Inclusive Collaboration Across Generations: 22 Mayan Families

• In Event:  Collaboration, Togetherness, and Mutuality; Strengths of Learning among Indigenous Children and Families of the Americas

Abstract

This study examines longitudinal changes across 3 decades in the ways that mothers and their 2 young children collaborate inclusively across generations of the same 22 families in a Guatemalan Mayan community. The 3 decades have brought dramatic changes related to globalization (including more schooling and technology use, fewer children, and less use of the Mayan language). Have family interactions come to resemble those of highly schooled European American families?

Our study examines inclusive collaboration, in which multi-age groups engage mutually together, without leaving anyone out. Prior research has found that in a number of Indigenous-heritage communities of the Americas, children and families often engage in sophisticated, fluid collaboration (Alcalá et al., 2018; Chavajay & Rogoff, 2002; Dayton et al., 2022; Ellis & Gauvain, 1992). Inclusion is a childrearing principle in many Indigenous American communities, across centuries (Chamoux, 1992; Gaskins, 1999; Good Eshelman, 2005).

In the previous generation, Mayan mothers and their two small children usually engaged all 3 together, triadically. We expected that with globalization, across 30 years, families might engage in ways similar to highly schooled European American families in the same situation, who more commonly left one person out, did not engage together, or resisted each other (Dayton et al., 2022).

The procedure was the same for both generations. During a one-hour family visit with an interview about children's routines, the local research assistant presented a sequence of attractive, unfamiliar objects to the mother to help the toddler operate. Here is a follow-up family with the jumping-jack puppet.
We coded the extent of inclusive collaboration among all 3 people in the first 10 seconds after the mothers grasped each of five novel objects, in 200-millisecond segments.
The follow-up Mayan families collaborated inclusively only half as much as the original families – averaging only 38% vs 73% of the time segments, t(21) = 3.90, p=.0005, 95% CI [41, 134]. Instead, they often engaged between only two people, with one person left out – three times as much as the original triads (averaging 46% vs 15% of time segments), t(21) = 4.77, p < .0001, 95% CI [43, 109]. The amount of time with no one in mutual interaction did not differ significantly (averaging 6% and 11% of time segments).
However, contrary to the idea that the later generation would act more like the highly schooled European American families, the later generation maintained harmonious interactions. They did not engage more in rough/ resistant conflict than the families from 30 years before (averaging 5% of the time segments in both generations), unlike the highly schooled European American families.
Thus, the current generation of Mayan families used less inclusive 3-way collaboration and more dyadic engagement than the previous generation. But they have maintained harmonious family interactions; they have not turned to frequent conflict as in the highly schooled European American families.

Authors

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

• Itzel Aceves-Azuara, California State University - Sacramento