Barry Bogin

Barry Bogin (born May 20, 1950) is an American physical anthropologist trained at Temple University who researches physical growth in Guatemalan Maya children, and is a theorist upon the evolutionary origins of human childhood. He is a professor at Loughborough University in the UK, after professorships at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, and Wayne State University. During 1974–1976, he was a visiting Professor at the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala.

Human evolution

Barry Bogin is notable for arguing that human evolution introduced two new pre-reproductive stages, childhood and adolescence, into development. He argues that these stages are absent in the pattern of growth in nonhuman mammals, in particular, in other Homininae such as chimpanzees. This makes them biologically specific to humans. He further argues that the physical, behavioral, and emotional characteristics of children and adolescents that derive from these two stages play a key role in creating modern human adults. According to him, appreciating this aspect of human evolution has important implications for child development theory and practice in psychology, education, and child welfare.

Guatemalan children

Starting in 1974 Bogin began research on the physical development of Guatemalan Maya children, and their families. Since 1992 he has researched Maya child growth and development after migration to the United States. The purpose of this research has been to document and model the social, economic, and political influences on differences in physical growth and health between Maya children living in Guatemala compared to those in the USA.

Books
  • Bogin, Barry (2001), Patterns of Human Growth (2nd ed.), Cambridge, UK & New York: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-56438-7, retrieved 16 September 2010  First published 1988. Second edition published 1999, reprinted 2001
  • The Family as an Environment for Human Development, edited with N. Wolanski (1996, Kamal Raj Publishers) ISBN 978-81-85264-13-4
  • Human Biology: An Evolutionary and Biocultural Approach, edited with S. Stinson, R. Huss-Ashmore, & D. O'Rourke (2000, Wiley) ISBN 978-0-471-13746-7
  • The Growth of Humanity (2001, Wiley) ISBN 978-0-471-35448-2
  • Methods in Human Growth Research (2005)


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