Paper short abstract:

Films and anthropological writings indicate that Aboriginal infant rearing practices were robust over tens of millennia but many are no longer practiced. Infant rearing is discussed cross-culturally, with film clips, in the context of the environment of evolutionary adaptedness.

Paper long abstract:

Cro-magnum man is physically very similar to modern humans and a hunter gatherer lifestyle has prevailed for 99% of human evolutionary history. As Although biological evolution is still continuing,it has slowed down for humans examples of this I will show film clips of nomadic Australian Aborigines and the Fore from the highlands of New Guinea. Their way of dealing with infants and young toddlers meet their needs well unlike many Western (and other) parenting behaviours which are described in the context of recent research. Because cultural change is much faster than biological change, there is now a misfit in infant "expectations" and parental treatment influenced by culture. This is detrimental to infant development, particularly to the attachment between infant and mother and the consequent psychological sequelae.

As the ethnopaediatrician M.F. Small, points out, little research has been carried out comparing different infant rearing practices in accord with infants evolutionary nature but this does seem to be a way of making judgements of best practice which health professionals wish to be able to do in order to promulgate it.