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

Michaeleen Doucleff

Mar 2021 · Simon and Schuster · Narrated by Michaeleen Doucleff

About this audiobook

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The oldest cultures in the world have mastered the art of raising happy, well-adjusted children. What can we learn from them?

“Hunt, Gather, Parent is full of smart ideas that I immediately wanted to force on my own kids.” —Pamela Druckerman, The New York Times Book Review

When Dr. Michaeleen Doucleff becomes a mother, she examines the studies behind modern parenting guidance and finds the evidence frustratingly limited and often ineffective. Curious to learn about more effective parenting approaches, she visits a Maya village in the Yucatán Peninsula. There she encounters moms and dads who parent in a totally different way than we do—and raise extraordinarily kind, generous, and helpful children without yelling, nagging, or issuing timeouts. What else, Doucleff wonders, are Western parents missing out on?

In Hunt, Gather, Parent, Doucleff sets out with her three-year-old daughter in tow to learn and practice parenting strategies from families in three of the world’s most venerable communities: Maya families in Mexico, Inuit families above the Arctic Circle, and Hadzabe families in Tanzania. She sees that these cultures don’t have the same problems with children that Western parents do. Most strikingly, parents build a relationship with young children that is vastly different from the one many Western parents develop—it’s built on cooperation instead of control, trust instead of fear, and personalized needs instead of standardized development milestones.

Maya parents are masters at raising cooperative children. Without resorting to bribes, threats, or chore charts, Maya parents rear loyal helpers by including kids in household tasks from the time they can walk. Inuit parents have developed a remarkably effective approach for teaching children emotional intelligence. When kids cry, hit, or act out, Inuit parents respond with a calm, gentle demeanor that teaches children how to settle themselves down and think before acting. Hadzabe parents are experts on raising confident, self-driven kids with a simple tool that protects children from stress and anxiety, so common now among American kids.

Not only does Doucleff live with families and observe their methods firsthand, she also applies them with her own daughter, with striking results. She learns to discipline without yelling. She talks to psychologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists, and sociologists and explains how these strategies can impact children’s mental health and development. Filled with practical takeaways that parents can implement immediately, Hunt, Gather, Parent helps us rethink the ways we relate to our children, and reveals a universal parenting paradigm adapted for American families.

Ratings and reviews

Hunt Gather Parent is an incredible anthropological/anecdotal perspective on parenting. Michaeleen has written a book that my wife and I plan to return to many more times to remind us of the tools that we can deploy to better ourselves and our family.

The book is filled with good tips on how to reframe what we think we know about parenting. However, some parts I couldn't agree with, such as using various monster stories to get children to listen. These fear based tactics may work short-term, but there are studies that show potentially long-term unwanted effects on how children apply judgment to certain situations. If they're raised with mostly stories to help them navigate tricky situations, instead of truth and trial and error, this will fuel a formation of superstitious belief system. it's quiet obvious that as adults they may struggle finding explanations for their feelings of inadequacy and will not have confidence in their abilities to make logical decisions. Just another way of looking at this...

One of my top three favorite books about parenting. if you're ever going to interact with children in any capacity, whether that be family, work, or even just around your neighborhood, please read this book. It is impossible to not become a more compassionate and understanding person after reading this book.

About the author

Michaeleen Doucleff is a correspondent for NPR’s Science Desk. In 2015, she was part of the team that earned a George Foster Peabody award for its coverage of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Prior to joining NPR, Doucleff was an editor at the journal Cell, where she wrote about the science behind pop culture. She has a doctorate in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree in viticulture and enology from the University of California, Davis. She lives with her husband and daughter in San Francisco.