Our Babies, Ourselves

"Small looks at the interface of biology and culture in relation to infanthood. This book explores some of the questions that loom largest to parents, such as sleeping, crying, nursing and walking. The research of biological anthropologists, cultural anthropologists, paediatricians and psychologists are discussed. What I mean by the interface of biology and culture is that biology tells us, for instance, that infants cannot crawl before a certain age. It is true they can’t, but if we accept this assessment narrowly on what is observed in the United States we can believe that the precise age when babies start walking in the United States is biologically determined. Then we might be very surprised to see that this varies somewhat from one culture to another. That is where culture becomes relevant and we see that infants are not merely biological beings. They exist in a social world. This is a readable book, in any case. Nothing is conclusive but good questions are raised. One of the merits is precisely that biology and culture are visited on the same page. Because the study of children has been so compartmentalised with paediatrics, psychology, education and the like, there is limited communication between the fields. To an extent, this is probably the nature of academic study; that for all the talk of interdisciplinary approaches, knowledge is compartmentalised, bureaucratised. But I think it is especially so with infants because there is a hesitation over whether they should be approached as purely scientific subjects or whether there isn’t a glimmer of culture in them."