Cultural patterns

Abstract

Cultural mores have more effect on parents and their children than is generally supposed. Differing child rearing practices are often due to differing cultural patterns, and produce differing patterns of development (Figures 27.1 and 27.2). Margaret Mead put it well — ‘The child will have, as an adult, the imprint of his culture upon him, whether society hands the tradition with a shrug, throws it to him as a bone to a dog, teaches him each time with care and anxiety, or leads him to manhood as if he were on a sightseeing tour — but, whichever method his society chooses will have far-reaching results in the attitudes of the growing child, upon the way in which he phrases the process of growing up, and upon the resentment or enthusiasm with which he meets the inevitable social pressures from the adult world’¹.