JOURNEY OUT OF
BABYHOOD
An Inuit
Childhood Drama
Jean L.
Briggs
Memorial
University of Newfoundland
CREDIT "Journey
out of Babyhood" is adapted from chapter 2 of Jean L. Briggs, INUIT
MORALITY
PLAY, Yale
University Press and, in Canada, ISER Books, Memorial University of
Newfoundland,
1998. The title of
the paper is borrowed from a subtitle in chapter 6.
(c)Jean L, Briggs
You may go
directly to:
This paper is a
story about a child - a three-year-old Inuit[ii]
girl whom I call Chubby Maata. The
story is about
how Chubby Maata learns to become a social person - and to become aware that she
is one.
But it's about
more than that, too. Inuit have an extraordinarily powerful way of acquainting
children
with the
difficult issues and situations that they'll have to deal with in their everyday
lives. They
playfully blow up
the plots larger than life; turn them into dramas and dilemmas that children
experience
as dangerous; set
children down at the mouths of labyrinths; and then abandon the children - so
the
innocents imagine
- to solve the problems with their own resources. A child trying to find a safe
passage
through the maze,
gets quite a lot of experience with real life; and we, watching her
vicissitudes, can
learn quite a lot
about matters of more scholarly interest. We can learn about the process of
growing up -
or in academic
jargon: "child development". We can also learn how culture comes to be
experienced and
internalized by
those who grow up in it; about the emotional underpinnings or dynamics of
morality; and
about the
operation of play and of imagination in social life, among other things. I'm
only going to point
you toward the
tips of a few of these icebergs today. My intention is to give you material to
think with, in
whatever
direction you choose - which is a very Inuit way of proceeding with
education.
The drama I'm
going to describe is not one of the most vivid ones. I could have told you about
a
drama in which
Chubby Maata's doting grandmother celebrates and tests her beloved granddaughter
by
telling her in no
uncertain terms that the whole world considers her - and especially her genitals
-
BAAAD: "Isn't
that so?"[iii]
Or I might have told you how Chubby Maata's mother shows her
daughter
her bleeding
finger, and an aunt, playing stooge, solemnly assures the child that her mother
is going to
die, and asks her
whom she wants to live with now. Or I might have described how Chubby
Maata's
grandmother asks
another threeyearold granddaughter why she doesn't kill her newborn brother:
"like
this"showing the
child how to tip the baby out of her parka hood - and then begs the little girl
to die, so
that she -
grandma - can have the child's beautiful new shirt: "Why don't you die? You
don't want to die?
Do die!
..."
By comparison
with these shockers, the game I call "Because you're a baby" is so mild,
benign,
and emotionally
unchallenging to the foreign naked eye as to be almost invisible at first
glance. But it
would be a
mistake to overlook the "Baby" drama. It lays the foundation for all the others;
it's subtle, and
rich in lessons.
It cracks the baby's cocoon, and lets in the chilly air of the larger world - a
bracing
atmosphere that
allows the social person to form and grow.
Chubby Maata was
a child of hunters, and at the time of this story, she was growing up in
a
nomadic camp, in
the company of sixty or so other Inuit, all kin of one sort or another. From the
point of
view of Chubby
Maata at the age of not-quite-three, the world revolved around her. Like many
other
muchloved Inuit
children, she was fed when she was hungry; comforted and rescued when she
was
unhappy; was
often given baby bottles of milk on demand; was cleaned when she was dirty; and
was put
to sleep when she
was sleepy. And she was almost always within touching distance of a loving
caretaker:
an aunt, a
cousin, an uncle or grandparent, her father, and most often, her mother.[iv]
Chubby Maata
knew that she was
very much loved and she revelled in that condition.[v]
Chubby Maata's
parents enjoyed their little daughter's babyness as she did, and they
often
celebrated it, as
we will see. But even a muchenjoyed baby must someday become a child, and the
child
an adult. The
symbiosis must be loosened, and the celebration given up if the baby is to
become a social
person and not a
toy. How can caretakers communicate these hard necessities to the baby they
dearly
love, who dearly
loves being what she is? And what can possibly motivate her to outgrow the
Garden of
Eden?
Of course,
sometimes going off by oneself, exploring new skills and independence, can be
fun. But
sometimes it is
the adult who wants the child to grow up and stop being a nuisance. Then what
do
socializers do?
In all cultures, I imagine, they use a variety of strategies. In our world, in
the carrot
department, I've
seen parents encourage, cajole, reward, bargain, and bribe; in the stick
department, we
wield criticism
and punishment: "You're too old for that, now." "That's not nice!" "Time out!"
"Go to
your room." "No
candy today." Or simply: Whack! To a large degree, we impose growing up, and
the
pace of it. (I
know there's another side to the picture, and I don't like to sound unfair; but
I do want to
make you think -
or "let" you think, as an Inuk would put it - about some of the characteristics
of our
practices, to
prepare you for seeing what's different about Inuit ways.)
Notice several
things about the familiar strategies I've mentioned. First, they all create
an
oppositional
relationship between socializer and tyro, whether the relationship treats of
rewards or
punishments, of
coaxing or criticizing. Mother (or another adult) metes out the treatment, and
the child
accepts,
negotiates, argues, or tries to reject it.
In the second
place, the reward, punishment, or bargain is most often mediated by the
socializer; it
is external and
arbitrary, in the sense that it is not an intrinsic consequence of the behaviour
the adult
wants to change.
What do I mean? If a child plays with a knife and cuts herself, that's an
intrinsic
punishment; if
the child plays with a knife and mother takes it away, that's an arbitrary
punishment, a
consequence that
doesn't follow naturally from the child's dangerous action. Similarly, if a shy
child
approaches an
adult, tentatively, and the adult smiles and hugs the child, that's an intrinsic
reward; if
mother says,
"There's my good, big girl," it's a mediated or external reward.
Another
characteristic of some of the parental responses that I listed just now is that
they follow
from the child's
chronological age ("you're too old..." or "not old enough"), instead of from her
own
individual
capabilities, understandings, and tendencies. These judgments are arbitrary,
too, in that they
don't exactly fit
the child. There are profound lessons for the tyro in this approach to
socialization -
lessons about the
locus of power; the arbitrariness of social rules (from the child's point of
view); and the
unimportance of
idiosyncracy and an individuated self.
Now, I'm not
going to claim that the Inuit adults I watched didn't hold the balance of power,
or that
they never
exerted arbitrary authority, and never imposed their will on children. They did
all those
things. But there
were striking differences, too, between the ways they treated children and the
ways we
Inuit didn't
impose age- or stage-related standards of behaviour on children of any age.
Parents
watched every
single child. They acquainted themselves with the emotional and social issues
that
exercised each
child - often they provoked or nudged children into being exercised, as we'll
see - and
then observed the
child's progress in dealing with the issues. They observed the development of
physical
skills, too, of
course. And all this information guided their educational efforts. Moreover,
criticisms -
especially when
children were small - rarely had an angry, or even serious, tone. Anger was
thought to be
demeaning both to
the child and to the adult critic who lowered herself or himself to the child's
level.
Argument was
avoided, too. It was considered unproductive, since it pitted socializer against
tyro, and
made the child
resistant to influence. Argument would have modelled the wrong behaviour, too,
since
confrontation in
adult life was avoided at all costs, as a very dangerous business. Adults did
sometimes
tell children
what the social rules were, but they never enforced the rule or insisted that
the children
follow it, on
pain of this or that. Sometimes adults offered false blandishments to very young
children, or
warned them of
imaginary dangers; but when they saw the anthropologist watching, they excused
their
behaviour a
little sheepishly by explaining that small children haven't learned to think,
and to recognize
truth yet, and
therefore it's ok to lie. But most often adults simply laughed; started a
distracting game; or
ignored a child
who was being unruly or intrusive, and waited for the child to learn to think,
that is, to
develop social
awareness by using her, or his, own mind.
What interested
me most about Inuit childrearing was the play I mentioned, which
provided
children with
opportunities for learning to think - and very early, too. Play that taught
children not only
to think but to
feel and to value in Inuit ways - to perceive dangers where adult Inuit perceive
dangers; to
be drawn to
certain situations and behaviours, and to be repelled or outraged by others.
Play that taught
children to
recognize issues and to take part, all unwitting, in the plots, the dramas, of
Inuit everyday life,
so that they
would be able to move out into that world, feeling themselves to be independent
and
responsible
actors, able to exercise judgment and make decisions with culturally appropriate
sensitivity.
Learning these
plots required alertness and sensitivity because they were subterranean and
unspoken; and
because the
dangers, too, were either subterranean or outside the warm and visible social
circle.
There are a
number of issues that engage three-year-old Chubby Maata and her family: What
is
she (baby or
child), and which does she want to be? Where does she belong? (That is, where is
home,
emotionally
speaking?). How should she relate to the people around her? (That is, whom does
she like
and dislike? and
whom should she like?). And how is she herself regarded by others? (Is she good?
bad?
lovable? not
lovable?). None of these questions have simple answers. For example, the right
answer to
how Chubby Maata
should regard other human beings is that she should like everybody, so
that
everybody will
like her, but at the same time she should be a bit afraid of liking and being
liked - a bit
watchful - lest
she be attacked, or stolen, or overcontrolled. But in spite of their complexity
- or perhaps
because of it? -
none of these issues are ever discussed in serious life, and none are the
subject of serious
instruction,
criticism or scolding. Instead, all of them - and the plots that shape them -
make their
appearance,
sometimes singly, sometimes multipley, and often ambiguously or even
contradictorily - in
play. Most of the
dramas are initiated by adults, but Chubby Maata is the principal actor,
sometimes
wittingly,
sometimes not. And often, as we will see, she is a very creative
actor.
We go now to one
of the first issues of all: the problem of leaving babyhood. And I'll try to
show
you how - I think
- an Inuit approach works.
The actors in the
drama are Chubby Maata; her mother, Liila; her four-year-old sister, Rosi,
and
Liila's teenage
sister, Luisa.
Liila and her two
daughters, Rosi and Chubby Maata, came into my tent to visit. Liila sat
down,
and four-year-old
Rosi sat down between her knees, in the place usually reserved for Chubby Maata.
The
place of a
baby.
Chubby Maata
wasn't at all happy with her sister's occupation of her territory, and she
expressed
her displeasure
with a wordless moo - a sound that one often hears from Inuit children who are
annoyed.
In this case the
protest had no apparent effect, either on Rosi or on Liila. Liila kneaded her
gum between
her teeth, pulled
one end out in long threads and put it back to be kneaded again, all the time
looking off
into space.
Rosi's expression was as blank as her mother's.
Chubby Maata was
not discouraged. "Remove her!" she demanded, addressing her mother.
Liila
continued to chew
her gum, apparently hearing and seeing nothing. Chubby Maata insisted:
"Remove
that one!" Still
no response. "Remove Rosi!" No response. Her mother went on playing with her
gum.
What to do now?
Chubby Maata, having reached a dead end on the road of direct demand,
took
Liila's gum out
of her mouth, put it in her own mouth and began to chew it. This was not at all
an unusual
thing for a
little girl to do, but in doing it, she made some gesture that made her mother
laugh. "Do this,"
Liila said,
smiling at Chubby Maata, and in rapid succession she clapped her hands and
slapped her
knees, then
crossed her arms and held her nose with one hand and her ear with the other.
Chubby Maata
imitated one
gesture after the other. Her face was a funny mixture of brilliant beam and
concentration,
and her arms were
a tangle. Rosi began to imitate too, with just as much enjoyment and no more
success,
and all three
laughed happily together.
Suddenly Chubby
Maata said to her mother: "Shall I sit here?" This time, she pointed to a
spot
beside Liila.
Liila countered playfully: "Squat on the floor." But when Chubby Maata didn't
respond to
that suggestion,
Liila said, "All right," and Chubby Maata sat down beside her.
I watched all
this with amusement, leaning back comfortably against my sleeping bag with
my
hands behind my
head. Chubby Maata, now established beside her mother, looked at me, put her
hands
behind her head
and said in a pleased tone: "Yiini" (it was my name). Liila and I
laughed.
At this point,
Liila's 19yearold sister Luisa came in, and Liila said to Chubby Maata:
"Imitate
Yiini." The word
she used means literally "pretend Yiini." Chubby Maata immediately repeated
her
imitation, but
this time, instead of 'Yiini' she said, "Tiini," as a smaller child might do.
There were still a
lot of words that
Chubby Maata herself mispronounced, but 'Yiini' wasn't one of them.
Luisa
nevertheless asked, "Tiini?" - questioning, the way Inuit do when they want to
make a
person think
again about the correctness of something she or he has said. But Chubby Maata
repeated:
"Tiini." Luisa
questioned again several times: "Tiini?" and each time Chubby Maata
confidently
confirmed:
"Tiini."
Finally, Rosi,
seeming impatient with her little sister's mispronunciation, said in an
emphatic,
how-can-you-be-so-silly
voice: "Yiini!" It was clearly her intention to correct. But Chubby Maata
replied
in her innocent
voice: "Tiini?"
Liila intervened.
Her tone caressed Chubby Maata and dramatized her affection for her; it was
a
playful version
of the voice that Qipisa parents and grandparents often used to babies and small
children
to teach them
that they were loved, and what she said was: "Say 'ungaa' (make the cry of a
baby) because
you're a baby."
When Liila said "ungaa," her voice was the voice of a tiny baby crying. And
Chubby
Maata's voice,
when she echoed, "ungaa," was just like her mother's. Liila hugged her
daughter
extravagantly and
exclaimed in the same intense, playful voice: "Unakuluuuk! That darling little
one!"
Then, still in
the same playful voice, a chant that rose at the end of each word, she dictated
for
Chubby Maata to
repeat: "Anaanak!" "Ataatak!" "Amaamak!" "Uquuquu!" The words mean
'mother,'
'father,' 'suck'
or 'baby bottle,' and 'meat' - all wellworn words in Chubby Maata's baby
vocabulary; and
both the words,
and the voice in which Liila said them, assured Chubby Maata that she was a
baby.
Chubby Maata's
voice again echoed her mother's exactly, as she repeated: "Anaanak!" "Ataatak!"
and
"Amaamak!" but
when she said "uquuquu" she added another syllable: "Uquuququu!" She was
saying
the word this
time not only like a mother talking to her baby but also as the baby herself
might say it.
And Liila gave
her another extravagant hug. They repeated the same litany several times,
celebrating
babyness.
But suddenly
there was a rude interruption. Somebody (it was Luisa) pushed Chubby
Maata's
bottom lightly
with her foot. The spell was broken. Chubby Maata turned, looking annoyed, and
asked:
"Who's hurting
me?" There was no answer.
Instead, Liila
said to Chubby Maata: "Say 'ungaa'." Again the voice of the tiny baby.
Chubby
Maata echoed,
"Ungaa." And again her mother hugged her. Liila didn't succeed in restoring
the
celebration,
though, because Luisa's push had given Rosi an idea. Now it was Rosi who
attacked Chubby
Maata from
behind, smiling broadly, and this time Chubby Maata was in no doubt as to who
the
aggressor
was.
Liila explained.
"Because you're a baby she's attacking you; she's ugiat-ing you." In using the
word
ugiat-, Liila
implied that Rosi's attack was motivated by affection. People often expressed
intense
affection toward
babies in aggressive ways which were called ugiat-. I suspect that Rosi's
motives were
less benign;
nevertheless, Liila's explanation made the attack playful; and since it was
playful, it was
safe. So the
children wrestled together, laughing - until Rosi exercised a little too much
strength. "A'aaa
(ouch)!"
exclaimed Chubby Maata.
"Say 'ungaa',"
said Liila; "cry, and I'll rescue you." This time she used the ordinary, adult
word,
qia, for 'cry'.
And this time Chubby Maata didn't reply immediately. But after a minute she did
say,
"Ungaa," and then
Liila, laughing, pushed Rosi away from her sister. Rosi returned, however, and
the
two girls began
again to wrestle and to laugh - until once, when Chubby Maata attacked Rosi,
Rosi, still
laughing, ran to
hide behind Luisa, who was standing near the door.
Liila held out
her hands to Rosi, beckoning her affectionately. But when Rosi trustfully
came
toward her,
Liila's arms shot out, not to embrace but to imprison her. Holding Rosi down,
she said to
Chubby Maata:
"Hurt her; make her angry; hold your hand on her head so she can't get
up."
Chubby Maata
said: "Shall I pull her hair?" She clutched a handful of hair, but Rosi cried
out,
"Aa'aaa!" and
Liila said, "No, just hold your hand on her head so she can't get up." Chubby
Maata did
that, but Rosi
wrenched herself free and escaped back to Luisa.
Then the
wrestling began again, and Liila, with an amused look, commented to everybody
and
nobody: "She -
she meant Chubby Maata - is really fighting!" The children were, indeed,
beginning to
look angry, and
they strained against each another, trying to push each other over. Their
earnestness was
comical, and
Liila, Luisa, and I broke into laughter; but at the same time, when the girls
began to flail at
each other, Liila
took the precaution of holding her hand between them. She didn't really want to
lose a
daughter.
Then, suddenly,
she said: "Be good, please; someone's coming in!" I hadn't heard anything and
the
children hadn't,
either, but they stopped fighting and one of them asked: "Who is it?" Liila
lowered her
voice to an
intense whisper, resonant with memories of bugaboos, and said: "Visitors from
another
camp!" The effect
was magical, as Liila had every reason to think it might be. 'Visitors from
other camps'
were a formidable
presence in the worlds of Qipisa three- and four-year-olds, and in fact, made
their
elders somewhat
uneasy, too. So the children stood still and waited.
For a few minutes
no one came in. But then we heard footsteps in the porch and the door opened
to
reveal - not
"visitors" but two very familiar boys, the girls' uncles Juda and
Matiiusi.
Rosi and Chubby
Maata were on easy and playful terms with both boys. But this time, when
the
boys came in,
Rosi whispered in Liila's ear: "Let's go to Kaati's." And Chubby Maata whispered
in her
other ear: "Let's
go home." Liila made no response at all to Rosi's plea and pretended not to have
heard
Chubby Maata's.
She made her repeat it several times: "Hai?" "Hai (what did you
say)?"
Chubby Maata did
repeat her request several times, at first in a whisper but each time a little
more
distinctly, and
finally Liila said: "Say 'ungaa' and we'll go home." This time her voice was not
playful, it
was
matter-of-fact. Chubby Maata didn't respond at once, but when she did say
"ungaa," her voice was
matter-of-fact
like her mother's, and immediately afterwards she claimed fulfillment of the
bargain.
"Come on! Let's
go home!"
But Liila didn't
seem to be listening. She said in an abstracted voice: "After awhile." It was
the
standard putoff.
Then, speaking again to Chubby Maata, she asked: "Shall Yiini and Luisa come
and
visit?" Chubby
Maata wrinkled her nose to say no, and Liila laughed. I joined in, repeating the
question
for confirmation,
as Inuit often do: "Chubby Maata! You don't want me to visit?" "That's right,"
said
Chubby Maata; she
did not want me to visit. Liila said in a tone of amused surprise: "She agrees!"
And
then, speaking to
Chubby Maata, she asked in the same amused tone: "Because you still don't like
her?"
Chubby Maata
opened her eyes wide and raised her brows to say yes, confirming that her mother
had
understood her
motive; and again Liila and I laughed.
Then, finally,
Liila and the children left, Liila saying: "Come on! Let's go home"the same
words
that she had
ignored when Chubby Maata said them a few minutes earlier. Luisa and Juda
followed them
out, and Liila
and Luisa mooed rejectingly at their brother, making it clear to him that his
presence was
not wanted. He
followed anyway, and Matiiusi, after a minute, followed too.
That's all there
is to the drama. It was a very ordinary, everyday, spontaneous, playful
interaction.
But I think it
was also a most effective socializereven when the adult players were not fully
aware that
they were
socializing when they played it.
What meanings
could the drama have had for the actors? And what might Chubby Maata
have
learned from
it?
This drama, like
others, was shaped by a number of the themes and plots that governed life
in
Chubby Maata's
camp, and in other Inuit settlements. But I want to focus on the messages
about
babynessthe issue
in the forefront of the drama. Liila is playing with Chubby Maata's babyness.
She
repeatedly tells
Chubby Maata to make the cry of a baby - "say ungaa" - and the action of the
drama
develops out of
these cries. Looking at how the action develops, we can follow Chubby Maata as
she
becomes aware of
being a baby, and aware of the advantages and disadvantages of babyness. We
can
watch her also as
she learns how to outgrow that state and discovers reasons for wanting to
outgrow it.
The drama can be
divided into two halves, in which rather different things happen, so I will
discuss
each half
separately. The first half is a celebration of babyness. At the same time, it's
a field in which
Chubby Maata can
experiment with being something other than a baby. How does this come
about?
Well, to begin
with, babyness is not all of a piece, and not all of its manifestations are
acceptable to
adults - Liila
in particular. When Chubby Maata maneuvers to restore her place between her
mother's
knees, she
discovers that Liila is not willing to validate her serious and somewhat
bad-tempered,
confrontational
baby demand. She ignores it.
Instead, Liila
turns the interaction into play when she laughs at her daughter's taking the
chewing
gum, and when
she demonstrates gestures for her to imitate. The game with the gestures
distracts Chubby
Maata from her
baby demand and gives her an opportunity to join with her older sister in a
common
effort: to do
what an adult does. The result is that she grows up a little. For the moment,
she becomes a
childat least,
she is not focused on babyness, baby privilege; she can ask for the sitting
position of a
nonbaby. And
this her mother accepts.
Carrying on from
this development, Chubby Maata's sharp eyes see another adult gesture
to
imitate: my own
posture, with hands behind head. "Yiini!" she says, very pleased with herself.
In this
game she is
playing "adult". Liila is pleased with Maata's imitation, too, but her warm
laughter tells us
that she sees it
as the act of a charming baby. Older children, and of course adults, would be
embarrassed
to imitate
somebody's action in that person's presence; and if Chubby Maata were older,
Liila wouldn't
ask her to
repeat the imitation. But because Chubby Maata is a baby, her mother does ask
her to repeat it
for Aunt Luisa,
and when Chubby Maata complies, she does it as a baby would do it, saying
"Tiini"
instead of
"Yiini".
In other words,
Chubby Maata is returned to baby status by her mother's laughter and mine, and
by
her mother's
request for a repetition of her cute action; and she acknowledges and dramatizes
that baby
status by
imitating baby speech. But there seem to be some differences of opinion as to
whether she is a
real baby or
playing baby. Luisa and Rosi think she really doesn't know how to pronounce my
name, and
both of them try
to correct her. I think Liila knows better. Instead of trying to make her
daughter's speech
more adult, she
points out her babyness: "Make the cry of a babysay 'ungaa'because you are a
baby."
In saying that,
she is both telling Chubby Maata that she is a baby and encouraging her to
continue
playing baby, as
she was doing.
The drama goes
on in the same vein. Liila dictates other words for her daughter to imitate:
mother;
father; suck;
meat. These are all words that adults say to babies and that represent infantile
concerns, but
they are adult
words, too. The last word is different. It's a play word and belongs entirely to
baby talk. It's
interesting that
this playbaby word is the word that Chubby Maata chooses to play with. She makes
it
even more
babylikeas she did when she said "Tiini" instead of "Yiini". And Liila responds
with another
mighty hug, as
she did when Chubby Maata made the baby cry, "Ungaa." In other words, mother
and
daughter are
playing baby together, each of them elaborating and celebrating the other's
overtures; and in
the process,
Chubby Maata is learning how to play at being what she is: her mother's darling
little baby.
She is also
experiencing in play a progression of identities. There are two parallel
developments,
both of which
correspond logically to the outgrowing of babyness. On the one hand, Chubby
Maata
moves from being
a baby through being a child to being an adult - before she returns to being a
baby. At
the same time,
she moves from being an unselfconscious baby toward being a selfconscious baby,
who
can observe
babyness and consciously play a baby role. The movement from baby through child
to adult
happens to be a
microcosm of the process of growing up, whereas the movement from being
an
unselfconscious
baby to a selfconscious one represents progress in acquiring techniques for
growing up.
Notice that
throughout part one, Chubby Maata has been maneuvered into operating, more
and
more
consciously, in play mode. It's playfulness that gets her what she wants. It's
playfulness that
enthrones her as
a darling baby. At the same time, in various ways, it nudges her toward the edge
of the
throne. We'll
see more of that, presently.
A third line of
development in the first half of the drama has to do not with the baby identity
itself
but with the
ways in which that identity is evaluated - the places that babies occupy in
human society. In
the first half
of the sequence, Chubby Maata moves from being an annoying baby standing on
the
periphery of her
social world to being an adorable one, cuddled at its centre. This third
development
doesn't lead
directly to growing up, and it runs into trouble in the second part of the
sequence.
In this second
half, spurred by Luisa's kick, the plot thickens and identities become more
complex.
The adorable
baby, whose dyadic baby relationship with her mother has just been celebrated,
begins to
become aware of
an outside world that interferes with that relationship, a more complex world
that
contains the
potential for hostility as well as affectionand more complicated still, it
contains the
possibility that
affection may be expressed painfully, with the appearance of hostility. Remember
that
when Rosi
attacked Chubby Maata, Liila didn't rescue her; she explained that Rosi was
expressing
intense
affection for her because she was a baby. So! It is not only a nice warm
experience to be a baby -
and to be loved
- it can also be dangerous, or at least disagreeable.
Nevertheless,
both adults and children laugh at Rosi's attack and at Liila's explanation,
which
keeps the play
alive; and the attack turns into wrestling, which both children enjoyuntil Rosi
gets a little
bit rough, and
Chubby Maata utters a cry of pain. Liila tries to restore play by telling Chubby
Maata:
"Say 'ungaa' (in
a baby tone); cry and I'll rescue you." Here's another consequence of babyness,
a
desirable one,
this time: Babies are rescued. But this time Liila associates the charming baby
cry, ungaa,
with the
disagreeable and disapproved cry, qia, of the older child. Chubby Maata has
often heard her
mother say, both
to her and to Rosi: "Don't cry!" "Stop crying!" So, where is Chubby Maata now?
Babies
are in danger of
being hurt because they're loved. They can also be rescued because they're
loved. But is
a baby cry
lovable? Or is it disapproved of?
Chubby Maata
hesitates this time before she says "ungaa," but she does say it. She announces
her
babyness, she
plays baby, and Liila rewards her by pushing Rosi away. Nevertheless, the
wrestling game
resumes, and
continues until Rosi runs to Luisa for protection. This time Liila offers
protection to Rosi;
but when Rosi
foolishly trusts her, Liila betrays her, holds her captive, and tells Chubby
Maata to "hurt
her, make her
angry."
In this
betrayal, there is a message for Rosi about babyness: She, the elder child,
can't expect to
have a
protective dyadic world-excluding relationship with her mother; mother will take
the side of the
baby and allow
the elder to experience helplessness. Liila is, playfully, and certainly
unwittingly,
demonstrating
the real displacement of the elder child by the younger, the baby.
But there is
also a message, a subtler one, for the baby. Is she really being rescued because
she's a
charming baby?
Indeed, is she really being rescued at all?
Up to this point
in the drama, saying "ungaa" has been part of a celebration of babyhood, and
has
been rewarded as
a symbolic expression of babyness. But now the direction to "say ungaa" is
presented
as a means to an
end; it's a condition that Chubby Maata must fill in order to achieve the goal
of being
rescued - the
goal of maintaining her alliance with her mother. Babyness is still being
rewarded, but now
we begin to
glimpse the saying of "ungaa" from another angle. It begins to sound less as
though Chubby
Maata is being
invited to play baby or to demonstrate her real babyness for the enjoyment of
herself and
others, and more
as though she is having to prove she's a baby, by making a public declaration
of
babyness at some
cost to herself, in order to obtain what she wants. And perhaps the reward she's
paying
for -
protection, alliance - is only a mirage.
Remember that at
the beginning of this drama, when Chubby Maata seriously tried to
displace
Rosi, Liila did
not take sides and did not intervene. If she had taken sides on that occasion,
she would
have been
supporting Chubby Maata's bad temper and interfering in a problem that concerned
just the
two children. To
put it in an Inuit way, she would have been making Chubby Maata feel
"strong"
vis-à-vis her
sister and encouraging her to take advantage of that strength. Inuit believe
that children
should learn to
feel weak; they should learn to fear other people a little, so that they won't
confront
people and try
to impose their will on them. By pretending to take sides and then stepping back
when the
going gets
rough, Liila is able to create a situation in which both children can experience
helplessness
and a certain
amount of discomfort. And when the battle appears to be getting out of control,
Liila stops
it evenhandedly.
So Chubby Maata is not quite as "rescued" as she may have imagined she would
be.
Liila refuses
alliance again when Chubby Maata asks to go home and Rosi asks to go next
door.
She turns a deaf
ear to both serious demands. Instead, she creates another game and directs it to
Chubby
Maata, who has
made the more babyish of the two requests: "Let's go home." By pretending not to
hear
what Chubby
Maata says, Liila again forces her to expose her babyness to an audience. This
time, it
doesn't sound,
in the least, as though Liila were encouraging Chubby Maata to play baby; in
fact, she's
not inviting her
to play at all; she merely asks her to repeat her serious wish more loudly. And
when she
tells her
daughter to 'say "ungaa," her tone is matter-of-fact.
Chubby Maata
seems to notice that her mother is not fully playing: She expects fulfillment of
a
serious contract
- if I say "ungaa," I'll get to go home - and she herself doesn't revert fully
to play form;
she says "ungaa"
in a matter-of-fact voice like her mother's.
But are serious
and playful ends really distinct? When Liila says "Say 'ungaa' because you're
a
baby" she is
teaching Chubby Maata to perform what she really is, so "Say 'ungaa'" can mean
several
things,
separately or all at the same time: play baby so we can enjoy your babyness
together; play baby
so you can
discover that you are one; playing baby is better than seriously being a baby;
and play baby so
I can see
whether you are one - and if you are one we can laugh at you. I think we can see
how slippery
these meanings
are, how easily they metamorphose, one into the other, and to what dilemmas they
might
lead. Chubby
Maata herself may not see clearly yet, but the fact that she already senses
danger of some
sort in
self-exposure is evident in the subdued nature of her reply to her mother's
question, "what did you
say?" Here is no
bounciness, no baby beam, but a whispera sure sign that she feels a little
jumpy.
So, the dark
underbelly of babyness begins to be exposed. Not only may it be somewhat
dangerous
to be a baby
because one is vulnerable to attack and alliances suddenly disintegrate; it may
also suddenly
turn out that
when one thinks one is being a charming baby (saying "ungaa"), one is instead
perceived as
an unpleasant
baby, tearful and aggressive. The adorable baby in the arms of her enchanted
mother has
become a
mindless baby in the eyes of a larger and less enamoured world. Again it's the
growingup
process in a
nutshell. And what Liila is doing, as she plays with her daughter, is to help
her to become
more aware of
these facts of her three-year-old life. The play provides both techniques and
motives for
growing up, as
well as provoking Chubby Maata to think about whether she wants to grow
up.
How does play
work to accomplish these ends?
Remember that in
the first half of the drama, serious behaviour always brings about a deadlock
in
communication, a
situation that Chubby Maata doesn't want; and good communication is
always
reestablished by
playful means.
Moreover, in
every instance of miscommunication in part one, after mother and daughter
have
begun to play
together, Liila uses the opportunity to point out to Chubby Maata, explicitly
and playfully,
that she is a
baby. She shows Chubby Maata all the delightful rewards of babyness. But at the
same time,
she blames all
Chubby Maata's difficulties - being ignored, misunderstood, and attacked - on
the fact that
she is a baby.
In a word, the ruptures in the play provide opportunities for Liila to use the
play to call
attention to
Chubby Maata's babyness and demonstrate how the baby identity works - both for
and
against herin
her social life.
We've seen that
in the first half of the drama, seriousness and playfulness seem to alternate
quite
simply,
seriousness intruding when one person understands another's act in the "wrong"
mode. And Liila
always
interprets the breakdown, returns the interaction to the safe sphere of play,
and reestablishes a
clear, simple,
and secure life, with mother and baby at its core. In the second half of the
drama the uses
of seriousness
and play get more complicated. Saying "ungaa" still solves problems, but it's no
longer
pure play; it's
a serious condition to be fulfilled before Liila can repair the breakdowns
in
communication.
Moreover,
although play is reestablished when Chubby Maata says "ungaa" in order to be
rescued
from Rosi's
wrestling attack, it's a different kind of play than in the first half of the
drama. Liila is no
longer playing
with Chubby Maata as a companion, she is playing with her as an object. She has
goals,
and some of them
are serious. Liila is tricking her daughters into serious confrontation, which
she
disapproves of,
just as she disapproved of Chubby Maata's first serious behaviourher attempt to
remove
Rosi. Liila is
testing both children to see whether they can be seduced into serious
aggression, and, as I
said earlier,
she is playfully creating a situation in which, if the girls do exceed the
limits of play, they
will experience
the uncomfortable consequences of confrontation. She is discouraging serious
behaviour.
She doesn't do
it by contributing to the attack (which would terrify Chubby Maata) or by
legislating
against it or
seriously suggesting how to deal with it (which would deprive the children of
the
opportunity to
actively participate in the solution of a problem); she does it by disengaging
herself and
letting the
children discover for themselves the possibilities and consequences of the
behaviour: physical
discomfort,
criticism from others (expressed as amusement), and disintegration of the
cherished mother
baby dyad. These
are experiences that the children could not be given in serious mode, because in
that
mode physical
aggression between people is unthinkable and encouraging it would be condemned
as
"mindless."
Instead, Liila encourages the development of "mind" in the children by tricking
them into
displaying their
lack of it.
And so it goes
on. When Chubby Maata wants to go home, Liila once more playfully forces her
to
expose her
babyness by saying "ungaa" as a condition for fulfilling the request, and Chubby
Maata
imagines that
she is making a serious contract.
But Liila
doesn't immediately fulfill her side of the contract. Instead, she makes still
another test of
her daughter's
maturity: "Shall Yiini and Luisa come and visit?" And Chubby Maata fails the
test. This
time, she
doesn't even seem to suspect hidden levels of meaning, even though Liila laughs
at her
ungracious
response. Chubby Maata has once again demonstrated to her elders that she is
indeed a baby -
an unenlightened
one who still has a long way to travel on the road toward becoming a social
person.
And Liila
accepts that fact. This time she does not explicitly point out Chubby Maata's
babyness; she just
takes her
home.
In other words,
in the second half of the sequence, simple dichotomies disappear and are
replaced
by multileveled
communications, part play, part serious. And it is Liila, no longer clarifier
but
obfuscator, who
creates these ambiguities by pretending to be serious when she is not and
pretending to
play when she
does not. Or by playing and being serious at the same time. Chubby Maata, of
course,
misunderstands
more than ever, while we, watching, bugeyed, from a safe distance, can see that
life is
no longer made
clear and simple but, on the contrary, is very complex. The dyad of mother and
baby is
being
undermined, and Chubby Maata is being left to her own interpretive
resources.
Once again this
small sequence of interactions appears to be a microcosm, this time of the
tangled
and treacherous
nature of communication in adult society. Chubby Maata is learning several
lessons
about
playfulness and seriousness that will be of use to her all her life. I think she
has already learned
that it's
possible to act in more than one mode, and she is beginning to learn that truth
and reason are not
the exclusive
property of one mode or the other. When communicative trouble looms on one plane
it can
be dealt with by
switching into the other - although play often works better than seriousness. At
the same
time, and
somewhat contradictorily, Chubby Maata is learning that no communication can
ever be trusted
to be what it
seems to be. It is always necessary to be alert to the possibility of hidden
meanings:
seriousness
under playfulness, playfulness under seriousness, the two intricately
enmeshed.
As to the
lessons about babyness that Chubby Maata is learning, it's clear that the
playfulness of
the medium both
simplifies and complicates the learning process. Some of Chubby Maata's
performances
of babyness are
initiated by her mother and others by herself, and they take various forms, but
all of them
dramatize
babyness in clear and simple images. Chubby Maata seems to recognize, create
and
communicate the
positive images of the darling baby quite well already; but she appears to have
only the
faintest
glimmering awareness of the existence of the mindless baby, who is perfectly
present to the
adults.
Nevertheless, all her baby performances give Chubby Maata the opportunity to
discover and
explore - even
to create (as in "Tiini" and "uquuququu") - the various dimensions of babyness
and the
consequences of
being a baby. Through her performances, she lives Babyness richly and with
increasing
awareness. And,
for the moment, by and large, with joy. At the same time, those performances
give her
practice in
experimenting with new behaviours and identities in a milieu that is fun and, in
an important
sense, safe.
When Liila playfully says "say ungaa," she is not - so far as Chubby Maata can
see -
threatening her
babyness. In fact, she is herself enjoying it; she presents herself, in the
main, as Chubby
Maata's
playfellow and ally, so Chubby Maata has no need to oppose her and to resist the
lessons she
presents.
Indeed, Chubby Maata is maximally open to those lessons, because she is in a
happy and
relaxed mood,
not in crisis.
In performing
babyness, Chubby Maata is wilfully, actively, putting on baby behaviour. And
of
course what is
wilfully put on can also be wilfully taken off, so Chubby Maata, in learning to
play the
role of baby, is
unwittingly learning how to take distance from babyness. At the same time, in
performing
babyness, Chubby
Maata will also discover - indeed, she may already suspect - that she is
displaying it;
she is
performing what she is, and audiences will confirm her understanding, in hugs
and in words - and
in laughter that
contains many meanings, evaluations both wanted and unwanted. We have seen that
the
fuzziness of the
boundary between playing baby and really being a baby disrupted Chubby Maata's
play
when Luisa
mistook her playful mispronunciation for real baby incompetence. It's because
she is playing
at being what
she really is that the boundary is problematic, and it's because it's
problematic that it's
educational.
It's the identity between playful and serious selves that makes it possible for
the play to
serve as an
announcement of self and, so, possible for audience reactions, both pleasant and
unpleasant,
to create
awareness of self; to break the cocoon and bring about a
change.
In conclusion, I
want to come back, full circle, to my introduction. I hope it's evident that in
this
simple, happy
play, Chubby Maata is learning about much more than the pros and cons of
babyness -
more, even, than
the value of playing. Larger dilemmas of adult life are also there for her to
discover as
her antennae
mature. One problem that is foreshadowed in the Baby game concerns love.
Although love
is essential for
survival and although sometimes it's delightful to love and be loved, it's also
painful and
dangerous. A
second problem concerns social support. Alone, one is weak; nevertheless, it's
safer to say
"uncle!" - that
is, "ungaaa" - when attacked than to seek alliance. Alliances can be
untrustworthy, even
with mother. And
because nobody tells Chubby Maata these things, and nobody tells her how to
deal
with them -
because she discovers all of this through powerful, emotionally charged
experience, and, she
supposes, by
herself - growing up becomes a creative act. Not something imposed by adult will
and
learned by
rote.
[i].This
paper was delivered twice in December 1998, first as the MillerComm lecture at
the University
of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign, and then at the 2nd Conference on Challenging the Child to
Figure
Things Out, at
the Fall Meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association in New York. "Out
of the
Garden of Eden,"
the paper that follows "Journey out of Babyhood" in this issue of AnthroGlobe,
was
delivered in May
1998 at the Joint Meetings of the American and Canadian Psychoanalytic
Associations
in Toronto.
Because both papers are published together in this issue of AnthroGlobe, I have
made
occasional
cross-references to minimize duplication. A modicum of repetition is,
nevertheless, necessary,
in order to
maintain the internal coherence of each paper.
[ii]."Inuit"
are the native people who used to be called "Eskimos." The change in
nomenclature was
adopted at their
request some years ago. The word Inuit means "people" in the Canadian dialects
of their
language,
Inuktitut, but in the title of the northern political body, the Inuit
Circumpolar Conference, it
refers not only
to the Inuit of Canada but also to the Inupiat of Northern Alaska and the
Kalalliit of
Greenland, all
of whom were formerly called "Eskimos."
[iii].This drama is the subject of "Out of the Garden of
Eden" (this issue of AnthroGlobe).
[iv].A fuller account of the experiences of infants and
small children in camps like Chubby Maata's
can
be found in the
introductory section of "Out of the Garden of Eden" (this issue of
AnthroGlobe).
[v].An anecdote that charmingly demonstrates Chubby
Maata's perspective can be found in the
introductory
pages of "Out of the Garden of Eden."
[vi].In an ethnographic account of a rapidly and unevenly
changing society, it is difficult to choose
tenses
for the
narrative. Neither past nor present fits exactly. In this paper I adopt the
convention of using the
past tense for
events I observed. I also use it for ethnographic generalizations, because I am
writing of a
past way of
life, and this point needs to be emphasized, even though some of the behaviour
described is
still widely
found. I use the present tense for analysis, to set it off from the ethnography
and make it
more
immediate.
http://wings.buffalo.edu/anthropology/anthroglobe/reprints/inuitchilddrama.htm
(17 of 17) [2/19/2001 1:56:23 PM]
Posted: 23 January 1999 Last edited:
23 September, 2005
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