Childhood is a special time, a strange time. Children are adored and catered to—they're given their own menus and bedrooms. They're considered delicate and precious, and so we cushion them from every imaginable risk. Kids are encouraged to play, of course—but very often it's under the watchful eye of anxious adults. This, anyway, is how childhood looks in much of the United States today. But is this the way childhood looks everywhere? Is this the way human childhoods have always been?

My guests today are Dr. Dorsa Amir and Dr. Sheina Lew-Levy. Dorsa is an Assistant Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke University, where she runs the Mind and Culture Lab. Sheina is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Durham University in the UK, where she co-directs the Forager Child Studies research group. Both Sheina and Dorsa have spent much of their careers thinking about how childhoods differ across cultures—and why.

In this conversation, I talk with Dorsa and Sheina about their fieldwork with indigenous groups in Ecuador and the Congo, respectively. We discuss the different ways that childhood differs in these places—for instance, in terms of parents' attitudes toward risk, in terms of the social structures and activities in which kids are embedded, and in terms of the freedom that children are granted. We discuss developmental psychology's "WEIRD problem." We talk about the quasi-autonomous cultures that children create among themselves—sometimes called "peer cultures"—and discuss how these kid-driven cultures end up shaping and benefit the larger community. Along the way, we touch on adult supremacy, adverse childhood experiences, walking the forest and climbing papaya trees, parenting norms, ding dong ditch and "nananabooboo", the pioneering work of the folklorists Iona and Peter Opie, teaching, toys, and the enduring question of what childhood is for.

Alright friends, lots to think about here. On to my conversation with Sheina Lew-Levy and Dorsa Amir. Enjoy!

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Notes and links

9:30 – For an overview of work on how culture shapes motor development, see here.

11:00 – The paper by Dr. Lew-Levy's and a colleague about "walking the forest."

16:00 – Dr. Amir's TedX talk, 'How the Industrial Revolution Changed Childhood.'

17:30 – For some of Dr. Amir's work on risk across cultures, see here.

35:00 – For a recent paper by Dr. Lew-Levy and colleagues about the evolution of childhood, see here.

39:00 – The popular article by Ann Gibbons, 'The Birth of Childhood.'

41:00 – For the idea of the "patriarch hypothesis," see here.

42:00 – For more on the "WEIRD problem" in developmental psychology, see here.

48:00 – A paper by Dr. Lew-Levy and colleagues about toys in hunter-gatherer groups. For more on the material culture of childhood, see our earlier episode with Michelle Langley.

52:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Lew-Levy on the prevalence of "child-to-child" teaching.

56:00 – A paper by Dr. Amir and a colleague about the concept of "adverse childhood experiences" in cross-cultural perspective.

1:04:00 – The paper by Dr. Amir and Dr. Lew-Levy on "peer cultures" and children as agents of cultural adaptation.

1:08:00 – For more on the idea of children as the "research and development" wing of the species, see our earlier episode with Alison Gopnik.

1:10:00 – For more on the Opies, see here.

1:13:00 – For the work of (past guest) Olivier Morin on children's culture, see here.

1:23:00 – For the paper by Dr. Camilla Morelli, 'The River Echoes with Laughter,' see here.

Recommendations

The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, by Iona and Peter Opie

The Gardener and the Carpenter, by Alison Gopnik

The Anthropology of Childhood, by David Lancy

Intimate Fathers, by Barry Hewlett

Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.

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