The infant-summary

Development during infancy from the age of a few weeks until the baby is walking securely and beginning to talk- is a dramatic thing to watch. Striking and radical changes take place within this relatively brief period. Early in infancy his face loses its neonatal look and becomes the smooth face of a baby. The childs activity increases and his sleeping time decreases. Socially, the infant progresses from blank, unblinking staring at faces to smiling at people, to demanding company, to laughing, to active participation in social games. The baby becomes aware of the surroundings and of himself. It must be the readers task to keep in mind the baby as a flesh-and-blood creature living at home with his parents even if we shall not be describing the whole baby, but only certain meaningful abstractions from the totality. Landmarks in the Infants Behavioral Development It seems that infancy itself has changed in the last twenty-five years, so that todays babies at least the measured and observed ones in American research centers are decidedly different creatures from yesterdays and develop much faster. This apparent acceleration plays a part in the controversy surrounding reports of precocious development in some African babies. Parental attitudes and practices have changed, thanks in large measure (in the United States) to Dr. Benjamin Spock, whose widely read book on child care has been a powerful influence in the last twenty years, so that parents are better able to relax and enjoy babies. There is greater faith in the competence of babies, and they are given increased freedom to explore and manipulate. Both the scales and the authors are guilty of the error of ethnocentrism, of assuming that development in a broadly Western setting is representative of development everywhere. We know in fact that development follows quite different rates in other social settings. In part, it was the inaccessibility of large numbers of subjects for research. Now, with the growing realization that the baby is

psychologically from birth on, there is a new willingness on the part of psychologists to go to where the babies are their homes, well-baby clinics, and pediatricians offices. There has come to pass also a new and more receptive attitude on the part of pediatricians, public health workers, and psychiatrists; they are more interested in research than before, and in research on normal and healthy babies as well as on sick and disturbed ones. A pediatricians practice today is devoted more to preventing illness and educating parents than to treating sick children.