NURTURANCE
Question: "Why is nurturance an important concept when trying to explain the behavior of children?"
Nurturance has been defined ms the response of helping other people (Baldwin, 1955, p. 164). Two situations which tend to elicit such behavior are: (1) the rendering of a favor or benefit, and (2) the presence of another person in trouble or distress.
Human behavior is systemic in its nature. Children develop as individuals through their experiences with other people, particularly family members and others with whom they live in close proximity. Children who do not learn to be nurturant do not respond with sympathy or compassion to the suffering of others. Having received little in the way of positive strokes or attention themselves, such children have not learned to convey themselves to others in this manner, including to their own children once they become adults. Devoid of vital physical and emotional contact with other people during critical develoF~ental periods, they my live out their lives as social isolates or develop antisocial tendencies.
Controlled studies have shown that infants need the touch of others, contact comfort, in order to have the ability to develop close personal relationships in adulthoed (Bowlby, 1973). Infants who are neglected, ignored, or for any reason do not experience enough touch, suffer mental and physical deterioration even to the point of death. Eric Borne (1963, p, 157) used the graphic expression that, "If the infant is not stroked, his spinal cord shrivels up."
REFERENCES
Baldwin, A.L. (1955). Bohavior and Development in Childhood, NY: Dryden Press.
Berne, E. (1963). Structure and Dynamics of Orqanizations and Groups, Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott.
Bowlby, J. (1973). Separation, Attachment & Loss, vol. 2. NY: Basic Books.
Thomas S. Rue, MA, NCC
December 21, 1991Psychological and Quantitative Foundations 7P:109
The University of Iowa - College of Education
Socialization of the School Age Child - Assignment #2
© 1991, Thomas S. Rue
Thomas Rue 1991-1993.
All rights reserved.
