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Biosocial Perspectives on Children, edited by Catherine Panter-Brick. Biosocial Society Symposium Series 10. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 160 pp. $54.95 (hardback), $19.95 (paperback).
Good things often come in little packages. This is a book of 4 state-of-theart reviews encompassing childhood as a biological phenomenon and as a sociocultural phenomenon, childhood biological variation and health, and childhood psychological development. There are 2 other chapters that discuss and synthesize the 4 reviews, and these add considerably to the book's value for undergraduate and postgraduate students, at whom it is aimed. The emphasis is very much on both evolutionary and anthropological perspectives.
The first review chapter, by Barry Bogin, considers the "evolutionary and biological aspects of childhood." This is a synthesis of Bogin's ideas that childhood is a feature unique to Homo, arising because of the fitness benefits it bestows upon the mother as well as the child. First, Bogin argues that childhood is not a consequence of heterochrony but rather arose de novo. At least in 1 respect he must be correct, because if childhood is absent from other species except our recent extinct ancestors, it must be new, but in other respects it must be due to changes in developmental timings, as evidenced by data presented later in the chapter that show delays in tooth eruptions and sexual maturity milestones. Indeed, presenting the explanations as a dichotomy seems simplistic, although it does serve the purpose of stimulating discussion. To some extent the problem is due to differences in perspective that depend on the level of focus (genes, individuals, societies) and the difficulties generated by attaching names for convenience to sections of a continuous process (e.g., mitosis and meiosis).
Bogin next reviews the patterns of physical and behavioral changes associated with human development, placed in a generalized mammalian context. "Childhood is defined as the period following weaning, when the youngster still depends on older people for feeding and protection." For heuristic purposes this definition would be better if it included the endpoint of the period. This section also has a graph of stature/weight growth that shows no evidence of an asymptotic trend at age 20! These minor criticisms aside, the latter part of Bogin's chapter is an excellent account of how and why childhood may...