“We Have to Give”: Sinhala Mothers' Responses to Children's Expression of Desire

Abstract

Using data gathered through participant‐observation and interviews focused on everyday mothering interactions in a Sinhala family in central Sri Lanka, I argue that the combination of continuous indulgence with disappointing material, social, and emotional results leads children to disavow their own desires by middle childhood. This early socialization to the negative potential of desire makes fertile ground for cultural doctrines that explicitly link desire, suffering, and destruction. Further, mothers who themselves have internalized these understandings react to their children's assertions of desire with intense discomfort combined with indulgence, reproducing their own socialization in the experiences of their children. By being attuned to psychodynamic processes between and within people and as well as attentive to the sociocultural medium in which they occur, I provide a model of and for thinking about how actual practices of mothering lead children to develop culturally patterned habits of thought, behavior, and feeling, preparing them to find subsequently encountered cultural material meaningful. [mothering, child socialization, indulgence, disavowal, desire, Sri Lanka]

Mothers’ Insistence when Prohibiting Infants from Harming Others in Everyday Interactions

“…Briggs (1974) noted that the Inuit families she observed rarely explicitly corrected misbehaviors when children were very young. [For similar reports from other communities of adults “indulging” young children, see Hewlett (1992) and Chapin (2010) .] Within a given community, the presence of siblings may affect the rate of conflicts, especially moral ones ( Tremblay et al, 1999 ).…”

The Use of Applied Behavioural Analysis for Autism Spectrum Disorders- Experiences from Working with Children in Sri Lanka

“…However, this indirectness in communication may sometimes lead to unwanted behaviours being inadvertently reinforced. It was seen that especially families living with grandparents had difficulties in managing meltdowns, as there is a belief that parents should not allow their children to cry [25]. This may have been culturally relevant in times when crying was an indication of physical pain, and ignoring it would not be approved in collectivist cultures.…”

Emotional arousal in the making of cultural selves

“…Another, less deliberate, example of shaming is provided by Bambi Chapin (2010) from her fieldwork in a Sinhala village on the island of Sri Lanka. Given the permissiveness of parents toward what was in Chapin’s American eyes the overly-demanding behavior of toddlers, she was surprised by the seemingly magical transformation of these demanding little creatures into characteristically compliant, restrained, and self-denying older children, beginning when they were about five years old, and at least by the time they were ten.…”

“…She discovered that these adults would invariably give in to small children, yes, but that this granting of their demands would be accompanied by signs of ambivalence such as winces, disgust faces, and a negative, withdrawing emotional tone. So children got what they wanted, but at the cost of disapproval and even dislike (Chapin, 2010: 361). Eventually, they stopped asking for what they desired.…”