Transformations in Collaboration Across a Generation in a Mayan Community

• In Event: Parent-Child Interaction in Latin American Families: Attention to Strengths and Culturally Appropriate Methods

Abstract

This study finds that mother-child collaboration has decreased over 30 years, in a Mayan community. Research has indicated that Indigenous children of the Americas often collaborate more skillfully — through fluid synchrony — than middle-class children from several highly schooled backgrounds (Alcalá, Rogoff, & Freire, 2018; Chavajay & Rogoff, 2002; Mejía-Arauz et al., 2007; Rogoff & Ruvalcaba, 2019).

However, dramatic community changes with globalization may relate to changes across generations in ways of collaborating. Many Indigenous American communities have increased schooling and access to technology, and decreased family size and Indigenous language use (Rogoff, Correa-Chavez & Navichoc-Cotuc, 2005; Rogoff, 2011).

There is some indirect evidence of lesser collaboration across generations based on cross-sectional comparisons: Children in some Indigenous American families with extensive schooling were less likely to engage collaboratively than children in the same community whose families had limited schooling experience and more contact with traditional practices (Chavajay & Rogoff, 2002; Chavajay, 2006; Correa-Chávez, Mangione & Mejía-Arauz, 2016; Mejía-Arauz et al., 2007). Those whose families had extensive schooling were more likely to work by themselves, leave one person out of triadic interaction, take turns, divide the task, or take unilateral control.
Although these findings are suggestive of change over time, the idea of generational changes in collaboration, in the face of globalization, require longitudinal research. One study examined children in the same locale across decades (García et al.), but changes from a small town to a large city made it unlikely that the later data represent the same population as studied earlier.

Our study directly examined generational change in family collaboration, by comparing the interactions of the same Guatemalan Mayan family groups across 30 years, in the same procedure. 20 mothers and a related 1-2-year-old toddler and 3-5-year-old child were videotaped exploring novel objects during a home visit in 1990. In 2020, the toddler/child generation of the 1990 families was videotaped in the same situation with their related toddler and 3-5-year-old. The 2020 cohort was also asked about community changes in childrearing practices across the generations.

We examined whether the two cohorts differed in the extent to which all three people (mother, toddler, 3-5-year-old) were engaged together, two engaged together and one was apart, all three were separate, or some of the three resisted each other’s activities. These categories were coded microgenetically, using Dayton et al. 's system (2017) to code the 10 seconds of interaction after the mothers grasped each of five novel objects and began to interact with the object with the children, in 200-millisecond segments.
In line with expectations, preliminary results indicate that the 2020 families spent less time with all three people (mother, toddler, and 3-5-year-old) in collaboration, than the 1990 cohort (M= 36% vs 73% of the time segments, respectively), a significant difference. The mothers’ reflections on changes across the generations help explain the difference – especially the drastic reduction in family size, the notable increase in Western schooling and media contact with Western practices, and the parents’ occupational changes from agriculture to salaried jobs.

Authors

• Itzel Aceves-Azuara, California State University - Sacramento
  Presenting Author

• Barbara Rogoff, University of California - Santa Cruz
  Non-Presenting Author