We look after ourselves, they look after themselves.” (Dentan 1978: 98).Ĭhildren tag along after adults, especially parents or grandparents, imitating their activities in ways that shade imperceptibly into helping out. They grow up here in the jungle like animals. A man might say, “We don’t worry about our children. ![]() “Semai emphatically deny that they teach their children. In some societies, infants are protected and insulated by parents for long periods while in others, independence and resilience are expected from a young age and children are rarely excluded from adult activity rather, they are readily integrated into the domestic economy.įor the Semai, a hunter-gatherer people from Malaysia, parents do not programmatically teach their children specific life or work skills as this would be coercive and detrimental to the child: How children are treated can depend on cultural factors that include subsistence type, economic activity, family or community structure, and residence patterns. It begins to consort freely with children of its own age or company (otu) and to take its share in work and play.” Photo by Julien HarneisĪmong the Igbo of Nigeria, for instance, Basden (1966: 65) finds that “from the age of about three years, the Ibo child is reckoned as sufficiently advanced to be left more or less to its own devices. Furthermore, a child’s personhood status may be acknowledged earlier or later on in the life-cycle in some societies compared with others. They may be left to “find their own way” from a much younger age than Westerners are accustomed to. While Western parents may be more familiar with the cultural notion that child-rearing demands a hands-on approach from caregivers until the child is self-sufficient, other cultures might leave children to explore freely as a form of self-education. This proactive and instructive approach, which can involve singing to a baby in the womb and providing educational toys with parental guidance throughout childhood, contrasts sharply with the approach to child development found in most non-WEIRD societies.Įthnographic examples from the eHRAF World Cultures database effectively illustrate some of the ways that culture influences childhood development. In so-called WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) societies, the responsibility is largely placed on parents or parental figures to not only nurture their children, but also teach them and guide their intellectual and social development from as early on in the lifespan as possible – including attempts to influence the fetus in utero (Lancy 2010: 80). A very thorough review of childhood-aided immeasurably by eHRAF- from the ethnographic archives has allowed me to offer a cross-cultural and distinctly different account of “normal” childhood.” As the author explains: “I’ve had some success at weakening the intellectual monopoly that western, middle class culture holds on ideas about child rearing and child development. Lancy has captured parental fascination beyond academia by challenging much that is so familiar about childhood in Western society. The third book puts Western parenting into perspective by comparing parenting practices with those of other societies. The second book focuses on the importance of “helping” in early childhood that commonly transitions to work in middle childhood. Using past and present examples from all regions of the world, in the first book, Lancy reveals alternate cultural notions of children who can be treated by parents and care-givers as innocent beings, annoying inconveniences, or commoditized possessions. But the anthropology of childhood has recently gained more prominence in academia, perhaps aided by Professor David Lancy’s comparative books, The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings (2015), Anthropological Perspectives on Children as Helpers, Workers, Artisans, and Laborers (2017), and Raising Children: Surprising Insights from Other Cultures (2017). Since the 1950s, cross-cultural researchers have studied cultural variation in the treatment of infants and children and have produced numerous publications on the possible causes and consequences of these variations. Cross-cultural research using the eHRAF World Cultures and eHRAF Archaeology databases allows us to compare and contrast aspects of childhood between cultures. However, approaches to childhood and children vary greatly across countries and peoples around the world. What is a “normal” childhood? Childhood, child-rearing and care-giving are all areas of human development which are largely taken for granted from within a single culture.
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