A few years ago on a gorgeous June day, I found myself in a windowless bathroom with forget-me-not wallpaper, my butt on a toilet, without any good reason to be there. It was a standard mothering move. Beyond the door, I could hear my two small kids laughing and eating cereal, so I stayed in this little space, smartphone in hand. In an hour, I was headed to a bowling alley with my kids, both of whom could now walk through a doorway on their own. And this was a brilliant new development, not just for the 2-year-old who’d learned to walk at the standard age, but for the 4-year-old, Fiona, who’d spent the past three and a half years in physical therapy striving toward this lofty goal. Forty-five percent of people with Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome walk, said the report when I first got her diagnosis. Her ability to walk meant I no longer had to consider wheelchair or stroller accessibility. Her ability to walk independently meant she could navigate the tight turns around a bowling ball return without having to steer a clunky walker. So I was taking my kids’ bowling, as soon as I stopped pretend-peeing and reading on my phone.
I was reading a friend’s blog post about a recent appointment with her counselor. As soon as she mentioned her son, who has the same chromosomal syndrome as my daughter, she began to cry.
The therapist asked, “Why do you always cry when you talk about him in here?”
It was a simple experiment. Lucia Alcala, a psychologist, built a tiny model grocery store with aisles and different items that she could put on a family’s dining room table.
She and her colleagues brought the model store to 43 family’s homes along California’s Central Coast. Each family had a pair of siblings, ages 6 to 10.
She gave the siblings clear instructions: Find an efficient route through the store to pick up a list of grocery items and — this was made clear — “work together, collaborate and help each other,” says Alcala, of California State University, Fullerton. “We gave them very specific instructions.”
Alcala and her colleagues logged what happened. Did the siblings help each other? Did they boss each other around? Did the older ones exclude the younger ones from the task?
For decades, scientists have documented a surprising phenomenon: In many cultures around the world, parents don’t struggle to raise helpful, kind kids. From ages 2 to 18, kids want to help their families. They wake up in the morning and voluntarily do the dishes. They hop off their bikes to help their dad carry groceries into the house. And when somebody hands them a muffin, they share it with a younger sibling before taking a bite themselves.
.
The author’s daughter, Rosy, at age 2 she does dishes — voluntarily. Getting her involved in chores did lead to the kitchen being flooded and dishes being broken. But she is still eager to help.
İzmir is a metropolitan city in the western extremity of Anatolia. It is the third most populous city in Turkey, after Istanbul and Ankara; and the second largest urban agglomeration on the Aegean Sea after Athens.
In 2019, the city of İzmir had a population of 2,972,900, while İzmir Province had a total population of 4,367,251. İzmir’s metropolitan area extends along the outlying waters of the Gulf of İzmir and inland to the north across the Gediz River Delta; to the east along an alluvial plain created by several small streams; and to slightly more rugged terrain in the south.
The setup to the newest “parenting is better, anywhere but here” book goes like this: When reporter Michaeleen Doucleff, who lives in San Francisco, reached peak frustration with her spirited 3-year-old daughter, Rosy, she wondered if other people out there might have the answers. She visited a few places that seemed sufficiently different to be enlightening—the Mayan village of Chan Kajaal, the Inuit town of Kugaaruk, and the Hadzabe tribe in northern Tanzania. She packed Rosy along and asked local parents for their help. The result is Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans. This is a heartfelt book that’s full of perfectly fine advice, wrapped in a story of some experiences that obviously changed this particular mother’s life, all built on a premise that should make us feel very queasy.
I say the advice is “fine” because almost every bit of it is something I’d heard before, coming out of the interconnected worlds of Western parenting guidance that self-describe as “respectful,” “gentle,” “peaceful,” “unconditional,” and “Montessori-” or “Waldorf-inspired.” Inuit parents (Doucleff generalizes!) try not to issue too many commands and avoid at all costs getting into power struggles with their children? I think of the concepts of “dropping the rope,” or “modeling graciousness,” both of which I learned from respectful-parenting bloggers and podcasters. Mayan mothers don’t overpraise, and their kids retain internal motivation much better? Psychologist Alfie Kohn wrote the book on it, more than 20 years ago, and you can find Montessori memes with suggestions for things you could say instead of “Good job,” ready to print and put on your refrigerator. Hadzabe parents give their kids a lot of physical freedom? Google “natural gross motor development” + “Emmi Pikler.” Mayan mothers do everyday household chores alongside their kids as they play, finding ways for them to participate as they can? That’s straight out of Waldorf and Montessori.
Some content on this page was disabled on April 15, 2025 as a result of a DMCA takedown notice from Guardian Media Group. You can learn more about the DMCA here:
Lake Tana is the largest lake in Ethiopia and the source of the Blue Nile. Located in Amhara Region in the north-western Ethiopian highlands, the lake is approximately 84 kilometres (52 miles) long and 66 kilometres (41 miles) wide, with a maximum depth of 15 metres (49 feet),[1] and an elevation of 1,788 metres (5,866 feet).[2] Lake Tana is fed by the Gilgel Abay, Reb and Gumara rivers. Its surface area ranges from 3,000 to 3,500 square kilometres (1,200 to 1,400 square miles), depending on season and rainfall. The lake level has been regulated since the construction of the control weir where the lake discharges into the Blue Nile. This controls the flow to the Blue Nile Falls (Tis Abbai) and hydro-power station.
.
An image of Hippos at Lake Tana in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia
Spotting patterns, trends, and formulas make our work (and life) easier. But I never thought I’d see someone unlocking the formula for the hardest job of all: raising super-successful children.
Harvard professor Ronald Ferguson, author of “The Formula: Unlocking the Secrets to Raising Highly Successful Children,” recently told the Harvard Gazette he’s done exactly that.
Ferguson was fascinated with what parents did to shape his talented students. So he and co-author Tatsha Robertson comprehensively studied how different parenting styles shape children’s success. Test subjects included the youngest statewide elected official in the country and the mother of the CEOs of YouTube and the genetics company 23andMe.
.
The ‘early learning partner’ is the most important role of the eight. kali9/Getty Images
The studio audience showered me with hisses, “nuh-uh’s,” and boos as I answered questions about my parenting. I was on an episode of a nationally syndicated talk show that aired on March 3, 2020, just weeks before parenting became a fuller-time job for millions of American women.
My sin? I let my 10-year-old ride public transportation without me. I reassured those at the show’s taping that the regular drivers and riders of my daughter’s route would be there to help in an emergency that she and/or her travel companions — two other fifth-graders — couldn’t handle. Mel Robbins, the life-coach-turned-TV-personality who hosted the show, responded with a chilling judgment: “You’re outsourcing your parenting.”
This, I thought, as I burned with studio lighting and the insecure indignation of the accused, is why so many mothers I know are dependent on anti-anxiety meds, alcohol, and other substances. It’s also why colleges have instituted hand-holding measures that would have been unthinkable two decades ago, including text messages reminding students about professors’ office hours and even where to find food.
We’ve heard about rising rates of maternal anxiety. We’ve heard about rising rates of young adult anxiety. Screens often take the blame, and they may yet play a role (especially when considering their impact on sleep), but there’s another culprit driving these phenomena: this common take on parental “outsourcing.”
The rise of intensive parenting belief that children must be attended—or even attended to—at all times by their parents or a direct proxy came to dominate America’s child-rearing philosophy from the last decade of the 20th century forward. My style, which revolves around limiting kids’ independence only to the extent necessary to protect them from risks that are both serious and fairly likely to materialize, is now known as “free-range parenting” in the United States, despite the fact that much of the world—including the majority in countries like Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, France, and Israel—just calls it “parenting.”
Indianapolis, colloquially known as Indy, is the state capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the seat of Marion County.According to 2019 estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, the consolidated population of Indianapolis and Marion County was 886,220. The “balance” population, which excludes semi-autonomous municipalities in Marion County, was 876,384. It is the 17th most populous city in the U.S., the third-most populous city in the Midwest, after Chicago, Illinois and Columbus, Ohio, and the fourth-most populous state capital after Phoenix, Arizona; Austin, Texas; and Columbus, Ohio. The Indianapolis metropolitan area is the 33rd most populous metropolitan statistical area in the U.S., with 2,048,703 residents. Its combined statistical area ranks 28th, with a population of 2,431,361. Indianapolis covers 368 square miles (950 km2), making it the 16th largest city by land area in the U.S.
He wasn’t even two years old; a tiny thing, really, hardly even a person. Alfred was the ninth son of King George III and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, their fourteenth child. But his numerous siblings didn’t make Alfred any less beloved. Portraits of the boy show him as rosy-cheeked and handsome, with light eyes, a pronounced Cupid’s bow, and soft folds of neck fat. His royal parents loved him dearly, and when he died on the 20th of August, 1782, Queen Charlotte was said to have “cried vastly.” The king, too, was bereft. Later, when he went mad, he reportedly held conversations with his lost little boy and his brother, Octavius, who’d also died as a child.
Often, upon losing a family member, 18th-century mourners would send the dead to their graves only after giving them one last haircut. They would harvest their locks to create elaborate weavings. Sometimes, the hair would be fashioned into floral wreaths. Sometimes, it would be made into jewelry. Frequently, the hair was plaited and pressed into lockets, which were then worn close to the heart. Prince Alfred didn’t have enough hair on his small blonde head for weaving, but a tress did make it into a locket — a single soft curl. It sits behind glass, in a gold and enamel frame that displays the dates of his birth and death. The other side of the locket, a delicate piece of jewelry shaped like an urn, is decorated with seed pearls and amethysts. It is now part of the Royal Collection Trust. “Due to his age, there was no official mourning period for Alfred,” notes scholar and collector Hayden Peters at The Art of Mourning. “But his death came at a time of the mourning industry being a necessary part of fashion and a self-sustaining one in its own right.”
In the world, human beings are facing various problems. People who are full of greed, anger, and ignorance are seen to be fighting with each other in words and deeds. As the fighting continues, various problems such as civil wars, wars of aggression, and wars of aggression are occurring. As world peace is being destroyed, humans are facing unbearable problems. Innocent children and women are not getting the rights they deserve and deserve. I can't think of one thing every time. What is it? The United Nations. If we look at the responsibilities and duties of the United Nations, I think it is not suitable for solving the problems that are happening in the world today. In fact, the United Nations and the World Security Council, such an organization must rule the world, must be able to give orders, and must have various ways to obey orders. There must be no organization that can influence more than that organization. There should be experts from each country. They can even dominate the superpowers like the US, China, and Britain. Only then will global peace be achieved quickly. Now, if a country with power develops more militarily, economically, or socially than its own country, then powerful countries will jealously seek out enemies and wage war. Or they will attack with fighter jets. In this, innocent people are losing their lives. No one understands the value of a life. You should think about how to achieve global peace by controlling these. If the US continues to be the permanent president of the UN, world peace will never be achieved. If you think carefully, no one sees that they are working for the common good, but for their own benefit, for the benefit of their own country. The permanent president of the UN and the Security Council has rejected this, As a young Rohingya, I have come to realize that only by electing the president and secretary from among the countries in the world through a secret ballot system and governing the world fairly can we achieve global peace. The United Nations and the Security Council are organizations in which any country must govern, give orders, and make them obey their orders. For example, only when a defendant is tried in court can we hold the leaders of the countries in check and control them, can we achieve global peace smoothly. Otherwise, it will not be easy for powerful countries to use various excuses to end this war every year, every year, for the benefit of themselves and their countries. No country's leaders pay any attention to the words of the United Nations and the Security Council. If we look at it in practice, look at the Rohingya issue. Myanmar is a small country. Even that country has been under siege for 8 years. What action can be taken? Why is the UN and the Security Council Powerless? Without such Power, how can the organization bring about global peace? Everyone should think about it. Whether there is a veto or a strong one, all countries in the world can only achieve global peace if they are subject to the UN and the Security Council. Seek peace in the quiet embrace of nature. Peace is an indispensable need of the human race. It is not as if one person can kill another person, and it is as if one country can attack another country, but instead of trying to build peace, we must try to destroy the peace now, and the world is getting hotter and is on the verge of collapse. I especially appeal to all the world experts to urgently try to bring about peace in all parts of the world. Mr, Noor Muhamed Arkhan Rohingya Youth Myanmar
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Illustration by Ashanti Fortson
Woman with Child on Leash (Getty Images)
