It is pertinent here to digress a little to register the evolutionary root of the childhood stage and get a sense of the immensely organic linkage of the evolutionary path of humans and the (unique and long) childhood among humans. The level of complexity of the brain is such that it cannot take place in the womb and must occur outside of it because the size of the head at the time of birth is limited by the bipedal (walking on two legs) nature of humans; needless to stress that bipedalism is a very unique evolutionary advantage for us (over other animals and nature).
Interestingly, the childhood stage has several practical benefits to parents as well as children. Let us look at the benefits for both parents and children.
Benefits for parents
Surprisingly, the childhood stage significantly reduces the demands on parents in raising children and derives the pride and pleasure of adding their ‘unique social imprint’ to the (already inherited) biological imprint in their children. Five key benefits enjoyed by parents due to the childhood stage are:
1. Enculture children to the larger society
The childhood-centred pattern of human growth creates the opportunity of nurturance in older and other members of family and kinship. It is central to social and cultural education; hildren may also feel uniquely bonded to their families and caretakers and a personalized two-way bond of affection is formed for life between the children and the non-parent care givers.
This is accomplished by living in extended family groups—two or three brothers and sisters, their spouses, children and parents— and sharing child care.
It is in this light that we can better understand the reasons of creating the multi-layered social organization of humans.
2. Lower the ‘cost and risk’ of raising children
Despite being in significant growth phase, children require lesser amount of food compared to adults (but calorific value and protein needs are no less). A 5-year-old child of average
size, for example, requires nearly 25% less dietary energy per day for maintenance and growth than a 10-year-old juvenile. The brain and body growth do not overlap and that relaxes the
demands on parents in terms of food for children in this stage.
Childhood stage also reduces the risk of survival and growth due to the ill-effects of factors such as diseases, lack of adequate quantity of food, brief bouts of poor socialisation etc. because the brain is plastic and constantly reconfiguring itself in this phase of growth. For instance, very broadly, the ill-effects of malnutrition have a higher chance of reversal among children compared to among adults.
3. Better quality of social, personal and professional life
The longer period of growth takes the pressure off time and money investments on the development of children. Parents can better plan birth of children to best suit their personal and
professional exigencies. Mention may also be made of the longer period of joy of parents – childhood phase is the best period for parenting; everything about children is sheer joy and adorable – behaviour, looks, ‘size’, curiosity, playfulness and such others.
4. Custom adaptation
Human children are well adapted to their environment – social, physical and cultural – due to the longer period of childhood after infancy.
This is a significant advantage in the sense that humans have been able to raise a greater percentage of offspring to adulthood than any other species even in harsh conditions (a benefit of better adapted children).
5. Reproductive agility
A childhood stage may have originally evolved as a means by which the mother, the father and other kin could provision dependent offspring with food and reduce the period of infancy stage of mother-centric attention. After weaning the infant, the mother is freed from demands of nursing, and starts ovulating (release of egg by the ovary which is inhibited due to nursing). This decreases the inter-birth interval and increases reproductive fitness.
Incidentally, the infancy (high dependency) period for each of the ape species is longer than that for humans and mothers among apes remain reproductively constrained.
Benefits for children
To be brief, the long childhood stage among humans is a prerequisite because it may be nearly impossible to organically develop the human brain in a shorter time scale. What is the evidence that suggests the impossibility of a faster brain development? For instance, human newborns use 87% of their resting metabolic rate for brain growth and functioning (and only the minuscule rest is used for other biological processes and development), a figure that declines to 44% by age 5 and 25% in adulthood; survival will be at stake if brain demands more from the metabolic activities during childhood.
Indeed, there are several advantages for children due to the childhood stage and some are listed here under:
- There is a socio-economic world to be initiated into, as crafted by humans over the evolutionary path, and childhood is the reason for the possibility of slow and steady pace of initiation.
- Children can easily learn and be ready to internalise any language, culture, religion, social mores and practices they are exposed to – the long childhood makes it far easier
- The tentativeness and exploratory behaviours of children is a critical factor in the individualistic development of every human child – the most powerful driver of evolution of humans. Indeed, child is the father of man and childhood is the driver of change and growth.
- Childhood is also an amazing period of informal learning on way to enter the formal learning system; the formal education system transformed the pace and reach of development across the globe and childhood is a critical component of the education system.
- Interestingly, play in childhood is the world’s best laboratory for ‘simplified simulation of the complex situations and realities’ of adult life; play and childhood are two sides of the same coin and make childhood an extremely powerful learning phase of the stages in human development.
A word of caution – adults should not try to extend childhood of their children by continuing to treat their juvenile or adolescent children as though they were still in the childhood phase. Obviously, the other side is equally true – we should not rush children out of childhood.
