Children of Different Worlds: The Formation of Social Behavior

Whiting, Beatrice Blyth

ISBN 10: 0674116178 / ISBN 13: 9780674116177

Published by Harvard University Press, 1992

About this Item

Satisfaction Guaranteed or your money back.

Seller Inventory # 0674116178

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Children of Different Worlds: The Formation of Social Behavior
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication Date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674116178
• ISBN 13: 9780674116177
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

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.

Whiting and 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.

An extension and elaboration of the classic Children of Six Cultures (Harvard, 1975), Children of Different Worlds will appeal to the same audience―developmental psychologists, social psychologists, anthropologists, and educators―and is sure to be equally influential.