News Release

Scholars explore variety of child-rearing methods around world

Book Announcement

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, News Bureau

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- A new volume of child-rearing manuals not only dispels the notion that there is one right way to bring up baby, but also challenges the idea that parents need such advice.

Above all, the book -- which packages heavily researched information about seven of the world's societies into a semi-fictionalized format of imagined parenting guides -- seeks to impart the message that there are many models for successful parenting -- in fact, as many models as there are societies -- and that all societies' practices are based on their standards of common sense.

"Seeing that there are all these different ways that people raise healthy, productive children should be reassuring to many parents," said Judy DeLoache, a psychologist and co-author/editor of "A World of Babies: Imagined Childcare Guides for Seven Societies" (Cambridge University Press). The book grew out of a course DeLoache and her co-author/editor, anthropologist Alma Gottlieb, taught at the University of Illinois, where they are professors. DeLoache's research focuses on the cognitive development of infants and toddlers, particularly on how they first learn about symbols. Gottlieb has studied the daily life of the Beng people of Ivory Coast for many years.

In the child-rearing guides, each author assumes the persona of a respected child-care authority -- a mother or grandmother, diviner, healer, teacher or midwife -- in one of the featured societies: Balinese (Indonesia), Beng and Fulani, (West Africa), Ifaluk (Micronesia), Muslim villagers (Turkey), Puritans (Colonial New England) and Warlpiri (aboriginal Australia).

Readers will learn from these manuals, for example, that Beng and Fulani babies are given enemas twice a day until they can walk; that many Balinese babies are not allowed to touch the ground until they're 8 months old; and that Puritans treated their colicky babies with a broth made of the boiled entrails and skin of a wolf, and their teething babies with a mix of hare brains, honey and butter. While to some readers some of the practices may at first seem exotic, even shocking, the book shows how most parenting practices are deeply rooted in the belief systems of the people who follow them.

To be sure, Americans no longer rely on wolf broth or hare salve, yet many "still practice Puritan-style parenting without realizing it," Gottlieb said. For example, one of our forebears' practices -- making their infants sleep alone when they reach the age of 6 months -- "is still followed by many Americans, who even expand this practice to begin right after birth," Gottlieb said. "At the same time, a small but growing number of Americans do sleep with their babies, contributing to what has recently become part of a national debate." Most babies throughout most of human history have slept with their parents for at least a year or two, Gottlieb said, "and this should be reassuring to parents today who are struggling with the issue."

Despite or perhaps because of the many differences in child-care practices, readers are embracing the new book. "A World of Babies," published in May, is now in its second printing.

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