Gabriel Scheidecker

Beyond Parents

The Social World of Early Childhood and its Developmental Significance. Approx. 215 p. 20 illus. in color. Sprache: Englisch.
gebunden , 282 Seiten
ISBN 3032057671
EAN 9783032057679
Veröffentlicht 6. Dezember 2025
Verlag/Hersteller Springer-Verlag GmbH
96,29 inkl. MwSt.
vorbestellbar (Versand mit Deutscher Post/DHL)
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Beschreibung

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

Portrait

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