Babies

During this course we were to watch the film "Babies". The film follows 4 different cultures as the parents raise their children from newborns to toddlers. What is great about this film is that you get the perspective of 4 different cultures where you can see great similarities of child rearing but also some differences. The film followed the development of children from Mongolia, Namibia, Japan and USA.  One of the major differences in the child rearing the stood out the most to me was how the mothers in Mongolia left their children to be while they carried on house duties. There was less supervision of the infants in this country. In Namibia was stood out the most was how there were no fathers around, in fact in all countries the father were not really present, and if so, they were both juggling work and watching the child. Also, in Nambia, it was interesting to see how one mother would be breastfeeding multiple children, of which (I'm not positive) but may not have even been her own children. Japan and USA seemed to have the most similar ways across their cultures of raising children. That is probably because both were urban cities where the children were being raised as compared to Mongolia and Nambia being rural. This film really took home the point of the developmental niche. Each child has their own "niche" in which there is a particular Physical and social settings of daily life that belong to the child, and there is Culturally specific Customs and child care/child rearing practices around that child as well as the Psychology of the caretakers impacting and influencing the development of the children.