In many industrialised societies, that model has largely disappeared. Its closest replacement, paid childcare, can create its own sorts of stresses, including financial.
Today, many families work a “double shift” – caregiving and working outside the home. In the US, more than five-in-10 households with children today are dual-income, while in the EU, more than six-in-10 are. Gender disparities also persist, with the majority of caregiving and household labor usually still falling on women – making mothers, in particular, feel more tired.
Compared to foraging cultures, it is also more common to have more children with smaller age gaps. Anthropologists, including Hrdy have found that, in foraging cultures, babies were normally spaced around four years apart; it was when societies became agricultural and settled that mothers began to have more children, more quickly. So for our foraging ancestors, having only one baby or toddler to look after at a time may too have helped with fatigue levels.
As a result, it’s likely the changes in sleep and lifestyle that have led today’s parents to feel so overwhelmed and sleep-deprived, not necessarily lack of sleep itself.
Still, if anything, some experts argue that we’ve evolved to be resilient to the strain of sleep deprivation during early parenthood, because it’s an evolutionary trade-off for our species to survive – it’s the culture around us that has made this resilience harder to uphold.
“We evolved to be adaptable, to have flexibility, to be able to manage crises, to be able to manage different life history patterns,” says Samson. “There are just going to be times in life where it’s worth it. You’re shifting the gear from ‘longevity’ to a mission-critical task in the present. And I think reproduction is one of those things.”
So, are there times in life when it’s okay to lose sleep?
“From the evolutionary anthropology perspective – it’s 100% yes.”
