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We explore contemporary evolutionary perspectives on children's psychological development, questioning the view that high-fidelity, inter-individual transmission of information explains the cumulative character of human cultures, and children's ontogenesis within these cultures. We argue that humans construct an environmental niche that is unique in being composed of institutions, which function to coordinate activity over multiple time scales. Institutions involve not simply customs or conventions but a deontology of future-binding rights, responsibilities, duties, and obligations. The origins of institutions can be traced in hominin evolution to Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, where kinship, the first institution, made possible community support of an extended and demanding form of ontogenesis. Since the human environmental niche is an institutional reality, children today need to acquire the ability to understand and act effectively within institutions. We propose that this ability emerges not as an adaptation solely to past conditions but through differentiation and reintegration of an "extended ontogenetic system" of which the child is a constituent, leading to a quality of self-consciousness on the part of the child that makes possible the ability to live in an institutional reality.

A global phenomenon is the reorganization of care for very young children. Institutions are replacing the context of family and community. Increasingly in Colombia young children spend hours each day in institutions directed by public policy and administrative guidelines. We explore, first, how research on this phenomenon adopts a reductionist perspective, a focus on "quality" and "outcomes" measured in ways that assume a Western axiology. Second, we consider how the institutionalization of childhood amounts to a "government" that imposes Western individualism. Third, we illustrate the tension created for childcare professionals and for Indigenous communities as their rights to make decisions about the best ways to care for children are threatened.