Gusii parents tend to view infant care primarily in terms of protection and nurturance, and to postpone deliberate instruction until the child is able to talk and understand commands, but the experience and learning of Gusii infants, as for all humans, begins at birth and is culturally organized. Infant psychosocial and behavioral development, though not prominent in Gusii formulations of parental priorities, is culturally shaped even in the early months, anticipating later developmental goals that are salient for Gusii parents. This chapter presents and interprets evidence from naturalistic observations and videotaped samples of elicited caretaker–infant interaction, to provide a portrait of communication and social learning over the first years of life.

A PROFILE OF GUSII MOTHER – INFANT INTERACTION

Describing mother–infant interaction in any human population means, at least implicitly, comparing it with the pattern best known to the child development field, namely, that of the American white middle class, so we shall present Gusii evidence in comparison with observations of middle-class Americans from the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts, before exploring its meaning and functions from a Gusii perspective.

The overview with which we begin is based on naturalistic observations of Sarah LeVine, who visited each child in the Gusii longitudinal sample at home every 3 months, thus covering children at each 3-month age point between 3 and 30 months, for a 1-hour observation that was subsequently coded. Comparable home observations were later conducted in suburban Boston; Appendix A and Appendix B describe the recording methods and coding categories.