Why do children misbehave?

And why do parents punish them for it?

As with most aspects of human behaviour, evolution has the answer, and yet again I’m indebted to the inestimable Steven Pinker for illuminating it in “The Better Angels of our Nature”.

He charts the history of violence against children, and concludes that mental and physical torture of children “for their own good” was common until very recently.  Starting from the evolutionary axiom that our behaviour is conditioned by the survival of our genes,  it seems odd that we should attack our offspring who represent our only chance of passing on those genes.  Look a little deeper and the answer is clear and simple. It is certainly in the parent’s interest that the child survives, but the best chance the parent has to pass on its genes is to have many children survive. The parent must therefore share out its time and resources with the children it has now and those it might have in the future. 

The interest of each child however is quite different. The child is in direct competition with its siblings for the food and protection of the parent and is instinctively driven to demand more than the “fair share” which the parent wishes to give.

This conflict between parent and child is unavoidable and can only be resolved by constant negotiation in which each side will use whatever arguments or tricks it can to prevail. 

Why has it taken us so long to understand this simple truth?

What's the risk?

Reading Steven Pinker’s “The Better Angels of our Nature” is a lesson in the life affirming properties of good statistics. His subject – violence –is one that arouses strong emotions, feelings that constantly lead us to conclusions that are wildly inaccurate. The danger of terrorism is a good example. He almost gets emotional stating the case that the threat of terrorism in America is tiny compared to almost all other dangers to life and limb.

“The number of deaths from terrorist attacks is so small that even minor measures to avoid them can increase the risk of dying.” He quotes a study that concludes that 1500 Americans died in car accidents because, fearing terrorist attacks, they chose to drive rather than fly. Less than 3000 people died in the 11/9 attacks (I refuse to use the illogical US method of abbreviating dates) yet every year more than 40,000 Americans die in traffic accidents, 20,000 in falls, 18,000 in homicides etc.

His thesis is counter-intuitive: that we are now enjoying the least violent period in human history. On page 235 (of 1025 – it’s a hefty read) he lists the “twenty  worst things that people have done to each other” and most of them we’ve never heard of.  Top of the list is the An Lushan revolt in 8^th century China which,  over a period of 8 years,  killed 40 million people –two thirds of the country’s population and a sixth of the world’s. Its modern equivalent would be 430 million.

If you think our society is violent just imagine that 8 years ago, ( in 2007, the year I think of as the “year of the mud” because of awful effect the wet summer had on festivals) an inner city riot escalated into a full scale rebellion, which has just petered out.  In this short period 40 million of us have died, and only 20 million remain.

The worst the 20^th century could manage was the second world war which including, as all the figures quoted do, deaths from starvation etc. killed 55 million.  Since then, according to Pinker, it’s been downhill all the way.

Thanks to modern statistics we can now get a very clear picture of what has actually been going on since life began. Even taking the view that there is no such thing as absolute truth, simply by collecting information and comparing it with other information we can arrive at conclusions which are much closer to absolute truth than were possible in previous centuries.  You don’t, for example, have to “believe” in evolution; the build up of statistical information shows quite clearly that it is the best explanation for the development of life.

The problem is our brains have not evolved to adapt to this situation. It was instant emotional reaction which enabled the first homo sapiens to survive in small bands of hunter-gatherers, and George W Bush’s “War on Terror” is a symptom of the damage this mindset can do in the 21^st century. To quote Pinker: “The 9/11 (11/9!) attacks sent the United States into two wars that have taken far more American and British lives than the hijackers did, to say nothing of the lives of Afghans and Iraqis. “

Why have we permitted our media to behave as if this accumulation of knowledge didn’t exist? Why do so many parents think that their children are at great risk from strangers when the statistics show that family members are a far greater danger? Why do people think that old ladies are in constant danger of physical attack when the danger is much greater to young men? The answer to these and many similar questions is that the media get more money by exaggerating our instinctive fears than be giving us the facts.