How do early childhood experiences differ across cultures?

Evidence suggests that infancts acquire cultures, therefore making it a developmental process. The more one engages in cultural practices, the more ones way of thinking becomes a mere habit to response of such practices. An example of this is our present westernized culture consists in for example the way we eat. In early childhood you are fed whatever your parents choice of food is and after multiple consumptions of this type of food ( whether it be asian, italian, vegan etc.) than that practice becomes more habitulized and tend to follow it throughout your life span.

Transmitted versus Evoked Culture

Evoked culture is a way that different geographies can affect cultural norms. It is the notion that all people, regardless of where they are from, have certain biological encoded behavioural repertoires that are potentially accessible to them, and these repertoires are engaged when the appropriate situational conditions are present. That is, for example, all individuals are capable of acting in an intimidating manner when their child is being threatened by others. This ability to act in this manner is universally present, however it is only evoked in some people when they find themselves in a threatening situation. Transmitted culture is when people come to learn about particular cultural practices through social learning or by modeling others who live near them. For example, if you see your neighbour planting a specific seed and seeing benefits from doing so than you are more than likely to plant the same seed.

I believe that I grew up in and evoked culture when comparing my upbringing to how we pick our mates. Physical attractiveness means a lot to people in our culture these days. But that is not everything that us individuals are attracted to. Other characteristics consist of intelligence, kindness, sense of humor and so on.

Is Culture Unique to Humans?

Depending on what you believe is the appropriate definition of culture, anwswers the controversial question of whether culture is unique to humans. Although there is much evidnece of culture in the animal kingdom, still today not everyone believes in this research. I grew up interacting with many different animals such as dogs, cats, cows, horses etc. therefore due to my cultural upbringing, I previously noticed signs of cultural learning in these animals. For example, after hearing the sound of the food bag crinkling before being fed multiple times, the dog and cat symnolize and relate the sound to being fed. This learned experience shows that animals besides humans are able to engage in cultural learning.

There are often psychological processes from different cultures that are often found quite controversial to other cultures. For example, The Sambi is a tribe who lices in New Guinea. These cultures also have many differnet beliefs such as that femaleness is an innate natural essences, whereas maleness is a tenuous essence that must be explicitly cultivated. When borm, boys are viewed as existing in the female word, spending the majority of their time with their mothers and doing what are socially viewed as female tasks. When born, they also wear the same type of grass aprons as females from their tribe wear to distinguish between genders. In the Sambia tribe, it was a very crucil and demeaning process for boys to be 'masculanized'. Painful practices are often encountered in this transition such as piercing their septum of the nose and thrashing the boys with sticks. By the age of 7 years boys regularly ingest semen by performing daily oral sex on adolescent boys and men and around the age of 15 these boys switch roles and provide semen to younger boys. To me, I view this process as very unacceptable. I believe that part of this is due to the heterosexual word we grow up in. In our common culture, boys grow up to be men, not all children born are female and grow up to be men through 'masculization' by ingestion of semen etc. I have not been exposed to many different cultures throughout over my life, therefore I find this process extremely disturbing that it is considered a acceptable and mandatory process in certain cultures.