Rearing Across Cultures

Family Roles and Organization. Indian families are considered to be a close knit family unit. The man (the father and/or husband) is always considered the head of household. There is also a significant value placed on higher education and success for their children.

When reading “A World of Babies” by Alma Gottlieb and Judy S. DeLoache, the book highlighted a multitude of societies around the world. These societies include the American Puritans, Beng from Ivory Coast West Africa, the people of Bali, the Muslim Turks, the Warlpiri from Australia, the Fulani in West Africa, and the Ifaluk from Micronesia and how each have different attitudes when it comes to breastfeeding, where the baby should sleep, what woman should or should not eat while pregnant, how to carry the baby, their religion and more . The book also shows the many parents’ ideas about their children and childcare compared to others across the globe. By looking at children around the world we get different perspectives, find out minute details such as infant mortality, and how economic status can affect child rearing. Learning the different ways people from other countries raise their children and cope with the many challenges around them is astounding. Just because you lack certain resources such as a tub or a particular formula does not mean one cannot raise a healthy baby. There is no right way to raise a child but this handbook gives you pointers so parents can choose the best way to do so.

Cultural paradigms make up a person’s identity, beliefs, values, and behavior. The paradigms tell us how human existence works, what is possible and impossible, what the rules are, and how things are done, shaping an individual’s reality. People are emotionally committed to their paradigms and give up or change them with great difficulty (Diller, 2015). “It is learned as part of the natural process of growing up in a family and community and from participating in societal institutions” (Diller, 2015, p. 93).

Parents across the world have countless ways of childrearing, but they all are derived mostly from their societies view on the "correct" way to do so. One such major child rearing practice is the responsiveness across cultures. Studies have found that most preindustrial parents are more responsive to a babies need than parents living in a industrialized society. In fact the study concluded that a preindustrial society, Efe of the Ituri Forest, parents responded to a child's needs within 10 secs 75% of the time where a industrialized society, United States, family wouldn't respond at all nearly 45% of the time. This of course is due to the parents idea of what a child's values should be. Here for example, the idea is that United States parents

Generally speaking, cultures cannot be established by an individual person, thus it is required to be supported by people who frame the society. In other words, people’s common habitual mode of behavior and the national spirit are shared or succeeded. As a result, these customs are materialized as a culture. Also, these established cultures have to be learned by people through their daily life. Culture has been shaped and changed by each ethnic group, and it has influenced every aspect of people’s lives, such

In the world today, there are numerous cultures, each with their own practices and selfways. Selfways are the traits and cultural participation patterns derived from a culture that define how a person should act in the world (Markus, Mullally & Kitayama, 1997). Selfways are a key example of how the people of the culture mold what the culture’s integral characteristics are, while the culture, itself, moulds the actions of the people of the culture. This process is called Mutual Constitution: the symbiotic relationship between a culture’s psychological processes and the individuals who reside in the culture forming a collective reality between the culture and participant within the culture (Fiske, Kitayama, Markus &Nisbett, 1998). The

Since culture has a profound influence on each individual's experiences and perceived reality; it’s important to note the complex inter-play among cultural variables that can significantly impact a wide range of psychological processes including: perception, cognition, feelings, and self-concept (Comas-Díaz, Griffith, Pinderhughes, & Wyche, 1995). Taken together with the versatile experiences of multidisciplinary professionals; it’s import to know

For as long as humans have existed, there has been the practice of two members of the human species coming together to raise their offspring. This practice is commonly known as parenting and over the course of the millenniums several styles or, ways of parenting have emerged from different cultures. The focus of this paper will be over two distinct styles of parenting: Chinese-style parenting and Western-style parenting. These two styles can be compared to the parenting style described by Psychologist Diana Baumrind; equating Chinese-style to Authoritarian parenting and Western-style to Authoritative parenting. With Chinese-style being shown as similar to a dictatorship and Western-style being shown as more of a democracy. As a result, Chinese parents believe Western-style is weaker, for focusing on a child’s emotional and mental well-being and allowing children to be independent and respected, but it can also be said these are Western parenting strongest points.

According to Virginia Satir, relationships are the living links that join family members. A family which itself is a system provides a perfect platform for a new born to learn all the necessary skills required to survive. Parental ethnotheories are the cultural beliefs of the parents which are expressed in the daily lives of the families. These are cultural models that parents hold regarding children, families, and themselves as parents. Like other cultural models related to the self, parental ethnotheories are often implicit, taken-for-granted ideas about the ‘natural’ or ‘right’ way to think or act, and

In Patterns of Culture, Ruth Benedict discusses the effect that culture has on human lives, and what those implications are for the study of cultures, including our own. She begins by reminding the reader that when studying other cultures, we are viewing them, not with clear vision, but through the lens of our own culture. “No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes,” she notes, rather “He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking” (Benedict 2005:2). From the beginning, Benedict indicates that while the individual is the one looking, they can only do that with tools that and notions that

My first step in this process was to discover a culturally different scenario or family opposed to my own to discover ways at which they view child rearing. Upon my reading, I discovered an article (Tudge, et… 2000) comparing the child rearing values and beliefs of parents in the United States to those in Russia. The author focused on the middle class societal group to compare each of their beliefs and values when it comes to raising a child. As I began to read, I found myself straddling the fence when it came to

Culture plays a paramount role in our lives. “It is what shapes who we are and how we view the world” (Thorp & Sanchez, 1998, p. 3). Culture includes things

China and America are quite different countries, not only visually but in how culture influences daily life. Specifically, I will take a look at how each country values child rearing and how they raise their children during childhood. I chose this topic because when I have children, I want to personally raise my children in the best way that I can. Looking into different cultures, such as the United States and China, will show me how children are raised and also the behavior of the children as a result of how they were raised. As mentioned in an article published in Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, individualism is valued in America, so we raise our children to exercise independence hoping they will one day be independent. However, Chinese culture does not value individual independence, so they raise their children to respect authority and are more controlling. Ultimately, the goal of parenting in any culture, as stated by the same article, is raise a child who becomes a “creature of his/her culture” (LUI, GUO, 2010). Child rearing is important in both countries because both want their culture to continue on for centuries. After researching how Americans and Chinese parents raise their children during childhood, it is evident that both countries have very different parenting practices; however, they both want to raise children who exemplify their own culture.

Culture can be defined as a concept that contains numerous practices, norms, and symbols (DeLong & Fahey, 2000), as well as ceremony, rituals, language, myths, and ideology (Pettigrew, 1979), that the individuals of a social collection share within themselves, and these qualities exist beyond an individual’s mind and have a widespread consequence (Walsham, 2002).

In India, the land of culture and unity, culture and unity are wellmanifested in the structure of society, indeed in the smaller unit of a society i.e. family. A family is a set of human beings related to each other in a non-professional manner, giving rise to a concrete cohesion within the family. Love, care, and affection are the most prominent human values, which are responsible for maintaining these bonds of relationships withina family. Typically, a nuclear family may be conceived as a unit consisting of acouple, children, and grandparents, and pets. In India however, there exists a special kind of family structure that really is quite vivid in the way it manages to handle and keep intact the human relations. This special kind of