What If We’re Making Parenting Harder Than It Needs to Be? | Michaeleen Doucleff

Michaeleen Doucleff, PhD, is a science journalist and author of Hunt, Gather, Parent. After struggling with some of the challenges of modern parenting herself, she travelled with her young daughter to Mexico, the Arctic, and Tanzania to learn from Maya, Inuit, and Hadzabe families about how they raise cooperative, confident and emotionally resilient children. 

In our conversation, we explore what these different approaches reveal about children, parents and the environments humans may be better adapted to - and what, if anything, modern Western families can take from them.

We talk about cooperation over control, why children seem to want to contribute, emotional regulation, autonomy, chores, boredom, community, and the surprising possibility that doing less as a parent might sometimes give you more of your life back.

You can learn more about Michaeleen on her website: michaeleendoucleff.com