In spite of the wide diversity of Native American cultures, early accounts reveal numerous cross-cultural similarities in Native American perspectives on child rearing. These include: allowing children to learn through their own observations; relying strongly on nonverbal cues rather than verbal directions; engaging the spiritual world in the child-rearing process by praying, changing, and singing, as well as by conferring special names to five children guidance and power; educating children for their future roles including them from infancy in all social, economic, and ritual activities; giving children the same range of freedom of behavior as adults; using stories to provide an understanding of the world and its relationships, both those between individuals and that between man and nature; respecting the individuality and desires of children to the same degree that those respected in adults; teaching children their responsibilities to each member of their kinship group; allowing children to fulfill their physical needs such as sleeping, eating, and restraint; impressing children with their roles in society through marking their passage into new stages of development with public ceremonies, especially at puberty.
———Underlying these characteristics is a view of children from birth, as full participants in society, with a standing equal to that of adults. This attitude is a hreflection of the religious orientation of Native Americans, in which all things in nature are accorded equal respect, be they inanimate or animate. Consequently, children were not expected to be supervised by adults but to be free like their elders, their freedom limited only by social obligations. As a result, child-care practices emphasized a responsiveness to the wishes of the child. For example, children were usually toilet trained when they were ready, and not according to a schedule based on adult needs, and in some societies children nursed for as long as five to seven years. Thus Native Americans allowed children to fit themselves into the social order, rarely using corporal punishment or other coercive methods to force conformity.
———At the time of contact with Europeans, most Native Americans lived in face-to-face communities where people knew one another. Child training was aided by shared values and an extended kinship system that tied an individual to all members of the society, either by descent or marriage, or through formal religious or social affiliations. As a consequence, all adults shared some responsibility for socializing the society's children.
———While Native American societies shared a broadly common orientation, nomadic hunting and gathering societies expressed these general values more fully than sedentary, horticultural societies, regardless of their economic systems, were organized for subsistence, requiring all people to contribute to the group according to their ability. Children represented the continuation of society, and their accomplishments signified the groups potential to endure. The importance and centrality of children was reflected in the public celebration of events in a child's life, such as a child's first steps, a girl's first menstrual cycle, or a boy's search for his spiritual helper at puberty.
———In native societies, the adults primarily responsible for child care were often not the parents. In hunting and gathering societies, it was more practical for grandparents to rear children too young to participate in economic activities. For example, among such tribes as the Arapahos, Gros Ventres, Blackfeet, and Sioux of the northern plains, grandparents prepared and cooked the food, did the household chores, and took care of the children. Grandparents were also repositories of cultural knowledge and wisdom, which they passed on to their grandchildren through instruction and stories. In these societies, children's individuality was allowed maximum expression and child training was minimally coercive. Strong emotional ties and intimate, teasing relationships also tended to develop between these children and their grandparents.
———Although men in northern Plains cultures were frequently expected to be warriors and hunters, they spent a great deal of time with their children when they were at home, especially with their sons. In societies that placed a premium on individual initiative and personal skill, they taught young boys to make tools such as spears, shields, and bows and arrows, and encouraged them to practice by hunting small animals around their village. Thus from early childhood, boys' play activities helped prepare them for their adult roles.
———In these societies, as soon as they were old enough, girls were taught by their grandparents and mothers to make moccasins, clothing, and lodge coverings, and to participate in daily chores such as preparing food and carrying water. Girls were also responsible for the care of their younger siblings, and strong emotional attachments developed between younger and older siblings, who spent a great deal of time in each other's company. Girls and boys were generally allowed to interact until they reached puberty. At puberty, girls were secluded in a menstrual hut and female relatives instructed them in homemaking skills and proper behavior. At the end of this time, girls were ready for marriage.
———Among such tribes as the Blackfeet and Crows, there were also accounts of men having strong and loving relationships with favorite daughters, whom they would take with them on hunting and raiding forays. As a result, some girls became proficient in male activities and a few women became noted warriors and leaders.
———In some nomadic societies, children went to live with other relatives; most often boys went to live with uncles. Children were sometimes given in adoption to other families who had lost chidden, or to older people who had no descendants to take care of them. In the fluid world of hunters and gatherers, adoption of both children and adults was frequent, and adoptees were accepted as fully as if they had been born into the family.
———Horticultural societies such as the Pueblos and the Iroquois frequently traced kinship through mothers. These matrilineal kinship systems assigned the mother's brother the task of training male children. In these societies, children belonged to another clan (his mother's clan). It was thus necessary for a male from the mother's clan (the mother's brother) to be responsible for training boys to assume their responsibilities in the clan. For example, among the Hopis, the men cultivated the fields owned by their wife's clan. Around the age of ten, sons began to learn to cultivate crops by working alongside their fathers. But it was a maternal uncle who was primarily responsible for socializing children, especially boys. The maternal uncle educated boys to fulfill their obligations to other members of their kinship group, preparing them for the ritual roles of their clan and for initiation into social fraternities. Maternal uncles were also the primary disciplinarians of Hopi children and as a result were the most respected and sometimes feared members of a child's kin group. The Hopi father-son relationship was more relaxed and affectionate.
———Hopi girls had a close relationship with their mothers, who trained them in their household duties. Grinding corn, the food that was most central to their survival, was the most time-consuming and difficult work they had to do. Nevertheless, instruction was not didactic but cooperative. Women and girls sang songs as they ground their corn, sharing a common burden, the women teaching by example. Not surprisingly, corn grinding was also one of the main components of the girl's ceremonies at puberty and marriage.
———In many societies, it was believed that children were reincarnated ancestors and that if they were not treated well, they would leave. In such societies, coercive methods were avoided for fear the child would die. However, there are Native American examples of coercive methods, including corporal punishment. Parents who exercised this type of control were likely to deflect their children's frustration and anger from themselves by telling them that a spirit would take them away if they did not do what they were told. Among the Hopi, it was primarily the mother's brother who punished children for misbehavior. Men dressed as Kachinas, powerful beings in Hopi mythology, also whipped children of both sexes in their first initiation ceremony, which took place when they were from six to ten years of age. Among the Nez Perces, there was a "Whipperman" who disciplined children by switching them in groups. The most severe example of parental control of children's behavior was the Ojibwa enforcement of ritual fasting, which children were made to undertake periodically for a day as a time beginning around the age of four or five to prepare them psychologically for the scarcity of food that occurred during the winter.
———Because parents did not usually take an disciplinary tasks, Native American societies often relied upon peer pressure to control children's behavior. In most societies, a child was a member of an extended family and was usually raised in the company of many peers. If a child did things to bring attention to himself, peers shamed him into conformity. When corporal punishment was used among the Nez Perces, children were usually disciplined in peer groups, even though only one child might be guilty of misbehavior. By punishing an entire group, adults could rely on children to control each other's behavior.
———The basic values underlying traditional cultural approaches to child rearing are still evident in Native America. This fact is particularly evident where people have remained in their own communities and traditional religious practices have persisted. However, contact with nonnative influences has tended to dilute these perspectives, undermining community standards. Today the contrast between native and European child-rearing strategies is not as strong as it once was. Many social workers assert that the disjunctive between traditional practices and contemporary conditions has contributed to social and educational difficulties.

MARILYN G. BENTZ (Gros Ventre)
University of Washington