Lew-Levy and Amir argue that children are cultural producers in their own right, contributing to cumulative culture through the creation and maintenance of peer culture. They emphasize that children independently generate and sustain their own body of knowledge, which can benefit their communities and serve as a source of cultural diversity. While we agree that children’s role as propagators of cultural knowledge is both understudied and underappreciated (see Qiu & Moll, Reference Qiu and Moll2022), we contend that much of the knowledge children transmit originates from adults – be it factual information, such as “There are no polar bears in Antarctica” or procedural knowledge, such as how to properly harvest, prepare, and cook cassava (Ankei, Reference Ankei2023). We argue that children contribute to cumulative culture primarily by transmitting this adult-originated knowledge. Objects of transmission span across the practical (e.g., household chores, skill acquisition) and theoretical (e.g., factual knowledge, reasoning) domains (Howe et al., Reference Howe, Recchia, Della Porta and Funamoto2012; Maynard, Reference Maynard2002; Pueschel et al., Reference Pueschel, Shen, Byrd, Indik and Moll2023; Qiu et al., Reference Qiu, Gottesman, Cox and Moll2025b). It is precisely in their role as transmitters of culturally valuable knowledge – initially acquired from adults – that children primarily make their contribution to cumulative culture.

Children’s exceptional ability to teach others is now well-documented (Qiu & Moll, Reference Qiu and Moll2022; Sobel & Letourneau, Reference Sobel and Letourneau2016; Strauss, Ziv, & Stein, Reference Strauss, Ziv and Stein2002). From a young age, children have a pedagogical capacity that lets them share general and relevant knowledge and adapt it to specific learners (Qiu et al., Reference Qiu, Ipek, Gottesman and Moll2024). This pedagogical knack suggests that children do not simply absorb culture but actively shape and refine it through teaching. By preschool age, children already exhibit an adult-like understanding of teaching. They selectively pass on information that is true, objective, generalizable, and relevant to learners. They also modify their instruction based on the learner’s needs and goals, demonstrating awareness of teaching as a cooperative, bidirectional process. Our recent meta-analysis (Qiu et al., Reference Qiu, Park, Vite, Patall and Moll2025a) found that most experimental work investigating children’s selective teaching focuses on factual information in the epistemic domain, further illustrating our point that children’s teaching is not limited to peer culture. For example, experimental paradigms have examined children’s transmission of factual knowledge (e.g., “Umbrellas protect you from the rain,” Baer & Friedman, Reference Baer and Friedman2018; “Ice melts when it gets hot,” Danovitch et al., Reference Danovitch, Scofield, Williams, Davila and Bui2023), as well as procedural knowledge, such as how to operate a novel box (Bridgers, Jara-Ettinger, & Gweon, Reference Bridgers, Jara-Ettinger and Gweon2020) or a causally ambiguous toy (Gweon & Schulz, Reference Gweon and Schulz2019).

In naturalistic studies, sibling caretakers play an important role in socializing their younger siblings, teaching them language, routines, and appropriate behavior (Ochs, Reference Ochs1988; Watson-Gegeo & Gegeo, Reference Watson-Gegeo, Gegeo and Zukow1989; Zukow-Goldring, Reference Zukow-Goldring and Bornstein2002). For example, relative clauses such as “take that car that is blue” occur more frequently in child-to-child conversations than in adult-to-child exchanges, and it was found that in Southern Africa, children with more sibling interaction acquire more complex linguistic forms than their counterparts without such experiences (Demuth, Reference Demuth1984). In small agrarian societies in Central Mexico, older siblings were found to teach younger ones how to make tortillas – from gathering ingredients to cooking the dough on a comal (Zukow-Goldring, Reference Zukow-Goldring and Bornstein2002). Similarly, in Mayan communities, Zinacantec children teach each other daily tasks that originated from adults, such as hand washing or water pouring (Maynard, Reference Maynard2002). Across cultures, children’s teaching reliably involves the transmission of knowledge that stemmed from adults and transcends peer culture, driving cumulative culture far beyond circulating knowledge related to dance, song, rhyme, and play among same-aged peers.

Lew-Levy and Amir stress that children generate knowledge and ideas in their own right, but also that these ideas are spread on a horizontal plane – thus creating a child or youth culture that exists in parallel to adult culture. They maintain that in rare moments of social change, peer culture can influence adult culture and benefit the community more broadly, such as Matés children’s fishing expertise or the unique weaving patterns that arose from Mayan children. We propose that child-to-adult transmission is far more common and frequent than previously acknowledged. Children act as cultural brokers across a range of contexts. In immigrant families, for instance, children translate for non-native-speaking parents and grandparents (Orellana, Reference Orellana and Orellana2009; Weisskirch, Reference Weisskirch2006) and introduce technology to connect their families to the local community (Katz, Reference Katz2010). Adolescents engaged in civics education may also initiate political conversations at home, increasing their parents’ civic competence (McDevitt & Chaffee, Reference McDevitt and Chaffee2002). Children feed their knowledge back into the adult world not only in rare moments of ecological change, but regularly and meaningfully in their daily lives.

While we agree with Lew-Levy and Amir’s thesis that children are not merely passive recipients but active benefactors of cultural evolution, we argue that teaching is a primary mechanism through which children shape culture outside of the confines of peer interaction. Theories of cultural evolution must therefore expand their focus beyond peer exchanges and recognize that children’s teaching of adult-originated information drives knowledge transmission across social contexts, influencing both their peers and adult culture.