Learning environments for infants

Learning environments in a sample of communal families and a sample of two-parent married nuclear families are compared for both intragroup and acrossgroup differences likely to influence childrearing and socialization outcomes. Learning environment variables include family and demographic backgrounds of parents; newborn health, developmental, and feeding patterns; personnel, size, and density in households; caretaking patterns; work loads and domestic tasks for mothers; kin and social supports for mothers; beliefs and value orientations of the parents; and change and mobility in families. Creedal and domestic types of communes also differed. The learning environment variables are interdependent with each other and with demographic features of the groups, and there is rapid change in communal lifestyles; both these features suggest that intragroup and longitudinal data are essential for generalizing about the effects of lifestyles on young children.