Give me the childrearing practice, and I will give you the culture: The Developmental Psychology of Hindu Freedom and Illusion

The founder of the Jesuit order, St. Ignatius of Loyola, is famously associated with the saying, “Give me the child until the first seven years, and I will give you the man.” He was, rightly of course, recognizing the importance of the first several years of life for the formation of adult personality and commitment. I propose a revision: “Give me the childrearing practice, and I will give you the culture.” This revision is based primarily on the work of the anthropologist M. Small in her book, Our Babies, Ourselves: “The general structure of any culture can be understood at a fundamental level by following the treatment of children.” This paper proposes that in order to understand two of the central elements of Hindu religious culture, one must understand Hindu childrearing practices. 

There are, of course, many themes animating Hindu religious culture. To choose just two on which to focus scholarly attention is perhaps arbitrary, but only to a certain degree. The concepts of moksha (freedom) and maya (illusion) are found throughout many of the Hindu sectarian traditions. Generally considered, maya communicates the notion that the external, material world is fundamentally unreal and untrustworthy. Freedom from such illusion – which is often referred to as moksha – is often the denouement of religious practice. 

This paper proposes that Hindu childrearing practices account for the general themes of maya and moksha. It is, therefore, important to characterize accurately such practices; after all, and as the psychologist J. Chisholm notes, “The most adaptively significant feature of children’s environment has always been… the quantity and quality of parental investment they receive.” Attempts at characterizing Hindu childrearing practices have been made. There is disagreement. For instance, the famous, not to mention late, Indian psychoanalyst, Sudhir Kakar, argues that Hindu mothers are indulgent with their infants. This indulgence is understood to be both physical and emotional. Hindu children, especially males, are treated as if they were gods, according to Kakar. This account has been criticized. Stanley Kurtz, for instance, cites several ethnographic sources that problematize Kakar’s account. Kurtz suggests that there may be a mild form of indulgence, but this is not across both physical and emotional registers. Kurtz demonstrates that Hindu mothers may physically indulge the child, but they emotionally withdraw. These dynamics are in place, ostensibly, in order to discourage the child from forming an exclusive attachment to the mother. This is done to encourage the child to form attachments to a group of “in-law mothers.” Such dynamics are in the service of promoting a collective sense of self, a sense conducive to collectivist living in South Asia. Why might this be the case?

The anthropologist Robert LeVine argues that there are two predominant types of childrearing practice, that is, the pedagogical and the pediatric. The former type encourages emotional development and socialization; the latter nurtures, almost exclusively, the physical well-being of the child. The distinction between the two ultimately reflects the degree to which the local ecology is burdened with infectious disease. Infectious disease ecologies promote the pediatric style. Kurtz’s characterization of Hindu childrearing practices falls within the purview of this style. Hindu mothers practicing pediatric childrearing styles tend to withhold emotional investment, perhaps recognizing implicitly the statistical probabilities of infant mortality. 

Pediatric styles of childrearing tend to nurture insecure-anxious attachments. Such attachments encourage the child to seek proximity to an otherwise-preoccupied parent. Importantly, insecure-anxious attachments are conducive to collectivist living. Collectivism is itself an antipathogen psychology. Collectivists are wary of interactions with strange others, that is, they tend not to be extraverted or open to new experiences. This is the case because of the geography of immunocompetence. Local groups are adapted to their disease ecologies, rendering strange others as potential vectors for a novel, infectious outbreak. It appears that Hindu childrearing practices are pediatric in nature. They nurture the physical survival of the child amidst a robust disease ecology as well as an attachment style characterized as insecure-anxious. Insecure-anxious children become collectivist adults. Here is where we can locate an explanation for Hindu maya and moksha.

Maya characterizes a world that is illusory and painful. In contrast to Erik Erikson’s sense of the normative nature of basic trust, maya reflects a perception of basic mistrust. Significantly, the Hindu goddess is occasionally called, Mahamaya, the Great Mother/Great Illusion. I propose that in order to understand this central, metaphysical component of Hinduism, we must understand the treatment of children in Hindu India. Burdened with a robust disease ecology, Hindu mothers must first and foremost ensure the physical survival of the child, the putative goal of pediatric childrearing. The ensuing, psychological impact upon the child encourages a perception of the mother, and eventually the world, as potentially one of uncertainty and thus illusion. The realities of the infectious disease burden in Hindu South Asia encourage a childrearing practice that eventually leads to a metaphysical claim about the world: the world is illusory (maya), a world from which freedom is sought (moksha). Accordingly, give anyone the childrearing practice, and they will give you the culture.