The Caveman Guide to Parenting | Hacker News Reader

The Caveman Guide to Parenting

nautil.us

33 pointssomberi26 comments

I am an italian male engineer, and my wife is an hungarian female psychologist: trying to grow a baby together causes cultural clashes about every 2 hours[0].

Moreover, my feeling is that, much like diets, parenting is a very fashion driven thing. At some point french style parenting was hip, then nordic style parenting, then asian style parenting...

I find it unsurprising that new fads come up, and something good will probably stick, but personally, I am a firm believer in the CTFD method[1].

[0] weaning at 9 months, are you crazy? why the heck are we allowing her to eat by herself, she only makes a mess! Of course it's ok to eat parmigiano at 6 months! Stop picking her up! Pick her up more often! Do not let her cry! Kids should learn to calm themselves! etc etc

[1] calm the f* down, kids will be ok http://www.thedaddycomplex.com/post/55268573331/latest-paren...

What is "french style parenting" ?

Presumably something along the lines of what is outlined in this book: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/809937327

And this one http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/738336560 - which I've read, and it seemed to make some sort of sense at the time.

"à la baguette"

"The family is asleep before 8 p.m. and awake before dawn, as Wolf imagines our ancestors were millennia ago, before artificial light interrupted our “normal circadian rhythms.”"

How does this approach work in areas that have large seasonal swings in the length of the day? Even here in Scotland (which isn't that far North) the days are far too long in summer and far to short in winter to based your day on sunrise and sunset. Personally, I need 7 hours sleep (no more no less) and get very grumpy if that gets disturbed - which means shutters and curtains in summer!

Yeah, I've always thought the idea a bit whacky, like we haven't had fire or full moons to light the night. I'm at 41 degrees south - Launceston, Tasmania - and in July go to work in the dark and get home in the dark in, then in December it's the other extreme with 15 hours of daylight at on the solstice.

I don't think it's wacky. Modern electric lighting really is a different beast. There are differences of both degree and light spectrum between fires/moons and full illumination of your environment by way of electric light.

Maybe we colonized parts of the Earth quicker than our body clocks can change to cope with the seasonal variations?

Oh yeah, for sure, that's a very good point actually.

I'm hugely opposed to fluorescent lighting in the home, especially at night. I only run incandescent / halogen, or 2700K compact fluoros / LEDs, and in the late evening all the over-head lights go off and we light the living spaces with tricolour LEDs and dim 2700K desk lamps.

I was at a relatives house a few months back and sitting under the fluorescent lights in the their house was hugely irritating.

If children can thrive in a cave they can thrive anywhere.

Happy and loving children come from happy and loving parents. Enjoy them and do what feels right and kind.

Paleo diet: Big brains needed carbs http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150806133148.ht...

The second sentence of the paper that page discusses:

it is clear that—to a first order of approximation—our physiology should be optimized to the diet that we have experienced during our evolutionary past.

That paper doesn't dispute the value of a paleolithic diet, rather it disputes what's in that diet.

We don't need to eat carbohydrates because we can make our own, the metabolic pathway is called Gluconeogenesis[1].

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis

You do need some glucose in your diet for your brain. A complete absence of glucose will kill you.

It would probably be impossible to eat a diet completely void of glucose, even meat contains some sugars.

People have been known to survive for weeks without food, and therefore dietary glucose.

This article is so true. We evolved/improved in so many ways, especially technologically speaking but when it comes to parenting, we should go back to the basics. We know how to work, create an app, market a product... but when it comes to raising a child, this is another issue. Parenting is a basic knowledge, which is getting lost. The importance of parenting and the ways to raise a child could be more taught at school.

The history of parenting suggests the bar is very low. As long as you don't spend every day beating your children or completely neglecting them they will be OK.

To me a lot of this was similar to how parenting is done in India even today - Carrying the child and having relatives take care of the child etc. Just unbelievable how resource-intensive these tiny things are :)

The enamoration we have with "paleo" lifestyles is slightly absurd. The naturalist, primitivisy concept that things were superior in the past is a fallacy.

Humans didn't live for very long 10,000 years ago, so the effects of chronic diseases (the most important ones today) were not very pronounced. Most infants died before the age of five, so it seems quite ridiculous to take parenting tips from them. You are much more likely to kill your infant if you sleep with him or her in bed, as this article seems to suggest.

People would find it quite ridiculous if I suggested we model our political system after caveman politics, or perhaps we didn't teach children to read and write (weren't we happier before written language?), but somehow every "paleo" suggestion related to healthcare is assumed to be superior.

We are speaking of a period of time in humanity's timeline that lasted 2.6 millions of years without any significant development, in which the life expectancy was apparently 35 for men and 30 for women and during which we suffered at least one near extinction event.

I would find the "paleo" trends to be funny, if it wouldn't be so disturbing that people can believe such bullshit.

Like, maybe children were constantly carried around because otherwise they'd be eaten by other animals, or even other humans, with the baby stroller being a luxury of modern life, made possible because of science. And there's no mention that before Christianity children were regarded not as being precious, but as being unworthy and disposable half-humans that are the property of their parents. And also, why no cave?

Those life expectancy figures are driven lower by much higher infant mortality. Plenty of 50/60 years olds around in cavemen times.

Thank you. The whole thing is driving me nuts - everybody seems to believe that people were dropping dead at 35.

This guide is short and contains very little useful information.

And was posted on "Hacker News".

Any time and energy a baby expends crying is that much less time and energy they can apply to learning and brain development.

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