Birth and early childhood from a cultural-historical and ethnological point of view

Abstract

There is no universal “childhood” that would be valid for all times and places. The life of children varies in time and space, in relation to social circumstances in each culture, society and community. This general statement can help us create a suitable framework for reflection on the need to learn “the stage of birth” of a person, or to be more precise, of a little person who becomes the object and subject of social and cultural existence. From a whole range of more general and more specific points of view (biological developmental, psychological, emotional, socialization-related, educational and so on), the ethnological or anthropological point of view appears to be the most multidimensional and holistic because it integrates many of the mentioned points of view and respects many other contexts of this changing phenomenon, the individual and historical stretch of human existence. It may be this multidimensionality that poses a difficult task for a researcher: where to grasp or from which direction to approach the defined, or how to define the universal and at the same time specific period which reflects particular geographical and historical, social and ethnic dimensions of an individual existence.