Читать книгу Child Psychology I: Development in the First Four Years - Vilhelm Rasmussen - Страница 8

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The development upon which the newborn child enters is determined by two factors: inheritance and the influence of environment.

By inheritance from its ancestors a child receives at the moment of fecundation the potentialities of powers which according to circumstances may either be unfolded into actualities or slumber concealed to be possibly handed on to a later generation. From recent years’ investigations on inheritance in plants and animals with which it is permissible to experiment, it results that the parental organisms inherit according to definite laws the potentialities of qualities in their offspring; and special investigations dealing with man indicate that the same laws also hold good for the human species, as indeed one might have anticipated.^[1] In the form of potentiality there are inherited physical qualities, diseases and predisposition to diseases, as also mental characteristics. For example, there are inherited the colour of the eyes, harelip, cleft palate, dwarfishness, gigantic stature, drooping eyelids, colour-blindness, deaf and dumbness, baldness, smallness of brain and skull, hæmophilia, diabetes, weakness or abnormality of the nervous system, shortness of life, mental disease, criminal propensities, lack of moral sense. Other extremely serious mental defects are hereditary in at least particular families, while, conversely, high intellectual gifts and musical talent are hereditary in other families.

The inheritance of potentialities from parents, and through them from remoter ancestors, is the fixed element in the new individuals career, but external conditions co-operate to a high degree in determining the realisation of the potentialities.

Even during pregnancy external conditions begin to make their influence felt, especially by the way in which the fœtus receives nourishment, but also in other ways. From the moment of fecundation to that of birth the new human being is dependent on the mother’s organism. She supplies it with nourishment, and is capable of infecting it, for example, with syphilis; she can do it harm by over-exertion, dissipation, and other abnormal modes of life. The birth of healthy offspring is therefore to a high degree a social question; for it is only when every mother lives under conditions of security and leads a truly rational life, that the good potentialities inherited by her child can be unfolded to the best extent possible. It has been established, for example, that the employment of mothers in work with poisonous substances, like lead, is highly injurious to their children; and severe labour, especially factory labour in unhealthy rooms, exercises a very unfortunate influence on the development of the unborn child. Again, it is better to live out in the country than in large towns. It is also, of course, a matter of great importance how long a time intervenes between successive births, especially with regard to the child’s viability. A child, so far as can be seen, has so much the greater chance of living out its first year the longer the time that has elapsed since the preceding birth.

After birth, food has more importance than anything else for the child’s physical and mental thriving. No artificial food can replace breast milk. The mortality of infants decreases in the same proportion as the period of nursing increases. Families which feed their infants artificially lose on the average five times as many children in their first year as families in which the children are nursed for a sufficient length of time. But the importance of nursing can also be demonstrated later on in life. An examination of 6744 men of twenty from Thuringia and Saxony showed that the percentage fit for military service was the greater the longer they had been nursed as infants. Nursing has also a demonstrable importance for the mind. At Dresden the character “very good” was, among 1075 children, received to a larger percentage by those who had been nursed for a long period; conversely, the character “unsatisfactory” or “bad” was relatively more frequent the shorter the period of nursing had been. Of course the results of such statistical investigations cannot be applied to each individual. The important thing, first and foremost, is the nature of the inherited potentialities, and, in addition, the character of the artificial food. But, other things being equal, it is found that the initial potentialities are best unfolded when the child is nursed for the normal period.

After weaning, external conditions, particularly food, have still an extraordinarily great importance for a child’s development. Comprehensive investigations on school-children have shown among other things that a child’s “ability,” more correctly, its capacity for work, depends more on the circumstances of the parents than on their nationality: that is, underfed children are incapable of fully developing their inborn potentialities. Within one and the same community the general rule holds that the physically well-developed children surpass the less well-developed in the matter of mental work. It is of importance, among other things, whether children grow up in the country or in large towns; for village children are on the average both taller and of better chest-measurement than town children of the same age-class.

Each of the two factors named as determining an individual’s development, inheritance and conditions of life, thus exercises an influence of extraordinary significance.

In the first period of the infant’s life, however, there is not so much to be noticed in the way of individual characteristics. Although infants may differ greatly in particular points, even when they are brothers or sisters, or indeed twins, the main lines of development are the same for all children. If they are normal, they all, for example, begin some fine day to babble or to walk. On the other hand, the time at which each power becomes manifest may vary in a fairly high degree. In the main, however, the infant’s development follows a general rule; individual peculiarities make their appearance later.

In the first period after birth the child is almost exclusively occupied in developing itself physically. Cleansing and feeding take up nearly all the time that the child is awake. All the same, significant progress does occur, not least by aid of the child’s two chief wants, cleanliness and food. The way to the child’s heart lies through its stomach. The infant smiles first at its mother, who feeds and tends it; and it shows friendliness to other members of its circle in accordance with the services which they render to it. But it grows in ability to show sympathy, and is thus already on the way towards becoming a social being.

It is, however, difficult to catch the beginnings of the individual attributes of the soul. That which commonly is taken as the first sign of sympathy, the first sign of intelligence, and so on, is oftenest merely the first observed exercise of a power which has long ago begun to develop. To detect indications of the higher activities of the soul is really a very difficult task, success in which is many a time due to a pure stroke of luck.

Most of the infant’s activity consists of spontaneous or reflex movements or expressions of instinct. In the waking state, as is well known, the infant lies and kicks, especially when it is being put to rights; but this kicking is purely spontaneous and quite involuntary, although it forms a very important piece of gymnastics. Nor is the infant’s ability to take food, when it has sufficiently rested after the birth, the result of any higher activity of the soul, but depends on a innate instinct. The child does not, however, quite at first understand how to suck, but needs a trifle of practice; and it is a long while before it can find the nipple for itself when laid to the breast. The human infant is not indeed quite so helpless as the young of the Marsupialia, which have the milk pumped into their mouths by contractions of the teats; but being unable to find the nipple for itself it must be placed where its mouth can grasp it. The infant can only open its mouth; the mother must direct it to the right place. When the newborn child becomes hungry it begins to suck while still in the cradle, before it is taken up, as I have noticed in the case of my second child, S.; and when the nurse lifted her to lay her to the breast she began to suck at the nurse’s hand. The infant takes its food blindly.

[1]	For further detail on this see Vilhelm Rasmussen, Menneskets Udvikling.