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CHAPTER 8
Ecocultural Niches of
MicicIle Childhood:
A Cross 'Cultural Perspective
Thomas S. Weisner
Imagine a satellite that could randomly sample the culture areas of the
world. This imaginary satellite can focus on households with children
ages 6-12 and can take audio and video recordings of their daily routines.
The satellite can record with whom children associate; how far they venture
from home; what work they do at what ages; the nature and difficulty of
the tasks; with whom they work and how that work is shared; and the
characteristics of the play group, household, and domestic group surrounding
them. From the recordings we can assess the sources of child stimulation;
how children explore the settings within their community; and with whom
they talk and their topics of discourse and interaction. Children and adults
in the sample communities could interpret the recordings and add to our
understanding of settings and environments by bringing their subjective
meanings to our interpretations. Together, the objective and subjective data
would provide a systematic assessment of the social ecologies of childhood
and development around the world. For any group of children we would be
able to define their ecocultural niche (Super and Harkness, 1982~.
The term ecocultural niche defines what Bronfenbrenner (1979) called the
ecology of child development, going back to the tradition of Barker and
Wright ~ 1954~. In comparative and cross-cultural studies (e.g., Berry,
1979:121-125; Konner, 1977; LeVine, 1977; OgLu, 1981; Super and Hark-
ness, 1980; B. Whiting and ]. Whiting, 1975; ]. Whiting and B. Whiting,
1978; and others), the ecocultural niche describes the sociocultural envi
335
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DEVELOPMENT DURING MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
ronment surrounding the child and family. The term niche implies that this
context has evolved through time and has adapted to the constraints imposed
by the subsistence base, the climate, and the political economy of the region.
The term niche connotes a somewhat different view of the environment
than is implied by the proximal home reaming environment or the social
structure, although it includes these. Parents, children, and families adapt
to a niche and shape it to some extent as well. The niche includes the
features of the environment, as conventionally defined, and also the scripts,
plans, and intentions of the actors. Thus, the ecocultural niche includes
variables inside as well as outside the person. Its most important elements
are the relationships between participants in organized behavior settings or
activity units actors with goals and intentions in a context. The study of
the niches of childhood, then, includes the study of the actions, motivations,
and goals or purposes shaped by those niches. As Super and Harkness ~1982)
emphasized, these contexts, or scaffolds, for children's development change
over time, just as individuals change and develop. Thus, the goals of a
ctevetopmentat analysis include not only the study of individual and group
. ~.
~ _ 1 . 1 ~ . . ~ 1
differences but also the study ot changes in the scaffolding surrounding
children over time.
Many features of the niche have been shown to affect children directly,
or indirectly through the child's participation in the family or community.
Whiting et al. (in press) developed an inventory of cultural features that
influence child development. Their list, which appears below, is derived
from cross-cultural as well as American studies and so includes some domains
and activities that are not relevant to American children. The domains
themselves, however the work cycle, health status, children's work and
chores-probably represent pancultural features that affect all children:
. ~ . . . . _
1. The characteristics of the subsistence work cycle and the economic and
technological system that produces it, including wage work, tending crops
or animals, distance from the home, migration, etc.
2. The health status and demographic characteristics of the community,
including mortality risks, availability of health care, birth control, family
size, etc.
3. Overall community safety other than health and mortality, such as
dangers from motor vehicles, intra- and intercommunity violence and war-
fare, etc.
4. The division of labor by age and sex and perhaps other criteria like
caste or race in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, including the rel-
ative importance of various activities for subsistence and prestige.
5. The work that children are expected to do beginning as a toddler through
adolescence.
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ECOCULTURAL NICHES OF MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
337
6. Child-rearing and chip care tasks in particular, including the personnel
available and used for caretaking.
7. The role of the father arm older siblings in child care as a special issue
of nonmatemal child care.
8. The composition of children's play groups by age, sex, and kinship
category (siblings, cousins, relatives, and nonrelatives).
9. The autonomy, independence, and role of women in the community.
10. Institutionalized women's support groups, both formal and informal,
such as work groups, church clubs, mutual aid societies, etc.
11. Various sources of child stimulation; more generally, the available
sources of cultural influence on children from both literate and oral sources,
including the child's contact with the media, the outside world, and toys.
12. Parental sources of information concerning child health, nutrition, new
methods of subsistence activities, and new methods of child care; the avail'
ability of novel or contrastive beliefs about childhood in the community.
13. Measures of community heterogeneity and change, including the presence
of subethnic communities, bilingualism, subcastes, social~ciass differences
and social solidarity; the role of minorities; group oppression and lack of
community commitment among some subgroups; information on migration;
and the number of generations that families have lived in the community.
Ecocultural variables like these have been developed from some basic ideas
about how the econiche has been formed; they are influenced by their
functions for community adaptation and by the overall level of cultural
complexity.
The domains in this list, for example, can be grouped into five clusters
on the basis of how they help children and families to adapt and survive.
One cluster influences health and mortality (health and community de-
mography, safety, defense and protection). Another affects provision of food
and shelter (the subsistence work cycle, chores). Another influences the
personnel likely to be around children and what those people are likely to
be doing (daily routines, division of labor, child care system, play groups).
A fourth focuses more specifically on the role of women and mothers in the
community as the primary responsible caretakers (support, women's status,
fathers' and siblings' roles). A fifth assesses cultural altematives available in
the community (heterogeneity, outside influence and information).
Cultural complexity is another widely used summary dimension that in-
fluences econiche constraints and opportunities. Cultural complexity in-
cludes an extensive cash economy, technological specialization, permanent
urban settlement pattems, a centralized political and legal system, a priest-
hood and other specialized religious roles, literacy, hierarchical status dis-
tinctions (such as a caste organization or social classes), and a diversity of
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DEVELOPMENT DURING MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
altemative cultural models in the community (such as in bicultural or mul-
tilingual settings) (Murdock and Provost, 1981~. Complexity does not nec-
essarily imply a more elaborate, rituaVsymbolic world, nor an easier, more
effort-free or stress-free life; but the size of the population and the scale of
. . . .
aCtlVltleS IS greater.
American children, of course, grow up in one of the most complex cultures
in the world, in this sense of hierarchy, stratification, technology, and
altemative choices available. The score for an American family on nearly
every niche feature is affected by that fact. Complex environments appear
to promote increased nonaffiliative, individual achievement striving in chil-
dren's social behavior and in parental goals (Gallimore, 1981~; more per-
sonalized competition between children (Seymour, 1981~; more egoistic and
dominant social behaviors in children (B. Whiting and J. Whiting, 1975~;
lower rates of nurturant and prosocial behaviors, which are emphasized later
in childhood (B. Whiting and J. Whiting, 19751; less sex-role segregation
in family roles; a less shared-function, more specialized family role system;
a more democratic family id. Whiting and B. Whiting, 1975~; and a general
decline in the use of nonparental care by kin, especially sibling caretaking
(Weisner and Gallimore, 1977~.
Adaptation and complexity are also related to the ability to accumulate
and store food and other resources for family use. In modem, complex
societies, year-Ion", stable availability of food and many other resources is
taken for granted, although the ability of families to purchase these resources
is problematic. In much of the world, however, families face regular un-
certainty in this matter. For example, early and strict responsibility and
compliance training and high peer affiliation orientation appear more fre-
quently as socialization goals and as child-rearing practices in societies that
emphasize the accumulation of resources (Barry et al., 1959~. Berry (1976)
contrasted "loose" societies (Iow accumulation, often based on a hunting
economy, high mobility, dispersed settlement pattems, unstratified, and
egalitarian) with "tight" ones (high accumulation, dense settlement, strat-
ified, etc. ). He suggested that psychological differentiation and field inde-
pendence characterize low food accumulating, low-density, migratory peoples.
Regardless of the different ways to generate and cluster the variables that
make up the niche description, certain dimensions recur as powerful eco-
cultural determinants of child development: ( 1 ) the personnel available in
the family which individuals, ages, sexes, kin; (~) the goal requirements,
or tasks, to be done, which provide the reasons for children and others to
be there; and (3) the cultural scripts, plans, and schemata that give meaning,
create people's motivation, and give cues to intentions and purposes.
Many studies in developmental psychology use home reaming environ-
ment or microsystem as the unit of analysis to study the effects of niche
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ECOCULTURAL NICHES OF MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
339
influences. The ecocultural niche includes the proximal home reaming en'
vironment but is broader. The ecocultural niche helps to account for the
existence of a particular home reaming environment in the first place. It
accounts for the limited child caretaking personnel available to assist Amer-
ican parents, for instance. It explains why the timing of bedtime and meals
is so problematic for many American families. It identifies the source of the
varying cultural ideas that appear in popular books on child stimulation or
on television (Beckman, 1977; Wertz and Wertz, 1977~. The immediate
home environment, then, is a result of the interaction between family goals
and ideals, child characteristics, and constraints and opportunities within
the ecocultural niche.
Developmental research already uses econiche measures, such as social
class or socioeconomic level, level of formal education, race, ethnicity,
religion. These kinds of measures lump together many disparate features of
the niche, drawn from different domains and functions, into a single pack'
aged variable (B. Whiting, 1976~. Econiche variables decompose global
descriptors like socioeconomic level into a much more complex set of mea'
surest In addition, measures derived from ecocultural niche domains are
more likely to reveal the mechanisms by which class or education produce
their effects on children. One reason for this is that the niche features
outlined here each have specific links to the daily routine of the child and
the family. The daily routine of a child includes all the varied activity
settings, with their personnel, cultural scripts, and plans and tasks, that the
child experiences (Cole, 1981; B. Whiting, 19801. The use of the ecocultural
niche mode! depends on an analysis of these activity settings, for they are
the immediate situational circumstances that provide the social scaffold for
assisting children to think, speak, and act (see Fischer and Bullock, in this
volume).
These scaffolds have their own developmental course in every culture.
The developmental course of the individual is paralleled by the development
of familial scripts and activity settings. These settings change with mature
ation, just as the child is changing. Children's behavior between 6 and 12
results from the interplay between the child's development, on one hand,
and the development of a culture's activity settings or scaffolds, on the other
(see Super and Harkness, 1982~. Thus, the ecocultural mode} has a theo-
retical and a comparative implication. For theory, research is needed on the
development of activity settings that will parallel studies of individual dif'
ferences in children's development. For comparative research, the range of
activity settings available for American children must be viewed in the
context of the range of such settings for children around the world.
Child development studies done in Westem cultures rarely compare the
data collected to data from other cultures around the world. Weisner et al.
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DEVELOPMENT DURING MII:)DLE CHILDHOOD
( 1983) studied American parents who were attempting to be more "natural"
and emotionally expressive in child-rearing practices with their infants and
young children or who were voluntarily poor and emphasized loose, flexible
discipline and compliance patterns (Weisner, 1982a). Although pronatural
and voluntarily poor parents did differ in a number of child care practices
from a comparison group, interactional styles often did not. More impor-
tantly, the practices on which innovative families differed (such as more
frequent breastfeeding, later weaning, or sleeping with the child) did not
cliffer very much when compared to the range of such practices around the
world. Thus American parents who weaned "late" did so by the time the
child was 18 months; however, most cultures and mothers around the world
do not even begin the weaning process until after age 18 months.
Although strictness of discipline and the extent of immediate compliance
to parental requests varied in the American sample, the cross-cultural evi-
dence indicates that our culture is unusually flexible and permits children
more autonomy and latitude in negotiations with parents over compliance
than do most cultures around the world (Minturn and Lambert, 1964; Lam-
bert et al., 1979~. The absolute amount of delayed compliance or negotiated
requests is high in American samples, compared with comparable samples
from Africa, for instance (Weisner, 1979~.
Many statistically significant differences between Western samples may
be of a similar character: they may produce only very small substantive
differences in behavior, which are of small magnitude, with outcomes that
are not sustained for very long. One powerful reason may be the fact that
on a pancultural scale the magnitudes of the intracultural differences are
not! very large. The only way to test this would be to systematically and
routinely compare developmental data collected within our own niche, with
data collected from a wide range of econiches and cultures around the world.
Such a practice would, ~ expect, have the same importance in interpreting
developmental data as the currently routine expectation in scientific studies
of reporting test and instrument norms or statistical variance within a sample.
The influence of the niche is subject to empirical test, as are features of
the child or parents, such as gender, age, and temperament. This point is
important to emphasize because culture is so often treated in just the opposite
way as an untested, packaged variable. The ecocultural niche approach
must not assume what is often exactly what needs to be proven: that cultural
factors indeed have important effects. Culture must be used as a set of
variables like others whose specific character and effects can be measured
and tested.
The same point is true for determining which aspects of the econiche
have the strongest effect ethnic or cultural membership itself or subsistence
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ECOCULTUR'4L NICHES OF MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
341
and environmental constraints. For instance, Ecigerton ~197 ~ ~ systematically
tested values and personality characteristics in adults from four tribal cultures
in East Africa. Within each culture, some individuals lived primarily as
pastoralists and others as horticulturalists. Edgerton was thus able to compare
the effects of cultural membership versus subsistence adaptation pastoral
or horticultural for each of eight sample groups (four cultures x two
subsistence modes). Results showed that both cultural group membership
and subsistence modes differentiated between clependent variables in his
study. Pastoralists were more concerned with displays of affection, direct
aggression, divination, and independence than were farmers. Farmers em-
phasized disrespect for authority and favored conflict avoidance, indirect
aggression, emotional constraint, and other values, compared with pastor-
alists. Tribal membership, however, was the best overall predictor of these
sample differences, and subsistence mode was next best.
In brief, the ecocultural niche defines the contexts for development; these
contexts represent evolved, adapted family responses to opportunities and
constraints of the environment; the activity settings that result are the
measurable, visible features that can influence children and families. The
study of child development, then, should include the study of the relation-
ships between the activity settings provided for children within the niche,
on one hand, and the maturational uniformities and individual differences
children and parents bring to these activity settings, on the other. Basic
research on the 6-12 age period should pursue new knowledge regarding
the development and influence of activity settings of children at these ages
and study a far broader range of such settings in American society and around
the world.
Finally, ~ believe that high-quality description of the lives of children in
other cultural settings is in and of itself of basic scientific value in providing
a mirror for ourselves. Lambert (1971:61) commented on the intrinsically
valuable character of cross-cultural data its ability to awaken us to new
altematives:
Since no one culture has managed to achieve a monopoly of all the "good" or "bad"
conditions for parent~child relations, then we are going to be delighted as we travel
about the world. We are always going to find some facet of human personality or
personality organization which glows with a serene excellence that we have never met
before. And lying below the fact of that fresh, though partial and perhaps even fleeting,
excellence, is new knowledge about how to make some future generation (and its parents)
better, more happy, or more free.
Although comparative work is widely accepted in principle or as a pro-
grammatic need, it is not being done. LeVine (1980) reviewed every article
and research note published over a 5-year period in four developmental
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DEVELOPMENT DURING MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
joumals and six anthropology journals. These represented the ten major
joumals in the two disciplines. Only 9.3 percent of the articles in the
developmental joumals included any data on subcultural variations in the
United States, Europe, Israel, or anywhere else (171 of the 1,843 articles).
Of these 171, 75 percent reported data from other Westem industrial so-
cieties, leaving only 42 articles (2.3 percent of the total) with any data from
Latin America, Asia, or Oceania. Similarly, the six anthropology journals
published 911 articles during this 5-year period, of which only 70 (7.7
percent) gave any consideration to child care or development. The situation
is even worse than this implies, since one of the anthropology joumals,
Ethos, by itself published almost one-third of all the articles on children in
the anthropology articles reviewed. The regions of the world are also very
unevenly represented; Latin America, for example, is far more frequently
mentioned than other parts of the world.
WESTERN AND NON-WESTERN CULTURES
In the discussion of ecocultural niches of middle childhood in this chapter,
American children ages 6-12 are often lumped with Westem children or
those living in complex societies. This is a gross oversimplification and of
course does not mean that there are not large differences in the experience
of children across Westem societies. Similarly, children in non-Westem
cultures are often lumped together to contrast with American children. This
is an even grosser oversimplification, since the range of cultures is even
greater within this category. References to non-Westem societies should be
understood as referring primarily to middIe-range horticultural and simple
agricultural societies, unless otherwise noted. Most examples are drawn from
Polynesia (Tahiti, Hawaii) and sub-Saharan Africa (East Africa, Ghana,
Botswana).
It is not possible or appropriate to present an ethnographic overview of
the patterns of child care during the 6-12 age period around the world. The
emphasis on broad, cross-cultural contrasts in this chapter is not intended
to homogenize the rest of the world, nor to imply that there are not enormous
social-cIass, racial, and ethnic differences in Westem societies, nor to suggest
that non-Westem societies are uniform. To the contrary, the point is to
search for the niche and activity settings that influence child development
and that are the result of just such class and ethnic differences.
The chapters in this volume reflect many of the central themes of middle
childhood: caretaking pattems, schooling, health, cognition, and self-un-
derstanding. Cross-cultural perspectives are especially important in the study
of cultural conceptions of the person and the self; children's own theories
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ECOCULTURAL NICHES OF MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
343
of their development and roles; the differing structures for child caretaking
during this period, particularly nonparental care; the socialization of appro-
priate emotional expression; the influence of deviance and psychopathology
in middle childhood; the influence of schooling and literacy; the effects of
urbanization and modemization; sex-role and gender-identity development;
the transition to adolescence; and others. ~ have selected four of these themes
to illustrate a comparative niche approach: the structure of caretaking; de-
velopment of the self; troublesomeness in children; and schooling effects.
Each of these domains is covered in the next four sections, followed by a
discussion of methods.
A goal of this volume is to suggest areas for new basic research. The topics
covered in this chapter are those that are not already covered in other cross-
cultural reviews, such as the Handbook of Cross-Cultural Human Development
(Munroe et al., 19811; that do not as yet have extensive comparative research
but look promising; that appear to be important during the 6-12 age period;
and that are emphasized in the other chapters in this volume.
PATTERNS OF CARETAKING OF CHILDREN
A central issue in American families with children ages 6-12 is the gradual
shift in direct control of the child's behavior and activity settings from parents
to the world of the school and peers. Medrich et al. ( 1982:102-103) reported
that parents in Oakland, California, fee! they need to devote less of their
time to either direct physical care or nonphysical care of their children
during this period. The papers by Maccoby and Markus and Nurius in this
volume emphasize that an important general developmental''task for Amer-
ican children in this period of life is to accomplish a gradual change in
processes of control and regulation. Children appear to gradually move from
coregulated activities to self-regulated ones. Parents retain overall managerial
influence, but children are increasingly capable of self-regulation of their
activities for long periods of the day. American parents encourage individ-
uation and self-control during this period but also attempt to negotiate with
children and withhold resources in order to retain overall managerial control
within the family.
The developmental task or agenda that faces parents and children in many
non-Western cultures is related to but different in many ways from the
American one of individuation and separation from the parent as an exclusive
controller. Rather, the task involves children gradually moving from under
the responsibility of older children and other nonparental members of the
household (e.g., grandparents or aunts) to becoming a responsible caretaker,
in charge of younger siblings and cousins. Children ages 6-12 take on
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DEVELOPMENT DURING MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
increasingly responsible family roles, including those relating to child care.
Parents' roles include the managerial and disciplinary ones familiar in Amer-
ican families, but child care is more diffused and shared. This caretaking
pattern has as its goal to produce an interdependent, responsible child, rather
than an independent, self-directed, highly individuated child.
Many cultures also share the belief that between age 5 and age 7 children
begin to acquire reason or sense, the ability to understand cultural rules and
to carry out directions. Rogoffet al. (1975), Super (1981), and I. Whiting
and B. Whiting (1960) identified this age period from cross-cultural samples,
and NerIove et al. (1974) did so with data from Guatemala. NerIove et al.
identified two natural indicators of cognitive skill that develop before or
during this period, which are both important in shared child management
activities: self-managed sequencing of activity and voluntary social activities.
Self-managed sequencing refers to the child's ability to follow a precise
sequence or series of acts autonomously e.g., washing clothes, which en-
tails gathering up a basket, clothes, and soap, putting the clothes in a basket,
going to water or the river, etc. These tasks require, in correct order, "a
scanning of the mode! and mapping of that model onto altematives, ret
membering what one had already tried and how well it fit" (NerIove et al.,
1974:287~. Voluntary social activities involve self-directed, shared activity
with others, which assumes a shared goal and rule understandings. For
[anguage-related voluntary social activities, reaming "to name, recognize,
and verbally relate functions or attributes of objects" to others (p. 287) is
crucial, including reaming kinship rules and cultural and family standards.
Voluntary social activities thus include understanding and storing multiple
roles and social scripts as well as the ability to lead and direct them. Sibling
caretaking exemplifies the application of both of these skills to an important
family Unction.
Rogoff et al. (1980) extended their cross-cultural work to the 8-10 age
period, suggesting that children appear to be developing skills at performing
more complex tasks, which require more elaborate understanding of context-
appropriate behaviors and more complex understanding of causality and
intent which increase the child's ability to consolidate and integrate the
separately acquired skills reamed in the 5-7 transition period.
Effective performance of child care, as a part of the competencies needed
to perform domestic chores and even manage the domestic routine, requires
a minimum level of both these kinds of skills in childhood, and in turn
domestic duties help train children in more general skills. Thus the age of
greatest involvement in and responsibility for shared child and domestic task
management corresponds to the 6-12 developmental period, when these
social and cognitive skills become available to children.
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345
The contrasts between coregulation and self-regulation and between in-
terdependence and independence are certainly expressed as cultural goals
and emphasized in parental talk and metaphor. The degree to which chil-
ciren's and parents' behavior in fact reflects these metaphors seems to vary
widely. The role of socialization and intemalized behavioral tendencies, in
addition to differences in activity settings as influences on metaphor and
behavior, needs new research. There is a sense in which all children are
interdependent within their family and community and a sense in which
autonomous self-regulation is more of a Westem cultural myth than a be-
havioral reality. The differences, however, between Westem and non-West-
em children in nurturance, prosocial responsibility, and affiliative orientations
have been well established (e.g., B. Whiting and J. Whiting, 19751.
Sibling Caretaking
Barry and Paxson (1971) surveyed 186 societies in the cross-cultural sam-
ple of the Human Relations Area Files and concluded that mothers were
considerably less frequently the primary caretaker of children than either
siblings, older children, or female adults other than the mother. Thus,
children ages 6- 12 in most of the non-Westem world continue what already
has been a common experience for them earlier in life: They participate in
peer and sibling caretaking systems and are not usually under the direct,
personal care and supervision of their mothers.
Gallimore et al. (1974), Leiderman and Leiderman (1973; 1977), Levy
(1973), Mead (1961), Mintum and Lambert (1964), Weisner and Gallimore
(1977), B. Whiting andJ. Whiting (1975), anal. Whiting and B. Whiting
(1973) have all recorded comparative data and developed theories about
sibling care. Sibling care is associated with the following ecocultural con-
ditions: horticultural, pastoral, and simpler agricultural societies in which
the family workload is high; mothers are responsible for work outside the
home; residence patterns establish sets of neighboring, extended family groups
with children available for shared care; and shared work roles and task
allocations within families promote joint care of younger children. Shared
functioning is a useful term for describing such flexible, nonexclusive family
work roles and child care responsibilities (Gallimore et al., 19741. Children
ages 6-12 are cared for by older children; then, through participation in
pivot roles (Levy, 1973), they move to caretaking supervision of still younger
children. Mothers' roles are as indirect managers of the sibling and family
group-assigning duties, overseeing the senior sibling caretaker, jointly doing
chores and activities with children, providing discipline and occasional in-
struction, or simply modeling correct behavior.
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359
school skills; if the child has behavior problems, provide counseling or special
medical help. There seem to be many aspects of behaviors inside and outside
school that do worry parents of children ages 6-12. Achenbach and Edel-
brock (1981) identified ll8 such behavior problems and 20 social compe-
tence items in their Child Behavior Checklist. Items ranged from truancy
to cannot concentrate; refuses to talk; nervous; disobedient at home; feels
unloved; and many others. Thus, many American children ages 6-12 have
difficulties adjusting to outside institutions; they are the target of individually
focused treatments; and there seem to be many areas of children's behavior
during this period that are potentially troublesome.
The non-Westem contrasts to the American child's experience provide
a final example of the potential usefulness of ecocultural and comparative
research for the study of children ages 6-12. It seems to be the case that:
( 1 ) children ages 6-12 in many non-Western settings are integrated smoothly
(perhaps a better description is, without question) into the world of work,
schooling, and community life outside the home; (2) a widely used mode
for dealing with troublesomeness in children when it does occur is to change
the child's family situation or activity setting rather than to focus on trying
to change the individual child; and (3) compared with the large number of
reported American parental concerns about their children, there are far
fewer such troublesome behaviors either reported or observed in non-West-
em studies of children ages 6-12. That is, children do not appear to be
nearly as troublesome and/or their parents report far fewer behavioral troubles
than do American parents and school or medical personnel.
Unfortunately, there has been very little basic research done in cross-
cultural samples on the naturally occurring behavioral problems that appear
in children ages 6-12 (see Edgerton, 1976~. Similarly, it is startling to
discover that there is no systematic account in the comparative literature-
of which ~ am aware that compares cross-cultural treatments of children
who are identified as troubled in some way. The suggestion that there is
relatively less troublesome behavior among children ages 6-12 in non-West-
em societies depends in part on the negative evidence that little is reported
in the available literature.
Some of the problems reported for American children depend on what
definition the culture provides for a particular behavior pattern e.g., what
do parents mean by poor peer relations? Others depend on cultural concep-
tions of what a child is capable of or what is perceived as normal for this
period e.g., do Tahitian parents fee! that children between 6 and 12 have
a sense of personal, autonomous self-worth? Some Western-defined problems
refer to public institutions, such as schools, courts, or welfare agencies, that
do not exist in other societies. It is not known, however, which of these or
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DEVELOPMENT DURING MIDDLE CH1LDH~D
other differences in how troublesomeness may be reported by parents pro-
duces differing patterns of behavioral problems in children ages 6-12. Basic
comparative research is needed on what parents in other ecocultural envi-
ronments report in the way of troubles for children in this period. Were we
able to replicate Achenbach and Edelbrock's study (1981) in a large, cross-
cultural sample, what descriptors of children's troubles would appear' Some
items might appear on nearly all lists, some on only one or two, and some
in one cluster of societies but not other clusters. In this way, we could begin
to disentangle which behavioral problems appear to have some universal
recognition and which do not.
The appearance of troublesomeness in children's behavior depends in part
on whether parents fee} that continuation of the behavior would cause the
child to be unable to adapt or survive in his or her niche in the future. The
widespread practice of sending children away to other kin or fostering them
during the 6-12 age period is sometimes intended to change the child's
environment in hopes that the child's troublesomeness will decrease. Al-
though, again, empirical studies are needed, it seems that in general, treat-
ments like sending a child to other kin are usually effective. The 6-12 age
period seems to have relatively few children acting out or seriously troubling
families, although covert tensions and difficulties with children are certainly
present, as is the possibility of pathology (see Korbin, 1981~.
Another reason for this apparently lower incidence of problems is the
strong, generalized expectable climate of compliance in non-Westem fam-
ilies described earlier in this chapter. Deference to adults is expected, as is
submission to their requests and commands. Children ages 6-12 participate
in training for [earned helpfulness expectations to act in a responsible and
prosocial manner to others. It is possible that expectable compliance in the
home and learned helpfulness among children of these ages may inoculate
them against many of the behavior problems described in American parents'
reports. Werner and Smith (1982) found that ecological (particularly house-
hold personnel) features were most important in accounting for children's
troubles during middle childhood in their longitudinal study of the children
of Kauai; and they also found that nonmatemal and sibling caretaking played
an important role in providing supports for resilient children those children
who were at earlier risk, but without troublesome outcomes.
Every one of these suggestions regarding children's relatively infrequent
troublesomeness in non-Westem ecocultural contexts needs testing. None
has been systematically studied at the present time. Both direct behavioral
observation of children and the collection of parents' folk conceptions of
troubles need to be obtained. The ecocultural niche differences that may
-reduce troublesomeness should be studied at the same time as the data on
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ECOCULTURAL NICHES OF MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
361
children's problems and troubles are gathered. The transitions from early
childhood into middle childhood and from middle childhood into adoles-
cence are certainly not necessarily smooth, and these boundary points also
need new, comparative research.
SCHOOLING AND LITERACY
Each cohort of children ages 6-12 over the past two generations, as well
as the one to come, is participating in a transformation unique in the history
of our species: the spread of formal schooling and literacy around the world.
The United States has nearly universal school attendance of children ages
6-12 and has one of the highest rates of literacy in the world; however,
formal school attendance is far from universal in much of the world. Indeed,
most nations are still in the transition to widespread literacy.
Rogoff (1981) recently published a comprehensive review of the rela-
tionship between schooling and the development of cognitive skills, such
as perception, memory, classification and concept development, logical problem
solving, and Piagetian tasks. When Western task and testing paradigms and
materials are used, schooled subjects generally do better on such tests than
nonschooled subjects. But Rogoff questioned this research strategy and pat-
tern of results on many grounds and pointed out that the natural experiment
created by different formal schooling in different societies has not begun to
be exploited by basic researchers.
First, research is needed to investigate the many threats to the general-
izability of school-nonschoo! samples. For instance, parents "who allow or
encourage their children to go to school may be wealthier, hew more modern
attitudes, or hold different aspirations for their children than parents who
do not" (Rogoff, 1981:267~. Children who are already better on skills assessed
by Westem tests may have been selected by their parents to attend school.
Schooled children may be more familiar with the test materials, testing
situations, and the language in which the test is administered than non-
schooled children. Tests given in school or based on school-related skills
often do not appear to generalize to contexts outside the classroom in any
event. Thus the differences between schooled and nonschooled subjects may
be, in a variety of ways, an artifact of the tests, selection of children for
school attendance, or the context-specificity of school cognitive abilities.
A more telling research need and critique of existing research is the "lack
of empirical research studying the mechanism for schooling's presumed ef-
fect" (Rogoff, 1981:276~. Rogoff suggested four specific aspects of school
experience that might be tested for in trying to discover mechanisms un-
derlying the schooling effect (p. 286~:
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DEVELOPMENT DURING MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
(a) Schooling's emphasis on searching for general rules; (b) the use of verbal instruction
out of context from everyday activities; (c) the teaching of specific skills in school, such
as memory strategies, taxonomic categorization, and the treatment of"puzzles" in which
the answer is to be derived from information in the problem; and specifically (d) literacy,
which may allow the examination of statements for consistency or may simply teach
some specific cognitive skills.
Scribner and Cole (1981) questioned the generality of literacy effects in
particular, and school effects more generally. Their Liberian study of un-
schooled but literate Vai literate in an indigenous Liberian Vai script
learned in the home indicates specific transfer effects for specific skills but
not a generalized cognitive restructuring traceable either to literacy alone
or to schooling.
The challenges for new basic research in this area are of enormous im-
portance. It is only through comparative work with children with different
literacy experiences and different formal school experiences that effects of
education can be distinguished from maturational and other age-related
developmental differences. Educational comparisons (Epps and Smith, in
this volume) and cognitive comparisons (Fischer and Bullock, in this vol-
ume) between children ages 6-12 need cross-national studies in order to
separate the effects of Western mass education and literacy from other in-
fluences on development.
Literacy and school skills, in this view, are specific cultural tools, aiding
the attainment of localized skills reamed in a context in which such skills
are needed and valued (see NerIove and Snipper, 1981~. What of other new
Western cultural tools looming on the horizon, which go beyond books and
literacy, such as the computer? What contextually specific, culturally lo-
calized cognitive skills and changes in social-behavioral styles may appear
as this new cultural too! continues to spread during the next generation?
SOME COMMENTS ON METHODS
The well-trained developmentalist prepared to study children ages 6-12
is a scholar with a diverse set of research skills packed into a traveling
backpack. Depending on the circumstances, this researcher can do partic-
ipant observation) various kinds of informant interviewing; formal controlled
observation, using time and event sampling; experimental manipulations;
tests and other kinds of structured tasks; and combinations of these as needed.
The location of research work a school, a middle-cIass suburb in Chicago,
a village in Western Kenya should not by itself determine the methods to
be used. Nor should the substantive problem determine the methods. The
study of achievement in children, for example, should never be limited to
just a single method (Gallimore, 1981~.
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ECOCULTURAL NICHES OF MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
363
Comparative research in human development has used a mix of qualitative
and quantitative methods since Tylor If. Whiting and B. Whiting, 1960~.
Qualitative, naturalistic research methods have developed a fairly substantial
literature with recognized procedures to validate or compare research using
these methods (Agar, 1980;Johnson, 1978; LeVine et al., 1980; Pelto and
Pelto, 1978; SpradIey, 1979; Thomas, 1976~. Current research on field-
work methods includes: role management in field situations; techniques for
notetaking; methods for summarizing and coding field notes; systematic
observation of behavior; quantification of field observations; styles and pro-
cedures for writing up and presenting ethnographic materials; techniques for
informant interviewing; and techniques for analysis and interpretation of
texts. Naturalistic field methods will continue to be important in cross-
cultural research. The basic research need is for more systematic attention
to these procedures. The decision rules for which methods to use, under
which circumstances, are particularly in need of attention.
Better specification of the units for analysis would assist cross-cultural and
Westem work alike. In this chapter, for instance, ~ have suggested the
activity unit (Cole, 1981) or behavior setting (B. Whiting, 1980) as the
link between the ecocultural niche variables and individual-level data typical
of Westem studies. The activity unit consists of an individual, engaged in
goal-directed activities, under the constraints of his or her localized niche.
Events in such activity settings or units are regulated by others in the setting,
by what the actor brings to the situation, and by the environmental cir-
cumstances. ~ believe that methods need to be developed that take the
activity unit as the unit of analysis not the individual actor alone, nor the
thought or language of that actor, nor the localized environment. The goal
for new basic research should be the development of methods suitable to a
comparative theory of activity units.
CONCLUSION
The topics selected for more extended discussion in this chapter (the
caretaking roles of children ages 6-12 and children's participation in work
for the family; the public and nonindividuaiistic nature of the self; the
possibly reduced troublesomeness of children ages 6-12 in non-Western
cultures; and literacy and schooling) are included because each of these
issues is an important developmental issue for American children ages 6-
12. These certainly do not exhaust the important topics that need new basic
research using an ecocultural and comparative approach. Additional topics
include, at least, the socialization of emotions and affect; beliefs about
temperamental differences of children held by parents in other societies; the
effects of urbanization and modemization on children ages 6-12; the com
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DEVELOPMENT DURING MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
parative phenomenology of childhood that is, children's own theories of
development and accounts of their own behavior; and sex role and gender
training. Reviews of these and other topics appear in several recent books
(Levine and Shweder, no date; Munroe et al., 1981; Munroe and Munroe,
1975; Triandis and Lambert, 1980; Werner 1979~.
Finally, an ecocultural perspective shows not only the marvelous diversity
of children's environments in cultures around the world but also how vul-
nerable children are to assaults on their safety and subsistence base. Children
participate in a world economy; they can be exploited by governments,
capitalists, socialists, and terrorists jUst as adults can. They suffer the con-
sequences of insecticide poisoning, poor food distribution, distorted govem-
ment, and social policies favoring special interests (see Davis, 1977~. The
social processes that drive the increasing urbanization, modernization, and
exploitation of the weak and the poor in third and fourth world countries
are immediate threats to children of all ages. Isolated tribes and regions of
great poverty within developed and developing countries deserve special
study due to threats to the very survival of some of these peoples.
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1983
Representative terms from entire chapter:
middle childhood
