Child Helpers

Cambridge Elements rP Fo Child Helpers: A Multidisciplinary Perspective ee Journal: Cambridge Elements HSS1 Manuscript ID Draft rR Manuscript Type: Psychology and Culture ev Date Submitted by the n/a Author: Complete List of Authors: Lancy, David; Utah State University, Sociology, Social Work & Anthropology iew Keywords: Child, Helper, Developmental stage, Ethnographic studies, Lab Experiments Cambridge University Press Page 1 of 130 Cambridge Elements Child Helpers: A Multidisciplinary Perspective rP Fo David F. Lancy Emeritus Professor Anthropology iew ev rR ee Utah State University Cambridge University Press Cambridge Elements Page 2 of 130 Dedication For Adley, with the wish she grows up to be helpful and generous. iew ev rR ee rP Fo Cambridge University Press 2 Page 3 of 130 Cambridge Elements Acknowledgements I am grateful to Alyssa Crittenden and the Society for Cross-Cultural Research for inviting me to present an early version of these ideas at the 2018 conference in Las Vegas. I owe an enormous debt to eHRAF, the electronic Human Relations Area Files, headquartered at Yale, and to the Merrill-Cazier Library and staff at Utah State University. As always, I would cite the invaluable editorial assistance of Jennifer J. Green Delliskave. iew ev rR ee rP Fo Cambridge University Press 3 Cambridge Elements Page 4 of 130 List of Figures Figure 1.1 - Katerina (Russia: Ivan Golovnev) Figure 1.2 - WEIRD child helpers provoke amazement (USA) Figure 1.3 - Jug Carrier (Laos: David F. Lancy) Figure 2.1 - Turtle Eggs to Share (Peru: Daniela Peluso) Figure 2.2 - Using a Mortar and Pestle (Peru: Daniela Peluso) Fo Figure 4.1 - Family Harvesting Cáñere (Bolivia: M. Ruth Martínez-Rodríguez) rP Figure 4.2 - Turtle-Butchering Party (Madagascar: David F. Lancy) Figure 4.3 - Helper at the Pea Harvest (Mali: Barbara Polak) rR ee List of Tables Table 2.1 Withdrawing the Infant’s Social Support Table 2.3 Play and Work Intertwined Table 3.1 Helping in the Ethnographic Record iew ev Table 2.2 The Importance of Sharing Table 3.2 Lab Studies of Children Helping Table 4.1 Unhelpful Children in WEIRD Societies Table 5.1 Children Learning Through Collaborative Activity Cambridge University Press 4 Page 5 of 130 Cambridge Elements Child Helpers: A Multidisciplinary Perspective Table of Contents Dedication List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgements Overview rP Fo One: Juvenile Helpers Reconsidering Juvenile Dependency Two: Setting the Stage rR ee Introducing the Child-as-Helper Stage Retiring Social Debt Playing at Work Three: Weighing the Evidence Helping in the Ethnographic Record iew ev The Importance of Sharing Lab Studies of Child Helpers Four: Contrasting Cultural Contexts for Child Helpers Sustaining the Drive to be Helpful Extinguishing the Drive to be Helpful The End of the Helper Stage Five: What are the Benefits of the Child’s Need to Help? Affiliation Earned through Collaboration Cambridge University Press 5 Cambridge Elements Page 6 of 130 Collaboration Leads to Learning Six: Summary and Conclusions References iew ev rR ee rP Fo Cambridge University Press 6 Page 7 of 130 Cambridge Elements One: Juvenile Helpers This essay was greatly inspired by a 15" film titled Tiny Katerina, which shows glimpses of Katerina from two- to four-and-a-half years of age. She lives with her parents and older brother in Northwestern Siberia in the taiga. The Khanty-speaking people live by foraging (berries, for example), fishing and herding reindeer; they are semi-nomadic. In their camp and the vicinity, Fo there is no evidence of electricity or any other public service. These people are very much “off rP the grid.” From the first, as a wobbly toddler, Katerina is shown being helpful. She carries (and drops and picks up) firewood chopped by her mother into their tent. She ladles food (spilling ee some) from a large pot over the fire into a tin and feeds the dog. She carries pans with bread rR dough to her mother to place in the baking oven. When her mother goes gathering in the forest, Katerina has her own toddler-size collecting bucket. She is out in all weather, including deep ev snow, keeping warm in her animal skin anorak and mittens. iew Insert Figure 1.1 - Katerina Katerina and her mother treat her myriad helping activities—imitating and collaborating with her mother—as absolutely routine (Golovnev, 2004; Golovnev & Golovneva, 2016). In a visceral way, the film reveals the deep gulf between our WEIRD (Henrich, Heine & Norenzayan, 2010; Kline, Shamsudheen & Broesch, 2018) model of “normal” child development and childrearing and the view derived from the anthropology of childhood. Cambridge University Press 7 Cambridge Elements Page 8 of 130 As often noted, human life history is unique in encompassing an extremely long (by mammalian and, especially, primate standards) period of juvenility. Bogin (2006: 205) claims that recognizable and unique stages are added to the primate life course: child, juvenile (I use “Middle Childhood”) and adolescent. There are many theories to account for this extraordinary pattern, such as that children are slowly acquiring “embodied capital” in terms of physical size, strength, immunities, survival tactics and facility with social relationships (Kaplan & Bock, 2001). But all perspectives emphasize the fact that juveniles are in a state of dependency, unable to meet their own needs—they are “costly.” Nowhere is this costly and prolonged investment in Fo one’s offspring more evident than in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, rP Democracy) society. Not only is the investment quite high but returns, at least as far as children “paying back” by contributing to the domestic economy, are scanty. In fact, in WEIRD society ee most children’s “work,” such as homework or practicing the piano, is strictly for the benefit of rR the child and may impose an added burden on parents, who help with homework and pay for piano lessons. But the WEIRD pattern is anomalous and characterized as “one of the worst ev subpopulations one could study for generalizing about Homo sapiens” (Henrich et al., 2010: 79). iew And, recently, a critical mass of research in traditional societies has accumulated that uncovers children’s ability and inclination to, at least partially, “pay back” their benefactors (Kramer, 2011). Discounting WEIRD society—where children are viewed as carefree, playful “cherubs”—as an outlier, we should reconsider and see children as helpful and hardworking would-be citizens, like Katerina. Work maps onto nearly the entire juvenile period, and it is entwined with developmental processes. The juvenile’s physical abilities, understanding of the environment, technical skill, strength, endurance and assumption of responsibility all show clear developmental trends that are applied to or activated by participation in the activities of those older or through the individual Cambridge University Press 8 Page 9 of 130 Cambridge Elements conduct of routine chores (Lancy 2018). It is important to stress that—outside WEIRD society— while infants and toddlers may be indulged, having all their needs met and enjoying nearly unlimited play time, they face a future characterized by work. How much they work and how soon varies cross-culturally, but it is the trajectory that all will eventually follow. The helper “stage,” which begins as early as fourteen months and lasts several years, is preparatory for a life of collaborative, family/community-based work. As one measure of the centrality of work in the child’s development, we find several societies that apply distinctive Fo terms to characterize each “stage.” For example, rP In the Giriama (Kenya) language the term for a child roughly two through three years in age ee is kahoho kuhuma madzi: a youngster who can be sent to fetch a cup of water . . .. A girl, rR from about eight years until approximately puberty, is muhoho wa kubunda, a child who pounds maize; a boy of this age is a muhoho murisa, a child who herds. (Wenger, iew ev 1989: 98) But the “helper stage” entails several distinctive characteristics. These include the fact that the child’s desire to help may out-pace their ability to be useful, at least in the endeavor they’ve offered to contribute to. Adults and older siblings must, therefore, “manage” the young helper. Even the youngest helpers may be seen as having unique attributes that make them ideal for certain jobs, such as gossip courier. So, not all work during the helper stage is strictly “developmental.” The very young suffer from quite low status, and voluntary helping is often a key that admits the child to limited participation, which, in turn, raises their social standing. Families may encourage Cambridge University Press 9 Cambridge Elements Page 10 of 130 the would-be helper by donating scaled-down or discarded tools for practice. Or, as an example of crafts, a potter may give her little girl a ball of clay to play with and then take her crude results and reform them into recognizable miniature pots. With few exceptions, indigenous1 communities act as if they fully expect children to volunteer to help out and, unlike WEIRD society (Pettygrove et al., 2013; Dahl et al., 2017), see no need to explicitly encourage, teach, reward, praise or thank the child for him/her to be helpful. The helper stage can also be viewed as a developmental niche (Super & Harkness, 1986). The Fo construct describes a system where there’s a confluence of everyday practices (habitus cf rP Bourdieu, 1977), parenting ethnotheory (Harkness & Super et al., 2010) and practice, and the child’s biological growth and development. More specifically, the facilitating behavior of parents ee and others as workers, such as acting as willing role models to observe and imitate, the ready rR availability of tools to practice with, and the plethora of sub-tasks in any undertaking all contribute to an environment that is adapted to the nurturance of eager but clumsy helpers. ev Elsewhere, I’ve characterized this interactive program to promote children’s development as iew workers as the “chore curriculum” (Lancy, 2012). The Second Section discusses three aspects of the infant’s early experience prior to the onset of the helper stage. While all young children seem to share a need to be helpful, culturally rooted 1 The literature is littered with various terms to designate the sorts of small-scale, face-to-face communities historically documented by anthropologists. Among these terms, which I will use somewhat interchangeably, are “indigenous,” “pre-modern,” “heritage,” “unacculturated” and “traditional,” among others. I find “village” the most congenial and expressive of the contrast with WEIRD or wholly modern society. Cambridge University Press 10 Page 11 of 130 Cambridge Elements motives are plentiful. Setting aside the extreme indulgence granted infants in a few foraging societies, most infants and toddlers are subtly reminded of their debt to those who feed and care for them. “Delayed personhood” is an extremely common notion in which the acknowledgement that one is worthy of full membership in the community and the conferral of a “real” name and identity is deferred. In a systematic survey of 32 foraging societies, bands or communities were composed, primarily, of unrelated individuals, suggesting that membership is not an automatic right conferred by kinship but must be earned through cooperative, prosocial behavior (Hill et al., 2011). Drawing on several complementary theories from psychology, a case is made that Fo this culturally constructed sense of obligation reinforces the biological imperative to help. rP While the socialization of helpers may be quite subtle and non-directive, that’s not always true of ee a complementary virtue: sharing. In small-scale, face-to-face societies—especially those that rely rR on the uncertain availability of wild foods—a willingness to share is the sine qua non of social life. The propensity to share may be what makes us unique as a species, compared to ev chimpanzees, for example (Hrdy, 2009). The sharing and transfer of food and other valued iew resources ranges from the commonplace—feeding the very young and the elderly—to the colorful and ceremonious (Barnett, 1938; Mauss, 1967). Apparently, children don’t offer to share a treasured snack or other prize as readily as they offer to help. Hence, many societies embrace an explicit program of training the very young to be unselfish. The willingness to share, especially products the child has acquired through their own gathering or hunting, is as highly esteemed as volunteer helping. As noted in this sub-section, helping may look somewhat different depending on the nature of work. While gardening, for example, is typically done collaboratively, gathering or hunting in the forest is typically executed by individuals, even while foraging in groups. Even very young children may find themselves in possession of valued Cambridge University Press 11 Cambridge Elements Page 12 of 130 resources, such as baobab fruits they’ve gathered under the trees. They “help” by sharing the results of these labors. Helping is also facilitated via an entirely different source—the imperative to engage in makebelieve or mimicry. Play is nearly universal in Early Childhood, and surveys of the ethnographic record note that make-believe or play that replicates the patterns of behavior on view in the child’s family and wider community occupies a significant portion of “play-time.” Unlike makebelieve play in WEIRD society, the “scripts” are drawn from reality, particularly scenes of older Fo members at work. While play and work are juxtaposed as antithetical in WEIRD society, rP elsewhere play is seen as complementary to the work children do or aspire to do. The very young (and their older caretakers) are very inventive when it comes to replicating—using materials and ee objects readily at hand—scenes from daily life. Hence, a little girl’s “doll” will be carried, rR coddled, fed and cleaned in make-believe play before the girl steps into the role of alloparent; ditto for cooking, food preparation, crafts (such as weaving), herding (clay animals), hoeing, ev chopping, hut building and so on. The great value of play is that it allows the child to advance iew along the trajectory towards “being useful” without harming valued commodities or the child herself, and it also avoids the need to interrupt or question an adult to solicit tuition. In Section Three, we look at the helper stage through the lenses of anthropology and psychology. The evidence reviewed for anthropology emphasizes the very wide range of societies and situations where child helpers or wannabe helpers have been observed. Particular attention is paid to ethnographic accounts that reveal the great enthusiasm the very young invest in their desires and efforts to be helpful. In developmental psychology, interest in child helpers has been minimal until quite recently. Led by Felix Warneken and Michael Tomasello, a growing series of studies has simulated situations where children as young as fourteen months are afforded an Cambridge University Press 12 Page 13 of 130 Cambridge Elements opportunity to be helpful. With each new study, the robustness and reliability of what appears to be a heritable drive to assist is affirmed and broadened. The notion that the child’s drive to be helpful is finite in duration—a stage or critical period—is easier to construct from the ethnographic data than from the lab studies. The samples used in these studies to date have not ranged higher than about three-and-a-half years of age. Research reviewed in section three makes a very strong case that the helper stage is universal. Indeed, the lab studies have almost all used WEIRD children as subjects; so, we must assume Fo that WEIRD toddlers are as desirous of “pitching-in” as their village counterparts. Yet, while the rP village kids are solid citizens by Middle Childhood, contributing in myriad ways to the domestic economy, WEIRD kids of the same age are reluctant participants2 who’re more likely to resist ee entreaties than to volunteer. The cause, as argued in section four, is the failure to accept and ev rR welcome toddlers’ helping overtures, which leads to the extinction of the drive to be helpful. Notwithstanding the early, spontaneous emergence of helping during the helper stage, older iew children offer varying levels of support for their family and peers. This may range from near zero in at least two societies of note—WEIRD and the Dobe !Kung (Draper, 1976)—to providing vital services (herding, infant care, food preparation) and resources (harvested crops, gathered tubers and fruits) on a consistent, reliable basis. Helpers transition smoothly into self-guided, self-sufficient workers. How this variation comes about is the subject of section four. The resolution lies in the degree of accommodation that the family and community make during the 2 As I was writing this paragraph, my daughter—mother of a new baby—sent me the following from a Facebook post. Insert Figure 1.2 - WEIRD Child Helpers Provoke Amazement Cambridge University Press 13 Cambridge Elements Page 14 of 130 helper stage and after to children who are eager to participate and learn on the job. For example, in an indigenous Kichwa (Ecuadorian Andes) community, mothers were more effective at supporting the child’s spontaneous efforts to be helpful than WEIRD mothers from Münster, Germany. As a result, “indigenous children helped more often, helped in a more spontaneous way, and helped in more complex and risky tasks (implying more skillful participation) than Münster children” (Torréns, Coppens & Kärtner, 2019). The ethnographic record is replete with descriptions of child helpers being woven into the fabric Fo of daily life, including the full panoply of domestic work—from fetching firewood to butchering rP game to making tortillas. The would-be helper isn’t given carte blanche, but even the most inept toddler is “assigned” a task that is within their capacity, and there is great tolerance for the ee child’s experimentation with the “tools of the trade,” including sharp knives. While child helpers animal kill) are celebrated. iew ev rR are not lavishly praised or rewarded, milestones of new chores completed or tasks mastered (first The sub-section that follows reviews evidence from WEIRD culture for the extinction of the drive to be helpful. Although this research is by no means voluminous, several sources indicate a lack of enthusiasm for infant helpers. Would-be beneficiaries find that allowing children to “pitch-in” makes the task more difficult and slows down the process. Rather than allowing would-be helpers to become involved in, for example, meal preparation or gardening, the parent may refocus the task at hand so that it becomes a lesson in nutrition or botany. These two broad patterns of incorporating helpful children into the domestic economy versus spurning or trying to postpone the helpful child’s debut have different end points. In pre-modern societies, the desire to be helpful is carefully nurtured. Predictably, these children mature into Cambridge University Press 14 Page 15 of 130 Cambridge Elements vital contributors to the welfare of their family and community. For these children, as the helper stage ends, the “worker stage” begins. Children in WEIRD society, by contrast, thwarted in their desire to pitch-in, seem to readily adapt to a lifestyle where they are wholly the beneficiaries of others’ good works, with little or no obligation to reciprocate. They become excellent candidates for “failure to launch” syndrome (Lancy, 2017a). The last sub-section speculates on the end of the helper stage. The endpoint may fall earlier or later, depending on the demand for the child’s labor, but is broadly encompassed by the period of Fo Middle Childhood, roughly ages six to ten. During this period, a variety of subtle changes will rP occur in the child’s involvement in the domestic economy. He or she will act more independently in reliably completing chores, and these will be more demanding in terms of strength and skill ee than chores taken on earlier. Children will have become more competent as gatherers or hunters rR and are able to make a significant contribution to their own and the family’s diet. In WEIRD society, the child-worker role is eclipsed by the role of student. An increasing portion of WEIRD ev children are expected to become strivers academically, athletically, socially and artistically. They iew may be every bit as “hard-working” as their village counterparts but just not very helpful. Throughout this work I try to keep the question of benefits in view. These are not only not obvious but can even be counterintuitive. Why should playful children without responsibility volunteer to work? Why should the targets of potentially meddlesome helpers tolerate them? Section Five provides two significant responses. First, the very basis of humanity is argued to be our capacity for collaboration. When a toddler seeks to “pitch-in,” they are making a bid to collaborate. Unlike the lab paradigm, where the help is aimed at a specific act (picking up a lost item) for a specific person with a specific need, in the village setting the helper has a more complex agenda. As Hrdy’s (2016) analysis shows, acting effectively as a collaborator is Cambridge University Press 15 Cambridge Elements Page 16 of 130 extremely challenging and completely beyond the ability of non-human primates. The helper stage sets up the “classroom” to nurture the skills essential to effective collaboration. A second benefit of the commitment to being helpful identified in the section is the practice and development of social learning skills, such as learning through attending to others’ speech (overhearing). Once the helper has been taken on board the team, so to speak, he/she will be able to closely observe others who’re competent, imitate what they’ve seen, and judge, from the way their work is received, whether their performance is adequate. Fo Reconsidering Juvenile Dependency rP One of the cornerstones of human life-history is the recognition of a uniquely extended period of ee juvenility (Bogin, 2006). Aside from delayed reproduction, juvenility, in most theories, is rR defined by the juvenile remaining largely dependent on others for most of their needs for up to two decades. As there is little consensus on how to “stage” childhood or how to name the stages ev (Grove & Lancy, 2015), in this work, I will use “juvenile” to describe the entire period of iew dependency3, or the period when the individual is at least somewhat dependent on others for provisioning, shelter, etc. The juvenile is, effectively, subsidized (Kramer & Greaves, 2011). Of course, the period of greatest dependency is infancy, followed by childhood or Early Childhood, from ages two to six. Next comes Middle Childhood, from ages seven to ten, followed by adolescence. The age ranges are approximate. In societies where the domestic economy requires 3 As a small caveat, I would note that elderly women have been referred to as helpers because their work is now directed at the support of their extended kin rather than their own nuclear family (Blurton Jones, Hawkes & O’Connell, 2005), and they are also dependent on others for at least some of their basic needs. These “helpers” lie outside the scope of this work. Cambridge University Press 16 Page 17 of 130 Cambridge Elements high labor inputs from family members, children may “move on” to the next stage more quickly. While helping is characteristic of the entire juvenile period except early infancy, I will argue that the helper “stage” is associated with late infancy and Early Childhood. The extended juvenile period in humans, relative to other mammals, is a costly reproductive strategy in terms of the need for prolonged parental investment coupled with the risk that one’s offspring will expire before reaching reproductive potential. One solution to this quandary is for juveniles to “help out,” leading to a “bidirectional transfer of resources and labor between Fo juveniles, mothers and others” (Kramer, 2011: 535). However, seeing human juveniles as rP making a significant contribution to the pooled labor of the family has only been acknowledged and documented relatively recently. Among indigenous people, of course, it is taken for granted rR ee and unremarkable. When Maya children from the Yucatan Peninsula were asked why they helped, they seemed ev surprised by the question; the answer seemed obvious to them. One child responded, “I help iew because I live there,” and another mentioned, “Helping is everybody’s responsibility” (Rogoff et al., 2017: 881). Among the Tikopia (Melanesia), the ideal child seeks social participation and interdependence…the motivation to work…lay in the situation itself with the worker embedded in society and thereby gaining social value (Lee, 1961: 29). There are several reasons for earlier views that saw the juvenile period as a uni-directional transfer of resources from adult to child. First, the Harvard studies of the Dobe !Kung of the Kalahari (Botswana) offered one of the earliest and most comprehensive studies of hunterCambridge University Press 17 Cambridge Elements Page 18 of 130 gatherer (H-G) childhood and concluded that !Kung “children do amazingly little work” (Draper, 1976: 213). Research with other H-G societies and, indeed, further studies of the !Kung as well, suggest that this statement can’t be widely generalized. Hunter-gather juveniles vary in their contributions, but some degree of involvement in the domestic economy appears to be universal. Another early idea was that humans required an extended period of subsidized or “sheltered learning” to master the myriad and complex skills and beliefs that would allow them to fulfill their role as adult members of the community. Children were seen as learners, unable to apply Fo their nascent skills until they’d (the children and their skills) more fully matured—much the way rP WEIRD children apply school-learning only years later in work. Village technology (with rare exceptions such as the Inuit), however, tends to be quite simple and transparent. Kramer’s ee research demonstrates that children’s skill level is driven by the time logged exercising the skill, rR which suggests that children “learn by doing” (Kramer, 2019; Kramer & Greaves, 2011; Koster, Bruno & Burns, 2016). Even with the most rudimentary skill and understanding of how to use a ev bow and arrows, a mortar and pestle, a sharp knife or a digging stick, juveniles can supplement iew or support the efforts of others (Blurton Jones & Marlowe, 2002). The Hadza (Tanzania; Crittenden et al., 2013), Mer Islanders (Melanesia; Bird & Bird, 2002) and the Mikea (Madagascar; Tucker & Young, 2005) are three very well documented cases of societies where young children master their environments to the extent of being able to acquire wild edible resources, such as small mammals, birds, shellfish and wild tubers. Successful child foragers not only supplement their own diet but share their “catch” with others, particularly younger siblings, consuming it on the spot and/or carrying it back to camp to share with the family. Sharing “food may act to build and maintain social bonds” (Crittenden, 2016a: 64). Cambridge University Press 18 Page 19 of 130 Cambridge Elements But even these very thorough studies don’t convey the complete picture. In addition to food acquisition, children also strive to reduce their burden on their seniors by performing various domestic services, such as fetching firewood, caring for younger siblings, assisting with food processing, cooking and so on. Far from seeing children as costly dependents burdening their caretakers for years, Kramer asserts that “Children’s help…minimizes demands on parental care and maximizes maternal time and energy available for reproduction and infant care” (2011: 537; see also Stanton et al., 2017). Taking it further, I found clear evidence that juveniles can quickly ratchet up their contributions to family and community in response to times of critical need, such Fo as the death of relatives and in periods of food scarcity, warfare and plague (Lancy, 2015a). rP Children pitching-in to help or taking the initiative to learn useful skills on their own are the earliest signs of a precocious effort to lessen dependency on others and to act (and be treated) ee like a contributing member of the group. It is just possible, however, that focusing on child’s critical role as helper. iew ev rR dependency as the attribute of the juvenile period has led to a failure to appreciate the young The Helper Stage in Child Development The view that juveniles should be viewed as helpful to others (taking care of baby brother while mother works; sharing food they’ve collected) pervades this analysis. Here, however, I want to introduce a central issue, namely helping during a period that I’ve labelled the “helper stage.” This stage in a child’s development spans fourteen months of age to, approximately, seven years or Middle Childhood. In Section Three I discuss research from anthropology and psychology aimed at demarcating the onset of the stage and detailing some of the characteristics of the helper in late infancy/Early Childhood. In Section Four, I discuss the end of the helper stage. Taken together, this research suggests that the helper stage encompasses a critical period where the Cambridge University Press 19 Cambridge Elements Page 20 of 130 would-be helper must be made welcome, else the helping motive is extinguished. Crossculturally, this termination of the desire to be helpful is rare but appears to be a growing phenomenon among WEIRD families with juveniles. The lab research on child helpers now being carried out with WEIRD samples (to be discussed below) obviously requires a brief, concise operational definition of the behavior of interest: “Helping is here defined as an action that primarily serves to facilitate the acquisition of another person’s goal” (Dahl, 2015: 1080). But an anthropological lens reveals that there are many facets Fo to the phenomenon. This is a sampling of inferences I’ve drawn from fieldwork and published rP accounts of children helping. Obviously, the helper stage emerges at a very early age—in late infancy, in fact. Margaret Mead observed on Samoa: “The tiniest little staggerer has tasks to ee perform—to carry water, to borrow fire brands, to fetch leaves to stuff the pig” (Mead, 1928: anthropologists (see Table 3.1). iew ev rR 633, italics added). Mead’s observations would find many parallels in the notes of field A child who has moved into the helper stage is usually a volunteer. These young would-be workers are, in effect, on probation. There is a clear risk of doing more harm than good or offering help that is actually unhelpful (Wynn, 2009). Among the !Kung, “… children can be a hindrance to the work groups of men and women” (Draper, 1976: 210), but they are given great latitude to learn and figure things out on their own. A prominent characteristic of domestic chores is that they tend to get pragmatically sorted into tasks of varying difficulty (Lancy, 2018). With the guidance of someone older, who can match their capabilities to the task inventory, the young child can meet their aspiration to help. The very Cambridge University Press 20 Page 21 of 130 Cambridge Elements young might volunteer to join a firewood gathering party. Perhaps they can assist in the gathering of hay for fodder. Being asked to run an errand (borrowing a fire brand) represents a kind of “promotion” at this early stage in the development of the individual’s “career” as a worker. Insert Figure 1.3 - Jug Carrier Aside from errands, some “jobs” seem particularly suited to young children. In pastoralist Fo Kurdish (Iraq) society, children, from the time they are able to balance across the floor with a tea rP glass and saucer in the one hand, must distribute the items for the tea ritual. “The woman who makes the tea has nothing to do with serving it, and never moves from her position behind the ee samovar…as a rule it is children’s work” (Hansen, 1961: 49). Children are also designated as ev rR gossip couriers. In Ese Eja communities (Bolivian Amazon), children…walk in and out of households as they iew wish and, since they are not cordoned off from much of adult life, they occupy a unique position to collect and traffic information…. In fact, adults often encourage children to gather sensitive information about others such as…who is having an affair with whom…. Children, like drunks, are not held responsible for what they say and are thus able to vocalize sensitive issues and conflicts otherwise indiscreet for adults (Peluso, 2015: 54). The child helper is an intern, a novice or “in training.” They “help” because they can’t yet do the tasks being carried out by the fully competent, but they are learning through participating. To borrow a phrase, helpers are “Learning through Observing and Pitching-In” (LOPI) (Paradise & Rogoff, 2009). Among the Baka (Cameroon), novice helpers were observed participating in Cambridge University Press 21 Cambridge Elements Page 22 of 130 butchering, gathering forest products, such as mushrooms and insects, and weir fishing. These tasks were subtly restructured to accommodate the child’s limitations (Sonoda, 2016). “Helper” also signals the ephemeral nature of the services that very young children provide, such as stirring the stewpot. It is not the magnitude, finesse or urgency of the task that matters, but that the young child contributes to a legitimate or authentic component of domestic activity (Lave & Wenger, 1991). In this process, the helper may well be moving into a chore normally undertaken by an older child. There are many “opportunities for advancement.” Fo standing rises. ee rP Because young children tend to be volunteers, their contribution earns social capital; their social rR A [Nahua] child who willingly helps and participates alongside the group is understood to be creating reciprocal relationships with others around him. For this reason, the child is ev understood to be “respectful” …. Respeto, furthermore, implies that the individual has been iew converted into a person—into a fully mature human being who has earned the status of community member (Flores et al., 2015: 328–9). Children have opportunities to earn social capital through “good deeds.” If these good deeds are voluntary and not assigned, so much the better. Florence Weiss describes this phenomenon in the Iatmul culture (Sepik Region, PNG). Children are expected to contribute to the family’s efforts but are not assigned chores. Rather, their autonomy enables them to aid others and, hence, to establish lasting and valuable relationships, as when a six-year-old girl gives her aunt some of the fruit she has collected. The aunt will not only be pleased but can be counted on “to support the girl in any future need she may have” (Weiss, 1993: 119, translated in Leibel, 2004: 83). Cambridge University Press 22 Page 23 of 130 Cambridge Elements Among the Iñupiaq (Canadian Arctic), children provide critical support to the family through their labor. A young informant explains: “They respect[ed] me, because I could do…my chores…without them telling me. That’s my reward [but sometimes] I got reward[ed] with good meals” (Sprott, 2002: 229). Volunteering also means they aren’t held to the same standards of accountability, competence and dependability as children who have “graduated” from this stage. Alternatively, no one complains if they remain at the periphery observing. Indeed, for the very young, evidence that Fo they are observing and listening attentively is as likely to earn acknowledgement as volunteering rP to help. Fundamentally, the child who’s engaged directly or passively with the work of others is demonstrating good sense, good manners and good morals. ee rR Mexicans define being acomedido/a as helping not because one has been asked to but because one acts on an opportunity to pitch in. Such collaborative interactions are ev characterized by ready helping [but] one does not want to be a nuisance when helping iew because of not knowing what is going on [which] highlights the importance of keenly observing ongoing activities and knowing when and how to pitch in (López et al., 2012: 876, 879). A helper’s offer to assist may be rebuffed or declined if he/she might seriously disrupt the work at hand. There is then a period when children are not yet ready to be granted the status of helper (Medaets, 2016; Michelet, 2016). In most societies these unhelpful helpers are urged to observe, listen and pay attention. They may be given scaled-down or old tools or a doll to use in playful practice. Samoan “children begin to practice tasks before they are expected to be capable of Cambridge University Press 23 Cambridge Elements Page 24 of 130 doing them. Toddlers try to sweep up leaves, cut the grass with a machete, or peel vegetables and are usually allowed to handle the tools required for such tasks” (Ochs, 1988: 160). In another peripheral role, the very young aspirant may shadow or apprentice to an older sibling who has earned acceptance as a helper. To sum up this portrait of the helper stage: pre-modern, small-scale societies seem to offer a developmental niche (Super & Harkness, 1986)4 in which the child’s emerging prosocial Fo tendencies (as contrasted with countervailing selfish and anti-social tendencies!) can blossom. rP The helping stage eventually gives way to the worker stage, but many aspects of the helper stage ee “niche” remain intact as children get older. The Baka, Central African forest foragers, provide an household maintenance. iew ev rR illustrative and typical case. In this particular study, 95% of the sample children were involved in Baka children have the freedom to make their own decisions, but they are also considered responsible for the consequences of such decisions. Baka children are also expected to participate in daily household chores such as fetching water, bringing meals to neighboring households, or collecting firewood. However, very few obligations are imposed upon Baka children, and physical punishment is rare (Gallois et al., 2015: 4). Among the Runa, forager/farmers in the Ecuadorian Amazon, 4 Dahl (2015) posits a “social-interactionist” model of infant helping that is similar. Cambridge University Press 24 Page 25 of 130 Cambridge Elements Children unanimously emphasized how accomplishing a task felt good because that caused someone else to [enjoy the benefit]. One boy described how he felt happy to have successfully hunted a tapir because that meant his mother would no longer be hungry [and] a young girl was proud when her manioc beer was served to [appreciative] guests and family members (Mezzenzana, in press: 26–27). Among the Araucanian (Chile), Praise and rewards were seldom given [to children]. To give a girl recognition for what she Fo was, or did, was not the custom; the very fact that a parent was satisfied with her and with ee rP what she did, was enough reward (Hilger, 1957: 77). Hence, we see continuation in the autonomous and largely volunteer basis in which virtually all ev rR children contribute freely to the household economy. In the next section, I will review the antecedent period of the child’s life history prior to iew becoming a helper. Two: Setting the Stage The helper stage is a very important period of development and change in human life history and involves other processes besides the emergence of helping. Several of these processes are inexorably linked to helping, however, and three are surveyed in this section. First is the oftendramatic transition from the predictable routines of infant care to the much more varied and less welcome demands of the weaned or soon-to-be-weaned infant. An infant may be a welcome addition to the family, while a toddler may be a demanding burden. At the outset of the helper Cambridge University Press 25 Cambridge Elements Page 26 of 130 stage, therefore, the child may face a certain degree of social debt which can be reduced by coming to the aid of others. Sharing is paired with helping as altruistic or pro-social behavior and also emerges in Early Childhood. In spite of their complementarity, many societies treat helping as appearing automatically, while sharing must be taught or at least monitored and corrected as necessary. The last sub-section links play and helping. Like helping, play, particularly make-believe, is Fo universal and often provides a kind of apprenticeship for the would-be helper. In village settings, rP play is focused largely on re-enacting scenes from daily life, which, of course, are dominated by routine tasks in connection with the provision of food, clothing and shelter—in a word, “work.” ee The child may reach at least a rudimentary facility with various work-related tasks through play ev rR and thereby enhance his/her value as a helper. Retiring Social Debt iew Because of the newborn’s vulnerability and the high value placed on fertility, infants are afforded a privileged position. They receive constant supervision by mothers and others 24/7. The mother “wears” her infant and begins nursing as soon as the child awakens. Others hold the infant, providing comfort and attention to their needs, including cleaning and safety. As a result of this period of complete dependency, children may be viewed as “moral debtors,” as incurring what has been referred to as the “milk debt” (Millard & Graham, 1985: 72). Consequently, when this intensive care is no longer seen as necessary and/or when a new, evenmore-demanding baby is imminent, the child’s position may be altered. Prothro (1961: 66) refers Cambridge University Press 26 Page 27 of 130 Cambridge Elements to the infant’s “dethronement.” Toddlers may fall to the bottom of the status hierarchy. As they lose their endearing vulnerability, toddlers may be identified more with their incompetence, lack of motor skill, undeveloped speech and bad manners than with the many attractive traits of the infant. On Malaita Island (Melanesia) “children are pushed to be adults as soon as possible” (Watson-Gegeo & Gegeo, 2001: 3). Many societies delay the conferral of personhood (Lancy 2014) until children can more closely approximate adult behavior, especially as workers. When a Nuer (South Sudan) boy “tethers the cattle and herds the goats . . . when he cleans Fo the byres and spreads the dung to dry and collects it and carries it to the fires he is considered ee rP a person” (Evans-Pritchard, 1956: 146). While the cavalier treatment of toddlers seems common and perfectly acceptable cross- rR culturally, among at least some societies, children are “indulged”: nursing is prolonged, and toddlers continue to receive care and attention from adults (Tronick, Morelli & Ivey, 1992). In ev the majority of societies, however, adults tend to view older infants or toddlers as a burden, iew especially if the mother has become pregnant or recently given birth (Trivers, 1974). Toddlers are relegated to the care of less productive family members, such as grandmothers and older siblings. This phenomenon is so widespread that the term “toddler rejection” was coined to describe it (Weisner & Gallimore, 1977: 176). Table 2.1 displays a sample of relevant cases. Table 2.1 WITHDRAWING THE INFANT’S SOCIAL SUPPORT “One of the most striking features in the Akan (Ghana) attitude to the child is the contrast between the lavish affection meted out to infants…and the harsh disregard which is the lot Cambridge University Press 27 Cambridge Elements Page 28 of 130 of most older children. The adored small child has to suffer the trauma of growing into an object of contempt” (Field, 1970: 28). “The golden period of Maori (New Zealand) infancy invariably comes to an end with the birth of the next child…. The new baby claims the lion’s share of the mothers’ attention. He has novelty value, so it is he, and not the toddler, who is passed from knee to knee at social gatherings” (Ritchie, 1957: 83–5). Fo “Weaning is done when the baby is about one year old…. Alorese (Indonesia) weanlings rP cry, shriek, and kick in order to gain access to the breast… [they receive] frightening threats: ‘If you continue nursing, the snakes will come or the toad will eat you.’ Finally, ee the mother rubs her nipples with pepper or lemon” (Du Bois, 1941: 154). rR “Gau Islanders (Fiji)…treat harshly any child who seems to be lagging behind in their ev developmental timetable…a fourteen-month-old that is still not walking will be given a iew chili-pepper enema” (Toren, 1990: 171). A number of societies accelerate the transition to the toddler stage. !Kung (Botswana) foragers accelerate sitting, standing, and walking because “in the traditional mobile subsistence pattern…children who cannot walk constitute major burdens” (Konner, 1976: 290). “Sulkiness, stubbornness, and tyrannical behavior, however, are short lived. The Taira (Taiwan) child finds that although this kind of behavior brought immediate and rewarding Cambridge University Press 28 Page 29 of 130 Cambridge Elements responses in the past, he now faces further withdrawal or punishment as a result” (Maretzki & Maretzki, 1963: 111). “Between two and four years of age a Nurs (Iran) child is a girvaru —a habitually dissatisfied” individual whose whining is more often met with a beating than sympathy (Friedl, 1997: 124). “An infant that cries and fusses until picked up, fed, changed, and so on, is acceptable; a Fo whining, clinging, demanding toddler is not. While [Hawaiian] babies live in the midst of rP an adult world, indeed, often at its very center, toddlers are expected to function in a separate sphere that only overlaps with that of adults at the peripheries” (Gallimore, rR ee Boggs, & Jordan, 1974: 119). “As [Samoan] babies approach the end of their first year, their crying is increasingly ev treated as a nuisance, rather than a cause for concern, and they are more likely to be iew shouted at or punished” (Ochs, 1988: 180). The dramatic change in the child’s status is found so reliably that I can suggest it as one of the legs on which the helper stage rests. Developmental psychology offers a sympathetic and complementary view. Rochat writes that “The fear of rejection [may lead to an] exacerbated need of humans to affiliate and bind to others [which] probably evolved as an adaptation to their extraordinary prolonged immaturity and helplessness outside the womb” (Rochat, 2009: 21, 25). Rohner (1986) claims that children need to feel “accepted” if they are not to suffer a socioemotional deficit. Much earlier, McClelland (1961) had proposed a universal “need for Cambridge University Press 29 Cambridge Elements Page 30 of 130 affiliation,” and psychological anthropologist Walter Goldschmidt (2006) posits the existence of “affect hunger.” It may be that volunteering to help provides a mechanism for the rejected toddler to re-affiliate with significant others. Perhaps infants who are “rejected” as toddlers may, effectively, “return to the nest” by being helpful to their mothers and other adult kin. Remaining in the proximity of the mother as an aide means one is never far from freshly gathered or prepared food, shelter, a warming fire, a comforting squeeze. Wynn sees the helper’s clumsy overtures as a “promissory Fo note” and pithily imagines the child’s calculation: “‘I can’t actually be of measurable help yet, rP but see what a cooperative nature I have, and how genuinely helpful I’ll be one day’” (Wynn, 2009: 483). But the helpful toddler does not exclusively target his/her ministrations to the ee mother. In the lab experiments discussed later in this section, fourteen-month-old children rR willingly offer to assist total strangers. Of course, in the village, “total strangers” are rare, and ev children’s prosocial overtures are likely directed at close kin (Wynn, 2009) who may be more willing to comfort the youngster than its own mother. iew I would again add the qualifier that, among at least some foraging societies such as the Congolese Bofi (Fouts, 2005), toddlers continue to be “indulged” through being carried and nursed on demand until roughly three years of age. Perhaps as a consequence, “helping” may be less evident among the very young. In one seventeen-site survey based on spot observations of children’s activities throughout the day, children in forager societies were found to log fewer hours of work/day (2.5–3 hours) on average than farming or pastoralist children (Kramer, 2019). And then there’s WEIRD society, where children get a “free pass,” perceived as a “gift” and a “joy” but never a burden—yet WEIRD toddlers volunteer to assist quite reliably. Cambridge University Press 30 Page 31 of 130 Cambridge Elements Lowered expectations for helping among foragers may be offset by very high expectations for sharing. In the next sub-section I survey ethnographic literature that illustrates explicit lessons in sharing aimed at infants. The Importance of Sharing Helping and sharing often get rolled into the overarching “prosocial behavior.” But recent research suggests that the two—sharing an altruistic foundation, and psychologically and Fo culturally complementary—are, nevertheless, distinct. rP Unlike with helping, which (except in WEIRD society) is treated as inherent in the child’s ee makeup and not requiring deliberate instruction, a number of societies intervene early to promote rR sharing (Aka (Congo) – Boyette, 2013: 126; Araucanian (Chile) – Hilger, 1957: 52; Wolof (Senegal) – Zempleni-Rabain, 1973: 227). And Boyette estimates that Aka socialization is ev effective: “Children, by four years old, are well accustomed to the idea that one must share and iew that there are implications for not sharing” (Boyette, 2019: 490). Generosity is demanded of very young Ngoni (Malawi) children—forcing them to donate prized resources to peers, for example (Read, 1960: 155). Most striking are the !Kung, who hold very low expectations for children as helpers (section one) but are quite anxious about children’s commitment to sharing. “Like other hunter-gatherers, the !Kung are ‘fierce egalitarians.’ They ‘consider refusal to share as the ultimate sin’” (Howell 2010: 194). And, while teaching or other forms of active socialization are rare, “Infants [are] taught about the importance of exchanging objects. They are brought into the formal system of reciprocity soon after birth, and between their sixth month and first year, their grandmother begins symbolic training in hxaro by guiding the Cambridge University Press 31 Cambridge Elements Page 32 of 130 giving of beads to relatives. Moreover, they are encouraged to share things, and their first words include na [give it to me] and i [here, take this]” (Bakeman et al., 1990: 796). Table 2.2 THE IMPORTANCE OF SHARING The Inuit take a laissez faire stance toward their children’s socialization. “Children are allowed to explore the world using what skills they can muster; and there is remarkably Fo little meddling by older people in this learning process. Parents do not presume to teach their children what they can as easily learn on their own” (Guemple, 1979: 50). The rP exception involves sharing, which is “stressed by giving bits of food and toys to the baby ee and by eliciting gifts of these same items from it. This ‘drill’ in reciprocity goes on rR continuously” (Guemple, 1979: 43). ev The Papel (Guinea-Bissau) engage older infants in a game of give and take. “The child will be offered an item, or a piece of food, but then asked to give it back…. If the child keeps iew the item, unwilling to share it with others, it will be commented on [or] hit lightly on its shoulder or cheek… a sign of disapproval of her or his unwillingness to share” (Einarsdóttir, 2004: 94). “A Kaoka (Guadalcanal) toddler presented with a piece of fruit is told to give half to ‘Soand-so,’ and should the order be resisted, the adult ignores all protests and breaks a piece off to hand to the child’s companion” (Hogbin, 1969: 33). “In contrast to the casual learning of skills, certain values are more self-consciously inculcated [among the Great Whale Inuit] …. Lessons in sharing are given when the child Cambridge University Press 32 Page 33 of 130 Cambridge Elements is sent to beg a neighbor for tea, when gifts of meat or fish are sent out of the family” (Honigmann & Honigmann, 1953: 41). “Aka children, by four years old, are well accustomed to the idea that one must share and [could expect] negative feedback to be a common response to selfishness…. As a mother shares out portions of a meal to family members, she will say “‘Watch me, this is how to share. You will share like this. Take this to so-and-so’” (Boyette, 2019: 481, 490–1). “Once Batek (Borneo) children could walk well, adults explicitly taught them to share food Fo by handing them plates of food to deliver to other families” (Endicott & Endicott, 2008: ee rP 124). Table 2.2 displays an array of cases that illustrate the deliberate socialization of infants in rR sharing. While sharing is clearly critical in highly egalitarian hunting and gathering societies, it is ev very widely acknowledged as a virtue that requires cultivation in the very young. Taking the iew experimental literature into account, investigators have found that “At age 3–4, the overwhelming majority of children behave selfishly” and don’t reliably share until age seven– eight (Fehr et al., 2008: 1079). This inherent and obvious selfishness on the part of infants is, I would argue, the prime motivator for those who feel compelled to train the very young to share. Several points are worth noting. First, the literature in child psychology suggests: A. “Young children’s helping behavior is not potentiated or facilitated by parental behavior in the immediate situation, suggesting that it is spontaneous and intrinsically motivated” (Warneken & Tomasello, 2013: 345). Whereas, B., “Toddlers are notoriously poor at sharing their possessions” (Svetlova, Cambridge University Press 33 Cambridge Elements Page 34 of 130 Nichols & Brownell, 2010: 1818). If parents are anxious to ensure and even accelerate the child’s prosociality, sharing may need a push, while helping may not. A second point is that these lessons may not be necessary; children may learn the social norms governing sharing from observing and interacting with others. In a recent experimental study with samples drawn from six distinct societies, sharing rates did not vary cross-culturally until Middle Childhood, when “children tracked toward the behavior of adults in their own societies” (House et al., 2013: 1). This is illustrated by Hadza (Tanzania) child foragers who have been Fo systematically studied by Crittenden and others. rP While there is strong sanctioning of Hadza children should they fail to share, there are no explicit ee sharing lessons. Nevertheless, young, successful foragers—like their parents—willingly share rR their bounty, especially by Middle Childhood (Crittenden, 2016a). Among males, the small mammals they fell with bows and arrows are generally roasted and consumed on the spot—by a ev group of peers—regardless of individual success. Girls are more likely to bring any surplus from iew foraging (such as fruit) home to share with family. In a truly playful mindset, groups of children collaborate in setting lures and traps for unwary weaver birds. The captives are roasted and shared out, including to the youngest children who weren’t able to contribute to the harvest (Crittenden, 2016a; 2016b). Foraged foods are shared with kin and non-kin alike (Crittenden & Zes, 2015). One might infer from the Hadza studies that explicit socialization of sharing is probably unnecessary, and lab studies offer considerable support: “We found that young 3-yearold children inferred normativity without any normative language and without any pedagogical cues” (Schmidt, Rakoczy & Tomasello 2011: 530). Cambridge University Press 34 Page 35 of 130 Cambridge Elements Third, the model of child help presented to this point is actually a somewhat better fit with societies that rely on cultivation and herding5. In these subsistence systems, a great deal of the work is done collaboratively, and the work often provides varying sub-tasks that can be matched to the size and skill of the participants, including helpers; whereas, among hunters and gatherers, the work may be carried out individually. Gathering, such as digging tubers or picking fruit, even when undertaken in a mixed-age group, is executed by individuals. Similarly, hunting and trapping, the domain of men and boys, is often done solo (Boyette, 2013; Rival, 2002). One implication is that affiliation-seeking children in a foraging community may gain social capital Fo not only through “pitching-in” but through sharing their bounty. “When the Buton (Sulawesi) rP child practices angling on the reef flat, he is catching fish that are consumed by [the] household, and this serves, at least in part, as his motivation” (Vermonden, 2009: 218). Among the Ese Eja of the Peruvian Amazon, iew ev rR ee Insert Figure 2.1 - Turtle Eggs to Share what I mostly see are children independently fishing, gathering, etc.—and individually taking this home—not necessarily helping their mothers or fathers hunt or fish. The little ones bring the tiniest little fish (equivalent to one swallow) but they are treated as though they are large (Daniela Peluso, personal communication, June 6, 2019). 5 A series of photos shared with me by colleague Tian Xiaojie (personal communication, June 1, 2019) shows Maasai (Tanzania) children across a broad age range (three to fifteen) assisting with the corralling and sorting of livestock for pasturing, watering and branding, during which they keep very young sheep and goats separated from the herd. Cambridge University Press 35 Cambridge Elements Page 36 of 130 Laura Rival notes from the Huaorani (Ecuador) that “Nothing is more cheering for a parent than a three-year-old’s decision to join a food gathering expedition. The child carries his/her own oto (basket)…and brings it back to the longhouse filled with forest products to ‘give away,’ that is, to share with co-residents” (Rival, 2000: 116). Outside of WEIRD society, children everywhere show a readiness to assist others or share their foraged resources, and investigators have no difficulty identifying, coding and tallying the Fo considerable amount of time children spend working. Of course, these same observation studies reveal that work hours are matched or exceeded by play. Regardless of subsistence type, all rP children play during the helper stage and later. But, as I will show in the next sub-section, much rR ee of that play is work-themed. Playing at Work ev iew Whittemore (1989: 92) identifies key elements of the transition from infancy to toddlerhood among the Mandinka (West Africa): “With the arrival of the next sibling, infancy is over. Now, play begins and membership in a social group of peers is taken to be critical to nyinandirangho, the forgetting of the breast to which the toddler has had free access for nearly two years or more. As one mother put it, ‘Now she must turn to play.’” But, unlike their WEIRD counterparts, whose play often involves invented or fantasy characters and scenarios (Gaskins, 2013; Power, 2000), Mandinka toddlers will be immersed in the real world, even as they’re playing. Before children can contribute in any useful way as helpers, their play is oriented towards work. Toddlers who “play pound” (in Africa, a large mortar and pestle are commonly employed in Cambridge University Press 36 Page 37 of 130 Cambridge Elements processing grain and other comestibles, and children simulate these tools and actions) will, in a short while, be pounding for real, assisting an older sister perhaps (Bock & Johnson, 2004). Before they can join an outrigger sailing crew, would-be Ifaty (Madagascar) sailors are learning to be nimble through playing on and in a beached craft (Lancy, 2015b). This finding of the merging of play and work is one of the earliest and most widespread in the ethnographic record. It suggests to me that even though very young children seem devoted to play, the “content” of their play often, or mostly, reflects the work that’s going on around them. Fo Table 2.3 provides affirmation from several ethnographers across a varied range of societies. rP Table 2.3 PLAY AND WORK INTERTWINED ee Separating Bonerate (Sulawesi) children’s “work from play is often problematic” (Broch, ev rR 1990: 83). iew “In fact, one of the most striking aspects of [East-Central Sudanese] children’s lives was the fusion between the activities of work, play and learning…. Knowledge acquired in the course of children’s participation in work was reinforced and enhanced in their play” (Katz, 1986: 47). “It is exactly the interweaving of play and work [by Bamana (Mali) children] that is striking” (Polak, 2012: 96). Among Pygmy (Congo) societies, “there is not the same distinction between work and play that exists in the west” (Boyette, 2016: 161). Cambridge University Press 37 Cambridge Elements Page 38 of 130 “After watching 3- to 4-year-old Hadza (Tanzania) playing a while, one eventually realizes that children are not just playing but are actually digging small tubers and eating them…. Foraging simply emerges gradually from playing” (Marlowe, 2010: 156). The “practice” or “trying-on” quality of make-believe is not limited to discrete skills but includes the full gamut of social behaviors and speech associated with the activity they are imitating. Fo There is often explicit recognition by adults in the community and visiting anthropologists that rP children at play are preparing for work. For example, adults are generally quite liberal when it ee comes to children “borrowing” their tools to “use.” When challenged by the ethnographer rR pointing out the danger inherent in sharp-edged blades of various kinds, parents are likely to respond with, “But how else can they learn to use the tool?” (Lancy, 2016a). Somewhat less ev frequent are reports of adults supplying children with scaled down but usable versions of iew common tools to practice with in “object” play. As examples, among the Penan of Borneo, “play is a very important means of acquiring skills, which…parents encourage by making smallersized weapons, such as spears and blowpipes, for children to practice with” (Puri, 2005: 282). “Fais Island (Micronesia) boys learn to fish with child-sized poles made for them” (Rubenstein, 1979). Another frequently noted aspect of the village play group, in which older children both care for their younger siblings and also involve them in work-themed play, is the seamless transition from playing at working to working while playing. The play group becomes, imperceptibly, a work group. Cambridge University Press 38 Page 39 of 130 Cambridge Elements Insert Figure 2.2 - Using a Mortar and Pestle Baka children who might, on another occasion, be engaged in “play,” routinely collaborate in weir fishing. The older children cut down branches and dig up clods of soil, and very small children carry these to the site where the diversion dam will be constructed. Once the weir is constructed, younger children walk the stream bed, driving fish into the trap, where older children harvest them. Once the dam collapses, the children gather to clean and divide up their Fo catch—maintaining a cheerful, spontaneous atmosphere throughout (Hagino & Yamauchi, rP 2016). The young Mbya Guarani (Argentina) child will be exposed to new environments beyond the immediate vicinity of the village as they tag along with their sib caretakers to the forest ee adjacent to the village to gather ripe fruits (Remorini, 2016). Mikea children in Madagascar rR forage “because it is an enjoyable social activity… an extension of play that occurs outside camp (Tucker & Young, 2005: 168). iew ev Foraging of the young is for the Zafimaniry (Madagascar) an adventurous but not a serious form of activity…a form of play. Consequently, the product of such activity, although it is very important nutritionally and economically, is not, nor in their evaluation should it be, taken seriously (Bloch, 1988: 28). Quite recently, there have been several studies that strongly reinforce the idea that play acts as a kind of “holding pattern” for children who are anxious to help but aren’t quite “ready.” LewLevy and Boyette (2018) have done a very important time-allocation study among Aka forager and Ngandu farmer children in the Congo Basin. They found that, as expected, children play less and work more as they age; but unexpectedly, at every age sampled, from three to sixteen, Cambridge University Press 39 Cambridge Elements Page 40 of 130 children from both communities allocate more time to work than to play. Fouts et al. (2016: 687) found that children from another Central African forest forager community preferred to use real tools, including knives (when available), in their make-believe play. Even earlier, Gaskins (1999) found that Yucatec Mayan toddlers were already spending more time observing work or doing it than they spent in play. …the extensive time Yucatec Mayan children spend in playing is not an indication they value play above work, but, rather, that their work abilities remain marginal and they turn to play Fo when they are excluded from work…. Thus, although play is a significant activity in rP children’s lives, it is not the most highly valued even for children as young as four. (Gaskins, Haight & Lancy, 2007: 193). ee rR These findings from field studies have received support from recent US studies (Taggart, Heise & Lillard, 2017; Taggart et al 2018). A sample of 100 children, aged three to six, were asked to ev choose between pretend and real versions of nine different activities, and justifications for their iew choices were recorded. When given a choice, preschool-age children overwhelmingly preferred real activities to their pretend equivalents—65% to 35%. Sixty-nine percent preferred to bake actual cookies rather than pretend to make cookies; 60% preferred to cut real vegetables with a paring knife; 66% preferred actual fishing; 74% preferred to feed a live baby, and so on. Children’s preference for real activities appeared between three and four years of age, then was constant through age six. Children said they preferred real activities because they are functional, useful and provide novel experiences. When children preferred pretend activities, the most cited reasons were being afraid of the real, lack of ability and lack of permission. I believe that the WEIRD childrearing model has misled parents (and professionals) into thinking that children prefer play over work, or that play is somehow more appropriate for them (Lancy, 2017a). Cambridge University Press 40 Page 41 of 130 Cambridge Elements These studies illustrate very young children’s eagerness to get involved with “real” adult activities by “pitching-in” or endeavoring to be helpful. However, I would say that make-believe and object play have a very significant role in helping to focus children’s attention on work and affords them the means to try out and practice more mature activities while avoiding the conflict that arises when clumsy, incompetent, would-be helpers are rebuffed. I want to suggest that as children transition from playing to working, the doorway between the two should have a sign that says “Helpers Welcome Here.” The child enters the helper stage motivated by an Fo accumulation of social debt as well as playful experience that more and more closely matches Three: Weighing the Evidence rR ee rP tasks they may well volunteer to assist with. Throughout this volume, I weave together evidence of many different kinds and drawn from ev distinct epistemological traditions. Anthropology offers a kind of patchwork quilt of data types. iew Prominent is the ethnographic study in which the anthropologist is a resident observer for an extended period in an obscure, small-scale, face-to-face community. From the beginning, observation and detailed notes on what one observes/hears are the core data. The observer communicates in the native tongue and cultivates relationships with individuals who become “informants”—reliable, articulate interpreters to whom the ethnographer can turn for help in completing, correcting and interpreting the raw recordings of scenes and speech. Photographs and audio/video recordings add another layer of data to one’s notes but also require interpretation and annotation. More formal data collection might include “spot observation,” where, by systematic time-sampling, the investigator can calculate relative frequencies of specific behaviors. In the study of childhood, time allocated to work versus play is frequently measured. Cambridge University Press 41 Cambridge Elements Page 42 of 130 Interviews may be formalized to varying degrees—from asking the same questions of a specified sample of subjects to more informal interviewing of individuals one has come to know intimately. Interviews with children are particularly problematic because of a natural shyness towards outsiders, but also because adults do not routinely seek information or opinion from children. It is customary for the ethnographer to write up their study in a relatively lengthy monograph. The great length enables the writer to provide very detailed descriptions from field notes as well as verbatim transcription of recorded speech. The author does not stop at detailing the phenomenon of interest but adds context to firmly embed it in the larger culture. In many Fo respects, this step is the essential achievement of anthropology. Vivid anecdotes and texts drawn ee rP from field notes add credibility to the ethnographer’s analyses and conclusions. The anthropological study of childhood is challenged by the paucity of studies that focus rR specifically on children. To achieve a reasonably comprehensive survey of childhood across a great variety of ethnically distinct communities requires mining the entire ethnographic corpus ev for material that illuminates the experience of juveniles. So, while there may be no more than iew two dozen monographs with a juvenile focus, there are several hundred reports in which children play at least a cameo role (Lancy, 2015b). The process whereby these sources are located, annotated, collated and analyzed is referred to as ethnology (Voget, 1975). The investigator conducting such a survey may approach the material deductively, where the questions are formulated in advance, or inductively, by letting the pattern emerge from the data-mining process. With respect to the study of child helpers, the approach has been largely inductive. I will provide a brief survey of child helping in the ethnographic record, followed by a parallel survey of studies carried out within the traditions of experimental child psychology. This research stands in direct contrast to what I’ve just described. Far from elaborately Cambridge University Press 42 Page 43 of 130 Cambridge Elements contextualizing the child as helper, the experimental study of helping will de-contextualize the behavior, reducing it to its essentials. Context or other aspects which may already be familiar to particular children add “noise” to the data, making the behavior harder to interpret. While care may be taken in selecting samples to control for variation by age and gender, thought is not often given to the influence of culture—exceptions noted later in the sub-section. That is, samples are drawn almost exclusively from WEIRD (Henrich et al., 2010) communities. Lab experiments are, without exception, deductive, with hypotheses stated in advance. In the conduct of the experiment, every attempt is made to standardize the experience. Sessions are typically quite Fo short, and the adults who are to serve as the beneficiaries of the child’s help are carefully trained ee rP to behave consistently. Verbal interaction is tightly scripted. In one of the earlier lab studies (Warneken & Tomasello, 2007), twenty-seven middle-class rR German children, aged around fourteen months, were selected. Three were excluded for “fussiness.” Parents were present but remained unengaged. A trained experimenter (E) carried ev out six tasks in front of the child and, in the process, had some difficulty: he drops a clothespin iew but can’t reach it; he does the same with a marker; he loses a spoon in a hole and can’t recover it because his hand is too large; and he has a pile of books to stow in a cabinet but doesn’t have a hand free to open the door. The experimenter does not verbalize or indicate by glance or gesture that he seeks the child’s assistance. Nor does E provide feedback following a helpful act. Mixed in with the experimental trials were control trials, where E acted on the same objects used in the experimental trials. The control trials had E throw the clothespin or marker on the floor, as examples. The sessions were video recorded, and then a naïve (unaware of the aims of the study) assistant coded the child’s behavior. The majority of the children very quickly saw the problem and intervened appropriately, at least in the simpler tasks where the lost object was out of reach. Only a very few helping responses were made in the control trials. Cambridge University Press 43 Cambridge Elements Page 44 of 130 This study represents the typical paradigm where individual children, without guidance, witness an adult (E) experience a problem in completing a simple task—a problem that the child might be able to solve. The child views this event in real time, and their subsequent behavior is video recorded. The video will be later coded and the data aggregated and analyzed for trends relevant to the stated hypotheses. I now turn to brief surveys of the relevant ethnography, followed by laboratory studies. Fo Helping in the Ethnographic Record rP Descriptions of child helpers are common in the ethnographic record. Quite recently, in her study ee of Runa (Ecuador) children, Mezzenzana recorded an episode of a three-year-old boy rR volunteering to help a neighbor butcher a tapir. “He was not asked to help and yet, the little child had come forward with water and a knife and assisted the woman throughout the process” (in iew ev press: XX). The sample cases in Table 3.1 were selected because they reveal (added italics) the eagerness and joy that accompanies children’s efforts to pitch in. Note in these excerpts the emotionally laden descriptors of young helpers’ states of mind. Cambridge University Press 44 Page 45 of 130 Cambridge Elements Table 3.1 HELPING ACROSS THE ETHNOGRAPHIC RECORD “Among Mayo (Mexico) villagers, little girls target their mother’s task inventory, selecting one within their capacity, like bringing water from the arroyo— ‘a little girl begs to undertake new tasks’” (Erasmus, 1955: 331). “During the rice harvest season, whole Taira (Taiwan) families are involved. Even a little child…stands by gloomily until an adult hands him a small bundle of sheaves to carry to Fo the threshers” (Maretzki & Maretzki, 1963: 510). rP “Mixtecan (Mexico) children are happy when they’re performing ‘little tasks’ for adults” ee (Romney & Romney, 1963: 573). rR (Fortes, 1938/1970: 20). iew ev “Little Talensi (Ghana) boys are said to possess “a passionate desire to raise a hen” “Bamana (Mali) children’s desire to participate in the adults’ work-life is overwhelming” (Polak, 2012: 110). Chaga (East Africa) “children delight in…cleaning out the animals’ quarters… [they] ask for permission to [help] their mothers carry out the dung” (Raum, 1940: 199). “Three-year-old Gusii (Kenya) children volunteer to hoe alongside their mothers and appear to enjoy it very much” (LeVine & LeVine, 1963: 182). Cambridge University Press 45 Cambridge Elements Page 46 of 130 “A Mazahua child shows an impatient readiness for adult behavior” (Paradise, 1987: 180). Himalayan (Uttarakhand, India) pastoralist children said they feel “a type of internal compulsion to work” (Dyson, 2014: 43). Note: Italics added in all cases. Fo In virtually every ethnographic study that gives any attention to children, child helpers will be noted—from participant observations, from interviews with parents and caretakers (extolling the rP importance of child helpers), and from focused empirical studies aiming to measure and codify ee children’s activities. In striking contrast to this rich and consistent picture of child helpers across cultural and historical6 accounts of childhood, children as helpers, until recently, are largely rR absent from mainstream developmental psychology. I selected a convenient sample of five ev reference works on child development published by top academic presses, including Oxford, iew Cambridge and Chicago (Shweder et al., 2009; Hopkins, Geangu & Linkenauger, 2017; Haith & Benson, 2008; Britto, Engle & Super, 2013; Goldstein & Naglieri, 2011). These volumes range in length from 506 to 2,200 pages. Over all five volumes, there was no mention of or reference to the child as helper. Not one. This lack of scholarly interest is mirrored in popular opinion. WEIRD parents were asked to rank the value of various manifestations of prosocial behavior in their two- and five-year-olds. “Happy” and “cheerful” topped the list. “Helpful” wasn’t in the top ten (Bergin, Bergin & French, 1995). 6In sixteenth- to twentieth-century workshops and factories, unwaged younger children “helped” older family members, thereby increasing their output and earnings (Horn 1994). Cambridge University Press 46 Page 47 of 130 Cambridge Elements In the vast body of research and theory on child development conducted within WEIRD societies, children are not helpers; they are helped—by parents, teachers, coaches, policies, treatments, lessons and so on. However, as I will now discuss, recent research by Warneken and others has begun to rectify this omission. Lab Studies of Child Helpers Fo As cross-cultural researchers are particularly aware, there is often a sharp disconnect between rP findings “from the field” and findings from lab studies with WEIRD populations (Lancy, 2015b; LeVine, 2007). A noteworthy exception occurs with respect to recent research on children ee helping. This line of lab research is essential to my claim that there is a helper stage in human rR life history. As varied and pervasive as accounts of child helpers are in the ethnographic record, the lab studies are crucial. They show that subjects as young as fourteen months, and possibly ev earlier, are eager to be helpful. The precision in measuring age and the large sample sizes are not iew available to the anthropologist studying children in a traditional rural village. The decontextualized settings created in the lab greatly reduce the likelihood that this behavior is “learned.” What follows in this sub-section summarizes the critical findings from a research program undertaken by Felix Warneken and colleagues. In multiple studies, fourteen+-month-old children, as long as they had some sense of what’s needed, consistently volunteered to help. And they offered assistance “before the adult either looked to them or verbalized his problem…and eye contact (as a subtle means of soliciting help) was also unnecessary...nor were they ever rewarded or praised for their effort” (Warneken & Tomasello, 2007: 279). Cambridge University Press 47 Cambridge Elements Page 48 of 130 The progress of lab research on child helpers has continued to “push the envelope,” so to speak—adding chimpanzees as subjects and varying the experimental paradigm to make helping more challenging. For example, eighteen-month-old children forego the opportunity to play with novel toys in order to go to the aid of an adult completing a task. They will also traverse an obstacle course to reach the person needing assistance (Warneken & Tomasello, 2009). On the other hand, “children who received a toy for helping were subsequently less likely to help spontaneously than children who had never been ‘paid’” (Warneken, 2015b: 2). The authors Fo conclude that “toddlers are instinctively altruistic (unlike chimps; Melis et al., 2011) and rP providing them with extrinsic rewards for their assistance actually diminishes their ardor” (Warneken & Tomasello, 2009: 460). Warneken finds that children volunteer even when “there ee may be no immediate expectation of reciprocity” (Warneken, 2015a). rR Children are proactive, intervening with help even when the adult is unaware there’s a problem. ev They “differentiate intention from accident, intervening only if the outcome does not match the iew person’s presumed goal…they do this without anyone asking for help or explaining the problem” (Warneken, 2015b: 1). They will offer assistance, like retrieving a dropped item, even when the adult is unaware of a problem (Warneken, 2013: 101). On the other hand, they are often able to decode the situation and then offer assistance only when it is required and they are capable of assisting (Warneken, 2015b). Additional findings are shown in Table 3.2. Cambridge University Press 48 Page 49 of 130 Cambridge Elements Table 3.2 LAB STUDIES OF CHILDREN BEING HELPFUL Six-month-old infants were shown animated cartoons of a red ball struggling to roll up a hill, either helped by a yellow triangle or obstructed by a blue square shoving it back. The infants looked longer and were more likely to reach toward the helpful symbol (Hamlin, Wynn & Bloom, 2007). “Having parents present and offering encouragement did not influence 24-month-old Fo children who consistently assisted a strange adult trying to obtain an out-of-reach rP object…helping behavior is not potentiated or facilitated by parental behavior in the immediate situation, suggesting that it is spontaneous and intrinsically motivated” ee (Warneken & Tomasello, 2013: 245). “Children younger than 5 years do not seem to be rR concerned by whether they are being watched or acting in private, indicating that iew ev reputational effects are not foundational for prosocial behaviors” (Warneken, 2015b: 2). “…children can help by correcting a person’s course of action…when a person requested a nonfunctional object (such as a cup with a hole), 3-year-olds handed over an intact object instead. Similarly, when an adult was unaware that a toy was no longer in the box he was struggling to open, 18-month-olds did not assist with opening that box but fetched the object from the correct location” (Warneken, 2015b: 2). “Young children make these inferences based on minimal cues. Specifically, children often help without anyone asking for help or explaining the problem…verbal and nonverbal communication is unnecessary” (Warneken, 2015b: 1). Cambridge University Press 49 Cambridge Elements Page 50 of 130 When given a choice, three-year-olds preferentially offer to help friends rather than strangers (Engelmann, Haux & Herrmann, 2019), strengthening the claim that children seek affiliation through helping. Young children from [villages on Tanna Island, Vauatu] take action to intervene on another’s behalf, even in the absence of concurrent behavioral or communicative cues indicating that help is necessary (Aime et al., 2017). Fo The conviction that child helping is universal and therefore heritable is reinforced by the rP findings from lab studies indicating, under optimum circumstances, that our nearest relatives, “chimpanzees share the motivation and skills necessary to help others” (Melis, et rR ee al., 2011: 1405). Nevertheless, “children are much earlier, more flexible and proactive helpers than ev chimpanzees. While active sharing is rare among chimpanzees overall, young children iew share the spoils of their joint labor” (Melis & Warneken, 2016: 302). Historically, the presumed core psychological mechanism underlying “prosocial” behavior, which includes helping, has been “empathic concern.” This is the vicarious affective response that results from witnessing another person’s distress. According to Hoffman (2000), empathy drives prosocial behavior. However, the evidence from Warneken’s research does not support this view. “Situational helping behavior based on shared intentions provides an alternative explanation for toddlers’ prosocial behavior” (Kärtner et al., 2010: 905). Another recent study concludes that child subjects in the lab studies of helping appear to be engaged in “instrumental helping—defined as behavior that is intended to fulfill others’ goal-directed needs. This kind of Cambridge University Press 50 Page 51 of 130 Cambridge Elements behavior is often interpreted as the first instance of human cooperation” (Giner Torrens & Kärtner, 201: 353). A recent neuroimaging study also confirms the distinction between instrumental and empathic intervention. Different neurophysiological patterns predicted the emergence of helping and comforting: Empathic responding and comforting were related to left-centered frontal activation Fo asymmetries, a marker of emotional processing, whereas instrumental helping was related to (Paulus, 2014: 79). ee rP right-centered temporal asymmetry, probably reflecting task- and goal-related understanding rR And from the ethnographic record as well, child helpers seem more interested in contributing to the accomplishment of a goal than in demonstrating empathy. iew ev The lab studies just surveyed support an evolutionary basis for an early period or stage in the child’s development when they reliably and sensibly provide assistance. This claim is made in view of the early onset, ubiquity, persistence in the face of obstacles, and untutored and unguided sophistication of children’s help. There is increasing evidence that children’s helping involves not only the desire to help another but an array of cognitive abilities that facilitate the child’s decoding the situation to determine whether help would be welcome, the nature of help that might be called for, and a self-assessment of one’s ability to help. These studies show a clear developmental effect where eighteen-month-olds are more capable than fourteen-month-olds in deconstructing situations that are more complex and “the propensity to respond pro-socially grows significantly between 18 and 30 months of age” (Svetlova et al., 2010: 1824). Cambridge University Press 51 Cambridge Elements Page 52 of 130 Of course, there are many rough edges to this match between lab psychology and community ethnography. For example, the lab paradigms are limited to brief, one-shot episodes of helping, contrasted with the more complex and extended helping that occurs when children volunteer to “pitch-in” to assist with various family enterprises, like food preparation. To date, lab studies have focused on the very young, and any changes in the reliability or nature of the drive to be helpful—in short, evidence for the end of the helper stage—must come from anthropology. Fo Four: Contrasting Cultural Contexts for Child Helpers rP This essay grew out of a stark contradiction provoked by two unrelated lines of research. On the ee one hand was the lab research, reviewed earlier, showing a universal tendency for the very young rR to insistently offer help to others. On the other hand, there was a growing body of ethnographic research on WEIRD society (echoed in the popular press, parenting blogs, how-to manuals, etc.) ev that painted a consistent picture of extremely resistant and unhelpful children from around six iew years of age. In this section, I attempt to resolve this paradox. The basic argument is that the helper stage provides a starting point for the transformation of juveniles into reliable workers in the family economy. Most societies provide a bridge (or scaffolding; Dahl, 2015) to facilitate this gradual transformation, whereas such a bridge may be unavailable in WEIRD families. Sustaining the Drive to be Helpful Helping is universal and appears in societies throughout the ethnographic record, including those where there are few, if any, demands on older children to carry out chores. In the WEIRD lab studies reviewed above, situations were somewhat artificial and tightly scripted. Outside WEIRD Cambridge University Press 52 Page 53 of 130 Cambridge Elements society, the would-be helper is handled quite differently in various cultural contexts (Giner Torrens & Kärtner, 2017). Generally speaking, helping is considered a voluntary act. Children can choose which activities to get involved in, and their efforts are typically accepted—within limits. As helpers, they also may elect to not participate or may tire of the activity and run off to play. Ju/’hoansi (Botswana) children, for example, often “pitch-in” to fetch water or firewood, process mongongo nuts and animal hides and prepare meals, but “it is well understood that children do these chores only if they feel like it” (Howell, 2010: 31). Among the Chiga (Tanzania), “the assumption of work and responsibility comes about gradually, and largely on Fo the child’s own initiative. This respect for the individual and his right to make work choices ee rP underlies Chiga treatment of young children throughout” (Edel, 1996: 178). The most commonly observed settings that attract would-be helpers are public or semi-public rR work sites. The following photos illustrate very well a widespread and typical pattern where the child takes the initiative to become involved and, as de Haan notes, adults willingly ev accommodate them as partners. They “create room” (de Haan, 2001: 188) for them—obviously iew akin to the widespread custom of “making room at the dinner table.” Note the circular arrangement in both photos. These mixed-age/mixed-ability work circles are common in the ethnographic record, and archaeologists have found them from the European Neolithic and earlier (Lancy, 2017b). Insert Figures 4.1 and 4.1 Figure 4.1 - Family Harvesting Cáñere Figure 4.2 - Turtle-Butchering Party Cambridge University Press 53 Cambridge Elements Page 54 of 130 Not only is the child making an authentic contribution to the collective effort but, as both photos show, there is physical contact among participants. This physical closeness may be especially welcomed by “rejected” toddlers. Children inevitably gather around work sites to observe, listen and, if permitted, help out. Butchering is typical of the activities that draw in helpers who are largely tolerated, even if their “help” slows down the process. Nayaka (India) children assist in the butchering and the division Fo of large game and, in the process, learn a variety of technical skills and social and cultural norms. rP They gathered vessels or plantain leaves and brought them to where the meat was cut; they ee held a torch if the butchering took place at night; they held the animal’s limbs to ease its rR cutting; they…monitored the equal distribution of meat chunks…and then carried the portions to the families (Bird-David, 2015: 96; see also Sonoda, 2016). iew ev But what happens when children’s participation is unwelcome, typically because they might interfere with the work at hand: spilling grain, disturbing the hunter’s or fisher’s quarry, or forcing the worker to alter or slow their production to accommodate the would-be helper? Among seminomadic Mongol pastoralists, inept helpers are halted by a commonly used injunction: “‘Chi cbadabgui!’—‘you can’t do it!’ [which] may be interpreted by children more as a challenge than a command” (Michelet, 2016: 236). In a Tstosil Maya (Mexico) community, a child’s overtures to fit in may be initially rejected as a “deliberate provocation” to encourage skill improvement and social responsibility (Martínez-Pérez, 2015). Similarly, on Truk Island in Micronesia, rebuffed children redouble their efforts to become fully competent (Gladwin & Sarason, 1953). Cambridge University Press 54 Page 55 of 130 Cambridge Elements Medaets (2016) describes the “stop, you can’t do it!” phenomenon in villages on the Tapajós River in Brazil. “In the Tapajós region, adult experts do not automatically welcome the novice as a co-participant and may actually disparage and discourage children’s attempts to demonstrate their emerging skills” (Medaets, 2016: 253). Responding negatively to a child’s initial attempts at helping may act as a goad, leading to greater self-reliance. And the Tapajós child will be welcomed as a participant at the successful conclusion of his/her self-instruction. Fo These ethnographic observations are reinforced by a recent lab study in the United States that rP found that three- to six-year-old children who have experienced some ostracism are more diligent at copying a model. The study authors speculate that “imitation serves an affiliative ee function in response to the threat of ostracism” (Watson-Jones et al., 2014: 204; for similar ev rR results from Vanuatu (Melanesia), see Clegg & Legare, 2016: 1435). Outright rejection is, however, rare. As Mead notes for Samoa (Polynesia): iew [Samoan] children are never told they are ‘too little,’ ‘too weak,’ ‘not old enough’ to do anything…. If a child attempts something beyond its capacity it will be diverted, but not openly discouraged (Mead, 1967: 235–236). A very well documented case that illustrates the subtle management of the helper stage is described by Barbara Polak for the Bamana of Mali. The Bamana are fairly typical of farming communities in the Sahel. Cambridge University Press 55 Cambridge Elements Page 56 of 130 Four-year-old Bafin has already grasped the meaning of sowing and is able to perform the various movements…he is entrusted with an old hoe as well as with some seeds so that he can gain some practice in this activity. However, …he has to be allocated a certain part of the field where he neither gets in the way of the others nor spoils the rows they have already sown…. As a rule, his rows have to be re-done (Polak, 2003: 126, 129). Bafin is, no doubt, inspired by seeing his siblings engaged in planting and harvesting. Fo [At harvest] three-year-old Daole…begins to pluck beans from the tendrils. After he has rP filled the lid with a handful of beans, his interest fades. [He] carelessly leaves the lid with the beans lying on the ground and goes looking for some other occupation…. Five-year-old ee Sumela…looks out for a corner not yet harvested and picks as many beans as will fill his rR calabash…[he] keeps on doing this for more than one and a half hours…. Eleven-year-old Fase has been busy harvesting beans…since morning. He works as fast as…his father and ev grown-up brother…and only takes a rest when they [do]…. Fase is fully competent…with iew regard to harvesting beans. He even takes on the role of supervising his younger brothers and checks their performance from time to time (Polak, 2003: 130, 132). Insert Figure 4.3 - Helper at the Pea Harvest We see here an instance of Weisner’s notion of “chains of support,” in which each member of the family work group supports and guides those who are slightly less advanced on the competency scale (Weisner, 1989: 78). In any work party, children in the helper stage are often supervised by older siblings. And the parents intervene rarely but strategically. A mother, for example, might take note that a little one engaged in planting is getting tired—and in danger of Cambridge University Press 56 Page 57 of 130 Cambridge Elements carelessly damaging a furrow—so she sends him back to the village to fetch a gourd of water (Polak, 2012: 100). The Bamana mother selects from a menu of child-appropriate tasks to re-direct a child without denying him/her the opportunity to help. Errand running is a frequent choice. “Even [Hadza] youngsters who are still walking very unsteadily on their feet are conscripted by adults to hand knives, beads, and food to other nearby adults” (Crittenden, 2016a: 66). And, as numerous ethnographers have noted, the utilitarian task of errand running also serves to socialize the child Fo to proper forms of interaction and address vis-à-vis neighbors, near and distant kin, adults of rP different ages and so on. “The child is given the responsibility to learn through this task the accomplishments the society values” (Lee, 1967: 56). ee cases that follow are representative: iew ev rR Providing appropriate chores for juveniles can be seen as a form of moral socialization. The three Giriama [Kenyan farmers] attach importance to providing children with duties that teach responsibility and mutuality. In their view, a mother who does not expect her children to help is remiss, even neglectful. A child so treated would inevitably emerge as an adult with few prospects and without the respect of the community (Wenger, 1989: 93). In a Yucatec Maya village, a parent does not hesitate to interrupt a child’s play to assign a chore. From an early age, Mayan children are aware that work trumps play. “As the child grows older their inner energy and curiosity…should be directed…toward productive work” Gaskins et al., 2007: 191). Cambridge University Press 57 Cambridge Elements Page 58 of 130 “In many contexts in Jajikon (Micronesia), elders are supposed to ‘send’ children to do things and make them work for their family…this work benefits the child as well…. Children who are not sent, adults told me ‘would not know how to work’ or ‘how to live’” (Berman, 2019: 110–1). The helper stage establishes a pattern of relationships between the juvenile worker and his/her kin, which continues into adolescence. In a timely manner, family members provide resources Fo and at least minimal guidance to the maturing worker. rP “Navaho (US Southwest) children learn responsibility by being given indispensable ee household tasks; in addition, they are given sheep of their own from the time they are about rR five. They are responsible for the care and welfare of these animals… [and, hence] they can take their turn at supplying the meat for the family meal, and they can contribute mutton ev when this is needed for ceremonials or to entertain visitors” (Lee, 1961:11). iew “A four- or five-year-old Mazahua (Mexico) girl…spends hours, days, and weeks seated beside her mother or other women emulating and helping at an onion stand in the marketplace in México. She trims onions. She tirelessly practices tying them into bunches with or without success. She arranges them carefully on a piece of plastic laid out on the ground, fanning away insects patiently [until] eventually, [she has] an opportunity to put together her own small stand” (Paradise & Rogoff, 2009: 118). She learns “marketing …by becoming directly involved in the various tasks implied and by taking the initiative and responsibility for learning without looking for or expecting instruction or helpful intervention from others” (Paradise, 1987: 10). Cambridge University Press 58 Page 59 of 130 Cambridge Elements “Most Kaoka (Melanesia) fathers have allocated at least one pig to the son by the time he is about eight; moreover, they insist that he accept full obligation to gather and husk coconuts each day so that the animal can be fed in the evening” (Hogbin, 1969: 39). In the Murik Lakes region of PNG, girls who’ve helped to dig clams are allocated a “share that is kept separate throughout the process of preparing them for market, and the amount of money earned from their harvest is given directly to them…. By responding…to children’s Fo efforts to help with work, mothers encourage a strong association between work, recognition, ee rP and being fed that is evident in many situations” (Barlow, 1985:87). Batek (Borneo) boys, may also be independent rattan collectors, with the right to keep and ev rR dispose of any of their own proceeds” (Lye, 1997: 363). While children may enjoy a great deal of autonomy vis-à-vis domestic chores, even in the most iew indulgent communities, such as Aka pygmies (Congo), interviewed children acknowledged that all had served as infant minders, and there were consequences for refusing this chore, such as being denied food or “getting hit by the mother of the infant” (Boyette, 2019: 488). Notwithstanding the cross-cultural and intra-individual variability in systems for accommodating eager young helpers, there is no case in the ethnographic record where the services of young helpers are simply dispensed with altogether. This clearly is the case in WEIRD society, and this antipathy towards child workers is unique. It’s not that WEIRD toddlers don’t offer to participate; they do, but they are diverted to other activities, reinforced by a full toybox and a library of juvenile video entertainment (Lancy, 2017a). As in the village, WEIRD children may Cambridge University Press 59 Cambridge Elements Page 60 of 130 be encouraged to engage in make-believe cooking, construction, infant care, and house cleaning, but these play-work activities transition to more sophisticated forms of recreation rather than to real work. In the ethnographic record, the participation of children, including the youngest, in family projects is commonplace. In WEIRD culture, by contrast, scenes of parents helping children with their personal agendas are far more common than the reverse. In fact, WEIRD parents report that collaborative engagement with their own children is far more likely to occur through parent-child play than in household chores; the reverse is true for samples of Indian and Peruvian villagers (Callaghan et al., 2011). Fo ee rP Extinguishing the Drive to be Helpful Harriet Rheingold, whose classic study established the apparently inherited proclivity for helping rR that emerges in Early Childhood, also interviewed parents of her subjects. These results are less well-known. She found that WEIRD parents were not particularly appreciative of helpful ev toddlers: “To avoid what they viewed as interference they tried to accomplish the chores while iew the children were taking their naps” (Rheingold, 1982: 122). Another study from the same era, in which mothers kept a log of all their four- and seven-year-olds’ prosocial acts (including helping), found that the children averaged fewer than one such act per day (Grusec, 1991). More recent studies also found that WEIRD parents see their eager-to-help young children as unhelpful (Hammond, 2014). Other obstacles might arise because of the complexity and opacity of modern domestic tools and equipment. WEIRD children may have a more difficult time learning to use a clothes washer or food processor or vacuum cleaner than their village counterparts who can learn from observing Cambridge University Press 60 Page 61 of 130 Cambridge Elements and imitating the more transparent actions of collecting, planting, campfire cooking, wood chopping and sweeping with a broom. …the material environment offers no mechanical complexities such as elaborate machines, beyond the comprehension of the child…. The simple mechanical principles upon which a Manus (PNG) native builds and navigates his canoes, or builds his house, present no mysteries. (Mead, 1967: 235). Fo Then too, a prominent characteristic of WEIRD childrearing philosophy is “overprotectiveness” rP (Lancy, 2017; Skenazy, 2009). A significant portion of a modern household toolkit would be deemed either threatening to the child or threatened by clumsy handling by the child. While ee WEIRD children may, on occasion, be asked to “hand mommy that spoon,” they are not ev rR generally engaged deeply enough in the task to be able to, eventually, take it over. Aside from outright denial of the child’s offer to assist, another apparently common response is iew to transform the task at hand into a series of lessons (Gauvain, 2001; Callaghan et al., 2011). For example, in a lab setting, WEIRD mothers were asked to invite their four-year-olds to participate in making some “crispy treats.” From the outset, mothers treated the cooking project as a means to an end, rather than the end itself. It wasn’t about shared work but to afford the mothers teaching opportunities. WEIRD mothers created lessons which involved the science of cooking, the sensation of taste, and basic nutrition information. But most often they used the cooking activity as an occasion for enhancing children’s literacy and basic mathematical skills. And while this behavior was valorized by the study’s authors, they acknowledge that “a possible detrimental effect of an overly didactic parental focus during the cooking activity is that children may find the joint activity less fun or engaging” (Finn & Vandermaas-Peeler, 2013: unpaged). Cambridge University Press 61 Cambridge Elements Page 62 of 130 An obvious consequence of the continued denial or deflection of helping overtures by toddlers is that the evident drive is extinguished7—victim of “a childrearing philosophy focused heavily on pedagogy” (Callaghan et al., 2011: 109). Consequently, older children rarely volunteer and frequently resist requests to help. The following is from a long-term, video-recorded ethnographic study of typical WEIRD families in the United States. In a study of 30 families in Los Angeles, “no child routinely assumed responsibility for Fo household tasks without being asked…the overall picture was one of effortful appeals by rP parents for help [who often] backtracked and did the task themselves… [becoming, in effect] a valet for the child” (Ochs & Izquierdo, 2009: 399–400). rR ee 7 The !Kung were cited earlier as an outlier where children are not expected or encouraged to ev assist with work, child care and so on. Draper notes: “I never observed a man who was surprisingly, iew working…attempt to get help from his own or another child” (Draper, 1976: 212). Not “I can relate an incident in which Kxau was trying to get his youngest son, Kashe, to bring him something from the other side of camp…. Kxau repeatedly shouted to his son to bring him his tobacco from inside the family hut. The boy ignored his father’s shouts, though !Kung camps are small, and the boy clearly could hear his father. Finally, Kxau bellowed out his command, glaring across at his son and the other youngsters sitting there. Kashe looked up briefly and yelled back, “Do it yourself, old man.” A few minutes later Kxau did do it himself. (Draper, 1975: 92) Cambridge University Press 62 Page 63 of 130 Cambridge Elements The following is drawn from an interview study contrasting the views of village (where children are routinely helpful) and “cosmopolitan” urban (Guadalajara) mothers: …a mother reported: “I’ll walk into the bathroom and everything is all soapy, and she says to me ‘I’m just cleaning.’ I tell her, ‘You know what? It’s better that you don’t clean anything for me, because I’m going to slip and fall in here.’” Mothers in the cosmopolitan community did not allow their children to take care of younger siblings, stating that childcare is the parent’s responsibility alone, not the child’s. One mother reported: “I tell her, ‘Don’t take Fo roles that are not yours,’ I tell her, ‘Enjoy your childhood, you will be a mom one day”’ ee rP (Alcalá et al., 2014: 102, 104–5). In WEIRD society, children no longer can be relied upon to manage and care for “their stuff,” let ev rR alone take on a portion of the parent’s chores. “…Mrs. York is trying to sort out the pieces of two games that have gotten mixed together. iew She tries again to get Jennifer to do her part [but] Jennifer complains [and] adds a dig at her mother, ‘I always have to do stuff by myself and you just sit around.’ Jennifer drags her feet…whines…complains… about her mother [who argues and negotiates with her daughter]” (Miller & Cho, 2018:122). Cambridge University Press 63 Cambridge Elements Page 64 of 130 These three studies are representative of a wave of similar field studies of WEIRD families around the globe8. A sampling from these accounts appears in the following Table. Table 4.1 UNHELPFUL CHILDREN IN WEIRD SOCIETIES In West Berlin “parents alone are responsible for…the reproduction of daily life…the child is the recipient of care and services” (Zeiher, 2001: 43). Fo In a case study from Los Angeles, a parent spends a lot of time cajoling/guiding a five- rP year-old into making her bed. It becomes a big dramatic production after she initially refuses, claiming incompetence. In a comparative case from Rome, the father doesn’t even ee bother trying to get his eight-year-old daughter to make her bed, he does it himself, while rR complaining that her large collection of stuffed animals and her decision to move to the top iew ev bunk make his task much harder (Fasulo, et al., 2007: 16–18). Genevan children “use the vociferous defeat strategy. They comply with what is asked of them but…cry, scream, bang doors, lock themselves up in their rooms to sulk and so on…. Some…agree to submit if their parents can prove their demands are well-founded” (Montandon, 2001: 62). 8 An internet survey of 500 US, primarily middle-class, families contradicts these studies in finding that parents reported “The mean number of chores that children participate in increased with children’s age” (Hammond & Brownell, 2018). Cambridge University Press 64 Page 65 of 130 Cambridge Elements A lengthy description of “‘shepherding’ a four-year-old Swedish child to bed at night shows this as a major undertaking [consuming] the mother’s time and energy” (Cekaite, 2010: 17–19). In Norway, children’s “contribution to the household is paid for by the parents [which indicates] that housework remains the responsibility of the parent” (Nilsen & Wærdahl, 2014: 3). In the Marshall Islands (Micronesia), drastic culture change has profoundly affected the Fo role of children in the family economy. “Adults do say that children today are different…. rP ‘The children of the past knew how to work. Children today, they don’t know how to work. They just play…[they] are very naughty.’” (Berman, 2019: 151) rR ee In the modern Australian middle/upper class, children no longer work. When queried, children treat “the term work as having one meaning only: waged work outside the home. ev Work is something that one ‘goes to’ and that is done in exchange for money” (Bowes & iew Goodnow, 1996: 302). Fast forward twenty years and many WEIRD families use a smartphone App to remind and guide children in doing chores while keeping track of how much they are owed by parents (Coppens & Alcala, 2015: 99). In all these cases, parents likely deflected or rejected offers of assistance from toddlers, only to find that older children (from age six through the teen years), when requested to help, refused, Cambridge University Press 65 Cambridge Elements Page 66 of 130 did a slap-dash job, complied but with much whining and complaining, or bargained for payment or privileges. Even within the global WEIRD culture, variability is to be expected in the degree to which child helpers are accommodated. In a comparative study, middle-class eighteen-month-old children and their mothers from Münster and Delhi were observed. Delhi mothers provided more “openings” for the child to be helpful, less praise for helping and more admonishment for not helping. “Delhi toddlers helped more than Münster toddlers” (Giner Torrens & Kärtner, 2017: Fo 353). Even “cosmopolitan” Indian parents expect children to be helpful and convey that rP expectation quite deliberately. Parallel views were expressed by child caretakers in modern Gaberone, Botswana (Marea Tsamaase, personal communication, June 18, 2019; see also Tudge, ee 2008: 169). German parents might like children to be helpful but treat it as a completely learned rR behavior—praiseworthy if displayed, needing cultivation if not. In fact, when German mothers attempt to promote helping in their toddlers, they do so aggressively through coaxing, instructing ev and rewarding, acting as if the child had no inherent motivation to be helpful (Köster et al., iew 2016). As noted earlier, praise and rewards actually suppress helping, and the aggressive scaffolding of German mothers may be counterproductive (Giner Torrens & Kärtner, 2017). In the United States, parents lavishly praise children—not necessarily because they need and value their help but to build up the child’s self-esteem and sense of self-worth (Miller & Cho, 2018). It appears that many WEIRD parents unwittingly extinguish the helping instinct in their toddlers. One very WEIRD result of this trend is the increasing appearance of “adulting” classes—at least in the United States. Adulting classes are aimed at those in their twenties and early thirties Cambridge University Press 66 Page 67 of 130 Cambridge Elements who’ve never learned domestic skills like infant and child care, cooking, sewing, home maintenance and so on. Students in these classes tell similar tales. Elena Toumaras, 29, is currently learning an adult skill she was never taught before— cooking. Toumaras is attending a cooking class in Queens to help fill a gap in her life skill knowledge. “I was so used to, when living at home, my mom always cooking,” she said. “Doing simple things now that I’m on my own, I’m struggling with it.” Elena says she’s finally learning skills she’s sorry she wasn’t taught years ago (O’Kane, 2018, italics added). Fo rP The clear implication here is that WEIRD children who aren’t expected to assist or collaborate with others in doing family chores, fail to learn necessary life skills. Domestic tasks are all ee practiced exclusively by adults who, in the interest of efficiency, “fail” to “teach” their ev rR children—leading to the need for adulting classes. The End of the Helper Stage iew From both lab studies and the ethnographic record, we can deduce that the helper stage begins around fourteen months. Unfortunately, to date, the lab studies have extended only to about thirty to thirty-six months, so they do not provide a clear end point. However, as just noted, there have been numerous ethnographic studies across a range of WEIRD societies indicating that, in the absence of careful cultivation, WEIRD kids may become quite resistant to appeals for help by as early as age six. Hence, the helper stage is truncated by the explicit rejection of the toddler’s offers of assistance. Elsewhere, the stage ends as the helper becomes a worker (Grove & Lancy, 2015; Lancy, 2018). Cambridge University Press 67 Cambridge Elements Page 68 of 130 This latter process can be demonstrated in a predictable—and increasingly rare—context, namely the family farm. In a survey of Wisconsin (USA) dairy farm families, preschoolers pitched in to help, but by age seven, all children were assigned daily chores: A seven-year-old feeds the calves, an eleven-year-old drives the tractor, and a twelve-year-old milks the cows. Older children were also responsible for various domestic chores including sib-care (Zepeda & Kim, 2006). In the context of an agrarian society, helping—which is welcomed and supported—gradually Fo evolves into working. Unlike the helper, a worker is fully competent at assigned chores and can rP work solo without supervision. The worker is reliable and does not wander off to play before completing the chore (Lancy, 2018)—as a young Mazahua (Mexico) child helper might, for ee example, “walk ‘in and out’ of adult activities, tak[ing] up tasks and leav[ing] them again” (de rR Haan, 1999: 78). The child who has left the helper stage is expected to take the initiative and self-assign chores, especially with respect to taking care of his/her own needs. For example, ev “Otgono, a six-year-old Mongol boy, “took the initiative to stir tea with a ladle.… On laundry iew day, he happily hand-washed small items. When…his trousers got torn he took a needle and thread from Tuyaa’s sewing box and mended them” (Michelet, 2016: 233). A surprising number of societies mark a milestone in the juvenile’s life course that has significant implications for the transition from helper to worker. The Kpelle (Liberia) refer to this event or period as “getting sense” (Lancy, 1996: 118), where sense encompasses a broad interpretation of intelligence (Gardner, 1983). For the Bakkarwal (nomadic pastoralists in Jammu and Kashmir) “Osh comes to a human child increasingly from the age of seven or eight years [and] it is osh which enables a shepherd to tend his flocks well, day and night” (Rao, 1998: 59). Cambridge University Press 68 Page 69 of 130 Cambridge Elements Among the Inuit (Arctic), the acquisition of isuma signals the child’s readiness to tackle a range of essential tasks on a routine basis, often without prompting. Isuma refers to consciousness, thought, reason, memory, will—to cerebral processes in general—and the possession of isuma is a major criterion of maturity. Saying that a person has isuma is equivalent to saying that she or he exercises good judgment, reason, and emotional control at all times, in addition to the skills appropriate to his or her age, gender, and role (Briggs, 1991: 267). Fo rP Isuma can be a descriptor of the child’s arrival at a distinct transition or stage in the life course, but it may also be signaled by a more specific event. ee rR “For a boy from the Copper Eskimo, an important transitional event was the ceremony accompanying the first kill. When the first seal was killed and pulled from its breathing hole, ev it was dragged over the body of the successful young hunter. The seal was then apportioned iew by a close relative (usually an uncle) and given to the predetermined seal-sharing partnership” (Damas, 2011: 42). In a rural village in NE Brazil, “a child, upon reaching the age of eight, would receive the present of a hoe from his father. The hoe given to a child of this age was special for being smaller and lighter than one used by an adult. Such hoes were not fashioned specially for children, they were simply old ones worn down from years of use by adults…. The receiving of one’s first hoe in this way [is] a rite of passage…. The day following its presentation, the child would be expected to leave for the field along with all the other working members of the family” (Mayblin, 2010: 34–35). Cambridge University Press 69 Cambridge Elements Page 70 of 130 “!Kung boys at around twelve are given a fine bow and arrows by their father to improve their prospects” (Shostak, 1981: 83). When Hadza boys “are considered responsible enough, they are finally permitted to use poisoned arrows” (Blurton Jones & Marlowe, 2002). The juvenile worker becomes a kind of cog in the domestic economy. Earlier, the juvenile may have taken on relatively undemanding tasks, such as child care or fetching firewood, but now their increased strength and skill permits them to undertake tasks that would otherwise fall to Fo adolescents or adults. In Middle Childhood, the juvenile makes a critical contribution to the 2011: 538). ee rP household but still depends heavily on others for food and other critical resources (Kramer, rR “…a Pumé boy living on the llanos of Venezuela might be successful in catching enough fish to feed himself, his siblings and parents, but is dependent on shares of processed plant ev food and hunted game from others. A Pumé girl might be able to weave a burden basket but iew is not strong enough to collect the moriche palm fronds or strip and process the fiber” (Kramer, 2011: 535). Because of international child labor laws, children may be particularly needy in terms of ready cash to pay for clothing, school fees and the like. While a helper might choose whom to assist and/or what activity to get involved in, a child worker is assigned particular responsibilities commensurate with their strength and skill, the job inventory and the makeup of the domestic labor force. “Tsimané (Bolivia) parents expect their children to be more fully engaged in productive work, gaining individual responsibility in Cambridge University Press 70 Page 71 of 130 Cambridge Elements activities like fruit gathering, help in the agricultural fields, and taking care of animals” (Martínez-Rodríguez, 2009: 65). Parents are charged with the responsibility of providing assignments or chores that facilitate the helper-worker transition. Of course, some juveniles may require a bit of prodding to stay “up to the mark.” A Sebei (Uganda) mother condemns a “lazy” daughter who isn’t up to the mark by saying, “I hope that you have stomach pains and dysentery” (Goldschmidt, 1976: 259). A Gusii (Kenya) child who fails to carry out a chore may be ordered out of the house and implicitly refused food and shelter Fo (LeVine & LeVine, 1963). A Kwoma (PNG) child is rewarded for industry but also scolded, rP beaten, hazed by peers and denied food for any sign of laxity (Whiting, 1941). Chuuk Island (Micronesia) children may be caned in addition to being denied food (Gladwin & Sarason, ee 1953). An Amhara (Ethiopia) adult may hasten a child to its chores “by throwing clods of dirt or ev rR manure at him” (Levine, 1965: 266). Folk stories, involving peranti (lazy) characters who suffer dire consequences for their iew behavior, are told purposely to indicate disapproval and instill a sense of fear and shame in children who require reminders of the tenets of Matsigenka (Peru) collaboration (Ochs & Izquierdo, 2009: 395–6). These examples and others (Lancy, 2018) reinforce the argument that unprompted helping may become attenuated at the end of the helper stage. The continued imperative that juveniles feel to be helpful must be scaffolded by their culture and, occasionally, the scaffolding may include ridicule and punishment. Cambridge University Press 71 Cambridge Elements Page 72 of 130 Across the ethnographic record, the transition from helper to worker tends to occur earlier in agrarian societies, particularly among pastoralists. But the age range from six to ten years seems to encompass the transition period across all modes of production, and this range corresponds, not coincidentally, to the period of Middle Childhood. Studies show that this is the stage where physiological and cognitive changes occur that are associated with growing physical, social and intellectual maturity (Lancy & Grove, 2011). If fourteen months marks the onset of the helper stage—corresponding to Early Childhood—then I would argue that the end of the helper stage corresponds to the onset of Middle Childhood. Fo rP Schooling is an evident impediment to a juvenile’s transition from the helper stage to the status of worker. Across the world in poorer communities, schooling may be treated as an unaffordable ee luxury—especially for girls, whose assigned work load may be higher than boys’ (Hollos & Leis, rR 1989). In many communities studied by anthropologists, school attendance tends to decline as the child’s value as a worker increases. “It is difficult to say precisely when [Ghanaian] children ev become net economic assets to their families, but education delay[s] that transition” (Lord, 2011: iew 102). In WEIRD society, the notion that schooling (and, increasingly, extracurricular activities like music performance, dance and sports) represents the child’s work is widespread, as reflected in terms like “Good Job!,” homework, schoolwork and seatwork. However, this view is driven not only by the incompatibility of school and work but also by the very privileged position (amounting to a Neontocracy, cf, Lancy, 2015b) that WEIRD children occupy. Real work by children is practically taboo in WEIRD families. Taken broadly, work is something only adults do. Adolescent employment, even casual summer jobs (flipping burgers at McDonalds, lifeguarding at the pool) has declined steadily (DeSilver, 2019). Cambridge University Press 72 Page 73 of 130 Cambridge Elements Referring again to children growing up on farms, Zepeda and Kim (2006) found that families were careful to ensure that both chores and academic study each received their due. This pattern, which today is exceptional, was the norm in the last century. In Laurence Wylie’ s ethnography of a farming village in France in the mid-twentieth century, children’s only opportunity to play occurred on the walk home from school, as all but the very youngest had chores (Wylie, 1957: 69). Earlier in US history, this rapprochement between helping and schooling hadn’t yet emerged. “German settlers in Pennsylvania opposed education on the ground that it would make Fo children lazy and dissatisfied with farm work” (MacElroy, 1917: 59). In contemporary rural ee rP villages as well, there is evident conflict. Inuit children who previously spent their days helping parents with hunting, trapping, fishing, rR skin preparation, and general household chores now spend much of the day in an institutional setting, learning skills unrelated, and sometimes antithetical, to those emphasized at home iew ev (Condon, 1987: 157). Globally, the growth of formal education has inexorably reduced or eliminated children’s participation in the domestic economy. Rogoff and colleagues were able to track this change over a sixty-year timespan in San Pedro, a Mayan community in Guatemala. Aside from change in children’s activity, their pattern of learning also changed dramatically. “The limited opportunities to observe and be involved in ongoing activities may increase the likelihood that children depend on others to organize their attention, motivation, and learning of the information and skills required in maturity, as in schools” (Rogoff, Correa-Chávez & Cotuc, 2005: 227). Cambridge University Press 73 Cambridge Elements Page 74 of 130 The helper stage is preparatory to a future as a skilled and responsible worker. In the next section, I will review two of the underlying processes that are inherent to the helper stage: learning to collaborate and learning practical skills. I will also show how these affordances of the helper stage are of much less value in a society dominated by teaching as the primary mode of enculturation. Five: What are the Benefits of the Child’s Need to Help? Fo The helper stage is a period in which the juvenile’s nascent motivation and readiness to rP contribute to the domestic economy first appears. In most societies this motivation is nurtured and guided by those older than the would-be helper. In Srection One, I cited Kramer’s (2011) ee argument that kin, mothers especially, have a strong motive for enabling the child helper, insofar rR as the helpful child relieves others of some of their burdens, permitting them to invest their time in ways that expand the family and thereby enhance genetic fitness. In Section Two I argued that ev the juvenile, from at least fourteen months and perhaps earlier, is primed by nature with the need iew to be helpful. The payoff for these overtures (which may be rebuffed) would be the opportunity to win the attention and approbation of the immediate family and, ultimately, the larger community. The barrier to such affiliation may be higher in some societies than others, but obstacles to affiliation typically lead to greater efforts to offer credible assistance. I want to return to the issue of benefits here because I want to identify two further benefits to both helpers and the helped, to be discussed shortly. Usually, benefits offset costs. An important cost has already been touched on, namely, in accommodating the would-be helper, the potential recipient of aid may compromise his or her own efficiency as well as the value of the goods being procured or manufactured. A second significant cost involves possible injury to the child. Cambridge University Press 74 Page 75 of 130 Cambridge Elements Targets of assistance include: butchering sites where sharp instruments are wielded; cooking sites with open fires and scalding hot cooking vessels; bush foraging, which places potentially harmful plants, insects, reptiles and predators in the child’s path; and hunting excursions, where the child might be in the line of fire or exposed to the deadly toxins used to coat arrow tips. Not only is the child helper at risk in such scenarios but as child-minders, they may place their charges at risk (Paradise, 1987). From an evolutionary perspective, these evident costs reinforce the view that there must be Fo distinct and significant benefits associated with child helpers. Two of the primary benefits will rP be discussed in the following sub-sections: learning to work collaboratively and learning valued skills as a novice member of a working party. rR ee Affiliation Earned through Collaboration iew ev According to de Waal, humans are born with a drive to “fit in” or the “desire to be like others” (2001: 230). Tomasello claims that children “…are sensitive from a young age to their own interdependence with others in collaborative activities…and they value conformity to the group as a marker of group identity” (2009: 45–6). Children as young as seventeen months demonstrate IGF=Ingroup Favoritism: “an evolved adaptation [which] serves to maintain the individual’s reputation as a reliable collaborator…and decreases the risk for exclusion from the group” (Jin & Baillargeon, 2017: 8200). Combine these claims with the ubiquity of “toddler rejection” discussed in Section Two and the fact that, in most societies, children earn social capital through being helpful, and you have a suite of evolutionarily significant benefits for the helper. Helping Cambridge University Press 75 Cambridge Elements Page 76 of 130 serves to cement the child’s social affiliation and social standing. That is, voluntary offers of assistance by children appear to be both welcome and appreciated, and the absence of same may be cause for concern about the child’s character. But because open praise is usually frowned on, these positive feelings may be hard for a participant observer to detect. Helping may well serve as a necessary precursor to the extremely important ability to collaborate with others. As Tomasello and Vaish note: Fo “humans procure the vast majority of their food through collaborative efforts of one type or rP another…[and] there is evidence that children help more in a collaborative context than a non-collaborative context… [leading to a claim that there is] a fundamental human drive to ee collaborate with others to achieve joint and shared goals” (2013: 238-9, 242). rR An excellent illustration of this vital collaboration and children’s participation is provided by ev Pygmy foragers, who depend on net hunting. A net is strung across a promising stretch of forest, iew and “beaters,” starting at a certain distance from the net, drive small mammals, such as duiker, into the net where they are clubbed to death. Later, the catch is butchered to ease transport back to camp. Men, women and children participate, and, as a group, they can obtain more food than individuals hunting singly (which men do). Children who’re old enough to keep up with the hunters as they travel to the site are given one or more responsibilities, including setting up and holding the net, beating, preventing animals from escaping the net and helping to carry the return load. Children make other contributions on the hunt: “Walking through the forest, men, women, and children…frequently check tree hollows and burrows for small prey and tree trunks for signs of lizards…. All net-hunt participants, but Cambridge University Press 76 Page 77 of 130 Cambridge Elements especially women and children, opportunistically gather insects, fruit, nuts, and plants whenever they are encountered” (Lupo & Schmitt, 2002). Agriculture typically provides numerous settings where a mixed-age working party can be accommodated. Tapajós River (Brazil) communities depend on manioc as a staple. The plant is cultivated, harvested, peeled of its fibrous skin, sun dried, chopped, crushed and sifted into flour. The flour is then toasted in an oven before being turned into dough and, for a portion, sold. Medaets (2011) describes a varied cast of individuals, ranging in age from two to seventy, and Fo settings in which all this family activity is carried out. Everyone is involved: Ranilson (fifteen) rP weeds the manioc plants; Luis (nine), Anderson (six) and Zilane (four) apply pressure to the pole used in pressing the dough; Everton (eight) washes up; everyone gathers firewood, but only ee Henrique (ten) starts the fire. While João (thirty-five) is in charge of roasting, his son Elder rR (seventeen) stirs the flour in the oven. Zilma (six) assists her grandmother in squeezing cupuaçu juice for everyone’s refreshment. As the toasting oven is at a distant village, add two hours of ev casual foraging in each direction for the convivial work party. iew With modernization, new venues are created, and children are eager participants. There are several accounts that provide descriptions of the process whereby Mazahua child helpers become collaborators in constructing a market stall. Role switching between observer-performer, as well as between marginal and central performer, permitted children to gradually gain more expertise while being fully involved and sharing responsibility for the activity. It is the “being close” to the expert in a “same identity” role (instead of being a student), which probably explains the…effectiveness of this way of “organizing learning”…. When an older, more experienced child took over a tricky Cambridge University Press 77 Cambridge Elements Page 78 of 130 part of the process, the less experienced child observed closely with what appeared to be a clear intent to better grasp how to do it. Once the more difficult part was accomplished, and the less experienced child was able to successfully carry out the next step in the process, he or she took over eagerly while the more experienced child watched, ready to correct or help when necessary…. This kind of reciprocity in favor of a collective effort…appears to reflect a social orientation growing out of an awareness of belonging to, participating in, and being part of a social entity (Paradise & de Haan, 2009: 196). Fo There is more to helping than the willingness and ability to carry out a series of isolated chores rP or helping a single individual with a single problem—the default paradigm for the lab studies reviewed earlier. In the societies studied by anthropologists, helpers inevitably become ee collaborators, and facility as a collaborator is tantamount in these societies to facility as an adult ev rR member of society. Failure to effectively collaborate would be an enormous liability. Barbara Rogoff and colleagues have carried out many cross-cultural comparisons of iew collaboration by Mexican indigenous children—valuable and steadfast helpers (Paradise & Rogoff, 2009)—versus children from more cosmopolitan backgrounds. Just as helping by children appears to either flourish or perish depending on the degree of welcome afforded helpers, so too is collaboration affected by supportive versus non-supportive environments (Rogoff et al., 2017). Indigenous or “heritage” communities sustain an especially sophisticated form of collaboration in which children learn to be “attentive to each other’s efforts, flexibly adjust their own actions to align with the direction of the group and take initiative when they see what needs to be done and support others in doing the same” (Rogoff et al., 2017: 880). Cambridge University Press 78 Page 79 of 130 Cambridge Elements In a task (López et al., 2012) that called for collaboration, a trio of five- to fifteen-year-old Mexican heritage siblings worked together, completing the task smoothly with little discussion or direction. WEIRD children, by contrast, tended to divvy up the task so each could work alone. And there was much conflict and argument regarding turn-taking. This study has been replicated with two or three children in various settings with varied problems to solve, and the results are consistent (Alcalá, Rogoff & Frairea, 2018; Mejía-Arauz et al., 2007; Correa-Chávez, 2016). In the last cited study, the author reported that Mexican sibling pairs, aged six to eleven, were Fo video recorded as they assembled a three-dimensional puzzle, guided only by the presence of a rP completed example. The sample children from a rural village, with little history of schooling, collaborated readily and effectively, with little or no verbal exchange, whereas the sample drawn ee from a middle-class, “high schooling” community tended to work alone, communicated verbally ev rR and drifted off-task (Correa-Chávez, 2016: 130). Other important conclusions from this line of research include the finding that the child as helper iew phenomenon “travels” from rural Mexican communities. Recent immigrants to the United States expect their children to participate in collaborative work as well as carry out routine chores (Orellana, 2001). Aside from ethnicity, Los Angeles families where mothers had less than a ninth-grade education held high expectations for their children as helpers, and those with higher levels of schooling, very low expectations (Klein, Graesch & Izquierdo, 2009). Children who work collaboratively are also able to apply their collaborative skills to the novel, more school-like settings used in the experiments just discussed. WEIRD children, by contrast, who do not participate as helpers in collaborative household activity, cannot collaborate effectively in the experimental tasks. Usually one member of the dyad takes charge, or the two Cambridge University Press 79 Cambridge Elements Page 80 of 130 take turns. And in this era of high-stakes testing, classrooms present few opportunities to learn to work collaboratively. López et al. (2012: 873) cite an earlier field study by Susan Phillips (1983), who found that Warm Springs Indian students in Oregon, when asked to work on group projects, worked together effectively without intervention from the teacher, whereas Anglo students in the school often disputed over turns, who would lead, and how to carry out the tasks—requiring teacher intervention. Clearly, the Indian children brought to school the collaborative strategies that were Fo in demand in their community. The Anglo students had been shaped by the WEIRD childrearing rP philosophy dedicated to child individualism (Kärtner et al., 2010). Miller and Cho’s (2018) recent work provides many illustrations of the promotion of individualism over collaboration. ee rR …parents are urged to honor the child’s perspective: “Treat your child as a separate, independent person with the right to his own feelings, ideas, and attitudes. Appreciate and ev recognize what he can do—no matter how small the triumph” (Miller & Cho 2018: 137) … iew they’ll have the confidence to do their own thing and not be led by other people…” (Miller & Cho, 2018: 69, italics added). Meanwhile, there is a growing recognition that, like “adulting” (see p. X), children’s inability to collaborate is a deficiency that must be remedied by—teaching (Sparks, 2017)! I am arguing that the spontaneous emergence of helping is an essential prerequisite to becoming a skilled collaborator. And the human ability to collaborate in a wide variety of enterprises, including childcare, has been credited with the success of our species. Cambridge University Press 80 Page 81 of 130 Cambridge Elements Collaboration Leads to Learning Another clear benefit of the compunction to pitch-in and be helpful is that it is through helping and, by extension, collaboration that children learn their culture. Across the ethnographic record and in the annals of history, learning through doing is the norm; deliberate instruction is a rare event. Teaching is expensive from a fitness perspective because a mature, highly productive individual has to reduce their output in order to take on the role of instructor (Lancy 2016b). A far more efficient approach is to take advantage of the child’s willingness to pitch-in and get Fo involved in a helpful fashion, which leads, inevitably, to incidental learning. rP As demonstrated so convincingly by Rogoff and colleagues (Rogoff, 2003; Correa-Chávez, ee Mejía-Arauz & Rogoff, 2015) over numerous studies covering decades, children must become rR involved as participants in order to fully experience the tasks of interest. They can closely observe competent models, and they can work their way up from very simple sub-tasks to more ev complex components. If they hope to receive any guidance at all from an expert, they must place iew themselves in close proximity, show they’re attending and, better yet, be willing to assist where needed (Paradise & Rogoff, 2009). Offering to help out can be seen as the “price of admission.” Each of the anecdotes in Table 5.1 illustrates culturally patterned learning through participation. Table 5.1 CHILDREN LEARNING THROUGH COLLABORATIVE ACTIVITY “Miskito (Honduras) [children] learn about fish and fishing strategies via observations [and] experience as participants on fishing trips…. They are frequently brought on excursions in dugout canoes with older relatives who fish. As youngsters, children often Cambridge University Press 81 Cambridge Elements Page 82 of 130 contribute by gathering and managing the fish caught by family members. [Consequently] they exhibit high levels of knowledge relatively early in life” (Koster, Bruno & Burns, 2016: 114, 117). Touareg (Niger) boys and girls spend several years as assistants to older siblings, learning the different kinds of forage, the idiosyncrasies of each animal and which ones need extra vigilance. He or she gradually takes on more responsibility until, at age ten, the young herder solos (Spittler, 1998). Fo rP “During this period there is no formal training [among the Mbuti Pygmies (Congo)], but boys and girls alike learn all there is to be learned by simple emulation and by assisting ee their parents and elders in various tasks” (Turnbull, 1965: 179). rR “In Samoa, a child may dig up worms and donate them to a fisher in hopes of being invited ev along to observe the [fishing] process” (Odden, 2007: 219). iew Apache [N. America] “youths [might] accompany a large hunting trip. They fetch wood and water for the camp and look after the horses, at the same time gaining experience by being with skilled hunters…learning much of what they ultimately would know about hunting from observation without direct instruction” (Goodwin & Goodwin, 1942: 475). “Tsimané (Bolivia) girls are expected to perform household tasks and accompany mothers and other relatives to agricultural fields. Such close interaction could facilitate the Cambridge University Press 82 Page 83 of 130 Cambridge Elements transmission of ethnobotanical knowledge and skills from the older to the younger generation” (Reyes-García et al., 2009: 283). “The first principle of Ojibwa (North America) learning is a preference for experiential knowledge. Indigenous pedagogy values a person’s ability to learn by observing, listening, and participating with a minimum of intervention or instruction. This pattern of direct learning by seeing and doing, without asking questions, makes Ojibwa children diverse learners. They do not have a single homogenous learning style” (Battiste, 2002: 15). Fo rP Canoe making for the Khanty (Siberia) is a complex process. The challenge is in wetting, heating and bending the wood to open the timber wide enough to accommodate the ee spreaders or thwarts without cracking. The goal is a small, sturdy and lightweight vessel. (Jordan, 2014: 252). iew ev rR Canoe makers learn through “watching, assisting…and then by trying for themselves” If children want to learn practical skills, and they clearly do, their primary option is to “learn on the job,” and, as expressed by Mesoudi, “Children seem to be predisposed to rapidly and automatically acquire huge amounts of information from other people. They are, in a sense, ‘cultural sponges,’ soaking up knowledge from those around them” (2011:15). Learning through collaboration encompasses the gamut of skills, practical and social, that are expected of mature individuals. Many have argued, for example, that infant and child care is learned largely through serving as an alloparent to one’s younger siblings (Veile & Kramer, Cambridge University Press 83 Cambridge Elements Page 84 of 130 2018). Girls are drawn to babies and tend to hover in close proximity to women with infants, eager to volunteer their services. Initially, they might do no more than hold the infant, but the alloparent role will grow in complexity and time allocated as they learn—under the loose guidance of the infant’s mother and other senior women. In WEIRD society, an avalanche of infant care books, videos, blogs and infant-care classes attest to the disappearance of sib-care (and “babysitting” as well, cf. Forman-Brunell, 2009) and the learning opportunities it provided. While sib-care may be universal, learning via collaboration involves different activities and Fo skills, depending on the nature of the work. Koster, Bruno and Burns (2016) carried out a study rP of “ethnobiological knowledge” of Mayangna and Miskito (Nicaragua) villagers across a wide age range. They were testing the assumption that “individuals continue to accumulate ee ethnobiological knowledge throughout their lives, resulting in greater expertise among the elder rR generations” (Koster et al., 2016: 113). They measured various attributes of fishing skill and knowledge of fish behavior and ecology. Skill and knowledge did not develop in a linear fashion ev with age. Rather, it was driven by the individual’s investment in fishing and in observing and iew interacting with knowledgeable fishers. This suggests again that children learn through collaborating, observing, listening and practicing and can, thereby, reach a high level of proficiency while still young. Parallel results were obtained in a study of botanical knowledge on Dominica Island in the Caribbean. Children’s knowledge of plants was positively affected by living in a multi-family, versus single family, compound and by the presence of a greater number of siblings in the household. This suggests that when children have more opportunities to interact collaboratively with others, their knowledge base grows more rapidly (Quinlan et al., 2016). Cambridge University Press 84 Page 85 of 130 Cambridge Elements This drive to collaborate is typically enacted in social environments that are extremely supportive and child-friendly. Here’s a description of collaboration among Batek (Borneo) hunters and gatherers: Trips to the forest are often festive occasions especially when the group is rather large…the Batek …adjust their speed of walking to the level of the least competent member of the group…. Aside from the explicit details of locations, conditions, and accessibility, verbalized information might include narratives and tall tales recounting the day’s experiences or Fo memories of past adventures. These are shared usually after work or at night thus providing rP an excellent context for children and young people to learn second-hand through the errors of the adults…. For children, these are their everyday classrooms…. Children also bring ee knowledge back to the parents. For example, children roaming free in the forest will spot rR much that is new and significant…and will inform the parents and other adults. In one case, a mother was complaining about local scarcity of takop “wild tubers”; her son pointed out to ev her a vine that he had seen, and this knowledge was acted upon. That children, even at this iew age, are considered to be equal partners in the conversation” (Lye, 1997: 70, 101, 108–9, 351). Note that it isn’t just children who learn through collaborative activity, adolescents and adults usually prefer group work, which affords ample opportunity to learn informally from peers (Koster et al., 2016) without the need for the social hierarchy implied by teaching (Borofsky, 1987). Furthermore, working in a collaborative context provides “frequent opportunities to observe innovations, evaluate their success, and imitate traits judged most successful or most common” (Hill et al., 2011: 1288). Cambridge University Press 85 Cambridge Elements Page 86 of 130 !Kung hunters “report at length and dramatically excursions and hunts [as] people are gathered around the fire… indirect adult communication of important information seems comparable to the indirect way that young men acquire information about animals and technology, which appears to be quite simply a matter of watching and listening to other people and then trying for oneself. There is almost no direct teaching” (Blurton Jones & Konner, 1976: 338–9). Humans appear to be equipped with cognitive skills that are adapted to learning in these Fo scenarios, and several of Warneken’s (2015b) lab studies identify these skills. One such is rP children’s ability to take in and process information from the environment indicating an unlearned capacity for what Gaskins and Paradise call “open attention” which can be deployed to ee good effect in social settings as well as in the natural environment (2010: 104). They describe rR open attention as wide-angled and abiding. The first means that the individual is aware of and attends to a great deal of the environment at one time rather than attending to only one ev information source (video game, teacher). The second means that attention is sustained rather iew than episodic or short-term (2010: 99–100). A recent experimental study compared isolated Himba forager/pastoralists with British subjects on tests of attention. Himba participants showed more efficient selective attention than did the Western participants (Caparos et al., 2013). This suggests that WEIRD society, with its emphasis on “pay attention to…mommy, the teacher, the monitor, the lecture,” leads to an attenuation of these native information gathering skills. Ingold neatly summarizes the contrast between indigenous and WEIRD models of pedagogy, illustrating the self-initiated and collaborative basis for the former. “In the passage of human generations, each one contributes to the knowledgeability of the next, not by handing down a corpus of disembodied, context-free information, but by setting up, through their activities, the Cambridge University Press 86 Page 87 of 130 Cambridge Elements environmental contexts within which successors develop their own…skills” (Ingold, 2001: 142). As noted throughout this essay, WEIRD society does not nurture learning via helping and collaborating. There is, rather, the tendency to firmly define the roles of adults and children as teachers/pupils (de Haan, 2001). WEIRD children develop an expectation that learning occurs largely via teacher-organized lessons. “Teachers, as well as parents with extensive schooling themselves… closely manage young children’s attention and discourage attention to surrounding events” (Silva, Shimpi & Rogoff, 2015: 209). Several recent empirical studies affirm this contrast. Fo rP Children from “traditional” Mexican communities attended to a toy construction demonstration ostensibly directed to another child and yet learned enough from this observation to successfully ee complete the task. In contrast, “children from families with extensive schooling may rely more rR on having their attention directed by adults and muster less attention when no one is telling them to attend” (Silva, Correa-Chavéz & Rogoff, 2011: 909). In a subsequent study “a sample of ev primarily European-American children learned better from direct teaching situations, whereas iew Yucatec Mayan children learned just as well from observing others’ interactions.” (Silva et al., 2015: 209). A critical corollary to these findings has emerged from studies of speech directed at children. While WEIRD children are the target of a large volume of direct speech from birth, indigenous children are rarely spoken to directly, especially in a didactic mode (Cristia et al., 2017). Instead, children are expected to overhear or eavesdrop on conversations where they are third or passive parties (de León, 2011). Empirical studies have verified that children may learn as well from such indirect forms of communication as from directed speech (Akhtar 2005; D. E. Sperry, L. Sperry & Miller, 2018). Cambridge University Press 87 Cambridge Elements Page 88 of 130 I have characterized the helper stage as a developmental niche that, in supportive societies, nurtures the growth of pro-social behavior. As I’ve described, there are a number of other corollary benefits that grow out of the helper stage: affiliation with the community, becoming an effective collaborator, and acquisition of the cultural toolkit of essential skills and values. Six: Summary and Conclusions Fo To fully understand and appreciate the significance of child helpers, it is necessary to reconsider rP a basic assumption about human development. It is widely acknowledged that there is a long juvenile period in human life history and that the juvenile is dependent on others for care and ee food. But, more recent field studies of child workers strongly suggest that juveniles act to reduce rR their dependency on others and assist in reducing the workload of those who provision them. Children frequently care for younger siblings, freeing up their mothers to spend time in food ev production. Child foragers and hunters not only provide food for themselves, but they may share iew their found resources with others. By recasting childhood as a period of transition from total dependency (early infancy) and responsibility-free play to legitimate participation in the domestic economy, we can see the role a child helper stage might play. The child-helper stage begins in late infancy, and, with very few exceptions, children during this period eagerly volunteer to assist or “pitch-in.” Because the helper, at this age, lacks the physical attributes, knowledge and skills to be truly useful, they may be rebuffed or redirected. The high motivation is evident in the child’s resilient and persistent attempts to finetune their assistance through observing and practicing relevant skills. They will be aided in finding suitable tasks Cambridge University Press 88 Page 89 of 130 Cambridge Elements within their capacity and, in fact, many common tasks, such as errand running, are designated for children of this age. The child helper can be described as “on probation,” a “novice,” or, an “intern,” meaning they are not fully competent and are expected to learn by observing, imitating and following the lead of those more competent. This status also carries with it the idea that the child is free to opt out of participation as he/she gets tired, distracted or bored. There is a recognition of the limits imposed by immaturity and expectations are adjusted accordingly. The helper stage fits well the Fo idea of a developmental niche, where maturational processes that are biological are ee rP complemented by cultural practices that scaffold and nurture the child’s emergent abilities. In seeking to understand the drive to be helpful, one persistent goad may be the toddler’s low rR status and lack of consideration. Many societies display “toddler rejection,” where the no-longerprecious child is treated like an unwelcome burden and shunted off to be cared for by other, ev slightly older children. Denied the breast, forced to travel on their own power, they may be quite iew unhappy. But volunteering to help is often treated as a legitimate means of reattaching to one’s mother and, more generally, feeds the need to affiliate with the group. Eventually, the child’s growing competence and reliability leads to recognition as a full-fledged “member” or “person.” Although this essay is focused on helping, sharing is, obviously, complementary. In particular, children are often able to gather wild foods through foraging; through sharing their bounty they can claim the same social capital they earn by helping others. In fact, many societies seem to value sharing over helping in that there are deliberate efforts to stimulate sharing behavior, whereas helping may be taken for granted. Cambridge University Press 89 Cambridge Elements Page 90 of 130 The child-helper stage begins in late infancy and represents the onset of a long period of development as a worker. The helper may become engaged with work either directly, through a successful bid to pitch-in, or indirectly, through play. In playing with objects, children wield real, scaled-down or replica tools, and they can develop considerable skill through playful practice— guided by their observation of more mature tool users. In make-believe play, children act out the roles of child minder, house sweeper, food preparer, hunter, herd boy, ad infintum. Play themes are solidly grounded in the local reality; fantasy is very rare. And they’re not just practicing discrete skills, as they might in object play, but the social behaviors and speech elements Fo associated with activities they might soon be involved in. rP Although child helping is a recent subject of inquiry, our understanding of the phenomenon has ee advanced rapidly because of the rare congruence of two very different lines of research. First, the rR ethnographic record is replete with references to child helpers, and some of the earliest crosscultural research on childhood tallied significant amounts of helping/working in the child’s daily ev routine. The ethnographic record also reveals the processes whereby child helpers are woven into iew the domestic economy. Helping has also been the subject of a vigorous program of experimental lab research simulating a helping episode. These episodes pair an experimenter who experiences some difficulty and a child who is in a position to assist—if they choose to do so. Just as the ethnographic record shows child helpers to be ubiquitous, the lab research, with numerous replications, varied aged samples, varied conditions and elaborate controls, also shows child helpers as a biological universal. The drive to be helpful appears early (by fourteen months); would-be helpers are not easily dissuaded or distracted and; their behavior is altruistic, not motivated by reward, approval or expectation of future payback. Cambridge University Press 90 Page 91 of 130 Cambridge Elements The proposal that there is a helper “stage” in the human life course is buttressed by evidence from both psychology and anthropology. The lab research demarcates the onset of this stage and shows its continuation at least until thirty-six months. Ethnographic research shows continuity and change as “helping” gets transformed into working in Middle Childhood—the end of the helper stage. By middle childhood, children may not operate as helpers as often because they now have their own chores, perhaps assisted by a younger sibling. Accumulating ethnographic evidence from studies of WEIRD families shows that children may lose the motivation to be helpful during Early Childhood. This points to the likelihood that young would-be helpers’ desire Fo to be useful and to affiliate must be accommodated. The ethnographic record shows the great rP diversity of such accommodations, from assigning would-be helpers to suitable tasks to permitting their participation in group projects to donating appropriately sized tools for them to ee use, etc. Failure to allow the child a helper role may lead to the extinction of the motive. rR While the helper stage construct may seem quite plausible, there are questions that can be raised. ev An immediate question is the compromise that workers must make in their own efficiency when iew they accommodate young helpers. Interviews with WEIRD mothers illustrate the many strategies they employ (doing household chores when their toddler is napping) to finesse his/her efforts to help. The child may very well find a reward for helping through affiliation and a pathway towards a place in society, but what sustains their efforts? I argue that there are two extremely important benefits that accrue to parents and children during the helper stage and later. First, unlike the lab paradigm, helping outside WEIRD society places the child in a cooperative work activity. The child learns not just to hull rice with a mortar and pestle, he/she learns to work collaboratively with several others who’re engaged in the multi-faceted preparation of the evening meal. The claim that children are gaining a unique and extremely valuable skill in Cambridge University Press 91 Cambridge Elements Page 92 of 130 learning to collaborate is supported in numerous studies comparing “village” children, who are expert collaborators, and “cosmopolitan” or WEIRD children, who are not. A second significant benefit to children and their kin is that, through collaboration, the novices will learn most of what they will need to know of their culture—from specific skills to language, manners and social customs. And they will learn largely through observation, imitation, practice and subtle feedback from co-workers—identified by Bandura (1976) as “social learning.” That is, experts very rarely need to provide lessons to the learner. And here, perhaps, the efficiency Fo lost in “helping the helper to be helpful” is regained in the near zero investment to add a valuable rP worker to the domestic work force. Not only is the child enhancing his or her potential fitness, the assistance that the child provides must improve the fitness of kinsmen who receive the help rR ee as well. Future research calls for the systematic study of the helper stage in indigenous communities and ev more ethnographic study of the phenomenon in WEIRD society. However, one of the most iew prominent effects of globalization is the imposition of formal schooling, which consistently undermines the child’s contributions to the family economy. Parents with at least some secondary education may adopt the WEIRD childrearing model and spurn child helpers. It is imperative to select research sites that are relatively unacculturated and not rapidly “becoming WEIRD.” References Cambridge University Press 92 Page 93 of 130 Cambridge Elements Aime, Hilary, Tanya Broesch, Lara B.Aknin, Felix Warneken (2017). Evidence for proactive and reactive helping in two-to five-year-olds from a small-scale society. 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