Fresh Take: Elizabeth Preston on What Animals Have to Teach Us About Parenting

About this episode

Elizabeth Preston discusses how animal parenting can inform human parenting practices and alleviate parental anxiety.

Why does modern parenting feel so difficult? If a chimpanzee knows what to do without reading a hundred parenting books, why doesn't it just come naturally? Science journalist and author Elizabeth Preston is the author of The Creatures' Guide to Caring: How Animal Parents Teach Us That Humans Were Born to Care. Drawing from animal behavior, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience, this book explains why studying the parenting of every species from poison frogs to bonobos, from rats to birds, can remind us how human parenting is supposed to work—and how parental anxiety may result from the belief we were ever supposed to do things differently. In this episode, we discuss: Why humans are “cooperative breeders” Why maternal anxiety and hypervigilance is an evolutionary advantage, not a personal failure The truth about “mom brain” and what actually happens to the brain during pregnancy Why fathers and non-biological caregivers are equally capable of deep caregiving The role of alloparenting and why kids benefit from many trusted adults Why caregiving is central to what makes us human Here's where you can find Elizabeth: https://elizabethgpreston.com/ @by.elizabeth.preston on IG…

People in this episode

Hosts: Margaret Ables, Amy Wilson

Guest: Elizabeth Preston

Topics covered

• animal behavior
• parenting
• cooperative breeding
• maternal anxiety
• alloparenting
• caregiving

Keywords

• parenting
• animal behavior
• maternal anxiety
• cooperative breeding
• alloparenting
• neuroscience
• evolutionary biology

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: The Creatures' Guide to Caring

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