Please write a response to the below-listed discussion:
Developmental Universals and Cultural Differences
To understand infant development in my belief developmental universals are more important than cultural differences. An infants developmental skills need to be built up before being exposed to culture; like cognitive changes that occur in the first two years of life. For example, in Piagets sensorimotor stage, there the child has six substages from 0 to 24 months. This development stages the infants, learning to recognize familiar sounds, starts cooing, reaching for objects, blabbing, etc. Thus, according to (Boyd, 2019. Pg 88) changes in cognition are behind the common impression of parents and other caretakers that 18-24-month-olds cannot be left unsupervised.
Understanding, walking, talking, are both the physical and cognitive skills the infant develops in the developmental universals. The three goals of developmental psychology are to describe, explain, and to optimize development (Baltes, Reese, & Lipsitt, 1980). With the infants cognitive and social skills set in place, the cultural influences in child development will start in my opinion. In other words, you need to learn how to crawl before you could walk and walk before you can run.
Cultural differences are most important for modeling beneficial significance in the continuing development of the infant. For example, if the infants parents are bilingual and speak both languages to the child, begin to talk sooner, develop larger vocabularies, use more complex sentences, and learn to read more readily when they reach school age (MacWhinney, 2011). The social interaction that is associated with culture does in my opinion mold the infant to become the adult that is influenced by how one acts, eats, and who we are. It is amazing to see that in newer generations like my nephew who is 3 years old, where cultural differences have already started marking his unique personality. Thus, in conclusion, reevaluating the question to what is more important in an infants development of developmental universal and cultural differences, well they both are equally important in my opinion.
Communal Care and Attachment
Interesting Van IJzedoorn & Kroonenberg (1988) did not gather data themselves, opting to analyze data from other studies utilizing a method called meta-analysis. It was shown that intra-cultural differences in attachment distributions are about the same as cross-cultural differences (Van IJzendoorn & Kroonenberg, 1988). Explaining the results of the different analyses made by Van IJzendoom, I am keen on the experiences I refer to with the closet to me, family, and friends with children. As mentioned in (Boyd 2019, pg. 116), in all countries van IJzendoorn studied, infants have one caregiver, usually the mother.
This study is focused on a group of people named the Efe, who are from the forests of Zaire (Tronick, Morelli, & Ivey, 1992.) The communal care and attachment for the child are based on a community experience. View it as living with rather a large group of extended family members, where the women and older children tend to the small infants. At that stage the attachment of the child to a particular adult is minimum, they dont care who is attending to them. As long as the infants needs are met. In my culture, aunts, cousins, and the familys favorite grandmother takes care of the child throughout the beginning stages of life, reframing from taking the child to daycare. Just like the Efe people, the child does go to sleep with their mother in the night, same for the child taken care of by the Abuelita they go home to their mothers as well. The findings on van IJzendoorn, Efe infants around 6 months start insisting of being with their mothers more than the other women who attended to them. Just like my nephew, around that age, he started crying more for his mom and not wanting to go with his grandmother or me.
That finding according to Boyd,2019 is some signs of a central attachment are evident, though perhaps less dominant. However, I wonder what the outcome currently would be if the analysis was done during the first two years of Covid where a child is limited to social bonding whether it be daycare or being taken care of my family. The communal care and attachment would be in my opinion intensify more towards their mothers; dont you think?
