Ep. 15 with Darcia Narvaez, Ph.D. Hunter-Gatherers, Parenting, Wisdom, Morals

My next guest is Darcia Narvaez, she is a Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. She has published dozens of academic journal articles and chapters and over twenty books. Her latest books include Restoring the Kinship Worldview, The Evolved Nest: Nature’s Way of Raising Children and Creating Connected Communities and Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom which won the 2015 William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association and the 2017 Expanded Reason Award. Today we begin by discussing the mismatch between the environments we evolved to be in, and the modern society in which we exist in today. We talk about cultural differences in hunter gatherer society, such as rearing practices and general values and how this may contribute to many of the struggles we currently face. We then move on to discuss the importance of attachment in moral development touching on some of her original ideas. We subsequently shift to talk about the evolved developmental niche, which includes the ideal parenting practices that developed from her interdisciplinary research on hunter-gatherer societies, psychology and neuroscience. More practical questions are asked of her, before we talk about wisdom, its definition, different types, and how to foster moral development. We end on the CNC rapid fire question tradition. If any of these topics are of interest to you, feel free to skip around.