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69 Children, like adults, participate in different kinds of relationships. Even between children and their parents, there are different types of interactions within these relationships.1 In the last chapter, I focused on one type of interaction in which children receive. In that type of interactions, children boldly asserted their desires and those around them gave into those demands. However , there was another, more common and more valued way that children were given things in Viligama—­ and this giving and receiving was accompanied by a very different emotional tone and a very different, if complementary, lesson. In this type of giving and receiving interaction, children waited passively while their caregivers—­ most commonly, but not exclusively, their mothers—­ gave them what those caregivers deemed to be necessary and appropriate. In these interactions, in contrast to those described in the last chapter, children’s own particular wishes or opinions were not voiced, nor were they solicited. Adults initiated the giving interaction, offering children what they determined those children needed. I argue that this type of early interaction is key in shaping children’s attachment to particular caregivers. I also argue that these interactions establish a template for future relationships with others, relationships that have a particular cultural shape and value. Through this type of interaction, in which seniors provide what juniors need, reiterated from infancy through adulthood, children learn about and learn to value culturally sanctioned relationships between people of different rank. Such hierarchical relationships are not only important within family life; they form the scaffolding of much of Sri Lankan society. In this chapter, I describe how this template for interactions between juniors and seniors is experienced, learned, and infused with feeling through family interaction. I begin by relating the incident that first crystallized my 4 Shaping Attachments Learning Hierarchy at Home 70 Childhood in a Sri Lankan Village recognition of this cultural style of hierarchical relationships and its enactment in everyday childhood experience. I then explore various ways this style emerges over the course of children’s growing up. I describe the basic model of hierarchical relationships that is manifested in and communicated through these kinds of interactions between parents and children. I examine ways that people might violate the expectation of this model, and how participants within these relationships might respond to such violations. Along the way, I discuss how this pattern of parent-­ child interaction compares to those discussed by developmental psychologists who study attachment and caregiving in the United States and how Sri Lankan-­ style attachments might lead to different socially valued outcomes. In the end, I suggest that this model of relating that children experience in Viligama is something they take with them and draw on as they participate in relationships outside of the home, something which is the topic of subsequent chapters of this book. But first the incident with the fish. “I Feed It to Him, So He Eats It” One day, when I was first getting to know Sii Devi, several years before her daughter Rashika was born, she was complaining to me about her four-­ year-­ old niece who was visiting her, saying, “She doesn’t eat.” When I asked Sii Devi what she meant, she explained that her niece would only eat milk and sweets but not rice or fish. I asked if Sampath, her own son who was seven at the time, liked fish, to which she replied, “He eats it.” Thinking she had misunderstood, I asked again if he liked it. Sii Devi laughed a little and said, “I don’t know, he eats it.” In response to my puzzled look, she added, “I feed it to him, so he eats it.” Like most Sinhala mothers, Sii Devi fed meals to her child by hand, massaging together each bite of rice and curry from the plate of food she had prepared and placing the food directly into his open mouth with her fingertips, while her son waited passively, undemandingly, for each bite. I had seen this interaction before. It was repeated at mealtimes each day, as Sii Devi fed Sampath—­ and as she would feed her daughter, Rashika, once she came along. Likewise, at mealtimes in households throughout the village—­ and, indeed, all over the island—­ caregivers placed food directly into the mouths of waiting children, giving those children regular experiences of being directly nourished and nurtured by caring and capable superiors. The basic pattern of this daily practice was not limited to feeding, I realized . I had seen...

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