Babies start out life helpless and stay that way for a long time. They cannot walk, feed themselves or survive for very long without an adult’s 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........

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