An NPR Science Desk correspondent challenges the misleading child-rearing practices commonly recommended to parents, outlining alternatives grounded in international ancestral traditions that are being used effectively throughout the modern world.

"In some parts of northwestern Nigeria, mothers studiously avoid making eye contact with their babies. Some Chinese parents go out of their way to seek confrontation with their toddlers. Japanese parents almost universally co-sleep with their infants, sometimes continuing to share a bed with them until age ten. Yet all these parents are as likely as Americans to have loving relationships with happy children. If these practices seem bizarre, or their...