John W. M. Whiting was born on June 12, 1908 in Chilmark,
Massachusetts, on Martha’s Vineyard. It was also here that 90 years later Whiting passed away on
May
13, 1999. His long career, which spanned more than
60 years, was spent
on the comparison of child behavior and parental practices in human societies,
looking for generalizations about human development that would survive the test of
cross-cultural investigation.
Whiting began his academic life at Yale University, where he earned his Bachelors Degree, as well as becoming the captain of the wrestling team. Later in 1938, he received his Ph.D. in Sociology and Anthropology. He stayed on there, serving as a Yale Institute of Human Relations staff member until 1947. Whiting took time out for wartime service with the U.S. Navy during World War II. His fieldwork at Yale on childhood learning in New Guinea, led to the publication of Becoming a Kwoma.
During his time at Yale, Whiting married Beatrice Bylth on June 8, 1938, with whom he worked for the majority of their life together. Together they formed one of the most enduring husband-wife collaborations in the history of anthropology and in 1966 they founded and directed the Child Development Research Unit at the University of Nairobi. This brought Kenyans to Harvard University for graduate training. It was the Whiting’s goal to make comparative child research a field in which scientists from all cultures could participate on an equal footing.
Whiting worked on staff at the State University of Iowa for two years before he came to Harvard in 1949. While there, he was on staff at the new Laboratory of Human Development in the Graduate School of Education. After only four years, Whiting became the Director of the Laboratory in 1953, then becoming Professor of Education in 1955 and the first Charles Bigelow Professor of Education in 1960.
Whiting’s career did not go without notice. In 1973, the American Psychological Association honored him with the G. Stanley Hall Award for Distinguished Contributions to Developmental Psychology. Whiting was elected the first President of the Society for Psychological Anthropology in 1978. In 1982, John and Beatrice Whiting won the American Anthropological Association's Distinguished Service Award. Later in 1989, they received the Society’s first Career Contribution Award.
After 15 years of working at Harvard, John Whiting retired in 1978, although he continued working with many others including Irven Devore, and other Harvard faculty in a cross-cultural field study of adolescence from 1980 -1985.
After his retirement his most important research papers were reprinted with an autobiographical memoir in Culture and Human Development: The Selected Papers of John Whiting.
“Whiting, Expert in Child Development, Dies at Age 90” The Harvard University Gazette ( 20 May 1999) http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1999/05.20/whiting.obit.html, 28 May 2,000.
Munroe, Robert L. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, March 2000, v.31 2, 157(3).
Saxton, Wolfgang. “John Whiting, 90, of Harvard, A Child-Growth Anthropologist” The New York Times, June 12, 1999 A13.
Image copyright The Harvard University Gazette
Written by Students in an Introduction to Anthropology Class, Minnesota State University, Mankato, Minnesota
Edited by Marcy L. Voelker, 2007