Here's a great paper(pdf) that looks at parenting from an evolutionary, hunter-gatherer perspective. It discusses approaches to child care that have been used successfully for thousands of years that are now being displaced by modern, often inferior methods. The paper is fairly long, and so I wanted to present a summary here because I feel it's very important information.
Evolutionary Function of Crying
- Crying signals genuine needs of the infant
- Crying should be immediately attended to by the mother or caregiver
- Crying takes significant physical effort on the part of the infant
- The immediate response to crying should be to restore physical contact between the caregiver and the infant
Infants as Carried Young
- Hunter-gatherer women carried their infants in slings close to the body
- This increased beneficial skin-to-skin contact between the mother and the infant
- The common leg positions of babies suggest they are adapted for carrying
Cosleeping
- Cosleeping for the infant and mother has been the universal norm throughout most of human history
- Bedsharing is the environment to which the vulnerable newborn is best adapted
- Cosleeping may reduce some forms of SIDS
Breastfeeding
- No alternative to breast milk existed before the transition to a farming economy
- Therefore, infants have been breastfed for 99% of all human existence
- Artificial substitutes have been unable to replicate the complex structure of breast milk
- There is mounting evidence about the many benefits of breastfeeding on child development
Extrogestation
- Human infants are born in an exceptionally immature state
- The conditions for the early part of infant life should attempt to mimic that of the womb
- This includes close contact with the mother's body in a tight, warm embrace
- Heartbeat sounds are comforting to an infant; women tend to hold infants on the left side of their body, close to their hearts
- Rocking an infant provides a calming effect since it mimics the movement stimulation the infant received from the mother's normal daily movements
- Swaddling replicates the feeling of the womb and has been proven effective in calming infants
Toilet Training
- Infants were historically toilet trained much earlier than in modern times
- Natural toilet training depends on reading an infant's signals and responding appropriately
- Children trained in this way complete toilet training anywhere from 6 months to 2 years
