There's a guy in Australia who made some "history" book called the "Dark Emu’ that pushes the idea that Aboriginal Australians were not just hunter gatherers and that they had settlements , agriculture, aquaculture and food storage. His own self proclaimed motivation for writing this fake history is to "rebut the colonial myths that have worked to justify dispossession"
Just to give you an idea of how ridiculous this claim is that the Aboriginals had these type of advanced settlements. The Australian government once had to release a PSA video telling the Aboriginals not to sleep on the road or they might get run over by cars. Does this sound like the kind of people that would have had agriculture, aquaculture and food storage?
As you can expect though, this book got a lot of awards and gets promoted in libraries and schools
I don't think that's it. It's pretty standard prior to the modern era for families to have around 5 kids or more.
Childless couples basically didn't exist and the whole 2.3 kids was a small family.
I think they're saying that by the time you're having your fourth kid, your first one is old enough to not need constant supervision.
Yes. The over-fives don't need as much supervision, and the 10 and overs of the tribe in general can look after them, and that's about the time they started to learn basic stuff (how to use a bow to hunt rabbits, how to knap stone, how to sew, whatever.)
Hell, when us free-range gen xers ran in packs, we knew to watch out for each other.
What Grumman said. Over fives will be off mingling with the other kids of the tribe. You only have to keep track of newborn-toddler-"preschooler".