Abstract
The essence of developmental psychology is normative. The innumerable changes that occur over time are conducive to creating a route map and a narrative that connects and then determines the points along the way. Once the metaphorical path is charted, children can be characterized by how far they have progressed or whether they have strayed. The child's first steps and first words are not only indicators of the child's entry into new worlds, but are also milestones to be calibrated with normative expectations about the direction and pace of children's travels. The strong contributions of maturation of the nervous system and the musculature early in development foster explanations of development as a predetermined unfolding of biological capacities occurring universally throughout the species. Historically, developmental psychology arose from two normative disciplines, intelligence testing and experimental psychology. Binet devised a series of tasks typifying mental performance at each age level. Subsequently, intelligence quotient (IQ) was expressed as a ratio of Mental Age/Chronological Age. The determination of typical performance in IQ testing and in the experimental laboratory requires a standardized protocol and measuring stick. Thus, the basic paradigm for developmental psychology is a linear pathway universally traveled and the construction of observation points (tests) to gauge progress along the path. It has not been fertile ground for feminists who have often been relegated to the exploration of gender identity, sex differences, and moral development. Writing a book that deconstructs the assumptions of developmental psychology is challenging, and Erica Burman has met the challenge effectively.
Burman, in the first (1994) and this new edition, and Walkerdine (1998) argue persuasively that developmental norms are exclusionary. Whose development is it? Western middle-class male children. What milestones are chosen? The ability to derive solutions to highly intellectualized problems. Like many feminist epistemologists (e.g., Code, 1991), Burman argues cogently that science creates its subjects in its own image. Developmental psychologists borrowed heavily from evolutionary biology and structuralism to build their own science. Consequently, the content of developmental psychology describes a child whose representation of the world and methods of gaining knowledge mirror developmentalists themselves. The intricacies of understanding differences in beliefs and feelings were reduced to detecting the presence of false representations due to incomplete information. The outcome of development was a theory of mind, not a set of interpersonal strategies and intuitions about people. Morality was originally equated with understanding abstract principles while excluding concern with maintaining caring relationships.
The emphasis on standardized testing ignores the context of development, from the arrangements of testing rooms and construction of experimental tasks to the nature of familial relations and cultural milieus and, thus, obscures their influence. Burman's excellent survey of the broad cultural variations in child-rearing circumstances makes a strong case for the contrasting claim that there are many childhoods rather than a single path with universal milestones. The terrain and the child's traveling companions help to construct the child's travels. Thus, the book sets an agenda for developmentalists and feminists to determine who and what are excluded and to put them back in.
Burman has a larger intent, dismantling the conceptual normative framework and starting the reader on the path toward reconstruction by providing a different epistemological lens. Like standpoint theorists (e.g., Falmange, 2000), Burman claims that our views are always from a particular inherently political perspective. Her book is a creative manual of effective strategies for viewing developmental change by shifting perspectives. One tactic is to broaden the focus away from the abstract solitary child. She redefines fields by placing topics like language acquisition and attachment in a familial and social context. For example, she rescues the study of language acquisition from the narrow focus on syntax by turning attention to communication, a social act. She notes how the privileging of the study of the acquisition of referential labels excludes communication of affect and mastery of the pragmatics of conversation. She expands the study of conversational partners to include fathers and siblings, not just the mother and the child. She cites research on differences in cultural beliefs about when and how it is appropriate to converse with children. She includes bilingual communities whose conceptions of communication and representation are richer than the standard normative monolingual model.
Developmental psychologists often distinguish between science and application. Burman breaks down this divide by broadening the range of developmental psychologists to include practitioners, such as pediatricians, social workers, teachers, child welfare workers, and celebrity child care experts, who create our images of childhood, advocate standards for proper child rearing, and influence social policies and their implementation. These are the people who transform normative data from statistical characterizations to prescriptions. Burman raises questions about the social and ethical implications of importing the laboratory into the nursery, creating the metaphor of the scientist in the crib and the myth of the indelible imprint of the first 3 years of life.
The distinctive focus of the book is the use of critical theory, which links purpose, power, and politics. To the extent one shares this political perspective, the analyses are illuminating. Norms are inherently conservative and reflect the values of those who proposed and propagated the norms. Norms can create inequalities that are designed to preserve a power structure that serves the interests of Western postcolonial, industrialized, developed nations. Burman provides penetrating insights into the use of the same metaphor, development, to characterize children and the economic status of nations. She shows how developmental psychology's norms can perpetuate racism, sexism, and Eurocentrism. She also musters numerous provocative examples of how the pronouncements of developmental psychologists authorize a regulatory structure that sanctions intrusion into children's lives. The characterization of the programs aimed at economically disadvantaged children as remedies for cultural deprivation reveals the exclusionary and myopic perspective of educators. Burman offers a different lens, “Exploitation and oppression suffuse the structure of developmental psychology. Our task is to deconstruct it” (p. 303).