Childhood offers us an interesting conundrum. According to evolutionary theory, the only legitimate strategy in the game of life is to pass on more copies of your genes than your rivals, which may explain why humans (and many other species) spend so much time unable to reproduce. Furthermore, raising kids depletes parents' resources, diminishing both parties' chances of survival (young orphans are unlikely to survive in many species).
Given these fundamental realities, it would appear to make evolutionary sense for infancy (defined as the period of a person's life when they are sexually immature) to be as brief as possible to optimize reproductive possibilities while minimizing the cost of parenting. So, why do humans (and other primates) have such a protracted childhood? Assuming evolutionary theory is correct, how can such a long period of sexual immaturity be explained? To put it another way, what is the purpose of childhood?
One especially significant decision many organisms must make is the trade-off between optimizing offspring quality vs. the number. What is the point of this trade-off? Simply because resource and time constraints mean that the more children you have, the less time and attention you will be able to spend on each individual: one of nature's fundamental principles is that time and resources are always finite. Organisms that follow the chosen strategy aim to generate as many viable offspring as possible while investing as little as possible in their upbringing. Many fish species use this method, producing millions of fry - the precise term for newborn fish - and leaving them to fend for themselves.
Only a tiny fraction will reach sexual maturity, but because the starting population is so enormous, enough will reproduce to make it a profitable approach. The K-chosen strategy is at the other extreme of the spectrum. Only a tiny number of kids are generated here. However, the parents spend substantially on the care and development of each person, resulting in a high percentage of people reaching maturity. Whether a species uses an r or K-selected strategy is mainly determined by the likelihood that the offspring would die due to severe conditions (e.g., being eaten); when this probability is high, r-selection is best.
Life-history theorists use a related scheme (known as the C-F continuum) that specifies whether the organism should maximize current or future reproductive fitness when describing different strategies within a species. Having many kids maximizes current reproductive fitness (since you have many copies of your genes right now), but investing intensively in a small number of offspring maximizes future reproductive success. (The best-of-all-worlds strategy of investing in numerous kids is not feasible for most people due to resource and time restrictions).
Once again, the ideal method for an individual to employ is determined by the nature of the environment. The claim is that when the environment is unpredictable, and the chances of offspring reaching maturity are low, it is often best to maximize current fitness; conversely, when the environment is predictable, and the chances of offspring reaching maturity are high, it may be best to maximize future reproductive fitness. In severe cases, there is evidence that parents may resort to the cruelest approach of all: infanticide.
John Bowlby, a British developmental, was interested in the factors that influence emotional and social development. Human neonates are very helpless (officially known as altricial), and the attachment system is developed to improve the infant's chances of survival and, ultimately, reproduction. The concept that children acquire a functioning model of the self and others due to early encounters with the mother was central to Bowlby's attachment theory.
The working model is a mental picture that combines cognitive and emotive components and directs the child's subsequent conduct. Bowlby claimed that children raised in safe circumstances with responsive and sympathetic moms would develop a functioning model that assumed that connections were valuable and that people could be trusted. Children who grew up with inattentive or abusive moms or whose mothers have absently developed working models that led them to distrust connections and other people.
Bowlby believed that constructing a functioning model had a crucial period between six months and three years. This suggests that events during the critical time are crucial for creating the working model, but later experiences are significantly less relevant. Despite recent criticism, Bowlby's theories have sparked many studies, and many developmentalists now use his attachment model; one such researcher was psychologist Mary Ainsworth.
Ainsworth (1967) devised the weird circumstance approach, which studies the immediate consequences of parental separation in the laboratory. Children are led into a room containing a variety of toys. When the youngster happily plays, a stranger enters the room, and the mother quickly exits. While the stranger sneaks out, the mother returns later and engages the youngster in play. The mother then departs again, and the stranger reappears. Finally, the mother reappears.
The infants usually scream when their mother leaves; this is natural; what is interesting is how they react when she reappears. Based on their reactions to the mother's withdrawal and return, Ainsworth first divided newborns into secure attachment, insecure-avoidant, and insecure resistive.
Judith Harris utilized the facts above in her book The Nurture Assumption and in a previous article in the journal Psychological Review to suggest that the impact of other children mainly drives the missing 40-50 percent of the variance. The book, in particular, sparked outrage, with the Society for Research in Child Development ranking it as the sixth most contentious since 1950.
Harris admits that parents have a significant impact in the early stages of infancy. Infants learn a lot from their parents in their early years; they usually learn their first language through parental input. However, as they start interacting with other children, they learn things that overcome the previous parental impacts.
Children of immigrants, for example, may first learn their parents' language but subsequently acquire the language of their classmates (assuming the two are distinct). These children will be multilingual and will frequently go back and forth between their parental language and the language of their community, depending on who they are with at the moment (the technical name is code-switching). Despite learning the parental language first, the child's natural language (the one with which he or she is most familiar) will usually become the language of his or her classmates rather than the parental language.
A similar occurrence occurs when families relocate to a different country region: parents are surprised to discover that their child begins to speak less like them and more like the child's friends. Harris contends that parents are inferior role models for their children's behavior. Parents in many cultures do numerous things that children would be punished for. Parents curse, argue, drink alcohol, stay up late, and engage in risky activities children are not allowed to do. If a youngster tried to imitate an adult, she would quickly become frustrated. To put it another way, children want to be successful in the eyes of their peers, and acting like adults is unlikely to help them do this.
The trade-off between optimizing offspring quality vs. the number is a major decision for organisms. John Bowlby's attachment theory suggests that children acquire a functioning model of the self and others due to early encounters with the mother. Mary Ainsworth devised the weird circumstance approach to study the immediate consequences of parental separation in the laboratory, which divided newborns into secure attachment, insecure-avoidant, and insecure resistive.
The trade-off between optimizing offspring quality vs. the number is a major decision for organisms. John Bowlby's attachment theory suggests that children acquire a functioning model of the self and others due to early encounters with the mother. Mary Ainsworth devised the weird circumstance approach to study the immediate consequences of parental separation in the laboratory, which divided newborns into secure attachment, insecure-avoidant, and insecure resistive.
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