Keynote Speaker Michaeleen Doucleff
Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans
Bestselling author, NPR correspondent, and Peabody Award-Winner Michaeleen Doucleff, Ph.D., is an award-winning journalist, bestselling author, and a prominent voice on parenting and child psychology.
Her book Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans explores parenting strategies from families in three communities: Maya families in Mexico, Inuit families above the Arctic Circle, and Hadzabe families in Tanzania. The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and USA Today bestseller introduces a highly appealing idea for a world where frantic over-parenting has become the norm, proposing that our ancestors may hold the answers to how to master parenting where our modern theories have failed.
Curious to learn about more effective parenting approaches, Doucleff lived with families and observed their techniques firsthand, applying them to her daughter with striking results. She talks to psychologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists, and sociologists and explains how these strategies impact children’s mental health and development.
Hunt, Gather, Parent helps us rethink how we relate to our children and reveals a universal parenting paradigm adapted for American families. By widening the parenting lens, Doucleff helps parents understand vitally different ways of relating to children, disciplining, and having fun together.
She has a bachelor’s degree in biology from Caltech, a doctorate in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree in viticulture and enology from the University of California, Davis.