Modern children working in brick factory in Nepal 

                                             (credit: Krish Dulal via Wikimedia Commons)

                                (Some customs that once served a purpose no longer do so.) 

Children may not enjoy some of the behaviors their elders dictate, nor may they enjoy them later when they are adults. Work is hard. Building shelters is work. Making clothes is work. Gathering food and preserving it for the winter is work. Raising kids is work. Work is tedious. But for survival, individual happiness is not what matters. Patterns of living that maximize the resources of the tribe over many generations are what matter, and these ways of living do not always make sense to the people being programmed to do them. But tribes that do not teach hard work and loyalty to family and tribe die out.

To illustrate further, another example of a custom that seems counterintuitive to Western minds but that works can be offered here. Polyandry allows and encourages one woman to have two or more husbands, legally and with the blessings of the community. It seems counterintuitive to us. But the practice is not only viable in some cultures, it even promotes better survival rates. In some areas of the Himalayas, when a man knows that finding work may require him to be away for an extended period, he can pick a good second husband for his wife. Then he will know that she, his children, his property, and the children and property of the other man will be protected. If she becomes pregnant while he is away, it will be by a man he has approved of.⁵ As long as all three really are faithful to the marriage, the risks of any of them getting an STD remain small. More surviving children is the result.