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When a new baby arrives among the Beng people of West Africa, they see it not as being born, but as being reincarnated after a rich life in a previous world. Far from being a tabula rasa, a Beng infant is thought to begin its life filled with spiritual knowledge. How do these beliefs affect the way the Beng rear their children?
In this unique and engaging ethnography of babies, Alma Gottlieb explores how religious ideology affects every aspect of Beng childrearing practices—from bathing infants to protecting them from disease to teaching them how to crawl and walk—and how... more When a new baby arrives among the Beng people of West Africa, they see it not as being born, but as being reincarnated after a rich life in a previous world. Far from being a tabula rasa, a Beng infant is thought to begin its life filled with spiritual knowledge. How do these beliefs affect the way the Beng rear their children?
In this unique and engaging ethnography of babies, Alma Gottlieb explores how religious ideology affects every aspect of Beng childrearing practices—from bathing infants to protecting them from disease to teaching them how to crawl and walk—and how widespread poverty limits these practices. A mother of two, Gottlieb includes moving discussions of how her experiences among the Beng changed the way she saw her own parenting. Throughout the book she also draws telling comparisons between Beng and Euro-American parenting, bringing home just how deeply culture matters to the way we all rear our children.
All parents and anyone interested in the place of culture in the lives of infants, and vice versa, will enjoy The Afterlife Is Where We Come From.
"This wonderfully reflective text should provide the impetus for formulating research possibilities about infancy and toddlerhood for this century." — Caren J. Frost, Medical Anthropology Quarterly
“Alma Gottlieb’s careful and thought-provoking account of infancy sheds spectacular light upon a much neglected topic. . . . [It] makes a strong case for the central place of babies in anthropological accounts of religion. Gottlieb’s remarkably rich account, delivered after a long and reflective period of gestation, deserves a wide audience across a range of disciplines.”—Anthony Simpson, Critique of Anthropology
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Alison GopnikThis book is a beautiful and moving account of the relationships between the mothers and children in this community and how close they are, even when childhood is endangered. (Source)
Tobias HechtThough this is what you could call an infant-centred ethnography, even Gottlieb approaches babies largely through what adults and older children say about them and do with them. (Source)
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Janet Wilde Astington | 3.78
Three-year old Emily greets her grandfather at the front door: "We're having a surprise party for your birthday! And it's a secret!" We may smile at incidents like these, but they illustrate the beginning of an important transition in children's lives--their development of a "theory of mind." Emily certainly has some sense of her grandfather's feelings, but she clearly doesn't understand much about what he knows, and surprises--like secrets, tricks, and ties all depend on understanding and manipulating what others think and know. Jean Piaget investigated children's discovery of the mind in... more Three-year old Emily greets her grandfather at the front door: "We're having a surprise party for your birthday! And it's a secret!" We may smile at incidents like these, but they illustrate the beginning of an important transition in children's lives--their development of a "theory of mind." Emily certainly has some sense of her grandfather's feelings, but she clearly doesn't understand much about what he knows, and surprises--like secrets, tricks, and ties all depend on understanding and manipulating what others think and know. Jean Piaget investigated children's discovery of the mind in the 1920s and concluded that they had little understanding before the age of six. But over the last twenty years, researchers have begun to challenge his methods and revise his conclusions. In The Child's Discovery of the Mind, Janet Astington surveys this lively area of research in developmental psychology. Sometime between the ages of two and five, children begin to have insights into their own mental life and those of others. They begin to understand mental representation--that there is a difference between thoughts in the mind and things in the world, between thinking about eating a cookie and eating a cookie. This breakthrough reflects their emerging capacity to infer other people's thoughts, wants, feelings, and perceptions from words and actions. They come to understand why people act the way they do and can predict how they will act in the future, so that by the age of five, they are knowing participants in social interaction. Astington highlights how crucial children's discovery of the mind is in their social and intellectual development by including a chapter on autistic children, who fail to make this breakthrough. "Mind" is a cultural construct that children discover as they acquire the language and social practices of their culture, enabling them to make sense of the world. Astington provides a valuable overview of current research and of the consequences of this discovery for intellectual and social development. less Alison GopnikThis book is part of Harvard University Press’s excellent series, The Developing Child. I could have really chosen any of the books in the series. They asked developmental scientists to write very simple versions of the research that they were doing for a lay audience. This particular book is about one of the most interesting areas of research in the past 30 years, which is our understanding of... (Source)
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For nearly forty years Iona Opie worked with her late husband Peter on a notable series of books on the traditional lore of childhood. As part of the fieldwork from 1970 onwards, she visited the local school playground every week. The children accepted Mrs Opie as a regular feature of the playground, a harmless collector of jokes and games. Her aim, however, was to provide the living context of school-lore, rather than the lore itself. She achieved this by writing down events exactly as they happened, and conversations exactly as they were spoken. The result is a startlingly honest portrait... more For nearly forty years Iona Opie worked with her late husband Peter on a notable series of books on the traditional lore of childhood. As part of the fieldwork from 1970 onwards, she visited the local school playground every week. The children accepted Mrs Opie as a regular feature of the playground, a harmless collector of jokes and games. Her aim, however, was to provide the living context of school-lore, rather than the lore itself. She achieved this by writing down events exactly as they happened, and conversations exactly as they were spoken. The result is a startlingly honest portrait of children at play, at once charming and hilarious, alarming and poignant, and full of infectious vitality. We see the games seasons as they come and go, watch ephemeral amusements being devised and forgotten, and see how school-lore evolves and is transmitted. Much fundamental human behaviour is recorded: the differences in attitudes between the sexes; the boys' irrevocable devotion to fighting and football, and their innate kindness; the art of story-telling; the friendships and enmities; the excited interest in sex; the diversity of characters; and, above all, the hilarity which pervades the playground, creating entertainment out of trivialities. In the uninhibited language and astonishing inventiveness chronicled in these pages we recognize the games and jokes of previous generations; at once a revelation and a reassurance of continuity, this book offers a unique insight into the world of the child. less Alison GopnikYes. Iona and her husband Peter were folklorists, and they went out to try to understand children, in the same way that an anthropologist would go into a distant tribe or a folklorist would record the songs and stories of people in some distant place. Their great book, The Lore and Language of School Children, is a wonderful record of what schoolchildren do – the rhymes and songs, rituals and... (Source)
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Many parents delight in their child's imaginary companion as evidence of a lively imagination and creative mind. At the same time, parents sometimes wonder if the imaginary companion might be a sign that something is wrong. Does having a pretend friend mean that the child is in emotional distress? That he or she has difficulty communicating with other children? In this fascinating book, Marjorie Taylor provides an informed look at current thinking about pretend friends, dispelling many myths about them.
In the past a child with an imaginary companion might have been considered... more Many parents delight in their child's imaginary companion as evidence of a lively imagination and creative mind. At the same time, parents sometimes wonder if the imaginary companion might be a sign that something is wrong. Does having a pretend friend mean that the child is in emotional distress? That he or she has difficulty communicating with other children? In this fascinating book, Marjorie Taylor provides an informed look at current thinking about pretend friends, dispelling many myths about them.
In the past a child with an imaginary companion might have been considered peculiar, shy, or even troubled, but according to Taylor the reality is much more positive--and interesting. Not only are imaginary companions surprisingly common, the children who have them tend to be less shy than other children. They also are better able to focus their attention and to see things from another person's perspective. In addition to describing imaginary companions and the reasons children create them, Taylor discusses other aspects of children's fantasy lives, such as their belief in Santa, their dreams, and their uncertainty about the reality of TV characters. Adults who remember their own childhood pretend friends will be interested in the chapter on the relationship between imaginary companions in childhood and adult forms of fantasy. Taylor also addresses practical concerns, providing many useful suggestions for parents. For example, she describes how children often express their own feelings by attributing them to their imaginary companion.
If you have a child who creates imaginary creatures, or if you work with pre-schoolers, you will find this book very helpful in understanding the roles that imaginary companions play in children's emotional lives.
less Alison GopnikThis is a book by one of the people who has been part of the new wave of research in cognitive development. What Marjorie did is to deal with a really fascinating phenomenon that all parents notice, which is the fact that children often have these imaginary friends who are very vivid and significant. Traditionally, explanations for this were either psychoanalytic explanations that had something... (Source)
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Somewhere in Africa, more than a million years ago, a line of apes began to rear their young differently than their Great Ape ancestors. From this new form of care came new ways of engaging and understanding each other. How such singular human capacities evolved, and how they have kept us alive for thousands of generations, is the mystery revealed in this bold and wide-ranging new vision of human emotional evolution.
"Mothers and Others" finds the key in the primatologically unique length of human childhood. If the young were to survive in a world of scarce food, they needed to be... more Somewhere in Africa, more than a million years ago, a line of apes began to rear their young differently than their Great Ape ancestors. From this new form of care came new ways of engaging and understanding each other. How such singular human capacities evolved, and how they have kept us alive for thousands of generations, is the mystery revealed in this bold and wide-ranging new vision of human emotional evolution.
"Mothers and Others" finds the key in the primatologically unique length of human childhood. If the young were to survive in a world of scarce food, they needed to be cared for, not only by their mothers but also by siblings, aunts, fathers, friends--and, with any luck, grandmothers. Out of this complicated and contingent form of childrearing, Sarah Hrdy argues, came the human capacity for understanding others. Mothers and others teach us who will care, and who will not.
From its opening vision of "apes on a plane"; to descriptions of baby care among marmosets, chimpanzees, wolves, and lions; to explanations about why men in hunter-gatherer societies hunt together, "Mothers and Others" is compellingly readable. But it is also an intricately knit argument that ever since the Pleistocene, it has taken a village to raise children--and how that gave our ancient ancestors the first push on the path toward becoming emotionally modern human beings. less 
Carol GilliganHrdy is an evolutionary anthropologist and her research challenges the widely held view that the nuclear family is the traditional or original human family. (Source)
Paul SeabrightHrdy has done more than any other individual to bring a sophisticated understanding of biology to the heart of a feminist perspective that we can live with in the 21st century. (Source)
Alison GopnikShe makes the very interesting argument that our particular evolutionary niche is such that we can’t just depend on mothers to provide care. (Source)
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