Our Surgeon General, Ourselves

Parenting in America Stinks       Twenty-six years ago, I published a parenting book titled Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent. Good sales numbers this far out from publication, continued attention from media, fan email, and royalty checks that still appear over a quarter of a century later tell me that a book about parenting written by an anthropologist of all things (not a “parenting expert,” not a pediatrician, not a child development researcher) rings true for so many Americans. The recent opinion piece in The…

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Everybody in the World Talks the Same Way to Babies

Anthropologists Show That We Are All Suckers for Baby Talk       It happens every time we meet a baby, anyone’s baby. Suddenly our brains are taken over by some other person with a different voice, one that goes up a few octaves and comes out in a sing-song lilt to produce some of the silliest sentences on earth: “Waaadda a cuuttee liddle baby! Aren’t youuuu the sweeeetest thingy in the world? Are you the sweeetest little booy in the world? Is this the cutest little girrrl ever?” And how many…

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It’s Food, Not Inactivity, That Makes Kids Fat

Anthropologists Show That What Kids Eat Matters More than What They Do     Over 13 million American children and teens are now classified as obese, and many others are overweight. During the past year, we have seen how obesity puts a body at risk for severe disease and death; starting on that path young makes for an extremely unhealthy outlook.   Sociologists, nutritionists, pediatricians, and child educators have done many studies trying to figure out why so many kids end up fat when childhood has normally been a time of high-energy…

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