The Evolved Nest: Nature’s Way Of Raising Children / Darcia Narvaez + G.A. Bradshaw

Darcia Narvaez returns to the podcast, along with co-author G.A. Bradshaw, to discuss their new book, The Evolved Nest: Nature's Way of Raising Children and Creating Connected Communities, published by North Atlantic Books.

Over the years, Professor Narvaez has appeared on this podcast to discuss various aspects of the evolved nest: an evolutionary set of environmental and relational conditions required for the wholistic development of human beings, from the earliest stages of pre-natal development to adulthood. Her work has gathered and woven various threads, from developmental psychology, biology, anthropology, and social analysis, into a tapestry of what human flourishing requires.

By drawing on the ancestral legacies of child-rearing and broader nesting practices and contemporary breakthroughs in neurology and developmental psychology, we can better understand how integral intergenerational cultural practices bear on the complex development of human beings. But, what of our animal kin? What are their evolved nests, and what lessons can we learn from them? How does a broken or intact human evolved nest impact and interact with the evolved nests of other animals? 

With Gay Bradshaw’s groundbreaking work with the diagnosis of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in African elephants (which she discusses in this interview), “a new paradigm of understanding, trans-species psychology,” emerged, which is “the scientific recognition that animals share common brain structures and capacities with humans that govern thinking, feeling, dreaming, aspirations, and consciousness.” Bradshaw determined something that many traditional human cultures have understood and considered: human moral development is no different from animal moral development, and both require effectively the same conditions for individual and collective flourishing. 

Over the course of ten chapters of their new book The Evolved Nest, Narvaez and Bradshaw describe “different animal’s parenting model[s], sharing species-specific adaptations that allow each to thrive in their evolved nests.” Some examples include: how wolves build an internal moral compass; how beavers foster a spirit of play in their children; how octopuses develop emotional and social intelligence; and how, when, and whether (or not) brown bears decide to have children. 

For me, this discussion with these two women is a dialogue on non-dual consciousness and how the ecological and the social are the same. The brokenness of modern human societies bleeds into all systems of life, and while it may be difficult to imagine returning to lifeways that regenerate the integral components of the evolved nests of human and more-than-human beings, still, we can look to our animal kin and see ourselves—our pains and joys, our love and traumas, our brokenness and healing. Whatever the path to ecological regeneration may be at this late stage of biospheric collapse, it will involve looking to our more-than-human kin to recognize ourselves in them, to see what has been lost, and what yet can be reclaimed.

Bios:

G. A. Bradshaw, PhD, is the founder and director of The Kerulos Center for Nonviolence. Her diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder in free-living elephants launched the field of trans-species psychology. She holds doctorate degrees in ecology and psychology and a master’s in geophysics and was a Fellow at the National Science Foundation National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.

Darcia Narvaez, PhD, MDiv, is Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. Her earlier careers include professional musician, business owner, classroom music teacher, classroom Spanish teacher and seminarian, among others. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Educational Research Association and former editor of the Journal of Moral Education. Narvaez has written numerous publications, including more than 20 books. She has given presentations, lectures and workshops in 23 countries; was recently named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and in a 2020 analysis, emerged in the top 2% of scientists worldwide. Narvaez is the founder of The Evolved Nest Initiative, focused on developing appropriate baselines for lifelong human wellness by meeting the biological needs of infants.

Episode Notes:

Purchase a copy of The Evolved Nest from Bookshop.

Learn more about the authors’ work at their websites: https://darcianarvaez.com / https://gabradshaw.com

Learn more about the evolved nest and watch the short film Breaking the Cycle.

The music featured is by Waxie.