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Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans Hardcover – March 2, 2021
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The oldest cultures in the world have mastered the art of raising happy, well-adjusted children. What can we learn from them?
“Hunt, Gather, Parent is full of smart ideas that I immediately wanted to force on my own kids.” —Pamela Druckerman, The New York Times Book Review
When Dr. Michaeleen Doucleff becomes a mother, she examines the studies behind modern parenting guidance and finds the evidence frustratingly limited and often ineffective. Curious to learn about more effective parenting approaches, she visits a Maya village in the Yucatán Peninsula. There she encounters moms and dads who parent in a totally different way than we do—and raise extraordinarily kind, generous, and helpful children without yelling, nagging, or issuing timeouts. What else, Doucleff wonders, are Western parents missing out on?
In Hunt, Gather, Parent, Doucleff sets out with her three-year-old daughter in tow to learn and practice parenting strategies from families in three of the world’s most venerable communities: Maya families in Mexico, Inuit families above the Arctic Circle, and Hadzabe families in Tanzania. She sees that these cultures don’t have the same problems with children that Western parents do. Most strikingly, parents build a relationship with young children that is vastly different from the one many Western parents develop—it’s built on cooperation instead of control, trust instead of fear, and personalized needs instead of standardized development milestones.
Maya parents are masters at raising cooperative children. Without resorting to bribes, threats, or chore charts, Maya parents rear loyal helpers by including kids in household tasks from the time they can walk. Inuit parents have developed a remarkably effective approach for teaching children emotional intelligence. When kids cry, hit, or act out, Inuit parents respond with a calm, gentle demeanor that teaches children how to settle themselves down and think before acting. Hadzabe parents are experts on raising confident, self-driven kids with a simple tool that protects children from stress and anxiety, so common now among American kids.
Not only does Doucleff live with families and observe their methods firsthand, she also applies them with her own daughter, with striking results. She learns to discipline without yelling. She talks to psychologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists, and sociologists and explains how these strategies can impact children’s mental health and development. Filled with practical takeaways that parents can implement immediately, Hunt, Gather, Parent helps us rethink the ways we relate to our children, and reveals a universal parenting paradigm adapted for American families.
- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherAvid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
- Publication dateMarch 2, 2021
- Dimensions6.13 x 1.2 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-101982149671
- ISBN-13978-1982149673
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Get to know this book
What's it about?
A mother examines the studies behind modern parenting guidance and finds the evidence frustratingly limited and often ineffective. She visits a Maya village in the Yucatán Peninsula to learn about more effective parenting approaches.Popular highlight
“If a little child doesn’t listen, it’s because she is too young to understand. She is not ready for the lesson.”332 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
Parents see this mess as an investment. If you encourage the incompetent toddler who really wants to do the dishes now, then over time, they’ll turn into the competent nine-year-old who still wants to help—and who can really make a difference.301 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
It’s not my job to entertain the children. It’s their job to be part of the team.287 Kindle readers highlighted this
From the Publisher
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Editorial Reviews
Review
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BESTSELLER
USA TODAY BESTSELLER
“Hunt, Gather, Parent is full of smart ideas that I immediately wanted to force on my own kids. (I wish I’d read it at the start of the pandemic, when I made their chore charts.) Doucleff is a dogged reporter who’s good at observing families and breaking down what they’re doing.”
—Pamela Druckerman, The New York Times Book Review
“Deeply researched . . . [Doucleff] takes care to portray her subjects not as curiosities ‘frozen in time,’ but instead as modern-day families who have held on to invaluable child-rearing techniques that likely date back tens of thousands of years.”
—The Atlantic
“Parents: You don’t have to go to kid birthday parties anymore! Or awkwardly straddle playground equipment! Or create chore charts! In her funny, honest, and practical book, Michaeleen Doucleff collects ancient wisdom that can restore sanity to parenting.”
—Amanda Ripley, New York Times bestselling author of The Smartest Kids in the World and High Conflict
“THIS IS THE PARENTING BOOK I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR!!! Frustrated by the challenges of being a new parent, investigative journalist Michaeleen Doucleff straps her kid on her back and travels thousands of miles to learn why and how indigenous cultures seem to raise kids to be far more skilled, confident, and content than the kids back at home. Armed with respect and curiosity, Doucleff realizes that incessant communication with her child while attempting to control every small thing leads her child to feel anxiety and act out. And that giving a child autonomy while building a loving connection yields highly skilled kids who cooperate, regulate their emotions, and pitch in without waiting to be asked. Smart, humbling, and revealing, Hunt, Gather, Parent should force a re-set of modern American parenting and return a healthier and happier childhood to both parents and children.”
—Julie Lythcott-Haims, New York Times bestselling author of How to Raise an Adult and Real American
“Michaeleen Doucleff’s Hunt, Gather, Parent breathes a gust of fresh air onto the parenting bookshelf. She gives us a whole new way of looking at raising kids, and it is so beautifully intuitive even as it runs counter to everything we have been taught as Western parents. I loved all the families she introduces us to, the landscapes she brings to life, and her honesty about her relationships with her own daughter. It really does take a village to raise a child, and it is pure joy to follow Michaeleen and Rosy from village to village seeing how it can be done. I can’t wait to talk to other parents about this book.”
—Angela C. Santomero, creator, head writer, and executive producer of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood and Blue’s Clues, and author of Radical Kindness and Preschool Clues
“Most of our greatest parenting challenges, such as how to instill helpfulness, kindness, and confidence in little ones, aren’t problems at all in other cultures. Michaeleen Doucleff travels far and wide to observe firsthand how parents in non-Western societies have successfully nurtured these traits in children for centuries, and she shares their effective strategies in this very readable book. Hunt, Gather, Parent is the new required reading for moms and dads seeking wise and creative solutions to our most vexing parenting dilemmas.”
—David F. Lancey, PhD, author of The Anthropology of Childhood and Raising Children: Surprising Insights from Other Cultures
“A lively account of traveling with her three-year-old daughter Rosy ‘to the corners of the world’ to research parenting techniques . . . Doucleff includes specific and manageable instructions for parents, and end-of-chapter summaries include extra resources. Parents will find Doucleff’s curiosity contagious and guidance encouraging.”
—Publishers Weekly
“An intriguing study that should be useful to parents from any culture, especially those who are at their wits’ end with their rambunctious, untamed children. . . . Eye-opening looks at how ancient techniques can benefit modern parents.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“This book is filled with accessible, practical information and anecdotes that can help parents address challenges they may face.”
—Jamie Herndon, Book Riot
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster (March 2, 2021)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1982149671
- ISBN-13 : 978-1982149673
- Item Weight : 1.2 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.13 x 1.2 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #38,936 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
![Michaeleen Doucleff](https://cdn.statically.io/img/m.media-amazon.com/images/I/01Kv-W2ysOL._SY600_.png)
Michaeleen Doucleff, PhD, is a global health correspondent for NPR’s Science Desk and the author of the New York Times bestseller Hunt, Gather, Parent. The book describes a way of raising kind and confident children, which moms and dads all over the world have turned to for millennia.
Doucleff has a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Berkeley, California, and a bachelor’s degree in biology from Caltech.
For the past decade, Doucleff has reported on disease outbreaks and children’s health for NPR. Before that, Doucleff was an editor at the journal Cell, where she wrote about the science behind pop culture.
She lives in San Francisco with her husband, daughter and German Shepherd, Savanna
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers say the book's character traits are peaceful, happy, and fun. They also say the content is informative, stunning, and a must-read for all parents. Readers enjoy the illustrations and find the writing style easy to follow along. They describe the writing quality as wonderful and describing it as a gem that tells of lost practices of parenting.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book a wonderful resource to recenter your parenting skills and get back to the basics. They also say the different parenting perspective shift is stunning, interesting, and easy to relate to. Readers say the book helps them connect with their daughters through all of their emotions. They say it's a must read for all parents, soon to be parents, teachers, and eye opening.
"...There is some interesting historical parenting perspective in the first two chapters that upends much of our current thinking about raising..." Read more
"...Simple practical ideas to implement changes now and philosophical ideas to change your mentality. Excellent book!!" Read more
"...kind of person everyone hopes their child will grow up to be - kind, helpful, independent, motivated, and able to tackle challenges and difficult..." Read more
"...The stories about other cultures were so interesting and easy to read that I was willing to wake up at 4am so I could get a chapter or two in before..." Read more
Customers find the book wonderful, fun to read, and non-pretentious. They also say it tells of the lost practices of parenting and how to apply them in modern.
"Ooo, this book was soooo good that I have too much to say and not enough time to write it all!..." Read more
"...Excellent book!!" Read more
"...Doucleff lays out the pitfalls of American parenting is brilliant and self deprecating and above all, interesting...." Read more
"...dangerous way, the book is really relatable, informative, and fun to read...." Read more
Customers find the writing style easy to follow along and get sucked into, with tools that make the concepts easy to grasp. They also say the author is humble and vulnerable.
"...peppers the book heavily with examples and tools that make the concepts easy to grasp...." Read more
"...The stories about other cultures were so interesting and easy to read that I was willing to wake up at 4am so I could get a chapter or two in before..." Read more
"...The information she gives is easy and laid out well, practical and easy to remember and seems simple to implement...." Read more
"...The tools she lays out are evidence based and simple—yet many of them I hadn’t thought to try...." Read more
Customers find the book's character traits to be peaceful, happy, and fun. They also mention that their children are confident, sociable, and emotionally mature. They say the book respects the family unit and how people work together. Customers also say that their kids are increasingly helpful and days are noticeably calmer.
"...My six year old is cooking and cleaning, and she is more peaceful and even sleeping better than she has been in years...." Read more
"...the kind of person everyone hopes their child will grow up to be - kind, helpful, independent, motivated, and able to tackle challenges and..." Read more
"...This is gentle parenting, although the term is never used in the book." Read more
"...The nice thing about this book vs others is that it really respects the family unit and how people working together accomplish more then just..." Read more
Customers find the book readable, enjoyable, and helpful.
"...With that said, I found the book to be humorous and entertaining...." Read more
"...The book is well written, entertaining, and practical...." Read more
"...literally turn your family into the most peaceful, happy, and fun environment if you try everything!..." Read more
"...It is readable, enjoyable, and helpful. Thank you, Michaeleen!!!!" Read more
Reviews with images
![Great Read!](https://cdn.statically.io/img/images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/common/transparent-pixel._V192234675_.gif)
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Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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I was able to do get these results so quickly because I was already many months into implementing a complementary educational philosophy (Montessori) at home. Hunt Gather Parent gave me some of the context I was missing to make phenomenal changes in my household in literally just a few days. This is an important book for parents, grandparents, nannies and other caregivers. This knowledge is desperately needed in the US today!
So as the book jacket explains, this is the story of an American mom, Michaeleen Doucleff, who brings her three year old daughter Rosy along with her as she lives and learns about parenting with families from three indigenous populations—the Maya in Yucatan, the Inuit in the Arctic circle and the Hadzabe in Tanzania. The book is rich with first-person anecdotes from each of these settings, populated by realistic portraits of the people she encountered. I loved learning about each group, and I wanted to read more, more, more about the families she met and the experiences she had.
The book also weaves in a ton of scientific research and many of the author’s original interviews with anthropologists (I admit I gave the book a lot more credit once I looked at the notes and realized a lot of the interviews were her own original work). There is some interesting historical parenting perspective in the first two chapters that upends much of our current thinking about raising children.
As well, the author was generous in her willingness to share the darker, cringe-worthier parts of her own parenting journey. I think just about any parent reading this book will recognize parts of their own parent-child relationships in this! But never fear, there is help on the way, as Michaeleen shares many macro and micro tips and tools for finding a completely new way of relating to our children. A very high level recap of some of her main points:
--Include children in every aspect of adult life, including housework, cooking and other day-to-day work, and the children will be happier, calmer and naturally helpful.
--React with peace and gentleness to children. Respond to misbehavior by ignoring, redirecting, modeling, encouraging, and other kind educational methods.
--Give children autonomy in a safe way that builds both their confidence and their feeling of responsibility to their family and community.
I really appreciated that Michaeleen was able to identify some “universal parenting strategies” because I agree with her that finding commonalities among cultures is the way to find what truly works. I think all parents everywhere want the same things, right? For their children to be healthy and fulfilled, and for the relationship among family members to be supportive and rewarding.
And yet many of us in the U.S. (and probably Canada, Australia and U.K. as well), have completely lost our parenting compass. We don’t even necessarily know what values we want to transmit to our children, let alone how to transmit them and nurture the behaviors that support them. Do we want to encourage independence or interdependence? Peer social skills or family ties? Shouldering responsibility or following your bliss? As parents, do we want to be our kids’ friends or their leaders?
The indigenous families interviewed by Michaeleen seem to have settled on the perfect middle ground among all these ideas. Their children are confident, sociable and emotionally mature. They definitely come across as happy and content. The parents seem to genuinely enjoy the company of their children, yet the parents have their own lives and aren’t at all slaves to their children’s whims.
Now, as for my own parenting journey…I have been on this path for a few years to try to remake our family life and my relationship to our older child. I have read and implemented some of the best of other cross-cultural parenting books that have come out in the past handful of years, including about the French, Danes, and Japanese. Those books were wonderful and do not fundamentally contradict what Hunt, Gather, Parent describes. It’s just that those books failed to mention some of the underlying concepts which are also practiced in France, Japan and Scandanavia—things like family togetherness.
As well, I have been reading books by Maria Monthessori and her disciples and implementing them in our home for about 6 months. Montessori provides a more detailed and comprehensive method than Hunt Gether Parent for introducing children of all ages to the work of daily life, as well as to the important concept of modifying the manmade environment (ie. The home) to ease children’s anxiety and increase their feelings of success.
Importantly, Maria Montessori describes child development in her books and explains how the evolutionary purpose of childhood is basically to follow around adults and older children so the developing child can learn how to act, move and speak like others of their group, thus adapting to their culture, environment and time. This is how an Inuit child grows up to know how to live off the harsh lands of the Arctic, and how an American child grows up to know how to drive a car, shop at the supermarket and earn an income through gainful employment. Montessori describes how children have a developmental need to contribute to their communities and families, and how they will become demanding, possessive, clingy or otherwise maladapted if this developmental need is thwarted.
Montessori has been incredible for our family and has completely changed our family life! Using the Montessori method of breaking jobs into subtasks and teaching by modeling rather than correcting, our 6 year old had already assumed a range of responsibilities from helping to prepare meals and clean up afterward, doing her own laundry, washing her hair, and many others. She was SO MUCH happier and confident after we taught her these jobs, we couldn’t believe it. And as Michaeleen notes in Hunt Gather Parent, we were continually surprised by her physical abilities, such as carrying a laundry basket full of laundry up a flight of stairs all by herself!
However, our child was still clingy and demanding. She had difficulty concentrating and talked compulsively All. Day. Long. Enter the answer to my fervent asking…Michaeleen Doucleff’s Hunt, Gather, Parent. One of the wonderful ideas from this book we implemented immediately was the Family Membership Card—which essentially says children need to eat, work, play and do everything else ALONGSIDE the other members of their family. Whereas before our daughter had her own jobs to complete, now I suggested we do all jobs together. And she loves it! Using this tool and some of the others from the book, after just a few days she is already calmer and more focused. I enjoy her company more than I have since she turned two! And our baby is getting more attention because there isn't so much idle chatter in the house. The transformation for our entire family has been wonderful, and I assume this is only the beginning for us!
To those parents who, like me, are looking for a better way to relate to their children and manage their family lives, I think you will find many ideas in this book. But change takes time if you are just starting this journey. Be patient with your children and spouse, and especially with yourself. Little by little, things will fall into place.
To the author…thank you for writing this book! I can tell it was an act of love, and you deserve many rewards in return. I wish all parents and children everywhere love, peace and blessings.
Top reviews from other countries
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Making me aware of my own mindset was a game changer for me with this book
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I myself am more interested from a professional standpoint as I work with children on a daily basis as a daycare worker. Needless to say that in itself can already be a struggle sometimes as you have to deal with the type of behavior described in this book not only times 1-3 but times 20+.
Working in daycare with the Waldorf/Steiner approach I was glad to see we already practice many of the advice from this book or they even embody our core principles - like modeling the right behavior for children for example instead of verbal instruction. Still there is always roam to improvement and I found many helpful tips I can apply in my daily work life plus reading this was a huge inspiration for me to again question pretty much everything I'm doing working with kids on a daily basis! Not to mention this book helped me get way more comfortable with facing - and comfortably answering - many of the parents questions I'm approached with on an almost daily basis. Not having children myself I always struggle with giving "2nd hand advice" to families regarding their parenting practices and routines but now I can adapt or explain a lot of the things we're doing in daycare on a daily basis to their specific situation.
So overall this book was a huge enrichment to me and I can - and do regularly - wholeheartedly recommend it to all (struggling) parents or even parwnts who just want to broaden their view on what parenting in this day and age in our western society entails and how it CAN look like!
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