Movie Review of Babies

Aaron Frederick
Lifespan Development
1:00 Class
"Babies" Response Paper

Let me first say that I really liked this movie not only because of all the cute babies, but because it showed life in different countries and how raising a baby somewhere else in the world can influence who that baby is as a person. Culture obviously has a huge part in development and this movie was good at demonstrating that. This movie raised some thought provoking questions for me as well. Most deal with development in some way or another. I characterized the four babies into two groups: modern and obsolete. The modern babies were those of the U.S. and Japan. The obsolete group consists of Namibia and Mongolia. Within the groups there are many similarities such as the style of living, use of hospitals, and so forth. There were some differences within the groups as well such as writing on the feet of baby Mari and type of care given to the baby. In the obsolete countries, babies seemed to be left unsupervised more often than in the modern communities. Many times, they would be watched by a sibling. This led the babies to do more mischievous things such as unrolling paper around the living room or fighting between siblings. Then the parents would get angry at their child because they (the parents) left the baby unattended and he or she got into trouble. This could lead to rebellion against parents later in life, assuming the scolding goes on. In the modern communities, the babies were very well supervised and rarely left unattended. In the U.S., Hattie went everywhere with her mom or dad. She was viewing the world for all it had to offer at a young age. In Japan, Mari attended daycare where she was watched all day by an adult. It seems to me that the more modern societies seem to provide almost too much love to their new born. (If that's possible.) Parents want their baby to be safe, but this may have an effect on the baby's development. In class we talked about how long it takes a baby to walk and it was stated that the environment that the baby is in will have a large influence on the time that the baby will start walking. I could see the environment affecting the walking of all babies. The children in Namibia and Mongolia had a pretty wide area to play around in, so naturally they had a curious urge to explore. Therefore, they were being self-motivated to walk. The children in America and Japan were taken outside with their parents but never had to depend much on walking as the other two did. This would lead to the modern babies walking a little bit later than the other two babies. Overall, the movie showed development quite well. I was able to pick up on things and put two and two together to figure out why they were showing what they were. I wish it would've been narrated, however. And I feel like it would be very interesting if they did follow up movies every couple of years. That way you could see how the baby was affected by the variables given to them in this movie.