Description
This volume draws heavily upon the results of research programs in contemporary cultures conducted at the American Museum of Natural History and Columbia University under grants from the Office of Naval Research. The nature and results of these programs have been reported more fully by Margaret Mead and Rhoda MCtraux in The Study of Culture at a Distance (the University of Chicago Press, 1953); the portions concerned with child rearing were reserved for the volume under review here. Additional chapters are reprinted (with revisions) from published sources or were written especially for this book.
The authors state that:
“…we do not propose to present an exhaustivestudy of ways of studying children within a cul- tural context but rather to give the student and interested reader some idea of the kinds of research which may fruitfully be explored from the standpoint both of method and of results. We have included several kinds of studies on the same culture, so that the student can see what it looks like to study French films, French children’s drawings, and French children in a park, or German child-care literature, German juvenile fiction, and story completion by German children.”
“The studies in this volume are all studies of pattern, of the stylistic interrelationships of different aspects of childhood, of the way in which, in a given culture, the image of the child, the way the child is rewarded and punished, children’s toys, the literature written for children, the literature written about children, the selective memories of adults about their childhood, the games children play, their fears and fantasies, hopes and daydreams, and behavior on projective tests are all systematically related to one another.”
