How do children learn to care for others?
The word ‘child’ can be defined in the following ways: a young human being below the age of puberty or the legal age of majority; a son or daughter of any age; an immature or irresponsible person.
Learning can be defined as gaining or acquiring knowledge or skill in something through study, experience or being taught.
To ask how children learn to care for others brings forward the interaction between the ways in which ‘children’ and ‘learning’ can be defined and how such interactions produce myriad ways to ‘care’, ‘learn’, and be a ‘child’.
This essay will address how children come to learn to care for others. It will first look at how children learn through others. Then, it will focus on how children learn through themselves. Lastly, it will outline the specifies of the relationship between ‘childhood’ and ‘care’, asking not how children learn to care for others, but the extent to which they should.
Chiefly people learn through others. Insofar as learning requires understanding, to learn through being taught by others is especially useful in the case of children, since, what they are to learn can be presented to them in a form they will be able to make sense of. Rydstrøm, in her 2001 article Like a White Piece of Paper, illustrates how children in Vietnam are taught to care through the ways in which they are socialised. She outlines how due to local emphasis on ancestor worship, celebrating the reproduction of the patrilineage, males are defined as ‘inside lineage’. Consequently, males are thought to ‘embody the past, present, and future history of their entire patrilineage, and in turn, the accumulated ‘morality’, ‘honor’, and ‘reputation’ of their father’s lineage’, contradicting the idea that children are ‘supposed to be blank’, with boys innately being perceived as less blank than girls. Conversely, females are categorised as ‘outside lineage’ due to females being unable to reproduce their patrilineage. As such, ‘female bodies do not incorporate accumulated ‘morality’, ‘honor’, and ‘reputation’ of their past, present, and future patrilineage, which means that their bodies emerge as truly blank’. Rydstrøm notes that, as a result, girls are treated as if they need ‘more ‘socialisation’ than boys in order to be inscribed with appropriate morals values’. One significant way in which girls and women can demonstrate that they have ‘embodied ‘morality’, ‘honor’, and ‘reputation’ is by practising tinh cam (sentiments/emotions/feelings). Despite the fact that everyone should live with ‘sentiments’, tinh cam conceptually refers mainly to females’ sensitivity concerning how, morally, they should behave, with tinh cam, overall, being a matter of ‘showing respect for the superior and self-denial for the inferior’. What is more, tinh cam is ‘a matter of ‘helping’ ither people, ‘behaving oneself, stimulating ‘harmony’ of one’s household, taking care of the young members of one’s household, and avoiding ‘confrontations’’. A gender divide thus appears to exist between care expectations for girls versus boys. This is accentuated by the pressure put on girls to learn how to care given that a female’s ‘sentiments’ manifest themselves in social relationships and practices thus allowing for a continuous subjection to moral judgment. Rydstrøm highlights how ‘being continually assessed makes females vulnerable, in the sense that they can lose ‘honor’ and their good ‘reputation’ if they behave in ways that do not accord with local assumptions about good female ‘morality’’. Moreover, girls failing to manifest the embodiment of tinh cam ‘provoke unease in their senior female kin, since a girl’s ways of ‘behaving herself’ are recognised as ‘mirroring’ the level of ‘morality’ of her female caregivers because they are acknowledged as her ‘role models’’. In a sense, children are taught to embody a particular form of adulthood, with care here being at the forefront in girls’ education since it is seen as a necessary role in motherhood. This pressure to learn to care imputed to girls results in them not only being taught, but, in important ways, teaching themselves how to care for others. Through the study of their female kin and seniors, girls learn to imitate their mothers and emulate their behaviours. This echoes Ngo Cong Hoan’s (1993) suggestion that ‘a child can imitate his mother when she takes care of the [child’s] father’, and Le Thi Nham Tuyet’s (1989) emphasis on the important role of a mother concerning a child’s ‘upbringing’ insofar as a mother sets an example through her ‘tender care and self-denial efforts’. Of note here is that while both authors write about a supposedly gender-neutral child, it is clear that what they have in mind is a girl. An interesting parallel can be drawn with Stafford’s 1992 article Good sons and virtuous mothers wherein he notes that although sons are not more important to their families than daughters, ‘while men remain sons, even after death, women – to a much greater extent – lose the status of daughter and their lives become defined by motherhood’. These examples illustrate how care, at times, is taught in a manner befitting a child’s expected future roles (i.e. a mother, a son). Children are socialised to embody a particular form of adulthood, which at times manifests as one in which knowing how to care is of paramount importance. Thus, given that children, to a great extent, learn what they are taught, rather than actively seek to learn of their volition, learning to care is a rather heterogeneous reality for children.
Another way in which children learn to care is through experience. Here, the care that is learned is to some extent distinct from care that is taught insofar as children are often required to make sense of situations in their own way and express care adequately yet subjectively. For instance, illness precipitates how a child will learn to care given that it destabilises parent/child dynamics. Hunleth (2019) in Zambian Children’s Imaginal Caring focuses on how children learn to care, but also express care, in the case of Zambian children whose parents have Tuberculosis. Offering a variation of Cindy Dell Clark’s (2003) term ‘imaginal coping’, Hunleth talks of ‘imaginal caring’. Imaginal here takes on a dual meaning, referring at once to the imagination, understood as ‘the way in which people envision and critique their worlds and also try on their ‘what ifs’ and construct other versions of existence besides those actually experienced’, and to how the image can be seen as a ‘vital datum for studying care’. She emphasises the value of using images in understanding how children make sense of care in underlining that ‘engaging with images [decentres] the privileging of voice that excludes from research people who are silent, silenced, or alternately expressive’. Indeed, given that there are many times where ‘children, [cannot], in conversation, articulate what they [want] to communicate … the image as a ‘language that expresses without formulating’ (Foucault 1993) proved, perhaps, all the more powerful’. As such, images allow for the formulating of care that makes sense to the child, that is accessible to him, as well as enabling the expression of care through acting as a medium, bridging the distance (and difference) of child and adult forms of care. For instance, Hunleth relates how Abby, one of the children whose parent had tuberculosis, explained her drawing: ‘the pot, it was for cooking for her mother; the beer bottle, it was for her father, who ‘likes beer’ … the schoolbook was a schoolbook, without further explanation. The orange, a fruit known for its health benefits and also a rarity in households in George because of its price, rose off the page. Abby told her mother that this was an orange ‘for her’’. Hunleth stresses that ‘while [Abby’s] mother and her other relatives could still overlook, minimise, or reject [her] desire to live with and provide care to her mother, the drawings of care … circulated in that room as visual reminders that she both cared for her mother and was herself in need of care’. Thus, drawing as medium through which care can be expressed allows for children to ‘prove’ that they care, using imaginal manifestations of care. Further, as Weiss (2002) notes, children’s fantasies are not ‘quaint, they are not delusional, and they are not separate from materially evident care’; rather they are ‘social acts’.
Similarly, while Luka could not be besides his father, who was fighting tuberculosis in hospital, very much wished he was, to such an extent that he would borrow Hunleth’s recorder and describe a ‘fantastical plot to scale the brick walls of the hospital and climb through a window and into his father’s ward, so that he could see him and give him medicine’ or hold imaginary conversations imploring the doctor to take care of his father; as well as creating multiple drawings of him by his father’s bedside. Importantly, ‘through the acts of creating and showing such drawings to loved ones, [children’s] imaginal (bedside) caring [is] brought into existence and [serves] as a form of assertion, [telling] family members: ‘I have not stopped caring for or about you’’. These drawings also convey the message ‘Recognise me, I am here’.
Beyond being used as a medium to convey and express care, images or drawings are also sometimes used as mediums in the negotiation of a child’s own aspiration. In fact, one of the children Hunleth worked with, Paul, drew a plane of his own volition, representing his desire to be a pilot, presented it to her in the presence of his father, also ill of tuberculosis, and ‘used it as a tool to redirect the conversation … to talk about his future’. As such, Paul was not only speaking to Hunleth, but to his father throughHunleth. Drawings serve as a way for children to express their desires, their aspirations, in a way understandable to all, thus enabling a form of self-care to some extent.
In the same vein, Froerer in her 2012 article Valuing girls’ education in central India, note that girls took care of preparing meals for their families before going to school so that her parents would continue their schooling. In 8-year-old Ramkumari’s words: ‘if I prepare the food properly, they will allow me to continue studying. I want to become a teacher someday, and I must go to school as long as possible’. Hence, by learning to care for others, she learns to care for herself and her own aspirations.
The relationship between childhood and care that emerges is a complex one. For instance, learning is inherently processual, begging the question of when does the learning end? At what point does one become the one teaching children how to care instead of being taught to care? If ‘child’ also refers to a son or daughter regardless of their age, does learning to care ever stop? Or rather does the ways in which one learns to care changes and adapts to given situations and stages in others’ life course?
Moreover, the question of what it means to care as a ‘child’ is of interest. Indeed, how one defines a ‘child’ conjures up very different realities. Taking the word ‘child’ as meaning below the age of puberty or a minor, puts emphasis on the ideas of understanding, empathy, and compassion, and how they relate to care. can one care without understanding? What is more, can one show compassion or empathy without fully perceiving and comprehending what is at stake? And, consequently, will a child’s ability to care always be conditional to their awareness? Taking the word ‘child’ as meaning a son or daughter of any age, showcases the variability and adaptability of care and emphasises the situational quality of care, with ‘children’ learning to care for their parents in a multitude of ways depending on their needs and relative independence.
Additionally, asking how children learn to care for others, overshadows the why. As Froerer writes, for girls, acquiring domestic skills, (here managing the household, assisting with agricultural work) enables them to ‘contribute to the immediate needs of their [families]’, constituting perhaps ‘the most important activity around which their lives revolved – and around which their future would largely be determined’. Learning to care for others in this way, rather than learning to care for onself, can be detrimental. Indeed, some children live in such conditions that require them to care for others before themselves, thus producing very empathetic and emotionally attuned adults. However, a lot of adult empaths are no other than hypersensitive children who were not able to learn how to set boundaries for themselves. Children in childhood studies are said to have agency. Yet, as Hunleth notes ‘an overemphasis on children’s agency – understood as the active roles children take in the world – invites us to overstate children’s power, understate their vulnerability, and insufficiently problematise the constraints place on children … Children are, in fact, agents, but they are not ‘super agents’ we are wise to remember. None of us are’ (emphasis mine).
To conclude, children learn to care for others in myriad ways. While it is interesting to ask how children learn to care for others, it is also significant to ask when and why. To be a child is a facet of identity; a son might get married and have children of his own, but, at the end of the day, will always be his parents’ child. Thus, perhaps learning is ongoing and contingent on the situation and context one finds oneself in, which might precipitate or transform the ways in which one might be expected or feel the need to care.
Bibliography
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Hunleth, J. (2019). Zambian Children’s Imaginal Caring: On Fantasy, Play, and Anticipation in an Epidemic. Cultural Anthropology, 34(2).
Evans, G. (2006). Educational Failure and Working Class White Children in Britain. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Read Introduction and Chapter 3
Froerer, P. (2012) 'Learning, livelihoods and social mobility: Valuing girls' education in central India'. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 43 (4). pp. 344 - 357
Rydstrøm, H. (2001). ‘“Like a White Piece of Paper”. Embodiment and the Moral Upbringing of Vietnamese Children’. Ethnos, 66(3), 394-413.
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