How Ancient Civilizations Raised Children

Summary

Podcast Summary: Camp Gagnon – "How Ancient Civilizations Raised Children"

Release Date: December 12, 2024
Host: Mark Gagnon
Guest: Dr. Meredith Small, Anthropologist

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Introduction

In this enlightening episode of Camp Gagnon, host Mark Gagnon welcomes esteemed anthropologist Dr. Meredith Small to discuss the intricate ways ancient civilizations approached child-rearing. Drawing from Dr. Small’s extensive research and her acclaimed books, the conversation delves into the evolutionary, cultural, and practical aspects of parenting practices that have shaped human development over millennia.

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The Evolutionary Basis of Human Parenthood

Mark Gagnon opens the discussion by sharing his personal journey into anthropology, inspired by Dr. Small’s book during his wife’s pregnancy. He reflects on humanity's long history and the innate behaviors that influence modern parenting.

Dr. Meredith Small emphasizes the evolutionary compromise humans have made between bipedalism and brain size, resulting in babies being born neurologically unfinished. She explains:

"Human babies are born prematurely compared to other primates because our pelvis is adapted for bipedal walking, which restricts the size of the baby’s head during birth. This evolutionary trade-off means that human infants are highly dependent and require extensive care."
— [13:48]

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Cross-Cultural Parenting Practices

Dr. Small highlights the diversity in parenting across cultures, noting that in Western societies, parenting is often isolated and driven by ideals of independence and self-reliance. In contrast, many non-Western cultures emphasize communal child-rearing, where extended family and community members actively participate in caring for children.

She states:

"In many cultures, children are carried on their mothers' backs all the time, allowing mothers to engage in daily tasks while ensuring the child receives constant attention and bonding."
— [03:33]

Mark concurs, pointing out the high levels of stress among Western parents due to the lack of social support networks.

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Co-Sleeping vs. Sleep Training

A significant portion of the conversation centers on sleeping arrangements for infants. Dr. Small advocates for co-sleeping, explaining its benefits for both the child and the parents:

"Co-sleeping allows for easier breastfeeding, provides comfort through physical contact, and helps synchronize the mother’s and baby’s sleep patterns, leading to better sleep quality for both."
— [30:57]

Mark shares his personal experience with co-sleeping, noting improved sleep patterns and bonding with his baby. They discuss the controversial nature of co-sleeping in Western cultures, often hindered by fears of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Dr. Small debunks common myths surrounding SIDS and emphasizes the natural design of human infants for co-sleeping.

"Research shows that the belief systems surrounding baby sleep in Western culture can lead to increased parental anxiety and disrupted sleep for both parents and children."
— [40:02]

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Baby Wearing and Its Benefits

Dr. Small explains the practice of baby wearing, where infants are carried using slings or carriers, a common practice in many non-Western societies. She outlines its advantages:

"Baby wearing facilitates constant physical contact, reduces crying by providing comfort, and allows parents to multitask efficiently without the need for strollers."
— [65:36]

Mark appreciates the practicality of baby wearing, sharing how it has benefited his family by enhancing bonding and simplifying daily routines.

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Breastfeeding Practices Across Cultures

The discussion transitions to breastfeeding, where Dr. Small explores its cultural significance and physiological benefits. She critiques the historical discouragement of breastfeeding in Western societies, often replaced by formula feeding influenced by corporate interests.

"Human breast milk is uniquely designed to be watery, requiring frequent feeding to satiate the baby, which naturally encourages bonding and responsiveness to the infant’s needs."
— [84:09]

Mark adds that processed foods and industrial practices have disrupted natural breastfeeding rhythms, affecting both maternal and child health.

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Addressing Modern Parenting Challenges

Dr. Small and Mark examine contemporary issues such as helicopter parenting and its psychological impacts. Dr. Small argues that excessive parental intervention can hinder a child's ability to develop independence and problem-solving skills.

"Allowing children to navigate conflicts and establish their own play rules fosters critical thinking and emotional resilience, essential traits for adulthood."
— [132:35]

Mark reflects on his own experiences with siblings and the benefits of mixed-age playgroups, supporting Dr. Small’s views on the importance of social dynamics in child development.

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Impact of Socioeconomic Factors on Parenting

The conversation touches on how economic pressures and cultural shifts in Western societies contribute to declining birth rates and altered family structures. Dr. Small links economic strain and lack of social support to the increasing reluctance to have larger families.

"In cultures where extended families are integral, children are seen as assets contributing to the household, contrasting sharply with Western perceptions of children as burdens."
— [90:26]

Mark underscores the need for societal changes to better support parents, advocating for more integrated and communal approaches to child-rearing.

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Conclusion and Final Thoughts

As the episode wraps up, both Mark and Dr. Small emphasize the importance of understanding and integrating anthropological insights into modern parenting. They advocate for practices that promote physical closeness, communal support, and responsive caregiving to foster healthier, more independent individuals.

"Parenting is the greatest rollercoaster ride in the world. Embrace the compromises and trust in natural instincts to guide the development of your child."
— [57:24]

Mark expresses gratitude for Dr. Small’s expertise, encouraging listeners to explore her books for a deeper understanding of cross-cultural parenting practices.

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Notable Quotes

• Dr. Meredith Small ([13:48]):
  "Human babies are born prematurely compared to other primates because our pelvis is adapted for bipedal walking, which restricts the size of the baby’s head during birth. This evolutionary trade-off means that human infants are highly dependent and require extensive care."

• Dr. Meredith Small ([30:57]):
  "Co-sleeping allows for easier breastfeeding, provides comfort through physical contact, and helps synchronize the mother’s and baby’s sleep patterns, leading to better sleep quality for both."

• Dr. Meredith Small ([40:02]):
  "Research shows that the belief systems surrounding baby sleep in Western culture can lead to increased parental anxiety and disrupted sleep for both parents and children."

• Dr. Meredith Small ([65:36]):
  "Baby wearing facilitates constant physical contact, reduces crying by providing comfort, and allows parents to multitask efficiently without the need for strollers."

• Dr. Meredith Small ([84:09]):
  "Human breast milk is uniquely designed to be watery, requiring frequent feeding to satiate the baby, which naturally encourages bonding and responsiveness to the infant’s needs."

• Dr. Meredith Small ([132:35]):
  "Allowing children to navigate conflicts and establish their own play rules fosters critical thinking and emotional resilience, essential traits for adulthood."

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Key Takeaways

1. Evolutionary Considerations: Human infants are born highly dependent due to evolutionary compromises between bipedalism and brain size, necessitating prolonged care and bonding.

2. Cultural Variations: Parenting practices vary widely across cultures, with non-Western societies often emphasizing communal support and physical closeness, contrasting with the Western focus on independence.

3. Co-Sleeping and Baby Wearing: These practices promote better sleep, bonding, and emotional security, challenging Western norms that prioritize separate sleeping arrangements and minimal physical contact.

4. Breastfeeding Dynamics: Continuous, on-demand breastfeeding supports the baby's physiological and emotional needs, while Western practices have often disrupted these natural rhythms through formula feeding and societal pressures.

5. Modern Challenges: Economic pressures, lack of social support, and cultural shifts contribute to declining birth rates and altered family structures, highlighting the need for more supportive parenting environments.

6. Parental Intervention: Excessive intervention in children's play and conflict resolution can impede the development of independence and problem-solving skills, critical for healthy adulthood.

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Recommendations

Listeners are encouraged to explore Dr. Meredith Small’s books, such as Our Babies Ourselves and the forthcoming Together, to gain deeper insights into cross-cultural parenting practices and their implications for modern child-rearing.

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Note: This summary excludes advertisements, intros, outros, and non-content sections to focus solely on the substantive discussions between Mark Gagnon and Dr. Meredith Small.

Transcript

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Hello. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to camp. This is. This is a very exciting episode. Thank you guys so much for tuning in as always, dropping F. Miles in the chat. Miles is my friend from college that the audience does not like and that makes me very happy for some reason. So again, campfires in the chat, drop some tents in the chat. I'm dropping F. Miles just for old time's sake. Thank you guys so much. Really appreciate you guys tuning into the episodes this week with Shaman Omar, which was awesome, and my good friend Anthony DeVito on Monday talking about mobsters Today is a very, very exciting guest for me. These are one of the days of the podcast that I get very excited about because a very specific niche interest that affects me on a very personal level that I get to explore and unpack. And it's a very, very interesting substrata of anthropology and parenting that I think make complete sense. And I'm so excited to have this woman in front of me today. It's Meredith Small. Dr. Meredith Small. I can't leave that out. Thank you so much for joining me.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

It's a pleasure.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

This is so, so exciting. I read your book when my wife was about four months pregnant. This is how long ago this is like, yeah, maybe eight months ago or something. My baby is like two months old now, and he's amazing. And I don't exactly even remember how I found your book. I've always been interested in anthropology and sort of understanding human beings on a fundamental level, right? Like, what is it that truly makes human beings what we are? And going all the way back to the very beginning of the Anthropocene, what have we been doing for the most amount of time? And applying those things to my life as much as possible. And I think there's a lot of things happening within sort of the productivity movement that people have been doing. Like Dr. Huberman talks about getting sunlight in your eyes in the morning because it helps sort of, sort of regulate your hormonal and circadian rhythms. You know, like in terms of dietary things, I'm trying to pull out processed foods because again, these things are all so new in the scope of humanity. And then when I was having a baby, I was asking myself the same question. How did people raise kids for, you know, 100,000, 200,000 depending on when you believe that, you know, Homo sapiens began in terms of the, you know, the present consciousness we have. How do people raise babies? How have they been doing it in hunter gatherer societies pre agrarian times? What did we do? And it Sort of just like rocked my world. I was like, this is crazy. And I found your book. I read the whole thing. I immediately emailed you and I was like, this is the greatest thing ever. And I've applied the rules and the things in the book. I shouldn't say rules, actually. I've applied some of your findings in the book to our parenting strategy and it has been remarkable. Our baby is. And maybe it's coincidence, I can't say it's causal, but my suspicion is that it is, but it's just been remarkable. So thank you so much for writing this book.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

It's great. And I want to add, when you were thinking about what was it like in the past when Homo sapiens were as we are today, about 200,000 years ago. But also added to that is Western culture is 1.2 billion people and there are 8 billion people on the planet. So what do the other 6.8 billion people who are not in Western industrialized culture? How do they bring up their babies? And are there hints and clues? And what are their babies like? People only know about that if they travel.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And they land in, you know, Asia or Africa or you know, some distant culture and see children running around in a certain way and babies being on mothers backs all the time. And I remember my ex brother in law who was in Zimbabwe for a year as a student and he came home and he said, hey Meredith, do you know that they carry their babies all the time? And I said, yeah, Ben, I do. And he goes, no, no, I mean all the time. So it's even, even looking in different directions, not just the past, that is useful because the way we parent in Western culture and the United States in particular is wacky. It's really wacky. And I think it's the most difficult place on earth to be a parent is the United States.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, I don't think you're wrong. I mean talk to parents in America and pockets of Western Europe, the Western world, sort of generally speaking. And they're stressed and they're tired and it's very, very difficult.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

There are no social networks, there is no help. You're supposed to, as in, with the, in anthropology we call them the belief system that we run by which is independence and self reliance. So you know, put that baby on a schedule, get them to grow up and become a CEO of a company. And it's all about isolation really. And humans aren't designed like that. Little or big. Nobody is designed to be by themselves all the time.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Absolute. And again, I just want to sort of preface with the audience your role with writing this book. You are an anthropologist.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I am an anthropologist, yes.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

And you taught at Cornell for, I think you said, 35 years, at least.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yes.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Wow. And what's also amazing, and we'll have a different podcast about this, you're also an expert in Venetian history.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yes, I did make that odd turn in the last couple of years. But I'll say I'm back. I'm writing a book right now. Pegasus is my publisher, and it won't be out for probably a year and a half, but I'm back to being more anthropological. And I'm writing a book about the anthropology of family. And let me tell you, it's really hard.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

I can imagine. I can imagine. But again, the book was just excellent. So throughout this conversation, I just want to unpack some things. When it comes to parenthood that, again, some people told this to me when I was having our baby. They go, it doesn't come with a manual, right. Which is sort of like this aphorism. You hear this little idiom. You're like, all right, yeah, whatever. And it is so true. And it comes down to every little thing that you do with this tiny human. There's no rule book for. It's like, okay, breastfeeding or not breastfeeding, where does the baby sleep? In a crib? In the room? In a different room. When do we pick them up? When they're crying a lot or when they cry a little, or, like, how do they go to sleep? How long should they sleep? Like, every question, a stroller, not a stroller. Like, there are so many things you take for granted that may or may not be the best thing for our kids. And furthermore, things that we don't even consider that are actually really beneficial. Everything is brand new when you have a baby. And I'm going through that now. And your book just offered so much comfort.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Let me ask you a question, please. You and your wife, do you have siblings? Do you have younger siblings? Did you ever have to take care of your siblings?

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yes, I had one younger sibling and then five older siblings.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

So they probably took care of you?

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, I was probably getting taken care of.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Did either of you ever babysit? Yes, but I think that's one of the problems is because, and I always come to this, the decrease in the birth rate in Western culture that most people, by the time they're going to have a baby, they have had no experience with the baby because they were in a family with one child, two children. And when I was Younger people had four kids, eight kids, six kids, and so there was more exposure to infants. And when my daughter was little, I took her over to the neighbors who had babies because there wasn't going to be another child, and I wanted her to be exposed to kids. And her father, when he was young, his mother was going to have another baby, and she sent him to the Red Cross babysitting class twice.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Oh, wow.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

So he knew how to do everything because of that.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

But I think we're missing that intergenerational experience with babies. And so people are left with exactly those questions. What do I do with this thing? I'm in charge, and it's going to die if I don't do something.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

It's crazy.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

What is it?

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

I mean, my friend Miles that we talked about that the audience hates shout out to you guys. He came over, like, I don't know, a week after our baby was born, and I put him in his hands, and he was just so awkward. He was like, what do I. And I was like, have you held a baby before? He goes, no, why would I meet a baby? I was like, that's a good point.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

The two things that we are not used to in Western culture are babies and death.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

I was just about to say that it's very interesting that our society has compartmentalized these things that I think, socially, we see as inconvenient, that I think young children are seen as sort of a nuisance. We don't really want to be around them. It's like a whole headache. Don't deal with it. They're expensive. And then death is the ultimate inconvenience. You know, your parents get old, your grandparents, they become a burden on you. And it also is a reminder of our own mortality. Let's just put them in a home and we don't look at it. And I think that it robs us of a fuller human experience by, you know, being removed from the bookends of life.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I think it also makes us a more lonely culture.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Mm, absolutely. I mean, what a. What a shame, right? Like, all these, you know, young. Young children, like, looking for, you know, mentorship and looking for connection that may or may not have it. And then all these old grandparents in homes by themselves.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

It's like, if only we could all come and live together in some type of community.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And the assumption that every culture has this assumption that what they are doing is the right way.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Sure.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And that it is the normal way, and the only way you get out of that is to take a class in anthropology or again, to travel. And not to travel to Europe, because that's Western culture, but to some other place where you're confronted with different life ways. And basically that was my job for.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

30 years, which is amazing.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah. I wanted to put all these 18 year olds on a 747 and take them somewhere. But I would say to them, not everybody in the world has a cell phone. And one out of every five people on the planet is Chinese. And if we don't know what the Chinese think and feel, we know nothing. And of course, there are a zillion different kinds of Chinese people. It's not like there's one type. So I think Americans especially are not well experienced or educated in other cultures. And we learn mostly, I think, from others who immigrate into the United States or if we have an ancestry, you know, that came over here from some other time.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Sure, absolutely. Yeah. And I think sometimes in America there's a little sense of like, maybe like a cultural centrism, maybe like an ethnocentrism or something. Always, oh, what can I really learn from someone in Malawi? What can I really learn from someone in West Africa living in like a small village? What can they teach me? And again, coming from this perspective where it's like, I'm trying to see how parenting is done from every different culture, what is the human experience outside of America to parent? You look at that and you go, oh, wow. They have a lot of things figured out that they've been doing for a very, very long time that I think we can learn a lot from. And that's what I'm hoping to discuss today.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah. The anthropologist Robert Levine and his wife, who worked with the Goosey people in East Africa, once showed the Goosey mothers and grandmothers film of Americans changing their baby. And these people said, what is wrong with them? They don't even know how to diaper a baby because the baby's screaming and you everything.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Wow. So, I mean, it makes sense.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

The judging goes both ways. Sure.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

I mean, it makes sense also. Right. America, we are a relatively new country of, you know, predominantly immigrants within the last few generations that all came here that typically cut ties with our old ancestry and we had to figure everything out from scratch. So I also have sympathy for, like, the American experience. Like, yeah, like, I talked to my parents, my grandparents, and they're like, we didn't breastfeed. We didn't know what to do. Like, they, we were told from some corporation and I couldn't talk to my Mom. Because they were off in England somewhere, and I had to write a letter and take three weeks to get advice. So we just figured it out. So I think that kind of explains a little bit about it. And then one last little underpinning, I want to say, before we dive into some of, like, the substantive little, I guess, actual actionable items, the things that we discussed today, they can be sensitive. I think a lot of people take a lot of, like, personal, maybe umbrage with the way people describe parenting and that, you know, the way that we're sort of discussing parenting today might be outside of the way that someone listening, that is a parent is parenting their kids. And I think it's worth noting, like, you know, whatever you're doing is probably fine. I think I just wanted to say, like, if you know everything, a lot of parents feel guilty about the way they parent. They're like, oh, I'm not doing this. I'm not doing this enough. I do this too much. Whatever you're doing is probably fine. If you're not abusing your kid, you're probably.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I totally agree. And watching this over the last 25, 30 years, I am, like, personally saddened by especially how difficult this is for women, because this used to be the bastion of women. You know, if they're gonna take everything else away still. We were mothers, and then the culture came and told women they didn't know how to mother. And that infuriates me.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

You know, so it's very contentious. When my niece was having children, she's like, you know, this is horrible. I need to talk to you. Everybody's telling me what to do. And my response was, don't listen to anybody. Listen to yourself.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

So I guess the first place to start something that I think you begin your book this way is sort of discussing from an anthropological lens. Why are babies so helpless?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

We are very different. If you think about, let's say, a deer, and the baby deer is born, and it stands up, and it immediately starts suckling on its mother, and it can walk. We have these neurologically unfinished babies who can't sit up, certainly can't talk, can't feed them. Well, they can sort of feed themselves, but it seems like you have to operationalize that feeding. And clearly they can't take care of themselves in any way, shape, or form. Well, it's very odd that we're like that, especially for someone like me who spent lots of years watching monkeys in the field. Macaque monkeys, which is what I used to do a long time ago. And those babies are born and they can immediately cling to their mothers. And then they eventually, after a month or two, they're on the backs of their mothers and they're holding on and they're toddling away and coming back. So we have these extremely, almost like kangaroos, you know, babies who are inside for so long, extremely dependent infants. And so what anthropologists, the theory that everyone has is that at first in human evolution, the first thing that made us human, if we want to label it that way, is actually bipedalism. Standing up on two legs and walking, it's not a big brain. Everybody says, oh, humans have big brains, that's what makes us different. But if you look at the fossil record, it's really bipedalism. So around 4, 5, 6 million years ago, we have paleontological evidence from pelvises and foot bones that those creatures who were our ancient ancestors became bipedal. But at that point their brains were still very small, the size of a chimpanzee. So we know from looking at the pelvis, and I'm talking, if any of your listeners know the fossil Lucy, there we go, that's great. The fossil Lucy, an australopithecine Australopithecus afarensis, about 3.5 million years ago. Oh, and we have the fossiluce, which is a 40% complete skeleton. So we've got her pelvis and the parts that we don't have, they could mirror image them. So Lucy's pelvis doesn't look like a modern human pelvis and it doesn't look like a chimpanzee pelvis. So a chimpanzee pelvis has a very reasonably small round opening for the baby's head to go out. And the pelvic blades are very thin and upright. And so that chimp baby going out is basically going out a tunnel and it's not a problem. Lucy's pelvis, what are called the iliac blades or the pelvic blades, the broad bones of her pelvis really tilt outwards, but the opening is ovoid. And still Lucy's baby, if she had any but australopithecine babies, which are the word is hominids like us, they feel that the babies turned an angle and then they went out and it was really easy. So the problem came at about 1.5 million years ago when there was a dramatic increase shown by the fossil record and the skulls in brain size. And one of the big questions in this research is how come and we can get to that a point why do we have such big brains? My personal favorite is social intelligence, keeping track of relationships. That's not tool use, because this all happened before there was much tool use, certainly not language. That's very recent.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

What about cooking food?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Still a little bit later there's some of that. And an anthropologist named Richard Wrangham has written a book about the possibility of food. But that's still a little, it's later.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Interesting.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

So Lucy is sort of a transition. Australopithecines are a transition between a more ape like creature and more of what we think of as a human creature. And the problem came about, like I said, 1.5 million years ago. Huge increase and sudden in geological times, meaning not overnight but hundreds of thousands of years. And then you have a misfit between the pelvic opening and the size of the baby's head. And that's why women go through labor, is because humans became bipedal. That's the reason. And then we got big brains. And so there's a misfit. But the reality is if you take a chimpanzee skull as a baby and plot it out to adulthood and you take a human one, human babies should really be born with much bigger heads and bigger brains to make it to adulthood. And they don't because they can't. It's an evolutionary compromise. The pelvic area is restricting the birth of a bigger headed baby because if the head got any bigger, women wouldn't be able to walk. The pelvis would change so dramatically. So it's a very interesting evolutionary compromise that the baby is born sooner but earlier than it should be. And anthropologists estimate about three months earlier. And they think that Neanderthals, Neanderthal babies actually had a 12 month gestation, not nine months like we do, that they were able to manage that because their brains, you know, somehow they managed it.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

But anyway, so we gestate for nine months as human beings and that technically every baby that's born is premature.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah, that's really it. Neurologically unfinished is the way, you know, academics put it, but that's it. So they come out and they're very dependent. Now what's really interesting in this story to me is that when all babies cry, of course, and they cry in a certain way, they most cry worse in the evening. And one of the people I write about in the book Our Babies Ourselves is a guy who was working at the University of Montreal. Ron Barr, pediatrician and also anthropologically educated, spent time with the Kung San people in Namibia and he ran A crying clinic in the hospital. And he said people would come in and they'd say, my baby is crying, blah, blah, blah, blah. He said I'd show them the universal crying curve. And that is a chart that shows that crying increases, and in about three to four months, it drops off in all babies. And isn't that interesting that it's the same three to four months that babies should have stayed inside? And he said to me, it's neurological, you know, that now their brains have developed, and so they're, you know, they're sort of right on where they should be. And they don't have to cry as much because they're getting everything they need.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Oh, wow, look at that.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

There we go. Yeah, that's fascinating. That's the universal crying care. So I said to him, so what do you say to these people? He goes, I show them the curve. And I said, and then what do they do? He goes, they go, oh, okay. And they go home. And they had come in saying, my baby has colic, blah, blah, blah. He goes, they just go home.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Wow.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And they don't come back.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

That is fascinating.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

So all this, you know, my baby has colic. What do I do? What do I do? You know, if you just wait, it'll go away.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Your baby's not supposed to be here. Okay. They're supposed to be back inside. You try to put them back in or something.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Stick them back in, put them in the toaster oven.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Wow. Yeah. That makes a lot more sense, doesn't it? Yeah.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And it's knowledge. We don't know. We don't know as parents. We don't know as citizens of this culture. And we always assume we're doing something wrong or something is wrong with the baby. And the reality is there's nothing wrong, Nothing at all.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, it's fascinating. And again, the thing about having our baby that I thought was so, so cool was doing the reflex testing, and you talked about something in the book about this second phase atricial. Second phase atricial, I think, is the term that, you know, these babies come out with these reflexes, and they have, like, a walking reflex, they have a grabbing reflex, they have, like this hanging reflex. All these interesting things that are baked into sort of hard ancestral heritage, our DNA from a time where we were able to come out and be more precocial. We were born being able to do more things. And because we're premature, we don't necessarily have that to the same degree. Is that a fair experience?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I think that's fair. I think that's fair. And a biological anthropologist and a friend of mine named John Marks has just written a great book about human diversity. And in there he says, we know that we're affected by culture, but we're also affected by development. Everything we do is affected by development, meaning the life stages we go through. Being a baby, being a toddler, an adolescent and an adult, then aging that whatever we do, our bodies and our minds are affected by that as well.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. I'm curious, how long do like other primates gestate for like a macaque?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Well, I know macaques is four and a half months.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Four and a half months.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

They're really small, you know.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Right.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And I guess elephants are really long.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, I think elephants are like two years or something.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah. And that's a lot to do with body size, I think.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Interesting. Yeah. I'm curious, like, is there a curve to chart, you know, gestational length and, you know, any other type of factor?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I'm sure there is, but I don't. I'm not familiar with it.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Interesting. So now thinking about little babies, right. That they basically all are premature and once they get here, they're still so brand new and they don't even really understand what's going on. Right. How does that change the way that we interact with them? Like, how does that change the way that parents should be looking at their one month old or their two month old and how, you know, some of the decisions that they make in that early developmental period?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I want to put a little bit about the cross cultural in here because the way we in the United States and Western culture, the way we interact with a newborn is very different across the world. I mean, there are cultures where people don't speak to newborn babies. They think it's stupid, you know, cause the baby can't talk. So just wait. But then it turns out that all the siblings and the other kids around are talking. They talk to the baby. So they're still learning language and how to talk with that. I think my impression of most Americans is that everybody is afraid of their baby more than anything. And the funny part is in Dr. Spock's book that sort of revolutionized parenting in the. I don't know when that was, the 1950s or something, the first line is, you know more than you think you do. And even though he went on to tell people what to do, and I think that's it, that our instincts, our reactions are, unless you're someone who's very, very anxious and doesn't trust your own Reactions, it's there. If, let's say you're in a grocery store and you hear a baby screaming, I react to that. I mean I do want to go over, push the mother out of the way and pick up the baby. I've never done that, but I would like to do that. And I think that that fear stops people sometimes. It's just an opinion. I've never collected data on this or anything that people are afraid almost to be physical with their babies, to pick them up and hold them all the time because they have their grandmother or somebody saying don't pick that baby up, you know, because you'll just spoil it. And there's a long history of that from like the 20s and the 30s of don't touch the baby, don't pick it up and the crying out business, like what is the point? The baby is screaming, that's a signal and that's all the baby has. It can't talk yet. And it is telling you, as Ron Barr would put it, that something is off balance, something is wrong, that they just feel like something's wrong. It could be food, it could be their diapers wet, it could be they just feel weird and what they're craving is contact. And so I'm a big proponent of carrying your baby all the time because if you do travel in other countries and you see babies always strapped to somebody, you never hear crying. Yeah, very, very rare. And Americans always think, well then you'll spoil that child and it will never become independent like we want it to be. Well, research shows that that is not true at all. In fact, they followed some little kids who did co sleeping until they were in kindergarten. Not they didn't necessarily co sleep to kindergarten, but they followed them till kindergarten. And those kids turned out to be more independent and more self reliant. They had a sense of security. Whereas I think that in American culture we bring up anxious people and part of that is forcing babies to sleep on their own and not finding. It's not that you necessarily have to sleep with your baby, but compromises in which there's more tactile sensory hand the baby to somebody else. And we also have a problem because we don't have big extended families much anymore. Some people do and they're the lucky ones. I had a graduate student for a while who worked with the Yanomami in the Amazonian rainforest and she was just telling me about her life there. And they live in these long houses and so an extended family is all sleeping together and nobody sleeps through the night. People wake up, they go to sleep. We have this thing in Western culture that if you don't sleep through the night, something's wrong with you. But in fact, humans are biphasic sleepers. They normally wake up in the middle of the night, but the trick is then you take a nap in the afternoon. And we don't allow that. So we've made that the workday is more important. But anyway, I said to her, what happens in the middle of the night when a baby is crying? And she said, oh, let's just hand it off to whoever is awake. And I thought, wouldn't it be great if you had 25 people that you could just turn to and turn this baby? Because that's the other pressure we experience in Western culture. It's just there usually one or two people taking care of that baby. And that's crazy. I mean, it really does take a village.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Let's talk about sleeping. So I want to talk about baby caring in a second, which is fascinating. But sleeping again, I think that's one of the first things that you're sort of doing with your newborn. Like, our baby's born and my wife and I kind of looked at each other and the midwife left and the doula left and we were all alone in our apartment. We just looked at each other like, all right, I guess we'll go to bed. It's so crazy. And again, everybody, so many little things come into question as to what should we do? And I read your book, so I was very fortunate because I feel like I had some information, a couple things. One, could you explain what co sleeping is? And then could you also explain sleep training and sort of like the, you know, what people would call the cry it out method or self soothing and why these things have kind of come into culture and what your opinion on these different sort of sleep styles are.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

The interesting background to that is that when my daughter was born in 1997, those words didn't exist. Co sleeping, you know, that kind of stuff.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

And what was it like?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Nobody talked about it at all. They never talked about sleeping. I think the assumption was you put the baby in the crib and nobody ever talked about it. And in fact, my oldest sister and her children are now way grown ups. She once said to me, I always slept with my kids. It was the happiest time of my life. And I never told anyone. Cause she knew.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

It's controversial.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

It's controversial. And I think part of the reason it's controversial is that in Western culture, we, at least in America, we have infused the bed with sexuality. And so, oh my God, you can't sleep with your children because that's where you have sex. And one time I was giving a talk to about, I don't know, hundreds and hundreds of people, and I was talking about this and saying, you know something, and some woman in the back yelled out, you can always have sex in the living room. And everybody burst out laughing, you know, because we have sort of idolized the bedroom as that that's mom and dad's or, you know, mom and moms or dad and dads. That's their sacred place.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

You know, that's interesting.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

But in other cultures, people sleep together, right? You know, a professor at Cornell said in Nepal one day she just wanted to go sleep by her, take a nap by herself. And she went in and laid down and sure enough, somebody came in and laid down right next to her because they didn't want her to be lonely. You know. But we have this thing that's part of our belief system.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

That's hilarious.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

You should sleep alone. You should sleep through the night.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, I mean, I even just you saying this, I'm like, yeah, I believe that as an American, like as someone who grew up in America, I'm like, yeah, you sleep alone. Like, why? Like if I took a nap somewhere and someone joined me, I'd be like, whoa, this is. Are you making, are you making a sexual advance? That would be my first thought.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

That's right.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

And it's imprinted on me culturally and.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

These deep seated belief systems which we all have. I have them, we all have them. They are really hard to change. It's part of our socialization that we do this. And again, the only way, you know, any different is to read or travel to another country. Anyway, so when I wrote the book and then the book came out and somebody called me for an interview and said, what do you think about attachment parenting? And I had never heard that word before. And I said, what other kind is there? And I didn't realize that was going to be like a big thing.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Right.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And then when. How I got into the understanding of what we now call co sleeping is through my truly fine anthropological friend Jim McKenna, who I interview in the book. And I went to his sleep lab. He's another former a primate behaviorist who became interested in infant sleep when he had a little baby boy. And he said his name is Jeff. And he said, I would be rocking Jeff standing up and then I'd lie down, put him down to go to sleep. And he'd cry. And he said, and this happened over and over. But for Jim McKenna, this was an interesting thing. And he began to dig into it. And he went to University of California, Irvine. He said he went to the neurology department, he knocked on first door and he found someone to collaborate and do EKGs and sleep studies with mothers and babies who didn't normally sleep together. So he wired them up and then he and this other person would stay up all night and they had an infrared camera on them. And he said, and I saw some of the films of women who normally didn't sleep with their babies, and in their sleep they are patting the baby, moving the covers, comforting the baby, and the mother and the baby are face to face. So Jim spent decades studying this, especially at Notre Dame when he was in the anthropology department. And he had a baby parent sleep lab. And so he has lots of data. And his final conclusions are that human infants are meant designed to not be alone at night. And normally if you're breastfeeding, you have to breastfeed through the night. Well, what a pain if you have to get up from bed and get. Walk in another room, get the baby, even go over to a crib. He said, it's just so much easier if you're co sleeping. A woman naturally turns towards the baby and the baby finds the mother's breasts and he has the film to show this. And so we've gone to a system where babies are often bottle fed. There's nothing wrong with that. I was bottle fed, I seem to be okay. But we've kind of disconnected that contact point at night because we have a belief system that if you don't do that, if you don't regulate the baby's sleep, it will never sleep alone and it will never sleep through the night. And that is untrue. But we've got it in our heads. Or the idea that if you sleep the baby, you will roll over on it and kill it and that will, you know, it'll be sudden infant death. But if you look at the real reports of sudden infant death, there is often an explanation and it usually has to do with, you know, awful things like the baby's crib is way too close to the radiator or, you know, the covers, the baby got tangled in the covers. And so you have to, you know, be prudent about this.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Morbid obesity is another one, another one.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Drug and alcohol use, Drug and alcohol, sleeping on a sofa, you know, which I did with my daughter. And when I read that, I was like, oh, no, but it's sort of common sense things. But culturally, we've also disconnected sleeping with a child. Like, you just aren't supposed to do that. And Jim looked at the history of that and he said it really comes from. I don't remember the dates exactly, but not medieval times. But later when poor people were killing their babies. Infanticide. Because they couldn't. They just couldn't deal with it. And so they would say, oh, I must have rolled over on the baby. But it turned out it wasn't true. And he had slides of these sort of odd kind of lobster traps that people put in their beds and put the baby in it so they wouldn't roll over on it. And one of the lines, we used to give talks together and one. One of the lines he would say to people is, how many people sleep with your dog? And, you know, a lot of people raise their hand and they go, do you ever worry about rolling over and killing your dog? And people just go, no.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

But it feels like a dog has more agency. They can run away.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

It feels like it, but, you know, you can try it. And this is actually sort of a fun thing to do if you're going to have a baby. Get a doll about the same size, put it in and find out if you roll over it. Because I guarantee you you won't. You won't because you are conscious of it. And you're still gonna wake up every couple of hours. Cause the baby's hungry.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. We had read there's a protocol for co sleeping. Now, I'm not exactly sure where it came from. Christos, would you mind pulling up, like the seven rules for co sleeping? And it's sort of the things that you discuss in the book. Like if, you know, avoid these things, like don't swaddle. That way the baby can sort of brace.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Don't be drunk.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Exactly. Don't be doing drugs or alcohol and even drugs, like a sleep aid. Like if you're taking some type of sleep medication, that would count. This is not like illicit drug use only and then like morbid obesity, things like that. And I think Christos is going to pull up that list because I think it's interesting to look at. But anytime I tell people, like, yeah, you know, we are, you know, we originally got like a bassinet to have the baby sort of next to us. But anytime we talk about this, people get very concerned. They say, oh, what about sudden infant death syndrome? You know, you're going to roll over on the baby. They won't be able to do anything. Oh, yeah. Baby on their back. Don't overheat. Couch sleeping.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Well, you know, that's really interesting. And Jim would say this, the baby on the back thing. When I was a baby, you put the baby on its stomach, all right? And then it came along, and babies would vomit and choke on it and.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Die on their stomach.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

On their stomach. So there was campaign. I don't remember when this was. It wasn't that long ago. Putting babies on their backs and the number of SIDS deaths dropped dramatically. And Jim said to me, isn't it interesting that one behavioral change had such an incredible effect on infant mortality?

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, it's interesting. Putting the baby on the back. You had another moment in the book where you discuss that babies that sleep on their stomach seem to sleep longer and harder, which is a really interesting.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Point, which is not good.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

But it's very counterintuitive because you read it and you go, don't you want your baby to sleep long? And you want them to sleep well? You say, of course, will put them on their stomach and they'll sleep very long, very well. But then you realize it's actually beneficial for babies to be mildly waking up and doing this active sleep. Can you talk about active sleeping and.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Why that's good for babies? And this, again, is Jim's work. He had all kinds of devices on people. And I would say to him, but these women come in and they're gonna sleep with their baby for the first time. And, like, how do they sleep? He goes, they sleep like a dream. And he said, I think it's because they know someone's watching, you know, so they're not afraid. They've got these scientists, you know, behind a window who are watching them. And he said what he discovered is that these mothers and infants go through what he calls a sleeping tango. So they go, there are four levels of sleep, including REM sleep. And they go through a level of sleep. And they might be able to find that too, I don't know. But for a visual. So that. Let's say the baby goes through the levels of sleep and then goes down. Then the mother follows, or the mother goes through a level the baby follows, like a tango. And that they really are entwined in their different levels of sleep. And he has said it's basically teaching the baby how to sleep.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Fascinating, isn't it, that the baby and the mom, their brain waves are basically syncing up.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

They're syncing up, and if the baby has an apnea, it stops breathing. And if the mother is Facing the mother is breathing out CO2, and that triggers the baby to breathe again. Yeah, it's pretty awesome work.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Evolution is really clever, huh?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah, it's really clever.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Call it. God, call it nature figured it out.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

That's right. So it makes sense. But without the scientific experiments, if you want to call them that, or observations, we wouldn't even know that. We'd just go with that. We'd go with, oh, you know, the baby should be bad. It'll breathe better if it's by its own. But it's. It's not true.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. So interesting. And again, I think the Western notion is that you put the baby in a crib, maybe in the room, but, you know, distant from you, or then eventually in its own separate room.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

That's right.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Because that's safe, that's safer.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And also, they'll grow up to be.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

You know, more independent.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

More independent.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

They'll be a CEO or something.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. Not a good time to be a CEO.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

No. Is that what you want? Yeah.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. So, yeah. That's an interesting concept.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

So let me add in here. There's also the other side of that is the number of people who choose not to co. Sleep because they don't sleep well when they're sleeping with a little kid, you know, or with a baby. And sometimes they don't sleep well with a partner. You know, some couples who sleep in separate beds or separate rooms because they just don't sleep well. Well, if you think about it, since we never did this go sleeping thing for people of my generation, that didn't happen. It's so odd in this culture that we put a baby in its own room, in its own bed, and then at what, 18, 20, 25, they have a partner and they're expected to sleep with someone for the first time in their life.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Interesting.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

So of course they don't know how to sleep with another person. You know, you've seen those ads for the beds that have two separate things and two separate duvets and two separate. Whatever. Cause people really don't know how to sleep with other people. But, you know, if you come from Nepal, you could probably lay down to sleep with anybody any time, you know, because again, sleeping is so culturally influenced in this culture and it isn't in other cultures. And we have all these sleep problems, insomnia, everything, you know, and that isn't true for other places.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. I'm curious. How do babies know when you put them down? Cause my baby does this. He'll fall asleep on me in two seconds. And the second I put him down, he's crying.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

How does he know that I'm not holding him?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Your heartbeat and your warmth. Yeah, it's pretty straightforward. You know, when you think about. If he's on your chest, his head is probably turned and he's right over your heartbeat, you know, they know.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

And is there a pheromonal element that they can smell?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I don't know. I would assume so. I would assume so, yeah. We always think humans don't have a very good sense of smell, but we still have one. And we're not cats, we're not dogs, but we still have one.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Interesting. Yeah. And there's another element. I don't remember if it's in the book or if I had read this elsewhere, that as babies are sort of active sleeping, like, they're kind of startling themselves. And I think parents sometimes get frustrated by this. Cause they're like, my baby was perfectly sound asleep, and then he startled himself, and then he woke up. This is bad. I should put him on his stomach, and that way he'll sleep longer and not startle himself. And I'm curious what your thoughts on this are. That sometimes the startle reflex can get worked out by going through it. By these babies startling themselves, they're able to kind of calm their sympathetic nervous system and not startle themselves as much. And as a result, by active sleeping and occasionally startling themselves and falling back asleep, they are less anxious later in life.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I don't know about that work, but what you're saying makes perfect sense to me. That we are learning animals. You know much of what we do. And so there's a lot of practice. It's back to that issue of development. It surely is part of development. And Ron Barr talked to me a lot about the terrible twos. And good luck with that. A friend of mine in Ithaca said her son, he just had a meltdown on the street. And I said, what did you do? And he was like two. She said, oh, I got him off the sidewalk and I put him on the grass so he wouldn't hurt himself. And then I just stood there and waited for him to get over it, you know, so he wouldn't hurt himself, because this is sort of a normal thing. And Ron says, it's just part of development, and it's part of that. The brain starting to sort itself out, you know, and it's not your fault, and it's not their fault, and you just live through it. Sort of like puberty.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

You live through that, too.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, I'm Excited for that one?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah, sure. Good luck.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

And I guess, similarly, babies don't know that they're separate from the mother's body.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

They don't.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

That's a fascinating concept as well.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And they aren't.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, right.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And, yeah, that's very true, as Jim puts it. Well, actually, it wasn't him. A pediatrician who's long dead said that there's not just a baby, there's a baby in someone because they're so neurologically unfinished, There has to be somebody else on the outside. And as adults, we are designed really to respond to that crying. And that's why we have a reaction to it if we didn't. And there are cases when people don't. And that's a real problem. There was a really nice piece of work that was done at Boston Children a long time ago, where they took babies. I don't remember how old they were a couple months old, and they put them, like, in a car seat, and then they would have the mother go in, and they would be doing this sort of interaction with hands and, you know, and everything. The baby would be all happy. And the women had an ear bud in their ear. And the researcher would say from the other room, okay, now give the baby a dead affect. So the woman would just change her face and stare at the baby and not respond to the baby reaching out. And the baby. Every baby that they tried this, I think it was 90 seconds, the baby would keep trying, and then it would just go limp and turn its face away. And even more interesting, then the research would say, okay, be yourself again. And the mother would be herself interacting, and the baby didn't respond right away because it was pissed.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Wow.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Or scared or unsure. And it was the same for all the babies they tried. So they really are born ready and waiting for that kind of interaction. It's what. That's how they learn and how they regulate themselves. They can't regulate themselves by themselves. They have to do it with us.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

I had a conversation on this show with a gentleman named Sebastian Younger.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I know who he is.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

He's brilliant. I love Sebastian. And he made a comment in the clip, actually went fairly viral. I was kind of surprised by it, where he said that human beings are the only mammals that don't sleep with their children, specifically in the West.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

That's right. He's also a great writer, but, yeah, he's brilliant.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Human beings in the west are the only mammals that don't sleep with their babies.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

That's exactly right.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

As soon as you put it in that Context, I was like, huh, isn't that odd? It's a little dumb.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

So you have a dog, you have a cat, you have a litter of kittens, you see them all snuggling there, they're all sleeping together in a ball. And then you think, but I can't sleep with my baby because I'll ruin it psychologically or something. It's pretty twisted, isn't it?

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. So now there's this thing in the west, and maybe not only the west, but I say the west sort of as an encompassing term for this progressive sort of scientific ideal of sleep training and this notion of cry it out, which is effectively you put your child on a sort of rigorous sleeping program where they're awake for a certain amount of hours and asleep for a certain amount of hours. And I think that amount varies depending on sort of the philosophy. You kind of take up with this, which is nice because it gives the parents a lot of autonomy and time and their schedule is more or less organized. Which if you're working a job and you have a 9 to 5 as a mother, it's probably very important that your baby's on a more regular sleep cycle. And that often includes putting them into a separate room so they can sleep independently, they can learn to be independent. And if they cry, there's an idea known as like cry it out, where you sort of let them continue to cry until eventually they self soothe. Is there anything like that?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Which is a really funny word to me, self soothe.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Right.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I mean, if you think about adults, how do we self soothe? Well, let's see, alcohol, drugs, sex, shopping, dance, music. Right. And to think that that's a good thing.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Right.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

That's very cultural, that you should be able to take care of yourself in your worst moments when you're unhappy, I think that's really wacky. You know, if you look across other cultures, people don't do that. You know, they're more connected. You know, not across the board, but you know, you could say that. And whenever I hear that term, I think you really want a two month old somehow to teach itself to self soothe. It's a nice word for teach itself to stop crying and fall asleep because it's exhausted. And you know, I have a reaction to this and I know that's really hard on people and I really have no right to tell other people what to do in this. But I don't think there's, and I might be wrong that there's any research. It'd be great to know if you took the Babies that went through this kind of quote unquote, sleep training and see what they're like at 18, I think that would be really interesting because I could be wrong. Maybe it's perfectly fine. I'm sure that happened to me as a baby, but I had lots of siblings, so I was never ever alone, ever. But I just don't get it basically, you know, and I've had mothers say to me, mothers who work and they say I sleep with my baby because I don't get to see him during the day. And that that's a way to make up for lost time during the day. Because if you're coming home from work and then you're doing whatever the family's doing that evening and you're exhausted and you go to bed and you put the baby alone and you get up and you go back to work, but you could have had, you know, seven hours with that baby. But I know these are really sort of of culturally unacceptable ideas that I have at some level. And people, you know, they might try it for a night and don't like it or whatever, but we have a primacy, a primacy of going to work and the intimacy of the partners, adults over the baby rather than trying to compromise and integrate all those things. And, you know, I just sound like, you know, a privileged academic when I say those things. But I've met enough people who have figured out compromises, you know, who have incorporated. I knew a woman at Cornell who was an older student and she was pregnant when she took my primary class. And she and her husband, who was a student, and they had two other kids they patched together, you know, relatives, you know, it's a shame we have to do this in American culture that you don't. There's no other, you know, state funded daycare or anything. And they patched together a system of different people. Some that they paid, some who were friends. And I so admired them for going to all that trouble to try to figure out how to do it. And sometimes people just can't figure it out. They just have to do what they have to do. People especially who have manual labor jobs and are exhausted, you know, and so, you know, in reality, people have to work it out for themselves. And it's not like every single thing you do to your baby is going to positive or negative is going to affect them for the rest of their life, unless something, you know, truly terrible and traumatic. But, but basically we all kind of make these decisions as we go. As a friend said to me when my daughter was a baby. And I was trying to decide between cloth and paper diapers because I lived in Ithaca, which is called the Berkeley of the East. And it was like, oh, the shame I'm going to get from people. And she just looked at me and she said, this is one of many compromises you will be making. And that has stuck with me. You know, my daughter's an adult and I. It's still. It's one of many compromises you will make. And you will never be a perfect parent by your own judgment or anybody else's.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Right.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And you will make mistakes and you'll make bad judgments, but, you know, it's the greatest rollercoaster ride in the world as far as I'm concerned.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Absolutely. On the idea of getting more sleep and being tired. I mean, I've just found on a personal basis, which is, again, an anecdote, a sample size.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

We said one. Yeah. An N of one.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

And, you know, we've been sleeping great. And our baby is, you know, don't.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Tell that to any other parents.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, I know. Hopefully they're not.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

We had a very. We were very lucky and I would say privileged to have this because I was an academic, I was older, and I had tenure. Nobody could touch me. And so I could. And my ex husband, my father, my daughter's father is a carpenter, a contractor, and worked for himself. So we just very quietly divided it up 50, 50. And I would go to the university Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and he would work Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. And the person who had to take care of the baby, the person who had to go to work, got to sleep by themselves. So they went downstairs and slept by themselves.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Hilarious.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I hesitate to say that because we were lucky that we could do that and most people can't. And a lot of that had to do is that I was an older parent and my career was established and so there was no risk for me. And that's very, very unusual, people having their babies in their 20s, their 30s, or even younger. It's much more critical on what they have to do.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

That's the other thing, having babies young. I mean, I'm 28, so in the scope of humanity, probably not actually that young, but I guess in New York standards, pretty young. And I feel it's great. I still have some dumb young man years where I can just be awake for a lot of nights and not feel it as much. You know what I mean? I think once I'm in my 30s, 40s, the hangover will start to hit that you lose four hours of sleep, and you're like, I have to go away for a week. So I feel pretty good. But sleeping with the baby in our bed, one of the nice things about that is the ability to breastfeed in the night and so not having to get up. And so as a result, my wife is just able to kind of, like, lean over, baby's happy, and then everyone goes back to sleep.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

And, you know, when thinking about, you know, sleep training, like, oh, I want to get the optimal amount of sleep, the most amount of sleep, as a parent, it's kind of counterintuitive. Again, but having the baby with you can actually offer more sleep because the baby's more placated.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And I think that speaks back to sleep in general being such a problem in America and probably most of Western culture, because we've made this day where you 24 hours, where you're supposed to work during the day, and then you do whatever you do in the evening, and then you're supposed to sleep. And if you don't sleep eight hours, who came up with eight hours? Then there's something wrong with you. And it'd be nice if we got over that.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Because, you know, in most cultures, people take a nap, you know, and if you go, I remember being in Indonesia and Bali and, you know, in the afternoon, all the shops were closed, and they weren't having lunch, like in Italy. They were sleeping behind the counter. And if you walked in, somebody would wake up and go. And I thought, this is awesome.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

It's nice, right? It feels a bit more human centric.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Oh, yeah.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

You don't have people conforming to a society that's sick, thinking that they're healthy. I want to ask about baby wearing and also about breastfeeding, which is two very, very interesting topics from an anthropological perspective. Is there anything else about sleeping that you wanted to underpin before we move on to that section?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I don't think so. Only for your listeners out there. Just do some reading and trust yourself about that. You know, you'll figure it out, you know, and the baby will be fine.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I would read resources whether you're gonna sleep train or have the baby in, like, a sidecar or in the bed and just kind of do your own personal research on the best ways to do that and if it fits your lifestyle.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

You know what? I'm guessing that when you go through the teenage years, I think as a parent, you begin to understand how little control you have over everything. And I think there's a fantasy that when you have a baby, you are in control.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Right.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And Americans do love their control.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Absolutely.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

You know, we are not relaxed about these things. And if you can take a step back and think. And also it. You know, that old adage, the days are long, but the years are quick. It's so absolutely true. And. And it changes. That's my biggest piece of advice. Whatever is upsetting you or trying you or exhausting you today, I guarantee you it will change.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

It's so short. It really is. And another great piece of advice that I had heard when it comes to young babies is try to be more of a gardener and less of a carpenter.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

You have this human being that comes with its own personality and its own ideas, and you can sort of mold it and shape it in certain ways, obviously by being a great parent, but they will just be sort of how they are and trying to nurture that and cultivate that is oftentimes. Again, I don't really have a ton of experience or advice to be giving on the topic, but I find that with even my nieces and nephews, cultivating the spirit of the human is typically more beneficial than trying to mold them into what you think they should be.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

That's right, because you really have no control. Yeah, you think you do. You have influence. You don't have any control. And when my daughter was a teenager, I never read parenting books, but somebody gave me one, and it said, okay, your job is over. When they're adolescents, and anything you've been trying to teach them about right or wrong, morality, whatever. And here's what you shouldn't do. Don't criticize their hair, their clothing, their friends, or their music. And your job is only about drugs and alcohol, and that's what you have. Safety is your only job.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

You're now an ethicist. You're trying to instill morality.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

That's really it. And so you do have influence and you hope for the best, but they are also human beings, and nobody's controlling you. So why do you think you're controlling them?

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Absolutely. Okay, we're gonna discuss a couple more topics, but really quick. We're gonna hear from our sponsors that make this show possible. And we'll be back in just a second. If you have any questions from my dear friend Dr. Small, aka Meredith, on the streets as we know her. Yeah, just one of the homies, Meredith. If you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the comments. I hope you guys are enjoying this as much as I am. This is, like, one of my favorite topics I love anthropology, so this is so fun. We'll be back in just a second. Hey, guys, really quick. Did you know that on this day in history, in 1582, Pope Gregory introduced the Gregorian calendar, which most of the world still uses today? Or that in 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, into orbit? This event triggered the space race between the USA and the ussr. I learned these facts pretty recently, actually, on the Smore Camp newsletter. That's right, Smore Camp, the Inner Sanctum. For this kind of show, we do a ton of research. I have different researchers and friends that help me find information. And not everything can make the episode. Either it's, like, too crazy, it's too weird or gory and it will get demonetized on YouTube or it's just additional. And it doesn't always make it, but it always makes it into the Smore Camp Inner Sanctum newsletter. So if you are interested in expanding your mind, learning new information, and being the most interesting person into every room you step into, check it out in the description or this QR code right here. Now, let's get back to the show. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because if you're anything like me, you're probably running late all the time. I am. I'm always leaving right when I'm supposed to be somewhere, and I never have time to sit down and grab a nutritious meal. And that's why I want to talk to you about this little product right here called Huel. Huel is absolutely amazing. It's got everything you need, all the essential vitamins and minerals, all the nutrients, all the protein you need in a regular meal packaged in this beautiful, convenient little bottle. That's right. No more of the days of you running out the door being like, I'll just grab some fast food or something. I'll have, like, you know, the leftover cheeseburger in the fridge. No, no, no, no, no. With Huel, it's healthy, nutritious. Everything you need to power through the day served in this little bottle right here. I mean, this has got 35 grams of protein, 7 grams of fiber, 27 vitamins and minerals. Everything's right on the back. And this will help you get through the day. It'll help you perform better, not only in the workplace, but also in the gym. I mean, at this point, I think they've sold over 400 million meals. I mean, that's. Is it 400 million? I mean, that's amazing. 400 million meals. So why not you take control of your health, be a little bit more time efficient and get all the essentials that you need in every little bottle. If you're Interested, go to Huell.com, use a promo code Camp. That's Huell H U E L dot com. Use the promo code Camp and get 15% off your first order. Check it out right now. Get control of your health. Get control of your life and stop being so late. Let's just fix that. Also, be on time. All right, Set an alarm. Let's get back to the show. And we are back. Thank you all so much. We're here live with Dr. Meredith Small. We have a question. When a baby's first born, can they see ghosts? Nathan, that's an excellent question. All right, what say you, anthropologist? What do we think? Can they see? Can they see ghosts?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Well, you know, it's hard to say because they can't tell us, can they?

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Oh, that's a good point. They might be. That's why they're crying. Could be they see ghosts and they're scared.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

But the question is, what kind of ghost? Who is it? Who is it?

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Someone haunting the house from years ago.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Some ancestor or someone haunting the house.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Oh, my goodness. See, but maybe the ghost can babysit. That's what, that's. That's what we really should do. It takes a village.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I'll quickly tell you about my friend Alma Gottlieb, who's a cultural anthropologist. Lived for years with the Beng people of Ivory Coast. And they have a whole different idea of where babies come from. They come from. We would think of it as like reincarnation, but it's not that it's a pre life and that they are alive and well there. I'm sure I'm not saying this right, but it's W U R G B E, I think, anyway. And they have a name and they have parents. And then when they're born, they are not officially into this world until their umbilical cord falls off. And so the new parents do a lot of things, you know, ointments and stuff to get that umbilical stump to fall off because they want the baby to stay. And if the baby cries a lot, they take it to a diviner, spiritual diviner, who says, this baby's not happy and it wants to go back to the other parents. And the way to make it happier is to give it money and jewelry, which sounds pretty good to me. And so the babies come from. They're fully formed. They're people already. Isn't that fabulous?

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Oh, that's interesting. I wonder how that changes the psychology of how you raise your kids. Being like, this is our kid right now, but it used to be someone else's kid, and we're just having them for this little moment.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I better be a good parent.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. Or else we're gonna get our asses kicked.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

It's also spiritually a good way to deal with infant and child death is about 50% in a lot of cultures. And so when you have your babies are dying a lot, this is a way to deal with grief as well. I mean, I'm just projecting that, but it just seems that way to me.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Absolutely. Wow. Wow. Okay. I want to ask you about baby wearing again. For a lot of people that don't have kids, or maybe they'll never have kids, they're not interested. This concept of baby wearing is really fascinating to me because in my mind, again, as an American, I go, you have a baby, you put them in a stroller and you push them around in the stroller and it's like, duh, that's exactly what you're supposed to do with babies. And then I was thinking about reading your book. I was like, wait a second. Stroller's only been around 150 years.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I don't know.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

But yeah, the scope of human beings as, you know, these bipedal hominids with the same brains we have right now that if that's this much, we've had strollers for such a small amount. So I guess my question is, what did people do when they didn't have strollers and what do they do today in places that they don't have access to strollers?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Pretty simple. It's a piece of cloth and tied. I brought one back from Bali. It's this long piece of cloth and whatever they've got, a towel, anything. And if you were to go, let's say, to East Africa, you would see that all babies are carried all the time. And part of the advantage is for breastfeeding, the baby's wiggling around and finding the breast once they can wiggle and, you know, the breast is getting stretched out for sure. But this way women go about their business and their business is growing things in the fields and, you know, bending over a lot and weeding and that sort of thing, taking things to market, whatever. And also by carrying a baby all the time, somebody else can do it so the baby can be handed off. And the reality is, around the world, 90% of childcare is done by other children. It's not done by adults. And when people go to, you know, foreign countries, I mean, people have come back and said to me, I couldn't believe it, you know, this 10 year old is carrying a baby. And I go, yeah, but that 10 year old has been doing that forever. And also. Well, there we go. And also. But that looks like somebody from medieval times, doesn't it? Anyway, but also there are always adults around. So when a child is doing childcare, there are monitors, you know, there's somebody there, there are adults, grandparents, other people in the village, you know, whatever. So they're not totally by themselves. So my personal experience is I. We never had a stroller. I think they're more trouble than they're worth, actually. And just recently my daughter was telling me that she's just sick and tired of the strollers in the subway. You know, people going down the stairs, going up, going up and even worse, go spend some time in Venice, where I go a lot. 400 bridges and people with a stroller taking up the whole bridge. And then they walk 50ft and they have to do it again.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, not ada accessible. We gotta do that. We gotta change some of Venice. We gotta tear it down and make it ada accessible. That would be.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

That's right. Bring in the cars.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Exactly.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And so I always found it very easy. And we had a sling kind of thing for my daughter. And then eventually a backpack, you know, and as she got bigger, I just make my husband carry her. And then sometimes she'd just sit on his shoulders. You know, I have pictures of them in foreign countries and she's just sitting on his shoulders. And I just think it can. People think a stroller is really convenient, but I don't get it myself. And they do like motion. You know, I admit to putting my daughter in the car and driving around to get her to sleep. You know, that happened to me once. But it's a very interesting thing. It'd be fun to look up the history of the. When strollers came about. And now there are those umbrella strollers that you can really simple.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Well, there's actually, I've seen them back in. I think this is like around Industrial revolution kind of turn of the century time. They had like, sort of like baby carriage, you know, prototypes. But they also had this thing that I thought was so cute. It's a little wheel with a seat. Oh, and then there's like a handle on it. Oh, and so this is for like toddlers. And so they can kind of sit on like the little like wheel seat and the parents can kind of wheel them around. I was like, oh, it's so cool.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Well, someone recently asked me, a young person asked me in all the time, when you didn't have a stroller and you were carrying your daughter, did you, didn't you ever have a time when you wish you had two hands? And I went, I did have two hands, because with a front pack or something, your hands are free. And just at that instant when we were having that conversation, a woman came down the street the other way. She had her baby in a front pack and she was holding two bags of groceries. And I went, see, it isn't like that. I never found it to be a burden in any kind of way. I just liked it and it seemed easier. I mean, there are photographs of me vacuuming the house with my daughter on my back. I just, you know, only when she got older, but then she could walk, right? So I mean, most babies walk around one. So by the time they're two now.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Let'S say someone listening, they say, well, I think the stroller's more convenient. They like the stroller better. So what, is there anything neurological or developmental benefits to baby carrying over stroller?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I don't think anyone's ever studied that. But intuitively I would think that the baby is more comfortable and will cry less because it's having physical contact, that.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Heartbeat, the smell, the warmth.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yep. And you could say, and Ron Barr's work with Hasan about crying, that all babies around the world cry the same number of times during the day, but western babies cry longer per bout. So we put up with a lot of crying. And what Ron Barr would say, it's because we don't carry our kids. And if you carry them, you have less crying.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

And for what reason specifically you can nurture them, you can soothe them quietly.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And they're quieter because they feel your warmth, your heartbeat, and they feel the motion as you're walking along. And that's how most babies in the world are dealt with.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

The motion element is really interesting that babies are gestating and forming from an embryo to its own self sustaining organism in the womb of a woman. Swaying back and forth, walking around, feeling motion, running, hearing the heartbeat of their mom. And then we expect them to not like the same environment when they're outside the womb. It seems a little.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah. And then we have the invention of the car seat, which of course we need for safety reasons. But I always judgmentally would say the worst invention was the pop out car seat where you can just take it out of the. And then you're just carrying it into the house and then you put it on the counter, you know, or maybe those mechanical seats where the baby is going back and forth and back and forth like that, which is giving it the kind of motion that would. I mean, I'm just speaking from personal experience here. And it was. I just, I thought it was easier.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. I'd read that there's some potential neurological development benefits from baby carrying. Oh, it's probably true is that as you're carrying them, they are moving and I guess their sort of motor function is getting a little bit more dialed kind of in the way that active sleeping is kind of helping them learn how to sleep. I guess by moving and swaying, they're again having like a little bit of surprise and they're neurologically. They're able to reach milestones. I have to double check the research. I don't know if Christos is able to look anything up on this.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

You know, this is passed from when I wrote my two books on childcare, but as you say this, my daughter never fell. She walked at one and she didn't. She didn't even do the grab onto things. She just walked across the room and all her little friends had scraped knees and she just never fell. And she's always had an incredible sense of balance. And I don't think I ever connected it to the possibility, the hypothesis that maybe it was because she was carried all the time.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. I need to double check where this research is from again. I don't want to say with full certainty that that's.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And she's also brilliant. So I'm sure everything I did was perfect.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, but it's a. Yeah, it's an interesting thing that again, when I hear it, I'm like, oh, this kind of makes sense. If that's what human beings have been doing for eons, then it tracks that it would continue to help. And then there's also the developmental component of constantly holding and wearing your baby, the head shape, which is another fascinating thing that I never really considered until I had a baby. That babies that are left on their backs either sleeping or not sleeping, they.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Have to have operations. I forget what the name of that operation where they get a flat head in the back. And then there's an operation that has become more and more popular because they.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Have a flat head and they have such. These soft fontanelles and their, you know, their cranium that are still forming and fusing.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah. They don't close for a long time.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. That leaving them on their backs, they can actually change the shape of their heads. Which again, is one of those things I was like, oh, well, you must.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Know about people in different cultures long ago. Like the. It might be the Incas or the Aztecs, I'm not sure. And they wrap the skull and the skull deforms because bone is plastered. If you break your arm and you don't have it done well. Oh, there we go. Plagiocellophy. Plagiolophy. I don't know.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Wow. Yeah. Are you able to pull up an image, Christos, of the baby head wrapping and how it actually changes the shape? There's these fascinating fossils. I'm sure you've seen them. They're wild.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Right. And it's done for beauty.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Right. Is that still done?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

No, I don't think so.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

It's an interesting little historical feature where you look at these heads. I've heard different theories. People are like, oh, this is evidence of extraterrestrial life and things like that.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Doesn't change brain function at all.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

How fascinating. Right. The malleability of the human brain, that you can change the shape of the vessel, but the thing itself still is functional. Yeah. I mean, it's just.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

It's because your bone tissue is replaced every 12 years. You know, it's constantly growing. We think of it as the skeleton as being so strong and stiff, but it's actually constantly changing.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah. The baby wearing thing we found very beneficial. And they have such great carriers now. You know, we did sort of the wrap for a while.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

But now we just have these carriers that are great and I prefer it. It's also great in the wintertime. Again, living in New York City, I never.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

You know, that's true.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

The notion of having a baby in a cold place is just so wild to me.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

The other thing, I mean, we found with our daughter is people in Ithaca would say, you're the only people we ever see in town who aren't carrying food for their toddler or their baby. And there's. And I don't. I think this is a more recent development that whenever a baby is. Or a small child is crying, Americans tend to feed them, you know, with a snack, a healthy snack, but, you know, Cheerios, whatever. And I think we didn't have. It never occurred to us to do that. But she didn't fuss like that. We didn't think to give her food when she was fussing. So I'd be interested in some long term study about the relationship between that new cultural practice and the rates of obesity. I think that would be really interesting.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Oh, that's interesting. Oh, I wanted to ask. I actually forgot to bring this up when we were discussing sleeping. At what point do you believe, based off the anthropological record or looking at other cultures around the world, should a baby be moved out of the bedroom of the parents and have their own sort of sleeping place?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I never. I don't. You know, I think you wait for them to tell you, you know. But again, it gets back to that cultural idea that the bedroom is a sacred place for the adult partners. And some people want the baby out of there because that's their intimate space. And, you know, fair enough. But, I mean, that's what happened to us. You know, our daughter said, no, I'm going to go sleep in my room now.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

How old was she, roughly?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Do you remember right now?

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

No, this is last year. She's like, all right.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I think she was. I don't remember, maybe five, six, something like that.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

And she said, I'm gonna.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

You're gonna go in there. She had a bedroom. Her dad fixed it up. It was beautiful. And enough with you people. Yeah, but I think also what happens with children who are comfortable sleeping with their parents is they come back if there's a trauma in the household or whatever, and it becomes a comfort place. I think humans in general like to sleep with somebody, and that, you know, makes you feel lonely when you're by yourself all the time.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. Again, talking about baby wearing, talking about sleeping. I see all these, like, Tiktoks and Instagrams where it'll be, you know, mothers, you know, sort of lamenting or discussing the issue of their baby only wanting to sleep with them or on them, like, oh, my baby isn't that interesting?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And they don't like it.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Well, yeah. And I understand if you have a job, if you have to work, if you have.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Or you're just brought up as an American.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Sure.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And your belief system is that the baby begins to feel like a parasite.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Right.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And the reality, it is a parasite. You know, So a friend of mine who used to study chimpanzees in Uganda said when they had their two young sons, he said, you know, Americans just complain about parenting all the time. And he said, when people start doing that, we usually say, we're having a blast. And that's what gets lost in all this. All the things that you have to decide about, should we go sleep, should we carry. It becomes such a conundrum. And I think that gets what gets lost in that are the moments of wonder and joy and just. No, it's not all good. Some of it is really, really hard. Jim McKenna, again, the CO sleeping guy, and I were giving a talk and he gave his whole presentation. And then a question afterwards, A woman raised her hand and she said, you know, I feed my son and then I put him down and he cries and I feed him and then I put him down. And Jim said, I just spoke for an hour about why that is. And, you know, evolution didn't promise you a rose garden. Like, it's gonna be hard. Yeah, that's what it is. We expect our jobs to be hard. Maybe we expect our adult relationships to be hard, our friendships, but somehow we think this is gonna be smooth sailing.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. No, I can empathize with the American experience in the sense that it is harder, like we mentioned before, because society, American society is not built to support parents and mothers specifically. I think I understand the frustration, but you see all these tiktoks of mothers saying, I'd love to. My baby wants to sleep on me. And you go, oh, wow. Yeah. There is some sort of ingrained evolutionary feature where they enjoy having that presence, being with the mom either, being held. And I feel like you can probably see this through all different primates, right?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Absolutely. And it's. I mean, humans have a little too much time to think about things, and we mostly just think about ourselves. And so also, in Western culture, children are thought of as burdens. And in non Western cultures, they're considered assets because they are assets economically. These are the little helpers on the garden plot. They're taking care of other children. They're hauling water and firewood. It's not child labor. It's just. They're appropriate tasks for these kids, but they contribute to the household where we've switched after the Industrial Revolution to where the only thing that children are supposed to do is learn. So they grow up and they learn and then they get a job. And so they become not assets, but burdens, dare I say college. And that's. So we've missed out on something, I think, in that sense and. And trying to bring back some sort of fun and observation of, whoa, this is. It's quite an amazing thing to watch a little tiny person become an adult. It is unbelievable. And you can't predict anything. And the only way to do it, as a friend once said to me, the only reason to be a parent is for the experience. And that's it. You know, there is no other reason. Just you want that experience. And A lot of people don't want that experience, and that's perfectly fine.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

I want to ask you about breastfeeding. This is again, another fascinating thing. I grew up in an environment with my family. Again, we're maybe a little bit more holistic, a little more hippy. Dippy, I was going to say.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Were your hippie parents hippies?

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

They weren't. They were these like Catholic Canadians. But for whatever reason, they sort of just, I think, gravitated to sort of like more naturalistic approaches to things. My mom had a couple home births, things like that. And so my family was just again, more. That made more sense to our family. And so me and all my siblings were breastfed. But I was talking to my mom and my grandmother and there was this discussion where there was a concerted effort to stop breastfeeding. And throughout America in certain parts after World War II, there was very little breastfeeding in certain parts of Africa and Asia. Today there are companies and corporations that have concerted interests into stopping breastfeeding that they're effectively trying to tell mothers to no longer breastfeed your kids and actually just to buy formula in order to breastfeed your kids. And again, this is another sensitive topic because I think the breastfeeding relationship between the mother and the child is so specific and unique and special and physiologically important. Yeah. So I don't want to diminish whatever anyone's individual choice is with this sort of path. And again, there's women that can't breastfeed, there's adopted parents that can't breastfeed. So I think however the baby gets fed and nourished is obviously, I think, paramount and probably the most important thing. But looking at, again, the anthropological record and how it's done in other cultures, what is sort of what you. The research you've done on breastfeeding around the world, what have you found that comes up a lot through other cultures? How is it done? Is it done on a specific schedule? What are sort of the protocols you see?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

No, certainly not on a schedule. I mean, especially among. If you were looking at hunters and gatherers or what anthropologists call small plot agriculturalists, you know, they're growing crops and either eating them or taking them to market. And it's. They don't places where, let's say, Nestle hasn't gotten to them, that's just normal life. It's just totally normal. And sometimes there is cooperative breastfeeding. You know, you might hand it off to your sister if she happens to be lactating as well, and it's just not a big deal. It's just that's what you do. There are cultures where very quickly they're feeding the baby something else, some kind of gruel or, you know, something like that. So people do do that as well. The problem with. Used to be the problem with the corporatization of baby formula is that it was lacking in omega 3 fatty acids. And that was the real problem. But that has changed. But I have the card of my recipe from the hospital of what. What my mother was supposed to feed me, you know, because she wasn't going to breastfeed.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

It was like corn syrup, and that's.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Exactly what it was. Karo syrup and milk.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Hilarious.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And so when you think about it, maybe that's why I really like candy, but there it is. This was not a formula produced by some company. It was just milk with sugar. How bizarre is that?

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

This also was not a long time ago. I mean. No.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Well, and the other thing is, if you look at the nutritional basis, we use cow's milk, and that's just an accident of the domesticated animals that we have. But in fact, goat's milk would be better. It's more like human milk. The problem with breastfeeding as humans compared to other animals is that human breast milk is watery. And so compared to, let's say, a seal, where a mother can feed her baby and go off into the ocean and look for fish, because the baby is very sated, because there's a lot of fat in that. But human breast milk is very watery, and that means it's designed to be fed almost continuously. So babies cry. If you do it on a schedule and say, okay, I'm going to breastfeed for 15 minutes, that's it. The baby might not get full. I'm using satiated, really. And that has to do with the fat content. And so humans are really. Babies are designed to breastfeed whenever they want, and much more often than every four hours or something like that. And even La Leche League, where people are breastfeeding every hour and a half, that's still less than, let's say, a Bushman, a Kung San Bushman, or we.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Would call that on demand.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

On demand, that's right. That's what it's called, which is derogatory. Right. And it's really the word that, you know, people I know have tried to get a change to is on cue rather than on demand, because demand sounds, again, like the baby is taking something away from you. And we really have this same relationship as with sleeping with breast milk, culturally, that it has been, you know, morphed by culture into something that it was never intended to be. And the fact that when a woman breastfeeds in America, she has to go hide somewhere because western culture has sexualized the breast. And that's not necessarily true in other cultures. They are for babies. That's what breasts are for.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, it's interesting the way that, yeah, it's once, once my wife started breastfeeding, it's like it no longer is this thing that again, the society has put onto it, you know, like might come back maybe. But it is interesting how, you know, culturally it is so sexualized. And in other places, again, you would see sort of pictures or videos of indigenous people living in a specific tribal community and, and the woman would be topless. And as sort of pearl clutching Westerners, I would see this and I would say, this is so strange. Right?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And you wouldn't want your little boy to watch.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

But then you think it's like, oh, well, they have so many children. Perhaps they have two or three children and they might be breastfeeding another sibling's child.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Well, probably not. They might. But the other thing is that breastfeeding is a natural birth control. So when women are breastfeeding and if they're doing it with a big space in between, it won't work. It has to be more on cue, on demand, it has to be more continuous. And what it just stops is the production of the hormones that cause ovulation. So that's why when you see someone who has two babies in 12 months, within 12 months, one right after the other, most likely they are not breastfeeding. And so usually if they're breastfeeding a woman, if they're breastfeeding for three, four, five years and they're in a culture that has no real birth control, that's the thing that will space out children.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, this is an interesting point. Again, I think for myself at least, I would look at what I imagined a hunter gatherer society to be in that families were massive and they had 10, 12 kids.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Not necessarily.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

It doesn't seem to be the case that it seems like women would go into puberty a little later. They would.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

It's the breastfeeding. And it's also babies dying, you know, it's also that because there's no medical care, no antibiotics, and of course there are a million ways to be a hunter and gatherer, you know, from marine resources to forests to savannahs, whatever. And these days, since a lot of Groups have been settled on reservations. But I was just writing about the ache people yesterday. And even though they've been settled by the government in Paraguay onto reservations since the 60s, they still go into the forest and gather honey and plants and go after game.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

And how many kids might they have?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I don't know exactly. I mean, the answer's there, but I don't know what it is exactly. But the women are still breastfeeding. I think one of the big tragedies that Western culture imposes on other cultures is formula, because people can't afford to buy it. And you know, it's. You have to. It has to be clean and safe and all those things. And it's really just capitalism at its worst as far as. That's my opinion, anyway.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Breast milk is a fascinating substance on a sort of microbial level that it offers a ton of nourishment to the newborn and seems like it's sort of like codified specifically for them that there is actual bacteria and nutrients found in the breast milk that is kind of custom tailored for that specific newborn.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

That's right.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Can you speak to that?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

It's so important for the baby's immune system, even to adulthood. And there's the hypothesis, the reason the growth in asthma in Western culture has something to do with fewer people breastfeeding and also toddlers not crawling around on the floor where they would be eating stuff that would. Then their body is making an immune system. So sometimes our healthy protection of them is not necessarily the best thing you can do, but the best thing a mother can do is breastfeed for a while to get that immune system going. I mean, I wasn't breastfeeding. I'm still here, but I'm an asthmatic as well and have lots of allergies. And I would never say that to my mother. I wouldn't anyway, because she's not here anymore. But. And I'm sure there are data on that and I just don't know it, but that's certainly. I mean, doctors encourage women. There are hospitals that are certified breastfeeding hospitals that will help. And there are lots of lactation specialists who are great when you think you can't do it. A woman who cannot breastfeed, that's very rare, but it's usually just positional. And because we don't have our mothers and grandmothers who did this, we don't have anybody to tell us how to do it. And so at least friends of mine have hired a lactation specialist to come in two or three times to make sure everything's okay. And sometimes nurses in the hospital will do it, too. Make sure you're okay before you go home.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Absolutely.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And adapt to that. And a lot of women, when they're working, it's pretty much impossible to keep that up. So either you have to use a breast pump and that's a mess, or you have to get some kind of way you can go home, or you compromise and do both, you know?

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. I had read I need to find exactly where maybe they can pull up the study that newborns are kissed by their mothers and that the actual ingestion of sort of the. The amniotic film that is present on the newborn's body can actually inform the breast milk as to what type of sort of nutrients to deliver based off of what's there. And then I think there's another feedback loop that happens throughout the breastfeeding process that the baby's sort of bacterial biome within their mouth can inform in some way, through the areola, the type of milk production that occurs on a. Again, sort of a microbial scale. I had read this, and I was like, this is just.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And also, if you breastfeed with long periods in between, breastfeeding happens because of the motion of the baby's sucking on the breast, and that's where. And then milk production happens. So if you have long spaces of time in between, that's gonna dry up the milk supply. It's a sign that babies were really meant to be breastfeeding all the time, all day long, whenever they're hungry.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Something that I'd read in your book that absolutely blew my mind is that there is different types of breast milk. Again, this is a concept in my mind where I was like, milk that comes out of a breast is breast milk, and it's the same no matter what time of day you do it or what session in the feeding it is, what minute in the feeding it is. So can you speak to the ways that foremilk and hind milk are different?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Well, yeah. Well, first of all, there's colostrum, which comes out right soon after the baby's born. And in some cultures, they don't allow the mother to eat that or to feed the baby that colostrum. They think it's bad.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Why?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

It's just cultural. Who knows? But it's actually really good. So because breast milk is made physiologically basically from blood, it's a process that happens within the breast, and the first milk to come down could be very watery, and then the production goes and it gets more Fat is contained in it. So again, if you're breastfeeding, you put a timer on and you're only going to do it for five minutes. The baby's not going to get that hind milk that's full of fat. And you're going to think, I don't have enough milk for this baby. But it's not that. It's really a mechanical relationship between the baby's mouth, mouth and that breast. And as the baby sucks, then the milk is being produced. And so you should just let it go. Just let it go till the baby stops.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Right.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

You know, but many women, even when my daughter, you know, was young, they'd say, I can't breastfeed. And I'd say, well, I remember one friend, I said, well, here's the name of a lactation special. That woman came, and my friend said, that didn't help. And I said, what do you mean? She said, oh, yeah, it worked, but I'm still not going to do this. And really, she just didn't want to breastfeed. She just didn't for whatever reasons.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Fair enough.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And I'm just like, yeah, okay, you know, you don't want to, so don't do it. You know, your kid will be fine. But physiologically, immunologically, the baby is better off if it's breastfed.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And that's just not me. Think that's pediatricians, right?

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Is that discussed through pediatricians when it comes to, like, pumping, like, if a woman is pumping to, you know, label sort of 4 milk and hind milk and have an awareness that the different types of milk that you actually produce in a specific feeding session will have different levels of fat to sugar ratio.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I don't know. My only experience was that was taking my daughter to some, well, baby check and, you know, it's all ready to feed her. And. And the nurse practitioner said very snottily, well, you know, we like to have them weaned by one year of age. And I thought to this woman, you have no idea who you're talking to. And then I said, very nastily, I said, I bet you do, and went home and just was, you know, furious. And my husband said, you are never taking her to the pediatrician again. And the next time he took her and the doctor asked all the right questions, he came in the room and he said, do you understand her? By this time, she was, you know, like a year and a half and she was talking, do you understand her? And my ex said, yes. And he said, does she understand you? And he said, yes. And he just went, check. You know, like, that's the. He wasn't. Pediatricians are looking for pathology. They're looking for the outliers, and they're not there really to give you advice on how to bring up your baby. They're looking for sickness. And all the pediatricians I've talked to said, our biggest business is behavioral and mostly sleep, and we have absolutely no training in that.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Interesting.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And, you know, if you have a sick baby, that's why they look at the growth charts. They're not trying to tell you your kid is going to be tall or short. They're looking to see if something's wrong. And that's what they're always looking for. But they have been pushed by the culture into giving advice. And one pediatrician said to me, I just tell them what my parents did. And I went to the trouble to look up medical schools and the training of pediatricians, and they get a course in behavioral genetics, which is if something is off genetically, how that might affect the baby. So we've really put them in this position, and they don't like it, most of them. One pediatrician said to a friend of mine, her daughter was, like, 2 years old, and he said, you should have another baby right now. And she went, why? And he, like, was flustered and said, well, you know, you just don't want to give your uterus that much time off or something. And she said, what's the evidence? And he went, well, I don't know. I don't know. He made it up. Why do people have babies two years apart now in America? There's no good reason. None. It's just something that has happened.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Right. Yeah. It is funny going to a pediatrician. You're seeking some type of wisdom. But again, that isn't the purpose of the pediatrician. When you explain it, it would be going to an orthopedic surgeon being like, oh, I hurt my knee. What sport could I play, exactly? And be like, I don't know, play baseball, play soccer, like, whatever you want. I'm here to fix your knee.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Right. It's like going to the optometrist and saying, what should I read? Right.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Exactly.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

No, it's true.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting phenomenon. So I. Yeah, it makes sense that there's so many people that are, you know, unsure what to do. But this. The notion of foremilk and hind milk and then even melatonin as a natural byproduct for sleeping is present in PM. Milk. Milk, that's Produced in the nighttime to help your baby sleep.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I didn't know that. Wow, that's great.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Can we get a fact check? Because here I am explaining things to a professor and I'm afraid that these are all wrong.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I don't have a baby anymore, but I hope to have grandchildren. So I need to know.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, I'm almost certain that's the case. I hope this is the case. There's actual sleep agents that will be found in night sense. Absolutely. And that sometimes women will pump and then they'll give their, okay, here we go. Breast milk. Produce a nice more midnight like. And it's one of these things that interesting. You look at sort of the, you know, evolution's undefeated. And you're like, oh, this makes so much sense.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah, that's great.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

But if you're pumping and you're not aware necessarily of when you're pumping, then you might give your baby PM melatonin laden milk in the morning, and then they'll sleep all day and then they're up all night, or vice versa. You give them sort of an activating daytime milk that doesn't satiate them. And then it's like you're out of lockstep with the way that we've done things for 300,000 years.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

My philosophy is that we have such big brains and it's really a mistake because we spend all our time trying not to think about things, overthinking things, making stupid decisions, and really, it's a curse.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, absolutely. I always look at human nature and I'm like, we've done a good job with the human part. You know what I mean? Like, the human part is thriving. We're thinking, we're consuming things, we're conscious, we're examining ourselves, and we sort of neglected the nature part. And it's like we kind of need to bring both into the fold a little bit until we can go full singularity and just join ourselves with the supercomputers and become on the web of things. Until that point, I think we have to be aware of our natural history.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Absolutely.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And how other people in the world do things.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Absolutely. So I'm curious, culturally around the world, when do people typically wean their children?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

4, 4 or 5? Whenever.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Mothers are not gonna be happy about that. No, they just heard you say that.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

American mothers. I'm not saying they should do that. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that. And they do that because they don't have many. You know, they have alternatives, really. And. And I don't know if those women are conscious that it's a natural birth control, but surely they can put two and two together and see that if they keep breastfeeding. Some cultures have a taboo against sex when breastfeeding is going on.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Oh, really?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

That's another way that they're controlling the birth rate.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Oh, that's interesting. I've also heard that there's a physiological benefit to the health and composition of mothers as they breastfeed.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Well, they certainly will lose weight because it's twice the number of calories. And so women who breastfeed tend to lose their pregnancy fat very quickly. Not always.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

But I had seen a doctor on Instagram that said breastfeeding is the greatest liposuction in history. And it's one of these things. You're like, oh, wow again.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Or you can eat like a pig, you can double your calories.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

And it's one of these things again. I just think about the way human beings have been and. And if you're living in an indigenous sort of tribal community, you're going to breastfeed and then you're going to walk around frequently carrying your baby and you are going to burn calories so quickly.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

That's right.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Whereas maybe if you're living in a suburb in the United States and you're not breastfeeding, you're going to put your baby in a car seat, you're going to drive, not walk as much, not burn as many calories, and your ability to lose that weight or to sort of gain the semblance of your prior to having the child might take longer.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Right.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

And it's again, one of these things, you're like, oh, it just makes so much sense the way it was.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Now that you're saying that. It just occurs to me, since we've seen such a major change in the composition of American food with processed foods and the increase in obesity, that just tracks it perfectly. I wonder how that affects breast milk.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Oh, I'm sure. The preservatives and the gums and the stabilizers. Yeah, I. I mean, there's no question in my mind that it's terrible. There's actually a book I'm reading right now, Ultra Processed Humans. Excellent book. I forget who it's by. Something Robert. Something I can't remember. We can look it up, but it's an excellent book that is actually, so far, I'm not through it all the way. It's making the case that the sort of nutritional components that make up food is different, whether it's a homemade item versus A store bought processed items. So you can look at a homemade cookie and a store bought processed cookie. And even if they have the same exact nutritional components, they actually affect your body in a different way because of the stabilizers and preservatives that are inserted into the processed food. And again, it's one of these things where I was like, ah, if it's the same amount of sugar fat, you know, sugar fat, it's the same. It's not.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Thank you for encouraging me to make another batch of chocolate chip cookies.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

See, you make them at home. It's great. And you look at the ingredients of the things you use in your home. You're not using, you know, dextrose and, you know, that's right.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Just read the labels.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, exactly.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

It's frightening. And I've seen this change in my lifetime, you know, and it's quite shocking to see that everything is processed. Oh, absolutely everything. Unless you're picking it up, you know, out of a bin and it's green. It's remarkable.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Things you wouldn't anticipate, like you might get, you know, some type of organic, natural looking granola. And you'll be eating this granola and you're like, oh, this tastes so good. And you look at the label and you'll see these stabilizers and these other types of agents in it that are keeping it able to be transported and stay on shelves that are ultimately affecting your body's ability to lose weight, your metabolism.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I had a farmer friend who had an organic farm. This is off the topic of babies. And he used to give tours of the farm. And he said, oh, we use fertilizer. We can call ourselves an organic farm because we use fertilizer. That breaks down quickly. And it was like, what? What?

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

That's the. Yeah, it's a manipulation of the label.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Oh, that's interesting. The way that the book puts it, which again I would encourage people to read, is that they say five or more ingredients.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I read that too. Yeah.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Five or more ingredients. Be skeptical that what you're eating is not processed. Again, you can eat processed food. I'm still gonna have ice cream from time to time. But an awareness of how much processed food, because I'm pretty sure one in five Americans, again, according to the book, is having 80% of their diet coming from ultra processed foods. And there's a ton of issues. Socioeconomic, food deserts, all these things that are contributing to this. And also consumers kind of want it.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Oh, absolutely. It tastes good.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

When you buy ice cream, you don't want it. To have ice crystals and all these problems. You want it to be creamy and you want it to be filled with palm oil.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

We did this to ourselves.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

It's cheaper and it travels better and it's, you know, tastes better.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

All those things.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Actually, it doesn't taste better, but it is cheaper and it does travel better.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And if you do take out or eat out, you don't know what the ingredients are.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Right?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

So again, that homemade food and you know, like high. My wife is doing a lot of like oats and things like that for like milk supply, which are excellent for like nuts, oats, things like that. And those are the things that we've been doing.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Maybe this is too personal, but did she need to have somebody help her?

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. We had a lactation consultant that was hugely beneficial. Beneficial, yeah. And I would encourage, you know, again, it's not my experience necessarily, so my advice probably doesn't go far here, but.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

We'Ve grown up where we don't.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

I've seen the benefits.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah, we don't see people doing it. Most of us weren't breastfed ourselves. And it's weird, when I was writing that chapter of the book, I got on an airplane and a woman had a. Maybe a five year old and then another, maybe a two year old or one and a half year old and she was breastfeeding. And she looked at me and I said, I don't care. But it occurred to me that it was the first time I had seen someone breastfeed in like 10 years in public.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. And it seems like things are kind of moving back that direction. It seems like more people are breastfeeding, which I think is probably a positive trend just for development. And. Yeah, I'm curious to know. Yeah, I'm curious if that plays some type of cultural shift on the aggregate. Breastfeeding versus not breastfeeding.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

It's such a strange culture. It's not particularly family friendly, it's not baby friendly and it makes it really hard and it makes people not want to be parents because it's, you know, the culture makes it really difficult. Most of my friends live in foreign countries. And when I talk to my Australian friends, my friend recently said her brother just had his second baby and she said, and so he's doing his some word I never heard before. And I go like, what's that? And she, oh, well, he's a lawyer. He gets six months off from work because they had a baby. And he can divide it up any way he wants. Like he can take two Weeks here, three weeks there, a month there. I was like, whoa. You know? And when my daughter was born, I got nothing.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Wow.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I could have taken the New York State eight weeks of unpaid leave if I wanted to, and that was it.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, it's brutal. And again, it's. It's bad for you, but it's worse for your children. Like, those are really the people that carry the brunt of it. And again, on the aggregate, what that does to a culture that doesn't care about the mother, child bond, or even just like the family triad, I just think is.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And yet American culture always talks about, oh, we care about family. And I beg to differ. I don't think it does.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

I did see a study that apparently millennial dads are spending significantly more time with their children.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

That's good.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Which, yeah, it seems like a big positive. I don't remember exactly how much, but it was like 60% more time with their kids. And you look at it, you're like, oh, this is. This is awesome.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah, that's great.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

And again, I'm curious to see what the cultural shift of that is going forward.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah, I mean, 40% of babies in America are born to single mothers now, but in some of those cases, the mother has a partner. They just aren't married.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

That's one of the statistical things that's interesting. That's a statistical point. They're like, all right, are they with someone?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Are they alone? Or are they with someone? And they're just not. Because the rate of marriage is, of course, down, although America has the highest marriage rate and the highest divorce rate in Western culture.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Oh, wow.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah. Stay tuned for that book.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, that's interesting. What do you credit the declining birth in the United States?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Well, I find that really interesting because when I was younger, most of my friends, my female friends, did not have children out of choice. And I was awed because I really wanted to have, like, three kids. And so did my sisters. And I think that we were the generation after the sexual revolution and the feminist revolution. And because there was decent birth. Birth control, finally women could say, I don't want to. And when I've asked my friends, they've just said, I didn't want to. Or they say. One friend said, I just thought it would cause a conflict between me and my husband over everything. And another one said, I don't like the family I grew up at. I didn't want to have that. And I guess she didn't think she could make it different, you know, so the reasons are very broad. But What I see now. And even during the last year, there have been so many articles in the newspaper, online books written about women in America choosing not to have children, the numbers have skyrocketed. And let me just say the Onion, you know the Onion.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Well, I subscribed to the Onion, and their recent issue had an article said US Birth rate is holding steady at zero. It was great. I laughed out loud. But the birth rate is way down. And not just in America, but everywhere. Italy, Spain, Korea and Japan, I believe. Yes. Now that's happening, too. And I think that when you give women decent birth control, they go okay, because not everybody wants to have kids. And there was no choice before. If you wanted to have sex, you either didn't have sex, so you didn't have children, or, you know, and, you know, more American women go to college than men are in the now, more than half the workforce. More women go to graduate school than men. And so, you know, we're going to be in charge. So really, you all should back down. But I think. I think it's interesting. And the reasons women don't want to have children vary greatly. Some people just say, I want to travel or I don't want this in the way of my career or whatever. Well, then I don't think they should have children because you don't want that. You don't want unhappy people being parents. And there was a lot of that.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. What do you think of the economic strain? I've seen this argument brought up.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I've seen that, too.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Sure. The wealth inequality obviously is increased. You know, the idea of a Gen Z person buying a home is, you know, far, far lower than their, you know, parents or their grandparents. So I'm curious, do you think that the economic component plays a role?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think if you're in a subculture of America that has more of a history of large families, whatever that might be, and you know that you're actually going to have a lot of family members around who are going to help you, because grandparents are often very involved. I don't remember the statistics, but very involved. And if you're someone who doesn't have that kind of familiar network, being a parent would be overwhelming, I think. And people don't seem to see the benefit in having children. Women don't like. It's just all burden and no asset, no fun. And so it's very cultural, and culture is very powerful. And, you know, I don't really have an opinion about that. I think it's just like, whatever Happens. Happens. It's just interesting to me to see it happen. I know some of my friends would have been great mothers, but they choose not to do it. And I've never heard a person say to me they regretted it. I haven't heard that.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

To having children.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

To not having them.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Oh, interesting.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I had no one who said that to me. I had a friend say that they were making up their will, and their problem is they don't have any kids, so they don't know who to give their assets to.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

That's interesting.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And I said, give it to a charity. You know, do that. Because they would give it to their brothers and sisters, but they're the same age, so that seems kind of stupid. So that's kind of interesting, you know, and it would be nice to do an ethnography of women who, by that I mean, really hang out with women who have decided they don't want to have children and hear what they have to say.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. It's an interesting dilemma that I've even just speaking with friends of mine saying I feel, on the one hand, a very strong compulsion to become a mother and have children and have many children, and that likely would pull me away from the workforce. But then simultaneously having this strong desire to be a career professional and succeed in the workplace and sort of actualize whatever their academic degree was in. They maybe got a master's degree in school, and they said, well, if I don't work, then I sort of wasted this collegiate time and the money. And I can empathize with that.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

That's because especially in American culture, we have separated children off from everything else. Children are only supposed to be seen in places that are designed for them. You know, playgrounds, preschools, whatever. They're not incorporated in the culture very well. You go to a foreign country and the kids are there, people complain, oh, I was in Spain, and, you know, the kids are at the dinner table at midnight. You know, like, how horrible is that?

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

That's great.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

We don't do that. You go into a restaurant in America, there are no children, you know, especially if it's like fine dining. And maybe that's why I like being in other cultures a lot, because I really like kids. And. And I think some people forget that they were kids. You know, they forget they were babies, too. Yeah. It's a cultural development, and culture is strong and hard to. It changes by who knows what means.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, I'm very grateful. My parents took me, included me in a lot of things. I'm grateful for that. I took many Naps on very many nice restaurant booths. And I slept at the restaurant.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

We took our daughter everywhere, everywhere. And once I was invited to a cousin's wedding, and they said, she's not invited. And we just went, okay, we're not going. That was our decision. And they made their decision. They're perfectly. They didn't. But those were people who went on to have their own children. So I don't know what that was about, but I just wish children were more. More socially integrated. You know, where I live in Brooklyn Heights, I love it now that I live in a place where I see the kids going off to school in the morning and coming back at night, and they just fill the streets, and it's awesome. Especially at Halloween when they're all dressed up and stuff. And where I lived in Philadelphia recently, there were no kids in downtown Philly. And I thought it was weird.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, it's interesting. I remember reading just, you know, children and their desire to be included. And I remember that as a kid, like, to be included was like, so. It was so special. And I think parents sometimes feel burdened with the idea of, like, oh, we have to entertain our child constantly. We have to play with them constantly. When sometimes a solution could be including them to say, like, hey, I'm going to make dinner, and you're going to be included in that process. And that's going to slow down the process.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

It'll slow it down and it'll make it messier. Yeah, but so what?

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

But it will be really valuable to the family unit. And then also, it might in some ways be quicker, because I don't need to placate you. I don't need to set you up with some type of toy or put you in front of the tv, which who knows what that, you know, from a biological standpoint, the screen. Screen exposure can do.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And we come back to that issue of the decrease in the birth rate, because this family that was from Binghamton, the Burns family, they had like, I don't know, eight, ten kids, whatever. And I was talking to their mother once, and I said, boy, you must have just never had any time. And she said, what are you talking about? She goes, the first one, your life changes. You have no time. The second one, it's worse. She goes, from the third one on, it's nothing, because they take care of each other. And my older sister, pretty much, in a lot of ways, brought me and my other sister up.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

I mean, my parents had seven kids.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Well, there you go. And if you only have two, you know, it's harder. And if you only have one, which I think the birth rate is going so that the norm is going to be not two kids, but one. I see it happening soon.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

You know, yeah, you got to be outnumbered.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

As soon as you're outnumbered, you just, you just let go. You accept and you say, you know what? We're going to make it through. And you're not so overly focused with every little decision, driving yourself crazy.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And Jim McKenna, the sleep guy, he said he was from a family from, I don't know, seven kids with me. He goes, I slept in the same bed with my brothers forever. He said, we'd fight with your stinky feet, whatever. And he said, we're still close. But he said, it's not a surprise. I'm interested in this topic because really, I had to sleep with people.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

I'm curious what the pro social dynamics of primates are. Actually, before we get to that question, I want to just jump to a quick break and hear from our sponsors that make the show possible. Thank you for everyone that is watching. Again, I hope you guys are enjoying this conversation live here with Dr. Meredith Small here. I mean, what day is it? Today's the 11th. Not a lot of people think these are live. I've gotten comments about that. Oh, are these really live? We're really live. December 11th, and we're here talking about the anthropology of early childhood. We're going to go to a quick break. If you have any questions for Meredith, please drop them in the comments and we'll be back in just a moment. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because it's 2024 and it's time to talk about something important. When you are seriously hurt, your injury could be worth millions. Yes, that's right. The world is a crazy place, and one person's negligence can result in another's settlement. And that's why I got to talk to you about Morgan and Morgan. Morgan and Morgan is America's largest injury law firm. They have over 100 offices nationwide and over a thousand lawyers. Yes, yes. These are the big boys. You know them, you see them, you see their billboards all over the world. If you ever drove down I90 from Florida to New York, I'm telling you, you've seen the billboards, all right? Have you ever watched a UFC fight? You've seen them right on the banner. I'm telling you, these are the biggest guys in the game, all right? With over $20 billion recovered for over 500,000 clients, Morgan and Morgan has a proven track record of fighting to get you full and fair compensation. The annoying thing with most attorneys is that in order to submit a claim, you gotta call them up, you gotta talk to their. You got to go back and forth on emails. You got to hope that they see it. They might charge you. Just even look at their claim. Here's the cool thing with Morgan and Morgan, with eight clicks or less, you can submit a claim and one of their licensed attorneys will take a look at it and get back to you. It's that easy. It's like ordering something off Amazon. It's just a couple clicks. You can submit your claim very easily and cheap. Yeah. How about zero dollars? That's how much it costs to submit a claim with Morgan and Morgan, extremely easy. No fee required. So. So if you are ever injured, you can go check out Morgan and Morgan. Their fee is free. Unless they win. That's right. Unless they win for you. Unless they fight and get you compensation, you're not paying a single dollar. That's a pretty good deal. So for more information, go to forthepeople.com gagnon. That's correct. F-O-R-People.com gagnon or dial pound law. That's £529 from your cell phone. That's for the people. F O r the people. Or dial pound law 529 from your cell phone. This is a paid advertisement. Now let's get back to the show after the short disclaimer. And we're back. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the tent. We're here at camp. We have. We got a couple of great questions from the audience. All right, Meredith, what about this one? Should children be allowed on airplane airplanes? What do we say?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yes.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

All right.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Why not?

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

I mean, I can tell you a couple reasons why. Well, I mean, you've been next to a crying baby.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Of course I've been next to a crying baby.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

You've had a crying baby.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Probably. I do remember a flight once from New York to San Francisco. My daughter was, I don't know, three or something like that. And she spent the entire time, you know, back when that short period where they had phones on the back seats and she just pulled it off. Put it in, put it in. Listen. Pulled it off. Put it in. And I thought, oh, my God, she must be driving the people in front of me crazy. And I think I asked them, and I don't think they even heard it. She did that for hours. And I. We flew to Europe. I mean, we Flew around the world. Was. And flew to Australia with her. And I, you know, looked up stuff and I would make a bag full of, like, little. I'd wrap up little toys and stuff. And as a result, as an adult, she loves airports. Oh, I think that's very odd. But she does. And.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, that's strange behavior. I don't know about that.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Daughter of an anthropologist, she flies all over the place.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

She's.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah, but they don't.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

They transport big dogs. Sometimes they put them in the. In the cargo hole, right?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Oh, yeah, they do that. Yeah, sure. Convenience.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

You can't do that with kids, I guess.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

No, I'm very sympathetic. I just saw some really funny humor skit where. Excuse me. From a TV show where, you know, there's the people with the crying baby and the other people who got on and they have presents for everybody all around them, and, you know, it's pretty good.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Oh, I saw one of those. I thought it was very sweet.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah. And I, you know, it really. It does separate the baby to children haters from. It's okay. Because most of the people on that plane who have had children, been there, done that, and they're fine.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

But for other people. And I just feel sorry for kids when they're crying.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

I empathize so much. I see the mom struggling with the crying baby, and I'm like, oh, she must be.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And the baby stressed out. You go up and down and the baby's ears are heavy. Having trouble and.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, it's a whole thing.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

I'm curious. Do you have any thoughts about microplastics and the effect on fertility and breastfeeding?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I think that's a really interesting question. I don't know anything about it, except, you know, that this. That our recognition of microplastics in the last, what, two years or something like that is frightening.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

I remember buying soap in high school with microplastics in the soap. Did you ever see this as, like.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

A scrubby or something?

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

They were literally selling it like soap with, like, microbial beads.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Oh, yeah, that's right.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

And I thought about that. It's literally just pieces of plastic.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

It's just scary and disgusting.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

And that was sold like they were selling, like, it's, It's. This is lead paint. It's insane.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

It's hard to imagine that it is not affecting breast milk.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

And they've done research where they found microplastics, and they found it at the bottom of Mariana's Trench, and they found it in the stomachs of the fish weed and it's just all over.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

It's horrible.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

You're eating a credit card of plastic every couple months or something like that.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Oh, dear God.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, I forget exactly the statistic. One of the congressmen said it at a hearing recently and yeah, it's a little.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

We really are the worst species on earth.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

You know, we're also the best. It goes both ways, the good with.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

The bad, right, Meredith, we're destroying our own nest.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, but we built an awesome nest.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

We did build an awesome nest.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Humans do awesome things. We also do crazy awful. The worst shit. Yeah, but we're pretty cool when we're not doing that stuff.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah, this is true.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

This is true. Okay, so that's a great question from Jonathan. I appreciate you asking. Oh, I'm curious. Do you know anything about ancient Egypt? I know you're well versed on Venetian history, but someone asked about Egyptian children.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I really don't. As I said, I'm writing this book about family and the only thing I just read recently was about an origin myth about two gods who then mated and they had twins and then those twins had twins. But that's a mythological thing. But no, I really don't know anything. But I think it's an interesting question.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Interesting. Okay, and then last question before we move on to talking about primates, resources for parents in the next three to five years, I have one Our Babies Ourselves by Meredith Small. An excellent book that I recommend everyone read. But are there other resources people should go?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Well, there's this book that came after that. It's about after kids start walking and talking and it's called Kids, my title. So that's sort of the companion book to Our Babies Ourselves and it has a lot of cross cultural stuff in it. Like I went to Dominica and followed this anthropologist named Mark Flynn. And I mean followed him around and he's been studying this one village for about now, 40 years. And he's actually a cultural anthropologist. And so he's lived with these people forever. And he also has integrated physiological studies, especially levels of cortisol. So as we were walking in this very hilly part of Dominica, he would just stop the kids on the way to work. And they know him and they're talking to him and as they're talking to him, an older woman came up. She's actually the matriarch of the village and they're talking about other things like how are your mom and dad, what are they doing? Blah, blah, blah. And this elderly woman, dressed just beautifully is helping Mark as he's handing Her a test tube and then swabbing inside of a kid's cheek and then sticking it in. She's holding the test tube and she's putting the test tube on top because he's been doing this forever and so he has cortisol levels. And I'll give you the bottom line of his study, which is fantastic, which I write about in kids and also wrote about for Discover magazine, a new scientist a long time ago. The bottom line is kids are not stressed by poverty, which can be a big stressor or things at school or soccer practice. They are stressed by family dynamics. For example, when dad hits mom, he hears about it and he runs into that kid, he tests them their cortisol spikes and the other important. There it is. And the other kids who are in families that experience a lot of trauma like that, or dad is going off to work on another island to make money and then he comes back and he's gone and he's back and they're living with their grandmothers and everything. And kids who have either very high levels of consistent cortisol are very low, they have behavioral issues. And as Mark said to me, and it's better in Dominica than it is in America because these kids are surrounded by their relatives and they're always some. And I was there and I watched it, you know, at one point people were yelling across these hollows, where's the American girl? You know, and the person next to me goes, she's next to me. And everybody knows everybody's business and life is lived outdoors, as Mark said. That's why he could do this work because life is lived outdoors. But kids respond to family trauma and it changes them physiologically and behaviorally when that happens. So there are other, in that book I write about other researchers who are working on young children, kids.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Now when you say kids don't get stressed by what happens at school or soccer practice.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

No, they're fine.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Is that in relationships to the trauma of some type of family dynamic gone awry?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Can be, can be.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

So not to say that kids don't get stressed by school, but.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Right, but that's not the major thing I see. And it's really whatever is going on in the family and he only has privy to that because he knows them all so well and he's lived there and he's brought his own kids there and you know, he's very integrated in the community. The photos are pretty great. His tall skinned guy walking down the street and all these kids running around him and you know, then they'll just put a has research assistant. They put a scale down outside the school, the kids come out and they jump on it, just getting their. I mean, it's an amazing piece of anthropology.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, it's just great. Another element, as far as early childhood development, I've read that children playing in mixed age groups is the single best.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

That's right.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Sort of agent or catalyst for healthy adjustment into adulthood.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

That's absolutely right. And that's in that book too.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Can you explain what that means?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Well, let's think of it in a way Americans can understand in the sense that. Remember the one room schoolhouse a long time ago, and so the older kids sometimes were helping the younger kids, not just even in socialization, but learning things. And in big families you have that. You have the older kids interacting with the younger kids. But because of the drop in the birth rate and the fact that we divide our schools by age, the kids don't have the resource of the older kids as examples or mentors or people who actually teach them things. And all the research shows that they learn better, they do better in mixed age groups, group situations. So that would be an easy fix. Actually, you know what would be the.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Best solution for that? Just school. Yeah, school. So how would that work though? You would put kids of different ages into different classes.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

You like kindergarten, first and second grade altogether. And you just have several classes of.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Them because you'd have, I mean, up until second grade. I mean, what are you even doing in school? Playing, Right? Yeah, yeah. So I mean, and I guess how old are you in kindergarten? You're five, four or five.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Mostly four.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

And a five year old could play with a seven year old. They're not that disparate.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Sure.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think about my childhood again, having six siblings. I was constantly playing with older kids. I was constantly catching up to try to keep on pace with what my siblings were doing. And I certainly feel like that benefited me even in sports, that I was playing soccer with kids my age. But I had been playing with my sister and my brother that were three, four years, five years older than me.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And you learn how to resolve conflicts too. You fight.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Right.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And you resolve those conflicts.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

You know, and you put up with people that you don't like. And you're gonna have to do that when you're an adult.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

That's such another interesting element about sort of how children learn through play.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Which is really the only way. It seems like again, I don't have any degree, but it seems like any type of animal, primate Mammal learns from a young age is through play. Like if you look at like even like lion cubs, the way that they play with their, you know, mom or their dad is them hunting. They'll do these sort of like simulated hunt type things where like they'll creep up on their mom and then the mom will turn around and like they again, they're not laughing, they're not emoting. I don't want to like sort of anthropomorphize these animals, but they are playing and learning how to hunt through play. And I look at human beings and I say, oh, we certainly learn how to be functional adults through play.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Absolutely.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

But one of the interesting things that I found is that oftentimes parents can be sort of too eager to intervene in early childhood play. For an example, let's say there's a group of eight kids that are going to play some type of capture the flag game or they're going to play war or some type of make believe game. And the kids will argue for an hour before the game. I'm not sure what this is here. The kids will argue for like an hour before the game, setting up the rules. And parents sometimes will see this and be sort of annoyed or.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Right.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

They step in and they step in because they're well meaning, they're eager to sort of perpetuate and sort of get the play going. And instead what they've actually done is they've removed the ability to resolve conflicts and to create rules and boundaries with their peers. And so as a result, these parents come in, well meaning, saying, oh, get on with the play. Here are the rules. You guys do this, you guys do this. Now go on. But the learning doesn't come necessarily from the play outright. It comes from the formation of the play rules. And again, it's another thing that in my mind I'm like, oh, I would definitely be the parent to intervene because I'm so eager to help the kids. When the best thing to do for the kids is to leave them alone.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Give them the box of play clothes and walk away.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Exactly. Which is another thing I just think culturally gets lost a little bit.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Right.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

It's simultaneously, you know, like being like so eager to help the kids. You're constantly playing with them and you're doing too much for them, but then you get so exhausted that you get burnt out. Just leave the kids.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I'll tell you two stories about my daughter that I find really hilarious. One is we had a gravel yard and I don't remember how old she was. Six, seven, Eight, I don't know. And I hear some noise, and she's out on the driveway, and it was perfectly safe. And she's got a big rock, and she's smacking the other rocks. And I came out and I said, what are you doing? She goes, I'm making stone tools.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

And I went, that's an anthropologist.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I swear, I never used the word stone tools in my house ever in my life. And I thought, this is. And, you know, they were good, too. They were, like, really sharp and everything. I thought that was pretty awesome.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Like one of these.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah, like one of these. Well, it wasn't this good, you know, but it was decent. Yeah. I was looking over at those is probably what made me think of.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. My friend Donnie Dust, he's a flint napper.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Oh, those are really nice.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, he made these.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

You can take courses in anthropology that will teach you how to do that. It's pretty great. And the other time I came home and there was a giant box in the dining room. I think we'd gotten a new dishwasher or something. I don't remember. And there was a little flap on it, and a little flap goes like this. And then I see written on the outside of the box. So she could write stress shop. And she's not talking. She's not saying anything. And then there were instructions. You write down your question and you put it through the slot, and the stress shop will respond to you. So I wrote down something like, how can I get my students to really like me? Or something like that. And I put it in, and then out came a little Ziploc bag of shells and a message. I don't remember what the message said, but there was some message like, here, you can play with these shells, and that'll be good. And I thought to myself, oh, my God, is this what I've done to this child? She thinks that what she invents is a stress shop. Like, is that how she sees her household? You know, but she did that. And because she was an only child, it was important to me that she had friends, you know, so we would always try to get people to come over and, you know, and I'd walk out of the room and just let them do what they want. And they would, you know, play veterinarian with the stuffed animals and stuff like that. Yeah, no, it is. There are moments of great hilarity.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Oh, I can't wait. I'm so curious. I don't know if this might be a little bit outside of your purview or your Professional expertise. So feel free.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Doesn't mean I can't talk about it.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Now we're talking. So many academics are afraid I'll speak to the professor. And they go, I don't know.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Well, quantum physics. I have nothing to say.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

But I was going to ask you about the double slit experiment, but we can move past that. I'm curious. Do primates like monkeys, macaques, do they cry? Do they cry like, mean, like tears.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Coming out of their eyes?

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

I guess just whining in the way that.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Oh, yes. Oh, absolutely.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Homo sapien babies will cry.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. They won.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

And how do somebody picks them up?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

You know, it could be anybody, just pick them up.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

And then they stop and they stop.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah. But no, when you say that I have this vision of Barbary macaques, you know, like one of these little macaques just sitting there going, you know, and eventually somebody comes up and picks them up.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Interesting. There's so many little things I feel like we can learn from studying macaques and other primates that haven't lost sort of that instinctual maternal characteristic.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And the question is always, does that tell us anything about human behavior? I mean, many different kinds of people watch primates, non human primates, psychologists, animal behaviorists, veterinarians. But anthropologists do it to see, is there anything there that you can equate to the evolution of human behavior. And I would say attention to kin. They know who their kin are, and we have the same sort of thing.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, it's interesting. I'm sure you've seen this experiment that was done with capuchin monkeys. I believe there's been a couple that are fascinating. They're too smart. It scares me. They're too much like this, freaking out. But they basically put a little baby capuchin and they scare it. They have this little robot scary thing. And they have two mothers that are available for the capuchin to go get comfort from.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And one of them is the real mother. Or they're just two female adults.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Two fake mothers.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Oh, two fake mothers.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. And it might be possible, if you want to pull this up, you can search, I guess, capuchin mother experiment. And one of them is wiry.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Oh, I think these are not capuchins. These are rhesus monkeys.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Oh, that's what it is.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah. It's Harry Harlow's.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yes. Okay. Can you finish the explanation?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yes. So this is Harlow's work from the University of Madison, Wisconsin. And there's actually a fabulous book by Deborah Blum. Maybe look that up. Because I can't remember the name, but I used to make my students read it all. So this is Harry Harlow, the Nature of Affection. And so they take the babies away from their real mothers. They give them. One is the wire one, which you see there with the big eyes, and the other one is a cloth one. And the wire one has a bottle in it. And the bottom line is the baby will go to the wire mother to eat and immediately back to the cloth mother. And Harlow's work. No, not Monkey wars and not the poison one.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Not Monkey Wars, Not Sex on the Rage.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

She's Pulitzer Prize winning writer, Deborah. But loved Goon Park. Love.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

It's that part there.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Fabulous book. And Deborah Blum got a job at University of Wisconsin. And then she got into this and she said to me once, because I knew her from her Monkey wars book that got about animal rights, and she got a Pulitzer Prize for that. And I was at a meeting and she was there, and she turned to me and she said, we were in the line for the bathroom, and she said, I just realized this whole book is about attachment. I went, right. And it's fabulous. It's written for the popular press, and it explains the development that we finally understand about attachment theory. And Harlow's work, it was brutal. Cause it's hard to watch because he's pulling these baby monkeys away.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Can you look up the video of the Harlow experiment of the two rhesus monkeys? Monkeys. The video is just like, aren't they cute?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

They're so cute.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

They're adorable.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

So there are. Just to give listeners some background, there are about 22 species of macaques. They're actually the most ecologically widespread primate after humans. So if you've ever seen the Japanese macaques in the hot tubs in Japan, they're macaques. I've studied four different species of macaques. And Harlow, if you read her book, Harlow was a real jerk. But these experiments are amazing. And the little monkeys that were taken away from their mothers became crazy. Really crazy. And his next experiment. Here they go.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Right?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

So you can see that the monkey here, that monkey's about. That monkey is about six months old. Old. And then, boom.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Time to go to the nurturing comforter.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah. And this work changed the way hospital births happen. The reason you get to be with your son right away is because of this work. Because it was so convincing that baby humans needed physical attachment.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. I mean, there was a time in America not that long ago where babies were born immediately separated from the mother, put into A sort of warm kind of incubation place and put into a room. And you might not see your baby until the next day.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

That's right. I'm sure that happened to me. But Harlow's work was instrumental and it went in for a very long time. And people have done, you know, built on that. But the basic idea is that physical touch is just as important as nutrition. And this speaks to our conversation about baby wearing and sleeping with your baby. It's all part of that. And I don't think anybody can read that work and not be changed by it because it's so striking. So then what they did after they had these crazy young ones, I mean, they were really crazy. They did some really bad experiments, sticking them in a thing called the pit of despair. It was like a funnel. And the baby, little monkey, was all by itself and to see if it would go crazy. But then they tried to fix them by giving them little therapists. And they put in the cage with the crazy monkey an older monkey, still a juvenile that had been brought up correctly who was affectionate. And it worked. So that monkey influenced the one that was crazy. And the idea was, you can change this. You can fix.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Oh, wow.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And that's what he showed.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Wow.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

So if you have a child who, let's say, was adopted under terrible, you know, conditions like back in Romania, and that if you work hard enough that hopefully you can change whatever mental illness that has infused that poor creature from not getting any touch, any. Not just. But no touch.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

I mean, it breaks my heart.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

No. I can't even look at it.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. It's so sad. And I'm curious if there's someone that's listening to this program. Maybe they just had a baby and they have the sort of social or economic means to do some of the things that you've outlined in the book. Wearing your baby frequently, sleeping with your child, having your baby on their back, breastfeeding frequently from the boob, things like that. And let's say they have one more objection and they say, meredith, I just don't want to create an overly dependent baby. Like kind of the thing we've been alluding to throughout the conversation. I don't want my baby to be too independent. I want them to be independent and sort of well adjusted and flourishing on their own. What would be your response to that?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

My response is that the study that Jim McKenna told me about, about the kids in kindergarten who they used co sleeping, but Jim said it's not just one thing. It's really a suite of Things if somebody is co sleeping, they're more likely to be breastfeeding, they're more likely to carry their baby. He said, so that's not parsed out very well. But those kids were really independent and I don't know, I just hold up my daughter as the perfect example who's completely independent and self reliant. And you know, I just think that shouldn't be something to worry about. That will happen naturally because the rest of the culture is all about that. And it's just part of growing up as a human. Pretty. You know, at some point, even if you're living in a multigenerational extended family place, you're still going out and tending to the cows or you know, pulling up the plants and you're marrying somebody and maybe moving to a different village and you know, those things still happen. There is no evidence that doing that I know of that doing that brings up a dependent adult. And what does that mean to be a dependent adult adult actually, you know, does that mean you live with your parents or like. And what's so bad about that really? If you were Italian, you'd be living with your parents. I had some, I have lots of Italian friends. But one explained to me, she was in her 20s and she and her sister still lived with her parents in Milan. And she said, we talked about this. I said, you know, it's very different from America. You know, when I was growing up, my parents said, and when I was 18, each of their four children, you know, basically get out and call when you get a job. You know, there was nothing. And I described this to her and she said, well, what Americans don't understand is that we also separate from our parents. We just do it when we're living with them because the economics are such that they can't aff nobody can afford to have a separate apartment when they're 20 or whatever. And so, you know, college doesn't really cost anything, but you have to have some place to live. For example, my Italian teacher, when he finished, he has a master's degree and he went back and lived with his parents in Puglia. But he was running a language business, which has turned into a huge business. He had rented an office and he said it's nothing. You know, he has his independent life. He just eats dinner with his parents and he talks to them. He's completely independent financially. He helps supporting his sister. It's lovely to see. Really lovely.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah. We do have such an interesting notion that if you are too close with your parents that there's some type of paraphilia.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

We think it's pathologically dependent. Everybody, I. You know, all these Italians, I know it's not like that at all. When I said to him, I hadn't seen one of my sisters for 20, he said to me, I don't even understand that. Like, I can't even comprehend it.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

He'd be like, never looking in the mirror or something. It's like such a strange notion.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

He just couldn't absorb it at all.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And, you know, I would say to him, and for good reason, but, you know, really, it's weird.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

You know, and it's nice to be exposed to families that are functional and supportive, but not intrusive at the same time. His parents don't tell him what to do, you know, and he's one of the most mature, independent people I know, you know, So I think it's something that Americans worry about and maybe they shouldn't so much.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I mean, of course, one would think about it, but maybe not worry so much.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Can you nurture your babies too much? Can you love them too much? Can you fall prey to manipulation? Can they trick you? Can they coerce you?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Okay, manipulation, that's a good one. Because people do think that they think they're crying is manipulation. And Ron Barr would say, crying is a signal. You know, they're trying to tell you something. Now, if someone, you know is a red light manipulating you, you could say, yeah, it's manipulating me to stop the car.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Right. It's changing your behavior.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Perhaps it's cueing what you're doing it when you're hungry. Is your body manipulating you? It's giving you a signal. And so maybe the good idea is kind of move away from the idea of manipulation and just think of these things as a signal.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Does that change at a certain point? If your kid's, like 5 or 6 and is like, if you don't give me candy, I hate you.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Then hate me. Grow a backbone. You know? It's like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know any parents like that, But I'm sure they're out there that they feel insulted or manipulated. And certainly teenagers try to manipulate you, but you just have to stand strong.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That'll be a fun test. It's hard to even imagine, like, you becoming a teenager.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

You just can't predict. Yeah, I was a really good teenager.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Oh, really?

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah. One of my sisters. We were. What does that mean?

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

What does that mean? Why were you a good Teenager. Oh.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

We never argued with her parents. We didn't do anything bad. We didn't sneak around. No, no. We were just. We were good.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Because you had no breast milk. That's what it was. You had no attachment, so you were just like, this is just my roommate. What am I gonna do with my parents? Some lady I know. You know, so maybe there are some benefits. Meredith, this has been awesome. I. I'm such a fan of you and your writing and your book, and I'm excited to read Kids, and I'm excited to read this family book that's.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Going to come out as well. So far, it's called Together, but I don't know, now that the Surgeon General. Last spring, I just realized his book was called Together, so I don't know if I get to call it that, but yeah.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Oh, did you. The last thing. Okay, we're going to wrap up soon. But there's one more thing I read that I thought was so interesting that apparently. Helicopter parenting.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yes. What about snowplow parenting? Or is that just an Ithaca thing? What is that? That's even worse. That's. Even people who are more extreme than helicopter parents, they're there with the snowplow.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Oh, wow.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

That apparently has been diagnosed by the Surgeon General as being potentially psychologically damaging to children.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Oh, I would think so. I had a friend who's not my friend anymore, so I think I can say this. Her son went off to college, and she said, I have to go with him, drop him off, because I have to show him how to make a bed.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Oh.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

I said, He's 18 and he's never made a bed. And she. Then she got embarrassed. And then he called her up from the drugstore and talked to her about what shampoo he could buy. And she also tried to tell him what courses to take. And also she was looking for an apartment in his third year of. And I. When she was looking at courses, I just kept saying to her, stop it. It. You're not. You know, I'm the professor. I'm like, they're his courses, not yours. Well, he has to have these. I said, back off. And when the apartment thing came, I turned around to my 15 year old and said, if you wanted to get an apartment, what would you do? And she just went, well, I'd look in the local, you know, paper, and then I would look here, and then I would talk to these people, and I went, oh, thank God. You know, because, you know, I never sat and taught her how to do that. But she picked up on it.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

This kid, Nothing a funny dichotomy, right. That you might have a parent that. And again, this is a generalization. I don't know if this is a specific person, but you might have a parent that, you know, puts their baby in a different room, and then when they're 16, 17, they're all over them.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

That's right.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

And they're the ones that are exactly right.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

And it's this push.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Or you sleep with your kid and you nurture them from 0 to 8 and then leave them alone.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

You leave them alone. And you watch. You watch. Because you got to be. Safety is the thing. But. And. And they, you know, they do learn, and they learn from their friends, and they learn from other people's parents, and they learn from you. Helicopter parents. I personally find them really annoying, mostly because I'm a professor and I have to deal with them in college. And that would take a whole nother podcast for me to tell you about interfering parents in college.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Well, that's not the next one we're going to do the next one we're going to do. We're going to talk about Venice. Oh. Because you have talked a lot about that expertise about Venice. But we will save that for a different day. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

It was a pleasure.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

This is fabulous. And I'm excited to do this again.

[Dr. Meredith Small]

Yeah, sounds great.

[Host (possibly named Gagnon)]

Thank you, everybody that watched at home. I appreciate the questions, and as always, I appreciate you guys tuning in. I'm really enjoying doing these live. I think they're so fun. I feel like there's more of, like, an energy. It's fun to see your guys feedback in real time. So we'll continue to do versions of these, and I'm really enjoying the rate that we're putting out episodes. I think it's so fun. This is our third one this week, so we are cooking. We got more merch on the way. We got T shirts. A bunch of people have been hitting me up. We have awesome shirts, hats, all sorts of stuff that I spent a lot of time working on, and I'm doing all the fulfillment packaging myself. Everyone that you order will come with a signed letter from me just expressing my gratitude because I'm so grateful for every person that listens to the show that asks questions, that's willing to open their mind and think about the world in a different way. We got some more episodes coming out this week that are awesome. Tony Hernandez will probably drop tomorrow talking about the Mafia, the Costa Nostra, the Italian mob, the Venetian mob. Maybe me in New York City and his experience growing up around that and just a bunch more episodes coming out this year and in January that I think you guys are really going to enjoy. So, as always, thank you so much for being a part of the show, for making it possible, and see you next time here at camp. Good night.