Weaning families from two modern scourges: screens and ultraprocessed foods

When Michaeleen Doucleff walked into my apartment, my almost-two-year-old was sitting on the counter, screaming, while I untangled her hair.

“Just leave it,” Doucleff advised, before breaking into her expansive laugh. “I left Rosy’s hair knotted for, like, five years.”

The 49-year-old and her daughter Rosy (10) were visiting my apartment in New York City to help me practise what Doucleff preaches.

For her first book, called Hunt, Gather, Parent, Doucleff took Rosy, then three, around the world to study the parenting techniques of ancient cultures and make home life less kid-centric and more family-focused.

After the book’s publication, she and her family swapped San Francisco for west Texas, where they now live with 15 chickens, two-and-a-half-hours from the nearest commercial airport.

Michaeleen Doucleff with one of her chickens at home in Alpine, Texas. Photograph: Sarah M Vasquez/The New York Times

Doucleff might be the biggest parenting expert you’ve never heard about. Hunt, Gather, Parent, published in 2021, has been translated into 31 languages. It has sold more than one million copies worldwide and has spent 11 weeks on The New York Times’ bestseller list – fuelled by Instagram and TikTok.

Her book’s online popularity is ironic given how Doucleff doesn’t even have a mobile phone of her own. (The family shares one that lives in a drawer, plugged into a wall; it can call and text but can’t download apps.)

Her new book, Dopamine Kids, promises to wean families from two modern scourges: screens and ultraprocessed foods.