Child

The death rate among children is large.  Of fifteen families in Bontoc, each having had three or more children, the death rate up to the age of puberty was over 60 per cent.  According to the Magulang census the death rate of children from 5 to 10 years of age is 63.73 per cent.

The new-born babe is as light in color as the average American babe, and is much less red, instead of which color there is the slightest tint of saffron.  As the babe lies naked on its mother’s naked breast the light color is most strikingly apparent by contrast.  The darker color, the brown, gradually comes, however, as the babe is exposed to the sun and wind, until the child of a year or two carried on its mother’s back is practically one with the mother in color.

Some of the babes, perhaps all, are born with an abundance of dark hair on the head.  A child’s hair is never cut, except that from about the age of 3 years the boy’s hair is “banged” across the forehead.  Fully 30 per cent of children up to 5 or 6 years of age have brown hair —­ due largely to fading, as the outer is much lighter than the under hair.  In rare cases the lighter brown hair assumes a distinctly red cast, though a faded lifeless red.  Before puberty is reached, however, all children have glossy black hair.

The iris of a new-born babe is sometimes a blue brown; it is decidedly a different brown from that of the adult or of the child of five years.  Most children have the Malayan fold of the eyelid; the lower lid is often much straighter than it is on the average American.  When, in addition to these conditions, the outer corner of the eye is higher than the inner, the eye is somewhat Mongolian in appearance.  About one-fifth of the children in Bontoc have this Mongolian-like eye, though it is rarer among adults —­ a fact due, in part, apparently, to the down curving and sagging of the lower lid as one’s prime is reached and passed.

Children’s teeth are clean and white, and very generally remain so until maturity.

The child from 1 to 3 years of age is plump and chubby; his front is full and rounded, but lacks the extra abdominal development so common with the children of the lowlands, and which has received from the American the popular name of “banana belly.”  By the age of 7 the child has lost its plump, rounded form, which is never again had by the boys but is attained by the girls again early in puberty.  During these last half dozen years of childhood all children are slender and agile and wonderfully attractive in their naturalness.  Both girls and boys reach puberty at a later time than would be expected, though data can not be gathered to determine accurately the age at puberty.  All the Ilokano in Bontoc pueblo consistently maintain that girls do not reach puberty until at least 16 and 17 years of age.  Perhaps it is arrived at by 14 or 15, but I feel certain it is not as early as 12 or 13 —­ a condition one might expect to find among people in the tropics.