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Lead book review

Our long, vulnerable childhoods may be the key to our success

Could our long journey to adulthood actually be the key to our success, wonders Sam Leith

13 August 2022

9:00 AM

13 August 2022

9:00 AM

Growing Up Human: The Evolution of Childhood Brenna Hassett

Bloomsbury Sigma, pp.384, 17.99

The central question in Brenna Hassett’s book, put simply, is: why are our children so very useless for so very long? Or: ‘What is the possible adaptive value of teenagers?’ If we consider maturity, or adulthood, to be the point at which an animal can play its own role in the evolutionary process – i.e.

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