Alloparenting: the hunter-gatherer way of caring for babies
By Julia Jones
Have you noticed our human babies are extremely needy? They’re born tiny and helpless, without the ability to find food, walk, or communicate. They can barely even get themselves to sleep without help!
Why on earth did humans evolve this way? Surely, babies would have a better chance at survival if they were less vulnerable and more independent, so there must be a pretty good reason. (Hint: it’s nothing to do with women’s hips being too small — check out our blog post explaining why the obstetric dilemma is a myth).
To understand why we evolved to have such vulnerable babies, let’s take a look at hunter-gatherer societies.
Why are hunter-gatherer cultures relevant to modern parenting?
Hunter-gatherer cultures are the most enduring and successful of human cultures. They have occupied at least 90% of human history.
We can gain insight into how our brains and bodies have evolved for parenting by understanding what’s “normal” for a mother and baby in a hunter-gatherer culture,
What happens when you have a vulnerable, needy baby that's very difficult for one adult alone to care for? If you live in a hunter-gatherer society, the whole community comes together and shares the care of that baby. This practice of shared infant care is called alloparenting.
What is alloparenting?
Alloparenting has been very common throughout human cultures for most of history. Here’s an example of what alloparenting might look like. This is an excerpt from a book called Mothers and Others by Sarah Blaffer-Hardy (a researcher and mother).
“‘In groups such as the Efe and Aka Pygmies of central Africa, allomothers actually hold children and carry them about. In these tight-knit communities of communal forages ‒ within which men, women, and children still hunt with nets, much as humans are thought to have done tens of thousands of years ago ‒ siblings, aunts, uncles, fathers, and grandmothers hold newborns on the first day of life. When University of New Mexico anthropologist Paula Ivey asked an Efe woman, “Who cares for the babies?” the immediate answer was, “We all do!” ’”
Alloparenting starts very early in a baby’s life. Sarah Blaffer Hardy found that:
“‘By three weeks of age, the babies are in contact with allomothers 40 percent of the time. By eighteen weeks, infants actually spend more time with their allomothers than with their gestational mothers. On average, Efe babies have fourteen different caretakers, most of whom are close of kin. According to Washington State University anthropologist Barry Hewlett, Aka babies are within arm’s reach of their fathers for more than half of every day.’ ”
For the vast majority of human history, babies were cared for by everyone in the community, not just mothers. In most cultures, it would have looked a lot like the example described above. This system of alloparenting resulted in complex social relationships and highly developed empathy among humans.
Some cultures still actively practice alloparenting. Here in Australia there are still plenty of Indigenous Australian communities in which babies have very strong bonds with multiple adult carers.
For example, in some Aborignal cultures, children call their biological mother’s sisters “mother” too and many people breastfeed each baby. I interviewed Nyungar women Kerry-Ann Winmar, Dorothy Winmar and Margaret Taylor for my book Newborn Mothers. They were telling me that in Nyungar culture first born children are raised by their grandparents and I naively asked who feeds the baby. Margaret replied “whoevers got milk feeds the baby. As long as they got a clean titty and good milk there, just shared it around.”
But what about nuclear families?
In a nuclear family, there are two parents and a child or children. They live separately from other adults in the community, and the parents have full responsibility for caring for their own children.
You might be thinking, well, duh! But actually, this system of nuclear families is the newfangled way when compared to alloparenting.
Nuclear families have only existed for a short time in the big picture of human history.
In some parts of Europe, nuclear families, where two parents care for their children alone, have existed for maybe hundreds of years. In other parts of the world, which have been more recently colonised, they've only existed for a few decades.
Even today, many people around the world don't live in a nuclear family. So, although it may seem like an obvious and typical structure for those raised in Western countries, it’s really not.
Vulnerability is perhaps our greatest strength
What if it's not an accident that babies were born so vulnerable? What if this vulnerability is actually a superpower?
Vulnerable babies are perhaps humans' greatest strength, and that's because they've helped to create these complex social relationships and highly developed empathy, which epitomise what it means to be human. Knowing who we can trust, sharing knowledge, and supporting each other make humans so much more powerful than we would've been if we lived alone.
It takes a village
We’ve all heard the expression “it takes a village to raise a child,” but what happened? Where are our villages today?
Traditionally a human baby would've been cared for by eight to 14 adult carers every single day, as in the example of the Efe people. Now this isn't happening. Babies are typically cared for by only one or maybe two adults in a nuclear family.
No wonder modern mothers feel exhausted and overwhelmed.
Most mothers prioritise their babies’ well-being over their own, so it’s not the babies who are suffering because of the lack of a village. It’s the mothers. They give and give and give and sacrifice everything for their babies. But this leads to burnout, depression, anxiety, and depletion.
And it's not sustainable.
What can we do to support mothers?
When we understand alloparenting as the biological norm for humans, we get a better sense of the burden that mothers might be carrying alone.
How can we lighten this burden? We can't replicate 14 adult carers in a modern-day environment just like that. It’s simply not a realistic goal. But we don’t have to be hunter-gatherers to help newborn mothers thrive, we just have to be willing to learn from them.
We can use this knowledge to encourage new parents to reach out for support, and provide some of that support ourselves. For example, in Newborn Mothers postpartum professional training we teach our students how to:
Build a referral network of professionals and resources
Share stories and statistics that can change mothers mindset around asking for help
Assist parents to build their own village of support
Engage community support for new families
Nourish families by cooking postpartum food based on universal cultural traditions
If you want to learn more about providing professional care for new families you can learn more about the training we offer here.
