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Notes -
I think it’s probably down to institutionalization of kids. Most of the generations after the boomers were more or less raised by daycares and schools with parents playing a supporting role. So if you take a highly social animal, a wolf or a chimp or something, and raise it in an artificial environment where it doesn’t form the normal social bonds that would form in the wild, it doesn’t seem surprising that such a situation might well depress reproduction in that group of animals (alongside other similar instinctual behaviors like hunting). They don’t know how, to form the bonds necessary to make that happen so they don’t.
I suspect that this has lead to a lot of mental health problems as well. Social animals who can’t form bonds get depressed and sometimes lash out at other animals.
Are children in daycares and schools prevented from socializing with their peers?
Not to the same level as one might form with his natal family. It’s not secure attachment where a child knows he is safe and that his family will always be around and accept him unconditionally. Daycares and schools have staff that changes every year, and possibly more often at a daycare. Kids shuffle in and out as families move or change schools.
If you consider a state of nature, kids would have been raised by close kin. Parents, aunts and uncles, cousins and brothers and sisters. They form strong bonds because they’re always there, and if the child needs help, they care enough to help.
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