Point of View/Aspects of Parental Care

Description and Examples

Organic hardware

Includes aspects of parental care such as “reproductive physiology, neurophysiology, and growth patterns” (LeVine et al. 1994: 16). An example of organic hardware is a mother's ability to lactate and feed her infant.

Ecological firmware

Includes conditions distinct to a population that affect “the resources available to children in the form of food, protection from health risks, other material goods, and social attention” (17). Parental decisions regarding, for example, fertility and allocation of emotional and material resources to children are based on “economic incentives” (19).

Cultural software

Includes the taken-for-granted ideas that a parent has regarding child care --“the ideas that influence parents in a particular population and give them a common–sense of what is natural, normal, and necessary in reproductive behavior and child care” (18). It influences parental behavior through a “semiotic model” (19), where cultural scripts “derived from the traditions and popular ideologies of a particular culture” (19) guide parenting behavior. Parents decisions are based on “conventionalized images of what is and what ought to be in the domains of reproduction and child care, applying ideal standards in their daily lives, and seeking to implement an agenda derived from culture–specific concepts of virtue” (19). However, parental behaviour is not always determined by a cultural script, as some parents may choose to act otherwise. Cultural scripts can also change from generation to generation. Therefore, cultural scripts are “central tendencies” of parental behavior, rather than “uniformities” (21).

Cultural software is further explained by LeVine et al. (1994) who present a cultural model of early child care comprised of three parts that drive parental behavior: moral direction, pragmatic design, and a set of conventional scripts for action. These three parts of the cultural model make up what LeVine et al. (1994) call a “commonsense folk model” (248) which is often “unformulated in local discourse and is difficult to elicit from parents because it is taken for granted and seems too obvious to mention” (249).

Cultural mediation model

This is the manner in which the organic hardware of a population is utilized. It is highly dependent on the ecological firmware and cultural software of that population. For example, organic hardware provides a “basic set of parameters” (20) for children’s developmental milestones (such as learning to talk) but does not actually determine the exact age at which the child will reach those milestones.

Parental Behavior

Pediatric model observed in Gusii mothers’ of rural Kenya interactions

Pedagogical model observed in American (Boston) middle-class mothers’ interactions

Moral direction: includes the “normative assumptions about what is best for an infant” (248) and also the goals that a mother/caregiver should pursue as she cares for her child.

The goal of moral direction for Gusii mother: reinforcing the hierarchical structure of the family by training the child to be compliant, obedient, and non-demanding.

The cultural script for the mother's verbal response to the infant entailed “command” (252) such as asking the child to ‘go fetch’ something for her.

The main goal for the American mother was “active engagement in social exchange” (LeVine et.al 1994: 249) where infant curiosity, such as exploration of surroundings, as well as verbal and visual communication, was encouraged    and readily facilitated.

The cultural script for the American mothers was the “questions and praise” (252) meant to build the child’s social interactions in both frequency and complexity.

The pragmatic design includes the overall strategy employed to achieve such goals, “specific behavioural devices used” (248), and the schedule for the implementation of such devices over the course of infancy/early childhood.

Mainly concerned with infant survival and physical health. Levine et al. concluded that because the Gusii believed that infancy is a time of considerable danger, the mothers’ goal was to protect the infant from illness or environmental hazards that could cause death.

The strategy or means of attaining the goal of protection, known as pragmatic design, entailed the culturally expected schedule that a mother or caregiver employed in order to ensure the survival of the child.  The design was carried on through soothing-- the mother carried or slept with her baby until the baby was at least 15-months-old, breast-fed, and responded immediately to the baby’s distress.

Strategies for successful initiation of proto-conversation included the use of a high-pitched baby talk and eliciting some sort of response, such as a coo or waving of the arms. If the infant gave any sort of response such as a babble, a smile, or a wave, the mother generously praised the infant, rewarding the infant for his/her effort and achievement. This praise/reward pattern was meant to build self-confidence in the child and increase the child's ability engage in social interactions as the child nears school-age.

The conventional scripts for action relate to caregiving in response to specific and natural situations. For example, this includes not only responding to a baby’s communication signals but responding with “the socially expected sequences of caregiving behavior” (248) expected for that specific situation.

By two years of age the “Respect-Obedience” (LeVine, et.al 1994: 254) model eventually replaces the Pediatric model of Gusii infant/child care. Further training in obedience came from the child being an “apprentice” (274) in the sibling group, where children were expected to be respectful of, and obedient to, those older than them.

As the child grew, the mother scaffolded the child's language development by progressively introducing adult–like speech. By the age of 2, the child was socialized into “initiation-reply-evaluation sequences” (LeVine et.al 1994: 251) that mimicked the structured interaction between a teacher and student during a classroom lesson. The mother took on the role of the teacher and the infant the pupil, with the hope of building school readiness.

Subsystems

Description

The physical and social settings of daily life

It includes the people with whom the child interacts, as well as the activities in which a child takes part. Depending on the setting, a child may be engaged in activities such as playing indoors or outdoors, playing with blocks or puzzles, coloring or painting, watching TV, listening to a group story, or helping with chores or meal preparation (Harkness et al., 2007).

In rural Africa, where 6 to 10-year-old daughters support their mothers in agricultural work by supervising younger siblings, the physical setting of farm life, where a mother can see all her children from afar, encourages the practice of older children caring for younger children. The embedded social settings carry the expectation of young girls helping their mothers instead of going to school. (Harkness et al. 2013).

These customs and practices are culturally embedded and are so common in the community that they seem obvious and natural solutions to everyday problems, developmental requirements, or social needs (Harkness et al., 2007).

These are most often performed by parents or caregivers and range from how to respond to a crying baby, and what to feed a child, to how often to talk to a child and what kind of vocabulary to use.

The psychology of the caretakers, which includes parental ethnotheories

These are often held in common by members within the same cultural community.

Parental ethnotheories include a “developmental agenda” involving “what the parent thinks the child should be learning, and when, in order to grow up to be a successful member of his or her community”. Parents choose customs of care and physical and social settings to correspond with their goal-based developmental agendas.

Priority is often placed on a few aspects of the child’s development, often to the exclusion of other aspects that are not seen as useful to future outcomes of the child. (Harkness et al., 2007: 35-8).

Developmental agendas vary from culture to culture to such a great degree, that one aspect of a child’s development (e.g., regular sleep) that is of great priority in one culture, may be of little priority in another (Harkness et al., 2007: 35-8).

The three subsystems of the developmental niche may lack consistency despite the parents’ ethnotheories and ideals of parenting. In such cases, “intervening factors” may exist, such as “situations or conditions”, that prevent parental ethnotheories from being fully realized (Harkness et al. (2007: 36). All parents hold, to varying degrees, a sense of contentment or discontentment with the development of their child, based on whether or not their parental ethnotheories are actualized.
For example, parents in an urban centre may wish to create a physical home environment similar to their own childhood experience in which there was a space and freedom to run around safely. Despite their parental ethnotheories of providing their children with the physical environment that matches their ethnotheory, their work is keeping them in the city, so they may feel discontent with the level of physical activity of their child.

“Each subsystem is influenced by forces in the larger ecology” (Harkness et al., 2013, p. 150), meaning that the developmental niche is an open system, where outside factors in the wider cultural and economic environment can be influential. As the wider culture and economy undergo change, they put pressure on some or all of the systems of the developmental niche, thus causing the developmental niche to eventually undergo its own process of change.
For example, immigrants, who bring their parental ethnotheories with them to their new country may become less powerful over time as their lives in the new country can be a substantially different from their home country.

Corollary three

The elements of the developmental niche are “continually involved in a process of mutual adaptation with the individual child” (Harkness et al., 2013: 150). Parents make judgments about his/her child’s skills and abilities and then, based on these judgments, make decisions regarding the most suitable environment and customs of care for his/her child. When a child’s personal qualities impact the decisions of the parents, the process of “mutual adaptation” (Harkness et al., 2007, p. 36) is enacted in the three subsystems of the child’s developmental niche. Parents’ judgments of their child then become an inherent component of the parents’ ethnotheories, which play out in both the customs of care and in the physical and social settings.
For example, if a seven-year-old child is beginning to exhibit the culturally defined qualities of responsibility and independence, her parents may allow her to walk to the neighbourhood school alone.

Acculturation strategy adopted by an individual

Preservation of (heritage) ethnic culture?

Positive relationship with the host/majority culture?

Analogous national or societal policy

Assimilation – becoming fully absorbed into the dominant culture’s ways of life, both culturally and linguistically.

NO

YES

‘Melting pot’ – an ideology that encourages full absorption in the host culture.

Integration – including oneself in both the host and heritage cultures.

YES

Multiculturalism – accepting different cultures within one society.

Separation – remaining separate from the host culture and avoiding interactions with the host culture.

YES

NO

Segregation – separating a group of people because of cultural, racial, or physical differences.

Marginalization – excluding oneself from both the host and heritage cultures.

NO

NO

Exclusion – cleansing of a group of people based on cultural, racial, or physical differences.