So we mammals have attachment and attachment is simply defined as the way a young child is dependent on an older individual to basically develop four S's. To be seen, To be safe, to be soothed, and to be secure. Those are the four S's of attachment.
And all mammals have attachment. We human beings have a very complex set of attachment which has some profound issues in terms of society. The work of Sarah Herdy, H-R-D-Y, an emeritus professor of anthropology from UC Davis, has demonstrated in a beautiful way in a book called Mothers and Others that the human family evolved dependent on a very unusual mammalian thing, very unusual, and that is called alloparenting. Alloparenting, A-L-L-O parenting. Allo means other.
And what it means is that we human beings... evolved as collaborative creatures in terms of the science of the greater good. We are fundamentally collaborative by how we evolved. We evolved when you have a baby, you share the caregiving, not just with your male partner if you have one, but with other males and other females.
Selective few others in the community are given the responsibility of caring for this precious gift you have. Now, you don't see dogs doing that, and you don't see mice doing that. doing that.
This is a very special human trait. You don't even see other apes doing that. Sarah Herdy argues in this beautiful way, and I was given the privilege of spending a week with her in a think tank thinking about these issues, she presents in this beautiful way the power that alloparenting had on allowing... us to develop the incredibly adaptive and collaborative nature that we have as human beings. I mean, look at us sitting in this room.
We are collaborating with language, we're collaborating with behaviors, we plan things together. We are unbelievably... tuned into the internal mental states of each other, this thing I call mind sight, it's fundamental to how we develop to know the internal subjective experience of another being. That's basically what is at the heart of being human.
And yet this collaborative nature doesn't really get supported in modern culture. We don't really support alloparenting. Much, really. We don't support kids in schools being collaborative.
If anything, what do we tell them to do? Race to the top. right, beat the other one out. We tell them what?
We say, get the best grade on the spelling bee, right? We say, get the best scores, get the best GPA, get the best SAT scores, go to the best college so you can get into the best graveyard. Right, I mean, that's kind of the nature of this competition, right? So now what happens with attachment in the early years is really important because infants depend on their caregivers avers, plural, to survive. But attachment doesn't go away.
Attachment is a lifelong process. So I have an attachment figure in my life. That's my wife.
You may have an attachment figure in your life, whether you're an adolescent or an adult. Someone you go to when you're... you're distressed. So they see your internal mental state, they don't just focus on your behavior.
That's what I mean by seeing. They keep you safe, meaning they will protect you from harm and they won't be a source of terror for you. If they are, they make a repair of that rupture.
They soothe you when you're distressed. So you're really out of sorts and you go to that person, they make you feel better. And overall, when you're with that person, you feel secure. Now ideally, and in 65% of the population, we have secure attachment as kids.
What happens when you're a kid moving into adolescence? What do you do with your attachment needs? You turn them toward your peers, which is a very natural, healthy thing to do.
Instead of turning only to your parents, you start turning toward your peers more. It doesn't mean you should exclude your parents totally. So it doesn't have to be at the extreme, but some parents freak out when their adolescent now is turning toward peers. It's very natural.
Why would it be natural to turn toward your peers as an adolescent? Because that's what you're going to depend on when you leave home. In fact, in the wild, if you're a mammal without an adolescent peer group, you are as good as dead. You're as good as dead if you don't have an adolescent peer group.
So now there's an upside and downside to everything, but let's talk about the downside, of course, is your parents are going to feel really sad that they're no longer in the role of being your primary caregiver. And you're going to start depending on people who may not have universal love for you, you know, endless love for you. They may not think you're crazy.
They're not going to make you oatmeal in the morning. You know, so this is a big change, you know. And you've got to learn to do that out in the world. But that's not going to happen when you're out in the world. So it's a form of training.
But the really big downside is that because membership with an adolescent peer group, even if it's just one other person, can feel a matter of life and death, because that's from millions and millions of years of evolution, are telling this adolescent, if I don't have at least one peer that I'm connected with, I'm going to die. So if there's a party going on, I go to my parents and I say, I need to go to this party. When you as an adult hear your adolescent saying that, when they say, I need, they really mean it. From millions of years of evolution, they're speaking to you. I need to belong to that group or I'm going to be dead.
Now you may go, that's so stupid. But it's not stupid, it's evolution. So when you understand that, it doesn't mean you let them go to the party, but you at least tune into their mental state.
If they say, I need this shoe to belong to all the kids who are wearing these shoes, and you don't want to buy that fancy shoe, it's okay, you don't have to buy it, but at least you can understand the feeling behind the incredible sense of life and deathness of it. Does that make sense? So having that perspective changes everything as an adult and even as an adolescent.
Because here's the downside of it, of course. You can sacrifice morality for membership. That membership can be so crucial in your bones, you need it, that a lot of people...
Probably the adults in this room go, yeah, I remember I did that, I remember I did that. You should see each other's faces, you're going, yeah, I did, you know. Because membership is a life and death issue and it can rise above morality.
So that's the downside. Now we have a name for that, it's called what? Peer pressure. That's what we call it. Giving up morality for membership is called peer pressure.
It's a natural downside of this change in the Olympic era. So what we wanna do is cultivate the upside. What's the upside?
The upside is when you develop social skills, skills during adolescence, your adulthood is going to be so much better. In fact, every research study done on happiness, we have our Christine Carter is our wonderful happiness expert on happiness. You can check me out on this, Christine.
Or longevity, or medical health, or mental health. What's the number one factor for all those studies? Supportive relationships.
Relationships, relationships, relationships. It's like the most important thing for mental health, for medical health, for longevity and happiness. So that's when you learn it. So adults need to honor this and realize this is what this limbic area is doing. It's saying, hey, no more oatmeal for me at home.
I'm going to get ready and find my oatmeal outside the house. I'm going to sow my wild oatmeal. That's what I'm going to do. And that's what they need to do. They need to do that.