Of American Children, The Matsikenga, and Self-Absorption …
Elizabeth Kolbert asks in her New Yorker article, Spoiled Rotten, “Why do kids rule the roost?”
More specifically she poses the question, “Why are American kids so spoiled?”
On spending several months living with and observing the Matsigenka tribe of the Peruvian Amazon, Carolina Izquierdo, a medical anthropologist at UCLA, grew impressed with the helpfulness and responsibility of Yanira, a six-year-old girl and member of a family within the Matsigenka tribe of 12,000.
Dr. Izquierdo witnesses Yanira’s self-less behavior, what some might call daily altruism, when she and Yanira accompanied a third family of the Matsigenka on an expedition down the Urubamba River for gathering leaves from the kapashi palm tree used to build roofs for the Matsigenka’s houses.
During the trip, Yanira, not a member of the family she and Dr. Izquierdo had accompanied, assisted others in performing daily chores and tasks without having to be asked.
Yanira made herself useful and all the while, Kolbert writes, “ … asked for nothing …”
This ability to give assistance without request, and in so doing,
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