This paper reviews evidence obtained from an analysis of the behavior of 3 to 11 year olds as observed in natural settings in the six culture study and preliminary findings from observing the behavior of mothers and children in a variety of settings in Kenya. The definition of "modern" includes at least three separate indices--the presence of wage earning employment, and formal education, and urban or suburban residence patterns where the urban center is pluralistic in cultural tradition. The work in Kenya suggests that to understand the learning environments which influence behavior of children and the socialization pressures exerted on them, it is necessary to increase the cross cultural sample used to include modern communities. It may well be that without adding these modern communities, curvilinear relations will be mistaken for monotonic ones. Particularly important for understanding U.S. society are the cumulative effect of complexity, nuclearity and formal education in increasing the proportion of seeking behaviors and decreasing that of offering behaviors. These findings cast some doubt on the validity of the stereotype of the association between individualism, achievement and self reliance. They also raise questions as to the relations of values to behavior. (Author/JM)