Four Babies Documentary Analysis

Watching four babies from four parts of the globe as they grow from infancy to toddlerhood is an interesting experience. And that is exactly what the documentary Babies gives you the opportunity to observe. If I ever needed to see firsthand how certain aspects of childhood—like grasping, crawling, and pulling oneself upright—are almost entirely nature, this film is a good place to find that out.
Babies showed how four children from four very different parts of the globe grew during the first year of their lives. Watching the four children develop was fascinating. I was able to watch the babies go from being physically unable to turn themselves over or to do much more than wave their arms to where Mari, from Japan, was able to pull herself …show more content…
For Hattie, for example, play at first was being entertained by her parents—being read to and playing with her mom in a hot tub full of rubber ducks. “Play” as a concept eventually evolved to the point where Hattie had her own ideas about what she considered fun, to the point of trying to walk out on her play group’s singing game. Ponijao seemed to learn sooner than the other children that playing with other children could be fun, and spent a good deal of time crawling around with one little companion or another. At first just being with others, chewing on a stick together or watching others play, seemed to be adequate for Ponijao; later she began interacting more and being a bystander less, like when she plays a handclapping game with her mother. Bayar, on the other hand, seemed to spend a great deal of time by himself, wrapped up in swaddling cloth or tied to the bed, with his brother bringing in the family’s cat to keep the baby …show more content…
For example, all the babies seemed to begin crawling at approximately the same time. Their parents started talking to them, trying to teach them to speak around the same time, too. And all four of the children began to feed themselves within a short time of each other. On the other hand, when the Mongolian family let Bayar crawl around among the animals, he seemed to have no fear of creatures that were three- or fifty-times his size; whereas when Hattie’s parents took her to the zoo, she seemed frightened of the animals there, suggesting that fear of animals—like arachnophobia—might be due in large part to an individual’s culture. And whereas Bayar seemed content playing by himself a good majority of the time, Mari got upset and threw several little tantrums in the course of five minutes in the seeming hope of getting someone to come play with her, suggesting that the culture dictates how an individual reacts to