How growing up connected started

‘I wonder if there’s parent education from an evolutionary perspective’ I mused to my husband, Brent, not long after I found out I was pregnant.

Brent and I are both completing our PhD in Social Psychology. We are both deeply interested in an evolutionary perspective.

What’s so great about evolution?

Understanding how evolution has shaped human physiology, behavior and psychology, helps us understand why we humans behave the way we do, and why we flourish under some conditions but not others.

Evolutionary science teaches us who we are - it teaches us about human nature.

We believe that an evolutionary perspective can help make medicine better, lead to more effective policies, help an economy that works for people, and - ultimately - to help us live happier, more connected lives.

Not too long after I mused about whether the evolutionary perspective had been applied to parenting, a friend gave me a book (from a German author and scientist) that was exactly what I’d hoped to find: a book about how evolution has shaped our children, why they behave the way they do, and how we can parent in ways that respects their evolved nature.

The book was really a life changer for us!

Truly understanding children, understanding why they behave the way they do (instead of just focusing on how to change their behavior), is deeply empowering: 

It shows that children, all children, are perfect just as they are. Their behaviors (such as not wanting to sleep by themselves, being afraid of the dark, not wanting to eat vegetables and being afraid of strangers) make complete sense. 

And it opened our eyes to how mainstream parenting with its focus on children’s behaviors (and the use of reward and punishment to shape that behavior) completely misses the mark and causes harm in the process.  

We believe that many of the issues that we as adults face today are largely caused by conventional parenting. 

When we ignore a child’s needs for feeling safe,  it undermines their trust in themselves, other people and the world at large; it creates anxiety and depression. 

When we signal to children that our love is conditional on them behaving a certain way (by, for example, using time-outs, punishment or ignoring them when they are upset), it creates unhappiness, a deep-seated believe that they are unworthy, and a focus on external ways to feel loved (such as buying status symbols, working long hours).

When we ignore a child’s need for autonomy, it creates self-doubt, anxiety, and overly-dependent adults.

During my pregnancy (and ever since), we read many more books and academic articles on the topic and spent countless hours going on long walks discussing what we learned and how we wanted to apply all of this in our lives, in a way that also respects the requirements of modern day life. 

This new found perspective not only changed how we wanted to approach parenting, it also changed how we live our lives. 

When we got into the PhD program at the University of British Columbia (in Vancouver, Canada), our goal was to get a job in academia. I am originally from Berlin in Germany, and Brent is from around Vancouver. We have family and friends in both places, and love to spend time in each city. 

But getting a job in academia would have meant moving wherever the jobs were, which could be pretty much anywhere in the world (academia is extremely competitive).

Getting a job in academia also meant working during weekdays and on weekends, and often all day - for, as they say in science, publish or perish.

This plan began to grate against our souls.

We realized that we truly want to embody and live our lives fully in line with our values: We want to have our family be the center of our lives; we want to live a slow life, with lots of space for adventure, being out in nature, cooking, making music, spending time with family and friends, and creating a community of like-minded people.

We want to live consciously. 

When our daughter was born, we did the things that felt natural to us: we slept (and still sleep) in the same bed with her, we always had her on our body during the day for the first few months, we immediately attended to her when she cried, and I nursed her whenever she wanted.

We also tried to be authentic with her (rather than using platitudes when talking to her), be calm, and show up as a reassuring leader who can hold the space for her when she is in distress.

All of this, as we had discovered, was perfectly in line with an evolutionary perspective on parenting and children.

Despite fitting our intuitions and the lessons of evolutionary science, this style of parenting also presents many challenges to those of us raised in large modern societies.

Parenting in line with human nature also asks us to come to better understand ourselves, understanding what triggers us, why we get impatient about some things, and coming to terms with and working on our own issues.

And so this journey has also led us down a path of self-discovery, mindfulness & meditation, and healing.

We are so grateful for having our daughter. Not only because she is the beautiful human being that she is, but also because having her has led us down this path; a path of living life more and more in line with our values, a path of living life consciously, a path of facing and working on our own insecurities and defensiveness, a path full of joy and being in the present, a path of a life lived fully.

We firmly believe this approach to parenting is a needed antidote to so many of the troubles in modern culture.

And so we feel drawn to share this path, share what we have learned (and are still learning) about the evolved needs of children, about how we can parent in line with those needs in ways that work in the modern world, and about the tools and insights from science, therapy, and mindfulness that help us grow in the process.

So that we can all grow up connected.

Connected to ourselves.

To our family.

To other people.

To nature.

And to the world at large.

We hope that, one day, all children feel at home in the world.