Why understanding culture is essential for supporting children and families

Abstract

Understanding culture is essential for understanding child development, and thus for designing and evaluating interventions to improve children’s physical and mental health. We outline seven key aspects of culture, and then review the Developmental Niche, a theoretical framework created to highlight the dynamics of cultural influence on development and to guide assessment of the child’s cultural surround. Within this framework, Parental Ethnotheories are an especially important part of the psychology of caretakers, as they influence parental behavior both directly and through parents’ choices of settings and customs of care. Two examples to illustrate the usefulness of this perspective are provided. One demonstrates the cost of ignoring culture in a large-scale intervention to combat poverty in the United States; the other outlines successful use of the Developmental Niche framework in an intervention to improve infant health in Bangladesh. Together, these examples illuminate the seven aspects of culture reviewed in the introduction.