Babies start out life helpless and stay that way for a long time. They cannot walk, feed themselves or survive without an adult’s continued care. Our dependency timeline has no clear parallel elsewhere in the animal kingdom.
Unlike most mammals, whose young reach basic self-sufficiency within weeks or months, humans remain dependent for years. That helplessness may be central to understanding humanity.
And yet, in societies that prize independence and self-sufficiency, dependence is often treated as something negative to be overcome.
That framing, I argue as a scholar in developmental psychology, is overdue for a rethink.
Where humans fit on the spectrum
Animal newborns are classified on a spectrum of two poles: “altricial” and “precocial.” Altricial species are like rats, born in a large litter and with eyes and ears fused shut. They require intense parental care.
Precocial species are like horses, born as a singleton, and up and walking soon after birth. There are even “superprecocial” species, such as the megapodiidae birds that live and survive on their own immediately after hatching.
Human beings are difficult to capture as either altricial or precocial.
Overall, we are a precocial species, born with our eyes and ears open. But, in other ways, humans have evolved to become more altricial, especially in our motor development. In comparison, for example, chimpanzees reach motor milestones long before human babies do.
Humans stay dependent for an unusually long time, and retain juvenile features well beyond childhood and into adulthood. Our spine and head alignment, for instance, more closely resembles that of a juvenile chimpanzee than an adult one.
This kind of prolonged helplessness is special to us, and it complicates a common assumption about evolution: that it moves in a straight line toward greater independence and capability.
Why psychologists are paying attention
Evolutionary biologists and anthropologists have wondered whether babies’ evolved dependence explains parts of our social collaboration and cultural innovation. It’s only more recently that child psychologists have begun to examine helplessness itself as a developmental feature rather than a limitation.
Human infant helplessness has often been explained through the “obstetrical dilemma,” the idea that humans face an evolutionary trade-off: walking upright resulted in a narrower pelvis, while our large brains require babies to have large heads. This theory posits that, as a result, humans may have evolved to give birth earlier. But in evolution, even a trait that emerged for one reason can go on to have new consequences.
Child psychologists are now examining helplessness to understand issues such as how evolution shapes childhood and the role this trait plays in social learning.
There are even debates about whether helplessness helps babies build foundational knowledge the way training data shapes an AI system.
In my own research, I build on these ideas to develop a road map to integrating helplessness into future research. I see human infants as uniquely active — we have strong sensory systems paired with weak motor systems, which means we orient more easily to social stimuli — and relational, in that we are dependent on social relations to survive.
I also see helplessness as long-lasting, meaning we shouldn’t judge a baby only as a future adult but examine how adults keep features of childhood.
This road map can then be used to understand morality. My work on helplessness grew out of research on prosocial behaviours. In studying how helping behaviours develop in infancy, I wondered whether the role of helplessness, which requires that infants are the recipients of care, could explain aspects of how they learn to be caring.
If care is something infants first receive rather than give, then perhaps the capacity for empathy doesn’t emerge in spite of helplessness, but because of it.
Helplessness and dependence as weaknesses
When British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby coined the word “attachment” for attachment theory, he had considered using the word “dependence.” He did not do so because he was concerned about the term’s negative connotations.
The word “helplessness” shares those associations. But is there anything wrong with being dependent on others?
Feminist and Indigenous worldviews have placed far greater emphasis on the importance of dependence and interdependence. Most social and language learning happens not in isolation, but in community settings.
Seen this way, dependence isn’t a deficit to be corrected but a structure that makes learning, culture and care possible in the first place. The critical point is how well an infant or child is supported in the relationships they depend on rather than how quickly they become independent.
Independence is not humanity’s story. The truth is, humans have evolved and developed to depend on each other.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
