Among the foundational projects in the study of childhood and culture is the “Six Cultures” survey from the late 1960s. Observational data were collected to map children’s daily activity in six village/small town settings around the world. Only in the single US middle-class community of “Orchard Town” were children not routinely engaged in chores (Whiting and Whiting 1975: 84). Nowhere are the gerontocracy and neontocracy perspectives further apart than on the issue of work.2 Indeed, “the dissociation of childhood from the performance of valued work is considered a yardstick of modernity” (Nieuwenhuys 1996: 237). While we hamstring our children to keep them from working, fearing their loss of innocence and studiousness, the norm elsewhere is to open the pathway to adulthood.

Previous generations of ethnographers have described the successful adaptation of children to societies that are themselves successfully adapted to their environment and material circumstances (Korbin 1987b). But, as these patterns of cultural adaptation are stressed by global forces that overwhelm local coping strategies, the lives of children are adversely affected. Anthropologists are prominent in the corps of concerned observers working to understand the contexts in which contemporary children live and to offer ideas to improve their lot (Schwartzman 2001: 15).

We will see that the distinction posed at the outset between cherubs, chattel, and changelings continues to apply in the present and into the future. In the neontocracy, the elevation of children to god-like cherubs, and corollary expense, show no signs of slowing. Among the poor, parents continue to seek the means to divest themselves of unwanted changelings or to convert their offspring to usable chattel.

In the previous chapter, I surveyed the relative rank of children over time and across cultures. Children may occupy the apex of society (neontocracy) or the basement (gerontocracy) or points in between. In this chapter my intent is to view the beginnings of life in the more common gerontocracy. In a gerontocracy, Imperial China for example, “‘child,’ or tzû, is understood … as a social status relative to his or her elders. It denotes the subordinate, humble, and inferior status of a child in a subservient role to that of his or her elders, ancestors, and others in a hierarchically superior position” (Hsiung 2005:21).

Figure 8 depicts a specific case from Pamela Reynolds’ study of the Tonga of Zambia. Note that the lowest level is the earth and a stillborn is returned directly to the wild, without ceremony. As the individual survives, she or he ascends a ladder of value reflected in the place and manner of burial – which progresses from fully wild to domestic.

Much of the contemporary literature on children identifies the parent–child relationship as central to the functioning of society. Furthermore, this relationship is seen as largely unidirectional. That is, the parent has manifold obligations to his/her child, while the child has few, if any, to his/her parent. However, as we review literature on children in other societies, a very different picture emerges. For example, West African “Ijo perceive of inheritance as flowing from sons to fathers as readily as the reverse” (Hollos and Leis 1989: 29). This contrast is captured in the two “value pyramids” labeled gerontocracy and neontocracy (Figure 1) in the first chapter.

In the previous chapter we looked at childhood through the lens of dependency. Infants and children can be distinguished from the young of mammals, generally, because, while their brains are large and growing rapidly, representing over half of their metabolism, they remain virtually helpless and in an immature state for a very long time. Others must care for them. In this chapter, we will examine the flip side of that coin and look at how “brainy” but incompetent children set about acquiring their culture and becoming competent members, ultimately supporting their erstwhile caregivers. This process we might characterize as “making sense,” which incorporates two ideas. One is that the child must strive to understand or make sense of all that’s going on around him or her, and this begins in infancy. And two, the child strives to be accepted, to fit in.

In the fall of 1973, I took up residence in the polygynous household of Chief Wolliekollie in the Liberian village of Gbarngasuakwelle (Lancy 1996). While the chief was very gracious in welcoming me, in facilitating my research on the children of the village, and in providing me with accommodation in his sprawling house, he failed to introduce me to other members of his household. Strangers rarely visited Gbarngasuakwelle and, when they did, the chief knew they usually meant trouble and expense, so he did his best to ensure their stay was short and unobtrusive. There was no protocol for dealing with a resident ethnographer.

The household consisted of three of the chief’s four wives, an unmarried sister of one of them, their children, and a steady stream of temporary residents related to the chief or his wives.

Before beginning a review of the cultural context for adolescent development, I will touch on “middle childhood” a newly emerging field of study that examines the period between childhood and adolescence. Physiological changes associated with the period between ages seven and twelve include the full maturation of the brain and the onset of adrenarche (increase in the adrenal production of the neurosteroid DHEAS) and a modest increase in growth referred to as the “mid-growth spurt” (Campbell 2011). The complementary cultural components of middle childhood will also be reviewed.

Adolescence is associated with more dramatic physiological change, notably puberty and a rapid growth spurt (Bogin 1994). First menses is often treated as an important milestone, sometimes triggering an elaborate series of rites to mark the change in a young woman’s status. Other physiological markers may be treated as culturally salient. “’Youth’ on Vanatinai begins at about age fourteen, or when the signs of puberty … are visible to onlookers.

The study of childhood has been dominated by the field of psychology but a robust tradition in anthropology, dating at least to Mead’s (1928/1961) Coming of Age in Samoa, calls attention to the culture-bound flaw in psychology. Mead’s work undermined the claim by psychologist G. Stanley Hall that stress was inevitably part of adolescence. Less well known was Malinowski’s earlier critique of Freud’s Oedipal theory based on fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands (Malinowski 1927/2012). Universal stage theories of cognitive development, such as that of Jean Piaget, met a similar fate when cross-cultural comparative studies demonstrated profound and unpredicted influences of culture and school attendance (Greenfield 1966; Lancy and Strathern 1981; Lancy 1983). Ochs and Schieffelin’s (1984) analysis of adult–child language interaction also showed that ethnographic studies in non-Western societies could be used to “de-universalize” claims made in mainstream developmental psychology. Bob LeVine has taken on one of psychology’s most sacred cows, mother–infant attachment (see also Scheper-Hughes 1987a).

One theme we’ve been pursuing throughout is the notion that high human fertility is facilitated by the child’s relatively rapid transition from wholly dependent to semi-dependent status. Childhood, as a stage of development unique to our species, allows the child to develop slowly with relatively little attention from its mother, freeing her to bear another infant. However, being a child does not just mean that one can survive well with minimal care from adults; it also means, in a more positive sense, that one’s life is filled with play activity. From the perspective of the harried parent, children’s deep engagement with playthings and playmates is a godsend. However, keeping busy turns out to be only one of a host of potential benefits conveyed by play.