Why Did We All Have the Same Childhood?

conducting a literature search of 89 different stories told by seven different forager cultures in Thailand, Malaysia, Africa and elsewhere. All of the tales carried lessons about social cooperation, empathy and justice, and many taught sexual equality

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can give future generations a real-world childhood. We can prioritize play. We can delay entry to social media platforms until at least 16. We can encourage young people to just hang out with each other, without supervision and without smartphones. We can take elements of childhood from previous eras and re-in... See more

This brings me to an issue that apparently really cheeses people who study childlore: Adults, it seems, are in a perpetual state of worry that Kids These Days just don’t play like they used to, probably because of whatever technology was most recently introduced. Roud and Willett both independently brought this up to me and insisted that it’s not t

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