Acculturation which begins at birth

Perhaps, you are now asking yourself what methods you would use to control the behavior of your children. Would you spank them or threaten to do so? Would you only use praise? Would you belittle or tease them for not behaving? Would you try to make your children independent and self-reliant or would you discourage it in favor of continuing dependence? At some time in our lives, most of us will be involved in raising children.

Will you do it in the same way that you were raised? Very likely you will because you were socialized that way. Abusive parents were, in most cases, abused by their parents. Likewise, gentle, indulgent parents were raised that way themselves.

Is there a right or wrong way to socialize children? To a certain extent the answer depends on the frame of reference. What is right in one culture may be wrong in another. Even seemingly insignificant actions of parents can have major impacts on the socialization of their children. For instance, what would you do if your baby cried continuously but was not ill, hungry, or in need of a diaper change?

Would you hold your baby, rock back and forth, walk around, or sing gently until the crying stopped, even if it took hours. The answer that you give very likely depends on your culture. The traditional Navajo Indian response usually was to remove the baby from social contact until the crying stopped.

After making sure that the baby was not ill or in physical distress, he or she would be taken outside of the small single room house and left in a safe place until the crying stopped.

Then the baby would be brought indoors again to join the family. Perhaps as a result, Navajo babies raised in this way are usually very quiet. They learn early that making noise causes them to be removed from social contact.

In most North American families today, we would hold our baby in this situation until the crying stopped. The lesson that we inadvertently may be giving is that crying results in social contact. Is this wrong? Not necessarily, but it is a different socialization technique. All rights reserved. Illustration credits. Shiite Muslim men in Iran ritually beating themselves bloody with hands and chains as an act of religious faith commemorating the death of Imam Hussein in a.

North American mother informally socializing her daughter baby in Bhutan under the care of an older sister grandmother in North America helping to socialize her grandchild. Location of the societies in the 's cross-cultural study of child rearing practices. Table: AM4 Children of at least one foreign-born parent: Percentage of children ages 0—17 by nativity of child and parents, parent's education, poverty status, and other characteristics.

Accessed April 23, The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences ; Accessed April 30, Productive vocabulary among three groups of bilingual American children: Comparison and prediction. First Language. Bilingual development in children of immigrant families. Child Development Perspectives ;12 2 School readiness amongst urban Canadian families: Risk profiles and family mediation. Journal of Educational Psychology ; 1 Acta Paediatrica ; 8 Perspectives of caregivers on the effects of migration on the nutrition, health and physical activity of their young children: A qualitative study with immigrant and refugee families.

Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health ;22 2 Who is meeting the Healthy People objectives? Families, Systems, and Health ;36 4 Differences in practices of body stimulation during the first 3 months: Ethnotheories and behaviors of Italian mothers and West African immigrant mothers.

Cultural underpinnings of gender development: Studying gender among children of immigrants. Child Development ;90 4 Child Development ;85 6 Comparative and individual perspectives on mother-infant interactions with people and objects among South Koreans, Korean Americans, and European Americans.

Infancy ;24 4 Specialization, coordination, and developmental sequelae of mother-infant person- and object-directed interactions in U. American immigrant families. Parental roles and relationships in immigrant families: An international approach. Modalities of mother-infant interaction in Japanese, Japanese American immigrant, and European American dyads. Child Development ;83 6 Developmental Psychology ;56 3 Developmental Psychology ;51 12 The Egyptian princess in the Bible who discovered baby Moses in the river sent Moses' sister Miriam to find a wet-nurse and maid.

Miriam brought Moses' natural mother. The princess did not expect the girl to secure the natural mother, for anyone could and would have served insofar as she was concerned. A third classification means is child care by parents or another relative or both.

In Maya-related societies of Central America, as well as in Samoa, the eldest child in the family is given the primary responsibility for the care of the younger children. In Latin societies, this is likely to be the eldest girl.

The responsibilities for the baby may start even before the child is weaned. Such care continues until the age of ten to twelve. At that time the father begins to pay more attention to the preparation of the boy for adulthood and the mother brings the girl into the complex workings of the home. Child care may also be classified by mother or father or both. There are several obvious biological reasons for assigning care of the child to the female parent.

Among the Black Caribs of Central America, this is accentuated by the practice of couvade. The mother carries on her normal life after the birth of the child and the father symbolically goes to bed. Among the Maya, the mother cares for the child until he is weaned, as long as two-and-a-half years after birth; and then other members of the family participate, especially the child's grandmother.

In habituation, human beings learn those aspects of culture not regarded by the culture as specifically learnable techniques. Babies, being helpless, have their needs fulfilled for them. In the course of the fulfillment of these needs, the way in which the need is fulfilled comes to be almost as important as the fulfillment. By the time a child is able to fulfill some of his own requirements for food and sleep, his habits are well established. These habits may be changed several times during the course of maturation, but even the need to change and the capacity to change are developed into habits.

In one sense, the habits are the culture. When the habits of the people change, the culture changes. Each individual in a given society is provided the means of individual enrichment. No society is without an education program, though few have as extensive and all-encompassing a one as that found in Western nations.

The formal education provided in Western nations through a graded school system is provided in other societies through social, religious, political, or economic mechanisms. The Pocomchi of Central America have a socio-religious organization called the cofradia. It provides all members of the society between the ages of twenty and forty with a formal education in keeping with the needs and demands of the society.

Each member approaching the age of twenty is elected into one of the eight cofradia in the community and serves for a period of two years. After this period of time, he rests at least a year before accepting election into a cofradia for another two-year term of service. When participating in the activities of the cofradia , he does everything the senior members do. Thus he is trained in all the social processes known and utilized within his community.

By the age of forty, he is fully qualified to handle any problem the society faces and to maintain the operation of the community effectively and efficiently along with the other leaders. In every society each member has someone for whom concern can be shown. This person might be part of his nuclear family, his extended family, an age or interest group, or a political or economic team. In societies that have economic trading teams, as among some Australian aborigine groups, a close caring relationship develops between trading partners.

In societies where there are age level organizations, as in certain areas of Africa, members of such an organization grow into a deep and abiding relationship with others of the same age level. In matrilineal societies where the lineage and inheritance are traced through the mother's line rather than the father's, the biological father is a relatively insignificant member of the family team.

He is replaced by a sociological father, the mother's brother in most instances. The child's maternal uncle thus functions in the male caring role and is responsible for the well-being and increasingly mature behavior of the child. In societies in which a joking relationship permits two members of the society to tease and criticize one another, a closeness develops which is impossible within a society where these roles are almost completely separated. In most societies where the informal and formal practices of education involve the master-apprentice relationship, a different type of preparation develops than that stemming from the classroom lecture system.

The master teacher is not simply training his pupil or apprentice to do the task in question; he is also teaching him to be a good master. Proper master behavior is passed on to the apprentice along with the skill. In North American society, where there is a teacher-pupil relationship rather than master-apprentice, knowledge is primary. The student will likely utilize the content learned but not gain in communication skills as he sits under the lecturer.

In Mayan societies, which practice the master-apprentice relationship, outsiders have established schools based on teacher-student. When students returned to their villages after studying at the Bible institute, they presented the same lectures to their own people because the apprentice models the master. Even the illustrative material, given by a lecturer with an urban and industrial background, was used verbatim even though little of it was relevant to the rural and farm people in the audience.

In societies where formal education is based on the teacher-pupil educational relationship, telling is the primary means of teaching, i.

Association between teacher and student is minimal, primarily within the context of the classroom. Influence of the teacher on the student is thus only in the specific area of the course. The rest of the teacher's experience and insight is lost to the student. The student who gets any closer to the teacher than that usually reports, "He's human after all.

Evaluation is thus of minimal value within the life of the student because only "end results" are tested and evaluated, i. The process by which one achieves learning is never questioned or evaluated.

It is assumed that if one can handle the final exam well, the process of learning has been adequate. In societies where formal education is based on the master-apprentice relationship, modeling of effective behavior is primary.

The proper behavior of the skill or trade is communicated along with the proper behavior of the master to his apprentice.

There tends to be maximum involvement between the two since they spend a great deal of time together. There is high potential for directed change with maximum impact on the life of the pupil by the master. Evaluation is in terms of the whole. The skill is only a relatively small part. Jesus related to His disciples through a master-apprentice relationship. By the time He went to be with His Father, the bulk of the disciples were ready to carry on the work He had begun, and they assumed positions in the early church in keeping with their preparation.

In John 17 Jesus prays for His apprentices, linking them with God. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world" John , Earlier He had referred to them as branches of a vine, Himself being the vine.

He speaks of the ones they will be contacting and bringing into the kingdom as "grapes. Every human who fulfills his biological destiny passes through four major stages or "crises" in the life cycle: birth; puberty, or maturity; marriage, or reproduction; and death.

Every culture recognizes these major periods in some way, though some are made more prominent than others. Some cultures handle these experiences calmly and quietly; others exhibit much anxiety.

In the latter case, the cultural emphasis is on the crisis situation. Within each society, therefore, these rituals or rites of passage allow a member to properly and effectively move from one condition of life to the next. There are pre-birth rituals, such as baby showers, which prepare society for the new infant's arrival.

The newborn is "baptized" within an eleven-day period in the Philippines and somewhat later in other Catholic-and Protestant-influenced cultures. The shower and baptism are the rituals, or effective means, of transition from unborn state to born state.

Some societies take this crisis so seriously that they require the husband to go to bed as replacement for the woman so that no harm will befall her and she will be able to provide sustenance for the baby. It has only been within the last hundred years that human beings have had a scientific explanation for conception because of biological and genetic processes.

Some primitive people fail to connect the act of physical, sexual intercourse with resultant pregnancy. Australian aborigines believe that a child is the reincarnation of an ancestral spirit. This belief negates any relation between the sex act and conception, though there is an admission that the woman's body must be opened in some way to permit the entrance of the ancestral spirits. There is an increasing awareness, however, that it may simply be the cultural suppression of physical reality.

In such cases the cultural form is designed to support the social system. For example, ancestor worship and totemism are important themes in the lives of many Australians. The continuity of the totemic group is sustained by the doctrine of spiritual reincarnation.

A tight focus on physical paternity would undermine the sacred institution. The matrilineal Trobrianders believe the male plays no role in conception.

To them, the spirit of a dead clan ancestor enters the womb when the woman is wading in the lagoon. It grows and becomes a child. The neighboring Dobu believe semen is coagulated coconut milk which causes the menstrual blood to coagulate and form a fetus. Many peoples of the world note the cessation of the menstrual flow as a sign of pregnancy. Others take note of breast changes, loss of appetite, "morning sickness," or a tendency to laziness on the part of the woman as signs of pregnancy.

Numerous anxieties attend the birth process such as 1 the child will not develop ideally, 2 the fetus will miscarry, 3 the birth will be difficult, or 4 some evil spirit will adversely affect the fetus and later the newborn child. Special attention is therefore given to those who attend the birth fathers may or may not be present and to those who see the child after birth to the Latin, strangers may convey illness and death by means of the evil eye. What adorns the baby after birth is also important the Pocomchi tie a string around the wrist of the newborn to protect the child against the evil eye.

Whereas nominally Christian societies use baptism and christening as indications of the social acceptance of the child, other societies utilize special presentations and naming ceremonies. Among the Ashanti, a child is not considered a human being until eight days after birth. At that time the child is ceremonially named and publicly presented. Should it die before eight days have passed, it would be simply disposed of; for the Ashanti would believe that it was merely the husk of a ghost child whose mother left it to go on a trip and then returned to claim it.