Full PreFrontal

Ep. 196: David F Lancy - A Cultural & Anthropological Take on Childhood Independence

March 27, 2023 Sucheta Kamath Season 1 Episode 196
Full PreFrontal
Ep. 196: David F Lancy - A Cultural & Anthropological Take on Childhood Independence
Show Notes Transcript

Culture in general plays an important role in human development and particularly childhood is shaped by culture. Not so long ago raising children was considered rather noisy, dirty, tedious and anything but pleasant. However, those living in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) societies that make up about 12% of the world’s population have perpetuated over-protective child-rearing practices and principals while ignoring the cultural wisdom of the rest of the world. With this rise in parental hyper-vigilance in creating independent children, there is a growing trend that parents are turning everything in the child's life into a learning/teaching opportunity, which is a likely source of learned helplessness and a predictable path to a failure to launch.

On this episode, anthropologist, researcher, and author and Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Utah State University, David Lancy, discusses the loss of autonomy and freedom in WEIRD societies and the relationship between how we raise children and the eventual likelihood of a failure to launch and the insecurity, anxiety, and breakdown in executive function. 


About David F Lancy
David Lancy has done extensive cross-cultural fieldwork with children as the focus. His most important work, just published in a third edition, is The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings. That scholarly book was paired by a popular version in 2017, entitled Raising Children: Surprising Insights From Other Cultures. In total, Lancy has authored nine books and edited three. A new work on pedagogy in culture is in progress. Publishers have included Academic Press, Cambridge, Longman, Praeger and Oxford. He has also authored over eighty articles and book chapters.

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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.

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Sucheta Kamath: Welcome back to Full PreFrontal exposing the mysteries of executive function. I'm your host Sucheta Kamath. And these conversations are about executive function, autonomy, independence, how do we become the most come into ourselves and become the most productive maybe most, and lead fulfilling lives, that seems to be the most important part of these conversations. And one thing, as I've shared with you guys, that it's really important to me that we broaden our lens when we think about executive function, that the field is new. And it needs to be informed by many other important works that are done in other fields. Because humans are not, you know, machines. And we are not brains that need to be optimized. But we also need to think about culture, history, also need to think about how the society plays a role. So today, we are going to have a very interesting conversation. I wanted to kind of start off by a little interesting podcast, a girlfriend and my, and I were on a trip. It was actually a dyslexia conference. And we both decided to listen to one podcast episode of invisible year. And in that particular podcast, there was a conversation that was about psychologist Roger Hart, who actually had just graduated from college. And he went to Vermont, along with his friend John Marshall, and he stumbled upon this idea, John Marshall had a camera and Roger Hart had an interest in children and their fleet free plays. So he tracked them followed them. And he captured this amazing, beautiful video of free play. So these children were roaming far away from their homes by themselves, they would get on their bikes, they would be gone for four or five hours, parents wouldn't know where they are. And and they would just explore the world. And Roger Hart went back after 30 years, and he was absolutely astounded, because what he found that if you can imagine the radius of the circle within which children played had significantly shrunk, that means those children who had received complete freedom to roam around had completely when they became parents themselves, or their children were at the most exploring the backyard, which was a fenced off. So this change happened. And this again, sounds very tiny, but I want to kind of bring up some other issues such as we don't have recess anymore. We have, you know, suburban moms hauling their children in the car for activities. That means the most time child spends is with an adult, one adult in a car. And every single thing is in our structured activity. And how does that really influence not just a growth development, but psychology, but also culture, and society, and who can speak on that other than expert anthropologist. So today, we are very, very lucky to have an incredible guest, whose praises can be sung all day long. But it's a great honor and pleasure to introduce Dr. David Lancy. He has done extensive cross cultural fieldwork with children as the focus. His important work, just published in a third edition is the anthropology of childhood. Now, I will tell you, you must brace yourselves when you read this, read this book, because you're going to reread the chapter a couple of times, and you're going to be very surprised and annoyed with in what ways you are not experiencing that kind of freedom that some of the cultures are permitting for their children. And I as a mother felt that very strongly, then, that's a scholarly book was paired by a popular version in 2017 entitled, Raising Children: Surprising insights from other cultures. In total, Dr. Lancy has authored nine books, and edited three. A new work on pedagogy and culture is something that he's working on, which I cannot wait to hear more about. And lastly, he has also authored over 80 articles and books and chapters. If I can share one thing, he began his journey as a psychologist. So I think I see a little bit of trace of psychology, as it informs anthropology. Welcome to the podcast. Dr. Lancy, how are you?

David F Lancy: Thank you very much. I'm fine. I look forward to our conversation.

Sucheta Kamath: Yes, I am too. So as I kicked off with this question about, you know, the freedom children receive. So as an anthropologist you study culture, and as an executive function specialist and a speech language pathologist. I'm interested in how children take responsibility for their lives and get ready to become competent adults. So can you first maybe begin and talk about the importance of culture in human life?

David F Lancy: That's a very, very broad question.

Sucheta Kamath: Well, maybe just I think, there, there are differences, right? Not every culture is identical. Maybe you can share a little bit about that.

David F Lancy: Right? I think the most people don't really, culture has many, many different meanings. So first thing, I have to stick a claim, personally, to a view of culture that's related to evolution, that is, we have human evolution. And one of our most important as a species, humans, one of our most important assets, if you will, what are most important characteristics of our species we, we have culture, we have something called culture. And although some have argued that chimpanzees, for example, have show evidence of culture, really, it's, it's not comparable. So by culture, we mean that there's this infrastructure that humans build over time, it evolves, it changes, meeting, change circumstances, but as an infrastructure that if you could think about it as as sort of like a monument building higher and higher and higher, as new ideas are introduced to the society or discovered and then passed on through children. And that's the role that children typically play an important role that children play as their, their culture bearers, they absorb the culture, they learn the culture, and then carry it on to the next generation. And so, so culture is used in that way. It's like a toolkit, that's another metaphor we might use. It's, it has all this useful information, skills, tools, building techniques, hunting techniques, all of this saves us the problem of learning a new with each generation.

Sucheta Kamath: So it's so interesting, you say that. And I think you have written this somewhere in one of your writings, that socialization of children, to become competent culture users and bearers. So I would love to maybe hang on that idea a little bit longer. Because, you know, as you think about, you know, every place there's culture is this invisible expectations are invisible way rules of operation that we imbibe by being in the company of others. And this is what kind of to me at the heart of self regulation. That means, if there, you know, three donuts and there are seven people, I will think twice before I take the whole donut, right? So this idea that, that there's a culture that's dictating how I will choose to act. And if I show obliviousness to that, then I'm definitely going to consider it be considered as a not collaborative or cooperative. And so in that way, it's such an important thing. And I do think that particularly from Western lens where I am now, I see that there's a lot of individuality that was given importance to individual choices, and everybody having a right to decide for yourself, and and you come first, and I think maybe can you share a little bit about your experience and your understanding of that socialization, to become competent human culture users?

David F Lancy: One of the things that took me a while to finally figure out as I was studying the work of other anthropologists over the years, was to really appreciate that the wide gulf there is between when we speak about cultural transmission, and cultural acquisition, cultural transmission, it turns out, there's there's two schools of thought two ways of looking at childhood. And one one way is to see the child as very eager to learn very aggressive in copying others behavior, pitching in to help out in order to be a full fledged participant in the culture. So this is culture acquisition, where the driving engine, if you will, of the whole process is within the title this the child's initiative, the child's first steps, and that's what we see in most indigenous societies. On the other hand, cultural transmission implies some third party, some apparent someone else who's takes the initiative to teach the child the culture. Okay, so that's a big battleground right now in my field, though, between those who see the primary moving force, as I said, the children's growing eagerness to learn and to be competent and to be accepted socially because of their competence, versus those who see the child largely as an empty vessel, and as a, you know, stationary being that needs to be turned on and guided. And so, that that, to me is kind of an input. That's how I see a lot of these discussions, your introduction, in fact, a lot of this seems to revolve around freedom given to children to figure things out on their own versus closely managing their lives on the basis that they can't possibly learn anything important. If they're not taught by someone with superior knowledge. Likewise, the notion of, of harm to the child risks, risk taking, and so on, all of those ideas neatly match up, if you will, so that in in the indigenous society, there's much less concern about harm for the child, they accept that there is going to be risk involved in children's learning independently, because they're free to learn, they're free to, to, to move around the village go, foraging in the forest, they have a lot of freedom because they've got to learn all this on their own. And when when when outsiders sort of probe or try to get parents to think more about being more hands on playing with their children, for example, the parents push back and say, I don't have time for that. I'm, that's I'm too busy, to grow, learn on its own. It doesn't need me to teach it, it. If it listens, if it observes or pays attention. Places itself in the right position has the right attitude. The child will learn, no intervention needed on the part of the parent.

Sucheta Kamath: Well, David, this just is blowing my mind because in western world, and maybe you can talk a little bit about the weird, the acronym weird societies, because this will considered negligence and and you know, neglect and abuse. If you leave a two and a half year old to explore the world. I mean, you know, there's a whole industry that costs what is creating a child safe house? You know that right?

David F Lancy: Oh, my gosh, yes, yes. Monitors. Sure. Absolutely.

Sucheta Kamath: Yeah. Or even creating locks or special bottles for pills?

David F Lancy: Yes, yes. Yes. Yes, I know.

Sucheta Kamath: So, what is the harm in that? Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

David F Lancy: No, I was just gonna say, this is a personal my one of my pet peeves is that childproof packaging, turns all turns out to be senior proof as well. And I can't so when they give me my, my medicine, you know, my prescriptions that are in packaging that to an older person to open.

Sucheta Kamath: It was so funny. Yesterday, I was at a cooking class with a bunch of people and the chef, um, it was in a cooks warehouse. So it was, you know, where you could buy your cooking supplies. And they showed a very interesting pepper, you know, like salt and pepper, whatever, what you call it? And yeah, and they had one where because for people with arthritis, they can't turn very good. They had like a very interesting and and I'm like, oh my god, instead of improving your abilities. Now we have to keep adapting and creating new tools to buy, which was $21. By the way.

David F Lancy: Maybe I can wait a while on that purchase.

Sucheta Kamath: Exactly. So yeah. So maybe you can talk tell us a little bit about what's the. So when you talk about your indigenous experience. Can you give us some examples of how the mothers leave a child or to do what kind of things are the kids doing in that environment? In the wilderness environments?

David F Lancy: Once one scenario that It comes to mind immediately. This occurred when I was in southwestern Madagascar and I ran across a butchering party that had captured a large sea turtle. And this was this was there a subsistence so fish, marine life of various kinds. It was it was a it was a community of right on the ocean. And the the animal was had been, had been killed and was now being butchered and, and very, very large turtle. Something like four feet in diameter, three and a half four feet in diameter. And ringed around the the turtle, which was on its back on its carpus. Were about four or five individuals. And they range from tiny little kid, about three years old, to teenagers and the teenagers were in charge. But the little kids were free to handle the knife and plunge their hands into the bloody guts of the animal. And just having a grand time was just wonderful, wonderful. And yes, if you tell the story, or just do a little of a head, I filmed it. This is before the days of iPhones and easy filming. And I filmed it and showed it to modern American parents otherwise naive, not having been the Madagascar, they would be appalled, they would be absolutely appalled. They would just think this was such an abuse and neglect of children to expose them to this. Whereas the people in that village would have just shrugged their shoulders and said, Well, how are they going to learn? How are they going to how they're going to learn how to do these skills? If they don't get to go, you know, learn them hat and directly through hands on experience. So that's just one I can give more anecdotes like that. But that kind of is characteristic. I'd say.

Sucheta Kamath: You know, this reminds me of of Vivian Salazar's work, she is a professor of sociology, I think, yes. And she takes what is that economically a price useless and socially priceless? Yeah. So the childhood came that and that's when the Western culture pivoted, that it became so precious that children could not touch anything, because it would only cause harm and no learning. So when what can you maybe from your perspective, when did this shift happen? Or maybe may start off with like WEIRD societies? This the acronym WEIRD? And how do we come to harbor these believes that children are precious, they need protection. They, they need freedom of certain things like what clothes you wear, but not really freedom to explore the world to determine what is safe or not. When did this shift happen? You think?

David F Lancy: Well, I'll come to that in a minute. But you asked me several things, one of which was to explain to the audience what WEIRD is what that's all about. So it's an acronym Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich Democracies, WEIRD societies. And the, this is a highly cited article by Joseph Henrich and two other colleagues published in 2010. And the subtitle over the title is The WIERDest People in the World. And they, they did a very clever study of by looking at hundreds and hundreds of published articles on human psychology basically, on on, on, on trying to all the studies probing certain specific topics within that, but basically, they they came to the conclusion that the subjects of those studies, the authors of those studies, the countries of origin of the research, were all from this tiny little fragment of the world's population, which they characterized as Western educated, so on and so on, and so on. And they found that those those that that research was extremely limited in just being about that population. But furthermore, in they particularly paid attention to any research that was comparative, so where there was comparative data available, so that you had some other cultures represented in the study. The WEIRD population, mostly predominantly European American. They were outliers, they were very poorly represented representative. So basically, they called into question the entire canon of ecology. And I'm not just child psychology, but of psychology generally, and calling into question. And, of course, this is something that anthropologists have known all along, and didn't come as much of a surprise. But so that was the first first thing that I now know. Helped me go back...

Sucheta Kamath: Which is I think it is kind of 12% of the world's population being studied, and considered the golden standard for the whole universe. Exactly. Yeah. So the my second part of that question was, now that we, since the Oh, you we have this idea...

David F Lancy: When did this start? Okay. I think critical turning point was the decline in the birth rate. And think about that means those pretty dramatic and that occurred in the period after, particularly after World War II. So 1940s, 1950s, there was a baby boomers immediately after, yes, but but the next boom or next phase, shortly after that generation after the baby boomers were born at its peak, the precip, the population dropped precipitously around the globe in the Western world. And to the point where several countries now like Italy are no longer in equilibrium, that is they're losing the native population of the native population is declining because of the very, very low birth rate. So when you have only one child in order to instead of five and six, I think there's just immediately a greater anxiety for one thing, the parenting labor that you may have spread over six children is now just focused on one or two. And then the anxiety says that's, I think, quite normal and natural that you would have some anxiety about your children and their safety and well being, it's going to be very different, very, disproportionately very different if you've only got one or two children, as opposed to six or seven. I mean, the British, in the, in the medieval period used to have a saying about the about the succession about, about successful marriage for the king was that the wife would produce an heir and a spare, at least. So people can be very effective, explicit, explicit and ruthless about having having large families. And not worrying too much about any one member, never any one child because there were other assists step up. And indeed, high infant mortality made also contributed to people being perhaps a little callous a little. I'm concerned about the loss of one or two children. So I think the decline in the birth rate that occurred in throughout the 20th century, but particularly after the middle of the century, is a big contributing factor. And I think another is the the children become projects. So sadly, I can't put my finger on where that starts and how that evolves. But that is one thing that strikes me as so strikingly different. Is this is this shaping of children, trying to optimize them trying to I mean, think about extracurricular activities, think about all the medical interventions, orthodontia work I mean, we spend so much money on perfecting our children. And so, so I think another thing is that, in our very competitive society, weird society is is competitive is there's not much cooperation. I mean, in the indigenous community, small face to face communities, people have to be interdependent, they have to help each other out. Whereas in our wealthy society, people can be much more independent, they're much less need for them to cultivate their neighbors and the community at large. And so there they can devote more and more attention and put lavish more and more resources on their children. And then bask in the reflected glory.

Sucheta Kamath: You know, you remind me another psychologist I had on my podcast, she actually studies children from affluent societies and delinquent behaviors. And I mean, not societies, but affluent groups, you know, and research project Suniya Luthar is or who has been a guest. And she actually talked about that she was studying children in low socio economic area around Yale and just for comparison, she decided to select population from the affluent communities children, and they were performing worse. They were demonstrating more inappropriate behaviors, then even lower socioeconomic, you know, groups of children from those groups. And that is also very much a telling that you know, this, I really think I think you put a put your finger it just unlocked this thought for me that in weird so I mean, indigenous is almost thought as underdeveloped and are somehow unsophisticated, but you just said, it is actually a beautiful way to describe a small face to face societies. And you're right. If there's a weird society, then there's no accountability, and you're, you don't have to cooperate. Everybody's for themselves.

David F Lancy: Exactly. Well, I'm just, in fact, just working on this book that you mentioned. And just working on a section now section of chapter two, as a matter of fact, on the tendency to really emphasize with children, I've said children had a great deal of freedom, indigenous children have a lot of freedom, a lot of can take a lot of initiative, but there are certain times when parents think it necessary to to intervene. One of those that that shows up in many societies is an intervention to teach children kinship terminology, and sharing behavior, generosity and cooperation.

Sucheta Kamath: Can you talk a little bit more about that? That sounds tremendous. 

David F Lancy: Well, as I said, teaching is very, very rare lessons are very, very rare child learns. But one of the places which it surprised me at first, when I ran and started running across this, particularly in the, throughout the Pacific region, cultures in the Pacific region, there is a tremendous emphasis on getting kids up to speed quickly in terms of their social standing. Making, making them familiar with their extended family, and community members, how to address them, what their names are, how they're supposed to be referred to how different language register speech registers to be used in different circumstances. And then also, there's sometimes very explicit instruction very game like or, or with young with babies with very young children, they start in very early on grooming them to be socially acceptable to fit in, wow, that is an age of contrasts with the with weird population. And again, like so, many other aspects of this we can date tentatively date, a shift that occurred probably in the 50s and 60s. And that is that in the 60s and 70s. In the United States, if you were middle class, you well every class including working class poverty in class, it was extremely important to, to to raise your children right, to bring them up to be polite, to be deferential, to be helpful to be generous, all of these qualities we really emphasized in this in this in the United States, Europe and so forth, even more. So, in the Far East, Japan, China, these these characteristics, these attributes are even more important and more stressed, is laid on them. And one of again is tied in with to degree with the birth rate because one of the reasons for all this social raising the child to kind of polish them up and make them socially acceptable instead of rotten brats. But instead of spoiling them and, and turning them into little monsters, Dennis the Menace is if we wanted help from the community or from extended family, looking after these children, so a mother's got a toddler, and she's pregnant with the next child, there will be times when she can't cope with it, the situation entirely on her own, she'll need help babies, babysitter, someone, grandma, an older sister, a relative, a neighbor, she wants them to she'll, she'll ask them, and it's assumed that they're to volunteer to take over this child look after it while the new baby, it makes primary demands on the mother's attention. Well, if that child is a Hellion, you're gonna have a hard time finding anybody willing to look after it. So it's just in a mother's historically, and cross culturally, it's been in the mother's deepest, deepest interest interest, to have her child, be known by the community and accepted and be loved by the community. And that only happens when the child behaves in a way that invites and care.

Sucheta Kamath: You know, so that, again, that cultural regulation, to yield cooperation, all these, you know, there's a another neuroscientist DeSteno, who talks about these higher emotions as a way to exercise self regulation, which is gratitude, you know, pride in your work, not arrogance, but pride, taking ownership of your work. And then the third is, of course, that, you know, collaboration and cooperation. So, the, as you mentioned, this, I was just thinking about, you have written a lot about this idea of self initiated learners. And can you maybe define that a little bit, and in the context of learning, the idea of vicarious learning learning by observing other people when you're not specifically directly taught, I feel like at least in the, in America, there is no opportunity to observe other people to learn because a lot of learning is very bookish, or it's not experiential learning is learning by somebody, blah, blah, even like, you know, talking about learning, then you inculcate that. So it's a transmission of information versus transmission of knowledge of how to, can you talk a little bit about that?

David F Lancy: Sure. Well, as I mentioned, at the beginning of our podcast here, that there's this distinction, really dramatic distinction between the self-initiated learning and the might say the other other adult-initiated learning. And it's, it's, it's a huge gulf now, I mean, it's a really, really significant divide in the social landscape. And one of the places where if you want to get a conversation going about this, drop into a faculty lounge somewhere, and ask your call your fellow colleagues on the university faculty about this issue, and even though I'm retired, I still hang out with those who aren't retired and are still teaching and, and this was a phenomenon that I I had noticed over the course of my career, but it's really reached kind of crisis proportion now, which is that we have college students who are incredibly needy, and and unable and unwilling to take risks. And so they become virtually parasites. Um, kind of camping out on the professor's tour, so to speak, and order that detailed and careful guidance. And it's in its there so there's so much fear of failure. There's so much dependence on somebody else telling them what to do and how to do it. That they it's a term psychologists have a term called phrase I'm sure you're familiar with learned helplessness there. Yeah. Oh, they're unhealthy. I would argue that children aren't from birth, they are self initiated learners. The child is programmed not to be a sit in a desk, you know, sit, sit at a desk, and listen to a teacher at he blackboard, they're not that's not the way our species evolved, our species evolved to produce children who are incredibly curious, who are great spectators. They, I mean, we think we think of children being hooked on media nowadays. Well, I watched children and villages and men, if they weren't doing a chore, they would look for whatever was going on. And just they would sit, watching what others were doing, even when I thought this is pretty boring, but from their point of view, is the best show in town or in the village. So they are taking the initiative to discover and absorb all this new information. I like sponges, and they're great imitators from birth. And, and yet, we squash all that we suffocate it, we snuff it out. And we program our children's daily lives, from start to finish. And whether whether it's swimming lessons, or piano lessons or amount, you know, times tables, or, or reading or grammar, all of this is just we just keep piling it on and piling and piling it on. And as a result, at the college level, we have what should be self starting learners, we should should the, you know, the college. One of the things that happens in college historically is that is that the, the amount of time that the teacher has to devote to individual students is much less than it is in high school just sort of drops off the map, because we're supposed to be doing research and publishing and scholarship. So faculty are not supposed to invest as much in individual children and their needs and, and personality characteristics and emotional needs, and so on. We're not supposed to do that. Because we have this other major job to do. And unfortunately, so many of our students now have not really been prepared for that. They on the contract with each passing year of their schooling, they become more dependent on my new guidance to with with with every learning task we set for them. 

Sucheta Kamath: You know, I think the two thoughts come to mind. I was at that cooking class yesterday, as I was mentioning, and a person sitting next to me. She has been, you know, in her job for 25 years. And she's at a very big firm, and she was talking about the new generation of employees that come up, you know, they have a lot of education. And they come and she was saying the same thing, what you said. So first of all, she says, The, you know, the OJT on the job training, they take very long. They don't pick up things by us through osmosis. They're not observant enough, because of the nuances.

David F Lancy: It's been drummed out of them. Yes, very early on.

Sucheta Kamath: And they want specifics like what do you want me to do? If you say create a report? Or how many pages, what font? How much margin in and she's like, Just do it. And that she was say, saying the second the tail end up that evolution is she said within 10 months, they come and they're like, Oh my God, when am I gonna get promoted? And she says, No, you're not a promotion material at all. And so I said, Oh, my God, their egos are so fragile that they get very offended. And she said, I don't care, I tell them you can leave.

David F Lancy: Well, good for her, she's in, she's in a minority. She's an anomoly. She needs to be on her guard because a lawsuit might very well being, you know, hanging over her head.

Sucheta Kamath: Or like this, you know, anonymous on social media, the spite that just feels you know, you're not able to handle that. So this brings us to a great junction here on talking about mental health, you know, you're writing about this. This there's a huge mental health crisis. Two kinds. One is incredible anxiety, which you already kind of talked about that if a lot is expected of you and you're supposed to demonstrate everything, then you become very anxious that maybe you're not good enough, and maybe you're truly not good enough. That's a separate issue. But the second thing is depression, like not having purpose and meaning, which is so much tied with autonomy even you don't have thought, authorship of your life, then, you know, I feel like how can that bring joy. So can you talk a bit about that?

David F Lancy: Well, I tend to always start with the little the youngest children, babies, toddlers, because in talking about parenting styles, or parenting practices, or culture and parenting, a lot of the A lot of times problems that we see with teenagers with college students have their origin and how what happened to them when they were toddlers. And so we talked already we've touched all the bases, we've talked about over protection, we've talked about parents turning everything in the child's life into a learning opportunity, a learning youth, translates as a teaching, because they can't really do much on their own translates as an opportunity give a lesson to the child. And I think so I think it starts this, this kind of learned helplessness, this loss of the a bit that the children are very good, they're very good observers. There. When they're genetically I mean, from it's an, it's an inherited characteristic. And ability, the ability to learn from observation and imitate what one has learned is very strong. But it's under it's these are underutilized skills, these are skills that eventually extinguished because they're unappreciated, the child is there's many areas of the home that are off limits, so many, in the neighborhood, we just we talked about that a little bit earlier, the restrictions. When you when you gave the example of the screened in back yard, I had this sudden image of the prison prison, you know, in a prison where the prisoners go out for an hour or something and walk around the, the fenced in area, it's like we we imprison our children. So I think that the the seeds are planted very, very early so that your employees would be employees, all of that baggage they bring with them is is cumulates, year after year after year. And it's it's the trends are not good. It's getting worse. And I sent you that paper that is now we're working on with colleagues. But we're trying to show how there is a relationship between how children are reared this over protection over concern over management of their lives. This leads to the psychological disorders, depression, mental health issues that are becoming more and more. I mean, the statistics are staggering. Hmm. And it starts very early. I mean, I don't can't Don't ask me to quote the figures. But the, the number of children, for instance, taking psychotropic drugs, number of very young children, like six years old, on on, on drugs for emotional disturbance. It's just frightening and scary. You have things like autism, for example, which exploded came out of nowhere. I did research with autism in about 1980, with colleagues at UCLA and at that time, they were keeping a register of autistic children national register, and there were only I mean, we were talking maybe in the few 1000s altogether. Nowadays, I don't know what the statistics are on prevalence of autism, but it's a skyrocketed. And so I mean, I think there is a clear, very clear relationship between how we're raising children and the eventual likelihood of failure launch and insecurity, anxiety lack of executive function, breakdown and executive function. Yeah, they're all part of the same story as far as I can see.

Sucheta Kamath: You know, it's so funny that I mean, it's sorry, not funny, ironic, that I see. Such a trend to from a culture which was completely unaware of in our lives. Have children in our psychological lives of children, then suddenly they're seeing this incredible implosion. And suddenly there's awareness that there's crisis. But there's, it's now again, the same attitude, let's fix it. There is no like contextualizing back to the culture back to the society, like a, you know, what I was telling one of my clients that the child is not even getting up from bed to go to school. And so she now had, so best invested parent that she now is driving the child to the psychiatrist, psychologist, me, but who is waking the child up is her who is getting the child into the car, or she's actually pack because he's not getting up in time. She's packing lunch for him, and putting shoes in the car. All he's doing is just being transported. And so I said to her, would you consider taking a break, like, completely, like taking a year off, and then he may be learned some work like wilderness go, maybe, you know, like chop wood or something, you know, they're like, not those special things. But I think this fear about this on some something about this invisible competition you have for resources, this feeling that somehow education and career and college readiness is the ultimate golden truth of becoming meaning leader. meaningful life, to me, is a kind of a hoax that we have created for ourselves. Now, of course, I'm already going to sound like an aberrant person, as I say that, but I truly think there's so much like we are looking at treatment, also, as something that is done outside the culture with the culture doesn't value having mental health problem, because it doesn't think becoming cooperative human as a valuable thing. You know?

David F Lancy: Well, that could throw us so easily backfire, because basically, what would what's going on here is you, the child develops all of these can these problems, these emotional, mental health issues. And they often get translated into a narrative that explains the child's failure to thrive, failure to launch. And essentially, they define themselves as someone who is permanently handicapped, and will require concessions of various kinds, they expect to be given a pass, where others might have to strive, and, and so on, they're given a pass. And in many ways, we have been very generous and our laws have been changed and treatments have been changed so that we're all we're all enabling. I mean, all of our agencies, all of our various branches of government and social social services, we're all enabling this learned helplessness, and giving it sounding labels, and providing all sorts of clinically sounding excuses. I'm sounding pretty jaded, and like an old bogey here, but honestly, it just...

Sucheta Kamath: I hear you, I understand what you're saying, 

David F Lancy: We're not honest with ourselves, and acknowledge that this is what is going on, it's just gonna keep getting worse.

Sucheta Kamath: So as I know, this is not the realm of practice for an anthropologist. I want to comment...

David F Lancy: All of this I'm speaking as a father of two daughters, and the grandfather of three and a half year old granddaughter, and I pay a lot of attention to the growth of my granddaughter.

Sucheta Kamath: And that's all I'm going to extend this question as a last question that how can we change because cultures and societies don't change by one person? It has to be a cultivated common belief and our commitment to act in that way, as a as collectively. So how can weird societies Stop being weird? Well, that's not a good question to ask.

David F Lancy: I mean, I think I think we need to rely upon our opinion leaders and people that are in key positions. So that paper I was speaking to you about is actually hopefully going into a journal addressed to pediatricians. So what do I know about pediatrics? Very little, but what I do the stuff that I do know about, I'm arguing should be should be part of the awareness of pediatricians so that they can turn around and provide more sensible long term guidance to parents, teachers, I think I think we need, we need to get our teachers associations, and our college level teacher preparation programs, to basically to engage in a conversation about this and to pay attention to the anthropological literature and other sources, historical materials, in other words, to basically look more broadly at this and don't simply go along with this trend of children becoming more and more handicap more and more needs have special needs. When it ends up you have all classroom and they all have special needs at once. Yes.

Sucheta Kamath: We just had a meeting with a district leader, yeah, was talking about the same thing. She said, there used to be like a small group of people who had disability now the whole class has.

David F Lancy: Right.

Sucheta Kamath: So as I and you know, that wonderful book, it was written in 2001, believe it or not, when my was just beginning my parenting journey, but and that was called, it was written by a psychotherapist actually called blessings, The Blessings of a Skinned Knee, and it's using...

David F Lancy: Immediately I think, I would like this book.

Sucheta Kamath: You will love it, because it's actually talks about this, you know, raising self reliant children, but kind of encouraging children to have scrap, you know, like scrapes and let them fall and let them pick themselves up, and then consider that as a blessing, you know, bow to the experience. And brilliant timing. I think your daughter may love this, I think this may be your gift for her during Christmas.

David F Lancy: I will. That's a good tip.

Sucheta Kamath: So as I wrap up this conversation, brilliant conversation. We always ask our esteemed guests to recommend a book or two that other than your prolific writing. Do you have anything that has influenced your worldview and your beliefs about how to do the work that you do? Or anything in life?

David F Lancy: Well, I wasn't expecting this question. But so I don't have a ready answer. But the person that immediately came to mind when you pose the question was Margaret Mead. And Margaret Mead, she's sort of the mother of, well, she's just really a founding mother of the whole field of anthropology, but especially the anthropology of childhood. And, and I had her in college, didn't, didn't get along with her and didn't like the class at all. But subsequently, fortunately, I've read her work and I'm just in awe of her insights. And so she's she's writing as an American, about it, visiting many other cultures. And she's, she's seeing these discrepancies between already between the indigenous model of child rearing and the western model. And so she her work has lots of insights, I think that would be of interest. You know, I think if parents are interested in understanding more, not just about their own child, but about children and childhood, I think that would, you know, that would be one way to get out this trend read maybe slowing down or reducing the trends. We're seeing unpleasant trends.

Sucheta Kamath: And you know, like all the things that we want in our children, my biggest question is parents, are you demonstrating it? You know, like this, we want kids to be curious. We want kids to have freedom. Are you exercising your freedom, you know, to explore the world you know, show curiosity and we be all always ready to say yeah, yes. And you know, so yes.

David F Lancy: You know, we discussed it. Free Range children. Yes. That's, that sums up a lot of our conversation today. Free Range children.

Sucheta Kamath: I will attach a that is a wonderful and I think you're collaborating with the author, right or your friends?

David F Lancy: Yes. Right. We're Yeah, I'd say we're friends. We're very good friends.

Sucheta Kamath: Oh, well. Thank you. So Alright, everyone. That's all the time we have for today. Once again. Thank you. Uh, Dr. Lancy, for being my guest. And everybody, as you can see, these are very important conversations, I really hope. You might wonder this is our second anthropologist on the show. I really think one of the biggest things we can do in understanding executive function and our role in either managing our own thoughts, actions, behaviors, in relationship to achieving goals that are important to us and helping children to do the same. We must really have a cultural perspective and a real lens on life that our worldview may not be adequate. And I think thank you for the work you do. And once again, so we are so grateful for your time for being here. And until next time, see you soon.