Household Structure and Status and Expressions of Affect in India

This special issue demonstrates the value of close examinations of mothering as actually practiced by particular mothers in particular circumstances. The articles in this issue analyze instances of mothering in Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, China, and the United States and are followed by commentary from leaders in the field about what might be learned by attending to such everyday practices. These ethnographic studies extend lines of research within psychological anthropology that have focused on mothers as socializers, by drawing on contemporary developments, including those concerned with schema theory, psychodynamic and intersubjective processes, the interpenetrations of political‐economies and domestic relations, feminist perspectives, and questions of agency in the lives of women and children. This examination of projects, processes, and practices of mothering affords insights into a range of related questions concerning human nature, processes of enculturation and socialization, individual agency and lived worlds, cultural patterning and change. [mothering, practice, child socialization, cross‐cultural child development, psychological anthropology]

Section: Defining Mothering: Universals and Variabilitysupporting

confidence: 67%

Section: Defining Mothering: Universals and Variabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Looking Inside Psychological Anthropologymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Practice of Mothering: An Introduction

Barlow

Chapin

2010

“…Some of them use psychoanalytic perspectives (e.g., Allison 1996;Kurtz 1992;S. LeVine 1979;Scheper-Hughes 1992), others developmental perspectives (e.g., Harkness and Super 1996, and their contributors;Seymour 1983Seymour , 1999, and still others an explicitly comparative paradigm of cross-cultural research (e.g., R. LeVine 1994;Minturn and Lambert 1964;Whiting and Whiting 1975). These explorations have demonstrated variations in the work requirements, personnel, institutional contexts, and emotional dynamics of mothering in different cultural environments.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Critiquing the “Good Enough” Mother: A Perspective Based on the Murik of Papua New Guinea

Barlow

2004

Despite ongoing debates about family, work, and the characteristics of good mothers, cultural and disciplinary biases have led many anthropologists and psychologists to ignore cultural aspects of mothering. Feminists and others have questioned the lack of agency for women in dominant psychological theories and the relative absence in psychoanalytic theory of mothers as subject persons. On the basis of data from the Murik of Papua New Guinea, in which mothering is conceptualized as a template for many kinds of social relationships and as a source of power, I argue that a holistic and relational view of mothering in social and cultural context is needed to restore subjectivity and agency to women as mothers and to understand mothering as a dynamic and culturally informed process.

“…She talked about the "diffusion of affect" to describe the multiple emotional bonds that Samoan children develop in the course of having multiple caretakers. In my own work, I have taken Mead's concept and shown how it applies to large, complex households in Bhubaneswar, India, where there are numerous caretakers of young children in contrast to smaller households in which mothers have fewer assistants with child care (Seymour 1983). It is important to note that a diffusion of affect does not imply shallow emotional relationships.…”

Section: Multiple Child Care: the Cross-cultural Recordmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiple Caretaking of Infants and Young Children: An Area in Critical Need of a Feminist Psychological Anthropology

Seymour

2004

Self Cite

Multiple caretaking of infants and young children, although nearly universal, remains controversial in the United States. Why? This article addresses that question by first reviewing some of the pertinent cross‐cultural record on multiple child care and then by drawing on my own and others' research in India as a case study. The article critiques some of the Western developmental and psychoanalytic assumptions that underlie beliefs that exclusive mothering is essential to a child's well‐being and argues that a feminist psychological anthropology is required to address these important issues about child care in American society and to help normalize multiple child care in both practice and theory.