertility has gone down, is that they're just more uh

312
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expensive.

313
00:20:25,680 --> 00:20:28,800
Um what what do you think are some of the other factors that you think are playing a key

314
00:20:28,800 --> 00:20:29,520
role here?

315
00:20:30,160 --> 00:20:35,600
Well, this is not a place that I am an am an expert, is thinking about modern demographic

316
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transition.

317
00:20:36,400 --> 00:20:42,230
Um uh so there are many factors, and I think all many different disciplines weigh

318
00:20:42,230 --> 00:20:47,430
in, you know, both about uh cognitive, you know, economic reasons uh that we just you know

319
00:20:47,510 --> 00:20:49,110
talked about, cost of children.

320
00:20:49,270 --> 00:20:54,150
You know, there certainly are um, you know, probably cultural evolution, you know, the

321
00:20:54,150 --> 00:20:57,510
cultural evolutionists would have a set of explanations for that.

322
00:20:57,670 --> 00:21:00,310
I think psychologists would have an explanation for that.

323
00:21:00,470 --> 00:21:06,310
You know, I think one obvious thing is is when we've got seven billion people on

324
00:21:06,310 --> 00:21:12,040
the planet, um, you know, that's gone up many fold since you know you and I were born,

325
00:21:12,200 --> 00:21:18,120
that it's uh you know, it's just a super competitive world, and and you you have to,

326
00:21:18,200 --> 00:21:22,680
you know, you have to you have to think about um you know that aspect of it.

327
00:21:22,760 --> 00:21:28,570
I was gonna say that demographers, uh well, to focus on

328
00:21:28,570 --> 00:21:33,290
a mean change, an average change in fertility is one question.

329
00:21:33,530 --> 00:21:39,290
But I guess what I've really learned watching this Maya community, the

330
00:21:39,290 --> 00:21:44,490
uptake of family planning or contraception is something very different that we have to

331
00:21:44,490 --> 00:21:49,460
really actually keep our eye on the variation and what's going on there.

332
00:21:49,780 --> 00:21:55,460
So, in that Maya community, as in much of Mesoamerica and Latin America,

333
00:21:56,020 --> 00:21:58,820
family planning is introduced with tubal ligation.

334
00:21:58,900 --> 00:22:04,900
So, this is a real serious decision, you know, on-off decision about whether you curtail

335
00:22:04,900 --> 00:22:07,220
your fertility or not.

336
00:22:07,460 --> 00:22:11,170
And it was, you know, I trained as a demographer.

337
00:22:11,250 --> 00:22:15,490
I was looking at averages, averages, averages, and you know, nothing was if nothing was

338
00:22:15,490 --> 00:22:18,210
really changing, but I knew things were changing.

339
00:22:18,370 --> 00:22:21,170
And I mean, I've worked in this community for 33 years.

340
00:22:21,330 --> 00:22:26,850
And so if you take a look at the variation, that's what was moving around, which was so

341
00:22:26,850 --> 00:22:27,250
interesting.

342
00:22:27,410 --> 00:22:32,050
So what parents were doing is some were just as as life got more

343
00:22:33,280 --> 00:22:38,720
economically as they started going through market integration, and there

344
00:22:38,960 --> 00:22:40,240
started to be some wealth.

345
00:22:40,320 --> 00:22:44,800
I wouldn't say there's even hardly wealth disparities yet, but now that's coming down the

346
00:22:44,800 --> 00:22:45,360
track.

347
00:22:46,160 --> 00:22:50,640
Some people were you were putting that into somatic reproductive effort, some people were

348
00:22:50,640 --> 00:22:53,920
having much larger families, and others were having smaller families.

349
00:22:54,080 --> 00:22:57,760
And so but you would miss all of that if you were just were looking at the average.

350
00:22:57,840 --> 00:23:00,240
You would you'd have to look at the distribution.

351
00:23:00,970 --> 00:23:06,970
And what was interesting is that women were, you know, tubal ligation again, really

352
00:23:06,970 --> 00:23:10,010
serious form of family planning.

353
00:23:10,250 --> 00:23:14,810
They were uptaking it at the end of their reproductive careers.

354
00:23:15,210 --> 00:23:19,290
So they would get a tubal ligation after they had six or seven children.

355
00:23:19,530 --> 00:23:25,210
So it was curtailing them from having seven, eight, or nine children, but they weren't,

356
00:23:25,370 --> 00:23:31,160
they weren't yet making the decision, I just want to have two children or one children,

357
00:23:31,400 --> 00:23:35,960
one child, until they understood the implications of this new world.

358
00:23:36,120 --> 00:23:41,320
I mean, so you've got this, you've got this rapidly changing world economically, you've got

359
00:23:41,320 --> 00:23:46,920
these new market opportunities, and along with that comes the the option to

360
00:23:46,920 --> 00:23:48,920
limit families size.

361
00:23:49,160 --> 00:23:50,520
And so what do you do?

362
00:23:50,680 --> 00:23:56,370
And what was so cool about that is that they had far more agency than we

363
00:23:56,370 --> 00:24:00,690
give most people, that they were making their own decisions and they were basically making

364
00:24:00,690 --> 00:24:02,530
the most cautious decision they could.

365
00:24:02,690 --> 00:24:04,130
They were doing the new behavior.

366
00:24:04,210 --> 00:24:10,130
If if I'm making, if if you're following what I'm saying, they were doing the new behavior,

367
00:24:10,210 --> 00:24:14,130
they were uptaking family planning, but they were doing so at a time that really wouldn't

368
00:24:14,130 --> 00:24:18,530
have late in their reproductive career when it really wouldn't affect their fertility.

369
00:24:18,850 --> 00:24:24,580
Then, 20 years later, when they start to understand the risks and opportunities,

370
00:24:24,820 --> 00:24:30,580
they start to then have it, have those tube ligations earlier in their reproductive career.

371
00:24:30,740 --> 00:24:35,300
So that's not super answering your question because I'm looking at it, I'm looking at the

372
00:24:35,300 --> 00:24:39,460
demographic transition played out like literally in a 20-year period.

373
00:24:40,020 --> 00:24:44,660
And that's all I can say about that is that that women have um, I guess, you know, their

374
00:24:44,820 --> 00:24:49,870
parents make decisions and they make conscious decisions about what they what they want to

375
00:24:49,870 --> 00:24:54,590
do, what they can afford to do, and how it might impact.

376
00:24:54,910 --> 00:24:59,230
You know, if if you only have two kids, you're not going to be growing crops much longer.

377
00:24:59,310 --> 00:25:01,630
You can't really afford to grow crops.

378
00:25:02,110 --> 00:25:04,990
Um, so it's a you know, it's a pretty major decision.

379
00:25:05,230 --> 00:25:10,910
So I think those decisions, the demographic transition, we can see a mean change in family

380
00:25:10,910 --> 00:25:15,310
size, gotten much smaller, got much smaller, you know, over a couple hundred years pretty

381
00:25:15,310 --> 00:25:19,640
quickly, I guess, but there's also a lot of variation around that.

382
00:25:20,280 --> 00:25:25,160
And that's maybe where we can learn actually more about why people, why parents make those

383
00:25:25,480 --> 00:25:26,440
decisions.

384
00:25:27,160 --> 00:25:27,400
Yeah.

385
00:25:27,480 --> 00:25:33,320
But I'm hearing you say too is also, I think from a very naive evolutionary

386
00:25:33,320 --> 00:25:39,290
perspective, and maybe one that, you know, I'm certainly guilty of promulgating would

387
00:25:39,290 --> 00:25:44,730
be one of there's evolved design for obviously like mating and for

388
00:25:44,730 --> 00:25:45,450
parenting.

389
00:25:45,610 --> 00:25:51,210
But the idea that sort of thinking about well, how are my children going to

390
00:25:51,210 --> 00:25:54,810
succeed in this social ecology?

391
00:25:55,290 --> 00:26:00,250
And what can I do now to ensure their success in the future?

392
00:26:00,620 --> 00:26:04,540
which, you know, even if it wouldn't have included, you know, birth control or it might

393
00:26:04,540 --> 00:26:07,740
have over evolutionary time, you know, but that's a little bit uncertain.

394
00:26:07,900 --> 00:26:11,900
I mean, we we certainly have lots of cross-cultural ethnographic evidence of birth control

395
00:26:11,900 --> 00:26:14,860
and ways to sort of limit fertility.

396
00:26:15,020 --> 00:26:21,020
But to me, this sort of expresses a much richer psychology of sort of family plan planning.

397
00:26:21,350 --> 00:26:27,350
and and even for the evolved psychology to sort of be aware of on the ground what is the

398
00:26:27,350 --> 00:26:33,270
social landscape, what is the ecology, and how can I as a parent, you know, it's not like

399
00:26:33,270 --> 00:26:37,350
we're just, you know, a species where we just sort of drop our eggs and say, good luck,

400
00:26:37,430 --> 00:26:37,990
everybody.

401
00:26:38,150 --> 00:26:42,230
You know, like we're really thinking about how can we smooth out the wrinkles?

402
00:26:42,660 --> 00:26:44,340
what how should we invest?

403
00:26:44,660 --> 00:26:49,060
I mean, I realize it's not helicopter parenting, like it may be in some places, but it

404
00:26:49,060 --> 00:26:54,660
seems to me to reflect still a design for thinking about um being responsible and thinking

405
00:26:54,660 --> 00:26:59,380
about the consequences of sort of like what what what is the landscape that these children

406
00:26:59,380 --> 00:27:01,540
are going to be in, which is what I think you would expect.

407
00:27:01,700 --> 00:27:07,460
Do you think that's fair or is that um well I think I think all parents you know

408
00:27:07,620 --> 00:27:09,190
think think about that.

409
00:27:09,270 --> 00:27:14,710
I mean, even natural fertility parents who, you know, there's other ways that you can alter

410
00:27:14,710 --> 00:27:19,990
your fertility than to then to take, you know, birth control or have a tubal ligation.

411
00:27:20,070 --> 00:27:25,750
And I think all parents, I think all parents think about uh what are the implications if I

412
00:27:25,910 --> 00:27:30,920
I mean I've certainly overheard those dialogues in those conversations both among the Kume,

413
00:27:31,320 --> 00:27:36,920
among the Maya, certainly among friends and colleagues and students that

414
00:27:37,080 --> 00:27:42,440
um you know we think about the futures of our children and what that's gonna what's that

415
00:27:42,440 --> 00:27:43,000
that's gonna do.

416
00:27:43,080 --> 00:27:48,920
I mean there's a lot of built-in biological mechanisms in humans so that we it's

417
00:27:48,920 --> 00:27:54,790
difficult well there's few few benefits and a lot of costs to have kids

418
00:27:54,790 --> 00:27:56,070
too closely together.

419
00:27:56,230 --> 00:28:01,990
So there are some some limits that are just kind of imposed, so to speak, biologically.

420
00:28:02,150 --> 00:28:07,750
But um, I do think there's uh well thought out conversations about about

421
00:28:08,070 --> 00:28:08,310
that.

422
00:28:08,630 --> 00:28:08,950
Yeah.

423
00:28:09,270 --> 00:28:11,430
David asked about the demographic transition.

424
00:28:11,590 --> 00:28:17,420
Are there other consequences as you see it to this idea that in a more

425
00:28:17,420 --> 00:28:23,100
quote unquote sort of natural ecology, children are having the experience of

426
00:28:23,100 --> 00:28:28,060
raising their siblings or close relatives or or in multi-age um

427
00:28:28,380 --> 00:28:29,260
cohorts.

428
00:28:29,500 --> 00:28:33,180
And we don't do that in in certain cultures and ours.

429
00:28:33,340 --> 00:28:36,460
Are there other consequences or or what are those consequences?

430
00:28:36,540 --> 00:28:39,900
And what are the ones that you are thinking about or worrying about or yeah.

431
00:28:40,270 --> 00:28:42,670
I I think I think there I think there are.

432
00:28:42,910 --> 00:28:46,830
I'm actually just starting to write a book on kind of the evolution of childhood.

433
00:28:47,150 --> 00:28:51,790
And while I'm again not an expert because I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a developmental

434
00:28:51,790 --> 00:28:57,790
psychologist or a cognitive psychologist, but certainly I I no I've got the

435
00:28:57,790 --> 00:29:03,600
other perspective of how kids organize themselves when they're

436
00:29:03,600 --> 00:29:07,840
children versus what you know is very apparent in our own world.

437
00:29:07,920 --> 00:29:13,840
And that's one of the biggest, I think, aspects is that kids in traditional societies hang

438
00:29:13,840 --> 00:29:16,240
out in mixed age groups.

439
00:29:16,560 --> 00:29:22,480
So there's very little, even I'm not sure if I think Mike was on that study, even among the

440
00:29:22,480 --> 00:29:28,240
Chamani, they looked at language learning and they found there was incredibly

441
00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:32,030
low child-directed uh adult talk.

442
00:29:32,350 --> 00:29:33,070
Very low.

443
00:29:33,150 --> 00:29:38,190
And I found that not in terms of language, but just in terms of learning, that kids spend

444
00:29:38,190 --> 00:29:43,390
almost no time being taught by uh adults.

445
00:29:43,550 --> 00:29:45,710
Now, that's very culturally specific.

446
00:29:45,790 --> 00:29:50,990
I'm sure, you know, in some cases, in some traditional cultures around the world,

447
00:29:51,600 --> 00:29:55,120
absolutely, you know, there's hands-on parent parental teaching.

448
00:29:55,280 --> 00:29:59,520
I just don't observe it in the with the people that I work with.

449
00:29:59,680 --> 00:30:03,920
There's much more uh kids learning, kids learning on their own.

450
00:30:04,000 --> 00:30:08,880
So, for example, the Pume, the hunters and gatherers that I work with, a lot of their

451
00:30:08,880 --> 00:30:11,520
technology is woven technology.

452
00:30:12,110 --> 00:30:17,790
and little girls, so they use you know baskets uh of every shape and

453
00:30:17,790 --> 00:30:21,710
size to do everything, you know, that's their those are their containers, those are their

454
00:30:21,710 --> 00:30:24,430
bowls, those are how they carry things around.

455
00:30:24,510 --> 00:30:27,070
I mean, they're really woven technology is really critical.

456
00:30:27,150 --> 00:30:29,870
They weave mats to sit on, so they don't have to sit on the dirt.

457
00:30:30,030 --> 00:30:35,150
And kids don't learn how they learn to do that is not by mom showing them.

458
00:30:35,310 --> 00:30:39,780
They will take a they'll go to the garbage, you know, the trash dump, they'll pick up a

459
00:30:39,940 --> 00:30:43,540
discarded basket or bat mat or something, they'll take it apart.

460
00:30:43,700 --> 00:30:48,020
I guess, you know, lots of kids learn basic mechanics this way.

461
00:30:48,180 --> 00:30:51,380
They'll take it apart and they'll learn how to put it back together again.

462
00:30:51,540 --> 00:30:56,020
And you know, maybe when they're a little bit older, they'll ask you know, mom a question

463
00:30:56,020 --> 00:30:59,620
about something sophisticated, or the mother will correct them about something.

464
00:30:59,780 --> 00:31:00,740
But that's how they learn.

465
00:31:00,820 --> 00:31:02,420
They're not they're not formally taught.

466
00:31:02,580 --> 00:31:06,260
And part of it, they're, I mean, they're just they're hanging out in mixed age and mixed

467
00:31:06,340 --> 00:31:11,390
sex groups, and they're learning an awful lot from each other.

468
00:31:11,710 --> 00:31:17,310
And I think there is probably a big price to pay for the fact that we have these

469
00:31:17,310 --> 00:31:23,230
age-regulated groupings, you know, in terms of after-school sports, in terms

470
00:31:23,230 --> 00:31:28,190
of schooling, uh, lots of expectation about age.

471
00:31:28,270 --> 00:31:34,240
And I think we've we've eliminated, I mean, at least this what I'm writing so

472
00:31:34,240 --> 00:31:38,640
far about that, you know, I certainly wouldn't recommend that we don't send our kids to

473
00:31:38,640 --> 00:31:44,560
school, but I think in terms of social learning, that's really critical is that you learn

474
00:31:45,440 --> 00:31:47,520
you learn from the older kids.

475
00:31:47,760 --> 00:31:51,840
Um you learn from the older kids how to socially regulate.

476
00:31:51,920 --> 00:31:54,160
And I think we miss out on that.

477
00:31:54,400 --> 00:32:00,010
I have a good example where um uh a male uh a postdoc uh

478
00:32:00,170 --> 00:32:05,930
he brought down um his uh kids to the field and the

479
00:32:05,930 --> 00:32:10,970
Maya were so excited to see like what you know what what would it be what what the little

480
00:32:10,970 --> 00:32:16,810
ones would be like and um they were the the kids

481
00:32:16,970 --> 00:32:22,940
were sh were just kind of jaw-droppingly astonished that there was a two-year-old and

482
00:32:22,940 --> 00:32:28,060
the two-year-old just threw fits, you know, as as our kids do through through tantrums all

483
00:32:28,060 --> 00:32:28,460
the time.

484
00:32:28,620 --> 00:32:33,420
And they were just like dumbfounded, like how in the like how do you like, why would you do

485
00:32:33,420 --> 00:32:33,500
that?

486
00:32:33,580 --> 00:32:34,620
And how do you get away with that?

487
00:32:34,860 --> 00:32:39,900
Or like sharing, it would be like they they just easily, they easily share.

488
00:32:40,060 --> 00:32:41,180
I mean they're self-interested.

489
00:32:41,260 --> 00:32:42,460
There's no you know essential difference.

490
00:32:42,970 --> 00:32:44,410
But they're they easily share.

491
00:32:44,490 --> 00:32:48,010
And you know, it's like, you know, that two-year-old old sort of behavior that that's mine

492
00:32:48,170 --> 00:32:48,970
and you can't have me.

493
00:32:49,450 --> 00:32:55,210
And and yet, and yet, and yet the little the the kid could recite their numbers and their

494
00:32:55,210 --> 00:32:57,290
letters in a way that the Maya kids could not.

495
00:32:57,370 --> 00:33:02,490
So there's just, you know, there's real differences in terms of kind of cognitive skills

496
00:33:02,490 --> 00:33:03,690
and social skills.

497
00:33:03,930 --> 00:33:08,650
And you know, we can't we need the social we need the cognitive skills obviously to succeed

498
00:33:08,650 --> 00:33:09,530
in our own world.

499
00:33:09,690 --> 00:33:14,820
But I I worry about the the social skills, I guess, and and and maybe what we're

500
00:33:14,820 --> 00:33:15,700
compromising.

501
00:33:16,420 --> 00:33:16,820
Yeah.

502
00:33:17,220 --> 00:33:22,580
Do you think those social skills, I mean, and maybe maybe I'm just saying the obvious

503
00:33:22,580 --> 00:33:28,580
inference is that the reason why the the the postdoc children got away

504
00:33:28,580 --> 00:33:34,310
with that was because there weren't just younger kids around who when there was a fit were

505
00:33:34,310 --> 00:33:35,830
just sort of like walked away.

506
00:33:35,910 --> 00:33:40,390
Cause right, they're just not, they are they're not, they didn't buy into like I'm gonna

507
00:33:40,470 --> 00:33:43,750
like go the full the full way and dealing with a meltdown.

508
00:33:43,830 --> 00:33:47,910
I'm still a kid, and you know what, kid, have a meltdown, I'm not gonna deal with this.

509
00:33:48,070 --> 00:33:52,710
And that just changes then the reward structure of the two-year-old of just like if I if I

510
00:33:52,710 --> 00:33:55,910
have a meltdown, yep, doesn't do anything, I'm not I'm gonna, you know, I'm just gonna do

511
00:33:55,910 --> 00:33:56,310
it less.

512
00:33:56,390 --> 00:33:57,990
Is that you know right, right?

513
00:33:58,070 --> 00:34:00,630
Yeah, certainly there would be synergy for that.

514
00:34:00,790 --> 00:34:01,270
Yeah.

515
00:34:01,480 --> 00:34:01,880
Yeah.

516
00:34:02,120 --> 00:34:02,680
Yeah.

517
00:34:04,520 --> 00:34:05,480
Interesting.

518
00:34:06,440 --> 00:34:11,960
I mean, I'm wondering if it if it has to do with the abstractness of the

519
00:34:11,960 --> 00:34:17,160
information that has to be transmitted in modern societies compared to

520
00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:19,400
forging societies.

521
00:34:19,800 --> 00:34:24,910
And that, you know, a physical skill can easily be acquired by you know actually practicing

522
00:34:24,910 --> 00:34:28,190
it actually doing it, you know, being around other kids who are doing it.

523
00:34:28,350 --> 00:34:34,110
Whereas learning how to read or write uh is not really the type of skill that you can learn

524
00:34:34,110 --> 00:34:34,750
by doing.

525
00:34:35,150 --> 00:34:40,990
And that's it's it's kind of an alien way of learning that kids aren't really um good at at

526
00:34:40,990 --> 00:34:41,310
doing.

527
00:34:41,390 --> 00:34:44,830
I mean the kids like to you know move move their bodies to manipulate things.

528
00:34:44,910 --> 00:34:48,750
They like to play around and experiment and you know try things out and see what happens.

529
00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:52,120
That's much more the the natural way that kids like to learn.

530
00:34:52,280 --> 00:34:56,760
But unfortunately, that's just not the way that that you can learn how to read and write

531
00:34:56,760 --> 00:34:57,640
and do math.

532
00:34:57,800 --> 00:35:00,120
It's just it's a very different mode of information.

533
00:35:00,280 --> 00:35:04,120
Do you think there's something about the different the the nature of the information that

534
00:35:04,120 --> 00:35:09,480
needs to be learned to to flourish in a in a modern society compared to a forging society.

535
00:35:09,560 --> 00:35:13,240
Do you think that is is one of the differences perhaps that that leads to these cultural

536
00:35:13,240 --> 00:35:13,800
differences?

537
00:35:14,440 --> 00:35:19,430
I mean I think in the from the surface of it, it would seem like you know, the information

538
00:35:19,430 --> 00:35:25,030
that we need to learn is is certainly additive, and and adults have kind of the end

539
00:35:25,030 --> 00:35:30,950
game picture in mind, and so um they can transmit that

540
00:35:31,270 --> 00:35:31,910
information.

541
00:35:32,230 --> 00:35:38,150
I mean, I would say you know, lots of um technologies in traditional

542
00:35:38,150 --> 00:35:40,390
societies is pretty sophisticated.

543
00:35:40,780 --> 00:35:45,100
Um but uh I would say that's yeah that's probably tr true.

544
00:35:45,260 --> 00:35:50,780
I'm not like I'm saying I wouldn't advocate that cognitive learning should um

545
00:35:51,740 --> 00:35:56,460
perhaps you know there it that's all very understandable but I think it's just appreciating

546
00:35:56,540 --> 00:36:02,410
I think what we what we what we always thought what we tend to do is look at look

547
00:36:02,490 --> 00:36:07,050
look at um you know look at where we're at today and then kind of project backwards as

548
00:36:07,050 --> 00:36:12,490
opposed to sort of thinking about you know evolution that happens from the past forward and

549
00:36:12,570 --> 00:36:18,010
you know what some of those pressures uh and changes would have been.

550
00:36:18,810 --> 00:36:24,570
But just you know, I mean, I guess just mostly appreciating that it's not a top-down,

551
00:36:24,940 --> 00:36:28,220
We maybe aren't adapted to a top-down process.

552
00:36:28,620 --> 00:36:31,500
Um it pr maybe is more challenging.

553
00:36:31,660 --> 00:36:36,540
Maybe that's why we have such trouble with retention, you know, in schools and stuff like

554
00:36:36,540 --> 00:36:36,620
that.

555
00:36:36,780 --> 00:36:38,460
I don't, I don't, I've I don't have any idea.

556
00:36:38,540 --> 00:36:44,300
Those aren't, those aren't things I really contemplate, but um it it you know, it could be

557
00:36:44,300 --> 00:36:50,130
that we are really well adapted in to something different, but true in this

558
00:36:50,130 --> 00:36:55,010
world, in this age, that's not what's going, you know, we need these other skills to

559
00:36:55,010 --> 00:36:55,810
succeed.

560
00:36:56,130 --> 00:36:58,610
Yeah, you use the word agency.

561
00:36:58,770 --> 00:37:03,010
Um, and I think like one of the things I'm hearing is that there was sort of a lack of

562
00:37:03,010 --> 00:37:08,850
appreciation for for many of the things you mentioned already of people having

563
00:37:08,850 --> 00:37:13,760
agency, including women, including children, who maybe weren't

564
00:37:15,040 --> 00:37:19,280
appreciated for the agency they actually had, either in the evolutionary models or maybe by

565
00:37:19,280 --> 00:37:23,920
ethnographers in the past, or by scientists, or just by social world.

566
00:37:24,800 --> 00:37:27,680
Is that, you know, can you speak a little bit to that?

567
00:37:27,760 --> 00:37:29,120
Is that a fair characterization?

568
00:37:29,280 --> 00:37:33,760
Do you think that that's um one of the themes of the work that you've seen?

569
00:37:33,920 --> 00:37:39,570
Is that it's sort of one way to be scientific is to sort of appreciate the

570
00:37:39,730 --> 00:37:43,650
the agency of folks who have otherwise been sort of overlooked.

571
00:37:44,690 --> 00:37:47,490
I I think it certainly in terms of kids, that's true.

572
00:37:47,650 --> 00:37:53,490
I mean, I you know, there are, you know, tons of books on child

573
00:37:53,490 --> 00:37:59,250
development and um, you know, how to how to raise the best children that we can.

574
00:37:59,410 --> 00:38:04,370
And they really do always seem to be kind of top-down perspectives.

575
00:38:04,610 --> 00:38:10,240
You know, one of the best a couple of couple of examples of that are uh,

576
00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:14,800
you know, if you if you, I'm sure any kind of research that you do, you know, we have to go

577
00:38:14,800 --> 00:38:20,560
through all of these um gyrations with with with human subjects to get

578
00:38:20,640 --> 00:38:21,920
to get approvals.

579
00:38:22,080 --> 00:38:27,110
And so the same thing is true when we go into the field and I don't know, it was a number

580
00:38:27,110 --> 00:38:31,830
of years ago, and I had to get permission in this case from adults if a child could

581
00:38:31,830 --> 00:38:33,190
participate in something.

582
00:38:33,430 --> 00:38:37,350
And so I asked the mother, I said, you know, could you sign this paper for your kid?

583
00:38:37,430 --> 00:38:40,630
And the kid was pretty little, probably five years old or so.

584
00:38:40,790 --> 00:38:45,830
And she just looked at me just kind of really quizzically and said, Why are you asking me?

585
00:38:45,990 --> 00:38:47,110
Ask the kid.

586
00:38:47,990 --> 00:38:49,430
It was just classy examples.

587
00:38:49,670 --> 00:38:51,270
Like, I don't need to make this decision.

588
00:38:51,350 --> 00:38:54,950
If my child wants to participate, they'll make their own decision.

589
00:38:55,580 --> 00:38:58,780
Yeah, so I think that's um I think that's really true.

590
00:38:58,940 --> 00:39:03,820
In terms of why you know kids have, you know, I think really been under the radar in uh

591
00:39:03,820 --> 00:39:09,740
anthropology and archaeology is there's I also have a great story um about out

592
00:39:09,900 --> 00:39:15,740
from Alison Brooks, who is a famous archaeologist uh working in sub-Saharan Africa, and

593
00:39:15,740 --> 00:39:21,550
she was living with um like in a in a kung in a juanse community and

594
00:39:21,550 --> 00:39:26,350
every day as a dutiful you know mother from america she made her kids peanut butter and

595
00:39:26,350 --> 00:39:32,030
jelly sandwiches and she'd go off to her excavation and give her kids the food and she'd

596
00:39:32,030 --> 00:39:36,190
come back at the end of the day and and their the lunch sack would still be full and and

597
00:39:36,190 --> 00:39:39,470
she would say what were what were you you know what were you doing all day long and like

598
00:39:39,550 --> 00:39:42,430
how did you eat and it's like oh yeah you know we're out we're out with the other kids

599
00:39:42,510 --> 00:39:46,990
we're killing little birds little lizards you know we're eating this we're grabbing that

600
00:39:47,340 --> 00:39:53,020
And all of that, yeah, I think for decades and decades go

601
00:39:53,180 --> 00:39:54,380
went completely unnoticed.

602
00:39:54,460 --> 00:39:58,380
They're just not watching what kids are doing.

603
00:39:58,460 --> 00:40:03,180
And because they're not bringing back, maybe the little ones aren't bringing back huge

604
00:40:03,180 --> 00:40:03,980
returns.

605
00:40:04,460 --> 00:40:09,100
Um, but they are actually really able, even among the Juansi, who are, you know, kids

606
00:40:09,100 --> 00:40:13,530
aren't known to really work that hard in that particular group of hunters and gatherers

607
00:40:13,610 --> 00:40:16,250
were were taking care of themselves, just going very unnoticed.

608
00:40:16,410 --> 00:40:21,770
So yes, I think they do have, uh I do think they have a lot of agency in their own uh

609
00:40:21,770 --> 00:40:22,410
society.

610
00:40:22,490 --> 00:40:28,410
And I think they do take care of themselves in ways that we just weren't paying attention

611
00:40:28,410 --> 00:40:28,650
to.

612
00:40:28,970 --> 00:40:29,130
Yeah.

613
00:40:29,370 --> 00:40:32,890
And I don't want to get too sidetracked, but David, I just have a quick aside, which is you

614
00:40:32,890 --> 00:40:37,440
know, I also think like just institutionally, I think like there can also be institutional

615
00:40:37,440 --> 00:40:41,280
selection pressures of like or even a fear of like kids' agency, right?

616
00:40:41,360 --> 00:40:45,840
Like because it can be contrary to the goals of the adults, right?

617
00:40:45,920 --> 00:40:50,400
Or, you know, or you just if you don't appreciate what it is the kids are designed to do,

618
00:40:50,640 --> 00:40:54,560
status schemes, you know, do things that are different than like, you know, you're going to

619
00:40:54,560 --> 00:40:58,400
be working in the workshop, you know, in five years and you need to know learn how to make

620
00:40:58,400 --> 00:41:01,440
a widget and you better be a good worker, like that kind of thing.

621
00:41:01,810 --> 00:41:02,130
Yeah.

622
00:41:02,210 --> 00:41:06,610
And then there's the issue of parent-offspring conflict where you know parents have have

623
00:41:06,610 --> 00:41:11,090
different genetic interests than than their offspring and often will will want them to be

624
00:41:11,090 --> 00:41:15,410
more altruistic toward their siblings than than the kids themselves would would want to

625
00:41:15,490 --> 00:41:17,010
from a Darwinian perspective.

626
00:41:17,330 --> 00:41:22,530
And so there's the need to mold kids uh in a in a in a into a shape that is going to be

627
00:41:22,530 --> 00:41:25,410
more beneficial for the parents' fitness than for the offspring's fitness.

628
00:41:25,490 --> 00:41:29,800
And so you might expect, you know, from the offspring's perspective, they uh are going to

629
00:41:29,800 --> 00:41:33,160
be better off learning from other kids in their peer group whom they're going to be

630
00:41:33,160 --> 00:41:35,880
competing with as adults for status and for mates.

631
00:41:36,040 --> 00:41:39,960
Um, that's gonna be, you know, a more important source of information for them than you

632
00:41:39,960 --> 00:41:43,880
know, than perhaps you know, being trying to be molded by their parents uh to fit you know

633
00:41:43,960 --> 00:41:44,680
the parents' agenda.

634
00:41:44,760 --> 00:41:48,280
I don't know if if you if you if you buy any of that perspective in terms of parent

635
00:41:48,360 --> 00:41:52,920
offspring conflict, Karen, if or if that has informed your your thinking on this at all.

636
00:41:54,570 --> 00:42:00,090
Yes, uh uh I mean certainly certainly that's true and you do see those

637
00:42:00,090 --> 00:42:04,890
conflicts I guess to to the point I was making earlier about opportunity costs you know

638
00:42:04,970 --> 00:42:09,530
once those opportunity costs start to diminish diminish when kids reach reproductive age

639
00:42:09,610 --> 00:42:15,050
you certainly see those you see those conflicts you also see conflicts at the at the other

640
00:42:15,370 --> 00:42:21,340
end around weaning I mean I have seen three year olds dump pots

641
00:42:21,340 --> 00:42:23,900
of boiling water on their one year old sibling.

642
00:42:23,980 --> 00:42:28,860
I mean, you do you do see stuff, you know, stuff happens where there's certainly conflict.

643
00:42:29,100 --> 00:42:33,820
You know, there's and it's usually around weaning uh age.

644
00:42:33,980 --> 00:42:39,900
But then, you know, I I do think there's kind of a sweet spot where there's just a really

645
00:42:39,900 --> 00:42:42,300
low opportunity cost for kids to not.

646
00:42:42,460 --> 00:42:48,060
I mean, what else is they don't like if you see a Maya kid working in the field, they're,

647
00:42:48,630 --> 00:42:52,790
you know, yeah, they'll weed a couple rows, they'll they'll weed for five minutes and then

648
00:42:52,790 --> 00:42:56,470
they'll pick up some dirt clods and throw them at birds and they'll, you know, kind of

649
00:42:56,470 --> 00:43:00,070
wander off, and then they'll come back and they'll do their thing and then they'll wander,

650
00:43:00,150 --> 00:43:03,190
you know, that's you know, kind of kids are you you can't expect them.

651
00:43:03,270 --> 00:43:05,270
It's not like factory work for sure.

652
00:43:05,510 --> 00:43:10,550
Um, and I don't think parents, you know, what's one thing was interesting, you never, both

653
00:43:10,550 --> 00:43:15,190
with the Pume and the Maya, uh, you almost never hear the word no.

654
00:43:16,140 --> 00:43:22,060
Um you hear like they'll parents will tell kids go do this, but they'll

655
00:43:22,060 --> 00:43:27,660
almost never, you know, like a kid will be sitting right next to you, like

656
00:43:27,980 --> 00:43:33,420
singing a song at the top of their lungs, way off key, you know, something that we would

657
00:43:33,420 --> 00:43:36,380
tell the kid to like, could you just, you know, cut it out?

658
00:43:36,620 --> 00:43:40,610
And they would just not, they would just wouldn't, you know, whatever.

659
00:43:40,690 --> 00:43:45,970
Kids, kids could could have a lot of freedom, except if they did need to do something, they

660
00:43:45,970 --> 00:43:47,090
would be told to do something.

661
00:43:47,170 --> 00:43:50,690
But you rarely heard like, don't do that, don't do this, don't do this.

662
00:43:50,850 --> 00:43:54,610
And you realize, yes, we tell kid, we have to tell kids that all the time because you know,

663
00:43:54,690 --> 00:44:00,370
there's the cleanser under the sink, there's the hot iron on the, you know, on the ironing

664
00:44:00,370 --> 00:44:03,250
board, there's the fertilizer that's on the grass.

665
00:44:03,490 --> 00:44:08,700
I mean, there's so there's the street, there's the dog, I mean, there's so much that we

666
00:44:08,700 --> 00:44:12,220
have to guard kids uh against.

667
00:44:12,380 --> 00:44:17,500
And um, yeah, so I mean, presumably though, there would be lots of things to guard against

668
00:44:17,580 --> 00:44:19,500
uh in a in a forager society.

669
00:44:19,580 --> 00:44:24,780
There, you know, there are poisonous plants, yes, animals and bugs, and you know, uh all

670
00:44:25,420 --> 00:44:28,620
sorts of dangers, you know, you know, fire and danger, sharp tools.

671
00:44:28,780 --> 00:44:33,260
There are there are lots of things that kids could get into uh in a situation there too.

672
00:44:33,470 --> 00:44:39,230
Um so I'm I'm I'm curious about why why that difference

673
00:44:39,230 --> 00:44:43,070
exists with with the well I think there's just so much more that's dangerous.

674
00:44:43,310 --> 00:44:48,670
I mean absolutely you know kids don't uh if they live around big uh

675
00:44:48,670 --> 00:44:51,230
carnivores you know there are different rules.

676
00:44:51,310 --> 00:44:56,420
I've never I haven't worked with people who live around big carnivores but um certainly I I

677
00:44:56,420 --> 00:45:00,340
think adults are probably just as you know freaked out by them as little kids are.

678
00:45:00,420 --> 00:45:03,140
But yeah, there certainly are are things in place.

679
00:45:03,220 --> 00:45:08,020
But there's just it just seems like in our houses there's just a gazillion things that can

680
00:45:08,580 --> 00:45:14,420
this is a change of magnitude um in terms of the numbers of things that could

681
00:45:14,420 --> 00:45:16,340
potentially hurt us or hurt our kids.

682
00:45:16,710 --> 00:45:16,870
Yeah.

683
00:45:17,110 --> 00:45:20,070
Do you detect any consequences of that freedom?

684
00:45:20,150 --> 00:45:23,590
Like compared to, I mean, you, you know, you you cross these cultures.

685
00:45:23,830 --> 00:45:25,510
Are there differences in kids?

686
00:45:25,590 --> 00:45:30,390
You know, like with freedom comes responsibility, sort of, you know, is that for example,

687
00:45:30,470 --> 00:45:32,550
or you know, are there notable differences?

688
00:45:32,710 --> 00:45:37,830
I mean, you talked about the two-year-old having a fit, uh, which was different for for the

689
00:45:37,830 --> 00:45:41,190
people, um, for the other kids, you know, in this other culture.

690
00:45:41,350 --> 00:45:46,940
Um, are there, you know, in your thinking about transposing yourself between these

691
00:45:46,940 --> 00:45:52,460
different cultures, um, yeah, are there things that you've sort of noticed about kids?

692
00:45:52,620 --> 00:45:55,500
Like you mentioned, you know, you're you're you're really thinking about, you know, we're

693
00:45:55,500 --> 00:45:56,860
really missing something.

694
00:45:57,020 --> 00:45:58,940
Um, do you see those consequences?

695
00:45:59,100 --> 00:46:03,420
I mean, I even think about this, you know, as a parent, you know, even just small cultural

696
00:46:03,420 --> 00:46:07,020
differences, you know, between like, you know, living where my son grew up and where he

697
00:46:07,020 --> 00:46:09,180
lives now, and what that effect has on me.

698
00:46:09,340 --> 00:46:13,850
I mean, I, you know, do you have you thought about, you know, what are the things that we

699
00:46:13,850 --> 00:46:18,970
might be blind to about our own ourselves or the children we're raising because they're not

700
00:46:19,290 --> 00:46:23,450
more responsible or because we're not giving them as much freedom or because we're not

701
00:46:23,450 --> 00:46:29,290
letting them grow up in a mixed age cohort like like they might be designed to do

702
00:46:33,290 --> 00:46:39,140
um well I mean I um I I don't know how that would quite would

703
00:46:39,140 --> 00:46:44,340
spin out, but uh I think if you know from a young age you have a lot of agency and you do

704
00:46:44,420 --> 00:46:46,420
you can make your own decisions.

705
00:46:47,060 --> 00:46:52,900
Um I don't know how that would affect, you know, kind of adult decision making or or

706
00:46:53,140 --> 00:46:58,740
um maybe not so much adult, but juvenile uh well young adult decision

707
00:46:58,740 --> 00:46:59,220
making.

708
00:46:59,430 --> 00:47:03,750
You know, we know all we hear, you know, we just hear so much bad stuff was what's going on

709
00:47:03,750 --> 00:47:07,510
with with young people, not so much children, but with with young adults.

710
00:47:07,670 --> 00:47:12,230
Um, you know, I guess the other thing I would say, it's, you know, we live in such a

711
00:47:12,230 --> 00:47:14,310
rapidly changing world.

712
00:47:15,110 --> 00:47:20,790
You know, it's just constantly uh it's really in an exponential

713
00:47:20,790 --> 00:47:22,230
state of change.

714
00:47:22,550 --> 00:47:27,820
Whereas, you know, I guess the people I'm talking about, there's there's some there's some

715
00:47:27,820 --> 00:47:30,460
homeostasis to their way of to their way of life.

716
00:47:30,540 --> 00:47:36,060
I mean the skill the skills you learn as a kid are the skills that are going to be useful

717
00:47:36,060 --> 00:47:38,380
to you uh as as an adult.

718
00:47:38,620 --> 00:47:42,220
I think it I think it's important to really integrate society.

719
00:47:42,620 --> 00:47:48,450
I mean, I'm expecting, you know, something I I didn't set out to study, but

720
00:47:48,450 --> 00:47:53,090
the the the hunters and gathers in Venezuela, Venezuela is such a broken-down country,

721
00:47:53,330 --> 00:47:58,530
their lives probably it's too dangerous for us to go back right now, but their lives have

722
00:47:58,530 --> 00:48:01,090
probably actually really not changed.

723
00:48:01,410 --> 00:48:07,330
Um but in uh with the Maya, their life has changed a lot.

724
00:48:08,620 --> 00:48:10,300
And you do see the breakdown.

725
00:48:10,460 --> 00:48:16,460
I mean, you do see the beginnings of kind of breakdowns in terms of where kids spend

726
00:48:16,460 --> 00:48:18,540
their time, how they spend their time.

727
00:48:19,020 --> 00:48:20,780
It's not as integrated.

728
00:48:21,820 --> 00:48:27,660
You know, the other thing is that kids and adults in more traditional societies, kids are

729
00:48:27,660 --> 00:48:29,740
kind of always there, like running.

730
00:48:29,900 --> 00:48:31,260
No, adults are like doing something.

731
00:48:31,500 --> 00:48:36,270
Kids are just constantly like running in or in and out of adult spaces.

732
00:48:36,510 --> 00:48:41,070
And so there's a lot of sort of spatial integrity, whereas I think we have a lot of

733
00:48:41,070 --> 00:48:43,790
actually spatial segregation.

734
00:48:44,510 --> 00:48:49,790
And so I don't know what that means about long-term sort of respect or

735
00:48:50,270 --> 00:48:52,350
intergenerational integration.

736
00:48:52,990 --> 00:48:58,200
Um, you know, I don't know, when I was a teen, I was embarrassed to be seen around my

737
00:48:58,200 --> 00:48:58,520
parents.

738
00:48:58,600 --> 00:49:03,720
You know, you do anything to like not like drop me off like two blocks away and I'll walk

739
00:49:03,720 --> 00:49:05,080
in or, you know, whatever.

740
00:49:05,240 --> 00:49:08,520
It's uh I I think that's changed back again.

741
00:49:08,680 --> 00:49:14,520
But you know, uh there you know, that would just never cross a puma or my child's mind to

742
00:49:14,520 --> 00:49:18,530
be embarrassed by their parent or their grandparent or um yeah.

743
00:49:18,610 --> 00:49:23,730
So I I I I I it's hard to answer because I think there's there's so much flux and change

744
00:49:23,730 --> 00:49:24,610
happening right now.

745
00:49:24,930 --> 00:49:25,090
Yeah.

746
00:49:25,250 --> 00:49:28,930
Well, I think that's a very uh thoughtful and careful answer.

747
00:49:29,010 --> 00:49:31,250
And I think even just being aware of the difference, right?

748
00:49:31,330 --> 00:49:36,370
To just even point to the fact that it is different and and it is something to ask, right?

749
00:49:36,530 --> 00:49:40,050
I think that's a big part of it, is just even asking the question.

750
00:49:40,210 --> 00:49:44,770
Um, yeah, it's and we would not even get to that question if you weren't sort of looking at

751
00:49:44,770 --> 00:49:48,360
the kinds of things that you're looking at, or more broadly taking, kind of this

752
00:49:48,360 --> 00:49:50,440
evolutionary approach to life history.

753
00:49:52,440 --> 00:49:54,280
David, I think you were going to say something.

754
00:49:54,920 --> 00:49:58,920
Yeah, I mean, I think we we've been talking a lot about life history.

755
00:49:59,160 --> 00:50:00,840
We've been throwing this word around a lot.

756
00:50:00,920 --> 00:50:06,760
Um, I don't think it's something that we've ever delved into uh uh thoroughly in

757
00:50:06,760 --> 00:50:08,280
this podcast before.

758
00:50:08,360 --> 00:50:13,170
Um, and it's really a core perspective, uh it's a t it's a core approach to a lot of people

759
00:50:13,170 --> 00:50:15,570
in the evolutionary behavioral sciences.

760
00:50:15,730 --> 00:50:21,250
Um so I think it might be worth um taking a moment to unpack, you know, what

761
00:50:21,250 --> 00:50:27,170
life history means and and what life history theory is and how that

762
00:50:27,170 --> 00:50:29,090
informs uh your work.

763
00:50:29,250 --> 00:50:31,330
So so what is uh life history?

764
00:50:31,410 --> 00:50:36,130
What is life history theory to you and how does that help you uh uh uh develop ideas in

765
00:50:36,130 --> 00:50:37,010
your research?

766
00:50:37,400 --> 00:50:42,520
Okay, well, I think you know it's a it's a concept that came out of evolutionary

767
00:50:42,520 --> 00:50:48,280
biology, and it was a kind of a revolution at

768
00:50:48,280 --> 00:50:54,280
the time to thinking about how we could think about species being

769
00:50:54,280 --> 00:50:57,320
different in terms of what we're called RK strategies.

770
00:50:57,560 --> 00:51:03,320
So, you know, some species produce a lot of offspring and don't just much in either one,

771
00:51:03,400 --> 00:51:09,090
and other ones um produce a a few species few offspring and in invest

772
00:51:09,410 --> 00:51:13,170
a lot you know that's kind of the short of it and the idea is you know once you make kind

773
00:51:13,170 --> 00:51:18,050
of a typology like that you know there are gonna be so many exceptions so life history

774
00:51:18,050 --> 00:51:23,170
theory kind of um it didn't so much supplant it but it gives it another way of looking at

775
00:51:23,490 --> 00:51:28,770
that um life events uh are uh differential

776
00:51:29,410 --> 00:51:35,180
time and energy investments are made in different life events.

777
00:51:35,420 --> 00:51:40,940
And there are differential fertility rates, mortality rates.

778
00:51:41,100 --> 00:51:44,860
So there's a focus on that, as well as on in growth and development.

779
00:51:45,020 --> 00:51:50,460
You know, whether you have a short infancy or a long infancy, or weaned early or late, or

780
00:51:50,460 --> 00:51:52,780
reach sexual maturity early or late.

781
00:51:52,860 --> 00:51:58,850
So it's the idea that you have a unit of time, a unit of calories, a unit

782
00:51:58,850 --> 00:52:04,450
of energy, unit of money in our case, and you can allocate it to this thing or to that

783
00:52:04,450 --> 00:52:09,330
thing that's either going to aid in your survival or reproduction.

784
00:52:09,490 --> 00:52:15,330
And so then it's heavily reliant on the idea of a trade-off that I can either do this

785
00:52:15,330 --> 00:52:16,770
thing or I can do that thing.

786
00:52:16,850 --> 00:52:22,780
So we can use that to think about, I mean, I think about many things about children, um,

787
00:52:22,940 --> 00:52:25,420
in terms uh including growth and development.

788
00:52:25,500 --> 00:52:31,340
You know, why is it that we have the kind of pattern of growth and development that we do,

789
00:52:31,500 --> 00:52:36,940
and then also why we start to reproduce when we do or not?

790
00:52:37,100 --> 00:52:43,100
Do we curtail, in a sense, childhood and and and make that transition early, or do we make

791
00:52:43,100 --> 00:52:43,740
it later?

792
00:52:43,980 --> 00:52:49,170
And then kind of from the mother's point of view, also the children's point of view, this

793
00:52:49,170 --> 00:52:54,290
idea of how do you allocate your resources to different children in terms of fertility

794
00:52:54,290 --> 00:53:00,050
decisions and how kids allocate their time in terms of either being helpful or not helpful.

795
00:53:00,130 --> 00:53:05,890
So I guess it informs that structure of time and energy and resources

796
00:53:05,970 --> 00:53:11,730
are limited, and decisions are made about alternative choices, is kind of what

797
00:53:11,730 --> 00:53:13,890
informs, I guess, most of what I do.

798
00:53:14,050 --> 00:53:14,610
Yes.

799
00:53:15,040 --> 00:53:20,880
And I think just one thing I uh you know, because I think it's probably so baked in for

800
00:53:20,880 --> 00:53:25,600
you, but I think, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you were one of the people

801
00:53:25,600 --> 00:53:30,240
to really go and look at what people were doing and not just listen to sort of what people

802
00:53:30,240 --> 00:53:34,240
were saying, which is, you know, you mentioned at the beginning, you know, you actually are

803
00:53:34,240 --> 00:53:35,760
going on these follows.

804
00:53:35,920 --> 00:53:40,640
And it's sort of easy to say in a few seconds on a podcast, but that's a very difficult

805
00:53:41,090 --> 00:53:42,290
thing to do.

806
00:53:42,450 --> 00:53:47,010
I mean, can you can you talk a little bit about, you know, like what how did you decide or

807
00:53:47,010 --> 00:53:48,530
why did you decide to actually do that?

808
00:53:48,610 --> 00:53:50,450
And like, was that actually difficult?

809
00:53:50,530 --> 00:53:55,890
You know, I mean, like that's I think for for many people, my generation, even

810
00:53:55,890 --> 00:54:00,690
understanding sort of because you know, we now that's sort of baked into, you know, if

811
00:54:00,690 --> 00:54:04,370
you're gonna do this, you have to go do a follow and actually track calories.

812
00:54:04,530 --> 00:54:08,960
But that was not, as I understand it, sort of a thing as much.

813
00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:12,960
I mean, I know people started to do that, but can you talk a little bit about like sort of

814
00:54:12,960 --> 00:54:13,760
what is that like doing?

815
00:54:13,840 --> 00:54:17,920
Or if you're somebody listening who's never done that, like what does that involve, you

816
00:54:17,920 --> 00:54:18,080
know?

817
00:54:18,160 --> 00:54:24,080
Like well, um time allocation, scan observations, focal

818
00:54:24,080 --> 00:54:29,600
follows, all of that came out of studies with I think mostly with primates in the

819
00:54:29,600 --> 00:54:34,770
60s and 70s, and the early behavioral ecologists.

820
00:54:34,850 --> 00:54:39,090
So I was a student of Hilly Kaplan's and Jane Lancaster's.

821
00:54:39,330 --> 00:54:43,250
And that's how they were they were trained by ethologists.

822
00:54:43,490 --> 00:54:45,810
They were actually trained here at the University of Utah.

823
00:54:45,890 --> 00:54:51,410
They were students of Kristen Hawks, and uh including Hilly Kaplan and Magdalena Hurtado.

824
00:54:51,570 --> 00:54:57,560
And you know, they had a real emphasis on b behavioral observation Before I be

825
00:54:57,880 --> 00:55:03,160
before I started studying with with with them in behavioral ecology, I was an archaeologist

826
00:55:03,320 --> 00:55:07,720
and I was a student of Lou Binford's, who was kind of the father of the new archaeology.

827
00:55:07,800 --> 00:55:13,560
And his real emphasis was on bringing scientific thinking to archaeology

828
00:55:13,720 --> 00:55:19,560
and um and on ethno archaeology, which is we have to see what people

829
00:55:19,560 --> 00:55:20,280
are doing.

830
00:55:20,440 --> 00:55:25,810
We can't see it in the archaeological record, so we have to go actually live and work with

831
00:55:25,810 --> 00:55:27,970
people that are living close to those ways of life.

832
00:55:28,130 --> 00:55:33,650
So all of that kind of comes together both from the archaeology, the ethnoarchaeology point

833
00:55:33,650 --> 00:55:36,770
of view and from the and then from the ethology point of view.

834
00:55:36,930 --> 00:55:41,810
And then as it translated into human behavioral ecology was behavioral observation.

835
00:55:42,130 --> 00:55:42,530
Right.

836
00:55:42,770 --> 00:55:46,290
So that was kind of the stuff that we used, I mean that was this when I was coming through,

837
00:55:46,370 --> 00:55:48,840
it was the stuff that we all, we all, we all did.

838
00:55:49,400 --> 00:55:53,480
You collected your reproductive histories when you first went into the field, and then you

839
00:55:53,480 --> 00:55:56,920
uh collected your time allocation uh data.

840
00:55:57,240 --> 00:56:01,640
And um it just has been abbreviated, I guess, over time.

841
00:56:01,800 --> 00:56:05,160
It's very, I can't talk any graduate students into doing it anymore.

842
00:56:05,240 --> 00:56:05,800
It's true.

843
00:56:06,120 --> 00:56:11,400
It's very, it's pretty it's pretty labor intensive, but and there are biases,

844
00:56:12,090 --> 00:56:17,850
but I would say it's uh you know, by watching people over the course of a year.

845
00:56:18,090 --> 00:56:23,450
So usually a year time frame was the time frame you would um

846
00:56:25,690 --> 00:56:30,330
you would go from house to house and every 15 minutes say write down what everyone was

847
00:56:30,330 --> 00:56:31,130
doing in that house.

848
00:56:31,210 --> 00:56:35,930
And after you have hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of observations, you know,

849
00:56:36,010 --> 00:56:40,970
you can say three to five year olds spend this amount of their time doing this rather than

850
00:56:41,050 --> 00:56:42,660
um rather than asking.

851
00:56:42,820 --> 00:56:48,020
I think it would also be really hard, you know, maybe interview, you know, maybe it's

852
00:56:48,020 --> 00:56:52,820
really limited because you can ask adults that, but you know, I'm not sure about kids.

853
00:56:52,900 --> 00:56:58,900
And again, having parents say what kids are doing are probably really different

854
00:56:58,900 --> 00:57:00,340
than actually seeing them.

855
00:57:00,500 --> 00:57:06,340
So there was a real emphasis on it and I think that is actually, it's reverted now more to

856
00:57:06,420 --> 00:57:11,110
um to interview even among behavioral ecologists, yeah.

857
00:57:11,270 --> 00:57:14,470
It's much, much more interview uh oriented.

858
00:57:14,630 --> 00:57:18,070
And different questions have emerged, you know, not so much what people how they spend

859
00:57:18,070 --> 00:57:22,950
their time, but I do think like knowing someone's, you know, age and sex, knowing what they

860
00:57:22,950 --> 00:57:26,870
do is is pretty fundamental to to so many questions that we want to ask.

861
00:57:27,190 --> 00:57:27,430
Yeah.

862
00:57:27,510 --> 00:57:31,430
I mean, and I don't, you know, we we can but but just the one question is sort of like what

863
00:57:31,430 --> 00:57:31,910
does that do?

864
00:57:32,150 --> 00:57:36,340
I mean, uh uh when before you did that and then after you didn't have that experience of

865
00:57:36,340 --> 00:57:40,820
being with a group of people and doing this sort of interesting and maybe slightly

866
00:57:40,820 --> 00:57:44,420
unnatural thing of every 15 minutes just noting down what people did.

867
00:57:44,980 --> 00:57:50,580
Um for for those of us who haven't done that, like does that change how you think about

868
00:57:50,580 --> 00:57:55,380
people or how you observe, or what what when you when you come when you're you know when

869
00:57:55,380 --> 00:58:00,260
you start doing that process, how does that change you as a person or scientist?

870
00:58:02,210 --> 00:58:07,970
Well, I think it was the most magnificent way to

871
00:58:08,770 --> 00:58:11,970
have kind of come up at doing research.

872
00:58:12,130 --> 00:58:17,330
It um it does, it did deeply change me as a human being.

873
00:58:17,410 --> 00:58:22,690
I I think in an in a number of ways that maybe if you don't, you know, sit there day after

874
00:58:22,690 --> 00:58:28,210
day after day in the boiling hot, and you know, half the time you're really bored, but um

875
00:58:29,010 --> 00:58:34,720
it is it it is so human to understand that just

876
00:58:34,800 --> 00:58:39,920
watching what people do, it's not what they say they do, but you know, we all love our

877
00:58:39,920 --> 00:58:41,200
children in the same way.

878
00:58:41,360 --> 00:58:44,320
We all, you know, are annoyed by the same things.

879
00:58:44,480 --> 00:58:46,640
We all, you know, feel certain ways.

880
00:58:46,800 --> 00:58:51,760
I've it was it was um I I mean, I think it's I go into the field every year.

881
00:58:51,840 --> 00:58:57,470
It's the most important thing, I think, to keep me as a kind, honest

882
00:58:57,790 --> 00:59:03,630
human being is to understand that we're all connected in this, we're all human.

883
00:59:03,710 --> 00:59:08,190
I mean you can't walk out of that situation and be very prejudiced about people.

884
00:59:08,350 --> 00:59:13,710
I mean it's uh you know even though you know they're hunters and gatherers, they are there

885
00:59:13,790 --> 00:59:16,900
there's so much that we um have in common.

886
00:59:17,060 --> 00:59:22,340
So yeah, I think there was uh there's a fundamental effect that it has on one's humanity

887
00:59:22,500 --> 00:59:23,300
for sure.

888
00:59:23,860 --> 00:59:28,900
Um and sense of empathy that we're all up, you know, we're all up kind of up against the

889
00:59:28,900 --> 00:59:31,140
same, some of the same basic things.

890
00:59:31,300 --> 00:59:31,780
Yes.

891
00:59:32,180 --> 00:59:32,500
Yeah.

892
00:59:32,740 --> 00:59:32,980
Yeah.

893
00:59:33,060 --> 00:59:38,020
I um yeah, and especially, I mean, just as a parent, especially, you know, like I think

894
00:59:38,260 --> 00:59:43,770
even uh whenever I see another parent, whatever the social distances, you know, I I sort of

895
00:59:43,770 --> 00:59:44,810
get a sliver of that.

896
00:59:44,890 --> 00:59:50,810
So I can't it must be uh really um life changing to sort of experience that

897
00:59:50,810 --> 00:59:53,370
in lots of different ways day to day over a year.

898
00:59:53,530 --> 00:59:54,090
Yeah.

899
00:59:54,410 --> 00:59:54,810
Mm-hmm.

900
00:59:54,890 --> 00:59:55,370
Mm-hmm.

901
00:59:55,770 --> 00:59:58,490
Yeah, and then people there people are mostly good.

902
00:59:58,730 --> 00:59:58,970
Yeah.

903
00:59:59,210 --> 01:00:02,170
They're mostly really kind and really loving and really good.

904
01:00:02,330 --> 01:00:07,700
I mean, you know, there's sometimes a few, you know, bad eggs and and um, you know, I think

905
01:00:07,700 --> 01:00:13,380
you deceive yourself as an anthropologist to think that, you know, you are beloved like

906
01:00:13,380 --> 01:00:13,860
family.

907
01:00:14,100 --> 01:00:20,100
I mean, there's always a um you know, there's always a you know, there it

908
01:00:20,100 --> 01:00:21,940
you you leave in the end.

909
01:00:22,020 --> 01:00:25,300
And so, you know, there's there's there's is a difference.

910
01:00:25,540 --> 01:00:30,580
Um, yeah, I think it's a kind of a mistake to think that you are kind of one of them, but

911
01:00:30,820 --> 01:00:36,530
um yeah, it's uh and it's a very different sense since you're asking the question.

912
01:00:36,770 --> 01:00:42,450
It's really different to miss a whole community.

913
01:00:42,530 --> 01:00:45,890
I can't even say what that's like because we don't really have that sense.

914
01:00:46,130 --> 01:00:50,050
Like when I'm not with them for a while, it's like I miss a village of 500.

915
01:00:50,130 --> 01:00:51,090
How do you even explain that?

916
01:00:51,250 --> 01:00:56,130
Like we we miss individuals, we miss you know, our kids, our parents, our friends, but like

917
01:00:56,210 --> 01:00:59,300
to miss a whole village is like a different thing.

918
01:00:59,460 --> 01:01:01,300
But uh anyway, thanks for asking.

919
01:01:01,620 --> 01:01:05,300
Yeah, it's it's sort of, I mean, I think a lot of the anthropologists we have on express

920
01:01:05,380 --> 01:01:09,620
that, and it's almost like you have this sort of strange alternate dimension, not strange,

921
01:01:09,700 --> 01:01:15,620
but just it's it is an unusual thing as a human to sort of have this uh other life that

922
01:01:15,620 --> 01:01:16,100
you miss.

923
01:01:16,580 --> 01:01:21,940
Um many people have expressed that, and um yeah, and that's it's it's a wonderful thing.

924
01:01:22,020 --> 01:01:27,380
And I think it also ties to one of the things that David um and I mentioned a lot on this

925
01:01:27,450 --> 01:01:33,370
podcast is sort of how um, you know, like you said, what we talk about may not always be

926
01:01:33,370 --> 01:01:34,490
representative of what we do.

927
01:01:34,650 --> 01:01:38,890
And it's it's nice that you're saying that in a way of sort of a lot of what we do is

928
01:01:38,890 --> 01:01:43,850
actually very universal and often very sort of uh just

929
01:01:44,490 --> 01:01:50,490
normal, everyday human stuff, and maybe not necessarily the stuff that makes the news um

930
01:01:50,570 --> 01:01:56,490
or or all the horrible stuff, uh, but but just sort of beautifully mundane sort of stuff.

931
01:01:58,460 --> 01:01:58,940
Yeah.

932
01:01:59,500 --> 01:01:59,900
Exactly.

933
01:02:00,380 --> 01:02:06,300
I mean, one one, you know, one of the mundane human things that um that our live

934
01:02:06,380 --> 01:02:11,660
that our lives revolve around is um parenthood itself and and the idea that there are two

935
01:02:11,660 --> 01:02:14,780
parents working together, the the dad and and the mom.

936
01:02:15,100 --> 01:02:20,300
Um and uh you've done some research on examining that question of you know what is the

937
01:02:20,300 --> 01:02:21,420
natural sort of family structure.

938
01:02:21,580 --> 01:02:25,750
You have a paper with Ryan Schacht with uh the question is, are we monogamous?

939
01:02:25,910 --> 01:02:27,990
is the title of the of the paper.

940
01:02:28,230 --> 01:02:33,750
Um and uh I'm curious how you would answer the question that you posed in the title of that

941
01:02:33,750 --> 01:02:34,150
paper.

942
01:02:34,390 --> 01:02:40,150
Do you see uh human life history as uh uh you know, in terms of biparental

943
01:02:40,150 --> 01:02:44,630
investment with with a mother and a father, uh, or or is it more uh is it is it is it

944
01:02:44,630 --> 01:02:44,870
different?

945
01:02:45,030 --> 01:02:48,150
Is it, you know, are there different family structures that we have that we are perhaps

946
01:02:48,230 --> 01:02:48,790
more suited to?

947
01:02:48,950 --> 01:02:53,040
What do you think is the answer to the question of what is the what is the most uh uh

948
01:02:53,200 --> 01:02:59,040
natural or or species typical uh uh parenting arrangement well

949
01:02:59,120 --> 01:03:04,400
that's a great question I think there's been huge evolutionary changes in that I mean um

950
01:03:05,360 --> 01:03:11,280
uh one of the one of the things I have argued is you know we can't

951
01:03:11,280 --> 01:03:16,480
see these well we can't see these behaviors in the past so we really have to we have to

952
01:03:16,480 --> 01:03:22,290
work from phylogenetic studies we have to work from what we know from closely

953
01:03:22,290 --> 01:03:23,330
related species.

954
01:03:23,490 --> 01:03:28,930
We have to work from what we know about living in these more traditional societies.

955
01:03:29,330 --> 01:03:31,810
I think we can say a couple of things.

956
01:03:32,530 --> 01:03:38,530
I do have a couple of papers on the cooperative economy of food and the evolution

957
01:03:38,530 --> 01:03:39,730
of the human family.

958
01:03:39,970 --> 01:03:45,410
That it is, well, one, the nuclear family is probably very novel.

959
01:03:45,660 --> 01:03:48,700
Um, the idea of that you get a mom and a dad in a house.

960
01:03:48,860 --> 01:03:54,140
So at least in the past we grew up in extended, I think that's a minimum you could say

961
01:03:54,460 --> 01:03:58,220
extended family households, and it's highly variable cross-culturally.

962
01:03:58,380 --> 01:04:02,700
You know, some places you get men's houses and you get women's houses, other places you get

963
01:04:02,700 --> 01:04:05,980
a lot of in you know, you get integrity between the the two.

964
01:04:06,140 --> 01:04:09,740
So it's it's it's it's quite, you know, it's quite variable.

965
01:04:09,900 --> 01:04:15,290
But I think what you can say is that the nuclear family is probably very, very

966
01:04:15,530 --> 01:04:18,410
recent, and you know, in terms of hundreds of years.

967
01:04:18,650 --> 01:04:22,490
Um, there's no question that you know, moms don't care who they get the help.

968
01:04:22,810 --> 01:04:27,450
I mean, I would say moms are agnostic, mothers are agnostic who they get the help from,

969
01:04:27,610 --> 01:04:32,010
whether or not it's their own kids, whether or not it's a partner, whether or not it's a

970
01:04:32,330 --> 01:04:33,290
grandparent.

971
01:04:34,090 --> 01:04:39,340
Uh And I guess I think probably the earliest systems were probably

972
01:04:39,340 --> 01:04:44,860
maternal, maternal structures where you get mothers and maybe related women and

973
01:04:44,860 --> 01:04:50,860
children that uh it's it's a big evolutionary step to get male parental care in there.

974
01:04:51,420 --> 01:04:54,380
And it happens, of course it happens.

975
01:04:54,620 --> 01:05:00,620
Um, but uh I would say it's one of the harder things to, you know, there has to

976
01:05:00,620 --> 01:05:06,350
be some big um uh social organizational changes, and that's what I mean.

977
01:05:06,430 --> 01:05:11,070
I've explored this topic with some evolutionary biologists uh before that paper with Ryan

978
01:05:11,230 --> 01:05:17,150
about about monogamy, and it is I think what's interesting about it

979
01:05:17,150 --> 01:05:22,910
is if you think of us as cooperative breeders, so what I mean by that is people other than

980
01:05:22,910 --> 01:05:28,670
mothers helping to raise offspring, very rare in the animal world, doesn't happen all that

981
01:05:28,670 --> 01:05:33,600
much, Happens across a great diversity of species, but not that many species.

982
01:05:34,080 --> 01:05:39,840
And the evolutionary biologists usually argue that in order for that to have

983
01:05:39,840 --> 01:05:44,720
happened, there had to have been monogamy in the system at some point in the past.

984
01:05:45,120 --> 01:05:50,880
So there is a precedence for thinking that monogamy and cooperative reading uh go together.

985
01:05:51,710 --> 01:05:56,030
Why why sorry, why why's the evolutionary reasoning behind those links?

986
01:05:58,830 --> 01:06:04,670
Because they're trying to explain why sexually mature uh individuals would

987
01:06:04,670 --> 01:06:08,590
help a mother raise offspring that are not their own.

988
01:06:08,750 --> 01:06:13,680
So there's this high opportunity costs that we've talked, kind of talked about.

989
01:06:13,840 --> 01:06:19,600
And so if everyone is highly related, if you're more related in the community through

990
01:06:19,600 --> 01:06:23,600
monogamy, you're more likely to want to pay the opportunity cost.

991
01:06:23,920 --> 01:06:29,840
And I guess what I argue is that because if kids are that

992
01:06:29,840 --> 01:06:35,040
valuable to helping mothers, you don't necessarily, they may be half

993
01:06:35,150 --> 01:06:38,590
siblings, but they're not going to be any more distantly related than that.

994
01:06:38,750 --> 01:06:42,990
So you don't necessarily need that entry point of monogamy.

995
01:06:43,470 --> 01:06:48,670
In many other cooperative breeders, monogamy happened sometime in the evolutionary past,

996
01:06:48,750 --> 01:06:50,590
and then the breeding system changed.

997
01:06:50,830 --> 01:06:56,430
So I guess to go back to your question, there is no question that male

998
01:06:56,430 --> 01:07:00,670
parental care is important in human societies.

999
01:07:01,230 --> 01:07:05,660
I think it's probably relatively, you know, in terms of a big evolutionary picture,

1000
01:07:05,820 --> 01:07:11,340
relatively late, because it requires a pretty big um social

1001
01:07:11,660 --> 01:07:17,180
organizational um change that kids helping raise uh

1002
01:07:17,180 --> 01:07:19,340
kids wouldn't require.

1003
01:07:19,660 --> 01:07:24,220
Um and I don't think older individual, you know, I think older individuals, that's just

1004
01:07:24,220 --> 01:07:28,380
demographically fairly not so probable.

1005
01:07:29,210 --> 01:07:34,650
What what social organizational changes do you think need to be in place for male parental

1006
01:07:34,650 --> 01:07:38,890
care to well there has to there's this trade-off where you're gonna have to assure

1007
01:07:38,890 --> 01:07:43,210
paternity confidence, women are gonna have to, you know, classic sexual selection.

1008
01:07:43,530 --> 01:07:48,570
Um, I guess you're gonna have to, you know, males will have to um

1009
01:07:49,460 --> 01:07:54,340
Bernard Chapet has made a lot of arguments in this direction, which is kind of you know how

1010
01:07:54,340 --> 01:07:58,020
we weigh dampen down male-male competition.

1011
01:07:58,180 --> 01:08:03,060
Although I think you could argue, yeah, we don't bludgeon each other, but we certainly have

1012
01:08:03,060 --> 01:08:07,060
other ways that we heavily males heavily compete with each other.

1013
01:08:07,300 --> 01:08:08,740
But you'd have to dampen that.

1014
01:08:08,820 --> 01:08:13,860
You'd have to respect, you'd have to respect your brother's children, your your brother's

1015
01:08:13,860 --> 01:08:14,900
wife, I guess.

1016
01:08:15,090 --> 01:08:19,810
And so, you know, oddly enough, we live in these communities where we have multiple

1017
01:08:19,810 --> 01:08:23,970
breeding aged males and multiple breeding aged females.

1018
01:08:24,210 --> 01:08:27,570
Just, you know, a village, uh, your neighbors.

1019
01:08:27,810 --> 01:08:33,730
And we somehow dampen down the competition to, you know, we we don't

1020
01:08:34,130 --> 01:08:35,970
we respect those boundaries.

1021
01:08:36,210 --> 01:08:41,660
And that's a big evolutionary change to what other great apes do.

1022
01:08:43,420 --> 01:08:49,420
So we, you know, probably go from a pretty polygynous past

1023
01:08:49,500 --> 01:08:55,340
of some form of some form we don't really know, to one where we start respecting each

1024
01:08:55,340 --> 01:08:56,300
other's boundaries.

1025
01:08:56,460 --> 01:08:59,260
And I think that's a pretty, that's pretty sophisticated.

1026
01:08:59,580 --> 01:08:59,820
Yeah.

1027
01:09:00,070 --> 01:09:04,150
Well, sort of, I mean, we had Chris von Ruden on and he talked about Chris Bohm and sort of

1028
01:09:04,150 --> 01:09:05,910
leveling mechanisms or coalitions.

1029
01:09:05,990 --> 01:09:07,830
Is that sort of the thing you're you're referring to?

1030
01:09:08,150 --> 01:09:09,910
Like I mean, that's the next step.

1031
01:09:10,070 --> 01:09:14,230
I mean, it's all speculative, and of course, we're sort of on the edge here of sort of what

1032
01:09:14,230 --> 01:09:20,070
the the the key topics, but I mean, is that sort of what you're uh um talking about

1033
01:09:20,150 --> 01:09:24,240
too, where it would be just sort of, you know, just from a very basic perspective, just

1034
01:09:24,240 --> 01:09:28,800
sort of to the extent that we have a phenotype that allows us to be coalitional, then you

1035
01:09:28,800 --> 01:09:30,880
know, we can sort of enforce norms like that.

1036
01:09:31,040 --> 01:09:36,000
And that a belligerent, um, aggressive male might be teamed up against and it's sort of a

1037
01:09:36,000 --> 01:09:38,640
leveling mechanism in the crispome kind of way.

1038
01:09:39,360 --> 01:09:43,040
Yeah, but I mean that's a big step because other primates don't do that.

1039
01:09:43,200 --> 01:09:48,960
I mean, they they form co coalitions, certainly, but they also have no problem

1040
01:09:49,120 --> 01:09:54,750
um, you know taking on you know there's no yes they're promiscuous

1041
01:09:54,910 --> 01:10:00,510
yeah um so yeah I think monogamy monogamy is

1042
01:10:00,510 --> 01:10:06,190
pretty pretty difficult to get to yeah there's I mean I I know there's some new

1043
01:10:06,270 --> 01:10:10,510
new thinking on that but you know I I think the human the human story whether or not we

1044
01:10:10,510 --> 01:10:14,750
have deep ancestry in that that's with that paper that's previous work that I've done with

1045
01:10:14,750 --> 01:10:19,260
Andy Russell looking at this question in other species of cooperative breeders.

1046
01:10:19,340 --> 01:10:23,820
You know, we we have some of those traits sort of, and you know, we don't have others.

1047
01:10:23,980 --> 01:10:26,540
So uh biological traits, social traits.

1048
01:10:26,700 --> 01:10:32,300
So I think um I teach this a lot in in and I just kind of let students

1049
01:10:32,620 --> 01:10:37,740
uh know kind of what the evidence is on this side or that side, and they can make up, they

1050
01:10:37,740 --> 01:10:38,540
can make up their mind.

1051
01:10:38,620 --> 01:10:42,140
I think it's a really loaded, it's a really loaded question.

1052
01:10:42,300 --> 01:10:44,590
Um and there's other ways, you know.

1053
01:10:44,670 --> 01:10:50,270
We know in societies where there isn't a lot of paternity certainty, it's it's the uncles

1054
01:10:50,270 --> 01:10:55,470
that play a big so so there, you know, I think we do have to distinguish between male

1055
01:10:55,470 --> 01:10:58,350
parental investment and paternal investment.

1056
01:10:58,590 --> 01:10:58,830
Right.

1057
01:10:58,990 --> 01:11:00,270
So, you know, you certainly can't.

1058
01:11:01,150 --> 01:11:04,750
Oh, those in terms of you know the the father investing versus uncles or other men.

1059
01:11:05,070 --> 01:11:05,710
Yes, yes.

1060
01:11:06,430 --> 01:11:06,670
Yeah.

1061
01:11:06,830 --> 01:11:09,870
So where there's a lot of promiscuity in those societies where there's a lot of

1062
01:11:09,870 --> 01:11:15,340
promiscuity, it is uh mother's brother that um will invest.

1063
01:11:16,140 --> 01:11:16,380
Okay.

1064
01:11:16,540 --> 01:11:22,300
So a lot of facultative sort of in lingo sort of facultative design here in terms of

1065
01:11:22,700 --> 01:11:28,620
or not parenting, but just uh investment in in allo parenting and offspring and

1066
01:11:28,700 --> 01:11:29,580
uh and children.

1067
01:11:29,660 --> 01:11:29,900
Yeah.

1068
01:11:30,300 --> 01:11:36,070
Well I think that's a good place for me to probably end is that you know I think the human

1069
01:11:36,230 --> 01:11:39,990
the brilliance of the human strategy is our incredible flexibility.

1070
01:11:40,470 --> 01:11:43,190
And you know we don't have just one breeding pattern.

1071
01:11:43,270 --> 01:11:49,030
We've got all of these I I would say we're not committed male parental investors at all.

1072
01:11:49,510 --> 01:11:55,480
It's pretty it is facultative and and we we solve it in so many that's our

1073
01:11:55,640 --> 01:11:57,880
that's why we're so successful at what we do.

1074
01:11:58,040 --> 01:12:00,440
We solve these things in so many different ways.

1075
01:12:00,760 --> 01:12:01,000
Yeah.

1076
01:12:01,400 --> 01:12:06,520
We we we have a mandatory question, which is is there anything we should have asked you uh

1077
01:12:06,760 --> 01:12:07,480
during this?

1078
01:12:08,040 --> 01:12:13,720
Oh yeah I I guess I I mean I brought up some of them, but I guess I was thinking, okay,

1079
01:12:13,960 --> 01:12:16,810
what are like one's Eureka moments?

1080
01:12:16,890 --> 01:12:18,490
You know, what gets them to?

1081
01:12:18,650 --> 01:12:23,210
And we talked, we we did actually talk about a few of them, but um, or you know.

1082
01:12:23,530 --> 01:12:28,170
Yeah, or how did you get, or maybe one question just sort of is like, how did you um how

1083
01:12:28,170 --> 01:12:32,490
did you discover, how did you become an anthropologist or become an evol interested in

1084
01:12:32,490 --> 01:12:33,370
evolution?

1085
01:12:34,090 --> 01:12:39,860
Well, um, I I was an archaeologist and as I said, in ethnoarchaeology

1086
01:12:39,940 --> 01:12:44,580
was really a big uh was really what was important at that time was studying uh living

1087
01:12:44,820 --> 01:12:49,620
hunters and gatherers or or recently um ethnographic hunters and gatherers.

1088
01:12:49,700 --> 01:12:54,340
And I just fell in love, I didn't have the patience for an archaeolog for archaeology,

1089
01:12:54,500 --> 01:12:56,260
really, the slowness of it.

1090
01:12:56,500 --> 01:13:01,650
And I guess I like um, I guess I would call myself, you know, a behavioral ecologist or an

1091
01:13:01,650 --> 01:13:03,170
evolutionary anthropologist.

1092
01:13:03,330 --> 01:13:09,250
And I guess I like thinking about origins questions, not historic narrative, uh,

1093
01:13:09,490 --> 01:13:14,530
not just explaining you know why things are the way they are, but actually have what what

1094
01:13:14,530 --> 01:13:17,730
the origins are, what origins are, origin stories.

1095
01:13:18,050 --> 01:13:23,090
And I also think it's a really good message for our time,

1096
01:13:24,320 --> 01:13:30,080
Because times are so sort of divisive that it focuses in some

1097
01:13:30,080 --> 01:13:33,440
ways on what makes us all human.

1098
01:13:33,680 --> 01:13:39,360
And I think in psychology, there's even a greater emphasis on

1099
01:13:39,360 --> 01:13:40,240
universals.

1100
01:13:40,640 --> 01:13:45,520
I do think you do have to stay focused on variation in order to advance the science.

1101
01:13:45,840 --> 01:13:51,530
But I do think it does pull together a lot about, you know, what

1102
01:13:51,530 --> 01:13:52,890
makes us fundamentally human.

1103
01:13:52,970 --> 01:13:55,690
And I think that's a good message for we need that message.

1104
01:13:55,850 --> 01:13:58,170
Students need that message at this time.

1105
01:13:58,570 --> 01:13:58,890
Yeah.

1106
01:13:59,130 --> 01:13:59,290
Yeah.

1107
01:13:59,450 --> 01:14:04,650
And I think even, you know, one of the themes of this, in addition to sort of being aware

1108
01:14:04,650 --> 01:14:10,090
of the agency of of people who haven't, you know, whose agency has sort of been

1109
01:14:10,090 --> 01:14:15,770
overlooked, is also just that it offers this interesting, and I mean your work is just it

1110
01:14:15,850 --> 01:14:20,880
it highlights the uniqueness of what is our universal uh nature, right?

1111
01:14:20,960 --> 01:14:24,400
That I think, you know, if you don't take an evolutionary approach, you wouldn't even ask

1112
01:14:24,400 --> 01:14:29,920
the question of, you know, is monogamy what what we're designed to do, or think we may ask

1113
01:14:30,000 --> 01:14:34,240
questions about facultative male investment in children or things like that.

1114
01:14:34,400 --> 01:14:40,270
And so I think seeing what we often take for granted um and seeing if it is weird or

1115
01:14:40,270 --> 01:14:45,230
not um is a real value thing and i think your work is a wonderful example of that and um

1116
01:14:45,310 --> 01:14:51,230
and it sounds like you're working on a book is that right i am yes yeah so we look

1117
01:14:51,230 --> 01:14:57,150
forward to uh when whenever that comes out we uh yes well it's it's an experiment

1118
01:14:57,230 --> 01:15:01,870
because writing writing a popular book is something very different from writing an academic

1119
01:15:01,870 --> 01:15:06,910
paper right so um yeah well thank you for that and i yes um

1120
01:15:07,780 --> 01:15:09,380
uh and thank you for your podcast.

1121
01:15:09,460 --> 01:15:10,500
It was really a lot of fun.

1122
01:15:10,820 --> 01:15:12,260
Yeah, thank you so much for being on.

1123
01:15:12,340 --> 01:15:13,140
We really appreciate it.

1124
01:15:13,220 --> 01:15:14,340
And yeah, uh best of luck.

1125
01:15:14,420 --> 01:15:18,020
And we look forward to having you on uh when the book is is coming out.

1126
01:15:18,180 --> 01:15:20,980
So so I'll enjoy that.

1127
01:15:21,220 --> 01:15:22,740
Okay, thank you.

1128
01:15:22,980 --> 01:15:23,700
Okay, bye.

1129
01:15:24,100 --> 01:15:25,380
Great pleasure talking to you all.

1130
01:15:25,540 --> 01:15:26,020
Yeah, you too.

1131
01:15:26,420 --> 01:15:27,620
Bye, Dave and David.

1132
01:15:27,830 --> 01:15:28,230
Bye.

1133
01:15:31,750 --> 01:15:36,790
David, how can people uh support the podcast now that we're all done with this episode?

1134
01:15:37,190 --> 01:15:41,190
Well, they can say that Evolutionary Psychology, the podcast, is awesome on social media.

1135
01:15:41,270 --> 01:15:46,390
They can leave us a kind review, uh, or they can visit us on Patreon and maybe throw us a

1136
01:15:46,390 --> 01:15:50,790
few bucks because uh more funding is always needed, as our friend Dan Sneezer would say.

1137
01:15:51,030 --> 01:15:54,470
And uh also uh just in general, reach out to us.

1138
01:15:54,550 --> 01:15:56,400
You know, tell us what you think, give us ideas.

1139
01:15:56,480 --> 01:16:00,240
We're uh we're lovely to talk to, if I uh don't mind saying so.

1140
01:16:00,560 --> 01:16:01,520
See so yourself, yeah.

1141
01:16:01,600 --> 01:16:02,400
I agree, David.

1142
01:16:02,480 --> 01:16:07,600
So yeah, and without further ado, um here's gonna be the next episode in a few moments or

1143
01:16:07,600 --> 01:16:08,080
in a week.

1144
01:16:08,240 --> 01:16:08,880
Good enjoy.