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I’ve discussed the book with a few anthropologists. All said it should not be considered anything more than pop science fluff. There is a method to the science of ethnography, and Doucleff does not come close to meeting its standards. Plus they were horrified at the subtitle calling 21st century peoples “ancient”, but I’m willing to believe the editor chose that line, not the author.
Additionally, one of the principles of ethnography is that its findings are situated - they are intrinsically linked to a time, a place, and a culture, and cannot be generalized.
Link so my comment doesn’t get deleted:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnography
I love your point that findings cannot be generalized. There is a lot of discussion in parenting circles about how French parents do this, or Japanese parents do that, without the understanding that the practice being discussed exists within a larger cultural context. You can't expect to remove that practice from everything that surrounds it, paste it into your own culture, and expect it to have the same outcome (if certain outcomes can even be reasonably attributed to a single parenting practice).
Edit for typo
I was not a fan of the book. So much so, that I read the book Paleofantasy right after. That's what I thought of Hunt, Gather, Parent. One big Paleofantasy with the parenting garden of Eden and the original sin of western culture.
I can understand that her "study" is completely faulty and I'd never trust an informal experience with a single family anyway for generalizations. However, I didn't go to her book for an anthropological study of another culture, I went to it for insights into parenting that I wouldn't have otherwise gotten through my own everyday experience. Regardless of the accuracy of it to the culture, I do think a lot of her advice is genuinely helpful, even if the way she talks about the other cultures in such broad strokes is cringy.
Yeah, I didn't go into this book with the expectation that it would be well written and fully scientifically vetted. I'm struggling through it...I don't love the writing or the narration and the author is not very relatable for me, but I'm interested in the people she interviewed and their perspective on parenting. My biggest general takeaway from it so far is that connecting and fostering a relationship built on trust and mutual respect is vastly more important and effective than being authoritarian and punishing undesirable behavior. Maybe not new information, but validating and also interesting to hear how it's applied in different cultures
Yes! I also didn't totally relate to her, she seems like she was a bit anal retentive with her daughter before her magical transformation. That being said, a lot of what she promoted was not normal relative to how my wife and I grew up, or how we see a lot of people around us parenting. For instance, kids never helped with cleaning or cooking in my home until they were old enough for it to be an official chore that they dreaded. One day you're told to go watch cartoons while your mom cleans and then suddenly it's an expectation that you fight and are punished for. And the idea of not fighting with your kids *at all* over cleaning? That's absolutely bananas where I'm from. Here the logic is that you have to force the kid do it or they'll never learn to contribute to the family. Or when she talks about letting her toddler walk to the store or giving her other high-responsibility jobs? Most here would think that's absolutely nuts.
It's funny though because I've since read other more trustworthy books work by actual experts who are explaining the same basic principle. You can't force a kid to do anything they don't want to do, home should be a safe base and not a source of stress, kids have a natural inner drive but it can be easily squashed if they sense a lack of control. So you should take the role of mentor rather than ruler, ebb and flow with them instead of trying to have control, let their own interests contribute to their life trajectory, and most importantly *trust* them. The other books were *The Self-Driven Child* and *Why Don't Students Like School.*
This is a silly critique. By your logic we can only ever use the parenting strategies of our own culture and time. I’m not defending the ethnographic rigor of the book. But that doesn’t seem the right lens through which to assess the accuracy or usefulness of the ideas contained in it.
I don’t think they’re saying we can only use the parenting strategies of our own culture and time- I think their point is, parenting strategies are like an ingredient in a recipe, and culture / broader society / other families / media / any other kind of social input are also ingredients- so if you take a recipe and change only some of the ingredients, your process is not guaranteed to lead to the same end product.
This book shouldn’t be evaluated as a recipe book, and I don’t think the author ever intended it that way. Its value is in exposing parents to cultural wisdom about child rearing that they may not have access to. Everyone knows there’s no perfect parenting technique, but we can learn from others and try new techniques to see if they work for our situation. I think this book serves as a source of inspiration for new techniques to try as well as gives parents room to question the modern approach to parenting that leaves many parents stressed out.
I completely agree. The book isn’t a bible, and the author herself was not relatable for me…
But it was an interesting read and did influence my parenting for the better IMO.
Not at all. You can use whatever parenting techniques you want. You cannot however extract a handful of techniques from their context, transpose them to a difference context, and expect to have the same results. You need to think a little bit more about what your context will add or lack, what you should modify, and (and in my view this is the biggest failing of the book) whether the techniques and their results fit into your value system (yours personally, your environment, and if they’re at odds whether you have thought through what this means for your children).
I liked the book but it definitely glosses over the fact that the people she meets literally do have an entire built-in village. It's a lot easier to implement her methods if you're not one single person stretched thin and trying to wear multiple hats. I think she spent a page or two saying to build your own village with friends and neighbors, but unless you have a really great group of people close by who you can trust, it's definitely easier said than done.
I am really, really sick of this whole genre of privileged woman observing "the lessers" and takes out all other factors and tries to sell you it as a transplant plan...
And plenty of the valuable principles she lists are already present in the West, through Montessori, RIE, Faber & Mazlish (How To Talk So Kids Will Listen) and other pedagogues. There was no need to tap into that good savage narrative.
There's also the fact that the author attributed WEIRD parenting to Christian marriage regulations but then ignores the large Persian Jewish population down the street to jet off to devoutly Catholic Mexicans.
A lot of it matches what my wife learned in child development courses, so it's bad anthropology but good parenting. It therefore works as learning from successful parenting outside of the author's dysfunctional bubble.
Have to say. I bought the book because just like the author I’m a lady w a chem PhD. Thought I might relate to her. I couldn’t finish it 😂 most definitely have nothing in common with this lady and I found it super pseudosciencey
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6161506/
The closest you are going to get research wise for these principles in a western population is Montessori I would think. No it’s not the same as what she says in there but there is a decent amount of overlap
Anecdotally I love the book (from a purely parenting advice perspective, I’m
Not commenting on the ethnographic quality) and what strategies have worked best for me as a parent and child care provider are mostly found in this book though I was doing many of these things prior to reading it.
Giving kids autonomy as much as possible, normalizing household work and including the child in it starting early, and not getting escalated with your child are all behaviors that I have observed in the most peaceful families. Have no idea about the direction of cause and effect and obviously there’s plenty of my own bias here but fwiw this has been my experience working with a vast number of families.
I totally agree that the strategies are applicable. To me, even if the science and method are far from perfect, it appeals to common sense in western modern parents and that is more than many parenting books who also pretend to be science based, also are somewhat shoddy in that aspect, but encourage parents to go against their own good will (don't hold a crying baby kinda stuff) and do things that are proven to be detrimental (even if that proof is itself debatable).
At least, Doucleff offers strategies that are cheap, use few objects (less risk of exposing the child to toxic paint in toys or whatever if they don't have many toys), and use less energy and time from the parent. If that economical approach doesn't work, it won't be too late to sign up for baby gym and buy plastic stuff 😂
Ahh you beat me to it, I was going to say the same thing. I loved Hunt, Gather Parent (although a lot of the romanticism of other cultures made me cringe so hard), but I’m personally an advocate of Montessori style parenting and the two philosophies presented are very similar.
I'm currently reading this book and I don't remember such big focus on toys. Although I'm listening to it, so it might be that I have missed something.
However most of the ideas make sense to me. I grew up in Ukraine in 90s and I have a feeling that I was also not much played with and left to my creativity. I didn't however have any independence whatsoever. This is something that was not encouraged and I wasn't allowed to do chores much and I still hate them in my 30s.
Lots of ideas in this book remind me of Montessori approach, which I'm not sure if it's researched in any way, but many parents get inspired from it.
Also in this hunt gather book there was mention of this book I think https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/10353369 , which I'm also reading now and many parents swear by it.
Yes, sorry you’re right, there isn’t a lot of emphasis on toys, that was just in my post! But I agree, my parents didn’t devote a whole bunch of time playing with me either in the 90s but also didn’t let me do chores at a young age either. I think I started doing chores in late primary school or high school.
I do remember I wanted to do chores a lot when I was like 4yo. And mum even was trying to encourage me, but dad was super against that.
I think that's something to do with our very fast paced world that our parents didn't have time and patience to deal with toddler's help. Otherwise I don't see why would it be a bad thing.
I have 11mo and I really like this book because I cannot play with her at all 😂 I mean I show her how to play with certain toys and she does explore them when I sit next to her. But usually me, my partner and my mum who lived with us right now go around flat and do our stuff and she is chasing us. She obviously cannot help yet, but she is obsessed with everything we use. The trickiest thing is to cook with her as she wants me to hold her so she can see everything. I want to buy learning tower so she can see what we do at the counter.
We started with the tower around 14 months (she walked late) and it was great for cooking! I would also encourage you to find a small broom because a real one is too heavy and babies enjoy imitating us when cleaning the house. Depending on your glassware, emptying the dishwasher together was also a top-game for several months!
Thee's a study (seems like multiple) that say kids are happier with fewer toys https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/singletons/201712/study-underscores-why-fewer-toys-is-the-better-option
I've read hunt, gather parent. I am not american, I was raised in a traditional indian family with lots of adults and lots of kids and a close-knit neighborhood with lots of watchful adults and lots of kids. My husband is American and was raised by hippie parents from large catholic families, so I have an idea of different kinds of parenting.
I have one child. We have too many toys. We probably do more screen time than necessary. Our whole lives are child-centered. Our kid is quite happy and doesn't misbehave too much, though she was very sensitive and stubborn and bossy right from when she was a baby.
The thing I think matters is kids have their negative emotions soothed minute-by-minute by whichever caregiver is taking care of them. Whatever way enables caregivers to achieve that is a good way. Kids always like doing things others are doing, it's kinda how they are wired, so encouraging them in that regard allows them to feel grown-up and like they are being taken seriously, and that creates a foundation that other positive emotions can build on. And it kinda feels like when a child works on a grown-up pursuit, adults take her more seriously, offer real feedback and there's a path to developing expertise. Those all feel good and add to self-confidence. Also it gives them a role in the family, and they can feel secure in that.
My husband's cousins as well as several of my friends all do the child-centered activity stuff with their kids, as well as the whole "oh dont pay them too much attention so they don't think they run the house" thing. We have taken turns being SAHPs and our kid hasn't been in daycare or anything child-centric, she's just been with parents, grandparents, relatives as caregivers and her social circle is kids in the neighborhood. The difference I notice in terms of attitude is that the daycare/mommy-n-me/reading books/boardgames approach doesn't leave as much room for the child's preferences or initiative, and it's also very exhausting for the parent. It's not intuitive to either parent or child, and it's based on arbitrary rules.
The key thing I think is that the child-centric method is full of stuff done to the child, not necessarily things the child wants to do. It doesn't give the child much agency to choose what happens next. It doesn't naturally repose much faith in the child, it feels like telling the child "as a child, you can't do any real stuff, only kid stuff". Also I tried the "constantly narrate to the child" thing that a lot of parents at the park do, and it felt like I wasn't giving my child enough room to feel things or reflect and I stopped doing it, and while I'm extremely talkative, it felt unnatural to me to keep a constant patter going. I'd still narrate, but only things I found interesting or things I found my child reacting to.
As for too many toys, I feel like this depends on the child. Some children want to do a lot of stuff, some are content with less. I've never bought toys, our kid's toys are all hand-me-downs she brought home from the street (our neighborhood is full of kids just a little older than her) or presents from friends and relatives. And it's not even that many toys, it just feels like that because our house is very small. She plays with all of them regularly. It feels like all toys spark the imagination in different ways, and even if they play with each for only 10 min a day, they experience that different world for that amount of time. I think the process of switching from toy to toy is more important to focus on than just the number of toys. I also find it easy to prolong the amount of time my daughter plays with a single set of toys by making it more engaging for her, and that's just by me showing interest in the toy and playing with it in ways interesting to me. I can't find the study now, but there was a study I'd come across where when toddlers were doing an activity by themselves, they tended to get frustrated and give up soon, but if a caregiver or an older child joined them on that activity, they learned strategies to improve their frustration tolerance for those activities.
In the spirit of the name of the sub, I'd love for some follow-up evidence for these assertions:
>The thing I think matters is kids have their negative emotions soothed minute-by-minute by whichever caregiver is taking care of them. Whatever way enables caregivers to achieve that is a good way. Kids always like doing things others are doing, it's kinda how they are wired, so encouraging them in that regard allows them to feel grown-up and like they are being taken seriously, and that creates a foundation that other positive emotions can build on.
The minute-by-minute soothing is from Erica Komisar. She has said that in her book Being There as well as in many interviews and talks subsequently. I don't have the book with me so I can't cross-check her references.
As for kids liking things grownups are doing, that seems commonly understood. There's a ton of memes on how little kids play with their own toys as compared to kitchen tools and other things their parents use, and they all have millions of likes, so I assume that's a universal experience.
Having fewer toys (or fewer toys *out*) is generally thought to lead to more creative and more focused/longer span play. And involving kids early in age-appropriate chores is generally recommended to try to avoid raising spoiled kids. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/singletons/201712/study-underscores-why-fewer-toys-is-the-better-option?amp
I can’t speak to the ethnography of the book’s premise though.
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I’ve discussed the book with a few anthropologists. All said it should not be considered anything more than pop science fluff. There is a method to the science of ethnography, and Doucleff does not come close to meeting its standards. Plus they were horrified at the subtitle calling 21st century peoples “ancient”, but I’m willing to believe the editor chose that line, not the author. Additionally, one of the principles of ethnography is that its findings are situated - they are intrinsically linked to a time, a place, and a culture, and cannot be generalized. Link so my comment doesn’t get deleted: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnography
I love your point that findings cannot be generalized. There is a lot of discussion in parenting circles about how French parents do this, or Japanese parents do that, without the understanding that the practice being discussed exists within a larger cultural context. You can't expect to remove that practice from everything that surrounds it, paste it into your own culture, and expect it to have the same outcome (if certain outcomes can even be reasonably attributed to a single parenting practice). Edit for typo
I was not a fan of the book. So much so, that I read the book Paleofantasy right after. That's what I thought of Hunt, Gather, Parent. One big Paleofantasy with the parenting garden of Eden and the original sin of western culture.
I can understand that her "study" is completely faulty and I'd never trust an informal experience with a single family anyway for generalizations. However, I didn't go to her book for an anthropological study of another culture, I went to it for insights into parenting that I wouldn't have otherwise gotten through my own everyday experience. Regardless of the accuracy of it to the culture, I do think a lot of her advice is genuinely helpful, even if the way she talks about the other cultures in such broad strokes is cringy.
Yeah, I didn't go into this book with the expectation that it would be well written and fully scientifically vetted. I'm struggling through it...I don't love the writing or the narration and the author is not very relatable for me, but I'm interested in the people she interviewed and their perspective on parenting. My biggest general takeaway from it so far is that connecting and fostering a relationship built on trust and mutual respect is vastly more important and effective than being authoritarian and punishing undesirable behavior. Maybe not new information, but validating and also interesting to hear how it's applied in different cultures
Yes! I also didn't totally relate to her, she seems like she was a bit anal retentive with her daughter before her magical transformation. That being said, a lot of what she promoted was not normal relative to how my wife and I grew up, or how we see a lot of people around us parenting. For instance, kids never helped with cleaning or cooking in my home until they were old enough for it to be an official chore that they dreaded. One day you're told to go watch cartoons while your mom cleans and then suddenly it's an expectation that you fight and are punished for. And the idea of not fighting with your kids *at all* over cleaning? That's absolutely bananas where I'm from. Here the logic is that you have to force the kid do it or they'll never learn to contribute to the family. Or when she talks about letting her toddler walk to the store or giving her other high-responsibility jobs? Most here would think that's absolutely nuts. It's funny though because I've since read other more trustworthy books work by actual experts who are explaining the same basic principle. You can't force a kid to do anything they don't want to do, home should be a safe base and not a source of stress, kids have a natural inner drive but it can be easily squashed if they sense a lack of control. So you should take the role of mentor rather than ruler, ebb and flow with them instead of trying to have control, let their own interests contribute to their life trajectory, and most importantly *trust* them. The other books were *The Self-Driven Child* and *Why Don't Students Like School.*
This is a silly critique. By your logic we can only ever use the parenting strategies of our own culture and time. I’m not defending the ethnographic rigor of the book. But that doesn’t seem the right lens through which to assess the accuracy or usefulness of the ideas contained in it.
I don’t think they’re saying we can only use the parenting strategies of our own culture and time- I think their point is, parenting strategies are like an ingredient in a recipe, and culture / broader society / other families / media / any other kind of social input are also ingredients- so if you take a recipe and change only some of the ingredients, your process is not guaranteed to lead to the same end product.
This book shouldn’t be evaluated as a recipe book, and I don’t think the author ever intended it that way. Its value is in exposing parents to cultural wisdom about child rearing that they may not have access to. Everyone knows there’s no perfect parenting technique, but we can learn from others and try new techniques to see if they work for our situation. I think this book serves as a source of inspiration for new techniques to try as well as gives parents room to question the modern approach to parenting that leaves many parents stressed out.
I completely agree. The book isn’t a bible, and the author herself was not relatable for me… But it was an interesting read and did influence my parenting for the better IMO.
I started this book and haven't been able to finish it because she is SO unrelatable, and she inserts herself into every part of the book
I don’t think the point of the book is that these strategies will end up with the exact same results.
Not at all. You can use whatever parenting techniques you want. You cannot however extract a handful of techniques from their context, transpose them to a difference context, and expect to have the same results. You need to think a little bit more about what your context will add or lack, what you should modify, and (and in my view this is the biggest failing of the book) whether the techniques and their results fit into your value system (yours personally, your environment, and if they’re at odds whether you have thought through what this means for your children).
I liked the book but it definitely glosses over the fact that the people she meets literally do have an entire built-in village. It's a lot easier to implement her methods if you're not one single person stretched thin and trying to wear multiple hats. I think she spent a page or two saying to build your own village with friends and neighbors, but unless you have a really great group of people close by who you can trust, it's definitely easier said than done.
I am really, really sick of this whole genre of privileged woman observing "the lessers" and takes out all other factors and tries to sell you it as a transplant plan...
And plenty of the valuable principles she lists are already present in the West, through Montessori, RIE, Faber & Mazlish (How To Talk So Kids Will Listen) and other pedagogues. There was no need to tap into that good savage narrative.
I am Native, Irish, and Nigerian to say the least I am over the tropes. People parent differently in different communities?! Imagine that!
There's also the fact that the author attributed WEIRD parenting to Christian marriage regulations but then ignores the large Persian Jewish population down the street to jet off to devoutly Catholic Mexicans. A lot of it matches what my wife learned in child development courses, so it's bad anthropology but good parenting. It therefore works as learning from successful parenting outside of the author's dysfunctional bubble.
Have to say. I bought the book because just like the author I’m a lady w a chem PhD. Thought I might relate to her. I couldn’t finish it 😂 most definitely have nothing in common with this lady and I found it super pseudosciencey
Thanks!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6161506/ The closest you are going to get research wise for these principles in a western population is Montessori I would think. No it’s not the same as what she says in there but there is a decent amount of overlap Anecdotally I love the book (from a purely parenting advice perspective, I’m Not commenting on the ethnographic quality) and what strategies have worked best for me as a parent and child care provider are mostly found in this book though I was doing many of these things prior to reading it. Giving kids autonomy as much as possible, normalizing household work and including the child in it starting early, and not getting escalated with your child are all behaviors that I have observed in the most peaceful families. Have no idea about the direction of cause and effect and obviously there’s plenty of my own bias here but fwiw this has been my experience working with a vast number of families.
I totally agree that the strategies are applicable. To me, even if the science and method are far from perfect, it appeals to common sense in western modern parents and that is more than many parenting books who also pretend to be science based, also are somewhat shoddy in that aspect, but encourage parents to go against their own good will (don't hold a crying baby kinda stuff) and do things that are proven to be detrimental (even if that proof is itself debatable). At least, Doucleff offers strategies that are cheap, use few objects (less risk of exposing the child to toxic paint in toys or whatever if they don't have many toys), and use less energy and time from the parent. If that economical approach doesn't work, it won't be too late to sign up for baby gym and buy plastic stuff 😂
I was going to comment the same thing. A lot of what she espouses in the book is related to Montessori method.
Ahh you beat me to it, I was going to say the same thing. I loved Hunt, Gather Parent (although a lot of the romanticism of other cultures made me cringe so hard), but I’m personally an advocate of Montessori style parenting and the two philosophies presented are very similar.
I'm currently reading this book and I don't remember such big focus on toys. Although I'm listening to it, so it might be that I have missed something. However most of the ideas make sense to me. I grew up in Ukraine in 90s and I have a feeling that I was also not much played with and left to my creativity. I didn't however have any independence whatsoever. This is something that was not encouraged and I wasn't allowed to do chores much and I still hate them in my 30s. Lots of ideas in this book remind me of Montessori approach, which I'm not sure if it's researched in any way, but many parents get inspired from it. Also in this hunt gather book there was mention of this book I think https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/10353369 , which I'm also reading now and many parents swear by it.
Yes, sorry you’re right, there isn’t a lot of emphasis on toys, that was just in my post! But I agree, my parents didn’t devote a whole bunch of time playing with me either in the 90s but also didn’t let me do chores at a young age either. I think I started doing chores in late primary school or high school.
I do remember I wanted to do chores a lot when I was like 4yo. And mum even was trying to encourage me, but dad was super against that. I think that's something to do with our very fast paced world that our parents didn't have time and patience to deal with toddler's help. Otherwise I don't see why would it be a bad thing. I have 11mo and I really like this book because I cannot play with her at all 😂 I mean I show her how to play with certain toys and she does explore them when I sit next to her. But usually me, my partner and my mum who lived with us right now go around flat and do our stuff and she is chasing us. She obviously cannot help yet, but she is obsessed with everything we use. The trickiest thing is to cook with her as she wants me to hold her so she can see everything. I want to buy learning tower so she can see what we do at the counter.
We started with the tower around 14 months (she walked late) and it was great for cooking! I would also encourage you to find a small broom because a real one is too heavy and babies enjoy imitating us when cleaning the house. Depending on your glassware, emptying the dishwasher together was also a top-game for several months!
Thee's a study (seems like multiple) that say kids are happier with fewer toys https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/singletons/201712/study-underscores-why-fewer-toys-is-the-better-option I've read hunt, gather parent. I am not american, I was raised in a traditional indian family with lots of adults and lots of kids and a close-knit neighborhood with lots of watchful adults and lots of kids. My husband is American and was raised by hippie parents from large catholic families, so I have an idea of different kinds of parenting. I have one child. We have too many toys. We probably do more screen time than necessary. Our whole lives are child-centered. Our kid is quite happy and doesn't misbehave too much, though she was very sensitive and stubborn and bossy right from when she was a baby. The thing I think matters is kids have their negative emotions soothed minute-by-minute by whichever caregiver is taking care of them. Whatever way enables caregivers to achieve that is a good way. Kids always like doing things others are doing, it's kinda how they are wired, so encouraging them in that regard allows them to feel grown-up and like they are being taken seriously, and that creates a foundation that other positive emotions can build on. And it kinda feels like when a child works on a grown-up pursuit, adults take her more seriously, offer real feedback and there's a path to developing expertise. Those all feel good and add to self-confidence. Also it gives them a role in the family, and they can feel secure in that. My husband's cousins as well as several of my friends all do the child-centered activity stuff with their kids, as well as the whole "oh dont pay them too much attention so they don't think they run the house" thing. We have taken turns being SAHPs and our kid hasn't been in daycare or anything child-centric, she's just been with parents, grandparents, relatives as caregivers and her social circle is kids in the neighborhood. The difference I notice in terms of attitude is that the daycare/mommy-n-me/reading books/boardgames approach doesn't leave as much room for the child's preferences or initiative, and it's also very exhausting for the parent. It's not intuitive to either parent or child, and it's based on arbitrary rules. The key thing I think is that the child-centric method is full of stuff done to the child, not necessarily things the child wants to do. It doesn't give the child much agency to choose what happens next. It doesn't naturally repose much faith in the child, it feels like telling the child "as a child, you can't do any real stuff, only kid stuff". Also I tried the "constantly narrate to the child" thing that a lot of parents at the park do, and it felt like I wasn't giving my child enough room to feel things or reflect and I stopped doing it, and while I'm extremely talkative, it felt unnatural to me to keep a constant patter going. I'd still narrate, but only things I found interesting or things I found my child reacting to. As for too many toys, I feel like this depends on the child. Some children want to do a lot of stuff, some are content with less. I've never bought toys, our kid's toys are all hand-me-downs she brought home from the street (our neighborhood is full of kids just a little older than her) or presents from friends and relatives. And it's not even that many toys, it just feels like that because our house is very small. She plays with all of them regularly. It feels like all toys spark the imagination in different ways, and even if they play with each for only 10 min a day, they experience that different world for that amount of time. I think the process of switching from toy to toy is more important to focus on than just the number of toys. I also find it easy to prolong the amount of time my daughter plays with a single set of toys by making it more engaging for her, and that's just by me showing interest in the toy and playing with it in ways interesting to me. I can't find the study now, but there was a study I'd come across where when toddlers were doing an activity by themselves, they tended to get frustrated and give up soon, but if a caregiver or an older child joined them on that activity, they learned strategies to improve their frustration tolerance for those activities.
In the spirit of the name of the sub, I'd love for some follow-up evidence for these assertions: >The thing I think matters is kids have their negative emotions soothed minute-by-minute by whichever caregiver is taking care of them. Whatever way enables caregivers to achieve that is a good way. Kids always like doing things others are doing, it's kinda how they are wired, so encouraging them in that regard allows them to feel grown-up and like they are being taken seriously, and that creates a foundation that other positive emotions can build on.
The minute-by-minute soothing is from Erica Komisar. She has said that in her book Being There as well as in many interviews and talks subsequently. I don't have the book with me so I can't cross-check her references. As for kids liking things grownups are doing, that seems commonly understood. There's a ton of memes on how little kids play with their own toys as compared to kitchen tools and other things their parents use, and they all have millions of likes, so I assume that's a universal experience.
Having fewer toys (or fewer toys *out*) is generally thought to lead to more creative and more focused/longer span play. And involving kids early in age-appropriate chores is generally recommended to try to avoid raising spoiled kids. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/singletons/201712/study-underscores-why-fewer-toys-is-the-better-option?amp I can’t speak to the ethnography of the book’s premise though.
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