Why It Takes a Village: Ruth Mace on Evolution, Family, and Modern Parenting

In this episode I’m speaking with Professor Ruth Mace, an evolutionary anthropologist whose work focuses on how human behaviour, family systems, and cooperation have been shaped by evolution.

She has spent much of her career studying how people make decisions about family, reproduction, and social life in different environments — and what that can tell us about how humans have adapted to live.

Her research sits right at the intersection of biology, culture, and everyday life, which makes her perspective especially interesting when we think about how modern lifestyles compare to the environments humans evolved in.

In the episode we cover child rearing, cooperation, family systems and what learnings we can draw from our evolutionary past.