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29 - Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Parent–Infant Interactions

from Part VI - Emotional and Social Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2020

By
Marc H. Bornstein  and
Gianluca Esposito
Edited by
Jeffrey J. Lockman  and
Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda
Jeffrey J. Lockman
Affiliation:
Tulane University, Louisiana
Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda
Affiliation:
New York University
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Summary

Each day more than three-quarters of a million adults around the world experience the joys and heartaches just as they do the rewards and fears of becoming parents to a newborn infant. Each infant is an individual, of course, as is each parent and each parent–infant dyad. Yet, parents and infants around the globe share a large number of commonalities. No matter their homeland, parents have the same responsibilities to guide their infants’ survival and success in life, and their infants have the same biological needs and must meet and succeed at the same developmental tasks and challenges. Although infancy encompasses only a small fraction of the life span, it is a period that parents the world over attend to and invest in. Parenting an infant is a 168-hour-a-week job. With good reason: Parenting responsibilities are arguably the greatest during the time of their child’s infancy because human infants are totally dependent on caregiving and their ability to cope alone is minimal.

Keywords

Parentingparent-infant interactionsculture and parentingparental cultural cognitionsparental cultural practicescross-cultural differences and parenting
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Infant Development
Brain, Behavior, and Cultural Context
 , pp. 805 - 832
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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