Beyond Parents - The Social World of Early Childhood and its Developmental Significance

This book provides a detailed look into the social world of infants and toddlers and explores the consequences of that environment on learning and socio-emotional development. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork and systematic observation in a rural community in Madagascar, it shows that children there grow up in dense social networks from birth, surrounded not only by parents and siblings but also by peers, cousins, aunts, grandparents, neighbours, and more. It challenges dominant parent-centric frameworks that assume socio-emotional development begins in relationships with parents, which form the basis for a gradual expansion of children's social relations. By contrast, the multiple coexisting but distinct social relationships of young children in this study provide parallel developmental pathways. This enables them to acquire simultaneously hierarchical-interdependent and egalitarian-autonomous modes of relationships, emotion, and self. The book presents a powerful critique of mainstream developmental science and calls for a broader, more inclusive understanding of early childhood across cultures.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction.- 2. The Pastoralist Community of Menamaty in Southern Madagascar.- 3. Relationships and Emotions.- 4. Caregivers Perspectives on Child-Rearing.- 5. The Full Range of Children s Social Partners.- 6. Practices of Care and Play.- 7. Multiple Developmental Pathways.- 8. Conclusion.

Über den Autor / die Autorin

Gabriel Scheidecker
is Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. His ethnographic research focuses on childhood and the politics of parenting in Madagascar, Vietnam, and Germany. He currently leads an SNSF Starting Grant that critically examines early childhood and parenting interventions in the Global South.

Produktdetails

• Autoren: Gabriel Scheidecker
• Verlag: Springer, Berlin
• Sprache: Englisch
• Produktform: Fester Einband
• Erschienen: 24.12.2025
• EAN: 9783032057679
• ISBN: 978-3-0-3205767-9
• Seiten: 282
• Illustration: XVII, 282 p. 47 illus.
• Serie: Palgrave Studies on the Anthropology of Childhood and Youth
• Themen: Sozialwissenschaften, Recht,Wirtschaft > Soziologie > Sonstiges; Anthropologie, Entwicklungspsychologie, Soziologie: Familie und Beziehungen, Globalization, Geography, Humangeographie, Social interaction, Madagascar, Ethnography, auseinandersetzen, Sociology of Family, Youth and Aging, Developmental Psychology, Child development, Sociocultural Anthropology, Physical-Biological Anthropology, childhood care, early childhood research, social partners, anthropology of childhood