Landscapes of Fear

2. Fear in the Growing Child

2. Pear in the Growing Child The child lives in a magical world of innocence and joy,a sheltered garden from which adults are expelled to their lasting sorrow. Vladimir Nabokov seems to believe in such a world. He confesses to an inordinate fondness for his earliest memories, but then argues that he has "reason to be grateful to them. They led the way to a veritable Eden of visual and tactile sensations."1 No doubt there are fortunate people whose childhoods, like Nabokov's, are lived in bubbles of light and warmth. For the generality of humankind this is unlikely to be true. The pure happiness of the young is a creed of the Romantic era, and we who are its inheritors show a natural tendency to suppress the sorrow and recall the joyas we rummage through the storehouse of memory. Look casually at the baby in the crib, and "thesleep of innocence" comes to mind. Closer observation, however, reveals tiny movements of face and hands that suggest disturbed dreams. Night terrors afflict children one to two years old.The child wakes up from it trembling and drenched in sweat. What causes the terror? What has he or she seen? Concern with childhood as a unique and uniquely important stage of human growth is a characteristic preoccupation of Western culture, with rootsnot much older than the seventeenth century. Far more common in the West and in other parts of the world as well has been the view that the child is a small and imperfect adult. For example, the initiation ceremony at puberty as practiced by many peoples expresses a belief in second birth: it marks the time when the youngsterrenounces his or her immature past and assumes the full dignity of a grown person. However fond parents are of their offspring, childhood isperceived as a rather awkward and fortunatelytransient state.Why Landscapes of Fear 12 focus on it? Given the fact that this attitude is common among peoples uninfluenced by Westernvalues,it is not surprising that they have neglected tostudythe child. Whatwe know of childish fears comes largely from the observation of children of European stock. Their fears, especially in the first year of life, may well be shared bythe young of other cultural traditions. Whether this is the case will be considered briefly later. Unlike many newborn primates the human infant cannot cling to the mother. The human mother has to maintain close contact with her child. But this biological incapacity to cling suggests that the human infant is adapted to tolerate brief periods of separation.2 In the first few months of life he can be left alone for a while without showing signs of alarm or anxiety. If a person can ever be said to enjoy ignorant bliss and fearlessness , it is at the beginning of his or her life. Of course, unusual events can always induce fear. Like many other animals the human infant shows distress when confrontedby sudden noise, loss of support,jerky movements,objects that rapidly expand or advance, and quick changes in luminescence. Generally, strangeness elicits alarm, but what constitutes "strangeness" alters as the child's worldexpands and he understands more of his environment. At first, specific events such as noise and sudden movements distress the child. Later, certain aspects in the visual setting cause unease. Still later, the child's fears nolonger relate clearly to any objectively threatening part of the environment; they appear to be self-generated and presuppose a high order of imagination. To be afraid of things in the environment the child must have a notion, however rudimentary, of objects that are permanent and exist independently of himself. The first enduring objects in the small child's unstable world are other human beings. Initially, the child does not distinguish between strange and familiar people: an infant two or three months old does not complain when he is moved from the mother's arm to that of a total stranger. Later, for a period lasting four to six weeks, the infant sobers at the sight of a strange face and stares at it uneasily. At about the eighth month (though it can be much earlier) the infant begins to show clear signs of consternation at the approach of an unknown person.3 Fear increases noticeably with even a short distance from mother. On the mother's lap the infant is content , but he may display a wariness of the world when seated only four feet away from her...