I recently read this article in The Guardian. The article it's about a study made of an African tribe, called the Akas, by Barry Hewlett, an American anthropologist, and how men of this tribe have different behaviours, compared to western society men. It refers specifically to how Aka men look after their children, even letting them suck their niples.
The Akas is a tribe, of about 20.000 people (total population), of central Africa. Barry Hewlett, the anthropologist, lived among them for a time, to observe and study their way of life more closely.
He saw that Aka men were more trusting and sharing fathers that western men. He noticed these in some behaviours that Aka men showed when they had to look after their children and in the way roles changed for women and men (they are more flexible).
Aka fathers are near their children 47% of the time. This is one of the reasons why Fathers Direct, an organism that looks forward to increase presence of fathers in raising their children, chose Aka as the best fathers in the world. This is the principal reason why they publish an article about this tribe, alongside they tell us more about their way of life.
So, in this tribe you can actually see a more egalitarian parenting, where both women and men share roles. But not just in parenting, they also share roles in other aspects of their life, their roles are interchangeable. For example, when women hunt, men take care of their children, and when men are cooking, women are deciding where to put the next camp, and vice versa. Although, women are the principal caregivers, roles can interchange because of their flexibility, something that just doesn't happen in our society. When Aka fathers change their roles, they don't lose status. This is possible because there's no stigma in different jobs. Women can hunt even when they're pregnant, being even better hunters than some men. But Hewlett makes it very clear that this is no feminist paradise: although tasks and decision-making are shared, in the community he studied, all top jobs, like the leader (kombeti), the elephant hunter(tumba) and the top healer (nganga), where reserved for men.
Nevertheless, Hewlett thinks the Akas parenting way is a role model for western societies, specially because of the physical closeness that exists between parents and their children.
This article enhances the differences in parenting between western societies and Akas culture. In western societies we think that if a father doesn't have enough time to be with his children, it doesn't matter, as long as the few time they spend together is "quality time". Hewlett thinks this is not the right way of taking care and raising a child. After living alongside the Akas tribe, he learned that sometimes it's better just to spend a lot of time with children, rather than a few minutes called "quality time". The article mentions another lesson the Akas have for our society: that it's the importance of children, because they are gifts and people are very lucky to have them. They are not a burden, like parents sometimes feel.
Finally, in western societies some fathers think it's natural that their kids suck their niples, but others find it disgusting and think that it's child abuse. But in Akas tribe, fathers would count as child abuse leaving kids in a cot, instead of keeping them close. This shows cultural differences between this societies and the Akas tribe.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2005/jun/15/childrensservices.familyandrelationships
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