7.2: Enculturation Agents

Enculturation Agents

Think back to an emotional event you experienced as a child. How did your parents react to you? Did your parents get frustrated or criticize you? Did they act patiently and provide support and guidance? Did your parents provide lots of rules for you or let you make decisions on your own? Why do you think your parents behaved the way they did? Enculturation agents are individuals and institutions that serve a role in shaping individual adaptions to a specific culture to better ensure growth and effectiveness.

Parents and caretakers are a primary enculturation agent for their young. Psychologists have attempted to answer questions about the influences on parents and understand why parents behave the way they do. Because parents are critical to a child’s development, a great deal of research has been focused on the impact that parents have on children. Parenting is a complex process in which parents and children influence one another. There are many reasons that parents behave the way they do.

The multiple influences on parenting are still being explored. Both caretakers and their children bring unique personality traits, characteristics, and habits to the parent-child dynamic that ultimately impacts the child’s development. Culture also influences parenting behaviors in fundamental ways. Although promoting the development of skills necessary to function effectively in one’s community is a universal goal of parenting, the specific skills necessary vary widely from culture to culture. Parents have different goals for their children that partially depend on their culture (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2008).

Differences in caretaking reflect differences in parenting goals, values, resources, and experiences. As previously stated, culture is learned. Regardless of the specific choices parents make, it can be said that caretakers play a pivotal role in exposing a child to early cultural learning. In fact, many researchers believe that parents/caretakers serve as the single, most important enculturation agent in any child’s life.

While some parenting priorities are culturally universal (parents are expected to play a role in nurturing and raising their young), many more childrearing values and habits are culture-specific. Culture-specific influences on caretaking choices can be subtle or overt, and promote a narrative of what parents “ought” to do in order to successfully raise their children. For example, American parents are encouraged to enculturate a sense of independence and assertiveness in children, while Japanese parents prioritize self-control, emotional maturity, and interdependence (Bornstein, 2012). Undoubtedly, every society places expectations on caretakers as enculturation agents to raise their young in ways that promote culture-specific goals and expectations. We will start with a focus on four areas of child development: temperament, attachment, parenting styles, and cognition. 

Temperament

In psychology, temperament broadly refers to consistent individual differences in behavior that are biologically based and are relatively independent of learning, system of values and attitudes. Thomas, Chess, Birch, Hertzig and Korn began the classic New York Longitudinal study in the early 1950s regarding infant temperament (Thomas, Chess & Birch, 1968). The study focused on how temperamental qualities influence adjustment throughout life. Behaviors for each one of these traits are on a continuum. If a child leans towards the high or low end of the scale, it could be a cause for concern. The specific behaviors are: activity level, regularity of sleeping and eating patterns, initial reaction, adaptability, intensity of emotion, mood, distractibility, persistence and attention span, and sensory sensitivity.

Redundancies between the categories have been found and a reduced list is normally used by psychologists today. Thomas, Chess, Birch, Hertzig and Korn (Thomas & Chess 1977) found that many babies could be categorized into one of three groups:

• Easy
• Difficult
• Slow-to-warm-up

Their research showed that easy babies readily adapt to new experiences, generally display positive moods and emotions and also have normal eating and sleeping patterns. Difficult babies tend to be very emotional, irritable and fussy, and cry a lot. They also tend to have irregular eating and sleeping patterns. Slow-to-warm-up babies have a low activity level, and tend to withdraw from new situations and people. They are slow to adapt to new experiences, but accept them after repeated exposure.

Not all children can be placed in one of these groups. Approximately 65% of children fit one of the patterns. Of the 65%, 40% fit the easy pattern, 10% fell into the difficult pattern, and 15% were slow to warm up. Each category has its own strength and weakness and one is not superior to another. An important aspect of the research of Thomas & Chess (1977) relates to the interaction of child temperament with caretaker personality and parenting style. They proposed that a “match” between the needs of child temperament with parental care would enhance healthy development of self-regulation and the child’s sense of self. This important balance is known as, goodness-of-fit.

Example \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Temperament and Culture

Thomas, Chess, Birch, Hertzig and Korn found that these broad patterns of temperamental qualities are remarkably stable through childhood. These traits are also found in children across all cultures. Thomas and Chess also studied temperament and environment. One sample consisted of white middle-class families with high educational status and the other was of Puerto Rican working-class families. They found several differences. Parents of middle-class children were more likely to report behavior problems before the age of nine and the children had sleep problems. This may be because children start preschool between the ages of three and four.

De Vries (1974) followed Masai (tribe in East Africa) infants and mothers for a number of years during a period of famine. The researcher found that Masai infants who were more demanding were more likely to survive during periods of ecological stress than infants who were more docile. The researcher suggested that infants who were more aggressive and demanding – or in temperament terms more difficult – were more likely to be fed and to have their needs met than docile infants who might have been easier to ignore. The findings from these cross-cultural studies of temperament demonstrate the interaction between ecology, temperament and culture can impact an individual.

Attachment

Some of the most rewarding experiences in people’s lives involve the development and maintenance of close relationships. Attachment refers to a deep and enduring emotional bond that connects one person to another across time and space. For example, some of the greatest sources of joy involve falling in love, starting a family, being reunited with distant loved ones, and sharing experiences with close others. Not surprisingly, some of the most painful experiences in people’s lives involve the disruption of important social bonds, such as separation from a spouse, losing a parent, or being abandoned by a loved one. Why do close relationships play such a profound role in human experience? Attachment theory is one approach to understanding the nature of close relationships.

Attachment theory was originally developed in the 1940s by John Bowlby, a British psychoanalyst who was attempting to understand the intense distress experienced by infants who had been separated from their parents. Bowlby (1969) observed that infants would go to extraordinary lengths to prevent separation from their parents or to reestablish proximity to a missing parent. For example, he noted that children who had been separated from their parents would often cry, call for their parents, refuse to eat or play, and stand at the door in desperate anticipation of their parents’ return. Drawing on evolutionary theory, Bowlby (1969) argued that these behaviors are adaptive responses to separation from a primary attachment figure—a caregiver who provides support, protection, and care.

It was not until his colleague, Mary Ainsworth, began to systematically study infant– parent separations that a formal understanding of these individual differences emerged. Ainsworth and her students developed a technique called the strange situation, a laboratory task for studying infant, parent attachment (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). In the strange situation, 12-month-old infants and their parents are brought to the laboratory and, over a period of approximately 20 minutes, were systematically separated from and reunited with one another. In the strange situation, most children (about 60%) behave in the way implied by Bowlby’s theory. Specifically, they become upset when the parent leaves the room, but, when he or she returns, they actively seek the parent and are easily comforted by him or her. Children who exhibit this pattern of behavior are often called secure.

Other children (about 20% or less) are ill at ease initially and, upon separation, become extremely distressed. Importantly, when reunited with their parents, these children have a difficult time being soothed and often exhibit conflicting behaviors that suggest they want to be comforted, but that they also want to “punish” the parent for leaving. These children are often called anxious-resistant. The third pattern of attachment that Ainsworth and her colleagues documented is often labeled avoidant. Avoidant children (about 20%) do not consistently behave as if they are stressed by the separation but, upon reunion, actively avoid seeking contact with their parent, sometimes turning their attention to play objects on the laboratory floor.

Ainsworth’s work was important for at least three reasons. First, she provided one of the first empirical demonstrations of how attachment behavior is organized in unfamiliar contexts. Second, she provided the first empirical taxonomy of individual differences in infant attachment patterns. According to her research, at least three types of children exist: those who are secure in their relationship with their parents, those who are anxious-resistant, and those who are anxious-avoidant. Finally, she demonstrated that these individual differences were correlated with infant–parent interactions in the home during the first year of life. Children who appear secure in the strange situation, for example, tend to have parents who are responsive to their needs. Children who appear insecure in the strange situation (i.e., anxious-resistant or avoidant) often have parents who are insensitive to their needs, or inconsistent or rejecting in the care they provide.

Exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Attachment and Culture

In the years that have followed Ainsworth’s ground-breaking research, researchers have investigated a variety of factors that may help determine whether children develop secure or insecure relationships with their primary attachment figures. As mentioned above, one of the key determinants of attachment patterns is the history of sensitive and responsive interactions between the caregiver and the child. In short, when the child is uncertain or stressed, the ability of the caregiver to provide support to the child is critical for his or her psychological development. It is assumed that such supportive interactions help the child learn to regulate his or her emotions, give the child the confidence to explore the environment, and provide the child with a safe haven during stressful circumstances.

A number of longitudinal studies are emerging that demonstrate prospective associations between early attachment experiences and adult attachment styles and/or interpersonal functioning in adulthood. For example, Fraley, Roisman, Booth-LaForce, Owen, and Holland (2013) found in a sample of more than 700 individuals studied from infancy to adulthood that maternal sensitivity across development prospectively predicted security at age 18.

Simpson, Collins, Tran, and Haydon (2007) found that attachment security, assessed in infancy in the strange situation, predicted peer competence in grades 1 to 3, which, in turn, predicted the quality of friendship relationships at age 16,which, in turn, predicted the expression of positive and negative emotions in their adult romantic relationships at ages 20 to 23.

It is easy to come away from such findings with the mistaken assumption that early experiences “determine” later outcomes. To be clear, attachment theorists assume that the relationship between early experiences and subsequent outcomes is probabilistic, not deterministic. What this means is that having supportive and responsive experiences with caregivers early in life may set the stage for positive social development, but that doesn’t mean that attachment patterns are set in stone. Even if an individual has far from optimal caretaker experiences in early life, attachment theory suggests that it is possible for that individual to develop well-functioning adult relationships through a number of corrective experiences, including relationships with siblings, other family members, teachers, and close friends.

Security is best viewed as a culmination of a person’s attachment history rather than a reflection of his or her early experiences alone. Those early experiences are considered important not because they determine a person’s fate, but because they provide the foundation for later experiences.

It is essential to note that the attachment theory work of Bowlby and Ainsworth focused on Westernized caretaking ideals in their determination of healthy, secure attachment. As previously discussed, what is considered “ideal” in Westernized culture is not necessarily prioritized in other cultures. Sensitivity and caution is required in determining if observed attachment patterns are adaptive within the context of the child’s environment.

Parenting Styles

As children mature, parent-child relationships naturally change. Preschool and grade-school children are more capable, have their own preferences, and sometimes refuse or seek to compromise with parental expectations. This can lead to greater parent-child conflict, and how conflict is managed by parents further shapes the quality of parent-child relationships. So, what can parents do to nurture a healthy self-concept?

Diana Baumrind (1971, 1991) thinks parenting style may be a factor. The way we parent is an important factor in a child’s socioemotional growth. Baumrind developed and refined a theory describing parenting styles based on two aspects of parenting that are found to be extremely important:

• Parental responsiveness, which refers to the degree the parent responds to the child’s needs.
• Parental demandingness, is the extent to which the parent expects more mature and responsible behavior from a child.

Using these two dimensions, she recognized three different parenting styles:

Authoritarian (Too Hard): the authoritarian parenting style is characterized by high demandingness with low responsiveness. The authoritarian parent is rigid, harsh, and demanding. Abusive parents usually fall in this category (although Baumrind is careful to emphasize that not all authoritarian parents are abusive).

Permissive (Too Soft): this parenting style is characterized by low demandingness with high responsiveness. The permissive parent is overly responsive to the child’s demands, seldom enforcing consistent rules. The “spoiled” child often has permissive parents.

Authoritative (Just Right): this parenting style is characterized by high demandingness with huge responsiveness. The authoritative parent is firm but not rigid, willing to make an exception when the situation warrants. The authoritative parent is responsive to the child’s needs but not indulgent. Baumrind makes it clear that she favors the authoritative style.

Example \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Parenting Styles and Culture

Of the four parenting styles, the authoritative style is the one that is most encouraged in modern American society. American children raised by authoritative parents tend to have high self-esteem and social skills; however, effective parenting styles vary as a function of culture and, as Small (1999) points out, the authoritative style is not necessarily preferred or appropriate in all cultures. In contrast to the authoritative style, authoritarian parents probably would not relax bedtime rules during a vacation because they consider the rules to be set, and they expect obedience. This style can create anxious, withdrawn, and unhappy kids. It is important to point out that authoritarian parenting is as beneficial as the authoritative style in some ethnic groups (Russell, Crockett, & Chao, 2010). For instance, first-generation Chinese American children raised by authoritarian parents did just as well in school as their peers who were raised by authoritative parents (Russell et al., 2010). Not surprisingly, children raised by permissive parents tend to lack self-discipline, and the permissive parenting style is negatively associated with grades (Dornbusch, Ritter, Leiderman, Roberts, & Fraleigh, 1987).

The permissive style may also contribute to other risky behaviors such as alcohol abuse (Bahr & Hoffman, 2010), risky sexual behavior especially among female children (Donenberg, Wilson, Emerson, & Bryant, 2002), and increased display of disruptive behaviors by male children (Parent et al., 2011). There are some positive outcomes associated with children raised by permissive parents. They tend to have higher self- esteem, better social skills, and report lower levels of depression (Darling, 1999).

Cognition

By the time you reach adulthood you have learned a few things about how the world works. You know, for instance, that you can’t walk through walls or leap into the tops of trees. You know that although you cannot see your car keys they’ve got to be around here someplace. What’s more, you know that if you want to communicate complex ideas like ordering a triple-shot soy vanilla latte with chocolate sprinkles it’s better to use words with meanings attached to them rather than simply gesturing and grunting. People accumulate all this useful knowledge through the process of cognitive development, which involves a multitude of factors, both inherent and learned.

Stage theories of development, such as Piaget’s stage theory, focus on whether children progress through qualitatively different stages of development. Sociocultural theories, such as that of Lev Vygotsky, emphasize how other people and the attitudes, values, and beliefs of the surrounding culture, influence children’s development.

Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget proposed that children’s thinking progresses through a series of four discrete stages. By stages he meant periods during which children reasoned in the same way about many superficially different problems, with the stages occurring in a fixed order and the thinking within different stages differing in fundamental ways. The four stages that Piaget hypothesized were the sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years), the preoperational reasoning stage (2 to 6 or 7 years), the concrete operational reasoning stage (6 or 7 to 11 or 12 years), and the formal operational reasoning stage (11 or 12 years and throughout the rest of life).

During the sensorimotor stage, children’s thinking is largely realized through their perceptions of the world and their physical interactions with it. Their mental representations are very limited. Consider Piaget’s object permanence task, which is one of his most famous problems. If an infant younger than 9 months of age is playing with a favorite toy, and another person removes the toy from view, for example by putting it under an opaque cover and not letting the infant immediately reach for it, the infant is very likely to make no effort to retrieve it and to show no emotional distress (Piaget, 1954). This is not due to their being uninterested in the toy or unable to reach for it; if the same toy is put under a clear cover, infants below 9 months readily retrieve it (Munakata, McClelland, Johnson, & Siegler, 1997). Instead, Piaget claimed that infants less than 9 months do not understand that objects continue to exist. This is called object permanence.

During the preoperational stage, according to Piaget, children can solve not only this simple problem (which they actually can solve after 9 months) but show a wide variety of other symbolic-representation capabilities, such as those involved in drawing and using language. However, such 2- to 7-year-olds tend to focus on a single dimension, even when solving problems would require them to consider multiple dimensions. This is evident in Piaget’s (1952) conservation problems. For example, if a glass of water is poured into a taller, thinner glass, children below age 7 generally say that there now is more water than before. Similarly, if a clay ball is reshaped into a long, thin sausage, they claim that there is now more clay, and if a row of coins is spread out, they claim that there are now more coins. In all cases, the children are focusing on one dimension, while ignoring the changes in other dimensions (for example, the greater width of the glass and the clay ball).

Children overcome this tendency to focus on a single dimension during the concrete operations stage, and think logically in most situations. However, according to Piaget, they still cannot think in systematic scientific ways, even when such thinking would be useful. Thus, if asked to find out which variables influence the period that a pendulum takes to complete its arc, and given weights that they can attach to strings in order to do experiments with the pendulum to find out, most children younger than age 12, perform biased experiments from which no conclusion can be drawn, and then conclude that whatever they originally believed is correct. For example, if a boy believed that weight was the only variable that mattered, he might put the heaviest weight on the shortest string and push it the hardest, and then conclude that just as he thought, weight is the only variable that matters (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958).

Finally, in the formal operations period, children attain the reasoning power of mature adults, which allows them to solve the pendulum problem and a wide range of other problems. The formal operations stage tends not to occur without exposure to formal education in scientific reasoning, and appears to be largely or completely absent from some societies that do not provide this type of education.

Example \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Cognitive Development and Culture

Although Piaget’s theory has been very influential, it has not gone unchallenged. Recent research indicates that cognitive development is considerably more continuous than Piaget claimed. For example, Diamond (1985) found that on the object permanence task described above, infants show earlier knowledge if the waiting period is shorter. At age 6 months, they retrieve the hidden object if the wait is no longer than 2 seconds; at 7 months, they retrieve it if the wait is no longer than 4 seconds; and so on. Even earlier, at 3 or 4 months, infants show surprise in the form of longer looking times if objects suddenly appear to vanish with no obvious cause (Baillargeon, 1987).

Similarly, children’s specific experiences can greatly influence when developmental changes occur. Children of pottery makers in Mexican villages, for example, know that reshaping clay does not change the amount of clay at much younger ages than children who do not have similar experiences (Price-Williams, Gordon, & Ramirez, 1969). In a study of tribal children (Inuit of Canada, Baoul of Africa and Aranda of Australia) researchers found differences in the ages at which children reached certain stages and acquired certain skills (Dasen, 1975). About 50% of the Inuit children solved a visual spatial test by the age of 7, 50% of the Aranda children solved the same task by the age of 9; however the Baoul children did not solve the task until the age of 12. On a conservation task the ages of skill acquisition reversed. The differences seem related to the living environment of the children – the Baoul children lived in permanent settlements while the Inuit and Aranda tribes are nomadic. Demands of daily life shape the cognitive development and different societies’ value and reward different skills and behaviors.

A main figure whose ideas contradicted Piaget’s ideas was the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky stressed the importance of a child’s cultural background as an effect to the stages of development. Because different cultures stress different social interactions, this challenged Piaget’s theory that the hierarchy of learning development had to develop in succession. Vygotsky introduced the term Zone of Proximal Development as an overall task a child would have to develop that would be too difficult to develop alone.

Overall, Piaget’s theories are widely recognized as making key contributions to the field of child development and helped pave the way for further empirical study. Cross-cultural testing has challenged many of his ideas, but the overall hierarchy of stages and sub-stages in cognitive development appears to be universal. Timing, ages, and capabilities during each stage appear to vary according to cultural context and enculturation patterns.

 

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Other Enculturation Agents

Contextual characteristics, such as the neighborhood, school, and social networks, also affect enculturation, even though these settings don’t always include both the child and the parent (Brofenbrenner, 1989). For example, Latina mothers who perceived the neighborhood as more dangerous showed less warmth with their children, perhaps because of the greater stress associated with living a threatening environment (Gonzales et al., 2011). Urie Bronfenbrenner was a Russian-born American developmental psychologist who is known for his ecological systems theory of child development. His scientific work and his assistance to the United States government helped in the formation of the Head Start program in 1965.

Bronfenbrenner’s research and his theory was key in changing the perspective of developmental psychology by calling attention to the large number of environmental and societal influences on child development. Bronfenbrenner saw the process of human development as being shaped by the interaction between an individual and his or her environment. The specific path of development was a result of the influences of a person’s surroundings, such as their parents, friends, school, work, culture, and so on.

According to Melvin L. Kohn, a sociologist from Johns Hopkins University, Bronfenbrenner was critical in making social scientists realize that, “…interpersonal relationships, even [at] the smallest level of the parent-child relationship, did not exist in a social vacuum but were embedded in the larger social structures of community, society, economics and politics.”

Peer and Sibling Relationships

Parent-child relationships are not the only significant relationships in a child’s life. Peer relationships are also important. Social interaction with another child who is similar in age, skills, and knowledge provokes the development of many social skills that are valuable for the rest of life (Bukowski, Buhrmester, & Underwood, 2011). In peer relationships, children learn how to initiate and maintain social interactions with other children. They learn skills for managing conflict, such as turn-taking, compromise, and bargaining. Play also involves the mutual, sometimes complex, coordination of goals, actions, and understanding. For example, as infants, children get their first encounter with sharing (of each other’s toys); during pretend play as preschoolers they create narratives together, choose roles, and collaborate to act out their stories; and in primary school, they may join a sports team, learning to work together and support each other emotionally and strategically toward a common goal. Through these experiences, children develop friendships that provide additional sources of security and support to those provided by their parents.

Peer relationships can be challenging as well as supportive (Rubin, Coplan, Chen, Bowker, & McDonald, 2011). Being accepted by other children is an important source of affirmation and self-esteem, but peer rejection can foreshadow later behavior problems (especially when children are rejected due to aggressive behavior). With increasing age, children confront the challenges of bullying, peer victimization, and managing conformity pressures. Social comparison with peers is an important means by which children evaluate their skills, knowledge, and personal qualities, but it may cause them to feel that they do not measure up well against others. Also, with the approach of adolescence, peer relationships become focused on psychological intimacy, involving personal disclosure, vulnerability, and loyalty (or its betrayal)—which significantly affects a child’s outlook on the world. Each of these aspects of peer relationships requires developing very different social and emotional skills than those that emerge in parent- child relationships. They also illustrate the many ways that peer relationships influence the growth of personality and self-concept.

Education

As previously stated, caretakers serve the role of being primary enculturation agents of their young in any given society. If parents serve as the #1 enculturation agent, education would likely be the second most important source of enculturation for any child.

Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits. Educational methods include storytelling, discussion, teaching, training, and directed research. Education frequently takes place under the guidance of educators, but learners may also educate themselves. Education can take place in formal or informal settings and any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts may be considered educational.

Culture, education, and society are all interconnected concepts that work to enculturate a child. Education models are based on the ideals and principals of society, and then its educated citizens go on to become influencers of that society’s culture. Researchers Markus and Kitayama (2010) refer to the systemic influence of culture and self as mutual constitution, and point out that individuals are simultaneously being shaped by culture while also influencing it. Regardless of the method of education, schooling serves as both a reflection of the priorities and values of that society, while also enculturating it’s young to contribute to that culture. For example, core American values of competition, choice, and independence can be seen in the way we structure our formal education system. Parents and students often expect to play a role in choosing curriculum, classes and competition for academic and athletic status is expected within schools. Similarly, in the United States the government dictates larger educational goals and resources, while state and local districts pass mandates based on the democratic wishes of larger society. In contrast to Westernized systems of education, many East Asian education models are based on uniform standards of academic rigor, student conformity, and respect for authority.

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Attributions

• 4.3: Temperament by L. D. Worthy, Trisha Lavigne, & Fernando Romero is licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Original source: https://open.maricopa.edu/culturepsychology.

• 4.4: Attachment by L. D. Worthy, Trisha Lavigne, & Fernando Romero is licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Original source: https://open.maricopa.edu/culturepsychology.

• 4.5: Parenting Styles by L. D. Worthy, Trisha Lavigne, & Fernando Romero is licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Original source: https://open.maricopa.edu/culturepsychology.

• 4.6: Cognitive Development by L. D. Worthy, Trisha Lavigne, & Fernando Romero is licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Original source: https://open.maricopa.edu/culturepsychology.
• 4.7: Other Enculturation Agents by L. D. Worthy, Trisha Lavigne, & Fernando Romero is licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Original source: https://open.maricopa.edu/culturepsychology.