Halton, E. (2007).
Eden inverted: On the wild self and the contraction of consciousness. Trumpeter, 23(3).
Humans are a neotenous species, retaining new-born like characteristics much longer than other species, and for that reason, requiring patterns of socializing that can meet our prolonged developmental needs. For example, mother-infant bonding and separation between 1 ½ and 3 years of age is a socializing rite of passage not only vital for the development of empathy and autonomy, but occurs in a primate undergoing genuine brain development through the age of two that occurs in utero for other primates and mammals. Our big brains somehow bodied forth from the “omnivorous attention” required for a dematuring primate to tune in, in wonder, to the paradise of edible instinctive intelligence. I take our neoteny as requiring that our immature intelligence attune itself to the mature instinctive intelligence of all-surrounding life, without and within, that provides the signs wherein we find our maturity. Apart from that, we go mad in the long run. Narvaez, D. (2013).
The 99%: Development and Socialization within an Evolutionary Context: Growing Up to Become “A Good and Useful Human Being”.
From birth, the social environment of small-band gatherer-hunters (SBGH) is vastly different from that of Western societies like the USA, creating distinctive social and moral personalities. SBGH have a companionship culture that is simultaneously deeply individualistic and collectivistic, highly pleasurable and cooperative, fostering natural virtue. Contrastingly, in Western societies like the USA, natural virtue is hard to develop because children are raised with a great deal of coercion and a minimalist approach to meeting their needs. Modern practices like these foster a self-protective brain and personalities far different from humanity’s moral potential.Liedloff, J. (1986).
The Continuum concept. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books.
Martin, C. L. (1999).
The way of the human being. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Wolff, R. (2001).
Original wisdom: Stories of an ancient way of knowing. Inner Traditions/Bear & Co.
Konner, M. (2005).
Hunter-gatherer infancy and childhood. Hunter-gatherer childhoods: Evolutionary, developmental and cultural perspectives.
If the monkey and ape background to hominid evolution entailed a consistent pattern of care of infants and juveniles, one would expect it to have coevolved with aspects of normal or optimal development that might have become dependent on it. If so, this would presumably limit the range of facultative adaptations easily achieved in human evolution, or at least the range achieved without developmental consequences.
Narvaez, D., Gray, P., McKenna, J. J., Fuentes, A., & Valentino, K. (2014).
Children’s Development in Light of Evolution and Culture. Ancestral Landscapes in Human Evolution: Culture, Childrearing and Social Wellbeing, 3.
Rogoff, B., & Mosier, C.E. (2003).
Privileged treatment of toddlers: Cultural aspects of individual choice and responsibility. Developmental Psychology, 39(6), 1047-1060.
Crockenberg, S., & Litman, C. (1990).
Autonomy as competence in 2-year-olds: Maternal correlates of child defiance, compliance, and self-assertion. Developmental Psychology, 26(6), 961.
Mothers and children were observed in laboratory and home settings in a study of the relationship between maternal control strategies and child behavior. Child compliance and self-assertion were associated with less powerful control methods; defiance with power-assertive methods. A combined control-guidance strategy elicited greatest compliance and least defiance.Chavajay, P., & Rogoff, B. (1999).
Cultural variation in management of attention by children and their caregivers. Developmental Psychology, 35(4), 1079.
Narvaez, D.
The Neurobiology of Moral Sensitivity: Evolution and Parenting.
Rogoff, B., Paradise, R., Arauz, R. M., Correa-Chávez, M., & Angelillo, C. (2003).
Firsthand learning through intent participation. Annual review of psychology, 54(1), 175-203.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985).
Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. New York, NY: Plenum.
Gaskins, S., & Paradise, R. (2010). CHAPTER FIVE
LEARNING THROUGH OBSERVATION IN DAILY LIFE. The anthropology of learning in childhood, 85.
Paradise, R., & Rogoff, B. (2009).
Side by side: Learning by observing and pitching in. Ethos, 37(1), 102-138.
Holt, J. C. (1989).
Learning all the time. Da Capo Press.
Children learn from anything and everything they see. They learn wherever they are, not just in special learning places. They learn much more from things, natural or made, that are real and significant in the world in their own right and not just made in order to help children learn, in other words, they are more interested in the objects and tools that we use in our regular lives than in almost any special learning materials made for them. We can best help children learn, not by deciding what we think they should learn and thinking of ingenious ways to teach them, but by making the world, as far as we can, accessible to them, paying serious attention to what they do, answering their questions - if they have any - and helping them explore the things they are most interested in. The ways we can do this are simple and easily understood by parents and other people who like children and will take the trouble to pay some attention to what they do and think about what it may mean. In short, what we need to know to help children learn is not obscure, technical, or complicated, and the materials we can use to help them lie ready at hand all around us.Rogoff, B., Mosier, C., Mistry, J., & Göncü, A. (1993).
Toddlers’ guided participation with their caregivers in cultural activity. Contexts for learning: Sociocultural dynamics in children’s development, 230-253.
Rogoff, B. (1990).
Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. Oxford University Press.
Gray, P. (2014).
The play theory of hunter-gatherer egalitarianism. Ancestral Landscapes in Human Evolution: Culture, Childrearing and Social Wellbeing, 192.
Narvaez, D., Panksepp, J., & Schore, A. N. (2012).
The future of human nature: Implications for research, policy, and ethics. Evolution, Early Experience and Human Development: From Research to Practice and Policy, 455.
Narvaez, D. (Ed.). (2012).
Evolution, early experience and human development: From research to practice and policy. Oxford University Press.
