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Culture and the Construction of Habits in Daily Life:
Challenges for Occupational Therapy
Sara Harkness
Habits of daily life are organized by the individual's "developmental niche," including physical and social settings, customs and practices of care, and the psychology of the caretakers, especially ethnotheories of parents and others (Harkness & Super 2006; Super & Harkness 2002). For individuals in rehabilitation - especially children - the concept of the developmental niche provides a framework for considering how a change in the child, due to sudden trauma or an increasingly evident developmental disability stresses all three components of the niche. Parents must now make modifications in settings, change their customs and practices of care, and confront the necessity of modifying their own ethnotheories of the child, of the family, and of themselves. Through examples from cross-cultural research with parents and children in several countries, this presentation will address possibilities for expanding parents' and therapists' available repertoire of ethnotheories as they define goals for the child's development and participation in meaningful activities of daily life. Cultural themes from Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands will be contrasted to United States middle-class themes of development that tend to emphasize cognition and individual achievement to the exclusion of other skills such as emotional and social intelligence and self-regulation. Widening the scope of what one considers successful development and participation may help individuals in rehabilitation, and those who care for them, identify and achieve more satisfying outcomes.
References:
Harkness, Sara, and Super, Charles M. (2006). "Themes and variations: Parental ethnotheories in western cultures." In K. H. Rubin and O. B. Chung (Eds.), Parenting Beliefs, Behaviors, and Parent-child Relations: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (pp. 61-79). New York: Psychology Press.
Super, C. M., & Harkness, S. (2002). Culture structures the environment for development. Human Development, 45(4), 270-274.
Space is limited! Please RSVP before May 1st, 2007 at: kjacobs@bu.edu
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