Angela Braden, co-founder/director of the Evolved Nurturing Initiative, ENI, a Kindred World initiative, and I sit down to talk about how our species evolved to nurture our young, and why our society should return to our heritage of compassionate and caring parenting.
We discuss:
– the intense pressure from our culture to act in ways that are discordant with maternal instincts and the way humans evolved to treat babies
– the importance of allowing women adequate bonding time with their babies postpartum, and how we can incorporate our children into our work lives
– pulling in community to help support mothers, parents, and children, for optimal psychological and emotional help
– the father’s role in providing nurturing care
– why we should educate women and men before they have children on babies’ intense needs in the early years
– “high needs” babies and how they seem to need even more nurturing (but all babies need lots of compassionate care!)
– how the Evolved Nurturing Initiative is educating parents/caregivers on babies’ biological needs; and how the meeting of these needs influences the neurological and emotional development of our children
Photo by Shutterstock/Lopolo