Ep. 196: David F Lancy - A Cultural & Anthropological Take on Childhood Independence

Full PreFrontal

Culture in general plays an important role in human development and particularly childhood is shaped by culture. Not so long ago raising children was considered rather noisy, dirty, tedious and anything but pleasant. However, those living in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) societies that make up about 12% of the world’s population have perpetuated over-protective child-rearing practices and principals while ignoring the cultural wisdom of the rest of the world. With this rise in parental hyper-vigilance in creating independent children, there is a growing trend that parents are turning everything in the child's life into a learning/teaching opportunity, which is a likely source of learned helplessness and a predictable path to a failure to launch.

On this episode, anthropologist, researcher, and author and Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Utah State University, David Lancy, discusses the loss of autonomy and freedom in WEIRD societies and the relationship between how we raise children and the eventual likelihood of a failure to launch and the insecurity, anxiety, and breakdown in executive function.

About David F Lancy
David Lancy has done extensive cross-cultural fieldwork with children as the focus. His most important work, just published in a third edition, is The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings. That scholarly book was paired by a popular version in 2017, entitled Raising Children: Surprising Insights From Other Cultures. In total, Lancy has authored nine books and edited three. A new work on pedagogy in culture is in progress. Publishers have included Academic Press, Cambridge, Longman, Praeger and Oxford. He has also authored over eighty articles and book chapters.
Website:

• https://www.davidlancy.org/

Books:

• The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattels, Changelings
• Raising Children: Surprising Insights from Other Cultures

About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.

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