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When I was in graduate school,

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one thing I often heard
was that the goal of anthropology

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is to make the strange familiar
and the familiar strange.

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I thought I knew what that meant, 
but I didn't really understand it

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until the first time
I conducted fieldwork.

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In my first year of graduate school,

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I traveled to South America
to work with the Shuar,

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an indigenous population
in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

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I was studying how children develop
across different cultures.

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I had a number of expectations 
for what that trip would be like.

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I knew I was going to get 
a lot of bug bites - I did.

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I knew I'd ride a canoe down
the winding rivers of the jungle - I did.

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And I knew I'd learn something
I didn't know before - and I did.

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I learned what childhood was like
in a small scale society.

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I saw independent young kids
climbing trees to gather papayas

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when they were hungry.

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I saw them starting fires,

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preparing food
for themselves and their siblings

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and even using machetes
quite confidently, I might add.

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(Laughter)

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The thing I didn't expect

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was the culture shock
of coming back to the United States.

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The strangeness of the Shuar
was becoming more familiar to me,

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but suddenly, the familiarity of home
started to feel strange.

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Being a child in a foraging society

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is very different than being a child
in a Western society.

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In societies like the Shuar,

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children are much more independent 
or as we like to call it "free-range."

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(Laughter)

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If you grew up in the era 
before cellphones,

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that might be what your own
childhood was like too.

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But for the newest generation of kids,
this independance is quickly fading away.

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And that's because childhood has changed
very recently and very rapidly.

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For virtually all of our time
on this planet,

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for hundreds of thousands of years,

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our species lived in small bands
of hunter-gatherers,

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more similar to how the Shuar live now 
than how the average American lives.

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Then just a few thousand years ago,

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most of our environment
started to change a lot.

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In fact, they changed 
so quickly and so drastically

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that many anthropologists believe

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we are now in a state
of evolutionary mismatch.

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This means that the environment
has changed too quickly

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for some of our genes to keep up.

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Cultural evolution is much faster
than genetic evolution.

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And what this means
is that our minds and bodies

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might be optimized for a world
that most of us no longer live in.

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So what did this
past environment look like?

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Well, it's impossible to perfectly
answer this question:

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bones fossilize, behavior doesn't.

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But we can learn a lot by looking
at current day societies like the Shuar.

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And I want to clarify here:

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the Shuar are not a prehistoric people
or windows into the past;

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they are modern people.

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But their way of life may give us a clue
about what childhood was like in the past.

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And what we know

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from looking across a large number
of these small-scale societies

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is that there are a lot
of common patterns.

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For instance, in virtually
all of these societies,

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women give natural birth,

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mothers breastfeed frequently
and for long periods of time,

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parents sleep in the same
room as their kids

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and children are constantly
in physical contact with other people.

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These patterns have started to change
in our Western societies:

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here C-sections are more prevalent,
as is formula feeding.

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Kids often sleep
in their own little rooms,

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and we don't want people

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in physical contact with us
or our children.

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We value personal space.

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But let's go back to the idea of mismatch.

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The practices in yellow have marked
the human experience

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for 99% of our time on this planet.

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The stuff in blue
is just 1% of human history.

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These massive changes
have happened so quickly

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that they may be out of whack
with the world we are born expecting.

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And we think there are consequences
for these changes, both good and bad.

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For instance, C-sections save lives,

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but they also shape the bacteria
in our gut and our immune system

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in ways that might
have negative consequences.

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But as an anthropoligst
who studies behavior,

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one shared feature of these societies
that I want to focus on

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and one that I've been able to see
for myself is this:

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in small scale societies,
alongside the adult community,

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is a complex mini-community of children,
an alternate society.

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This child society is made up
of kids of all ages and genders.

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It has its own unique culture and leaders.

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It has drama and a surprising amount
of political intrigue.

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To understand why this child society
is so important for development,

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it helps to keep in mind
a curious fact about humans,

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and that is to become 
a successful adult in any culture,

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children have to learn an enormous 
number of complicated skills.

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These include both technical skills,
like building a fire,

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and social skills,
like maintaining friendships.

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And to perfect these skills,
which take decades,

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children also develop foundational skills,

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like creativity, determination
and problem solving.

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Like, one day, when the Shuar adults
were playing a soccer game,

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I saw a group of kids set up their own 
soccer game right next to the adults.

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When they called me over,

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I got really excited because I thought 
they wanted me to play with them,

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but they were like,
actually, you just keep score,

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so all of us can play.

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(Laughter)

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Problem solved.

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Shuar kids, like kids everywhere,
spend a lot of time observing adults

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and incorporating
their behaviors into their play.

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In fact, this is one of the reasons
the play itself has evolved

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as a way to practice these skills
in ways that are low-cost.

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No one has to encourage kids to do this.

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They do it on their own

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because through unstructured play,
children learn how to become adults.

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Another important benefit
to this mixed-age society

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is that kids teach to 
and learn from one another.

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Younger kids benefit
by learning from older kids

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who are only slightly better than them.

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And through teaching,
older kids strengthen their own skills,

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as you may have experienced yourself -
teaching helps you learn.

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It's hard to find these patterns
in our Western societies.

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Kids here spend the majority
of their development

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in a room with other kids
their own age by design.

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Adults are totally in charge

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of the content and structure
of their time.

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They determine when kids eat.
They determine when kids play.

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They even determine
when kids can go to the bathroom.

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And the unstrucutred play time of recess

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is now quickly becoming
a structured activity.

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A strange byproduct
of all this micro-managing

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is that we're teaching kids things
that don't even need to be taught.

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Kids don't need to be taught how to play.

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They don't even need
to be taught how to talk, really.

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You don't have to point
to an apple and say, "This is an apple."

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Kids can also learn through exposure,

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like hearing you ask your husband
for an apple and him handing you one.

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"Apples." - done.

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And the idea that it is a parent's duty

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to constantly craft and monitor
their children's experiences

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causes a lot of unnecessary anxiety
and may, in fact, be detrimental.

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When we take away mixed-aged play groups,
when we take away unstructured play,

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we are in fact taking away
the training wheels to adulthood

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that children have had for millennia.

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We are contributing to an increasingly
mismatch environment.

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What's more,

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instead of letting kids develop
foundational skills like problem solving,

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we're flipping to the back of the book
to show them the answers.

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But that leaves them unprepared for all 
the new problems they're going to face.

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This might be one of the reasons

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why the transition to college
is so difficult for kids here,

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or why choosing a career path
can feel so daunting.

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There's been very little space to explore.

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The lesson is not that we should
go back to living like foragers

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or think whatever is natural
is what we should do.

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That's the naturalistic fallacy.

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But we would benefit
from taking a broader perspective

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and understanding
how our evolutionary history

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has shaped the way our minds develop.

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We all want the best for our kids.

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We want them to be independent,
confident, problem solvers.

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We want them to be happy.

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But paradoxically,

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our cultural practices in the West
might be undermining children's abilities

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to develop these skills.

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It's hard to study the long-term
consequences of these changes,

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especially because
they're happening so quickly.

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But there are some tried-and-true
methods to raising kids

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that we've been using for millennia.

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In fact, we've been using them for so long

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that children minds might actually
be expecting them.

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Some of these methods
you can start using now.

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Set up more mixed-age
play dates for your kids.

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Give them the room
they need to make mistakes.

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Give them more unstructured playtime.

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In fact, this is not just an idea

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that's relevant for those
who are raising kids

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because even as adults,
we are still developing.

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These lessons are applicable to you too.

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Allow yourself to make mistakes.

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Spend time with older family
and younger friends.

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Give yourself some unstructured playtime.

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And perhaps recognize
that the familiar culture all around you

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is, in fact, very strange.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)