Sexual equality was also manifest in parenting. Men in primitive societies spent more time with their children than many fathers do now.11 Child-rearing was a responsibility shared by the whole tribe: infants were held by everybody and sometimes even breastfed by different women. ‘Such early experiences,’ notes one anthropologist, ‘help explain why children in foraging societies tend to acquire working models of their world as a “giving place”.’12 Where modern-day parents warn their children not to talk to strangers, in prehistory we were raised on a diet of trust.
