Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans

Ooo, this book was soooo good that I have too much to say and not enough time to write it all! I’m excited to be the first reviewer to have already put these parenting strategies into action and say—yes, this works! My six year old is cooking and cleaning, and she is more peaceful and even sleeping better than she has been in years. Even the baby is happy because we are including him in everything we do as a family. I was able to do get these results so quickly because I was already many months into implementing a complementary educational philosophy (Montessori) at home. Hunt Gather Parent gave me some of the context I was missing to make phenomenal changes in my household in literally just a few days. This is an important book for parents, grandparents, nannies and other caregivers. This knowledge is desperately needed in the US today! So as the book jacket explains, this is the story of an American mom, Michaeleen Doucleff, who brings her three year old daughter Rosy along with her as she lives and learns about parenting with families from three indigenous populations—the Maya in Yucatan, the Inuit in the Arctic circle and the Hadzabe in Tanzania. The book is rich with first-person anecdotes from each of these settings, populated by realistic portraits of the people she encountered. I loved learning about each group, and I wanted to read more, more, more about the families she met and the experiences she had. The book also weaves in a ton of scientific research and many of the author’s original interviews with anthropologists (I admit I gave the book a lot more credit once I looked at the notes and realized a lot of the interviews were her own original work). There is some interesting historical parenting perspective in the first two chapters that upends much of our current thinking about raising children. As well, the author was generous in her willingness to share the darker, cringe-worthier parts of her own parenting journey. I think just about any parent reading this book will recognize parts of their own parent-child relationships in this! But never fear, there is help on the way, as Michaeleen shares many macro and micro tips and tools for finding a completely new way of relating to our children. A very high level recap of some of her main points: --Include children in every aspect of adult life, including housework, cooking and other day-to-day work, and the children will be happier, calmer and naturally helpful. --React with peace and gentleness to children. Respond to misbehavior by ignoring, redirecting, modeling, encouraging, and other kind educational methods. --Give children autonomy in a safe way that builds both their confidence and their feeling of responsibility to their family and community. I really appreciated that Michaeleen was able to identify some “universal parenting strategies” because I agree with her that finding commonalities among cultures is the way to find what truly works. I think all parents everywhere want the same things, right? For their children to be healthy and fulfilled, and for the relationship among family members to be supportive and rewarding. And yet many of us in the U.S. (and probably Canada, Australia and U.K. as well), have completely lost our parenting compass. We don’t even necessarily know what values we want to transmit to our children, let alone how to transmit them and nurture the behaviors that support them. Do we want to encourage independence or interdependence? Peer social skills or family ties? Shouldering responsibility or following your bliss? As parents, do we want to be our kids’ friends or their leaders? The indigenous families interviewed by Michaeleen seem to have settled on the perfect middle ground among all these ideas. Their children are confident, sociable and emotionally mature. They definitely come across as happy and content. The parents seem to genuinely enjoy the company of their children, yet the parents have their own lives and aren’t at all slaves to their children’s whims. Now, as for my own parenting journey…I have been on this path for a few years to try to remake our family life and my relationship to our older child. I have read and implemented some of the best of other cross-cultural parenting books that have come out in the past handful of years, including about the French, Danes, and Japanese. Those books were wonderful and do not fundamentally contradict what Hunt, Gather, Parent describes. It’s just that those books failed to mention some of the underlying concepts which are also practiced in France, Japan and Scandanavia—things like family togetherness. As well, I have been reading books by Maria Monthessori and her disciples and implementing them in our home for about 6 months. Montessori provides a more detailed and comprehensive method than Hunt Gether Parent for introducing children of all ages to the work of daily life, as well as to the important concept of modifying the manmade environment (ie. The home) to ease children’s anxiety and increase their feelings of success. Importantly, Maria Montessori describes child development in her books and explains how the evolutionary purpose of childhood is basically to follow around adults and older children so the developing child can learn how to act, move and speak like others of their group, thus adapting to their culture, environment and time. This is how an Inuit child grows up to know how to live off the harsh lands of the Arctic, and how an American child grows up to know how to drive a car, shop at the supermarket and earn an income through gainful employment. Montessori describes how children have a developmental need to contribute to their communities and families, and how they will become demanding, possessive, clingy or otherwise maladapted if this developmental need is thwarted. Montessori has been incredible for our family and has completely changed our family life! Using the Montessori method of breaking jobs into subtasks and teaching by modeling rather than correcting, our 6 year old had already assumed a range of responsibilities from helping to prepare meals and clean up afterward, doing her own laundry, washing her hair, and many others. She was SO MUCH happier and confident after we taught her these jobs, we couldn’t believe it. And as Michaeleen notes in Hunt Gather Parent, we were continually surprised by her physical abilities, such as carrying a laundry basket full of laundry up a flight of stairs all by herself! However, our child was still clingy and demanding. She had difficulty concentrating and talked compulsively All. Day. Long. Enter the answer to my fervent asking…Michaeleen Doucleff’s Hunt, Gather, Parent. One of the wonderful ideas from this book we implemented immediately was the Family Membership Card—which essentially says children need to eat, work, play and do everything else ALONGSIDE the other members of their family. Whereas before our daughter had her own jobs to complete, now I suggested we do all jobs together. And she loves it! Using this tool and some of the others from the book, after just a few days she is already calmer and more focused. I enjoy her company more than I have since she turned two! And our baby is getting more attention because there isn't so much idle chatter in the house. The transformation for our entire family has been wonderful, and I assume this is only the beginning for us! To those parents who, like me, are looking for a better way to relate to their children and manage their family lives, I think you will find many ideas in this book. But change takes time if you are just starting this journey. Be patient with your children and spouse, and especially with yourself. Little by little, things will fall into place. To the author…thank you for writing this book! I can tell it was an act of love, and you deserve many rewards in return. I wish all parents and children everywhere love, peace and blessings.

The basic idea of this book is really simple: if you want children to stop acting like babies, then you need to stop treating them like babies. This isn't something you can do overnight, and the book suggests tools and timelines to make it happen. I strongly recommend this book --- especially if you had a standard American upbringing but your spouse didn't (more on that later). Probably my biggest takeaway from the book is that kids, even really young ones, want to be helpful, so you should let them --- even if they screw up at first. This solved a 30-year-old mystery for me. When I was a kid, I often played with legos with some friends, and when we were done, we'd have to clean them up. We viewed this as a chore, but the younger brother of one of my friends was really excited to help clean up. I could never understand why he was so excited to help with such a boring thing, but this book explains it. He wanted to be helpful. I'm a scientist, and one thing I really like about the book is that it explicitly doesn't rely on scientific research (the author explains this clearly in the book). That may sound like a weird thing for a scientist to like, but quite frankly, most childhood psychology research is garbage (not even the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment is reproducible!), which is why you get so many contradictory books that claim to be scientific. Even if everything in this book were contradicted by a peer-reviewed article in a prestigious scientific journal, I'd trust this book over the article. Until research gets better, observational studies of different cultures are as good as it gets. (The author is also a scientist and came to the same conclusion.) For those who demand science, the author does include some scientific nuggets in the book (mostly from interviews with scientists), but these are more seasoning than meat. I had a pretty standard American middle-class upbringing, which is to say that my parents didn't do most of the things in the book (strange now that I think about it --- my mom was once an anthropologist who studied a culture similar to those in the book), so most of the advice is foreign to me. Some even sounds crazy (let young kids use sharp knives?!?), but my wife is not from the USA, and her take is that much of this advice is pretty obvious. Apparently she started using sharp knives around age 4, and her fingers are all there --- and free of scars. In contrast, I only got to use knives once I was in scouts (and had my Totin' Chip), and my fingers are covered in scars to this day... Maybe starting young is the way to go. If nothing else, reading this book brought our parenting philosophies closer together and saved us a lot of arguing. My daughter is too young for most of the advice in this book, except for one piece: children are never too young to watch adults do stuff. Sure enough, if I load my daughter into a sling or put her in a chair with a view of me, she's entertained watching me cook, clean, etc. (In contrast, if I put her in a chair while I work on my computer, she quickly gets bored and unhappy.) Besides that, I can't yet comment on how useful the book is, but the advice in the book is well reasoned and jives with my wife's experience. I've also spent a lot of time learning how other Americans raise their kids, and much of it seems insane. There have to be better ways. So, I look forward to trying the book's advice in the future. A word on some of the negative reviews: yes, the author's background does make its way into the book in small ways. Yes, she does suggest taking your kid to work if you can, which yes, is impractical for many people. However, this is simply one of many examples of how to treat your kid like an adult. The author spends more time talking about folding laundry than about taking kids to work. Rather than write a negative review if you can't take your kid to work, be creative and come up with some new way to treat your kid like an adult. The author is also limited in ways (lives in a small, urban dwelling in a crowded, overpriced city), and I'm guessing most people have options that are not available to her.

This book truly changed the way I parent. It cleared up so much confusion created by many of the competing parenting philosophies out there. One of its greatest strengths is that, despite how unfamiliar some of the methods may initially feel, the approach is remarkably logical and practical. Much of what’s discussed wasn’t new to my immigrant spouse, which made the book even more meaningful because it helped us become more aligned in our parenting. I find myself returning to it again and again as a guide, both to stay on track and to reflect on how we’re growing as parents. Highly recommended.

Well I’ve read lots of posts on this book. Mostly negative. I’m on page 156 of 309. 4/5 stars for this reason alone - I’m not done. I am a new parent (baby 11 months) but not new to babies, toddlers, kids. I’ve babysat for years and I’m a foster mom. I think negative posts are largely unwarranted. I hear lots of stuff about the author being unequipped to parent based on how she talks about her daughter, and how she way to obsessed with indigenous culture. As a person of color (black in America) I think it’s unfair and frankly, rude. The whole premise of the book is that American ways of parenting have such a short history, it’s arguably not worth looking into further. So let’s go to some ancient ones. Who cares if she is white and having a hard time with her toddler? I would hope she is coming from a place where she is ready to learn. My rant here is that I can’t stand when people dismiss white ladies for this crap. I mean.. travel outside the US and there is plenty to learn. The word “fetishize” is used too much in the commentary of this book. Let’s talk about the book. I’ve read through her time in south America where she learns to let kids help. It’s revolutionary in my opinion. The only mom friend I see doing this is from Barbados. Her kids are ridiculously helpful, thoughtful and not fussy, and I have no doubt after reading this portion that it’s because she (without thought) has been incorporating her kids in daily tasks since birth. I witness her routinely ask her kids to grab her this or that. They all want to babysit my baby and care about him and are so helpful at age 4, 10 and 12. I will be incorporating this immediately and already am. Baby is 10.5 months and I’m having him put clothes in the wash, crack eggs for his breakfast and feed the dog (with my help of turning his hand so the food tips into the bowl). He glows. It’s brilliant. They care about what we are doing! Sure, I disagree that all kid activities promote bad behavior. I love me a splash pad, playground, etc. and I will continue these fun things. But, I’m more conscious about allowing him to go about my day with me AND not sitting on the floor too long with his trucks, etc. Side note on another American hurdle. Well, our lives revolve around screens or work outside the home. It requires intentionality to do what she is suggesting. I think back to our trip to Italy at 8 months. Baby was amazing. Seriously (flight aside). Why? Likely because he was taking in life, seeing the same buildings we saw, tasting the same food and meeting the same new people. So, I think it makes sense that we should let them into our world more versus diving into theirs so much. BUT my only struggle with this concept (and others) is that it sort of requires a flowy lifestyle and/or village. How many of us get to show our kids how to knit or frame a home as our daily task? Hell, even prune a vegetable garden? At best most of us can ask the kids to help make dinner. We just aren’t in the skilled trades anymore. She references other kids stepping in often, and I think in America we aren’t having kids as much so this can also be a difficulty. It does fall on 2 parents often and sometimes one. If you don’t want to or can’t have more kids, you do sort of miss out on the play/learn opportunities she references a lot . The stakes feel higher cause it’s your one and only “baby” so we resort to buying all the toys and gadgets :( She goes on to the Inuit. She talks about how they stay calm. I think this is valuable too. I genuinely am sorting out my emotions as I read. I get frustrated when he fusses and tries to move during diaper changes. Well, it’s just what babies do. Is he testing me? She would argue maybe not. It’s just baby behavior! I do have patience for my baby, but this reminds me that it’s okay to allow him to be and to MODEL the right behavior. Anyway, I came to say the claims about her fetishizing these cultures is wild. She traveled for a living! If you haven’t spent a day in a remote village, then hush! Anyway, the book is 100% worth reading and is changing the way I parent TODAY

This book has profoundly impacted my approach to parenting my two-year son. It is packed with ancient wisdom, personal insight, and quality research that gives Western society a glimpse of what parenting can really be if and when we choose to let go of our tightly held beliefs around how we “should” and “should not” be raising children. I do, however, have one sharp criticism of this author’s decision to include, in my view, historically inaccurate and decontextualized remarks about the Catholic Church. I am not going to provide a full defense of my view—I simply want to note that as a convert to the Catholic faith, I found this section off-putting and honestly a bit strange. The most devout Catholic people I know are extremely family-oriented and the Church has a global presence, meaning that there are Catholic communities all over the world with parenting styles that do not mimic the Western or “WEIRD” approach, yet function as fully Catholic communities. It seems peculiar to attribute the West’s and, more specifically, the United States’ peculiar family culture to an institution that has a substantial presence and influence on every continent; and, yet, not every culture that embraces Catholicism has adopted the family structures and/or parenting techniques of the West. I am a proud Catholic wife and mother who loves Jesus Christ and His Church. My heart breaks when people misunderstand the Church or hold false perceptions about what the Church actually teaches and stands for. I do simultaneously understand that people may be deeply appalled by troubling issues in the Church’s past and present; however, as any institution involving humans is not immune to corruption, the Catholic Church is no exception. Despite my strong personal bias as a Catholic, I decided to set aside my emotional response and forge ahead. I am glad that I did so, as I found almost everything else the author discussed to be extremely valuable. As a final note, I want to express my deep appreciation for the vulnerability and sincerity that the author demonstrated throughout her work. It takes a lot of courage to publicly document the struggles of parenting. I truly applaud her for being candid with the readers about her experience raising a toddler. I highly recommend this book to all new mothers or fathers looking to be inspired and take on a much more liberating approach to raising little humans.

I cannot thank the author enough for this book. I’m not exaggerating when I say that implementing what I read in this book has changed my whole household. I have to really practice changing my parenting style (and that change hasn’t been perfect by any means, I’m practicing) but it’s amazing how quickly things have been changing for the better. I’ve only been doing this for a week and my 4 year walked into my bedroom this morning fully dressed for school and I hadn’t said a damn thing to her 🤯! I feel less tension with my daughter and I can tell she does too. She tells me that we’re a great team and we are now! I haven’t blown up at her and my house has actually stayed (mostly) clean (that’s cause we have a clothes monster now, who she finds intriguing and fun). I can calm my toddler down a lot fast now too and I’m hoping to avoid pit falls with him that I had run into with my daughter before. Don’t be on the fence about this book, get it, read it, do it.

Everything I have heard the author say on NPR about the Iñuit rings true to my own experiences. More than 40 years ago, I met 16 young Iñuit children, was amazed by their calm maturity, and moved to their village in Arctic Alaska (with the village council's permission). Our children lived among the Iñuit from birth until they left for college. I coached our sons' mostly Iñuit youth softball teams for a decade. We lost more often than not, but not ONCE did a parent complain to me about our team's performance or my coaching. I can think of no better place in the world to raise a child. I've pre-ordered the book. When I've had a chance to read it, I'll update my review. ---------------- I have read the book, and I like it. This is the story of smart, sensitive, frustrated 3-year-old girl (Rosy) who tries to reform her smart, hard-charging, professional, angry, and clueless mother into an adult who will listen, understand, free her daughter from near constant oppression, and let go of the tensions driving them apart. The mother (author Michealeen Doucleef) is a slow learner burdened by her own childhood experiences, but also self-aware and resourceful. Their emotional and geographic journey follows a happy and instructive path. Way to go Rosy! Doucleef – a self-confessed terrible parent – had the brilliant idea of turning her obvious parenting failures into a book project, both to satisfy her deep curiosity about Indigenous parenting and to finance her own reformation. Through determination and with lots of help, she gradually works her way back to solid parenting ground, learning lessons that should benefit anyone willing to journey with her. Doucleef has a self-deprecating nature that Iñuit admire, but at times her self-deprecation seems to me more like a literary device than true humility. I can live with that. Doucleef’s unexpected encounter with Chubby Mata (p. 216-217 in the first edition) moved me to tears. If you don’t know about Jean Briggs and Chubby Mata, then the encounter won’t have the same effect on you, but that’s OK. I am not surprised that Mata’s family loved Jean Briggs. For me, Doucleef's encounter not only increased my already considerable respect for Jean Briggs, but it muted criticism Doucleef is getting for misrepresenting Indigenous people. For decades, I have recommended Jean Briggs’ books and papers to newcomers to rural Alaska. I plan to recommend Doucleef’s book, too, especially to clueless elementary school teachers from the Lower 48 facing their first Iñuit classroom. Some get it, some don’t. I hope an adult Rosy, like Chubby Mata here, is able to report back to us on what it was like living with the childish version of Michaeleen. There have been a few negative reviews, here and elsewhere. To get a sense of the problem, one Amazon reviewer recommended Rebecca Onion’s review of Hunt, Gather, Parent in Slate, so I read it. I also read Shannon Withycombe’s Twitter blasts. Here is my take. Doucleef does not ignore the science nor the modernization of Indigenous societies. Readable scientific diversions are embedded throughout the book (for an example, see p. 236-239 in the first edition) and referenced in 15 pages of endnotes. It is not that Doucleef ignored the science, it’s just that she didn’t adopt the perspectives that Onion and Withycombe prefer. This happens all the time in science, and it’s healthy. Criticism is what academics do at conferences and in journals. They battle over ideas, over perspectives, and over who should get credit. A PhD chemist (Doucleef) who dares tread on cultural anthropology or early childhood education is going to get hammered, especially if they write a popular book. Very few psychologists, anthropologists, or journalists live among Indigenous people for very long, not even superb anthropologists like Jean Briggs. Academics and journalists live in cities because that’s where the money is. Like Doucleef, they do intermittent field work. Like Doucleef, many are fascinated with Indigenous people. Academics butter their bread with theories and papers that they hope will win grants, lure graduate students, and get them tenure. Academics advance their careers through production and publication just as journalists do. Doucleef is not writing for academics. She is writing for parents who are at their wits end. Consider the academic bickering if you will, but don’t ignore Doucleef because of it. For those who wonder about my credentials, I am an interdisciplinary PhD trained by anthropologists, biologists, ecologists, and economists. My undergraduate degree was a Bachelor of Journalism. I also lived and worked in small Alaskan Iñuit communities for 30 years. As I said in my initial note, we raised our children among the Iñuit. Had Doucleef shared authorship and editorial control with some of her key respondents (not a bad idea!), this book might have been even better, and would have been an example of the “co-production of knowledge.” Her current critics probably would have been silent.

I want to start out by saying I didn't agree with everything in this book, nor was it expected! I noticed that a lot of what is written is trending right now, so this isn't all new, but i was able to adapt how i digested the info. Normally, when I read an article, I end up trying to overhaul my parenting style all at once. I may have 1 good day because I applied what I read, but I just as soon forget everything within the same day or overwhelm myself because I wasn't able to change anything. The benefit to reading an entire book was simply that i slowed down and kept reading long enough for these parenting hacks to really sink in and transform my behavior; after all, it takes 2 weeks of practicing before a habit is formed. A couple takeaways for me: Understanding my child is in a constant state of learning, she is not trying to test her boundaries or push my buttons. As soon as I stopped taking misbehavior personally, I was able to cool my anger and actually help my child process theirs. Ironically, I had to learn the lesson I was trying to teach my child! There are, of course, situations that I couldn't always figure out how to relay what I read. For example, I don't always have a job for my toddler to do. Sometimes, a situation is too dangerous, and it's hard to stop in the middle of cooking to help them feel like they are helping, and I feel guilty for saying no because I don't want to kill their helpful nature or acomedido. I am still struggling to always know what to do or say while staying calm and nurturing my child's curiosity and desire to be a part of the task/family. Trying to not overly praise my child has been getting better, but it surrounds us; my husband, her teachers, a lady at the super- market. There are so many npc's that want to praise your child, but are you supposed to say, " we don't do that. It over enflates their ego or causes them to need praise when they should just be able to handle a task on their own without expectation." Out of context, it seems ridiculous, as I am sure you all reading this review can agree. The point is, READ THIS. You won't be worse off after absorbing some solid parenting techniques from around the world. And now, we enlightened parents will just wait for the natural benefits and consequences to unfold for you!

I've written so many parenting books but nothing seemed to work. After reading this book, I realized in which ways my behavior and words were escalating many situations with my kids. I have learnt to ignore their bad behavior, stay calm while they are upset and most importantly I started to see them as capable individuals who can do many things on their own and also help each other out.

I love it! This book should be mandatary for all parents. Best book I’ve come across.

I really enjoyed this book! It gives a new take on parenting that really resonated with me.

"Hunt, gather, parent..." is a highly engaging piece of literature that calls for an "appeal to ancient wisdoms bias" much more than I expected. Certainly, the book title informs the reader that we should expect an idealisation of the past, but I had also expected a splash of fresh water (or a pinch of salt) given the author's background in science and medicine. Clearly, the author makes a strong argument for many of her claims, but I was surprised to find myself making counter-points which the author never addresses. I would very much appreciate another book with a more critical debate discussing the finer points of balancing safety and independence. However, that topic is far more difficult to tackle, and will not be resolved through a book, I'd still like to read it. That topic would be much like the current debate on balancing individual freedom and national security. The author did well to encourage critical thinking, as I too have attempted to do with this feedback, and I do appreciate the efforts made. I read the book in less than a week and found it difficult to put down. The writing was clean and polished making it a true joy to read. I wasn't a fan of the chapter summary, which is akin to self-help books, but it didn't bother me and I can see the value of it. I did love the illustrations. Such captivating storytelling, and a foot firmly planted in the science of child development.

The book was insightful, intuitive and gives parents practical advise on parenting. Was surprised and happy to see one para on the South Indian tribe. The author has done her research well on the indigenous cultures around the world. To be honest, coming from a culture which still is largely based on collectivism as opposed to individualism in western countries, the book was relatable and many of these tips are lost knowledge within my own community. Although I have witnessed this kind of parenting, reading about it in a structured and detailed manner was eye opening. Tried to implement few of these tips with my own toddler and it works! Have been having less conflicts and lesser tantrums. As opposed to the kind of parenting advise given nowadays, this book makes you feel not guilty about many things you should have never been anxious about. Teaches us how to raise confident and responsible kids.