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Children's daily lives in a Mayan village: a case study of culturally constructed roles and activities
... Este artículo adopta el punto de vista de que para comprender el proceso de desarrollo infantil es indispensable estudiar a los niños en el desempeño de sus actividades cotidianas, los sistemas de creencias culturales y las instituciones responsables de la regularidad del comportamiento experimentado por los niños (de León 2005;Gaskins 1999;Paradise 1996). ...
... Entonces, el objetivo de este trabajo es examinar los principios culturales que guían la socialización infantil en la comunidad nahua de San Isidro Buensuceso, Tlaxcala. Siguiendo el modelo de Gaskins (1999), se describen cuatro principios: la primacía del trabajo de los adultos, la importancia de las creencias parentales, la independencia de la motivación de los niños y la socialización bilingüe. La primacía del trabajo de los adultos refiere a que la vida cotidiana de los niños está estructurada en torno a las labores de los adultos; las creencias parentales son ideas o modelos culturales que los padres sostienen con respecto a los niños, a sus familias y a ellos mismos; la independencia refiere a la propia motivación que tienen las niñas y niños en la realización de sus actividades, y la socialización bilingüe tiene que ver con el proceso de adquisición del lenguaje en el contexto de intenso contacto entre el español y el náhuatl en la comunidad de estudio. ...
... Además, se retoman algunos conceptos y métodos de la sociolingüística (Goffman 1981;Gumperz y Hymes 1972). Asimismo, se toman como referencia teórica los estudios en el área de la Psicología Cultural del Desarrollo (Gaskins 1999;Gaskins y Paradise 2010;Harkness y Super 1992;Rogoff 2003;Rogoff et al. 2003;Rogoff et al. 2007). ...
El objetivo de este trabajo es examinar los principios culturales que guían la socialización de los niños bilingües (náhuatl-español) de San Isidro Buensuceso, Tlaxcala. Se describen cuatro principios: la primacía del trabajo de los adultos, la importancia de las creencias parentales, la independencia de la motivación de los niños y la socialización bilingüe. La situación muestra un proceso de socialización dinámico que se configura por el contacto y mezcla de la cultura indígena con la “modernidad”, del náhuatl con el español, dando lugar a un modo de vida híbrido que forma parte de la vida cotidiana de los habitantes de la comunidad.
Bajo el marco de la Socialización del Lenguaje y la Psicología Cultural del Desarrollo,
este estudio permite conocer los factores que intervienen en la socialización cultural y
lingüística en un grupo indígena del área de Mesoamérica. Además, nos brinda la posibilidad de entender cómo las personas transforman, resisten y conservan la cultura y la lengua minoritaria en contextos de contacto con una cultura y lengua mayoritaria.
La recolección de datos se guía por las técnicas de la etnografía. Se realizaron
videograbaciones de las actividades cotidianas de las familias del estudio y, en específico, de los niños, igualmente se realizaron entrevistas en náhuatl.
... However, when we step outside of this particular cultural context, it becomes clear that the form of these interactions is far from the norm. In many cultural groups, mothers engage in relatively little direct interaction with their infants (Heath, 1983;Gaskins, 1999;Pye, 1986;Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986;Shneidman & Goldin-Meadow, 2012;Shneidman, et al., 2013), and may even refrain from talking directly to their infants before they themselves begin to talk (Brazelton, 1977, Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986. Most accounts of parent-infant engagement in such communities come from ethnographic descriptions (e.g., Brown, 2011;Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986, De León, 2011Paradise, 1994). ...
... These tend to focus on how adults' beliefs about childhood and childrearing practices (e.g., child-centered vs. situation-centered societies shape their patterns of early interaction, socialization and learning (c.f., Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984). For example, in several distinct communities including the Maya (Brown, 2011;De León, 2011;Gaskins, 1999;Pye, 1986) and related groups (the Gusi (LeVine et al., 1996), Kaluli (Schieffelin, 1990), and rural Samoans (Ochs, 1982(Ochs, , 1988), parents do not engage directly with their infants in proto-conversations or other dyadic interactions. Instead, infants in these cultural communities appear to be socialized as observers, more than active participants. ...
... Based on prior evidence from communities in which caregivers are less likely than Westerners to engage their children directly (Heath, 1983;Gaskins, 1999;Pye, 1986;Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986;Shneidman & Goldin-Meadow, 2012;Shneidman, et al., 2013), we expected that in comparison to their Eurodescendant counterparts, Wichi children would spend more time engaged actively in solitary activities (e.g., observing others' interactions; manipulating objects on their own) and less time interacting directly with others. More provocatively, perhaps, we suspected that this careful observational study might permit us to uncover alternative forms of "togetherness" in Wichi engagement and socialization. ...
Theories of early development have emphasized the power of caregivers as active agents in infant socialization and learning. However, there is variability, across communities, in the tendency of caregivers to engage with their infants directly. This raises the possibility that infants and children in some communities spend more time engaged in solitary activities than in dyadic or triadic interactions. Here, we focus on one such community (indigenous Wichi living in Argentina's Chaco Forest) to test this possibility. We examine naturally occurring attentional activity involving the mother and child among the Wichi and among Eurodescendant Spanish‐speaking families living in Argentina. We engaged 16 families—8 Wichi and 8 Eurodescendant—in an observational study of interactions between caregivers and their 1‐ to 2‐year‐olds. A mixed‐analytic approach revealed no differences between communities in the proportion of time infants spent alone, or in mother‐child interaction. What does differ, however, is how mothers engage in these interactions: Wichi mothers spend a greater proportion of their time observing their infants than do Eurodescendant mothers. Moreover, when infants in both groups are alone, they focus their ‘solitary’ activities differently: Wichi infants engaged primarily in observation alone, whereas Eurodescendant infants were more focused on the object. Finally, all mother‐child pairs engaged in dyadic and triadic (object‐infant‐caregiver) patterns of attention, but the triadic patterns differed considerably between cultures: Among Wichi, mothers actively “watched” infants as they engaged with objects, whereas Eurodescendant mothers actively engaged with their infants in joint attentional episodes. This work illustrates how attention and socialization, key mechanisms of early development, are culturally organized. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwsOCLXubKQ.
Research Highlights
Longitudinal, observational investigation of mother‐infant interaction in two distinct Argentine cultural groups (Wichi and Eurodescendants) reveals both commonalities and clear community‐based differences in interactions between mothers and their 1‐ to 2‐year‐olds.
Wichi mother‐infant dyads engaged primarily in visual observation of one another, but their Eurodescendant counterparts tended to engage in more verbal or physical interaction.
We identify a new form of triadic interaction—lateral joint attention—among the Wichi dyads.
This work underscores that attention and socialization, key mechanisms of early development, are culturally organized.
... Broadly speaking, human play is extensive and ubiquitous (Whitebread and Basilio, 2013). However, it is influenced by various cultural factors, leading to diverse and complex manifestations (Farver, 1999;Gaskins, 1999). Moreover, play is widely acknowledged as a critical component of young children's educational development (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2016;Pellegrini and Bjorklund, 2004;Wisneski and Reifel, 2012). ...
Introduction
This research aims to understand how preschool children in Taiwan, where ethnic integration is common, incorporate their unique ethnic and cultural backgrounds into their play activities to express and integrate their cultural identities. Using Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory as a theoretical lens, the study examines and analyzes these attributes.
Methods
This study employed purposive sampling to select a public preschool in Taoyuan City, Taiwan, and adopted a qualitative research approach. The play behavior of 27 Taiwanese children was observed over a two-month period, during which nine interviews were conducted with preschool teachers. Teachers’ reflections on instruction and children’s portfolios were also collected to provide supplementary insights into elements that could not be fully clarified through observation and interviews.
Results
The analysis was grounded in Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, and the data were coded to systematically organize and condense the information. The findings revealed the following: (i) Children express their cultural traits through folk festival ceremonies during play activities; (ii) Engaging in play activities related to folk festival ceremonies is essential for these children, as it deepens their understanding of the cultural contexts within their respective ethnic communities. Moreover, the children demonstrate the ability to integrate their knowledge and skills related to the cultural characteristics of their ethnic groups.
Discussion
The play activities of Taiwanese preschool children exhibit a dynamic nature and undergo modifications over time across different ethnic, cultural, and contextual settings, as exemplified by the variety of materials, shapes, flavors, and terms associated with rice dumplings reported by children. Thus, recognizing and addressing cultural diversity within early childhood education settings is essential for promoting meaningful engagement and facilitating children’s successful adaptation to socially diverse environments.
... Con este marco referencial, se han escrito distintas etnoteorías del desarrollo infantil según las diversas culturas (Gaskins, 1999;Rogoff, 2003;De León, 2005;Flores, 2010: 109). Lourdes de León Pasquel (2005), por ejemplo, ha subrayado que el desarrollo infantil está orientado por aspectos biológicos, sociales y culturales, puesto que no puede hablarse únicamente de una infancia universal, en el sentido sociológico, sino que también debe hablarse de infancias diversas, que dependen del modo en el que cada grupo social las conciba (James, Jenks y Prout, 1998). ...
... In many Indigenous communities in the Americas, collaboration has been an important practice for centuries, with children commonly included as contributors to family and community endeavors along with everyone else (Baxter, 2005;Chamoux, 1992;Díaz Barriga Cuevas, 2012;Flores et al., 2015;Gaskins, 1999;Good Eshelman, 2005;Lenkersdorf, 1996;Paoli, 2003). Mutuality in collaboration is a cultural value that is central to Indigenous Knowledge Systems. ...
Changes in family life related to globalization may include reduction in the collaborativeness observed in many Indigenous American communities. The present study examined longitudinal changes and continuities in collaboration in a Guatemalan Maya community experiencing rapid globalization. Fluid collaboration was widespread 3 decades ago among triads of mothers and 1‐ to 6‐year‐olds in 24 Mayan families exploring novel objects during home visits (Dayton et al., 2022). However, in the “same” situation 30 years later, 22 mother–child triads of their relatives spent half as much time in collaboration among all three people. This aligns with globalizing changes and with the pattern of Dayton et al.'s middle‐class European American families. Nonetheless, the Mayan families maintained harmonious interactions, in line with preserving important cultural values.
... From an ethnographic perspective, it may be completely valid to consider features like number and composition of talkers a part of children's specific cultural and linguistic milieu. The number of talkers present, after all, likely relates to cultural practices around childcare (e.g., alloparenting), household organization (e.g., multigenerational housing), and daily activities (e.g., food preparation routines; see Gaskins (1999) and Casillas (2023) for more discussion of these issues). Put differently, variation in the number of talkers present can signal group-specific routines, practices, and interactional contexts. ...
We present an exploratory cross-linguistic analysis of the quantity of target-child-directed speech and adult-directed speech in North American English (US & Canadian), United Kingdom English, Argentinian Spanish, Tseltal (Tenejapa, Mayan), and Yélî Dnye (Rossel Island, Papuan), using annotations from 69 children aged 2–36 months. Using a novel methodological approach, our cross-linguistic and cross-cultural findings support prior work suggesting that target-child-directed speech quantities are stable across early development, while adult-directed speech decreases. A preponderance of speech from women was found to a similar degree across groups, with less target-child-directed speech from men and children in the North American samples than elsewhere. Consistently across groups, children also heard more adult-directed than target-child-directed speech. Finally, the numbers of talkers present in any given clip strongly impacted children’s moment-to-moment input quantities. These findings illustrate how the structure of home life impacts patterns of early language exposure across diverse developmental contexts.
... In her studies of the Yucatec Maya, Gaskins (1996Gaskins ( , 2000 has described how respect is highly valued for children and how it is enacted in everyday life: Children show proper respect by greeting older family members and taking care of younger members. However, they have a great deal of autonomy in their daily lives (Gaskins, 1996(Gaskins, , 1999(Gaskins, , 2020. They make both minor and major decisions, from selecting play activities and companions, roaming around the community, deciding whether to take medicine, and whether or not to attend or leave school. ...
Knowledge from the Global South, including Latin America, has enriched our understanding of developmental science. Despite underrepresentation in the published literature, research from Latin America has advanced the psychology of parenting and child and adolescent development. An ecological approach is valuable in adding meaning and specificity to general cultural clusters and has revealed how responsibility, lovingness, and respect are enacted in the everyday lives of families and children. Although the evidence is not exclusive to the Global South, research from Latin America has broadened and challenged theories and accepted practices from the Global North. Examples include countering attachment theory with respect to multiple caregivers and sensitive responsiveness and problematization of children’s work in terms of family responsibilities. Research from Latin America has also challenged the notion of optimal parenting styles and revealed how the cultural values of familism and respect are evidenced in the daily practices of parents and children. Latin America boasts a psychology that acknowledges the importance of the political and social context and seeks to apply psychology to addressing social problems. To fully recognize and take advantage of knowledge from the Global South, the science of psychology should refrain from promoting “best practices” and sidelining research from Latin America and other regions of the majority world; it needs to fully document autochthonous parental ethnotheories, socialization goals, and practices and promote the implementation of the goals of local communities.
... For example, between the ages of four and eight, caring for others was done simultaneously with playing and enjoying themselves, as expressed by another interviewee: 'When I was little, I liked dressing her up, combing her hair, my sister was like a doll to me' (Bárbara, 29 years old). Certainly, the care that girls provide towards their siblings has been widely studied (Gaskins, 1999;Rogoff et al, 2003), demonstrating that girls and boys develop complex skills through caring, and learning through multiple pathways and resources that their environments offer them, based on observation, imitation and play. They also introduce innovations that demonstrate empathetic attitudes and practise sophisticated forms of communication, synchronisation and collaboration (Remorini and Laplacette, 2020). ...
This study examines the childhood care experiences of women between 20 and 30 years of age from low-income households in Santiago, Chile, by employing semi-structured interviews and qualitative analysis. At present, women understand their caregiving roles as older sisters, one which burdened them with agency practices, shaping critical reflections regarding the social organisation of care and influencing their present identity. They also articulate a desire for emotional resilience, a coping mechanism previously observed in low-income neighbourhoods in Chile. While downplaying their caregiving past, they subtly reveal the weight and regret associated with their responsibilities, influencing their reluctance to become mothers in the present. This study underscores the intricate interplay of past care experiences with present decisions, revealing the impacts of empowering discourses on women’s ideals and achievements, and the inherent fragility they carry.
... Several scholars (Gaskins, 1999(Gaskins, , 2000(Gaskins, , 2008Kramer, 2005;Paradise and Rogoff, 2009) have examined the socialization process of young children within Maya communities. Younger children start to learn by observing their older relatives. ...
Yucatec Maya orality has been a popular topic of study of scholars from a wide array of disciplines. These studies often rely on academically generated categories of speech that have often been stylized in forms that descend from Western thought. The generated speech categories may overlook more performance-based forms that are more common of Indigenous knowledge systems. Most of the collected and analyzed Maya oral literature appears to be recounted by men, leaving women’s orality and their unique ways of interpreting the world largely under-documented. In this paper, I expand our understanding of Yucatec Maya women’s oral literature by providing a systematic documentation and description of u t’aan nukuch máak, words of the elders, a ‘speech’ genre that relies largely on performance. The performance of u t’aan nukuch máak are an embodiment of my female collaborators’ culture, as they occur in their daily routines. U t’aan nukuch máak are performed (or uttered) in the context of certain bodies, objects, times, and spaces that index concepts that reflect the strength of Maya cultural memory.
... La familia, actor fundamental en este tipo de turismo, ha sido poco estudiada pues se le enmascara bajo un supuesto comunitarismo idealizado (Lemas et al., 2023;Jouault, 2021). El trabajo en este contexto es un principio organizador de la vida familiar, en él participan todos sus miembros desde temprana edad según sus capacidades, y es la base del aprendizaje (Gaskins, 1999;Alcalá et al., 2021;. ...
El turismo del sector social ha tenido un crecimiento sostenido en los últimos 25 años en la península de Yucatán. De tal manera que se observa la relevancia que adquiere el turismo comunitario como fuente de trabajo y su incorporación a procesos productivos dentro de la pluriactividad campesina, en los lugares donde esta actividad socio-económica se ha insertado. Tres preguntas guiaron nuestra reflexión: ¿Qué papel está desempeñando la mujer en estas empresas?, ¿Cómo se construye el relevo generacional en el seno de estas empresas campesinas y familiares? ¿Qué sucede con los emprendimientos de jóvenes profesionistas? A partir de una investigación-acción participativa emprendida desde 2014 con redes colaborativas de las cooperativas turísticas de la Península, documentamos como en el transcurso de 10 años la participación de la mujer creció un 105% y la de las personas menores de 30 años se incrementó en 56%. La incorporación de las mujeres en el grupo de trabajo ha sido fundamental en la evolución y consolidación de algunas empresas. La participación de los jóvenes adquiere relevancia al involucrarse dentro de las actividades operativas, jugando un papel clave en la competitividad de estas empresas.
Although play occurs in a wide variety of animals, models of the origins of play behavior are lacking. We propose a novel computational model exploring the evolution of non-social frivolous play. Asexually reproducing semelparous animals can either rest or forage. Foraging occurs when an organism is below an energy threshold. Success is determined by the combination of skill and availability of resources, which declines over time but replenishes for each generation. Play was introduced as a mutant strategy: a frivolous activity that uses energy and increases the probability of dying over resting with no direct fitness benefit. Simulations show that play behavior becomes fixed in the population and the time spent playing is maintained at a low rate in spite of its costly nature. When play behavior is functional by increasing foraging ability, it evolves quickly and the time individuals spend playing increases, but eventually the population of players collapses and play disappears. We suggest a mechanism underlying the origins of adaptive play from non-adaptive behavior when resources expand. Initially play acts as a spiteful behavior in that playing individuals suffer a direct cost to their fitness, but also may incur even greater costs to other individuals in the population.
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(Original work published 1934)