The Moral Sense by James Q Wilson

Author:James Q Wilson [Wilson, James Q]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781439105030
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 1993-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

Rights versus Duties

Some people argue that the balance we Westerners (or we Americans) have struck between nurturance and control is not the only, and perhaps not the best, strategy for developing in children a strong moral sense. These critics point out that enforcing and explaining rules is a method of child rearing geared to producing independent, self-reliant adults, each equipped with an internal compass that will ensure a reasonable degree of self-control and a principled commitment to fairness. That may be appropriate for a competitive, individualistic culture such as our own. But there is another kind of culture for which a different style of child rearing is appropriate, and this alternative may be preferable.

The other kind of culture is one that emphasizes the group over the individual, obligations over rights, and helping over fairness. Some liberal critics of American society find examples of such cultures among smaller, more primitive societies (the San of the Kalahari are a favorite example), while some conservative critics take Japan as their alternative. Both sets of critics agree in describing these other cultures as being much more child-centered and familyoriented than ours, but whereas liberal critics point to mutual aid as the chief benefit, conservative ones point to low crime rates and economic competitiveness as the happy result.

There is no doubt that in some places the infant remains in closer contact with its mother for longer periods of time and with less attention to discipline or control than is the case in this country. Melvin Konner has remarked on how different infant-care arrangements are across cultures and how little effect on psychological wellbeing these differences seem to have.28 A !Kung San baby is continuously in its mother’s company, is nursed by her on demand for up to four years, and is not the object of much toilet training. By the standards of American followers of Dr. Spock, the !Kung baby is hopelessly spoiled. By contrast, in the Israeli kibbutz babies sleep in an infant house and, though frequently visited by their parents, they soon enter into a planned course of training, schooling, and chores based on communal principles. By the standards of the !Kung, the kibbutz child seems cruelly abandoned. Some Russian infants are swaddled, and Navajo babies are bound onto cradleboards. In rural Guatemala infants stay close to their mothers but in darkened huts where there is not much talking. Japanese mothers sleep with their babies, apart from their husbands; American mothers sleep with their husbands, apart from their babies. Japanese infants are greatly indulged; the orderly social discipline that so impresses American visitors does not begin until the child is considerably along in years, much older than are American children when they experience similar rules.

Despite these differences, the majority of babies in all cultures where tests have been done seem securely attached to their mothers.29 Infant sociability and maternal affection are such universally powerful forces that, although local cultures may modify infantmother relations, the consequences of those differences for human bonding seem rather small.

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