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How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

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Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#51

Post by watwut »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #43
jacobolus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some other important differences: (1) Extended families live in a small area. There are many nieces and nephews and cousins so kids are playing in a big group of family and other neighbors, and e.g. girls start taking care of younger family members starting when they are 5 or 6 years old. (2) People work close to home, on work that is more or less comprehensible to a child, and often in groups. A group of p…

My mother is one of 12 kids. My father grew up on a farm, dirt poor. Your description to some degree fits my childhood. There were some really good things about growing up that way. But I was not thinking about romanticizing rural poverty. I was thinking about unfairly vilifying modern people whose choices grow out of wildly different circumstances, as if "your children should be doing more chores!" is yet one more m…

You dont need full time parent at home. That is really not the need. I also agree that "your child should do more chores" is just another guilt tripping of parents. If your child is lazy to wash dishes after dinner, absolutely needs to do more. But, as long as the child contributes without temper tamtrump to age-appropriate activities you all do and are needed (and still have time to learn and play), it is perfectly fine.

There is no need to artificially emulate a group of people living in different environment and situation.

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#52

Post by cambalache »

jordigh wrote: post #27

I know this is a bit petty, but I've stared to resent a little that even though I'm Mexican, I'm not considered Western. What am I, then? Eastern? Central? Southern? I'm not just arguing about the geography, but about the culture. I feel much more like a Canadian or a USian (or a Guatemalan) than I feel like an African, Middle Easter, East Asian, or South Asian. I speak the same languages as Europe, have been mostly…

My friend, this was something that surprised me 15-20 years ago when thanks to the Internet I started to interact with Americans. At the end Western is a code word for White dominated places or sometimes just Anglo. This came from Huntington's Clash of Civilizations a profoundly ignorant work.

As you wrote you can live in Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo or Mexico City, huge cosmopolitan places, maybe you have some recent relatives who came from Italy or Spain or Portugal, speak Spanish or Portuguese, are Catholic, read Cervantes, Proust, Camoes. Listen to Opera or Rock or Baladas. But somehow you are at outsider. Sam from Indiana is the only true inheritor of Homer, Pindarus and Quevedo legacy.

At the end my advice is to scoff and move on.

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#54

Post by DoreenMichele »

watwut wrote: post #51
DoreenMichele wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother is one of 12 kids. My father grew up on a farm, dirt poor. Your description to some degree fits my childhood. There were some really good things about growing up that way. But I was not thinking about romanticizing rural poverty. I was thinking about unfairly vilifying modern people whose choices grow out of wildly different circumstances, as if "your children should be doing more chores!" is yet one more m…

You dont need full time parent at home. That is really not the need. I also agree that "your child should do more chores" is just another guilt tripping of parents. If your child is lazy to wash dishes after dinner, absolutely needs to do more. But, as long as the child contributes without temper tamtrump to age-appropriate activities you all do and are needed (and still have time to learn and play), it is perfectly…

My recollection is you are not American. America has this romanticized ideal from the 1950s of a nuclear family with a full-time provider (the father), a full-time parent (the mother) and 2 or more children. This has not been reality for quite a long time. Our demographics have diverged from that in recent decades. But that mental model continues to basically poison American life, in part by dictating cultural norms that work for that lifestyle and don't work for any other.

If you come from a different context, maybe that doesn't need to be said. But in America, it very often needs to be said that a lot of Americans can't afford to live that way anymore because, if you don't say it, the assumption is "You neglectful parents, selfishly pursuing careers instead of taking care of your kids." Because America is very neurotic about some things.

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#56

Post by joesb »

PebblesRox wrote: post #20
keyle wrote: post #8

Very interesting. I thaught my toddler to help dad make his coffee in the morning... Puts the capsule in, pushes the long button, takes the capsule out... Then he smells the coffee and says 'nice' and feels the cup and confirms a job well done by saying 'hot'. It's surprising how quickly he learnt how to do it, and how keen he is to help dad do it, for no gain of his own. On the other hand begging him to eat, trick h…

If anyone wants to see this in action, someone took a video of their two-year-old making coffee. It’s impressive! (And adorable) https://www.paulaspencerscott.com/single-post/toddler-making...

But, imagine, if the kids fucked up once and burns his face with that coffee, many of use would be blaming the parent for involving him in such a dangersous task for a two-year-old.

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#57

Post by ponchotek »

itronitron wrote: post #26
rossdavidh wrote: post #12

Reminds me of something I read from Jared Diamond, wherein he said that in traditional societies that he had investigated, the kids play is just small versions of the adults life, that gets more and more realistic until it's the real thing. So, a child gets a piglet to look after, if the adults raise pigs. This would make sense from a biological point of view; the young watch the adults and imitate what they're doing…

Yes exactly, I give my children mini-screen devices so that they will be ready for their career of sitting in front of an adult-sized screen for 8 hours a day.

This is easily the best thing I have ever read in HN

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#58

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jordigh wrote: post #27

I know this is a bit petty, but I've stared to resent a little that even though I'm Mexican, I'm not considered Western. What am I, then? Eastern? Central? Southern? I'm not just arguing about the geography, but about the culture. I feel much more like a Canadian or a USian (or a Guatemalan) than I feel like an African, Middle Easter, East Asian, or South Asian. I speak the same languages as Europe, have been mostly…

> Mayans and I are by now part of the greater western world

"Western" is used as short-hand for the cultures "that have some origin or association with Europe. The term also applies beyond Europe to countries and cultures whose histories are strongly connected to Europe by immigration, colonization, or influence."

Modern Mexican culture could be argued to be "Western". It would be difficult, on the other hand, to argue Maya culture is Western.

> I feel much more like a Canadian or a USian

Linguistically, the use of "USian" strikes back at your argument. There is no ambiguity when someone says "I am American," as people from only one country identify themselves as such. Using the term "USian" thus explicitly rejects one's affiliation with the United States.

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#59

Post by JumpCrisscross »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #35

"The Mexican-American kids, aged 6 to 7, were doing about twice as much around the house as the middle-class European-American kids, on average," It's implied but not outright stated in the above quote: We are talking about households that are much, much poorer on average than "middle-class European-American kids." This is backed up by the photos in the article. So, if you have nothing else to do because your parents…

> poorer cultures wind up naturally more people centered than richer cultures, which wind up more thing centered

Source? Comparing Switzerland to the United States, and even within the United States, wealthy versus lower-income regions, I found lower to mid-middle class households to possess a more-pronounced attachment to possessions than households higher up. (Partly because attaining those things may have involved sacrifice for the former.)

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