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Peer Relations and the Origins of Morality  275

In some cultural contexts, parents relinquish responsibility for the care of their infants to grandparents for an extended period of years, during which parents are in minimal contact with their children. Some immigrants to North America send their infants back to their country of origin after giving birth, where grandparents and other relatives raise them (Bohr & Tse, 2009). Years later, these “satellite babies” return to their biological parents and attend school in their adopted country. From the perspectives of the parents, economic and social needs drive the decision to send their infants back to the home country. Parents believe they are offering their infants a chance to be reared by loving grandparents while they work to establish an economic foundation before their child returns to the United States, for example, to begin school. However, according to attachment theory, prolonged infant-parent sepa- ration, and the subsequent disruption from relationships with grandparents and relatives, could have long-term, adverse developmental consequences. In fact, children who have been separated from their parents for lengthy periods of time, and then reunited, have been found to suffer depression and mental health problems as adolescents (Suárez-Orozco, Todorova, & Louie, 2002). Thus, there is growing need to better understand how practices around sepa- ration and early childrearing affect the trajectories of children’s development from cultures around the globe. CHECK YOUR UNDERSTANDING 7.18 1. How might infants’ cultural and social experiences affect their behaviors in the Strange Situation? 2. What conclusions can be drawn about infants’ attachments to multiple care- givers beyond the mother? Provide evidence to support your conclusion. ✓ Peer Relations and the Origins of Morality Primary caregivers are by no means the sole beneficiaries of infant affection. Beyond infants’ relationships with primary caregivers, infants display a keen inter- est in peers and people outside the family and engage in a rich variety of behaviors that may be precursors to mature forms of moral behavior and reasoning. Prosocial Behaviors LEARNING OBJECTIVE 7.19  Identify prosocial behaviors exhibited by infants. When do infants display prosocial behaviors such as helping and sharing? Although such behaviors take months to develop, their origins appear in infants’ very early interest in other children. Infants ages 1 to 3 months already respond differently to peers than they do to mothers or their own image in a mirror (Field, 1979; Fogel, 1979). Midway through the first year, infants smile and vocalize toward other infants (Maudry & Nekula, 1939; Vandell, Wilson, & Buchanan, 1980). By the end of the first year and into the second year, infants distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar peers and express more smiling and proximity-seeking toward peers they know and like than toward peers they don’t know or dislike (Jacobson, 1981; Howes, 1983). And, toddlers increasingly help, share with, and comfort peers and adults in the second year (Brownell, 2013; Vaish, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2009). How do researchers test toddlers’ prosocial behaviors? They often place children in situations that elicit behaviors such as sharing and helping. For instance, an examiner may pretend to be distressed or in need of help and observe how children respond. Infants as young as 14 and 18 months helped an experimenter pick up toys that were out of reach (Warneken & Tomasello, 2007),

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