Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 I was so angry. It seemed unfair. What's wrong with playing off the dark. What's wrong with the girl playing with boys.
Speaker 2 00:00:17 Hello, I'm Joseph Shaws and welcome to the deep culture podcast where we explore culture and the science of mind. And I am here with my co-host Yvonne VanderPol. How are you doing today, Yvonne?
Speaker 3 00:00:30 Hi, Joseph. Wonderful to be here. I'm doing fine. The sun is shining.
Speaker 2 00:00:34 We've got beautiful spring weather in Tokyo. So everything is great. So Yvonne, this episode's title is culture in the cradle
Speaker 3 00:00:44 Culture in the cradle wonderful title. And what does that mean?
Speaker 2 00:00:49 Well, what we're interested in in this episode is how is it that we learn our culture or put differently? How is culture passed down from one generation to the next? So for example, how did being raised in the Netherlands make you Dutch or how did being raised in the United States? Make me somehow American.
Speaker 3 00:01:12 We kind of take it for granted that when we grow up somewhere, we are shaped by culture. But how does this happen?
Speaker 2 00:01:20 That's a great question because after all, you know, Dutch parents, aren't trying to teach their children to become Dutch. They're just trying to be good parents. So somehow parents pass on cultural values without thinking about
Speaker 3 00:01:34 It. And there is research into this topic and it's something called parental ethno theories. And that's about the way that cultural attitudes affect parenting. And we'll talk about it a bit later,
Speaker 2 00:01:47 And it is something that you can notice sometimes when you travel to different countries, you may see parents that are treating children very differently than they would, where you come from. I remember a British friend of mine who was visiting Spain and he said, oh, it was crazy. You know, the families take their children out to dinner at 10:00 PM, but they should be in bed.
Speaker 3 00:02:10 I can imagine that impression. And I guess what it means to be a good parent, depends a lot on cultural expectations.
Speaker 2 00:02:19 And it's also true that it's not just parents that pass on culture. You know, children are influenced by everything in their environment. So the simple fact of growing up in the Netherlands also somehow shapes people to become Dutch in many ways.
Speaker 3 00:02:36 So in this episode, we'll dig into this question of how culture is passed on and we'll hear more examples of cultural differences parenting.
Speaker 2 00:02:45 And that brings us to part one Kao G So Yvonne, I think the first challenge that we face with this topic is to even know what to call this process that we're talking about, this process of learning our own culture.
Speaker 3 00:03:09 Yes, it's so taken for granted. We usually just say growing up,
Speaker 2 00:03:13 And it's interesting that we talk about our native language, but we don't really even have a word like native culture.
Speaker 3 00:03:22 I studied anthropology and the term anthropologists use this and acculturation the process of acquiring the culture of the community you grow up in,
Speaker 2 00:03:32 Or a psychologist might use the word socialization to talk about how we learn to function in society.
Speaker 3 00:03:38 Yeah. So one point that these different terms have in common is that they are an unconscious process. They happen just in the act of living everyday life.
Speaker 2 00:03:49 And I guess this is common sense, but I also find it really amazing that there is this unconscious cultural learning process that happens as children grow up. I mean, caretakers somehow pass along cultural lessons without realizing it.
Speaker 3 00:04:04 Well, I agree, but I'm not sure if pass along or cultural lessons is quite the right way to say it. Cultural patterns are part of the developmental process of growing just as acquiring. Our native language is a natural part of growing up, being shaped by our social environment is a natural part of human development.
Speaker 2 00:04:26 So in that sense, humans are simply cultural by nature.
Speaker 3 00:04:31 And that actually reminds me of a quote by Edward Hall, where he talks about this. And he says it's frequently the most obvious and taken for granted and therefore the least studied aspects of culture that influence behavior in the deepest and most subtle ways. So let's get an example here. I was fascinated by one thing you mentioned to me, Joseph, and that was this idea in Japan of KA G, which you said literally means the country character river, but it refers to a typical arrangement of a family sleeping together. You said it's typical and people take it for granted, but I guess it also has a deep cultural significance.
Speaker 2 00:05:16 You have to kind of imagine it, the character for river is made by three vertical lines and the middle line is shorter than the other two. And that kind of represents the water that's flowing between the banks of the river.
Speaker 3 00:05:30 Okay. I can picture that, but it's not a river that we're talking about here, huh?
Speaker 2 00:05:36 No. So in Japan, the term colon is also used to talk about a typical way that the child sleeps between the parents. The shorter line between the two longer lines is the image of the child sleeping between the parents. And traditionally that would be on a futon on a to Tommy mat.
Speaker 3 00:05:56 Do children sleep the same Putin or like the congee on a separate smaller one in between?
Speaker 2 00:06:01 Well, I guess sleeping on the same Putan would be typical.
Speaker 3 00:06:04 And what does that represent?
Speaker 2 00:06:07 Well, in Japan, it's not rare for children to sleep together with their parents, even up to elementary school age. So the term Kaji kind of represents this family closeness, a kind of family fusion. And it goes along with things like children, taking a bath together with their mother or father, a kind of family bonding, and there's even a special word for this parent child bond. It's am I, which is, it's kind hard to translate, but it's something like nurturing dependence.
Speaker 3 00:06:39 Interesting. So carbon G is really about more than the fact that children sleep together with their parents. It reflects Japanese attitudes towards Emily relations towards human relations, I guess.
Speaker 2 00:06:53 Yes. And it's not just that parents are close to their children. Uh, in Japan, there's a strong sense of public and private spaces being separate and inner spaces are to be kept safe and pure and outer spaces are more public and less pure. And that's why taking off your shoes in a Japanese home is a big deal. You need to keep these separate realms separate. And there are even terms for that UCI, which is inner space and Soto, which is outer space.
Speaker 3 00:07:23 So the child sleeping between the parents is actually like them creating an inner safe space.
Speaker 2 00:07:30 Exactly. But, but of course, Japanese parents, aren't consciously thinking, oh, I'm going to create a safe space for my child. And of course not all Japanese parents sleep onto Tommy mats or even sleep with their children. But these larger patterns, they're something that all Japanese understand. They're part of this larger Japanese worldview.
Speaker 3 00:07:51 It's striking that everything is so interconnected.
Speaker 2 00:07:55 Yeah. And it goes on and on. I mean this fusion, this sense of collective self is reflected in other aspects of everyday life. Like the fact that Japanese elementary school children serve lunch to their classmates at lunchtime and that no one starts to eat until everyone has been served. Or the fact that there's one style of backpack used by elementary children all over the country.
Speaker 3 00:08:25 It's also fascinating Joseph. And it makes me wonder though how you learned all of this. Of course, I understand that you have lived in Japan for quite a long time now.
Speaker 2 00:08:35 Well, it's interesting because it, in some ways it's easier for me to notice those things because they contrast with the way things are done in the us. It can be really hard to uncover those patterns in your own home cultural community. You just don't just don't notice them. But this also makes me wonder if VA, um, well, how common is it in the Netherlands for parents to sleep in the same bed with their children until elementary school? Do they take baths together?
Speaker 3 00:09:02 Yeah, of course the Netherlands is a culturally diverse country and there's a wide range of parenting practices, but the focus is on developing autonomy and independence. It's quite visible from early on, I think, and just born babies. They stay in their cradles in the same bedroom with their parents or maybe the first couple of months. It's, it's not so common for parents to sleep in the same bed with their children.
Speaker 2 00:09:26 And how was it for you when you were growing up?
Speaker 3 00:09:29 Oh, well for instance, my brother and I, we had a separate bedroom and from early on, that was our space. And actually the two of us had a whole floor that was ours.
Speaker 2 00:09:38 Speaking of space. Can I ask something about the Netherlands when I've been there? I noticed these big windows in the houses where you can see inside. And I, it feels like there's no privacy
Speaker 3 00:09:50 And indeed many houses have large windows. And more importantly, the curtains are often open and not only during the day also the evening. So anyone passing the street or on the sidewalk could easily look inside a house and get this glimpse of family life. It's absolutely normal. And it's this idea of, we have nothing to hide and for newcomers, this is hard to understand,
Speaker 2 00:10:15 Wow, that is so different from this Uchi inside versus Soto outside distinction in Japan. When I was a child, we got punished by being grounded. We weren't allowed to leave our room or leave the house in Japan. Parents sometimes punish their children by putting them out of the house and the child will, you know, cry to be let back in.
Speaker 3 00:10:42 Well, I don't have many memories of being punished, but being grounded to our rumors indeed the way it was done. And Joseph, what else have you learned about American deep cultural values by living in Japan and seeing parenting there?
Speaker 2 00:10:58 One thing that I noticed is that Japanese parents tend not to praise their own children in public or in front of others. They play down the accomplishments. Oh, he's not so smart. Uh, and she's always acting up. Americans often have this idea of self-esteem that children need to feel good about themselves in order to, to grow and succeed. But how about in the Netherlands?
Speaker 3 00:11:23 Well, in the Netherlands, children are definitely praised in public praise in the Netherlands is more related to gaining self confidence in life and not as much in becoming a winner or in being the best.
Speaker 2 00:11:38 Well, I love these stories, but you know, I think we should clarify something. We talk about passing on cultural patterns, but we don't mean that there's some single Japanese or American or Dutch culture that all Japanese or American or Dutch people share in some absolute way that there is some kind of cultural essence.
Speaker 3 00:12:00 Exactly what we are talking about is more complex than that. And we're talking about cultural patterns and those patterns are infinitely complex and dynamic, and those patterns are created by interaction. They don't exist in some purified form.
Speaker 2 00:12:16 And in this podcast, we use the term deep culture to talk about these unconscious cultural patterns within us and the patterns that are in the world around us
Speaker 3 00:12:26 And deep culture is dynamic and it's exist at different skills. For example, every family has its own family culture. The way things are done in that specific family and different regions have distinct cultural patterns well and so on.
Speaker 2 00:12:42 And naturally these change over time. So the cultural patterns that my grandparents grew up with are different than what I did of course. And so some patterns may change quickly over a generation, but others may be carried on four hundreds or even thousands of years.
Speaker 3 00:12:59 Yes. And what is so remarkable about deep culture is that all this complexity just feels natural to us. We take it for granted
Speaker 2 00:13:08 And that brings us to part two playing after dark.
Speaker 3 00:13:25 As I reflected on these deep culture pattern for this episode, I was struck by the complexity of all there is to learn and that we are not simply learning to be good children. We are learning to fit into and hopefully succeed in the community and society that we were born into.
Speaker 2 00:13:43 Yeah, that's so true. But you know, that can also create this kind of inner tension that I think everybody feels at least a little bit that sometimes what we feel as an individual doesn't match the expectations of the community around us. And so we have to learn to navigate in a world, which may not always make sense, or it may not feel fair. And that is something that from the podcast team discovered growing up in Eastern India,
Speaker 0 00:14:27 One of the biggest lessons I learned growing up was to listen in silence with a lowered head when being given advice by someone older, not betraying any surprise or shock and definitely not questioning. I remember one evening in summer when I was playing Kadi, it's a team sport played in. It's very physical. You tag other players and score points. You tackle them. And I was the only girl playing in the group of all boys. I was having so much fun that I played well after dark only to see my clearly displeased grandfather walking up to me and ordering me to stop playing immediately to head back home with him. He made it clear that playing with boys until after dark was not expected of me. I was so angry. It seemed unfair. What's wrong with playing after dark. What's wrong with the girl playing with boys. I felt angry with my parents too, because they did not defend me their daughter in front of my grandfather. It was a revelation to me, how my parents avoided conflict in the presence of my grandparents as if they were not in control of their own household. I realized that they too had to follow the expectations of others. They too had to fit into a larger world that was beyond even their control.
Speaker 0 00:16:15 Looking back, I realized that this is a key lesson for a child growing up as I did in India, you learn that everyone has a position or a place in society. And that respecting that place is what helps maintain peace. Indian society can be harsh. There are great disparities. There are uncertainties and risks for many people. Daily survival is an ongoing challenge. So these predetermined roles give a feeling of stability. Spending time in discussion or questioning is a luxury that is better avoided when things go well, each person has a dignity that comes from playing their role. Well, too often though, the reality is tremendous inequality, especially for women as an adult. Now, as a professional woman, I navigate this complexity every day. I follow social expectations, but I use them creatively. I bend them and sometimes I even break them. What I learn from Kadi is that yes, I can play the game. And sometimes I must fight to change the rules.
Speaker 3 00:17:43 And I love it though, how she explains this tension of knowing how to get along yet playing the game of life in our own way. And that makes me wonder, Joseph, what were the life lessons that you learned growing up in the states?
Speaker 2 00:17:59 Well, one of the lessons I learned growing up was that I felt like I always had to be unique and I had to explain my uniqueness. You know, adults asked me, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? What is your favorite sport? What kind of music do you like in elementary school? There was an activity called show and tell, and each child brings some object to show to the class and explain, and this was called sharing, but it seemed a little bit more like showing off.
Speaker 3 00:18:31 And she just spoke about learning to listen without questioning with hat down.
Speaker 2 00:18:36 Well, I was told by adults, look at me when I speak to you. And I was expected to give reasons for my opinions and tell people what I wanted and, and why. And in school, I remember having to learn to give a persuasive speech and I had to write all these essays to practice making an argument and proving my point. And I got the feeling that, you know, you're nobody, if you're not unique and can't explain it,
Speaker 3 00:19:05 That's quite a lot of pressure.
Speaker 2 00:19:08 It is. And part of expressing this kind of unique self is all these choices you have to make. You know, when you go to a restaurant you're asked, well, would you like super salad? What kind of dressing would you like French fries or baked potato? Would you like rare, medium rare or well done. And, and you even negotiate with the server, you know, can I get the ice cream on the side or can I substitute the French fries for fresh fruit?
Speaker 3 00:19:35 So what were the larger live lessons you learned from all this choosing and explaining and convincing?
Speaker 2 00:19:42 Well, the feeling that I had, although nobody said this openly was that life is a competition. And when I was a child, the last thing I wanted to be called was bluer.
Speaker 3 00:19:58 Ah, and that's quite a contrast with the Netherlands. We don't really like winners and you shouldn't stick out too much. And I also assume that the winner loser mentality contrasts with Japan.
Speaker 2 00:20:10 Well, yes, there is an expression in Japanese. That's very similar to this idea. The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.
Speaker 3 00:20:18 Well, these are great stories and also their stories. So it makes me wonder, is there research about all of this?
Speaker 2 00:20:26 Well, that brings us to part three, the three RS. So Yvonne, I understand that in the Netherlands, there is something called the three RS
Speaker 3 00:20:47 Indeed, and the three RS are wrist re hide Ray Homa, and it stands for rest cleanliness and regularity. And let me explain rest is of course of the utmost important for children. They just need a lot of sleep and it relates to regularity and routine waking up, having naps and going to bed at set times. And I could even tell you the ideal bed times for children per age and then cleanliness. And that's literally related to personal hygiene to washing and bathing. And of course also at set times,
Speaker 2 00:21:23 Well, I will admit that I had never heard of the three R's until I read this fascinating article about cultural difference in attitudes, towards parenting, uh, called themes and variations, parental ethno theories in Western cultures.
Speaker 3 00:21:41 And let's explain that first. What are parental ano theories? Well, here's a quote from that article and parental ano theories are cultural models that parents hold regarding children, families, and themselves as parents, parental ano theories are often implicit taken for granted ideas about natural or right way to think or act.
Speaker 2 00:22:05 So the basic idea is that parents have beliefs or attitudes about parenting, about how children develop or how they should be raised. And this research compared the attitudes of American Dutch and Italian parents to see how culture affects the raising of children. And, and this is where I first came across the three RS. And I even remember asking you if it was true that this is a common idea among Dutch parents,
Speaker 3 00:22:33 And that was many years ago, Joseph, when you worked on your book, uh, the intercultural mind. And I remember that I looked it up because it seemed both, both old fashioned to me and also still in use. And actually I did some research again for this podcast and the three RS were first mentioned in the early 19th century. Can you imagine?
Speaker 2 00:22:55 Wow. So that's like 200 years ago and it's still going on.
Speaker 3 00:22:59 Yes, exactly. And actually it was yesterday that I had a follow up conversation with a young couple, three months after their re relocation to a Latin American country, but it was amazing. They literally said that they focused from the start on the rest and regularity for their three and six year olds. And only when they had the routines and rest, we all be happy as a family. And in fact, I think that many Dutch parents might simply assume that the three RS are things that babies everywhere needs, that they are universal. I was fascinated by the idea of cultural, the regulated customs of care.
Speaker 2 00:23:40 And, and here's a quote about that. Culturally regulated, customs of care are behavioral sequences or arrangements of care that are so well integrated into the culture that they seem to require no justification. They appear to be self-evident common sense solutions to everyday problems.
Speaker 3 00:24:03 For example, this research found at Dutch parents very carefully regulated their children's schedule to give them routine and make sleep time very important. And researchers found that Dutch babies were sleeping on average two hours more. And then the American babies they studied,
Speaker 2 00:24:21 Which was amazing to me because I would have thought that the amount of sleep that babies need is simply biological and that parenting shouldn't matter. But clearly it does.
Speaker 3 00:24:32 And Dutch parents assumed that they should regulate their baby's sleep. Whereas American parents assumed that babies regulate their own sleep and that parents simply had to adapt to it
Speaker 2 00:24:44 Well, and that seems to reflect another difference. They found that American parents focus on special time. They feel that children need individual attention and stimulation to develop. Whereas Dutch parents tended to talk about the importance of routinely spending time together.
Speaker 3 00:25:02 It's our quality time moments. And when I was young, we always had all meals together and we discussed today. And of course also coffee time and tea time. We enjoyed that together.
Speaker 2 00:25:14 Well, something else that fascinated me with this research was cultural differences in what parents said when asked to describe your child.
Speaker 3 00:25:24 Yes, for example, American parents seem to look at their children in terms of mental or intellectual development. They talked about their children being intelligent or cognitively advanced or independent Italian parents. On the other hand, focused on social quality saying that their baby is easy or even tempered or simp.
Speaker 2 00:25:47 And that really fits the assumption that Italian parents expressed in this research that in order to develop children need lots of social attention to be with other people. Whereas Dutch parents describe their children as agreeable or having a long attention span, which fits this emphasis on regularity. And you know, this also interests me because these deep cultural patterns are passed on. You know, some of these patterns run very deep individualism, for example, runs through American society at a very deep level. And it just continues on through generations.
Speaker 3 00:26:25 And on this podcast, we have talked about cultural differences in cognition, in thinking styles that it can be measured and can be traced back to thought traditions that are thousands of years old, like how Confusionism has influenced Chinese societies or how Western thought traditions can be traced back to Greek philosophers. And that comes from the work of Richard NBI.
Speaker 2 00:26:50 Yes. You know, I have this image in my mind of Socrates whispering in my ear when I was growing up and, and Confucius whispering in the ears of Chinese people growing up
Speaker 3 00:27:03 And NBI also talks about child rearing. And we talked about this already in one of the previous podcasts. And he describes how Western children grow up in a world that seems to consist of nouns, naming objects, for example, what's that it's a doggy.
Speaker 2 00:27:20 Well, and that's just like a show and tell
Speaker 3 00:27:23 Yes. And, and Asian children, they grow up in world of verbs. Social interaction works
Speaker 2 00:27:30 Well. I have certainly seen Japanese parents playing a kind of give and take game saying, oh, can I have it? Oh, thank you. Here you go.
Speaker 3 00:27:40 <laugh> and researchers also identify cultural parents related to how we form our identity. For example, Japanese children, sleeping with their parents that reflects what Shema calls an interdependent self, a sense of self focused on relationships and community.
Speaker 2 00:28:00 And that is such an interesting area in and of itself. This idea that how we experience the self depends on culture. And in fact, we're going to dedicate the next podcast episode to that
Speaker 3 00:28:13 Indeed. And maybe by now, it's also time we close this episode. So Joseph, before we do that, what's your takeaways from all this?
Speaker 2 00:28:23 Well, I guess it's a reminder for me that human beings are cultural by nature. That internalizing cultural patterns is an integral part of being human, just like acquiring our first language. So culture runs deep, but we don't notice it because it's so natural to us. And how about you Yvonne?
Speaker 3 00:28:47 Yeah. Well, for me, I think again, it's the power of the end unconscious. And just as Edward Hall expressed, it's frequently the most obvious and taken for granted aspects of culture that influence behavior in the deepest and most subtle ways.
Speaker 2 00:29:04 And so now before we close, we should mention this work that we've been referring to, as you said, Edward T. Hall these's quotes came from his book beyond culture. We also have been referring to themes and variations, parental ethno theories in Western cultures by Harkness and super, and that can be found in parenting beliefs, behaviors, and parent child relations across cultural perspective. You also might want to check out three Dutch parenting pillars that make same parents and happy children. And that is from the a mother far from home blog by Rachel Norman. We have been referring to the work of Richard Nisbet and his book, the geography of thought. And finally, also the work of Marcus and Tama, the article culture and the self implications for cognition, emotion and motivation.
Speaker 2 00:30:06 The deep culture podcast is sponsored by the Japan intercultural Institute and NPO dedicated to intercultural education and research. I am the director of GII. We have the GII learning circle where intercultural educators get together to share best practices, to find out more, just do a web search for the Japan intercultural Institute. And if you liked today's episode, please recommend us on social media and you can reach us at DC podcast at Japan, intercultural.org, a special thanks to Ishita re for sharing her kabati story. And as usual, thanks to our sound engineer, Robinson, Fritz podcast, team members, Zena Matar, and Danielle glimpse and everyone at GI. And of course, Yvonne, thanks to you for sharing this time with me today.
Speaker 3 00:31:00 Well, thank you, Joseph. And thanks all listeners for being with us today. Again,
