By Martin J Packer (Sage, £31.49)
A broad, heavyweight take on child development which considers the factors influencing the culture of the community into which children are born. The book sets out to answer ‘how a child, who at birth knows nothing of how her culture works, develops the psychological skills … to participate in that culture and to contribute to its reproduction and transformation’. The book passes from prenatal development to adolescence, in which social, cognitive, emotional and physical aspects of development are interwoven. Case studies range from girl scouts in the USA to hunter-gatherer populations in southern Africa.
