Publications [#237812] of Naomi Quinn

Published Articles

1. Quinn, N (2005). Universals of Child Rearing. Anthropological Theory, 5(4), 475-514. (A winner of the 2009 Boyer Prize for Contributions to Psychoanalytic Anthropology, awarded by the Society for Psychological Anthropology.). [doi]
   (last updated on 2020/02/16)

   Abstract:
   This article delineates four universal features of child rearing that together explain how child rearing everywhere so effectively turns children into valued adults. Cultural models for child rearing, so variable in the substance of what they teach, are all equally designed to make the child's experience of those important lessons constant, to link those lessons to emotional arousal, to connect them to evaluations of the child as approved or disapproved of, and to prime the child to be emotionally predisposed to learn them. This design insures that the child is receptive to these lessons, and that the lessons themselves are unmistakable, motivating, and memorable. The result, human adulthood, could not be accomplished otherwise. Copyright 2005 SAGE Publications.