Psychological Development and Need
Caring for a baby's physical needs, although important, doesn't ensure it develops into something we would recognise as a human being.
A child who is neglected psychologically will not develop into a recognisable member of society because they will not be mentally-equipped to cope with the psycho-social demands that will be made upon them by others – both their immediate family, for example, and wider society (teachers, employers and the like). They will not, for example, be able to communicate with people, because they will not have learnt a language.
As I’ve suggested earlier, not everyone agrees with the broad thrust or implication of this argument, although no sociologist would disagree with it since if they did there would be little point in trying to understand the world sociologically.
The significance of this idea, in terms of cultural development, is the fact that human beings are invariably social animals. That is, they require the existence of other human beings in order to interact and develop psycho-socially.
The fact of this sociability – and the incredibly complex forms of social interaction we have developed as human beings – suggests the need for a cultural approach to the understanding of human social behaviour.