3 ms·

I wonder why small children are so restless they disrupt their parents' normal operation. There should be a clear evolutionary disadvantage in that. You might

I wonder why small children are so restless they disrupt their parents' normal operation. There should be a clear evolutionary disadvantage in that. You might need attention, but attention has two sides and as a baby you don't want to get angry adults' attention, especially in more primitive societies.

saint_fiasco 11y ago
If you don't pester your parents but your siblings do, they may get more attention and resources than you. Besides, the parents having strict daily schedules is a recent phenomenon. I bet hunter-gatherers don't care if they wake up three hours late because the baby was restless last night.
- kaybe 11y ago
  Depends on the climate. In some climates you really really want to be up at sunrise so you can do stuff before it becomes too hot. But then again, the night is long when you don't have artificial light.
  - saint_fiasco 11y ago
    You can also ask your sister, mother, aunt, grandmother or older child to look after the kid while you go gather food. Before agriculture, it wasn't hard to find someone with free time willing to look after the children.
- guard-of-terra 11y ago
  Or you might die. If you happen to pester the wrong person you might die. If you happen to pester your parents at the wrong time you might be injured. People under stress are dangerous.
aklemm 11y ago
That is an excellent question.
ashark 11y ago
I'm pretty sure that if our cave-man ancestors raised children the way we do, humanity would have either have gone extinct or babies would be way less annoying[1] thanks to evolutionary selection. There's no way a huge percentage of stone age babies wouldn't have been shaken to death or hurled off cliffs at 2am otherwise. I'm sure some were anyway, but it'd have been most of them. It had to have been a more collective effort than it is now, with a greater relief from work for those involved in the caretaking than we enjoy. It must have been both, because even a single dedicated stay-at-home caretaker will go nuts without support/relief, and the typical working partner does not have the capacity to properly provide that at night and not be really, really messed up during the day. [1] I write this as a parent of two. Hospitals bombard new parents with "don't shake your baby" educational material. They do this because babies are phenomenally shakeable things, especially when they're shrieking for no damn reason at 2am and you're so tired from days on end of terrible sleep that you're beginning to hallucinate.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  Not just "our caveman ancestors", but I think most historical societies features a greater degree of both intergenerational support and "lateral" support from other families for shared child-rearing tasks than has generally been the case in industrial to post-industrial capitalist (and the more capitalist-leaning of the modern mixed) economies (the more socialist-leaning mixed economies in some cases probably, while still featuring less intergenerational familial support than earlier societies, may come closer, or even exceed, the total support through increased lateral support through state mechanisms.)

saint_fiasco 11y ago

If you don't pester your parents but your siblings do, they may get more attention and resources than you. Besides, the parents having strict daily schedules is a recent phenomenon. I bet hunter-gatherers don't care if they wake up three hours late because the baby was restless last night.

kaybe 11y ago
Depends on the climate. In some climates you really really want to be up at sunrise so you can do stuff before it becomes too hot. But then again, the night is long when you don't have artificial light.
- saint_fiasco 11y ago
  You can also ask your sister, mother, aunt, grandmother or older child to look after the kid while you go gather food. Before agriculture, it wasn't hard to find someone with free time willing to look after the children.
guard-of-terra 11y ago
Or you might die. If you happen to pester the wrong person you might die. If you happen to pester your parents at the wrong time you might be injured. People under stress are dangerous.

aklemm 11y ago

That is an excellent question.

ashark 11y ago

I'm pretty sure that if our cave-man ancestors raised children the way we do, humanity would have either have gone extinct or babies would be way less annoying[1] thanks to evolutionary selection. There's no way a huge percentage of stone age babies wouldn't have been shaken to death or hurled off cliffs at 2am otherwise. I'm sure some were anyway, but it'd have been most of them. It had to have been a more collective effort than it is now, with a greater relief from work for those involved in the caretaking than we enjoy. It must have been both, because even a single dedicated stay-at-home caretaker will go nuts without support/relief, and the typical working partner does not have the capacity to properly provide that at night and not be really, really messed up during the day. [1] I write this as a parent of two. Hospitals bombard new parents with "don't shake your baby" educational material. They do this because babies are phenomenally shakeable things, especially when they're shrieking for no damn reason at 2am and you're so tired from days on end of terrible sleep that you're beginning to hallucinate.

dragonwriter 11y ago
Not just "our caveman ancestors", but I think most historical societies features a greater degree of both intergenerational support and "lateral" support from other families for shared child-rearing tasks than has generally been the case in industrial to post-industrial capitalist (and the more capitalist-leaning of the modern mixed) economies (the more socialist-leaning mixed economies in some cases probably, while still featuring less intergenerational familial support than earlier societies, may come closer, or even exceed, the total support through increased lateral support through state mechanisms.)