Human beings have a unique life course. We have evolved a much longer and more helpless childhood, and longer old age, than our closest primate relatives. Many adults are involved in caring for children, including not only mothers, but fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, and unrelated “alloparents”. Why are human children so helpless? Why do they need so much support? Why do humans, especially women, keep living long after they stop reproducing? The central idea in this issue is that these “life-history” characteristics help produce other well-known human advantages such as learning and exploration, cooperation and culture. Biologists, anthropologists and psychologists, studying a wide range of animals and cultures, suggest how childhood, caregiving, and learning might go together.

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