Tamis-LeMonda-Preface

Preface   vii

Context and Culture Children develop in multiple interrelated contexts—the intrauterine environment and the contexts of family, peers, childcare, school, and neighborhood—all of which are subject to important cultural influences. In addition, biological context is integral to developmental process- es—for example, brain asymmetry channels language input to the left hemisphere from the start of life, and the universal and individual experiences of children cause the brain to develop in ways that make all children alike and each child unique. This theme—that development is the product of multiple interacting contexts—is system- atically integrated into every chapter of Child Develop- ment: Context, Culture, and Cascades . Students will learn that there is no such thing as development devoid of con- text or culture and that contexts are nested within other contexts: an infant regularly held in its father’s arms is next to a warm body in rooms that are more or less noisy and cluttered, and these nested contexts work together to affect the baby’s development. Similarly, culture infuses all aspects of development. Children from communities across the globe show strik- ing variations in their experiences and development while also following many shared developmental paths. How- ever, most of developmental psychology is grounded in a small subset of the world’s population of children. For example, popular motor milestone charts, based on the research of Arnold Gesell decades ago, draw from a hand- ful of U.S. children; the literature on language acquisition is grounded in monolingual children learning English; and most of what is known about children’s social skills (from attachment to peer relationships) is based on children from North America raised in nuclear families. In contrast, Child Development: Context, Culture, and Cas- cades includes many examples of the impressive range of human variation—communities where infants begin to walk at eight months of age or not until later in the sec- ond year; communities where children as young as four years care for siblings; and communities where school- ing is rare—with attention to the views and practices that contribute to such differences. At the same time, students are reminded of the balance between unique cultural practices and universal developmental processes. That is, most children babble before they produce their first words; most children transition from being wobbly to proficient walkers though the strength and postural control that come from practice in upright postures; and supportive and loving caregivers benefit the social development of all children, regardless of where they are raised. This pre- sentation of cultural breadth invites students to reflect on what is “universal” about human development, yet recog- nize that many assumptions about child development are rooted in their own experiences. Many child development texts place the important top- ics of context and culture in separate chapters, where they

children, my husband, and I were always becoming. The river we stepped in when our first child was born had long washed away, to be replaced by new waters, sometimes stormy, sometimes calm, but forever chang- ing. And so, my goal in writing this book is to give back to others what the field of child development has offered me: an appreciation and understanding of the sources In Child Development: Context, Culture, and Cascades , I seek to convey the wonder and awe of child development. In addition, I aim to inspire students to understand the pro- cess of change and to think about change through the eyes of a developmental scientist. To appreciate child development requires understand- ing the basics: What is changing and why? Accordingly, each chapter describes changes in a select domain of development at a specific time in childhood (the what) and considers the many forces that spur changes in chil- dren (the how). Within and across chapters, students will learn about interactions between biology and envi- ronment; the role of contexts (e.g., family, school, com- munity, and other contexts) in development; and how cultural views and practices infuse children’s everyday lives. Finally, because the path of a river is affected by the flowing waters that preceded it, students will come to appreciate how small changes can exert downstream effects on development in the process of developmen- tal cascades. Changing children swim in ever-changing waters that spill into the future. However, beyond providing the fundamentals of child development, the ultimate message of this book runs much deeper than words on a page. Students will see that answers to the “whats” and “hows” of change are both fundamental to science and hold a key to improv- ing the lives of children and families around the world. What Makes this Book Unique? Child Development: Context, Culture, and Cascades stands apart in the landscape of child development textbooks. Many otherwise excellent books were crafted years ago and, even if updated, are not systematically organized around topics at the forefront of developmental science: the roles of context and culture in development and developmental cascades. Furthermore, many texts glaze over research methods or relegate them to a highlighted box, rather than systematically incorporating research methods into core material so that students understand how scientists arrive at the conclusions they do. Finally, as someone who has long been fascinated by the study of how infants enter the world of communication through interactions with others, this book showcases the criti- cal area of language development in a dedicated chapter, rather than burying it under another domain. and consequences of life changes. Understanding Change