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 IMAGES OF CHILDHOOD

Edited by
C. Philip Hwang
University of
Michael E. Lamb
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Irving E. Sigel
Educational Testing Service

VD Psychology Press
A Taylor & Francis Group
NEW YORK AND LONDON
First published 1996 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Published 2014 by Psychology Press

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and by Psychology Press

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Copyright © 1996 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or

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or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.

Cover design by Gail Silverman

Cover photograph, The Herbert Children by Lambert Sachs, is a
gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, © 1995
Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Images of childhood /edited by C. Philip Hwang, Michael E.

Lamb, Irving E. Sigel.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
1. Child development. 2. Child psychology. 3. Devel­
opmental psychology. I. Hwang, C. Philip. II. Lamb, Mi­
chael E., 1953- . III. Sigel, Irving E.
HQ767.9.I55 1996
305.23T—dc20 95-49699
CIP

ISBN 13: 978-0-805-81701-0 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-805-81702-7 (pbk)

Publisher’s Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of
this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original
may be apparent.
 Contents

Acknowledgments

CHAPTER ONE
Images of Childhood: An Introduction
Michael E. Lamb and C. Philip Hwang

CHAPTER TWO
Disciplinary Approaches to Images of Childhood: Religion, History,
Anthropology, and Psychology
Edited by Irving E. Sigel
with sections by
Ake Sander; Hugh Cunningham,
Sara Harkness, and Irving E. Sigel and Myung'In Kim

CHAPTER THREE
Proverbs as Images of Children and Childrearing
Jesus Palacios

CHAPTER FOUR
Changing Perceptions and Treatment of Young Children
in the United States
Maris A. Vinovslds
 CONTENTS

CHAPTER FIVE
Positive Childishness: Images of Childhood in Japan
ShimJenChen 113

CHAPTER SIX
Cultural Models of Childhood in Indigenous Socialization
and Formal Schooling in Zambia
Robert Serpell 129

CHAPTER SEVEN
Brazilian Children: Images, Conceptions, Projects
Maria Malta Campos and Jerusa Vieira Gomes 143

CHAPTER EIGHT
Learning “Respect for Everything”: Navajo Images
of Development
James S. Chisholm 167

CHAPTER NINE
The Sun Match Boy and Plant Metaphors: A Swedish Image
of a 20th-Century Childhood
Karin Aronsson and Bengt Sandin 185

Author Index 203

Subject Index 209
 Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Allmanna Barnhuset, Lars Salvius Foreningen, the Na­

tional Institute of Child Health and Development, the Bank of Sweden
Tercentenary Foundation, the Council for Research in the Humanities and
Social Sciences for financial support.
— C. Philip Hwang
— Michael E. Lamb
— Irving E. Sigel
This page intentionally left blank
 C H A P T E R O N E

Images of Childhood:
An Introduction

M ichael E. Lamb
N ation al Institute o f Child H ealth a n d H u m an D evelopm ent

C. Philip Hw ang
University o f Goteborg

The 20th century will surely be remembered as a period of remarkable

calamity, vigorous intellectual activity, and striking technological progress.
For the first time in history, the development of rapid forms of communi­
cation and transportation shrunk the effective size of the world so that many
of its citizens were made aware of events occurring in far-distant locations
and came to appreciate cultural differences more directly than was previously
possible. Among the many trends and events for which the century may be
remembered, however, one will surely be the ascendancy of science and
scientific thinking. As part of a set of ideological presumptions glorifying
science and logical positivism while deriding religion and spirituality, a wide­
spread belief in the boundless merits of objectivity developed. Given ade­
quate resources and ample time, scientists have argued, they will be able
to reduce the mysteries of the universe, as well as the mysteries of life and
death, to objectifiable processes and events. This set of beliefs hastened the
separation of the social sciences from philosophy and fostered the illusion
that social scientists could identify with clarity and insight the circumstances
and conditions that maximized the quality of human existence and human
development.
Whatever arrogant hubris that the social sciences in general, and students
of child development in particular, bring to evaluation of their contributions,
it is easy to recognize the tremendous progress that has been made from
their rather humble origins a little more than a century ago. As the number
of professional developmental psychologists has grown, there has developed

1
2 LAMB AND HWANG

a remarkable body of knowledge concerning children and their develop­

ment. In the process, we have learned a great deal about the milestones of
human development and about the significance (or lack of significance) of
deviations from the norm in various aspects o f development. We have
learned how children acquire knowledge, how their behavior changes, and
what factors explain the individual variations that make social experiences
colorful, meaningful, and frustratingly difficult to predict. Unfortunately, re­
searchers seldom caution that their conclusions may be limited by the char­
acteristics of the specific children they studied or by the particular methods
and measures employed. Instead, they offer unqualified and more grandiose
conclusions about the potential or behavior of “the child.” On occasion, of
course, such inferences and conclusions may be warranted but they are
surely warranted much less frequently than they are asserted. More com­
monly, they involve restatements of some basic shared beliefs about child
development wrapped in the mantle of shiny new “findings.” And whereas
most of the literature is concerned with the compilation of such findings,
this book is focused on the underlying basic beliefs.
Although the study of behavioral development got its theoretical orien­
tation from European and British theorists and observers in the mid-19th
century, the empirical study of behavioral development has long been domi­
nated by North American scientists who have, almost single-handedly, led
scholarly efforts to advance our understanding o f developmental processes
and trajectories from the 1960s to the 1980s. Unfortunately, despite the
narrow range of cultural backgrounds represented in this endeavor, students
of behavioral development often claim to be describing universal aspects
of behavioral development. It has become increasingly clear, however, that
much of what has been seen as universal is itself colored by the perspective
and orientation of those studying it. This necessarily gives pause to those
who would understand human behavioral development in toto, not simply
the development of White North Americans living in the late 20th century.
In this book, we draw attention to the implicit and explicit images of
childhood that various disciplines, and most especially developmental psy­
chology, have constructed. These sometimes unspoken metaphors have
enduring value, in that they provide a means of drawing together, integrating,
and interpreting otherwise disparate findings or conclusions. They also
provide a ready, and often helpful, means of conveying the fruits of scientific
research to the people who constitute its primary consumers. Unfortunately,
too few scientists and writers seem to recognize that these are only images or
metaphors and that they do not represent solid sculptures of an objective
reality. Indeed, as we and our colleagues strive to show in this book, the
images of childhood that each professional implicitly carries in her or his head
vary across historical epochs just as they vary across cultures and subcultures.
Perhaps even more alarming, some of these images seem to reflect the
1. INTRODUCTION 3

politically correct ideology of particular times and places, at least as much as

they represent the objective findings they purport to summarize.
What do we mean by “images of childhood’? In partial reflection of the
amorphous nature of these images, and the fact that they are conceptualized
with varying degrees of precision and articulation by the contributors to this
volume, the term im ages is defined and used quite broadly in this book.
Images are basic assumptions or conceptions about children and the factors
that influence their ontogeny. Images thus include beliefs regarding the
existence of innate tendencies or dispositions, the susceptibility to external
influences, the limits of human modifiability, the special importance of early
experience, and the role of the individual. Is a child viewed as a smaller
version of the adult or is the child viewed as a uniquely different developing
creature, for example? Is the child believed to have special or unique needs?
Images are variously synonymous with conceptions, perceptions, beliefs,
and ideas; they dominate professional and lay discourse about children and
childhood even though they may often remain implicit rather than explicit.
Images are coherent and resilient within individuals although they may vary
somewhat within sociocultural groups, and certainly vary across cultural
groups and historical epochs.
The goal of this volume is to unpackage cultural and historical variations
in the conception of childhood in order to make clearer those that might
be considered universal aspects of behavioral and psychological develop­
ment and those that must be seen as temporary cultural constructions or
images. The question is of particular relevance today as the sociopolitically
dominant middle-class Anglo-Saxon culture comes to account for a smaller
and smaller portion of the total U.S. population and as other groups strive
to assert their individuality and distinctiveness in ways that parallel the
increasing focus of policy makers on indigenous practices and behaviors.
We want to evaluate what is known about the diverse constructions and
conceptions of childhood by discussing these issues from the perspectives
of a variety of different cultural and subcultural groups. Stated differently,
we examine cross-cultural variations in the conceptions of childhood as well
as their expressions in and implications for child-care practices and policies.
The specific aims of this volume are as follow:

1. Delineate images of childhood in diverse cultural, subcultural, and

historical contexts. Images of childhood are expressed in myths, proverbs,
and beliefs about children’s nature, health, intelligence, competence, and
so on and these are all viewed as sources of information by the contributing
authors.
2. Illustrate how these images of childhood are manifested in popular
proverbs as well as in distinct patterns of childrearing, broadly conceived
to include aspects of parental behavior, child-care arrangements, education,
indoctrination, and the assignment of responsibilities.
4 LAMB AND HWANG

3. Indicate how these images of childhood are manifest in the develop­

ment and implementation of educational and social policies as well as in
the legal status of children. For example, differing images of childhood have
affected the design of educational systems, the nature and utilization of
nonparental child care, and the timing and nature of religious and social
rituals in almost all known societies. Examination of these influences can
be quite informative. Authors also consider policies that have failed because
their designers did not take into account changing or culture-specific images
of childhood.
4. Consider whether children are believed to have a privileged place in
society and whether age-graded constraints limit their roles and participation
in society.
5. Evaluate the extent to which cultural images affect the ways in which
developmental processes are viewed or understood. For example, different
conceptions of children’s malleability or innate characteristics determine how
children are viewed by educational authorities, by religious authorities, by
welfare authorities, by legal authorities, and so on.

As indicated earlier, we address these issues from the perspectives of

different disciplines as well as from the perspective of different cultural
groups. We have selected a variety of cultures as “case studies” for further
examination so as to elucidate central issues.
The images of childhood examined in this book vary along three major
dimensions: disciplinary, historical, and cultural. As articulated more fully in
chapter 2, first of all, there are important differences among disciplines in
the ways in which images are defined, identified, and studied. The contribu­
tors to this volume are largely historians, anthropologists, theologians, and
psychologists and thus these four disciplinary perspectives are highlighted
in chapter 2, wherein each discipline is characterized— albeit crudely— in a
brief mini-chapter. The four disciplines can be arranged along a fuzzy con­
tinuum, with psychologists focusing on individuals and individual variation,
anthropologists concerned with the characteristics of subcultural groups and
societies, historians with changes over time in societal practices and their
underlying conceptions, and theologians with fundamental belief systems
that unite individuals from otherwise divergent backgrounds and eras. The
contributions of each level of analysis to an appreciation of images are
highlighted in chapter 2, whereas the authors of subsequent chapters apply
these different perspectives to specific societies.
A second dimension of variation is historical time. As Cunningham illus­
trates in his section in chapter 2, several important changes in the perceptions
of childhood have occurred. Perhaps no one is better known as a chronicler
of these changes than the French historian, Philippe Aries. In a widely read
and hotly disputed book, Aries (1962) argued that children were not recog­
nized as having distinct needs, characteristics, and abilities until the 18th
1. INTRODUCTION 5

century. Before that, they were viewed as little more than young adults who
happened to be small in size and stature. Subsequent historians, like Vi-
novskis (chapter 4) and Cunningham, have challenged this conclusion, ar­
guing that the recognition o f childhood did not suddenly emerge as Aries
believed. Through much of recorded history, in fact, the special or unique
natures of infancy and childhood have been recognized, not only by artists,
specialists, and novelists, but also by those developing social policies and
programs. Nevertheless, perceptions and images have changed over time,
partly in response to accumulating scientific wisdom and partly in response
to ideological and political movements.
Images also vary across cultures, and the bulk of the chapters in this
book focus on the images characteristic o f individual cultures and social
groups. As with the historical variations, it has long been the practice of
contemporary Anglo-Saxon scientists and commentators to view their beliefs
or images as the most modern and therefore most “correct.” Earlier images
and those of other cultural and ethnic groups are, by contrast, typically
viewed as quaint but potentially misleading relics of ignorance and naivete.
One purpose of this book is to underscore the extent to which our contem­
porary images are no less subjective and no less products of a unique era
than those of other cultures and other historical times.
Cultural conceptions of childhood shape not only what is studied but
how it is conceptualized. Within the modern American perspective, for ex­
ample, it is considered axiomatic that early experiences have a profound—
many would say immutable— effect on children’s development. This notion,
however, is rooted in the Western belief that developmental trajectories are
necessarily linear. In some contrasting Eastern views, emphasis is placed
not on the earliest experiences, but on those experiences that occur after
the child has achieved the age of reason and is thus capable of developing
mature understanding and mastery. While Americans worry about the effects
of infant day care, early intervention, mother-neonate bonding, and parent-
child separation in infancy and childhood, for example, many parents in
Singapore blithely assign infants, toddlers, and preschoolers to round-the-
clock nonparental care arrangements until the children are old enough to
benefit from the care and wisdom of their parents around 6 or 7 years of
age. Evidently, this difference in the conceptualization of childhood has
implications not only for research strategies designed to describe and explain
developmental processes and trajectories, but also for the design and im­
plementation of interventions and social policies.

OUTLINE OF THE BOOK

In chapter 2, four authors— an historian, a theologian, a social anthropologist,

and a psychologist— each sketch their discipline’s approach to the analysis
of “images of childhood.” Certainly, all the major bodies of religious thought,
6 LAMB AND HWANG

which have their origins in texts written from 2,000 to 5,000 years ago, pay
explicit attention to the unique (and usually protected) status of children
and the special responsibilities of those adults, particularly parents, charged
with their care and socialization (Sander, chapter 2). Religious texts tend to
use the term ch ild h oo d rather loosely and are often not well-informed about
the specific needs and characteristics of children of varying ages, Sander
notes, but all religious traditions recognize childhood as a distinct phase of
life with unique potentials and vulnerabilities.
Cunningham shows that social historians paid little attention to images
of children and childhood until the publication of Aries’ book in 1962.
Through an examination of artistic and literary imagery, Aries argued that
childhood was not recognized as a distinct phase of life until the Renaissance.
As Cunningham points out, this conclusion has been rejected by many his­
torians, who have provided numerous examples of the special status ac­
corded to children, even if there was little agreement regarding the parame­
ters of the different stages of life defined in different eras. Cunningham
further cautions that few if any historical eras have been characterized by
single or unified visions of childhood and children. Diversity is the norm—
within eras, cultures, and even individuals. Even in the present, he concludes,
the discrepancy between the image and the reality is noteworthy. This point
is also emphasized by Campos and Gomes in chapter 7.
Within young disciplines like social anthropology, there has been little
dispute about the distinctiveness of childhood or even about the discrete
phases or stages within it. Rather, as Harkness briefly explains, social an­
thropologists have sought through observation and interview to discern dis­
tinctive views of children and childhood in different cultures and to show
how patterns of childrearing and child care are rationalized and explained
by reference to a larger body of beliefs about social responsibility, sociali­
zation, and parenthood. For psychologists (see Sigel & Kim, chapter 2),
meanwhile, the focus is less on what makes particular cultures distinctive
than on variations within cultural groups in the relative importance of dif­
ferent beliefs and on the ways in which these beliefs then shape the practices
of individual parents and, in turn, their children. For psychologists, the areas
of consensus within cultures have thus been of much less interest than the
areas of variation. Only by studying variation in parental beliefs and parental
behavior have psychologists been able to explore and articulate parental
influences on their children’s development.
These disciplines thus offer complementary rather than alternative or
competing approaches to the study of images of childhood. Only by looking
both at the broad brush strokes that separate figure from ground in historical,
theological, and anthropological analyses, as well as at the details described
by developmental psychologists, can we truly appreciate the breadth and
importance of the images that motivate and animate the social sciences.
1. INTRODUCTION 7

In chapter 3, Palacios shows how the close study of proverbs can help
illuminate implicit images of children, childhood, and childrearing. As
Palacios notes, proverbs often provide a pithy way of encapsulating certain
“received truths,” whether about gender differences, childhood, or the nature
of development. As he shows, many cultures use popular proverbs to illus­
trate the continuities between childhood and adulthood, the greater ease of
shaping behavioral dispositions in childhood than in later life (a restatement
of the early experience hypothesis by which developmental psychologists
have long been enamored), and of the need for strict discipline during the
early years of life. Proverbs provide insight into basic or traditional values
that endure over time and thus their close study may permit social scientists
to explore and articulate differences in the underlying belief systems of
diverse cultures and historical epochs. Interestingly, although many societies
employ pairs of proverbs that express contradictory messages, this tends
not to be the case for proverbs expressing beliefs about childhood, childrear­
ing, and gender differences. Proverbs are quoted less by better educated
members of society and by citizens of the “modern societies” than by mem­
bers of lower classes or from less developed countries. The implication of
these patterns of usage have yet to be determined, however.
Because the later chapters are each written by individuals whose own
disciplinary and cultural backgrounds are quite diverse, these chapters also
differ quite extensively with respect to their focus. Not surprisingly, Vinovskis
(chapter 4), portrays the changing images of childhood in contemporary
North America through the eyes of an historian, particularly one used to
drawing inferences about underlying beliefs from such social policies as the
establishment of institutions to provide compensatory education and pro­
tective custody to poor children. As Vinovskis points out, there has been
remarkable homogeneity in some basic values and images of childhood in
the United States despite tremendous differences in the backgrounds of
those entering the proverbial melting pot. Only recently have images drawn
from other cultural foundations entered the North American mainstream.
There is little evidence that Colonial Americans ever doubted the impor­
tant differences between children and adults. Indeed, the Puritan faith of
many Colonial Americans appears to have motivated a strong emphasis on
the value of strict discipline in the course of socialization. North Americans
also place little emphasis on preordination and innate individual tendencies,
whereas much greater malleability is anticipated. Inequities are believed to
be rooted in social circumstances rather than genes and fate. Fearful that
children forced to fend for themselves on the street would come to prey on
their more fortunate and affluent compatriots, for example, middle-class
philanthropy led to the establishment of child-care and educational institu­
tions in the early 19th century. North Americans have also long believed in
the special value of early intervention, and established enrichment programs
8 LAMB AND HWANG

for young children nearly two centuries ago. Only when Brigham (1833)
forcefully argued that such early interventions had especially harmful rather
than especially advantageous effects did such programs fall from favor,
although belief in the special importance of early experiences was not chal­
lenged. Not surprisingly, these fundamental beliefs continue to influence
public policy and debate, whether focused on early intervention or the
dangers of infant day care.
By analyzing changing public policies concerning early child education and
care, furthermore, Vinovskis effectively illustrates the special relationship
between politics and science. He shows that scientific ideas packaged or
promoted in such a way that they complement politically popular beliefs tend
to have enormous impact, at least for a while. As the political winds change,
however, attention to scientific evidence often changes too, even in self-con­
sciously technological and scientifically oriented societies like the United
States. One wonders whether objective evaluations of children’s needs (at least
as they are understood at different phases) have any real impact on public
policy when they fail to reinforce popular ideological positions.
Whereas Vinovskis provides a sobering view of the changes over time
in North American conceptions of childhood, Chen (chapter 5) provides an
anthropologist’s view of some enduring tendencies that dominate Japanese
conceptions. Recent industrialization notwithstanding, Japanese culture is
heavily rooted in its agricultural past and thus agricultural metaphors for
children and child care abound. O f particular interest and importance is the
“plant cultivation” model of childrearing that emphasizes the need for ten­
derness, tolerance, and the absence of restrictions as the young sapling
begins its growth followed by years of careful pruning and straightening to
ensure that the chosen path is actually followed. Interestingly, Chen suggests
that, in modern Japan, the updated version of this model may draw on the
experience of cash crop farmers who need to provide much more intensive
and zealous care in order to maximize the value of their products. One thus
observes an extensive reliance on tutors and cram schools (ju ku ) to ensure
success in the crucial school-leaving examinations that determine admission
to prestigious universities and thus delimit likely social status in adulthood.
Another important metaphor identified by Chen describes the means by
which Japanese parents help their children make the transition from child­
hood to adulthood. Chen compares this task to a river crossing and contrasts
two approaches: One in which the adult stands on the opposite shore and
beckons the child to him or her and the other in which the adult crosses
the river with the child so as to facilitate the transition. According to Chen,
the second metaphor represents traditional Japanese childrearing with its
emphasis on nurturance and indulgence, whereas the former represents the
situation in many Western societies where the differences between the roles
of adults and children are more strictly defined.
1. INTRODUCTION 9

Like the Japanese, the Chewa of Zambia have a lengthy agricultural tra­
dition, even though colonization and its aftermath have led millions of Zam­
bians to leave the countryside and move into squalid settlements in the
major cities, particularly Lusaka. Because of their agricultural traditions, how­
ever, most Zambian tribal groups, like the Japanese, tend to use agricultural
metaphors to represent children, their needs, and their socialization (Serpell,
chapter 6). Yet, whereas traditional Japanese values have largely been main­
tained and endogenously enriched in the recent rush to modernization and
industrialization, Zambia’s colonizers imposed a set of policies that accorded
scant respect to the values that preceded them. Indeed, as in many other
countries, the hegemonistic colonial powers often misrepresented local cul­
tures, as well as their fundamental conceptions and values. Instead of rec­
ognizing indigenous conceptions of intelligence, social responsibility, and
success, for example, the British colonizers of Zambia imposed an alien and
elitist model of education, with its own implicit definitions of intelligence
and success. In the more authoritarian British model, the expert teacher
instructs the ignorant pupil, whereas among the Chewa, as in many indige­
nous African cultures, youngsters are gradually introduced to and integrated
into the group through processes of apprenticeship, imitation, and experi­
mentation. The Chewa distinguish among and evaluate differently knowl­
edge, intellectual quickness, craftiness, trustworthiness, and wisdom, of
which only the first is taught by formal educational systems. In addition,
the Chewa place much greater emphasis on “learning by doing” than on
symbolically mediated instruction. Analysis of the difficulties surrounding
introduction of the British-inspired educational system in Zambia, as in other
parts of Africa, helps illustrate the indigenous values that preceded them,
even if only by the sad results of a failure to pay them greater heed.
Colonization also played an important role in the development of Brazil,
South America’s largest and most populous nation (see chapter 7). Successive
waves of Portuguese explorers, missionaries, and settlers have slaughtered,
enslaved, embraced, and married the indigenous Indians as well as the Black
slaves imported from Africa by settlers to facilitate the agricultural exploita­
tion of the continent. Despite the diverse backgrounds and enormous so­
cioeconomic disparities that have always and continue to characterize Bra­
zilian culture, however, the dominant or ruling values and ideologies have
traditionally been those of the Portuguese inspired upper class, among whom
godliness and social status were reflected in degrees of pigmentation. Thus,
as Campos and Gomes (chapter 7) show, the most influential images of
Brazilian childhood are derived from models of the traditional patriarchal
family with its rigid distinctions between male and female roles as well as
between the upper and lower classes. In such contexts, men naturally domi­
nated women, adults dominated children, and the upper classes directed
and exploited those less fortunate than themselves. Among the middle and