Child Well-Being: Anthropological Perspectives 18 Edward G. J. Stevenson and Carol M. Worthman 18.1 Introduction Anthropology commonly is regarded as the study of human origins or exotic cultures, but in fact, its remit embraces all aspects of humanity. It is distinguished from other social sciences, conceptually, by its attention to both culture and biology and their interaction on the timescales of evolution, history, and the individual lifespan, and methodologically, by a tradition of ethnographic fieldwork conducted among diverse populations. Anthropological study of children occupies a special place in the discipline, as it engages with issues from the evolution of the life course to how culture is acquired during the earliest years. A lapse in attention to children and childhood by mainstream anthropology in recent decades has been balanced by a current surge of interest in the place of children in society and appreciation of the value of anthropological studies for understanding child well-being (Bluebond- Langner and Korbin 2007; Lancy 2008). Unfortunately, major recent reviews of threats to child welfare and how to ameliorate them (Grantham-McGregor et al. 2007; Engle et al. 2007; Walker et al. 2007, 2011) have largely overlooked anthropological contributions – and particularly the importance of culture as a determinant of both socioeconomic conditions and local definitions of well- being. In this chapter, we discuss anthropological perspectives that advance E.G.J. Stevenson (*) Department of Anthropology, University College London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] C.M. Worthman Laboratory for Comparative Human Biology, Department of Anthropology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA e-mail: [email protected] A. Ben-Arieh et al. (eds.), Handbook of Child Well-Being, 485 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9063-8_20, # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014 486 E.G.J. Stevenson and C.M. Worthman understanding of child well-being by engaging the places and possibilities that various societies provide for children. The chapter is structured as follows: First, we summarize how culture consti- tutes a basic and unique feature of human childhood and child care and is therefore a necessary concept for modeling child development and well-being. Then, we describe models that anthropologists have used to explain variation in child development and well-being. Next, we consider the ways these models add to our understanding of how ongoing transitions in vital rates, education, nutrition and disease, and politics, economics, and ecology are affecting child well-being worldwide. Finally, we describe policy implications and suggest future research directions. Our broad aims are to demonstrate the value of anthropological approaches for understanding and promoting child well-being and to illustrate the kinds of research needed to test hypotheses derived from anthropological models. 18.2 Shared and Variable Features of Human Childhood Underpinning the anthropological approach to child well-being is a set of observations about children in relation to other species. One observation is that humans are distinctive vis-a`-vis their nearest living relatives, the chimpan- zees and gorillas, in how long they remain dependent on caregivers. Whereas other primates begin to locomote early and receive only milk from their mothers, humans are unable to walk until they are nearly a year old and rely on adults for provision of food until maturity (Pereira and Fairbanks 2002). Another basic observation is that the circumstances of child-rearing among humans are tremendously diverse, ranging across almost all the world’s terrestrial ecosystems and including social contexts from small, mobile, and relatively egalitarianforaginggroupstodenseurban neighborhoods characterized by great inequality. Together, these two features – prolonged dependence and environmental variation – have important consequences for human development and well- being. During the prolonged juvenile phase, both the nervous system and the immune system – which are characterized by immense complexity and mediate critical social and ecological relations – rely on or are sensitive to environmental cues that are expectable features of experience. For example, children acquire cultural concepts through exposure to the language-using community in which they grow up (Ochs and Schieffelin 1986), and they acquire immunocompetence via early exposures to pathogens and irritants (reviewed in McDade 2005). Behavioral patterns, including diet, are often shared at the level of the local group; and risks and opportunities for healthy development also vary significantly at this level. Accounting for environmental variation therefore is crucial for deriving more valid, generalizable models of child development and well-being. 18 Child Well-Being: Anthropological Perspectives 487 Table 18.1 Four major dimensions of child well-being studied by anthropologists Health Relationships Nutrition and growth (Eveleth and Tanner Attachment/anxiety (Hrdy 2005; LeVine and 1990; Martorell et al. 2010) Norman 2001) Food/water security (Dettwyler 1993; Hadley Social relations (Hinde 1987; Whiting and and Wutich 2009; Stevenson et al. 2012) Edwards 1988) Morbidity (Bentley et al. 1991) Sexual mores (Mead 1928; Herdt 1989) Mortality (Hill and Hurtado 1996; Kaplan Freedom of choice and action (Lancy 2008; et al. 1995) Panter-Brick 2002) Stress/suffering Competence Early stressors (Landauer and Whiting 1981; Knowledge/learning (Blurton Jones and Konner Kuzawa 1998) 1976; Boyd and Richerson 1985; Richerson et al. 2010) Biocultural mediators (Worthman et al. 2010) Psychomotor development (Chisholm 1983; Adolph et al. 2010) Subjective well-being (Izquierdo 2005; Play (Norbeck 1974; Schwartzman 1976; Bock Godoy et al. 2009; Kohrt et al. 2011) and Johnson 2004) 18.2.1 Problems and Goals in the Anthropology of Well-Being In anthropology, research relevant to child well-being has been carried out both by cultural anthropologists, who have tended to focus on children’s linguistic, moral, and psychological development, and by biological anthropologists, who have tended to focus on mortality, physical growth and maturation, and stress. Although we cannot hope to represent the whole range of topics that anthropologists have addressed in relation to child well-being, Table 18.1 reflects the diversity of relevant concerns, under the headings of health, relationships, competence, and stress or suffering. Work by both cultural and biological anthropologists has acted as a check against the assumption that Western standards of human development (including developmental tempo and markers of competence) apply to all humanity (see Mead 1928; LeVine and White 1986; Henrich et al. 2010). Ethnography, the hallmark method of anthropology, which combines interview and observation of naturalistic behavior, often over long periods of time, can provide windows into child devel- opment in cultural context and accommodates rich description of multiple dimen- sions of well-being (LeVine 2007). Ethnography may expose unexpected relationships between environments of child-rearing and outcomes in terms of well-being. For example: • Among the Yoruba of Nigeria, parents provide only very small amounts of meat or fish to their children, for fear of spoiling their alafia, “a [concept of] well- being that includes physical health, peace of mind, material prosperity, [and] harmonious relationships” (Zeitlin 1996: 410). • Among the Gusii of Kenya, minimal verbal interaction between parents and children, and consistent withholding of praise, serves as part of a socialization strategy that promotes obedience and responsibility, without any apparent harm to children’s self-esteem (LeVine et al. 1994). 488 E.G.J. Stevenson and C.M. Worthman • Among the Matsigenka of the Peruvian Amazon, physical health has improved over the past three decades, but the commonness of sorcery accusations (a marker of social cohesion and trust) has increased (Izquierdo 2005). One goal of anthropology is to explain such apparently paradoxical relationships between environments and outcomes by taking into account the cultural context – and especially local systems of meanings and expectations about what it is to be a person and to lead a good life (LeVine and White 1986; D’Andrade 1992; Shweder 1996; Markus and Kitayama 1998). This requires close attention to indigenous concepts, which may often be difficult to translate. A more ambitious and elusive goal of anthropology is to identify regularities in well-being across cultures and through time. This enterprise, contrastingly, requires broad definitions of well-being that apply to many cultures. For the purposes of this effort, we may assume that well-being everywhere partially corresponds with phys- ical health and that it is dependent on a set of basic capacities in the individual (e.g., adequate nutritional status) and on social supports (e.g., nurturing relationships). These two complementary goals of anthropology are reflected in two, overlapping families of models that we describe below – one aimed at explaining well-being in cultural context, and the other at explaining variation in well-being across cultures. An assumption common to both approaches is that while much variation in child well- being may be determined by culture, other influences – such as differences in childcare arrangements within the same cultural community and processes such as globalization that affect many cultural groups – are also important. Integrating