Emotional-Social Factors
of the learning situation which is available in the natural setting of the mother caring for and getting to know her infant, and the infant's early learning about himself and the environment in the context of this care. There is no better situation in which to observe that learning than in the mother's care of the infant, particularly during the process of feeding. In the early feeding situation, the infant brings with him internal variabilities; boys certainly are different from girls, not only anatomically but, as I hope to demonstrate, behaviorally, even in the newborn period. Mothers vary from one another. Home situations vary. Cultural and socioeconomic levels of the children vary. Styles of care vary. There are as many variables in this early learning as there are in classroom learning; just as there are many different modes and styles of teaching, described by Dr. Faust and others, so also are there many modes and styles of mothering. What counts most in the learning situation of early infancy and in that mutual adaptation of infant to mother is not only the inborn characteristics of the infant or the mother, but how they fit together or do not fit together. What are the primary tasks? Where does the stress in the relationship come from? Much of what takes place in that period of time is found in nonverbal interaction at affective and behavioral levels. We do not yet have an adequate language to describe what happens. The language we have is defective because it tends to adultomorphize the infant. Let me point out a few of the complications involved in looking at that early learning situation. First of all, in order to look at it at all, we must unEmotional-Social Factors JUSTIN D. CALL, M.D. College of Medicine University of California, lrvine