Care and conflict in infant development: An East-Timorese and Papua New Guinean comparison

INFANT BEHAVIOR AND DEVELOPMENT 4) 225-246 (1981)

Care and Conflict in Infant Development: An East-Tirnorese and Papua New Guinean Comparison* ROMOLA McSwAn'~

The University o f Western Australia

A pattern of adult permissiveness allied with insensitivity and physical restriction resulting in agonistic behavior in infants characterizes the socialization process in East Timor and distinguishes it from that in the Papua New Guinea sample. Here, adult permissiveness combines with awareness of infant responses and positive encouragement of infant physical independence. Irritation and aggression is absent among the New Guinean babies. In spite of differing circumstances, both infant groups detach themselves without anxiety. Behavioral analysis of films of twelve East Timorese and twelve Papua New Guinean subjects from the age of one to 15 months, and their caregivers, revealed some similarities and a complex of clear differences between the two groups. The similarities suggest features of socialization which further comparison may show to be universal. The differences can be labelled cultural and are possibly related to ecological variables.

" P e r h a p s the most impressive thing about the infant's social development is our ignorance o f the processes involved" (Richards, 1974). W h o is the infant to which Richard refers? Is there a universal infant or are there multitudes o f infant types which somehow develop into representatives o f their own cultures? The original incentives for this explorative research into cross-cultural infant-adult interaction were the traditional anthropblogical

*This study was funded in part by a grant from the Social Sciences Research Council, Australia. I am most grateful to Bernard Macdougall for assistance in analyzing and scoring the data. Reprint requests should be addressed to Romola McSwain, Department of Anthropology, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Western Australia.

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goals of discovering the universal and the culturally specific. Using the method of participant-observation combined with extensive filming and behavioral analysis of these films, it is a comparative description of infant development and care-taking patterns in two non-We.stern societies. The basic assumption underlying the study is that physical contact with caregivers' in early infancy is a crucial aspect of infant development (of. Blurton Jones, 1972). It results both from biological programming in infants (Tiger & Fox, 1972) and from culturally conceived prescriptions on the part of caregivers (Shotter, 1974). Hence the following areas of investigation seemed relevant: 1. Kinds of physical contact: what they look like 2. Instigator of physical contact: infant or caregiver 3. Amount of physical contact and the extent to which 1. (above) contributes to or detracts from it 4. Identity of caregivers 5. Changes in physical contact over time, from the age of approximately one month to the achievement of mobility The aim was to discover features in infant-caregiver relationships common to both Timorese and Papua New Guinean samples, and to isolate those which appeared to be culturally specific to Timor. The socio-cultural and physical environments of children between the ages of one month and 15 months, or mobility, were recorded. Physical contact between them and their caregivers during a period equivalent to an ordinary full day was fllrned on a singl~ frame and at times at ordinary speed on a Super 8 movie camera. In Timor, a 15-year-old local girl speaking both Portuguese and the local language, Mediki, acted as a guide and occasionally as interpreter. She enabled friendly contact to be made with the people, but was not used as a means of carrying out interviews, since the study was to be purely descriptive and based on observation. Being familiar with the Papua New Guineans and their area, I needed neither guide nor interpreter. Subjects willingly cooperated and, after at least three visits to each settlement to establish rapport, filming began. I soon found that approximately three hours of filming was all that they--or, for that matter, I---could tolerate. Consequently, I broke the filming period up into an initial morning's work (ceasing when an infant fell asleep for what couid.be predicted to be a long period) and, ideal'Lewisand Rosenblum(19.74,xv) use the term caregiver "to refer to the person responsible for givingcareto an infant.., a neuterqualityof this term." ThusI referboth to parents and non-parents for, as Weisnerand OaUimore(1977) point out, non-parentalcaretakingis significantin most societies.

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ly, an afternoon's work on the following day. Neither infants nor caregivers remained stationary for long and there was a constant need to zoom in on certain parts of their bodies as their actions" changed. Consequently the remote control, which I had'thought would reduce awareness of my presence, proved unusable. The anthropologist welcomes ethology's continuous interactional descriptive mode. But the tools of the ethologist are the units of behavior he objectively describes. As far as the analysis of the Timor and Papua New Guinea films was concerned, there was a considerable problem in turning so vast a number of units into a comprehensive account. In her own analysis of long film sequences, Bullowa (1975) tackles similar problems by using broad categories which I also made use of and describe later. To achieve an initial, broad behavioral picture, retaining a degree of the color and dynamic quality of real life, I crudely lumped together or glossed over much important activity painstakingly analyzed on the recording sheets. A less detailed analysis may well have provided an adequate cross-cultural comparison. Yet a positive value of the undertaking lies in its indication of the potential use of the data from both cultures in various ways according to the research focus, possibly in small sections, or for the investigation of specific behaviors such as stroking, teasing and mobilizing, perhaps over the age range of the subjects. Further, the use of pre-coded behavioral categories enables and simplifies cross-cultural research. The Timor films and diary (McSwain, 1977a) are stored in f'dm archives available to scholars wanting direct access to cross-cultural material. Their professional storage is all the more desirable since events in East Timor after the Portuguese withdrawal in 1975 have, in all probability, rendered them unique and their repetition out of the question.

THE SUBJECTS

The Timorese study took place in East Timor in the mountain Administration Post of Venilale from September to November 1971. Administration records provided information about twelve infants of both sexes, between one and 15 months and with roughly similar backgrounds. An ideal age difference of one' month was not always possible. See Table 1. The comparison study took place over a period of three month~ at the end of 1973 among Karkar Island people in the town of Madang on the Papua New Guinea mainland. An exact age comparison with the Timorese sample was not possible. Table 2 replicates for Karkar children the categories of information in Table 1.

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TABLE 1 Timorese Subjects

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Infant's Name

Age at Filming*

Me Naha Aparacio Agostino Hakorta Custodio Maria Helena Gertrudis Coo Seda Rosantina Jose Batista Ono Loi Celestina

1 month 2 months 2 mths 3 weeks 4 mths 1 week 5 mths 5 mths 3 weeks 8 mths 3 weeks 9 mths 1 week 11 months 11 mths 2 weeks 14 mths 1 week 15 mths 2 weeks

Order of Child 5th 1st 1st 3rd 4th 6th 1st 4th 1st 3rd 3rd 7th

Brought Up by Sex Both Parents f m m f m f f f f m m f

Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

*Age is given in months and to the nearest week.

TABLE 2 Karkar Subjects

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Infant's Name

Age at Filming*

Mass Jnr. Ales Yadi Magirpain Kith Gair Samuel Sibet Ngel Malom Elisabeth* Bung

1 month 2 months 3 mths 1 week 4 mths 2 weeks 6 mths 3 weeks 7 mths 2 weeks 8 mths 2 weeks 9 mths 3 weeks 11 mths 3 weeks 12 mths 2 weeks 15 mths 2 weeks 16 months

Order of Child 5th 1st 3rd 3rd 2nd 3rd 4th 2nd. 1st 6th 1st 4th

Brought Up by Sex Both Parents m m m f m m m m f f f m

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes

*Elisabeth is being reared by her mother's mother while her own young, unmarried mother works in the town. The grandmother has a child of her own only five months older than Elisabeth, so there is some competition between them, especially as she suckles both infants.

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RESEARCH FINDINGS--TIMOR SAMPLE The Physical Environment

Venilale comprises rolling country with rocky limestone outcrops. The people grow rice on terraces carved out of the limestone and on distant river fiats. Other crops are grown among the sharp crevices near their houses. Goats and buffalo graze free. Just before the monsoonal rains, which begin toward the end of November, people leave their houses en masse to plant the river flats, leaving only old people in charge of young children at home. But during September, October and November, the women have few calls on their time, which they spend gossiping with their relatives and neighbors. As they talk they may weave or make pots. The Social Environment

In Venilale, people live in extended family settlements comprising three or four small houses and a joint cooking house. Residents are drawn from patrilineal or matrilineal kin or both. Frequently, neighbors walk through adjacent settlements on their way to the spring for water, or to their fields. Because of the low house roofs and consequent dark interiors, life in the daytime is carried on out-of-doors under the shade of the trees or of the house eaves. These areas are not grassed, the hard earth being swept clean. Analysis of Filmed Data

1. Following the advice of Sorenson and Gajdusek (1966), the films were initially analyzed unedited on the basis of the order of events as they occurred. 2. For each child, broad categories were abstracted in order to obtain manageable units of data which were "recognisable as major activities" across cultures (Bullowa, 1975; Mead & Macgregor, 1951). These, based on Bullowa's task'oriented units, were as follows: feeding, sleeping, body-care and minding or caretaking. 3. Every frame in each major activity unit was examined for each ingant and the actions recorded and totalled in terms of Bullowa's component and sub-component activities. While instigators of actions and responses were recorded, a continuous visual interactional pattern set (cf. Lewis & Lee Painter, 1974) was impossible for such large amounts of data. 4. Information for all twelve subjects was collated so that initiators and recipients remained distinguishable but identities of caregivers were lost. This crude method did, however, show changing behavior over the age range.

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5. Final summary descriptions of each major activity unit moved away from strict dyadic models because of the difficulty of presenting them lucidly to the reader. Each description comprises three sections: caregiC'ers' behavior towards infants, infants' behavior towards caregivers, and changes over time. Presenting a progressive record by age from this sample presupposes that interaction among all Timorese infants and adults follows the same pattern. There is no real evidence for this. Unevenness or unexpected features should emerge in such long sequences of behavior and, indeed, appear to do so in the case of one subject (No. 8) whose mother seemed to lack some of the mothering qualities apparent in the other women. On the credit side, this system does permit the discovery of much more in a short time than would a study of a larger sample of only one age group, if that sample were available. As Mead (Mead & Macgregor, 1951) notes, exploration of a limited sample in depth is the only approach possible in most non-Western field situations. What follows is a brief resumg of the final summary descriptions of each major activity unit for the Timorese sample and a general comment on outstanding features. In less detail, the same activities are outlined for the Karkar, with those features emphasized by the Timorese picked out for special attention. The two patterns are then compared and considered in relation to relevant ethological and anthropological literature.

Timorese Major Activity Units ' Child Minding. Except when asleep, the Timorese infants were always in physical contact with other humans, because of a general tendency for caregivers to restrict such movements as standing, crawling and exploring until mobility and to "groom" babies constantly in spite of their objections. By "grooming" I refer to picking at skin, hair, eyes, nose and ears and fidgeting with clothes. I do not imply any reciprocal engagement through these activities. Contact was not close, because all caregivers practiced a slack hold, with one arm and frequently two hands hanging loosely, support coming mainly from the body or from a sling (Figure 1). Although mothers caressed and joggled their children, all except three brushed aside infants' responding hands to fidget with their bodies or clothes. Restrictions involved forcibly holding babies on the lap (Figure 2), usually by. an encircling arm, considerable playing and teasing by caregivers and bystanders, and frequent offers of breast-feeding. Teasing came from auxiliary caregivers rather than from mothers, extended family settlements and close proximity of similar settlements providing a range of potential childminders. Fathering, when it did occur, was of a warm and permissive

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Figure 1. A Timorese mother holding her eleven months two weeks old son in a sling.

nature, but the demands on men of distant agriculture and occasional trading, as well as their social proclivity, rendered this considerably less in extent and in practical nurturance than care given by auxiliaries. The effect of these sorts of preoccupations on father-child proximity is admirably discussed by West and Konner (1976) from their analysis of 80 cultures. They found that fathers are closest to their children in horticultural societies but where patrilocal residence and the extended family are absent.. From four months on, the babies themselves struggled, at first unsuccessfully, against slack holds and' uncomfortable positions until, at the age of 11 months (No. 9) they began to support themselves while leaning against caregivers' shoulders or laps. Before 11 months they could do little against restrictive holds. After that they got into rages when prevented from escaping, one (No. 10) biting his mother painfully three times in quick succession.

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Figure 2. A nine months old Timorese struggling to escape from her grandmother's lap.

With freedom finally achieved, infants Nos. 10 and 11 remained at first in frequent physical and, later, visual contact with caregivers. In spite of constant discouragement, infants from nine months made continual efforts to move along.the ground. The initial style, on one knee and opposite foot, sitting between each slide forward (Figure 3a), gave way to moving along on all fours, that is, without knees on the ground (Figure 3b), a manner probably related to the hard bare ground and rocky outcrops. It is also described for the Alorese (Dubois, 1944) and the Balinese (Mead & Macgregor, 1951). No. 11, at 14 months and one week, took a few unsteady steps and cried inconsolably during his mother's frequent absences. But No. 12, at 15 months, walked steadily and played alone for up to 15 minutes while her mother was away, only crying for her when tired or hungry. Confinement, with its accompanying teasing and unwelcome "grooming," resulted in the growth of violent behavior in babies in their attempts to escape. In other respects, adult permissiveness in the form of leniency and tolerance characterized child-minding.

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Figure 3a. An eleven months old Timorese baby moving on one knee (concealed) and one foot.

Y

1 Figure 3b. At eleven months two weeks, this Timorese baby progresses on all fours.

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Feeding. With one exception (No. 4), all the infants were suckled by their mothers. Auxiliaries sometimes fed them solid foods. Breast-feeding provided considerable physical contact, because mothers used it as a panacea for all irritatibns, to conclude all major activities and to soothe infants to sleep. Almost continual "grooming" of infants' faces, bodies and clothes during feeding, and teasing and playing by young and adult bystanders, also contributed to physical contact. Again, holds were slack (Figure 4), bodies and laps acting as main supports. After initially being provided with the nipple, infants were then left to hold it themselves. Four mothers caressed infants during feeding. All played with them afterwards. They regularly went on with practical preoccupations,'such as "grooming" older children and weaving. In general, attitudes towards

Figure 4. A Timorese mother's arms hang loose as she suckles her nine months one week old baby. His hidden arm is imprisoned behind her body.

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suckling or giving solid foods were casual and indulgent; suckling continued while dogs cleaned up infants' feces, and adults followed children about with bowls of rice, stuffing the food in unwilling mouths at every opportunity. Distressed infants found satisfaction only in their mothers' breasts and made definite movements to get them. The eight oldest children protested against loose holds and, from 11 months onwards, experienced increasing difficulty in reaching the nipple from unsatisfactory positions. They showed signs of irritation at being "groomed" and disturbed by mothers' accompanying activities. For none did solid food replace suckling during a mother's absence, and crying continued until she offered her breast on her return. As infants interacted more with their peers and wider social group, they made more frequent searches for the breast, suckling often but briefly (Nos. 8, 9, 10 and 11), and became more belligerent at unsatisfactory holds. Such behavior may have derived from mothers' growing casualness in holding and satisfying babies, and from their more frequent absences. At the same time, continuing maternal readiness to make breasts available probably stimulated infants' demands. Sleeping. To encourage sleep, mothers suckled infants as they lay in their laps or in slings. "Grooming" continued for as long as a caregiver held a sleeping child, who, up to two months, lay supported only by her lap. A larger infant was supported on the lap by one arm curved under its neck and around its back and buttocks, while the caregiver's hands lay slack. An infant sleeping in a sling depended on the sling for full support, while the caregiver's hands and arms remained free (Figure 1). No effort was made to protect sleeping children from noise, playing, teasing or the movements of the caregiver as she crocheted, wove or prepared betel. Infants might be near sleep when vigorous teasing, usually from grandmothers or young, urnmarried females, wakened them. Once asleep, the older child was placed uncovered on a bench sooner than a younger one, thus receiving considerably less contact with caregivers. Variations inevitably occurring in a range of caregivers' behavior have been noted by Leiderman and Leiderman (1977) and especially by Weisner and Gallimore (1977), who express concern over the potential of such differences for the infant. In Timor, given the teasing and other disturbing activities of auxiliary caregivers, it is not surprising that tired babies preferred their mothers. As a child became mobile, he refused to accept auxiliaries. If there was no alternative, he fell into a restless sleep only after considerable crying and beating of hands against the auxiliary's body.

Body Care. Young babies (Nos. 1, 2 and 3) were gently handled during bathing, dressing and after defecating or urinating p. For the rest, caregivers

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provided only slack physical support and few, if any, opportunities for infants to participate. They largely ignored signs of distress such as loud crying and frantic stretching toward them. Children from four to nine months showed most fear and haade most efforts to get close to their mothers during bathing, dressing and "grooming." Among older children, such signs decreased for two reasons: first, they were better able physically to support themselves and to escape from "grooming;" second (especially for Nos. 11 and 12), they were subjected to less body care in general, supervision now being frequently left to their young siblings. Even the dogs (traditionally used for this purpose) adequately cleaned children who had defecated unnoticed by caregivers.

COMMENT Outstanding features of Timorese infant-adult interaction were permissive yet restrictive and, in some respects, apparently insensitive, behavior on the part of adults; and attaching yet investigative and agonistic behavior on the part of the infants. Attachment refers here to a close and long infant-adult relationship approximating what ethologists call bonding. Agonistic behavior denotes strained combative efforts associated with conflict between two individuals. Were such apparent oppositions inter-connected? Did the infant's urge to explore and his subsequent aggression arise from his caregivers' overprotection? Or was aggression a part of the desire to explore and was the need to leave innate in the infant? Whatever the trigger for trying to depart, the fact that all animal infants do leave their mothers (Rheingold & Eckerman, 1970) means that departure is not related to mothers' absence. Furthermore, attachment and detachment develop and exist together. Or, as Ainsworth et al. (1974) suggest, attachment is stable and endures, and co-existing attaching and exploratory behavior adjust to each other according to the situation. Where a secure attachment with caregivers exists, a balance of both behaviors is achieved, with the mother being used as a "secure base from which to explore" (Ainsworth et al, 1974). Under the circumstances of the Timor caregiver's preventing detachment and the infant's agonistic behavior, could the child still consider the caregiver as a safety center from implied dangers? Rather, the material reflects Rheingold and Eckerman's findings that the child who chooses to detach himself does so without anxiety. The generally permissive nature of Timorese infants' upbringing and considerable physical contact with caregivers might be expected to result in confident, satisfied children. Certainly they did not lack confidence, nor did they normally cry excessively. Perhaps their long and constant contact with

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caregivers provided them with attention, especially in connection with nurturance, before they cried for it, as their needs were anticipated through their subtle physical signals (cf. Konner, 1972). ~'et how can one reconcile caregivers' permissiveness and general concern with their relative insensitivity to infants' caresses, fears and irritability? When adult permissiveness changed to restrictiveness as the child tried to detach himself, he resorted to aggression, characterized by temper, anger and attacks on his caregiver. At incipient mobility, he had to fight for his "biological and psychological right," as Rheingold and Eckerman (1970) put it, to learn the nature of his environment. At the same time, he demanded frequently recurring caregiving behavior, from his mother in particular, Did the inharmonious relationships he experienced with his main caregivers result in an unbalanced attachment-detachment pattern which in turn conditioned him for an agonistic separation? And did aggression, as a major ingredient of his detachment, further impair the attachment-detachment behavior? For infants to struggle so determinedly to depart, their surroundings presumably contained important and reassuring stimuli, among them, the extended family. This residential group dissipate~l their emotional ties and encouraged confidence in initiating exploration in an environment peopled with a range of familiar relatives. The following brief description of infant-adult interaction among the Karkar of Papua New Guinea, used purely as a comparison with major features of the Timorese data, may throw some light on questions raised here. THE KARKAR SAMPLE The social and physical environment

The Karkar environment has been described in detail elsewhere (McSwain, 1977b). Briefly, the subjects in this study came from villages where they lived either in extended family households or in nuclear families with close relatives adjacent to them. Although patrilineal and patrilocal, endogamy within the village is common, so that a woman might weU'live in close proxlm~ty to her own as well as to her husband's kin. Karkar falls into that majority Papua New Guinea category which Fisk (1966) labels "affluent subsistence." It produces ample food, mainly the starchy tuber, taro, and a range of other vegetables and fruit• The physical environment is a benign one, with rich volcanic soil and adequate rainfall. Until 1973, when its central volcanic vent began erupting violently for the first time since 1899, Karkar presented few, if any, physical dangers or discomforts. The families studied lived temporarily in the nearest mainland town of •

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Madang, but their backgrounds and close ties were village ones. Town life continued to provide alternative caregivers, since all families had some relatives in Madang with or near whom they lived. Absence from home heightened links with iron-relatives who filled this role admirably. Working for wages reduced the amount of time fathers spent with children and caused women to spend more time at home than would have been the case in their villages, where they would have tended sometimes distant gardens almost daily. But, as I point out later, they would have taken their infants with them to the gardens.

Karkar Major Activity Units Child Minding. Caregivers were consistently permissive in that they made themselves readily available and allowed infants complete freedom to detach themselves. They kept sleeping babies near them in their hanging net bags (bilums) and at all other times maintained considerable and close physical contact with supportive holds involving body, lap, arms and hands. Chowning (1972) claims that in some New Guinea societies, adults tease babies purely for their own amusement. Among the Karkar this was not so. Frequently playful, they rarely teased, or "groomed" infants. They encouraged crawling from three months and exploration from six months. Thenceforth, passive lap-holding was not enforced (Figure 5). With the exception of th~ Wogeo (Chowning, 1972), this seems the rule in Papua New Guinea. Differences between parents and other caregivers were less marked than in Timor, with perhaps a tendency for greater playfulness among the latter. Just under seven months old, No. 5 tried to stand alone, No. 8 crawled, although not on all fours (Figure 5), and No. 10 was a confident, independent walker. Less violently active before detaching themselves than were their Timorese counterparts, Karkar infants were not agonistic. They continued physical, then visual, contact with caregivers until past twelve months of age (No. 10) when they were content to go off with older siblings. Although mothers were seldom absent, babies had '6onsiderable contact with a range of auxiliary caregivers, mainly cousins, fathers' brothers' wives, siblings, mothers' sisters, fathers' sisters, grandmothers and unrelated neighbors, particularly childless married women. Fathers were loving and indulgent but could spend only a limited amount of time with their infants and were not involved in practical nurturance. Feeding. In general, Karkar feeding sub-components did not correspond markedly with Timorese ones; breast feeding seemed to be a panacea only in the case of hunger and fatigue, and when newly detached infants initiated suckling on their frequent returns to their mothers. Thex:e was less

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Figure 5. A Karkar baby of nine months three weeks crawls away from his mother on hands and knees.

interference in the form of playing, teasing and "grooming" from caregivers and bystanders; holds were supportive (Figure 6); there was little observable irritability and aggression in children. Sleeping. Suckling usually preceded sleep. Hence tired infants preferred their mothers. When held on the lap, they lay in the crook of one arm with a hand curved around their buttocks and the other hand curved around their legs to meet it. At times they were placed in bilums before or after falling alseep. If before, the caregiver put the strap of the hilum around her forehead and walked with a swaying motion, patting the infant's .buttocks (Figure 7). Once a child was asleep, the bilum was suspended from any convenient projection nearby. In sleep, Karkar babies remained in the midst of social activity and noise, but suffered no interference through teasing, "grooming" and caregivers' ongoing preoccupations.

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Figure 6. A Karkar baby of twelve months two weeks supported by mother's arms and hands during feeding.

Body Care. Gestures of distress similar to but less violent than those of Timorese infants did occur. As in Timor, the infants' attempts to overcome fear during bathing were met by permissiveness rather than positive remedial action to comfort. Other body care was casual and seemed acceptable to infants, except in the few cases of "grooming," which they stopped by pushing the offending hands away. Although suckling sometimes occurred after major body care, it was less frequent, less immediate and less sought after. SUMMARY OF KARKAR ADULT-INFANT PHYSICAL CONTACT AND COMPARISON IN BROAD TERMS OF MAIN TIMORESE AND KARKAR CHARACTERISTICS Karkar adult behavior can be characterized as permissive, attentive and unrestrictive. Karkar infant behavior was attaching, accepting and investi-

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Figure 7. A month old Karkar infant in a bilum on his mother's back.

gative. The infants detached themselves early and peacefully in the presence of caregivers' permissive, even encouraging, attitudes. The essential difference between the two groups is as follows: The Timorese caregivers deliberately disturbed and irritated infants and forcefully prevented them from exploring their environment, while the Karkar did not subject infants to irritations, humored early efforts at independence and actively contributed to the detachment process. The Timorese babies displayed agonistic behavior over detachment and in other contexts. The Karkar babies, passively accepting early close physical contact with" adults, participated in their detachment as a natural consequence of their increasing mobility and interest in their environment. The Timor and Karkar evidence support the following proposals: (a) infants leaving mothers are a universal phenomenon, even under widely differing circumstances.

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(h) detachment and attachment co-exist, but the degree of emphasis on one or the other may vary at a given age in different societies. (e) infants separate themselves voluntarily without anxiety, even in the wake of two very different sets of circumstances. (d) in situations both with and without infants' irritation, restriction and agonistic behavior, mothers continue to be regarded as secure bases and attachment and preference for them persist.

Freedman (1974) puts forward a case for Navajo babies accepting physical restriction on cradle boards because they are temperamentally suited to it, whereas only highly active infants would reject such confinement: I do not find his argument acceptable in the case of the Timorese. Apart from their reactions to the frustration already described, they gave little evidence of being particularly active or complaining. Therefore, it does seem likely that the restrictive behavior of Timorese caregivers did, indeed, result in agonistic infant behavior, especially since lack of restrictive behavior went hand in hand with a relative absence of aggression among Karkar babies (cf. Figures 2 and 5). The end result f o r both samples was broadly the same once detachment was actually achieved, with all infants eager to explore an environment which seemingly held no fears for them, interacting increasingly with their peers, yet regularly renewing physical or visual contact with caregivers. Such ultimate similarities are in line with Kagan's (1976) well-documented view of behavior development in which the capacities of children for change, provided their environments change, allow them to achieve ultimate psychological competence however restrictive their infancy may have been. The Karkar comparison further suggests that the relatively undemanding nature of Timorese infants, apart from their determined efforts to detach themselves, may not have been closely related to their considerable and long close physical contact with caregivers. Karkar babies appeared more accepting and contented with a much shorter period of close contact. Perhaps it is the quality of that contact that counts (cf. Ainsworth et al., 1974). For Karkar infants it was more secure; they were rarely mere objects of adult play and teasing; nor were they needlessly disturbed and irritated: Consequently, they might be expected to have fou0d their social environment more predictable and controllable than did their Timorese counterparts. Assessment of mothers' presence or absence is limited by two factors: the season in Timor and the special conditions of urban life in Madang. But a general knowledge of the two cultures indicates that Timorese mothers do leave infants to attend markets and festivities and to garden, whereas Karkar mothers, if they intend to rear their own children, mainly keep them with them or near them. How much infants equate auxiliary caregivers with mothers can be gauged from the behavior of mobile children in both soci-

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eties. In times of distress, the auxiliary caregiver was clearly less acceptable. This is not to deny the supportive role of the extended family but to relate the availability of the mother to a child's self-Confidence and contentment, and, as Weisner and Gallimore (1977) note for any range of caretakers, to point up the differing styles of care given. The Karkar infant had no need to put on a tantrum or to cry himself to sleep as did the Timorese displaying his need for his absent mother. The possible effects on Timorese babies of their caregivers' permissiveness on the one hand and insensitivity and even deliberate attempts to irritate on the other have been disct~ssed and compared with the effects of the Karkar adult pattern of permissiveness, greater awareness and responsiveness and general lack of intent to irritate. But the paradox of this combination of Timorese characteristics remains. Speculations within a mildly adaptive framework in respect to each society follow. Minturn and Lambert (1964) propose that socio-cultural factors, such as household composition or mother's work load, bring about methods of child rearing which must then be supported by a system of values and beliefs. But physical environmental factors have also influenced these methods, not only in the distant past, as in infant-mother attachment (Bowlby, 1969), but more recently, In LeVine's (1977) argument for parental adaptation to environmental threats to their children's safety and survival as the basis for child rearing practices, he cites the case of the Gusii of South Kenya. These people restrict their children's mobility (and hence their exploratory behavior) to prevent them from being burnt at domestic fires. Initially adapting only to this immediate hazard, Gusii mothers do not consider the long term effects of such restriction on their infants. LeVine lists numerous other physical dangers, but these mothers, having adaptively solved the one problem by restrictive back-carrying, now subscribe to this established custom itself, without anxiety over additional environmental threats which are, to a great extent, als0 controlled. In like manner, Timorese restrictive behavior may be related to the inadvisability of allowing infants to crawl or wriggle on their stomachs or buttocks over the sharp limestone outcrops. Extending this line of argument, it is suggested that adult insensitivity and deliberate irritation o f infants may

have derived in turn from the environmentally-influenced, long and trying period o f lapholding during which caregivers ranged from being inattentive to making playthings o f their charges f o r their own entertainment. Such paradoxical behavior occurs elsewhere. Mead and Macgregor (1951) commenting on similar characteristics among Balinese adults, explain diem as a deliberate preparation for the arrival of a new sibling, whether that sibling is expected oi" not. Du Bois (1944) reports these features among the Al0rese, where, in addition, the mother's day-long absence, resulting in hungerfrustration in the infant, fits ill with the considerable maternal concern and constant physical contact she maintains on her return. Maternal ambiva-

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lence towards Anbara Aboriginal infants in Australia has been described by Hamilton (1970). Karkar women, as elsewhere in Papua New Guinea, are responsible for the routine work which 19roduces the major part of the family's food requirements, as well as making a considerable contribution to cash crop production (McSwain, 1977b). At the same time, they undertake the full-time care (albeit with the support of relatives) of their infants. The bilumthey have devised as a cradle, perhaps in response to the economic demands made on them, may hang from a convenient branch, providing a high degree of safety, comfort and coolness for infants sleeping or, in some cases, lying looking at the trees or sky as their mothers work close by. Or they may hang on their mothers' backs. It enables women to carry their infants about with them safely and with relative ease. My own experience in using the Timor sling for my children is that, while it admirably transfers the weight of an infant from one's arms to one's neck or back and one.shoulder, it necessitates that one arm either supports the child's head or is on the alert to do so. The child can slip down and hence out of the sling over a period of time because support is not equally distributed over its body. It cannot be safely suspended from a branch or nail and consequently cannot provide secure sleeping accommodation for the Timor infant away from or outside his home. The environmental factor of physical danger is not so obvious on Karkar, where pigs constitute the main threat to crawling, exploring infants, but where soft volcanic soil can do no damage. Without this environmental barrier to early detachment, Karkar mothers allowed their children to try their strength soon after six months of age, hence releasing themselves from the trying circumstances of lap-holding but not of visual surveillance. As Chowning (1972) notes, parents are glad to be partly relieved of the burden. I stress the descriptive nature of the terms permissive and restrictive-they do not explain behavior. LeVine (1977) dismisses them as a dimension of parental ideology used to explain seemingly conflicting child-rearing practices. He argues in favor of cultural adaptation to a high infant mortality rate and low medical technology, in which concern for sheer survival of infants rather than for their emotional and behavioral development is paramount. This explanation accords well with the Timor data. Timorese mothers allowed the first efforts, at detachment after nine months and there was much struggling to contain their curious infants. But they did not permit them to depart entirely until they could go unscathedm they were not allowed to make mistakes. In this agonistic situation lay the infant's frustration and his caregiver's lengthy period of giving protection to an unwilling recipient. Out of this bound relationship emerged teasing and disturbing as an amusement for the adult and an irritation for the child. This pattern, as a probable adaptive response to physical hazards, was a customary and no doubt efficacious means o f achieving infant health and welfare.

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CONCLUSION

In spite of the considerable amount of material to be dealt with, the methodology as a whole has certain strengths. In particular, it has shown that time lapse data effectively gives a long term picture of various important forces in the relationship between caregivers and infants. In this respect, the study identifies a complex system of attraction and reversion on the part of infants, both pulling them towards caregivers and away towards the wider environment. It suggests a series of linked relationships possibly arising initially from physical danger in the environment and consequent restrictive child-rearing practices. The latter, now culturally perceived, have bound caregivers to their charges. Relief is sought in a cluster of actions generally disturbing to infants, who resort to aggression not only "to halt unwelcome attentions but to achieve freedom to explore the environment. Less general but equally relevant information also emerges about the various styles and significance of surrogate mothers and the relationship between extended households and infant detachment. The suggestion that restrictive infant experiences do not affect competence in older children or their adequate maturation is given some support but largely remains for further research.

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