Can the ‘Paleo Parenting’ Trend Solve the Problems of Modern Motherhood? Scientists Say It Could

While there’s a lot of debate about the best way to parent children, many moms can agree on one thing: motherhood is often challenging. Science writer Elena Bridgers has studied the evolution of motherhood to answer the pressing question, “Why is modern motherhood so hard?” And some researchers believe that modern parents could learn a thing or two from hunter-gatherer societies.

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On social media, Elena explains how ‘Paleo parenting’ could inspire modern parents.

The science writer and researcher has critiqued “gentle parenting.” Through her research, she has examined hunter-gatherer societies, noting that humans have lived in this way for most “of our existence as a species.”

In hunter-gatherer societies, parents don’t exactly take a “gentle parenting” approach. Instead, they tend to believe “children learn by doing,” Elena explained in one video.

“We have to let them do things and take risks,” Elena explained. She also pointed out that hunter-gatherers tend to value “individual autonomy” — even for children. “This does not mean that they never say no,” she said. “It just means that when they do, it’s usually very simple and non-verbal.”

While Elena said she doesn’t really have a problem with the gentle parenting approach, she thinks it can be more labor intensive for parents.

She also talked about birth spacing.

In several other videos, Elena offers another explanation for why parenting might be more stressful today. “There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that humans evolved to have much longer spacing between births than we do in modern Western society,” she said. She explained that chimpanzees “space their babies about six years apart,” and “in our evolutionary past, birth spacing was closer to 4 years.”

Elena acknowledged that “not all mothers have control over their birth spacing.” She said she didn’t intend to “shame anyone who felt that spacing their children close together was the right decision.”

“I just think it’s interesting that 2 years is considered the norm, when for 99% of history it was probably closer to 4,” she captioned one video about birth spacing.

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Motherhood shouldn’t be so lonely.

While many people say “it takes a village,” Western cultures are commonly associated with being more individualistic. According to Elena’s research, this could be making motherhood a much more stressful experience than it needs to be. “When we look to the Great Apes, most mothers practice a form of clutch and carry mothering,” Elena explained in a video. “But anthropologists who have studied human hunter-gatherer societies have observed that a single baby might be passed between as many as 14 different caregivers in a single hour … care of children was communal.”

In contrast, many mothers now feel pressured to do everything on their own. “We now expect mothers to raise their closely-spaced children alone in single family homes with very little help from extended kin and community,” Elena argued.

Some parents have discussed ‘Paleo parenting’ on Reddit.

On several popular parenting threads on Reddit, parents discussed the work of another science writer who examined parenting styles in ancient cultures and hunter-gatherer societies. In Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans, Michaeleen Doucleff wrote about how American parents can “rethink the ways we relate to our children.”

On Reddit, one person who read the book explained it encourages parents to “include kids in your day to day life, don’t cater to their needs all the time, and they need to have tasks to be part of the family. It’s the way I do things anyway and it DOES make kids happier, in my experience.”

Another person thought the book served as a “reminder that it’s supposed to take a village which is why our family is so exhausted doing it alone.”

Motherhood shouldn’t be so exhausting.

Speaking to Today.com, Elena said the way we think about parenting is not “normal.” “The self-sacrificial idea of motherhood, where you’re supposed to just be burning the candle on both ends, is not healthy and not normal,” she told the outlet. However, modern times might require modern solutions in some cases. In one video, Elena argued that “sometimes the TV is your village.”

“Sometimes, when you are parenting alone in a single family home, the TV is your village,” she stated. She noted that for most of humans’ existence, children had lots of “playmates and caregivers.”

“It’s unrealistic to expect our children to entertain themselves alone for long hours while we work or relax,” she continued. “But many parents feel like a failure if they turn on the TV.”

She added she “can’t help but wonder as I see the demonization of screen time spreading, especially in trad wife culture, is this just another tool that the patriarchy has invented to keep women exhausted and in their place?”

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