This book discusses the characteristics of adolescence cross-culturally and examines the differences in the adolescent experience for males and females. Several relationships are tested in order to gain an understanding of cross-cultural patterns in adolescence.

This article builds upon gender inequality theory to examine childhood gender inequality in preindustrial societies. Multivariate and cluster analysis are used.

This article investigates the sexual division of labor between adults and children. Data analysis suggests that children usually perform tasks appropriate for an adult of the same gender, but boys will often perform women’s tasks while girls generally do not perform men’s tasks. Thus, women tend to benefit more from children’s labor.

This article uses ethnographic reports on a world wide sample of societies for rating frequency of participation by children in adult activities and degree of permissive treatment of children.

This study examines the consequences of birth order; results suggest that the firstborn child is more likely to have social authority as they grow older (they have siblings’ respect, they control property or head kin groups, etc.). The authors suggest that this authority may be legitimated by extra attention firstborns receive though elaborate birth ceremonies and teknonymy.

This study discusses childcare done by children. While no empirical hypotheses are tested, the authors identify some potential sociocultural and developmental correlates of childcare by children and provide relevant descriptive statistics. Possible correlates include mother-child relationships, conceptions and emergence of childhood stages, organization of play groups, development of social responsibility, sex differences, personality development, cognitive style and cognitive development, motivation and learning.

The author tests Straus' model of wifebeating that suggests that socialization through violence (by encouraging aggression, corporal punishment and by observing violence) increases the likelihood of wifebeating. The relationship between socialization of children using violent techniques and wifebeating is tested using the Probability Sample Files.

An existing body of research has, based on Kohn's (1977) theory of values of conformity vs. self-reliance in children of blue -collar vs. white-collar working families, suggested that socialization which emphasizes conformity is more likely to employ coercive rather than inductive methods. However, the researchers' tests for correlation of emphasis on conformity with coercive, inductive, and overall parental control indicate that parents in societies which emphasize conformity utilize both methods equally, and exert more control overall over their children than those in societies which emphasize self-reliance. The authors also test for predictors of conformity and present path models of direct and indirect effects.

The purpose of this book is to introduce a conceptual and methodological perspective called the "universalist approach," and to use this approach in exploring the pancultural antecedents and affects of parental acceptance-rejection of children,

The ability of adults to digest lactose is common only in populations of European and circum-Mediterranean origin, a distribution thought to be a result of genetic adaptation to drinking milk from domestic livestock. Two additional hypotheses have been proposed to explain the distribution of high lactose digestion capacity: (1) supplemental calcium in high-latitude populations prone to vitamin D deficiency and (2) maintenance of water and electrolytes in the body in highly arid environments. However, these hypotheses are confounded by the shared ancestry of populations whose lactose digestion capability has been tested. Therefore, the authors test all three hypotheses using a phylogenetic comparative method for 62 cultures.