The Evolved Nest

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“Kindred has been a godsend for realizing that aiming for the wellbeing of people, communities and planet is not hopeless. Thank you, Kindred, for your years of wise guidance!”

Darcia Narvaez, PhD

Kindred World, President

Evolved Nest, Founder

Kindred Media, Contributing Editor

Darcia Narvaez is a Professor of Psychology Emerita at the University of Notre Dame. She is the founder of the public and professional educational outreach project, The Evolved Nest Initiative, whose nonprofit mission is to share her science research into developing appropriate baselines for lifelong human wellness by meeting the biological needs of infants. This baseline is imperative at this time as the United States ranks 41st out of 41 developed countries in public policies that support families.

In a 2020 analysis of top scientists, Narvaez emerged in the top 2% of scientists worldwide. Of the eight million scientists in the world, the analysis concerned those who had at least five articles published in scientific journals between 1996 and 2017-- over six million scientists. Individuals were ranked according to various criteria, including number of citations of their work.

Narvaez’s book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom, was chosen for the 2017 Expanded Reason Award from among more than 360 total entries from 170 universities and 30 countries. Narvaez received the prize, including a substantial monetary award, at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Vatican City on September 27, 2017.  The book also received the William James Award from the American Psychological Association in 2015. 

The Evolved Nest is a breakthrough concept that integrates findings across fields that bear on child development, child raising and adult behavior.  The Evolved Nest promotes optimal health and wellbeing, cooperation, and receptive and sociomoral intelligences. Societal moves away from providing the Evolved Nest have contributed to the ill being and dysregulation we see in one another and society. Learn how to nest your children and re-nest yourself.

Narvaez’s prior careers include professional musician, classroom music teacher, business owner, seminarian and middle school Spanish teacher. Dr. Narvaez’s current research explores how early life experience influences societal culture, wellbeing and sociomoral character in children and adults. She integrates neurobiological, clinical, developmental and education sciences in her theories and research about human nature and human development. She publishes extensively on moral development, parenting and education. Recently she has been studying the Evolved Nest and how it influences wellbeing, sociality and morality. 

On the Evolved Nest’s YouTube channel, you can view the many interdisciplinary conferences she hosted at the University of Notre Dame regarding early experience and human development. In 2016, she organized a conference on Sustainable Wisdom: Integrating Indigenous KnowHow for Global Flourishing, and whose essays were published in a book by the same name in 2019.

“Kindred World helps bridge the vast gap between scientific research and practice, what is happening within the culture that often cuts against scientific evidence regarding ways to promote human thriving and flourishing. Parents and families deserve to know the best ways to raise healthy, happy, socio-emotionally developed, loving children and this is exactly what Kindred provides!” 

Mary Tarsha

Kindred World, Director-at-Large

Evolved Nest, Collaborator and Researcher 

Kindred Media, Contributing Editor and Podcaster

Mary Tarsha is a PhD student in Developmental Psychology and Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Research at the University of Notre Dame.  She conducts research investigating human flourishing and moral development in the Evolutionary Moral Psychology Laboratory under the directorship of Dr. Darcia Narvaez.

Listen to Mary Tarsha’s podcast series with Darcia Narvaez on the Evolved Nest.

And listen to her book reviews with Dr. Narvaez on Kindred.

Read over 88 five-star reviews, endorsements, and stories of collaborations from our partners on Kindred World's Great Nonprofits' page. Kindred World has received the Great Nonrprofits' Top Rated Nonprofits Award every year since 2014.

“I heartily applaud Darcia Narvaez and Kindred World for the excellent and important work they are doing to show how to change our values to support the children of the present and the future. The challenges that are facing Mother Earth and all species including our own are difficult and daunting but Narvaez shows the ways and the direction in which we can move towards survival and thrival.I am grateful for her down to Earth and intelligent leadership and initiative..” – Genevieve Vaughan, Founder, Maternal Gift Economy Movement and Salons, Homo Donans: For A Maternal Economy, Author

“I discovered Kindred World through the work of Dr. Darcia Narvaez after reading her book Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality. It greatly advanced my thinking on the importance of child development and even the fundamental reality of who we are as a species and how we best flourish in balance with other human and non-human selves. It was through my familiarity with Dr. Narvaez that I then came to know of Lisa Reagan's work in eduction, advocacy, and media, and that led me to Kindred World. Kindred World plays an essential role in advancing our understanding of human flourishing and advocates for the shifts necessary to align our cultures with our optimal development as a species in balance with the world.” – Benjamin, political scientist and peace ethologist, global social justice educator at the University of Michigan

“Thank you Kindred World for working tirelessly to get the word out that a healthy world begins with a healthy child, which begins with a healthy mother and family supported by the community. As our culture seems to spin out of control, the voices for truth you provide and promote give parents a healthy, sane place to turn for support in raising attached, secure babies. One such voice is Dr. Darcia Narvaez who also works tirelessly to expand our culture's understanding of these critical issues. It has been said, ‘It's darkest just before the light’. Thanks to all of the Kindred World light workers for helping to usher in a new dawn!” – Diane Hansen, professional with expertise in the field

“Darcia’s work is invaluable! Her research reveals human-nestedness is paramount to a worthwhile and wholesome existence, alongside, within and as-part-of nature. Our species’ ‘true’ societal norms are broken, as revealed through her research of the “Evolved Nest” or the evolved developmental niche. What’s needed is to realign modernity with our species’ typical biological nature. As a biologist who sees all things in nature as animate, it is without a doubt what we’ve been missing and why we humans are experiencing so much unrest, prevalent and normalized psychosis in the form of depression, deep seated aggression, resentment, learning disabilities and so much more.
 

“My conversations with Darcia have felt like the reunion of kindred spirits. Her research and words have pointed towards that innate truth I’ve worked hard to try to share with others. Our true human nature is so much more then we are experiencing in these times. We need to nest our children well, as naturally as we did for ten’ of thousands of years of our evolutionary and prehistoric past. Hope for humanity lies within restoration of our species’ evolved nest. As soon as humanity resumes it’s place, once again, within the niche in which we evolved, only then will we gain true sustainability and a better, more wholesome existence. We owe our children and the future of humanity the nested-ness that is a part of who we really are.” – Wild Feather Jane, a parent