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

Doucleff reflects on a December morning that she remembers as her parenting “rock bottom.” She woke up before the sunrise and started planning her upcoming “battles” with her “enemy”—her daughter Rosy: “What will I do when she strikes me again? When she hits? Kicks? Or bites?” (1). Doucleff explains that she loves her daughter but that raising her has been difficult. She reflects on her childhood growing up in an “angry home” and notes how she wants to raise Rosy more peacefully. After researching, she started using an authoritative parenting approach, but it did not help her mitigate Rosy’s behavioral issues, leaving her feeling like a bad mother.

During a trip to Mexico, Doucleff witnessed other parenting styles in action, and she was inspired to research hunter-gatherer parenting methods. While parenting is “personal” and varies from culture to culture, Doucleff noticed that different methods seemed to share four universal elements that help raise children to be kind and self-sufficient.

Doucleff thanks readers for their attention, suggesting they likely experienced similar struggles to the ones she’s faced, and she notes that her goal in writing is to help parents learn “the universal parenting approach” (6)

Doucleff criticizes modern Western parenting for its narrow field of view and its disregard of ancient parenting techniques, which, she argues, makes raising children in the U.