Childhood in Rakau: A Study of the First Five Years of Life

Abstract

This chapter will give the reasons for the study, its emphasis and methods, and an outline of the presentation to follow. The present study is a unit-part of a larger Rakau study being made by Ritchie and others. It was felt that a closer investigation of child development from infancy through adolescence to adulthood was necessary to enlarge and test Ritchie's observations. The process of growing up to adulthood was therefore divided into three sections, which of necessity, overlap in many respects. The writer chose to study the first of these sections, the first five years of life in Rakau. This segment has unity and significance in its own right. The other sections concern the middle-years child and the adolescent. When the studies are placed longitudinally, a developmental picture will be obtained of growing-up to be a Rakau adult. This process of growing up can be called socialization. Socialization thus refers to the process whereby the new born infant is transformed into the functioning adult personality. The present study, therefore, will be concerned with all the formative influences which impinge on the child during this growing up process. The impingements may be physical and details of child care are included. They may be social: the feelings and reactions of all the people who surround the child, the socializing agents, and are responsible for the 'psychological atmosphere' will be described. Or they may be instructional. This term refers to those actions of the parents as socializing agents concerned consciously with the ideals they wish the child to accept, as distinguished from the other actions which the parents perform without conscious concern for the ethical development of the child.