Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans

Ooo, this book was soooo good that I have too much to say and not enough time to write it all! I’m excited to be the first reviewer to have already put these parenting strategies into action and say—yes, this works! My six year old is cooking and cleaning, and she is more peaceful and even sleeping better than she has been in years. Even the baby is happy because we are including him in everything we do as a family.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.

We adopted our daughter and as a part of the pre-adoption education process were required to read many parenting books. I read as much as I could in preparation, both adoption specific and more general parenting advice, including many highly recommended books by child psychologists and experts. They honestly made me wonder if we were making a mistake in having a child. They made parenting sound exhausting, joyless, and endlessly anxiety inducing. So much emphasis on tracking development and milestones, seeking professional advice at every turn and parents ensuring every activity is centered around enrichment and development of the child. I picked up this book with low expectations, but after a few pages I couldn't put it down. After the first few chapters I understood that THIS was how I wanted to be with my kid and it honestly changed how I thought about parenting. It described a way of raising a child who would become the kind of person everyone hopes their child will grow up to be - kind, helpful, independent, motivated, and able to tackle challenges and difficult emotions. The way Doucleff lays out the pitfalls of American parenting is brilliant and self deprecating and above all, interesting. Unlike any other parenting book I've ever read, the stories and anecdotes in this book are memorable. She peppers the book heavily with examples and tools that make the concepts easy to grasp. The simplicity of this style of parenting is what drew me to it, and now that we have our daughter, I have read this book a few additional times and pick up new tips and tricks every time. My husband even read it and it's helped us stay on the same page when we encounter difficulties with our daughter. If nothing else, it's a helpful reminder to reset and reassess when I find myself frustrated or anxious. I think this is a very underrated parenting book and recommend it to anyone who will listen. It's been a guidepost for me as I navigate parenting my daughter in a way that feels authentic and helps me stay on the path of being the kind of calm, steady and supportive-but-not-overbearing mother I truly want to be.

Probably the first and last time I will ever say this about a parenting book- or any non fiction book- but I couldn’t put the book down!I hardly ever read through an entire book like this cover to cover- but this book I read in its entirety in less than a week.It was so helpful, so practical and so hopeful.The stories were entertaining and instructive and I love how humble and relatable the author is.I teared up and laughed multiple times.Reading this book was like going on a fun trip around the world with a friend and learning so much useful information at the same time.I am around kids all the time but I don’t have kids yet, because it has been overwhelming to me how stressful parenting seems to be from watching other parents. But this book actually made me WANT to have kids and feel excited about parenting, unlike a few other parenting books I have picked up.The information she gives is easy and laid out well, practical and easy to remember and seems simple to implement.I’d highly recommend reading this whether you have kids or not. It will give you hope to be a parent, help you in your parenting journey, and help you with friends and relatives who have kids. It will also help you understand yourself and how you behave and think and act coming from a western background.I feel like it answered SO many of the parenting questions I’ve had, and honestly believe it may be one of the only parenting books anyone needs to read.

A little preachy about how bad normal Western parenting is, but lots of interesting and seemingly practical advice nevertheless. Good.

As a career teacher, coach, and tutor, I have read a lot of books in this category. This is the best antidote for modern kids. HIGHLY recommended.

This book I would highly recommend for all parents. It easily calls attention to the mindset’s we carry, the skills we display and even gives a few simple tools we use.Making me aware of my own mindset was a game changer for me with this book

This book was recommended to me by my cousin who luckily already got to read it right before expecting his first child.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!

I love it! This book should be mandatary for all parents. Best book I’ve come across.

I've written so many parenting books but nothing seemed to work. After reading this book, I realized in which ways my behavior and words were escalating many situations with my kids. I have learnt to ignore their bad behavior, stay calm while they are upset and most importantly I started to see them as capable individuals who can do many things on their own and also help each other out.