Children of different worlds
Subtitle: the formation of social behavior
By: Beatrice Blyth Whiting, Carolyn Pope Edwards, in collaboration with Carol R. Ember ... [et al.].
Contributors: Edwards, Carolyn P.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 1988
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 337
Subjects: Socialization -- Cross-cultural studies.; Social interaction in children -- Cross-cultural studies.; Mother and child -- Cross-cultural studies.; Friendship in children -- Cross-cultural studies.
Description: The culmination of twenty years of research, this book is a cross-cultural exploration of the ways in which age, gender, and culture affect the development of social behavior in children. The authors and their associates observed children between the ages of two and ten going about their daily lives in communities in Africa, India, the Philippines, Okinawa, Mexico, and the United States. This rich fund of data has enabled them to identify the types of social behavior that are universal and those which differ from one cultural environment to another. Beatrice Whiting and Carolyn Edwards shed new light on the nature–nurture question: in analyzing the behavior of young children, they focus on the relative contributions of universal physiological maturation and universal social imperatives. They point out cross-cultural similarities, but also note the differences in experience between children who grow up in simple and in complex societies. They show that knowledge of the company children keep, and of the proportion of time they spend with various categories of people, makes it possible to predict important aspects of their interpersonal behavior. -- Jacket.
Notes: Bibliography: p. [316]-329.
Includes index.