Sublime

One was the fact that our father’s neocortex genes seem to be suppressed during development so that the neocortex we have is determined by our mother’s genes;

And that value kicks in early. Toddlers whose dads encouraged exploring (while setting limits) had better social and emotional skills twelve to eighteen months later.17

First, social, and hence brain, evolution may have been driven mainly by female interests.

being an involved dad creates a “dad brain” that replaces his single-man desires. He’ll experience a decrease in the testosterone previously used in the hunt for sex and recovery after rejection, and an increase in oxytocin emanating from the joys of loving and being loved by an infant who needs him.

The modern style of parenting is not just exhausting for adults; it is also based on assumptions about what children need to thrive that are not supported by evidence from our evolutionary past. For most of human history, people had lots of kids, and children hung out in intergenerational social groups in which they were not heavily supervised. You

Natural selection has made us a cultural species by altering our development in ways that (1) slowed the growth of our bodies through a shortened infancy and extended childhood but added a growth spurt in adolescence, and (2) altered neurological development in complex ways that make our brain advanced at birth yet both highly expandable and enduri