Family, Society and its impact on infants

Perhaps family is the oldest educational institution of the infant. Within it an infant is born and brought up. The future life of an infant depends greatly on the family first and then after the infant period is over they are vary much influenced by society , environment and so on. Now there may arise a question-what is family? According to Bieseuz and Bieseuz, "The family in sense may be defined as a woman with a child and a man to look after them." In a family parents take care of for the physical and mental development of the infants. Parents feed them, provide with clothing and shelter and look after when they are in sick.

The infant or a baby (a child under seven years of age) learns a good deal from others through imitation. The infants upto five years imitate the character and behaviour of the parents or the superior without thinking and reasoning. The parents should be vary cautious in dealing with the children. Because the character, behaviour of the parents directly influence the children. That is why it is necessary to teach the children with utmost care the technique of speech,etiquette, sound conduct, behaviour to others and so on.If there is always struggle in between the father and mother of the family the infant of that family can not be suitable for decent society. This is the age of science and technology and to fit ourselves with it our august parents should remove all their orthodox ideas so that their children may fit with the changing society.
Discipline is necessary in every walk of life-in the family, in the society, in the school etc. If there is no sound discipline in the family-there will be chaos and the future life of the infants will not be happy. An infant to be a useful member of the society, it has to be trained by its parents and teachers from the vary beginning. There should be co-operation in between the family and society and the school for the development of the infant. Without co-operation successful education will not be possible. School is also a society in miniature.

It is not necessary to say that family and social environment is very essential in moulding the personality of the infant. Now what is environment? We can simply say that the term environment means all that is found around the individual. The environment enfluences the infant or the child physically and mentally and their character is formed accordingly. For example-an infant born and brought up in hilly area will be adventurous and hardly. Likewise if the infants are born and brought up in a primitive society their character and behaviour will be akin to primitive people. Again if a child is born in a family of pilferers will pick up this art easily by living with his family members.
Infant as well as man wants to know unknown. It is their nature. We see that when the infant is able to speak, they ask so many questions to their parents. But most of the parents feel disgusted in answering the questions. It affects the mind of the infant. What is mind? It is a complicated question. Yet we can simply say that thinking , feeling and willing are the fundamental of mind. So it is duty of the parents of the family to give the answer of the infant as per as possible. This will help the infant to increase the knowledge.
Every infant is born with certain individual traits. This traits developed in a proper way in a good social environment. We the teachers as member of the society should make a study of the distingusing characteristics
of each child and well-acquainted with the environmental factors of the child. This will help him to understand the behaviour of the child under different situations and would be able to mould the behaviour of the infant in a desired way.