I don't think child rearing is supposed to be as difficult as modern society makes it.

As you pointed out, you don't have a lot of help in raising your kid. You're expected to do it mostly with your partner (or god forbid alone).

They've done some studies of hunter gather tribes to determine who handled babies the most. Turns out the kids' actual parents only handled the kids for about half the time (I think even a little less)! The term for it is "alloparenting".

Evolution did not prime us for this level of child care. Good luck to you!

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rationalist 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Even without going that far back, I imagine it was easier when parents kicked the kids out of the house and told them not to come back until dinner time.

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graemep 8 hours ago | parent [-]

> Even without going that far back, I imagine it was easier when parents kicked the kids out of the house and told them not to come back until dinner time.

Did people ever do that with under-twos? Or under-fives?

The big difference in more recent times was community and extended family help, and at least one parent having more time at home.

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eszed 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm of an age to have grown up like that, and one of the real drags was having to take my 3-5 year-old sibling along on whatever activity the rest of us were up to. ("But mom, we're building a fort - do I have to?") The other kids with younger siblings did the same. As I recall, at five I wasn't to leave the yard by myself, but as a mixed-age group of ~3-11 year-olds, yeah: we ran around all over the place together. The older kids took on responsibility for the younger ones.

So, yeah, that's eighties suburbia, and my sister wasn't less than two. On the other hand, if there'd been a larger age difference (and, maybe if I'd been a girl? My mum was more progressive about gender roles than most of her contemporaries, but still) I expect she'd have been entrusted to me earlier. Starting at the age of ~4 I'd been left alone with my sister for up to an hour while she napped, with the instruction to run next door to get my mother if she woke up.

By the way, I think all of that was fine.

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jdsnape 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don’t have hard evidence, but when I was a kid I enjoyed the children’s book ‘Five children and it’, written ~1900

The children cart their two year old sibling around with them everywhere (sans parents) and it’s totally unremarkable.

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amanaplanacanal 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Evidently there was quite a bit of handwringing in the 1950s that the "nuclear family" was bad for children and would lead to more divorce, since there were no longer grandparents and aunts and uncles around to help with childrearing.

	▲	graemep 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Interesting. If so, they were right.