The Oxford Handbook of

Human Development and Culture

OX F O R D L I B R A RY O F P S YC H O LO G Y

E DI T OR-I N- C H I E F

Peter E. Nathan

A rea E ditor s

Clinical Psychology
David H. Barlow

Cognitive Neuroscience
Kevin N. Ochsner and Stephen M. Kosslyn

Cognitive Psychology
Daniel Reisberg

Counseling Psychology
Elizabeth M. Altmaier and Jo-Ida C. Hansen

Developmental Psychology
Philip David Zelazo

Health Psychology
Howard S. Friedman

History of Psychology
David B. Baker

Methods and Measurement

Todd D. Little

Neuropsychology
Kenneth M. Adams

Organizational Psychology
Steve W. J. Kozlowski

Personality and Social Psychology

Kay Deaux and Mark Snyder
 OXFORD LIB R ARY OF P SYCHOLOGY

Editor in Chief peter e. nathan

The Oxford Handbook
of Human Development
and Culture
AN INTERDI SCIPLINARY PERS PECTIVE

Edited by
Lene Arnett Jensen

1
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Oxford handbook of human development and culture : an interdisciplinary perspective / edited by Lene Arnett Jensen.
pages cm.—(Oxford library of psychology)
Includes index.
ISBN  978–0–19–994855–0 (hardcover : alk. paper)  1.  Developmental psychology—Cross-cultural studies.
2.  Ethnopsychology—Cross-cultural studies.  I.  Jensen, Lene Arnett.
BF713.O9295 2015
305.2—dc23

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
I dedicate this handbook to my daughter and son, Paris and Miles, in the hopes that they will
continue to navigate among cultures with a sense of appreciation and possibilities.
SHORT CONTENTS

Oxford Library of Psychology  ix

About the Editor  xi

Acknowledgments xiii

Contributors xv

Contents xxi

Chapters 1–710

Index 711

vii
O X F O R D L I B R A R Y O F P S YC H O L O G Y

The Oxford Library of Psychology, a landmark series of handbooks, is published

by Oxford University Press, one of the world’s oldest and most highly respected
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ix
 nation’s and world’s most productive and best-respected psychologists have agreed
to edit Library handbooks or write authoritative chapters in their areas of expertise.
For whom has the Oxford Library of Psychology been written? Because of its
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Peter E. Nathan
Editor-in-Chief
Oxford Library of Psychology

x Ox ford L i brar y of P s ycholo g y

ABO UT TH E E DITO R

Lene Arnett Jensen

Lene Arnett Jensen is associate professor of psychology at Clark University, Worcester,
Massachusetts. She is the originator of the cultural-developmental theoretical approach
for scholarship on human development. Her research addresses moral, civic, and cultural
identity development in the context of globalization. A native of Denmark, Dr. Jensen
has resided in a number of countries, including Belgium, India, and France. She lives in
Massachusetts with her husband and twin children.

xi
AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S

I would like to thank the authors for contributing to this handbook. There was a pal-
pable enthusiasm about an interdisciplinary project that brings together what we have
come to know about human development through the study of peoples across the globe.
I also appreciate the authors’ positive responses to several rounds of review and revision.
I am grateful for the support of Oxford University Press. I especially thank Sarah
Harrington, Senior Editor, Anne Dellinger, Associate Editor, and Andrea Zekus, Associate
Editor, for their stellar professional advice throughout the writing and production of the
handbook. The copyeditors also stood out for how their careful attention went beyond the
grammar and formatting to the arguments and ideas of the chapters.

xiii
 CO NTRIB UTO RS
Jeffrey Jensen Arnett
Department of Psychology
Clark University
Worcester, Massachusetts
Mara Bach
Department of Psychology
Marquette University
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Baptiste Barbot
Department of Psychology
Pace University
New York, New York
Herbert Barry III
School of Pharmacy
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Oana Benga
Department of Psychology
Babeş-Bolyai University
Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Rachana Bhangaokar
Department of Human Development
and Family Studies
The Maharaja Sayajirao
University of Baroda
Gujarat, India
Kaitlin Black
Department of Psychology
Clark University
Worcester, Massachusetts
Aysecan Boduroglu
Department of Psychology
Boğaziçi University
Istanbul, Turkey
Jennifer Morozink Boylan
Department of Psychiatry
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Michael Broda
College of Education
Michigan State University
Lansing, Michigan
Jill Brown
Department of Psychology
Creighton University
Omaha, Nebraska
Lynne A. Chisholm
Institute of Educational Science
University of Innsbruck
Innsbruck, Austria
UNESCO Institute for
Lifelong Learning
Hamburg, Germany
Christopher L. Coe
Department of Psychology
University of Wisconsin – Madison
Madison, Wisconsin
Feyza Çorapçi
Department of Psychology
Boğaziçi University
Istanbul, Turkey
Maricela Correa-Chávez
Department of Psychology
California State University
Long Beach, California
Luciana Dutra-Thomé
Department of Psychology
Universidade Federal do
Rio Grande do Sul
Porto Alegre, Brazil
Carolyn Pope Edwards
Department of Psychology
Child, Youth and Family Studies
University of Nebraska
Lincoln, Nebraska
Laura Ferrer-Wreder
Department of Psychology
University of Stockholm
Stockholm, Sweden
Stanka A. Fitneva
Department of Psychology
Queen’s University
Kingston, Ontario,
Canada
xv
Constance Flanagan Phillip L. Hammack
Department of Civil Society and Department of Psychology
Community Studies University of California – Santa Cruz
School of Human Ecology Santa Cruz, California
University of Wisconsin-Madison Sara Harkness
Madison, Wisconsin Department of Human Development
Doran French and Family Studies
Department of Human Development University of Connecticut
and Family Studies Storrs, Connecticut
Purdue University Elaine Hatfield
West Lafayette, Indiana Department of Psychology
Wolfgang Friedlmeier University of Hawaii at Manoa
Department of Psychology Manoa, Hawaii
Grand Valley State University Daniel B. M. Haun
Allendale Charter Township, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Michigan Anthropology
Jigisha Gala Leipzig, Germany
Department of Human Development Max Planck Institute for
and Family Studies Psycholinguistics
Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda Nijmegen, Netherlands
Gujarat, India Jutta Heckhausen
Suzanne Gaskins School of Social Ecology
Department of Psychology University of California – Irvine
Northeastern Illinois University Irvine, California
Chicago, Illinois Sascha Hein
Mary Gauvain Child Study Center
Department of Psychology Yale University
University of California New Haven, Connecticut
Riverside, California Hubert J. M. Hermans
Namrata Goyal Department of Psychology
Department of Psychology Radboud University
New School for Social Research Nijmegen, Netherlands
New York, New York Ming Hu
Patricia Greenfield Department of Civil Society and Community
Department of Psychology Studies
University of California – Los Angeles School of Human Ecology
Los Angeles, California University of Wisconsin
Elena Grigorenko Madison, Wisconsin
Child Study Center Maria I. Iturbide
Department of Epidemiology & Department of Human and Community
Public Health Development
Department of Psychology University of Illinois at
Yale University Urbana-Champaign
New Haven, Connecticut Champaign, Illinois
Shu-Sha Angie Guan Lene Arnett Jensen
Department of Psychology Department of Psychology
University of California – Los Angeles Clark University
Los Angeles, California Worcester, Massachusetts
Angela H. Gutchess Ҫiğdem Kağitçibaşi
Department of Psychology Department of Psychology
Brandeis University Koç University
Waltham, Massachusetts Istanbul, Turkey

xvi C ontri bu tor s

Chiemi Kan Helyn Luisi-Mills
Department of Mental Health Department of Civil Society and
University of Tokyo Community Studies
Tokyo, Japan School of Human Ecology
Shagufa Kapadia University of Wisconsin
Department of Human Development and Madison, Wisconsin
Family Studies Adriana Manago
Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda Department of Psychology
Gujarat, India Western Washington University
Mayumi Karasawa Bellingham, Washington
Department of Comparative Psychology Heather Mangione
Tokyo Women’s Christian University Department of Psychology
Tokyo, Japan Clark University
Norito Kawakami Worcester, Massachusetts
Graduate School of Medicine Hazel R. Markus
University of Tokyo Department of Psychology
Tokyo, Japan Stanford University
Heidi Keller Stanford, California
Department of Psychology Tomoko Matsui
Osnabrück University Center for Research in International Education
Osnabrück, Germany Tokyo Gakugei University
Shinobu Kitayama Tokyo, Japan
The Culture and Cognition Program Caroline Johnston Mavridis
University of Michigan Department of Human Development and
Ann Arbor, Michigan Family Studies
Marie-Louise Klingstedt University of Connecticut
Department of Psychology Storrs, Connecticut
University of Stockholm Usha Menon
Stockholm, Sweden Department of Anthropology
Silvia Koller Drexel University
Institute of Psychology Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul Joan G. Miller
Porto Alegre, Brazil Department of Psychology
Cynthia Levine New School for Social Research
Department of Psychology New York, New York
Stanford University Yuri Miyamoto
Stanford, California Department of Psychology
Cynthia Lin University of Wisconsin
Department of Civil Society and Community Madison, Wisconsin
Studies Yu-Ming Mo
School of Human Ecology Department of Psychology
University of Wisconsin University of Hawaii at Manoa
Madison, Wisconsin Manoa, Hawaii
Jia Ji Liu Normanda Araujo de Morais
Department of Human Development and Graduate program in Psychology
Family Studies University of Fortaleza
University of Connecticut Fortaleza, Brazil
Storrs, Connecticut Gilda Morelli
Gayle D. Love Counseling, Developmental and
Institute on Aging Educational Psychology
University of Wisconsin Chestnut Hill College
Madison, Wisconsin Boston, Massachusetts

C ontri bu tor s xvii

Catalina Mourgues Carol Ryff
Child Study Center Department of Psychology and Institute
Yale University on Aging
New Haven, Connecticut University of Wisconsin
Jun Nakahara Madison, Wisconsin
Department of Psychology Allison Sambo
Tokyo Women’s Christian University Department of Civil Society and
Tokyo, Japan Community Studies
Christina Nicolaides University of Wisconsin
Department of Psychology Madison, Wisconsin
University of California – Riverside Juliana Prates Santana
Riverside, California Department of Sociology
Bame Nsamenang Federal University of Bahia
Department of Psychology Salvador, Brazil
and Counseling Guan Saw
University of Bamenda College of Education
Bambili, Cameroon Michigan State University
Jiyoung Park East Lansing, Michigan
Department of Psychology Alice Schlegel
University of Michigan Frances McClelland Institute for Children,
Ann Arbor, Michigan Youth and Families
Anne C. Petersen University of Arizona
Center for Human Growth and Tucson, Arizona
Development Barbara Schneider
University of Michigan College of Education
Ann Arbor, Michigan Department of Sociology
Senel Poyrazli Michigan State University
Department of Behavioral Sciences East Lansing, Michigan
Pennsylvania State University Jacob Shane
Harrisburg Middletown, Pennsylvania Department of Psychology and
Marcela Raffaelli Social Behavior
Department of Human and Community University of California – Irvine
Development Irvine, California
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Barbara J. Shwalb
Champaign, Illinois Department of Psychology
Richard L. Rapson Southern Utah University
Department of History Cedar City, Utah
University of Hawaii at Manoa David W. Shwalb
Manoa, Hawaii Department of Psychology
Jodi Reich Southern Utah University
Child Study Center Cedar City, Utah
Yale University Carlos José Nieto Silva
New Haven, Connecticut Center for Psychological Studies
Lixin Ren Federal University of
Department of Psychology Rio Grande do Sul
University of Nebraska Porto Alegre, Brazil
Lincoln, Nebraska Ed de St. Aubin
Paul C. Rosenblatt Department of Psychology
Department of Family Social Science Marquette University
University of Minnesota Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Minneapolis, Minnesota

xviii C ontri bu tor s

Carola Suárez-Orozco Gisela Trommsdorff
Graduate School of Education Department of Psychology
and Information University of Konstanz
University of California – Los Angeles Konstanz, Germany
Los Angeles, California Kari Trost
Kazumi Sugimura Department of Child and Youth Studies
Graduate School of Education Stockholm University
Hiroshima University Stockholm
Hiroshima, Japan Suman Verma
Charles M. Super Department of Human Development &
Department of Human Development Family Relations
and Family Studies Government Home Science College
University of Connecticut Panjab University
Storrs, Connecticut Chandigarh, India
Mei Tan Matthew Wice
Child Study Center Department of Psychology
Yale University New School for Social Research
New Haven, Connecticut New York, New York
Sarah Thomas Ceren Yalin
Department of Psychology Department of Psychology
University of Stockholm Koç University
Stockholm, Sweden Istanbul, Turkey
Erin Toolis
Department of Psychology
University of California – Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, California

C ontri bu tor s xix

CONTENTS

Part One  •  Development and Culture in a Global

World: Overarching Issues
  1. Cultural-Developmental Scholarship for a Global World: An
Introduction  3
  Lene Arnett Jensen
  2. Ethical Considerations in Research on Human Development and
Culture  14
  Joan G. Miller, Namrata Goyal, and Matthew Wice
  3. Human Development in Today’s Globalizing World: Implications
for Self and Identity  28
  Hubert J. M. Hermans
  4. Migration Between and Within Countries: Implications
for Families and Acculturation  43
  Carola Suárez-Orozco
  5. Indigenous Social Science at the Intersection with Human Development:
Implications for and Lessons from African Ecocultures  61
  A. Bame Nsamenang

Part Two  •  Birth, Infancy, and Toddlerhood

  6. Charting Infant Development: Milestones Along the Way  79
  Charles Super and Sara Harkness
  7. Comparative and Developmental Anthropology: Studying the Origins
of Cultural Variability in Cognitive Function  94
  Daniel B. M. Haun
  8. The Emergence and Development of Language Across Cultures  111
  Stanka Fitneva and Tomoko Matsui
  9. Early Emotional Development in Cultural Perspective  127
  Wolfgang Friedlmeier, Feyza Corapci, and Oana Benga
10. The Evolution of Attachment Theory and Cultures of Human
Attachment in Infancy and Early Childhood  149
  Gilda Morelli
11. Early Contexts of Learning: Family and Community
Socialization During Infancy and Toddlerhood  165
  Carolyn Pope Edwards, Lixin Ren, and Jill Brown

xxi
 Part Three  •  Early and Middle Childhood
12. Childhood Practices Across Cultures: Play and Household Work  185
  Suzanne Gaskins
13. Cognition in Childhood Across Cultures  198
  Mary Gauvain and Christina Nicolaides
14. Cultural Manifestation of Intelligence in Formal and Informal
Learning Environments During Childhood  214
  Sascha Hein, Jodi Reich, and Elena L. Grigorenko
15. Moral Reasoning: Developmental Emergence and Life
Course Pathways Among Cultures  230
  Lene Arnett Jensen
16. The Interaction Between Culture and the Development of Creativity  255
  Catalina Mourgues, Baptiste Barbot, Mei Tan,
  and Elena L. Grigorenko
17. Parental Ethnotheories and the Development of Family Relationships
in Early and Middle Childhood  271
  Sara Harkness, Caroline Johnston Mavridis, Jia Ji Liu,
  and Charles M. Super
18. In and Out of the Classroom: The Intersection of Learning
and Schooling Across Cultural Communities  292
  Maricela Correa-Chávez, Heather Mangione,
  and Kaitlin Black
19. Gender Across Cultures: Sex and Socialization in Childhood  307
  Shagufa Kapadia and Jigishi Gala

Part Four  •  Adolescence

20. Leaving Childhood: The Nature and Meaning of Adolescent
Transition Rituals  327
  Alice Schlegel and Herbert Barry III
21. Adolescent Risks and Resiliences Across Cultures  341
  Marcela Raffaelli and Maria Iturbide
22. Global Concerns in Adolescent Health with a Case Study of India  355
  Suman Verma and Anne C. Petersen
23. Cultural Roots of Values, Morals, and Religious Orientations
in Adolescent Development  377
  Gisela Trommsdorff
24. Identity, Politics, and the Cultural Psychology of Adolescence  396
  Phillip L. Hammack and Erin Toolis
25. Family in Adolescence: Relatedness and Autonomy Across Cultures  410
  Ҫiğdem Kağitçibaşi and Ceren Yalin
26. Cultural Templates for Child and Adolescent Friendships  425
  Doran French
27. Education and the Youth Phase: Patterns, Purposes, and Problems
in Global Perspective  438
  Lynne A. Chisholm

xxii C ontent s
28. Child Labor: Homes, Streets, Armies, Factories, and Stores  456
  Silvia Koller, Luciana Dutra-Thomé, Normanda Araujo de Morais,
  Carlos José Nieto Silva, and Juliana Prates Santana
29. Adolescent Civic Development Across Cultures  471
  Constance Flanagan, Cynthia Lin, Helyn Luisi-Mills,
  Allison Sambo, and Ming Hu

Part Five  •  Emerging and Young Adulthood

30. The Cultural Psychology of Emerging Adulthood  487
  Jeffrey Jensen Arnett
31. The Intersection of Culture, Health, and Risk Behaviors
in Emerging and Young Adults  502
  Laura Ferrer-Wreder, Kazumi Sugimura, Kari Trost,
  Senel Poyrazli, Marie-Louise Klingstedt, and Sarah Thomas
32. New Media, Social Change, and Human Development from
Adolescence Through the Transition to Adulthood  519
  Adriana Manago, Shu-Sha Angie Guan,
  and Patricia Greenfield
33. Social Mobility in the Transition to Adulthood: Educational Systems,
Career Entry, and Individual Agency  535
  Jutta Heckhausen and Jacob Shane
34. Work and Work Migration Within and Across Countries in
Emerging and Young Adulthood  554
  Barbara Schneider, Michael Broda, and Guan Saw
35. Love, Sex, and Marriage Across Cultures  570
  Elaine Hatfield, Yu-Ming Mo, and Richard L. Rapson
36. Dual and Communal Parenting: Implications
in Young Adulthood  586
  Heidi Keller
37. Fathering Diversity Within Societies  602
  David W. Shwalb and Barbara J. Shwalb

Part Six  •  Middle and Older Adulthood

38. Cognition in Adulthood Across Cultures  621
  Angela H. Gutchess and Aysecan Boduroglu
39. Midlife Narratives Across Cultures: Decline or Pinnacle?  637
  Usha Menon
40. Explorations in Generativity and Culture  653
  Ed de St. Aubin and Mara Bach
41. Adult Development in Japan and the United States: Comparing Theories
and Findings About Growth, Maturity, and Well-Being  666
  Carol Ryff, Jennifer Morozink Boylan, Christopher L. Coe,
  Mayumi Karasawa, Norito Kawakami, Shinobu Kitayama, Chiemi Kan,
  Gayle D. Love, Cynthia Levine, Hazel R. Markus, Yuri Miyamoto,
  Jun Nakahara, and Jiyoung Park

C ontent s xxiii
 42. Community Leadership and Non-attachment
in Later Adulthood  680
  Rachana Bhangaokar
43. Death and Bereavement in Later Adulthood: Cultural Beliefs,
Behaviors, and Emotions  697
  Paul C. Rosenblatt

Index  711

xxiv C ontent s
 PART
1
Development and
Culture in a Global
World: Overarching
Issues
 C H A P T E R

1 Cultural-Developmental Scholarship
for a Global World: An Introduction

Lene Arnett Jensen

Abstract
This chapter introduces The Oxford Handbook of Human Development and Culture: An Interdisciplinary
Perspective, and its hallmark “cultural-developmental approach” to scholarship. The handbook
provides a comprehensive synopsis of theory and research on life course development. Experts
from disciplines such as anthropology, education, family studies, neuroscience, psychology and
sociology integrate findings from cultures around the world, including a focus on historical changes
and globalization. The 43 chapters showcase the burgeoning interdisciplinary scholarship that bridges
universal and cultural perspectives on human development. This “cultural-developmental approach”
is a multifaceted and flexible way to conceptualize theory and research that is in step with the global
realities of human development in the 21st century. This chapter includes a description of how the
cultural-developmental approach conceptualizes: 1) the entity of analysis, 2) the scope and meanings of
concepts, and 3) the nature of theoretical frameworks. Examples to illustrate the argument are drawn
from the handbook chapters.
Key Words:  cultural-developmental approach, human development, culture, globalization,
interdisciplinary, theory, anthropology, education, family studies, neuroscience, psychology, sociology

In 2005, my American husband and I moved
from the United States to my native Denmark with
our 6-year-old twins for a sabbatical year. Some
months into the year, we visited Copenhagen, where
we were delighted to find an Indian restaurant.
After ordering a selection of our favorite dishes, we
were chatting away in a mix of Danish and English
when the waiter ambled back to our table. With
a friendly smile, he asked in English: “Where we
are you from?” Upon hearing a brief version of our
saga, he looked at my son, Miles, and said: “Oh, so
you are half Danish and half American.” Almost
instantly, Miles, whom his friends have dubbed the
human calculator, rejoined: “Oh no, I am 100%
Danish and 100% American.”
Our children are coming of age in a globalizing
world, where foods, languages, people, ideas, and
identities are swirling across cultures. Either first-
hand or through media, children and adults from
almost every proverbial corner of the world have
exposure to diverse cultures. Movement across cul-
tures is not new, but the current extent and speed
of the swirl is (Friedman, 2000; Giddens, 2000;
Hermans, this volume). Globalization is erasing,
redrawing, perforating, fusing, and reinforcing
cultural boundaries among peoples and within
individuals. Cultural identifications—where we
see ourselves as being “from”—remain central to
human psychology, as exemplified by the waiter’s
question. But, in a globalizing world, cultural identi-
fications are also becoming increasingly complex, as
suggested by my son’s answer (Jensen, 2003, 2010,
2011b; Jensen, Arnett, & McKenzie, 2011; Larson,
Jensen, Kang, Griffith, & Rompala, 2012).

3
Aim and Scope
The aim of this handbook is to provide an
in-depth and comprehensive synopsis of theory
and research on human development, with every
chapter drawing together findings from cultures
around the world. This includes a focus on cultural
change and globalization. The handbook covers the
life course from the prenatal period and birth to old
age and death. Chapters are written by experts who
collectively represent disciplines such as anthro-
pology, education, human development, family
studies, neuroscience, psychology, and sociology.
The 43 chapters showcase the burgeoning interdis-
ciplinary approach that bridges universal and cul-
tural perspectives on human development.
This bridging of universal and cultural per-
spectives fits with today’s need for a new phi-
losophy of inquiry into the human condition.
One-size-fits-all theories, such as those popular in
the social sciences of the 20th century, are often
too broad and too biased to adequately capture
the complexities of human selves and relations
across diverse and changing cultures. On the
other hand, one-for-every-culture raises the spec-
ter of theoretical pandemonium. In my view, as
I describe later in this chapter, the challenge and
opportunity that we face today is one of conduct-
ing research and conceptualizing theories that are
cultural-developmental in nature (Jensen, 2008,
2011a, 2012b). We need scholarship that is mul-
tifaceted, flexible, and dynamic in order to stay in
step with the cultural and global realities of human
development in the 21st century.
The definitions of development and culture
across the handbook chapters are somewhat
eclectic. The beauty of interdisciplinary scholar-
ship is that it necessitates rethinking definitions.
Development is addressed broadly and descrip-
tively in terms of change that occurs in human
beings as they age (Zelazo, 2013). It may involve
increase or decrease; it may be quantitative or
qualitative; and it may be gradual or stagelike.
Culture is defined as the symbolic, behavioral,
and institutional inheritances that are shared
and co-constructed by members of a community
(Goodnow, 2010; Heine, 2008; Shweder et al.,
2006). Culture is not synonymous with country or
ethnicity, for example, but rather describes com-
munities whose members share key beliefs, values,
behaviors, routines, and institutions. As scholars
addressing cultural issues have long observed, cul-
tural communities include heterogeneity among
groups and individuals (Gramsci, 1971; Salzman,
4 C u lt u r a l -De v e l opm e n t a l S c hol a r s h i p f or a G l ob a l W or l d
1981). Variation also exists between cultural com-
munities, including on their degree of heteroge-
neity, intergroup contest, and change over time
(Strauss, 1992; Weisner, Bradley, & Kilbride,
1997; Whiting & Edwards, 1988).
An important aspect of difference both within
and across cultures pertains to access to power.
Power differentials occur along diverse lines, such as
class, ethnicity, gender, and religion (Hammack &
Toolis, this volume; Heckhausen & Shane, this
volume; Kapadia & Gala, this volume). From a
cultural perspective, it is important to recognize
that North America and the West have remark-
able financial and ideological influence, including
on scholarly enterprise and publications (Arnett,
2008; Chisholm, this volume; Super, 2010;
Super & Harkness, this volume). From a develop-
mental perspective, it important to remember that
children and youth have less power than adults.
Certainly, children are resilient and represent their
elders’ hopes for the future. Also, as compared to
the past, youth in their later teens and early 20s
may have gained more power today. This is because
globalization often entails movements for demo-
cratic forms of governance (Giddens, 2000), and
rapid cultural change calls for behavioral and cog-
nitive flexibility. Nonetheless, children and youth
are vulnerable to neglect and exploitation (Koller,
Dutra-Thomé, Morais, Nieto, & Santana, this vol-
ume; Raffaelli & Iturbide, this volume; Verma &
Petersen, this volume). Meanwhile, at the other
end of the life course, elders in many cultures
believe that their culture and its treatment of the
elderly have declined. Essentially, they perceive a
loss of value in today’s rapidly changing economic,
political, residential, and technological environ-
ment (Rosenblatt, this volume). As scholars—and
human beings—we need to keep in mind differ-
ences between groups in access to power (Miller,
Goyal, & Wice, this volume; Nsamenang, this
volume).
This handbook owes an enormous debt to the
many scholars who have addressed the intersection
of development and culture. They are too numer-
ous for me to name here. A perusal of the handbook
chapters and their references, however, speaks to the
work of manifold scholars over an extended period
of time. Although scholarship on the intersection
of development and culture has received important
attention for quite some time, it has recently taken
off and flourished in an unprecedented way. In
1981, Ruth Munroe, Robert Munroe, and Beatrice
Whiting edited the Handbook of Cross-Cultural
Human Development. In their introduction, the
handbook editors emphasized that “not all topics
have reached a level of maturity sufficient to allow
a ‘state-of-the-art’ review… . The volume is there-
fore a prospectus as much as a review of the field”
(Munroe, Munroe, & Whiting, 1981, p. ix). More
than three decades later, every chapter in this hand-
book also includes a discussion of future research
directions. This reflects the stimulating fact that
many topics still can be taken much further via a
cultural-developmental approach. More than three
decades later, however, the present handbook also
attests to the in-depth and high-quality cultural
knowledge that we now have about a plethora of
topics in human development. Furthermore, this
knowledge pertains to the entire life course.
Crucially, this handbook also attests to the
efforts of the many scholars who, over time, have
contributed to making our field more inclusive of
worldwide diversity. Thus, this handbook includes
authors from many parts of the world—something
that sets it apart not only from handbooks published
a few decades ago, but also from a fair number of
current works that address human psychology,
development, and social institutions. Here, the aim
was to go beyond the boundaries of Europe and
North America and represent those parts of the
world where the majority of people live. Adequate
worldwide representation of authors and research
participants still leaves something to be desired,
but the 100 or so contributors to this handbook
were mindful of the issue of worldwide diversity.
For example, no chapter simply refers to partici-
pants without specifying the culture and context
of the described research. I also asked authors to
think about the order in which they listed cultures
and nationalities, with the result that most opted to
alphabetize. It is all too easy to list the most power-
ful nations first and thereby unwittingly perpetu-
ate a power differential. Authors also put careful
thought into the question of whom they were writ-
ing for rather than proceeding to address a small
minority of the world’s population without further
consideration.
A Cultural-Developmental Approach
As mentioned earlier, bridging of universal
and cultural perspectives fits with today’s need
for a new approach to human development.
A cultural-developmental approach to scholarship
requires a rethinking of (1) the entity of analysis,
(2) the scope and meanings of concepts, and (3) the
nature of theoretical frameworks (Jensen, 2012a).
Here, I provide a succinct argument in regards to
each of these three dimensions. This conceptual
argument is followed by a more nuts-and-bolts
review of the handbook’s organization, along with
some of its other innovative features.
The Entity of Analysis
From a cultural-developmental vantage point,
the unit of analysis is individuals across the life
course who are developing in tandem with one
or more changing cultures. Three aspects of this
definition bear elaboration. First, all individuals
develop within particular cultural milieus at par-
ticular times in history. The cultural milieus may
be multifaceted, for example, encompassing both
local and global values, beliefs, customs, and insti-
tutions. No individual is culture-free, however.
Scholars have for some time highlighted how indi-
viduals, from start to finish, live within cultures
where they constantly interact and negotiate with
people whose behaviors and rules convey cultural
beliefs and values (e.g., Brunner, 1990; Cole, 1996;
Goodnow, Miller, & Kessel, 1995; Greenfield, 1997;
Kağitçibaşi, 1996; LeVine et al., 1994; Markus &
Kitayama, 1991; Miller, 1999; Moghaddam, 1987;
Nisbett, 2003; Nsamenang, 1992; Stigler, Herdt,
& Shweder, 1990; Wertsch, 1997; see LeVine &
New, 2008, for a collection of essays on culture and
child development dating back to the early 1900s).
For example, their analyses have focused on the
“dialectical syntheses” (Valsiner, 2011) and “trans-
actional events” (Rogoff, 1990, 2003) whereby
children develop into active and skilled members
of particular cultures.
When scholarship is explicit about the cultures
under investigation, it adds to our knowledge of
the local. When scholarship is explicit about the
cultures included, it also makes claims about uni-
versal features of human development more cred-
ible. It is necessary to be clear about where and
when particular individuals were studied in order
to build a database on which such claims can be
evaluated. In other words, knowledge of what
is culturally specific and what is universal comes
from studying individuals in specific places and at
particular times (see also Haun, this volume). From
a cultural-developmental perspective, findings
showing cultural differences are just as important
and useful as findings showing cultural similari-
ties. Some of the chapters in this handbook include
findings from many different cultures, whereas
others home in on a few. All authors unite in high-
lighting both cultural differences and similarities,
A r n e t t J e ns e n 5
and are clear on the empirical basis of their argu-
ments for either.
A second important aspect of the definition of
the entity of analysis is that it entails a focus on
individuals across the life course. Scholars in devel-
opmental psychology, education, and family stud-
ies quite often study children. Recently, Paul Bloom
(2013) wittily observed that “there’s some truth to
the claim that a lot of developmental psychology is
the study of the interested and alert baby” (p. 25).
One reason for this attention to children is the
quest to uncover universal origins of human devel-
opment. Meanwhile, anthropologists and sociolo-
gists habitually study adults. One reason is that
adults are those members of a society who are the
most knowledgeable in the ways of their culture.
Another way to put this is that adults, more than
children, are enculturated. A specific example that
illustrates this is the well-known phenomenon
of dissonant acculturation among immigrants
(Portes & Rumbaut, 2001). Compared to children,
adults who immigrate to a new culture typically
adopt fewer of the psychological and social char-
acteristics of the new culture. The explanation is
that children are more malleable, less set in their
ways, less culturally socialized. The implication is
that conclusions about universal development that
largely rest on research with children are not tak-
ing into account that even if cultural socialization
already begins prenatally (Hepper, 1996), cultural
socialization becomes far more pronounced with
age. In other words, children represent an easier
test than adults when looking for universality.
Conversely, adults represent an easier test than
children when looking for cultural diversity. From
a cultural-developmental perspective, the study of
individuals across the life course is therefore nec-
essary. Thus, this handbook covers the entire life
course.
Research on immigrants also helps to high-
light a third aspect of the present definition of the
entity of analysis, namely, cultural change (see also
Silbereisen & Tomasik, 2010). Although research
has demonstrated that adults who immigrate to a
new society retain many of the ways of their culture
of origin, it is also the case that cultures change.
It is an open question, for example, the extent
to which an 18-year-old who immigrates to the
United States today would be similar in mode and
degree of acculturation compared to an 18-year-old
who immigrated 25 years ago. Certainly, in a glo-
balizing world, today’s immigrant is likely to have
grown up with far more awareness of the English
6 C u lt u r a l -De v e l opm e n t a l S c hol a r s h i p f or a G l ob a l W or l d
language and American customs long before
immigrating. This awareness may entail famil-
iarity with American popular culture, but it may
also have other less obvious consequences. For
example, research indicates that use of the English
language impacts spatial cognition (Haun, this
volume; Haun, Rapold, Call, Janzen, & Levinson,
2006; Haun, Rapold, Janzen, & Levinson, 2011).
English-language users are more likely to reference
objects in relation to the self (e.g., “the cat is to the
left of the house” from the perspective of the self)
rather than in relation to other objects (e.g., “the
cat is between the tree and the house”) or by means
of a cardinal-direction type system (e.g., “the cat
is on the west side of the house”). The point is that
human development occurs in tandem with cul-
tural change.
Many chapters in this handbook discuss changes
to cultures. Some authors have worked in particu-
lar cultures for long enough to speak to historical
changes (Edwards, Ren, & Brown, this volume;
Harkness, Mavridis, Liu, & Super, this volume).
There are experts on immigration, in which change
within and between cultures is part and parcel of
the subject matter (Correa-Chávez, Mangione, &
Black, this volume; Suárez-Orozco, this volume).
Some chapters address cultural tools or contexts,
such as media, that are powerful drivers of cultural
change (Manago, Guan, & Greenfield, this vol-
ume). Also, some authors describe how major eco-
nomic shifts go hand-in-hand with major cultural
shifts in conceptions of the life course (Arnett, this
volume) and key developmental tasks, such as work
(Schneider, Broda, & Saw, this volume). Finally,
a large number of chapters address globalization,
with some focusing on its push toward homo-
geneity (Hatfield, Mo, & Rapson, this volume)
and others emphasizing its polymorphous quality
(Hermans, this volume).
Broadening and Deepening Concepts
A cultural-developmental approach entails
both a broadening and deepening of concepts.
With respect to broadening, the study of devel-
opment in diverse cultures leads to the discovery
of new concepts. Based on extensive research on
learning, for example, the focus on developmen-
tal goals such as questioning, communication,
pride, and self-esteem derived from research
with European Americans has been broadened
to include goals such as diligence, persever-
ance, moral self-perfection, and contributing to
society in research with Chinese participants
(Li, 2011, 2012). Similarly, researchers have pro-
posed that a European-American focus on accep-
tance of the self needs to be supplemented with
a concept of acceptance of the world in research
with East Asians (Rothbaum & Wang, 2011;
Trommsdorff, in press). With respect to the devel-
opment of the self, research from African cultures
indicates that there the self is understood not only
in individual physical and psychological terms,
but also in social, ancestral, and spiritual terms
(Nsamenang, 2011, this volume; see also Serpell,
1993). Our conceptual categories, then, are
expanded when research includes diverse cultures.
Munroe, Munroe, and Whiting (1981) wrote of
the discovery of “hidden variables” through cul-
tural studies (p. x). These variables may come into
view as we study cultures different from our own.
Moreover, they may be hiding in plain sight, in the
sense that “the variables we do not see or identify
in our research are often normative and universal
in our culture so that we fail to realize their influ-
ence” (Munroe, Munroe, & Whiting, 1981, p. x).
A cultural-developmental approach not only
adds to the number of concepts, it also deepens
them. Scholarship on the developmental goals of
independence and interdependence provides a good
illustration. A first step in scholarship on these
two concepts was indeed a broadening in which
researchers observed that, apart from indepen-
dence, interdependence is a highly valued goal in
many cultures, and it also requires attention (e.g.,
Triandis, 1995). Subsequent steps have involved a
deepening of research on these concepts, for exam-
ple, addressing how both can be found within cul-
tures (Raeff, 2010), how their intersection depends
on culture (Kağitçibaşi & Yalin, this volume;
Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2008), how their develop-
ment involves both similar and different processes
(Phinney & Baldelomar, 2011), and how each
concept has multiple meanings depending on the
cultures studied (Greenfield, 2010; Kağitçibaşi &
Yalin, this volume).
Essentially, every chapter in this handbook
contributes to the broadening and deepening
of conceptual categories of relevance to human
development. For example, there is valuable broad-
ening in regards to types of secure infant attach-
ment (Morelli, this volume), intelligence (Hein,
Reich, & Grigorenko, this volume), creativity
(Mourgues, Barbot, Tan, & Grigorenko, this vol-
ume), moral values and orientations (Trommsdorff,
this volume), and parenting (Keller, this volume;
Shwalb & Shwalb, this volume). Chapters also
introduce new multiplicity in regards to processes
of language development (Fitneva & Matsui, this
volume), social learning (Correa-Chávez et al.,
this volume; Gauvain & Nicolaides, this volume),
and cognitive aging (Gutchess & Boduroglu, this
volume). With respect to deepening of concepts,
examples include new elaborations on the mean-
ings of children’s play (Gaskins, this volume),
adolescents’ friendships (French, this volume),
transition rituals in adolescence (Schlegel & Barry
III, this volume), and sexual behaviors in emerg-
ing and young adults (Ferrer-Wreder et al., this vol-
ume). A number of chapters also delve deeply into
relations between concepts, such as how different
understandings of the relation of the self to society
have important implications for civic engagement
in adolescence and older adulthood (Bhangaokar,
this volume; Flanagan, Lin, Luisi-Mills, Sambo,
& Hu, this volume) and for generativity and
well-being in middle adulthood (de St. Aubin &
Bach, this volume; Menon, this volume; Ryff et al.,
this volume).
Flexible and Multiplicitous
Theoretical Frameworks
When the entity of analysis is individuals across
the life course who are developing in tandem with
one or more changing cultures, and when psycho-
logical concepts are broadened and deepened, the
result is a need for new kinds of theoretical frame-
works. Theories need to add multiple kinds of con-
cepts. They need to encompass multiple meanings
for these concepts. They need to incorporate how the
development of concepts may follow divergent devel-
opmental trajectories in different cultures (Jensen,
2008). They need to account for the fact that cul-
tures change. And the idea needs to be considered
that some developmental phases may only appear
under certain historical circumstances, such as
emerging adulthood in cultures with economies that
necessitate lengthy education (Arnett, this volume).
While this may seem like a rather tall theoreti-
cal order, it is also an invigorating one. It opens
up the possibility of much-needed new theoretical
conceptualizations. Generally speaking, I think we
need to move toward template models that propose
life course trajectories for multiple kinds of con-
cepts (Jensen, 2008, 2011). The trajectories need to
be seen as templates, in the sense that they have the
flexibility to allow for cultural variability. For each
concept, this flexibility pertains to whether or not it
emerges, when it emerges, and the slope of its devel-
opment. For example, it seems likely that a concept
A r n e t t J e ns e n 7
that is highly emphasized within certain cultures
will emerge earlier in development and increase
more rapidly in quantity and quality as compared
to cultures where the concept has minimal impor-
tance. Also, it seems likely that some concepts may
be subject to more cultural variability than others
depending on the impact of biological inheritance.
From a cultural-developmental perspective, then,
ontogenetic development is not determinative nor
is there a limitless cultural range.
To give a specific example, I have proposed a cul-
tural-developmental approach to moral psychology
(Jensen, 2008, 2011a, in press). Building on a large
body of assorted research on moral reasoning from
different cultures, this theoretical approach charts
patterns of moral development across the life course
in terms of three Ethics: Autonomy (e.g., fairness,
individual needs), Community (e.g., responsibil-
ity for others, social harmony), and Divinity (e.g.,
injunctions from sacred texts, concern with spiri-
tual purity; see Figure 3A in Jensen, Chapter 15,
this volume). The Ethic of Autonomy, for example,
is predicted to emerge early in development and to
stay relatively stable across adolescence and into
adulthood even if the specific types of Autonomy
reasons that persons use are likely to some extent
to change with age (e.g., more focus on individual
rewards and less on individual rights by children as
compared to adults). To give another example, the
Ethic of Community, according to the cultural-
developmental approach, rises throughout child-
hood and into adolescence and adulthood, both
in degree of usage and in the diversity of types of
reasons.
The developmental trajectories for each ethic
are conceptualized as templates, however. They
accommodate to the prevalence of the three eth-
ics and the hierarchy among them within cultures
(see Figures 3B and 3C in Jensen, Chapter 15, this
volume). For example, there is a more pronounced
emphasis on the Ethic of Community in Taiwan
than in the United States and a stronger emphasis
on the Ethic of Autonomy in the United States
than in Taiwan (Miller, Fung, Lin, Chen, & Boldt,
2012; see also Li, 2011, 2012). These different
hierarchies interact with development. Thus, the
Ethics of Community and Autonomy are likely to
emerge at different points in childhood in Taiwan
and the United States, develop along somewhat
different slopes, and reach different endpoints in
adulthood. With respect to cultural change and
historical time, the cultural-developmental theory
of moral psychology includes a prediction that,
8 C u lt u r a l -De v e l opm e n t a l S c hol a r s h i p f or a G l ob a l W or l d
in cultures where an emerging adulthood phase
exists, one might expect an uptick in autonomy
due to the self-focused nature of this period
(Arnett, Ramos, & Jensen, 2001). The theory,
then, aims to capture how moral development and
culture co-modulate. It does this by incorporat-
ing conceptual breadth (e.g., three kinds of eth-
ics), depth (e.g., diverse types of reasons within
each ethic), and developmental trajectories that
accommodate to cultural variability and cultural
change. A recent series of empirical studies con-
ducted in diverse cultures by scholars from dif-
ferent disciplines has provided substantial support
for this theory (Jensen, in press).
Going forward, I think that cultural-
developmental approaches that employ template
models provide a new conceptual framework for
building theories to inspire new research and find-
ings on many topics. The charge of authors contrib-
uting to this handbook was not to put forth new
theories. In fact, I asked authors to ensure that they
were inclusive of the key theories within their topic
area and that they balanced coverage of their own
scholarship with the contributions of others. That
said, I think that the assembled chapters provide
a wealth of findings that constitute raw materi-
als ready to be built into new theories of human
developments. Manifold phenomena would benefit
from being reconceptualized through a cultural-
development approach; these include emotional
and cognitive abilities, identity and interpersonal
relations, contexts of development, and phases or
stages of the life course.
New theories aiming to bridge universal and
cultural perspectives might fruitfully draw on
new and emerging work on evolution, genet-
ics, and neuroscience (e.g., Friedlmeier, Corapci,
& Benga, this volume; Gutchess & Boduroglu,
this volume; Morelli, this volume). Scholars are
addressing how biological mechanisms oper-
ate in tandem with culture at a number of levels
(e.g., Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll,
2005). For example, culture–gene coevolutionary
work includes consideration of how culture (such
a dairy farming) can influence gene frequencies
in groups (such as the selection for the genotype
for adult lactose absorption in dairy farming com-
munities; Laland, Odling-Smee, & Myles, 2010;
Richerson & Boyd, 2005). Work on probabilistic
epigenesis addresses how infants are born with a
repertoire of possible developmental trajectories
(each with different end states) and how interac-
tions with the environment lead to the pursuit
of some trajectories over others. Not only does
this create differences between individuals, but it
also creates differences between cultural groups
(Gottlieb, 1998, 2007). Also, recent work on
biocultural constructivism further proposes that
human evolution has selected for “plasticity” (e.g.,
Henrick, 2008) of trajectories. Even when a per-
son is launched on a developmental trajectory (as
a result of gene–environment interactions), there
is still room for some alteration of both the path
and the end state. Li (2007) argues that genetic
activities and neural mechanisms themselves pos-
sess “remarkable plasticity awaiting sociocultural
context to exert reciprocal influence on them and
to be ‘coauthors’ of mind and behavior” (p. 540).
As will be clear from all of this handbook’s chap-
ters, the understanding is that humans share a
variety of inherent tendencies or propensities. In
turn, these co-modulate with culture in regards to
the timing of their exact emergence and the extent
and nature of their development.
Organization and Innovative Features
This handbook comprises six sections cover-
ing (I) Development and Culture in a Global
World: Overarching Issues; (II) Birth, Infancy,
and Toddlerhood; (III) Early and Middle
Childhood; (IV) Adolescence; (V) Emerging and
Young Adulthood; and (VI) Middle and Older
Adulthood. By and large, this chronological orga-
nization allowed experts to write on those sections
of the life course with which they are most famil-
iar. Chapters are also interlinked; authors reference
topically related information found in other chap-
ters in the handbook.
The division of the life course into these sections
is a heuristic that I think scholars across the world
will recognize, even if the life course is divided in
many other ways within specific cultures. No divi-
sion, whether chronological or topical, can avoid
being a heuristic of a certain kind. Here, I asked
authors to include discussions of indigenous con-
ceptions of periods of the life course when it was
relevant to the information in their chapters.
As described earlier, I think we need theories
of human developments. Scholars have begun to
write of “childhoods” (Nsamenang, 2011), “ado-
lescences” (Larson, Wilson, & Rickman, 2009),
and “emerging adulthoods” (Arnett, 2011). For
example, Larson and his colleagues (2009) argue
that adolescents across the world face important
common psychological tasks, including identity
formation and emotional preparation for adult
roles. At the same time, important psychological
characteristics and processes that surround these
tasks vary widely across cultures, including the
extent of emotional upheaval, the degree of separa-
tion from parents, and the nature of relationships
with peers. The present life course divisions are
put forth and used in this spirit of multiplicity and
flexibility.
This chapter started with a family experience
from my sabbatical year in Denmark. That was
not a coincidence. I asked authors to provide a
pertinent and succinct personal example from
their scholarly experience to open their chapters.
The intent is to illustrate in a captivating and
distinct way how it is important to pay careful
attention to the intersection of development and
culture in peoples’ lives. Of course, any example
can only capture part of a larger story. As should
be clear from my opening family experience, my
son is not growing up short of positive cultural
identifications. But that is not always how it is.
For some years, I have returned again and again
in my writings to Liechty’s (1995) description of
Nepalese youth and one young man, “Ramesh,” in
particular. When Liechty was conducting his early
ethnographic work, Nepal and especially its larg-
est city of Kathmandu were undergoing an abrupt
and rapid transition into the world of global trade,
Western tourism, and electronic mass media.
Although youth enjoyed media and imagining a
broad range of possible selves, these unattainable
media ideals eventually collided with the realities
of their local lives. Ultimately, many felt margin-
alized: alienated from their local culture but not
truly part of the global culture. In the memorable
words of 21-year-old Ramesh (p. 187): “You know,
now I know sooooo much [from films, books, and
magazines about the West]. Being a frog in a pond
isn’t a bad life, but being a frog in an ocean is like
hell. Look at this. Out here in Kathmandu there
is nothing. We have nothing.” As I was finishing
this chapter, I contacted Mark Liechty to ask if
he knew what had become of Ramesh. They had
lost contact after Ramesh’s life spiraled into seri-
ous drug use (Liechty, personal communication,
June 3, 2014).
While each of the personal and research exam-
ples recounted by authors is unique, I have found
them to be remarkably illuminating. Each tells
something about the authors and conveys some-
thing central to the purpose of this handbook.
I hope readers find the examples as thoughtful and
moving as I have.
A r n e t t J e ns e n 9
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 C H A P T E R

2 Ethical Considerations in Research

on Human Development and Culture

Joan G. Miller, Namrata Goyal, and Matthew Wice

Abstract
This chapter focuses on ethical issues in culturally based research on human development. The
authors consider ethics both in terms of ways to guarantee the cultural adequacy of procedures for
the protection of human subjects and of ways to enhance the cultural sensitivity of the theory and
methods underlying psychological inquiry. After briefly discussing the historical context in which
human subjects protocols emerged, the chapter focuses on cultural issues entailed in achieving
informed consent, safeguarding the privacy of research participants, and protecting research
participants from harm. It then focuses on ethical issues involved in ensuring the cultural adequacy
of research findings, including issues of sampling and generalization, avoiding bias in assessment, and
cultural broadening of research constructs. It concludes by underscoring respects in which taking
cultural meanings and practices more fully into account makes it possible to enhance both the ethics
of research and its quality.
Key Words:  ethics, confidentiality, informed consent, institutional review boards, privacy, harm,
attachment, parenting, motivation, culture

Research ethics is concerned with protecting the
human rights of research participants, including,
most basically, the right to privacy and to protec-
tion from harm. Professional codes of ethics have
been elaborated in response to ethical abuses that
have occurred in research, as well as to chang-
ing sensitivities to human rights issues and to the
growth of new methodologies and study popula-
tions. Codes of research ethics thus represent his-
torical and cultural creations, even as they seek
to embody timeless principles. In this chapter, we
consider issues of research ethics that arise in cul-
turally based research over the life span.
To illustrate the types of ethical challenges that
exist in research on culture and human develop-
ment, we provide here an example of an ethi-
cal issue that one of the authors of this chapter
encountered in conducting research among Indian
and US populations. She had plans to conduct an
interview study on social attribution with a univer-
sity population in southern India and approached a
university psychology professor with the request to
recruit participants from her class. Arriving to class
that day, however, the professor not only graciously
introduced the author to the students and gave a
brief description to the class of the type of research
that she was conducting, but also announced to
everyone that they would all be taking part in the
study. The students greeted this announcement
with equanimity, as an appropriate expectation
with which they were not only comfortable but also
all ready to comply.
In this context, the consent form took on a for-
eign and almost superfluous air. It was foreign in
the sense that it was not a practice that was indig-
enous to the local cultural context, but rather one
that had been introduced by Western research-
ers. It was also superfluous, in the sense that, in

14
this context, students were motivated to meet the
expectations of their professor to participate in
the project and did not approach the situation as
one in which the decision about whether or not to
participate was theirs alone. In showing a willing-
ness to participate in the project, the students were
fulfilling what they viewed as their role-related
responsibilities to meet the expectations of their
professor. Although the students potentially could
have declined to participate, they shared a tacit
understanding that being responsive to the for-
eign researcher was being responsive to a guest,
in accord with the expectations of their profes-
sor. Nonparticipation would have meant a loss of
face for the professor that would be shared by the
students.
The author’s response to this situation, as is
often the case, was improvised, in that the ethi-
cal guidelines of institutional review board (IRB)
committees do not typically address how to make
accommodations in this type of situation and may
even differ in terms of what types of accommo-
dations, if any, are considered appropriate. She
collected the consent forms from the students,
all of whom had signed the form indicating their
willingness to participate, but later went out of
her way, in a procedure that would not have been
necessary with a US population, to emphasize
with each student individually the acceptability of
declining to participate. In response to this further
informal elaboration of the consent agreement, a
few students later declined to participate, even stu-
dents who had initially signed the consent form.
In this way, a real option to decline to participate
was afforded to the students by acting in a way that
more fully took into account local cultural norms
and that had not been achieved by the written con-
sent form required by the IRB and which everyone
had signed.
In this chapter, we present an overview of ethi-
cal issues arising in culturally based research on
human development in terms of both the consider-
ations taken into account in contemporary human
subjects procedures that are stipulated in IRB
protocols, as well as in terms of more general con-
cerns in cultural psychology with ensuring that the
content of research is both culturally sensitive and
culturally fair. In the first half of the chapter, we
address the cultural adequacy of procedures for the
protection of human subjects. In the second half,
we consider steps that are necessary to ensure the
cultural sensitivity of the constructs, methods, and
conclusions of psychological research.
Cultural Adequacy of Procedures
for Protection of Human Subjects
In this section, we discuss cultural challenges
that arise in protecting the human rights of research
participants. After briefly describing the histori-
cal and cultural context in which human subjects
protocols developed, we focus on cultural issues
entailed in achieving informed consent, ensuring
the privacy of research participants, and protecting
research participants from harm.
Historical Context of IRB
The evolving and historically sensitive nature of
human subjects concerns is seen in their recent evo-
lution and elaboration in relation to harmful pro-
tocols adopted in actual medical and social science
research. The concerns with protection of research
subjects first came to prominence with the extreme
conduct of Nazi doctors and scientists during
World War II. Concentration camp inmates and
other prisoners were commandeered into research
without having given consent and were subject
to medical interventions that resulted in great
harm, frequently leading to death. In response to
these abuses, The Hague Court formulated the
first written statement of ethical guidelines in the
Nuremberg Code, a code that stipulates the neces-
sity of informed consent, balancing risks with
anticipated benefits, and avoidance of harm.
Whereas many researchers distanced themselves
from the conclusions of the Nuremberg Code in
assuming that no such extreme practices existed
in research practices elsewhere, abuses that arose
in medical and social science research increas-
ingly made clear that harmful practices occur
more widely in scientific inquiry and represent
an ever-present hazard. One of the most cited
examples of ethical violations in medical practice
occurred in the Public Health Service Syphilis
Study (1932–1971), known also as the Tuskegee
Syphilis Experiment (Jones, 1993). A sample of
African American men had been recruited, without
their informed consent, into a multiyear longitu-
dinal study that explored treatments for syphilis.
The study enrolled hundreds of men who had con-
tracted syphilis and a comparison group of hun-
dreds who were syphilis-free to serve as controls. In
terms of ethical problems, study participants were
given false information about the need for certain
extremely painful study procedures, such as spinal
taps. Also, the longitudinal study was continued
with the study participants being denied access to
antibiotics even after penicillin had been shown,
M i l l e r , G oy a l , W ic e 15
during the 1940s, to be a safe and effective treat-
ment for syphilis. The study raised questions about
the potential for harm in medical experimentation
and the need to fully inform participants about the
risks of research, as well as broader questions about
the potential for discrimination and bias, with
questionable practices having been undertaken
with a minority population.
Psychological investigators became particularly
sensitive to the potential for harm in psychological
research in response to the human subjects abuses
associated with some of the classic and highly
influential controlled experiments undertaken by
US social psychologists in the mid-20th century
(De Vos, 2010). For example, this occurred in the
Milgram obedience to authority study (Milgram,
1963) that documented the tendency for respon-
dents to comply with the admonitions of an author-
ity to administer ever-increasing levels of shock to a
confederate in a learning task. Although providing
a powerful demonstration of obedience to author-
ity, the research came under fire in later years for
having subjected participants to the psychological
harm of believing that they had inflicted severe
physical pain on a fellow research participant and
for engaging in deception in feigning the situation
presented to subjects, with no actual shock having
taking place (Brandt, 1971; Kaufmann, 1967).
Notably, other contemporary social psycho-
logical studies that also provided dramatic dem-
onstrations of the power of the situation and that
prompted individuals to engage in harmful behav-
ior were also not identified at the time as ethically
problematic (Zimbardo, 1973). For example, simi-
lar types of harm occurred in a prison experiment
conducted at Stanford University by Zimbardo and
his colleagues (Zimbardo, Haney, Banks, & Jaffe,
1973). This study involved research participants
being assigned to roles as guards and prisoners in a
simulated prison, in a procedure that continued for
6 days despite evidence of participants experiencing
extreme distress, with the “guards” acting in ways
that were physically and psychologically abusive to
the “prisoners.”
Other contemporary studies employing less
reactive behavioral observation techniques also
were later recognized to involve human rights viola-
tions, such as an ethnographic study (Humphreys,
1970) that involved surreptitiously conducting
observations of homosexual practices in public
restrooms. Although producing findings of great
interest at the time, the study was later recognized
as involving ethically problematic behaviors such
16 E t h ic a l C ons i de r at ions i n R e s e a rc h on H u m a n De v e l opm e n t
as invasion of privacy, exploitation of a vulnerable
population, and lack of informed consent.
In response to the increasing recognition of
questionable ethical practices existing not only in
medical research but more broadly in all research
with human subjects, the US Department of
Health and Human Services became involved in
the formal regulation of the conduct of research,
with the National Research Act (1974) mandating
the establishment of IRBs to protect the rights and
safety of research participants. This was followed
in 1979 by the publication of the Belmont Report,
which articulated the basic ethical principles that
underlie all contemporary research with human
subjects. Centering on human rights and moral
values, these principles include (a) the principle of
respect for persons as autonomous agents capable
of making their own decisions, which underlies
such considerations as the requirement to obtain
informed consent and to respect the privacy of
research participants; (b) the principle of benefi-
cence, which underlies such considerations as min-
imizing risks and maximizing benefits, as well as
maintaining confidentiality; and (c) the principle
of justice and fairness, which underlies such con-
siderations as selection of research subjects in ways
that are equitable and that avoid the exploitation of
vulnerable populations.
Procedures for the protection of human rights
in research and for the realization of the standards
set forth by the Belmont Report are widely avail-
able, with major professional organizations of psy-
chologists articulating codes of conduct based on
these considerations. For example, the American
Psychological Association’s (APA) “Ethical
Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct”
elaborates the standards that must be met to pro-
tect the rights of research participants (American
Psychological Association, 2002), while more spe-
cialized professional organizations, such as the
Society for Research in Child Development, dis-
seminate ethical standards specifically applicable
to particular research populations, such as children
(Society for Research in Child Development, 2007).
Our discussion here does not seek to replicate
this type of widely available information but rather
points to ways human subject guidelines need to
be elaborated to ensure that they are responsive to
the challenges of cultural research. Our discussion
in this section focuses on three of the central issues
considered in contemporary human subjects pro-
tocols: informed consent, protecting privacy, and
minimizing harm.
Informed Consent
Informed consent involves providing individu-
als with prior information about the nature of the
research procedures in which they are being asked
to engage, as well as about the benefits and poten-
tial for harm involved. In the case of children, IRB
procedures involve additional complexity because
of the assumption that children lack the legal right
to consent to research or the perceived power to
refuse to participate, nor do they possess, in many
cases, the cognitive maturity to fully understand
research procedures. To address these develop-
mental concerns, it is recognized as important for
researchers to obtain consent from parents or legal
guardians, as well as from school teachers or prin-
cipals who may be interacting with or overseeing
the child’s activities during the period of the study,
as well as to secure the child’s verbal and/or writ-
ten assent to participate. In conducting research in
diverse cultural contexts, however, additional chal-
lenges arise in (a) ensuring that respondents fully
understand the nature of the procedures and the
risks involved, (b) securing consent from the rel-
evant parties, and in (c) making certain that any
consent given is fully voluntary.
To achieve informed consent, efforts must
be made to address the limited prior familiar-
ity of certain populations with the theoretical
concepts motivating research and with negative
aspects of the research procedures to be employed.
These types of issues have been documented in
research with children from Western cultures. For
example, in a series of studies conducted among
elementary-school aged Canadian children, the
children proved accurate in describing the pur-
pose of the studies being conducted but did not
fully appreciate potential negative consequences
involved in participating, such as feelings of being
embarrassed or upset by their performance on cog-
nitive tests or of being bored by the length of study
procedures (Abramovitch, Freedman, Henry, &
Van Brunschot, 1995). These same kinds of con-
cerns may be even more pronounced in the case
of cultural populations who have limited famil-
iarity with the norms of experimentation. In such
cases, individuals may not anticipate respects in
which psychological research may involve rela-
tively impersonal modes of interaction and thus
may react particularly negatively to research con-
texts. For example, in a study on AIDS conducted
among African Americans, investigators observed
that research participants interpreted structured
tests, with their repetitive items, as a sign that
the researchers lacked respect for their feelings
and experiences (Stevenson, DeMoya, & Boruch,
1993). In these types of situations, the imperson-
ality of informed consent procedures may lead
individuals to be reluctant to agree to participate
in research, with study procedures experienced as
violating local cultural norms, such as the value
placed among Hispanics on an individual’s ability
to be simpatico to others in everyday social interac-
tion (Browner, Preloran, & Cox, 1999). To address
these concerns, researchers not only need to add
information to informed consent agreements that
explain more fully the nature and potential benefits
and risks associated with the research, but to make
efforts to ensure that the language of consent agree-
ments is written in as clear and culturally familiar a
way as possible and that it accords as much as pos-
sible with local cultural norms (Freeman, 1994).
Attention also needs to be given to cultural vari-
ation in conceptions of authority that may affect
the range of parties from whom consent needs to
be secured. For example, in the case of American
Indian or Alaska Native tribes, it is important to
consult with and obtain the prior approval of tribal
leaders about whether and how investigators should
approach potential child and adolescent research
participants and their families (Beauvais &
Trimble, 1992; Norton & Manson, 1996). Given
the family-oriented values emphasized in certain
Asian cultures (Tai & Lin, 2001), consent may
tend to be viewed as a family right, meaning that
informed consent must be secured from parents,
guardians, or even grandparents, even in cases in
which the child is above the age of legal consent.
Extra care also needs to be taken to ensure the
voluntariness of consent in research conducted in
diverse cultural contexts. Whereas consent forms
include a stipulation that respondents are free to
withdraw their participation from a study at any
time without negative repercussions, this freedom
may not be experienced by research participants.
In this regard, it has been demonstrated that chil-
dren tend to be reluctant to withdraw from a study
unless the experimenter reiterates this freedom to
withdraw during the actual course of the study
procedures, such as by explicitly stating that he or
she would not be upset by the child stopping par-
ticipation (Abramovitch et al., 1995). A tendency
not to recognize the acceptability of withdrawing
from a study once it has begun, however, may be
particularly pronounced in cultural communities
in which individuals are particularly inclined to
defer to the authority of the researcher or where
M i l l e r , G oy a l , W ic e 17
they may be even less familiar with the norms of
psychological research than are study participants
from middle-class European-American contexts.
Attention also needs to be given to the contrast-
ing meanings of research compensation in groups
of different cultural and socioeconomic back-
grounds. For example, in cases in which family
beliefs support the child’s participation in research
as an altruistic act, getting paid for participation
may tend to be perceived negatively as an infringe-
ment on family values (Sanchez, Salazar, Tijero, &
Diaz, 2001). Likewise, researchers need to take spe-
cial care to ensure that any compensation offered is
both fair and noncoercive. This means, on the one
hand, adequately compensating research partici-
pants for their time and effort and for any financial
costs that they may have incurred, such as travel
expenses or loss of time at work, while, on the other
hand, ensuring that the compensation offered is
not so great as to be experienced as compelling
participation.
Protecting Privacy
Privacy in the conduct of research involves
many different types of considerations. As Allen
(1999) notes, research privacy entails concerns
with (a) physical privacy, in terms of providing spa-
tial seclusion; (b) informational privacy, in terms
of assuring confidentiality and protection of data;
(c) decisional privacy, in terms of allowing indi-
viduals and families to make important decisions
for themselves, such as those concerning sex, repro-
duction, or religion; and (d) proprietary privacy, in
terms of control over names and other indicators
of personal identity. Assuring each type of privacy,
however, can only be achieved through taking
into account the ecological constraints of different
social settings and contrasting cultural definitions
and practices related to privacy.
Standard IRB requirements focus on protecting
the privacy of the data collected, including under-
taking such measures as using participant codes,
rather than names, and employing secure methods
of data storage. However, such strategies may be
insufficient to protect participant privacy in the
case of small, close-knit communities, in which
recruitment efforts and participation in research
may tend to become widely known public activi-
ties. In such cases, media reports of research may
lead to the public identification and thus violation
of the anonymity of members of distinctive cul-
tural or linguistic subgroups (Norton & Manson,
1996).
18 E t h ic a l C ons i de r at ions i n R e s e a rc h on H u m a n De v e l opm e n t
Contrasting cultural norms concerning pri-
vacy may also affect the meaning and desirability
of physical and informational privacy in the con-
duct of the research itself. This was illustrated dra-
matically in a recent public health interview study
conducted in Sri Lanka, which compared the out-
looks of Ayurvedic, Buddhist, and Western healers
(Monshi & Zieglmayer, 2004). In seeking to pro-
tect the privacy of the information collected, inter-
views were first undertaken, in accord with Western
norms, in an enclosed terrace in the home of one
of the healers. Participants, however, accepted this
setting with resistance. As the local interpreter
explained to the foreign researchers, respondents
were uncomfortable with the seclusion of what they
viewed as this “hidden” interview space. It was only
when the researchers moved the interviews to the
public space of an open patio that the Sri Lankan
healers participated in the interviews without hesi-
tation or unease. Furthermore, as is common in
many other cultural settings, research participants
came to the interviews accompanied by significant
others, including young children in their care, as
well as adult family members and close friends.
Not only were the participants unconcerned about
disclosing information in front of these bystand-
ers, but they also experienced such open commu-
nication as normatively appropriate and desirable,
leading the participants to feel more comfortable
and to be more forthcoming in their responses than
had the researchers interviewed them alone. Also,
in many instances, the bystanders contributed
their own responses to the interviews, in ways that
enhanced the readiness of the research participants
to speak freely with the interviewer.
Variation in the cultural values underlying deci-
sional privacy also must be taken into account in
determining who should be given information that
an individual is participating in research or given
access to information being collected on an individ-
ual as part of a study. In this regard, a central issue
that arises is the weight to be given to the rights
of adolescents to control their own behavior versus
the rights and responsibilities of parents to oversee
the behavior of their offspring. It is recognized that
older adolescents not only have the cognitive capac-
ities of adults but also the societal right to engage in
consequential adult-like behaviors, such as drink-
ing alcohol or driving. Thus, the cognitive imma-
turity of the adolescent or his financial dependence
on his parents no longer constitutes clear grounds
for giving priority to the parent’s rights to decision
making in research over the rights of the adolescent
himself. However, how such conflicts between the
rights of adolescents and those of their parents need
to be resolved is culturally variable.
In recent work conducted with US samples,
researchers have concluded that in cases involving
major health care decisions, such as seeking care
at a family planning clinic, where the rights of a
youth to control her own behavior conflict with the
authority of her parents to oversee the youth’s con-
duct, priority should be given to the rights of the
adolescent: “a youth’s rights to care must supersede
a parent’s rights to know what is happing to their
youth” (Brooks-Gunn & Rotheram-Borus, 1994,
p. 120). It is argued that, in these cases, the youth
should have autonomy over her own behavior and
that involvement of the parents may preclude the
adolescent from gaining access to the care she
needs.
However, in many non-Western cultural com-
munities, or even in the case of certain minority
subgroups within the US, families play a greater
normative role in the planning of the adolescent’s
life, with the expectation by the parents and by the
adolescents themselves that the family will be con-
sulted and involved in major life decisions. Thus,
it tends to be experienced as disrespectful of the
parental role or an intrusion on parent–child com-
munication to bypass parents in health care matters
involving adolescent children, with the adolescents
themselves generally viewing parental involvement
and input as legitimate and valuable (Casas &
Thompson, 1991; Fisher, 2002). Also, in terms of
proprietary privacy, the requirement of nondis-
closure of information obtained in research may
be rejected in such cases as being in conflict with
the perceived goals of research. Thus, it has been
found that teenagers who self-identify as members
of minority subgroups in the US commonly expect
researchers to assist them with obtaining help with
any problems uncovered as part of the research and
thus support the disclosure of information about
their experiences to third parties, including not
only family members but also social service and
public health agencies (O’Sullivan & Fisher, 1997).
The present considerations underscore the
extent to which culturally variable notions of
privacy must inform research procedures, or, as
Prost and Vincent (1993) argue “The private life
is not a natural fact; it is a historical reality that
is constructed in different ways by various societ-
ies” (p. 12). Respecting privacy as it is understood
in culturally variable terms and in the context of
contrasting local sociocultural constraints has the
potential to better meet the needs and expectations
of research participants while also yielding better
quality research data.
Minimizing Harm
Research with human subjects, as noted earlier,
seeks to balance benefits that derive from research
with risks to the human subjects involved. These
risks, however, may be heightened in research to the
extent that the procedures employed are culturally
inappropriate or involve vulnerable populations.
Most procedures adopted in research with chil-
dren have been created taking into account the
cultural expectations and practices of middle-class
European-American families. Although these pro-
cedures may induce some stress in children, the
stress is generally judged to be temporary and to be
no greater than that experienced in everyday fam-
ily life. However, to the extent that research proce-
dures violate the socialization practices emphasized
in particular cultural communities, they may entail
greater potential for harm or discomfort.
This type of potential for greater harm or dis-
comfort may be seen in the cross-cultural use of
the Strange Situation procedure to assess attach-
ment (Rothbaum, Pott, Azuma, Miyake, & Weisz,
2000). As created by Ainsworth (1963), the Strange
Situation procedure is designed to assess secure
base behavior by subjecting the infant to what is
intended to be a mild level of stress related to a tem-
porary separation from the mother or other care-
giver. During the course of the procedure, the child
is put in a situation in which, for brief periods, he or
she interacts with an unfamiliar adult and also, in
turn, is left alone. Although this procedure invari-
ably evokes some distress for the child, the distress
is judged to be warranted as a means to gain insight
into processes of attachment and is routinely
approved by Human Subjects Reviews Committees
as entailing an acceptable level of risk. According to
Ainsworth and her colleagues (Ainsworth, Blehar,
Waters, & Wall, 1978), the procedure is congruent
with commonly experienced American parenting
practices, with American mothers generally com-
fortable with taking their babies into unfamiliar
environments and leaving them for a few minutes
with a stranger or, even briefly, alone. However, as
Takahashi (1982) notes, this type of behavior rarely
occurs among Japanese mothers who seldom go
out leaving the child with another caregiver, even
with a grandmother or father. In cases in which the
Strange Situation has been administered to a sample
of Japanese infants (Takahashi, 1986), the anxiety
M i l l e r , G oy a l , W ic e 19
involved for the Japanese infants has been found to
be intense, leading the infants to display patterns of
response that appeared to be more reflective of their
efforts to cope with the stress of the procedure than
of enduring patterns of attachment.
The Strange Situation procedure also may
cause significant anxiety for the mothers who are
expected, as part of the procedure, to expose their
children to a highly unusual and anxiety-provoking
experience. Although mothers may routinely com-
ply with the experimenters’ requests to separate
from their infants during the Strange Situation
procedure, given the deference accorded to sci-
ence, they may also feel that, in doing this, they
are failing to protect their infants from a nega-
tive psychological experience and thus breaching,
at least temporarily, their protective role as a par-
ent. However, although this type of concern may
be experienced to some degree by all mothers, it
is likely to be even greater in cultural contexts in
which the separation from the caregiver involved in
the Strange Situation procedure is more discordant
with everyday parenting practices and conceptions
of good parenting.
The potential for discomfort or risk in psycho-
logical research may also be seen in other topic
domains, given the relatively common use of
stressful experimental procedures in research with
very young children. To give another example,
the Still Face paradigm is a widely used labora-
tory procedure in which, after a 2-minute period
of face-to-face play, mothers are asked to maintain
a still face while looking toward their infant for 2
minutes, followed by 2 minutes of reunion play
(Tronick, Als, Adamson, Wise, & Brazelton, 1978;
Tronick & Cohn, 1989). The interaction is later
coded for such features as the infant’s capacity to
maintain affective self-regulation during the period
of the still-face, maternal expressive behavior, and
the level of coordination achieved in mother–
infant interaction during the reunion period. It
is anticipated that all infants will show emotional
distress in this task, in that the mother’s behavior is
unexpected and highly troubling in its sudden and
extreme nonresponsiveness. However, none of the
safeguards are present that are routinely employed
in research with adults. Thus, no effort is made to
obtain the child’s assent to participate or to inform
him or her in advance about the upcoming stress,
and no experimental effort is undertaken to debrief
the infant by informing him or her of the deception
involved in their caregiver having feigned nonre-
sponsiveness. The Still Face Procedure, however, is
20 E t h ic a l C ons i de r at ions i n R e s e a rc h on H u m a n De v e l opm e n t
considered ethically acceptable by Human Subjects
Review Committees in that the discomfort induced
is only relatively short-term in duration and is gen-
erally congruent with what are assumed to be every-
day parenting practices in which infants commonly
experience delays in maternal responsiveness.
The Still Face procedure, like the Strange
Situation paradigm, however, is discordant with
parenting practices and beliefs in cultural com-
munities outside the dominant white, middle-class
model that is taken by default to be normative in
developmental psychology and thus may induce
much greater stress among infants and mothers
in such communities than among middle-class
European-American mothers. Marked cultural dif-
ferences exist in caregiver responsiveness to babies’
fussing and cries and in the processes through
which self-regulation is achieved (Meléndez, 2005).
To give an example, whereas 98% of the time the
!Kung San hunter–gatherers of Botswana respond
to babies’ frets within 10 seconds, Western moth-
ers tend to refrain from responding to their infant’s
cries in as much as 40% of the cases (Barr, 1999)
and may not even identify a baby’s crying as requir-
ing of a response until the crying has persisted for
as long as 10 minutes (Small, 1998). Furthermore,
in many cultures of Africa and Southeast Asia, a
contrasting style of self-regulation has developed
in which infants come to self-regulate before mak-
ing a full-blown cry (Papousek, 2000). Given
this expectation of relatively immediate paren-
tal responsiveness to infant distress among such
infants and their parents, the Still Face paradigm
then would tend to involve much greater likelihood
of psychological harm than among middle-class
European-American mothers.
In terms of the Strange Situation and the Still
Face Paradigm, as well as of other similar experi-
mental paradigms that induce culturally variable
levels of stress, there is a need to make significant
modifications in the consent agreements, if not
also in the procedures of the experimental para-
digm itself, to minimize any potential for harm.
In terms of consent agreements, it is important to
more fully inform parents in advance of the risks
involved. Thus, although it may be reasonable
among middle-class European-American parents
to portray such experimental procedures as elicit-
ing no more than routine levels of distress among
infants or as not exposing children to experiences
that are highly unusual in terms of their everyday
lives, this type of assurance does not apply in the
case of cultural communities in which parenting
practices differ markedly. Also, it is important to
modify the procedures themselves in ways that
reduce the level of harm or discomfort induced
while still preserving the construct validity of the
theoretical concepts being assessed, such as by
markedly shortening the duration of the stressful
interactions in these tasks.
Greater potential for harm also exists in the
case of research conducted among populations
who are particularly vulnerable because of mental
or physical problems, immaturity, or particular
historical-political circumstances (Macklin, 1999).
Hernandez et al. (2013) provide a convincing case
for the designation of immigrant populations as
vulnerable due to many potential factors includ-
ing lack of language proficiency, undocumented
status, and poverty. Moreover, research conducted
in war zones constitutes another example of a con-
text in which sensitivity to population vulnerabil-
ity extends beyond the IRB emphasis on disability
and immaturity. Goodhand (1999) notes, in writ-
ing about the challenges of conducting research in
the context of contemporary conflict areas such as
Afghanistan, that the issues of physical security
and the threat of harm from participation in the
research arise not only for the investigators them-
selves, but also for research participants. It is noted
that when choosing issues for discussion, research-
ers must be aware of the political sensitivity of
particular issues and avoid topics that are not only
taboo but that would put the participants at physi-
cal risk—such as discussion of the opium economy
in Afghanistan or issues of caste in the case of Sri
Lanka. In the case of research conducted in conflict
zones, researchers also need to be sensitive to the
tensions that arise between the need to maintain
confidentiality versus addressing extreme threats to
human safety and security. Researchers also must
seek to give back to the local community while
avoiding creating false impressions of the improve-
ments that individuals may expect in their condi-
tions of life from involvement in the research.
Cultural Adequacy of Conclusions
Drawn from Research
In this section, our discussion goes beyond top-
ics typically addressed by Human Subjects Review
committees to consider issues that are critical in
conducting research that is fair to diverse cultural
populations in the sense of adequately tapping
and representing their outlooks in psychological
inquiry. These issues involve not only questions of
sampling and of avoiding bias in the conclusions
drawn, but also of working to culturally broaden
the constructs, methods, and conclusions of psy-
chological inquiry.
Sampling and Generalization
from Research
Sampling involves issues of fair treatment in
that it bears on representing cultural perspectives
in a way that is inclusive while avoiding either
engaging in stereotyping or in otherwise oversim-
plifying the nature of particular cultural outlooks.
Psychology presently rests on a skewed sampling
of the world’s populations, with researchers in
many cases making claims that are presented as
generalizing to all of humanity on the basis of
samples drawn from a highly skewed database
consisting primarily of individuals from Western
industrialized societies (Arnett, 2008; Henrich,
Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010). As critics have
charged, psychological research tends to proceed
as though the cultural context for human develop-
ment is homogenous, with middle-class European
Americans treated as the default or unmarked sub-
ject of research:
Culture … has been assumed to be homogeneous,
that is based on a standard set of values and
expectations primarily held by White and
middle-class populations … For example, in
developmental psychology, children means White
children (McLoyd, 1990); in psychology of women,
women generally refers to White women (Reid,
1988). When we mean other than White, it is
specified.
(Reid, 1994, p. 525)
Strikingly, not only has culture and ethnicity
been neglected in research on human develop-
ment, but limited attention has been given to social
class. As Fernald (2010) notes in underscoring this
neglect at the 2010 International Conference on
Infant Studies, fewer than 1% of the research pre-
sentations sampled children from disadvantaged
families, despite 20–40% of children in the United
States living in poverty.
In seeking to broaden the database on which
conclusions are drawn in psychological inquiry,
however, it is vital not only to adopt more culturally
inclusive sampling practices, but also to avoid ten-
dencies to approach culture, ethnicity, and social
class in ways that involve overly global claims. For
example, overgeneralization can be seen in the
heavy reliance on the individualism-collectivism
construct and the related construct of an
M i l l e r , G oy a l , W ic e 21
independent versus interdependent cultural view
of self-formulations that presently dominate much
developmental and social psychological research
on culture. In this work, although the popula-
tions sampled involve primarily individuals from
particular national groups, such as Japanese,
claims are made that apply to all East Asians or
to all Asians, or even to all Easterners, with simi-
lar broad generalizations made to all Westerners
on the basis of research conducted exclusively in
the United States or Canada (e.g., Nisbett, 2003).
Likewise, little attention tends to be given to varia-
tion linked to ethnicity despite findings that the
perspectives of minority group populations, such
as African Americans, may not only differ from
those of European Americans, but also show dis-
tinctive patterns of cross-cultural variation (Miller,
Kapadia, & Akiyama, 2013). These same kinds
of considerations also apply in the case of work
on social class, with an onus on investigators to
avoid making global claims about the impact of
social class or assimilating social class differences
to the same processes seen as underlying cultural
differences. For example, as observed in work on
attachment conducted among Puerto Rican and
European-American families (Harwood, Miller, &
Irizarry, 1995), the nature of any social class dif-
ferences observed may vary depending on the val-
ues and practices emphasized in different cultural
contexts.
It is also critical to avoid the stereotypical
stance that results from relying on pan-ethnic or
pan-cultural labels or from making pejorative
assumptions in efforts to “measure” culture as
an individual difference variable. For example,
investigators note that the common tendency to
categorize respondents into subgroups in terms
of general national labels (such as Hispanic or
American Indian) obscures the moderating effects
of national origin, immigration, and religion, as
well as of social and personal histories on psycho-
logical outlooks, and may be insensitive to mixed
race or bicultural self-identification (Fisher, 2002).
An over-homogenizing stance in cultural research
is also exacerbated by the use of scale measures of
culture that promote categorization of populations
into dichotomous categories and often embody
pejorative assumptions. For example, on scale mea-
sures of collectivism, such as the widely used mea-
sure assessing independent versus interdependent
self-construal (Singelis, 1994), interdependence is
tapped in terms of items such as “I will sacrifice
my self-interest for the benefit of the group that
22 E t h ic a l C ons i de r at ions i n R e s e a rc h on H u m a n De v e l opm e n t
I am in,” which portray collectivism as a nona-
gentic stance that is emotionally nonsatisfying. As
critics have charged (e.g., Miller, 2002), this type
of claim involves a problematic tendency to view
collectivistic outlooks in terms of an assumed ten-
sion or opposition between the desires of the indi-
vidual and social requirements—a tendency that,
although it may reflect certain Western cultural
outlooks, does not characterize collectivist cul-
tural outlooks that view the social and the natu-
ral as inherently mutually constitutive rather than
as in tension (e.g., Marriott, 1976; Miller, Das, &
Chakravarthy, 2011).
Avoiding Bias in Assessment
To achieve fairness in the conclusions drawn
from research, it is also vital to ensure that assess-
ment procedures are interpreted in the same way
in different cultural contexts and thus provide
valid indices of the constructs being assessed. This
assumption is often violated when research instru-
ments do not adequately take into account the con-
ditions of life or cultural viewpoints emphasized
in different cultural contexts and fail to consider
cultural variation in familiarity with research.
Assessment of attachment with the Strange
Situation procedure provides an example of ways
in which a standard behavioral assessment proce-
dure may be interpreted differently than intended
in a particular cultural context and thus be tapping
other dimensions than those planned. As discussed
earlier, in the context of the close parent–child con-
tact maintained in Japanese families, the Strange
Situation typically ends up inducing more stress
than tends to occur among American populations
(Takahashi, 1986). In creating this stress, however,
the validity of the procedure as an index of attach-
ment is called into question. It thus becomes diffi-
cult, if not impossible, to assess whether findings of
greater insecurity in the Strange Situation among
Japanese as compared with US children arise from
variation in attachment or from the different mean-
ing of the task in each cultural context.
Notably, a similar problem of cultural differ-
ences in the fairness of research procedures has been
noted in the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI),
presently the most respected and widely used
instrument for assessing attachment among adults
(Hesse, 1999; Main, 1995). The measure involves
an open-ended interview that is tape-recorded and
later transcribed, in which the participant is asked
to narrate real-life autobiographical memories of
relationships with their parents during childhood,
as well as to generate five adjectives that best
describe these relationships and to provide episodic
memories to illustrate why they have selected the
adjectives. The open-ended free response nature of
the interview might suggest that it is a culturally
fair measure. However, cultural differences in dis-
course norms and in the meaning of the interview
context introduce cultural bias in the responses
given. Takahashi and Hatano (2009) note that
Japanese respondents tend not to be forthcoming
in their responses to the AAI, often responding
by saying “I do not remember” or by giving very
brief answers because the interview context vio-
lates Japanese norms that discourage disclosure of
private information about the family to strangers.
Japanese respondents also tend to give more mea-
sured responses than would typically be observed
in a US sample because of their maintaining con-
trasting culturally based conversational styles, and
they are particularly reluctant to speak of nega-
tive family experiences, particularly in relation to
mothers. Takahashi and Hatano (2009) point out
that, although a literal scoring of the responses
given by Japanese respondents to the AAI might
show respondents to be unconsciously idealizing
their relationships with their parents, this scor-
ing would lack validity in that it fails to take into
account the noncomparability of the meaning of
the AAI probes and interview among Japanese as
compared with among the Western populations on
which it has been normed. Rather than responding
in a defensive way to the AAI, Japanese respond in
a way that is considered culturally appropriate in
what to them is a socially uncomfortable interview
context.
Contrasting culturally based presuppositions
about the purpose and nature of experimentation
may also lead to bias in measurement that under-
mines the validity of results. Greenfield (1997)
illustrates such a situation in describing the con-
trasting performance displayed by Zinacantecan
Mayan child weavers in a task assessing their abili-
ties to continue striped patterns. The children dis-
played great competence on this task when it was
presented in a familiar everyday form in which the
sticks were arrayed in a wooden frame and the chil-
dren were asked to continue the pattern with addi-
tional sticks. However, they failed at the task when
it was presented in the format of a multiple choice
procedure in which they were asked to select which
among three different possible patterns arrayed in
front of them correctly continued the pattern. Their
response to the multiple–choice format involved an
effort to construct something meaningful, such as
by pairing choices with each other to make some
kind of a larger pattern, rather than identifying
the one best response. As Greenfield (1997) sug-
gests, the issue is not only the children’s unfamil-
iarity with the multiple–choice format per se, but
also their adherence to the broader conversational
assumption that communication should serve a
functional purpose and their lack of understanding
that experimentation involves specialized norms in
which information is given solely for the purpose of
testing understanding, without regard to the prac-
tical relevance of this information.
Cultural Broadening of Constructs
Finally, to achieve fairness in the conclusions
drawn in research, it is important to attend to the
cultural inclusiveness and sensitivity of the con-
structs and theories being assessed. Even in cases
in which respondents are familiar with research
procedures and experience them in a way that is
congruent with local cultural norms, the research
may fail to capture the perspective of a particu-
lar cultural group because the constructs being
assessed embody culturally specific conceptual
assumptions.
This type of concern may be seen, for example,
in research that has called attention to the need
for cultural broadening of the meaning of paren-
tal control. In the dominant models of parenting
behavior, a distinction is drawn between “behav-
ioral control,” which involves the active guidance
and direction of behavior and that is assumed to
have adaptive consequences, particularly with
younger children, as compared with “psychological
control,” which involves the use of strategies such
as manipulation, guilt induction, and coercion and
that is assumed to have negative consequences at any
age (Barber, Olsen, & Shagle, 1994). Authoritative
parenting, which is based on behavioral control, is
seen as leading to close parent–child relationships
and is positively related to academic achievement
among European Americans, whereas authoritarian
parenting, which is based on psychological control,
is seen as leading to affectively distant parent-child
relationships and is negatively related to aca-
demic achievement among European Americans
(Baumrind, 1966, 1996; Conger, Conger, Elder,
Lorenz, Simons, & Whitbeck, 1992). However,
unexpected relationships have been observed when
parenting measures based on these distinctions
are employed among cultural groups other than
those on whom they were originally developed.
M i l l e r , G oy a l , W ic e 23
For example, authoritarian parenting has been
associated with positive academic performance
among Asian youth and observed to have no
associations with academic performance among
African-American youth (Dornbusch, Ritter,
Leiderman, Roberts, & Fraleigh, 1987). Research
has also shown that affective warmth tends to be
experienced in the case of Asian Americans whose
parenting is characterized as being authoritarian
(Chao, 1994; 1995).
These unexpected findings appear to arise from
the same parenting behaviors having contrasting
affective meaning in different cultural communi-
ties. This was demonstrated in a study documenting
cultural variation in the affective associations made
to items from standard parenting scales—such as
the following item in the Child Report of Parenting
Behavior Inventory (CRPBI; Schaefer, 1965): “[my
mother or primary caregiver] says if I really cared
for her, I would not do things that cause her to
worry” (Mason, Walker-Barnes, Tu, Simons, &
Martinez-Arrue, 2004). All youth associated feel-
ings of being controlled and manipulated with this
“control through guilt” item and other similar items.
However, African Americans linked the item and
other similar items with greater feelings of being
loved or cared for than did European Americans.
Attention to the contrasting cultural meanings
accorded to parental control is important in ensur-
ing the validity of theoretical claims being made.
As Mason et al. (2004) point out, parenting that
researchers may have classified as authoritarian
according to distinctions made on conventional
parenting scale measures may actually be reflec-
tive among Asian Americans of a “training” style
of parenting. Also, it is unclear whether what is
presently scored as authoritarian among African
Americans actually is reflective of such an orien-
tation, given the positive affective meanings that
African Americans tend to associate with parental
control. Attention must also be given to local cul-
tural meanings in order to avoid any unintended
harm resulting from the real-world application of
psychological findings. For example, a parent edu-
cation program might inadvertently encourage par-
ents to behave in ways that may lead their children
to feel rejected or unloved or to make the parents
feel that their own parenting practices are being
disparaged unless the program and the research on
which it is based has taken into account the affec-
tive meanings linked with the parenting practices
being displayed in the specific cultural communi-
ties under consideration.
24 E t h ic a l C ons i de r at ions i n R e s e a rc h on H u m a n De v e l opm e n t
The need for cultural sensitivity in the constructs
underlying research and in associated measuring
instruments may also be seen in work on motivation
in the context of the tradition of self-determination
theory (SDT) (Deci & Ryan, 1985; 1987; 2002).
In the case of all scale measures developed to assess
self-determination (Self-determination theory,
n.d.), references to role expectations are included
only as either introjected or external scale items,
which are items designed to tap a noninternalized
and thus nonagentic stance. Work in the tradition
of self-determination theory acknowledges that
individuals may internalize social expectations as
fully in collectivist cultures as in individualistic
cultures (Chirkov, Ryan, Kim, & Kaplan, 2003).
However, this feature of the scale items means that
anyone who sees themselves as acting in response
to role expectations would invariably be scored as
lower in agency than someone who does not see his
or her behavior as responsive to role expectations,
since this is the only place on SDT scale measures
where social expectations are mentioned. Given
the greater emphasis placed on role expectations
in social attribution and moral reasoning in collec-
tivist than individualistic cultures, this may then
lead to the conclusion that collectivist populations
tend to be less agentic than individualistic cultural
populations (e.g., Bontempo, Lobel, & Triandis,
1990) or that individuals with collectivist cultural
backgrounds experience a type of agency that
does not involve a subjective sense of choice (e.g.,
Iyengar & Lepper, 1999; Markus & Kitayama,
2003). However, when effort is made to treat con-
ceptions of duty as potentially internalized motiva-
tional stances associated with a subjective sense of
choice, certain collectivist populations have been
found to score high in agency even when giving
greater overt emphasis to duty or obligation than
do Americans (Miller et al., 2011).
Conclusion
Taking cultural considerations into account in
research on human development is integral not
only to ensuring the ethics of research, but also to
ensuring its quality. Research, it has been seen, can
only be conducted in an ethically sensitive way by
incorporating local cultural practices and outlooks,
just as incorporating such practices and outlooks is
vital to ensuring the construct validity of the data
being collected and the theoretical significance of
the findings obtained. Systems of research eth-
ics, as formulated by IRBs, need to be treated in
a flexible way that recognizes that they have been
formulated at particular historical points in time
from particular cultural viewpoints, with these
guidelines unable to anticipate all of the consider-
ations that must be taken into account to ensure
that any ethical standards being applied are cultur-
ally inclusive. As research on human development
comes increasingly to utilize new types of method-
ologies and to become increasingly international,
the types of ethical challenges that the field faces
will continue to change, with attention to culture a
key part of responding to such challenges.
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 C H A P T E R

3 Human Development in Today’s

Globalizing World: Implications
for Self and Identity
Hubert J. M. Hermans

Abstract
The psychological dimension of “open” versus “closed” is a core dimension for self and identity in
a globalizing world. With this thesis as a starting point, the implications of globalization for human
development are discussed: the impact of the Internet on the embodied self, globalization and
localization as two sides of the same coin, and the emergence of global and local identities, including
their bicultural and hybrid manifestations. Furthermore, attention is given to the balance between
homophily, as a necessary condition for effective communication between different cultural positions,
and heterophily, as a source for innovation and creativity at cultural interfaces. In this context,
psychology as a discipline is criticized for its universal pretensions. Finally, arguments are presented
for studying the influence of globalization on lifelong development, including the process of aging, and
for the necessity of dialogical models for the study of self and identity in a globalizing world.
Key Words:  globalization, localization, bicultural identity, hybrid identity, dialogical self, homophily,
heterophily, aging, cultural learning

On a Personal Note: World War II
as the First Period of Globalization
in My Life
One of the most impressive moments in my life
was in September 1944, when my place of birth,
Maastricht, in the south of The Netherlands,
was liberated from the German occupation. As a
7-year-old boy, I saw, with mounting surprise, the
marching soldiers of the American 30th Infantry
Division “Old Hickory,” passing through the nar-
row street near my parents’ house, wildly applauded
by the masses who greeted them with explosive
enthusiasm and joy after more than 4 long years
of suppression and suffering. The sudden change of
military power marked the beginning of a totally
different way of communication with the “strang-
ers.” The contrast between the attitude of the Dutch
toward the enemy and toward the liberator could
not be more pronounced. While I, like almost all of
my peers, had felt reservation and anxiety toward
the German soldiers during the occupation, from
the moment of liberation, I was excited to meet
and greet every American soldier with a big smile
and a loud “Hello boy!,” a greeting that was always
returned. Whereas I had never communicated with
any German soldier before, always observing them
from a safe distance, I learned to interact with
the Americans in a surprisingly spontaneous and
open way. On the suggestion of an older friend,
I sometimes addressed a friendly looking soldier
with a simple, but quite effective, combination of
American words: “Mother poor, want chewing
gum.” When my request was approved, and it typi-
cally was, I felt rich as the proud owner of a whole
package of Wrigley Chewing Gum, which for me
symbolized a historical turn in my lifestyle.
When I look back at the events of that time and
their meaning in my personal history, I realize that
the occupation by the German army and the later
liberation by the Allies were my first experiences

28
of what we would today call “globalization.” The
darkness, fear, and threat that lurked over the
first period was abruptly followed by a feeling of
rebirth, renewed vigor, and elated joy during the
second one. This early experience made me aware
of the strong contrast between closing myself to
the unwelcome occupiers and opening myself to
the welcomed liberators.
The Open Versus the Closed Mind
The opening of borders between different cultures,
countries, and communities is one of the central
features of a globalizing world. Despite increasing
economical, ecological, demographic, political, and
military interconnections, however, individuals and
groups are also separating themselves from each other
in the service of their vested interests and demarca-
tion of their own identity. This increasing interde-
pendence and separation as its counterforce create
a field of tension in which individuals, groups, and
communities position themselves and each other as
part of the process of civilization.
After Rokeach’s (1960) classic study The Open
and Closed Mind, psychologists have become aware
of the social relevance of this dimension for the
workings of self and identity. As a response to the
border-crossings in a globalizing world, individu-
als and groups are opening or closing themselves,
depending on their needs, interests, wishes, anxiet-
ies, or uncertainties. On the assumption that self
and society are not mutually exclusive but rather
inclusive, it makes sense to study how self and soci-
ety shape each other. That is, society deeply pen-
etrates the self just as, in reverse, the self is able
to influence and even innovate society, as Mead
(1934) has convincingly argued in his influential
book Mind, Self, and Society.
Also in our own work, self and (globalizing)
society, are considered to make up each other.
Since 1992, my colleagues and I were involved
in the development of a social-scientific theory,
the so-called dialogical self theory (Hermans &
Gieser, 2012; Hermans & Hermans-Konopka,
2010), inspired by the groundbreaking works of
American authors like William James (1890) and
George Herbert Mead (1934), and the Russian lit-
erary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin (1973/1929). In this
theory, the self is considered as a “society of mind,”
which functions as a dynamic multiplicity of
embodied I-positions among which dialogical rela-
tionships can be established. As this theory holds, a
certain degree of innovation and renewal of self and
identity are indispensable for further development,
not only of the individual self, but also of society
at large. This innovation requires a certain degree
of openness for the specific social positions of other
groups, cultures, and communities as part of a glo-
balizing society, but also for the development of a
demarcated self of the individual person.
In this chapter, I want to sketch the relationship
between globalization and human development
with special emphasis on the psychology of self
and identity. More specifically, I want to show how
deeply self and identity are influenced and even
changed by the process of globalization. I describe
that globalization has a Janus-faced nature, lead-
ing in some cases to creativity and innovation of
self and identity and in other cases to identity
confusion and marginalization. Finally, I criticize
psychology’s universal pretensions and argue for a
dialogical approach in the study of globalization
and localization.
Globalization, Self, and Development
First of all, we need to answer the question of
what we mean by globalization and why it is rel-
evant for human development. To illustrate the
relationship between globalization and develop-
ment, I give some examples of the influence of glo-
balization on the everyday life of adolescents and
young adults, with a focus on the deep impact of
Internet technology on self and identity. I use these
examples as a starting place for a broader discus-
sion of the possibilities and dangers of the process
of accelerating globalization and their linkages to
human development.
The Impact of Globalization
on Development
The focus of this chapter is on the intense and
deep implications of the process of globalization for
the development of the individual person. But what
is “globalization”? In a most general way, global-
ization refers to the process of international, inter-
regional, and intercultural contacts arising from
the interchange of products, people, ideas, and
worldviews. Such interchanges, including advances
in transportations and telecommunications, are
central factors in globalization. As Marsella (2012)
concludes, virtually all the definitions involve an
acknowledgment “that the process of globaliza-
tion involves extensive and often imposed contact
among people from different cultures, nations, and
empires with subsequent social, cultural, economic,
and political interdependencies and consequences”
(p. 456).
H e r m a ns 29
 Globalization has profound implications for the
formation of self and identity during the life course.
Discussing the repercussions of globalization for
adolescents (ages 10–18) and emerging adulthood
(ages 18–29), Jensen, Arnett, and McKenzie (2011)
present some telling examples. Promoted through
the highly popular Fotologs and MSN Messenger,
hundreds, even thousands, of adolescents in Chile
organize parties in which they violate the traditional
sexual mores of what was once one of the most con-
servative countries in Latin America. In China, a
mass movement of “factory girls” in their late teens
to mid-20s move from rural villages to cities in
an attempt to find work, some of them attending
English classes, others becoming escorts for wealthy
businessmen, and many of them working in order to
send their hard-earned money back home. Or, a cou-
ple, an American woman and Greek man, are mar-
ried in Paris, honeymoon in Africa, and then find
their residence in England. With these “snapshots,”
Jensen and colleagues illustrate how globalization
impacts the identity development of adolescents and
emerging adults worldwide in key areas such as mar-
riage, sexuality, work, and moral values.
Internet’s Deep Implications
for Self and Identity
One of the most revolutionary developments
in the process of globalization is the use of the
Internet. It has a pervasive influence on the every-
day life of an increasing number of people world-
wide, and, thanks to technological advances, it is
accessible at many places and locations, not only
in the school but also in trains, in nature, and even
in one’s bedroom. It has the potential to broaden
one’s vista in unprecedented ways. According to
Larson (2002), the Internet provides the potential
for entrepreneurs to offer the “MIT Curriculum on
Calculus” or “Pentecostalist Curriculum on World
History” to any child who has the money and
equipment available to log on to the specific web-
site. The increasing number of courses, curricula,
and their à la carte combinations exemplify the
potential for enormous growth of individualized,
Internet-mediated education. The Internet enables
children and adults to have access to information,
institutions, and virtual communities across the
world, regardless of one’s age, gender, ethnicity,
social standing, or physical attractiveness. On the
basis of his review of literature, Larson concludes
that the freedom of choice and empowerment pro-
vided by the Internet has implications for every
30 H u m a n De v e l opm e n t i n T oda y's G l ob a l i z i ng W or l d
facet of adolescents’ lives: their social contacts
with family, friends, and romantic partners; their
health and well-being; their education; their civic
and community engagement; and their transition
to adult work. However, Larson also gives attention
to the shadow sides of Internet communication (see
also Hevern, 2012): it generates new vulnerabili-
ties to interpersonal manipulation and commercial
exploitation, and it opens new opportunities for
deviant behavior, such as hacking and accessing a
diversity of pornographic materials.
A striking example of how deep the use of the
Internet can go into the embodied self is provided
by adolescents who are engaged in self-mutilation:
As a conversation unfolds among Teenagers on
an Internet message board, it rapidly becomes
evident that this is not idle electronic chatter. One
youngster poses a question that, to an outsider,
seems shocking: “Does anyone know to cut deep
without having it sting and bleed too much?” An
answer quickly appears: “I use box cutter blades.
You have to pull the skin really tight and press the
blade down really hard.” Another response advises
that a quick swipe of a blade against skin “doesn’t
hurt and there is blood galore.” The questioner
seems satisfied: “Okay, I’ll get a Stanley blade ‘cause
I hear that it will cut right to the bone with no
hassle. But … I won’t cut that deep.”
(Bower, 2006, p. 376)
A team of researchers under the supervision
of Janis L. Whitlock of Cornell University stud-
ied self-injury message boards like this one. Five
Internet search engines led the investigators to
discover 406 such sites. Most of them attracted
participants who presented themselves as adoles-
cents between 12 and 20. Even more ominously,
a significant minority of messages discouraged
self-injurers from seeking formal medical or men-
tal assistance, or they shared ways to keep the
details about self-harm techniques secret (Bower,
2006). As the phenomenon of self-mutilation sug-
gests, Internet communication has a deep impact
on the relationships of adolescents not only with
each other but also with themselves and their own
body. Globalization, and Internet communication,
as one of its manifestations, is not something “out-
side,” but rather penetrates deeply into the inner
domains of the self (Hermans & Dimaggio, 2007;
Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010).
In a more recent review of advances of Internet-
based technologies, Hevern (2012) demonstrates
the increasing diversity of communication pos-
sibilities. Premillennial Internet media (e-mail,
instant messaging or texting, personal webpages,
and weblogs) have been joined by a large number of
post-2000 innovations: social networking utilities
(Facebook, MySpace, Twitter); wikis; peer-to-peer
file transfer protocols (such as BitTorrent); Voice
over Internet protocol (VOIP), like Skype; and
both graphic image (Flickr) and video (YouTube,
Vimeo) sharing utilities, among other develop-
ments. As Hevern shows, these online technolo-
gies build an environment often labelled “Web
2.0” because individuals use the Net not merely
to access information created by professional web
designers (“Web 1.0”) but to create themselves and
share with others their own ideas, beliefs, personal
experiences, and artistic achievements.
Like Larson (2002), Hevern is not only con-
cerned about the promises and increasing oppor-
tunities of the Internet, but also about its shadow
sides, to which he refers in terms of the “voices of
darkness and the irrational” (p. 196). In his view,
the emergence of such voices seems to be facilitated
by the unique opportunities of barricaded and rela-
tively anonymous Internet communication tools.
Globalization: Its Promises and Deceptions
The process of globalization is so complex
and caught in opposites that it is not possible to
describe it in either positive or negative terms. It is
associated with both virtues and vices and loaded
with possibilities and dangers. Moreover, as I show
in this section, it is connected with its counterpart,
localization, in a dialectical way.
Globalization: Its Virtues and Vices
Not only the Internet, but globalization, as a
broader topic has both virtues and vices and brings
both advantages and disadvantages. As Marsella
(2012) observes in his review of literature, global-
ization gives and takes, it promises and deceives, it
liberates and imposes. In presenting a list of positive
and negative implications, he notes that the same
events can be seen as positive or negative depending
on differing points of view and the phase of transi-
tion of a particular group, nation, or culture. On
the (generally) positive side, he includes topics like
exposure to new ideas and customs, international
integration and networking, increased national
wealth, social mobility, new technologies, changes
in gender status and opportunities, chances for
economic growth via foreign companies, and a
sense of global solidarity with humanity. On the
negative side, he refers to decreased predictabil-
ity and control; future shock, culture shock, and
identity shock; greater divisions between rich and
poor; cultural disintegration; exploitation of labor
forces; breakdown in traditional values and cus-
toms; increased dependence on foreign sources;
and English-language penetration.
English-Language Penetration
and Its Implications for Identity:
The Case of Edward Said
An illustrative example of the impact of
English-language penetration in the context of
social power relationships and globalization,
including colonialism, is provided by the life of
Edward Said. This author became well known
in scientific circles for his influential work on
Orientalism, a concept used by many researchers
to refer to a generally patronizing Western attitude
toward Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African
societies. In his autobiography Out of Place (1999),
Said reflects about the different cultures in which
he was involved and also about the influence of his
name on his identity. As Bhatia (2002) describes,
Said struggled with his hyphenated, postcolonial
identity as a Palestinian-Egyptian-Christian-A
rab-American, a diversity of cultural positions
that, in his view, were loaded with many tensions.
Born as a Palestinian and belonging to a Christian
minority, he lived in an Arab country, received his
education in colonial Cairo in a British school, and
later moved to America.
The training that he received in the English school
in Cairo reflects both his experience of dislocation
and the culture shock between the Arab boys and
the English educators. The British staff of the school
used to position the Arab boys as a “distasteful job”
or as “delinquents” who were in need of regular dis-
cipline and punishment. Interactions were prescribed
in a handbook with rules that were used to make the
Arab boys become like the British, which in turn
evoked resistance on the part of the boys:
Rule 1 stated categorically: “English is the language
of the school. Anyone caught speaking other
languages will be severely punished.” So Arabic
became our haven, a criminalized discourse where we
took refuge from the world of masters and complicit
prefects and anglicized older boys who lorded it over
us as enforcers of the hierarchy and its rules. Because
of Rule 1 we spoke more, rather than less, Arabic,
as an act of defiance against what seemed then, and
H e r m a ns 31
 seems even more so now, an arbitrary, ludicrously
gratuitous symbol of their power.
(Bhatia, 2002, p. 68)
As this quotation illustrates, English language
was not simply a subject to be learned at school in
which the pupil could excel or fail. It was rather
part of a prescribed form of interaction associated
with differences and even clashes between cultural
positions and their hierarchical organization, based
as they were on social power and suppression.
This quotation reflects the significance of social
power in the process of globalization. In this exam-
ple, the relationship between the English staff and
the Arab pupils was markedly different from the
hierarchical relationship between teachers and
pupils in the context of a single culture (e.g., an
English school for English adolescents). It was a
relationship of social power that puts one culture,
the English, including its language, above the
other one, the Arabic, which led the Arabic boys to
answer with forms of counterpower.
The English-language penetration even “infil-
trated” his name, which confusingly combined the
English name Edward with the Arabic name Said.
He reflects on his name in this way:
Thus it took me about fifty years to become
accustomed to, or, more exactly, to feel less
uncomfortable with, “Edward,” a foolishly English
name yoked forcibly to the unmistakably Arabic
family name Said… . For years, and depending
on the exact circumstances, I would rush past
“Edward” and emphasize “Said”; at other times
I would do the reverse or connect these two to each
other so quickly that neither would be clear.
(Said, 1999, pp. 3–4)
As this quotation shows, Said’s multicultural
identity was not an addition or a simple juxtapo-
sition of different identities. Rather, his different
cultural positions were loaded with tensions and
the residuals of social power relationships between
different cultural groups. Power relationships and
cultural domination do not simply “surround” the
self as something outside the skin, but infiltrate its
most personal and inner domains (Callero, 2003;
Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010).
Globalization and Localization
as Two Sides of the Same Coin
Conceptions that consider globalization
and homogenization (e.g., Americanization) as
identical or equivalent processes have become
32 H u m a n De v e l opm e n t i n T oda y's G l ob a l i z i ng W or l d
increasingly obsolete (e.g., Castells, 1997;
Featherstone, 1995). Although there are clear
indications of homogenizing trends (e.g., con-
sumerism, last-bestseller distribution, worldwide
export of Hollywood films, the explosive spread
of social media), the idea that globalization is to
be identified with cultural homogenization is no
more than simplistic, whether seen positively as
the utopia of the global village or negatively as a
form of cultural imperialism. Rather, the process
of globalization leads to a sharpening of cultural
contrasts or even engenders new oppositions (e.g.,
reappraisal of indigenous cultures, spiritual coun-
termovements, protests against overconsumption,
ecological movements, forms of religious funda-
mentalism). One of the obstacles to understand-
ing the process of globalization is the widespread
tendency to regard the global–local distinction as
a polarity consisting of mutually excluding com-
ponents. This polarity is represented by the view
that we live in a world of local affirmations against
globalizing trends. As a consequence, localization
is asserted as a form of opposition or resistance
to the global, which is seen as hegemonic. Such
mutually exclusive opposition is exemplified by the
idea that people retreat into smaller communities
or local niches as a defense against the overruling
process of globalization.
Certainly, there are defensive forms of localiza-
tion. As Kinnvall (2004) has convincingly argued,
the globalization of economics, politics, and other
global developments have resulted in an increase of
what she calls “ontological insecurity” and “exis-
tential anxiety.” One main response to this anxiety
has been to seek protection and affirmation of one’s
self and identity by drawing closer to any collectiv-
ity that is seen as being able to reduce insecurity
and anxiety, with religion and nation as primary
identity markers. Particularly, the combination of
religion and nationalism is a particularly power-
ful response in periods of rapid change and highly
uncertain futures.
Fear of global culture’s hegemonic influence on
the local culture is also reflected in the phenomenon
of contamination anxiety—the worry that the global
culture will contaminate the authenticity of the local
culture. Chiu et al. (2011) give the example of the
closing down of a Starbucks coffee shop in Beijing
in 2007. In that year, the director of BizChina,
the prime-time daily business show on CCTV
International, started an online campaign to have
Starbucks removed from Beijing’s Forbidden City.
He wrote an online article in which he portrayed
the Forbidden City as a symbol of China’s cultural
heritage and Starbucks as a symbol of lower middle
class culture in the West. His article attracted more
than half a million readers and inspired more than
2,700 commentaries, most of them sympathetic to
the writer’s plea. In July 2007, Starbucks closed its
shop in the Forbidden City.
Despite the existence of defensive localization
and contamination anxiety, globalization in its
broadest sense increasingly involves the incorpo-
ration of locality, as reflected, for example, in the
emergence of TV enterprises such as MTV, CNN,
and, later Al Jazeera, seeking global markets and
focusing, at the same time, on a great diversity
of local events and cultural specificities. The past
century, in particular, has witnessed a remark-
able proliferation with respect to the international
organization and promotion of locality. One can
refer to attempts to organize the promotion of the
rights and identities of native or indigenous peoples
on a global scale (e.g., the Global Forum in Brazil
in 1992 or the Global Forum on Migration and
Development in Belgium in 2007). Therefore, it
makes sense to conjure up a process of glocalization,
as Robertson (1995) has proposed, as this concept
combines two seemingly opposing trends: homog-
enization and heterogenization, which can be
explained as not only simultaneous but also com-
plementary and interpenetrative. (For “global–
local interpenetration” or “global–local dialectics,”
see Chen, 2006; Featherstone, 1995.)
From Globalization to Hybrid Identities
On the level of self and identity, globalization
and localization receive their expression in global
and local identities and facilitate the emergence
of hybrid identities. In this section, I will demon-
strate that the tension between these identities, in
the positive case, leads to creativity and innovation,
and, in the negative case, to identity confusion.
This then leads to a discussion of the Janus-faced
nature of globalization.
Global and Local Identities:
Biculturality and Hybridity
The global–local nexus has immediate impli-
cations for the psychology of self and identity. As
Arnett (2002) has argued, many people living on
the interface of cultures, particularly adolescents
and emerging adults, develop, in addition to their
local identity, a global identity that provides them
with a sense of belonging to a worldwide society.
Their global identity enables them to be in touch
with people from a diversity of places when they
travel abroad, when others travel to the places
where they live, and when they communicate with
others through the rapidly increasing use of media
technology.
At the same time, people continue to keep and
further develop their local identity as well, based as
it is on local circumstances, traditions, and prac-
tices. This identity is at work when they interact
with family, friends, colleagues, and participants of
their sport clubs. Arnett gives the example of Inuit
adolescents in northern Canada who are avid fans
of televised pro hockey games. Some of them leave
their hometowns for a while to become engaged in
educational and occupational training in large cit-
ies elsewhere. At the same time, they maintain a
local identity that is rooted in distinctively Inuit
traditions. They like ice fishing, race snowmobiles,
and stay outside during the long summer days
when it stays light well past midnight. Although an
increasing number of adolescents and young adults
develop a global identity in finding their own way
as autonomous individuals, their local identity is
defined by the traditional values of reticence, mod-
esty, and family obligations. They retain their Inuit
identity even as they also develop an identity as
members of a global society.
Even in parts of the world that are subjected to
an intensified process of globalization, there are
many who retain and develop their local identity
alongside their global identity. Jensen, Arnett, and
McKenzie (2011) refer to the situation in India
with its growing, vigorous high-tech economic sec-
tor led largely by young people. Even the higher
educated young people, who are used to participat-
ing in the global economy, still keep their prefer-
ence for an arranged marriage and continue to care
for their aging parents, in accord with Indian tra-
dition. While their global identity participates in
the fast-paced high-tech world, their local identity
stays firmly rooted in the Indian tradition, in this
way preserving and developing a bicultural identity.
However, Jensen et al. (2011) continue, global
and local elements are not to be considered as iso-
lated parts of the self, parts that do not have any
influence on each other. Without any doubts,
local cultures are being modified by globaliza-
tion, especially by the introduction of free market
economics, global media, democratic institutions,
increased length of formal schooling, and delayed
entry into marriage and parenthood. Such changes
significantly alter traditional cultural beliefs and
practices and may lead, as Hermans and Kempen
H e r m a ns 33
(1998) have observed, to hybrid identities that com-
bine elements of both local and global cultures.
The phenomenon of hybridization contradicts
the traditional view of cultures as internally homo-
geneous and externally distinctive. The acceler-
ated process of globalization leads to numerous
border-crossings, resulting in the recombination of
existing forms and practices into new cultural pat-
terns (Rowe & Schelling, 1991). Hybridization of
cultural elements may create such multiple identi-
ties as Mexican schoolgirls dressed in Greek togas
dancing in the style of Isadora Duncan, a London
boy of Asian origin playing for a local Bengali
cricket team and at the same time supporting the
Arsenal football club, Thai boxing by Moroccan
girls in Amsterdam, and Native Americans cel-
ebrating Mardi Gras in the United States. Pieterse
(1995) refers to such examples in opposition to the
idea that cultural developments, past or present, are
moving toward cultural uniformity and homoge-
neity, as expressed by the idea “from the west to
the rest.” This idea of uniformity fails to see the
pervasive influence of countermovements that are
derived from the fact that one culture does not sim-
ply take over or “imitate” the developments of the
other, but also responds to them. It also underes-
timates the capacity of human beings to combine
very different and even conflicting I-positions in a
multiple identity. The resulting process of hybrid-
ization offers new ways for cultural practices to
become combined and fused so that novel cultural
identities emerge (see also Canclini, 1995).
Hybridity, Innovation, and Creativity
The innovative potential of the process of
hybridization is exemplified by the phenomenon of
“third culture,” in which two or more original cul-
tures are combined into a new one. As Pollock and
van Reken (2009) detail, countless people of vir-
tually every nationality do not fully belong to any
group in the world. They may be North Americans
who grew up in Singapore, or British kids raised in
China, Japanese children growing up in Australia,
or a child of a Norwegian father and a Thai mother.
All of them have one thing in common: they are
spending or have spent at least some part of their
childhood in cultures or countries other than their
own. They become third culture kids (TCKs) and
later adult culture kids.
Children become TCKs for a variety of rea-
sons. Some have parents working in international
business, the diplomatic corps, the military, or
religious organizations. Others have parents who
34 H u m a n De v e l opm e n t i n T oda y's G l ob a l i z i ng W or l d
studied abroad or lived for some period outside
their home culture because of political problems or
wars. TCKs are raised in a neither/nor world. It is
neither the world of their parents’ culture nor that
of the host culture in which they were raised. As
Pollock and van Reken observe, they live first in
one culture, move to another one—sometimes to
two or three more—and often move back and forth
among them. In this way, TCKs develop their own
life patterns, different from those born and bred
in one cultural place. The authors add that most
TCKs learn to live comfortably in their world of
rapid change (p. 4). Apparently, many TCKs suc-
ceed in developing a third culture in which they
integrate elements of other cultures and their own
original culture in a new form.
The phenomenon of third culture finds its theo-
retical correlation in the notion of “third position”
(Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010), in which
two or more different, contradicting, or conflicting
I-positions are reconciled in a way that brings the
self to some higher level of integration. An illus-
trative example of a third position on the level of
the self is given by Branco, Branco, and Madureira
(2008), who describe the story of a 25-year-old les-
bian woman in Catholic Brazil. At some point in
her self-reflections, she started to talk about herself
as a Christian woman who wanted to help forsaken
and lost people, including many gays and lesbians,
living aimlessly in a difficult world. She felt that
her mission was to help people in the lesbian com-
munity to think about their lives and change them
in order to better fit Christian values, practices,
and beliefs. In this way, she reconciled conflicting
positions “I as a Catholic” and “I as a lesbian” by
bringing them together in a third position “I as a
missionary.” For development of self and identity
on the tension-loaded interfaces of different cul-
tures, the integration and reconciliation of conflict-
ing cultural and personal positions is a requirement
for bringing the self to higher levels of integration
(Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010).
One of the findings of our own research is that
multiplicity of self and identity needs dialogue
in order to prevent fragmentation and dissocia-
tion (Dimaggio, Hermans, & Lysaker, 2010). An
empirical example is a study by König (2009), who,
inspired by dialogical self theory, studied the pat-
terns of cultural positions in the lives of 13 global
nomads or “expatriates” who had extensive experi-
ences in the contact zones of different cultures. She
started with the assumption that acculturation can
be seen as a continuing process of self-innovation
propelled by dialogues between personal cultural
positions. She invited her participants to iden-
tify their cultural positions (e.g., I as Dutch, I as
German, I as American) and to conduct a dia-
logue between them. Each step in the dialogue was
rated on three variables: novelty, importance, and
authenticity. Results showed, in agreement with
the hypothesis, that in the majority of cases novelty
ratings increased as the result of dialogue between
the different positions. This finding is in support
of the observation that dialogical relationships
between positions of TCKs and global nomads
have the potential to contribute to the innovation
of the self. (For the innovative impact of dialogue
on the self during psychotherapy, see Goncalves &
Ribeiro, 2010.)
Research on innovation and creativity is par-
ticularly relevant to understanding the potentials
of the process of globalization. In an experimental
psychological study, Leung and Chiu (2010) pre-
sented aspects of American and Chinese culture
to a group of European-American undergraduates.
The participants were randomly assigned to one of
five experimental conditions: (a) American culture
only, where they viewed a presentation of American
culture only; (b) Chinese culture only, where the
participants viewed a presentation of Chinese
culture only; (c) dual cultures, where they looked
at a presentation of both American and Chinese
culture (music video segments and movie trailers
from each culture); (d) fusion culture, where they
viewed a presentation of a hybrid culture created
by fusing American and Chinese cultures (e.g.,
McDonald’s rice burger; a Vanessa Mae music
video); and (e) control condition, where the par-
ticipants did not see any presentation. Subsequent
to the experimental conditions, participants com-
pleted a creativity test (writing a new version of the
Cinderella tale). Consistent with the hypothesis,
creative performance following either dual cultures
exposure or fusion culture exposure was signifi-
cantly higher than that in the control condition.
When the participants came back, 5 to 7 days later,
to complete a different creativity test, the results
could be replicated.
Leung and Chiu (2010) presented a literature
review that enabled the reader to place his or her
results in a broader context of studies on creativity.
For example, there is empirical evidence that expo-
sure to diverse normative views in groups or work
teams consisting of culturally diverse members is
positively related to the development of creative
potential (e.g., Guimera, Uzzi, Spiro, & Amaral,
2005), probably because such exposure gives
room for the expression of heterogeneous opinions
in groups or teams. Furthermore, bilingualism
research has studied the creative performance of
bilinguals who have been exposed to two languages
in their attendant linguistic cultures. The results
suggest that bilinguals tend to have higher creative
performances compared to monolinguals (e.g.,
Ricciardelli, 1992). In addition, there is evidence
that ethnically diverse groups are more creative
than ethnically homogeneous groups (Simonton,
1999). Finally, at a broader societal level, there is
evidence that creativity increases after civiliza-
tions open themselves to outside influences and
geographic areas become more politically differ-
entiated and culturally diverse (Simonton, 1994).
All together, these studies suggest that social and
cultural hybridity has the potential of enhancing
creativity at individual and societal levels.
Openness, Dialogue, and Development:
A Research Example
Openness is also a relevant phenomenon in
the study of the relationship between personality
and inner dialogue. In one of the research proj-
ects inspired by dialogical self theory, Oles and
Puchalska-Wasyl (2012) investigated the relation-
ship between inner dialogues (e.g., who am I dia-
logues, giving support to oneself, and conversations
with imagined others) and the so-called Big Five
personality traits (extraversion, neuroticism, con-
scientiousness, agreeableness, and openness to
experience). With the use of personality question-
naires, the authors found that inner dialogues
showed the highest correlations with openness to
experience and with neuroticism. That is, those
with more internal dialogues are more open to
experiences involving active imagination, aesthetic
sensitivity, attentiveness to inner feelings, intellec-
tual curiosity, and preference for variety. Moreover,
subjects with many inner dialogues have a higher
degree of neuroticism or emotional instability,
as manifested by anxiety, moodiness, worry, and
self-consciousness.
For the present chapter, it is particularly rel-
evant that the relationship between personality
traits and inner dialogue is probably modified by
developmental factors. Oles and colleagues found
that in adolescents, internal dialogicality corre-
sponds more highly with neuroticism than with
openness, whereas in the middle-aged samples
the internal dialogical activity corresponds more
highly with openness than with neuroticism. The
H e r m a ns 35
authors conclude that in adolescents internal dia-
logues are stimulated mainly by anxiety and per-
sonal problems, whereas adults use them in the
service of openness and curiosity. Whereas adoles-
cents may become involved in internal dialogues
in order to reduce anxiety, middle-aged people use
them mainly for exploring new experiences and
broadening their scope of personal possibilities.
The Janus-Faced Nature of
Globalization: Identity Confusion
In contrast to many of the TCKs and expatriates
who share a common, often high, educational and
economic backgrounds and who are able to create
new homes and cultural enclaves abroad, many
people all over the world, particularly adolescents
and young adults, struggle with cultural diversity
and conflict, which often leads to identity confu-
sion. An example is given by cultural anthropolo-
gist van Meijl (2012), who noticed that the impact
of migration is nowhere near as pervasive as in the
Asia-Pacific region, which accounts for almost 40%
of the millions of people who cross national borders
each year. Limited prospects for economic growth
and the effects of climate change cause them to try
their luck elsewhere. The largest migration streams
are from Polynesia, with about 25% of the total
population living abroad today, many of them liv-
ing in New Zealand, where they constitute 7% of
the total population. Given the transnational con-
nections between Pacific people in New Zealand
and their places of origin, an increasing number of
diasporic children and adolescents are growing up
between two or more shores, with migrants from
Samoa and Tonga making up the largest Polynesian
groups in New Zealand. This leads them to develop
multiple identifications with more than one place
in and beyond New Zealand.
As van Meijl (2012) explains, confusion begins
when someone’s Samoan identity is challenged
by island-born members of one’s extended fam-
ily (aiga) or church community, which used to
be highly influential in Pacific Islander commu-
nities. At the same time, one’s identity as a New
Zealander is challenged by New Zealanders of
European descent (Papalagi). Their identity as
being both Samoan and New Zealander entails
insecurity and lack of control resulting from their
experience of “deterritorialization.” They feel that
social and cultural attitudes derived from their new
world are opposed to behavioral and sociocultural
norms established in their Pacific identity. As a
consequence, their sense of self is divided between
36 H u m a n De v e l opm e n t i n T oda y's G l ob a l i z i ng W or l d
two cultural positions that are generally felt as
contradictory.
Not only in economically underdeveloped
parts of the world, but also in wealthier countries
identity confusion or marginalization becomes a
problem to many adolescents and young adults.
Norasakkunkit and Uchida (2011; see also Chiu
et al., 2011) focused on the psychological adapta-
tion of individuals labeled as Not in Employment,
Education or Training (NEETS), a marginal sub-
culture in Japan that has emerged in response to
globalization. Apparently, a sizable number of
Japanese youth (estimated to be around 1 million)
cannot adjust to the rapid changes in occupational
life characterized by increased competitiveness
and decreased job security that globalization has
brought to Japan. Often, these adolescents and
young adults lack persistence in pursuing achieve-
ment goals and move from the center to the periph-
ery of society. Retreating from society, they display
low identification with the core values of interde-
pendence and self-improvement in Japanese society
and become increasingly marginalized. Their posi-
tion as falling between the rapid changes of global-
ization and the core values of Japan prevents them
from developing an identity with sufficient clarity
and direction.
The Challenge of Cultural
Difference and Distance
When the tension between local and global
identities leads in some cases to creativity and inno-
vation and in other cases to confusion and margin-
alization, can we then gain some understanding of
the conditions that move the self into one or the
other direction? In which situations are difference
and distance between cultural positions so large
that the negative implications become dominant
over the positive ones? A discussion of these topics
will concentrate on the relevance of the concepts of
homophily and heterophily.
When Do Difference and Distance
Between Cultures Become Too Large?
From an African perspective, Doku and Asante
(2011) make an observation that is helpful to
understanding why some individuals experience
identity confusion as a result of globalization while
others do not. They notice that those individu-
als most likely to suffer confusion—often result-
ing in depression, suicide, and substance use—are
raised in cultural environments with the greatest
cultural distance from the global culture, at the
same time being subjected to the consequences of
globalization.
As Doku and Asante describe, African cul-
tures not only entail a set of values, ideas, and
attitudes regarding the relationships between liv-
ing beings, but also between the living and the
dead. In Ghana, for example, it is believed that
the dead are still “alive” and have, in their qual-
ity of spirits, “super control” over what goes on
in their absence. They have the power to reward
the faithful and punish the unfaithful. Libations
are poured to them in order to please and consult
them about virtually everything that is of vital
importance to a family. Even at dining tables,
their presence is expected, respected, and even
sensed by reserving a chair or space for them.
Therefore, the dead are buried with rich orna-
ments and regalia that they may need in their
next life.
In a discussion of literature on traditional
African healing, Lindegger and Alberts (2012)
portray how “Traditional African” is typical of
a cultural system that considers the person to be
connected with a supernatural order that organizes
relationships with family, community, the earth,
God, spirits, ancestors, or living dead. Health and
happiness, including mental health, are seen as a
function of the equilibrium of these various rela-
tionships, whereas disease and unhappiness are
seen as a function of disharmony or the influence of
evil spirits. In their discussion of traditional South
African culture, Lindegger and colleague focus on
the role of a healer called “iSangoma” in isiZulu
and isiXhosa. The task of this healer is to diagnose
any disharmony in the various relationships, espe-
cially the relationship with ancestors. The iSan-
goma functions as an intermediary between the
visible and invisible worlds, and he has the task of
diagnosing and harmonizing these relationships
and, especially, of transmitting messages from the
ancestors to the living.
It may be clear that there is a large psychologi-
cal distance between the values and practices of
African and other indigenous cultures that, on
the one hand, want to maintain and protect their
traditional worldview and, on the other hand, the
main values that are brought to the world by the
process of globalization. As Marsella (2012) notes,
the hegemonic imposition of values associated
with North American popular culture, including
individualism, materialism, competition, hedo-
nism, rapid change (often indiscriminately labeled
as “progress”), profit, greed, commodification,
consumerism, and privatization, bring values to
the world that are alien and offensive to many
people whose cultures are rooted in long and stabi-
lized traditions. Those cultural groups with a large
distance between their traditional values and the
implicit values of globalization seem to be particu-
larly vulnerable to identity crisis or confusion.
In reviewing the many topics discussed in this
chapter, it becomes evident that globalization is
Janus-faced. There are no convincing reasons to
evaluate this global change as “good” or “bad” or
as “constructive” or “destructive.” Both qualifica-
tions apply in varying degrees to different parts of
the world, depending on economic, educational,
cultural, and historical circumstances. In a more
sophisticated way, it makes sense to distinguish, as
Chiu et al. (2011) do, between exclusionary reac-
tions, including fear of cultural contamination,
negative intercultural affect (e.g., envy, anger, dis-
gust), and seeing foreign cultures as a threat, and
integrative reactions, including positive intercultural
affect (e.g., admiration and curiosity), interest in
global resources, the adoption of a cultural learning
mindset, and behavioral reactions like acceptance
and synthesis. This leads to the proposition that
cultural values and practices with a large psycho-
logical distance from globalizing trends are more
probable to evoke exclusionary reactions, whereas
those with smaller distance are more likely to lead
to integrative reactions. For the development of self
and identity, the psychological distance is particu-
larly relevant because it affects the degree to which
the individual is able to bring together different and
often conflicting cultural identities as parts of a self
that is sufficiently coherent and integrated in the
form of third positions or productive coalitions of
positions (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010).
The notion of psychological distance brings us to a
related topic in the social-scientific literature, one
known as the phenomenon of homophily.
Homophily and Heterophily
“Similarity breeds connection” is the first sen-
tence of an article by McPherson, Smith-Lovin,
and Cook (2001, p. 415) on homophily, which is
the principle that a contact between similar people
occurs at a higher rate than among dissimilar peo-
ple. The fact that we favor contact with like-minded
people organizes network ties of every type, includ-
ing marriage, friendship, work, advice, support,
information transfer, exchange, co-membership,
and other types of relationships. Consequently,
homophily places constraints on people’s social
H e r m a ns 37
worlds, with strong implications for the informa-
tion they receive, the attitudes they form, and
the interactions in which they become involved.
Homophily in race and ethnicity creates the stron-
gest divides in our personal environments, with
age, religion, education, occupation, and gender
following in roughly that order (McPherson et al.,
2001). In other words, homophily motivates people
to stay within the comfort zone of their self-space
(Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010).
To see the far-reaching implications of our
homophilous tendencies in the context of global-
ization, it is necessary to consider its opposite ten-
dency, known in the literature as heterophily. In an
insightful analysis, Rogers and Bhowmik (1970)
observed that heterophily—the tendency to com-
municate with people who are dissimilar to one’s
own views, values, and experiences—has the disad-
vantage in that it is less effective than homophily.
Heterophilous interactions are likely to cause mes-
sage distortion, delayed transmission, restriction
of communication channels, and cognitive disso-
nance. Simply said, heterophily makes it more dif-
ficult for communicating partners to understand
each other. Yet, Rogers et al. argue that there are
situations in which heterophily is a necessary ingre-
dient: a white middle-class teacher in a ghetto, a
father–adolescent relationship, a change agent who
is diffusing innovation, and, particularly relevant to
the present chapter, international communication
between individuals who do not share a common
culture. When participants would be homophilous
to a maximum degree, communication would be
facile but entirely redundant. On the other hand,
when they would be totally heterophilous, they
would not understand each other. So, Rogers and
colleague conclude that for effective and innovative
communication, the interacting partners should
be homophilous on variables that add to mutual
understanding, and heterophilous on those vari-
ables that are relevant to finding creative ways for
solving the problems in the situation at hand.
An argument for the relevance of this conclu-
sion in the context of globalization can be found
in a study by Girouard, Stack, and O’Neill-Gilbert
(2011) who investigated the dyadic interactions
of 30 Asian-Canadian and 30 French-Canadian
preschool children and analyzed them in terms
of social participation, initiation, response strate-
gies, and social interchange. Results showed that
the children preferred to play more interactively
together with same-ethnic partners, whereas with
cross-ethnic partners they played more solitarily in
38 H u m a n De v e l opm e n t i n T oda y's G l ob a l i z i ng W or l d
the presence of the peer. The authors conclude that,
consistent with studies with older children, the
results of this study revealed that the ethnicity of
the playmate is influencing the nature of preschool-
ers’ social interactions.
Apparently, the homophilous tendency can be
observed in the social interactions of children at
a very young age, and this confirms the view that
homophilous attitudes are strongly established in
the self of children and adults. This raises the ques-
tion of how, and under which circumstances, chil-
dren can find a balance between homophilous and
heterophilous interactions, on the assumption that
not one but both tendencies are relevant for effec-
tive and innovative communication with individu-
als and groups from other cultures. Intercultural
learning as part of the development of children and
adults seems to be a neglected area on the inter-
face of globalization and human development and
deserves more future research. This research should
start with participants at a young age if one wants
to create the conditions for stimulating integrative
reactions between individuals and groups of differ-
ent cultural origins.
The Historical Child Versus
the Universal Child
In a sense, psychology as a discipline—including
developmental psychology—is also “homophilous”
because it favors a Western (American, European)
standard notion of childhood throughout the world
(Prilleltensky, 2012). As Woodhead (1999) has
argued, modern child development inherited a uni-
versalist legacy, implying that all humans are sub-
jected to general laws that can be studied on the basis
of positivistic scientific principles, with the conse-
quent systematic neglect of the social-psychological
specificities of individuals and cultures. For exam-
ple, Piaget’s three mountains experiment has been
replicated numerous times by generations of stu-
dents to demonstrate young children’s limitations
in taking perspectives. Researchers have asked chil-
dren to pour water into different-shaped glasses in
order to demonstrate their inability to understand
the invariance of quantity under transformation.
When these experimental tasks were transported
across the globe in cross-cultural investigations, it
became possible to produce comparisons of more
than two dozen of communities in terms of the
percentage of subjects who had attained different
Piagetian stages. Predictably, the findings favored
populations who had experienced European-type
schooling and education. To take another example,
the typical American and European emphasis on
the importance of independence for children and
adolescents and the uncritical transportation of this
ideal to other parts of the world may shake the very
roots of Asian families who emphasize authoritarian
attitudes and practices.
As Woodhead (1999) emphasizes, the task of psy-
chology is not the discovery of the “eternal child”
but of the “historical child.” The cultural environ-
ment should not be seen as something outside the
process of development, that which surrounds it,
but should be considered as an intrinsic part of
the developmental process itself. Therefore, future
research should focus on the study of children, ado-
lescents, and adults on different levels: personal,
interpersonal, organizational, cultural, and global
(see also Prilleltensky, 2012).
Aging and Globalization:
A Neglected Area
Another neglected area is the developmental
aspects of old age in relation to the process of glo-
balization. The world’s population stands at over
7 billion in 2013 and is estimated to reach 9.3 bil-
lion by mid-century (although numbers differ con-
siderably depending on various sources). As Sayan
(2002) has estimated, the number of people aged
60 and older is expected to increase from 629 mil-
lion in 2002 to nearly 2 billion by 2050. Similarly,
the Department of Economic and Social Affairs
(DESA) of the United Nations concludes that dur-
ing the first half of this century, the global pop-
ulation of 60 and older is expected to expand by
more than three times to reach almost 2 billion in
2050 (source date: May 10, 2013). Moreover, the
elderly population itself is aging, with the 80-plus
age group making up the fastest growing segment
of the population. This “graying of the world”
results from falling fertility rates and rising life
expectancies.
In a study on the identity of the elderly,
Phillipson (1998) notes that, in the present phase of
late or advanced modernity, globalization, includ-
ing the emergence of a postindustrial society and
more fluid and pluralized forms of identity, cre-
ates a high level of uncertainty in old age. In a
historical overview, the author shows that in the
post-World War II period, from approximately the
1950s through the early 1970s, much emphasis
was placed, particularly in the rich countries, on
the safety of retirement as part of a welfare state.
This was generally seen as a crucial instrument for
maintaining a sense of hope and purpose in old age.
However, Phillipson continues, the era of unparal-
leled progress, halted in the subsequent decades as
a combination of events—a slow-down of economic
growth, the rise of world oil prices, the increase of
unemployment and inflation—challenged the basic
assumptions of welfare. The unraveling of the retire-
ment system, together with changes to the welfare
state, has posed significant threats to the elderly.
Retirement is no longer central as a system organiz-
ing exit from the workplace for an increasing num-
ber of people. At the same time, these individuals
are often confronted with a language and ideology
that scapegoats the old, defining them as a burden
and cost to society, and this raises, at the individual
level, existential issues of the nature of meaning of
growing old (Phillipson, 1998, p. 3).
So, although we often speak about identity cri-
sis and confusion in the population of adolescents
and adults, it would be a serious omission when
we, as psychologists and social scientists, fail to see
the deep impact of the accelerating process of glo-
balization on the level of self and identity of the
elderly. Future studies should be more focused on
all stages of human development, on the basis of
the assumption that globalization affects lifelong
development.
The Self as a Mini-Society
As the material presented in this chapter sug-
gests, human development is deeply affected by
intercultural processes and accelerated globaliza-
tion. As part of those processes, self and identity
also do not develop in isolation from sociocultural
contexts, but, instead, they function as historical
and sociocultural phenomena. We live in a “com-
pressed” social space where we cannot avoid meet-
ing people who are very different from us. It is like
living in the same “room” with people we don’t
know and not being able to put them outside (e.g.,
immigration waves, international military opera-
tions, worldwide implications of financial or eco-
nomical crises, forms of international terrorism).
This situation moves people increasingly from the
center of their cultures to the interfaces between
them, where both the positive sides (e.g., innova-
tion, cross-fertilization, cooperation, creativity)
and the negative sides (exploitation, alienation,
defensive forms of localization, aggression) become
surprisingly or painfully evident.
As discussed in this chapter, globalization
and localization also have deep implications for
the development of self and identity. As we have
argued earlier (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka,
H e r m a ns 39
2010; Hermans & Kempen, 1998), processes on
the contact zones between different cultures and
on the interface of globalization and localization
have at least four implications for the self: (a) it is
faced with an unprecedented density of positions
that may lead to a “cacophony of voices” in the self;
(b) when the individual is increasingly participat-
ing in a diversity of local groups and cultures on a
global scale, the position repertoire becomes more
complex and heterogeneous, laden as it is with dif-
ferences, tensions, oppositions, and contradic-
tions; (c) given the speed and unpredictability of
global changes, the repertoire receives more “visits”
by unexpected positions; and finally (d) as a conse-
quence of the increasing range of possible posi-
tions and the increasing speed of globalization,
there are more and larger “position leaps,” that is,
the individual has to make more and larger “men-
tal jumps” given the relatively large psychological
distance between positions. Such leaps include, for
example, immigrating to another country, marry-
ing a partner from another culture, cooperation
with colleagues from different cultures, or being
confronted by the needs of people at the other end
of the world who are facing extreme poverty or suf-
fering from a disaster. These developments have the
consequence of creating a higher degree of uncer-
tainty in the self, which may innovate and enrich
the self in some situations but lead to identity crisis
or confusion in other situations. As these implica-
tions demonstrate, the self, as part of the society
at large, functions as a mini-society with its own
differences, dynamics, opposites, and tensions.
Considering the self as a society of positions may
help us to understand which processes are taking
place on the interface of cultures in a globalizing
society.
Future Directions: Toward a Dialogical
Conception of Self and Identity
Finally, I briefly sketch some desirable future
directions for research on the relationship between
globalization and development. I see four main
directions that are in line with the topics discussed
in this chapter and of immediate relevance to the
study of self and identity.
First, the relationship between globalization and
development should avoid the erroneous view that
culture and society are simply “surrounding” the
self and identity, conceptualized as essentialized
entities having an existence in and of themselves
and a development on their own. In contrast, self
and culture are not mutually exclusive but mutually
40 H u m a n De v e l opm e n t i n T oda y's G l ob a l i z i ng W or l d
inclusive. When one of these components changes,
this has immediate repercussions for the other. An
implication of this view is that the study of self
and identity is in need of not only psychological,
but also sociological, cultural anthropological, and
historical perspectives. Recent advances in brain
sciences should also be taken into account, par-
ticularly those research endeavors that focus on the
social aspects of the brain.
Second, future research on the flexibility and
resilience of the self is indispensable as the acceler-
ated process of globalization brings more tensions,
contradictions, conflicts, and oppositions in the
self than ever before. A flexible and resilient self is
able to navigate between the Scylla of premature
but unsuccessful unity and the Charybdis of frag-
mentation. How can the self, being tension-loaded
and contradictory as it is, yet be sufficiently coher-
ent and substantial to form a coherent diversity?
How is the self able to create adaptive and creative
combinations of cultural and personal I-positions
(Falmagne, 2004; Hermans, 2001)?
Third, developmental psychology has to make
a transition from research based on the universal
child, adolescent, and adult to the historical child,
adolescent, and adult. Too long has mainstream
developmental psychology persisted in the assump-
tion that research findings based on American
and European samples have universal significance,
thereby neglecting important contextual factors like
culture, history, and society that are not extrinsic
but intrinsic to human development. As such, the
development of self and identity deserves attention
on different levels: intrapersonal, interpersonal,
organizational, cultural, and global (Surgan &
Abbey, 2012).
Fourth, future studies of the process of global-
ization and their implications for development are
in need of a dialogical conception of self and iden-
tity. Under the influence of the Enlightenment,
mainstream psychology has for too long favored a
conception of an essentialized self considered as a
“container” with razor-sharp boundaries between
self and nonself, with the exclusion of the other as
part of the self, and as being involved in a relent-
less pursuit of having the environment under
control (Sampson, 1985; see also Callero, 2003).
Postmodern views have answered this highly cen-
tralized self, overly unified and enclosed as it is in
itself, by proposing a highly decentralized concep-
tion that is open to relationships, often leading
to a situation of “multiphrenia” (Gergen, 1991)
and fragmentation of the self. In my view, the
accelerating process of globalization asks for a third
conception of the self, a dialogical one, in which
centralizing and decentralizing movements are seen
as mutually complementing forces (Hermans &
Hermans-Konopka, 2010). Such a conception is
needed to develop a self that is decentralized and
open enough to the innovative potentials of global-
ization, yet closed and centralized enough to develop
an identity that embraces the values, practices, and
traditions of one’s local culture. Such a conception
enables the self to develop dialogical relationships
not only between different I-positions in the multi-
voiced mini-society of the self but also between the
social and cultural positions of the multicolored
participants in a globalizing world.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have focused on human devel-
opment in the context of the processes of global-
ization and localization, with special attention to
the differences, tensions, and conflicts in self and
identity. Apparently, globalization is a Janus-faced
phenomenon that fosters innovation, creativity,
and integration in some situations, and confusion,
anxiety, and marginalization in other situations.
In an attempt to determine under which condi-
tions globalization shows its virtues and under
which conditions its vices, the notion of “distance”
between different cultures and between different
cultural positions in the self proved useful. When
the distance is manageable and, moreover, receives
an adaptive answer by a flexible and resilient self,
an integrative solution can be found. When, how-
ever, the distance is overly large or unbridgeable as
the result of irreconcilable values, then confusion,
marginalization, and fragmentation are most prob-
able. To keep the different and divergent positions
in the self together as parts of a contradictory yet
coherent whole, a dialogical view on self and iden-
tity is desirable so that these positions can learn
from each other and stimulate the further develop-
ment of the self as a sufficiently integrated whole.
Acknowledgments
I thank Agnieszka Konopka for her careful
reading of this text and for her valuable suggestions
and comments.
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 C H A P T E R

4 Migration Between and Within

Countries: Implications for Families
and Acculturation
Carola Suárez-Orozco

Abstract
Global migration is transforming the shape of families as hundreds of millions of children are growing
up in transnational families the world over. In this chapter, the implications of transnational familyhood
for parenting and the development of children is considered including the normative family separations
that accompany the process of migration, complicated family reunifications, and the ways in which
normative parenting is disrupted by migration. Growing up in transcultural spaces can complicate
enculturation and acculturative tasks for children, adolescents, and emerging adults. The ways in which
developmental scientists theoretically and paradigmatically examine the culture(s) of children and
youth developing in transnational spaces are problematized and recommendations for future research
are then made.
Key Words:  immigration, transnationalism, parenting, family separations, acculturation, family
relations, culture

From 1997 to 2002, I co-directed a large-scale
longitudinal study of 400 newcomer immigrant
young adolescents from Central America, China,
the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Mexico
to the United States. The mixed-methods study
was focused on academic adaptations and out-
comes but, as part of the initial interview, both
parents and adolescents were asked to describe
their immigration histories. In the process of those
interviews, I (accidentally—because that was not
the intent of the study) learned that three-quarters
of the participants recruited from public schools
had been separated from their mothers, fathers,
or indeed both parents for some period of time
(more than 6 months and sometimes more than 5
years). I found cultural variations in the lengths
of separations and whether children stayed with
mothers, fathers, or other caretakers. My initial
ethnocentrism, using an attachment theory lens,
led to worried pathologizing as I began to consider
the implications of these separations. As I dug into
this unanticipated set of findings, I learned that
although often experienced as complicated and
painful, disruptions were, for most children and
families, temporary and managed. I learned that
parent perspectives were quite different from those
of their children. I learned about the sociopoliti-
cal, gendered, and policy pressures that led to pro-
tracted separations. And while my data gave me
specific insights into separations after reunifica-
tions, I learned from other researchers about sepa-
rations as they were occurring (Dreby, 2009) and
of cultural groups that were making pragmatic
decisions to send their babies away to be raised by
grandparents, with the plan for reunification at
school age.(Gaytán, Xue, & Yoshikawa, 2006).
Large-scale migration defines our era. Every
continent on earth is now involved in mass migra-
tion—as areas of immigration, emigration, or as
transit areas and, often, as all three at once. At the

43
dawning of the new millennium, the lives of millions
of people have been shaped by both cross-national
migration and within-nation migration (United
Nations Development Program [UNDP], 2009).
An estimated 214 million people—or about 3.1%
of the world’s population—have moved across
borders, and an estimated four times as many—
740 million—are involved in regional migration
(UNDP, 2012). Both sending as well as host soci-
eties are being changed by large-scale migration
and large-scale cultural contact all over the world
(Bornstein & Cote, 2010).
Most migrants move in search of better liv-
ing conditions. The vast majority of international
migrants go to a country with higher levels of capi-
tal than their originating countries (UNDP, 2009);
this is also typically the case for internal migration
from rural areas to urban centers in search of jobs.
While many immigrants experience opportunities
for increased household incomes, improved access
to education and health services they are also often
significantly constrained both by policies that
impose barriers to entry as well as by resources
they allow them free movement (UNDP, 2009). In
addition there are hidden and unanticipated costs
to the family and children. (Suárez-Orozco &
Suárez-Orozco, 2001)
While migrations are motivated by multiple fac-
tors they are most often driven by family motiva-
tions: providing for family members in the form of
remittances or reuniting with family members are
at the core of migratory experiences. The process
of migration inexorably changes family systems,
Fig. 4.1  Densities of immigrants arriving and leaving between countries (2000–2005).
44 M ig r at ion Be t w e e n a n d W i t h i n C ou n t r i e s
family dynamics (Bornstein & Cote, 2010; Falicov,
2007), and the definition of “familyhood”
(Bryceson & Vuorela, 2002), and it has implica-
tions for the development of children, adolescents,
and emerging adults.
Migration in Perspective
Migration is global, shaping and reshaping
every continent on earth (UNDP, 2009). Today,
immigrant youth are departing from multiple
points of origin and arriving in numerous desti-
nations across the globe. Some of the new coun-
tries of immigration have negligible experience
in receiving immigrants (like Spain and Italy;
Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco, & Sattin-Bajal,
2010). Yet other countries facing large-scale immi-
gration today have the long view on immigration
(e.g., the United States and Australia).
The Figure 4.1 and Table 4.1 illustrate the
story of international flows at a glance. The major-
ity of receiving countries are the high-income
Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) nations (see Figure 4.1).
And, with little exception (the United Kingdom
to Australia and New Zealand and the inter-
nal European Union migration of Italians and
Germans), the top 25 sending countries are in
low-income regions (see Table 4.1).
Seemingly everywhere, newcomer immigrants
are adding novel threads of cultural, linguistic,
religious, and racial difference to the social tapestry
of their new societies. In New York City, Berlin,
and London, diversity defines the demographic,
 Table 4.1. Share of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) Immigrants by Source Country, 2000.
Source country North America Europe Australia/Asia

Mexico .219 .001 .000

United Kingdom .041 .027 .206

Italy .027 .062 .038

Germany .028 .049 .045

Turkey .003 .085 .005

India .038 .023 .018

China .039 .009 .066

Philippines .046 .007 .030

Vietnam .032 .008 .026

Portugal .011 .040 .002

Korea .025 .002 .075

Poland .019 .024 .010

Morocco .002 .048 .000

Cuba .028 .002 .000

Canada .025 .004 .006

France .007 .027 .005

United States .012 .015 .017

Ukraine .009 .022 .002

Spain .004 .027 .002

Greece .008 .015 .028

Serbia .003 .027 .009

Jamaica .019 .006 .000

Ireland .006 .021 .009

El Salvador .022 .000 .001

Netherlands .007 .014 .020

Based on the adult immigrant population. Represents the top 25 sending countries and three OECD
subregions (high-income North America includes Canada and the United States; high-income Australia/
Asia includes Australia, New Zealand Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan).
Source: Hanson, 2010.

social, and cultural spheres. In New York City,
half the children in schools originate in immi-
grant homes—representing a breathtaking 190
countries and territories and speaking more than
170 distinct languages (Suárez-Orozco et al.,
2010). In Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and the Hague,
two-thirds of all children in schools come from
immigrant-origin homes; in Paris, one-third of chil-
dren are of immigrant origin, and in Copenhagen,
one-fifth are of immigrant origin (Suárez-Orozco
et al., 2010). Some are the children of educated
professional parents (such as Indians in California),

S uá r e z - Or o z c o 45
whereas others may have illiterate parents (such as
Kurds in Norway). Some received excellent school-
ing (such as the children of migrants from Hong
Kong in Vancouver), whereas others left educa-
tional systems that were in shambles (such as the
children of migrants from Somalia in Stockholm).
Some escaped political, religious, or ethnic perse-
cution (such as Iraqi children in Jordan); others are
motivated by the promise of better jobs and better
educational opportunities (such as Uzbek children
in the Russian Federation). Some are documented
migrants, whereas others are unauthorized young
migrants (there are perhaps 2 million such children
in the United States today; Gonzalez, 2009). Some
join well-established communities with robust
social supports (such as Cubans in Miami), whereas
others move from one migrant camp to another,
forcing students to change schools frequently.
The pathways and outcomes of immigrant youth
will vary greatly as a function of their incoming
resources and the receiving context in the new soci-
ety (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2010).
In the past two decades, a growing number of
cities, towns, and even entire countries that had
no previous history of incorporating immigrant
students and families into their communities,
neighborhoods, and schools have experienced a
virtual explosion in the number of immigrant- ori-
gin residents. In the United States, for example,
between 2000 and 2007, the largest growth in the
foreign-born population took place in the so-called
new destination states of South Carolina (63.8%
growth), Arkansas (60.7% growth), Nevada (57.2%
growth), Tennessee (56.9% growth), and Alabama
(56.4% growth; Terraza & Batalova, 2008). But
the southern United States is not unique in this
regard. Across the Atlantic, Spain is an illustra-
tive case of mass migration to new destinations.
In the past 25 years, Spain has transitioned from a
country of net emigration to one of rapidly grow-
ing immigration, emerging as a preferred destina-
tion for many immigrants, particularly from South
America, Eastern Europe, and Africa (Arango,
2004). The foreign-born population in Spain is
one of the fastest growing in Europe, comprising
approximately 12% of the total Spanish population
in 2009 (Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas, 2009).
Global migrations transform the very shape,
essence, and definition of family (Foner, 2009;
Mahalingam, Sundari, & Molina, 2009; UNDP,
2009). All over the world, the experience of trans-
national migrants can be characterized as a cycle of
“separation and reunification of different members
46 M ig r at ion Be t w e e n a n d W i t h i n C ou n t r i e s
of the family unit over time” (Tyyska, 2007, p. 91).
Although it is difficult to establish the extent of
immigrant family separations because exact fig-
ures are elusive, informed estimates can be made.
There are 214 million cross-national immigrants
and refugees in 2010, and if, on average, each was
to leave behind two parents or children,1 then at
least 642 million individuals may be involved in
transbordered transnational family formulations.
In addition to transnational immigrations,
migrations are happening within borders at unprec-
edented rates (UNDP, 2009). In China alone,
more than 100 million people are moving across
the country from one region to another (National
Bureau of Statistics of China, 2012); these migra-
tions involve long distances in travel, changes in
languages and customs, disruptions in family ties,
and often the assumption of undocumented status.
Many are seeking work as well as educational oppor-
tunities in urban centers (Chiang, Hannum, & Kao,
2012). Internal migrants typically speak not only
different languages but are of different ethnicities,
may be undocumented, and thus face xenophobia
and exclusionary practices in addition to accul-
turative challenges. Likewise, within the borders of
India, according to its 2000 Census, an estimated
309 million individuals (or 30% of the population)
migrated internally and are undergoing issues of
acculturation, language acquisition challenges, fam-
ily separations, xenophobia, and other challenges
that arguably are similar to those faced by trans-
national migrants (United Nations Educational,
Scientific, and Cultural Organization [UNESCO],
2012). Other examples of countries that have nota-
bly high proportions of internal migrants include
Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, and Turkey (Bell
& Muhudin, 2009; UNDP, 2009). Typically, these
internal migrants move from rural areas to urban
centers, and, for some, this is a step along the path to
an international migration (UNDP, 2009).
Mass migrations typically follow economic
transformations (such as the Industrial Revolution
or the more current trends toward globalization),
local violence or conditions of war, or environ-
mental disruptions (American Psychological
Association [APA], 2012; Gould & Eldredge,
1977). Individual migrations are most often driven
and motivated by the search to be reunified with
family members, as well as to seek work or refuge
(APA, 2012; Massey, 1995; Zhou, 2001). In 2009,
worldwide, there were 42 million displaced persons
as a result of ongoing conflicts in their spaces of
origin, including 16 million refugees and asylum
seekers and another 26 million internally displaced
people uprooted within their own countries (APA,
2012; UNHCR, 2009). In addition, there are cur-
rently approximately 25 million people categorized
as “environmental refugees,” and it is projected
that, as a result of environmental degradation,
deforestation, and rising sea levels, 200 million
people will become refugees by 2050 (APA, 2012;
UNDP, 2010).
Immigration and the Family
Family Separations
Although immigration can be viewed as driven
by labor, demographic, and economic factors, a
second look reveals its enduring root in the fam-
ily. Many economic immigrants are propelled to
migrate in order to help support family members.
Remittances to relatives left behind in the country
of origin have grown substantially over the past 2
decades (World Bank, 2011). Even in the context of
the global recession, remittances from immigrants
in the United States and other high-income coun-
tries have surpassed “325 billion dollars in 2010
far exceeding the volume of official aid flows and
gross domestic product (GDP) in many developing
countries” (World Bank, 2011, vii).
Immigration typically starts with family and
then, in turn, family bonds sustain it. Many immi-
grant voyages begin with one member sacrificing for
the greater good of the family (Suárez-Orozco &
Suárez-Orozco, 2013). There are myriad permu-
tations of family members moving long distances
and working long hours, cut off from loved ones,
in order to help other family members. After the
father disappears, a 17-year-old embarks on the
arduous journey north from Puebla, Mexico to
New York so his three sisters can continue with
their studies. Shortly after losing her husband to
cancer, a Filipina nurse makes the migratory jour-
ney to Abu Dhabi, working long shifts to support
her four young children who have stayed behind
in the care of her mother. Parents in a small village
in rural China work endless hours, barely scraping
by for their basic needs to send off their beloved
only son to Beijing; although the teenager longs to
return to his family and friends, he knows that he
must do well so he can take good economic care
of his parents in their old age. A Haitian accoun-
tant from Port-au-Prince reluctantly leaves his
family to find work as a taxi driver in Montreal
to save for his youngest daughter’s costly medical
treatment. Countless such sacrifices constitute the
ethical logic of family migration all over the world
(Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2013).
Although the sacrifices of migration are often
made on behalf of the family, it is the family itself
that is typically most unsettled and changed by
the process that immigration was to safeguard.
Many migrations begin tentatively, with a plan of
eventually returning back home. Migrations, how-
ever, often result in protracted family separations
(Suárez-Orozco, Bang, & Kim, 2011) that deeply
threaten the identity and cohesion of the family,
transforming well-established roles, creating new
loyalties and bonds, and destabilizing cultural
scripts of authority, reciprocity, and responsibil-
ity (APA, 2012; Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco,
2001). Even under the best of circumstances,
the family is never the same after migration
(Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2013).
Often, migrations create new, forced family
configurations (Bryceson & Vuorela, 2002). Most
typically, migrations take place in a “stepwise” fash-
ion, with one family member going ahead, later to
be followed by others (Hondagneu-Sotelo & Avila,
1997; Orellana, Thorne, Chee, & Lam, 2001).
Historically, the pattern was of the male leaving first
and establishing a beachhead in a new land while
sending remittances home. Over time, when finan-
cially possible, the process of bringing relatives—
wife, children, and others—began. But in recent
decades, immigration has achieved a nearly perfect
gender balance, with approximately half of all global
migrants being women (UNDP, 2009). Today, the
developed world’s demand for service workers draw
women—many of them mothers—from a variety of
developing countries to care for “other people’s chil-
dren” (Hondagneu-Sotelo & Avila, 1997; Gratton,
2007). And, in rapidly ageing countries, we can also
say that these immigrant workers are summoned to
care for what we could term “other people’s parents”
(Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2013).
Large sectors of the so-called pink-collar occu-
pations have also attracted immigrant women.
When migrating mothers leave their children
behind, complicated new arrangements must be
left in place. Often, extended family members,
such as grandparents or aunts, become the pri-
mary caretakers with the help of the father (if he
remains local and is still part of the family). In
many cases, however, both parents go ahead, leav-
ing the children in the care of extended family
(Bernhard, Landolt, & Goldring, 2006; Foner,
2009; Scalabrini Migration Center, 2003).
S uá r e z - Or o z c o 47
 As migrant households gain a firmer foot in the
country of immigration, new children are born,
thus forming complex blended families. These
families incorporate a range of settled migrants and
new arrivals, as well as citizen children. Notably, in
most high-income countries of immigration today,
the majority of the children in immigrant families
are born in the new land. This is immigration’s
most powerful echo. There is wide variability in the
ways in which countries structure access and citi-
zenship to the next generation. In some countries,
automatic citizenship is afforded to those born
within borders. In others, citizenship must be peti-
tioned when the child comes of age. In still others,
there is no access to citizenship and nationhood for
the second generation (Brubaker, 1992). This has
implications for identity formation, access, par-
ticipation, social belonging, and civic participa-
tion (Brubaker, 1992; Suárez-Orozco, Yoshikawa,
Teranishi, & Suárez-Orozco, 2011).
The range of transnational family arrangements
generated by global migration encompasses enor-
mous variety. In most cases, immigrant parents
strive to find a rhythm to raise their children as
best they can while managing the complexities of
life in the new society. But some families devise
other arrangements. A decades-old practice is to
send children—particularly unruly teenagers—
back to the homeland to be cared for (or resocial-
ized) by grandparents (Foner, 2009; Smith, 2006).
Increasingly, immigrant infants and toddlers (espe-
cially from China but also from India) are sent
back to be cared for by extended family while par-
ents work around the clock in the new land (Foner,
2009; Smith, 2006). There are still other family
arrangements: upper middle-class families from
Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan send middle and
high school-aged youngsters to study in the United
States or Canada. In the so-called astronaut kids
arrangement, the father remains in the homeland
generating income while the mother accompa-
nies the child to study in a new land (Ong, 1999;
Waters, 2002). Parachute kids, on the other hand,
live with extended or fictive kin while both parents
remain in the homeland (Ong, 1999).
Wrenching families apart through the depor-
tations of undocumented family members is
increasingly an issue of concern in many nations
(Suárez-Orozco, Yoshikawa, Teranishi, &
Suárez-Orozco, 2011). In the United States, this
has become a large-scale issue in recent years,
with 400,000 deportations annually (APA,
2012). Families with undocumented parents have
48 M ig r at ion Be t w e e n a n d W i t h i n C ou n t r i e s
involuntarily been wrenched apart by workplace
as well as in-home raids conducted by immigra-
tion authorities, leaving citizen children behind,
sometimes in the care of relatives, sometimes in the
care of foster homes, and sometimes forcibly relo-
cated to a country they have never known (Capps,
Castañeda, Chaudry, & Santos, 2007; Chaudry,
Pedroza, Castañeda, Santos, & Scott, 2010).
Seemingly in perpetual motion, therefore, the
immigrant family is destined to separations, and
with luck, reunifications. Here, then, is immigra-
tion’s bittersweet paradox—although motivated for
the well-being of the family, in reality, it wrenches
the family apart (Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco,
2013). When families first separate, they often
expect to soon reunite. The reunification of the
entire family, however, often takes many years,
especially when complicated by financial hurdles,
convoluted immigration regulations, and compli-
cations of unauthorized status (Bernhard et al.,
2006; Foner, 2009; Menjívar & Abrego, 2009).
When it is time for the children to arrive, they may
be brought to the new land all together, but often
they are brought in one at a time. Although par-
ents may maintain contact during the separation
period through phone calls, email, the ubiquitous
care packages, and, when possible, personal visits,
these separation–reunification processes involve
difficult psychological experiences for the families.
The difficulties arise during the separation phase,
and they resurface during the period of reunifica-
tion (Falicov, 2007; Suárez-Orozco, Todorova, &
Louie, 2002; Suárez-Orozco, Bang, & Kim, 2011).
For the children, these migrations result in two sets
of disruptions in their attachments: first from the
parent who goes ahead and then from the caretak-
ers to whom the child became attached prior to her
own migration (Ambert & Krull, 2006; Bernhard
et al., 2006; Dreby, 2009 Suárez-Orozco et al.,
2002; Wong, 2006).
The United Nations Development Program
(2009) suggests that family separations are wide-
spread and have lasting repercussions. Specialized
research in the field of migration in the United
States and Canada is beginning to map the extent
and consequence of these separations. Within
North America, only a few studies can give us a
glimpse into the percentages of youth involved. In
a nationally representative survey of documented
immigrants, nearly a third of the 6- to 18-year-olds
in the study had been separated from at least one
parent for 2 or more years. Notably, the rates of sep-
aration were highest for children of Latin American
origin, which happen to make up more than half
of all migrants to the United States (Gindling &
Poggio, 2009). Because separation rates are higher
among the unauthorized or those who are in the
process of regulating their documentation status,
this is probably a low estimate of separation rates.
In our US bicoastal study conducted with 400
recently arrived immigrant youth from China,
the Dominican Republic, various countries in
Central America, Haiti, and Mexico and who
were attending public schools, we found that the
majority of the immigrant children in the sample
had been separated from one or both parents for
protracted periods of time—from 6 months to
10 years (Suárez-Orozco, Bang, & Kim, 2011).
Nearly three-quarters of the youth were sepa-
rated from one or both of their parents during the
migration process. Approximately 26% of chil-
dren in the study were separated from both par-
ents for some period of time, a pattern most often
occurring in Central American families (54%).
Separations from mothers only occurred most fre-
quently in Dominican families (40%), and sepa-
rations from fathers only were most frequently
found in Mexican families (33%; Suárez-Orozco
Bang, & Kim, 2011). The vast majority of Central
American (88%) and Haitian children (85%) were
separated from either one or both of their parents
during the course of migration (Suárez-Orozco
Bang, & Kim, 2011), whereas Chinese families
were least likely to be separated over the course of
migration (52%).
The duration of separation from parents was
often lengthy, with individual cases reporting
being separated from one or both parents for nearly
their entire childhood. What are the psychologi-
cal effects of these separations? When comparing
youth who had not undergone family separations
to youth whose families had separated, we found
that those who arrived as a family unit are less
likely to report depressive or anxiety symptoms
than are those whose families had separated
(Suárez-Orozco, Bang & Kim, 2011). Those who
had undergone the longest separations from their
mothers report the highest levels of anxiety and
depression. Generally, we found that the high-
est levels of distress are reported by youths who
have undergone medium- and long-term separa-
tions. Not surprisingly, we found the lowest rates
of psychological distress among youth who had
not been separated from their mothers or who had
undergone separations of less than 2 years from
their fathers. We found the greatest distress among
youth who had undergone separations of 4 or more
years from mothers.
If the youth was left with a loving caretaker for
an extended period of time, she often becomes very
attached to that caretaker. When the child is called
to join the parents, although she is happy about the
prospect of “regaining” the parent(s), she also faces
“losing” sustaining contact with the caretakers to
whom she has become attached.
After reunification in the new country, mutual
calibrations are required. If the separation was
for a long period of time, reunited children first
must become reacquainted with the family.
Furthermore, they often find themselves entering
new family configurations that may include step-
parents, stepsiblings, and siblings they have never
met. Youth respond in a variety of ways to these
family separations. For some, it is a painful process,
leading to high reports of depressive symptoms.
We found, however, that when children and youth
were well prepared for the separation, if the separa-
tion was framed as temporary and necessary and
undertaken for the good of the family, the youth,
although changed, is not necessarily damaged by
the experience (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2002).
Parents often expressed guilt for being away
from their children while also recognizing that
their sacrifice is necessary for the good of the fam-
ily. At the same time, it often occurred to them
that their children did not always fully understand
this sacrifice. The longer the parents and child were
apart, the harder it was for the child to make sense
of the situation. Basic issues like parental authority
and credibility are often undermined the longer the
parent and child have been apart (Suárez-Orozco,
Bang, & Kim, 2011).
Disruptions in “Normative” Parenting
in Immigrant Families
All societies define parenting along shared
scripts of safety, security, and emotional care for
children (Levine, 1993). At the most basic level,
parents must provide for the physical security and
safety of their children. The idea of “home” con-
notes familiarity and the sense of being at ease,
feeling safe, and being cared for. For immigrant
parents, this includes finding appropriate housing
in a community where they will feel safe and able
to provide basic protections for their children. This
is not always easily achieved because many immi-
grant families find themselves in communities that
are deeply troubled, crime ridden, and where they
are unable to ever achieve the most basic sense of
S uá r e z - Or o z c o 49
security (although there is, of course, variation
between receiving contexts).
Providing for the physical security of the child
is but the most fundamental of parental responsi-
bilities. The work of protecting children involves
a range of domains: providing the basic financial
resources needed for feeding and clothing them,
sending them to school, and meeting their health
needs. Parents must also provide the protections
afforded to citizens living as members of a larger
community. For immigrants, these basic securities
may prove elusive. Although migrants are renowned
for their work ethic and for struggling valiantly to
provide for their families, this may not be enough.
Poverty among working-class immigrant families
remains a protracted problem for newcomers from
many countries in the United States, in particu-
lar, but in many other receiving countries as well.
Twenty-one percent of children with immigrant
parents live in poverty (in comparison with 14% of
those with US-born parents), and nearly half (49%)
of children with immigrant parents live in the next
income bracket of double the poverty level (in
comparison to 34% of those with US-born parents;
Hernandez, Denton, & McCartney, 2007; Urban
Institute, 2005). Although relatively better off than
before the migration, financial security remains a
nearly impossible quest for millions of immigrant
families.
Although some immigrant families are eventu-
ally able to achieve a semblance of financial stabil-
ity, millions face a more formidable threat to their
basic security—living with unauthorized status.
The ethos of safety and security essential to foster
healthy family dynamics is unattainable to mil-
lions of unauthorized families who face a perva-
sive sense of fear driven by the constant threat of
being hunted and at risk of apprehension. A cul-
ture of fear shapes the experiences of those living
without papers. “Illegality” is the cross that many
immigrant parents and their children alike bear. In
the United States, approximately 1.1 million chil-
dren are unauthorized, and an additional 4 mil-
lion are citizen children growing up with at least
one parent who is an unauthorized immigrant.
Amazingly, today, the United States—a country
with less than 5% of the world’s population—has
approximately 20% of the illegal immigrants in the
world: 11 million people living in the shadows of
society (Passel & Cohn, 2009).
Beyond the fundamental physical, social, and
economic security parents should provide, there are
parental authoritative, socializing, and emotional
50 M ig r at ion Be t w e e n a n d W i t h i n C ou n t r i e s
roles that are essential for optimal child develop-
ment and well-being (Maccoby, 1992). For a vari-
ety of reasons, for immigrant parents—especially
those with limited financial resources or who
have undergone premigratory trauma—these core
parental functions are can be systematically com-
promised by a powerful undertow. Indeed, many
immigrant parents are robbed of the psychological,
social, and cultural resources to optimally engage
with their children in the new society.
Immigrant parenthood is often defined by an
ambiguous presence. If parents have gone ahead
and left their children behind, their presence is only
partially enacted: symbolically with calls, materi-
ally with remittances, gifts, and the occasional
visit. These contacts provide the parents occa-
sion for the delivery of intermittent interventions
regarding expectations and admonishments about
how the children ought to behave. On reunifica-
tion, the children will experience a new ambiguity.
The children need to get to know, in new intimate
proximity, the rhythms, moods, and expectations
of their parents.
Although finally physically present, parents may
nonetheless continue only to be ambiguously there
(Boss, 1999). Making ends meet while learning a
new language and the ways of a new culture drain
parents of their time and energy. Many work mul-
tiple jobs for long hours. Others find the stresses of
learning a new language while performing on the
job overwhelming. Most are mourning the losses of
loved ones left behind. As such, many immigrant
parents, although with the best of intentions, find
themselves unable to provide the physical pres-
ence, time, and energy required to meaningfully
parent their children. Furthermore, the cumula-
tive stresses and losses of migrations, although
tempered by economic gains, leave many parents
emotionally exhausted, anxious, depressed, and
distracted. They may be physically present but
psychologically elsewhere and unavailable to meet
their children’s day-to-day emotional needs.
Immigration is particularly stressful to par-
ents when they are unable to draw on their usual
resources and coping skills, especially when
much is at stake for the balance and well-being
of the family. Immigration removes parents from
many of the supports that are linked to com-
munity ties, jobs, and the main institutions of
the new society. Stripped of many of their sig-
nificant supports (extended family members, best
friends, and neighbors), immigrant parents may
never fully develop the social maps needed to find
their way in a foreign land. A lack of a sense of
basic competence, sense of control, and sense of
belonging leave many immigrant parents feel-
ing marginalized. It is difficult to guide children
without a compass showing a clear due north in
the new land.
A new paradox becomes increasingly evident.
Even as immigrant parents become more empow-
ered economically by the opportunities of their
new homeland, they experience a keen sense of
inadequacy in their ability to effectively exercise
their parenting authority. At a time when immi-
grant children and youth need extra guidance in
navigating the difficult currents of the new coun-
try, many immigrant parents find themselves at a
loss, unable to guide their children.
Furthermore, a loss of parental status is ampli-
fied by the multiple social demotions they experi-
ence in the new society. The sources of these social
demotions are many, and the consequences are
profound. Some start by taking a job well beneath
their qualifications and skills. The field of immigra-
tion is littered with examples of wasted talent: the
doctor from China now working as a nurse, the
nurse from El Salvador working as a cleaning lady,
the engineer from Ghana working as a taxi driver.
Even a better salary makes these demotions a hard
pill to swallow.
Although other immigrants may not suffer a
drop in job status, they nonetheless find them-
selves toiling in the most stigmatized, dangerous,
and demeaning work. Immigrant workers often
reveal a deeply felt sense that they, and only they,
can and will endure the harshest, most unforgiv-
ing working conditions the new land has to offer.
These workers are also often aware that their
employers view them as less than human—simply
as labor to be exploited and discarded at will—
and this knowledge runs through the narratives
of many immigrants (Orner & Hernandez, 2009;
Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2013).
Demoralization, uncertainty, and fear at work
is but a part of the stress that worms its way into
the heart of immigrant family life. Immigration
reverses the natural order of parental authority.
Typically, nonimmigrant parents know the rules of
engagement in their social sphere. They know the
basic rules of socialization and how to guide their
children through the moral, social, and cultural
etiquette required for membership and belonging
(Maccoby, 1992). They can wisely impart to their
children the basic rules for respectful interaction
with others, how to complete school, and how to
get a job. In a new society, the rules of engagement
change, and immigrant parents are no longer mas-
ters (or even sometimes players) of the game. This
is painfully revealed by the eternal complaints of
teachers who accuse immigrants of not being inter-
ested in their children’s schooling when in reality
the parents simply do not know how to be “advo-
cate parents” in their new society.
For immigrants, “relinquishing the parental
function” is a painful and reluctant process. Some
do so out of a sense of helplessness and entrust their
children prematurely to responsibility beyond their
years. Some youth cherish this role and feel as if
they are responsible and active contributors to the
family (Orellana, 2009). Others, however, report
feeling burdened or are left with a “worm that
undermines basic certitude” (Hoffmann, 1989,
p. 145).
Parents find themselves turning to their chil-
dren for help and guidance in the practical, cul-
tural, and linguistic nuances of the new society
(Orellana, 2009). The reversal of parental author-
ity may be most underscored by the inability of
many immigrant parents to master the language
of the new land. The complexity of understand-
ing and making oneself understood will define
the lives of new immigrants at work, in dealing
with the institutions of the new society (includ-
ing schools, health care services, the police, and
the judicial system), and with the very essence of
social membership. Language becomes the under-
tow that drags immigrants down and forces them
to paddle hard just to stay afloat. It is an over-
whelming preoccupation for immigrant parents
who see language as essential to advancing in the
new society. There is an inevitable period of lin-
guistic inadequacy that compounds the difficulty
of learning the social rules that smooth interac-
tions in the new society. Some are blessed with the
linguistic gifts of a previous education and social
contexts that facilitate rapid acquisition of the new
language, but many others find themselves lin-
guistically challenged and never fully master the
intricacies of the new language (Suárez-Orozco &
Suárez-Orozco, 2013).
Immigrant children, on the other hand, read-
ily come into a more intimate contact with the
language and culture of the new society than do
their parents. Schools immerse them in the new
values and worldviews, and, above all, introduce
them to the systematic study of the new language.
Teachers are often native-speaking members of the
majority culture. Other children who may not be
S uá r e z - Or o z c o 51
immigrants become the daily interlocutors with
whom immigrant children develop a new linguistic
repartee. The children watch television, see mov-
ies, listen to music, and are indeed steeped in the
media of their new land’s language. Soon, these
children will be easily swimming in the culture of
the new land. Their parents, on the other hand, are
more removed from these new cultural realities,
particularly if they work long hours, as many do,
in enclaves with other immigrants who tend to be
of the same linguistic, ethnic, and national back-
ground. The children’s deep immersion in the new
culture facilitates the acquisition of the new lan-
guage and gives them a course to chart in making
their way in the new society.
Some immigrant parents rage against their
loss of authority; overreaction is not uncommon.
Hypervigilance, regimented routines, and polic-
ing peer influences, as well as media influences,
become preoccupations in many immigrant house-
holds. Parents become frustrated and feel increas-
ingly threatened by the encroachment of new
cultural values and behaviors in their children.
They often respond by tightening the reins. Putting
in place disciplinary sanctions from the “old coun-
try” opens a new cultural can of worms. Although
withholding a meal, spanking a child, pulling an
ear, or forcing a child to kneel on rice are com-
mon practices found in many countries of origin,
they may be dissonant with mainstream ideals of
the proper discipline of a child in the new land.
As parents attempt to discipline their children in
ways that are culturally aligned with their country
of origin, many will clash with mandated report-
ers in the new society. A “good spanking” in the
old country can be a reportable offense in another.
Children quickly become wise to the spirit and let-
ter of the law in the new land.
If immigrant parents do not learn alterna-
tive sanctioning mechanisms, however, they lose
control of their offspring. This may have severe
implications for the well-being of the children
because it is essential for parents to maintain
basic authoritative functions within the family
(Maccoby, 1992). The parents’ authority is not
only symbolic, but is also critical for imposing
limits around curfew, values around respectful
behavior toward others, expectations for doing
homework, and much more. If parental authority
is undermined, if the parent’s voice of authority
loses meaning, and if the children lose respect for
their parents, the very foundation of safety and
family coherence is compromised.
52 M ig r at ion Be t w e e n a n d W i t h i n C ou n t r i e s
Many parents thus come to face the paradox of
parenting in a promised land. The country offers
them the dream of a better tomorrow and provides
them with the opportunity to give their children
greater economic security. Their children may
have access to better education, may learn new a
new language, and may develop cognitive flex-
ibility (Hakuta & Diaz, 1985) and resourcefulness
(Falicov, 2005) through the process of migra-
tions. Nonetheless, there are many losses along
with the gains of migration (Suárez-Orozco &
Suárez-Orozco, 2001), and the coherence and
cohesion of the family is often assailed in the pro-
cess (Falicov, 2005).
A Brief Review of Migration
and Acculturation
Although migration involves the physical move-
ment of people, acculturation encompasses the
adjustments required by that act (Bornstein &
Cote, 2010). Anthropologists tend to focus on
the cultural adjustments required when two (or
more) cultures come in sustained contact with
one another (e.g., Redfield, Linton, & Herskovits,
1936). Sociologists, by contrast, typically exam-
ine the adjustments that occur over the course of
generations (i.e., comparing first to second to third
generational outcomes; e.g., Alba, 1992; Rumbaut,
1997). For psychologists, however, “acculturation
implies psychological adjustment” (Bornstein &
Cote, 2010, p. 530); that is, how the individual
person is changed by the process of migration (e.g.,
Berry, 1997; Berry, Phinney, Sam, & Vedder, 2006;
Birman & Trikett, 2001). In what ways does the
individual (and different members of the family
system) change his language use, manner of dress
and interactions, and system of values and beliefs
over the course of cultural contact (Schwartz,
Unger, Zamboanga, & Szapoczni, 2010; Szapoczni,
Scopetta, Kurtines, & Arnalde, 1978)?
Acculturation is generally thought to be dis-
organizing to the individuals involved, at least in
its initial stages (APA, 2012; Bornstein, 2012).
Typically, as we have seen earlier, there are gen-
erational differences in the pace of acculturation,
complicated by the ways in which the family has
been stressed by the process of migration.
When acculturation adjustments do not occur
smoothly and so-called acculturative stress (Graves,
1967) occurs, negative consequences can include
family dysfunction (Falicov, 2007; Qin, 2008),
as well as psychological symptoms (APA, 2012;
Bornstein & Cote, 2010), schooling problems
(Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco, & Todorova,
2008), and delinquency (Berry & Kim, 1988).
Although receiving cultures often fret about
newcomers’ willingness and ability to “assimilate”
to the new society (Huntington, 2005; Goodhart,
2013), the pattern is quite clear. Across time, by the
second or third generation, cultural and linguistic
attrition is typically quite steep (Alba, 1992; APA,
2012). Parents habitually do not reject their cul-
tural values and practices but instead, to varying
degrees, instrumentally adopt the linguistic and
cultural practices of the new society (Bornstein,
2012; Foner, 2009. The acculturation process
happens in stages, beginning with language and
moving on to behaviors, cultural practices, and
sometimes values (Birman & Trickett, 2001). For
adults who have been socialized in the host culture,
identification typically is retained with the culture
of origin, although practices of the new culture are
adopted (APA, 2012). Their children, by contrast,
oftenbridge both cultures, and, on the surface,
acculturate more quickly (APA. 2012; Suárez-
Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2001). The degree to
which the 1.5 or second generation does so has
much to do with family dynamics and exposure to
the receiving and host societies, as well as accep-
tance in the host society (APA, 2012; Garcia Coll
& Pachter, 2002).
There are a variety of domains to consider when
examining acculturation—from linguistic usage to
private domains (such as family values and prac-
tices or religious involvement) to public spheres
(including work or school domains or social, civic,
and political engagement; Bornstein & Cote,
2010). Individuals and families can be acculturated
to varying degrees across domains by individual
choice. Thus, when a parent acquires full English
fluency, works as a professional, and has friends
from varying cultural backgrounds but chooses to
retain nationality and not seek to pursue citizen-
ship in the United States, there is an element of
agency in this process. By contrast, acculturation
can also be partially driven by the parameters of
the host society. When an undocumented immi-
grant 25-year-old who arrived in the United States
at 6 months of age is English dominant, has lim-
ited fluency in Korean, has pursued a US college
education, but cannot legally work, vote, or partici-
pate in public spheres or regularize her status, then
exclusionary practices may arguably play a role in
acculturative possibilities (conscious or uncon-
scious; Suárez-Orozco, Yoshikawa, Teranishi,
Suárez-Orozco, 2011). Thus, acculturation should
be thought of as a complex, multidimensional pro-
cess involving societal, cultural, familial, and indi-
vidual dimensions, as well as contexts of reception
and origin.
Complicating the Concept
of “Culture” in Acculturation
At the heart of acculturation research is the
notion that adaptation (either at the societal or
the individual level) involves two sets of cultures
(Berry, 2006; Bornstein & Cote, 2010). A funda-
mental complication with acculturation research is
the notion of what we mean by “culture.” Cultures
are made up of basic observable routines, activities,
and cultural practices (Bourdieu, 1990; Weisner,
2002). Culture is what people typically do, their
language use, their kinship systems, their religious
and ritual practices, their economic models, their
power structures and hierarchies, how they raise
their children, how they dress, how they prepare
their food, and the like. Then there are the cultural
models (D’Andrade, 1984) or belief systems about
the world. These are the ways in which members
of a culture generally specify critical and essential
knowledge and skills—“not to acquire them rules
one out as a competent member of the group”
(Goodnow, 2009, p. 8). Furthermore, every culture
has values, norms, and ideologies, often aligned
with religious belief systems (Holden & Vittrup,
2009). By definition, cultures share systems of
distributed knowledge (Rogoff, 2003) that are
historically derived, patterned, and perpetuated
across generations (Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952).
Although many anthropologists and ethnographers
tend to emphasize the behavioral routines, insti-
tutional frameworks, and structural-functional
dimensions of culture, others underscore its sys-
tems of meaning (Geertz, 1973).
At the heart of the problem of acculturation
research is a rather thin conceptualization of a
very “thick” idea (Geertz, 1973). Much research
in the field approaches “culture” in a rather naïve
manner. As Triandis has provocatively but astutely
asked, one is left wondering “where is the culture
in acculturation?” (Triandis, 1997). The danger
of reducing cultures to simplistic categories (e.g.,
Chinese culture or American culture, or collectiv-
istic vs. individualistic cultures; (Oyserman, Coon,
& Kemmelmeier, 2002) remains a constant threat
to advances in this domain. All too often, accul-
turation research simplifies “culture” to nationality
and/or ethnicity. Researchers typically operational-
ize culture as “language plus ethnicity or language
S uá r e z - Or o z c o 53
plus ethnicity plus nationality” (Chirkov, 2009,
p. 99). Indeed, a cursory overview of most scales
of acculturation reveals that language is used as a
central variable (Zane & Mak, 2002).
A fundamental premise of acculturation theory
is that there must be two cultures—conceived as
fixed monoliths—juxtaposed one against the other,
such as “the” immigrant or heritage culture versus
the culture of the receiving country. Although
there is some debate about “directionality” (i.e., are
both cultures affected by one another, or is only
one culture changed?) and “dimensionality” (i.e., if
one takes on aspects of the new culture, does one
concurrently lose aspects of the heritage culture, or
are these independent dimensions?; Sam, 2006),
there is no doubt that there must be at least two
different cultures. A flaw in this thinking, however,
is that somehow the two cultures to be compared
are constructed as monolithic and hermetically
sealed from each other—American culture is X
and Chinese culture is Y. Berry, however, acknowl-
edges that “there is no contemporary society in
which one culture, one language, one religion,
and one single identity characterizes the whole
population” (p. 27). With large, complex, rapidly
changing, and globally interconnected countries
like the United States or India, that is easy to
grasp. What cultural values, exactly, does a single
Manhattanite who is a New York Times-reading,
agnostic, 20-something, graphic designer share
with a 55-year-old Pentecostal, Fox News watcher,
parent of three children, small-business owner in
Columbus, Ohio? Or what does a poor, illiterate,
Muslim man, father of five offspring living in a vil-
lage in the South of India share with an affluent,
highly educated, multilingual Hindi couple with
no children in Mumbai? But even in countries
with relatively small populations, such as Sweden
or Canada, dramatic demographic changes over
the past 30 years are causing seismic shocks to once
bedrock notions of what it means to be “Swedish”
or “Canadian.” The notion that culture can be
easily equated to nationality—an idea rejected by
most anthropologists (Goodnow, 2009)—is com-
pletely anachronistic in the 21st century.
Researchers often use language as an indica-
tor of acculturation, but this assumes that all
immigrants do not speak the language of the host
country. Although this may be true in many cir-
cumstances, it is by no means always the case.
Hence, for example, immigrants to the United
Kingdom educated in former English-speaking
colonies such as Jamaica or India may be able to
54 M ig r at ion Be t w e e n a n d W i t h i n C ou n t r i e s
communicate with ease in English upon arrival.
That does not mean that they are acculturated to
the values, beliefs, and practices of the new cul-
ture. A Jamaican mother can speak English per-
fectly, but concurrently be appalled by dissonant
new childrearing practices she sees happening
around her in her new neighborhood. Likewise,
immigrants from Spanish-speaking South
America arrive in Spain without the language hur-
dle, but they do not necessarily pass acculturation
obstacles as they enter the host country, and they
may feel uncomfortable with the interpersonal
directness typical of Spaniards, which may clash
with the more polite and subdued style typical
of Ecuadorians—now one of Spain’s largest new
immigrant groups. Furthermore, migrants who
speak world languages such as English, Spanish,
or French often do so with strong regional accents
and linguistic styles that mark them as distinct
from one another; hence, Spanish-speaking immi-
grants from the Andean region, the Caribbean,
and the Southern Cone of Latin America, although
they share a common language, nonetheless are
deeply divided by regional differences (Otheguy,
Zentella, & Livert, 2007).
When immigrants arrive, they bring with them
an internalized sense of their own culture. Adults
in particular have scripted notions of their cultural
beliefs, values, and practices. These cultural rules
of engagement provide them comfort, and they
will continue to hold on to them, especially if they
feel disoriented in the new land. Practices that were
unquestioned back home may suddenly be rec-
ognized in the new land as only one of multiple
potential ways of doing things (Goodnow, 2009).
Some of the cultural practices in the new land
may be appealing, intriguing, and readily adopted.
Refugees who come from political strife and immi-
grants who arrive from nation states with chaotic
and corrupt bureaucracies come to appreciate effi-
cient and transparent social institutions. Thus,
Chileans arriving in the United States after the
Pinochet era or Bulgarians arriving in Switzerland,
although not necessarily adopting all the practices
of their new homeland, will appreciate the safety,
order, and transparency of their new lands’ govern-
ments and strive to adopt these practices in their
work or civic projects.
Conversely, some immigrants will encounter
cultural dissonance for the first time. Tensions may
arise across heretofore unquestioned gendered expec-
tations and obligations, such as working outside
the home or dating (Suárez-Orozco & Qin, 2006),
as well as across generational expectations, such as
respect for elders or filial piety (Suárez-Orozco &
Suárez-Orozco, 2001). For some immigrants, this
means rigidifying and closing ranks as a way of
protecting children from perceived toxic influences
(Goodnow, 2009). Immigrants to Sweden from
Somalia have century-long traditions of arranged
marriages for their daughters in early adolescence.
Back in Somalia, this would have been culturally
normative and thus neither particularly dissonant
nor often questioned. Within the Swedish context,
this practice flies in the face of the expectations of
Western liberal cultural values, values readily inter-
nalized by many daughters (Wikan, 2001).
To complicate matters further, immigrants may
lock into and become “fossilized” in the cultural
practices of their country of origin as they remem-
ber them (Kroeber, 1938), yet certain features of
culture continue to evolve and change. Those who
are not exposed regularly to the ongoing flows of
cultural changes via transnational visits and con-
tacts may be oblivious to new cultural realities
back home. Hence, their cultural frame of refer-
ence may be practices, values, and traditions that
are no longer au courant and are more in keeping
with the world they left behind 30 years ago. This,
then, suggests that immigrants often navigate three
different cultural realities—the new culture, mem-
ories of the old culture, and the new cultural reali-
ties that have emerged after they left their home
countries.
Parents, extended family members, the ethnic
community, and media pass down the heritage
cultures to immigrant origin youth of the 1.5 and
second generations. If there is a dense community
and transnational flows are regular, the heritage
culture is deeply lived and richly reinforced. Yet,
sometimes, immigrant families are relatively iso-
lated, having few other co-ethnics to continue to
cross-pollinate the heritage culture. In other cases,
their transnational contacts may be cut off because
of refugee status, unauthorized status, financial
constraints, or personal reasons. With limited
contact with co-ethnics, the parental culture will
become something of an abstraction upheld only
by the parents, with no shared narratives by oth-
ers in the community or reinforcement of cultural
expectations. Under these circumstances, the con-
tinuity and internalization of heritage culture will
be challenging and complicated.
Sustained contact is an essential ingredient for
acculturation (Trimble, 2002), but varying degrees
of real contact may occur. Some immigrant groups
are quite insular by choice (Masgoret & Ward,
2006) because of economic circumstances or as
a result of varying degrees of shunning from the
receiving society. With minimal contact with the
host community, particularly in circumstances
of deep segregation (Orfield & Lee, 2006), it
is unlikely that there will be much movement
toward acquiring the necessary knowledge about
the host culture needed to “navigate the border”
(Phelan, Davidson, & Yu, 1992) between cultural
worlds. Although at times immigrants may be
welcomed and indeed actively recruited, at other
times (especially in periods of high unemployment
and economic uncertainty among native citizens),
anti-immigrant sentiment flares up (Espenshade &
Belanger, 1998; Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco,
2001). If the “dominant” culture is spewing
hatred over the airwaves and making newcomers
feel particularly unwelcome, what are the effects?
Does this rigidify cultural boundaries? Encourage
cocooning (Goodnow, 2009)? Hasten attempts at
“passing” when this is may be phenotypically an
option (e.g., for Russian immigrants but not for
most Dominicans in the United States)? Under
what circumstances? For whom? At which par-
ticular phases of development? The social context
of reception remains an underconsidered dimen-
sion of the equation in much of the research on
acculturation (Rumbaut, 1997; Suárez-Orozco &
Suárez-Orozco, 2001; Sue, 2002).
Complicating matters further, in
immigrant-receiving countries like the United
States, Canada, Australia, and Argentina, history
suggests a pattern of interethnic marriage over time
and across generations, resulting in biracial and
bicultural children (Root, 1992; Trimble, 2002).
What are the implications for acculturation if an
immigrant youth has parents of two different cul-
tures (an Indian father and Mexican mother, for
example) and is being raised in a third space (in
the Silicon Valley in Northern California)? How
does the child negotiate and internalize the varying
cultural messages that she receives?
What of the hundreds of millions of internal
migrants who remain within the borders of nation
states (International Organization for Migration,
2008)? Our models of acculturation assume moves
across borders, but migrants from rural China to
urban Beijing are often unauthorized, speak a dif-
ferent language, and are vastly different from their
urban counterparts. Acculturation theory and
practice could very well be applied to these popula-
tions, too.
S uá r e z - Or o z c o 55
 Global urban youth culture constitutes another
complicating feature of acculturation (Arnett,
2002). Increasingly, young people are incorporat-
ing features of youth culture into their identity,
one highly influenced by pervasive media. If one
observes a classroom in the outskirts of Paris or
Stockholm, one sees many of the same modes of
dress, body language, and interactions between
peers and with teachers as one sees in a classroom
in the Bronx or Brooklyn.
In an increasingly complicated world, accultur-
ation models will need to take into account mul-
tiple layers of cultural influences—familial origins,
“majority” (“mainstream” but sometimes minor-
ity in numbers) and “minority” (underrepresented
in the power structure but sometimes majority in
numbers) cultures, and the more abstract global
youth culture. Developmental scientists interested
in culture will continually need to manage the ten-
sions between the requirements of nomothetic laws
of science and the hermeneutic interpretive project
of understanding human behavior in its irreducible
dimensions (Chirkov, 2009).
Future Research Directions
How should cross-culturally meaningful work
be conducted to capture the experience of trans-
national families and child development across
borders? This kind of work, as we have seen, forces
us to reexamine many of the traditional social sci-
ence assumptions around validity and reliability
(McLoyd & Steinberg, 1998; Suárez-Orozco &
Carhill, 2008). To do this work in a way that
accurately, empathically, and ethically captures
the experience of our participants, the complex-
ity of and multiply determined nature of the pro-
cesses must be recognized. This work requires an
ecological framework linking emic (outsider) and
etic (insider) approaches and interdisciplinary,
mixed-method strategies (APA, 2012; Hernández,
Nguyen, Casanova, Suárez-Orozco, & Saetermoe,
2013; Suárez-Orozco & Carhill, 2008).
Meaningful understanding in this field requires
insights provided by parallel fields within the
social sciences, including economics, sociology,
anthropology, and public health (Suárez-Orozco
& Carhill, 2008). Using an array of method-
ological strategies is necessary to identify cultural
variations in experience (APA, 2012; Betancourt
& Williams, 2008). Research with culturally and
linguistically diverse populations requires a funda-
mental alteration of common investigative frame-
works often aligned with middle-class Western
56 M ig r at ion Be t w e e n a n d W i t h i n C ou n t r i e s
frameworks (APA, 2012). Mixed methods that
combine qualitative and quantitative strategies in
varying sequences, aligned with specific research
questions and designed to shed light on contextual
insights, are particularly important in this domain
(APA, 2012).
Interdisciplinary teams whose members are
“bilingual” (or “multilingual”) with one another’s
methodologies lead to more robust research contri-
butions. Team members must be well versed in one
another’s methodologies. Just as is the case with
language abilities, it is rare to achieve complete
mastery and equal ease across more than one meth-
odology. Thus it is important to have multidisci-
plinary teams in which there is at least one member
who is dominant in one language/discipline but
is also quite “fluent” in the other language(s)
(Suárez-Orozco & Carhill, 2008).
Attention must also be paid to contexts—both
of origin as well as of reception. The contexts of ori-
gin (Rumbaut, 1997)—including the economic,
political, cultural, social, and personal factors
that may have propelled immigrants to leave their
country of origin—are important to understand
whenever undertaking a study in order to frame
questions and make sense of findings. The contexts
of reception (Rumbaut, 1997)—national integra-
tion policies, legal frameworks, the political cli-
mate, media representations of immigrants—also
have deep developmental implications (cf. APA,
2012; Deaux, 2006; Suárez-Orozco & Carhill,
2008; Suárez-Orozco, Yoshikawa, Ternanishi, &
Suárez-Orozco, 2011).
Combining etic and emic approaches to diverse
populations is important in the phases of both data
collection and analysis (Cooper, Jackson, Azmitia,
& Lopez, 1998; Suárez-Orozco & Carhill, 2008).
Bicultural and bilingual researchers are better able
to establish rapport and trust within communities
and gain entry into immigrant populations that
might otherwise be difficult to access. Furthermore,
insiders are essential for appropriate linguistic and
cultural translations of protocols. Their perspec-
tive is also essential to accurate, culturally relevant,
and ethical interpretations (Hernández, Nguyen,
Casanova, Suárez-Orozco, & Saetermoe, 2013). If
the research is not conducted by members of the
immigrant community, it is then essential that cul-
tural experts be consulted both while developing
instruments, as well as when interpreting findings.
Outsiders can serve a role in providing a fresh inter-
pretive perspective as well by lending their specific
disciplinary expertise.
 Whenever possible, it is important to include
comparison groups (Suárez-Orozco & Carhill,
2008). These comparison groups can include both
a range of immigrant-origin populations as well
as others from nonimmigrant populations who
encounter similar contexts. Alternatively, the same
culture of origin arriving into contrasting contexts
(e.g., Crul, Schneider, & Lelie, 2013) or with vary-
ing socioeconomic resources and capital can pro-
vide important perspectives (e.g., Louie, 2004).
Such comparison groups provide valuable contex-
tualization of findings.
Questions and prompts that are valid for one
group may not be valid for another. It is a chal-
lenge to develop single instruments or approaches
that capture the experiences of individuals from
a variety of backgrounds (APA, 2012). Of course,
research protocols should always be provided in the
dominant language of the informant. Measures
developed with mainstream English-speaking
populations (as are many standardized instru-
ments) are often culturally and linguistically
biased (Doucette-Gates, Brooks-Gunn, &
Chase-Lansdale, 1998). New tools, either adapted
from preexisting instruments or developed entirely
de novo, are often a necessity for accurate research
with immigrants (APA, 2012; Suárez-Orozco &
Carhill, 2008). The process of such develop-
ment should be dynamic and inductive, involv-
ing theoretically based formulations along with
themes emerging from the field. As culturally
informed questionnaires are developed, they must
be carefully translated and piloted (APA, 2012;
Suárez-Orozco & Carhill, 2008).
Using triangulated data from a variety of per-
spectives is also highly recommended when faced
with the challenges of validity in conducting
research with groups of diverse backgrounds. Such
an approach allows more confidence that data are
accurately capturing the phenomenon under con-
sideration. By sifting through a variety of points of
view—self-reports, parent reports, teacher reports
(in the case of youth), or reports from other com-
munity members (in the case of adults)—as well
as researcher observations, concurrence and dis-
connections can be established between what
informants say they do, what others say they do,
and what the researcher sees them do. Researchers
should consider various levels of analysis in their
research, including the individual, interpersonal
relations (peers, family) and context-specific social
groups (work, schools, neighborhood, church), as
well as cultural dimensions.
By paying attention to various layers of context,
by working in interdisciplinary teams, by attentive
crafting of culturally attuned strategies for captur-
ing experience, and through careful attention to
our participants’ perspectives, developmental sci-
entists can seek to clarify both common denomina-
tors and particularities of development for children
and adolescents growing up in our increasingly
interconnected countries and globe.
Note
1 This is a likely a conservative estimate. Most migrants tend
to originate from settings with large families. Furthermore,
estimates of global remittances suggest that in some South/
North migration corridors, each migrant in the North who
remits funds back to the South is supporting an estimated
four family members remaining behind (World Bank,
2011).
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 C H A P T E R

5 Indigenous Social Science

at the Intersection with Human
Development: Implications for
and Lessons from African Ecocultures
A. Bame Nsamenang

Abstract
Africa shows no commensurate contribution to global knowledge systems on human development
vis-a-vis its status as the cradle of humanity. This essay introduces Africentric thinking into
contextualizing developmental research in Africa’s centuries-old social systems and cultural capital
with the objective of strengthening its generative research capacity. It exposes the nature of human
development knowledge in Africa’s systems, bringing out its broad features. It also traces historical
periods in the gradual but steady advancement of research on African child development and the
emergence of contextually informed and culturally appropriate Africentric research. It flanks the
traumatic rupture of Africa’s social systems on colonial hegemony, noting the resilient, endogenously
patterned forms of development in adversity. The chapter advocates a strengths-based research
approach that can rekindle and enhance an African past that coexists today as triple-strand hybridized
heritages of enculturating, socializing, and educating children through social ontogenetic stages.
Key Words:  indigenous social science, African ecocultures, social systems, cultural capital,
worldview, theory of the universe, life cycle developmental trajectory, resilience and resourceful-
ness, hybrid developmental context

A Call for Indigenous
African Social Science
Bame Nsamenang, an anxious but ambitious
village boy, began his academic expedition in
September 1964, when he gained a government
scholarship to study in a Catholic boarding sec-
ondary school in his own village of Kitiwum, in
northwest Cameroon. His illiterate but responsive
parents, Joseph Bame and Adela Shwemyar, who
prompted his development and supported his edu-
cation, shoved him into this world exhorting him
to shun evil and “be a good boy.” This inerasable
caution was not simply a parental admonition; it
has served as a forceful developmental task as the
boy strived through every stage of life to remain
his parents’ “good boy.” That parental injunction
has since served as a moral code and an incisive
developmental principle because a truly “good
child” should not fail or be seen to be failing. This
parental expectation is consistent with Jahn’s (1961,
p. 108) finding that, in West Africa, “the ances-
tors are conceived of as continuing spiritual pres-
ences watching over and admonishing their living
descendants: The dead are not alive but they do
exist,” even in their oral legacies.
The invitation to contribute a chapter to The
Oxford Handbook of Human Development and
Culture not only offered this “Kitiwum boy” an
opportunity to extend his scholarly outreach on
indigenous social science of human development in
African ecocultures, but also powerfully reminded
him of a call by an Indian developmental scien-
tist, Saraswathi (2009), that “Bame … Some day
you must write about how you achieved amidst all
odds and inspire young people in your country to
strive.” That the Kitiwum boy continues to struggle

61
with adversity is true, but that he has “achieved”
agitates his imagination because he is still feeling
his way through the turbulent European-American
intellectual waters of “publish or perish” in search
of an Africa-centric academic niche. He doubts if
his efforts belong to those exemplars of unexplored,
outstanding accomplishments he has noticed in
many young people across Africa. Some young
people from impoverished backgrounds have navi-
gated the harsh realities of African villages and city
slums toward academic excellence and prominent
professional positions in global spaces, but their
developmental trajectories persist as outliers to
developmental science. The lives of most African
children, like that of the “Kitiwum boy,” have not
been defeated by adversity, as some theories and
interventionists have averred. The often-cited but
largely uncharted resilience in African children is
only one of several facets of stoic agency, resource-
fulness, and inventiveness inherent in indigenous
African values and early socialization and educa-
tional practices.
The focus of this chapter is on human develop-
ment in Africa’s ecocultures in general but in par-
ticular on the development of young citizens from
birth through adolescence in Africa’s ecocultural
spaces. By ecocultures, I am referring to the physical
and social settings of young citizens and the cultural
knowledge and value systems, attitudes, and prac-
tices inherent therein. My suggestive examination
of how these ecocultural elements incite develop-
ment and channel individuation (e.g., Nsamenang,
1992a; 2001; 2004; 2010) includes a brief com-
ment on the impact of colonialism and the effect
of the universalization of key Western epistemic
concepts on them. I attempt to expose the nature
of the knowledges and practices about children and
their development in Africa’s cultural settings and
the broad features of the social systems in which
the development of children in Africa occurs. I also
chronicle the major historical periods in the grad-
ual but steady advancement of research-based child
development knowledge and the emergence and
development of efforts to put in place contextu-
ally sensitive and culturally appropriate Africentric
models for development and learning during the
early years of life. Flanking the regrettable rupture
of Africa’s social systems by colonial and post-
structural forces with centuries-old socially pat-
terned forms of inequalities, this chapter advocates,
through rigorous research and suitable policy gen-
eration, a strengths-based way forward for rekin-
dling and enhancing connections to a past that
62 I n dig e nou s S o c i a l S c i e nc e at t h e I n t e r s e c t ion w i t h H u m a n De v e l opm e n t
endures today in Africa’s rich traditions and time-
less wisdom of early child care and family-based
education.
Human development is a biological process that
occurs in an ecocultural context that imprints on
it in ways that social science research still has to
fully decipher and enhance. The ecocultural sys-
tem is defined roughly by a physical and social
setting, traditions of childrearing practices, and
the psychology of caregivers (Super & Harkness,
1986, this volume). Adjaye (2012) suggests that if
we wish to truly understand human development
in Africa, we ought to focus on the continent’s six
extraordinary geographic zones: the Maghreb in
the northwest of the continent, the Sahara Desert
to the southeast, and the Sahel in the South consti-
tute three precisely defined zones. The three other
geographic zones of the African continent are the
forestlands, the savanna, and the mountains.
It is worthwhile to note that, over historical
time, the people’s culture has grown primarily
from each of these geographic zones, and they
offer some useful lessons in how climate and
topography cultivate a sense of place and identity
(Adjaye, 2012). Jean Piaget (1973, p. 156), not
often acknowledged for consideration of culture
and context, reflected on the importance of both
as follows: “The human being is immersed right
from birth in a social environment, which affects
him just as much as his physical environment.
Society, even more, in a sense, than the physical
environment, changes the very structure of the
individual.” Bram, (1998), in apparently com-
pleting Piaget 1973, is aware of the importance
of culture and context, but cautions that assign-
ing value to the original culture in context and
to the mode of early childhood development it
promotes should not mean automatically accept-
ing every aspect of that culture and context, nor
should it mean adopting cultural relativism. It
does mean recognizing that, in every culture and
context, there are worthwhile elements and that
if these are rapidly replaced by other models, this
will be harmful rather than productive (Bram,
1998). Still, my focus in this chapter on the inter-
section of indigenous African social science with
human development should not be interpreted
as nostalgia for Africa’s glorious past but as rep-
resenting a call, based on provisions of the UN
Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC)
(UNICEF, 2003), to anchor human development
scholarship in Africa by drawing “strength from
the fountain of her rich cultures, and wisdom
from her timeless traditions” of unacknowledged
“successful” preparation and empowerment of
the next generations (Callaghan, 1998, p. 31).
The not often well-acknowledged critical impor-
tance of context and culture in language and
other aspects of development is revealed in the
Vygotskian perspective (Vygotsky, 1978) that
it is “a co-construction between an individual
and society in its various manifestations” (Kritt,
2013, 18). In fact, the social, cultural, and his-
torical origins of the cultural context in children’s
thought ought to be considered, not just as a bio-
logically given ability, because cultures are quite
forceful in stamping their imprints on to the
biology of human ontogenesis (Nsamenang &
Akum, 2013).
Indigenous social science aims to increase
knowledge in the classroom and the research field
of diverse epistemologies and methodologies (de
Goede, 2013). This laudable trend in state-of-the-art
social science provides tools for situating and rede-
signing developmental research in historical, cul-
tural, and global contexts that transcend hitherto
hegemonic Anglo-American visions. Postcolonial,
subaltern, and poststructural critiques that focus
on the power differential between the West and the
non-West, particularly Africa, in international pol-
icy and knowledge production about the Majority
World are increasingly influential. Only very rarely,
however, is indigenous knowledge of the Majority
World treated as knowledge per se in the main-
stream of psychology and in related fields such as
human development.
At the University of Botswana, Chilisa (2012)
has developed a “postcolonial indigenous research
paradigm” that emphasizes discovery of indigenous
knowledge systems and production. She argues for
a decolonization of research. This chapter builds on
Chilisa’s (2012) paradigm of research as emancipa-
tion and empowerment of the “colonized other,”
with a focus on exploring how Africa’s diverse eco-
cultures print onto human development and indi-
viduation. This is important, given that Western
epistemologies and concepts of education, accord-
ing to Callaghan (1998), have devalued indigenous
cultures so much so that they are now seen as anti-
progressive and that they ought to be intervened
into extinction. Callaghan (1998) pleads that we
should listen to and learn from the African holistic
worldview in order to see an integrated way of look-
ing at the child in the family and the universe. This
would enable us to see the intersection between
the social sciences and human development in
new ways, and this could enable us to engage a
paradigm shift in the way that we envision the
education and development of children in Africa
(Callaghan, 1998). In other words, an indigenous
African social science is about generating contextu-
ally and culturally relevant knowledge about edu-
cating the developing child (Nsamenang, 2004).
It is also about rights-based improvement of the
cultural identities and life conditions of children
and families, as required by the UN CRC. In fact,
“Those who have worked in international develop-
ment are keenly aware that research [and interven-
tion entirely] based on a predominantly Western
scientific paradigm is part of the story, but not the
full story needed to move forward effectively in
local development” (Arnold, 2004, p. 46). Perhaps
it is such recognition that led UNESCO (1999) to
posit that every culture, including the African, and
every cultural community, can produce scientific
knowledge of universal value. So, what trends are
there in African child development research to live
up to UNESCO’s expectations?
Major Historical Periods of Human
Development Research in Africa
This section sketches what, from my thin selec-
tion of the available literature, we now know about
human development research in African societ-
ies and what aspects of or lessons from it may
strengthen Africa’s contributions to global schol-
arship on human ontogenesis. I have organized
this overview into five waves of historical research
periods. For each period, I endeavor to identify the
nature of developmental ideas or precepts and/or
the main thrust of the research characteristic of the
period.
First Period: Arrival and Fledgling
Start to  Scientific Psychology in Africa
Kağitçibaşi (1984) observed that scientific psy-
chology was invented in the Western (Minority)
world and, like developmental research today, was,
without their consent, forcefully exported into the
rest of the (Majority) world (Kağitçibaşi, 1996;
Kağitçibaşi, this volume). In follow-up of this
historical trend, Nsamenang and Lo-oh (2009)
have claimed that rudiments of developmental
psychology and research arrived in Africa allied
to the colonial services of governance, education,
health, evangelism, social work, and more. The ele-
ments of the developmental science that arrived in
Africa allied to colonialism did not implant in a
vacuum; they encountered unfamiliar, resistive,
Ns a m e n a ng 63
and uncharted indigenous social systems and
developmental ideas and practices that remain
mostly unexplored today. Both the “native” and
the imported fragments of European and American
science coexisted together in the same psyches and
societies but in the nascent scientific discourses,
the latter did not acknowledge the former. In the
course of colonial history, scientific psychology in
general and its indigenous developmental version
in particular began to emerge from insights from
colonial service delivery but more definitely from
anthropological research that had a tacit goal of
“domesticating” the savage African mind (Goody,
1977) and understanding stagnated develop-
ment in the Dark Continent (Forde, 1963; Kidd,
1906/1969).
Most dispensers of the earliest elements of
developmental science were not psychologists
but colonial agents mandated to deliver services
and consolidate the colonial state in Africa. The
European and American voyagers or sojourners
and missionaries who rejected or reviled Africa’s
knowledge systems, modus vivendi, and forms of
intelligence published the earliest and most virile
racist literature on Africa (e.g., Tylor, 1881). Ellis
(1978) recounts that European voyagers, mer-
chants, missionaries, and colonial agents referred
to the irrationality and gullibility of the African
who, “irrationally” bartered food, cattle, and
other substantive local goods for a few pieces of
European iron and silver coins. Africa’s resources
still suffer this fate today in the hands of foreign
extractors of natural resources, and this contrib-
utes to Africa’s abject poverty and inability to
support its young citizens, in spite of its consid-
erable natural resources and enormous human
capital.
A developmental topic that attracted early
research attention was curiosity about the precoc-
ity of physical development of the African child
compared to that of the Western child (see also
Super & Harkness, this volume). Wober (1975)
summarized research on accelerated psychomo-
tor development of children in Africa, which was
attributed to excessive body contact-comfort, fre-
quent physical handling, and early psychomotor
stimulation. These were withdrawn quite abruptly
when a child was weaned at the birth of the next
sibling, and this was regarded as the reason that
the African toddler then began to lag behind his
European or American peer—as measured by
milestones considered important in the European
or American context. The shape of developmental
64 I n dig e nou s S o c i a l S c i e nc e at t h e I n t e r s e c t ion w i t h H u m a n De v e l opm e n t
science implanting as a fledgling scientific disci-
pline in Africa today was also determined then
by the orientating attitude adopted in reporting
research, an orientation that persists today. The
African data were never presented as integral or
contributory to Western developmental markers
but as failing to conform to or as poor templates
of developmentally appropriate European and
American norms (LeVine, 2004). Thus, reports
of the substantive cross-cultural research on
African child development have tacitly rejected
and still largely despise African patterns of child
life and development. This partially explains why
systematic science-based knowledge of human
ontogenesis in Africa for apt policy generation is
conspicuous by its scarcity.
But although developmental science is well
under way in Africa, albeit in a fledgling state, it
is not yet as far along in ecological and cultural
relevance as it should be. Wober (1975) tacitly
invoked an ecological paradigm when he sensi-
tively predicted that Western psychology would
not successfully implant and thrive in Africa
without anchoring in the local reality. In spite of
Wober’s (1975) provocative prediction that psy-
chological research would be different in the hands
of native-born Africans, most African researchers
still ignore the “soil” (see Kishani, 2001) that has
nurtured Africa’s enduring social capital and time-
less traditions of child care (Callaghan, 1998). The
indigenization movement in research is sustained
by increasing realization that the bulk of published
research about Africa was authored by itinerant
non-Africans and that it embodies the externalized
imprints, vested interests, and interpretations that
foreigners brought into Africa.
Second Period: Measurement of Human
Abilities and Personality Profiling
The second epoch of the discipline’s development
in Africa involved a gradual shift away from mea-
suring specific abilities and personality profiles in
Africa and comparing them to Western standards.
A new focus emerged on the developmental impact
of the local cultural setting. In her Six Cultures
Study of Childrearing, B. B. Whiting (1963) moved
the field of psychological anthropology toward a
more systematic, measurement-oriented approach
to human abilities and psychological characteris-
tics. For their part, Cole, Gay, and Sharp (1971)
expanded and enriched the field by comparing
performance on cognitive tests between Liberian
and American respondents and concluded that
performance outcomes on cognitive tasks was more
dependent on situational factors than on underly-
ing differences in cognitive abilities.
The 1970s and 1980s were indeed a watershed
period in cross-cultural research on human abili-
ties and development of cognitive and social com-
petencies. Whiting and Whiting (1975) provided
the roadmap for the role of culture on child devel-
opment in Children of Six Cultures, while Berry
(1976) sketched the ecology of cognitive styles and,
along with colleagues (Berry et al., 1986), demon-
strated the role of acculturation on cognitive devel-
opment with respect to figure–ground perceptual
abilities with a central African subsample. Munroe
and Munroe (1975) published the first textbook on
cross-cultural developmental research, with influ-
ential data from their childrearing research in East
Africa. Mundy-Castle (1975 offered an important
distinction between academic or technological
and social intelligence in African children. Dasen,
Inhelder, Lavallee, and Retschitzki (1978) pub-
lished an influential monograph on the “birth” of
intelligence in the Baoule child in Cote d’Ivoire
based on their Piagetian research. In the same year,
Erny (1987) offered an educational perspective on
African children and their developmental setting.
Collaborating with B. B. Whiting, the Munroes
(Munroe, Munroe, & Whiting, 1981) published
the first comprehensive handbook on cross-cultural
human development, one that integrated anthro-
pological and psychological research and included
insightful glimpses from databases obtained from
across Africa. Serpell’s (1984) overview and cri-
tique of cognitive development research and psy-
chological testing in Africa revealed that, ab initio,
the studies were designed to determine how well
African children performed the “tricks” of Western
schooling rather than to understand abilities in
African children and the conditions under which
they were developing. The differences observed in
test scores between African children and Western
comparative samples were interpreted as “devel-
opmental lags.” A “deficiency” interpretation was
thus imputed into African children’s abilities rather
than differences in cultural routines and the curri-
cula of schooling experiences between African and
Western children.
Regarding social development, LeVine (1973;
LeVine & LeVine, 1963) hinted that Gusii parents
in Kenya tended not to be overtly affectionate with
their infants and toddlers, and Ainsworth (1967)
described lack of face-to-face interactions between
Bugandan (Ugandan) mothers and their infants.
Similarly, Goldschmidt (1975) purported a pattern
of “idle hands and absent eyes” in mothers’ interac-
tions with infants among the Sebei of Kenya and
Uganda. On the other hand, the Kilbrides’ (1974;
1975) studies among the Baganda corroborated
findings by Super and Harkness (1974) that East
African parents influenced the social behavior of
their infants through smiling and talking to the
infants. Two African psychologists, Ohuche and
Otaala (1981), charted broad features of the devel-
opmental context of children in Africa. Having
discerned the cultural divergences to child rearing
from their research in the United States and East
Africa, Super and Harkness (1986) introduced a
sociological-anthropological paradigm with data
from East Africa and the Boston area of the United
States to promote understanding of children and
their psychosocial differentiation in cultural con-
text using an approach that they termed the “devel-
opmental niche framework.”
Third Period: Toward Contextually and
Culturally Appropriate Research
Movement away from the comparative para-
digm of cross-cultural research and toward con-
textually sensitive research projects that “value
Africans in the African context” (Callaghan, 1998,
p. 31) is the distinct mark of the third period of
developmental research in Africa. The contextual-
ization movement represents a milestone in Africa’s
struggles to document the social capital within
which it prepares its children for life and patterns
of African child development. A publication dur-
ing this phase, one that has been listed as a land-
mark contribution to both developmental science
(Lonner & Berry, 1992) and cross-cultural research
(Gielen, 2004), is Nsamenang’s (1992a) Human
Development in a Cultural Context: A Third World
Perspective that depicted a worldview that Serpell
(1994, p. 18) characterized as constituting “a very
different psychological frame of reference from
that which informs contemporary developmental
psychology.” Given that early childhood develop-
ment, for example, involves an encounter between
and engagement with the cultural world of the
child’s family and that of any other representative
of society or stakeholder community (Bram, 1998),
contextually oriented research would strengthen
contributions to the science from research within
Africa’s varied ecocultures. In this regard, LeVine
and colleagues (1994) reported an interdisciplinary
research project on childrearing among the Gusii,
a high-fertility, polygynous society of Kenya, as
Ns a m e n a ng 65
Lessons from Africa to developmental psychology.
It is instructive that LeVine (2004, p. 149) revis-
ited this dataset a decade later to acknowledge
sub-Saharan African mothers as employing “a
practical understanding of infant care and develop-
ment contrasting sharply with expert knowledge in
the child development field.” To be specific, “Gusii
mothers raised their infants and toddlers accord-
ing to a different set of standards” (LeVine, 2004,
p. 159) than the developmental practices that have
been derived from European and American cultural
realities (LeVine, 2004). On their part, Dawes and
Donald’s (1994) edited volume mapped out several
dimensions of the psychosocial consequences of
adversity on childhood development from South
African research. Similarly, Weisner, Bradley, and
Kilbride (1997) devoted an edited volume to the
African family as varying in social capital and chil-
drearing patterns but as resilient and fairly adaptive
in the “crisis of social change.”
Fourth Period: Dialectic Between
Indigenization and Integration
into Global Scholarship
The fourth and current period includes Azuma’s
(1984) indigenizing psychology (Mashegoane,
1998) and attempts by African scholars to develop
a psychology that builds on an African theory
of the universe and speaks to the stark reali-
ties of the bewildering diversity of the continent
(see Nsamenang & Tchombe, 2011; Tchombe,
Nsamenang, Keller, & Folűp, 2013). This indi-
genization movement represents attempts by
African scholars to frame a psychology that makes
sense in their social and cultural systems and by
which they can gain understanding of their mind-
sets, subjectivity, intersubjectivity, and modus
vivendi, particularly the preparation of their young
citizens who retain their cultural identities in a
world in transition.
Simultaneously, however, there exists a muted
determination and long-standing debate as to
whether to frame Africentric scholarship within the
outlets and forums of fiercely competitive global
scholarship. Emerging signs in developmental sci-
ence point to efforts by African and Africanist
scholars (e.g., Dasen, 2011; Nsamenang, 2010;
2013a; 2013b; Tchombe et al., 2013) to accumulate
competitive Africentric databases from how African
ecocultures imprint onto child development and
psychological differentiation (Marfo, 2011) and to
endeavor to disseminate them into global knowl-
edge networks. In my view, Africa is an important
66 I n dig e nou s S o c i a l S c i e nc e at t h e I n t e r s e c t ion w i t h H u m a n De v e l opm e n t
world region, one with its own knowledge systems
that deserve visibility within global knowledge
systems. The aim should be to generate, interact,
share, and exchange them widely, particularly
Africa’s developmental knowledge and practices,
so that they can enrich and extend the frontiers of
developmental science (Nsamenang, 2007).
Researching Human Ontogenesis Within
Africa’s Indigenous Knowledge Systems
It is instructive to note that the realities of
Africa are not identical with those of the United
States, Europe, and other regions of the world
that have accumulated impressive but invasive
research findings. It is equally important to be
reminded that the bulk of what we have learned
about African social systems and African child
development so far has been produced mainly
by expatriates. And it is not only African authors
who have noted the Anglo-American domina-
tion of scientific psychology. Arnett (2008), for
example, has critiqued psychological science that
bypasses the 95% of the world’s population that
lives in the Majority (nonwestern) World while
“American psychology” produces what it claims
to be “research findings that implicitly apply to
the entire human population, the entire species”
(Arnett, 2008, p. 602)! In my view, the psychol-
ogy and human development community needs
reminding that the movement for indigenous psy-
chologies “arose as a reaction to the mainstream
version of psychology” that did not and still
grossly fails to “reflect the social, political, and
cultural character of peoples around the world”
(Allwood & Berry, 2006, p. 243).
All this notwithstanding, what can we actu-
ally learn from Africa that is valid and authentic?
This challenging concern obliges Africa and her
scholars to develop and disseminate their own
research-based findings on human functioning and
psychosocial differentiation (e.g., Erny, 1973). The
critical issue is whether Africans will do this in iso-
lation or within cutting-edge trends in global schol-
arship. As a result, I perceive the necessity to focus
on contextually meaningful research and possible
lessons that can emerge from Africa, some of which
may overlap or may introduce new insights into
research findings from long-standing European-
and American-based research. Such research would
not only be useful to Africa and its populations, but
also to the discipline, the international community,
and relevant policy development at local, national,
and international platforms.
 Here, I briefly introduce four interesting, useful,
and innovative research findings indicative of what
Africentric research could offer to the field.
First, Goze Tape’s (1994) research is
neo-Piagetian, wherein he studied constructivism
in the local context of 12- to 16-year-old Ivorian
adolescent students. Tape (1994) acknowledged
age as an important variable that factors into the
attainment of the operational stage, but reasoned
that the critical period when the structures of “for-
mal operations” are being elaborated depends more
on the school content with which the adolescent
student interacts than on her or his age per se. He
made an important distinction between the school
that promotes formal thinking and experimen-
tal reasoning and the traditional Ivorian learning
environment that fosters essential analogical think-
ing. Faced with these divergent modes of cognitive
operations, Tape (1994) proposed an integration of
the constructivist model with the theories of cog-
nitive styles. For him, cognitive research should
focus on understanding how individual personal
characteristics influence their cognitive function-
ing in particular settings. He hypothesized that
formal and analogical thinking are complementary
in human activity but are supported differently.
Dasen (1993, p. 156) recognized Tape’s research as
“a good beginning of the development of a truly
African psychology.”
Second, my life cycle developmental trajectory
is a sociogenic explication of human ontogenesis
within Africa’s social systems and cultural capi-
tal (Nsamenang, 1992a) that Serpell (1994, p. 18)
judged as offering a different “theoretical focus
from the more individualistic account proposed by
Freud, Erikson and Piaget.” Ngaujah (2003) recom-
mends this theoretical approach for education, mis-
sionary work, and pedagogy because it highlights
the affective nature of the environment on children’s
cognitive and social learning possibilities at all ages.
Missionaries can take from it “a healthy respect for
the people of Africa” (Ngaujah, 2003, p. 9).
Third, Serpell (1977) initiated research into
African forms of intelligent behavior by charting
the perceptions of intelligence in a rural community
in eastern Zambia. This eventually led Kathuria
and Serpell (1999) to develop a language-reduced
test suitable for use by children in rural Africa—
the Panga Muntu Test (Make-A-Person Test). The
test presents children with wet clay, and the chil-
dren are asked to “make” a person with the clay.
The children’s figures are then quantitatively scored
for accurate representation of human physical
characteristics. A majority of young children in
rural Africa are more familiar with clay or other
local materials as mediums of play than they are with
commercially prepared toys or pencil-and-paper
test items. Furthermore, familiarity with “intelli-
gent behavior” in sub-Saharan Africa reveals that
primacy is placed on social rather than mentalistic
or cognitive intelligence per se.
Fourth, Sternberg and his colleagues (2001)
studied the relationship between academic and
practical intelligence in Luo children of a rural
Kenyan community (Sternberg et al., 2001). They
developed a Test for Tacit Knowledge for Natural
Herbs. The test sampled from common illnesses
in the Luo community and standard herbal treat-
ments for those illnesses in that community.
Implications of and Lessons from
Indigenous Social Science Research
These four lines of research all exemplify
Allwood and Berry’s (2006) goal that “the sci-
ence [of psychology] has a dual responsibility: to
understand people in their own terms [Indigenous
Psychology (IP)], and to search for general prin-
ciples of human behaviour. The development of
an IP is valuable in its own right, but they may
also collectively serve as building blocks in creat-
ing a more general psychology” (Allwood & Berry,
2006, p. 265) IP is useful for studying the impact
of political, economic, religious, social, and accul-
turative aspects of life on a specific society. Putting
IPs together offers broader insights, but insights
truly built on local knowledge rather than on the
knowledge of typically local Western or American
ideas and precepts that are being universalized
(Atteh, 1989). IP refers to “the scientific study
of human behavior or mind that is native; that
is not transported from other regions and that is
designed for its people” (Kim & Berry, 1993). IP
generally advocates examining knowledge, skills,
and beliefs people have about themselves and the
universe, studying them in their natural settings.
Theories, concepts, and methods are developed to
correspond with psychological and developmental
phenomena in context.
As noted by Chilisa (2012) and reflecting
Nsamenang’s (1992a; 2004) earlier views, Africa’s
developmental science scholarship must innovate or
generate theories and methodologies that are con-
sistent with the existential realities and the “facts”
and processes of Africa’s childhoods and liveli-
hoods. Development of IP in South Africa, which
has endured political and racial turmoil for decades
Ns a m e n a ng 67
if not centuries, would help to cultivate socially
appropriate methods for its cultural communi-
ties. In short, IP explicitly advocates incorporating
both the content and the context of development
into research agendas because no child develops
in a vacuum or in a universal ecoculture. Human
development is context-bound and culture-imbued
(Nsamenang, 2009; 2011; Nsamenang & Akum,
2013). Furthermore, indigenous knowledge is
the systematic body of knowledge acquired by
local people through the accumulation of experi-
ences, informal experiments, and intimate under-
standing of the environment in a given culture
(Rajasekaran, 1993). Indigenous knowledge is the
actual knowledge of a given population; it reflects
their experiences based on traditions and includes
more recent experiences with modern technolo-
gies (Haverkort, 1993). Local people, including
parents, farmers, landless laborers, women, rural
artisans, and cattle rearers, are the custodians of
indigenous knowledge systems. Moreover, these
people are well informed about their own situa-
tions, their resources, what works and does not
work, and how one change impacts other parts
of their system (Butler & Waud, 1990), but they
cannot articulate their circumstances as scholars
do. These knowledge systems may appear simple
to outsiders, but they are intricate and repre-
sent mechanisms that ensure livelihoods for local
people. Indigenous knowledge systems often are
elaborate, and they are adapted to local cultural
and environmental conditions (Warren, 1987).
Indigenous knowledge systems are attuned to the
needs of local people and the quality and quantity
of available resources (Pretty & Sandbrook, 1991).
They pertain to various cultural norms, social roles,
or physical conditions. Indigenous social science is
built on such knowledge. Research into it can be
carried out by whoever is qualified and sensitive to
the nuances of developmental contexts, but it spe-
cifically behooves Africa’s scholars to develop their
knowledge systems and share with and disseminate
them into global knowledge communities and pub-
lication outlets.
The significance of indigenous knowledges and
the four exemplary studies just cited is that they
depart from normative comparisons and represent
genuine attempts to recognize, respect, and describe
indigenous mindsets and intellectual values by
using ecologically meaningful local materials and
media to focus on indigenous psychosocial pro-
cesses (Mpofu, 2002). They also demonstrate the
appropriate application of psychometric procedures
68 I n dig e nou s S o c i a l S c i e nc e at t h e I n t e r s e c t ion w i t h H u m a n De v e l opm e n t
with indigenous materials for the purpose of sup-
porting local educational activities or practices in
other sectors. Although promising beginnings have
been recorded in indigenizing the measurement of
human development and calibration of intelligence
and other abilities in sub-Saharan Africa, much
remains to be achieved in terms of programmatic
research in these and other areas.
Some Indigenous Research Themes
In this section, I identify some broad research
themes that I perceive as priority areas for
Africentric developmental research and that can
also serve for theory building and methodological
innovation.
I focus on a description of emerging indigenous
work in Africa in order to highlight what we know
and can learn from Africa.
Exploring Africa’s Universe
of Human Ontogenesis
Human ontogenesis, the story of individual
development, occurs in all habitable environments
and cultures across the globe. Human develop-
ment scholarship in Africa, as elsewhere, must
first understand the directive ethnotheories of the
people under study, the place of the human being
in his or her universe, and specifically how people
in each cultural context think about and prepare
children for life. The last point should be the focal
subject matter for human development scholarship,
given the implausibility of a universal human ecol-
ogy. That is, a universal child development envi-
ronment does not exist; child development occurs
in Africa’s specific physical and cultural settings
and not in universal contexts or civilizations, in
spite of acculturation. In fact, every cultural com-
munity possesses a worldview or theory of the uni-
verse that frames its conception of the child and
his or her preparation for adult life (Nsamenang
et al., 2008). Ochs (1988) posits at least one theory
of knowledge for every culture that specifies the
limits of knowledge and the path to its acquisition.
Bram (1998) elaborates that the unique features of
a culture are its system of values, norms, ideologies,
beliefs, symbols, and signs that cumulate into one
whole system singular to that culture.
A Holistic Versus a Cartesian
Theory of the Universe
An African theory of the universe is holistic and
theocentric in its shaping of African outlooks and
modes of life; it acknowledges everyone’s humanity
and bestows an omnipresent spirituality on being
human (Nsamenang, 2010; Nsamenang et al.,
2008). The holism of Africa’s non-Cartesian theory
of the universe (Nsamenang, 2010) interconnects
the sacred and the secular worlds to the human
condition, visualizing them as conceptually insepa-
rable (Bongmba, 2001). This theory of the universe
should not be ignored. Anthropologist Levy-Bruhl
(1910/1966) indicated that the cultural systems
of indigenous peoples are constituted on the law
of mystical participation, which conceptualizes
human beings and nature as parts of an insepa-
rable entity that can be viewed as a consciousness
of cosmic holism (Tylor, 1871/1929). In addition,
Africa is neither homogeneous nor a monocultural
continent but exhibits a bewildering diversity and
extraordinary dynamism (Olaniyan, 1982, p. 1)
that convolutes its holism.
The theory of holism invokes an indivisible
interplay of secular and sacred forces to ensure
the well-being of the people. It equally posits the
indestructibility of the human life force, like the
indestructibility of “force” in physics, which only
transitions from one life stage to another. For exam-
ple, the life force is not decimated at death; it trans-
forms into an afterlife of the ancestral world and
spiritual realm (see Nsamenang, 2005a). Although
not overtly acknowledged in psychology, evidence
of this view of the afterlife can be discerned from
funeral ceremonies and death wishes wherein the
living request the dead not to forget them. The
world’s most visited memorials—for example, the
Washington Monument—are devoted to the dead.
This brief account depicts a more complex picture
of human ontogenesis than has hitherto been con-
ceptualized and researched. This complexity exists
at two main levels of reality: reality itself that is
transcendent and cannot be understood by human
beings and the reality that human beings have
constructed with language, which includes the
lifeworlds constructed by cultural groups in their
long social-cultural history of development, and
the reality of the scientific microworlds constructed
by individual scientists or scientific communities
(Hwang, 2013).
Theories of the universe position the child as
a cultural agent to whom various cultures teach
or organize for children to teach themselves their
cultural curricula at different stages of ontogeny.
African theories of the universe situate the child
as a cultural agent who must undertake a cultural
curriculum at various stations of development. The
family (e.g., Fortes, 1950) is central to this role
because it is the institutional hub in which child-
bearing and childrearing are located, such that child
care is a collective enterprise rather than a parental
prerogative (Nsamenang, 1992b). “Kinship is the
nucleus from which social networks ramify, moral
behavior is initiated and prosocial values, produc-
tive skills and the mother tongue are learned”
(Nsamenang et al., 2008, pp. 55–56). The theory
positions the child not in his or her lonesomeness or
independence but as socially integrated into social
networks; meaningful development involves inter-
connectedness to networks of other humans at dif-
ferent developmental stages. Thus, values and their
intergenerational continuity (Nsamenang, 2012a)
are ingrained in family structures and reproduc-
tive roles, as are the treatment of and experiences
or settings to which children at different ages and
developmental stages are subjected or exposed to.
The social capital that flows from such human
interconnectedness engenders strengths that prime
resourcefulness and resilience; these sometimes
generate outstanding accomplishments from con-
ditions of poverty and extreme inequality, but they
are largely unexplored and uncharted.
A Life Cycle Versus a Life Span
Developmental Trajectory
If we could carefully explore it, we would
notice that across cultures, human development
can be seen as being organized in systematically
varying pathways, with developmental learning
(Nsamenang et al., 2008) in both the institu-
tional school and the school of life (Moumouni,
1968) sequenced “to fit the different milestones
of development that the culture perceives or rec-
ognizes” (Nsamenang, 2005b, pp. 329–330). “The
developmental organizers of these pathways are
the pan-human themes of autonomy and related-
ness, which are differentially emphasized in differ-
ent cultural environments” (Keller, 2008). These
themes are pervasive and directive in that they
structure and route enculturation, socialization,
and education agendas, wherein parents and off-
spring construct and co-construct their psycholo-
gies within the existential realities and dynamics
of their cultural environments and with support
from their cultural tools and ecological resources.
Cross-cultural empirical evidence (e.g., Keller,
2008; Sagi-Schwartz, 2008; Trommsdorff, this vol-
ume) from multisite research in different parts of
the world validates these theoretical assumptions.
An African theory of the universe visualizes a
life cycle developmental trajectory in three phases
Ns a m e n a ng 69
of selfhood; namely, social selfhood or the expe-
riential self and the metaphysical phases of spiri-
tual selfhood and ancestral selfhood. A universal
but mostly inferred recognition of the metaphysi-
cal phases of human selfhood is discernible in
the intentions and connotations of funeral rites
and the significance of the forms of memorabilia
people in all cultures hold of their loving dead
(Nsamenang, 2005a) decades, even centuries,
after they died. Developmental science, however,
excludes them from its focal content, even though
they are issues of intimate attention for the bulk
of humanity across the globe. For instance, people
in all cultures loathe death perhaps because most
can never be truly ready for it, or they dread to
imagine their transition into the spiritual world of
evil or loving-dead ancestors in their afterlife. To
the extent that Africans, like everyone else, recog-
nize the implications of the metaphysical phases
of the human life cycle, these concerns constitute
an essential component of their psychosocial being
and functioning, a fact that challenges science
to develop the capacity to operationalize and the
tools to capture and measure. It might be noticed
that some people sometimes deploy more time and
resources into anticipation of their afterlife than
they expend on their children’s needs and welfare.
Within the experiential or social selfhood, the
forte of Anglo-American developmental science,
African social ontogeny posits seven ontogenetic
stages. These are added to the two metaphysical
phases to give a total of nine distinctive periods
of the human life cycle. They include the neona-
tal period, social priming, social apprenticeship,
social entrée, social internment, adulthood, old
age/death, and ancestral and spiritual selfhoods
(see Nsamenang, 1992a; 2005a). Each ontoge-
netic stage is marked by distinctive developmen-
tal tasks, defined within the framework of the
culture’s conception of child, family, and their
welfare. An essential task in African family tradi-
tions that traverses all stages is responsibility train-
ing, which begins from an early age. Within the
African worldview, responsibility is more valued
than cognition, per se, in the sense that one can-
not be responsible without necessarily cognizing.
This is because Africans cherish cognition not as
an end in itself but as a means to social ends or as
it is subordinated to servicing or enhancing human
needs, and they are aware that some people may
be cognitively alert but irresponsible. Cultures dif-
fer in the manner in which they guide children’s
development and organize developmental learning.
70 I n dig e nou s S o c i a l S c i e nc e at t h e I n t e r s e c t ion w i t h H u m a n De v e l opm e n t
Toward Researching the Resilience and
Resourcefulness of Children in Adversity
The appalling state of children in Africa depicted
in Western media hypes and research-based reports
obscure noticing and researching the robust resil-
ience and resourcefulness of children in adversity.
In fact, bare statistics of children in poverty and
their desperate situations tend to mask the count-
less examples of domestic heroism by children in
AIDS-affected families in Africa. Strengths-based
research in Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, and Zambia
suggests that family structures are more resil-
ient than the international development field and
human development researchers had expected
(UNAIDS, 2006). Yet most interventions in Africa
continue to bypass such strengths, resourceful-
ness, and achievements because such interventions
have been framed by mindsets and strategies that
advocate replacing Africa’s social capital instead of
exploring, understanding, and enhancing it. This
is a provocative reality for Africa’s human develop-
ment scholars. Thus, it might be more fruitful and
serviceable to ground research on the strengths of
children and their families in adversity and poverty
rather than on elusive so-called developmentally
appropriate norms that have been derived from the
realities of non-African childhoods.
Children’s Agency Within Africa’s
Social Capital and Cultural Tools
Social capital is inherent in African parental
values that permit peer group life and support
children’s self-care, peer interstimulation, and per-
formance of household duties from an early age
(Nsamenang, 2008; Pence & Nsamenang, 2008,
Richter, Foster, & Sherr, 2006). African peer cul-
tures are significant developmental spaces not only
for transmitting and innovating or/and creating
values, which await exploratory discovery and
enhancement, but also for original theory build-
ing and methods development. From an early age,
most children in Africa observe and participate in
family tasks as well as in caregiving to younger sibs
with little or no instruction but with the guidance
and encouragement of parents and peer mentors
(Nsamenang & Lamb, 1995). This pattern of early
learning through caregiving is rooted in African
perceptions of children as social agents in their
own “becoming” (Erny, 1968) and in participatory
processes “as participants in cultural communities”
(Rogoff, 2003, p. 3), often in peer cultures without
the usual sense of classrooms and schools (Bruner,
1996). Social capital is also noticeable in children’s
capacity to transcend adult models by creating
their own social worlds even when living up to
adult demands and commands (Nsamenang &
Lamb, 1995).
Children’s agency and protagonism has been
recorded in young caregivers who support ail-
ing parents or ageing guardians, especially those
affected by HIV/AIDS. Drawing on data collected
in Western Kenya, Skovdal, Ogutu, Aoro, and
Campbell (2009) reported how young caregivers
coped with challenging circumstances, often with
skill and ingenuity. They concluded that children’s
ability to cope with adversity was determined by
the extent of their community participation and
proficiency in negotiating for social and material
support from it. Their data revealed how young
caregivers, on their own terms and initiatives, mobi-
lized social support, engaged in income-generating
activities, and constructed positive social identities
around their caregiving roles. In fact, sibling care-
giving eased children’s transition into adult roles
after their parents’ death from AIDS (Nsamenang,
2007; 2013b). In brief, adversity and peer group
processes breed a genre of resourcefulness in
African children that has scarcely been captured
by Euro-Western epistemes and research tools.
Africentric research ought to innovate and capi-
talize on such inventiveness in young citizens and
on other unexplored facets of Africa’s social capital
and political economies.
Furthermore, in order to generate research that
transcends Eurocentric governing theories and nar-
ratives, scholarship in Africa must benefit from the
fact that the early childhood developmental learn-
ing contexts of children in Africa offer opportuni-
ties (Curran, 1984) that have seldom been taken
into explicit account by European and American
theories and methodologies. In addition, the
hybridism shaping the development and individua-
tion of African children’s personalities and cultural
identities is an intermingling, like strands in a braid,
of Eastern and Western-Christian legacies as they
have been superimposed onto a resilient Africanity
(Nsamenang, 2005b). This intermingling offers a
novel theoretic and methodological terrain that no
existing theory fittingly explains, and no anteced-
ent evolutionary template exactly corresponds to its
triple-strand braid (Nsamenang, 2005b, p. 276). In
other words, Africa’s existential hybridism, exud-
ing the concocted developmental trajectories and
educational ideas of Africanity (indigenous Africa)
and imported heritages and legacies from the
Islamic-Arabic world and the Christian-scientific
West offers unprecedented opportunities for inno-
vative theorizing and methodological creativity to
transcend the insularity of Euro-Western theories
and methodologies on developmental phenomena.
The “differentness” of the African landscape ought
to oblige “research that interrogates policy (instead
of informing it)” and that dissuades the “construc-
tion of a knowledge which is exclusive of many
other knowledges” (Urban, 2006). Thus, research-
ers should adopt a learning posture (Agar, 1986),
a discovery mindset, and an exploratory approach
to researching the human condition in Africa
(Nsamenang, 2005b). With such an orientation, it
is possible to learn, discover, and chart patterns of
human ontogenesis in any context.
Personality Development and
Individuation in Africa’s
Cultural Settings
A claimed basic African personality type is
understood to be based on a deep-seated, spiri-
tual, psychic property shared by and unique to all
Africans, namely the African thought processes
and cosmological ideas that regard the human
not as a social means but as an end, an entity in
society (Okpara, 1989, p. 168). A number of con-
temporary African psychologists have sought to
affirm this view of a basic African personality type
in their theories. For example, the Nigerian psy-
chologist Olowu (1984; 1986) claims that African
self-identity is a collective phenomenon derived
from the extended identity of group “beingness”
(Akotia & Olowu, 2000, p. 7). In his earlier stud-
ies of self-concept among Nigerian youth, Olowu
(1984; 1986) suggests that it is distinctive Yoruba
socialization patterns that account for their strong
self-concepts relative to English youth and to those
in Nigeria, who are alienated from these roots by
social class factors. The South African psychologist
Bodibe (1992; 1996) argues that there are distinc-
tive manifest behavior patterns among Africans that
can only be understood as evolving from unique
African epistemologies. He suggests that in indig-
enous African social thought, self-knowledge is a
matter of projecting oneself “outward” and estab-
lishing relationships with the sky, land, and one’s
kinship group, rather than dwelling on the rela-
tionship that people have with their own thoughts
and feelings. Accordingly, he believes that Western
concepts of knowledge promote ill-health among
Africans based on the very fact that they propagate
dualist, non-African or non-Cartesian notions of
mind-body, thinking-feeling, experience-behavior,
Ns a m e n a ng 71
and subjectivity-objectivity. And Nyasani (1997), a
Kenyan philosopher and theoretical psychologist,
develops perhaps the most comprehensive of all the
published accounts of a distinctive African person-
ality: the African mind reveals itself through what
may rightly be called a congenital trait of social-
ity or sociability. It further reveals itself as a virtu-
ous natural endowment of patience and tolerance.
And, last, it manifests itself as a natural disposition
of mutual sympathy and acceptance. These three
areas then appear to serve as important landmarks
in the general description of the phenomenology of
the African mind.
Perhaps the most important point is that this
view of the individual is not merely a matter of aca-
demic psychology but functions as a deep folk or
collective psychology of the people. Okpara (1989)
points out that belief in this basic personality type
permeates African history and society. It is mani-
fested in all areas of life, in religion, commerce, and
cultural activity; it is “found among even the least
rhetorical of African nationalists and thus consti-
tutes part of the mythology of our political life”
(Okpara, 1989, p. 168). Importantly, the tendency
to position African psychology in opposition to
European and American psychology derives to a
large extent from this strong concept of a singu-
lar African personality. So, for example, Eze (1991)
considers it a substantive requirement, in order to
create an overall African perspective in psychol-
ogy, to put forward a “thesis calling for a system-
atic identification and separation of the … black
African ‘we’ from the European, foreign ‘they’
as the first step towards the development of an
African psychology and nationalism” (Eze, 1991,
p. 29). And Goduka (2000) argues that it is the
fact that all Africans bear within them a stock of
innate, spiritually centered wisdoms that necessi-
tate nzagwalu (“answering back when one has suf-
fered many years of insult”) against ignorant and
racist European/Western scholarship in philosophy
and psychology (Goduka, 2000, p. 11).
But this view of a distinctive African mind or
psyche, however, is by no means unanimous among
African psychologists and philosophers of psychol-
ogy (Moll, 2007). There has been an equally sophis-
ticated theoretical perspective evident in Africa that
is skeptical of these notions and instead looks to
the development of authentic universal theories to
provide psychological interventions and solutions
for Africa. It should be noted, though, that the
stream of thought about a unique African person-
ality shares the view that mainstream psychology,
72 I n dig e nou s S o c i a l S c i e nc e at t h e I n t e r s e c t ion w i t h H u m a n De v e l opm e n t
dominated as it is by narrowly conceived positiv-
ism, operationalism, and Cartesian conceptions of
mind, has failed to engage adequately the problems
of Africa.
Conclusion
The aim of this chapter is to get researchers to
think differently about human ontogenesis, in a
way that encompasses all corners of the globe and
produces hybrid contextualist theories. I also chal-
lenge the scientific community of Africa,—home
to the earliest humans and to the longest “experi-
ments” in childrearing and practices of preparing
the next generations—to show the world what
knowledge Africa has to offer in the field of human
development. Research into these centuries-old
social systems and timeless fountains of wisdom of
child care ought to extend the frontiers of human
development research and inspire inventive theoriz-
ing and methodologies sensitive to African ecocul-
tures. But, thus far, human development research
in Africa seems to have been overwhelmingly fix-
ated on European and American templates, as if the
conditions of human life and child development in
Africa match those in Europe and North America.
If African parents promote relational individu-
ation, defining the self by connecting a unique
personal identity to that of the shared social per-
son (Woodhead, 2008, p. 6), then we must expect
developmental indicators and norms that diverge
from those of the independent construal of the
self that governs a universalizing Western develop-
mental science. If the contemporary social systems
in Africa are a hybrid of East, West, and a deeply
resilient Africanity, how can we expect epistemes,
theories, and methods imported from elsewhere
to fit? The hybridism of contemporary Africa
does not correspond to any antecedent evolution-
ary template. Even more importantly, the bulk of
the knowledge and practices within Africa’s social
systems and developmental mores exists in invis-
ible norms and tacit precepts that are mostly inac-
cessible to developmental science’s epistemes and
methods. This perhaps explains why when scholars
apply Western epistemes, theories, and methods
to African systems, they repeatedly discover that
they do not fit (MacGaffey, 1981). So, what does
Africa’s cyclical life cycle vision of human ontogen-
esis portend for theory building and methodologi-
cal innovation?
That Africa’s sociogenic developmental tra-
jectory differs in theoretical focus from the indi-
vidualistic accounts espoused by Western scholars
(Serpell, 1994, p. 18) reinforces the call for system-
atic exploration of distinctly indigenous patterns
of development so that developmental research
in African contexts could fertilize and expand
the theories, methods, and policy implications
of psychology beyond Western molds. My (e.g.,
Nsamenang, 1992a; 2000; 2004; 2013b) consistent
argument is that research into indigenous develop-
mental processes can contribute to a richer, more
powerful global psychology. The scientific method,
not Western datasets and narratives, is the handi-
est tool that can source new theories, methods,
and developmental knowledge in every social sys-
tem globally and in Africa, the cradle of human-
ity, in particular. Africa deserves and ought to be
an integral part of evolving an inclusive science of
psychology that is yet to be “crafted” from research
into the indigenous social sciences of human onto-
genesis across the globe.
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 PART
2
Birth, Infancy, and
Toddlerhood
 C H A P T E R

6 Charting Infant Development:

Milestones Along the Way

Charles Super and Sara Harkness

Abstract
Determining the age of selected, presumably universal behavioral accomplishments—milestones—
has played a uniquely important role in history of developmental research. This chapter presents a
brief overview of how charting the mastery of motor skills contributed to early child development
research, followed by an extended example of how cross-cultural work has helped us better
understand the meaning and dynamics of particular milestones. As a cultural perspective has been
applied to the cognitive and social behaviors of more recent interest, it has become clear that the list
of behaviors under study is limited by its European-American roots. Nevertheless, one can see in both
theory and practice a growing recognition of culturally regulated diversity in the universal milestones
of infancy.
Key Words:  infant development, cross-cultural research, developmental milestones, developmental
research, Developmental Niche, motor development, cognitive development, social-emotional
development

Determining the age of selected, presumably uni-
versal behavioral accomplishments—milestones—
during infancy has played a uniquely important
role in developmental research since its early years.
Although the behaviors of interest have changed
over the decades as developmental theory evolves,
the study of milestones continues to be a mainstay
of the field. Change in this research tradition has its
own milestones, marking an increasing maturity of
the field.
This chapter begins with a brief historical over-
view of how charting the mastery of specific behav-
iors—particularly gross motor behaviors—figured
in the early history of child study and child devel-
opment research. This is followed by an extended
example of how cross-cultural work sheds new
light on the original milestone questions and, in
so doing, added new ideas about parental beliefs
and behaviors in particular cultural settings.
During the same era, developmentalists expanded
their pantheon of interests beyond motor acts to
include a variety of cognitive and social behaviors,
and soon cultural questions were asked about them
as well. One result, as developmental and cultural
perspectives are becoming more truly integrated, is
the current realization that even the expanded list
of behaviors under study is limited in ways we do
not yet fully understand by its European-American
roots. Nevertheless, one can see a growing recog-
nition of culturally regulated diversity in universal
developments. The chapter concludes with a reflec-
tion on how we have arrived here.
Emergence and Elaboration
The milestone strategy seems obvious enough as
a first phase of studying an ability of interest: watch
for its emergence and then its elaboration into the
mature form. As a framework for analysis, this
strategy stands as a postnatal, behavioral ver-
sion of embryology, which, like so many areas of

79
natural science, was advancing dramatically in
the mid-19th century. Darwin’s “baby biography”
stands as perhaps the earliest modern instance of
this natural (as opposed to experimental) approach
to understanding human development. Although
Darwin’s interest focused on the emergence of
emotional expressions, his observations ranged
more broadly. “When between 80 and 90 days
old,” Darwin wrote of his son, for example, “he
drew all sorts of objects into his mouth, and in
two or three weeks’ time could do this with some
skill; but he often first touched his nose with the
object and then dragged it down into his mouth”
(Darwin, 1877, p. 1).
This “natural history” approach to human
development was specifically promoted in the late
19th century by G. Stanly Hall (1893, p. 283),
widely regarded as the founder of developmental
psychology (Cahan & White, 1992). For Hall,
the emergence of specific behaviors was a natural
place to look for “recapitulation,” the influential,
late 19th-century postulate (from embryology)
that individual development replays key sequences
of our species’ evolution (Richardson & Keuck,
2002). He incorporated this view into his own
work, stipulating that only by relating development
during childhood with development of the species
“can we hope to find true norms against the ten-
dency to precocity… . and… . establish criteria by
which to… . measure arrest and retardation” (Hall,
1904, vol. 1, p viii). It was during this era, in 1900,
that the term “norms” was introduced (Woolley,
1936). Although Hall’s questionnaire studies
themselves ultimately produced few empirical find-
ings of lasting value, the “child study movement”
he set in motion and the ontogenetic, evolutionary
framework he applied to early development formed
the intellectual structure for the next generation of
developmentalists.
The centrality of motor milestones in the sub-
sequent study of infancy stems from two charac-
teristics. First, motor milestones involve common
behaviors evident to the naked eye—father Darwin
can observe hand-to-mouth behavior at home as
well as pediatrician Gesell can in his high-tech
observation dome, as indeed can a visiting devel-
opmentalist with little knowledge of the local
language or morays. Second, motor development
is a useful arena for exploring more fundamental
questions about the interdependence of structure
and function, of constitution and experience, in
development of the nervous system—a more gen-
eral and less archaic cousin of the recapitulation
80 C h a r t i ng I n fa n t De v e l opm e n t
idea. McGraw, for example, was explicit in her aim
to understand not only norms, but also “process,
not end result or achievement” (quoted in Bergenn,
Dalton, & Lipsitt, 1992, p. 384). Framed as a
“nature–nurture debate,” these issues came into
full bloom in the decades between the two World
Wars. The reasons for behaviors’ emergence, and
internal versus external influences on their timing,
became key questions (Shirley, 1931). “The pre-
dominant activity of the institutes and centers of
the Child Development movement from the 1920s
to the 1940s,” writes White (2005, p. 290), “was
addressed to efforts at quantitative descriptions of
the activities and qualities of developing children,
[or] norm-gathering.” Nowhere was this more evi-
dent, at least in popular understanding, than in
the work of Myrtle McGraw (1932) and of Arnold
Gesell (Gesell & Ilg, 1949). Although there was
more difference in their positions on the “nature
vs. nurture” dichotomy than may have been appar-
ent at the time (Dalton, 2004), the delineation of
behavioral norms and their use in both normal
assessment and clinical practice became an estab-
lished topic for developmentalists.
The most lasting contribution from this era is
probably what eventually became the Bayley Scales
of Infant Development (Bayley, 1933, 1936, 1969).
This developmental test consists of a large number
of specific behaviors, such as reaching for a small
cube, arrayed in order of increasing difficulty. The
behavioral items are individually administered in
a standardized format but flexible sequence—the
actual sequence depends on the infant’s level of
maturity and the flow of interest during the test-
ing session. The particular items were originally
derived from “several theoretically eclectic scales
of infant development and a broad cross-section
of infant and child research,” thus there was “no
particular theory driving the content” (Bayley,
2006, p. 1). The test was initially divided into sepa-
rate Motor and Mental scales, but Bayley herself
has pointed to this distinction as somewhat arti-
ficial because various abilities mature and differ-
entiate over time (Bayley, 1969). Now in the third
edition (Bayley, 2006) and comprising five scales
(Cognitive, Language, Motor, Social-Emotional,
and Adaptive), the Bayley Scales are widely con-
sidered the best instruments for developmental
evaluation during the opening years of life. There
are, however, several similarly constructed instru-
ments used in the research literature (Gesell &
Ilg, 1949; Griffiths, 1954). Test results are usually
summarized into scaled scores and developmental
equivalents (months and days of chronological
age) in comparison to norms. Thus, for example, a
child who at 10 months has all the motor achieve-
ments of an 11-month-old (but none above) would
be assigned a Developmental Quotient (or DQ) of
100 * 11/10 or 110.
Although McGraw’s doctoral dissertation
(McGraw, 1931) compared the development of
“southern white and negro infants,” the very lit-
tle comparative research undertaken outside the
United States was done by a few anthropologists
with interdisciplinary interests (Mead, 1928; Mead
& Macgregor, 1951). World War II caused a major
disruption of domestic, and certainly overseas,
developmental research; thus, the understanding of
infant development in the 1950s was still guided
by the ethos of universal pattern of emergence, pro-
viding a species-specific metric of developmental
progress. The specific “ontogeny-recapitulates-phy-
logeny” hypothesis had been largely set aside, but
so powerful was the “milestones of emergence” tra-
dition that when the French pediatrician Marcelle
Géber encountered a precocious pattern of devel-
opment among infants in Kampala, Uganda,
over the first year of life (Géber, 1956, 1958) and
subsequently found Ugandan neonates to be neu-
rologically advanced (Géber & Dean, 1957b), she
concluded that “[I]‌t was fairly clear that [the pre-
cocity] had a genetic basis” (Géber & Dean, 1957a,
p. 1061). Her results were eventually picked up by
Arthur Jensen (1969), among others, to press the
argument that Africans and African Americans are
inherently limited in their intelligence (using the
phylogenetic analogue that rapidly developing spe-
cies end up with lesser cognitive abilities, such as
lower primates compared to humans [Jensen, 1973,
p. 283]). As more studies from Africa (and else-
where; see Phatak, 1969) accumulated, they tended
to replicate the picture of advanced early develop-
ment, reporting average developmental quotients
(DQ) as high as 130 (Leiderman, Babu, Kagia,
Kraemer, & Leiderman, 1973; Vouilloux, 1959).
A small number of reports offered environmental
explanations (Faladé, 1955), and an unevenness in
the areas of early advance was occasionally noted
(Falmagne, 1962), calling into question the idea
of a truly generalized precocity; however, this lit-
erature was scattered and not always in English.
Furthermore, for a long time, there was no rebuttal
to the neonatal findings, which had been presented
in the prestigious international medical journal
Lancet (Géber & Dean, 1957b). Thus, the phenom-
enon of “African infant precocity” and its genetic
basis were widely accepted, and the core findings
were included in some introductory textbooks and
edited readers well into the 1960s (Brackbill &
Thompson, 1967).
Motor Development in the Field
It was in this context that the present authors
moved to western Kenya to study child development
and family life among the Kipsigis people, in a rural
village we call Kokwet. Basic ethnographic work—
watching, talking, listening—quickly revealed that
many infant milestones there emerged, yes, earlier,
but in a context vastly different from the originating
ecology of the normative studies. One salient differ-
ence was that most mothers in Kokwet (more than
80% in a later formal survey) believed it important
to teach an infant several behaviors that figure cen-
trally in the Bayley (1969) and Gesell exams (Gesell
& Ilg, 1949): to sit, to stand, and to walk. “What
kind of mother would not do this?” most Kipsigis
mothers exclaimed to our inquiry.
It soon became evident that these motor accom-
plishments were prominent in the way Kipsigis
mothers conceptualized infants and thought about
their own role as mothers. These ideas were woven
into the consciousness of everyday life. Seeing an
acquaintance on the path with child on her back,
one might call out the greeting “Tianná?” (“What
has he/she learned?”), and it would be answered,
“He is sitting now” or “She walks.” This cognitive
orientation operated from the moment of birth or
even before, as objective, structured judgments
of specific newborn behaviors revealed (Super &
Harkness, 2009). In comparing behaviors such as
holding the head up straight and the Moro (startle)
reflex, the Kipsigis mothers were especially attuned
to motor integrity and responsiveness. A sample
of mothers in Boston, in contrast, focused on an
underlying concept of cognitive competence, which
they saw, for example, in orientation and habitua-
tion. The different ways of “seeing” the same behav-
ior is made evident in the comment by one US
mother that her newborn son was very “alert and
attentive.” Asked to elaborate, she replied, “Well,
I can tell because he holds his head up, you know,
with his neck straight.” For her, the cognitive atten-
tional element in a controlled orienting of the head
was more salient than the underlying neuromus-
cular skill. A Kipsigis mother would have built her
interpretation around the integrity and smoothness
of the motor accomplishment.
As a natural consequence of this focus on motor
accomplishments, the Kipsigis mothers (and their
S u pe r , H a r k n e ss 81
mothers, and the babies’ siblings) carried out several
specific, deliberate routines that promoted walk-
ing, sitting, and standing. Starting in the first week
of life, the common newborn stepping reflex was
elicited by the mother or grandmother, sitting with
legs outstretched on the floor of the hut or, after
a week, on a cowhide laid outside. This activity,
called keguldó, was evidently an enjoyable way to
play with the baby, but, in addition, the “bounc-
ing” was believed by adults to develop the muscles
and skills for walking. The frequency of keguldó
can be estimated by averaging nearly 2,000 “spot
observations” and “quick interviews” that indicate
that the activity took place two or three times per
week during the first month, increased in frequency
to nearly every day at 4 and 5 months, and then
decreased somewhat as a more directed “teach-
ing to walk” (kitwalse) began around 6 months.
Kitwalse, which involves holding one or both of the
standing child’s hands and moving slowly along to
encourage stepping, then increases in frequency to
98% of days in the closing months of the first year.
There is a parallel set of practices involving a shal-
low pit or a semicircle of cloths supporting the back
to “teach” sitting. Experimental evidence from the
United States confirms that deliberate, anticipatory
exercise of walking, sitting, and crawling—at a fre-
quency much lower than observed in the Kokwet
sample—produces accelerated development of
those skills (N. A. Zelazo, Zelazo, Cohen, &
Zelazo, 1993; P. R. Zelazo, 1976).
Notably, none of the mothers in Kokwet was
interested in teaching her baby to crawl. More
so than walking, crawling exposes a child to dirt
and insects, and it was seen as more dangerous
with regard to fire pits inside and roaming calves
or other creatures outside. The spot observations
confirmed that teaching or exercising crawling was
virtually nonexistent in Kokwet.
Other aspects of daily life for the infants in
Kokwet promoted development more than the
typical US scenario. In part, no doubt, because of
the absence of sanitary floors and protective cribs,
babies in Kokwet spent much less of their waking
time lying down than did a sample of US infants
(10% vs. 27%), thus providing them with less
opportunity to learn or practice crawling and roll-
ing over. Instead, they were often carried and were
in physical contact with their caretakers (8 a.m. to
6 p.m.) twice as much as (78% vs. 39%); even when
asleep this was true 34% of the time compared to
1% (Super, 1981). For the Kipsigis infants, virtually
all this contact was either on the caretaker’s back or
82 C h a r t i ng I n fa n t De v e l opm e n t
straddling the hip and held securely with a cloth,
an arrangement that engaged frequent vestibular
stimulation and required almost constant postural
accommodation, including exercise of muscles in
the trunk and legs. In contrast, body contact for the
US infants, when it occurred, more often involved
being held in a face-to-face position on the lap, sup-
ported under the arms, a positioning that probably
involved less use of muscles and coordination.
Experimental evidence confirms the hypothesis
underlying these observations, that substantial dif-
ferences in the physical postures of daily life can
influence the development of both specific skills
and also more general aspects of development.
Brief passive exercise through cycling movement
of the arms and legs (Porter, 1972) and vestibular
stimulation in a swivel chair (Clark, Kreutzberg,
& Chee, 1977) over the course of 1 or 2 months
have both been shown to significantly advance
gross motor development in infants. Observational
studies of variations in posture and sleep posi-
tion yield similar conclusions (Abbott & Bartlett,
2001; Vaivre-Douret, Dos Santos, Charlemaine, &
Cabrol, 2005). Furthermore, vertical posture (one
aspect of back- or hip-carrying) is conducive to
calm alertness (Korner & Thoman, 1970), possibly
through increased levels of the hormone cortisol
(Harper, 1972).
The maternal beliefs, customary practices, and
particular settings described here form a distinc-
tive aspect of the Kipsigis infants’ “Developmental
Niche” (Super & Harkness, 1986). The
Developmental Niche framework is useful not only
for identifying specific elements in a child’s daily
surround, but also for understanding how the vari-
ous elements combine (or conflict) with each other.
In this case, there are substantial synergies in the
promotion of early motor development, yielding
a prime example of “contemporary redundancy”
(Super & Harkness, 1999). When contemporary
redundancy occurs during a period of particu-
larly rapid development, it can have profound and
long-term effects. With regard to motor develop-
ment, there is some evidence from animal models
that early motor experience alters muscle anatomy
and motor output, lasting even into a sedentary
middle age (Serradj, Picquet, & Jamon, 2013).
In any case, the immediate result for under-
standing motor milestones in Kokwet is that test
items related to sitting and walking were achieved
“precociously.” The advances averaged as much as
3 months or more. Crawling, in contrast, tended
to be delayed by about 1 month (Super, 1976).
Curiously, the commonly used Bayley scales con-
tain 15 items based on sitting, standing, and walk-
ing in the first year, but only 1 item for crawling
and a total of 4 items while lying prone (on the
stomach). It would appear that this is the unin-
tended result of item selection for easily distin-
guished, qualitatively distinct behaviors, which
happen to provide more intermediate stages for sit-
ting, standing, and walking than for crawling and
rolling over. In any case, the result is that Bayley
scores in the first year are heavily weighted—nearly
four times as much—for items in which the infants
of Kokwet were specifically trained and for which
they received massive daily practice. In this light,
the pattern of relative advance and delay is under-
standable from the pattern of specific teaching and
experience. In addition, the pattern of very high
Developmental Quotients in the first year followed
by decline in year 2 can now be seen to match a
shifting emphasis from rural Afro-centric items
(e.g., walking) to urban Euro-centric ones (e.g., use
of stairs).
There are currently dozens of studies that rep-
licate the key points of this argument, across
East, West, and Southern Africa and in commu-
nities of the African diaspora (Ainsworth, 1967;
Bril & Sabatier, 1986; Faladé, 1955; Gottlieb,
2004; Hopkins & Westra, 1989; J. E. Kilbride
& Kilbride, 1975; LeVine et al., 1994; LeVine &
LeVine, 1966; Rabain-Jamin & Wornham, 1990;
Varkevisser, 1973). Diversity in the timing and
patterning of infant motor development has been
accepted into the mainstream literature (Adolph,
Karasik, & Tamis-LeMonda, 2009) and stands as a
distinctive and commendable case of broad global
samples contributing to a fuller understanding of
human development (Karasik, Adolph, Tamis-
LeMonda, & Bornstein, 2010). The neonatal
reports that so reinforced a nativist interpretation
of “African infant precocity” ultimately proved to
have serious methodological flaws (Super, 1981;
Warren, 1972). Furthermore, the claim of neuro-
logical precocity has never been replicated despite
several attempts (Brazelton, Koslowski, & Tronick,
1976; Freedman, 1974; Keefer, Dixon, Tronick, &
Brazelton, 1991; Konner, 1972; Super & Harkness,
2009; Vouilloux, 1959), including one drawing
from the same Ugandan population used by Géber
(Warren & Parkin, 1974). There remains the pos-
sibility of subtle group differences in some aspect
of motor tone even “at birth” (Keefer, Tronick,
Dixon, & Brazelton, 1982; Super & Harkness,
2009), although such neonatal reports are usually
based on exams after several days of postnatal life,
during which common African practices of mas-
sage are likely to have already influenced growth
and development (Acolet et al., 1993; deVries &
Super, 1979; Field et al., 2004; Hopkins, 1976;
Super & Harkness, 2009).
A broader review of the literature on motor
development in various groups around the world
indicates a number of other patterns (Super, 1981).
Arai and colleagues (Arai, Ishikawa, & Toshima,
1958), for example, report no difference between
a sample of Japanese infants and Gesell norms in
the first 3 months, but found subsequently a gen-
eral decline in Japanese scores, especially toward
the end of the first year. The authors hypothesized
that the relative decline results from a low level
of maternal stimulation and restricted practice in
locomotion due to frequent back-carrying, but they
provide no empirical evidence in this regard. Other
observers have noted that Japanese parents typi-
cally place a low value on precocious development
(Kitano, 1961). Reports from Guatemala (Wug de
Leon, de Licardie, & Cravioto, 1964) and Mexico
(Robles, 1959; Solomons & Solomons, 1975) sug-
gest that fine motor coordination and sitting are
somewhat advanced in the samples studied, relative
to US norms, but that walking is delayed. Given
the age distribution of these items, there is an over-
all appearance of early precocity and later decline
in the Mexican and Guatemalan samples. There
are related reports on the timing and patterning
of early motor skills from South Asia, the Middle
East, and the Insular Pacific (see Super, 1981; Super
& Harkness, 2010). Although none of these reports
provides the empirical detail on parental beliefs
and practices available for the African case, they
are all consistent with the conclusion that infants
and toddlers become more proficient, earlier, in
the kinds of motor activities that are enabled and
encouraged by their environments.
Beyond Motor Performance
Despite the early focus on motor milestones, the
movement to describe and norm universal achieve-
ments was not limited to motor acts. Some behav-
iors, even at the earliest of ages, reflect the quality
of higher level internal processes. A neonate’s sus-
tained focus on a red ball suggests a certain level
of attentional control and perceptual processing.
Two years later, her ability to correctly arrange
pieces of a jigsaw puzzle is of research interest
not for its motor coordination, but for the mental
analysis and organization assumed to lie behind
S u pe r , H a r k n e ss 83
finding the solution. Her excited waving of the
arms and expression of pleasure directed toward
her mother at that moment draws attention to her
social-emotional growth more than her upper-body
coordination. As the field of human development
advanced, behavioral domains beyond motor skills
grew in importance to researchers, and they, too,
have become delineated with milestones. Four
approaches of mental and social growth are briefly
reviewed here from the vantage point of establishing
universal milestones. We have far less information
in these domains about how specific beliefs, cus-
toms, and settings surrounding the child shape the
particular pattern and timing of accomplishments,
but at times enough aspects of the Developmental
Niche are evident to suggest that the kind of Niche
analysis applied to motor skills can be applied more
broadly.
Mental Scales
The California First-Year Mental Scale (Bayley,
1933) was devised at the same time as the motor
test (Bayley, 1936), and the two together com-
prise the full Bayley Scales of Infant Development,
versions I and II (Bayley, 1969). Items from the
mental scale have been less commonly used than
motor tests in comparative studies, but the avail-
able reports suggest an overall pattern similar but
not identical to the motor results. In many ways,
this is not surprising—the distinction between
motor and mental items is not based on any par-
ticular theory (Bayley, 2006), they involve many
overlapping brain circuits (Diamond, 2000), and
the two scales are highly correlated (for example at
6 months the correlation is .78; Bayley, 2006).
Leiderman and colleagues (1973), studying
a Kikuyu sample outside Nairobi, reported an
advance in both motor and mental scores during
the first year, compared to US and UK norms,
but a mental DQ that was lower than the motor
DQ (108 vs. 130). Both scales showed the great-
est advance at about 8–10 months, followed by
a decline as the first birthday approached. The
authors did not carry out a formal item analysis
but noted their “impression that Kikuyu infants
lagged… . on items involving implements which
were less familiar in their environment than in the
United States” (Leiderman et al., 1973, p. 247f); as
with motor items involving stairs, for example, the
less familiar implements (such as colored blocks)
are increasingly found with mental items for the
older ages. Relatedly, the authors report that infants
from more “modernized” families, as indexed by
84 C h a r t i ng I n fa n t De v e l opm e n t
economic status and amenities in the household,
scored higher on the mental scale. Others have also
reported mental scores on the Bayley or other such
tests to be relatively advanced in the early months,
but less so than measures of motor skills, and for the
advance to be declining by the second year. This is
true in East and West Africa (Aina & Morakinyo,
2005; Faladé, 1955; Lusk & Lewis, 1972) and parts
of India (Phatak, 1969) and East Asia. Lim and
colleagues report specific item differences between
infants in Singapore and the United States (Lim,
Chan, & Yoong, 1994).
Studies using items from infant mental scales
generally do not provide much insight into the pat-
terning of experience that produces the diversity
in results. The Kilbrides’ reports from East Africa
are an exception (J. E. Kilbride & Kilbride, 1975,
1990; P. L. Kilbride, 1980). For historical and eco-
nomic reasons, social and political success among
the Baganda group they worked with depended on
interpersonal skills and highly mannered interac-
tions. Relatedly, Baganda mothers and caretak-
ers were especially devoted to social engagement
with their infants, with the result that the babies
progressed more rapidly through the various
social items on the Bayley mental scale (on aver-
age: 2.2 months, compared to the US norm of
3.7 months). J. E. Kilbride and Yarczower (1976)
also report longitudinal correlations within a
Baganda sample between specific developmental
advances and specific child care practices, such
as high scores on visual attention items and fre-
quency of being lifted up to an upright position;
most of these specific correlations correspond to
the Baganda–US group differences (e.g., regard-
ing time in an upright position). There are other
reports of individual development–environment
correlations that further support this picture for
early mental development (Miquelote, Santos,
Caçola, Montebelo, & Gabbard, 2012; Yarrow,
Rubenstein, & Pedersen, 1975).
Tests of Theory
The motor, mental, language, and other scales
devised by Bayley, Gesell, Griffiths, and oth-
ers were designed to evaluate individual children
across a general gradient of “development,” and, as
noted, there was no particular theory driving the
selection of items. The aggregated results from chil-
dren in a particular group were initially intended
to reveal something about the nature of those chil-
dren; only as investigators delved deeply into the
results did it become evident that they told us as
much about the tests as about the children and,
ultimately, about the nature of “development.” On
the other hand, other infant tests weave closely
elements of theory and tools for evaluation: the
theory inspired the development of measures, and
the test results contribute to refinement of the the-
ory. Milestones demarcating development in these
theoretical approaches have also been investigated,
and the results speak to both the broader validity of
the underlying theories, as well as to the potential
contributions of varying environments.
Genetic Epistemology
Around the same time that McGraw, Gesell,
Bayley, and others were charting the emergence
of skilled behavior in US infants, Jean Piaget was
carrying out detailed observations of his daughter
Jacqueline. These resulted in his seminal publica-
tion on the origins of infant intelligence (Piaget,
1936). The theoretical framework of developmen-
tal epistemology Piaget brought to this work was
detailed and complex. Some of the specific behav-
iors he focused on are the same as those found in
the classic “baby tests”—not surprising, perhaps,
given the limited behavioral repertoire of infants—
but, for Piaget, success in using a stick to attain
an object out of reach did not just add one more
point to a test score; instead, it marked an advance
in the attainment of “tertiary circular reactions,”
an understanding of the relationship between one’s
own body and the “behavior” of objects. In other
words, Piaget was less interested in “age equiva-
lents” and DQs than he was in qualitative changes
in infants’ behavior that signal a shift in their
understanding of the world.
Are these Piagetian milestones—transitions
from one stage or substage to the next—accom-
plished at the same rate in various settings, or
are there particular cultural routines that support
their development at a different pace? If so, is the
difference a minor one? More profoundly, does
the sequence of milestones shift in some settings?
Unlike for Bayley scales, that result would pose a
major challenge to the theory and indeed the entire
paradigm. As it turns out, however, compara-
tive studies strongly emphasize the universality of
sequence and, to a large degree, the timing of key
behaviors.
Dasen and colleagues (Dasen, Inhelder,
Lavallée, & Retschitzki, 1978) observed infants
in a rural agricultural village of the Baoulé people
in the Ivory Coast, attending to the same aspects
that concerned Piaget. They found a “remarkable
similarity” (p. 125) in unstructured play with
objects when Baoulé and French infants were
compared, even though “toys” in the Baoulé vil-
lage were minimal, and adults did not use objects
to mediate social interaction as much as Western
parents typically do. They subsequently found the
Baoulé infants to be slightly advanced compared
with French norms on tasks involving use of objects
as tools, but on par with regard to object perma-
nence tasks. Konner (1972, 1976) in Botswana and
Goldberg (1977) in Zambia also found occasional
and small differences in timing reflecting vari-
ability in culturally structured opportunities for
exploration. A report from India (Kopp, Khoka, &
Sigman, 1977) indicates broad similarity in the
sequence and timing of Piagetian accomplishments
between infants in New Delhi and the United
States. Two specific situations were found in which
the US babies excelled, regarding search for hidden
objects and use of intermediary tools (e.g., string)
to obtain an object out of reach, but the authors
speculate that the discrepancies result primarily
from subtle differences in caretaker behavior dur-
ing testing.
The only reports of substantial differences in
attainment of Piagetian stages involve timing,
not sequence, and the differences are attributed
to very low levels of experience and interaction
with the environment found in orphanages (Hunt,
Mohandessi, Ghodssi, & Akiyama, 1976;
Paraskevopoulos & Hunt, 1971) and isolated vil-
lages where infants spend most of the first year in
the “small, dark interior of [a]‌windowless hut,… .
[are] rarely spoken to or played with” and have
access to no toys or playthings (Kagan & Klein,
1973, p. 949).
Memory and Attention
Yet a third approach to infant mental life and
its milestones emerged from the “cognitive revolu-
tion” in developmental psychology, which began
as the era of grand overarching theories (Freudian,
Piagetian, Skinnerian), in general, started to
wane. For infants, the laboratory study of atten-
tional processes was a key method, and, despite
the technical complexities, some of this work
has been used outside its culture of origin. A key
paradigm concerns novelty and habituation—
babies will usually look more at an object that is
novel (or not remembered), and, as it is repeated,
their interest eventually declines and they attend
elsewhere. This pattern has been replicated in an
Ethiopian sample (Kennedy et al., 2008), but its
S u pe r , H a r k n e ss 85
reliable appearance was slowed with malnutri-
tion. Healthy Ivorian infants, on the other hand,
showed no difference from a French sample in the
rate or growth of visual habituation (Lécuyer &
Tano, 1990). A more extensive use of the labo-
ratory paradigm by Kagan and his colleagues
measured the increase in attention to distorted
models of the human face and/or figure during
the first 2 years. The U-shaped curve found in the
United States (Kagan, Kearsley, & Zelazo, 1978)
was essentially replicated with Ladino infants
in rural Guatemala (Sellers, Klein, Kagan, &
Minton, 1972), Mayans in Mexico (Finley,
Kagan, & Layne, 1972), and !Kung San infants
in Botswana (Konner, 1973). This would suggest
that long-term memory (believed necessary to
recognize and process the distortions) develops
similarly in these diverse settings (Kagan et al.,
1978), especially in the second year. It is likely
that the timing of the upswing in the first year
is similar everywhere, but less than certain given
variations in the age of testing and one set of
discordant results from Japan (Takahashi, 1973,
1981).
Emotional Development
The social smile is a developmental marker
valued by parents and researchers alike. Its rapid
increase in the second and third month is a uni-
versal charm, and it is included in most of the clas-
sic “baby tests,” such as the Bayley. A confluence
of several changes that peak around 4 months has
led to the supposition of a broad neurological shift
at that age (Kagan, 1971), and therefore, to the
hypothesis that a rise and 4-month peak in smiling
would be found in all normal populations. Indeed,
the cross-cultural literature supports this hypoth-
esis because the rise occurs similarly in a variety
of samples from the United States, Europe, the
Middle East, Africa, and the Far East, even though
the absolute rate at any given age depends on the
rearing environment (see Super & Harkness, 2010).
Two other closely related emotional behaviors
thought to reflect a critical shift in psychologi-
cal functioning are “stranger anxiety” (distress at
approach by an unfamiliar adult) and distress to
maternal departure. Typically, these reactions
emerge toward the end of the first year in US and
European samples and are thought to result from
the same emerging memory skills that lie behind
the changes in attention to normal and distorted
facial masks mentioned earlier. In this case as well,
the comparative research reveals great similarity in
the rise of these emotional responses. As reviewed
86 C h a r t i ng I n fa n t De v e l opm e n t
elsewhere (Kagan et al., 1978; Super & Harkness,
2010), there is a rise in distress to maternal depar-
ture and/or an approaching stranger in the second
6 months, peaking shortly after the first birth-
day, in samples of Mayans and Ladinos in rural
Guatemala (Lester, Kotelchuck, Spelke, Sellers,
& Klein, 1974), !Kung San in the Kalahari desert
(Konner, 1972), Kipsigis in western Kenya (Super,
1981), Baloué infants in the Ivory Coast (Dasen
et al., 1978), babies from a group home in an Israeli
kibbutz (Fox, 1977), Navajo infants (Chisholm,
1983), and even among malnourished infants in
Bangladesh (Super, Guldan, Ahmed, & Zeitlin,
2011). The subsequent decline in rate of distress,
however, varies considerably across groups. The
anxious response was nearly absent by 24 months
among the kibbutz and Mayan infants, who had
presumably become used to the practice of daily
care shared by several individuals, whereas it was
still displayed by almost half of the US and San
infants, who typically received care primarily by
their mother.
These three behaviors—smiling, stranger anxi-
ety, and distress to maternal departure—are all
relevant to the much more complex construct
of attachment (Bowlby, 1969). During the sec-
ond half of the first year, the complex of behav-
iors that characterize “secure base behavior”
become evident. Establishment of this platform
for exploring the world is said to constitute the
key third phase of a universal attachment process
and is surely a milestone itself. Although there
is a large and growing body of cross-cultural
research on attachment, however (see chapter
by Morelli, this volume), it largely concerns the
characteristics and determinants of individual
differences in attachment style, such as “secure”
(Posada & Jacobs, 2001; Rothbaum, Weisz, Pott,
Miyake, & Morelli, 2000; Super & Harkness,
2010; van IJzendoorn, Bakermans-Kranenburg,
& Sagi-Schwartz, 2006). Variations in timing
have not been a focus of inquiry. Nevertheless,
overlooked in the differing perspectives on attach-
ment research is the fact that all reports outline
roughly the same developmental timing of attach-
ment behaviors. The analysis of distress to mater-
nal departure described earlier provides a succinct
demonstration of similarity in timing of at least
one of the distinctive milestones.
A curious aspect of this emotional domain,
however, is that some indices (e.g., distress at
stranger approach and at maternal departure) pro-
vide compelling evidence for a “universal” timing
of development at the group level but are not “uni-
versal” in the sense that all individuals show this
response. For example, at around 12 months, when
distress to a stranger’s approach peaks in all stud-
ied populations, the response is exhibited by nearly
all US and !Kung San infants (Kagan et al., 1978;
Konner, 1972) compared to about 65% among the
Mayan and Israeli infants (Fox, 1977; Lester et al.,
1974). It seems that commonly timed biopsychoso-
cial changes underlying this response may or may
not result in the milestone behavior, depending on
dynamics of the Developmental Niche (and, pre-
sumably, individual temperament). This is unlike
the case for major motor and cognitive milestones
in the first year, at least, which all normal infants
master even though the timing may be influenced
by the Niche. (Conventional hands-and-knees
crawling is an exception: about 4% of infants
never use this type of locomotion; World Health
Organization [WHO], 2006c).
Beyond Western Milestones
Despite the breadth of behavioral domains just
reviewed and the variety of specific behavioral
acts thought of as milestones, the inspiration for
all this work has come from the minds of North
American and European researchers. They have
studied aspects of early development that seemed
important to them either because they appear
common in our environments or because they are
distinctive of a particular theoretical point of view
(see Nsamenang, this volume). Are there behav-
iors common in another cultural place, valued and
encouraged by parents and caretakers, that could
serve as important markers there?
Many candidates can be found in the ethno-
graphic and culturally oriented literature: com-
petence in music and dance (Kreutzer, 1998) and
particular feeding behaviors (Schulze, 2001); pos-
sibly the kiss (Singhi & Radhika, 1992). A detailed
survey of culturally defined developmental agenda
is beyond the scope of this chapter (see chapter
by Harkness et al., this volume), but one report is
particularly relevant here because it reinforces the
point that, even in infancy, “universally” emerging
competences are encouraged (or not) and shaped by
the customs, settings, and parental ethnotheories
that surround the child.
Zeitlin and Barry (2004, 2008, as reported
in Harkness, Super, Barry, Zeitlin, & Long,
2009; Super, Harkness, Barry, & Zeitlin, 2011)
adapted the Bayley cognitive scale for adminis-
tration in the Louga area of Senegal and found
that 3-year-olds there scored nearly a full standard
deviation below the US norms. Not surprisingly,
perhaps, scores on the Bayley correlated positively
and significantly (r = .47) with maternal educa-
tion. It is not the case, however, that the children
of mothers with lower formal education were not
developing and learning from their environment.
Ethnographic interviews and observations made it
clear that these mothers were particularly attuned
to and supportive of two domains of learn-
ing: motor skills and the exercise of “responsible
obedience.” Young children were taught respectful
greetings and household tasks needed to advance
appropriately with age. Mothers and older siblings
frequently taught words for concrete objects and
actions in the context of early training for chores.
A 6-month-old would have an object placed in
her hand and would learn to “take” and “give.”
Somewhat later, when walking was mastered, the
child would be instructed to deliver an object to
another person in the room and later to carry out
more substantial errands. This sequence of expec-
tations integrated young children into relations of
daily life, and it also enabled them ultimately to
contribute to family maintenance tasks such as
food preparation. Capitalizing on the ubiquity of
socialization for chores, the investigators devel-
oped a local scale of developmental accomplish-
ment based on maternal reports about such tasks
as making deliveries, carrying water in a bowl,
and tidying up (as well as some motor skills and
“good” behavior such as respectful greetings to
elders). Both this local scale and the Bayley were
positively correlated with health measures such as
hemoglobin count and physical growth, suggest-
ing that both reflect a fundamental well-being.
Unlike the Bayley scores, however, the local
developmental scores were significantly correlated
negatively with maternal education (r = −.24). All
the children were learning, but mothers with dif-
ferent levels of education were following different
models for development.
Thus, to answer the question posed at the begin-
ning of this section: Yes, there are common, val-
ued, and encouraged behaviors in other cultural
settings that can serve as important markers of
development. The particular items can be viewed
with existing theory as reflecting the same kind of
psychological processes inherent in the standard-
ized tests—attentional control, memory, elements
of theory of mind—even though the specific tasks
are not particularly valued or encouraged in the
urban Western setting.
S u pe r , H a r k n e ss 87
Milestones in Research
From the global perspective of the early 21st
century, it can be seen that developmental research
often has four phases; the history of “milestones”
and what promotes them is no exception. In ideal
form, the four phases are local inquiry, search
for group variation, search for causes underlying
any such variation, and, finally, integration of
the results into mainstream theory and practice.
There are no doubt many forces shaping this pat-
tern, including the biases of scientists, restricted
funding, complexities of cross-culture research,
and the long process of humanity discovering
itself. Nevertheless, this sequence has a curiously
Piagetian look to it, from concrete attributes,
through process and operations, to abstract func-
tions as units of description. (A similar parallel
between historical sequence and individual ontog-
eny has been described for mathematics by Piaget
[1950]).
Local Inquiry
In the first phase, investigators explore the
parameters of a behavior of interest (walking,
searching for a moved object, distress to mater-
nal departure, etc.) in their local environment,
which has traditionally been middle-class North
America or Europe. It is common in this phase
to assume that the basic structure, timing, and
meaning of developmental growth found at home
are essentially universal. Thus, results are pre-
sented as for the species, describing, for example,
the emergence of “erect posture and ambulation
in the human infant” unmarked by time or place
(McGraw, 1932).
Seeking Variation
The second phase involves a search for variation
in other locales and populations. Initially, this was
done by anthropologists (Mead, 1928), later by
Western investigators with interdisciplinary train-
ing (Konner, 1972; New & Richman, 1996), and
still later by professionals in their non-Western
home countries (Adjei, 1977; Agiobu-Kemmer,
1984; Nsamenang, 1997; Serpell & Jere-Folotiya,
2008). This phase is marked by the discovery of
“strong” and “weak” universals (Dasen, Lavalée, &
Retschitzki, 1979), interesting variations in tim-
ing and sequence (Jahoda, 1983; J. E. Kilbride
& Kilbride, 1975; Mead & Macgregor, 1951;
Nelson, Yu, Wong, Wong, & Yim, 2004), and
the occasional discovery of something quite novel
(Shweder & LeVine, 1975).
88 C h a r t i ng I n fa n t De v e l opm e n t
Unpacking
A third and sometimes overlapping phase,
occurring at various times for separate domains,
involves “unpacking” the environment to identify
causal pathways (Weisner, Gallimore, & Jordan,
1988; Whiting, 1976). Methods to understand and
measure the environment, however, have lagged
far behind child assessment. Several scales are
designed for exploring specific predefined aspects
of the environment, such as stimulation for cog-
nitive and socioemotional development (Bradley,
Corwyn, & Whiteside-Mansell, 1996), support
for motor development through objects (Caçola,
Gabbard, Santos, & Batistela, 2011; Doralp &
Bartlett, 2013), and orderliness of the environment
(Matheny, Wachs, Ludwig, & Phillips, 1995). But,
even for the core motor behaviors, predefined scales
are likely to miss important elements in a foreign
culture, as the Kenyan work described earlier illus-
trates. For more advanced cognitive and social
behaviors—such as jigsaw puzzles, group danc-
ing, and message delivery—where cultures do not
just support but construct the milestones, a more
complex, mixed-methods approach to understand-
ing the Developmental Niche is needed (Super &
Harkness, 1999). For most of the child behaviors of
theoretical interest to developmental science, this
work remains to be done.
Integration
Finally, in the ideal fourth phase, insights from
cross-cultural work are integrated into the main-
stream literature, where they contribute to stronger
theories (Karasik et al., 2010), novel experimenta-
tion (N. A. Zelazo et al., 1993), innovative therapies
(Field, 2002), and more sophisticated evaluations
for programs and policy (Engle, Najimidinova,
Agency of Sociological and Marketing Surveys, &
Faromuzova, 2011; Fernald, Kariger, Engle, &
Raikes, 2009; Harkness, Super, Mavridis, Barry, &
Zeitlin, 2013). This last purpose is particularly
notable in the case of the milestones and norms that
were part of the creation of developmental science
more than a century ago. On the one hand, the
World Health Organization’s Multicentre Growth
Reference Study has included six core motor behav-
iors along with physical growth norms for healthy
human infants around the world (World Health
Organization [WHO], 2006c). As intended, the
results provide a global standard for rigorous pro-
gram evaluation (even though between-group
variation is likely to be underestimated due to the
sampling strategy; WHO, 2006a, 2006b). On
the other hand, sometimes locally defined behav-
iors may be of more relevance (Engle et al., 2011).
Furthermore, there is growing recognition that
many of the behaviors involved in developmental
screening or assessment are significantly shaped
by the cultural setting and that such scales there-
fore require local norms to be useful in the clinic
(Aina & Morakinyo, 2005; Nelson et al., 2004;
Ngoun, Stoey, van’t Ende, & Kumar, 2012;
Wijedasa, 2012). This potential conundrum—
global or local norms?—is perhaps best thought of
as an opportunity to consider the purpose of testing
milestone attainment. Is it for individual “diagno-
sis” or screening, in order to prescribe interventions?
Will the results contribute to a group comparison,
in order to evaluate a field program or to under-
stand naturally occurring variation? Or is the goal
to assess progress at the national level in achieving
globally defined standards of early childhood care?
Engle (2002) has argued that each of these purposes
requires a different choice of milestones, or indica-
tors, varying in breadth, detail, and local nuance.
Conclusion: Milestones Along the Way
In this progression of research on emerg-
ing infant behaviors, the four stages just outlined
appear in retrospect to be intellectual milestones for
developmental science as obvious as the mastery of
walking is for an infant. In that regard, the study of
infant milestones is a strand woven throughout the
larger tapestry of the discipline. Most domains of
inquiry, most traditions of theory, begin with some-
one—Darwin, McGraw, Bayley, Gesell, Piaget,
Kagan, Ainsworth—watching for the appearance
of key behaviors and charting their transformation.
The study of motor development was “present at the
creation” and, not coincidentally, was instrumental
in pressing forward toward a more global under-
standing. Cognition, attachment, development of
self and “theory of mind,” social interaction and
peer relations, these newly established fields have
picked up the thread and are weaving their own
variations. The emerging fields of developmental
neuroscience and “gene-by-environment interac-
tion” promise exciting new colors and depth. This
may seem a long way from “learning to walk” but,
seen as horizontal décalage (Piaget, 1950), the his-
tory of charting infant milestones may provide us a
map of where the newer fields, still mostly involved
in local inquiry, are likely going. By examining
variation around the globe, necessarily an interdis-
ciplinary endeavor, we may ultimately arrive at a
natural history of human development.
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S u pe r , H a r k n e ss 93
 C H A P T E R

7 Comparative and Developmental

Anthropology: Studying the
Origins of Cultural Variability
in Cognitive Function
Daniel B. M. Haun

Abstract
This chapter examines the potency of combining cross-cultural, comparative, and developmental
studies for understanding the dynamics of the interplay between cultural context and inherited
predispositions during human development. This combined approach has contributed to our
understanding of the emergence of cross-cultural variation in some of the most basic human cognitive
functions such as spatial cognition, numerical cognition, visual perception, and social cognition. The
same combined approach is also key to understanding human cultural variability in contrast to that
found in other species: although there is now good evidence for population-level variation in apes and
other animals, human’s vary in a wider repertoire of behaviors of which a larger proportion is socially
acquired. By combining comparative, developmental, and cross-cultural studies, we may understand
the species-typical psychological mechanisms that create, structure, and maintain uniquely human
cultural variability.
Key Words:  infancy, primates, evolution, phylogenetic comparative methods, physical cognition,
social cognition, cultural variability

Comparative and Developmental
Cognitive Anthropology
When I first visited the ǂAkhoe Haiǁom, a
Northern Namibian forager group, in 2005, I was
packing my car to go to town for a 2-day break
when I was approached by a man whom I had not
met. Because we did not share a common language,
much of the conversation that followed relied on
facial expressions and gestures. I guessed that he was
looking for a ride, which is a valuable opportunity
for this remote population. Trying to make sure he
wanted to go where I wanted to go, I pointed down
the road toward Tsintsabis, the next town, just
over 60 kilometers away, and said “Tsintsabis?” He
laughed and pointed in the opposite direction, nod-
ding. Then he pointed at the sky with a quizzing
facial expression. I was lost. Recognizing this, he
clarified. He pointed over his shoulder, then at the
sky, and then reversed the point over his shoulder
to go from back to front, and then pointed at the
sky again. We had hit a dead end. It took the inter-
vention of several other members of the commu-
nity to make us understand each other. As it turns
out, he was pointing over his shoulder to indicate
the correct beeline direction toward Tsintsabis. He
had laughed because the direction I had pointed
in, down the road to Tsintsabis, was not at all the
direction to Tsintsabis. He had pointed at the sky to
ask about the estimated time of departure by indi-
cating the position the sun would be at that time.
Finally, he had attempted to enquire about the time
of departure and the time of return. Although we
both were under the impression that we communi-
cated quite clearly, we had no idea what the other
was talking about or how to make the other under-
stand. This miscommunication was, of course,
only the tip of the iceberg. It was also clear that,
even now that I understood his communicative

94
strategies, I could not respond in like manner. I did
not know where the sun would be at 2 p.m., the
time of intended departure, or how to communi-
cate that I planned to return only in 2 days’ time. I
also could not accurately point to any of the other
towns I was planning to visit. In other words, he
had a different set of information available to him.
We were in the same place at the same time, solving
the same task in different ways, and, at least speak-
ing for myself, without the ability to simply switch
to match the other’s communicative strategies. My
conversation partner wielded a cognitive expertise
that I did not. He did not ride with me in the end.
I am not sure why.
Cross-Cultural Variability
of Cognitive Function
The Phenomenon
Interactions such as the one just described drive
home the fact that human cross-cultural varia-
tion is not restricted to behavioral strategies and
traditions—eating either bread or rice for break-
fast—but also manifests in the cognitive abili-
ties and preferences of individuals—the way we
can, tend to, or prefer to process information.
Consequentially, two humans, in the very same
place, at the very same time, might handle the very
same task in very different ways. If such variation
in cognitive ability and preference occurs not only
from one individual to the next but on a popula-
tion level, we refer to it as cross-cultural variabil-
ity of cognitive function. Cross-cultural variability
of cognitive function in adult humans has been
investigated in different domains, showing that
humans vary more than previously expected. For
example, human adults from different cultural
backgrounds might disagree about which of two
lines is longer (Segall, Campbell, & Herskovits,
1963), whether green and blue are the same color
(Roberson, Davies, & Davidoff, 2000), or whether
a pile of seven coins is smaller than a pile of eight
(Pica, Lemer, Izard, & Dehaene, 2004).
The cognitive sciences are again starting to
embrace the challenge of cross-cultural variabil-
ity (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010). A ris-
ing number of publications abstain from rushed
claims of universality, but discuss—or ideally even
investigate—cross-cultural variability of cogni-
tive function. This includes the developmental
sciences, with a growing set of studies investigat-
ing cross-cultural variation in children’s acquisi-
tion of social cognitive skill (Barrett et al., 2013;
Callaghan et al., 2005; 2011; Cohen & Haun,
2013; House et al., 2013; Liszkowski, Brown,
Callaghan, Takada, & de Vos, 2012), physical
cognitive skill (Goldstein, Davidoff, & Roberson,
2009; Haun & Rapold, 2009; Haun, Rapold,
Call, Janzen, & Levinson, 2006; Haun, Rapold,
Janzen, & Levinson, 2011; Pica et al., 2004; Segall
et al., 1963), and the differences in children’s envi-
ronments that might cause some of the variation
(Bolin, 2006; Gaskins, 2006; Keller et al., 2006;
Lancy, Bock, & Gaskins, 2010; LeVine, 2007;
Rogoff, 2003).
Levels of Explanation
According to Tinbergen (1963), to assess any
behavior comprehensively one should address it on
four different levels of explanation. Two proximate
(here and now) levels explaining the behavior of an
individual:
(a) In terms of its ontogeny—how does it
emerge across the life span of individuals?
(b) In terms of causation—what are the
mechanisms that enable it?
And on two ultimate (historical) levels explaining
the behavior of population or species:
(c) In terms of its phylogeny—what is its
evolutionary history?
(d) In terms of its adaptive advantage—why
was it selected for?
The following sections assess the added value
of a combined comparative, developmental, and
cross-cultural approach to addressing the first
three levels of explanation (a–c) concerning the
phenomenon of cross-cultural variation of cogni-
tive function. This multifaceted approach provides
the potential to understand the dynamics of the
ontogenetic emergence of cognitive variability
by allowing the assessment of the ongoing and
complex interaction between heritable predisposi-
tions of human cognition and the impact of the
individual’s environment. Any discussion of the
interaction of heritable predispositions and envi-
ronmental influence, especially when observing
behavior only, is a radical simplification of a highly
complex process. The interaction of genetic, epi-
genetic, and environmental influences on human
behavior is as of today largely unpredictable.
The perspective presented in the next section of
this chapter does not therefore aim to provide a
description for this process, but merely to provide
the developmental behavioral sciences with a set
of didactic tools that will allow for a slightly more
H au n 95
nuanced discussion of the interplay between cul-
tural context and inherited predispositions during
human development, replacing the still existing
dichotomous examination of “nature versus nur-
ture.” The same combined approach also allows
for an assessment of the differences in human and
nonhuman cross-cultural variability and, finally,
the assessment of the mechanisms causing the
species-unique structure of human cross-cultural
variability. Several examples from the current lit-
erature from various areas of both physical and
social cognition will serve to illustrate how these
different methodological strands might be com-
bined meaningfully.
The Ontogeny of Cultural Variation
Throughout development, children acquire
cultural knowledge. They do so by means of
and in interaction with universal biological pre-
dispositions. The acquired cultural knowledge
entails the contents and the tools to master the
challenges of particular environments. The term
environment refers to both physical and social
structures and processes. In this view, develop-
ment is the construction and co-construction of
cultural information based on informed hypoth-
eses that are derived from the evolutionary heri-
tage (Greenfield, Keller, Fuligni, & Maynard,
2003; Keller, Poortinga, & Schölmerich, 2002).
To start to describe this interaction, we require a
way of estimating both heritable predispositions
and environmental impact.
Estimating Heritable Predispositions
The first question at stake here is whether any
variance found in a human cognitive capacity is
due to species-typical genetic variance (Mameli &
Bateson, 2006). Although in some accounts, such
as niche construction (Odling-Smee, Laland, &
Feldman, 2003) or developmental systems theory
(Oyama, Griffiths, & Gray, 2003), environmen-
tal features and even cultural systems can be used
to transmit information across generations, here
we solely focus on genetic heritability. Within
this framework, “heritable” cognitive character-
istics should be seen as part of the evolutionary
endowment of the species; that is, as a set of reli-
ably reoccurring developmental resources that is
inherited from a last common ancestor (LCA)
through descent with modification (Mameli &
Bateson, 2006). One way to approach this ques-
tion is to combine developmental and compara-
tive studies.
96 C om pa r at i v e a n d De v e l opm e n t a l A n t h r op ol o g y
Infant Cognition
In developmental science, the early onset of a
cognitive capacity or preference is considered sug-
gestive of a heritable cognitive trait (Carey & Spelke,
1996; Karmiloff-Smith, 2010; Spelke & Newport,
1998). Although the very early acquisition of a
cognitive trait might support (not prove) claims of
relevant heritable predispositions, a late acquisition
does not prove the absence of such predispositions.
Inherited cognitive capacities and preferences are
not necessarily present at birth but might emerge
only later in ontogeny. Children might be inher-
ently prepared to acquire an ability or preference
over time (Karmiloff-Smith, 2010). Although some
sophisticated capacities are not present at birth,
there is no a priori reason to exclude the possibility
that heritable factors construct children’s abilities
in these late-blooming cognitive domains. Given
that they develop later in life, infant data alone are
insufficient in determining the relevance of heri-
table cognitive predispositions in a given domain.
Primate Cognition
As defined earlier, “heritable” cognitive charac-
teristics should be seen as part of the evolutionary
endowment of the species, that is, inherited from
an LCA (Mameli & Bateson, 2006). Conversely,
any trait that is part of the evolutionary inheri-
tance ever since an LCA becomes part of a shared
repertoire between related species (Byrne, 1995).
The reoccurrence of a certain cognitive trait across
related species therefore suggests its heritabil-
ity (Byrne, 1995; Haun, Jordan, Vallortigara, &
Clayton, 2010). Following this comparative
approach, humans have been compared to various
primate species including pro-simians, monkeys,
and the great apes (Tomasello & Call, 1997). And,
indeed, continuities in cognitive function between
humans and their phylogenetic cousins are striking
even in more complex cognitive tasks such as per-
spective taking (Hare, Call, Agnetta, & Tomasello,
2000; Kaminski, Call, & Tomasello, 2008; Liebal,
Call, Tomasello, & Pika, 2004) and cooperation
(Melis, Hare, & Tomasello, 2006; Rekers, Haun,
& Tomasello, 2011). These continuities, in prin-
ciple, allow us to make inferences about extinct
evolutionary ancestors of the selected set of spe-
cies. The strength of such an inference, however,
crucially depends on the selected sample of species.
To make any reliable statement about an extinct
organism’s cognitive architecture with some con-
fidence, the comparisons need to be taxonomically
informed: evolutionary taxonomy, or cladistics,
is the classification of species in such a way that
it correctly reflects evolutionary history. A valid
grouping or “clade” within evolutionary taxonomy
is a group of species with a common ancestor that
is not ancestral to any other species (monophyletic
group). The currently most common, but by far
not the only, measure of similarity in cladistics is
molecular structure and function (Enard & Pääbo,
2004). Figure 7.1 presents such an evolutionary
taxonomy of our own clade, the great apes.
In evolutionary biology, cross-species compari-
sons and historical reconstruction use a set of sta-
tistical techniques called phylogenetic comparative
methods (PCM). Among other possibilities (Nunn,
2011) these methods enable researchers to recon-
struct probable ancestral states of shared but vari-
able cognitive traits (Haun et al., 2010; MacLean et
al., 2012) based on taxonomically informed selec-
tions of samples (Arnold & Nunn, 2010) and to
place statistical measures of confidence on these
Chimpanzee
(Pan troglodytes)
Bonobo
(Pan paniscus)
Human
(Homo sapiens)
Gorilla
LCA (Gorilla gorilla)
Orangutan
(Pongo pygmaeus)
Fig. 7.1 Consensus phylogeny of the great apes based on
results from the 10k Tree Project (Arnold, Matthews, &
Nunn, 2010). Branch lengths are proportional to the amount
of genetic change. LCA, last common ancestor. Adapted from
Haun et al., 2010.
reconstructions (Garland, Midford, & Ives, 1999;
Pagel, Meade, & Barker, 2004). With the help of
these statistical tools, we can reconstruct states of
the common ancestor based on any reliable set of
taxonomic relations of living species: if humans and
all other great apes share features of a certain cogni-
tive trait, the features are likely part of all species’
shared inheritance from their LCA and hence heri-
table in all species, including humans. One alterna-
tive interpretation is that (1) the same trait evolved
independently several times within the same clade.
This phenomenon is called convergent evolution or
homoplasy. The other alternative is that (2) similar
traits are acquired during ontogeny due to contex-
tual constraints that are identical in all species. The
likelihood of the former alternative decreases with
an increase in sample size (the number of species)
and the completeness of the tested family of species.
For humans, a complete set of species with a single
common ancestor that in turn is not ancestral to
any other species is the great ape clade: orangutans
(Pongo pygmaeus), gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), bono-
bos (Pan paniscus), chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes),
and humans (Homo sapiens; see Figure 7.1). Hence,
studies applying matched methods for comparing
cognition across all great apes by means of PCM
can estimate the likelihood that a certain cognitive
trait develops by means of and in interaction with
universal heritable predispositions.
The Interaction of Heritable
Predispositions and Cultural Context
One conclusion often drawn from the pres-
ence of cross-cultural variation in a cognitive trait
is that its acquisition is subject to environmental
input only and not structured by heritable pre-
dispositions. One conclusion often drawn from
the absence of cross-cultural variation in a cogni-
tive trait is that it is impervious to environmental
influence and emerges based on heritable predispo-
sitions. Both conclusions are grossly premature if
based on the presence and absence of variation in
adults alone. The inadequacy of these conclusions
becomes apparent when we take a developmental
perspective. Cross-cultural comparisons of cogni-
tive abilities and preferences and the taxonomically
informed comparisons of the same traits across the
great ape clade provide us with estimates of both
the variability of a trait across human popula-
tions and the heritable predispositions relevant to
that trait. These two factors interact constantly
throughout development. That’s why, based on
adult variation alone, it is impossible to identify the
H au n 97
relative contribution of either heritable predisposi-
tions or environmental impact to the developing
trait. However, when additionally considering
the developmental origins of a given trait, we can
track the patterns of emergence of said trait. These
ontogenetic patterns, as detailed later, often take
characteristic shapes. These characteristic shapes
indicate different relative contributions of heritable
predispositions and contextual influence. The fol-
lowing examples demonstrate some of these recur-
rent developmental patterns:
• The presence of variation in adult cognition
across cultures is largely driven by
(a) genetic variation on a population level;
(b) context-dependent cultural learning in the
absence of heritable predispositions;
(c) context-dependent cultural learning
overriding heritable predispositions.
• The absence of variation in adult cognition
across cultures is largely due to
(d) heritable predispositions that are either
impenetrable to learning or are under no pressure
to change;
(e) learning in response to cross-culturally
universal contextual features.
This categorical structure is only an approxima-
tion, ignoring the gradual and dynamic process of
development. Its purpose is to serve as a didactic tool
to sort evidence and exemplify the ways in which
cross-cultural variation of cognition might emerge,
taking a very first step toward a more nuanced
description. It also should make clear that the pres-
ence and absence of variation in adult cognition does
not enable us to infer its emergence. Here, I review
findings from the cognitive sciences to illustrate and
elaborate on each of the five categories (a–e).
The presence of variation in adult cognition
across cultures is largely driven by genetic varia-
tion on a population level. This rarely discussed
account explaining how adult variation across cul-
tures emerges states that the observed variation of
adult cognition across cultures is the consequence
of genetic variation on a population level. This is
a politically controversial explanation for psycho-
logical differences between cultures, one with a
dark history, and it should be examined with care
(Gould, 1981). Researchers have identified some
genes that vary systematically across populations,
such as genes associated with skin color (Jablonski &
Chaplin, 2000) or lactose intolerance (Beja-Pereira
98 C om pa r at i v e a n d De v e l opm e n t a l A n t h r op ol o g y
et al., 2003). One example for a cultural behavior
that appears to be partly genetically determined on
a population level is the use of linguistic tone, i.e.
the use of voice pitch to convey lexical or grammat-
ical distinctions. Dediu and Ladd (2007) showed
that there is a relationship between the population
frequency of two alleles (haplogroups of the brain
growth and development-related genes ASPM and
Microcephalin) and the presence of linguistic tone.
They documented the relationship between the
population frequency of these two alleles and the
presence of linguistic tone, showing that it is not
due to the usual explanatory factors represented
by geography and history. In their account, differ-
ences across cultures in cognitive traits might be
caused by certain alleles biasing information pro-
cessing and thereby influencing the trajectory of
individuals’ ontogenies, as well as of the trajectory
of a cultural trait through iterated cultural trans-
mission. Consequentially, a genetic base for cogni-
tive variability across cultures cannot be entirely
ruled out. Genetic variation should not, however,
be considered a likely candidate for explaining
the whole of cognitive variability across cultures.
Human groups are genetically much more similar
to one another than to any of the other great ape
species (Figure 7.2; Kaessmann, Wiebe, Weiss, &
Pääbo, 2001). In contrast, they vary much more
in their behavior than the other great apes (Pagel
& Mace, 2004). So, even if genetic variation plays
a small role in accounting for cross-group varia-
tion, it remains reasonable to assume that most
between-groups differences are overwhelmingly
attributable to socially transmitted mechanisms
(Heine & Norenzayan, 2006). Hence, the heritable
predisposition discussed in the remaining sections
of this chapter are assumed to be universal and no
source of variation on a population level.
The presence of variation in adult cog-
nition across cultures is largely driven by
context-dependent cultural learning in the
absence of heritable predispositions. One exam-
ple of a cognitive trait that is entirely learned per-
tains to visual illusions. The perception of many
visual illusions varies across cultures (Segall et al.,
1963). One particular illusion, the Ebbinghaus
illusion (see Figure 7.3), appears to be a case of
“context-dependent cultural learning in the absence
of heritable predispositions.” In this illusion, a tar-
get circle surrounded by larger circles looks smaller,
and one surrounded by smaller circles looks larger
than they really are. The Himba, a remote pastori-
alist group in Northern Namibia, experience the
 Gorilla
Pan
Homo
Fig. 7.2  Phylogenetic tree of human, chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla, and orangutan Xq13.3 sequences.
Adapted from Kaessmann, Wiebe, Weiss, & Pääbo, 2001.
Ebbinghaus illusion much less strongly than do
English university students (de Fockert, Davidoff,
Fagot, Parron, & Goldstein, 2007). But suscep-
tibility to the illusion increased even after brief
exposure to an urban environment among some
Himba (Caparos et al., 2012). Recent developmen-
tal studies of susceptibility to the Ebbinghaus illu-
sion found that at 4 years of age, English children
do not perceive the illusion and hence are more
accurate than adults at judging the relative size of
the central circle. Even by the age of 10 years, chil-
dren still performed better than adults (Doherty,
Campbell, Tsuji, & Phillips, 2010). A compari-
son between US and Japanese children revealed
Fig. 7.3  The Ebbinghaus illusion. The two central darker circles are equal in size but appear different to adults in some cultures.
Pongo
that the two populations diverge over ontogenetic
time. Whereas children from both cultures per-
form equally well at age 4–5, both perceive the
Ebbinghaus illusion increasingly strongly as they
grow older (6–7 and 8–9 years), but the effect is
stronger in Japanese children, causing an increas-
ing divergence of the two populations (Imada,
Carlson &, Itakura, 2013).
Based on these developmental results, suscepti-
bility to the Ebbinghaus illusion seems to develop
late in some individuals and in some cultures, such
as the Himba, hardly at all. A comparison between
humans and baboons (Papio papio) demonstrated
that only humans misjudged the central target
H au n 99
size under the influence of the Ebbinghaus illu-
sion, whereas baboons expressed a more veridical
perception of target sizes (Parron & Fagot, 2007).
As of yet, there are no data available from nonhu-
man great ape species, precluding any firm state-
ments about the LCA. Based on the baboon data
alone, one might propose that, for the case of the
Ebbinghaus illusion, children appear to inherit
no cognitive predisposition, and therefore adult
variation emerges as a result of context-dependent
experience.
The presence of variation in adult cognition
across cultures is largely driven by context-
dependent cultural learning overriding herita-
ble predispositions. One example for such a trait
is the use of spatial frames of reference (FoRs) in
memory. Relational language follows coordinate
systems or FoRs, which serve to specify the direc-
tional relationships between objects in space in
reference to a shared referential anchor (Levelt,
1996). Languages vary in the repertoire they
code and also in the habitual usage of different
FoRs (Levinson, 2003). Some languages mainly
use egocentric FoR with terms like front, back,
left, and right: “The ball is to the left of the tree”
(from my point of view). Some languages, such as
the ǂAkhoe Haiǁom mentioned in the introduc-
tory anecdote, mainly use a so-called allocentric
FoR in which linguistic descriptions, for example,
use cardinal direction type systems such as our
North, South, East, and West: “The stick is north
of the pebble.”
Spatial relational cognition can be categorized
similarly in egocentric (view-dependent) and allo-
centric (view-independent) memory representa-
tions and varies similarly across cultures (Haun,
2011; Haun & Rapold, 2009; Haun et al., 2006;
2011; Levinson, 2003; Majid, Bowerman, Kita,
Haun, & Levinson, 2004). While both egocentric
and allocentric FoRs are common across cultures,
children early on prefer allocentric over egocentric
FoRs: As soon as they have become competent nav-
igators (at 16 months of age; Acredolo, 1988), i.e.
they successfully use both allocentric and egocen-
tric cognitive strategies, English-speaking children,
at least between 3 and 5 years of age, are better
at allocentric strategies than at egocentric ones
(Allen, 1999; Haun et al., 2006; Nardini, Burgess,
Breckenridge, & Atkinson, 2006).
Finally, comparing across species, all great
ape species, including 4-year-old German chil-
dren, prefer to process spatial relations based on
environmental cues and not self. Based on these
100 C om pa r at i v e a n d De v e l opm e n t a l A n t h r op ol o g y
results and the allocentric preference of young
human navigators The inherited cognitive mode
of operation in humans and the other great apes
appears to be to process spatial relations using
allocentric FoRs over view-dependent egocentric
FoRs (Haun et al., 2006). In this case, cultural
variation in spatial memory is no indicator of the
absence of heritable predispositions. The nuanced
picture that emerges instead is one in which the
inherited bias toward the allocentric coding of
spatial relations can be overridden by cultural
learning.
The absence of variation in adult cognition
across cultures is largely due to heritable pre-
dispositions that are either impenetrable to
learning or are under no pressure to change.
One example for a cognitive trait that is not
learned but heavily structured by heritable predis-
positions is the ability to discriminate large quan-
tities by means of approximation (approximate
arithmetic). This ability is common in human
adults across cultures such as the United States,
the Munduruku (Pica et al., 2004), and the Piraha
(Gordon, 2004; Frank, Everett, Fedorenko, &
Gibson, 2008), across which there is otherwise
strong variation in numerical abilities (Frank
et al., 2008; Gordon, 2004; Pica et al., 2004).
Infants are able to solve quite similar tasks from a
very early age. Six-month-old infants, for example,
can discriminate 8 versus 16 dots on a screen (Xu
& Spelke, 2000). After seeing repeated presenta-
tions of either 16 (or 8) until they habituate, they
will now look longer at an array of 8 (or 16) dots.
Hence, infants are able to discriminate the two
arrays. Controls for surface area and other char-
acteristics ensure that infants can discriminate by
number alone (Xu & Spelke, 2000). Furthermore,
a large set of studies has shown that the approxi-
mate arithmetic abilities in infants are imprecise
and ratio-dependent. Six-month-old infants suc-
cessfully discriminate 8 versus 16 and 16 versus 32
dots, but fail with 8 versus 12 and 16 versus 24 (Xu
& Spelke, 2000). In other words, 6-month-olds
can discriminate numerosities with a 1:2 but not
a 2:3 ratio (Feigenson, Dehaene, & Spelke, 2004).
The ability to discriminate these more difficult
ratios, however, increases quickly with age. At
10 months, infants are already able to tell apart
arrays with a 2:3 ratio, and adults can discriminate
ratios as small as 7:8. In summary, approximate
arithmetic abilities emerge early and become more
proficient across age but do not change in struc-
ture (Feigenson et al., 2004).
 For the domain of approximate arithmetic,
basic performance characteristics in quantity dis-
crimination tasks are shared across animal taxa
(Cantlon, Platt, & Brannon, 2009), including all
nonhuman great apes (Hanus & Call, 2007). All
tested great apes can select the larger of two quan-
tities by approximate arithmetic, both when pre-
sented simultaneously and in sequence, even when
the quantities are large and the numerical distance
between them is small (Hanus & Call, 2007).
Similar performance levels have been reported
for human children from roughly 6 years of age
onward (Halberda & Feigenson, 2008), indicat-
ing a common heritage of the proximate number
system (Feigenson et al., 2004). Given the herita-
ble predisposition, early onset, and cross-cultural
stability of approximate arithmetic abilities, the
absence of variation across cultures is likely due
to a strong heritable predisposition that is either
impervious to learning or under no contextual
pressure to change.
The absence of variation in adult cognition
across cultures is largely due to learning in
response to cross-culturally universal contextual
features. One example that is at least suggestive
of universal learning is declarative, referential ges-
tures. The gestures exchanged among chimpanzees
in their natural habitat are largely imperative and
non-referential (Tomasello, 2008). In contrast,
among humans, declarative referential gestures,
such as pointing, emerge already around the first
birthday (Bates, Benigni, Bretherton, Camaioni, &
Volterra, 1979; Liszkowski, Carpenter, Henning,
Striano, & Tomasello, 2004).
Recent studies have shown remarkable
cross-cultural stability in the existence as well as
the structure of infant pointing across cultures.
Children in Kyoto (Japan), Montaro Valley (Peru),
Nova Scotia (Canada), Rossel Island (Papua New
Guinea), Srikakulam (India), and Tzeltal and
Yukatec Mayans (Mexico) start pointing around
their first birthday, as reported previously for
European and American samples. In all settings,
the majority of infants uses the specific form of
index-finger pointing (Callaghan et al., 2011;
Liszkowski et al., 2012). Evidence that declarative
referential communication is to some extent learned
in the context of social interaction (Werner &
Kaplan, 1963) comes from the study of individ-
ual differences within a cultural setting (Gaffan,
Martins, Healy, & Murray, 2010; Liszkowski &
Tomasello, 2011) and population-level variation
in some limited features, such as the frequency
of points (Salomo & Liszkowski, 2012). On an
individual level, infants’ frequency of pointing is
related to social interactional practices of look-
ing together at objects and to social-cognitive
skills for comprehending reference (Liszkowski &
Tomasello, 2011). Cross-cultural variability in the
amount of joint action and declarative gestures to
which infants were exposed across three differ-
ent cultures—Yucatec-Mayans (Mexico), Dutch
(Netherlands), and Shanghai-Chinese (China)—
caused variation in the frequency with which
infants pointed. Infants gestured somewhat more
depending on the amount of joint action and ges-
tures they were exposed to (Salomo & Liszkowski,
2012). Hence, whereas declarative referential
pointing emerges most likely universally across cul-
tures, the frequency with which infants point var-
ies both interindividually as well as cross-culturally
depending on the amount of infant–caregiver
social interaction.
Interestingly, some scientists have argued that,
given the right environmental structure, chimpan-
zees will produce humanlike referential declara-
tive gestures when communicating with humans
(Leavens, Ely, Hopkins, & Bard, 2012). This
would indicate that species differences in this
behavior are not directly determined by differences
in heritable predispositions to gesture referentially
with a declarative motivation. Another indicator is
that pointing is learned by both species, just much
more naturally by humans. Hence, it appears that
human infants acquire referential declarative ges-
tures universally in the absence of a shared heri-
table predisposition.
This last example provides a good opportu-
nity to highlight the complexity of the interaction
between heritable predispositions and environ-
mental impact in development. As stated earlier, in
humans, the synchronous emergence of pointing
gestures and the similar frequency of use are likely
due to universal learning. The characteristic hand
shape of the index-finger point, however, might be
promoted by a heritable predisposition to slightly
raise the index finger relative to its neighbor when
relaxing the hand (Povinelli & Davis, 1994).
Amongst great apes, this is only true for humans.
Hence, species differences in the hand shape might
be due to heritable predispositions, even if differ-
ences in the likelihood with which the general
behavior is acquired are not. Or, to give another
example, the likelihood with which human chil-
dren acquire declarative referential gestures might
be higher than it is for chimpanzees because of
H au n 101
heritable predispositions, causing human children
to interact socially with others in species-unique
ways and promoting the motivations and skills
that benefit the acquisition of pointing (see section
on Uniquely Human Social Cognition). As stated
earlier, the examples given here are not meant to
be an adequate description of the complex inter-
play of heritable predispositions and environmen-
tal impact, but they are a first step in the right
direction. In this spirit, the universal features of
human declarative referential communication
seem to be largely due to learning in response to
cross-culturally universal features of human social
interaction.
By documenting the dynamics of the emergence
of cross-cultural variation—or its absence—through
combining cross-cultural with developmental and
comparative data, we learn about the structure of
the cognitive ability itself and, maybe more impor-
tantly, the dynamics of the interplay between cul-
tural context and inherited predispositions during
the emergence of adult cognition. This emergence
is structured by learning mechanisms and biases
that guide the transmission of cultural knowl-
edge and mediate the impact of the environment
on the developing child. It is in these mechanisms
and biases where we must seek the explanation for
the extensive cultural variability that identifies the
human species.
The Phylogeny of Cultural Variation
For a long time, it was thought that no other
animal species showed anything resembling human
culture. But detailed and long-term studies of vari-
ous animal species in their natural habitats have
established that they, too, form distinct social, or
perhaps cultural, groups with multiple behavioral
differences (Allen, Weinrich, Hoppitt, & Rendell,
2013; Boughman & Wilkinson, 1998; Hunt &
Gray, 2003; van Schaik et al., 2003; Whiten et
al., 1999). Arguably, some of the most detailed
and convincing recent evidence for nonhuman
culture—defined as socially acquired, population-
specific behavior (Perry, 2006)—comes from the
study of two of our closest phylogenetic relatives:
chimpanzees (Luncz, Mundry, & Boesch, 2012;
van Leeuwen, Cronin, Haun, Mundry, & Bodamer,
2012) and orangutans (Krützen, Willems, &
van Schaik, 2011). Chimpanzee populations, for
example, vary in their relative preferences for stone
(Figure 7.4 A1) and wooden tools (Figure 7.4 A2)
for cracking nuts (Luncz et al., 2012) and in the
propensity and the style with which they engage in
102 C om pa r at i v e a n d De v e l opm e n t a l A n t h r op ol o g y
a particular kind of mutual grooming: the groom-
ing handclasp (Figure 7.4 B1-2) (van Leeuwen et
al., 2012). Hence, chimpanzees display cultural
variation in both physical tasks and social behav-
iors. All together, 39 different behaviors have been
documented to vary across a set of six wild chim-
panzee populations. The behaviors might be pres-
ent in one and absent in another population or vary
in their specific local instantiation (Whiten et al.,
1999).
In comparison to all these cases, however,
human cross-cultural variation still appears to
be unique in both extent and structure. Humans
appear to display a wider repertoire of behaviors
that vary more distinctly across communities and
of which a larger subsection are socially acquired
(Pagel & Mace, 2004). This difference between
human and nonhuman behavioral and cognitive
variability demands an explanation. The human
capacity for cultural variability must root in a set of
characteristics that enable, structure, and stabilize
cultural variation beyond what can be observed in
other primates. This foundation of cultural behav-
ior must be universal across all humans. Again,
a developmental perspective is of great benefit
here: childhood is when individuals acquire many
of the most important culture-specific behaviors
and abilities. Species differences in the structure of
early development (see section on The Phylogeny
of Cognitive Development) and differences in the
capacities, strategies, and biases relevant for social
learning in this period (see section on Uniquely
Human Social Cognition) are at the core of most
accounts explaining uniquely human cultural vari-
ability. By the same methodological triangulation
of cross-cultural, developmental, and compara-
tive approaches, we can identify those character-
istics of early development that are both unique to
humans among the great apes, but universal across
all humans and might therefore serve as defining
features of the human species.
The Phylogeny of Cognitive Development
One important example of a unique and uni-
versal human characteristic is the prolonged
cranial ontogeny in human infants relative to
the other African great apes (Hublin, 2005): in
human evolution, the evolutionary trend toward
increasing brain size favored wide pelvises in
females to secure the mother’s and infant’s safety
during birth. At the same time, bipedalism
required increasingly narrow pelvises for stabil-
ity during locomotion. Likely as a result of these
 A1 A2

B1 B2

Fig. 7.4  Culture in chimpanzee: (A) Chimpanzee populations vary in their relative preferences for stone (A1) and wooden tools
(A2) for cracking nuts (Luncz, Mundry, & Boesch, 2012). Photographs by Mark Linfield. (B) Chimpanzee populations vary in the
propensity and the style with which they engage in a particular kind of mutual grooming: the grooming handclasp (van Leeuwen,
Cronin, Haun, Mundry, & Bodamer, 2012). Two examples of styles are palm-to-palm (B1) and wrist-to-wrist (B2). Photographs by
Daniel Haun and Edwin van Leeuwen.

two developments, human children are born at an
early stage of brain development relative to other
African great ape species (Hublin, 2005). Thus,
the infant’s head still fits through the mother’s
narrower pelvis without compromising the trend
toward bigger brains. Whereas chimpanzee brains
are already 45% of the average adult size at birth
and 85% of the adult size at 1 year of age, the
human brain is only 25% of the adult size at
birth, increasing to around 55% 1 year later. It
takes humans up to 6 years to reach 85% of the
average adult brain size (Hublin, 2005). So the
major growth period of the human brain—the
time when it is maximally plastic—takes place
outside the womb, where children are much more
exposed to their physical and social environment.
Therefore, human children may be expected to
adapt to the local circumstance much more easily
for a longer period than, say, young chimpanzees
do (Bruner, 1972).
Humans’ cognitive development differs from
that of other African great apes also in other ways.
Research has shown that on physical cognition
tasks, humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos perform
at the same level at 2 years of age, but by 4 years
children have advanced whereas chimpanzees and
bonobos remain at their 2-year-old performance
levels. On social cognition tasks, in contrast, chil-
dren outperform chimpanzees and bonobos already
at 2 years, and this difference is even bigger by
4 years. In other words, pattern and pace of cogni-
tive development differ between humans and other

H au n 103
apes, particularly in the social domain (Wobber,
Herrmann, Hare, Wrangham, & Tomasello,
2013). Hence, both the prolonged timing and the
focus on the social domain in human development
might benefit the individuals’ internalization of
the surrounding social environment and result in
increased cross-cultural variation.
Uniquely Human Social Cognition
Recent studies have identified several human
social behaviors that appear to have no corresponding
match in other primates. Examples are pretend play
or fictional games that children invent together with
a play partner (Rakoczy, Warneken, & Tomasello,
2008); joint attention, featuring mutually recog-
nized shared attention to an external object (Bruner,
1998; Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll,
2005); shared intentionality, featuring collaborative
interactions in which participants share psychologi-
cal states with one another (Searle, 1995; Tomasello
et al., 2005); false belief reasoning or understanding
that others might hold beliefs about the world that
are untrue (Call & Tomasello, 2008); social prefer-
ence, preferring to do things together over doing the
same thing alone (Rekers et al., 2011); overimitation,
the tendency to copy actions faithfully, including un-
or counterproductive aspects (Horner & Whiten,
2005); normative conformity, the tendency to change
ones behavior to others to avoid negative social con-
sequences (Haun & Tomasello, 2011; Haun, van
Leeuwen, & Edelson, 2013); natural pedagogy, the
sensitivity to a restricted set of communicative signals
as indicative of a teaching context (Csibra & Gergely,
2009); and norm psychology, the tendency to adhere
to, enforce, and redress violations of the shared
behavioral standards of one’s community (Chudek &
Henrich, 2011; Rakoczy & Schmidt, 2013). Because
these behaviors are proposed to be nonexistent in
the other great apes, PCMs cannot reconstruct LCA
states given the lack of similarities across species.
Nevertheless, some of these behaviors emerge early
in ontogeny and have been shown to vary little across
cultures. Overimitation, false belief reasoning, and
normative conformity are three such examples.
Overimitation
If chimpanzees copy the particular actions of
their conspecifics (i.e., imitate), they appear to
do so infrequently and with relatively low fidelity
(Tennie, Call, & Tomasello, 2009). Children, in
contrast, tend to copy actions faithfully, even those
aspects that are superfluous or disadvantageous
(Horner & Whiten, 2005; Nielsen, 2006). This
104 C om pa r at i v e a n d De v e l opm e n t a l A n t h r op ol o g y
phenomenon has come to be called overimitation
(Lyons, Young, & Keil, 2007). It emerges in the
second year of life (Nielsen, 2006) and becomes
increasingly pervasive through the preschool period
(McGuigan, Whiten, Flynn, & Horner, 2007).
One recent study has replicated these findings
in Bushman communities of the South African
Kalahari Desert (Nielsen & Tomaselli, 2010),
reporting striking similarities in performance to
prior samples. Kalahari San children’s perfor-
mance, similar to that of children from US and
UK/European samples, was unaffected by age, the
cultural background of the model, or the children’s
opportunity to learn on their own how to operate
the apparatuses (Nielsen & Tomaselli, 2010).
False Belief Reasoning
Maybe the most frequently discussed ability that
distinguishes humans from other great apes is the
ability to take the mental perspective of others (Call
& Tomasello, 2008). Some of the many abilities
summarized under the term “theory of mind” have
homologues in other great apes, but humans show
an extraordinary facility with making inferences
about the beliefs of others and, in particular, false
beliefs (Call & Tomasello, 2008). Understanding
that others have a false belief requires the individual
to understand that others’ representations contra-
dict not only one’s own, but also reality. Because
being able to do so requires a true representation of
another individual’s mental state, false belief under-
standing is seen as sign for a fully fledged theory of
mind (Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001).
In recent years, several studies have compared
understanding of others’ false beliefs across dif-
ferent human cultures (Avis & Harris, 1991;
Callaghan et al., 2005; Knight, Sousa, Barrett, &
Atran, 2004; Liu, Wellman, Tardif, & Sabbagh,
2008; Vinden, 1996; 1999). All of these stud-
ies relied on a highly language-dependent narra-
tive task—the so-called Sally-Anne Task (SAT;
Wimmer & Perner, 1983). In this task, children
are presented with a story in which Sally hides
her marble in her box and then leaves the room.
While Sally is gone, Anne moves the marble
from Sally’s box to her own basket. When Sally
returns shortly after, children are asked where
they expect she might look for her marble. If
children understand that Sally holds a false belief
about the location of her marble, they will predict
Sally will search in her box. Many, however, see
the usage of story-based tasks in a cross-cultural
setting as highly problematic (Lillard, 1998). It
can be expected that the problems of translat-
ing stories into foreign languages, including not
only mistakes, but also the required adaptations
to cultural sensitivities, will render results unreli-
able (Segall, Dasen, Berry, & Poortinga, 1990).
Furthermore, children across cultures might well
vary in how readily they are able and willing to
answer questions about others mental states and
likely behavior, but not in their understanding of
others’ false beliefs per se.
Two recent studies applied nonverbal tests
either adapted from a design previously used with
nonhuman great apes (Haun, Girndt, Liebal, &
Kaminski, in preparation) or with preverbal infants
(Barrett et al., 2013). Both studies report very little
cross-cultural variability in performance. In the first
study, children played a competitive game against an
experimenter in which they could maximize their
winnings if they correctly predicted their opponents
behavior based on their understanding of the oth-
er’s mental states. Four- to seven-year-old children
from three communities were compared—Leipzig
(Germany), ǂAkhoe Haiǁom (Northern Namibia),
and Safotu (Western Samoa). Several studies have
previously noted a delay in Samoan children’s acqui-
sition of false belief reasoning (Callaghan et al.,
2005; Mayer & Träuble, 2013) using narrative-based
tests. However, children from all three cultures
showed identical levels of performance when apply-
ing false-belief reasoning in a competitive social
game (Haun et al., in preparation). The second study
used a set of so-called spontaneous-response tasks
(Baillargeon, Scott, & He, 2010). These include pref-
erential looking tasks, anticipatory looking tasks,
and violation of expectation tasks. Again, this study
found identical performance in all tasks across chil-
dren aged 2–4 years from three traditional societ-
ies: the Salar community in China, a Shuar/Colono
community in Ecuador, and a Yasawan community
in Fiji (Barrett et al., 2013). The two studies seem to
indicate that children across highly varied cultures
become proficient interpreters of others’ beliefs.
Normative Conformity
Humans do not just learn from others as all great
apes do—they conform to them. Humans will alter
their opinions or behavior to match that of their
peers, even if those peers are conspicuously wrong
(Asch, 1956; Bond & Smith, 1996), an effect dubbed
“conformity” (Asch, 1956) or sometimes even “strong
conformity” (Haun & Tomasello, 2011). Such con-
formity moves groups toward behavioral homogene-
ity while at the same time stabilizing between-group
heterogeneity (Henrich & Boyd, 1998). Adults across
a wide variety of cultures (Bond & Smith, 1996), as
well children as young as 4 years of age (Haun &
Tomasello, 2011), adjust their responses to a con-
spicuously erroneous group of peers. Furthermore,
humans appear to conform based on two different
motivations: informational and normative motiva-
tions (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955). Informational
conformers conform to maximize performance (“the
majority must be correct”). Normative conformers
conform because of the social benefits of conform-
ing relative to dissenting. Although it has been shown
that chimpanzees will learn from the majority when
acquiring a novel task (Haun, Rekers, & Tomasello,
2012), chimpanzees, in contrast to human children
as young as 2 years of age, do not adjust their behav-
iour to the majority, if such a change is not accom-
panied by an increase in payoffs (Haun, Rekers &
Tomasello, 2014; Van Leeuwen, Cronin, Schütte,
Call & Haun 2013). Although some studies have
even claimed humanlike conformity in nonhuman
primates (Hopper, Schapiro, Lambeth, & Brosnan,
2011; van de Waal, Borgeaud, & Whiten, 2013;
Whiten, Horner, & de Waal, 2005; but see Haun
et al., 2013; van Leeuwen & Haun, 2013 and van
Leeuwen & Haun, 2014, for a critical perspective),
no study to date has convincingly shown a nonhu-
man primate conform based on normative motiva-
tions. Because normative conformity has been shown
in humans early in development and in adults across
cultures, species differences in the motivations under-
lying conformity might be a contributing factor to
species differences in cross-cultural variation.
Conclusion
Human cognition varies substantially on a popu-
lation level. It is important to consider however, that
the presence or absence of population-level variation
in any given cognitive skill alone is not indicative
of the developmental dynamics of said skill. Despite
recurrent appearances of such arguments in the lit-
erature, the presence of cross-cultural variation in a
cognitive trait is no indicator that the acquisition of
that trait is not structured by heritable predisposi-
tions. Equally, the absence of cross-cultural variation
in a cognitive trait is no indicator that its acquisi-
tion is impervious to environmental influence and
that it emerges based on heritable predispositions
alone. To understand the relative contributions of
heritable predispositions and the environment, a
combined approach using cross-cultural, compara-
tive, and developmental studies is helpful because
it makes visible certain recurrent dynamics of the
H au n 105
developmental process. Although being far way
from a realistic account of the complex emergence
of an individual’s cognitive structures, the resulting
categories can serve as thinking tools to sort evi-
dence and exemplify the ways in which cross-cul-
tural variation of cognition might emerge.
One fact about human cross-cultural variation
that is largely agreed upon is that human behav-
ior varies more across populations than that of
other closely related animal species, such as the
great apes. Although there is now good evidence
for population-level variation in apes and other
animals, humans vary in a wider repertoire of
behaviors, of which a larger proportion is socially
acquired. The same combined comparative, devel-
opmental, and cross-cultural approach is also key
to understanding the species-typical psychological
mechanisms that create, structure, and maintain
uniquely human cultural variability.
Many scientists have called for a psychologi-
cal and developmental science for a cultural spe-
cies (Heine & Norenzayan, 2006; Henrich et al.,
2010; Jensen, 2012). The research summarized in
this chapter shows that this call is being answered.
This emerging research perspective addresses
cross-cultural variation of psychological processes,
not only in their final manifestations but also in
their ontogenetic dynamics. The emerging psy-
chological science emphasizes the combination of
cross-cultural, developmental, and comparative
studies to gain a more nuanced understanding
of how human cognition enables, structures, and
responds to human culture.
Acknowledgments
The author owes special thanks to Cristine
Legare, Heidi Keller, Michael Tomasello, and Katja
Liebal for vital comments on earlier drafts of the
chapter and to Ronja Büchner for editorial assis-
tance. This work is supported by the Max Planck
Society for the Advancement of Science.
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 C H A P T E R

8 The Emergence and Development

of Language Across Cultures

Stanka A. Fitneva and Tomoko Matsui

Abstract
Children growing up in vastly different cultural contexts acquire language. To many, this strongly
suggests that the mechanisms of language development are universal. Yet it is also possible that, at
least to some extent, children develop language in idiosyncratic ways. This possibility is motivated by
seeing language as a cultural tool and its development as part of broader processes of enculturation
and socialization. In the first part of this chapter, the authors emphasize the sensitivity of language
development to social factors. This sensitivity leads both to common principles of language
development and variability in development. In the second part of the chapter, the authors focus on
the development of linguistic tools related to the management of interactions, such as expressions
of affective and epistemic stance and politeness. They conclude by considering the scope, nature, and
methods of examining the relation between language development and culture.
Key Words:  language development, culture, socialization, emotion, epistemic expressions, politeness,
indirect directives

A 6-year-old’s request was proving to be decep-
tively easy to oblige. “Tell me about my Bulgarian
ancestors,” she asks. Mom (the first author) starts
with the girl’s grandparents, but she quickly gets
steered to those who are not with the living any-
more. Dyado Petar, a great grandfather, has
recently passed away, so it is his story that has to
be told. Mom goes over the finite stock of memo-
ries from her childhood. Then comes the inevitable
“Tell me more! Tell me more!” So, time for the
stories heard from relatives and neighbors. “Dyado
also… . ” Mom stops in her tracks. She wants to
say “fought in the war.” She recognizes the topic
would lead to way too many questions, and she
wants to go to sleep. But it is not the topic as much
as how the expression sounds that stops her. It takes
her a second to recognize the reason: evidentials.
Bulgarian, like a number of other languages, has
grammatical markers (think of the “-ed” tense
marker in English) that indicate the source of
the information. So, first-hand information, such
as a personal memory, is marked differently than
information obtained from others. Mom consid-
ers “fought in the war apparently.” She has never
doubted that Dyado had fought in World War II,
so this phrase does not sound right either. But now
that she thinks about it, Dyado never talked about
the experience. Can she shoulder the responsibil-
ity of feeding her daughter some family legend?
Then again, nobody has questioned the story. As
the saying goes, when in Rome do as the Romans
do. “Dyado fought in the war” gets blurted out fol-
lowed by the more sensible “Let’s go to sleep now.”
Language is an important part of culture: it
embodies culturally specific concepts, it supports
meaning-making and meaning sharing among
individuals, and it facilitates the intergenera-
tional transfer of other cultural components (e.g.,
tool and symbol use, customs, and art). As the
story in the previous paragraph illustrates, in

111
different cultures, there are different ways to talk
about events. In learning a language, children
learn not just a system of sounds, sound-meaning
mappings, and a grammar, but also how to be
participants in their culture. Although language
competence is rarely a developmental target for
either children or caregivers, becoming a compe-
tent member of one’s social group is, and conse-
quently, so is language use.
Since the cognitive revolution in the 1950s,
the dominant view in psychology and linguistics
has been that language is an organ of the body—
a part of the brain dubbed “universal grammar”
(Chomsky, 1965; Pinker, 1994). This tradition capi-
talizes on the powerful observation that no matter
where children are born, they develop an ability to
communicate using language and that there are
deep similarities in the way languages work. As
with any other body organ, the key mechanism for
language development is the human genetic code
and maturational processes. The universal gram-
mar tradition emphasizes syntax as the defining
feature of language. Although input is afforded a
role (e.g., in learning vocabulary and setting syntac-
tic parameters), this role is limited and uninterest-
ing. Pragmatics—the area of linguistics concerned
with language use, which is most likely to be influ-
enced by culture—is mostly outside the interests of
researchers working within this framework.
This chapter adopts the sociocultural perspec-
tive which, in contrast to the universal grammar
perspective, foregrounds the differences between
languages and the relation between language and
culture (von Humboldt, 1999; Vygotsky, 1962).
Rather than as an organ of the body, the socio-
cultural perspective views language as a tool. As
with any other tool, children have to learn how to
use it—use that can be and is taught. In contrast
to universal grammar, the sociocultural perspec-
tive asserts that language development cannot be
understood outside the context of culture. Rather,
it is viewed as a process of socialization through
which the child becomes a competent community
member.
With respect to development, it could be use-
ful to view culture as a medium constituted of
historically accumulated tools that are organized
to support human growth (Cole, 1995). Culture
encompasses the system of beliefs, knowledge, and
practices and the collection of material artifacts of a
community. It is stable because it is maintained over
generations via social learning and teaching, but it
is not static because every generation can modify
112 T h e E m e rg e nc e a n d De v e l opm e n t of L a ng uag e Ac r o ss C u lt u r e s
handed down cultural ingredients and invent new
ones. Because of the breadth of any definition of
culture, here we focus on its social-interactional
layer. Our goal is to illustrate both the sensitivity
of language development to social factors and how
in learning language children acquire tools to man-
age their interactions. In this, we follow the defini-
tion of language socialization offered by Ochs and
Schieffelin (1984) as encompassing socialization
through the use of language and socialization to
use language.
In the first part of this chapter, we focus on the
place of social factors in the mechanisms of lan-
guage development. We consider these factors in
relation to universal features of language knowl-
edge, such as the development of knowledge of
language-specific phonology, the construction
of word-referent links, and the construction of a
vocabulary containing different lexical categories.
Even though children share these learning objec-
tives, we see that culture may influence their attain-
ment. In the second part of the chapter, we focus
on the development of several classes of linguistic
expressions that show considerable cross-linguistic
variability: expressions of affective and epistemic
stance and expressions of politeness. We have
selected them as features that relate transparently to
social interaction patterns, even though language
development research has not consistently pursued
those relations. They allow us to trace the develop-
ment of cultural competence within language use.
Our review of language development is thus
quite selective. We touch on phonology, semantics,
and pragmatics, but we do not aim for depth or
to assess competing theories for the phenomena
we describe. Instead, our aim is to highlight how
culture—broadly construed—may contribute to
children’s language development. We draw exten-
sively from the pioneering work of Elinor Ochs and
Bambi Schieffelin who have examined language
socialization with respect to a variety of linguistic
and cultural phenomena (e.g., Ochs, 1988; Ochs &
Schieffelin, 1984; 1994; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986).
Social Underpinnings of Language
Development
In this section, we highlight aspects of language
development suggesting that it is both highly
attuned to social signals and robust to social varia-
tion. Children master language around the world
even though there is significant variability in how
language is used, how it is taught, and, conse-
quently, how they learn it.
Social Sensitivity
Infants are well equipped for the task of language
learning from birth. This preparedness involves
giving special status to speech and people. Prenatal
exposure to language, in particular, is linked to
newborns’ preference for speech over other sounds,
to preference for their mother’s voice, and to pref-
erence for their native language (Byers-Heinlein,
Burns, & Werker, 2010; May, Byers-Heinlein,
Gervain, & Werker, 2011). In addition, infants
display innate interest in human faces (Mondloch
et al., 1999). This visual bias naturally draws atten-
tion to the source of speech and has consequences
for speech perception and segmentation (e.g.,
Mitchel & Weiss, 2010). It also underlies the pro-
cess of joint attention, which is implicated in word
learning (Baldwin, Markman, Bill, Desjardins, &
Irwin, 1996). While these biases facilitate language
learning, the computations that newborns need
to perform to extract the phonetic, semantic, and
syntactic categories of the language they are learn-
ing are complex. Social factors may influence these
computations, for example, by drawing children’s
attention to relevant aspects of the signal. Recent
evidence for such processes come from the domains
of phonological and semantic development.
A well-established phenomenon in the first
year of life is the attunement of perception to
the phonology of the language children acquire.
Although at birth infants make categorical dis-
tinction between phonemes regardless of the
language they come from, by the end of the
first year, they only discriminate phonemes
from their native language (Kuhl, Williams,
Lacerda, Stevens, & Lindblom, 1992; Werker
& Tees, 1984). This phenomenon appears to be
anchored in children’s sensitivity to the statisti-
cal distribution of sounds in their environment.
Maye, Werker, and Gerken (2002) demonstrated
that when children are presented with a bimodal
distribution of sounds falling on a continuum
(e.g., da—d ha), they make a categorical distinc-
tion between sounds from the two extremes of
the distribution. If children are presented with a
normal, unimodal distribution, they do not make
a categorical distinction between the same two
sounds.
Yet social context also appears to constrain
children’s phonological learning. Kuhl and her
colleagues exposed 9-month-old English-learning
American infants to 12 live interaction sessions
with an adult Mandarin speaker over the course of
4–5 weeks (Kuhl, Tsao, & Liu, 2003). After the
sessions, the infants were tested on a Mandarin
phonetic contrast that does not occur in English.
The infants not only performed better than a con-
trol group that did not have exposure to Mandarin,
but also showed the same level of discrimina-
tion as same-age Mandarin-learning infants and
retained the contrast for several days. However,
when 9-month-old English-learning infants were
exposed to Mandarin by audio only or television
(combining audio and visual information), they
did not learn the Mandarin phonemic contrast.
Kuhl et al. used the term “social gating” to refer
to the constraint exercised by social factors and
proposed two explanations for it. The first is that
the live interaction increased infants’ motivation to
learn by increasing their attention and arousal. The
second is that the live interaction provided specific
information that fostered learning (e.g., the speak-
er’s eye gaze and pointing coupled with interactive
contingency). Either way, the attunement of speech
perception skills appears to be deeply affected by
the social context.
The role of social factors in word learning rep-
resents a much longer research tradition. On one
hand, this research has shown that adults attempt
to facilitate children’s language learning (in cultur-
ally conditioned ways), for example, through using
child-directed speech, creating joint attention
situations, and structuring predictable environ-
ments, which helps children understand the lan-
guage accompanying the situations (Bruner, 1981;
Fernald, 1989; Tomasello & Todd, 1983). On the
other hand, this research has shown that children
are sensitive to the social signals provided by adults.
For instance, by the end of their first year, infants
follow the speaker’s gaze and pointing gestures,
and, by 18 months, they exploit these cues in learn-
ing word–object mappings (Baldwin, 1991).
More recent research explores how various
characteristics of informants influence preschool-
ers’ uptake of the labels informants offer for novel
objects. Attention to one’s sources of linguistic
knowledge is crucial because language is a system
of conventions: it exists only in virtue of the agree-
ment among a community of speakers about sound–
meaning correspondences. Children discriminate
informants on a number of characteristics, such
as past accuracy, age, and benevolence of inten-
tions (e.g., Brosseau-Liard & Birch, 2011; Fitneva,
2010; Fitneva & Dunfield, 2010; Koenig & Harris,
2005; Liu, Vanderbilt, & Heyman, 2013). Much of
this research could be construed as consideration
for the speakers’ community membership. For
F i t n e va , M at s u i 113
example, after children observe one adult correctly
label familiar objects and another adult incorrectly
label the same objects, 4-year-olds are more likely
to endorse the labels offered by the previously cor-
rect adult for unfamiliar objects (Koenig & Harris,
2005). While (mis)labeling of common objects
may trigger inferences about the knowledge of the
speakers, it may also trigger broader inferences
about their community membership (Diesendruck,
Carmel, & Markson, 2010). As more direct evi-
dence for the importance of community mem-
bership, English-speaking 3- to 5-year-olds prefer
informants with a native rather than a foreign
accent (Kinzler, Corriveau, & Harris, 2011).
Children not only prefer reliable and appropriate
language models but appear to block learning from
unreliable models. Sabbagh and Shafman (2009)
tested preschoolers’ semantic and episodic memory
for object labels presented by a speaker who claimed
knowledge or ignorance of the objects. Although
children encoded the labeling episode in both con-
ditions, they established a semantic word-referent
link only when the label had been presented by a
knowledgeable speaker. This study suggests that
a social gating mechanism could operate in word
learning just as it does in perceptual learning. In
both domains, certain social conditions have to
be met in order for language learning to proceed.
Otherwise, learning may be blocked.
In sum, in the first year of life, speech percep-
tion abilities grow more readily within than out-
side social interactions, and later, in the preschool
years, vocabulary growth is constrained by chil-
dren’s preferences for language models. These con-
straints on language learning help children not
only avoid errors and save on corrective efforts, but
also develop knowledge that establishes their place
as members of their communities. As such, these
constraints may be integral to a broader process set-
ting the foundation of children’s cultural learning.
Cultural Paths to Language: Reference
and Vocabulary Structure
Phenomena such as social gating highlight
the sensitivity of language learning to social fac-
tors. Here, we focus on two aspects of language
knowledge—the referential nature of content
words and a vocabulary consisting of a variety of
word classes—to highlight the variability in lan-
guage learning and its robustness to variation in
the social environment. Although certain aspects
of adult language knowledge are universal, there
appear to be multiple paths to that knowledge.
114 T h e E m e rg e nc e a n d De v e l opm e n t of L a ng uag e Ac r o ss C u lt u r e s
Reference
A defining characteristic of language is its ref-
erential nature. In learning to speak, children map
sound patterns to concepts denoting categories of
objects, events, properties, and relations. This is
a notoriously difficult task (Quine, 1960), and in
response researchers have proposed innate con-
straints on word learning (e.g., Markman, 1989)
and that children around the world learn words
the same way (e.g., in joint attention situations;
Baldwin, 1991). Seminal observations by Ochs
and Schieffelin (1984) contrasted middle-class US,
Samoa, and Kaluli (of New Guinea) cultures and
showed that the context in which children link
words and meaning vary profoundly, thus chal-
lenging a number of these proposals about seman-
tic learning.
Ochs and Schieffelin suggested that perhaps
the key feature of children’s language socialization
in middle-class American society is the presump-
tion of personhood. Children are treated as real or
potential addressees and as speakers whose vocal-
izations are meaningful speech acts (e.g., asking,
asserting, rejecting). In deciphering the meaning
of these vocalizations, mothers and other caregiv-
ers engage in “mind-reading.” Because infants are
treated as conversational partners, conversations
with them have the prototypical face-to-face turn-
taking structure. Characteristically, American
caregivers produce child-directed speech, which
is characterized by grammatical simplicity, posi-
tive affect, and exaggerated intonation. Later, sup-
ported by activities such as book reading, ostensive
teaching of word meaning is common (Sénéchal
& LeFevre, 2002). These activities also embody
mind-reading: through them, caregivers simplify
what they perceive to be a difficult task for young
learners. Several of these features of caregiver–child
communication show positive correlations with
language development in experimental studies
(e.g., Fernald & Kuhl, 1987). But are they neces-
sary for language development?
Ochs and Schieffelin showed that caregiver–
child communication in Samoan society is mark-
edly different. Samoan infants are not directly
addressed until they begin to crawl. Their vocal-
izations are treated as indications of physiologi-
cal states rather than as communicative attempts.
Moreover, when infants begin to crawl, they are
addressed with orders, instructions, and negative
sanctions, and caregivers do not use child-directed
speech. Furthermore, the hierarchical structure
of Samoan society is reflected in the structure of
conversations involving children. When children
begin to talk, they quickly learn that they have to
address their requests to those with high ranks. But,
whenever possible, the addressee would instruct a
lower ranked caregiver (e.g., an older sibling) to
respond. Thus, Samoan children do not receive
responses from their addressees, and turn-taking
(dialogue) does not dominate their conversational
experience.
The Kaluli society presents a third model of
language socialization. This is an egalitarian soci-
ety and language is an important tool to establish
and maintain one’s place in it. Thus, Kaluli infants
who cannot speak are not regarded as conversa-
tion partners. When a mother speaks to her infant,
the infant is oriented outward rather than to the
mother. Mothers also speak for their infants when
the infants are addressed by others. When they
do this, mothers use a high-pitched voice but not
simplified language (which would undermine the
position of the child). As in Samoa, child-directed
speech is not observed. When Kaluli children begin
to speak, they receive intensive instruction in how
to perform speech acts like teasing, requesting, and
reporting, all related to the role that language plays
in managing relations in their society. They do
not receive instructions like American children do
about how to name objects and events.
Ochs and Schieffelin’s observations revealed
deeply diverging conceptions of infants and their
verbal behavior. On the side exemplified by the US
middle class is the conception of children as inten-
tional beings: even though deficient in their ability
to articulate ideas, their vocalizations are treated as
intentional and given meaning and interpretation.
On the side exemplified by Samoa and Kaluli is the
conception of infants as noncommunicative: their
vocalizations are not attended to until they are
comprehensible. These diverging concepts shape
profoundly different contexts for children’s learn-
ing of word-referent links and affect theories about
what this learning necessitates.
Research by Nameera Akhtar and her colleagues
demonstrates experimentally that vocabulary can
be learned from different forms of input. By age 18
months, infants can extract form–meaning map-
ping both from speech directed to them and speech
directed to third parties (Akhtar, 2005; Akhtar,
Jipson, & Callanan, 2001). Thus, learning through
overhearing provides a viable alternative to learn-
ing guided by ostensive signaling. In other words,
the input to language learning is much broader
than child-directed speech. Children gauge the
attentional focus of others not just when others
directly interact with them, but also when they sim-
ply observe them (see Correa-Chavez, Mangione,
& Black, this volume, for related cultural differ-
ences on observational learning). Moreover, chil-
dren rely not just on gaze, but also on touch and
posture to detect others’ attentional focus (Akhtar
& Gernsbacher, 2008). This allows for language
learning to proceed under vastly different condi-
tions of integration of the infant in conversational
exchanges.
Vocabulary Structure
Children across cultures acquire the distinction
between grammatical categories such as nouns and
verbs. Vocabulary development varies, however
(e.g., Bates, 1979; Bloom, Lightbown, & Hood,
1975; Nelson, 1973). Katherine Nelson observed
that whereas for the majority of English-learning
toddlers she studied vocabularies consisted primar-
ily of object labels, for a substantial minority, early
vocabularies consisted of formulaic phrases and
routines (e.g., “stop it” and “I want it”) and included
a much larger proportion of pronouns, verbs, and
adjectives. These groups, which Nelson called “ref-
erential” and “expressive,” respectively, show dif-
ferent use of language and language development
trajectories (Nelson, 1981). Children with a referen-
tial style follow the course of language development
familiar from textbooks: first words around the first
birthday, a vocabulary spurt around 18 months,
two-word combinations lacking grammatical func-
tion words around age 2, and well-formed sentences
emerging 6 month later. Characteristically, these
children engage in a lot of naming acts. In contrast,
children with an expressive style produce more
holistic language without going through clearly
differentiated stages and use language for a greater
variety of speech acts (e.g., asking, greeting, com-
menting, requesting, dis/agreeing).
The difference between referential and expres-
sive children is an individual difference that can
be rooted in temperament and cognitive capaci-
ties on one side and language input environment
on the other. On the cognitive side, Bates (1979)
argued that the development of language rests on
the ability to imitate behavior (even when it is
not well understood) and to decompose wholes
into parts. Favoring imitation would naturally
result in an expressive style of development and
decomposition in a referential style of develop-
ment. On the environment side, expressive chil-
dren are more often second-born children and
F i t n e va , M at s u i 115
from lower socioeconomic background (Nelson,
1973). Mothers of expressive children are more
likely to ignore their children’s utterances and
respond with formulaic expressions, corrections,
or directives in comparison to mothers of refer-
ential children who are more likely to respond
on topic and engage in turn-taking (e.g., Lieven,
1978). Although correlational, these data sug-
gest that the environment in which children
develop may influence the structure of their early
vocabularies.
The research on referential and expressive styles
draws attention to individual differences in lan-
guage development. However, given differences
in socialization practices involving turn taking,
ostensive communication, and child-directed
speech, different pathways of development may
be dominant in different cultural communities.
Indeed, the structure of children’s early vocabulary
varies depending on the language they are acquir-
ing: in some languages (e.g., English), there is a
clear dominance of nouns, whereas in others (e.g.,
Korean, Mandarin), this dominance is not found
(e.g., Brown, 1998; Choi & Gopnik, 1995; Tardif,
1996). Many reasons have been identified for this
difference including ones distinguishing the home
environment of English-learning children and
Korean- and Mandarin-learning children in ways
similar to the home environment of referential and
expressive learners. For instance, authoritarian par-
enting is more common in the homes of expressive
than referential learners and it is also more com-
mon in East Asian cultures. Thus, individual vari-
ability in language development may be replicated
at the level of culture.
In sum, even though all children develop
vocabularies encompassing different lexical cat-
egories, early language development is extremely
variable. Socialization practices such as teaching
children words for particular objects, proper-
ties, and actions, book reading (which provides
numerous opportunities for introducing and
explaining words), and whether and how children
are involved in conversation may not have dras-
tic effects on language achievement. However,
they may have consequences for how language
develops.
Summary
In this section, we explored the sensitivity of
individual language development to social fac-
tors and how aspects of language knowledge
may be achieved in different ways across (and
116 T h e E m e rg e nc e a n d De v e l opm e n t of L a ng uag e Ac r o ss C u lt u r e s
within) culture. The evidence suggests both that
social factors play a role in language learning—
in some cases even “gating” learning—and that
language skills can develop in different social
settings following different paths. Two points of
cultural variability in particular appear related to
differences in children’s language learning: the
conception of the child as a conversational par-
ticipant and the conception of what language is
for. Having outlined how social and interaction
factors relate to language development, we turn
to several domains of language development that
relate to children’s ability to effectively partici-
pate in social interaction.
Learning to Speak, Learning to Interact
Although some interactions among people
do not involve or require language, many do.
Conversation accompanies play and work and
can stand as an interaction on its own. Not sur-
prisingly, language learning involves learning of
linguistic forms that directly relate to establishing
and managing interactions, including expressions
of emotion, certainty, and social rank. In this sec-
tion, we focus on several of these forms: (a) linguis-
tic indexes of affective and epistemic stance and
(b) linguistic indexes of social identity and social
acts, which are integral to the expression of polite-
ness in conversation.
Linguistic Indexes of Affective
and Epistemic Stance
Every language has linguistic indexes of
affective dispositions (i.e., expressions refer-
ring to the feelings and emotions of the speaker
toward some proposition), as well as indexes of
epistemic stance (i.e., expressions specifying
the speaker’s beliefs and knowledge about some
proposition, such as modal verbs and eviden-
tials). These indexes are central features of com-
municative events. They are not always part of
the propositional content of the utterance (i.e.,
what is intentionally shared by the speaker and
can be judged as true or false). However, they
make a crucial contribution to constructing con-
texts in which the propositional content should
be interpreted. For example, they are crucial to
determining whether the speaker is criticizing or
endorsing that content and whether it is a joke
or serious matter. In other words, indexes of
affective and epistemic stance help the hearer to
understand the set of intentions that the utter-
ance is expected to communicate.
Indexes of Affective Stance
Indexes of affective stance in language include
paralinguistic cues, such as prosody, and affective
vocabulary. Emotional prosody in infant-directed
speech is likely to be universal and recognized
without much experience (Bryant & Barrett, 2007;
Ferguson, 1964; Fernald, 1991). In fact, some schol-
ars have argued that the primary function of infant-
directed speech is the communication of emotion
(Falk, 2004; Fernald, 1989; Trainor, Austin, &
Desjardins, 2000). Nevertheless, adultlike under-
standing of emotions and attitudes in speech devel-
ops over many years. Quam and Swingley (2012)
reported that 4-year-olds, but not 2- and 3-year-
olds, are capable of using prosodic cues to infer the
emotional state of the speaker when the speech has
no lexical content (as in “mmm, mm mm mmm”).
Morton and Trehub (2001) compared older chil-
dren’s and adults’ ability to identify the emotion in
the speaker’s voice when the lexical content and the
prosody of an utterance provide incongruent emo-
tional information (e.g., saying “I am very happy”
with a sad voice). They found that the majority of
4-year-olds and half of 10-year-olds responded on
the basis of content whereas adults’ judgment was
based exclusively on prosody. Thus, the ability to
use prosodic cues to judge the speaker’s emotional
state involves protracted development.
The importance of affective prosody as a cue
to the speaker’s emotional state varies across
cultures. In European and North American
cultures, a greater proportion of information is
conveyed by verbal content than through non-
verbal or paralinguistic contextual clues (Hall,
1976; Kitayama, 2000; Markus & Kitayama,
1991). According to Hall (1976), these cultures
and languages are “low-context.” They contrast
“high-context” cultures (e.g., many Asian cul-
tures). In these cultures, nonverbal and paralin-
guistic clues such as tone of voice generally have
greater importance than the verbal content of an
utterance. In support of this distinction, using
a Stroop-like task, Ishii, Reyes, and Kitayama
(2003) found that Japanese attended to tone of
voice more than to lexical content in judging the
emotion conveyed by the speech.
Americans showed the opposite pattern.
Furthermore, they found that Tagalog-English
bilinguals in the Philippines attended more to the
tone of voice when they did the task in Tagalog
and when they did it in English. Thus, attentional
biases are more likely to be caused by cultural than
linguistic factors.
Cultures also differ in the emotions emphasized
in the socialization process. In Polynesian cultures,
such as Western Samoa, for example, display and
recognition of emotion are highly important, and
affect-loaded expressions (e.g., curses and profani-
ties) are present in most speech acts. Examining
caregiver–child conversations in Western Samoa,
Ochs (1986) found that Samoan-speaking children
started using expressions with affect such as ta ita
(poor me) and tae (shit) several months before they
started using the corresponding neutral expressions
a’u (I) or leai (no!).
Clancy (1999) investigated how affect is linguis-
tically socialized in Japan by analyzing conversa-
tional data from three Japanese mother–child pairs
(in which children were between 1 year 11 months
and 2 years 5 months old). Three characteristics of
the Japanese socialization of affect became appar-
ent. First, Japanese mothers and children did not
use the verb suki (like) to express love for one
another or someone else, unlike English-speaking
mothers and children who use “love” and “like”
to express their feelings for people in the conversa-
tion (Brown & Dunn, 1992; Dunn, Bretherton &
Munn, 1987). Second, explicit mention of anger by
the use of the verb okoru (be/get angry) was very
rare. Third, while English-speaking 2-year-olds
have never been reported to use expressions of shame
and embarrassment, Japanese 2-year-olds and their
mothers used the word hazukasii (ashamed/embar-
rassed) to criticize socially inappropriate behaviors
(e.g., passing wind and wetting pants).
The early socialization of shame occurs in other
cultures too. Schieffelin (1986) discusses shaming
routines in caregiver–child conversations in the
Kaluli community. The shaming routines occur
when caregivers become frustrated by the actions of
children who are expected to know better. The rou-
tines include name-calling, negative imperatives,
mock offerings, rhetorical questions, sarcastic state-
ments, and third-party threats. Shieffelin observed
that from about 6 months of age, infants are involved
in routines of shaming. When infants are around
14 months, caregivers start using expressions such
as “Aren’t you ashamed?! (Go:no: mo:sindilowaba?!)”
or “Be ashamed! (Sindiloma!)” in order to teach
children how to control their actions. And around
age 2, caregivers begin to teach their children how
to shame younger children. As a result, by age 2,
children in the Kaluli community learn how to use
the expressions of shaming themselves.
Studies in English-speaking communities
show that caregivers’ discussions of emotion with
F i t n e va , M at s u i 117
their children, including explanation of emo-
tion and responsiveness toward children’s emo-
tions, predict children’s understanding of emotion
(Denham, Zoller, & Couchoud, 1994; Dunn,
Brown, Slomkowski, Teska, & Youngblade,
1991; Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998;
Taumoepeau & Ruffman, 2006; 2008). This offers
an explanation of the cross-cultural differences in
the time course of acquisition of expressions of
affect mentioned earlier. Children who grow up in
a community in which linguistic display of affect is
encouraged, as in Western Samoa, are more sensi-
tive to linguistic expressions of affect and learn how
to display affect linguistically earlier than children
growing up in a community where verbal expres-
sion of affect is more constrained. Similarly, in
cultures where caregivers use the notion of shame
frequently to teach children normative behaviors,
as in Japan and Kaluli, children acquire expressions
of shame earlier.
Indexes of Epistemic Stance
The information that speakers present in commu-
nication varies in quality. This quality can be honestly
revealed or distorted as a result of interests in elicit-
ing particular behavior in the addressee or concerns
about reputation and future interactions. Indicating
the source of information is one way of characterizing
information quality, and this is what evidentials, men-
tioned in the opening of the chapter, do. A number of
recent investigations in different languages show that
evidentials are acquired relatively late, between the
ages of 6 and 9 or later (Fitneva & Matsui, 2009).
Here, we focus on another index of information qual-
ity, namely expressions of one’s certainty about the
information which emerge earlier than evidentials.
Mental state verbs such as think and know indi-
cate specific mental states. However, these verbs
can also be used as expressions of speaker certainty,
i.e., as a type of epistemic marker (Shatz, Wellman,
& Silber, 1983). In fact, English-speaking children
first appear to use think and know to express vary-
ing degrees of certainty regarding the content of
the complement proposition (Bloom & Beckwith,
1989). Diessel and Tomasello (2001) furthermore
found that children use think initially in the par-
enthetical formula I think with a meaning similar
to maybe.
Moore, Bryant, and Furrow (1989) tested
English-speaking children’s understanding of
the mental state verbs think and know as epis-
temic markers. They hid an object in one of two
boxes, and children received verbal clues from two
118 T h e E m e rg e nc e a n d De v e l opm e n t of L a ng uag e Ac r o ss C u lt u r e s
different puppets about where the object was. The
descriptions of the location were prefixed by I know
or by I think as in “I know it’s in the red box” or
“I think it’s in the blue box.” Four-year-olds were
able to differentiate the degree of speaker certainty
associated with each of the two verbs, whereas
3-year-olds were not.
In Japanese, speaker certainty is most frequently
expressed through sentence-ending particles.
Adopting the method used in Moore et al. (1989),
Matsui, Yamamoto, and McCagg (2006) presented
preschoolers with hidden object tasks that prompted
them to make decisions based on two conflict-
ing utterances, each of which was marked with an
expression of a different degree of speaker certainty.
Three-year-olds showed a fairly good understanding
of the particles of speaker certainty kana (uncer-
tainty) and yo (certainty), but their understanding
of the equivalent verbs, omou (think) and shitteiru
(know) was poor. Matsui et al. suggested that one
possible reason for the earlier understanding of cer-
tainty particles is their input frequency, which was
supported by a frequency analysis of naturalistic
mother–child conversation data.
Cross-cultural difference in children’s under-
standing of linguistic markers of certainty was
found in Matsui, Rakoczy, Miura, and Tomasello
(2009). These authors compared Japanese chil-
dren’s understanding of linguistic markers of
speaker certainty with that of German children in
relation to their understanding of the false belief
of the speaker. Japanese and German 3-year-olds
observed a story in which the protagonist ended up
having a false belief about the location of an object.
Then the protagonist told the child in which of two
potential locations he believed the object was hid-
den. Crucially, in one condition, the protagonist’s
speech was appended by a linguistic marker of cer-
tainty (e.g., “Surely the apple is in the blue box and
not in the red box,” and in other condition, by a
linguistic marker of uncertainty (e.g., “Maybe the
apple is in the blue box and not in the red box”).
Having listened to the protagonist’s speech, the
child was asked to point at the location where the
protagonist is going to look for the object first.
Japanese children correctly predicted where the
protagonist will search for the object first when the
protagonist’s speech included the certainty marker,
but their performance was at chance when the
speech included the uncertainty marker. German
children’s predictions were not affected by the cer-
tainty markers in the protagonist’s speech. Thus,
unlike Japanese children, German children were
not sensitive to the linguistic markers of speaker
certainty. The result indicates that the acquisition
of the linguistic markers of speaker certainty vary
across cultures. As in the case of emotional expres-
sions, the variability in acquisition is likely related
to the frequency and consistency of the markers in
the input (Matsui et al., 2009).
Linguistic Indexes of Social Identity and
Social Acts: Linguistic Politeness
Politeness is a communication phenomenon rec-
ognized across cultures (Brown & Levinson, 1987;
Leech, 2006). Nevertheless, politeness is given dif-
ferent definitions by different researchers that vary
according to the theoretical framework and goal of
the research (Meier, 1995). The difficulty in defin-
ing politeness may partly be due to the lack of
consistency in the forms used to express politeness
across cultures and the diversity of functions of dif-
ferent forms. Therefore, here, we take the notion
of politeness rather broadly to refer to the socially
appropriate ways of communicating. The socializa-
tion of politeness includes children’s learning of
linguistic indexes of social identity and social acts
(e.g., Burdelski, 2012). According to Ochs (1996),
social identity includes understanding a variety
of social roles (e.g., speaker, hearer, teacher, doc-
tor), relationships (e.g., kinship, occupational),
group identity (e.g., gender, class, ethnic), and rank
(e.g., employer and employee). Social acts, on the
other hand, refer to a variety of socially recognized
goal-directed behaviors, such as request, offer, and
compliment.
Ochs (1996) suggests that children quickly
learn linguistic indexes for the social identities of
the people they are talking to as well as particu-
lar expressions of sociocommunicative acts. For
example, in the highly stratified society of Western
Samoa, by the time children reach the two-word
stage, they understand the social rank indexed by
verbs such as sau (come) and alu (go), which are
used only in directives to inferiors, and aumai
(give, as in beggining), which is used in the impera-
tive and addressed to kin regardless of status. Many
other studies have also demonstrated that children
develop understanding of culturally specific rules
of linguistic politeness between the ages of 2 and 5
(Ochs, 1988; Schieffelin, 1990; Shatz & Gelman,
1973). One of the most intriguing questions that
politeness raises is whether explicit instructions are
required for children to learn polite language. In
the following paragraphs, we review some of the
existing findings about this questions by focusing
on two phenomena: (a) acquisition of politeness
forms and routines and (b) acquisition of indirect
directives.
Politeness Forms and Routines
Acquisition of formulaic expressions of polite-
ness such as “thank you” and “please” requires
understanding of social stance and social norms.
These expressions are often categorized as polite-
ness routines and have been a focus of much
research in language socialization (e.g., Burdelski
& Cook, 2012).
Middle-class mothers in the United States take
an active role in teaching their children politeness
routines and expressions. Mother–child conver-
sations show that American mothers frequently
instruct their children about the use of formulaic
expressions of politeness (e.g., “please,” “thank
you,” and “excuse me”; Gleason, Perlmann, &
Grief, 1984; Gleason & Weintraub, 1976; Grief &
Gleason, 1980). The ways children acquire polite-
ness formulae, therefore, appear to be rather dif-
ferent from the ways they acquire word meaning
or syntax, for which parents rarely give explicit
instructions. By learning how to use politeness
formulae appropriately, children learn important
social rules as well as stylistic variations.
Studies on the acquisition of politeness forms
and routines outside English-speaking com-
munities also suggest that caregivers’ explicit
instructions, modeling, and prompting facili-
tate early acquisition of politeness formulae.
Demuth (1986) reports that Basotho caregiv-
ers often use their prompting routines to teach
young children (2- to 3-year-olds) how to use
politeness formulae for thanking, greeting, and
respect for elders, among others. According to
Clancy (1986), Japanese caregivers frequently
use explicit instructions and modeling to teach
young children (1- to 2-year-olds) when to use
a specific politeness formula because Japanese
is particularly rich in formulaic expressions of
politeness. Japanese caregivers’ explicit modeling
and instructions to teach verbal and nonverbal
expressions of gratitude and politeness may pre-
pare young Japanese children to function well in
a culture that values conformity.
Japanese children also have to learn the polite
and formal form of predicates called “masu
form” (Clancy, 1986; Cook, 1997 Fukuda, 2005;
Nakamura, 1996). The masu form belongs to the
linguistic category of “addressee honorifics” (tein-
eigo in Japanese). Addressee honorifics register
F i t n e va , M at s u i 119
formality and politeness and are contrasted with
the plain forms that register informality and casu-
alness. As such, when addressee honorifics are used
in conversation, they indicate the speaker’s consid-
eration and respect for the addressee. The speaker
needs to consider several social indexes in order
to understand when and how to use the addressee
honorifics, including social position, power, age,
and sex of the addressee. In addition, more dynamic
social factors such as ingroup/outgroup distinction
and the topic of conversation seem to determine the
appropriateness of their usage.
Cook (1997) investigated how often and in what
situations caregivers use the masu form with their
children. The analysis of caregiver–child conversa-
tions revealed that, most of the time, caregivers use
plain forms, which are informal and casual, when
they talk to their children. Although the masu
form was only occasionally used, the function of
the polite form in caregiver–child conversation was
clear: caregivers used the masu form in order to
express their responsibilities in the household (e.g.,
serving food, teaching social norms, and scolding)
and to present themselves as public selves (e.g.,
quoting someone else’s speech). Children them-
selves tended to use the masu form in the context of
role-play (Cook, 1997; Fukuda, 2005). By 3 years
of age, their choice of the masu form was appro-
priate and revealed basic sociocultural knowledge
about the use of polite language in conversation.
Peer interactions may also play a role in chil-
dren’s learning of how to be polite. According to
Burdelski (2010), teachers at Japanese preschools
often encourage children to engage in polite-
ness routines with peers and discuss how to use
verbal and nonverbal expressions of politeness by
using explicit instructions and prompting. Many
children in the preschool he observed engaged in
politeness routines such as greeting, leave-taking,
offer/invitation, appreciation, compliance, and
apology. He also reports that some children were
trying to encourage peers to join politeness rou-
tines by prompting them with what to say.
Nevertheless, children’s use of politeness rou-
tines in kindergartens or preschools may be quite
different from that in a family environment.
Ladegaard (2004) demonstrates that young chil-
dren in Denmark tend to use unmitigated obliges
(an utterance that demands a response from the lis-
tener, including questions, directives, prohibitions,
and imperatives) more often than mitigated ones.
Furthermore, he found that the tendency was the
same for boys and girls, unlike in the United States,
120 T h e E m e rg e nc e a n d De v e l opm e n t of L a ng uag e Ac r o ss C u lt u r e s
where girls are usually found to be more polite
than boys (Sachs, 1987; Kyratzis & Guo, 1996).
Ladegaard (2004) points out that Danish chil-
dren may have less adult contact and spend more
time with peers than do children in other Western
countries and suggests that such upbringing may
explain why both boys and girls in Denmark use
fewer politeness routines than children in the
United States and Japan.
Indirect Directives
One of the central topics of research on the
acquisition of linguistic politeness has been chil-
dren’s understanding and use of indirect directives
(Ervin-Tripp & Gordon, 1986). In the framework
of speech act theory, directives, which include
commands, requests, and orders, are defined as
speech acts in which the speaker attempts to make
the hearer change a state of affairs (Searle, 1976).
Indirect directives (e.g., “Can you pass me the
salt?”) are typically considered more polite than
their direct counterparts (e.g., “Pass me the salt”),
but they are harder to process (Clark & Lucy, 1975).
Studies focusing on English-speaking infants’
and toddlers’ understanding of indirect directives
in naturalistic conversation with their caregivers
demonstrates that by 2 years of age, children can
interpret indirect requests (e.g., “Why don’t you …”,
“Can you …”) as a call to action (Bucciarelli, Colle,
& Bara, 2003; Ervin-Tripp, 1970; Shatz, 1978).
An experimental study by Reeder (1980) revealed
that English-speaking children can distinguish the
illocutionary force of requests and offers between
2;6 and 3;0. For example, the utterance “Would
you like to play on the train?” can be interpreted
either as a request to play on the train (e.g., “I
want you to play on the train”) or an offer of an
opportunity to play (e.g. “I will let you play on the
train”) according to the context. In another study,
Ledbetter and Dent (1988) compared preschoolers’
understanding of direct requests, indirect embed-
ded requests, and “hint requests” (e.g., “The water
is spilling …”). They found that 5-year-olds com-
plied with all request forms more frequently than
did 3-year-olds. In addition, children who had
higher language comprehension ability were found
to be better at understanding syntactically complex
requests. Thus, understanding of indirect direc-
tives begins to develop during the early preschool
period.
Children’s ability to use indirect directives
appropriately develops more slowly. James (1978)
elicited English-speaking children’s commands
and requests to three types of addressees (an adult,
a peer, and younger child). Four- and five-year-olds
adjusted the level of politeness of their commands
according to the addressee’s age but when they
requested a favor they used the polite forms regard-
less of the addressee’s age. In contrast, Georgalidou
(2008) showed that Greek preschoolers reveal
rarely used polite directives with either their teach-
ers or their peers (although they knew how to use
the polite directive forms). Axia and Baroni (1985)
analyzed spontaneous requests made by Italian
children (5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds) in different social
circumstances. They found that whereas 7-year-
olds could use indirect requests after less polite,
direct requests failed, only 9-year-olds could adjust
their use of indirect requests according to the
context.
One of the reasons why it takes time for children
to be able to use indirect directives appropriately
may be that, unlike socialization of politeness rou-
tines, there is little explicit instruction or prompt-
ing on the part of caregivers as to when to choose
more polite alternatives. Still, by 9 or 10 years of
age, children seem to acquire the culturally spe-
cific rules of when to use indirect directives. For
instance, Hungarian and Norwegian are character-
ized by a direct and an indirect style respectively
of expressing needs and desires. Correspondingly,
Hungarian children (4–10 years) typically express
their requests and commands in a rather direct
way, whereas Norwegian children (4–10 years)
adopt more indirect ways to issue directives when
the relationship between the speaker and addressee
is not intimate (Hollos & Beeman, 1978).
Summary
Mastering the languistic tools that allow us to
navigate communicative interaction successfully—
understanding and expressing emotion, certainty,
and politeness—shows early origins and protracted
development. The evidence for early sensitivity in
these domains testifies to their importance in struc-
turing communicative interaction cross-culturally.
The evidence for protracted development attests
to the complexity of communication. Protracted
development may be adaptive in allowing for
the development of skills that have to be flexibly
applied to different situations.
Future Directions
Children grow in a cradle of social interac-
tions. Yet the relation of language development to
social and more broadly cultural factors remains to
be fully grasped. In this section, we briefly high-
light three salient questions: what is the scope of
the influence of culture on language development?
What is the mechanism of this influence? And
to what methods and sources of evidence should
researchers direct their attention?
Scope
Given the role of syntax as a defining feature of
(although they knew how to use polite directives)
language in generativist theories, one may wonder
whether culture may influence the development of
syntactic knowledge. Initial proposals here raised
skepticism. For example, Bruner (1981) argued that
children may extract structural word-order knowl-
edge from interactions in which adults enact the
meaning of sentences. However, both blind and deaf
children, for whom audio-visual correspondences
are largely unavailable, develop syntactic knowledge
(e.g., Goldin Meadow & Mylander, 1998; Landau &
Gleitman, 1985). Thus, adults’ enactment of mean-
ing is clearly not necessary for syntactic development.
Contemporary sociopragmatic accounts of
syntactic development (e.g., Tomasello, 2000)
emphasize children’s early-emerging social com-
petencies, for instance, children’s ability to draw
inferences about speakers’ communicative intent
and their motivation to share meaning. They also
emphasize children’s robust capacities for statis-
tical analysis of the input and the environment
(Saffran, 2003). Together, children’s social com-
petencies and statistical computation capacities
enable them to discover not just the meaning of
words but also the communicative purpose of dif-
ferent language structures and, thus, the latent
structural organization of language. As an exam-
ple, consider Ochs and Schieffelin’s (1994) find-
ing of discrepancies in the frequencies with which
parents and children produce certain structures.
As mentioned earlier, young Samoan children
use the first-person affect-marked pronoun ta ita
(poor I/ poor me) earlier and more often than
the neutral form a’u (I). The latter, however, is
much more common in adult speech. Ochs and
Schieffelin argue that children’s use of ta ita
reflects their understanding of the social indexi-
cality of linguistic forms. Young Samoan children
are at the bottom of the social hierarchy and are
expected to engage in begging. Statistical analy-
sis of the environments in which different forms
are used could further support children’s learn-
ing of forms appropriate for their social standing
and the tasks that they have to accomplish. Thus,
F i t n e va , M at s u i 121
recent sociopragmatic accounts provide a promis-
ing framework for investigating the role of social
factors on syntactic development.
Mechanism
What is the nature of the mechanism through
which culture influences language development?
Some of the evidence we presented could be inter-
preted as suggesting that social factors play a neces-
sary role in language learning (e.g., social gating
in phonological and semantic development). This
contrasts with positions that social factors are
simply contributing to language development.
Information-integration theories (e.g., Hollich
et al., 2000) as well as dynamic systems theories
cast most constraints on language development,
including social factors, as soft—contributing but
not necessary—constraints. The advantage of these
proposals is that they recognize the redundancy
in the information sources constraining language
learning. They also easily account for the fact that
language learning happens in vastly different envi-
ronments. Further articulating the gating and con-
tributing conceptualizations of the role of social
factors is important, as is examining their applica-
tion to various aspects of language development.
Method
Perhaps the greatest challenge for research on
how culture shapes the development of language
is methodological. Very often, all the data are
descriptive or correlational. This is not an accident.
Vygotsky (1929) argued that the study of higher
mental processes requires methodologies recogniz-
ing the reciprocal links between people, their activ-
ities, and the contexts in which these activities take
place. But the child-in activity-in context dialectics
does not easily lend itself to traditional experimen-
tal methods. We next consider two areas of research
that, in our view, not only strengthen the case for
a deep relation between language development and
culture, but also provide methodologies that could
be useful to researchers in this area: second lan-
guage acquisition and embodiment.
The task of learning a second language later in
life is a formidable cognitive problem and one that is
likely affected by biological factors (Lantolf, 2000;
Lenneberg, 1967). But, as anyone who has tried to
learn a foreign language would testify, communica-
tive competence takes more than obtaining excel-
lent grades on dictation and grammar tests. Being
able to use a foreign language requires sensitivity to
what native speakers of the language speak about
122 T h e E m e rg e nc e a n d De v e l opm e n t of L a ng uag e Ac r o ss C u lt u r e s
and how they do this. Second-language learning
research may provide a window into language–cul-
ture relations that are also present in first-language
learning but perhaps invisible because children are
born open to any culture and language.
Following sociocultural theories,
second-language educators have been empha-
sizing building cultural understanding in
second-language learners (e.g., Lantolf, 2000).
Beyond the relatively transparent effect that under-
standing culture-specific communication practices
(e.g., of greeting and turn-taking routines) may
have on language development, cultural under-
standing may facilitate grammatical learning.
For example, greater attention to context may be
more important for learning a pro-drop language
or a language allowing null arguments than a lan-
guage in which all arguments of the verb have to be
overtly realized. Attention to status and mastering
a system of interactions based on status is required
in learning a language with a honorific system.
Although status affects interactions across cultures,
foreign-language learners need to acquire a novel
normative system. Testing hypotheses such as these
could enrich our understanding of the relation
between cultural and language learning.
Recent research has also made a strong case
that linguistic representations are not disembod-
ied abstract symbols (as argued by Chomsky) but
perceptually and experientially grounded symbols
(Barsalou, 1999). There is growing developmen-
tal support for this position. For example, Iverson
(2010) highlights the correlation between children’s
ability to manipulate objects and the onset of two-
word combinations. Other research suggests that, at
least for young children, words refer to objects-in-
space as opposed to abstract object categories devoid
of locational features (Samuelson, Smith, Perry, &
Spencer, 2011). Research with adults further reveals
that action simulation is involved in language com-
prehension processes (e.g., Glenberg & Kaschak,
2002). These findings suggest that the physical
and material settings in which children grow may
have more subtle and diverse influence on lan-
guage development than previously thought (i.e.,
vocabulary). To the extent that culture organizes
infants’ physical and interactional environment,
particularly in terms of stability and opportuni-
ties for movement and action, they mesh well with
sociocultural theories. Further research combining
insights of sociocultural and embodiment theories
could extend our knowledge of how language devel-
ops across cultures.
Conclusion
Language development is an essential part of
the broader process of children’s socialization. In
learning the language of their community, chil-
dren are not just acquiring a vocabulary and a
grammar: they are acquiring a tool of their cul-
ture and a skill to use this tool. The mastery they
develop is key to their integration and functioning
in their culture. Not surprisingly, the evidence sug-
gests that language development is both a process
that is molded by the cultural beliefs surrounding
children and a process that is acutely sensitive to
social variables.
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 C H A P T E R

9 Early Emotional Development

in Cultural Perspective

Wolfgang Friedlmeier, Feyza Corapci, and Oana Benga

Abstract
Cultural differences of emotions are well documented for adults. In contrast, the developmental
pathways for these culture-specific ontogenetic outcomes are less known and studied so far. However,
several theoretical frameworks were constructed and tested over the past several years to specifically
describe and explain emotional development within a cultural perspective, demonstrating that this
topic is currently of high interest in the scientific community and beyond. The goal of this chapter
is to provide an overview of the current knowledge about cultural commonalities and differences of
emotional development from infancy to kindergarten. The authors present studies on temperament
and genetics that aim to explain cultural differences, and they also present studies on socialization
practices and beliefs that serve to transfer cultural knowledge and rules about emotions to the next
generation.
Key Words:  emotional competence, emotion expression, facial expression, temperament, emotion
regulation, ideal affect, emotion norms, emotion socialization, emotional competence models

The study of emotion from a cultural and devel-
opmental perspective emphasizes two central char-
acteristics. First, emotions are not only biologically
driven processes, but also are symbolically medi-
ated activities that are culturally shaped from birth
(e.g., Holodynski & Friedlmeier, 2006; Mesquita &
Albert, 2007; Saarni, 1998). For instance, research
on the neural basis of emotions shows a universal
mechanism for the role of amygdala in the activa-
tion of fear and anxiety through the appraisal of
potential threat cues (LeDoux, 1995). Yet there is
also emerging evidence for cultural specificity in
the neural processing of emotional cues. Research
shows a more enhanced amygdala response for pro-
cessing fear stimuli of one’s own culture over that
of another culture (Chiao et al., 2008). Another
line of research points out that the same emotion
may carry different meanings across cultures in
relation to cultural norms (e.g., Trommsdorff &
Cole, 2011).
Second, a developmental perspective points to
the fact that emotions have dyadic qualities: infants
who have limited regulation skills express emotions
to signal to their caregivers about their state. As
caregivers regulate infants’ emotions vicariously
(Kopp, 1989), infants start to learn emotion norms
through these interactive regulations. The norma-
tive character of emotions, in turn, leads to inves-
tigating cultural models of emotional competence
as well as the transmission mechanisms of these
cultural expectations to children and the conse-
quences for children’s emotional development (e.g.,
Friedlmeier, 2005; Holodynski & Friedlmeier,
2006).
Research on early emotional development
requires a culture-sensitive approach to overcome
ethnocentrically biased features at the theoretical
and methodological levels. When the first author
of this chapter worked as a PhD student at the
University of Konstanz, Germany, he became

127
involved in a cross-cultural study about the
development of empathy and prosocial behavior
in young children. This project involved German
and Japanese mothers who described in a semi-
projective questionnaire their own reactions,
their reasoning, and emotions in several conflict
situations with their child (e.g., child still wants
to swing but mother wants to leave). German
mothers described their own emotional reaction
as becoming angry, empathic, and (im)patient. In
contrast, Japanese mothers used neither an emo-
tion term nor sentences to express an inherently
emotional state but gave rather general behavioral
descriptions when asked about their emotional
reaction (e.g. “I let her still continue for a while”
or “I tell her that we need to leave as others expect
us home”1). However, when the project colleague
from Japan coded the statements, he could iden-
tify emotions in these answers. After a discussion
within the project team, we presented these state-
ments to several Japanese exchange students, as
well as to German students, and asked them to
evaluate the emotional content. The result was
surprising: the German students did not recognize
much emotional content, whereas the Japanese
students agreed strongly about the same emotions
behind each statement. This agreement can be
seen as an indication that Japanese consider emo-
tions more context- and less person-specific. In
Japan, verbal expressions of behavioral descrip-
tions seem to represent a generally felt emotion,
which differs from the perspective in Western
Europe and the United States, where emotions
are perceived as unique individual experiences
and are less context-related.
These insights were a strong indication of the
“risk of using culturally biased conceptual catego-
ries and explaining the categories from our familiar
cultural position” (Saarni, 1998, p. 651). As a con-
sequence, cross-cultural research requires working
closely with researchers of the respective cultures
and applying qualitative methods to discover
culture-specific phenomena (see also Jensen, 2012).
This chapter is structured in three parts. The
first part gives a short overview of theoretical
approaches. The second part takes a closer look at
children’s emotional development, with an empha-
sis on evolutionary, genetic, and temperament stud-
ies. The third part presents socialization practices to
describe cultural commonalities and differences in
emotional development. Because this work is part
of the Handbook’s section on “Birth, Infancy and
Toddlerhood,” we mostly focus on early childhood.
128 E a r ly E mo t ion a l De v e l opm e n t i n C u lt u r a l Pe r s pe c t i v e
The number of empirical studies about emotions in
infancy from a cultural perspective is still limited,
and socialization processes may become more rel-
evant at an older age. Therefore, we also include an
overview of cross-cultural research examining chil-
dren’s emotional development from early through
middle childhood.
“Culture” was defined by national and eth-
nic groups in most of the cross-cultural studies
reviewed, and the comparisons between East Asian
and US samples predominated in the literature.
We also integrate relevant studies from other coun-
tries, as well as within-country comparisons, and
we underscore cultural characteristics that may
explain differences. The final section identifies
major gaps in the knowledge about the impact of
culture on emotional development and offers sug-
gestions for future research.
Theoretical Frameworks to
Study Emotional Development
in Cultural Perspective
The complexity of the concept of emotion (i.e.,
expression, feeling, appraisal, motivational com-
ponent, valence, arousal, physiological reactions)
and emotion regulation is reflected in the wide
range of theoretical perspectives for studying emo-
tions (see Holodynski & Friedlmeier, 2006; 2012).
Some general theoretical frameworks serve to study
emotional development in cultural perspective.
Although those theories agree about the interplay
among biological, individual, and sociocultural
factors, they weigh these components differently.
Evolutionary-based theories focus on genetic
and temperamental factors and emphasize the bio-
logical and individual characteristics for emotional
development. Genetic studies analyze the impact of
certain genes for temperamental differences, which
may lead to further cultural differences in the emo-
tional reactivity. By contrast, sociocultural theories
(e.g., the bioecological model by Bronfenbrenner &
Morris, 2006; the developmental niche by Super &
Harkness, 1986; sociocultural theory by Rogoff,
2003; relationship model by Chen & Rubin, 2011)
focus on cultural factors and socialization prac-
tices. Common to all these sociocultural theories
is the aim to describe the individual as an active
contributor to his or her development and the
importance of that social context for development
(see also Edwards, Ren, & Brown, in this volume).
In the past several years, more specific cul-
tural theories for emotional development have
been constructed to describe and explain cultural
differences in children’s emotional develop-
ment. For example, the internalization model
of emotional development by Holodynski and
Friedlmeier (2006) argues that children’s emotion
expression and regulatory competence becomes
more differentiated and self-initiated (from inter-
to intrapersonal regulation) while still guided
by parental interactions and cultural norms.
Children’s expression and modulation of emo-
tions are specifically shaped through caregivers’
emotion socialization, which involves caregivers’
expression and modeling of emotions and their
specific reactions during emotionally charged
situations (Thompson & Meyer, 2007). The inter-
nalization model primarily focuses on children’s
emotion expression as a culturally constructed
sign system, and caregivers’ emotion socialization
practices are one mediator of the relation between
culture and children’s emotional functioning.
Thus, the acquisition of expression signs in inter-
personal interaction leads to a transformation of
the biologically determined precursor emotions of
neonates into the culturally functional and differ-
entiated emotions of adults.
The internalization model and other recent
cultural theories (e.g., Mesquita & Albert, 2007;
Trommsdorff, 2012) also argue that the indepen-
dent and interdependent cultural models of self and
relationships in a given sociocultural context act to
organize emotional development. These theories
provide definitions and goals for self and social rela-
tionships. In Western industrialized urban commu-
nities (e.g., the United States, Canada, Germany),
the prevailing cultural model of the independent
self-construal draws on promoting self-sufficiency,
autonomy, and independence (e.g., creativity, asser-
tiveness; Markus & Kitayama, 2001). Conversely,
in non-Western, collectivistic societies, as in China
or Japan, with a prevailing cultural model of inter-
dependent self-construal, individuals are defined
by relationships and cultural values such as proper
demeanor in hierarchical relationships (e.g., respect
for elders), social harmony, and prioritized group
interests (Markus & Kitayama, 2001). These dif-
ferent self-construals have implications for different
emotion competence models, as well as for related
parental strategies to regulate young children’s
emotions, as we outline in the section “Emotion
Norms and Socialization Practices.” Because the
reported studies cover a broad range of theoretical
approaches, the respective theoretical frameworks
of the different studies will be described briefly in
the next two sections.
Cultural Differences in Children’s
Emotions and Emotional Functioning
Cross-Cultural Differences in Facial
Expressivity
According to evolutionarily inspired theories of
emotion, such as those of Ekman (1992), Levenson
et al. (2008), or Izard (1991; 2009), humans are
considered equipped with innate basic emotions
differentiated in terms of facial expression, physi-
ological body reaction, and subjective feeling.
However, the emotional repertoire of neonates is
rather primitive, consisting of five so-called pre-
cursor emotions (Sroufe, 1996), namely: distress,
disgust, startle reaction, interest, and endogenous
pleasure. Endogenous pleasure in neonates does
not exhibit the coincidence between the typical
external sign of it—the smile—and an externally
observable cause (Holodynski & Friedlmeier,
2006). The neonatal smile occurs in the absence
of recognized/recognizable external or internal
(visceral) stimuli and can be also observed during
rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. These precur-
sor emotions are not clearly marked by the facial
expression with respect to their temporal and spa-
tial features (Holodynski & Friedlmeier, 2012).
Such neonate precursor emotions are considered
universal, although they have not been investigated
cross-culturally in a systematic manner.
Camras (2011) postulates progressive differ-
entiation of basic emotions (e.g., anger, fear, sad-
ness, joy) from such initial generalized affect states,
distinguished only by valence, to more adultlike
emotional discrete states under the influence of
a wide range of factors (including environmental
ones). In light of this framework, although the
starting point is similar/universal, the emotions
are expected to become more differentiated at the
interface with social and cultural variables. Camras
and colleagues provided a series of fine-grained
analyses using Baby Facial Action Coding System
(BabyFACS) that offers a comprehensive, ana-
tomically based system for coding facial expres-
sions based on discrete, minimally distinguishable
actions of the facial muscles. They showed that
by 5 months, US and Japanese infants produced
similar negative emotional expressions in an arm
restraint procedure, but US children responded
more quickly (Camras, Oster, Campos, Miyake, &
Bradshaw, 1992). In another study, Camras et al.
(1998) showed that by 11 months, Chinese infants
demonstrated a longer latency to show facial dis-
tress following an anger/frustration episode (gentle
arm restraint), as well as a fear-inducing procedure
F r i e dl m e i e r , C or a p c i, Be ng a 129
(growling toy gorilla head); fewer Duchenne smiles
(i.e., genuine rather than social smiles) during the
baseline preceding the introduction of the nega-
tive emotion stimulus; and less overall expressivity
than their Japanese and US counterparts. In con-
clusion, it seems that Chinese infants, followed by
Japanese children, have a tendency to display less
positive and negative emotions and a longer latency
to respond.
Another illustrative study addresses the social
smile—the first facial expression of pleasure.
An acquisition around the second month of life,
it seems to peak universally at about 4 months,
this age being similar in samples ranging from
the United States, Israel, Uganda, and Japan
(see Super & Harkness, 2010). However, the
absolute rate of smiling ranges from 5% to 20%
(Super, 1981), as shown by studies from Africa,
Europe, the Middle East, and the United States,
and there is increasing divergence in subsequent
months (Super & Harkness, 2010). As revealed by
Wörmann, Holodynski, Kärtner, and Keller (2012)
in their comparative study, although at 6 weeks the
frequency of social smiling was similar for German
infants and for Nso infants from Cameroon, at
12 weeks differences already emerged: in German
dyads, both members smiled to each other and imi-
tated each other more often than in Cameroonian
dyads (see Figure 9.1). The most probable explana-
tion stands in the Nso parenting ethnotheory that
does not value dialogic mother–infant communi-
cation and infant smiling (Keller & Otto, 2009),
while it emphasizes a different form of maternal
contingency than the German one, namely, proxi-
mal parenting strategies (e.g., body contact, body
25
Mother Muenster
Mother Nso
20
Infant Muenster
Infant Nso
Duration (%)
15
10
0
Week 6
Maternal and infant smile during mutual gazing
Fig. 9.1  Duration of maternal and infant smiling during mutual gazing for dyads in Muenster (Germany, n = 20) and in Cameroon
(Nso, n = 24). Duration is expressed in percentage over total observation time.
Source: Wörmann, Holodynski, Kärtner, & Keller (2012).
130 E a r ly E mo t ion a l De v e l opm e n t i n C u lt u r a l Pe r s pe c t i v e
stimulation; Kärtner, Keller, & Yovsi, 2010). Thus,
social-cultural models that can be described as
independent or interdependent (see Keller et al.,
2005) seem to shape from a very early age emo-
tional facial expressivity.
If emotional expressivity is permeable to
social-cultural influences so early in development,
it should not be surprising to find subsequent differ-
ences at preschool age, when children are expected
to have a full repertoire of basic emotions, as well
as social or self-conscious emotions (e.g., empathy,
shame, guilt, contempt). Camras, Bakeman, Chen,
Norris, and Cain (2006) compared four groups of
girls: US, Mainland Chinese, Chinese-American
nonadopted, and Chinese-American adopted to
US families. The US girls displayed more smiles
when compared to the other groups and more
disgust-related expressions and overall expressivity
compared to Mainland Chinese girls. Yet, congru-
ent with their adoptive culture, adopted American
Chinese girls showed more disgust expressions than
their Mainland Chinese counterparts. Maternal
attitudes toward childrearing (self-reported mater-
nal strictness, aggravation, positive expressiveness,
and cultural identification) correlated with chil-
dren’s facial expressivity, illustrating the shaping
of emotional expressivity by cultural and family
factors.
Cultural Differences in Temperament
Cross-Cultural Differences
in Reactivity
Although research is limited and there are
exceptions (Rosenblith & Anderson-Huntington,
1975), evidence generally indicates that several
Week 12
groups of Asian-origin infants (Chinese-American,
Japanese-American, Hmong) and Navajo children
(who supposedly are genetically related to these
groups) display lower irritability, less physical activ-
ity, and more (self-)quieting during infant testing
procedures as compared to European-American
children (Chisholm, 1983; Freedman, 1974;
Freedman & Freedman, 1969; Muret-Wagstaff &
Moore, 1989; Super & Harkness, 2010).
Direct behavioral observations with older
infants have also documented lower emotional
and behavioral reactivity as well as subdued affect
among Chinese-American infants as compared
to US infants (Kisilevsky, Muir, & Low, 1989;
Kuchner, 1981; Lewis, Ramsay, & Kawakami,
1993). However, when infants’ behavioral responses
as well as cortisol level as a biological marker for
stress were obtained during an inoculation proce-
dure, 4-month-old Japanese infants had the most
pronounced cortisol response coupled with a lower
behavioral response, whereas the Caucasian group
displayed a quicker intense behavioral reaction to
the pain stimulation and a longer latency to calm
down but a lower cortisol response. This study
draws attention to the biobehavioral approach to
obtain a more accurate picture of children’s reactiv-
ity and suggests that Asian infants tend to manifest
reactivity physiologically rather than behaviorally.
Similar findings have also been reported by Kagan
and colleagues (see Kagan & Fox, 2006) in exam-
ining behavioral inhibition of Chinese infants in
the face of novelty (see the section “Temperamental
Reactivity as Behavioral Inhibition”).
Data from parental evaluations of child tem-
perament confirm that infants from Western,
individualistic cultures (US, Finland, Spain or
Italy) experience higher levels of positive emotions
depicted by the “positive affectivity” dimension of
temperament, such as smiling/laughter, approach,
high-intensity pleasure, and reactivity (Gaias et al.,
2012; Gartstein et al., 2006; Gartstein, Slobodskaya,
& Kinsht, 2003; Gartstein, Slobodskaya, Putnam,
& Kinsht, 2009; Gartstein, Slobodskaya, Zylicz,
Gosztyła, & Nakagawa, 2010; Slobodskaya,
Gartstein, Nakagawa, & Putnam, 2013). In con-
trast to the observation studies, temperamental
studies based on parent ratings reveal that infants
from Asian, or more generally from collectivistic
cultures (China, Japan, Russia, Poland), seem to
experience more negative emotions as captured
by the “negative affectivity” dimension of tem-
perament, such as distress to limitation or fear. It
is plausible that parental evaluations of negative
emotions vary cross-culturally in relation to dif-
ferent emotion norms and related expectations by
parents.
Subtle differences were also delineated in the
comparison of US infants with Western European
countries such as Spain or Italy. Although the over-
all temperamental profile of Spanish children was
closer to that of US children than to Chinese chil-
dren (who were also included in the study), they
showed an increasing tendency for smiling/laugh-
ter with age, as compared to their US counterparts
who displayed higher levels of stability for this tem-
peramental subdimension (Gartstein et al., 2006).
A similar developmental trend was found in the
case of Italian infants (Montirosso, Cozzi, Putnam,
Gartstein, & Borgatti, 2011). Different focuses of
early parental practices might explain this pattern
of results. Research suggests that physical/cognitive
stimulation involving objects acts to foster early
individuality and assertiveness in the US infants,
while dyadic parent–child interactions, built on
close physical contact and aimed to enhance affili-
ativeness and connectedness is more emphasized
in Italy (Bornstein, Tamis-LeMonda, Hahn, &
Haynes, 2008; Bornstein et al., 2012).
Another interesting comparison refers to Russian
and Polish infants. By sharing similar Slavic cultural
backgrounds and collectivistic tendencies, at least
in part linked to their communist past, similarities
between the two groups were expected. However,
Russian infants comprised higher levels of “nega-
tive affectivity” and lower levels of “positive affec-
tivity” than US infants (Gartstein, Slobodskaya, &
Knisht, 2003; Gartstein, Knyazev, & Slobodskaya,
2005), whereas Polish children had similar ratings
on these two temperament subscales to their US
counterparts (Gartstein et al., 2010). These results
point to the fact that empirical data need to be col-
lected from more diverse cultural samples, even
from similar geographical regions or with similar
historical trajectories, before a relation between
cultural dimensions and emotionality can be con-
firmed with certainty.
Given the early manifestation of such a differ-
ential emotional reactivity, some researchers argue
that genetic mechanisms might provide the basis
for temperamental differences in emotional expres-
siveness (Kagan et al., 1994; Kagan & Fox, 2006).
From this perspective, genetic polymorphisms have
been lately considered in relation to cultural phe-
notypic differences. For example, the long allele of
dopamine transporter gene DRD4, associated with
novelty seeking, risk taking, and low inhibition,
F r i e dl m e i e r , C or a p c i, Be ng a 131
 90
PR China
80 Singapore Korea
Taiwan
70 Mexico
Brazil

Individualism-Collectivism
Russia Turkey
60
Argentina India Japan
50 Spain
Austria Israel
40 Estonia Poland
Finland
South Africa Germany
30 Sweden France
Denmark Italy
20 Hungary

10 USA Australia
UK
0
0 20 40 60 80 100
5-HTTLPR (% S allele)

Fig. 9.2  Results from correlation analysis between Hofstede’s individualism–collectivism index (reverse scored) and frequency of S
allele carriers of the 5-HTTLPR across 29 nations. Collectivistic nations showed higher prevalence of S allele carriers (r(29) = 0.70,
p < 0.0001).
Source: Chiao & Blizinsky (2010, p. 532).

seem to have a low frequency of only 5% in East Effortful Control and

Asian populations, as compared to South Americans
(69%) and North Americans (32%; Chen, Burton,
Greenberg, & Dmitrieva, 1999). So-called social
sensitivity genes have also been linked to cultural
parameters such as collectivism-individualism. The
short allele of serotonin gene 5-HTTLPR, associ-
ated with heightened sensitivity to both positive
and negative social influences, has been found to
be more prevalent in collectivist societies such as
China, Korea, Mexico, Brazil, and Turkey (Chiao
& Blizinsky, 2010; see Figure 9.2). The µ-opioid
receptor gene, with its G allele associated with
increased sensitivity to social rejection, and the
monoamine oxidase A variant MAOA-uVNTR
associated with social exclusion-related neural
activation, seem to be more frequent in collectiv-
ist cultures (Way & Lieberman, 2010). Although
not covering the whole story, the search for genetic
underpinnings of cross-cultural differences in con-
junction with environmental social/cultural influ-
ences might offer data of heuristic value for future
research. Nevertheless, genetic variation will not be
a main factor for cross-cultural variations because
human groups are genetically very similar, so that
cross-cultural behavior differences are overwhelm-
ingly due to mechanisms of sociocultural transmis-
sion (Heine & Norenzayan, 2006: see also Haun,
in this volume).
Emotion Regulation
Emotion regulation can be seen as a facet of
self-regulation, acknowledged as the ability to
control thought, action, and emotion as part of
goal-directed behavior (Rothbart, 2007). Emotion
regulation entails the self-regulatory dimension of
temperament, namely, effortful control that modu-
lates reactivity by the use of attention strategies,
behavioral inhibition, and self-soothing. Individual
differences in effortful control emerge at the end of
the first year of life, and children’s effortful control
continues to develop throughout the toddlerhood
and preschool years (Rothbart, 2007; Rothbart &
Bates, 2006). Early regulatory behaviors such as
orienting to external stimuli or self-soothing are
already present in the first year of life, and they
develop gradually over time to more independent
attempts with neurobiological maturation and
co-regulation with adults. Factor-analytic studies
have shown that infancy temperament subscales of
orienting, low-intensity pleasure, soothability, and
cuddliness loaded on the “regulatory” factor in the
Child Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ; Rothbart &
Ahadi, 1994). These scales represent potential pre-
cursors of effortful control.
With the exception of a few studies (Gartstein
et al., 2006), research evidence generally indicates
that US children are perceived by their mothers

132 E a r ly E mo t ion a l De v e l opm e n t i n C u lt u r a l Pe r s pe c t i v e

as displaying higher levels of “regulatory con-
trol” compared to children from Taiwan (Hsu,
Soong, Stigler, Hong, & Liang, 1981), Japan
(Slobodskaya et al., 2013; Windle, Iwawaki, &
Lerner, 1988), Russia (Gartstein et al., 2003),
and Italy (Cozzi et al., 2013; Montirosso et al.,
2011). On the other hand, compared to US moth-
ers, Italian mothers gave higher ratings to their
children on cuddliness (enjoyment and molding
of the body when being held by the parent), both
in infancy (Montirosso et al., 2011) and in tod-
dlerhood (Cozzi et al., 2013). This pattern of evi-
dence is consistent with the view that American
parents structure their child’s activities (explo-
ration and routine behaviors) in a less imposing
way. Although they provide rules, regulations,
and a supportive framework for interaction, this
guidance aims not to compromise the child’s
interest in such activities (see Bornstein, Putnick,
Heslington et al., 2008). Therefore, they expect
more self-regulatory behaviors for their children,
whereas the higher emphasis on affiliativeness/
connectedness characteristic of Italian families
may explain the higher levels of cuddliness of
Italian children.
Japanese infants and toddlers scored lower
for effortful control as compared to Russian and
US children in the study by Slobodskaya et al.
(2013). Although somewhat counterintuitive,
this result is convergent with other findings,
such as those of Ujiie et al. (2000) showing that,
by 11 months, Japanese infants used more of a
relational style of emotion regulation (i.e., being
more dependent on their mothers as compared to
US infants). Also, Friedlmeier and Trommsdorff
(1999) found the same kind of interdependence
in mother–child relationships when comparing
toddlers in Japan versus Germany in an emotion
regulation task evoked by witnessing another
person’s sadness (other-focused distress). The
Japanese mothers seemed to be more sensitive to
their children; however, maternal sensitivity did
not reduce the emotional distress in the child in
this situation, as was the case for the German
dyads. Japanese mothers do not yet expect that
the child is able to self-regulate so early in devel-
opment, and the child is not blamed/scolded
for it (see Trommsdorff & Kornadt, 2003). In a
similar situation (other-focused distress) without
the mother, Japanese preschoolers also showed
less regulatory skills to reduce the distress com-
pared to German children (Trommsdorff &
Friedlmeier, 2010).
Temperamental Reactivity
as Behavioral Inhibition
Kagan and colleagues compared Chinese-
American and non-Chinese-American infants
from the Boston area, showing that Chinese chil-
dren were less active and less vocal and positively
aroused to stimuli, yet displayed a pattern of high
basal heart rate and wariness to the unfamiliar (see
review in Kagan & Fox, 2006). The same pattern
was characteristic for Chinese infants from Beijing;
Kagan and colleagues showed that, as compared
to their US and Irish counterparts, 4-month-old
Chinese infants were less active and less irritable,
both behaviorally and vocally; of the three groups,
the highest reactivity was exhibited by American
infants (Kagan et al., 1994). Thus, Asian children
displayed lower levels of arousal and less variability
to stimulation (see Figure 9.3), particularities that
fit well with the profile of reduced emotional reac-
tivity already outlined.
Interestingly, the profile of high irritability and
motor activity in infancy seems to develop fur-
ther into a temperamental profile described by the
construct of behavioral inhibition—a pattern of
social reticence and anxiety/distress to unfamil-
iar and/or challenging situations (Kagan & Fox,
2006). A higher prevalence of behavioral inhibi-
tion in Chinese versus Canadian toddlers has been
demonstrated (Chen et al., 1998). Recently, the
cross-national comparison was expanded to include
three other countries—Italy, Australia, and South
Korea. Results of this study (Rubin et al., 2006a)
revealed that, although Italian and Australian tod-
dlers displayed less inhibited behaviors, Chinese,
followed by South Korean, children were the more
inhibited.
Although this could be interpreted in light of
genetically grounded cross-cultural differences,
one should not forget that, by toddlerhood, a sig-
nificant amount of socialization has already taken
place, primarily via parental influences. Linking
behavioral inhibition/shyness to parental percep-
tion of their toddlers’ temperamental characteris-
tic, Rubin et al. (2006b) found that Italian mothers
perceived their toddlers as less inhibited compared
to Canadian and Indian mothers. Also, Canadian
and, surprisingly, Indian mothers viewed their
children as less inhibited than the Chinese and
Korean mothers. Childrearing strategies correlate
differently with maternal perception of behavioral
inhibition/shyness in different cultures; positive
associations were significant not only with paren-
tal rejection (India), punitiveness (Canada and
F r i e dl m e i e r , C or a p c i, Be ng a 133
 60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Motor activity Cry
Fig. 9.3  Means and standard deviations for American, Irish, and Chinese 4-month-old infants. The means for motor activity are
the frequency of movements, crying is assessed in seconds, and the other behavior refers to the proportion of trials on which they
occurred.
Source: Kagan, Arcus, et al., 1994.
India), lack of acceptance (Canada and Italy), and
discouragement of independence (Italy), but also
with protectiveness (Korea) and parental accep-
tance (China; Chen et al., 1998, Rubin et al.,
2006b). Thus, there seem to be cultural differences
in parental perception of behavioral inhibition/shy-
ness, and such differences correlate with childrear-
ing strategies: parents validate/accept/protect this
individual temperamental profile in some cultures
(e.g., Korea, China), but invalidate/reject/punish it
in others (e.g., Canada, Italy, India).
Although research is limited, evidence gener-
ally indicates similar patterns of findings relating
shy-inhibited behavior to lack of peer acceptance
in non-Western countries such as Russia (Hart
et al., 2000) and China (Chen, Cen, Li, & He,
2005; Hart et al., 2000). Rejection by peers of
wary and socially withdrawn children has been
documented also in Argentina, Canada, Greece,
Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States (see
review in Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006). Of
particular importance, Chen and colleagues (2005)
indicate a progressive change in the perception of
this profile since the 1990s by urban Chinese ele-
mentary school children, namely from a positive to
a negative evaluation. Although the 1990 cohort
peer perception of shyness was positively associated
with social and academic achievements (r = .36,
respectively, r = .17, p <.001), the 2002 cohort’s cor-
responding associations were negative, as shyness
134 E a r ly E mo t ion a l De v e l opm e n t i n C u lt u r a l Pe r s pe c t i v e
American
Irish
Chinese
Fret Vocalize Smile
became positively associated with depression and
aggression-disruption (r = .18, respectively, r = .17,
p <.001). This means that the 2002 cohort evaluates
shyness similar to the US perspective. This change
in the evaluation may reflect social and historical
changes at the macrolevel, such as social and eco-
nomic reforms in China that may imply a change
from collectivist to a more individualistic model of
societal norms.
Emotional Display Rules
From the early years on, children are social-
ized to modify the form and level of their emo-
tion expression according to the emotion display
rules, defined as social norms that inform children
about how, where, when, and to whom to express
emotions (Saarni, 1999). Display rules are a direct
reflection of socialization practices imposed on
emotion expression and regulation. Here, we focus
on studies with younger children.
Cross-cultural differences in knowledge about
display rules were explored by Joshi and MacLean
(1994) comparing Indian and English preschool-
ers (4–5 years of age). Indian girls (4–5 years of
age) differentiated between feeling and emotion
expression better than the same age Indian boys
and English girls and boys. They argued for the
distinction between the feeling and expressing on
the basis of social norms and expectations, such as
respect to elders, deference, and social obligations;
the Indian girls’ knowledge about culturally shared
display rules was the best in child–adult scenarios
involving concealment of negative emotions. Raval,
Martini, and Raval (2007) showed further that for
urban Indian Gujarati children (5–9 years), anger
and sadness are less appropriate to express than
pain, so they controlled these emotions more often.
Gender effects were also evident in this respect: girls
reported more attempts to control their anger com-
pared to boys, and they displayed sadness more
frequently than anger. Interestingly, when the girls
expressed anger or sadness, they did so in a subtle,
indirect manner; for example, they only used facial
expressions corresponding with the negative emo-
tion. Looking also at negative emotions, Brahman
Nepalese children have been shown to have higher
levels of self-awareness regarding the need to con-
ceal anger, as compared to American children or
Tamang Nepalese (Cole, Bruschi, & Tamang,
2002; Cole & Tamang, 1998); this is already
apparent at a young school age (first grade), with
the pattern remaining consistent up to fifth grade.
A similar distinction was found by Zahn-Waxler,
Friedman, Cole, Mizuta, and Hiruma (1996), who
showed that Japanese preschool children (around
4–5 years of age) had a clear tendency for greater
regulation of their emotions in response to conflict
and displayed less anger and less aggressive behav-
ior relative to their US counterparts.
Garrett-Peters and Fox (2007) compared emo-
tional expressions of Chinese-American versus
European-American children (4 and 7 years) upon
receipt of an undesirable gift to test the generaliz-
ability of the display rule in a disappointing con-
text. Whereas the older US children masked their
disappointment and displayed more positive expres-
sion than the younger ones, as expected, older
Chinese-American children’s positive expression
remained low. These results could be counterintui-
tive at first sight, given the Chinese cultural empha-
sis on emotional restraint. However, they might
indicate, as authors speculate, a differential endorse-
ment of emotional restraint for some emotions
(anger, sadness), but not others (disappointment).
Interestingly, the more Chinese-American chil-
dren were adapted to Western values, the more they
showed the expression pattern of US children (i.e.,
masking the disappointment with positive expres-
sion). They also found a statistical trend for gender
difference because girls compared to boys showed
less negative expressions in both ethnic groups.
A critical difference between Eastern and
Western children also refers to the concealment
of positive emotions. For example, in the name of
modesty, Chinese and Taiwanese children viewed
lying about one’s own good deeds as increasingly
positive from 7 to 11 years of age (Lee, Xu, Fu,
Cameron, & Chen, 2001). In achievement situa-
tions, Japanese preschoolers expressed less pride
after success (but significantly more exposure
embarrassment) compared to European-American
and African-American children (Lewis, Takai-
Kawakami, Kawakami, & Sullivan, 2010).
To summarize, the cross-cultural differences
reported about children’s use of display rules are
consistent with the higher overall adult endorse-
ment of emotion expression in more individual-
istic countries (van Hemert, Poortinga, & van de
Vijver, 2007). There seems to be a tendency in
collectivistic societies for earlier use and expertise
with emotional display rules. The stronger conceal-
ment of positive and negative emotions is guided
by cultural norms of modesty and social harmony.
However, the developmental studies also point to
variations of early teaching of appropriate emotion
expression that may also affect the development of
one’s emotional experience of later similar situa-
tions. Gender differences show similarities across
cultural groups relative to the use of display rules
for powerful negative (e.g., anger) versus powerless
negative emotions (e.g., sadness).
Emotion Norms and
Socialization Practices
So far, we have documented the rich body of
data emphasizing cross-cultural differences in emo-
tional reactivity and emotion regulation, as well
as emotion display rules, already evident early in
childhood. Emerging evidence suggests that fam-
ily socialization strategies (i.e., parental practices,
attitudes, ethnotheories) and the media are two
potential mechanisms explaining such cultural dif-
ferences, along and in conjunction with putative
genetic factors that still need to be explored.
Based on theory (Markus & Kitayama, 2001;
Mesquita & Albert, 2007) and recent research
on cultural differences in children’s emotional
developmental outcomes, emotional competence
models have been proposed to explain such differ-
ences (Chan, Bowes, & Wyer, 2009; Friedlmeier,
Corapci, & Cole, 2011). These competence mod-
els represent cultural configurations for parents’
goals and expectations of their children’s under-
standing and expression of emotions. Accordingly,
Western caregivers primarily foster “individualis-
tic emotional competence” by encouraging open
F r i e dl m e i e r , C or a p c i, Be ng a 135
communication of personal experiences and tol-
erating the display of anger, pride, and disgust
more readily because these emotions indicate
inner states of autonomous individuals (Markus
& Kitayama, 2001). Caregivers’ socialization
strategies aim for emotion coaching by providing
comfort and assistance but also encouragement
for emotion expression. Suppression of emotion
is disqualified, and strategies like minimizing the
child’s emotion or even punishment are seen as
nonsupportive (Thompson & Meyer, 2007). In
more collectivistic, group-oriented societies, inter-
personal sensitivity, expression of other-focused
emotions (i.e., sympathy, guilt), and self-restraint
in the expression of socially disengaging emotions
that can be potentially disruptive to interpersonal
relations are deemed to foster “relational emo-
tional competence” (Chan et al., 2009; Wang,
2003). Caregivers’ socialization strategies focus
more on teaching control of emotion by using
strategies like ignoring or teasing (Cole, Tamang,
& Shrestha, 2006).
In the following sections, we review the few
available studies from Asia (e.g., Nepal, India,
China), Africa (e.g., Cameroon), Europe (e.g.,
Germany, Italy, Romania, Turkey), South America
(e.g., Argentina), and the United States based on
cultural emotion norms and parental responses
pertaining to emotion expression and regulation.
Cultural Emotion Norms
Cultures differ in their evaluation of emotional
functioning and have different ideas about optimal
emotion expression and regulation. Such different
expectations are reflected in different emotion
norms representative of the cultural models of
independence and interdependence. These models
create different developmental pathways starting
in infancy (see also Keller, in this volume). A study
by Keller and Otto (2009) comparing Nso farm-
ing mothers with German middle-class mothers
revealed differences in the desired age of children
to control and express emotions. Nso mothers, but
not German mothers, placed emphasis on foster-
ing emotion control in their children during the
first 3 years of life. This emotional norm to culti-
vate emotional calmness appears functional in the
context of a farming community where children
are taken care of by multiple caretakers. Emotional
calmness facilitates children’s adaptation to the
presence of multiple caretakers. On the other
hand, German mothers generally expected to see
emotion expression much earlier than the Nso
136 E a r ly E mo t ion a l De v e l opm e n t i n C u lt u r a l Pe r s pe c t i v e
mothers, with the exception of shame and guilt
expressions (see Figure 9.4). These culture-specific
differences in maternal beliefs fit with the assump-
tions of the emotional competence models: in
Western culture, emotions are indications of indi-
vidual needs that have to be respected and openly
communicated. In contrast to this individualistic
emotional competence model, in a culture such as
the Nso with an interdependent self-construal,
proper demeanor and respecting group interests
has priority over emotion expression. Accordingly,
Nso mothers favor the open expression of socially
engaging emotions such as shame and guilt, which
act to regulate social relationships to maintain
social harmony and foster relational emotional
competence.
Another line of research on emotion norms
shows that European Americans prefer a high
positive arousal as ideal (e.g., excitement), whereas
Chinese adults rather consider low arousal (e.g.,
contentment) as ideal. Tsai, Louie, Chen, and
Uchida (2007) demonstrated that this cultural
difference was also reflected in children’s books
from the two cultures. These findings suggest that
cultural artifacts, such as children’s books, act as
a specific pathway through which emotion norms
are presented and can be culturally transmitted
and learned. We studied emotion displays in chil-
dren’s storybooks in the United States, Turkey,
and Romania and coded positive and negative
emotions and the intensity as well as contextual
features of emotion displays (e.g., ingroup/out-
group; VanderWege et al., 2014). Two most inter-
esting results showed that positive emotions were
dominant in all three cultures, and the amount of
negative emotions was similar. However, US chil-
dren’s books presented negative-powerful emotions
(anger, contempt, frustration) to a significantly
higher extent than did Romanian and Turkish
books (see Figure 9.5), whereas the reverse pattern
was found for powerless emotions (e.g., sadness,
fear). Second, the emotion displays in US books
were significantly more intense compared to the
Turkish and Romanian displays, and this effect
was independent of the emotion type and contex-
tual characteristics.
Taken together, the few available cross-cultural
studies converge on the finding of stronger endorse-
ment of emotion expression as well as a higher level
of acceptance of negative powerful emotions in the
US compared to more collectivistic group-oriented
countries. Because negative powerless emotions
like sadness or shame evoke others’ support, these
 40
35
30

Age in months
25
20
15
Berlin, Germany
10
Nso, Cameroon
5
0
r

ar

lt
y

hy
es
ge

id

am
Jo

ui
Fe

at
dn

Pr
An

G
Sh
tip
Sa

An
Fig. 9.4  Timetable for Nso and German mothers’ expectations for the emergence of emotions.
Source: Keller & Otto (2009).

negative emotions are generally well accepted in
group-oriented countries. These findings also pro-
vide support that emotion norms in the media fit
the prevailing cultural models of self and relation-
ships. In addition to children’s storybooks, differ-
ences in the ideal positive affect—more excitement
in US and more calm content in Chinese—are
reported for women’s magazines, men’s maga-
zines, and news magazines (Tsai, 2007), as well
as for best-selling self-help books (Tsai, Miao, &
Seppala, 2007). There is still a lack of studies that
include other cultural groups and also studies that
focus on widely used electronic social media (e.g.,
blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube). Whether emo-
tion representations in media match individuals’
own ideal affect depends on additional factors. For
example, media such as children’s storybooks are
not only consumed by young children themselves,
but caregivers are involved by telling the story and
explaining the characters. Thus, caregivers’ presen-
tation of mental states and emphasis on emotion
descriptions is an important mediator of cultural
knowledge about emotions (see the later section
“Parental Emotion Talk with Children”) along
with their specific responses to children’s emotions.
We turn now to examining research on parental
emotion socialization.
Cultural Differences in Emotion
Socialization in Infancy
We know little about the maternal reactions to
infants’ positive and negative emotions in the very
early developmental periods from a cross-cultural
perspective. Studies by Keller and colleagues have

80%

70%

60%

50%

40% Positive
Negative powerless
30%
Negative powerful
20%

10%

0%
US Romania Turkey

Fig. 9.5  Percentages of emotion displays in European-American, Romanian, and Turkish children books.
Source: VanderWege et al. (2014).

F r i e dl m e i e r , C or a p c i, Be ng a 137
compared maternal caregiving practices for infants
from different sociocultural orientations. Although
most of these studies have focused on daily care-
giving practices and communication style, of par-
ticular concern to our review are those studies that
addressed mothers’ distress regulation. In one study
(Keller, Voelker, & Yovsi, 2005), women from the
Cameroonian Nso and Northern Germany commu-
nities commented to videotaped infant care practices
that included mothers of their own culture and the
other culture. Nso women’s comments in response
to infants’ distress had more emphasis on proximal
caretaking (i.e., breastfeeding) compared to German
women, whereas German women emphasized distal
parenting characterized by face-to-face interaction.
Direct behavioral observations conducted in the
homes of Nso Cameroonian, Indian, and German
families confirmed that the West African Nso moth-
ers provided the most frequent nursing and body
contact to their infants (Keller et al., 2005). This
study also illustrated that Nso mothers displayed
more caressing as a means of demonstrating affec-
tion than did Indian Rajput mothers. These findings
suggest that, even within non-Western communities
identified as relational in their models of compe-
tence, norms regarding the intergenerational dis-
tance and open emotion expression may differ and
influence maternal emotional expressivity.
The implications of the emotional competence
models for emotion socialization are also evident in
a study with US, Italian, and Argentinian mothers
and their 5-month-old infants by Bornstein et al.
(2012). Although these three nations share similar
levels of modernity, industrialization, standard of
living, birth rates, and nuclear families, culture-
and community-based differences were expected
due to cultural norms guiding emotional relations
in the family. Childrearing in Argentina is guided
by interdependent self and values like respeto and
familism, in the United States by independent self,
and in Italy by independent self with a strong focus
on close relationships and high physical affection.
Regarding the cross-national differences, Italian
mothers were rated as more sensitive than the two
other groups, and Italian dyads were dispropor-
tionally classified as higher in their emotional avail-
ability—defined as sensitivity combined with low
nonintrusiveness and low nonhostility—compared
to mothers from the United States and Argentina.
Interestingly, in spite of the different focus of
self-construal orientation, no differences in emo-
tional availability occurred between Argentinian
and American mothers. This may be due to the
138 E a r ly E mo t ion a l De v e l opm e n t i n C u lt u r a l Pe r s pe c t i v e
infancy period, and differences may start later in
more industrialized, urbanized societies. Regarding
the difference between Italy and the United States,
Hsu and Lavelli (2005) reported similar differences
for 3-month-old infants: Italian mothers displayed
higher levels of social/affective behaviors and more
open expression of affection, held their very young
infants more, and spent more time in synchronous
dyadic interactions. The dynamic coexistence of an
independent self-construal with a focus on close
relationships in Italian families points to the inter-
sectionality and fluidity of cultural frameworks
(Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2008). Such results may
also point to a third emotional competence model,
one lying beyond the individualistic and/or rela-
tional emotional competence models, and we will
discuss this in the Conclusion.
Cultural Differences in Emotion
Socialization in the Toddler
and Early Childhood Years
The toddler years are an important transi-
tion period as children begin to shift from being
dependent on their caregivers for self-regulation
to managing their emotions and behaviors more
independently (Holodynski & Friedlmeier, 2006;
Kopp, 1989). Research on specific emotion social-
ization practices in response to toddlers’ frustration
has typically employed delay of gratification para-
digms. The few available observational research
studies conducted with Western samples have
revealed that mothers’ use of verbal distraction
during a waiting task was positively related to
toddlers’ verbal distraction and visual distraction
by orienting toward nondelay objects (Mirabile,
Scaramella, Sohr-Preston, & Robinson, 2009;
Putnam, Spritz, & Stifter, 2002).
In contrast, maternal negative control (i.e.,
verbal criticism, intrusive physical restraining)
has been associated with poor compliance toward
the prohibited toys and with toddlers’ distress
(Calkins & Johnson, 1998; Lecuyer & Houck,
2002). Similar patterns of findings have also been
noted in a sample of Turkish mothers of toddlers,
such that children were more likely to comply with
the demand of the task when mothers used distrac-
tion (Corapci & Mustafaoglu, 2013, April). More
cross-cultural studies are needed, but a preliminary
conclusion seems to be that distraction appears to
be an efficient response to reduce toddlers’ distress
across cultures.
With the increased language and cognitive
abilities of older children, caregivers not only
comfort and use distraction with their preschool-
or school-aged children, but also encourage their
emotion expression and scaffold them to resolve
the source of distress during emotionally charged
situations (Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad,
1998). In Western research, encouragement of
emotion expression and provision of instrumen-
tal (e.g., scaffolding) or emotional support have
been labeled as “supportive” given their associa-
tions with children’s emotion knowledge and social
competence. On the other hand, minimization
and punitive responses, which refer to caregivers’
restriction of emotion expression and use of verbal
or physical punishment, respectively, have been
labeled as “nonsupportive” due to their associa-
tions with children’s poorer emotional competence
(Thompson & Meyer, 2007). Research generally
indicates that US caregivers typically endorse sup-
portive emotion socialization responses to a greater
extent than nonsupportive responses (e.g., Cassano,
Perry-Parrish, & Zeman, 2007; Fabes, Poulin,
Eisenberg, & Madden-Derdich, 2002). This prefer-
ence can also be seen as an example of individualis-
tic emotional competence in that these practices foster
children’s autonomy and self-enhancement. In con-
trast, preferences for supportive or nonsupportive
responses are less strong in other cultural groups,
in line with relational emotional competence goals.
Mothers of school-aged children from Hong Kong
(Chan et al., 2009) and mainland China (Tao,
Zhou, & Wang, 2010) endorsed minimization as
nearly as important as expressive encouragement,
whereas Indian mothers of 5- to 9-year-old children
endorsed minimization and rated expressive encour-
agement very low (Raval & Martini, 2009).
Research on emotion socialization practices in
Hong Kong (Chan et al., 2009), Turkey (Corapci,
2012), and India (Raval & Martini, 2009) has also
drawn attention to maternal responses that heavily
rely on teaching the appropriate emotion display
rules, with an emphasis placed on moral reasons.
In a comparative study, Cheah and Rubin (2004)
similarly documented that Chinese mothers were
more likely to suggest teaching strategies (i.e.,
explaining and educating about appropriate behav-
iors) than their European-American counterparts
in response to both child withdrawal and aggres-
sion. Such emphasis on the importance of moral
standards, social norms, and behavioral expecta-
tions in situations where children display distress
has also been noted in discourse studies conducted
with Chinese mothers of toddlers (Wang, 2001).
Finally, research with Indian mothers (Raval &
Martini, 2009) also identified the unacceptability
of emotion expression as one of the most frequently
endorsed emotion socialization practices, especially
for anger expression. Taken together, such differ-
ences between the US and non-Western data sug-
gest that culture influences the relative emphasis or
balance parents place on individualistic and rela-
tional goals.
Socialization of Specific Emotions
The majority of evidence to date examines care-
givers’ emotion socialization as an undifferentiated
response to children’s negative affective reactions,
including children’s anger, fear, and sadness. Only
a few studies have compared parents’ responses to
discrete negative emotions. The paucity of research
on discrete emotions is striking since children begin
to express discrete emotions over the first year of
life (Izard & Ackerman, 2000), and theory about
emotions points to the distinctiveness of the expe-
rience, expression, and functions of discrete emo-
tions such as sadness and anger. The few available
studies reveal that mothers from Turkey (Corapci,
Aksan, & Yağmurlu, 2012) and India (Raval &
Martini, 2009) were more likely to encourage the
expression of sadness compared to anger. Sadness
has been characterized as the key emotion to elicit
not only empathy and sympathy, but also close-
ness with caregivers (Izard, 1991). Thus, maternal
encouragement of sadness rather than anger expres-
sion is meaningful in these cultural contexts with
a prevailing cultural model of interdependent self
and relational emotional competence. The lower
level of expressive encouragement of anger also fits
the relational emotional competence view because
anger expression may challenge the hierarchy and
cohesion of the family.
Recent research in the United States (Morris
et al., 2011) as well as in Turkey (Corapci et al.,
2012) has identified mothers’ use of attention refo-
cusing (i.e., distraction) as an effective strategy to
reduce preschoolers’ anger and sadness. In India,
mothers of school-aged children endorsed pro-
viding more emotional and instrumental support
in response to children’s sadness than anger. US
school-aged children’s self-reports also reflect dif-
ferential parental responses to sadness and anger.
Similar to Indian mothers, US mothers were per-
ceived by children as more understanding toward
sadness than anger (Shipman & Zeman, 2001;
Zeman & Garber, 1996).
Finally, naturalistic observations in the house-
holds of Nepalese Tamang and Brahman ethnicity
F r i e dl m e i e r , C or a p c i, Be ng a 139
have not only revealed ethnic group differences
in emotion socialization, but also differences in
mothers’ responses to anger and shame (Cole et al.,
2006). Children’s anger was discouraged by scold-
ing and teasing by Tamang mothers, perhaps due
to the Tamangs’ Buddhist values (minimization of
emotion) or their lower status in the society rela-
tive to high-caste Brahmans. On the other hand,
Brahman children’s anger was met with reasoning;
it was not encouraged but may have been toler-
ated in order to socialize children’s role as socially
dominant. Caregiver responses to shame also dif-
fered: Tamang caregivers responded with a mix
of ignoring, reasoning, and nurturance, whereas
Brahman caregivers ignored child shame. These
findings illustrated how religion, ethnicity, and
social class may influence emotion socialization
even within a nation identified as relational in its
models of competence.
These differentiated results for anger and
sadness are in line with the reported results
that negative-powerless emotions (e.g., sad-
ness, shame) are more endorsed overall, whereas
negative-powerful emotions (e.g., anger, contempt)
are seen especially as disruptive in cultures with an
interdependent self focus (see the earlier section
“Cultural Emotion Norms”). Altogether, it seems
necessary to differentiate between these two groups
of negative emotions in future studies.
Parental Emotion Talk with Children
Research on children’s early social-linguistic
environments reveals that mother–child conver-
sations also give insight into how mothers label,
interpret, and organize emotional states. The few
available cross-cultural studies (Fivush & Wang,
2005; Wang, 2001; Wang & Fivush, 2005; Wang,
Leichtman, & Davies, 2000) have not only dis-
cerned differences in the manner in which mothers
communicate about mental states (e.g., explana-
tions, elaborations, talking about moral standards),
but they have also pointed out that maternal
focus on mental states in conversations mediates,
at least partly, the effect of culture on children’s
emotion understanding (Doan & Wang, 2010).
Specifically, discourse studies have consistently
revealed that US mothers of 3-year-old children
made significantly more references to cognitions
(think/know), emotional states, and other mental
states compared to Chinese (Wang et al., 2000)
and Chinese immigrant mothers in a storytelling
task (Doan & Wang, 2010). Immigrant Chinese
mothers’ orientation to the Chinese culture was
140 E a r ly E mo t ion a l De v e l opm e n t i n C u lt u r a l Pe r s pe c t i v e
also found to be associated with their lower use of
emotion questions and explanations and a lower
quality of emotion discussion in storytelling (Tao,
Zhou, Lau, & Liu, 2013). US and Chinese moth-
ers’ narrative emotional content have also been
compared when mothers were holding conversa-
tions about emotionally salient events (Fivush &
Wang, 2005; Wang, 2001; Wang & Fivush, 2005).
Compared to US mothers, Chinese mothers were
more likely to take a didactic approach and empha-
size ways to repair the interaction with the person
who caused sadness, anger, or fear in their children
and to teach them about the moral standards for
emotion expression. Chinese mothers were also less
likely to engage in negotiations to discuss how and
why their children were experiencing a particular
emotion.
The pattern emerging from the discourse stud-
ies converges with emotion socialization studies
reviewed earlier and suggests that the primary
goal of Chinese mothers is to socialize their chil-
dren into the culturally appropriate display of
emotions. They are not preoccupied with facili-
tating emotional understanding in their children
(Wang, 2003). In contrast, US mothers’ emphasis
on the verbalization of cognitions, desires, and
emotional states focuses on awareness and under-
standing of one’s own emotions. The latter can
be seen as consistent with the prevailing cultural
model of the independent self-construal that draws
on autonomy (i.e., making own choices, achieving
one’s full potential), assertiveness, and expression
of inner personal experiences (Mesquita & Albert,
2007) and the individualistic emotional compe-
tence model. As a result, US children were found
to show more advanced understanding about situa-
tions that provoke various emotions than were their
Chinese peers (Doan & Wang, 2010; Wang, 2003).
Furthermore, this different style also affects autobi-
ographical memory. Wang and colleagues (Wang,
Hutt, Kulkofsky, McDermott, & Wei, 2006)
studied the emotion situation knowledge and
autobiographical memory in Chinese, immigrant
Chinese, and European-American 3-year-olds.
European-American children had better emotion
situation knowledge and remembered more details
of experienced past events. This cultural difference
is not relevant for memory skills, and Chinese chil-
dren are probably better in other memory tasks, but
the important conclusion here is that the focus on
personal emotion in form of child-centered remi-
niscing in European and American countries ver-
sus socially oriented reminiscing in Asian families
has consequences for the individual’s self-construal
and identity that is constructed in relation to auto-
biographical memory.
Emotion Socialization and
Child Outcomes
Relations between supportive emotion social-
ization responses (i.e., emotional and instrumental
support, expressive encouragement) and children’s
emotion regulation competence, emotion under-
standing skills, and social competence have been
reported in reviews of research with US samples,
whereas nonsupportive responses (i.e., minimiza-
tion, punitive responses) were related to behavior
problems and dysregulated affect (Thompson &
Meyer, 2007). A growing number of researchers
point out that caregivers’ emotion socialization
responses should be studied within a broader con-
text of parenting. Of particular importance seems
to be parental minimization of emotions in order
to better understand cultural differences in these
responses (Tao et al., 2010). For example, more
minimizing parents were not necessarily lower in
authoritative parenting in China, and Chinese
mothers’ minimizing responses were unrelated to
child adjustment (Tao et al., 2010). By contrast,
unlike studies in the Western cultures, Turkish
mothers’ minimizing responses of anger were
related to less angry and aggressive behaviors per
teacher report (Corapci et al., 2012). It is possible
that Turkish mothers may minimize anger to help
their children conform to social norms. Future
studies need to examine minimization responses in
combination with global socialization goals to bet-
ter understand the culturally relevant meaning and
function of minimization.
Conclusion
The aim of the chapter was to give some insight
into current knowledge about young children’s
emotional development in a cultural perspective.
Although the studies are still low in number, they
already demonstrate that culture matters in regard
to describing and explaining emotional develop-
ment. It is interesting to note that some of the
early emotional characteristics—lower reactivity
of Eastern/Asian-origin children; lower irritability/
distress and more (self-)quieting during infant test-
ing procedures; less active, less vocal and positive
arousal to stimuli; less pronounced facial expres-
sions—are correlated with temperamental and
genetic predispositions. At the same time, this emo-
tional reaction pattern already fits with the cultural
model of relational emotional competence, namely,
the norms of rather low emotion expression and
ideal affect of contentment instead of excitement
combined with parental preferences for emotion
socialization strategies like training, minimization
strategies, and unacceptability for negative (pow-
erful) emotions instead of supportive strategies.
Genetic transmission seems to be a relevant factor,
but such transmission happens very slowly over
very long time periods. The maintenance of the
current patterns is probably strongly affected by
culture-specific emotion socialization patterns and
social norms that are requested to be respected by
the next generation.
Cross-cultural temperament studies are impor-
tant contributions, especially longitudinal stud-
ies, which are rare. For example, Gartstein et al.
(2006) revealed how negative emotionality ratings
of Russian children were closer to those of Japanese
children in infancy but became more similar to those
of US children in toddlerhood. The critical aspect of
these temperamental studies is the fact that all these
data come from parental evaluations of child tem-
perament. It is very likely that parents’ evaluations
of their child’s characteristics are affected by the
expectations and norms of their cultural group. This
may explain why Chinese mothers—in contrast to
scientific observations—perceive a higher “nega-
tive affectivity” level in their children. East Asian
countries consider negative (powerful) emotions as
undesirable. Due to this culturally shared norm,
East Asian mothers may be more prone to register
negative displays and, due to the related expectation
that such experiences should not occur, they may
overestimate their occurrence rate.
Most studies demonstrated cultural differences
in emotion expression and emotion regulation,
especially the results reported about emotion talk,
which point to the fact that emotions themselves
are evaluated differently. It seems that members
of East Asian countries consider emotion not as a
potential indicator for well-being but rather value
the need to overcome it by regulating behavior
more on a voluntary and reflective basis. As a con-
sequence, cultural differences in emotions do not
only refer to different endorsements of emotions
and related strength of expression and to display
rules, but also refer to culture-specific attitudes
toward emotions. Such differences may lead to dif-
ferences in emotion experience, and some studies
with adults have begun to address this issue over
the past several years. For example, Consedine,
Magai, Horton, and Brown (2012) argue that the
F r i e dl m e i e r , C or a p c i, Be ng a 141
affective paradox that ethnic minorities report
more positive life experiences although they experi-
ence lower income, poorer health, and higher rates
of unemployment and discrimination compared to
European Americans cannot be solely explained
by social desirability differences. They interviewed
US-born African Americans and immigrants from
the English Caribbean, Dominican Republic,
and Haiti and included European Americans and
immigrants from Eastern Europe as comparison
groups and looked at self-reported anger. They
could demonstrate that, for minority groups in the
United States, lower self-reported anger is not only
due to social desirability but also due to a difference
in the way members of minority groups consciously
experience emotions; the latter is seen as a conse-
quence of the emotion socialization during child-
hood and adolescence. Although Consedine et al.
(2012) determine the cultural difference as repres-
sion, such cultural differences may reflect different
forms of feelings based on the different pathways of
emotional development (Friedlmeier, 2010).
The individualistic and relational emotional
competence models show intercultural and intra-
cultural malleability. These models are apparently
not strongly related to cultural dimensions (e.g.,
individualism, power distance), and cultures with
similar norms can differ in such models, as shown
for the United States and Italy. Both emotional
competence models are not exclusive, and a mix-
ture of both was already presented for mothers in
Hong Kong (Chan et al., 2009). We assume that
further configurations of emotional competence
models can be described for other cultures, and
within-country differences can also be expected
due to different living situations (e.g., rural vs.
urban samples). The two emotional competence
models are good starting points for studying emo-
tional development from a cultural perspective,
but it remains important to include other cultures
beyond the US and East Asian countries to enrich
the description of potential emotional competence
models, as well as to determine the relevant fea-
tures to describe the emotion norms.
Whereas the individualistic model endorses gen-
eral emotion expression, aims for positive excite-
ment, and is mostly present in West European
countries and United States, the relational model of
emotion competence rather endorses emotion con-
trol as reported for East Asian countries and India.
Other emotion competence models may exist and
differ from these two models by endorsing some
emotions more than others (e.g., high endorsement
142 E a r ly E mo t ion a l De v e l opm e n t i n C u lt u r a l Pe r s pe c t i v e
for positive high arousal but low endorsement for
negative powerful emotions), which seems to fit
with emotion norms described for East European
countries, and/or high endorsement of emotion
expression combined with control of expression
depending on context conditions (e.g., strong dis-
play allowed within ingroups but control expected
especially for negative emotions toward outgroup
members, especially toward authorities). This latter
model could apply to South American countries.
More empirical evidence is needed to determine
these different models.
Without a doubt, there are still open questions
that need to be addressed in the future, and some
questions are difficult to answer due to the com-
plexity of the topic. The reported studies already
point to cultural variations regarding specific emo-
tion norms, but more studies need to be done out-
side of the East Asian and the United States.
A central feature in studying emotional devel-
opment is the time factor, but most studies are
cross-sectional. For example, cultural differ-
ences in “positive affectivity” seem to decrease
over the first year with age (Slobodskaya et al.,
2013). Japanese infants start with lower levels of
high-intensity pleasure, a subdimension of “posi-
tive affectivity,” as compared to Russian infants
and also to US infants (who have the highest
scores). But by the time they are 1 year old, chil-
dren in all three cultures show similar high levels
in positive affectivity (see Figure 9.6). Although
such studies give a thorough first insight, we do not
know how individual changes happen over time,
and we also do not gain insight on how parental
strategies affect children’s emotional reactions in
the long run. The latter is critical because some
cultures show higher indulgence toward children
compared to other cultures. Some socialization
strategies may be different at certain age periods
and more similar at others, and children’s emo-
tional developmental pathways may diverge and
converge respectively. More longitudinal studies
are necessary to obtain stronger empirical evi-
dence about such developmental pathways.
The time factor also refers to cohorts and soci-
etal changes. These culture-bound mechanisms are
not immutable but are rather influenced by changes
at the macrolevel (e.g., historical/societal changes)
or at the microlevel (e.g., family migration). As an
illustration of microlevel changes, Gartstein, Peleg,
Young, and Slobodskaya (2009) revealed differ-
ences between temperamental subdimensions of
infants born to families of Russian immigrants in
 6.0
5.5
Scale scores
5.0
4.5
4.0
3.5
3–6
High intensity pleasure
Japan
Fig. 9.6  Effects of age and culture on the Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire (ECBQ) temperament subscale “high intensity
pleasure” (part of positive affectivity) in Japanese, Russian, and US infants of different age groups. Bars are 95% confidence intervals.
Source: Slobodskaya et al. (2013).
the United States and Israel, as well as to Russian
families residing in Russia. Israeli infants were
perceived at the highest levels of falling reactiv-
ity and soothability as compared to the Russian
or US infants and were more perceptually sensi-
tive than Russian infants. On the other hand, US
infants showed the lowest rates of cuddliness and
low-intensity pleasure as compared to the Russian
or Israeli infants.
Most studies do not differentiate distinct emo-
tions. However, socialization strategies vary along
different types of emotions, as was shown for sad-
ness and anger. Studying each distinct emotion
may be too detailed but at least differentiating
between positive, powerful negative emotions (neg-
ative emotions with an impulse of attacking, e.g.,
anger, jealousy) and powerless negative emotions
(negative emotions with an impulse of withdrawal,
e.g. sadness, anxiety) is relevant. The distinction
between the two types of negative emotions has
been very useful for studies of gender differences
(see Fischer & Manstead, 2000), and it may also
be effective for cultural studies because interdepen-
dent cultures do restrict negative powerful emo-
tions more than negative powerless emotions.
Emotion display rules may vary within a person
along contextual features. The study by Raval and
Martini (2009) pointed out that, for Indian moth-
ers, the display rules vary in regard to the social
partner. Mothers expect that their children display
more control toward their fathers and less control
toward themselves. Moreover, most studies did not
Age (months)
6–9 9–12
Russia USA
test for gender differences, which may also vary
across cultures and age-groups. In general, qualita-
tive approaches are still desirable because the cul-
tural variations are not well-known in this area of
research.
We hope that this review encourages and inspires
researchers for future studies to increase our knowl-
edge. The number of studies will increase slowly
since such investigation is highly time-consuming
in regard to collaboration efforts, coding of qualita-
tive material, and more. However, it will remain an
important goal to gain further insight on how early
emotion socialization in different cultures lays the
ground work for different pathways of emotional
development.
Note
1 These are not original but vaguely reconstructed statements
because the original material is not available.
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 C H A P T E R

10 The Evolution of Attachment Theory

and Cultures of Human Attachment
in Infancy and Early Childhood
Gilda Morelli

Abstract
Children develop attachment relationships with caregivers they trust to care for and protect them,
and children’s care reflects the interplay of cultural and ecological processes. Central to children’s
care and relationships is the importance communities place on action that is directed by one’s own
thoughts and feelings (autonomy) or by the thoughts and feelings of others (social harmony). In
the former, attachment relationships are characterized by recurring separation and reunions, and
learning centers on exploration; in the latter, by continuous contact and care and accommodation to
others and context. This view of attachment represents revised thinking, and this chapter considers
cultural differences in conceptions of good care, competent children, and close relationships in light of
traditional and revised attachment theory and research. Also considered is current understanding of
the ecological circumstances of resource uncertainty during human evolution that likely preferenced
infants capable of developing multiple, simultaneous attachment relationships.
Key Words:  attachment, relationships, care, culture, resource unpredictability, scarcity, parenting,
self, evolutionary adaptedness, autonomy, social harmony

Efe forest camp. Eighteen-month-old Maua sits in
her aunt’s lap focused intently on the families stream-
ing from the forest into the bright light of the freshly
cleared camp. Cheerful greetings and song meet the
newcomers as they are helped to ease baskets and
infants to the ground. Babies are cuddled by people
they do not know or do not remember, and, with a bit
of humored coaxing, toddlers shake hands, and older
children bring water to the travelers. In time, they sit
and share news, and voices blend with the sound of
honeybees circling overhead.
Maua’s mother breaks off several small pieces of
honey comb and, with a few quiet words, places them
in Maua’s hand. Maua walks to a newly arrived
young girl and offers her a piece. Gladly accepted, the
two watch the animated storytelling of a group of men
and women as sweet honey drips down their chins.
A boy grins at Maua and breaks from the onlookers to
scoop her up. She quiets, not knowing how to respond
to this cousin she has never met. Sensing her concern,
he carries Maua to a family friend, and, as she settles
in his lap, Maua’s mother leaves camp to collect fire-
wood. Maua begins to sway to the musical rhythms of
a finger piano, and not long after, a neighbor beckons
her to come and see the baby she nurses, a newborn
whose mother has not yet returned from gathering.
Maua perches on her thigh and plays with the baby’s
tiny toes, giggling all the while. But soon she feels very
hungry and scans the camp for her mother, who is not
there. She slips down to watch a woman spoon wild
yams from a pot, and with just a hint of a fuss, the
woman looks up and gives Maua some to eat.
Soon, Maua’s mother returns. Maua waits as her
mother stokes the cooking fire, and once done, she
climbs into her mother’s lap and nurses hungrily.
When Maua’s sucking slows with sleepiness, she is laid
into the arms of an old relative. Draped there also is a
small orphaned boy, now in the woman’s care. With a

149
bit of adjusting, and with legs and arms intertwined,
the two children settle comfortably. Maua’s mother
and sister join a group of women on the other side of
camp to plan for the next’s day foraging expedition.
This vignette describes experiences typical of
Efe foragers of the Ituri Forest of the Democratic
Republic of Congo. It portrays Efe infancy as
intensely social, and it exemplifies the infant’s
continuously shifting social landscape and the sig-
nificant breadth and intensity of cooperation in
infant care. More than 25 years have passed since
the highly social life of Efe children and the shar-
ing of care by many was first described (Tronick,
Morelli, & Winn, 1987). At the time, the Efe pat-
tern of care was considered unusual. But decades
of research on hunters and gatherers show that this
view is no longer correct. Extensive care of young
infants by individuals other than their mothers is a
practice common among forager societies (Konner,
2010). With shared developmental assistance
(Morelli, Ivey Henry, & Foerster, 2014) and the
universal need of mothers for it (Hrdy, 2009), Efe
infants, like other forager infants, are part of social
and cooperative networks from birth. They develop
relationships with the many people who care for
them, and many of these relationships develop into
close relationships by the time infants are able to
walk (e.g., Meehan & Hawks, 2013).
Introduction to Attachment Theory
Attachment theory is concerned with human rela-
tionships—the close relationships children develop
with the people who are responsible for them and
their care—and with the implications of closeness
for children’s learning and development. Attachment
is part of our human legacy and a species-wide char-
acteristic. It evolved as an adaptation to predator
pressure and allows children to balance their need
for protection and exploration. As such, it is charac-
terized by children’s recurring separations from and
reunions with primary caregivers (Bowlby, 1969;
1982). Children seek proximity to their primary
caregivers for comfort and security when conditions
are dangerous or their needs compelling, and, once
assured of their safety and well-being, they venture
away from caregivers to explore the environment.
Attachment theorists have long argued that all
children develop attachment relationships in the
same way, and all attachment relationships serve
the same purpose (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, &
Wall, 1978; Bowlby, 1982; Cassidy & Shaver,
2008). That is, there are regularities across cultures
150 T h e E v ol u t ion of At t ac h m e n t T h e or y a n d C u lt u r e s of H u m a n At t ac h m e n t
in the type of care that fosters secure attachment
relationships and the competencies that develop as
a result, in the relation between secure attachment
and confident exploration, and in the incidence and
form of insecure attachments. According to attach-
ment theorists, decades of research largely confirm
these claims (Van IJzendoorn & Sagi-Schwartz,
1999; 2008). Today, attachment theory is psychol-
ogy’s most influential theory of relatedness, setting
standards for what constitutes healthy relationships
for humans.
This traditional account of attachment, once
unrivaled, receives less support than it once did. We
better understand now the ecological circumstances
associated with the evolution of attachment and the
contextual dependency of attachment relationships.
Researchers whose views on attachment reflect
these developments accept attachment as an evolved
behavioral system and acknowledge important
similarities in attachment worldwide (e.g., quali-
ties of care and caregiver are important to the close
relationships children develop, and attachment
relationships relate to children’s learning). Other
than this, they argue that attachment relationships
are constituted largely by the interplay of cultural
and ecological processes (LeVine & Norman, 2001;
Otto & Keller, 2014; Quinn & Mageo, 2013).
We now believe that ecological conditions of
resource unpredictability during the Paleolithic
period favored psychological and social processes
that increased the likelihood of people gaining
access to scarce and needed goods and services.1
These conditions, along with predator pressure,
likely favored selection for capacities for attach-
ment. Evidence also suggests the cultural patterning
of attachment relationships. It singles out as critical
to these relationships the importance communi-
ties place on action directed by one’s own thoughts
and feelings (i.e., autonomy) or on the thoughts
and feelings of others and context (i.e., social har-
mony). Middle-class European-American families
are examples of the former, and, for their children,
attachment relationships are characterized by recur-
ring separation and reunions, and learning centers
on exploration. Traditional East Asian families are
examples of the latter; for their children, attach-
ment relationships are characterized by continuous
contact and care, and learning centers on accom-
modation (Rothbaum, Morelli, & Rusk, 2011).
The chapter is organized in the following way.
Attachment theory and research are reviewed first.
Then, the ecological circumstances likely prevalent
during the Paleolithic period are discussed, and, as
a companion to this, the social life of Efe hunter
gatherer infants of the Democratic Republic of
Congo are described. Following this, the cultural
basis of attachment relationships is considered by
examining children’s care across communities, pay-
ing attention to the relation among care, autonomy
and social harmony, and exploration and accom-
modation. Finally, questions about attachment
security and measurement are addressed.
Attachment Theory and Research
Attachment theorizing began with the work of
Bowlby (1969; 1982). Initially, Bowlby was inter-
ested in the protective function of the attachment
system, which is activated when infants are dis-
tressed and brings them into the protective solici-
tude of their primary caregivers (i.e., mothers).
Later, the function of the attachment system was
broadened to include support of children’s innate
drive for exploration and mastery of the inani-
mate and social world (Ainsworth & Bowlby,
1991). Together, the dual function of safe haven
and secure base—secure base function—allows
children to venture forth from their caregivers and
explore the environment knowing they can return
safely to their caregivers for safekeeping.
The secure base reflects a link between and bal-
ancing of the attachment and exploration systems,
and varies with infant experience of caregivers as
trustworthy sources of protection and comfort.
When children are assured of their caregiver’s trust-
worthiness and their needs are met, the attachment
system is deactivated and the exploration system is
activated. This allows children to explore the envi-
ronment with confidence and gain control over it.
When children feel threatened, the attachment sys-
tem is activated and the exploration system is deacti-
vated. They return to caregivers for the reassurance
they need to resume exploratory activities. Through
exploration, children develop a sense of themselves
as competent and worthy of support, and later as
autonomous. Children who are not assured of their
caregivers’ trustworthiness do not achieve the same
confidence in others, in themselves, and in their
mastery of the environment (Weinfield, Sroufe,
Egeland, & Carlson, 2008). The care underlying
children’s ability to explore the environment with
confidence features sensitive responsiveness to pos-
itive and negative signals (e.g., Belsky & Fearon,
2008) and meets the child’s innate need for auton-
omy (Grolnick & Ryan, 1989). Ainsworth (1976)
describes autonomy-supporting practices as those
that respect the child as separate and with a will of
her own, legitimize the child’s wishes and activities,
and honor the child’s requests when she indicates
what she wants.
The ability of children to use their caregiver as
a secure base from which to explore the environ-
ment is assessed most commonly using a laboratory
procedure developed by Ainsworth and colleagues
(Ainsworth et al., 1978). The Strange Situation
examines how well children around the age of 1
organize attachment and exploration behaviors
during a period of moderately escalating distress
designed to activate the attachment system. In it,
children are repeatedly separated from their care-
givers for a brief period of time and left alone or
with a stranger. Children secure in their attach-
ment relationships are comforted by their caregiv-
ers’ return and are able to use them as a secure base
to explore. Children insecure in their attachment
relationships are not able to use their caregiver as a
secure base and do not seek contact with their care-
givers on return (avoidant), seek and resist contact
(resistant), or show no discernible pattern of behav-
ior (disorganized). These children with insecure
attachment relationships are at risk for developing
later behavioral problems (Thompson, 2006).
The distribution of secure and insecure pat-
terns of attachment in nonclinical populations is
assumed to be the same across communities. The
secure pattern is regarded by attachment theorists
as the typical pattern, with approximately 65% of
children within a population securely attached.
The avoidant insecure pattern characterizes about
20% of children within a population and the resis-
tant pattern 15%. When the disorganized insecure
classification is considered along with the avoidant
and resistant classifications, the percentage of chil-
dren within a population classified, respectively, is
about 15%, 9–10%, and 15%.
Interdisciplinarity of Attachment
Theory and Research
“Attachment theory was born from John
Bowlby’s insistence that a field must be willing
to break from past traditions and be open to new
ideas” (Cassidy, 2003, p. 409). Bowlby’s thesis on
attachment was based in part on his understand-
ing of the environment of evolutionary adaptedness
(EEA), which owed much to writings on primate
social groups. He and others believed that during
the Paleolithic period men cooperated to protect
the group from predators and to secure food by
hunting, the two assumed primary functions of
social groups. While men were well integrated into
Mor e l l i 151
the group, women were not. Women exchanged
food with men and functioned in small subgroups
made up of their infants and sometimes older
children. The cooperation between women was
believed different from that between men and was
considered less important to women and the group
(Patterson, 2003).
The view of hominid women and infants in small
mother–young groups largely separate from one
another was expanded based on animal behavior
research that demonstrated infant maternal prefer-
ence (Harlow & Zimmermann, 1959; see Schiller,
1957, on Lorenz). This, along with Bowlby’s psy-
choanalytic leanings, led to Bowlby’s near exclusive
attention to the emotional tie between infants and
mothers. He assumed the singular importance of this
relationship to all others and its lifelong influence on
all close relationships. Bowlby’s clinical orientation
also gave way to the portrayal of attachment relation-
ships as healthy (secure) or as predicative of disturbed
development (insecure) (LeVine, 2014).
Bowlby’s thesis was a theory of human social
relationships (Thompson, 2006). The translation
of theory to research on the ontogeny of individ-
ual relationships is credited largely to the efforts
of Ainsworth (Ainsworth et al., 1978). She laid
the groundwork for research on secure base, sen-
sitive care, and patterns of attachment based on
her in-depth observational studies of mothers and
infants in Uganda and later in US homes. The sim-
ilarities observed between the two communities
helped to advance the thesis of the universal nature
of attachment relationships. From this were set
standards for good parenting, secure attachment,
and the study of both. Since Bowlby framed attach-
ment theory, most research has been on individual
differences in attachment security and on the rela-
tion between attachment security and later com-
petence (Delius, Bovenschen, & Spangler, 2008).
The majority of studies are of mothers and infants
in middle-class contexts of Western communities
because key features of attachment relationships—
secure base, distribution of security, sensitive care,
and infant competence—are assumed universal.2
The few studies elsewhere largely support these
assumptions (e.g., Cassidy, 2008; Van IJzendoorn
& Sagi-Schwartz, 2008).
Human Evolution and Attachment
Theory Reconsidered
Ecosystems during the period of human emer-
gence were highly variable.3 There was significant
temporal and spatial unpredictability of foods
152 T h e E v ol u t ion of At t ac h m e n t T h e or y a n d C u lt u r e s of H u m a n At t ac h m e n t
available to humans, and food was often of low
nutritional quality. There was high exposure to
disease-producing agents and trauma hazards. For
these reasons and others, mortality throughout the
hominid lifespan was high. All of this set in motion
the evolution of biological processes and flexible
behavioral strategies to improve security of access
to nutritional and social resources. Key to estab-
lishing reliable access were social tendencies that
made possible cooperative activities, sharing, and
social group living. These tendencies co-evolved
with a life history that included short interbirth
intervals, postweaning dependency, slow juvenile
growth, and high fertility, which committed moth-
ers to raising multiple dependent young children
at the same time and committed children to com-
peting with their mothers, siblings, and others for
scarce resources.
This understanding of hominid life progressed
with decades of research on foraging societies, aided
by advances in ecology and evolutionary biology,
neuroscience, and genetics. The evidence suggests
that adaptations to ecological constraints imposed
by resource insecurity during the Paleolithic period
are manifest best by extant foragers in Africa, many
of whom live in evolutionary relevant settings.
Bowlby long appreciated the importance of study-
ing modern-day foragers to understand attachment,
and the Efe are one of the oldest extant lineages
of modern humans and one of the few remain-
ing traditional African pygmy groups. Efe life is
marked by high daily variability in resources across
the lifespan, influencing well-being and behavior.
The sharing and cooperative networks in which Efe
participate are the mainstay of their existence and
build up over a lifetime of associations. These net-
works help to reduce variance in resource access,
and reliable relationships are valued greatly because
they promise a more predicable flow of goods and
services.
Efe children are centered within social net-
works from birth, and their health and survival
hinge quite immediately on their ability to secure
resources reliably from others, especially as they
leave the protective niche of early infancy. Mothers
alone are not able to provide for their multiple
dependent young. The day-to-day variability in
an individual’s hunting or foraging success means
inevitably that others must provision the infant on a
regular basis. Who is available to do this, however,
varies quite a lot. Efe adapt to shifts in resource
availability by frequent changes in residency and
camp location and by calibrating social networks
to individual and group needs. Camps may be nes-
tled deep in the forest, with many residents and few
strangers passing through. Or they may be close
to the road, with few residents and many strangers
passing through. The high prevalence of parasitic
and infectious diseases and injury means that some
of the people who have cared for babies are not well
enough to do so or have died.
This uncertain access to nutritional and social
resources places strong demands on Efe children
to gain broad exposure to many people and to
develop predictable and trustworthy relationships
with many of them. Their success rests on astute
sensibilities that allow them to navigate dense and
variable social landscapes, manage and negotiate
relationships with people who may or may not share
their interests, predict the intentions of others,
and develop favorable patterns of exchange while
minimizing and eliminating unfavorable ones. Efe
infants have many opportunities to develop the
competences needed to do this.
As shown in the vignette, Efe infancy is intensely
social, and infants spend most of their time near or
in physical contact with many people. Infant social
networks expand over the first 2 years of life, are
fast paced, and variable. Over a 2-hour period,
Efe infants, on average, are in contact with 9 to 14
different people, some with as many as 20 people.
They change partners about once every 3 minutes,
and most of their partners are not the same over
a period of several months. These shifts in social
landscape bring Efe babies into contact with many
people and allow them to learn and practice com-
plex behaviors for developing, sustaining, and
renewing relationships.
Many of an infant’s early cooperative relation-
ships, built on social exchange, are likely to develop
into trusting ones. Efe infants enjoy great success
in securing resources from people, and they are in
good moods most of the time they are with oth-
ers, which is quite a lot, probably because care-
givers are very solicitous of them. With so many
people to trust, and so many of them in contact
with the infant or just a few steps away, Efe babies
grow up in dense groupings of people who care for
and about them. And, most likely as a result, Efe
infants develop multiple, simultaneous attachment
relationships that are similar in importance and
significance to them.
The ecological circumstances that gave prefer-
ence to infants capable of participating in diverse
and complex cooperative relationships and of
developing multiple attachments are very different
from what Bowlby envisioned. His understanding
of the EEA did not take into account the energetic
needs of women and children or the pivotal role
cooperative relationships played in their lives. It
allowed him to assume the near exclusive role of
mothers in the care of their infants and the primacy
of the infant’s attachment relationships with her.
Attachment relationships with others, although
recognized by Bowlby, were different, developed
later, and were less strong and consistent.
Cultures and Attachment
Relationships Reconsidered
Most culture studies on attachment relation-
ships consider the constitutive role of cultural and
ecological processes. Attachment researchers are
not indifferent to them. Bowlby’s thesis allows for
adaptation to local conditions, and Ainsworth’s
procedure accommodates cultural differences
between Ugandan and US mothers and infants.
But they did not extend contextual considerations
much beyond this, and later Bowlby did not see
cultural variation in children’s close relationships
at odds with attachment theory (LeVine, 2014).
Attachment theorists continue in this vein. They
appreciate the relevance of context for attachment
but in very limited ways. Often, context is taken
into account to explain the atypical distribution
of insecure classifications or researchers down play
observations ill-fitted to theory. For example, Van
Ijzendoorn and Sagi-Schwartz (2008) recognized
the contextual components of attachment relation-
ships in their multiculture study of attachment and
the need to shift from a dyadic to social network
perspective (a sweeping change to attachment
theory), but concluded nonetheless that “taken as
a whole, the studies are remarkably consistent with
the theory” (p. 901).
Even though attachment theorists show great
fidelity to attachment theory, some acknowledge
considerable flexibility in the attachment system,
related to multidetermined influences, capable
of accommodating different cultural practices
and ecological and material circumstances (e.g.,
Simpson & Belsky, 2008; Thompson et al., 2006).
Honing this view requires several essential avenues
of research, including further exploration into how
attachment develops in different cultural settings
(Thompson et al., 2006). Already, there is impres-
sive documentation on the diverse realities of chil-
dren’s lives, and there is great interest in the cultural
nature of sensitive care, competence, and secure
base, and the relational values they represent (e.g.,
Mor e l l i 153
Edwards, Ren, & Brown, this volume; Otto &
Keller, 2014; Quinn & Mageo, 2013).
Cultural Patterning of Relational Values
The thesis on the cultural nature of attachment
relationships rests strongly on well-researched con-
cepts that represent how people function as sepa-
rate individuals and in relation with others. One
representation is the independent self, character-
ized as self-directed (Kitayama, Duffy, & Uchida,
2007), physically and mentally separate (Raeff,
2006), defined by personal qualities (Suh, 2000),
and instrumental in social relations (e.g., promotes
own goals; Shweder, Much, Mahapatra, & Park,
1997). For this representation, a person’s own
thoughts, feelings, and actions are used as the
primary referent for action (Markus & Kitayama,
2010). A second representation is the interdepen-
dent self, characterized as socially responsive, “fun-
damentally connected with others” (Kitayama
et al., 2007, p. 141), and dutiful and obliging (e.g.,
promotes others’ goals; Shweder et al., 1997). For
this representation, the thoughts, feelings, and
actions of others are used as a person’s primary
referents for action (Markus & Kitayama, 2010).
Self-representations co-exist in individual psychol-
ogies and cultural philosophies (Keller, 2011a); are
inseparable, multiple represented, and mutually
constitutive; and are understood in culturally dis-
tinctive ways and particularized in everyday prac-
tices (Raeff, 2006).
Self-representations reflect the relative impor-
tance of individual and group needs, goals, and
preferences in cultural philosophies on autonomy
and social harmony. Autonomous functioning
underlies independent self-representations, and the
prototype for autonomy is attachment relationships
that preference the link between the behavioral
systems of attachment and exploration (Morelli &
Rothbaum, 2007; Rothbaum et al., 2011). These
close relationships are marked by recurring separa-
tions and reunions and by exploratory activities that
involve materials and tasks typically in relative iso-
lation from peers and at a distance from caregivers
but with a social orientation, particularly when help
is needed (Grossmann, Grossmann, Kindler, &
Zimmermann, 2008, p. 873). Through these and
other autonomy-supporting practices and activities,
children experience themselves as distinct and sep-
arate, and the importance of exploration for learn-
ing is foremost. Harmonious functioning underlies
interdependent self-representations, and the proto-
type for harmony is attachment relationships that
154 T h e E v ol u t ion of At t ac h m e n t T h e or y a n d C u lt u r e s of H u m a n At t ac h m e n t
preference the link between the behavioral systems
of attachment and accommodation (Morelli &
Rothbaum, 2007; Rothbaum et al., 2011). These
close relationships are marked by near continuous
union and contact and by accommodative activi-
ties typically in close cooperation with others that
include conformity, propriety, compliance, respon-
siveness to social cues, and coordinating one’s
own and others’ needs. Through these and other
accommodative supporting practices and activi-
ties, children experience themselves as connected
to others, as “part of encompassing social relation-
ships” (Markus & Kitayama, 2010, p. 423), and as
“defined and made meaningful in respect to such
others” (Kitayama et al., 2007, p. 144). For these
children, the importance of accommodation for
learning is foremost.
Good Care and Competent Children
Attachment theory claims that a history of sen-
sitive care fosters child attachment security.4 This
care is defined by qualities that support the child’s
need to explore the environment and, related to
this, her need for autonomy. It is contingent on the
child’s explicit signals, synchronized to the child’s
activities, and follows the child’s lead. It is affec-
tionate and affectively engaging, and it encourages
expressions of positive emotionality. Cared for in
this way, the child is secure in her attachment rela-
tionships. She is assured that she is in control and
competent, and others are available if needed. She
is able to explore her environment with confidence
and at a distance from others. And she experi-
ences herself as separate and distinct, with needs
and desires of her own. This is considered the gold
standard of good care against which all care, world-
wide, is compared and evaluated.
All indications suggest that sensitive care is
universally important to the close relationships
children develop (Rothbaum et al., 2011). But
attachment theory’s notion of good care, which
represents Western standards, is not. Care that
controls a child’s actions, anticipates her needs, or
dampens her emotional expressiveness is sensitive
care practiced by people who place importance on
social harmony. These features of care, considered
next, are some of the ways parents and others teach
children to develop a situation-centered view of
reality and the ability to accommodate to others
and context (Ellis & Petersen, 1992; Morelli &
Rothbaum, 2007; Rudy & Grusec, 2006).
Care that controls what children do is represen-
tative of a global pattern. Whiting and Edwards
(1988) note that, except for US mothers, all
mothers in their 12-community study (Kien-taa,
Liberia; Kokwet, Kisa, Kariobangi, Ngeca, and
Nyansongo, Kenya; Bubaneswar and Khalapur,
India; Juxlahuaca, Mexico; Tarong, Philippines;
and Taira, Japan) ranked highest or second high-
est in training and controlling their children.5
Similar findings are reported for caregivers in other
African (Keller, 2003; LeVine et al., 1994), East
and South Asian (Chao & Tseng, 2002; Rudy &
Grusec, 2006), Middle Eastern (Kagitcibasi, 1970;
Sharifzadeh, 1998), South and Central American,
and non-middle-class US communities. This way
of getting children to act appropriately does not
harm the close relationships they develop with
their caregivers. Children in Puerto Rico (Carlson
& Harwood, 2003); in mostly low-income families
in the United States from Puerto Rico, Dominican
Republic (Fracasso, Busch-Rossnagel, & Fisher,
1994), and Mexico (Howes & Wishard Guerra,
2009; Ispa et al., 2004); and in low-income
African-American families (Ispa et al., 2004)
have secure attachment or positive relationships
with their controlling and intrusive mothers.6 For
kibbutz-living Israeli (Aviezer, Sagi, Joels, & Ziv,
1999) and Bogotá Colombian children (Posada
et al., 2002), maternal intrusiveness has no relation
to attachment security.
To most of the world’s cultures, controlling
children is what good parents do. Chinese parents
and parents in other Confucian cultures, practice
guan, which is to govern, care for, and love chil-
dren by taking control, directing their behaviors,
and placing demands on them (Chao & Tseng,
2002; Tobin, Wu, & Davidson, 1989). Puerto
Rican parents act in similar ways to teach children
to be calm, attentive, and well-behaved (Carlson &
Harwood, 2003), as do Nso mothers (farmers,
Cameroon) to teach children to show good man-
ners and to share (Keller, Demuth, & Yovis, 2012;
Keller & Otto, 2009). This care includes expres-
sions of closeness (Halgunseth, Ispa, & Rudy,
2006; Ispa et al., 2004; Schwarz, Schafermeier, &
Trommsdorff, 2005), and children experience it in
a positive way. Japanese and Korean adolescents see
guan as a sign of parental acceptance and warmth
(Chao & Tseng, 2002), and Latina and Portuguese
adolescents living in the United States in families
with low incomes see directive care as affirming
their parents’ protection (Taylor, 1996).
Care that anticipates children’s need is another
way to sensitively care for children even though
anticipatory responsiveness does not conform to
attachment standards of contingent responsiveness
to children’s explicit signals. This practice of meet-
ing a child’s needs before or around the time they
are expressed is observed in communities around
the world. It is reported, for example, among the Efe
(Morelli, Ivey Henry, Tronick, & Baldwin, 2002),
Nso (Keller et al., 2012; Keller & Otto, 2009),
Makassar farmers (Indonesia; Röttger-Rössler, in
2014), Sinhala farmers and wage earners (Sri Lanka;
Chapin, 2013), Yucatec Maya farmers (de Leon,
1998), and the Japanese (Rothbaum, Nagaoka, &
Ponte, 2006). Caregivers rely on situational cues,
prior history, and the child’s subtle signals—often
nonverbal—to do this. For the child, care that
consistently anticipates her needs helps to create a
reality that blurs her sense of self as distinct and
separate from others and accentuates her depen-
dency on them. Her phenomenological experience
becomes one of shared selves and shared perspec-
tives and of seeing herself and the world as others
see her and the world (Cohen, Hoshin-Brown, &
Leung, 2007; Rothbaum, Pott, Azuma, Miyake, &
Weisz, 2000).
Care that dampens or discourages negative but
also overly positive expressions of emotions helps
children learn a style of expressiveness that best
maintains their relationships with others by not dis-
rupting social harmony. This is different from care
advocated by attachment theorists that responds
to children’s overt positive and negative signals
and preferences positive ones. Among the Chinese
and other East Asian peoples, intense emotions
are considered immature and socially disruptive
(Kitayama, Karasawa, & Mesquita, 2004; Wang &
Young, 2010). Puerto Rican mothers (middle- and
working-class) prefer calm, well-behaved children
(e.g., Harwood, Miller, & Irizarry, 1995) as do
the Gusii farmers of Kenya (LeVine, 2004) and
the Nso who believe a calm child fits well into her
social group (Keller & Otto, 2009). Whereas care-
givers preference negative signals by responding to
them (quickly), they tend to do the opposite with
positive signals—and in some communities such as
the Gusii, caregivers are relatively unresponsive to
them (i.e., to childish babbling).
What caregivers want for children relates to
how they care for them, which draws from com-
munity models of how individuals should func-
tion as separate individuals and in relationship to
others. Sensitive care as exemplified by attachment
theorists advances the child’s individuality in ways
that promote autonomy. Important are her abili-
ties, confidence, happiness, and discovery through
Mor e l l i 155
mature forms of exploration. The competent child
acts based on what she thinks and believes, and she
changes the environment accordingly. Sensitive
care as exemplified in non-Western communities
advances the child’s sociality in ways that promote
social harmony. Important is proper demeanor,
obedience, compliance, conformity, respect for
elders, remaining calm, sharing, and accepting the
care of many others and the advances of strangers
(e.g., Harwood et al., 1995; Keller, 2003; Morelli
et al., 2014; Otto & Keller, 2014; Quinn & Mageo,
2013). The competent child acts based on what oth-
ers think and feel, and she changes her behavior
accordingly.
Expanding Notions of Good Care
Although sensitive care is a keystone of attach-
ment theory, it only modestly predicts attachment
security (de Wolff & Van IJzendoorn, 1997). This
finding led researchers to consider other aspects
of caregiver involvement related to attachment.
In line with Western interests is caregiver ability
to attribute mental and psychological states to the
child and to treat her as an intentional agent (see
Sharp & Fonagy, 2008, for a review of research
on mind mindedness, reflective functioning, and
parental mentalizing). In line with the majority of
communities worldwide is interest in child health.
But the relation between child care and health,
and the role of attachment relationships in both,
is of little interest to attachment researchers even
though protection from malnutrition may be “the
most dramatic demonstration of the adaptive value
of attachment security” (Van IJzendoorn & Sagi-
Schwartz, 2008, p. 900). The health benefits of
breastfeeding are clear (Latham, 1997), but chil-
dren suckle for reasons other than food. Among for-
aging and other traditional societies, for example,
children suckle when they are frightened or sleepy,
and caregivers use the breast to quiet and console
children. Suckling is part of the child’s experience
of her caregiver as a safe haven, source of comfort,
and co-regulator of emotions; and for Efe and Aka
forager (Central African Republic) children, suck-
ling children is not an exclusively maternal activity
(Hrdy, 2009).
Feelings of security likely extend as well to oth-
ers who regularly give food to children. Observing
and participating in food sharing networks simi-
lar to those depicted in the vignette at the open-
ing of this chapter are ways Efe infants learn about
the trustworthiness of others. These experiences
engender feelings of trust, and trust underlies close
156 T h e E v ol u t ion of At t ac h m e n t T h e or y a n d C u lt u r e s of H u m a n At t ac h m e n t
relationships. Among the Murik foragers (Papua
New Guinea) “food is the quintessential expression
of relatedness, caring, and belonging” (Barlow,
2013, p. 177). Mothering is defined more by feed-
ing than by giving birth, and children belong to the
people who feed them. For them, separation and
loss are expressed by going without food.
Care and Child’s Situation or
Self-Centered View of Reality
There are ways parents and others teach chil-
dren to develop a situation- or self-centered view
of reality in addition to those already considered
(e.g., Keller, this volume). Physical closeness, for
example, is central to attachment relationships
marked by near continuous union and contact and
by accommodative activities in close cooperation
with others, and it typifies young children’s experi-
ences in non-Western communities. This closeness
is usual for infants in hunting and gathering com-
munities. During the day, for example, Efe infants
spend most of their time in the arms or on the
backs of others, and when in someone’s lap, they
are often part of a social knot of interlaced legs and
arms. Among Japanese and Koreans, the signifi-
cance of physical contact between infants and par-
ents (e.g., co-sleeping, co-bathing, breastfeeding)
is captured by the terms sukinshippu and seukinsip
(skinship), respectively. There is a tactile quality to
this type of care (Röttger-Rössler, 2014) that allows
for the subtle and near imperceptible exchanges
on which anticipatory responsiveness depends. It
enables children and caregivers to rely regularly on
nonverbal ways to communicate and, as a result,
to coordinate their involvement in nonexclusive
and socially nondisruptive ways (e.g., Morelli &
Verhoef, in preparation). This paves the way for
learning how to manage attention to simultaneous
activities (Correa-Chávez, Mangione, & Black, this
volume; Rogoff, Mistry, Goncu, & Mosier, 1993).
Caregivers teach children to see the world as
others do and to adjust to their reality. Empathy is
the emotion of feeling-with-others (Saarni, 1997),
and empathic listening and responding take into
account and accommodate to the needs of others.
Japanese mothers may foster this by telling chil-
dren what others are thinking and feeling (Clancy,
1986). Beng (farmers in Côte d’Ivoire; Gottlieb,
2014) and Kaluli caregivers (farmer-foragers in
Papua New Guinea; Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984)
may do the same by speaking for their children,
and, for the Kaluli, teaching them what to say.
Caregivers teach children to attend intently to
others and context. In many traditional commu-
nities, children are positioned so that their gaze is
directed outward when carried or sitting, and this
draws children’s attention to their surrounds. So
does the expectation that children learn by observ-
ing and watching, a view shared by Efe and Mayan
families (farmers and wage earners in Guatemala;
Morelli, Rogoff, & Angelillo, 2002) and com-
mon among traditional societies (Correa-Chávez
et al., this volume; Rogoff, 2003). Caregivers
teach children about social interdependencies by
accentuating the social group. Teasing, shaming,
and name-calling (Samoans, Samoan Islands,
farmer-foragers; Mageo, 2013); abrupt weaning
(Pirahã foragers, Brazil; Everett, 2014); and with-
holding empathic attention (Bhubaneswar, India;
Seymour, 2013) direct children away from indi-
vidual relationships and toward the social group as
a whole. Care and protection by many others instill
in children a sense of dependency on them and the
group for meeting their needs (e.g., Everett, 2014;
Morelli et al., in 2014).
Physical separation, in contrast, is central to
attachment relationships marked by recurring sep-
arations and reunions and by exploratory activities
at a distance from caregivers, and it typifies chil-
dren’s experiences in Western communities. This
separation provides children with many opportu-
nities to explore the environment away from care-
givers, and it lessens social demands on children
to accommodate to others and context. Because
caregivers often are not physically close to the
child, children and caregivers frequently use ver-
bal means to make contact. Caregiver response is
often contingent on the child’s explicit signals as
a result, and this fosters the child’s sense of herself
as a separate agent in control of the environment
(Keller, 2011b). Moreover, reliance on sound and
the face-to-face and dyadic nature of engagement
(Keller, 2011a; Keller et al., 2009) make it difficult
and less likely for the child and caregiver to attend
to multiple events simultaneously (Correa-Chávez
et al., this volume; Rogoff, 2003). What this means
is that children may have to disrupt social events
to get others to pay attention to them (Morelli &
Verhoef, in preparation). There are other experi-
ences that emphasize the child’s distinctiveness and
provide her with opportunities to distinguish her-
self from others and to act based on her own needs,
thoughts, and feelings. For example, when speak-
ing with others, the child is expected to make her
intentions clear. She is not to assume others know
what she is thinking or share her point of view
(Clancy, 1986). A lot of what European-American
caregivers talk about with the child is about the
child—her activities and options (Morelli, Rogoff
et al., 2002). And children are not expected to adapt
their speech to take part in conversations; caregiv-
ers do this (Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986). What is
more, US and Turkish mothers draw attention to
the child by singling out her achievements and
praising her accomplishments, sometimes ignoring
the contributions of others. Such praise contributes
to the child’s notions about herself as self-sufficient,
and it is less common in non-Western communities
(LeVine, 1980; Rogoff, 2003). And, US parents are
less likely to press children to comply with requests
that are seemingly unfair. When the child tries to
negotiate, parents negotiate with them (Kuczynski,
Kochanska, Radke-Yarrow, & Girnius-Brown,
1987). Japanese mothers find this difficult to
accept because it goes against the ethos of accom-
modating to others (Ujiie, 1997). And, in many
African and East Asian communities, children are
expected to obey and comply (Nsamenang, 1992;
Yamada, 2004).
Secure Base Function
To learn about themselves, others, and the
world about them, children preferentially rely on
caregivers with whom they have close relationships.
These caregivers are able to support the child’s
learning because the child trusts them to keep her
safe and secure. With the feelings of safety and
security these relationships engender, the child is
able to engage fully her capacity to learn, even in
stressful situations. This is the secure base func-
tion of attachment relationships, and there is little
doubt that caregivers significant to the child play
this role in communities worldwide. What varies
across communities is the nature of the secure base
and the learning it supports. In attachment the-
ory, the secure base balances tension between the
linked systems of exploration and attachment and
makes possible competent exploration at a distance
from caregivers for gaining knowledge and skills
(Grossmann et al., 2008). Revised thinking on
attachment sees a second link between attachment
and accommodation. This link is likely strong for
children in communities that place importance on
social harmony. For them, the secure base func-
tions in a second way, as a foundation for learn-
ing to accommodate and by accommodating, and
it balances tension between children’s ability to
cope with threats to accommodation and to fit in
socially.7
Mor e l l i 157
 The proposal that the accommodation and
attachment behavioral systems are linked is backed
by several strands of research. When asked to
respond to vignettes based on their own communi-
ty’s description of desirable and undesirable attach-
ment behaviors, Puerto Rican mothers described as
optimal an attachment pattern that balances two
ways of relating to people—calm, respectful atten-
tiveness and positive social engagement (Harwood
et al., 1995). Anglo-American mothers saw the
balance between relating to people and exploring
separately from people. The Japanese concept amae
also symbolizes the connection between attach-
ment and accommodation. Amae is to depend on
and presume another’s love and indulgence, and
positive amae exemplifies secure attachment rela-
tionships that meet the child’s amae needs for
indulgence and interdependency, not exploration
and autonomy (Mizuta, Zahn-Waxler, Cole, &
Hiruma, 1996).
Exploration is important for all children’s
learning. But exploratory activities often support
accommodative learning for non-Western chil-
dren by taking place close to caregivers who may
direct what children do. Children rarely explore at
a distance from caregivers in many non-Western
communities (Keller et al., 2009). Among tradi-
tional societies, this is because children are held or
carried most of the time in the first year of life.
When children are able to venture forth, caregivers
keep them close by. Balinese mothers use fake fear
expressions to do this (cited in Bretherton, 1992).
Gusii and Hausa caregivers (farmers and shep-
herds in Nigeria) prevent children from crawling
away (LeVine, 2014). And Japanese mothers keep
children nearby by staying close to and initiating
contact with them (Rothbaum et al., 2000; Ujiie
& Miyake, 1985). In some places, exploration
is less common. Chinese children in families in
which parents are wage earners (Chen et al., 1998;
Liu et al., 2005; Rubin et al., 2006), Korean chil-
dren in the United States (Farver, Kim, & Lee,
1995) and South Korea (Rubin et al., 2006), and
Japanese children explore less than do Canadian
and Caucasian/Anglo children in structured and
everyday settings.
Making exploration a part of the social
goings-on is another way exploration supports
accommodative learning. Japanese mothers are
more likely to take advantage of social opportuni-
ties to direct their child’s attention to the environ-
ment and to use toys for social engagement than are
Caucasian-American mothers (Bornstein, Azuma,
158 T h e E v ol u t ion of At t ac h m e n t T h e or y a n d C u lt u r e s of H u m a n At t ac h m e n t
Tamis-LeMonda, & Ogino, 1990). !Kung foragers
(Botswana; Bakeman, Adamson, Konner, & Barr,
1990), Wolof farmers (Senegal), and Soninke and
Toucouleur (Senegal, Mali, Mauritania) immi-
grants to Paris (Rabain-Jamin, 1994) are more
likely to respond to children when they are engaged
socially than with objects. For these African immi-
grant children, activities are structured around
people; for Parisian children, activities are centered
on exploration of inanimate objects.
Conundrums for Attachment Researchers
Secure Attachment Relationships
Notwithstanding the diverse realities of chil-
dren’s lives, there are many studies that back
attachment theorists’ views on sensitive care and
the normative distribution of secure attachment
relationships (Van IJzendoorn & Sagi-Schwartz,
2008). There are others who counter these claims
by arguing that attachment constructs and
research practices make it easy to disregard or
not notice significant differences in close relation-
ships. The maternal sensitivity scale, for example,
relies heavily on interpretation of appropriateness
(Carlson & Harwood, 2014), making it easy to fit
observations to the measures provided. And the
secure attachment classification is defined broadly
and assigned to children who act very differently
in the Strange Situation—from children who
interact at a distance from their mothers (B1) to
children who approach, cling, and resist release
(B4) (Ainsworth et al., 1978). The latter charac-
terizes Japanese children. Compared to US chil-
dren, Japanese children strenuously resist and are
upset more by separations, initiate more contact,
and explore less in the Strange Situation procedure
(Rothbaum et al., 2000). Given this and social
experiences related to their care, it is hard to know
if Japanese and US children actually experience
security in the same way.
Attachment research practice also makes it
difficult to consider alternative interpretations of
close relationships. Reclassifying children origi-
nally classified as disorganized (e.g., Behrens,
Hesse, & Main, 2007) ignores the possibility that
their behavior may be organized and meaning-
ful by local standards (Keller, 2008). Modifying
the Strange Situation protocol to suit community
practices ignores the possibility that the procedure
is not an appropriate assessment of attachment
security and that close relationships may serve dif-
ferent functions. Korean mothers, for example,
were allowed to initiate contact and remain close
to their children in the Strange Situation because
physical closeness is important to them. This, and
knowledge of the importance of social harmony
for Koreans in general, did not influence judgment
that the Strange Situation is a valid assessment of
security for Korean children, and attachment clas-
sification has the same meaning in Korea as it does
in the United States (Jin, Jacobvitz, & Hazen,
2010; Jin, Jacobvitz, Hazen, & Jung, 2012). Finally,
relying on urban, well-educated, materially secure
families in non-Western communities to study
attachment relationships ignores the possibility of
Western influences on children and their families
(Heinicke, 1995; Keller, 2014; Posada, Gao, &
Wu, 1995).
Insecure Attachment Relationships
At the start, attachment theorists believed that
attachment patterns and their distribution were
the same for all children in all communities, even
though attachment theory had little if anything to
say on the matter (Waters & Beauchaine, 2003).
Cultural studies, for the most part, support this
supposition for secure attachment relationships,
maybe for the reasons noted already (for examples
of exceptions, see Jin et al., 2012; Tomlinson,
Cooper, & Murray, 2005). Few explanations are
offered for similarities across communities in dis-
tribution of secure attachments because secure
attachment and the processes underlying them are
presumed by attachment theorists to have deep bio-
logical roots. This view should extend to insecure
attachment relationships, but it does not.
Early on in the days of attachment research,
attachment researchers observed that the distribu-
tion of insecure attachment patterns for Western
and non-Western communities veered greatly from
distribution standards established by research on
middle-class US communities. In North Germany
(lower- and middle-class families), the majority
of children (~66%) were classified as insecure in
their attachment relationships, and most of these
children were avoidant (Grossmann, Grossmann,
Gottfried, Gerhard, & Unzer, 1985). Similarly,
in Israel, approximately 41% of children living in
kibbutzim were classified as insecure, but many of
them were resistant (~33%). And, in Japan, approx-
imately 32% of infants were classified as resistant
(Takahashi, 1986). Rather than seeing this as a set-
back for universal claims or accepting that these
children were at risk for mental health problems
(LeVine, 2014), attachment theorists argued that
cultural and ecological processes best explained the
child’s behavior in the Strange Situation—not their
attachment relationships. North German chil-
dren acted in the independent manner lauded by
parents; Israeli and Japanese children were overly
stressed by the procedure because of their limited
experience with strangers, and, for Japanese chil-
dren, infrequent separation from mothers.
Attachment researchers by and large accept the
account that insecure, but not secure, attachment
relationships are mediated by contextual factors
in nonclinical populations. Even though scholars
outside of the field point to conceptual difficulties
with this stance (e.g., LeVine & Norman, 2001),
it gained ground, and nowadays it is taken for
granted and attachment researchers rely on cul-
tural practices and philosophies to predict the inci-
dence of insecure (not secure) attachment patterns
(e.g., Jin et al., 2010). The reasoning first put forth
by attachment theorists was that insecure attach-
ments are “secondary strategies that could be adap-
tive under certain conditions for a certain period
of time” (LeVine & Norman, 2001, p. 96). This
way of thinking was in part a reaction to critiques
by animal behavior researchers that resisted the
view on evolutionary grounds that one pattern of
attachment—the secure pattern—was the species’
optimal pattern (e.g., Hinde, 1987). A compan-
ion, evolution-based, explanation was advanced.
Insecure patterns are adaptive under certain condi-
tions, such as when parents are unable or unwilling
to invest in children—often as a result of living in
ecologically risky environments. In these instances,
children adapt by avoiding disinterested parents
and secure resources elsewhere (avoidant classifi-
cation) or by being demanding and overly vigilant
(anxious/resistant classification) so that they can
secure resources from parents at the most oppor-
tune times (Chisholm, 1996; Simpson & Belsky,
2008).
The explanations offered are in line with attach-
ment theory and endorse the validity of attach-
ment classifications. This is a testament to the sway
attachment theory has on conceptualizing the evo-
lutionary and cultural bases of attachment relation-
ships. It makes it difficult to consider alternative
ways to describe children’s behaviors in their close
relationships and to think differently about child
security and close relationships.
Describing Attachment Relationships
[T]‌hat so many attachment researchers have
gone on to do research with the Strange
Situation rather than looking at what happens
Mor e l l i 159
 in the home or in other natural settings …
marks a turning away from “field work,” and
I don’t think it’s wise.
—(Ainsworth, 1995, p. 12)
One of the great challenges for attachment
research is to develop assessments informed by cul-
tural standards of good care, competent children,
and close relationships. The allure of maintaining the
current course, with small analytic and philosophical
adjustments to theory and research, is strong—not
surprisingly, given a research tradition that spans
decades and extends to communities worldwide
(Solomon & George, 2008). But attachment theory
risks much if it continues to side-step the diverse real-
ities of children’s lives. How best to proceed may be
answered by returning to Bowlby’s and Ainsworth’s
initial interests on the secure base function of attach-
ment relationships and individual differences in chil-
dren’s ability to use caregivers as a secure base across
time and contexts in everyday settings (Waters &
Beauchaine, 2003). These interests draw attention
to the importance of recording, hypothesizing, and
testing variability in children’s close relationships in
the full range of communities and ecologies in which
they live. Progress along these lines is under way.
Rich ethnographic accounts and analyses point
to different secure base function and to different
social and contextual circumstances that are likely to
threaten the child and activate the attachment system.
They show us how little sense it makes to consider
close relationships in isolation from one another or
from either the perspective of the child or the people
who care for her. And they suggest that attachment
theorists’ exemplars of good patterns of care are deriv-
ative and developed historically as households split
into smaller units characterized by nuclear families.
This formation reduced attachment relationships to a
few and isolated the psychological importance of the
mother—with one or two others. The trend towards
less socially dense families combined with an ethos
of decision making based on one’s needs (along with
other considerations) co-acted to lay groundwork for
children’s learning to explore and by exploring at a
distance from others. The opportunities to explore
at a social distance from others are less common for
children living in the nearly constant presence of oth-
ers. This, combined with an ethos of children’s learn-
ing by keen observation, and children’s learning to
accommodate and by accommodating (along with
other considerations), keep children and others near
each other. Proximity to, not distance from, people
best supports children’s learning.
160 T h e E v ol u t ion of At t ac h m e n t T h e or y a n d C u lt u r e s of H u m a n At t ac h m e n t
Moving forward, attachment theory must
accommodate the diverse realities of children’s
relationships to be a theory of human close rela-
tionships. To succeed, we need scholars who are
willing to shed language that constrains thinking,
sail beyond the comfort of philosophical anchors,
and develop a broad cross-cultural and empirical
base by observing, talking, and listening to people
as they live their lives and in the contexts where
human development actually occurs. And we need
to do this in a way that allows us to expand on the
richness of observation and insight that attachment
theory and research have to offer.
Notes
1 The Paleolithic period is marked by the appearance of
hominids, the immediate ancestors of modern humans,
and distinguished by the development of stone tools and
the grouping of humans into small bands.
2 I use Rothbaum and Trommsdorff’s (2007) definition
of Western as primarily middle-class North American,
Western- and Northern-European communities; and
non-Western as primarily describing the rest of the world.
And I, like them, do not believe there is homogeneity
within these groupings or within individual countries or
societies.
3 Please refer to Morelli et al. (2014) for research cited in this
section.
4 In this section, Chinese, Canadian, German, Israeli,
Japanese, Korean, Puerto Rican, Turkish, and US fami-
lies are from middle-class communities, unless otherwise
noted. The mode of living for all other communities is
provided. For a few studies, this information is not avail-
able. The term “children” refers to youngsters 5 years and
younger, unless otherwise noted.
5 In all communities, farming predominated, except in
Kariobangi, Bhunbaneswar, and the United States.
6 Ispa and colleagues (2004) report that maternal warmth
and acculturation status moderated the relation between
control and attachment security in African-American
families and Mexican families, respectively. Howes and
Wishard Guerra (2009) report the importance of family
accessibility for Mexican families.
7 An accommodation behavioral system is consistent with
theorizing that selective pressures favored biological and
psychological processes to allow people to maintain good
relationships and the integrity of the group (e.g., Flinn,
Nepomnaschy, Muehlenbein, & Ponzi, 2011; Fonagy,
Gergely, & Target, 2007). This likely includes abilities
associated with awareness of and alignment with important
other people and situation-based expectations.
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 C H A P T E R

11 Early Contexts of Learning: Family

and Community Socialization During
Infancy and Toddlerhood
Carolyn Pope Edwards, Lixin Ren, and Jill Brown

Abstract
The contexts of early learning and socialization are diverse and complex but not without
predictability. The tension between predictability and variation fascinates researchers interested
in childhood and culture and motivates careful exploration of different developmental niches to
better understand socialization during infancy, toddlerhood, and early childhood. Contexts of early
socialization vary in the people and activities present, and the beliefs and norms of caregivers and daily
companions. The chapter utilizes anthropological constructs (household structure and composition,
settlement patterns and subsistence level, mothers’ workload, gender division of labor, intimacy
levels between husbands and wives, and cultural roles and norms pertaining to sibling caregiving and
fostering of children) to better understand how parents, siblings, grandparents, extended kin, foster
families, early childhood centers, and welfare institutions can work together to raise healthy children.
The authors explore how opportunities and constraints as well as expectations and demands influence
children in enduring ways.
Key Words:  early learning, socialization, childhood, culture, development

Relationships provide the framework for young
children’s development. When relationships are
predictable, responsive, and reciprocal, they help
children break down the incoming stream of infor-
mation from the outside world so they can assimi-
late, understand, and trust it. The rhythms of close
relationships with parents, siblings, extended kin,
and other caregivers in the community support
cognitive, social, emotional, language, and motor
development in young children. Relationships
provide more than the context of early learn-
ing: “development takes place within, through
and for relatedness” (Josselson, 1996, p. 2). Thus,
relationships provide not only the setting but also
the constituent elements and motivation for early
development.
This chapter focuses on family and commu-
nity socialization practices and goals during the
early years of childhood, with a particular focus
on infancy and toddlerhood. Using evidence
from diverse cultures—drawing from multiple
scholarly disciplines and methodologies—we
show that different early contexts for socializa-
tion vary in their objective parameters (people
present, activities, and experiences provided), as
well as in their subjective dimensions (values,
beliefs, and norms held by the socializers). In our
view, these objective and subjective differences in
turn play out in different kinds of opportunities
and constraints, on the one hand, and expecta-
tions and demands, on the other, that influence
children in lasting ways. In forefronting these
features, we assume an ecocultural perspective,
originally formalized by John Whiting (1994)
and now reframed by contemporary scholars
such as Sara Harkness and Charles Super, Heidi
Keller, and Carol Worthman (see Edwards &
Weisner, 2010). This functionalist perspective

165
links history, ecology, and maintenance systems
(e.g., subsistence, settlement, household) with
cultural belief systems, adult routines, and the
learning environments and developmental out-
comes of children.
In addition to synthesizing findings from past
research, we also offer short portraits of child and
adult behavior gathered from our own research
studies conducted in Italy, China, Kenya, Namibia,
and the United States to illustrate the concepts and
arguments we advance. In this way, we try to pro-
vide what we regard as “memorable instances” and
to draw the reader inside the material in order to
spark new insights and questions about the contexts
of early childhood development in the contempo-
rary world. We open with one such example from
ongoing research in Pistoia, Italy, that illustrates
the first trust- and relationship-building stage as a
child transitions into an infant–toddler center. This
caregiving context involves intersecting systems of
family and center, functioning within a municipal-
ity that explicitly invests in public child care as a
way of fostering a “culture of childhood.”
Pistoia, Italy. It is early morning, and baby Clara
(10 months old) and her mother are entering
the door of infant-toddler center, Il Grillo (“The
Caterpillar”) for the first time. Clara and her family
live in Pistoia, a city of about 90,000 people, located
between Florence and Pisa in the region of Tuscany.
As in other Italian cities, educators have been
working for several decades together with parents
and city administrators to build high-quality public
systems of care and education. Pistoia aims to be a
“child-friendly city,” with enrichment and support
programs designed for all age groups of children.
In the infant programs, educators have put much
thought into creating welcoming environments
and transition procedures to create community
and belonging. As Clara and her mother come
into the center, a teacher named Franca comes
forward to greet them. Clara’s mother invites Franca
to hold her baby, and together they go around
and look at the spaces. Franca says, “Here there
will be notebooks compiled by both parents and
teachers—a notebook to go back and forth. You
can write what you see, and we will respond what
we see.” Then they sit down to talk in a specially
prepared area. The teacher and mother fall into
rhythm in offering Clara toys from a basket, while
she contentedly plays. Clara’s mother describes what
she likes to eat, how she likes to go to sleep, and why
the parents have decided to bring her to the center.
Throughout the week, Clara’s mother leaves her for
166 E a r ly C on t e x t s of L e a r n i ng
gradually lengthening periods, as the baby becomes
more and more comfortable. By the end of the week,
the inserimento (“settling in”) process is complete,
free of abrupt separation and distress.
(adapted from Edwards & Gandini, 2001, pp. 187–190)
Beliefs and values provide the context for human
interactions and relationships in any historical time
or community setting, of course. In northern and
central Italy, core cultural values about the com-
munity’s responsibility toward its children have led
to the development of welcoming public services
for even the youngest children. In other cultural
contexts, child care services may not be as well
developed, but systems of support include (to vary-
ing degrees) mothers, fathers, siblings, extended
family, and hired help or child care providers.
Throughout history, parents have needed to find
ways to share the care of young children while they
perform other important work for their families.
Therefore, they have created ways to enlarge their
children’s circle of relationships while they are
busy or unavailable. It has always been to parents’
advantage to have their children form important
secondary relationships that can be depended on
on a routine basis. Furthermore, societies must
make provision for children who are orphaned,
abandoned, or otherwise in dire need, and this can
be done through systems of fostering or institu-
tional care. In this chapter, we examine two general
types of socialization contexts: family-based settings,
including child fostering; and early care and edu-
cation services, including child welfare institutions.
We discuss the full range of contexts, but the por-
traits we highlight represent examples we would
consider to promote generally healthy growth and
development. These examples illustrate that young
children can thrive in different kinds of contexts
when conditions are met for promoting emotional
security, complex learning, and rich interaction
with the social world.
Adult and Sibling Care in the
Context of the Family
Cultural patterns of childrearing differ across
time and place according to such macrofactors as
climate, geography, demographics, economics,
political systems, and technology, yet they are not
totally random and unpredictable. Indeed, under-
neath the variation, the care of infants and tod-
dlers has many common features cross-culturally
because all societies desire their children to survive
and thrive. Parents everywhere face certain simi-
larities in the tasks of caring for and socializing
infants and toddlers, even though their styles
of caregiving are influenced by the features of
their daily cultural routines, resources, and roles
(Harkness & Super, 2002; Whiting & Edwards,
1988), as well as by non-normative characteristics
that create heterogeneity.
Salient cross-cultural similarities arise because
infants and toddlers have universal needs for pri-
mary care related to health, nutrition, and safety
if they are to stay alive and grow. Furthermore,
babies’ immature, floppy bodies need to be physi-
cally supported (held, carried, or contained) much
of the day. As their motor systems develop, toddlers
seek physical challenge and freedom to move and
practice reaching, sitting, crawling, and walking.
Their perceptual and cognitive systems likewise
need visual and object stimulation to promote
learning. Finally, infants and toddlers have univer-
sal needs for attachment and social companionship
requisite for social and emotional health.
Parents as Caregivers
Yet, in spite of these general requirements, the
relational contexts for infant and toddler social-
ization vary greatly, as do parental belief systems,
or ethnotheories, about what children need. For
example, who provides the caregiving and where
it takes place can be distributed in many different
ways within and across cultural communities. Yet,
during the nursing period, mothers are the most
important caregivers in more than 80% of the
world’s societies (Barry & Paxton, 1971). Mothers
are more likely than any other single individuals to
feed, clean, hold, and interact with their infants,
but how they do so varies widely. For example, pat-
terns of cultural variation are seen in how much
mothers carry and hold their babies during the day;
where they put them to sleep at night; how early
they wean them and how abruptly; whether they
interact with them in a more distal and verbal or
more proximal and kinesthetic style; whether and
how they involve them in their daily work and
leisure activities; what style of discipline and con-
trol they use; how much they play with them and
interact face to face; how early they expect inde-
pendent skills of hygiene, dressing, and feeding;
and what kinds of politeness and mature behavior
are expected. These differences are described in
several chapters in this volume; therefore, here, we
focus on the different relational contexts of early
socialization.
Although mothers are usually the primary care-
givers of young children, they are not usually the
exclusive caregivers. Instead, shared caregiving that
extends the child’s circle of consistent relation-
ships is the norm. Sometimes these supplemen-
tary caregivers are family members, for example,
fathers, grandparents, or siblings. However, today,
in many parts of the world, supplementary nonfa-
mily caregivers or professionals are often employed
to look after children either in their own or the
child’s home or in a group care setting. These
systems demonstrate the range of possibilities for
appropriate infant–toddler care and provide strong
evidence that sharing care within and beyond the
family is as much part of the human story as is the
mother-exclusive pattern.
What factors best predict variations in the moth-
ering role with infants and toddlers? Researchers
have established that the following factors are of
paramount importance: household structure and
composition; settlement pattern and subsistence
level; mothers’ workloads; the gender division of
labor and level of intimacy/distance between hus-
bands and wives; and cultural roles and norms per-
taining to sibling caregiving.
Household structure and composition are
clearly important. When people live in extended
families, with many close kin in the compound
or in nearby courtyards, then grandmothers,
aunts, and co-wives (women married to the same
husband) often assist the mother in childbirth
and infant care. In contrast, it tends to be the
father who comes next to the mother in involve-
ment in communities where people live in nucle-
ated, monogamous family households—especially
where population density is low, females contribute
heavily to the food supply, and husbands and wives
interact in their daily work and social activities.
Thus, it is not surprising that many scholars have
found that fathers in hunter–gatherer or foraging
societies tend to be generally high in involvement
with infants and toddlers (Fouts, 2013; Hewlett &
MacFarlan, 2010; Katz & Konner, 1981; Marlowe,
2000). For example, Aka and Efe pygmy fathers
of Central Africa can be highly participatory; Aka
fathers have been observed to spend over half of
their day holding or being nearby their infants,
and in fact are very affectionate, hugging and kiss-
ing their babies while holding them even more
often than do mothers (Hewlett, 1991). Yet, even
in these nomadic hunter–gatherers, the salience of
the father may vary across the year. For instance,
Efe and Aka may spend part of the year in settled
villages and part of the year wandering the land
in small bands (Hewlett, 1991; Morelli & Tronick,
P ope Edwa r ds , R e n, Br ow n 167
1992). In the settled villages, surrounded by other
adults, fathers are less active in infant care than
they are when they are isolated with their wives and
children in the bush, under which situation their
help and support is more needed. Thus, fathers’
roles are flexible depending on the family’s living
situation, suggesting that fathers are capable of
picking up their level of child care depending on
what is asked and needed from them.
It is interesting to compare these findings from
the Central African foraging communities with
those from other type of societies. Marlowe (2000),
using data from the Standard Cross-Cultural
Sample, found the highest level of father involve-
ment in foraging peoples; followed by the hor-
ticultural peoples (shifting cultivators, working
with hoes and machetes); and with the lowest
level among pastoralists and settled agricultural-
ists (farming with plows and draft animals). In all
societies, fathers play roles as policy makers, figures
of authority, providers of material resources, and,
where necessary, warriors and defenders.
The further importance of ecology and subsis-
tence—as played out in mothers’ workload and
the division of labor between men and women—is
evident in findings from the Children of Different
Worlds Study (Whiting & Edwards, 1988). This
book is based on observational data collected
between 1965 and 1975 by 10 collaborators and our-
selves, as well as on data reanalyzed from the 1954–
1956 Six Cultures Study (Whiting & Whiting,
1975) and spot observation samples collected under
the leadership of Lee and Ruth Munroe. In con-
trast to the Central African hunter–gatherers, the
majority of samples in Children of Different Worlds
were traditionally part of tribal societies with pas-
toralism and settled agriculture as the basis for sub-
sistence (“middle-level” societies). Several others
were part of complex, stratified societies with econ-
omies based on intensive agriculture and/or indus-
try. None was a foraging group. The total corpus of
data included communities located in the countries
of Kenya (six communities), United States (three
communities), India (two communities), and
Guatemala, Liberia, Mexico, Okinawa, Peru, and
Philippines (one community each). Looking at the
rank orders of coded behaviors, and poring over the
qualitative ethnographic data, we concluded that
we could see at least three different “profiles” of
maternal behavior with children aged 3–10 years,
which we called the “training mother,” found in all
of the sub-Saharan agricultural communities; the
“controlling mother,” found in other agricultural
168 E a r ly C on t e x t s of L e a r n i ng
communities of North India, Philippines, and
Mexico; and the “sociable mother,” found only in
the United States.
In all of these samples, mothers had the pri-
mary responsibility for infant care, but the
amount of paternal responsibility varied widely.
Ethnographers made an estimate of the fathers’ par-
ticipation in the care of infants and toddlers. The
Kenyan fathers were judged to be the least involved
in the care of infants (Whiting & Edwards, 1988,
table 2.9, pp. 64–65). Polygyny was a favored form
of marriage, and husbands and wives often ate,
slept, worked, and socialized separately, with the
father frequently having a hut or room of his own.
Furthermore, sexual relations between husband
and wife were often prohibited for a long postpar-
tum period to prevent an immediate next preg-
nancy that might threaten the nursing mother’s
milk supply. As reported by the ethnographers, the
Kenyan fathers never cared for infants even in the
mothers’ absence and rarely held the child even at
home. The fathers were more involved with toddlers
but still did not care for, carry, teach, or take charge
of them more than occasionally. The most involved
fathers were found in Claremont, California, and
Orchard Town, New England, where marriage
was monogamous, husband and wife slept and ate
meals together, and husbands assisted women in
their household work.
It is not surprising that the US samples showed
the highest level of father involvement, but it was
still relatively low. Today, however, throughout
the industrialized world and increasingly in the
developing countries as well, mothers have been
drawn into the labor force and, at the same time,
are more likely to be separated from the extended
kin network that prevailed in the traditional
rural community. Moreover, their children of
middle childhood age, potential “helpers at the
nest,” are in school all day. These factors all lead
to an increase in father involvement and the use
of child care systems (e.g., Haas & Hwang, 2013;
McFadden & Tamis-LeMonda, 2013; US Census
Bureau, 2010).
Norms favoring father caregiving are found to be
rising in middle-class urban-industrial populations
of Europe and North America, especially as more
mothers work outside the home (Shwalb, Shwalb,
& Lamb, 2013). In most European countries, such
as Norway, Sweden, Italy, France, and Germany,
as well as in Asian countries such as China, Korea,
and Japan, shared caregiving (both inside and out-
side the family) is fostered by government policies
that are intentionally designed to support the fam-
ily and women’s participation in the labor force
(Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development [OECD], 2006). The Scandinavian
countries are famed for their generous policies of
paid parental leave that provide parents with an
earnings-based wage replacement of 80–100%, up
to a high-income ceiling (Haas & Hwang, 2013).
To encourage fathers to take advantage of these
benefits, Norway and Sweden have achieved some
success by experimenting with policies that extend
the period of paid parental leave for families when
both the mother and father participate.
Although the patterns of change are complex,
some studies of contemporary families find a
prominent role for fathers. For example, Edwards,
Logue, Loehr, and Roth (1986, 1987) conducted
spot observations on 38 infants and toddlers aged
2–30 months living in a college town in Amherst,
Massachusetts. The study had a matched-pairs
design. Half of the children attended a high-
quality, university-based infant/toddler program
that was open mornings only. The other half
(matched by age and sex) also had mothers who
were working or studying at least part-time, but
these children were cared for in home-based
arrangements (by fathers, family day care provid-
ers, babysitters, etc.). The study provides a detailed
picture of the ecology of the children’s lives. Spot
observations were conducted either in person or
by telephone, in morning, afternoon, and evening
time periods, 7 days a week, over 8 months, for
a total of 1,232 observations (with 25.8% of the
center-care children’s observations collected at the
center). In the at-home observations, mothers were
found to be in the immediate vicinity (“interac-
tional space”) of the child in 73% of the obser-
vations, compared to 44% for fathers. Mothers
were the “closest adult” for 64% of the observa-
tions, compared to 33% for fathers. Content of the
observations revealed fathers to be very involved
in both play and caregiving activities. Similarly,
Harkness and Super (1992) employed an in-person
spot observation technique to study father involve-
ment in another Massachusetts town, Cambridge.
These fathers were directly involved in caretaking
from the beginning of the infant’s life, holding
steady at about 15% of the time during the child’s
first 5 years; fathers engaged in feeding, bed/bath
routines, play, book reading, outings, and other
activities. Thus, both these studies have demon-
strated that fathers are very involved in both play
and caregiving in children’s early lives.
Siblings as Caregivers
Sibling relationships are another context of
infant and toddler socialization especially salient in
middle-level societies, that is, tribal societies with
subsistence economies based on settled agriculture,
herding, and fishing (Cicirelli, 1994; Maynard,
2002; Weisner & Gallimore, 1977). Sibling care
of infants is most common in situations in which
women have several children and heavy workloads,
and fathers are not involved, as in the Kenyan sam-
ples in Children of Different Worlds.
In Ngecha, Kenya, for example, the workload of
mothers is very heavy (Edwards & Whiting, 1993;
2004). At the time of our study and continuing into
the present, the majority of mothers were responsible
for obtaining water, cooking fuel, and fodder for the
milk cow. They were the principal gardeners, respon-
sible for raising maize, beans, and other vegetables for
family consumption and selling any surplus in the
local market. These busy mothers often designated
a daughter aged about 6–10 years as “child nurse”
for an infant, although they would readily involve a
son if no girl of the right age was available. The child
nurses carried their infants around on their backs or
hips while they played or did chores, and when these
charges grew older and became ambulatory, they
incorporated their toddlers into the little group of
children (usually close relatives) who played together
in the roads and fields near the homestead. Child
nurses might be expected to care for infants for 2–4
hours daily while their mothers worked in the gar-
den or performed household chores—more time
than seen in most of the other study communities.
Yet, backup was available; usually, the child nurses
kept the babies, by now at least 4 or 5 months old,
in or near the homestead, where aunts, co-wives, or
grandparents could be called upon to help out when
needed in an emergency.
In our many hours of observational records of
Kenyan child behavior, we mostly find examples
of attentive care by older siblings. This finding
accords with other studies documenting sibling
teaching and nurturing (Watson-Gegeo & Gegeo,
1989; Zukow, 1989). For example, with respect to
cognitive and linguistic stimulation, Zinacanteco
siblings in the Mayan village of Nabenchauk,
Mexico, engaged toddlers in interactions that
were sustained, elaborate, well-matched to the
toddlers’ developmental level, and facilitative of
mature responses by the toddlers; as they grew
older, the caregivers’ behaviors approached more
closely the adult Zinacantec model of teaching
(Maynard, 2002).
P ope Edwa r ds , R e n, Br ow n 169
 In a few of the Ngecha observations, however,
it is easy to discern when a child nurse was over-
taxed. Indeed, mothers said that they preferred a
child nurse to be at least 6 years old, and when we
compared the behavior of 5- versus 8-year-old sib-
ling caregivers, we found that the younger care-
givers were the more inconsistent ones in their
treatment of infants, kissing them one minute,
then teasing, pinching, or handling them roughly
in the next (Whiting & Edwards, 1988, p. 194).
In a close microanalysis of the rate scores of social
behavior of Ngecha mothers with toddlers (aged
2–3) and their adjacent older siblings (17 girls,
14 boys, aged 4–5 years), we found that the older
siblings interacted in a mix of positive and nega-
tive modes with their toddler-followers and a
combination of nurturing and companion roles
(Edwards & Whiting, 1993). The mothers, as is
typical in sub-Saharan Africa, did not treat tod-
dlers (or infants, for that matter) as social com-
panions. They rarely engaged in play or purely
sociable interaction with them; rather, most of
their interaction was “business” of the nurturant
or prosocially dominant types. The adjacent older
siblings, in contrast, were significantly more
likely than their mothers to engage in various
kinds of playful and sociable as well as aggressive
interaction. The siblings were more likely (on the
positive side) to clearly seek the toddlers’ sociabil-
ity, sit with or follow after them, play, run around
with them, and watch them, and (on the negative
side) physically tease them, dominate them, seek
or grab an object from them, and verbally criti-
cize or insult them.
Here are typical examples of this mixed posi-
tive and negative interaction from Ngecha and
Nyansongo, two of our agricultural cultural com-
munities. Notice how 3-year-old Muthoni, in the
first case, and 1-year-old Moriasi, in the second,
do not seem disturbed or overwhelmed by their
siblings, but rather take the complexity in stride.
Also notice that while Muthoni receives a larger
proportion of teasing and dominance, and Moriasi
a larger proportion of affectionate interaction, in
both cases, the older sisters demonstrate nurtur-
ance and empathy.
Ngecha, Kenya. Present in the observation are
Muthoni and Wambui, sisters aged 3 and 5, along
with their grandmother. Muthoni is fiddling with a
dry corn husk. Wambui teasingly and playfully tells
her that she could be bitten by a lizard, but Muthoni
does not respond. Wambui now shows her little
170 E a r ly C on t e x t s of L e a r n i ng
sister what she has made, a piece of round metal tied
at the end of a string. She asks her if she wants one
made for her, and Muthoni says yes. While Wambui
is looking for another piece of metal, Muthoni
takes Wambui’s plaything and tries swinging it.
The metal flies off the string. Wambui, upset at
this, tells Muthoni she will not make a toy for her
because of what she has done, but Muthoni ignores
her. Wambui repairs her plaything and teasingly
calls Muthoni, “You bad Kinono” [a corruption of
“Muthoni”]. Muthoni takes it as a joke and repeats
it after Wambui, who is amused. Muthoni now sits
with her feet together, squeezing a clod of earth
between her feet. Wambui takes the piece of earth,
saying it belongs to her. Muthoni starts to cry, and
Wambui gives the clod back.
(Edwards & Whiting, 1993).
Nyansongo, Kenya. Rebecca is a 5-year-old
child nurse living in a rural farming village (LeVine
& LeVine, 1963). She is observed hoeing in a field
with her aunt, cousins, and Moriasi, her 1-year-old
brother. Moriasi begins to fuss, and Rebecca
interrupts her work of hoeing to go and pick him
up. She tries jouncing him, but he only begins to
cry louder. “Why are you crying?” Rebecca asks,
“I don’t have anything to give you.” She becomes
impatient and gives him a little slap, but then
self-corrects and puts Moriasi onto her back and
carries him into the shade at the front of a bigger
house where her baby cousin and his big sister are
playing. Rebecca carefully sits Moriasi down. She
turns her attention for a few moments to her baby
cousin, and treats this baby affectionately. The
two big girls begin to get involved in laughing and
wrestling together and start to drift away from the
two babies. The aunt sees this retreat and says to the
girls, “Why are you leaving those babies?” Rebecca
immediately comes running back and proceeds to
amuse the babies by singing and dancing.
Whiting & Edwards, 1988, pp. 174–175)
Thomas Weisner (1989a), studying the Abaluhia
of Western Kenya, has described this pattern of
sibling caregiving as a distinct cultural style that
provides toddlers with beneficial cognitive and
emotional challenge. From repeated opportunities
of deciphering their siblings’ intentions, toddlers
learn how to deal with teasing and mild aggression
incorporated within an envelope of generally benev-
olent caregiving. They practice and master different
techniques of social persuasion. Crying and whin-
ing may get their mother, aunty, or grandmother to
intervene, but on those occasions when no adult is
present, the toddler must learn to fight back, out-
wit, or better yet, deflect sibling provocations into
playfulness. The toddler is thereby stimulated to
cognitively discriminate between different kinds of
social situations and to develop a rich repertory of
behavioral responses.
Extensive sibling caregiving in Western fami-
lies is less common than in non-Western agrarian
societies. In the United States, sibling caregiving is
most common in poor and rural communities and
in African-American and other minority commu-
nities. Native Hawaiians (like other Polynesian and
Pacific Island peoples) are known for their value of
lifelong sibling relationships and ethnotheories of
shared domestic management by parents (Weisner,
1989b), although with much variability in the
amount they delegate care in daily life. Sibling
caretaking is especially useful for single mothers
employed in the labor force. To be preferred as a
caregiver, the sibling should be at least a young ado-
lescent rather than elementary-school aged. Sibling
care by elementary-school aged children ideally
takes place under the indirect supervision of a par-
ent who is busy with other tasks or while the parent
is off for a short, unspecified period of time.
Grandparents as Caregivers
In addition to parents and siblings, other fam-
ily members, grandparents in particular, often play
an important role in children’s development across
many cultural contexts, providing important back-
ups to mothers, especially in families with extended
household arrangements. In contemporary Western
societies, with increased longevity and good health,
psychologists have become increasingly interested
in studying grandparenthood (Dunifon, 2013).
The intensity of grandparent involvement var-
ies substantially across cultures. However, most of
the empirical research has been conducted in the
United States, where grandparent involvement is
relatively low. In the United States, individual-
ism and independence are valued, and the nuclear
family is the most common family form; multi-
generational households are not usual. Only 1 in
10 children lives with grandparents (Livingston &
Parker, 2010). Grandparents are the primary pro-
viders of child care for 30% of working mothers
with children under age 5.
In some other countries, grandparent involve-
ment is more prevalent and expected (Ikels,
1998). These studies have been conducted mainly
by anthropologists and sociologists and have
revealed ways in which cultural values influence
expectations for grandparent involvement and
roles. For instance, in Chinese urban areas, approx-
imately 50–70% of young children receive supple-
mentary care from grandparents (Jiang et al.,
2007). There are many benefits when parents and
grandparents share the responsibilities of caring for
the children. Grandparents are often the ones with
whom parents feel most comfortable to entrust
their children. Grandparents can share the load of
parenting. Some grandparents act as “child savers”
who spend a great amount of time providing child
care when parents are incapable or unavailable to
take care of their children, and some are “parent
savers” who take care of grandchildren so that par-
ents can focus on their jobs or education (Baker &
Silverstein, 2012). In some cases, grandparents are
both “child savers” and “parent savers.”
Additionally, in many families, children feel
most comfortable sharing troubles or worries with
their grandparents. In some cultures, grandparents
and grandchildren develop “joking relationships”
characterized by teasing, insults, and suggestive
behaviors. Drucker-Brown (1982) worked with
people from the Mamprusi of northeastern Ghana
where the joking relationship between grandpar-
ents and grandchildren serves multiple functions.
The joking relationship helps erase the real age dif-
ferences between the two generations and reduce
intergenerational tensions as well. Mamprusi chil-
dren are required to respect and defer to their par-
ents; they are expected to “kneel or crouch, avert
their eyes, and speak softly” (Ikels, 1998, p. 41)
when seeking goods from parents. However, it
is not uncommon for a child to make demands
from his grandparents in a very discourteous way.
Similarly, the Mamprusi children may discuss sex-
ual matters with their grandparents but not their
parents.
Finally, grandparents can be important social-
izers who transmit values, ethnic heritage, and
family traditions to their grandchildren either
through direct contacts or via the middle genera-
tion. Children can learn important knowledge or
skills that are valued by the culture they live in
through interacting with their grandparents. For
instance, in Bhubaneswar, India, familial interde-
pendence is highly valued, and learning the signifi-
cance of extended kin is an important task in early
years of life. From infancy on, mothers and other
caregivers repeat over and over to infants and tod-
dlers a complex set of kin terms so that children
can learn how to address extended kin appropri-
ately (Seymour, 1993). In the following example,
P ope Edwa r ds , R e n, Br ow n 171
the adults, especially the grandmother, teach a tod-
dler how to address the researcher (Susan Seymour)
appropriately:
Bhubaneswar, India. For half an hour
Grandmother, Sita (father’s older sister), Gopal
(father’s younger brother), and Rabi (1.5-year-old
boy) sat in front of the room. Grandmother, Sita,
and Gopal all together told Rabi how to greet me.
They repeated the command over and over again.
Rabi finally said “nani,” which was an appropriate
way to address me. Everyone laughed.
(adapted from Seymour, 1993, p. 56)
Group sleeping is a common practice in
Bhubaneswar, India. Children usually sleep
together with their mothers and siblings, grand-
parents, or some other relative in order to reinforce
an early sense of interdependence. Rabi (the boy
just mentioned) slept with his grandmother for
an extended period after his younger sibling was
born. This practice was believed to help reduce
Rabi’s feelings of sibling rivalry. More importantly,
sleeping with an adult makes children learn how to
share intimate spaces and experience much physi-
cal contact with their siblings when they grow up
(Seymour, 1993). Seymour (1993, table 3.1, p. 58)
reported that in Bhubaneswar, India, 10–12% of
nurturant acts were performed by grandmothers,
the next highest to the proportion of nurturant acts
done by mother (53–58%). Grandparents appeared
to be important caregivers and socializers for infant
and toddlers in Bhubaneswar, India.
Despite the benefits of grandparent involve-
ment, many issues may arise when parents and
grandparents hold different childrearing val-
ues and beliefs and adopt different childrearing
practices. Goh (2006) interviewed parents and
grandparents of young children about their joint
parenting experiences in Xiamen, an urban city
in southeastern China. Both parents and grand-
parents expressed a lot of ambivalence, dilemma,
and contradiction regarding their joint parenting
experiences. Some parents expressed the concern
that grandparents tended to take over tasks that
parents expected their children to perform (e.g.,
feeding oneself), and, as a result, children learned
to depend too heavily on grandparents, which
was contradictory to parents’ goal of cultivating
independence in their children. Some parents also
raised the issue that parents and grandparents
might convey mixed messages to the children. This
is one of the many aspects of distributed caregiv-
ing that deserve further research.
172 E a r ly C on t e x t s of L e a r n i ng
Fostering: Another Form
of Shared Caregiving
As we have described, the sharing of infant and
toddler caregiving among family members is nor-
mative in many cultures. Even beyond that kind
of sharing, in Africa and some other parts of the
world, a culturally specific child care practice and
tradition of child fosterage exists, and here the role of
parents is markedly reduced (Weisner, Bradley, &
Kilbride, 1997). Accounts in Africa describe foster-
age as a social welfare system revolving around kin-
ship; fosterage is defined as the rearing of a child by
someone other than the biological parent (Bledsoe,
1990). What makes fosterage unique is the semi-
permanent yet adjustable nature of the relation-
ship. Goody (1973) was among the first to describe
the practice among the Gonja of Cameroon. She
remembers her first entries in her field notes were
the Ganja word kabitha “a girl given to someone”
and kaiyeribi “a boy given to someone.”
Early work focused on West Africa, but
Southern Africa, in fact, has the highest rates of
fosterage, in large part due to migration of parents
looking for work (Monasch & Boerma, 2004) or
to families putting their children into what they
believe are advantageous situations. Fosterage also
affords parents a culturally appropriate outlet to
prepare children for the death of a parent or to
acquire the emotional skills they need to face loss.
In present day contexts like sub-Saharan Africa,
where HIV/AIDS rates are more than 20%, foster-
age is protective and congruent with how orphans
are transferred out to families in the midst of the
illness, prior to the death of the parent, to protect
the child from the trauma of the parent’s death
and to help the child adjust to his or her new situ-
ation. The percentage of children living away from
their mothers ranges from as low as 3% in Sudan
to as high as 30% in Namibia. Fosterage seems to
increase with age. In Namibia, fosterage rates are
13.7% (for children birth to age 2 years), 25.9%
(for children aged 3–5), 30.2% (for children aged
6–9), and 31.3% (for children aged 10–15). The
younger children are fostered primarily to grand-
mothers, whereas the older children are fostered
to those who can provide apprenticeship, work, or
access to education (Brown, 2011).
Clearly, the motivations behind fostering chil-
dren are multiple and complex. Research illumi-
nates such motivations as the desire to gain an
heir or a helper (Payne-Price, 1981), provide a bet-
ter education for a child (Isiugo-Abanihe, 1985),
gifting and sharing between families (Madhavan,
2004), establishment of social bonds (Bledsoe,
1990), enhancement of fertility (Isiugo-Abanihe,
1985; Pennington, 1991), the need for the birth
mother to be childless when entering a new
relationship with a man (Pennington, 1991;
Vandermeersch & Chimere-Dan, 2002), and
times of crisis, like sickness and famine (Brown,
2011; Madhavan, 2004).
Some of these motivations are intended to ben-
efit the adults, whereas others are intended for the
benefit of the child, and concepts link parental
ethnotheories with cultural necessities. For exam-
ple, in ethnographic interviews with Namibian
women fostered out as children, an ethnotheory
of “suffering as a source of strength” was heard.
Suffering was closely linked to moral development
and a sense that suffering makes a person stronger
(Brown, 2011). Thus, women believed they were
benefiting their children when they fostered them
out, even if mothers increased suffering in the
short run.
Furthermore, in Namibia, as elsewhere, infants
and toddlers are often fostered to “grannies” or
elderly extended kin with the intention to instill
traditional knowledge and ways of behavior that
are diminished in urban centers. Many mothers
in the capital of Namibia arrange for infants as
young as 6 months to make the journey 13 hours
north to the tribal homeland to live with extended
family. In Ovambo culture, it is not appropriate to
deny a “granny” when she asks for a child, yet some
mothers struggle with negotiating this arrange-
ment. Mothers spoke of the competing desires for
children to learn cultural traditions in the rural
area versus keeping them in urban centers where
there are opportunities to participate in modern
learning environments such as preschool. Mothers
also described the emotional attachment they have
to the child and the wrench they feel in letting
the child go. One mother, Emelia, explained her
tactic to keep her child with her, yet placate the
paternal grandmother who had asked to have her
child. “I sent her to her grandmother. She went to
the village, but only for three or four months… .
I wanted her back and it was only that Memekulu
(grandmother) wants a child… . So I decided to
give her away for three months, not to disappoint
Memekulu.”
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the fostering
customs is the light it sheds on the competency cre-
ated in the entire family, from oldest to youngest,
in child caregiving. Here is an example from Jill
Brown’s field notes (2011), focused on Ndeleo.
Windhoek, Namibia. I entered the house and
found only Ndeleo, 19 years old, home with the
children of the house. The house is in the township
of Katatura on the outskirts of the capital city in
Namibia. I asked, “Where is Meme (mother)?”
and Ndeleo tells me she went to the North for
the funeral of Memekulu (grandmother) and will
return next week. Ndeleo is holding an infant of
6 months, and with her in the sitting room are three
girls aged 6, 8, and 12. Ndeleo hands the infant
to the 6-year-old, and those two leave the room to
return later with a bottle. Two other boys enter the
room and greet me and continue on to the back
of the house bringing dried meat for dinner. The
8-year-old girl takes the infant and attempts to
make her smile. Ndeleo directs the 12-year-old to
fetch drinks and bring them to the sitting room.
The above vignette is a snapshot of family life
in Southern Africa. But at a closer look it is the
relationships among these children that is impor-
tant and provides the context of early learning.
The children in the house constitute a web of
relatedness, both social and genetic, that cements
families together and provides the context for early
development.
Ndeleo is the biological child of the mother of
this house and is currently staying at the house.
She did not grow up there; she was fostered to a
maternal uncle as an infant. The 12-year-old girl is
Ndeleo’s biological sister and grew up in this home.
The 8-year-old is Ndeleo’s oldest brother’s daugh-
ter, and the 6-year-old is the child of her mother’s
husband. The boys are both paternal relatives from
the north who are living in the home primarily to
be closer to better schools in the capital. Ndeleo,
who has finished her studies, has come back to stay
in this house with her mother and look for a job.
The house runs seamlessly in the absence of
adults during their visit to the north, and adults
often report little worry in situations similar to
this vignette. Each member of this house might be
thought of as a small context of care, with Ndeleo
providing instrumental support while the younger
girls play and tease in emotionally supportive ways.
As Suzanne Gaskins describes, work is intermixed
with play, and children earn recognition from
adults as their competency and workload increases
(Gaskins, 2014, this volume). The fluidity of care-
givers and opportunities for interactions are nested
within these broader cultural norms of socially
distributed child care, fosterage, and extended kin
care (Weisner et al., 1997).
P ope Edwa r ds , R e n, Br ow n 173
Early Care and Education Services
The institution of schooling has transformed
the social lives of school-aged children around the
world by removing them from the context of the
home for much of the day, where education is non-
formal and most of their child companions are
siblings or “courtyard cousins.” Instead, they gain
access to formalized, symbolically oriented learn-
ing situations and to intense social relationships
with peers, that is, same-age children from outside
the family. Correa-Chavez, Manigione, and Black
(2014, this volume) point out that in communities
with extensive schooling, babies are often talked
to in ways that direct and order their attention in
much the same way school does.
Along parallel lines, it becomes timely to con-
sider the comparable effects of child care institu-
tions on children under age 6. Families today
have increased needs for such services, reflecting a
global increase in the incidence of women in the
labor force, single-parent families, and family units
isolated from extended kin. In North America,
many parts of Europe, and increasingly in Asia and
Africa, women have become essential contributors
to family income. As working parents increase their
use of preschools, organized playgroups, and child
care arrangements, their children are encounter-
ing formal learning experiences and peer relations
at ever earlier ages. Increasingly, these extrafamil-
ial settings have become important contexts of
socialization for infants and toddlers. As such, they
present different kinds of opportunities and expec-
tations than do family contexts, and their influence
may leave lasting impacts.
An infant–toddler program is quite a different
place from a family home. Bronfenbrenner (1979)
describes how “new” in human history it is for chil-
dren so young to spend all day in the care of adults
focused exclusively on them, not on economic
or household tasks, and in companionship with
same-age peers. The result is that children receive
less exposure to the cultural world of work and
reduced opportunity to observe and participate in
everyday activities of production and household
with adults and older children. Rather, they engage
in child-centered play experiences that elicit sym-
bolic, fantasy, and constructive play—experiences
that professional educators believe are conducive to
the cognitive skills of school readiness.
Equally striking is the change in their daily
companionship. The global nature of the change in
age of access to same-age peer relations is strongly
suggested by the rising rates of participation of
174 E a r ly C on t e x t s of L e a r n i ng
children under age 3 in organized child care.
According to a United Nation’s Children’s Fund
(UNICEF, 2008) report on the advanced indus-
trial countries of the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD), “Today’s
rising generation in the countries of the OECD is
the first in which a majority are spending a large
part of their early childhoods not in their own
homes with their own families but in some form of
child care” (p. 3).
A glimpse into how child care might affect
children’s daily companionship is evident in the
study described earlier of Amherst, Massachusetts,
children aged 2–30 months (Edwards et al., 1986;
1987). Initial interviews had revealed that most
parents, whether they used center- or home-based
supplementary care, strongly valued early peer con-
tacts for their infant or toddler. Looking at the total
corpus of 1,232 observations, it is striking how
much contact the children had with other chil-
dren. Observations were coded in terms of whether
a “sibling,” “regular peer,” or “stranger child” was
present with the target child (where a “sibling” was
defined as a sibling, half-sibling, or step-sibling; a
“regular peer” was a familiar playmate from play-
group or day care; and a “stranger child” was any
other child, for example, one visiting with a par-
ent). For the half of the sample who attended the
university center, the most frequent companions
were regular peers, present in 28.2% of the obser-
vations. In fact, some of these observations took
place during home time, when parents got day care
“friends” together. A sibling was present in 16.9%
of the observations and a stranger in 3%. In con-
trast, for the half of the sample who received care
in home-based arrangements, the respective figures
were 21.7% with siblings, 9.3% with regular peers,
and 4.8% with stranger children. Clearly, the cen-
ter experience was transforming young children’s
age of access to same-age peer experiences.
It is evident that interactions with peers are
exciting and pleasurable to the children (e.g.,
Brownell, Ramani, & Zerwas, 2006; Sanderson,
2011; Whaley & Rubenstein, 1994). Mueller and
Cohen (1986) speak of “peer hunger” on the part of
toddlers. Part of the excitement and pleasure seems
to arise precisely from the fact that the dominance
hierarchy is not set. Constant moments of compari-
son and challenge arise because children have not
spent years growing up together with relative com-
petence long ago established. Instead, relatively
novel to one another, and similar in size, strength,
and verbal ability, they have similar cognitive and
social agendas that make competition and com-
parison particularly interesting and motivating to
all concerned. Toddlers grab for the interesting
objects waved in the hands of others but often shift
between moments of conflict, sharing, showing,
and affection (Caplan, Vespo, Pedersen, & Hay,
1991), as if the incidents of aggression are part of
the flow of learning to play with others.
What does this changing age of access to peer
relations suggest about the opportunities and
expectations for children? In our view, this depends
on the cultural context because different societies
have very different policies and curriculum guide-
lines for early care and education, as documented,
for example, in the 10 “country portraits” in New
and Cochran (2007). The approaches that vari-
ous countries have applied to the field of family
policy and child care are deeply embedded in their
national histories, core value systems, and basic
beliefs about child development. Similarly, Tobin,
Hsueh, and Karasawa (2009), in their research
comparing preschool in China, Japan, and the
United States, argue that culture acts as a source of
continuity and a brake on globalization in educa-
tion, leading to preschool systems with noticeable
differences in their core features. For example, in
the case of the Japanese preschools, one finds peri-
ods of order and disorder alternating throughout
the classroom day, high student–teacher ratios, and
emphasis on feelings and the development of empa-
thy. Teachers tend to stand back and let children
learn to resolve their own disputes. In contrast, in
the case of US preschools, one finds an emphasis on
choice, individualism, ownership, self-expression,
and risk reduction (that is, removing dangers and
challenges in the interest of safety). There, teach-
ers tend to intervene and manage the children’s
conflicts, imposing adult standards of justice and
fairness. “The unmarked beliefs and practices are
supported by … what we are calling ‘an implicit cul-
tural logic’ ” (Tobin et al., 2009, p. 242).
These core beliefs play out in innumerable ways
in the interactions children are socialized to pre-
fer and the expectations that adults bring to their
encounters with children, for example, in manag-
ing interpersonal issues that naturally arise in a
group of small children. Frustrations and conflicts
often arise because the children have not yet devel-
oped skills of smooth group entry, negotiating dis-
putes, waiting their turn, and sharing materials and
space. One solution to managing a toddler group,
favored in American programs, is to teach children
the words to resolve their conflicts through verbal
means, for example: asking “Can I have that?,”
asserting “That’s mine!,” explaining “My turn,” and
so on. Research has established that American
adults tend to have very early expectations for ver-
bal assertiveness and social skills with peers (see
Edwards, Gandini, & Giovannini, 1996). This
American approach to socializing for verbal profi-
ciency fits well with values of self-expression and
individualism, for example, defense of ownership
rights.
In Pistoia, Italy, in contrast, observation suggests
that adults instead have relatively early expecta-
tions for another kind of competence, the capa-
bility to become a participant (or “protagonist”)
in the social group, finding identity, and sense
of belonging (Galardini & Giovannini, 2001).
In Italy, mothers have the right to paid parental
leave to spend at least 1 year at home with their
infant, while government policies support families
in finding public infant–toddler care that is edu-
cational and nurturing for the children and at the
same time supportive of family needs. Educators in
many parts of Italy have interpreted this policy as
requiring strategies for incorporating families into
the civic community and seeking to create wel-
coming services that are open to all children and
good for them in the present, rather than an invest-
ment that produces useful outcomes in the future
(Fortunati, 2007).
This chapter opened with an observation illus-
trating the extreme care and delicacy with which
an infant and family are transitioned into the child
care center (Bove, 2001). Ten-month-old Clara and
her mother arrived on the first day and sit together
with the teacher, Franca, who asks about the baby’s
routines at home. Franca begins to inquire about
the family’s expectations of infant care, where
Clara will be part of a group of children staying
together for 3 years. As the observation continues,
we see how the teacher picks up on the mother’s
wishes and demonstrates how the infant center will
help fulfill them.
Pistoia, Italy. Clara’s mother tells the teacher of
her hopes: “I don’t want Clara to be one of those
little girls who are so shy that they won’t talk to
anyone. Maybe coming here, she will become an
outgoing girl.” Just then the baby’s attention is
attracted by the sight of a little boy slightly older
than herself coming around the corner. Franca picks
up immediately on Clara’s attention, “Clara is very
interested in other children.” The mother nods,
“Yes, yes!” So Franca gently carries Clara close to
P ope Edwa r ds , R e n, Br ow n 175
 Lorenzo and introduces the two, in the affectionate,
slightly formal style an Italian mother might use in
introducing any two children. The two children are
almost touching, and Carla reaches to put her hand
softly on Lorenzo’s head. Franca says he is bello
(“handsome”). Now Carla turns for the first time to
look directly and fully into the face of Franca, as if
to take in who she is. Then she glances over to her
mother, as if to be reassured it is okay. Her mother
gazes with a warmly smiling face, signaling to Carla
that she approves of Carla’s interest in these new
people.
By the end of the week, Carla’s mother leaves her
for the whole morning. On Friday, when she arrives
for pick up, Clara rests comfortably in Franca’s arms
while the teacher tells about the baby’s day. Then,
Clara arches toward her mother, who takes her in
her arms. As mother and baby turn to leave, Clara’s
mother pauses in the doorway. Revealing their
growing sense of belonging, she names everyone
present around the room and waves good-bye for
Clara to all the friends.
(Adapted from Edwards & Gandini, 2001, pp. 187–190)
Our studies include many such observations,
as well as detailed descriptions of strategies used
to help children recognize the identity of others
and learn empathy. Complementary observations
focused on object play and language development
by Musatti and Mayer (2011) show how teachers
structure and lead activities, including how they
position their body and pace their interaction to
create prolonged sequences of shared attention and
participation by toddlers, for example, in ongoing
investigation of musical instruments, toys, or the
natural environment.
Child Welfare Institutions
We conclude this chapter with consideration of
one final context of socialization for infants and
toddlers, child welfare institutions, providing total
care for children who are orphaned, abandoned,
or otherwise separated from a family. It is difficult
to estimate the number of infants and toddlers
involved in such care worldwide, but the risk of
poor developmental outcomes is well documented.
When committed early to institutional care, young
children become vulnerable to long-term problems,
including malnutrition, growth retardation, sen-
sory processing difficulties, behavioral and attach-
ment disorders, and cognitive and language delays
(see reviews in the St. Petersburg—USA Orphanage
Research Team, 2008, and the Leiden Conference
176 E a r ly C on t e x t s of L e a r n i ng
on the Development and Care of Children without
Permanent Parents, 2012). These poor outcomes
result from the constraints of institutional rear-
ing—regimented routines, high child-to-caregiver
ratios, impoverished cognitive and linguistic
stimulation, and deprivation of reciprocal interac-
tions with stable caregivers (Nelson et al., 2007). It
might be said that many child welfare institutions
are all constraint, little opportunity, in the sense of
their developmental potential.
In light of the findings, many Western countries
have closed almost all of their child welfare institu-
tions in favor of systems of adoption, foster care,
kinship care, and small group homes. However,
in low-resource countries, building such systems
will take many years, and, in the meantime many
children, particularly in Eastern Europe, Africa,
and Asia, will still be raised in institutions. What
to do in the meantime? An important study con-
ducted by the St. Petersburg—USA Orphanage
Research Team (2008) demonstrated that com-
prehensive changes in institutions, making them
less “factory-like” and more “family-like” in care-
giver assignments, routines, and caregiver–child
interaction—could lead to dramatically improved
developmental outcomes (physical and cognitive)
in young institutionalized children, even those
with disabilities. The group sizes were reduced,
children were assigned their own primary caregiv-
ers, and caregivers learned how to be warm, sen-
sitive, and responsive during nurturing, as well as
child-centered in play. Thus, by approximating the
shared caregiving paradigm that is so successful
worldwide—not seeking for a “mother-exclusive”
arrangement—healthy socialization contexts were
re-established.
An example of another such intervention
is under way in China, taking place at a much
larger scale, suggesting that it is possible to cre-
ate relatively benign group care contexts for
infants and toddlers without families. Half the
Sky Foundation, a nongovernmental organization
founded in 1998, operates in close partnership
with the Chinese government and has established
Children’s Centers in 51 welfare institutions in 24
provinces and municipalities all over the country.
Today, it focuses on professional development for
welfare institutions throughout the entire nation
(http://www.halfthesky.org/en/map). For young
children, the foundation establishes enrichment
programs that supplement custodial care, provid-
ing primary caregiving, intimate-style relationships
in the context of a group, and an active learning
environment. A forthcoming 2-year evaluation
of Half the Sky training and technical assistance
conducted by an international external research
team has assessed the fidelity of program imple-
mentation and outcomes for children birth to age 6
(Zheng, Li, McCall, & Groark, 2013). The assess-
ment team measured children’s growth (including
height, weight, and head circumference) and social
behavior and observed the quality of child–care-
giver interactions and accommodations at two
metropolitan sites. The study concludes that under
Half the Sky training and on-site, follow-up sup-
port, all areas show significant improvements.
At the core of the Infant Nurture programs,
serving the youngest children, are practices that
provide enrichment in the context of a close, caring
relationship. Women from the community (“nan-
nies”) go through an intensive training before each
is assigned as the primary caregiver of a consistent
group of two to four infants (Cotton, Edwards,
Zhao, & Gelabert, 2007). The little groups gather
together a few hours each day within a large play-
room. The nanny pays close attention to her babies,
learning each child’s signals and how to respond
to them, holding, playing, talking, and encour-
aging mobility. Through responsive, reciprocal
interactions, the nanny helps the babies grow in all
domains of development and build a firm attach-
ment. She also observes and makes anecdotal
records twice a week on her babies, compiling a
Progress Report every few months (Evans, 2003).
These reports describe skills and behaviors recently
mastered, as well as areas that still need special
attention, but are written in a personal, first-person
style that conveys the nanny’s emotional invest-
ment in the child, as seen in the following example
provided by Janice Cotton, Chief Program Officer:
Lianyungang Social Welfare Institution,
China. On February 24, 2006, a miracle came
true: GengHui stood up without any help. We were
so happy and excited. I held her tightly in my arms,
kissed her face again and again and praised her
ceaselessly and loudly. All the nannies clapped their
hands for her and were really proud of her. She was
happy too! She snuggled into my arms, with her
arms around my neck and her face against mine,
uttering “Mama, Mama.” I was so happy, and my
eyes were full of joyful tears. After that, we still
continued the training every day.
Eventually, the Progress Reports, along with
photos and other artifacts, are compiled into a
Memory Book that belongs to the child. The
Memory Books may hold therapeutic value for
orphaned children who have no parents to provide
a natural source of personal history and autobio-
graphical memory.
Conclusion and Future Directions
In this chapter, we discussed several kinds of
early contexts for socialization. They vary in their
subjective as well as objective dimensions, influ-
enced by such ecocultural variables as household
arrangements, settlement patterns and subsistence
level, parents’ workload and employment, gender
division of labor, and cultural roles and norms
pertaining to sibling caregiving. Through such
contextual factors, children’s daily routines and
interaction patterns provide them with both oppor-
tunities and constraints in development. Despite
the variations, the early contexts for socialization
we have described are generally based on predict-
able, responsive, and reciprocal relationships, and
these promote healthy development in children.
We began with the suggestion that early child
development happens “within, through and for
relatedness” (Josselson, 1996, p. 2); relationships
provide the companionship (e.g., close and caring
adult–child and child–child interactions), forma-
tive processes (e.g., attachment, language stimu-
lation, social-emotional guidance), and sources of
motivation (e.g., desires for comfort, help, atten-
tion, information, and play) that power early
development.
Of course, in diverse settings, the nature of
developmentally enhancing relationships looks
quite different, as witnessed in the townships of
Namibia, infant centers in Italy, and the welfare
institutions of China. However, we may extract
a pattern of caregiving that is characterized with
closeness, emotional intimacy, commitment, and
continuity over time for healthy development in
young children, perhaps a microcosm of common
ingredients of all the early contexts of socialization
we have described for infants and toddlers.
Many fruitful lines of research could follow
from the foundations laid by past investigators. We
offer some future directions for research involving
each early context of socialization. Regarding par-
ents, there is a well-established body of literature
about maternal caregiving, but less about the role
of fathers. In this chapter, we reviewed studies on
the degree of paternal involvement, but, clearly,
much more work needs to be done. Given the wide
variation in amount and styles of paternal involve-
ment in children’s early life, what are the outcomes
P ope Edwa r ds , R e n, Br ow n 177
for children? Does it matter if fathers violate the
cultural norm, for example, by taking a much more
active or less active role in daily caregiving than
is typical? How does paternal caregiving interact
with maternal caregiving in influencing young
children’s socialization? Many children grow up in
households where the identity of the male figures
residing in the home changes over time: how do
very young children comprehend or react to this?
How should we conceptualize and measure the
dynamic processing of the interactions and rela-
tionships among father, mother, child, and others?
Siblings are important caregivers and compan-
ions to young children around the world. Although
the practice of sibling caregiving has been well
documented, we still do not know much about its
developmental implications. What is the quality
of the emotional closeness or attachment between
babies and their child nurses, and does it endure
over time, perhaps even into adulthood? What
could we find out by interviewing children about
being a child nurse, or their memories of having
been cared for by one? Furthermore, what could
we learn about the maternal decision making
involved? What kind of factors do mothers consider
in assigning one of their older children as a child
nurse to a new baby? Do they have ethnotheories
about what makes a good child nurse; have they
seen some children who are especially good in this
role? We would expect that mothers in middle-level
societies would speak of “responsibility” and “obe-
dience” in describing a good child nurse, but do
they also have ideas about the child’s empathy or
consistency? How do they monitor and train their
children for the role of caregiving? Are there dif-
ferences between more educated and less educated
mothers in these regards?
New directions of research into care by grand-
parents might include how children navigate the
messages and varied socialization efforts of the two
generations. In societies in which the roles of parents
are rapidly changing, how are parental ethnotheo-
ries about the activities of grandparents—for exam-
ple, in discipline, play, feeding—also changing?
How do children interpret and internalize conflict
that arises between parents and grandparents? How
do they retain emotional bonds with grandparents
even over separations in time and space? Focusing
on infants and toddlers, what methods can be
used to study two-generation caregiving from the
standpoint of such young children who may not be
able to verbalize their ideas well? Are intervention
or education efforts needed to minimize potential
178 E a r ly C on t e x t s of L e a r n i ng
negative experiences of two-generation caregiving
and maximize the felt benefits of two-generation
caregiving in young children’s development?
Child fosterage represents a unique variant in
caregiving and offers a window into understanding
the implications of early relationships, both those
with biological origin and those socially created. In
the contemporary world, as educational opportu-
nities become more valued, what are the develop-
mental implications for children who receive this
opportunity? What happens when parents refuse
this practice? Furthermore, what more can be
learned about the transfer of resources through the
practice of fosterage? Children are but one entity
that moves; the webs of connection also act as con-
duits for material resources to move between fami-
lies. How large are these webs of connection, and
to what extent are families materially intertwined?
As child care centers become an increasingly
pervasive and important part of contemporary life,
children have earlier and more frequent interac-
tion with same-age peers from outside the family.
Of course, peer relationships at the dawn of chil-
dren’s development differ in profound ways from
what they will become in later years, but are they
totally transient and replaceable to preschool chil-
dren, as many American parents believe (Aukrust,
Edwards, Kumru, Knoche, & Kim, 2003)? Later
peer relationships have been much studied, both
the negative side of peer relationships (e.g., aggres-
sion, bullying) and the positive (e.g., prosocial
behavior). Yet, the emergence of the earliest rela-
tionships has only just begun to be understood,
and questions remain about their long-term conse-
quences (e.g., in teaching role-taking and empathy,
or skills of conflict avoidance and resolution) that
set the stage for later development. Are children
who have higher levels of early peer interaction—
whether in home and neighborhood settings, or in
formal child care—different in their social compe-
tence from children who have lower levels? What
about the quality of the caregiving context; for
example, how effective are typical early childhood
practitioners in facilitating very young children’s
interactions with their peers so that the infant or
toddler group becomes a community and all chil-
dren are included?
It is well known that child welfare institutions
often cause poor outcomes for children, especially
for the youngest children and those who remain
in them the longest. Intervention efforts have been
made to examine how changes within institutions
may improve children’s developmental outcomes.
Most of our discussion in this chapter has centered
around contexts of early learning, where the norms
of socialization are implicit. These norms have
emerged over the generations within an ecocul-
tural niche in which they are connected to other
beliefs and practices. However, norms of adult–
child and child–child interaction—implicit in the
systems of sibling care in Kenya or of peer inter-
actions in the United States—need to be made
explicit in the context of child welfare institutions
seeking to achieve a higher and more intentional
quality of care. Half the Sky Foundation bases its
practices on an explicit consideration of psycho-
logical and educational research, translated into
written standards of practice, with the goal of
creating an enriched and enriching environment,
with emotional relationships given priority. We
have used Half the Sky as an exemplar of com-
prehensive intervention carried out to enhance the
development of the most vulnerable children: chil-
dren without families. Other countries may adopt
similar approaches, or adapt elements of the Half
the Sky approach, to examine what kinds of staff
training and ongoing support will be effective in
different cultural contexts. What leads to suc-
cessful implementation? What aspects need to
be revised or changed to accommodate cultural
differences?
In conclusion, successful cultural scripts for
interaction with very young children are evident
in adult–child and child–child relationships. We
have described prominent cultural differences in
organization and physical/verbal styles of adult
caregiving, and shown that communities vary in
who provides different elements of nurturance
throughout the day (e.g., whether fathers, grand-
parents, older siblings, and/or persons from out-
side the family circle supplement maternal care),
but usually one or a few individuals are most
significant. They also vary in the how, or stylistic
mode, in which care and stimulation are provided
(e.g., whether it is more proximal and kinesthetic,
or instead more distal and vocal in orientation)
and in how much play and information-sharing,
perhaps also horseplay and sociability, are mixed
in with caregiving routines. Children seem able
to adapt to many constellations of care regimes
as long as they contain adequate amounts of
warmth and sensitivity, promotion of autonomy,
and support for language and learning (Edwards,
Sheridan, & Knoche, 2010). Indeed, if the older
generations in the world’s societies are to support
and take full advantage of children’s immense
creative potential to navigate complex and rap-
idly changing contemporary environments, then
we all need to learn much more about children’s
growth, development, and adaptations to change
in the context of the extraordinary ambiguities,
risks, opportunities, stresses, and multiple path-
ways that are encountered in contemporary life
worldwide today.
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P ope Edwa r ds , R e n, Br ow n 181
 PART
3
Early and Middle
Childhood
 C H A P T E R

12 Childhood Practices Across

Cultures: Play and Household Work

Suzanne Gaskins

Abstract
Why do young children play? Why do they work? Although play is often considered a spontaneous
and intrinsically motivated activity of children, this chapter provides evidence that different cultural
commitments to play influence the forms that it takes. Work also is a culturally constructed activity,
with cultural variation in its value and forms. These cultural differences in how play and work are
viewed by caregivers and experienced by children grow out of differences in broader parental
ethnotheories about the nature of childhood and development, which in turn are based on more
general cultural beliefs and practices. How play and work influence development is obscured by
theory that emphasizes universal outcomes even as it also recognizes environmental influences. Four
different models of how to integrate these potentially contradictory claims are proposed and are used
to interpret the adequacy of explanations about developmental outcomes of children’s play and work
experiences.
Key Words:  culture, work and play, parental ethnotheories, everyday experience

Play is the work of the child.
— Maria Montessori
The child becomes a person through work.
— Maria Montessori
Why do young children play? Why do they
work? What motivates them, and what do they
gain? At first glance, these questions may appear to
have simple, direct answers, but, when considered
through the lens of cultural variation, we discover
there are multiple answers. It becomes clear that
the answers must consider not only the “nature”
of children but also the nature of children’s every-
day activities and the culturally informed parental
ethnotheories that organize them. This chapter lays
out an argument for reconceptualizing children’s
play and work as culturally organized activities.
And, in the process, motivation and outcomes will
come to be understood as a reflection of particular
cultural understandings rather than of children’s
nature; thus, conclusions about them will become
more complex and nuanced.
I learned something about the complexity of
understanding children’s play and work early on in
my field work in a traditional Yucatec Mayan vil-
lage in Mexico while chatting one day with two
sisters, aged 7 and 9, about what they did after
school. They started listing the chores that were
waiting for them each day when they got home.
Then the 7-year-old proudly proclaimed that
she washed her own clothes in the long washtub
set up in the back yard. Her older sister quietly
announced that she washed her own clothes, too,
and those of her baby brother. And then, after
thinking for a moment, she added proudly that she
thought that soon, when she got a little better at
doing laundry, she would be allowed to wash her
older brother’s clothes, too. Because I didn’t know
any children in the United States who liked to do

185
chores and sought more work, I was surprised by
their enthusiasm for after-school chores. I asked if
they sometime wished that they could just relax
when they came home from school, with time to
play outside or watch television. They assured me
they did not because they liked being able to help
their mother, who had so much to do. It was clear
by their demeanor that it also felt good to be judged
competent to do adult work.
Even though they were eager to work, these two
girls also liked to play. Once their specific work
tasks were done, they and their younger siblings
would go out into the yard to play. While playing,
though, these two girls were actually still work-
ing because they were taking care of their younger
siblings who were playing with them. This sibling
child care, embedded in the children’s play, freed
their mother from child care so she could more
easily cook, clean, collect firewood in the woods
nearby, or run errands. On some days, they would
set up a “play house” scene in the yard and act out
domestic narratives. On other days, they would
all retreat to the back of the yard and climb fruit
trees to find an afternoon snack for themselves.
When they tired of eating, they might play a game
of chase or try walking along a fallen log without
falling off. But in all their play activities, the two
girls never abandoned their role of caretaker, mak-
ing sure their younger siblings stayed safe and con-
tent and providing suggestions of activities within
the younger children’s ability and interests, even
as the older girls also had a good time doing such
things as pretending or taking physical risks. They
knew if one of their siblings got hurt or became
unhappy, they (because they were older) would be
held accountable by their mother (Gaskins & Lucy,
1986). They had also reached an age at which they
felt the responsibility on their own, as well, under-
standing that their siblings didn’t fully grasp all the
possible dangers and therefore depended on them
for their safety and well-being.
In both their work and their play, these two
Yucatec Mayan girls demonstrated a great deal
of responsibility and behavior motivated by
doing things that helped the family—more than
one would expect to see in most middle-class
European-American children of the same age,
although their behavior is similar to children in
many other cultures (Lancy, 2014). They liked to
work because it made them feel competent (White,
1959) and helpful to their family (Paradise & de
Hann, 2009). They enjoyed playing with and taking
care of their younger siblings for the same reason.
186 C h i l dho od Pr ac t ic e s Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
This chapter explores the cultural foundations
of their attitudes and actions and, in the process,
illustrates both how children’s everyday contexts
and interactions are organized through cultural
schemas (Strauss & Quinn, 1997) and how chil-
dren’s repetitive participation in such activities leads
them to construct their own understandings in line
with those shared in their community (Kulick &
Shieffelin, 2004; Miller & Goodnow, 1995). It
demonstrates that the origins of children’s motiva-
tion to work and play and the ways in which work
and play function in their everyday lives are not
universal but in fact quite variable across cultures.
The chapter concludes with a discussion of the
consequences of such variation for theorizing chil-
dren’s development and learning. Cultural varia-
tion in experience creates a tension between two
basic tenets of developmental theory: children’s
development is a universal process, and it is shaped
by experience (Gaskins, 2006; 2013a). Four differ-
ent models of how to integrate cultural variation
into developmental theory will be proposed and
evaluated in the conclusion: (1) multiple pathways
to universal developmental outcomes, (2) a dual
model of general universal outcomes paired with
specific but consequential differences, (3) a theory
of active negotiation between universal matura-
tional processes and enculturation, and (4) rec-
ognition that differing pathways of development
always involve gains and losses.
Most psychological claims are largely based
on research conducted on one community—
middle-class European-Americans. Henrich,
Heine, and Norenzayan (2010) have identified this
sample as WEIRD: Western, educated, industrial-
ized, rich, and democratic. Even more disturbing,
they demonstrate how behaviors from this one
sample are often outliers when a more represen-
tative sample is studied. They conclude that psy-
chologists need to sample more widely if they want
to make universal claims about human behavior.
Although their critique focuses on studies of adults,
and in particular college students, they acknowl-
edge in passing that the same problem exists in the
study of children from infancy on. Not only have
developmental theories been tested on this single
population and then generalized to all groups, but
on the basis of such limited data researchers have
generated theoretical categories (e.g., attachment
types; see Gaskins, 2013a; Morelli, this volume)
and set population norms of what is “normal.”
The bulk of existing research on children’s play
and work is particularly vulnerable to this critique.
It is often assumed that play is “children’s work”
and that work is, at best, an unpleasant interrup-
tion of their innocent and carefree experience. The
moral force of these arguments is often explicit
or lying just under the surface. And yet the eth-
nographic record of childhood in other cultures
clearly demonstrates that children in many cultures
spend a lot of time on chores and helping out with
family work, even as it also shows that children
everywhere enjoy playing (Lancy, 2014).
Cultural Beliefs About Play and Work
Why do children play? Play theories, which are
quite varied, provide a number of answers to this
question (Göncü & Gaskins, 2011; Smith, 2010).
Children play to expend energy or to seek stimula-
tion. Children play to practice and display mastery
of cognitive and social skills, especially those that
they will need as adults. Children play as a way of
dealing with the frustrations that come from their
own immaturity (Piaget, 1962) and to overcome
more traumatic or undesirable events they experi-
ence (Freud, 1950). And children play to establish
or defend social hierarchies, explore social roles
(Vygotsky, 1978), or refine their understanding of
themselves (Mead, 1934).
In cultures where caregivers cultivate children’s
play (Gaskins, Haight, & Lancy, 2007), as in
middle-class American families, they tend to have
an ethnotheory about play that might be sum-
marized as “all of the above”; that is, they think
that children play for all of these reasons. With
this understanding of play, they value it highly as
a childhood activity. For them, play is an intrin-
sically motivated behavior that children exhibit
in order to be stimulated, display mastery, escape
from their own incompetency, conquer their fears,
and learn to understand themselves and their
playmates better. They usually hold two other
commitments about play: play is uniquely suited
for children to accomplish all these things, and,
because it is so central to children’s well-being,
learning, and development, adults should mediate
and even participate in children’s play to maximize
the children’s pleasure and play’s positive outcomes
(Lancy, 2007).
Not all parental ethnotheories, however, value
play so highly. In some cultures, such as the
Kpelle-speaking people of Liberia, play is accepted
as a normal part of childhood, but it is not seen as
particularly valuable (Gaskins et al., 2007; Lancy,
1996). In these cultures, children spend a great
deal of time at play because they do not have much
else to do, but caregivers do not think that play
has a central role in children’s learning and devel-
opment. Perhaps they think it is a way to use up
extra energy and to practice certain skills needed
for adulthood, but overall, it is not as highly valued
nor as actively mediated as it is in those cultures
that cultivate play. In yet other cultures, such as
the Yucactec Maya, although play is seen as a nor-
mal part of childhood, as a way to expend energy
and practice skills, it is often curtailed when there
are other activities at hand that are seen as more
valuable and productive (i.e., work; Gaskins, 1999;
Gaskins et al., 2007).
For parents who hold either of these two kinds
of ethnotheories about play—acceptance or cur-
tailment—children’s play is not considered to be
uniquely valuable over other kinds of activities;
rather, play is a default activity (harmless but insig-
nificant) for children to engage in when they can-
not helpfully participate in other, more useful ones.
And parents who accept or curtail play, in contrast
to those who cultivate it, do not take much respon-
sibility for mediating children’s play by providing
materials, space, or ideas, and they certainly do
not see themselves as being a guiding play partner
(Lancy, 2007).
Why do children work? There has been much
less written about the role of work in formal theories
about children’s learning and development, prob-
ably because the cultural group that has produced
such theories has an ethnotheory that de-empha-
sizes work as a legitimate activity in childhood in
the first place. Of note, this chapter only looks at
child contributions to household work (chores), not
child labor (working for wages); see Nieuwenhuys
(1996) for a discussion of this distinction. We must
look instead at what is known about why parents
seem to value children’s work. European-American
middle-class parents say that they assign chores to
their children not because they need their help—
in fact, they report it is often more work for them
to have the child do a chore than to do it them-
selves. They think that children learn some prac-
tical skills by doing chores, but they value chores
far more because of the social lessons that children
learn about the importance of their participating
in family work (White & Brinkerhoff, 1981). There
is a strong moral tone to their reasoning: children
should work, even if it they don’t want to (and even
though it can make their parents’ lives harder not
easier), because it teaches them important lesson
about responsibility and independence (Goodnow,
1988). Children from this community appear to
G a s k i ns 187
start out, when they are toddlers, by being moti-
vated to join in doing family work (Rheingold,
1982). But, sometime before they are of school age,
they lose much of that motivation, so much so that
parents have to incentivize older children through
payment or other rewards to do the chores and/or
to threaten punishment if they do not (Goodnow,
1988).
This state of affairs stands in stark contrast
to the situation in the Yucatec Mayan family
described at the beginning of this chapter, in which
the two school-aged girls were eager to work, were
proud of their accomplishments, sought additional
work, and actually helped their mother get serious
work done. In many cultures, even very small chil-
dren contribute helpfully to ongoing family work,
and children begin to assume regular and produc-
tive work responsibilities as they enter into middle
childhood (Rogoff, Sellers, Pirrolta, Fox, & White,
1975). Wenger (1989) reports attitudes toward work
among Kaloleni children in Kenya, for instance,
that are quite similar to those reported here for the
Yucatec Maya. Lancy (2014) calls this the “chore
curriculum” (p. 254) and gives many examples of
how children contribute to household work, agri-
cultural and pastoral chores, gathering, hunting,
and fishing. As Henrich, Heine, and Norezayan
(2010) suggested, when it comes to children’s work,
it is the European-American middle-class sample
that is the outlier.
These contributions show some stable pat-
terns across cultures. For instance, it is consis-
tently reported that children’s work responsibilities
increase as they get older. The pattern reported
in Gaskins (2000) is similar to that seen among
agricultural groups (e.g., Edwards, 2005; Nag,
White, & Peet, 1978; Rogoff, 1981; Wenger, 1989)
and foragers (e.g., Bird & Bird, 2002). The par-
ticulars of timing are influenced by the difficulties
of the work to be done (and learned); children in
forager societies usually engage in work activities
at a later age than do those in agricultural societ-
ies (Kramer, 2005; Lancy, 2014). Blurton-Jones,
Hawkes, and Draper (1994) demonstrated that
even within a particular type of society, the partic-
ular demands of the work environment may influ-
ence the age at which children take on significant
work responsibilities. In a comparison of two forag-
ing societies, they found that Hadza children were
productive at a younger age than were !Kung chil-
dren. Resources available in particular households
can also have an effect (e.g., Munroe, Munroe, and
Shimmin’s [1984] comparative study showing that
188 C h i l dho od Pr ac t ic e s Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
birth order affected the amount of work children
do, with older children doing more).
Likewise, across cultures, it is consistently
found that girls start working younger and spend
more hours working than do boys of comparable
age. Edwards (2005) reports that boys consistently
spend less time working than do girls, beginning as
early as age 3 (see also Blurton-Jones et al., 1994;
Wenger, 1989). Many reasons have been offered to
explain this gender difference: (1) young girls spend
more time with gender-appropriate role models
(i.e., mothers and other caretakers) than do young
boys; (2) women’s work is more accessible for young
children’s participation than men’s work (which
often requires greater strength and takes place away
from home); (3) girls are more prepared to accept
responsibility, especially at a younger age; and
(4) girls are more likely to be interested in helping
with the care of younger siblings. However, there is
little evidence available to evaluate the validity of
any of these explanations.
Like European-American parents, parents in
many cultures believe that it is important that chil-
dren learn to participate in family work. However,
they also believe that children will naturally learn
how to be competent at appropriate work tasks,
and, although there sometimes is a need to remind
children of their responsibilities or focus their
attention, there is often less urgency expressed
about the need for formal training (examples
of how children seem to learn effortlessly can be
found in Hewlett & Cavalli-Sforza, 1986; Phillips,
1983; Simmons, 1942; Wilbert, 1979). Along with
this attitude there is sometimes a tendency to define
children’s work as primarily important not because
of what it teaches the child but because it is needed
for a family to thrive. For both these reasons, these
parents are less likely to encourage children to help
before they are competent; rather, children will
often be excluded from any particular activity in
family work until they are both motivated to do the
work and have enough skill and understanding to
need little active support while doing it (Gaskins,
1999; Wenger, 1989).
Why does play loom so large in the lives of
European-American middle-class children and
work seem so onerous, whereas Yucatec Mayan
children embrace work enthusiastically and reserve
play for leisure times? General parental ethno-
theories about the nature of childhood and chil-
dren’s learning and development can go a long way
toward explaining these differences. Childhood for
European-Americans (at least for the past century),
and early childhood in particular, has been defined
as a time of innocence, protection, and indulgence
(Mintz, 2006). Along with this is an understand-
ing that children’s experiences contribute not only
to what they learn, but also to their development
(Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). Taken together, these
two understandings lead parents and other con-
cerned adults to invest a great deal of time and
material resources into constructing environments
to maximize children’s pleasure and the richness of
their experiences (Zelizer, 1985).
Intentional efforts to teach or socialize often
look a lot like school learning: highly verbal, with
the adult directing the child’s attentional focus.
Given their understanding of the role of play in
development, much of their investment is in maxi-
mizing the quantity and quality of play. These
beliefs lead children’s everyday experiences to be
very child-centered (Lareau, 2003), and even very
young children come to expect to have a great deal
of control and influence over family activities (du
Bois-Raymond, Büchner, & Krüger, 1991). They
are highly motivated to become increasingly com-
petent at their play for its own sake but not par-
ticularly motivated to become competent at adult
work activities, nor does their competency in play
transfer easily into competencies in work.
Yucatec Mayan parental ethnotheories are very
different from those just described (Gaskins, 1996;
1999). They also think that very young children
are innocent and need protection and indulgence,
but they expect children to move more quickly into
demonstrating understanding and shouldering
responsibilities. They believe that children learn
much of what they need to know gradually, through
observing what goes on around them according to
their own interests and practicing their working
models of their developing knowledge in play and
in work (Gaskins & Paradise, 2010). They view
development as a process of unfolding, with little
recognition of how experience might influence that
process (Gaskins, 1996). And they do not recog-
nize play as being a particularly important vehicle
for development (Gaskins et al., 2007).
These beliefs lead children’s everyday experi-
ences to be centered on ongoing adult activity
(Gaskins, 1999). To be able to participate in the
“center ring,” they must acquire and demonstrate
competence at the family’s work tasks as increas-
ingly legitimate participants (Lave & Wenger,
1991). Until they reach a level of competency, they
are expected to engage in observation or in unre-
lated play, in both cases conducting themselves in
ways that do not interfere with the ongoing work.
They strive to become more competent in order
to be able to participate in the ongoing activity of
the household. Thus, Mayan children’s everyday
experiences are very family-centered rather than
child-centered (Gaskins & Paradise, 2010) because
even very young children, although they have come
to expect to have their basic needs met and to have
a great deal of autonomy and choice in their own
activities, recognize that they have little influence
on the flow of family activities in general. They are
highly motivated to become competent at adult
work activities but not particularly motivated to
become more competent at their play, beyond using
it as a place to practice the skills and understand-
ings they are acquiring.
Foundational Sources of Cultural
Beliefs About Play and Work
These contrasting parental ethnotheories do
not exist in a vacuum. They grow out of more
basic cultural differences in economic systems,
historically particular circumstances and beliefs
about the future, and understandings of self. In
terms of children’s experiences of work and play,
the particular production mode of a culture is not
the most important thing; rather, a major deter-
mining factor for shaping children’s experience is
the presence of adult work of any sort that is inter-
pretable and accessible (Gaskins, 2003). Whether
the adult work is in agriculture, cottage manu-
facturing, or running a small business makes a
difference, of course, in the particulars of what
children must learn and the kinds of help that
they are able to contribute, but all of these types
of work take place in the presence of children and
involve significant tasks that children can under-
stand and in which they can participate. Thus,
while one child might spend the day weeding a
garden, another in packaging merchandise to be
sold, and a third stocking shelves, all are contrib-
uting meaningfully to the family’s work by doing
tasks that are somewhat repetitive, within their
physical ability, comprehensible, and taking place
side by side with the other members of their fam-
ily. In contrast, when parents take on wage labor
outside the home and/or engage in abstract work
dealing with ideas rather than goods (even if in
the home), their work is either no longer present
for children to see or too complex for children to
comprehend. A child who accompanies his or her
mother or father to a law office on a “take your
child to work day,” or, in fact, watches a parent
G a s k i ns 189
work on the computer from home everyday, can-
not really understand nor participate in a parent’s
actual work.
Engaging children in adult work seems most
sensible and least exploitative if there is reason
to believe that they are not only contributing to
the family’s well-being today, but also learning
how to do the work that will sustain them tomor-
row as adults (a comparison Bock [2002] makes
between direct contributions to the household
economy and experience-based embodied capi-
tal). Thus, learning family work through observa-
tion and increasingly legitimate participation is
most likely to take place in communities where
there is little culture change stemming from
recent culture contact, increased mobility, new
educational opportunities, and technology. The
rationale for having children work changes where
there is little continuity of economic and cultural
ways of living across generations, especially if
parents explicitly recognize that the world their
children will inhabit as adults is going to be very
different from the one they live in. It may still be
useful to have children’s help, but their participa-
tion in work is no longer serving as a seamless
entry into adult work.
Freeing children to spend their time during
early and middle childhood in formal school-
ing (and homework) or other ways of preparing
for an unforeseeable future—including perhaps
open-ended exploration and play—becomes a more
motivated parenting strategy with rapid cultural
change. This dual commitment to play and school-
work, which on the surface appears contradictory,
in fact is motivated by a common understand-
ing of childhood as being more about preparing
for the future (and perhaps an unknowable one)
than engaging in productive work in the present.
(It is interesting to note that many of the recent
impassioned defenses of the importance of play
for children’s development—e.g., Hirsch-Pasek,
Gonlinkoff, Berk, & Singer [2008]—are in
response to increased competition from formal
schooling [not from family-based work] in the
form of increased number of hours in school, ear-
lier introduction of literacy and numeracy activi-
ties, elimination of recess, and more homework.)
Contextual and economic discontinuity across
generations leads the developmental process to
be discontinuous, too, with childhood set off as a
unique period of time with special characteristics
that need not be integrated with what comes later
(Benedict, 1938).
190 C h i l dho od Pr ac t ic e s Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
Finally, every culture has an ideal of what
characteristics are valued in a person. Parents
adopt this ideal as the goal they want to achieve
in raising their children, what Quinn (2005) has
called “cultural models of childrearing” (p. 479),
by which she means the process of rearing chil-
dren to be culturally valued adults. She argues
that cultures train children into culturally spe-
cific emotional predispositions to prepare them
to receive the lessons about what is desired and
expected behavior—“predispositional priming”
(p. 480)—and gives several examples. For the
Taiwanese, parents instill a sense of shame that
leads children to understand right from wrong
and seek to exhibit proper conduct (Fung, 1999;
Miller, Fung, Lin, Chian-Hui Chen, & Boldt,
2012). For the Ifaluk, they instill a sense of fear-
fulness that will lead children to avoid danger
and prefer the company of others, eventually
leading to an extreme awareness of the conse-
quences of one’s own actions on others (Lutz,
1983). For the Inuit, they instill a combined sense
of respect and fear of being treated unkindly
(Briggs, 1998). For the Gusii, it is a sense of obe-
dience, restraint, and social distancing (LeVine
et al., 1994). For Germans, it is self-control and
self-reliance (LeVine & Norman, 2001). And for
middle-class Americans, it includes self-esteem,
accomplishment, and ability (Miller et al., 2012).
Adding the Yucatec Maya to this list, their pre-
dispositional priming is a sense of independence
of action, responsibility toward the family unit,
and confidence built through accomplishments.
For each of these cultures, parents construct
experiences and provide feedback to help chil-
dren learn the particular understanding of self
that will lead them to learn the proper lessons to
become a well-functioning adult in that culture.
The Cultural Construction of Children’s
Everyday Environments and Activities
By considering the parental ethnotheories that
organize the everyday lives of European-American
middle-class and Yucatec Mayan children and the
foundational cultural understandings that inform
them, their different commitments to work and
play in childhood come to make sense. It is not
the case that either group of parents is engaged in
misguided parenting or irresponsibly putting their
children at risk, or that one approach is “better”
than the other (although parents in each group
may think these things about the parents in the
other group). Rather, parents in both cultures are
preparing their children to enter into the cultural
world they will inhabit as adults. This is not to
say that the developmental outcomes of these two
very different sets of experiences will be identical,
except in the larger sense of the children becom-
ing well-functioning adults in their communities.
Nor will the everyday realities of the children be
the same. Children’s engagement in work and in
play in their everyday lives grow out of a particular
cultural perspective on childhood and have distinct
influences on their habitual experiences.
Children living in a child-centered world, as
middle-class European-American children often
do, inhabit a world in which their parents go
away to work and then spend their time at home
significantly focused on their children’s activities
and concerns. This world is filled with negotiation
between parent and child, a world in which chil-
dren feel they have a right to assert their opinions
and their desires and strive to have events reflect
them (du Bois-Raymond et al., 1991; Kusserow,
2004). Caregivers’ behavior is motivated out of con-
cern about the children’s self-esteem, using praise
to reassure children and everyday narratives about
their experiences to paint children’s behaviors (even
their transgressions) in a positive light (Miller,
Sandel, Liang, & Fung, 2008; Miller et al., 2012).
Negative feedback like punishment and teasing are
less common. Children’s play often appears locally
to be self-motivated, but it grows out of a highly
mediated physical environment filled with many
toys that have been purchased by adults, some, if
not most of which (“each sold separately”) are tied
to cultural themes that are commercially promoted
and serve to provide cultural capital with their
peers (e.g., tie-ins to movies and TV shows, popu-
lar collections; Chudacoff, 2007). Children often
play alone, with same-aged peers (either in school
or arranged play dates), or with their parents. They
frequently request help or company from their par-
ents, especially when they are bored, lonely, or frus-
trated (Haight & Miller, 1993).
Adult teaching is often intentional and highly
verbal. Adult participation in children’s play (at
home and at school) allows caregivers to suggest top-
ics and embed explicit lessons (Bedrova & Leong,
1995; Chudacoff, 2007; Haight & Miller, 1993),
thus eliminating the opportunity for children to
use play for their own exploration and expression.
Interactions often take the form of verbal expla-
nations, questions, and reference to concepts and
abstractions beyond the here and now, mirroring
school instruction. Chores are introduced to help
children learn both skills and responsibility, but
often the demands of household chores outpace the
children’s knowledge or ability, so caregivers assign
some small part of their own chores and help the
child complete the task successfully, attributing
the successful completion of the task to the child
(cf. Hopgood, 2012, ­chapter 10). In this form, it
often takes longer for the adult to complete a task
than it would if the child was not involved; some-
times, the task has to be redone entirely once the
child is done “helping.”
In contrast, children living in a world centered
on family work, as Yucatec Mayan children often
are, inhabit a world in which all family members
are regularly engaged throughout the day (and
evening) in productive work in the home, yard,
neighborhood, or fields. For the Yucatec Maya,
there is no clear distinction between times for work
and leisure, and young children can be present for
almost all activities adults engage in. Activities
are defined by what needs to be done and who
can contribute to accomplishing a task (Gaskins,
1999). Children are welcomed as active partici-
pants if they are competent or as participants who
are primarily observing if they are interested but
not yet competent. Because they want to be per-
mitted to be more actively involved in the family’s
activities, children are motivated to become more
competent. If the task is primarily a solitary one,
they sometimes work as an assistant (e.g., hold-
ing something, fetching something), pairing this
help with observing the work. Eventually, they are
able to do the task on their own. But many tasks,
especially low-skill, repetitive ones (e.g., forming
tortillas, weeding, shucking corn), allow people to
work together in parallel. For these tasks, children
often work independently alongside a parent or
older sibling, doing the same work. While work-
ing, they can continue to observe to improve their
skill or to learn how to do the next step (Gaskins &
Paradise, 2010). They may work more slowly or
need occasional correction, but their contribution
is a real one. Similar characteristics are found in
the “chore curriculum” in many cultures (Lancy &
Grove, 2010) and indeed, were more common in
the United States in the 1800s (Chudacoff, 2007).
If they are not going to work or watch, they are
encouraged to separate themselves from the loca-
tions where work is being done and can decide for
themselves what they want to do (Gaskins, 1999).
As a result, they usually take up their play and other
leisure activities at some distance (at least, psy-
chological distance) from those who are working.
G a s k i ns 191
At this distance, multiaged play groups organize
themselves and resolve their own conflicts, with
older siblings asserting their play agendas on the
younger ones but also respecting the needs and
desires of the younger ones because they have a
responsibility to keep them content while they play
(Gaskins & Lucy, 1986). Resources for play consist
of discarded objects or other found objects in the
house or yard, along with a few purchased com-
mercial toys that often are used for novel purposes
once they have outlived their original uses.
Direct adult instruction in this environment
is rare, as it is in many cultures (Lancy & Grove,
2010). If children fail to take the initiative to mas-
ter work appropriate to the level of their under-
standing and the needs of the family, or if they fail
to join in ongoing work that they know how to do,
they are teased or shamed to direct their efforts
more toward observing, practicing, and pitching in
(Paradise & Rogoff, 2009), but they are hardly ever
explicitly assigned work against their wishes, thus
reflecting the cultural belief in individual autonomy
(Gaskins, 1999). Feedback and explanation dur-
ing collaborative work occurs, usually as a minor
course correction when the child has made an error
while productively working. It often occurs at the
moment when the child needs to be more careful
to avoid hurting him- or herself or causing damage
to the objects and materials being used. Feedback
can be direct or it can be subtle, such as making
an adjustment to something the child has done
and offered as complete. Praise is rare; no response
(no dismissal, no explicit corrections, no adjust-
ments of finished work) is seen as active acceptance
that the child has managed the job competently.
Children often invite direct feedback by asking a
simple question: “Like this?”—to which adults give
a direct, accurate, and informative answer. Because
adults do not see play as a learning activity, they are
not motivated to join in or structure children’s play
as a way of teaching.
Developmental Consequences of
Culturally Organized Experience
So far, it has been argued that children’s everyday
lives are organized by parents and other caregivers
based on their culturally informed ethnotheories
about play and work, which grow out of their the-
ories about how children develop and learn and,
more generally, broader cultural constructs, such
as economic systems, the rate of culture change,
and understandings of self. These nestled beliefs,
ranging from particular to general, construct an
192 C h i l dho od Pr ac t ic e s Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
everyday context for children’s activities and affect
how much of their time children spend at play or
at work and how they and their caregivers under-
stand and value those activities. Although there
is no one “right” answer to the questions of why
children play or work, or what they “should” or
“naturally do” get out of play or work, the variation
in children’s everyday experiences of work and play
are, however, not without consequence. The final
question to be examined is how these different cul-
turally organized everyday contexts influence chil-
dren’s learning and development.
The issue of cultural influences on developmen-
tal outcomes has proven to be a conundrum in the
study of childhood, especially in the field of psy-
chology, where there has been a general commit-
ment to understanding developmental processes as
being universal across the species. At the same time,
there is a widespread recognition that experience
can have a significant impact on developmental
outcomes (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). These two
theoretical premises in themselves do not lead to
an inconsistent argument if one of two additional
corollaries is added: (1) environmental influences
lead to only minor differences, without influenc-
ing the basic developmental processes; or (2) there
is only one kind of environment that maximizes
developmental potential, and varying from it leads
to deficient outcomes. Both of these corollaries,
especially the second, are frequently invoked in the
literature: differences are defined as deficits.
The fields of cultural psychology and psycho-
logical anthropology have as a basic premise the
importance of experience in children’s develop-
ment (Shweder et al., 2006). However, research-
ers in these fields have emphasized the complexity
and profundity of environmental differences that
shape children’s experiences, often by focusing on
detailed descriptions of a single cultural case and
minimizing comparison. Coming from a Boasian
perspective, they are also committed to the premise
that cultural differences should not be judged as
being better or worse against some outside stan-
dard, but rather understood on their own terms.
Thus, this perspective does not accept either of the
two corollaries that permit psychologists to pair
universal outcomes with experiential effects. They
accept one of two theoretical premises of psycholo-
gists—the importance of experience—and add to
that the fact of significant variation in that experi-
ence. These two are also compatible in themselves,
but they are incompatible with the psychologists’
fundamental premise of universal processes.
 Two-by-two, the premises work. However, all
three premises cannot be accepted in any straight-
forward way because they are mutually contra-
dictory (Gaskins, 2006). It is not possible for
development to be a universal process and signifi-
cantly dependent on experience while taking place
in radically different environments. Thus, develop-
mental psychologists and cultural psychologists,
if they are to hold to their own primary premises,
must violate or at least ignore one premise held
by the other group. Developmental psychologists
often do not seek out the full range of environ-
mental variation that different cultural groups
represent, or, if they do, they do not maximize the
richness of description of that variation. Those who
focus on cultural variation often do not articulate
the developmental implications of the variations
that they document.
There are multiple ways to address these con-
tradictions, all of which involve an acknowledg-
ment of two things: (1) significant and legitimate
variations in children’s environments that influ-
ence their experiences and (2) the importance of
looking at the developmental outcomes of those
experiences. One solution is the concept of mul-
tiple pathways to a single developmental endpoint.
Another is a model of universal outcomes (paired
with universal or comparable experience) at the
most general level paired with an elaboration of
variable outcomes at the next level. This relies on
the idea that, in spite of wide variation in experi-
ence, there are general principles shared across
communities—for instance, that all children, at
some point in infancy or early childhood, will be
engaged by their primary social group as legitimate
actors—even as there are also significant variations
in the details. A third solution is to redefine the
problem as being the active negotiation between
the universal processes of development that chil-
dren bring with them and the particulars of cul-
tural understandings and activities that they are
faced with in their everyday lives. A fourth solution
is to acknowledge that every culture does better
at supporting some developmental processes and
worse at others but that, overall, no one approach is
better than another. These approaches are not nec-
essarily mutually exclusive—in fact, it may take all
of them to develop an adequate concept of develop-
ment as an intersection between an individual and
a cultural process.
Each of these integrative approaches invites a dif-
ferent focus in understanding the role of work and
play in children’s development. The characteristics
of European-American children’s play and Yucatec
Mayan children’s work share a number of impor-
tant characteristics that usually go unrecognized
(see also Edwards, 2005; Gosso, Morais, & Otta,
2007). Both lead children to be occupied in inter-
esting activities that allow them to seek stimulation,
express their mastery, and yield a sense of agency
and competence. Both provide opportunities to
solve problems and to learn social skills through
interactions organized around a common goal. The
argument for multiple pathways to universal devel-
opment would focus on these similarities. While
play may indeed be a major influence on children’s
engagement with the environment and their cogni-
tive and social development in European-American
middle-class families, its influence may come more
because it takes up so much of children’s time and
less because it is a unique experience for foster-
ing such activity and development. Children in
other cultures who spend more time participating
in family work are getting similar experiences in
all of these areas. They are applying their energy
and interest to the task at hand, and they are con-
stantly engaged in problem solving and negotiating
social relations through interaction as they work.
To accept this argument, however, one must be
willing to let go of the claim that play is a unique
developmental force.
The argument for general universal outcomes
with important variations would focus first on
what play and work have in common, as the multi-
ple pathways argument does, but additionally take
into account where these arguments differ. Both
allow children to expend energy and to seek stim-
ulation. But work puts real-world limits on these
experiences. Both give children a sense of agency
and competency by giving children an opportu-
nity to take action and practice mastery, but these
may be qualitatively different when gained through
work and play. Play’s advantage lies in the fact that
there is great freedom to explore and fail because
there are few real-world consequences. However,
one might argue that work experiences might pro-
duce even more profound or more efficient learning
precisely because there are real-world consequences
for both mastery and error. This approach allows
a reduced claim about play’s uniqueness to stay
intact, but it introduces the idea that other activi-
ties might also have unique roles missing in play.
The argument for negotiation between uni-
versals of child development and cultural under-
standings would focus on how different cultural
approaches to children’s everyday experiences deal
G a s k i ns 193
with the universal characteristics of children every-
where. The list of such characteristics might include
expenditure of energy, seeking of stimulation and
curiosity, social interaction, problem solving, and
pleasure in mastery and performance. Children in
different cultures would find ways to express these
universals that are consistent with the cultural roles
they are given through work and play, as well as
the mechanisms of learning they come to practice
and the teaching they come to expect. Thus, all
childhood behavior might be thought of as a set of
underlying developmental universals that can only
be observed through their culturally conforming
expression (which, in addition to providing differ-
ently shaped molds for these universals, might also
influence their relative importance to the children).
European-American children learn to express them
primarily through their play, and its open-ended
and nonserious parameters both expand and limit
their experience. Likewise, Yucatec Mayan chil-
dren learn to express these same universals pri-
marily through their work, and its grounding in
consequences and productivity likely expand and
limit their experience in different directions.
The argument for qualitative differences—that
each cultural organization of childhood experience
is better at promoting some kinds of development
and worse at others—would focus on the unique
values of play and work. In the case of play, perhaps
the best candidate for a unique contribution is the
expression and fostering of creativity. Because of
its lack of direct consequences, play invites experi-
mentation, risk taking, and novel expression in a
way that is not available in activities where there
are indeed consequences of work not finished or
valuable materials wasted. Another potentially
unique contribution of play is the opportunity for
emotional catharsis through pretending things
that do not conform to reality, thus increasing the
child’s sense of power and control. A review of the
ethnographic record suggests that such inventive
pretend play is found most prevalently in cultures
where play is highly cultivated by adults and rep-
resents a large part of children’s activity (Gaskins,
2013b). Given this distribution of inventive pretend,
the emotional catharsis that comes with it could be
seen as a compensatory act by children who need to
express control precisely because of their isolation
and lack of impact in the real world they inhabit
(Gaskins & Miller, 2009). In the case of work, per-
haps the best candidates for unique contributions
to children’s development are increasing their sense
of competence and social connectedness (which
194 C h i l dho od Pr ac t ic e s Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
includes responsibility). Through work, they are
able to make a real contribution to the shared work
of the family, with the result that their under-
standing of self includes having their participation
highly valued (Gaskins, 2003). So, play and work
each provide unique developmental consequences
that are in complementary distribution: increased
creativity (and perhaps emotional catharsis) versus
increased sense of competence in the real world and
connectedness. The nature of play minimizes the
opportunity for competence and connectedness,
just as the nature of work minimizes the opportu-
nity for the expression of creativity and a cathartic
reinventing of reality.
The most complete analysis may come from
combining the insights from all four of the argu-
ments. Although play has been emphasized by
European and American scholars of childhood
as the primary activity of childhood and credited
with many important consequences for children,
in fact, both play and work, if culturally valued
and supported through parental beliefs and prac-
tices, can be rich everyday activities for achiev-
ing many developmental outcomes. Both offer
many opportunities for children to express their
curiosity in order to learn about the world while
also learning about solving problems and inter-
acting with others, and both can lead to a great
deal of pleasure. Play allows for more exploration
and personal expression, whereas work allows for
more integration into family activities with shared
meaning. Over time, the differences of these two
approaches lead children to feel comfortable living
in either a primarily child-centered or primarily
family-centered environment. And although many
developmental outcomes attributed to play can be
achieved through work as well (such as being an
effective social partner and learning how to solve
problems), some claimed outcomes of play (such as
creativity) are not achieved as clearly through work,
just as play does not lead children to feel as compe-
tent at practical skills and socially connected (and
responsible) as work does.
To date, little research on work or on play
addresses the potential of these different inter-
pretations of the tension between development
processes and experience (multiple pathways to
universal development, general universals tem-
pered by specific cultural variation, negotiation
between universal developmental processes and
culturally organized environments, and recog-
nition of strengths and weaknesses of different
developmental outcomes). This explains why, when
the research lens is focused on different aspects of
children’s experiences, there can be such divergent
interpretations of the value of work and play and
their roles in development. Going forward, if play
and work can be studied in a variety of culturally
organized children’s environments and the impact
of such environments on shaping children’s every-
day lives (and thereby, their cognitive, social, and
emotional development) assessed, our understand-
ing of both of these central activities of childhood
can be understood more fully and accurately.
Conclusion
This chapter makes it easier to understand why
the Yucatec Mayan sisters described in the chapter’s
opening looked forward to their work and took
such pride in it. Embedded in a family-oriented
environment in which the work they were expected
to do was within their ability and made a real con-
tribution to the family, these girls had learned to
value their growing competencies and to accept
responsibility—even to volunteer to help out when
the opportunity presented itself. They learned a
lot about the world, about themselves, and about
others while they worked alongside other family
members, first observing and then being allowed to
participate when able to contribute. The intrinsic
reward was in recognizing their ability to do a task
well and to share the burden of family work, along
with a tacit acknowledgment by their parents and
others of their growing competence by being given
new and more demanding chores.
Yucatec Mayan children are not alone. There are
many cultures, especially those based on agricul-
ture, where children grow up learning to see them-
selves as meaningful contributors to family work
(Lancy, 2014). This can happen even in indus-
trial and postindustrial societies when adult work
occurs in the home (e.g., Harper, 1987) or when
families are under unusual stress to get household
work and child care done, as in families with a seri-
ous parental illness or in immigrant families where
children have a better grasp of the language and
cultural practices of the new environment (e.g.,
Orellana, 2009).
When the experiences of these children growing
up in such “work-friendly” environments are consid-
ered from the perspective of the cultural meanings
that organize them, children’s work can be seen as
both a culturally motivated and culturally valuable
commitment. Likewise, “play-friendly” environ-
ments are also seen as both a culturally motivated
and culturally valuable commitment, rather than
the “natural” way that children “should” grow up.
The importance of play for middle-class European
Americans is not diminished by this analysis, but
our understanding of the source of its importance
is transformed from being universal to being cul-
turally motivated. By doing so, we are more open to
value other kinds of childrearing environments and
to appreciate the complexity of our own.
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G a s k i ns 197
 C H A P T E R

13 Cognition in Childhood
Across Cultures

Mary Gauvain and Christina Nicolaides

Abstract
Children learn to think through the appropriation, use, and adaptation of social practices and
the material and symbolic tools of their culture. Social processes are the means through which
these practices and tools become part of the child’s cognitive repertoire. To describe cognition in
childhood from a cultural perspective, this chapter discusses the sociocultural approach to cognitive
development along with ideas from evolutionary developmental psychology that support this view.
It focuses on four social learning processes through which children come to understand and engage
in culture: behavioral observation, sharing of knowledge in reciprocal interaction, explicit efforts to
instruct or transmit knowledge, and participation in cultural activities. Empirical support for each of
these processes is also discussed.
Key Words:  cognitive development, sociocultural theory, cultural psychology, cross-cultural psy-
chology, cognitive socialization, ecocultural theory, evolutionary psychology, dynamic systems

How does the complex set of skills we call
thinking come about in childhood? This intriguing
question is made all the more interesting by the fact
that the remarkable intelligence even young chil-
dren possess is adapted to unique circumstances
of growth. These circumstances are defined, at
the broadest level, by historical period and cul-
tural context. Yet, even with history and culture in
mind, it can be difficult to discern the possibili-
ties and scope of child cognition in the midst of its
unique forms. Tackling this issue from a histori-
cal vantage point is severely limited. Children are
largely omitted from the historical record before
the last century, and even when discussed, the
focus is usually on their place in the social order
with little insight into their thought processes
(Aries, 1962). Cultural analysis is another matter,
however. Many different cultures have existed and
continue to exist on the planet. It is therefore pos-
sible, although not always practical, to study cog-
nition in childhood across different cultures as a
way of tracing out the origins and development of
cognition (Gauvain, Beebe, & Zhao, 2011). Such
inquiries aim to advance understanding of the rela-
tion between culture and cognition, as well as to
identify common and variable properties of intel-
lectual growth (Cole, 1996). Whereas some studies
have reinforced long-standing ideas about cogni-
tive development, others have raised new questions.
To illustrate, let’s consider our recent study about,
ironically, children’s questions.
For a number of years, the first author
(Gauvain) has collaborated with anthropologist
Robert L. Munroe in analyzing a large corpus of
child data that he and his late wife, the develop-
mental psychologist Ruth H. Munroe, collected
in 1978–1979 in four traditional communities:
Garifuna in Belize, Logoli in Kenya, Newars
in Nepal, and Samoans in American Samoa (see
Munroe & Munroe, 1997). This rich dataset covers
socioemotional, motor, and cognitive development,
and many findings are relevant to current research.

198
In fact, data such as these may be especially valuable
in that they come from a time with less rapid and
widespread societal changes than we see today. The
current pattern of change, called globalization, may
very well reduce cultural variation in the everyday
experiences that underlie cognitive development.
Our interest in examining children’s ques-
tions was prompted by research with Western
samples that reports high rates of children’s
explanation-seeking or “why” questions. We were
especially interested because this research tends to
assume that this type of questioning is universal
and, also, that it may play an important role in cog-
nitive development. For instance, in an analysis of
the CHILDES database (MacWhinney & Snow,
1985), Chouinard (2007) showed that almost
one-quarter of the information-seeking questions
from 3- to 5-year-old American children sought
explanation rather than isolated factual informa-
tion. Chouinard argued that a child’s use of explan-
atory questions indicated that learning was taking
place. She then conducted experimental work to
support this assertion and used this set of results
to support the claim that children’s questions func-
tion as a mechanism of cognitive development.
In analyzing the four cultures in our samples,
we identified close to 3,000 utterances from 96 3-
to 5-year-old children and found scant evidence
of “why” questions (Gauvain, Munroe, & Beebe,
2013). These children were curious and asked ques-
tions (269 [11%] of the utterances were questions),
but these were mostly of the information-seeking
type (e.g., “Where are you going?”). Only 12
(4.5%) were “why” questions. In their questions
of all types, these children displayed memory for
events, concern with future-oriented activities, and
perspective taking. In other words, their questions
had evidence of complex thought, thus there was
no gulf in cognitive activity between them and
“Western” children of the same ages. Rather, what
we found were patterns suggesting that cultural
variation in explanation-seeking questions may be
quite large, an observation that begs the question
about the role these questions play in cognitive
development.
What might explain these differing patterns?
To answer this question, we needed to look beyond
individual cognitive performance to the socio-
cultural context. In so doing, three explanations
occurred to us. First, in small-scale traditional
societies, including the four we studied, there is
an unspoken acceptance of the greater authority of
adults vis-à-vis children, especially younger ones.
For a child to often ask “why” would be to chal-
lenge that authority and appear insolent (LeVine,
1970). Second, in small-scale traditional societies,
children can see for themselves their meaningful
part in relatively stable socioeconomic fabrics and
therefore they may seldom need to ask for explana-
tions. Third, in industrialized and postindustrial
societies, the demands of life—new devices and
techniques, ever-widening knowledge—may make
the asking of explanatory-type questions a highly
adaptive way for children to come to terms with
their environment (Gauvain & Munroe, 2012).
Further study is needed to substantiate any of
these claims, yet all point to the importance of
examining the sociocultural context in order to
understand cognitive development. The benefits of
such study are manifold (Gauvain et al., 2011). They
may elucidate commonalities in cognitive develop-
ment; for example, in both the Western samples
and our four cultures, children actively explored
the world and used language to carry out their
explorations, often with questions. But the use of
any particular type of questioning varied across set-
tings because social and cultural practices, such as
authority relations and other conditions, appeared
to influence the nature of these questions. Our
analysis also shows that, given limited evidence of
the universality of explanation-seeking questions,
the assumption that they are a widespread mecha-
nism of cognitive development is problematic. That
is, if explanation-seeking questions are an impor-
tant mechanism of cognitive development, where
does this conclusion leave children who live in cul-
tures where language socialization does not empha-
size or encourage such forms of speech? Although
it is reasonable to contend that explanation-type
questions can function as one among many such
mechanisms, it may be that the role these questions
assume as a mechanism is contingent on their con-
text of expression. In general terms, this research
illustrates how cognitive development is an indi-
vidual, social, and cultural endeavor, and to under-
stand this process it is necessary to study it in a way
that respects these contributions and their relation
to one another.
What are the individual, social, and cultural
contributions to cognitive development? In terms
of the individual, cognitive development involves
the organization and adaptation of human cogni-
tive potential in a way that reflects the needs, inter-
ests, and capabilities of a person over the lifetime or
ontogenesis. For these developing competencies to
take form, social processes are necessary. Human
G au va i n, N ic ol a i de s 199
beings are social animals, and human cognition is
an emergent property of social experience. When a
child is born, social contact and support are indis-
pensible to survival, and the early social experi-
ences children have set in motion a lifelong process
of learning and cognitive growth that is deeply
and inextricably entwined with other human
beings (Gauvain, 2013). The other critical compo-
nent is culture. Cognition develops as individuals
engage in meaningful and prospective ways with
other people and their products, and culture pro-
vides the overarching structure or frame for these
experiences.
So what is culture? We use the definition of
culture from Goodnow, Miller, and Kessel (1995).
Culture is an organized social unit in which mem-
bers of the group share values, beliefs, and under-
standings about the world; participate in common
practices; and transmit information and ways of
living across generations. Culture connects cogni-
tive development with human history instantiated
in the time and place in which the individual lives
and grows—that is, the unique circumstances of
development (Cole, 1996). These cultural-historical
contributions exist in myriad material, symbolic,
and institutional forms and practices that collec-
tively enable, organize, and provide direction for
intelligent human activity. As children participate
in social interaction and other forms of social expe-
rience, the shared understandings and behaviors of
the culture become part of a child’s own thoughts
and actions (Rogoff, 2003).
In this chapter, we discuss cognition in child-
hood across cultures. We focus on the period from
infancy to middle childhood, a time of significant
change in how children think and engage in the
world. We discuss individual, social, and cul-
tural dimensions of cognitive development using
research from various cultures as the evidentiary
base. Cognitive development is wide-ranging,
includes a broad set of capabilities, and occurs in
many different situations. Therefore it should come
as little surprise that a number of learning processes
are involved. We highlight four processes by which
children come to know and use cultural forms of
thinking and acting: observing, sharing, transmit-
ting, and participating. These processes are inher-
ently social, relying on information that children
gather from other people. They are also transfor-
mative in that children actively construct under-
standing of the world and of themselves through
experiences with others and with the institutions
and tools of the culture (Lawrence & Valsiner,
200 C o g n i t ion i n C h i l dho od Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
1993). Although these four processes are not the
only social means through which culture becomes
part of individual cognitive functioning, research
has identified these processes as important. By
identifying and discussing a range of social learn-
ing experiences, we hope to show the pervasive
contributions of the social-cultural context to cog-
nitive development and, at the same time, point
to some of the commonalities in this development
around the world.
Social Learning Processes that Connect
Individual Cognitive Development
with Culture
Several processes of learning have come to the
fore as developmental scientists have grappled with
the complex social and cultural nature of cognitive
development. Here, we focus on observing, shar-
ing, transmitting, and participating, which we
contend are universal processes of cognitive devel-
opment although with different emphasis and form
across cultures. For instance, in cultures without
formal schooling, children learn largely through
observation (Lancy, 1996), whereas cultures with
formal schooling place great emphasis on instruc-
tion, which we refer to as transmission. Here, we
define these processes and later we discuss them
more fully. Table 13.1 provides a summary of these
four processes.
Learning by observing occurs when some-
one attends closely to and learns the behavior of
another person or model (Bandura, 1986). Such
learning, which is restricted to overt behaviors,
begins in infancy and remains significant through-
out life. The learner attends to the model in a
nonintrusive manner. Because the model is not
displaying the behavior in order to aid learning,
the onus is entirely on the learner. Observational
learning is an important source of cultural knowl-
edge, and two types have been described: emula-
tion, when learners use their own means to achieve
a goal observed in another’s actions; and imitation,
when learners use observed behaviors to reach the
same goal as the model (Tomasello, Kruger, &
Ratner, 1993).
Sharing describes situations in which informa-
tion is communicated from one person to another
for the purpose of mutual understanding. It
involves proactive effort to exchange knowledge
in a reciprocal way; that is, the partners are equal,
albeit with different capacities defined by develop-
mental status or knowledge state. Sharing informa-
tion begins in the first year, is not restricted to overt
Table 13.1.  Four Social Learning Processes Important to Cognitive Development from a Cultural Perspective.
Social learning Typical focus of Role of developing Role of other Child–other person
process learning child person(s) relationship

Observing Discrete behavior of Observer who selects Model may or may Same physical setting
another person and attends to not be aware of being but otherwise not
another’s behavior observed necessarily related
and retains it for
later use to meet own
goals

Sharing Information passed Participant who Participant who Reciprocal

from one person shares information shares information
to another for the or with whom it is or with whom it is
purpose of sharing shared shared

Transmitting More experienced Active learner who Supports and Learner and teacher
person purposefully gradually assumes guides the learner
teaches a less responsibility for the in the activity and
experienced person activity gradually transfers
some skill or responsibility for it to
understanding in a the learner
learning activity

Participating Cultural activity Participant–learner Engaged in a cultural Inexperienced

with a clear goal and who intends to learn activity that is the participant and
demonstrated means the activity focus of the learning, experienced
to reach the goal allows child access participant(s)
to the activity and
may alter behavior
to accommodate
learning

behavior or verbal communication, and need not
be initiated by a more experienced person. Even
very young children use pointing to share infor-
mation (e.g., a sight or sound). The emphasis and
emotional register during sharing often coveys cul-
tural values about what knowledge is important to
the group and how group members feel about it
(Goodnow, 1990).
Transmitting involves explicit efforts to teach
someone something. These efforts begin early in
childhood, occur in informal and formal settings,
and are increasingly important with development.
Much of the research on this process has been
informed by Vygotsky’s (1978) notion of the zone
of proximal development (ZPD), the region of sen-
sitivity for learning. Support by a more experienced
partner in the ZPD can help a child engage in and
practice higher levels of competence. Scaffolding,
an instructional technique in which the experi-
enced partner adjusts the support to meet a learner’s
needs, helps children engage with and learn during
a challenging activity (Wood & Middleton, 1975).
Children also learn by participating alongside
experienced cultural members in the activities of
the community (Rogoff, 2003). Such situations are
geared toward practical purposes, to carry out an
activity that happens to be the focus of the child’s
attention. Learning may or may not be aided by
the person engaged in the activity. Through this
form of active participation, which includes but
is not limited to directing attention toward the
activity in a resolute manner, children learn much
about their culture (Rogoff, Paradise, Arauz,
Correa-Chávez, & Angelillo, 2003).
Together, these social learning processes play
a significant role in cognitive development. We
discuss them separately for explanatory purposes;
however, they operate in concert and often occur
side by side. Sometimes, they even build on one
another, for example, when a child and adult remi-
nisce, the adult may, at some point, offer instruction
such as a cultural lesson about moral responsibility
(Miller, Fung, Lin, Chen, & Boldt, 2012). In this
discussion, we do not aim to create a doctrinaire

G au va i n, N ic ol a i de s 201
typology of sociocultural learning processes. We
discuss these processes because there is extensive
research on how each functions as an inroad to
cultural-historical ways of knowing and acting. We
are also interested in their relation to other criti-
cal features of the developing organism, including
the active and learning-oriented nature with which
human beings are endowed (Elman et al., 1996)
and our inherent social bias, which is especially
evident in the young (Homer & Tamis-LeMonda,
2012). Social learning processes build on these
capacities, and it is through them that human cog-
nition finds expression in, and comes to embody,
the cultural-historical forms that make up a par-
ticular developmental context.
Before discussing these social learning processes,
we describe the relatively recent research emphasis
on social and cultural contributions to cognitive
development. We then discuss sociocultural theory,
an account that incorporates the individual, social,
and cultural dimensions of cognitive development.
Some ideas from evolutionary developmental
psychology are also discussed because they offer
long-range historical support for this approach.
A Brief History of the Sociocultural
Approach to Cognitive Development
Interest in cultural contributions to cognitive
development emerged in the 1960s, partly in reac-
tion to universal assumptions inherent to Piaget’s
theory, but also in an effort to understand increas-
ingly worrisome patterns of school failure, espe-
cially among poor children (Munroe & Gauvain,
2010). Developmental scientists began to study
children’s cognitive performance in different cul-
tural settings, including those in which formal
schooling was not or had only recently become
available (e.g., see Cole, Gay, Glick, & Sharp, 1971;
Serpell, 1979). In general, this research showed
that children in more traditional societies did not
perform as well on a wide variety of cognitive tests
as did children living in urban-industrial settings
(e.g., see Dasen, 1974; Goodnow, 1976; Wagner,
1981). This pattern was perplexing, and attempts
to explain it included unfamiliarity with task or
test materials; inexperience with research methods;
differing social practices, especially pertaining to
questioning by authority figures (i.e., adults); and
experience with formal education and literacy
(Rogoff, Gauvain, & Ellis, 1984). When investiga-
tors tried to compensate or control for these dis-
crepancies, differences in performance essentially
remained (e.g., Gay & Cole, 1967; Lancy, 1983).
202 C o g n i t ion i n C h i l dho od Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
At this same time, researchers, often the same
individuals conducting the tests, were reporting
various impressive cognitive skills and reasoning
in the everyday behaviors of traditional peoples,
including children (e.g., Greenfield & Childs,
1977; Saxe, 1981; Serpell, 1979). These observa-
tions suggested that what children knew and were
capable of doing cognitively were not being tapped
in conventional research measures. Also, it was
clear that it was not just transfer to Western-style
testing situations that was at issue; children in tra-
ditional cultural settings were having difficulty
in formal educational situations, which suggested
that their impressive cognitive skills were not being
transferred to the classroom either. These observa-
tions led to closer study of the relation between for-
mal schooling and cognitive development (Rogoff,
1981), yet formal schooling alone did not answer
all the questions researchers had about culture and
cognitive development. What eventually emerged
was the realization that there must be a much
deeper connection between culture and cognition
than was currently understood (Cole, 1996).
What followed was a long period of study aimed
at the functional organization and expression of
human intelligence in specific cultural settings
(Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition,
1983). The result was a theoretical approach in
which cognitive development was seen as cultur-
ally mediated (Cole, 1996), an approach enriched
by theories that emphasized the sociocultural
basis of human intelligence, especially the ideas of
Vygotsky (1978) and activity theorists (Wertsch,
1981). Other theoretical views of the time were also
valuable in this emerging formulation, including
ecocultural (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) and adaptation
views of human development (Konner, 1977).
Since this time, researchers have studied the cul-
tural basis of cognitive development. It is now clear
that schooling plays an important role, but not all
cultural variations can be explained by this experi-
ence (Gauvain & Munroe, 2012). We also know
that the cognitive consequences of formal educa-
tion can vary across cultures and types of school-
ing (Scribner & Cole, 1981; Stevenson & Stigler,
1992). Commonalities in cognitive functioning
and development across cultures also remain a
mystery because researchers espousing universal
explanations rarely delve deeply into the existence
or sources of these patterns. When explanations
are offered, they often draw on general theoretical
ideas such as evolutionary psychology or the rela-
tively new field of developmental neuroscience, but
without the tests needed to support the universal
claims. It is difficult, as Cole (1996) observed, to
create a description of cognitive development that
incorporates the vast range of settings and practices
that make up the cultural-historical experiences
of human beings. Nonetheless, this multidecade
effort, one that arose from several theoretical tradi-
tions and used various research methods, produced
significant appreciation of and insight into the
complex connections of the individual, social, and
cultural in cognitive development.
The Evolutionary Base
The sociocultural basis of cognitive develop-
ment was crafted over the long period of human
evolution (Bjorklund & Pellegrini, 2002). As Cole
(1996) writes, human biology and culture are the
dual legacy or inheritance of our species. In other
words, they co-evolved, and their mutually consti-
tutive nature is the foundation of cognitive devel-
opment. Through natural selection, our ancestors
who were able to solve problems critical to survival,
including obtaining vital resources and caring
for their young, were more likely to succeed and
reproduce (Buss, 2012). Several social and cogni-
tive capabilities were crucial, including the ability
to cooperate in groups and understand conspecif-
ics and be able to work with and learn from them
(Tomasello et al., 1993). In addition, the vast
potential for and interest in learning that human
beings possess, along with other neural properties
such as brain plasticity (Kolb & Whishaw, 2011),
gave early hominids the capability to construct and
modify the environment to aid survival (Flynn,
Laland, Kendal, & Kendal, 2013).
Several other species characteristics also evolved
that were pivotal to cognitive development, includ-
ing immaturity at birth, a protracted period of
dependence on mature members, gradual special-
ization of intelligence to local circumstances, and a
period and process of growth that makes it possible
for human beings to obtain high levels of cognitive
functioning in a lifetime—the process known as
childhood (Konner, 2010). This period of depen-
dence provides many benefits along with survival,
including a form of nurturance that has countless,
repeated opportunities for learning. What manner
of cognitive system would mesh with this evolution-
ary story? For Elman and colleagues (1996), it is a
mental system endowed with some basic cognitive
skills that can jump-start the system once experi-
ences occur. Such a system would allow the human
organism to understand and use information in the
environment more efficiently than would a prepro-
grammed set of knowledge.
This description of human phylogeny is con-
sistent with the idea of cognitive development as
a socially constituted process. Although much of
what children learn is common across social and
historical circumstances, such as physical proper-
ties of the world (Spelke & Kinzler, 2007), and
rooted in domain-general processes, such as atten-
tion and memory, learning is specialized to the
unique circumstances of growth. Infants and chil-
dren are taught by those who care for them and
pass on valued practices and tools of the culture.
As Vygotsky (1987) pointed out, the development
of higher mental functions is where the phylogeny
and cultural history of the species converge.
Sociocultural Theory
Contemporary sociocultural theory has been
greatly influenced by Vygotsky (1987), who
described how social and cultural experiences con-
tribute to psychological development. Vygotsky
and his colleagues, who together developed activ-
ity theory (Wertsch, 1981), differed markedly from
their contemporaries of the early 20th century who
emphasized individual functioning or relied on
immediate environmental stimulation to explain
development (Kozulin, 1990). These theorists saw
the sociocultural context and intelligent human
activity as an organized and meaningful whole.
Social experience is the means through which
children learn about themselves, other people, and
their culture by way of the practices, symbols, and
tools that support intelligent action.
In this view, social and cultural experiences
mediate individual cognitive development by
transforming basic psychological abilities, such as
innate perceptual and memory skills, into com-
plex, higher order psychological functions tailored
to the needs and interests of the culture (Wertsch,
1985). Whereas other primates, and human beings
when they use basic mental functions, use features
of the world to guide action, human beings are
also capable of creating symbols (e.g., language)
and tools (e.g., literacy) that affect how they think
and interact with the world. For example, the basic
form of memory includes unintentional impres-
sions of events directly influenced by the environ-
ment. More complex forms entail the voluntary use
of signs or tools to mediate and extend these basic
functions, as when an individual writes something
down on paper to remember it for later use. Here,
literacy, a cultural product transmitted socially
G au va i n, N ic ol a i de s 203
across generations, mediates individual cognition
and, in so doing, transforms it.
The ability to devise and use cultural tools frees
human intelligence from its biological base and
links it to the minds of other people as they pres-
ently exist and as embodied in the practices and
artifacts of the culture (Cole, 1996; Vygotsky,
1987). Adoption of these practices and artifacts
aligns children’s thinking and behavior with others
in their culture. Children play active roles in this
process. They do not simply mimic the actions of
more experienced others; they come to understand
the meaning and intention behind these practices,
tools, and symbols (Tomasello, Carpenter, Call,
Behne, & Moll, 2005). For example, communi-
cative conventions of the culture, such as scripts,
organize and guide children’s actions by providing
them with an outline of expectations and behav-
iors in a setting (Nelson, 2007). Cultures also have
forms of representation that provide children with
knowledge that would not be possible without
these forms; for example, maps provide children
with insight about large-scale space they would not
otherwise have (Liben, 2001). Through social pro-
cesses such as observing, sharing, transmitting, and
participating, the thinking, practices, and products
of the culture become part of individual cognition.
Over the course of development, what emerges is a
mature individual in whom the culturally specific
nature of experience is an integral part of how the
person thinks and acts.
The sociocultural approach is consistent with cur-
rent understanding of human evolution, discussed
previously, and with other developmental theories
including probabilistic epigenesis (Gottlieb, 1997),
ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner &
Morris, 2006), and dynamic systems and trans-
actional approaches (Sameroff, 1989; Thelen &
Smith, 2006). Similar to sociocultural theory, all
these views contend that bidirectional forces across
time and contexts shape development. Probabilistic
epigenesis redefines the relation between human
biology and experience in a way consistent with a
sociocultural approach. In this view, human devel-
opment does not have a predetermined biological
course; rather, its course is facilitated, organized,
and maintained by experience. Ecological systems
theory stresses the relations between the develop-
ing child and various environmental systems and
provides description of the layers of human social
experience that make up development in cultural
context. Dynamic systems and transactional
approaches concentrate on change over time in the
204 C o g n i t ion i n C h i l dho od Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
coordination of elements of a complex, integrated
system. Development arises from the system as a
whole, not from any single factor. Similarly, a cul-
ture and its members change in relation to ongoing
interactions and demands in a system, with cogni-
tive development constrained but not wholly deter-
mined by these various processes.
Social Processes and Cognitive
Development in Cultural Context
Now we focus on four social means of learning
about culture: observing, sharing, transmitting,
and participating. Our aim is to demonstrate the
breadth, complexity, and sociocultural nature of
individual cognitive growth.
Observing
Children acquire many behaviors that are
cultural by observing others (Konner, 2010).
Observational learning has a long history of study
in psychology (Bandura, 1986), with much of the
research focused on social behaviors. Here, we con-
centrate on cognitive skills, although we recognize
that dividing intelligent behaviors into cognitive
and social realms is arbitrary and serves the pur-
poses of researchers more than it describes actual
human development.
Other people model behaviors in children’s
presence that are valued in their culture. Children
learn these behaviors by attending closely to them
in an inconspicuous manner guided by the child’s
own interests and capabilities. Children are active
in this process, displaying intrinsic motivation and
initiative in selecting and attending to a behavior,
concentrating in order to learn it, and expending
effort to make sense of it in the immediate con-
text and in relation to personal goals (Gaskins &
Paradise, 2010). The person observed, or model,
may not be aware of the observation, nor does
the model do anything to encourage or support the
learning. Thus, responsibility for learning is on the
child alone.
Learning through observation begins early
in life, which suggests an innate propensity for
human beings to learn in this manner. Infants
as young as 6 months of age can imitate novel
actions toward objects that they have seen adults
do (Barr, Dowden, & Hayne, 1996). They can
learn new behaviors by observing others for as little
as 30 seconds and reproduce these behaviors after
a 24-hour delay (Collie & Hayne, 1999). By the
end of the first year, children understand other
persons as intentional agents, which contributes to
their ability to select and interpret observed actions
(Tomasello & Haberl, 2003). In the second year of
life, the ability to learn behaviors through obser-
vation increases (Matheson, Moore, & Akhtar,
2013). At 16 months, children can learn a com-
plex set of modeled behaviors, with an evident
bias toward intentional as compared to accidental
behaviors (Carpenter, Akhtar, & Tomasello, 1998).
Observational learning is not restricted to more
experienced models; at 30 months of age, infants
can learn problem-solving strategies by watch-
ing same-age peers solve a problem (Brownell &
Carriger, 1991).
Cross-cultural research has shown that chil-
dren spend much of their waking hours watching
others (Whiting & Edwards, 1988), which sug-
gests ample opportunity to learn a wide range of
behaviors through observation. These behaviors are
displayed by other cultural members and, as such,
represent some of the cultural behavioral reper-
toire. Observational learning is especially likely
for routine cultural behaviors because of their fre-
quent occurrence, public display, and consistency
in performance across cultural members. The fact
that children, especially when young, are in close
company of adults and older children who use these
behaviors enhances opportunities to learn them.
For instance, children in the Warao community of
South America will grip a canoe handle for the very
first time in the same manner as do older members
of the group without any prior instruction (Wilbert,
1979), and girls in Chiapas, Mexico learn to operate
a complex foot loom by observing an experienced
weaver (Childs & Greenfield, 1980).
Evidence of observational learning also appears
in play when children adapt observed behaviors in
order to practice a skill. For example, girls in the
Okavango Delta of Botswana will pound a stick on
the dirt during play in a way that resembles how
they have seen others use a pestle and mortar to
crush grain (Bock & Johnson, 2004). In Liberia, 8-
to 10-year-old Kpelle boys practice climbing trees
with a bamboo strip wrapped around the tree and
each end held in a hand, the conventional way of
climbing the tall, straight palm trees in their village
(Lancy, 1996). However, in play, the boys practice
on a coconut tree because it is curved near the
ground, which makes climbing easier.
What children learn through observation is
often opportunistic, spurred on by what they see
and hear around them. Children take an active
role by choosing what they attend to and in deter-
mining how the learned information is later put to
use. Although observational learning is a universal
strategy for cognitive development, opportunities
for and emphasis on observational learning vary
across cultures.
Sharing
Much of learning about culture occurs in situ-
ations in which knowledge is communicated from
one person to another for the purpose of mutual
understanding or sharing. These exchanges are
reciprocal; that is, both parties are equal partners,
notwithstanding their developmental status or
knowledge states. The intent is to involve some-
one in what another person knows or is thinking
about and not to teach the person something.
Sharing information begins early in life, and it
helps initiate infants and young children into the
knowledge, practices, and values of the culture.
Intersubjectivity, joint attention, social referencing,
conversations about the past and as events unfold,
and joint narratives during shared reminiscing and
storytelling are examples of sharing as a means of
learning about culture (Gauvain, 2013).
Young infants show interest in sharing informa-
tion with their caregivers. Two-month-old infants
respond to parental overtures by making sounds
similar in pitch to the parent’s voice (Snow, 1990).
At 3 months, infants are sensitive to social con-
tingencies when interacting with their mothers
(Striano, Henning, & Stahl, 2005), which paves
the way for coordinated social attention or intersub-
jectivity (Trevarthen, 1980). Six-month-old infants
can partake in turn-taking routines (Bruner &
Sherwood, 1976), and, later in the first year, infants
will look reliably at the place where adults are look-
ing, referred to as joint attention (Adamson &
Bakeman, 1991). Together, these emerging com-
petencies allow children to share knowledge with
others, which, in turn, supports the development
of a broad spectrum of cognitive skills, including
language and object knowledge—skills important
to learning about and participating in culture.
Joint attention develops similarly in very dif-
ferent cultural settings, although there is variation
in the communicative styles and cultural practices
caregivers use to establish joint attention. Among
the !Kung San, a hunter–gatherer society in Africa,
adults neither encourage nor prohibit an infant’s
exploration of objects, but if the infant initiates
interactions by offering objects to caregivers, joint
attention and object exploration follows the same
course observed in other communities (Bakeman,
Adamson, Konner, & Barr, 1990). The focus of
G au va i n, N ic ol a i de s 205
interest during joint attention also differs across
cultures. Mothers and their 12- to 24-month-old
children in the United States and in a Mayan com-
munity in Guatemala allocate their attention in
different ways (Chavajay & Rogoff, 1999). Whereas
Mayan dyads attend to several events simultane-
ously, US dyads attend to one event or object at
a time or alternate back and forth between items.
In other research, mothers in the United States,
France, and Japan were similar in nurturance
and responsiveness toward their 5-month-old
infants, yet they differed in the rates they directed
the infants’ attention toward objects and mother
(Bornstein, Tal, & Tamis-LeMonda, 1991). US
mothers mainly directed attention to objects, and
US and Japanese mothers had similar and higher
rates of directing attention to the mothers them-
selves than French mothers did.
Caregivers and children also share information
about culture in conversations about the past and
as events unfold, which contributes to memory
development (Reese, 2002). Children use similar
memory strategies, such as elaboration, in conver-
sations with an unfamiliar adult that were previ-
ously used with their mothers (Lange & Carroll,
2003). Children’s active engagement is important
to this learning, as shown in research in which
children’s memory for an event was better when
the event was talked about by mother and child
than when it was only talked about by mothers
or not discussed (Haden, Ornstein, Eckerman, &
Didow, 2001). In conversations in which children
and their caregivers co-construct autobiographical
stories in the form of a narrative (Bruner, 1986),
children gain experience with a cognitive structure
important to learning about and engaging in cul-
ture. The narrative form is useful for organizing,
storing, and communicating memories, and it is
common in sustained social groups including the
family (Farrant & Reese, 2000). Shared narratives
help establish and maintain group identity and
cohesion (Ochs, Taylor, Rudolph, & Smith, 1992).
They also contribute to the child’s developing sense
of self and understanding of mind (Nelson, 1996),
interpretation and encoding of events (Haden &
Ornstein, 2009), and anticipation of future actions
(Gauvain & Huard, 1999).
Research has found cultural differences when
young children and adults share personal knowl-
edge with one another, which has consequences for
cognitive development. Wang (2013) found that
the conversations of European American parents
and preschoolers emphasized personal attributes
206 C o g n i t ion i n C h i l dho od Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
and qualities, whereas conversations of Taiwanese
parents and preschoolers focused on social rela-
tionships. These patterns were, in turn, associated
with children’s memory. Other research showed
that European American parents are more likely
to use an elaborative and child-centered approach
when reminiscing with their children in compari-
son with Chinese parents who tend to use a prag-
matic, mother-centered approach (Wang, Doan, &
Song, 2010). Parent–child conversations about past
events also reflect cultural values. Mullen and Yi
(1995) found that European American mothers
made more references to the children’s thoughts
and feelings, whereas Korean mothers made more
references to social norms. In research on naturally
occurring stories about past experiences between
2–1/2-year-old children and family members, sto-
ries told in Taiwanese families emphasized moral
and social standards, reflecting cultural values
regarding proper conduct, respect for others, and
self-control (Miller, Wiley, Fung, & Liang, 1997).
In contrast, European American stories mostly
focused on entertainment and affirmation of
the child as an individual; also, when the child’s
past transgressions were discussed, misdeeds were
understated and recast to emphasize the child’s
strengths. These patterns are consistent with social-
ization goals and values in these cultures and sug-
gest that, during conversations about the past,
children not only learn how to organize memories
for communication, they also learn what aspects of
the past are important to talk about and remember.
Children also share knowledge with and learn
about culture from other children as they engage in
joint activities including those involving problem
solving (Fletcher, Warneken, & Tomasello, 2012),
conservation (Doise, Mugny, & Perret-Clermont,
1975), planning (Gauvain & Rogoff, 1989), spa-
tial thinking (Golbeck, 1998), moral and causal
reasoning (Kruger, 1992; Manion & Alexander,
1997), and conceptual and scientific understanding
(Mercer & Littleton, 2007). As children get older
and develop representational, linguistic, and meta-
cognitive competencies, the information they share
changes as do opportunities for learning. Research
indicates that explanations offered to agemates by
preschoolers and preadolescents during naturalis-
tic conversations cover a wide range of topics and
reflect developmentally related interests and capa-
bilities (Blum-Kulka, Hamo, & Habib, 2010).
This research suggests that sharing knowledge is
an important learning process, one that changes
as children develop cognitive skills. To illustrate,
consider how the development of language and
symbolic understanding provides children with
the means to interact with others about events and
ideas beyond the immediate circumstances.
Transmitting
When children enter early childhood and
develop many skills, in particular language and
executive functions, there are more active efforts
to teach them cultural ways of thinking and act-
ing (Vygotsky, 1978). We refer to these processes as
transmitting to emphasize the explicit intention to
pass cultural knowledge on to children. Societies
make an enormous investment in educating young
members about the culture (Göncü & Gauvain,
2012). Developmental research on this process has
examined social interactions in the child’s zone of
proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978), scaffold-
ing (Wood & Middleton, 1975), and apprentice-
ship (Rogoff, 1990). These findings support the
general claim that cognitive development can result
from solving problems with an experienced partner
who targets assistance to the learner’s needs.
Some research has examined the transmission
of cultural knowledge in formal learning situa-
tions (e.g., see Hughes, Luo, Kwok, & Loyd, 2008;
Palinscar & Brown, 1984; Pianta & Stuhlman,
2004). In school, children learn much about their
culture, including how it interprets the natural
and social worlds, the values it places on certain
ways of thinking, and the tools it uses to sup-
port thinking (Bruner, 1996). Research suggests
that cognitive skills including executive functions
(i.e., working memory, inhibitory control, atten-
tion), decision making, and problem solving are
enhanced by exposure to formal education (Baker,
Salinas & Eslinger, 2012). Although teachers play
a central role in this process, children also contrib-
ute through peer tutoring, collaborative learning
arrangements, and less formal learning opportu-
nities in the school setting (Flynn, 2010; Harris,
1995; Joiner, Littleton, Faulkner, & Miell, 2000).
Research has also shown that parents in cultures
with compulsory schooling prepare children for
the classroom before they even begin school by
engaging them in activities and communicative
exchanges that resemble those in school, such as
small lessons about how things work or talking
on a sustained topic about things that are not the
current focus of activity (Tudge, Odero, Hogan, &
Etz, 2003).
Children also acquire cognitive skills and cultural
knowledge outside of school during interactions
that support learning (Gauvain & Rogoff, 1989),
including understanding in specific domains such
as science and mathematics (Bjorklund, Hubertz, &
Reubens, 2004; Hyde, Else-Quest, Alibali, Knuth,
& Romberg, 2006; Jipson & Callanan, 2003).
Parents and other more experienced partners,
including older siblings, arrange opportunities for
children to develop cognitive skills through play and
other after-school activities and by making technol-
ogy and other learning tools available (Gauvain &
Perez, 2005; Serpell & Hatano, 1997). More expe-
rienced partners aid learning by helping children
manage the more difficult components of tasks,
breaking down a problem into manageable subgoals
and providing structure and guidance (Gauvain,
2001; Saxe, 1991). In a successful encounter, as the
child’s skill increases, the more experienced partner
reduces the amount of support so that eventually
the child can execute the task in a skilled fashion on
his or her own.
The technique of scaffolding is important in
many cultural settings for transmitting skills that
children need to carry out mostly or entirely error-
free, such as knowledge needed in situations when
adult supervision is limited or unavailable (e.g.,
information about poisonous plants and hazard-
ous conditions; Gauvain, 2005; Zarger, 2002).
Scaffolding may also occur in situations in which
economic or other costs are high, for example, in
trying to maintain valued traditional practices.
In contrast, trial-and-error learning may be more
common when cost does not matter or innova-
tion is desired (Greenfield, 2004; Tanon, 1994).
Instruction may be especially important when
children enter middle childhood and become
engaged in economically important activities and
venture beyond the homestead on their own or
with other children. Instruction and scaffolding
may also be used to convey cultural skills that
involve mainly mental activity, especially skills
that are important for children to learn quickly
or flawlessly. Lancy (1996) observed scaffolding
among the Kpelle when children learned respect-
ful behaviors or manners, apprenticed in spe-
cialized skills such as weaving or how to make
medicine, and when boys learned to play Malaη, a
game of mental strategy.
Still, deliberate instruction as described in rela-
tion to ZPD and scaffolding may be more common
in cultures in which formal schooling is highly
valued. When formal schooling is less common or
nonexistent, mothers may sometimes instruct their
children, but their instruction seems to differ from
G au va i n, N ic ol a i de s 207
cultures with formal schooling. LeVine and col-
leagues (1994) videotaped traditional Gusii moth-
ers in Kenya and middle-class US mothers as they
taught 6- to 25-month children age-appropriate
tasks. Gusii mothers instructed their children ver-
bally, demonstrated the entire task in advance, and
told the children to complete the task exactly as
demonstrated. They rarely demonstrated part of
the task while the children were doing it, and when
children completed the task successfully, the moth-
ers did not praise them. In contrast, American
mothers used verbal instruction throughout the
task, often demonstrated part of the task while
children worked on it, encouraged task exploration,
and, when children finished, their mothers praised
them. Gusii children were more cooperative with
mothers than American children were; however,
Gusii children completed the task less often. In
explaining these differences, LeVine and colleagues
pointed out that the Gusii mothers and children
were in an unfamiliar situation in that young chil-
dren usually learn skills from older children and
siblings, compliance is important because children
are often responsible for domestic activities, and
praise is avoided at all ages because adults think it
leads to conceit and undermines group solidarity.
This research echoes the view that some modes of
transmission are more common in some cultures.
And, specifically, it suggests that when instruc-
tion occurs, it reflects cultural values, unique task
requirements, and long-term community-based
goals for children’s learning and development.
Participating
Children learn quite a bit about culture by par-
ticipating alongside experienced group members in
the daily activities and practices of the community
(Goodnow et al., 1995; Rogoff, 2003). Such situ-
ations are geared toward practical purposes—to
carry out an activity that happens to be the focus of
the child’s attention. In many cultures, children are
given extensive access to the mature practices of the
community. Even children as young as 2–3 years of
age in some communities, such as the Efe foragers
in Africa and Maya in Guatemala, have experience
in a limited but authentic fashion with the routine
work activities of adults in their societies and are
thereby privy to cultural ways of acting and solv-
ing problems (Morelli, Rogoff, & Angelillo, 2003).
Learning through participation may be especially
important in settings where explicit instruction is
less common than in Western communities (Lancy,
Bock, & Gaskins, 2010; LeVine et al., 1994). For
208 C o g n i t ion i n C h i l dho od Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
example, in Zinacanteco, a Mayan community in
Mexico, skill at weaving is transferred across gener-
ations as apprentice weavers, usually young girls, sit
or stand quietly alongside and watch their mothers
or older sisters weave (Greenfield & Childs, 1991).
The learner’s attention is focused on behaviors that
are important to the learning, and this attention
is permitted over a long period of time, which in
other circumstances might be considered rude.
Despite substantial cultural variation in the
onset and nature of participatory learning experi-
ences, engagement in cultural activities is pervasive
in children’s lives. In these situations, the child is
neither a bystander nor a learner, but is rather a full
participant whose contribution is defined by his or
her current understanding, maturation, interests,
and so forth. Cognitive development is evident
in changes in children’s roles and responsibilities
in the activities (Rogoff, 2003). Children learn by
directing their attention in a sustained and reso-
lute manner toward what it is they want to learn,
described in the process of intent community par-
ticipation (Rogoff et al., 2003). Intent community
participation includes behaviors by the child such
as interest and motivation to learn about a valued
cultural practice, close observation of experienced
individuals engaged in these practices, listening in
on conversations of more experienced individu-
als, asking questions about the behaviors of expe-
rienced individuals, and creating opportunities to
be involved in practices of interest. Such learning
may or may not be aided by the experienced person
engaged in the activity, but the child is nonethe-
less allowed to witness the activity, which Lave and
Wenger (1991) call legitimate peripheral participa-
tion. The experienced cultural member may aid
learning by placing the activity in the child’s line of
sight, arranging participation in ways that build on
the child’s skills, or offering guidance as the child
engages in the activity (Rogoff, 2003).
Opportunities to learn through participation
change as children develop. Some of this change is
regulated by maturational factors, some by experi-
ence, and some by a combination of the two. The
transition that takes place from 5 to 7 years of age,
the 5-to-7 shift, is a case in point. Research based
on a wide range of cultures has shown that between
5 and 7 years of age children experience a change
in the roles and responsibilities that are assigned to
them, and this change has consequences for cogni-
tive development (Rogoff, Sellers, Pirotta, Fox, &
White, 1975). This period coincides with neuro-
logical changes, principally the development of the
frontal cortex and associated executive functions
(Kolb & Whishaw, 2011). This transition point
appears to operate as a prelude to maturity by set-
ting the stage for middle childhood, a period when
children are increasingly relied on by others and
the culture at large (Weisner, 1996). The rate and
pattern of children’s participation in and responsi-
bility for activities at this transition differs across
cultures and may be greater in communities where
children are relied on to meet economic or subsis-
tence needs.
A key feature of learning through participa-
tion is that children are engaged to some degree
in authentic adult activities, which in turn helps
prepare them to become mature cultural members.
This learning affects cognitive development in sev-
eral ways. It provides children with an introduction
to and practice with activities that foster the devel-
opment of culturally valued skills. It demonstrates
how more experienced cultural members under-
stand and approach common problems. Finally, it
provides children with experience with the actual
tools, both symbolic and material, that are used in
the culture for solving problems, especially those
problems that are encountered regularly and con-
sidered important to solve (Goodnow, 1990).
Although learning by participating has roots
in observational learning, these processes differ on
several counts. Observational learning is opportu-
nistic, and what is observed is incorporated into the
child’s behavioral repertoire and used later to meet
the child’s own goals, which may differ from those
of the model. In contrast, learning by participating
is activity-focused and involves some recognition
of the activity as a whole along with its purpose
and place in the culture. For example, when a child
looks on as someone engages in a routine cultural
practice, such as preparing food or weaving a cloth,
the learner acquires how the goal state, food to eat
or a cloth to use, is achieved in his or her culture.
The learned behavior is tied to the activity as an
ensemble, and its reproduction, later on, is tied
to this activity. Thus, learning by observing and
learning by participating differ in two ways: focus,
either on an action (observing) or an activity (par-
ticipating), and goal, either the learner’s own goal
(observing) or the goal of the activity in the culture
(participating).
Conclusion
Human beings learn to think about and solve
problems in their everyday lives through the appro-
priation, use, and adaptation of social practices
and the material and symbolic tools developed by
their culture. For cognitive development to suc-
ceed—that is, bring a child to mature competence
in the community—children have to learn much
about their culture. Interpersonal and other social
processes are the primary means through which
cultural understanding is conveyed to children,
and engagement in these processes helps organize
the developing mind in ways aligned with the
needs and aspirations of the community. Although
much of this learning occurs through interper-
sonal contact, the social nature of this learning is
evident when children work alone on problems or
materials derived from the culture. Experience in
cultural activities and with cultural symbols and
tools advance children’s thinking in ways that
would not be possible without them. It is through
these experiences that, over the course of develop-
ment, culture and its resources become constitutive
components of human intelligence (Cole, 2006).
Children’s active contributions to this learning are
evident in the ways they adopt some of these con-
ventions and tools; adapt, resist, or discard others;
and introduce new and innovative forms—all with
the aim of meeting the unique circumstances of
growth (Gauvain, 2009).
Similar to other critical aspects of human devel-
opment, opportunity and support for children to
develop cognitive skills suited to the circumstances
of growth are overdetermined. Many learning pro-
cesses help children come to understand and engage
in their culture, including behavioral observation,
the sharing of knowledge in reciprocal interactions,
explicit efforts to transmit cultural understand-
ing and ways of thinking, and participation in the
activities, practices, and institutions of the culture.
These processes co-occur, and one process may
mutate into another depending on the situation and
learning needs. For example, when a child is learn-
ing through intent community participation, the
experienced person may notice the child’s interest
and offer instruction, thereby shifting from partici-
patory learning to a more didactic means of trans-
mission. Several factors regulate the frequency and
manner with which these various types of learning
occur. Additionally, the dominance of any particu-
lar learning process and how it is implemented dif-
fer across cultures (Miller, 1997).
The ideas in this chapter are based on a sociocul-
tural approach to cognitive development. We began
with discussion of research on children’s ques-
tions to illustrate the complex social and cultural
nature of cognitive development. We discussed the
G au va i n, N ic ol a i de s 209
theoretical foundations of a sociocultural approach
and then described four social learning processes
that support individual cognitive development
and connect the individual mind with the culture
it inhabits. Throughout, we tried to show how an
approach to cognitive development that incorpo-
rates the mutual contributions of the individual,
the social, and the cultural context is both feasible
and valuable. However, to date, theory and research
have concentrated on one, sometimes two, of these
components. These efforts have yielded important
formative steps. Still, a comprehensive description
of cognitive development, one that takes the indi-
vidual, social, and cultural components fully into
account, remains in the offing.
Examination of culture, in particular, has lagged
behind theory and research on individual and social
contributions. There are many reasons for this situ-
ation, including how to study culture, a naturalis-
tic process, in a way that meets scientific concerns
important to the discipline that were honed in lab-
oratory settings. There are also historically based,
pretheoretical assumptions regarding the univer-
sality of human cognition and its development that
need re-examination (Kessen, 1979). Finally, there
are theoretical challenges, including how to under-
stand culture from a psychological vantage point.
We hoped to show that valuable information on
this front can be found in sociocultural theory, a
perspective in which culture and its related social
processes are at the center of cognitive develop-
ment. One way to gain empirically based insight
into the sociocultural nature of cognitive develop-
ment may be to utilize ethnographic evidence to
think more deeply about aspects of cognitive devel-
opment that are presumed to be universal, such as
our investigation of children’s explanation-seeking
or “why” questions (Gauvain et al., 2013). Another
way may be to consider how the learning processes
described in this chapter vary in form and empha-
sis across cultures and identify patterns of cognitive
development and the cultural goals they meet that
are linked to these variations.
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G au va i n, N ic ol a i de s 213
 C H A P T E R

14 Cultural Manifestation of Intelligence

in Formal and Informal Learning
Environments During Childhood
Sascha Hein, Jodi Reich, and Elena Grigorenko

Abstract
The authors present a cultural perspective on conceptualizations of intelligence and the effects of
educational practices in formal (i.e., Western-style schooling) and informal (i.e., family and community
apprenticeship) learning environments on intelligence. Western schooling primarily affects the
development of cognitive processes underlying performance on tests measuring academically related
cognitive skills. Learning in informal settings is closely related to cognitive skills with a high value
for successful adaptation within the culture. The effects of both learning environments can only be
understood in relation to each other since both foster the cognitive skills necessary in a particular
context. Zambia and Saudi Arabia are used to illustrate that different emphases in educational
contexts underlie the variation in meaning and value attributed to cognitive skills across cultures. The
authors stress the importance of investigating how different conceptualizations of learning have a
culture-specific bearing on intelligence and related academic skills.
Key Words:  intelligence, culture, formal schooling, informal education, Saudi Arabia, Zambia

In some parts of the world, in rural Zambia, for
example, views of the origins of intelligence and
the value of formal schooling differ from those of
the Western1 world. We recently observed such a
difference as part of the regular recruitment pro-
cedure for our current study of reading disabilities
in Zambia, the Bala Bbala Project 2 (BBP; Reich,
Tan, Hart, Thuma, & Grigorenko, 2013b; Tan,
Reich, Hart, Thuma, & Grigorenko, 2014). In a
meeting with parents in a rural Zambian farming
community about the possibility of their children
participating in the BBP, a retired head teacher
(i.e., principal) expressed his view that the capac-
ity for reading is God-given, and parents acknowl-
edged their agreement. In further conversations, a
high school-educated witness to the meeting who is
from a nearby community said that the statements
of this parent, this former educator, indicate that he
and the other parents do not believe in the devel-
opment of intelligence or, for that matter, of any
cognitive ability. With such a confession, in this
community, one’s capacity to do well is believed
to be predetermined and thus continued school-
ing for children unable to progress is considered
of little value. Moreover, this statement provides
evidence that his cultural beliefs regarding devel-
opment remain unwavering despite being trained
in Western-style pedagogy. This is not to say that
children who struggle will be set aside as unable to
experience success. Rather, parents and elders often
evaluate cognitive capacities, strengths, and weak-
nesses informally, and roles in society are assigned
accordingly, with more complicated tasks being
assigned to those who can handle them and simpler
tasks being assigned to those who cannot.
Western models, in contrast, view cognitive
development as unfolding through the interac-
tion of various interlinked ecological contexts and
individual characteristics of a child. Formal educa-
tion in school settings and informal education in

214
the family context interact with children’s predis-
positions to contribute to individual differences in
cognitive development (Baenniner & Newcombe,
1995; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006; Sternberg &
Grigorenko, 2001). These environmental contexts
are highly complex and play varying influential
roles during the life span. Particularly at young
ages, the structure provided by the family (e.g.,
interactions among parents, children, and siblings)
and features of home learning environments serve
as highly influential contexts that shape cognitive
development, and provide multiple opportunities
to acquire cultural knowledge (Bornstein, 2012;
Bradley, Corwyn, Burchinal, McAdoo, & Coll,
2001; Bronfenbrenner, 1986; Estrada, Arsenio,
Hess, & Holloway, 1987; Fiese, 2001; Maccoby,
1992; Ramey & Ramey, 2012). As children mature
from early to middle childhood, the context of for-
mal education (e.g., instructional practices, teacher–
student relationships, and curricular differentiation)
and schooling, when available, exerts an increasingly
important environmental influence on children’s
cognitive abilities (Ceci, 1991; Ceci & Williams,
1997; Christian, Bachnan, & Morrison, 2001;
Cliffordson & Gustafsson, 2008; Eccles & Roeser,
1999; 2012; R. E. Mayer, 2000; Nisbett, 2009).
Bridging this Western social science understanding
of cognitive development to cultural conceptualiza-
tions of intelligence as expressed by Zambian parents
is a challenging task—a task that we consider impor-
tant to achieve for the field of cultural psychological
research and for different societies worldwide.
The goal of this chapter is to explore how the
relationships of schooling (as a context for formal
education) and the family and home environment
(as a context for informal learning) affect children’s
intellectual development in childhood across cul-
tures. We draw from context-based theories and
ecological models of human development (e.g.,
Berry, 2004; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006) to
(1) emphasize the relationships between intellec-
tual development and culture-shaped educational
practices in formal and informal learning envi-
ronments and (2) describe potential influences on
intellectual development that occur on the basis of
bidirectional relations between the child and his or
her formal and informal learning contexts, as well
as across these contexts.
This goal is by no means new. Cultural research
has long been concerned with children’s exposure
to and learning from particular cultural activi-
ties. In this field of research, the primary aim is
to understand the universal and culture-specific
allocation of meaning to the psychological con-
struct of interest in different societal settings and to
understand how individuals adapt to change caused
by acculturation (Bornstein, 2002; Kagitcibasi &
Berry, 1989; van de Vijver & Poortinga, 2002).
This chapter adds a perspective on the effects of
educational practices on intelligence at the inter-
section of school and family environments across
cultures. Similar endeavors have been undertaken.
For example, Buchmann and Hannum (2001)
reviewed research on educational outcomes in
developing countries and concluded that although
there is evidence of the relative effects of school
and family on educational outcomes, less is known
about how community factors operate indepen-
dently of or in conjunction with family and school.
From a cultural perspective, distinguishing
between formal and informal learning environ-
ments and their effects on intellectual functioning is
important. In the past decades, most research from
the United States has accentuated that Western
modes of schooling primarily affect the development
of cognitive processes underlying performance on
tests measuring academically related cognitive skills
(e.g., mathematical problem-solving tasks) taught in
school (Ceci, 1991; Christian et al., 2001; Sternberg,
2007). Learning in informal settings, however, is
more closely related to cognitive skills relevant to
a particular cultural community (e.g., practical
problem-solving skills). What these skills—whether
it be hunting and navigation skills of children in
Alaska, showing social responsibility in Africa, or
being able to memorize large sections of the Quran
in Arab countries—have in common, and what
cannot be assessed with traditional intelligence
tests, is the successful adaptation to an environment
and the culture-specific perception of what defines
an intelligent child. These skills might be important
indicators of intelligence in some cultures but not
in others. For instance, a child who takes care of
siblings and the elderly or who is able to recite large
parts of the Quran is not necessarily perceived as
an intelligent child by Western standards. However,
this does not imply that conclusions cannot be
drawn from Western tests of cognitive skills across
cultures. As we illustrate, what varies is the meaning
and value attributed to the assessed skills. This dis-
crepancy is reflected, for example, in the data gener-
ated by large-scale international studies such as the
Trends in International Mathematics and Science
Study (TIMSS). The overall low performance in
mathematics and science compared to international
benchmarks of countries like Saudi Arabia (Martin,
H e i n, R e ic h, G r ig or e n k o 215
Mullis, Foy, & Stanco, 2012; Mullis, Martin, Foy,
& Arora, 2012) is coupled with an unusual obser-
vation that girls in seven Arab-speaking countries
(the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia,
Palestinian National Authority, Jordan, Bahrain,
and Oman) showed generally higher science
achievement in eighth grade, with scores being close
to or meeting the international average (e.g., in the
United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Jordan). Thus,
whereas around the world there is a dominant trend
for boys to do better in math and science, in the
Arab-speaking countries the situation appears to be
different.
The first section of this chapter introduces the
ways in which culture has an impact on cognitive
development. The second section focuses on psy-
chological accounts of intelligence and different
notions of intelligence across cultures. These first
two sections support our view that intelligence can
only be understood as inextricably linked with cul-
ture, which makes it necessary to take the cultural
context into account when examining the deter-
minants of and environmental influences on the
development of intelligence. The third part focuses
on the ecological contexts for children’s intellec-
tual development and provides the foundation to
unfold our conceptualization of formal and infor-
mal learning environments across cultures. In the
fourth section, we illustrate this conceptualization
with a discussion of formal and informal educa-
tion in Zambia and Saudi Arabia, as well as the
effects of both learning environments on cognitive
skills and related academic achievement. Zambia
illustrates ways in which responsibilities at home
can enrich children’s cognitive development and
how these factors interplay with school experience.
Saudi Arabia exemplifies the tension between tra-
ditional Islamic educational values—which are
deeply entrenched in the educational system as well
as in home education—and the Western critique
on the traditional models of schooling and their
presumed suboptimal effect on cognitive develop-
ment of children. We conclude with an outlook on
future research and the need to take a closer look at
the interplay of formal and informal learning envi-
ronments and how different conceptualizations of
learning in these contexts have a culture-specific
bearing on intelligence and related academic skills.
Culture and Globalization as Linked
Contexts for Developing Cognition
As children worldwide mature in the age of
globalization, they develop within one or more
216 C u lt u r a l M a n i f e s t at ion of I n t e l l ig e nc e i n F or m a l a n d I n f or m a l L e a r n i ng
changing cultures or contexts. Some communi-
ties maintain strong cultural integrity while others
change more rapidly; thus, cognitive development
may follow different developmental trajectories in
different cultural communities that build on dis-
tinct cultural practices (Cole, 1985; L. A. Jensen,
2003; 2012; Rogoff, 2003; Weisner, 2002). School
and family contexts are embedded in this larger
cultural milieu and affect individual differences
through their impact on the proximal conditions
for child development (Bronfenbrenner & Morris,
2006; Harkness & Super, 2012; Nisbett, 2009;
Rogoff, 2003; Rogoff & Chavajay, 1995).
Culture can be understood as patterns of beliefs,
values, and social practices that are acquired (i.e.,
from other individuals through teaching, imita-
tion, and other forms of social learning) and tra-
ditions that are inherited (i.e., persisting across
generations), transformed over time, and shared
by members of a community (Gutierrez, 2002;
L. A. Jensen, 2012; Laland, Odling-Smee, &
Myles, 2010; Rogoff, 2007; Shore, 1996). Culture
as a set of socially transmitted information (Alvard,
2003) can therefore be used to describe communi-
ties whose members share key beliefs and behaviors
(Gutierrez, 2002; Paradise, 2002) but where cul-
tural practices may also vary within communities
(Gutierrez & Rogoff, 2003; Rogoff, 2003; 2007;
Shore, 2002). Based on this understanding, study-
ing culture becomes an analysis of the cultural
practices in learning environments (Gutierrez,
2002). From a psychological perspective, the term
“culture” has described how a group learns and
solves problems in varying environments (Berry,
Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 1992; Sternberg,
2007). To understand how culture forms cognitive
development, it is important to consider the eco-
nomic, social, political, and historical contexts in
which they appear and function (Paradise, 2002).
With globalization comes the merging of differ-
ent cultures and the interaction of diverse people
more than ever, with a unique flow of people, ideas,
and goods across cultures (L. A. Jensen, 2012).
Globalization strongly shapes the cultural milieu
of children’s development and has important impli-
cations for psychological research (Arnett, 2002;
Kagitcibasi, 2012). These implications reflect a
change in perspective regarding the applicability
of psychological and educational theories beyond
the cultural contexts in which they were origi-
nally designed (Serpell, 2008a). Theories of intel-
ligence have mainly emerged from European and
American research. However, this understanding is
not necessarily shared across cultures worldwide, as
we describe in the following section.
Intelligence and Culture: Two Multifaceted
and Interwoven Concepts
Since the inception of psychological accounts
of intelligence more than 100 years ago (Lubinski,
2004; Spearman, 1904), it has been of great interest
to researchers from educational and psychological
disciplines to understand the nature, development,
and determinants that account for individual dif-
ferences in intelligence test scores (Herrnstein &
Murray, 1994; A. R. Jensen, 1998; Lubinski, 2004;
Neisser et al., 1996; Nisbett et al., 2012; Spearman,
1904). Particularly Spearman’s (1904) conceptual-
ization of general intelligence has received much
attention as a common source of individual differ-
ences that is “generally” manifested in positive cor-
relations between distinct tests (e.g., verbal, spatial,
and numerical tests) of intellectual functioning
(Borsboom & Dolan, 2006; Carroll, 1993; Deary,
2012; A. R. Jensen, 1998; 2002). In addition to
theoretical analytical intelligence frameworks,
multiple theories of other intelligence indicators
have been proposed and examined for underlying
construct validity. These theoretical frameworks
have in common that they are somewhat distinct
from more academic ones (Almeida et al., 2010;
Gardner, 1999; J. D. Mayer, Caruso, Panter, &
Salovey, 2012) and include notions such as practi-
cal intelligence (Sternberg et al., 2000), emotional
intelligence (J. D. Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso,
2000; 2004; Roberts, Zeidner, & Matthews, 2001;
Salovey & Mayer, 1990), personal intelligence
(J. D. Mayer, Panter, & Caruso, 2012), and social
intelligence (Kihlstrom & Cantor, 2000; Marlowe,
1986). A common feature of these conceptualiza-
tions of the components of intelligence is that the
corresponding skills (e.g., application of knowl-
edge of how to regulate emotions to then gener-
ate solutions to interpersonal problems) are needed
for successful adaptation to the environment and
therefore the cultural context.
Thus, intelligence is inextricably linked to cul-
ture, and views on what is perceived as adaptive also
vary across cultural contexts. Among different soci-
eties, adaptive success in life depends on more than
the conventional academic knowledge and skills
taught in school. Similarly, Western definitions of
intelligence might not be shared by other cultures
(Serpell, 2000; Sternberg, 2000), thus a worldwide
understanding of intelligence as encompassing
multiple cultural sensitive meanings and notions
for different concepts of intelligence is required. For
example, we have found that in Kenyan villages,
children perceived as competent have the broadest
and most accurate knowledge regarding natural
herbal medicines used to treat parasitic and other
illnesses (Grigorenko et al., 2001; Sternberg et al.,
2001). This form of adaptive tacit knowledge (prac-
tical intelligence) is different from the kind of aca-
demic intelligence required for academic success.
In these villages, in contrast to the views of many
in postindustrialized Western countries, academic
skills are perceived as a relatively minor part of cog-
nitive competence, and the concept of intelligence
comprises more practical and community-oriented
social adaptive skills than Western concepts
(Grigorenko et al., 2001). Furthermore, on the
other side of the world, in rural Alaskan Yup’ik vil-
lages, the most competent adolescents are viewed
as those who have superior hunting, gathering,
navigating, and fishing skills—an important part
of their everyday knowledge/practical intelligence
(Grigorenko et al., 2004). These examples show that
culture affects what skills are perceived as part of
cognitive competence. Thus, it is necessary to take
the cultural context into account when examining
the determinants of and environmental influences
on the development of intelligence. How culture
relates to the broader ecological context for child
development and how educational practices have a
bearing on cognitive development are the focus of
the following sections.
A Closer Look at Ecological Contexts
for Children’s Intellectual Development
Conceptualizing the significance of environ-
mental influences on child development and their
interplay with biopsychocultural dynamics, espe-
cially in early learning contexts, has been the foun-
dation for a host of socioecological models, such
as the developmental niche (Harkness & Super,
2012; Harkness et al., 2009; Super & Harkness,
1986), the bioecocultural microniche (Worthman,
2010), and Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model
of human development (Bronfenbrenner, 1986;
Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994; Bronfenbrenner
& Morris, 2006). Cultural contexts such as the
impact of religious institutions have been added,
for example, to Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) model of
developmental contexts, and the original model
has been deepened by highlighting the overlap
among contexts such as family and work, and that
potential orders in the nested contexts may depend
on culture (Goodnow, 2011).
H e i n, R e ic h, G r ig or e n k o 217
 The common denominator of ecological models
of child development is that they aim at a struc-
tured description of social interactions in environ-
mental contexts, as well as the interaction between
these contexts and the growing child. The over-
arching goal is to link the development of human
behavior to the ecological and cultural contexts in
which an individual lives and where the environ-
ment provides opportunities or constraints on the
range of possible cultural forms that may emerge
(Berry, 2004). Development in these models is typ-
ically seen as being produced through person–envi-
ronment interaction and as a process of adaptation
(Super & Harkness, 1999).
In these person–environment interactions,
Berry (2004) viewed day-to-day experiences such
as child reading practices and education as part of
a pattern that provides a basis for individual learn-
ing and development (i.e., the experiential context).
Ecological models stress that the effects of educa-
tion (proximal process) will differ in their influ-
ence on intellectual development (child outcomes)
depending on the nature and quality of the formal
and informal learning environments (context) and
the nature of periodicity (time). In this ecologi-
cal context, cultural factors will prescribe what is
learned and at what age. Cultural variations in
intelligence may best be understood as adaptations
to differing ecological settings (Berry, 2004). As
Lonner and Hayes (2004) noted, the process of
learning to be competent always occurs in a cultur-
ally prescribed context; that is, the way one learns
to act intelligently and competently is guided by
the cultural prompts and inputs that shape one’s
personal and social growth and development.
At the broader community level, intellec-
tual skills are shaped by complex interactions in
larger social networks, including family (Fiese,
2001), school (Christian et al., 2001), and religion
(Goodnow, 2011). The cultural beliefs, values, and
practices within these settings are an integral part
of the socioecological environment for children’s
social and cognitive functions. In a socioecologi-
cal setting, cultural factors do not only affect the
distal context of child development (i.e., the remot-
est layer of the environment in which a child does
not directly participate), but also the proximal set-
ting conditions, such as community services and
childcare practices (Chen & Eisenberg, 2012).
Even though ecological models were designed to
allow for multiple levels of analyses, as well as for
the systematic investigation of the relationships
among them, less is known about the relationships
218 C u lt u r a l M a n i f e s t at ion of I n t e l l ig e nc e i n F or m a l a n d I n f or m a l L e a r n i ng
between these systems and their influence on child
outcomes. One instance of these bidirectional
influences becomes evident when children in
early and middle childhood experience significant
transitions from one context to another (e.g., the
transition into formal schooling), which has a tre-
mendous effect on children themselves as well as on
the ways in which family members experience this
change (Bronfenbrenner, 1986; Dockett, Perry, &
Kearney, 2012).
Ecological contexts such as the child’s family
are therefore not closed subsystems, but, in order
to understand the cognitive development of chil-
dren, it is important to consider how families inter-
act with schools and how these interactions may
foster or hinder cognitive development. Families
are important socialization agents that produce
substantial variability in cognitive skills early on,
and a multitude of factors in the child, family,
and sociocultural context affects a child’s cogni-
tive growth even before formal schooling begins
(Christian et al., 2001; Fiese, 2001). However,
rather than looking at intrafamilial processes alone
(e.g., parent–child relationships and relationships
among siblings), it is important to consider that
these processes are also influenced by the external
environment (events at home can affect the child’s
progress in school and vice versa; Bronfenbrenner,
1986). Thus, formal and informal learning envi-
ronments are strongly linked to one another and
need to be described and understood as intercon-
nections among people (Goodnow, 2010; 2011). In
what ways the links between formal and informal
learning environments can be culture specific is the
focus of the next section.
Formal and Informal Learning
Environments Across Cultures
In September 2000, 189 nations agreed (among
other goals) to achieve universal primary education
(Millennium Development Goal [MDG] 2); that
is, to ensure that children everywhere, boys and
girls alike, will be able to complete a full course (i.e.,
enrollment and completion) of primary schooling
by the year 2015 (Lewin, 2006; United Nations
General Assembly, 2000). This goal reflects a mini-
mal consensual understanding of social policies
that are designed to provide what is considered an
ideal formal educational context for child develop-
ment. Achieving universal primary education for
all children worldwide comes from Western beliefs,
and although many governments have adopted
these goals and started working toward them long
before the MDGs, the choices of individuals sug-
gest that some communities might prefer to have
children learning in other environments (e.g., at
home). The MDGs imply that a way of formal
schooling similar to middle-class European and
American communities (i.e., age-grading and seg-
regation of children from their communities, with
learning through lessons out of the context of target
activities) is preferable across countries, whereas in
some communities, children are more included in a
range of community events, with learning through
observation and practice (Rogoff, 2007). This con-
trast is not only visible for a small number of coun-
tries worldwide, but also is apparent—to a varying
degree—in many countries that strive toward
formal education for all children as prescribed by
current global society. We argue here that the two
learning environments (i.e. formal schooling and
informal learning at home and community) are by
no means mutually exclusive. It is the degree of cor-
respondence that determines how skills acquired
in one learning environment (and viewed as neces-
sary and adaptive to this environment) are applied
in another learning environment and vice versa. It
is the cultural context that shapes this degree of
correspondence; that is, how closely two learning
environments are related and overlapping—or how
different they are from one another. We refer to
Saudi Arabia and Zambia as examples where our
current work helped us to understand this overlap
between formal and informal education.
Formal Learning Environments
The premise for providing formal education
is its large influence on cognitive development
(e.g., Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994; Sternberg &
Grigorenko, 2001) and opportunities for chil-
dren to develop and acquire the necessary skills
to become valuable members of society. Although
the importance of formal education is being rec-
ognized among cultures worldwide, particularly
Western-style modes of universal formal school-
ing and educational practices have left an impact
around the globe (Grigorenko, 2008). Many stud-
ies from Western countries have identified school
contextual factors associated with cognitive abili-
ties (Ceci, 1991; Ceci & Williams, 1997; Christian
et al., 2001; Eccles & Roesner, 2012; R. E. Mayer,
2000), yet it is unlikely that the same factors will
operate universally across different countries, cul-
tures, and societies (Heyneman & Loxley, 1983).
The varying emphases on formal schooling around
the globe and their influences on cognitive abilities
might differ across cultures and countries as well
(Demetriou & Papadopoulos, 2004). Thus, despite
the wide dissemination of Western-style for-
mal schooling, these Western modes might not
be applicable to all cultures or might need to be
altered (Elliott & Grigorenko, 2008; Sternberg,
2008). Although the ideological value of universal
primary education is supported by national poli-
cies, this goal also illustrates a global reality—not
all children go to school. In some communities,
this might be because schooling is not available for
everyone. In others, it might not be a preferred or
valued way to spend one’s childhood years, or the
practical value of formal education is still underap-
preciated. However, children in these families are
not disadvantaged regarding successful outcomes
in life per se, but rather they are developing cogni-
tive skills relevant to tasks within their particular
cultural environment, their specific community,
and their individual family. Given that these skills
are not always in line with a Western sense of ideal
outcomes of education, such as critical thinking
and knowledge in academic domains, it is neces-
sary to pay attention to adaptive cognitive skills
that are defined based on cultural values within
informal learning environments.
Informal Learning Environments
In informal education (i.e., education with-
out an arranged educational agenda, curriculum,
learning plans, or planned and deliberate teach-
ing), multiple opportunities exist to be creative and
reflective (Thomas & Pattison, 2012). Worldwide,
there are examples of children acquiring knowl-
edge associated with academics outside of the
classroom. For instance, opportunities to develop
everyday mathematical skills have been observed
out of school (Carraher, Carraher, & Schliemann,
1985; Guberman, 1996). In a recent study, Wager
(2012) found that, in their mathematical instruc-
tion, American teachers utilize children’s cultural
and community/out-of-school experiences as con-
texts for problems, link these experiences to school
mathematics, and identify embedded mathematical
practices prominent in these experiences. In con-
trast, teachers from Bahrain tend to underappreci-
ate children’s out-of-school mathematical practices
and are not always in agreement with parents
regarding their perceptions about home–school
relationships and mathematics learning in differ-
ent contexts (Al-Mahdi, 2010). In a Bolivian study,
boys living on the street scored higher on a creativ-
ity measure whereas scores on other cognitive tests
H e i n, R e ic h, G r ig or e n k o 219
were similar for boys living on the street and living
in houses even though they had the same socio-
economic status (Dahlman, Backstrom, Bohlin, &
Frans, 2012). Some communities have even rec-
ognized the benefits of alternative education and
assistance programs for families unable or unwill-
ing to send children to formal school programs.
The Working Boys’ Center of Quito, Ecuador
(Working Boys’ Center, 2011), established in the
1960s, accommodates the work schedules of young
children to help support them and their families.
Education programs are scheduled to complement
their work rather than put them in the situation of
having to choose earning money over learning in a
formal setting.
Our main argument so far is that although the
implementation of Western modes of schooling
has gained momentum in low- and middle-income
countries, there is a large discrepancy across cul-
tures regarding the emphases that are being put on
education in formal and informal learning envi-
ronments. What accompanies the premise that
there are inherent benefits to formal education is
the Western concept of intelligence that emerged
mainly due to its presumed importance in pre-
dicting educational attainment and scholastic
achievement (Deary, Strand, Smith, & Fernandes,
2007; Lynn & Mikk, 2007). Whereas the effects
of formal schooling on intellectual functioning
are clearly evident in research that emerged from
Western countries, the significance of education in
informal contexts and the effect of informal educa-
tion on cognitive development have been underes-
timated. From a cultural perspective, this clearly
misrepresents the picture of intellectual develop-
ment and the value of cognitive skills for successful
adaptation to the demands of a particular society.
It is therefore important to understand that
formal and informal learning and their effects on
cognitive skills do not necessarily build on one
another and complement each other (as is most
likely the case in high-income countries), but can
also be in contrast to each other. For example, in
some African communities, a child who is able
to plan daily activities for siblings and carry out
home responsibilities is often regarded as a “smart”
child and thus not sent to school so that the fam-
ily and community can benefit from his or her
skills. Another example pertains to memorization
and reproduction skills required for many Muslims
around the world to gain knowledge in the Quran.
Especially since Quranic schooling is the only for-
mal school experience for some Muslim children
220 C u lt u r a l M a n i f e s t at ion of I n t e l l ig e nc e i n F or m a l a n d I n f or m a l L e a r n i ng
(Moore, 2012), and given that positive effects of
Quranic schooling on serial memory and short-term
recall performance have been observed (Wagner
& Spratt, 1987), it is misleading to oversimplify
and hastily criticize traditional methods of teach-
ing that place an emphasis on factual knowledge
and memorization. However, discussions about the
quality of education in Arab countries need to con-
tinue (Rugh, 2002), especially given that the labor
markets in these countries often demand a cogni-
tive skill set that is beyond that of young adults
who graduate from institutions of higher educa-
tion. In the following sections, we present Zambia
and Saudi Arabia as illustrative examples of why it
is important to examine adaptive cognitive skills
based on the cultural specifics of education in for-
mal and informal environments.
Zambia and Saudi Arabia: Two
Distinct (but Similar) Examples
Zambia and Saudi Arabia serve as excellent
examples of culture-specific extents of environmen-
tal influences on cognitive performance because
they are geographically distinct and economically
different, but show important aspects of divergence
from the Western model of formal education.
The Point of Friction Between Formal
and Informal Education in Zambia
In Zambia, a country experiencing tremendous
socioeconomic and cultural change, understand-
ing children’s development requires, as Kagitcibasi
(2012) has expressed recently, a cultivation of the
contextual and a consideration of the global. How
global ideas of formal education collide or harmo-
nize with informal education in community and
family contexts is especially evident in this country.
Zambia is one of the least developed countries
and a place where, in spite of economic growth
over the last decade, 66% of the population still
lives in poverty (Ministry of Finance and National
Planning, 2011; USAID, 2011). The ideological
value of formal, Western-style schooling is appre-
ciated on a national level, as reflected in Zambia’s
efforts to achieve universal primary education.
However, due to financial constraints, there are
communities in Zambia in which education is
not feasible for all children. Therefore, in Zambia
(similar to other countries in sub-Saharan Africa),
one can observe a remarkable divergence between
national ideology (i.e., a striving toward Western
modes of formal schooling) and local educational
practices. Especially for rural parts of Zambia,
schooling has placed new demands on children
from traditionally subsistence-farming families, in
which cognitive competence is required to progress
academically and be successful in an increasingly
international labor market.
Providing universal primary education for all
is a project with many practical hurdles, such as
advancing the idea that education has practical
value and is not simply an abstract concept with
few tangible outcomes (Serpell, 1993; Serpell &
Jere-Folotiya, 2008). On the most basic instantia-
tion of the goal of universal primary education,
Zambia is set to achieve it. The net enrollment
was reported to be more than 100% in 20093 —
more schools are being built, and school fees are
no longer formally required with the Free Basic
Education and Reentry Policies (Chiwele &
Syampungani, 2011). However, despite increases in
primary school enrollment, grade 7 enrollment has
not yet reached 100% and secondary school com-
pletion rates continue to be low (19.8% in 2009;
Chiwele & Syampungani, 2011). Furthermore, the
quality of education is in question, with more chil-
dren attending primary schools without an influx
of equivalent resources. This concern is not just one
of an outsider’s perspective; Zambians state gen-
eral dissatisfaction with government schools, and,
more specifically, parents have said that there are
not enough teachers and children have expressed
a desire to have motivated teachers with adequate
housing (Chiwele & Syampungani, 2011).
At the time of Zambia’s independence, reports
indicated that only 1,200 Zambians had second-
ary school certificates and only 32,000 Africans
in Zambia had completed primary school (out of
357,000 individuals aged 15–19 years, and 457,000
children aged 10–14 years, respectively, as reported
in the 1969 census; Ohadike & Tesfaghiorghis,
1975). This was problematic for a country
with limited resources that was trying to grow
(Mwanakatwe, 1974). Since then, enrollments have
increased, but it takes time and money to build
schools, train teachers, and adjust culturally. In
one of our current studies, the BBP, we continue to
observe the problems of a growing Zambian school
system within a traditional culture described in the
1970s by Mwanakatwe (1974). Of course, an acute
area of concern is that schools are not equipped or
staffed appropriately. With increased attendance,
multiple sessions are scheduled to allow for more
students to attend, but this leaves little time for
teachers to prepare lessons, and high numbers of
students leave little time for individual attention or
skill practice. A less obvious, but potentially just
as important, area of concern is the role or empha-
sis placed on agricultural education. Even with
instruction and practice in agricultural techniques,
primary school programs are designed more often
to prepare students for the possibility of secondary
school and future employment rather than for the
reality of farming and rural life. These production
units for agricultural experience, when available,
do teach farm-related skills, but evaluations have
not found these programs to be otherwise success-
ful (Achola & Kaluba, 1989). A merger of formal
and informal education systems has been posited
for Zambia (Banda, 2008), and the work of Serpell
and colleagues in Mpika, Zambia, has provided
some encouraging results for students who are able
to participate in programs that make community
values and socialization part of the curriculum
(Serpell, 2008b; Serpell & Mwape, 1998/1999).
Learning Environments
and Intelligence
The differences between Western notions of for-
mal schooling and informal education in families
and communities in this African context crystal-
lize in what has been described as social respon-
sibility and social competence (i.e., sensitivity to
the needs of others and taking responsibility for
others), forms of adaptive and intelligent behavior
in societies where extended families live together,
and children are required to assume family respon-
sibilities early in life (Chen & Eisenberg, 2012;
Edwards, 2000; Kagitcibasi, 2012; Keller, 2007;
2012; Serpell, 2011).
The Western concept of intelligence does not
map directly onto an African concept, the closest
of which is better described as socially responsible
intelligence (Mundy-Castle, 1974). For example,
work from Kenya (Sternberg et al., 2001) showed
that, in Kenyan villages, time spent developing
academic skills may be perceived as taking away
from time needed to develop practical skills and
vice versa, suggesting that academic and practical
intelligence can develop independently or are even
at odds with one another. Furthermore, in Kenya,
this form of intelligence is related to household
responsibilities (Harkness & Super, 1992), which in
the Western view are not as closely related to intel-
ligence as school performance might be. And, in
Senegal, despite low scores on a Western-designed
developmental assessment (i.e., the Bayley Scales of
Infant and Toddler Development), children did not
show more developmental delays, and parents were
H e i n, R e ic h, G r ig or e n k o 221
aware of ways to support their children’s develop-
ment (Harkness et al., 2009).
In Zambia, one can observe a divergence between
what is being taught in school based on a national
ideology that orients itself toward international cur-
ricula blueprints and what is being taught at home.
In the latter realm, the communal perspective on
education clearly prioritizes the family as the key
unit of socialization, whereas compulsory formal
schooling is sometimes regarded as undermining the
family structure. This leads to noteworthy observa-
tions that teaching-learning activities in Zambian
schools do not find their cultural origins solely in
Western school-based learning practices. In Eastern
Province, household responsibilities (i.e., serving
food to elders, looking after children, looking after
a sick person, selling goods, preparing meals) have
been found to predict mathematic achievement for
children for whom schooling is either not available
or not a preferred activity because these activities
provide some limited mathematics exposure (Reich
et al., 2013a). Moreover, differences in views of
development have been found between teachers
(formal education) and parents (informal learn-
ing) in rural Africa, thus emphasizing the current
divide between these two learning environments
(Serpell & Jere-Folotiya, 2008).
Further highlighting the differences between
the traditional culture prominent in rural Zambia
and the new Westernized schooling being put into
place, Serpell (1993) described the position of
teachers as bicultural—the teachers have had the
childhood experience of the local culture but are
trained to teach in the Zambian school system.
They understand “that cognitive alacrity requires
interpersonal, social responsibility as a necessary
complement for the development of a wise intel-
ligence” even though they have been trained in
differing instructional methods (Serpell, 1993,
p. 109). In a 1983 study, a small number of teach-
ers were asked about topics relevant to the inter-
section of their two cultures (Serpell, 1993). The
mixed pattern of responses illustrates the clash-
ing of these two cultures and inconsistent beliefs
in which should be supported. Specifically, when
asked about seasonally low attendance due to
farming responsibilities, more positive statements
for missing lessons were provided than negative
ones; however, when asked about older primary
school students and behavior associated with start-
ing their own families, at least for female teach-
ers, the expressed viewpoint was to wait to finish
schooling. Teachers, as parents themselves and
222 C u lt u r a l M a n i f e s t at ion of I n t e l l ig e nc e i n F or m a l a n d I n f or m a l L e a r n i ng
members of the local communities, are living in
the traditional culture, but teach and exemplify
the “success” of completing one’s studies.
At least in Zambia, the Free Basic Education and
Reentry Policies (Zambia Ministry of Education,
2003) could eventually lead to social acceptance of
children attending school without the ability to pay
associated fees or obtain necessary resources (e.g.,
pencils, uniforms); however, as of 2002, many par-
ents continued to report that their children stopped
attending for financial reasons (e.g., expenses such as
school uniforms and supplies), and schools reported
that family obligations or situations were most often
involved in the decision to leave school (i.e., mar-
riage, being orphaned, poverty; Zambia Ministry
of Education, 2003). Unfortunately, family obliga-
tions are expected to increase with the recent global
economic crisis and climate change. In addition,
families, especially in rural sub-Saharan Africa,
keep their eligible children out of school due to
distance between home and school, the perception
that children were too young, and because of home
responsibilities, which are seen as more immediate
needs (Central Statistical Office Zambia & ORC
Macro, 2003; P. Jensen & Nielsen, 1997).
Factors influencing student attendance in rural
Africa are globally understood but persist in areas
in which schooling does not result in economic
boosts. While working in rural Southern Province,
Zambia, we observed that not attending school can
be related to individuals (e.g., illness), the family
(e.g., work obligations), and the region (e.g., flood-
ing rivers). Citations in the literature match our
experiences. Nearly 20% of children living in rural
Zambia live more than 5 km from school, which
makes attending school challenging (Lungwangwa
& Kelly, 1999; Mumba, 2002). Of the other factors
cited, some are related to family circumstances,
but others are related to either the school directly
or opinions of school (e.g., inadequate facilities,
negative attitude about the value of formal edu-
cation; Mumba, 2002). Not only do families lack
the funds to send children to school, but poten-
tial revenue is lost when children attend school
instead of working, and children often must do
additional market or domestic work. Children who
work more complete fewer years of education, and
home responsibilities have a detrimental impact on
school attendance when children work more than
8 hours a week (Edmonds, 2007; Psacharopoulos,
1997; Ray, 2003; Zabaleta, 2011).
Overall, the impact of sending children to
school is often substantial and can affect parents’
and caretakers’ willingness to do so. Interestingly,
we have observed that children attending school
reported that they had a greater number of home
responsibilities than the children who were not
currently attending school (Reich et al., 2013a).
This suggested that parents are more likely to
assign home responsibilities to the children they
perceive to be more competent (Guberman,
1996). Our work in sub-Saharan Africa has con-
tributed to knowledge of the relationships among
Western markers of success in formal schooling
(Grigorenko, Reich, & Jukes, 2013; Reich et al.,
2013b), but less is known about the indicators of
success in the informal learning environments
for these same communities, most notably the
ones used by parents to select children for formal
schooling or household responsibilities. Moreover,
given that parents do not send all of their children
to school, it is essential to know what other means
parents use to transmit or ensure the acquisition of
the essential knowledge and skills. An example is
traditional knowledge that is transmitted through
experiences outside of the school setting that can
be of immediate greater value to individuals, their
families, and communities than the knowledge
gained in formal schooling.
Formal and Informal Learning
Environments in Saudi Arabia
Similar to Zambia, Saudi Arabia is affected by
globalization and the increasing importance of a
knowledge economy to compete in international
labor markets (World Bank, 2008). The call for
education for all and the associated predominance
of Western forms of schooling is visible in Saudi
Arabia’s successful improvements in reaching the
target indicators set for achieving universal primary
education (Ministry of Economy and Planning,
2011). Moreover, Saudi Arabia has made strides
toward improving enrollment at other levels of
education, including building more kindergartens
and identifying children who need additional edu-
cational resources for special needs. Unfortunately,
not all of the countries in the Arab region of the
world have had the same level of success as Saudi
Arabia (United Nations & League of Arab States,
2007). According to a 2007 report, the Arab region
has faced challenges with respect to achieving uni-
versal primary education. There are not enough
classrooms or schools, which, especially for many
lower middle-income countries, is difficult to
resolve because of funding constraints and prob-
lems with school management. Moreover, many
Arab countries have teacher shortages, a problem
that seems to have had a greater impact on female
students than on male students. However, for both
genders, this shortage results in more children in
each class along with a decrease in the quality of
education. More specifically, a 2010 report (United
Nations & League of Arab States, 2010) discussed
educational variability across the Arab region of
the world. Like Saudi Arabia, many Arab countries
will meet goals for enrollment and literacy rates,
but a few, such as Morocco and Yemen, have a
longer road ahead of them, and others, such as the
Occupied Palestinian Territory, have actually expe-
rienced recent decreases in the target indicators.
In Arab countries such as Kuwait, Jordan,
Oman, Yemen, and the West Bank and Gaza there
are considerable variations in the patterns of school
enrollments, and these are attributable to rural–
urban locations, family background variables,
and interactions between income gaps and gender
gaps (Al-Qudsi, 2003). As in Zambia, in the Arab
region, many families might send their children to
school initially but later discontinue school atten-
dance because occupation restricts students’ access
to education, which is partly due to a persisting
lack of incentives (e.g., meal programs, lowering
the costs associated with schooling) for parents
from low-income households to send their chil-
dren to school, paired with a perceived low rate of
return to education (United Nations & League of
Arab States, 2007). This is especially true of com-
munities with high percentages of people living in
poverty because children can earn money or help
around the home in place of attending an educa-
tional program. Some countries within the Arab
region face political conflicts, and children’s secu-
rity and safety are a concern. These conflicts do not
involve education but certainly impact access to it.
However, compared to Zambia, Saudi
Arabia is a country that has vast resources to
spend on education. Although public expen-
diture per student by primary and secondary
level of education in Saudi Arabia was highest
among all Middle East and Northern African
countries in 2002 (World Bank, 2008), Saudi
Arabia students’ approximate average test score
(332 compared to an international average of
467) in mathematics in the 2003 TIMSS study
was lowest among all Middle East and Northern
African countries (Mullis, Martin, Gonzalez,
& Chrostowski, 2004). This picture remained
fairly stable in the 2011 TIMSS results (Mullis
et al., 2012). During this period (2002–2011),
H e i n, R e ic h, G r ig or e n k o 223
the major educational debate in Saudi Arabia
centered around the impact of religious educa-
tion on child development, a discourse that cul-
minated in a fierce debate and media attention
in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. The
implications of the tragic terrorist attacks on
the United States have clearly triggered a reas-
sessment of the historically pragmatic and stra-
tegic relationship between Saudi Arabia and the
United States (Pollack, 2002). For instance, the
changes and strains in the relationship between
the two countries have leveraged the debate and
educational discourse about the Arab system
of education in general and the role of Saudi
textbooks in inciting violence against the West
through its curriculum in particular (Center for
Religious Freedom, 2008; 2011; Lahmar, 2011;
The Economist, 2012).
This debate contains a surprisingly low level of
evidence regarding the impact of Saudi’s formal
educational curriculum. Available information,
however, comes from sources such as the 2004 Arab
Human Development Report (United Nations
Development Programme & Regional Bureau
for Arab States, 2005), which described formal
education (e.g., curricular, teaching method, and
evaluation practices) in Arab states as not permit-
ting active, exploratory learning but rather focus-
ing on testing memorization and recall of facts and
describes the societal role of education as the repro-
duction of control in Arab societies. Four years later,
a 2008 World Bank report (World Bank, 2008)
described frontal teaching as a dominant feature in
classrooms and group work, creative thinking, and
proactive learning as still being rare in the main
classroom activities. Qualitative deficits regarding
the education system in Saudi Arabia also resonated
in a recent 2011 UNESCO report (UNESCO,
2011), which stated a significant mismatch between
skills produced and those required by the labor
market and higher education in Arab States.
Religious education is the welding spot of for-
mal and informal education in Saudi Arabia.
Remarkably, although the Quran provides a
common foundation for educational practices in
schools and families, the interplay between for-
mal and informal learning contexts are often dis-
regarded in this debate. In Arab countries, child
development and the family context are strongly
entangled with Islamic rules and morals. Because,
in theory, the Saudi constitution is the Quran, the
nation’s educational policies and formal education
practices derive largely from these statements of
224 C u lt u r a l M a n i f e s t at ion of I n t e l l ig e nc e i n F or m a l a n d I n f or m a l L e a r n i ng
religious and moral laws of Islam and reflect a long
tradition of religious learning (Al-Sadan, 2000).
Therefore, the Saudi educational system supports
the concept of the family as the key social unit,
stresses the importance of family ties, and, as a
result, educational progress consolidates family life
instead of weakening it (Al-Hariri, 1987).
Even though Arab formal schooling has a long
tradition (Herrera & Torres, 2006), there is only
a sparse amount of information available from
Arab countries in the Middle East, and available
empirical studies often do not focus specifically on
different learning environments and their effects
on cognitive abilities (Cole, 2005; Heyneman,
1997; Wagner & Spratt, 1987). Other information
published in English focuses on a country-level
description of educational practices and quality
(e.g., Wiseman, Sadaawi, & Alromi, 2008), with
less emphasis regarding the links between educa-
tion and cognitive outcomes.
Despite the current critique of Saudi Arabia’s
strong reliance on memorization and reproduction
of factual knowledge as traditional teaching meth-
ods and the current debate about the quality of edu-
cation, a recent report stated an increase of 3.55 IQ
points (as measured by Raven’s Standard Progressive
Matrices) per decade between 1977 and 2010
(Batterjee, Khaleefa, Ali, & Lynn, 2013). In a recent
overview, Moore (2012) illustrated routine learning
activities in Quranic schooling and concluded that
children may develop concepts and skills that could
support their literacy learning in secular schools.
Together, these strands of literature indicate that
the impacts of religious education are much more
complex and beyond the current simplification of
the detrimental effects of Quranic schooling on
cognitive skills. Thus, when enriched appropriately
by teaching methods known to be supportive for
successful adaption to life demands, the structure
and content provided by Quranic schooling could
serve as a linking factor between different learning
environments, one that could have a positive effect
on early cognitive development in children. Given
the scarcity of available information, future cul-
tural research in Arab-speaking countries has yet to
systematically investigate the ways in which school
experiences of children are linked to their informal
education and how both environments affect the
development of cognitive skills in children.
Conclusion and Future Directions
The examples from Zambia and Saudi Arabia
have shown that we might be losing sight of the
variety of cognitive skills that are required for
successful adaptation to the demands of the soci-
eties in which children grow up worldwide when
we define the quality of education solely in terms
of the acquisition of knowledge and skills, as, for
example, reflected in comparative international
studies. Balancing the call for universal primary
education for boys and girls with the tremendous
variation in what intelligence means and how it
manifests itself across the cultural diversity of
societies worldwide is one of the most important
tasks of intelligence research in the coming decade.
Moreover, more research on the understanding,
conceptualization, and attitudes toward cognition
and cognitive development is needed. Within each
country, culture, and community there are lay-
ers of viewpoints that intersect and deviate from
one another. While the retired head teacher at a
community meeting believes that capabilities are
God-given, the government in which he lives dem-
onstrated its alternative viewpoint in its decision to
work toward the MDGs.
These viewpoints coexist in many cultures
around the world even though they seem at
odds with one another, just as traditional and
Western-style medicines seem to be. To an out-
sider, they seem incompatible, but to an insider,
such coexistence is simply how life is. Beyond such
a “registration” of their coexistence, it is important
that future studies investigate the impact that these
divergent views have on one another, as well as
how they may affect the next generation’s cognitive
development. Those in favor of universal education
as prescribed by the MDGs might hope that the
impact of Western-style formal education is similar
to its role in the United States or other developed
countries. However, since the Western-style educa-
tion is not simply replacing informal learning envi-
ronments, but substituting, removing, and adding
to them instead, the reality of their impact and the
interaction of these formal and informal environ-
ments is yet to be well understood.
But perhaps the first and foremost goal is to
document, describe, and understand such informal
environments. Even Masai are not born herders but
have to be apprenticed to become ones! So, how
does the corresponding learning take place, how
long does it take, what are the indicators of prog-
ress, and how does one become an expert in herd-
ing? Collectively, as a field, we know a lot about
classroom (i.e., formal educational settings). We
know substantially less about diversity and the
typology of informal learning settings. We argue
that cataloging and describing such settings will
help us understand better what different cultures
that rely heavily on informal learning settings value
as intelligence and intelligent behavior.
Acknowledgments
The preparation of this article was supported
by funds from the Ministry of Higher Education
of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and by USA NIH
R01 TW008274. The chapter does not necessar-
ily represent the views of the funders as grant-
ees are encouraged to express their professional
judgment.
Notes
1 In the context of this chapter, we use the term “Western”
in a broad sense to describe research that originated from
the traditional perspective on curriculum-based education
in formal settings. Most of the literature we refer to origi-
nated from or is about research conducted in the United
States, but we are not exclusively limiting our review to this
literature.
2 Bala Bbala means “read the word” in Chitonga.
3 Factors such as migration are not captured by the census
reports and thus, although enrollment above 100% is not
possible, it is the reported rate.
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H e i n, R e ic h, G r ig or e n k o 229
 C H A P T E R

15 Moral Reasoning: Developmental
Emergence and Life Course Pathways
Among Cultures
Lene Arnett Jensen

Abstract
Our capacity for moral reasoning is in many ways what makes us distinctly human. We are born
with shared moral sensibilities. As we develop from childhood into adulthood, our moral reasoning
branches off in diverse directions shaped by culture. This chapter reviews developmental and cultural
research on moral reasoning, which is understood to intersect with emotions. Moral reasoning is
described as an intra- and interpsychological phenomenon that is important in moral judgments and
actions. The chapter situates current research in the historical context of early scholarship. Then,
there is a review of the foci and findings of four contemporary theories: the Cognitive-Developmental,
Domain, Identity, and Cultural-Developmental approaches. This is followed by a section on two
recurrent research topics: care and prosociality, and social contexts and processes of moral
reasoning. The conclusion addresses the necessity of future research across the entire life course,
and implications of globalization on moral development.
Key Words:  moral reasoning, moral development, moral emotions, moral behavior, moral identity,
culture, globalization, contexts, processes, life course

Morality is fundamental to the human condi-
tion. From early on, children make distinctions
between right and wrong (Bloom, 2013), and
the people and institutions around them convey
myriad moral messages in direct and indirect
ways (Miller, Fung, Lin, Chen, & Boldt, 2012;
Li, 2011, 2012). From early on, too, develop-
mental scientists have addressed morality. Freud
(1930/1961), for example, argued that every
child by the age of 5 has developed a moral con-
science that is both a comfort and a curse. The
conscience, an internal representative of societal
norms in Freud’s view, allows the child to become
a contributing member of society. But a person’s
conscience is also a lifelong obstacle to satisfac-
tion of the ever-pressing instinctual desires for
sex and aggression—desires that if heedlessly
expressed would make coexistence impossible. To
Freud, then, moral development was a Catch 22.
We cannot live happily without a conscience, nor
can we live happily with it.
Also writing in the early 1930s, Piaget (1932/1965)
held a more sanguine view. Based on his interviews
with Swiss children and observations of their games,
Piaget argued that the young child’s internalization
of the moral rules conveyed by parents and other
authorities is followed by increasing autonomy from
those rules in late childhood or early adolescence.
In Piaget’s view, this constitutes a window of oppor-
tunity rather than a moment before mayhem—as
Freud might have predicted. Piaget’s argument was
that through egalitarian peer interactions, adoles-
cents negotiate and remake some of the moral rules
of society. In so doing, they not only voluntarily take
ownership of the new rules, but society also evolves
in an increasingly democratic direction. To Piaget,
then, the entry into adolescence was a time for moral
renewal at both the individual and collective levels.

230
Not in all societies, however. According to Piaget, it
could not occur in what he described as “primitive”
cultures where adolescents conform to their elders
without question.
Freud and Piaget asked the kinds of questions
about moral reasoning and development that
researchers have continued to address: is morality
the equivalent of societal norms, or is morality a set
of concepts that go beyond society? Is morality sep-
arate from or compatible with individual interests
and desires? How do moral conceptions develop in
the course of childhood and adolescence? Who has
notable influence on moral development: parents,
peers, or other contexts? To what extent does moral
development differ between cultures?
Freud and Piaget differed on their answers to
just about all of these questions. In one notable
respect, however, they were similar. Neither saw
reason to focus on people’s religious beliefs as part
of morality. To Freud (1927/2010), religion was an
“illusion”—to invoke the title of his famous book
on the topic. In his view, religious beliefs consti-
tute mere regressions to the infant’s “oceanic” sense
of being one with the world (Freud, 1930/1961).
Piaget held that any reference to religion and the
supernatural masks the structure of genuine moral
reasoning. Consequently, he left all such references
by his samples of Geneva children and adolescents
uncoded (Edwards, 1981). The avoidance of the
role of religion in moral reasoning has character-
ized research up until fairly recently, including the
absence of coding schemes that encompass reli-
gious and spiritual concepts.
The past few decades of research on moral rea-
soning, however, have seen calls for the inclusion
of highly diverse kinds of moral reasoning. This
includes religious and spiritual reasons, and many
other previously unexamined concepts (Colby
& Damon, 1992; Dien, 1982; Gilligan, 1982;
Miller, 1989; Shweder, 1990). In this respect,
moral development research is akin to other areas
of psychology that also have changed from focus-
ing on uniformity to covering multiplicity. Instead
of a focus on one kind of self, one kind of intel-
ligence, and one kind of creativity, for example,
researchers now describe multiple selves (Markus
& Kitayama, 1991; Triandis, 1995), intelligences
(Gardner, 1993; Sternberg, 1985), and creativities
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1988; Lubart, 1999). Many
moral development researchers also have moved to
address multiple kinds of moral reasoning.
One of my own most vivid moments of recog-
nizing multiplicity in moral psychology occurred
about two decades ago when I went to interview
a middle-aged, fundamentalist Baptist American
woman as part of a research project on the moral
reasoning of adults from religiously conservative
and liberal communities in the United States and
India (Jensen, 1997a, 1997b, 1998a, 1998b). I could
tell from the moment that I pulled into her drive-
way that she held strong convictions. Her parked
car was plastered with bumper stickers, including
“Life is short. Pray hard. Read the Book!” Once
inside the front door, there were religious items
all over—crosses on the wall, a Bible on the cof-
fee table, plenty of sofa pillows with scripture in
needle point. After some lemonade and friendly
small talk, I started my recording device, but I had
barely gotten halfway through the questions for
the first moral issue when she suddenly gripped my
arm and implored me to kneel down on the floor
with her and ask Jesus to come into my heart. She
was passionate, beseeching. I desperately cast about
in my mind for a graceful reply to a plea that I had
never encountered (see also Jensen, in press a).
Perhaps an American researcher would have had
more familiarity with the situation, but being a
fairly recent immigrant from Denmark I had none.
Religion is largely, if not entirely, absent from indi-
vidual and collective considerations in Denmark
(Vainio, in press; Zuckerman, 2008). For example,
unlike in the United States, meetings in city hall do
not start with a prayer. There is no pledge of alle-
giance invoking divinity. Nor does the monetary
unit avow a “trust in God.” On worldwide surveys
assessing the extent of religious and spiritual belief
and behavior, Denmark repeatedly comes out rock
bottom (Gallup, 2013).
But here I was face-to-face with a most sincere
religious plea—or “witness” as she would have
called it. I finally gave her hand a gentle squeeze
and said that now was not the right time. The
experience was entirely outside my research pro-
tocol, but it was a singularly revealing moment in
my work because I understood that whereas I had
come to the woman’s house in search of knowl-
edge about human psychology, she had opened her
door to try to save my soul. Moreover, this purpose
was of supreme moral importance to her because
to become “saved,” in this religiously conserva-
tive Christian worldview, is not only the path to
better moral understanding and behavior in this
life, but also to salvation in the next. I took from
this encounter that morality suffuses intra- and
interpersonal psychology. Our moral concepts are
highly diverse, with some concepts being widely
A r n e t t J e ns e n 231
shared and others less so. While morality is framed
by collective worldviews, it also spurs individual
action—as in the case of this woman, even if she
was the only one among many religiously conserva-
tive participants to try to convert me.
Organization and Scope
In the following, the focus is on the questions
that Freud and Piaget asked about moral reasoning
almost a century ago, as well as on new questions
that have come about—often as a consequence
of researchers conducting research outside of the
American and European middle-class and of the
world having changed quite dramatically in the
space of a century. Because theory more than any-
thing else shapes research, I first review the key foci
and findings of four contemporary theories: the
Cognitive-Developmental, Domain, Identity, and
Cultural-Developmental approaches. This review
includes attention to findings for diverse cultural
groups. Subsequently, I present a discussion of
recurrent and emerging research issues. Specifically,
the section on key recurrent issues addresses care
and prosociality, and contexts and processes of
moral reasoning. The section on emerging issues
focuses on two topics: the necessity of addressing
moral reasoning across the entire life course and
implications of globalization on moral develop-
ment. Throughout, I include research quotations
from children, adolescents, and adults from diverse
cultural communities in an attempt to render their
moral psychology in an authentic and vivid way.
Before turning to theories, a few brief notes
on definitions and scope. First, development is
addressed broadly and descriptively in terms of psy-
chological change that occurs in human beings as
they age. It may involve increase or decrease, it may
be quantitative or qualitative, and it may be grad-
ual or stagelike (Zelazo, 2013). Apart from aiming
to provide descriptions of people’s moral psychol-
ogy, moral development researchers often have
aspired also to provide moral prescriptions. In the
conclusion, I return to the link between descriptive
and prescriptive purposes in moral development
research.
Second, culture is defined as symbolic, behav-
ioral, and institutional inheritances that are shared
and co-constructed by members of a community
(Goodnow, 2010; Heine, 2012; Shweder et al.,
2006). Culture is not synonymous with country
or ethnicity, for example, but rather describes com-
munities whose members share key beliefs, values,
behaviors, routines, and institutions. As scholars
232 Mor a l R e a s on i ng
addressing cultural issues have long observed, cul-
tural communities include heterogeneity among
groups and individuals (Gramsci, 1971; Salzman,
1981). Variation also exists between cultural com-
munities, including on their degree of heterogeneity,
intergroup contest, and change over time (Strauss,
1992; Weisner, Bradley, & Kilbride, 1997; Whiting
& Edwards, 1988). An important aspect of differ-
ence both within and between cultures pertains to
access to power (Jensen, Chapter 1, this volume).
Third, the present focus is foremost on research
addressing moral reasoning and concepts. Moral
reasoning is described here as an intra- and inter-
psychological phenomenon that is important in
individual and collective moral judgments and
actions (Jensen, 1997a; Pizarro & Bloom, 2003).
In other words, as I describe later, moral reasoning
takes place not only in the mind of an individual,
but also in dyadic and group contexts.
Moral reasoning is also described as intersect-
ing with emotions in human development, rather
than being sharply differentiated (e.g., Eisenberg,
Spinrad, & Sadovsky, 2006; Krettenauer, Malti, &
Sokol, 2008; Smetana & Killen, 2008; Tangney,
Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007). Scholars have occa-
sionally put forth the strong hypothesis that emo-
tions are what determine moral actions, with
reasoning being a separate epiphenomenon (Haidt,
2001; Kagan, 1987). However, most research indi-
cates that reasoning and emotions intersect and
that the nature of the intersection depends on fac-
tors such as the type of moral issue, development,
and culture. With respect to type of issue, Monin,
Pizarro, and Beer (2007) have noted that shocking
violations (such as sibling incest) pull more for emo-
tional reactions, whereas complex dilemmas (such
as paying taxes) pull more for reasoning. In a recent
edited volume, Latzko and Malti (2010) concluded
that moral cognition intersects with moral emo-
tions in different ways depending on development.
For example, longitudinal research has found that
moral emotions become better aligned with moral
decisions in the course of adolescence (see also
Krettenauer, Colasante, Buchmann, & Malti,
2014; Malti, Keller, & Buchmann, 2012). Culture,
too, matters in the sense that both moral reasoning
and emotions are shaped through socialization. For
example, moral reasoning that emphasizes auton-
omy, community, and divinity is correlated with
emotions of anger, contempt, and disgust, respec-
tively (Rozin, Lowery, Imada, & Haidt, 1999).
Our capacity for moral reasoning is in many
ways what makes us distinctly human (Tomasello,
Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll, 2005). Undoubt­
edly, humans rationalize their behaviors in a post
hoc manner from time to time, but that is not all
that we do. As findings in this chapter will indicate,
we also put reasoning to intra- and interpersonal
uses in shaping moral behaviors at both the indi-
vidual and collective levels. Also, moral reasoning
becomes an internalized mechanism that underlies
habitual behaviors. Moral reasoning also comes to
the fore in a deliberative manner when we re-evalu-
ate long-established behaviors and when we reflect
on new situations.
Before proceeding, I would like to note that
my aim is to provide a broadly inclusive account
of key theoretical and research issues on moral rea-
soning and development and an account of their
respective contributions to the collective scientific
enterprise. With that goal in mind, I shared this
chapter with scholars who take an array of research
approaches to moral psychology. No author, of
course, is free of a vantage point. As the originator
of the cultural-developmental approach to moral
psychology, I think it important to bridge the uni-
versalistic perspective of developmental psychology
with the pluralistic perspective of cultural psychol-
ogy (Jensen, 2011). Nonetheless, I have benefitted
tremendously from the feedback of my colleagues
and have included their suggestions.
Four Contemporary Theories
A Cognitive-Developmental Approach
Starting in the late 1950s, Kohlberg (e.g.,
1958, 1964, 1969, 1981, 1984) formulated a
cognitive-developmental approach to moral rea-
soning that in myriad ways has influenced much
of the subsequent research on morality. Inspired by
Piaget (1932/1965) among others (Baldwin, 1895,
Stage 3
Conventional level
Stage 2
Stage 1
Preconventional level
Fig. 15.1  Kohlberg’s cognitive-developmental sequence.
1906, 1906–1911; Dewey, 1930; Kant, 1785/1949),
Kohlberg wanted to find out if moral reasoning
develops in a predictable sequence. To help answer
this question, he interviewed children and ado-
lescents about “hypothetical dilemmas,” the most
famous of which pit the value of life against the
value of property or the value of one person’s life
against the value of several people’s lives. In the
best known of these dilemmas, Heinz, who lives
in a German village, has a dying wife who might
be cured by a particular medicine. Heinz, however,
cannot afford it, and the town pharmacist will not
lower his high price or extend credit. As a research
participant, one has to decide whether Heinz
should steal the drug and, even more importantly,
why or why not.
Drawing on participants’ responses to the
dilemmas, as well as on his readings of Western
rationalist moral philosophy, Kohlberg concluded
that moral reasoning occurs in a sequence of three
levels. Each level includes two stages, for a total
of six. Figure 15.1 provides a visual representation
of the theory. According to Kohlberg, every child
starts out at the Pre-Conventional Level, reasoning
strictly in terms of ego-centered considerations—
reminiscent of an uncivilized Freudian child. The
child initially focuses on avoidance of punishment
and obtainment of rewards (Stage 1) and then on
satisfaction of self-interests (Stage 2). In one of
Kohlberg’s studies, for example, a boy in Stage 2
argued that Heinz “should steal because he needs
his wife to cook for him” (Kohlberg, 1981, p. 115).
Next follows the Conventional Level and a
shift to group-centered considerations. Here, the
focus is on adhering to the norms of family and
other groups to which one belongs (Stage 3) and
maintaining social order (Stage 4). The third
Stage 6
Stage 5
Postconventional level
Stage 4
A r n e t t J e ns e n 233
Post-Conventional Level goes beyond both the self
and one’s society—reminiscent of the Piagetian
adolescent’s perspective. Here, the emphasis is on
democratic procedure and social utility (Stage 5) or
universal principles pertaining to justice and indi-
vidual rights (Stage 6). Kohlberg partly derived the
last stage from his interviews with philosophers.
For example, one philosopher spoke in terms of
Stage 6 when reasoning that stealing the drug “was
wrong legally, but right morally.” He elaborated in
a lengthy interview where, among other things, he
argued that “all property has only relative value and
only persons can have unconditional value. The
decision [is] a principled one. [It] must be made
from a disinterested point of view that … is con-
sistent with the decision of any rational agent in a
similar situation” (Kohlberg, 1981, p. 163).
To Kohlberg, it was not only that his six stages
describe what moral development is like. Kohlberg
made the far more audacious claim that his stages
describe what moral development ought to be like.
If more people can be educated to reach Stage 6,
according to Kohlberg, we will be more moral, and
we can join together to create communities that
are more just. Like Piaget, Kohlberg thought that
interactions and discussions with peers advance
moral development. The desire to go from moral
psychology to moral philosophy, “from is to ought”
to use Kohlberg’s well-known words (1981), cer-
tainly did not originate with Kohlberg. But it is an
aspiration that has continued to both inspire and
discomfit moral development research.
Extensive research has found that the first three
of the cognitive-developmental stages are com-
mon across diverse cultures, whereas the others
are not. Across cultures, younger children often
use the concepts from Stages 1 and 2, and, in the
course of adolescence, the concepts from Stage 3
become common (e.g., Colby, Kohlberg, Gibbs, &
Lieberman, 1983; Kohlberg, 1984; Snarey, 1985;
Walker, 1989). Stages 4 and 5, however, are less
common, and Stage 6 is so rare that it was removed
from the cognitive-developmental scoring man-
ual by the early 1980s (Colby & Kohlberg, 1987;
Kohlberg, 1986). In Snarey’s (1985) comprehen-
sive review of 44 cross-cultural studies using the
cognitive-developmental approach, 66% of studies
found no reasoning at Stages 4 or 5. Even in the
34% of studies where these two stages did occur,
they were rare. Reasoning in terms of Stages 4 and
5 was mostly characteristic of a subset of Western
or Westernized middle- and upper-middle-class
adolescents and adults residing in urban areas.
234 Mor a l R e a s on i ng
Extensive research across cultures has also
found that children, adolescents, and adults
think in terms of numerous moral concepts that
Kohlberg’s cognitive-developmental approach
does not take into consideration. Kohlberg was no
keener on including concepts pertaining to religion
and spirituality as part of morality than Freud and
Piaget were (e.g., Colby & Damon, 1992; Jensen,
1995, 1997a, 1997b, 1998a, 1998b; Richards, 1991;
Richards & Davison, 1992; Shweder, Mahapatra, &
Miller, 1990; Shweder & Much, 1986; Vasudev &
Hummel, 1987; Walker, Pitts, Hennig, & Matsuba,
1995). Walker, who has contributed extensive
research from the cognitive-developmental vantage
point, has critiqued this omission. He observed
that the cognitive-developmental manual includes
708 “criterion judgments” for scoring moral rea-
soning but is “bereft” of notions of religiosity, spiri-
tuality, or divinity (Walker et al., 1995, p. 384).
Furthermore, many researchers have concluded
that concepts pertaining to community, collectiv-
ity, and interdependence also are not well accounted
for by the cognitive-developmental approach (e.g.,
Dien, 1982; Edwards, 1981, 1982, 1986, 1997;
Ma, 1988; Snarey, 1985; Tappan, 1997; Tietjen &
Walker, 1985; Walker & Moran, 1991). Yet mem-
bers of many cultures place a premium on such
concepts. For example, research with Chinese chil-
dren has shown that by age 4, they are well aware of
notions pertaining to shame, loss of face, social dis-
cretion, and role-based duties (Fung, 1999; Miller,
Wiley, Fung, & Liang, 1997). The development of a
conscience is well under way at an early age in these
children—as Freud would have predicted. This
conscience, however, seems in step with Confucian
ideals of social hierarchy and harmony, rather than
the ideals of justice and individual rights at the end
of Kohlberg’s cognitive-developmental sequence.
In sum, children across many cultures
develop along the path of the first half of the
cognitive-developmental stage sequence. From
early on, however, they also take other paths with
other end goals. A small proportion of middle-class,
Western, and Westernized urban adolescents and
adults also reason in terms of some of the concepts
in the second half of Kohlberg’s sequence, but
those also are not the only concepts in their moral
repertoire. Accordingly, some theorists have aimed
to revise the top half of the Kohlbergian sequence
with the aim of maintaining a stagelike structure
with different end-goal concepts (Gibbs, 1979,
2014; Gibbs, Basinger, Grime, & Snarey, 2007;
Ma, 1988; Rest, Narvaez, Bebeau, & Thoma, 1999;
Snarey & Keljo, 1991). Alternative models by Gibbs
and by Rest and colleagues have generated a lot of
research, including of an applied nature. As we will
see later, however, most researchers addressing a
broader swath of moral concepts have not utilized
Kohlbergian or post-Kohlbergian theory.
As a final note in regards to Kohlberg’s
cognitive-developmental approach, it is interest-
ing to ponder that Snarey’s review of cross-cultural
studies was published in 1985. The world has
changed significantly since then. By 2008—for the
first time in human history—more people were liv-
ing in urban areas than in rural ones (Population
Reference Bureau, 2008). Most of the urbaniza-
tion has occurred in developing countries. These
migrants are certainly not all middle class, and,
although exposed to ideas from the West, they
also are not all Westernized. Nonetheless, a ques-
tion worth asking is whether some of the kinds
of Stage 4 and 5 concepts that were found among
Western and Westernized adolescents and adults
in Snarey’s review might have spread. With urban-
ization and globalization, it would not be unrea-
sonable to expect that more people have moral
perspectives that include society as a whole and
individuals as unfamiliar and independent enti-
ties. If these kinds of moral concepts are becoming
somewhat more common, they would not attest to
a cognitive-developmental stage structure. Instead,
they would suggest the importance of particular
cultural and contextual milieus in moral devel-
opment. It also seems plausible that other moral
concepts—local and/or hybrid ones—might form
part of people’s moral repertoires in non-Western
globalizing parts of the world.
The Domain Approach
In the latter half of the 1970s, Turiel and his col-
leagues proposed taking a step back from Kohlberg’s
question of how moral reasoning develops to the
question of what is moral in the first place (e.g.,
Nucci & Turiel, 1978; Turiel, 1975). Turiel and
his colleagues wanted to find out whether children
differentiate moral from nonmoral issues. Based
on a similar tradition of Western rationalist phi-
losophy that Kohlberg drew on (Duncan & Fiske,
1977; Dworkin, 1978; Gewirth, 1978; Rawls,
1971; Searle, 1969), they argued that in order for
a rule to be moral, key criteria are that it applies to
everyone and that it cannot be altered (e.g., Turiel,
1983; Turiel, Killen, & Helwig, 1987). If children
were to be asked whether these criteria of univer-
sality and inalterability apply to different kinds
of issues, would they make distinctions between
moral and nonmoral issues? Also, would their rea-
soning in response to the issues vary? To address
these research questions, Turiel and his colleagues
have often presented children and adolescents with
vignettes. For example, in one vignette, a child
pushes a peer off a swing, and in another, a child
calls a grandfather by his first name.
Turiel and his colleagues have concluded that
three domains of knowledge can be differentiated,
even if occasional overlap occurs (e.g., Nucci, 1981;
Nucci & Turiel, 1993; Smetana, 1983; Turiel, 1983;
Turiel et al., 1987). One of these domains is moral.
The other two, termed “conventional” and “per-
sonal,” are not. Domain researchers have recently
renamed the latter two domains “societal” and
“psychological” (Killen & Smetana, in press), but
here the original terms will be used since nearly all
research cited has used them. According to Turiel
and his colleagues, the three domains differ on cri-
teria, reasoning, and issues. With respect to crite-
ria, conventional and personal rules—unlike moral
ones—apply only to one’s group or oneself, respec-
tively. Also, conventional and personal rules—
unlike moral ones—are alterable. With respect
to reasoning, moral rules are justified in terms of
references to justice, fairness, and harm to other
individuals. Conventional reasoning, in contrast,
focuses on communal and religious norms, inter-
ests, and authorities. Personal reasoning focuses
on the welfare of the self. Based on these criteria
and modes of reasoning, according to domain
theorists, examples of moral issues include stealing
and aggressive acts (such as pushing someone off a
swing). Conventional issues involve a wide variety
of acts, such as those pertaining to forms of address
(such as calling a grandfather by his first name),
attire (such as wearing a head scarf), sexual cus-
toms (such as premarital sex), and familial arrange-
ments (such as divorce). Personal issues include
one’s choice of friends and recreational activities.
Figure 15.2 depicts the domain approach.
The implication of Turiel’s conclusion is a notable
narrowing of the moral domain. Morality, from this
perspective, is solely that which goes beyond both
self and society, akin only to the highest levels of
development in Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s approaches.
Within this perspective, too, there is a lim-
ited focus on the development of this differen-
tiation. The argument is that the features of the
three domains are inherent and that a young child
through independent observation and exposure
to diverse behaviors will conclude that harm to
A r n e t t J e ns e n 235

Moral
Conventional Personal
Fig. 15.2  Domain approach.
another individual or discrepant treatment of two
similar individuals, for example, are prima facie of
moral consequence. Meanwhile, the child will also
conclude that eating with one’s hands, running
around naked, or feeling happy about listening to
music are not of moral consequence.
Research findings across cultures have shown
that children make a distinction between the moral
and nonmoral as defined by the domain approach,
for a very particular set of issues. In many parts
of the world, children—even as young as 3 years
of age—differentiate “moral” vignettes in which
an innocent child is pushed, hit, or robbed from
“conventional” vignettes, in which children eat
food with their fingers or fail to follow the rules
of a game. By and large, children respond to these
vignettes in terms of the criteria and reasons that
the domain approach predicts (e.g., Ardila-Rey
& Killen, 2001; Hollos, Leis, & Turiel, 1986;
Killen & Sueyoshi, 1995; Kim & Turiel, 1996;
Nucci, Camino, & Sapiro, 1996; Nucci, Turiel, &
Encarnacion-Gawrych, 1983; Song, Smetana, &
Kim, 1987; Yau & Smetana, 2003). In other words,
contrary to Kohlberg’s theory, even very young
children are capable of referring to fairness and
avoidance of harm to other individuals in response
to some moral issues.
In many other instances, however, the pre-
dicted correspondence across issues, criteria, and
reasoning does not hold. This has been found, for
example, for matters pertaining to showing respect
(such as honoring a deathbed promise), helping
others in need (such as taking an ailing elderly par-
ent into one’s household), sexuality (such as coed
bathing), and avoiding disgusting behaviors (such
as eating one’s dead pet dog). In many parts of
the world, children, adolescents, and adults apply
236 Mor a l R e a s on i ng
“moral” criteria of universality and inalterability
to these matters, but they reason in terms of what
the domain approach deems nonmoral concepts
such as role-based duty, social order, and spiritual-
ity (Bersoff & Miller, 1993; Edwards, 1987; Haidt,
Koller, & Dias, 1993; Miller & Bersoff, 1992,
1994; Miller, Bersoff, & Harwood, 1990; Miller &
Luthar, 1989; Nisan, 1987; Shweder et al., 1990;
Vasquez, Keltner, Ebenbach, & Banaszynski, 2001;
Zimba, 1994).
Research also indicates that a large number of
people will judge an issue to be moral but do not
universalize their judgment. In other words, the
universality criterion is not universal, or at least it is
not necessarily the only or foremost criterion (Blasi,
1987, 1990). Based on a review of scholarship
across history and cultures, Wilson (1993) con-
cluded that “universalism is not natural, localism
is” (p. 197). Studies with religiously conservative
groups, for example, have documented their hierar-
chical worldview (e.g., Ammerman, 1987; Jensen,
1997a, 2006; Vainio, in press). In this view, God
is above humans. Among humans, differences exist
in some respects between various groups, including
believers and nonbelievers. Based on such a world-
view, a conservative Christian can maintain that
one may require more morally out of a Christian
than a non-Christian (e.g., sexual abstinence prior
to marriage, modesty in dress, tithing). An ortho-
dox Jew can hold that moral expectations for Jews
are different from those for non-Jews (e.g., keeping
kosher, circumcision).
Furthermore, research where participants dis-
cuss their own moral experiences also suggests
a more complex picture. Such research is illumi-
nating because it provides emic rather than etic
information about morality; that is, how research
participants rather than theorists define and delin-
eate morality. Research with Canadian adults, for
example, has shown that they discuss a wide variety
of reasons to justify their moral actions, including
their own psychological well-being—a reason that
the domain approach presumably would deem per-
sonal rather than moral (Walker, 2013; Walker et
al., 1995). Research with moral exemplars from the
United States has found that they vary considerably
on the concepts they invoke to account for their
remarkable moral contributions and behaviors.
Common concepts pertained to justice, charity,
harmony, and religious faith (Colby & Damon,
1992). Only the first of these concepts is moral,
according to domain theory. In short, accounts
from people’s real moral lives—whether ordinary
or extraordinary—of their moral motivesblend
considerations from the three domains.
Taken together, these findings suggest that
children in many parts of the world recognize
that not all issues are of the same hue. Children
and adults from diverse cultures, however, appear
to regard a wide variety of issues and reasons as
moral that are not included within the moral pal-
ette of the domain approach. In recent years, some
research on domain theory has compared judg-
ments of vignettes in which the circumstances
(what domain researchers term “contexts”) sur-
rounding a judgment vary (e.g., Gasser, Malti,
& Buholzer, 2014; Killen & Stangor, 2001). This
research often compares “straightforward” sce-
narios (e.g., exclusion based on group membership
in general) to “multifaceted” ones (e.g., exclusion
based on group membership under varying cir-
cumstances). Children’s and adolescents’ responses
to the multifaceted scenarios tend to encompass
diverse reasons, such as fairness and group func-
tioning. Domain theorists, however, still only
classify the former as a moral reason (Killen &
Smetana, in press). Thus, in their recent chapter
summarizing large amounts of research based on
the domain approach, Killen and Smetana (in
press) primarily discuss moral reasoning in terms
of justice, fairness, and harm to other individuals.
The handbook chapter on morality scarcely cites
decades’ worth of emic and cultural psychology
research, but there is frequent mention of “com-
plexity” and “contextual variables.” Exactly how
much this attention to complexity and context will
lead domain theorists toward consideration of the
full spectrum of cultural and emic findings and a
softening of the rather sharp lines differentiating
their three domains remains to be seen.
Moral Identity Theory
The examination of the lives of moral exem-
plars from the United States by Colby and Damon
(1992) was published in the early 1990s and
became a key impetus for theory on moral identity.
Blasi, too, had called for a focus on moral identity
by this time (e.g., 1984). Colby and Damon’s proj-
ect was a purposeful attempt to open up to new
research in a number of ways. They focused on real
rather than hypothetical or vignette-based moral
issues and decisions. They focused on moral good-
ness rather than avoidance or actual commitment
of transgressions. They also wanted to add moral
behavior to the predominant research focus on
moral reasoning.
Based on their interviews with 23 exemplars,
Colby and Damon concluded that reaching a
moral judgment is necessary but insufficient in
forming a moral identity. There is a need for a dia-
lectical process whereby one’s reasoning and judg-
ments support one’s moral behaviors, which, in
turn, render future reasoning both more habitual
and refined. Describing this dialectic between
reasoning and behavior, Colby and Damon wrote
that “the optimal condition for moral development
is when habitual morality is supported by one’s
reflective self” (p. 309). In regards to moral rea-
soning, Colby and Damon found that the majority
of exemplars reasoned at the Conventional Level
of Kohlberg’s cognitive-developmental sequence,
with only four exemplars scored at Stage 5. They
did not take this finding to mean that moral rea-
soning does not impact moral behavior, but rather
that the nuances of people’s reasoning and the full
scope of their exemplars’ moral habits were not
fully captured within cognitive-developmental the-
ory. Extending their work, Damon and Colby (in
press) have recently conducted archival case studies
of moral and political leaders in the 20th century,
including Jane Addams, Dag Hammarskjold, and
Nelson Mandela. Damon and Colby argue that
these leaders drew and reflected on their social and
cultural contexts in developing their moral ideals
and identities and that they also contributed to cul-
tural transformations.
Recent scholarship on moral identity has
addressed a number of issues (Lapsley & Narvaez,
2004; Narvaez & Lapsley, 2009), many of which
are still subject to debate (Hardy & Carlo, 2005,
2011). For example, researchers have argued that
whereas a dialectic between reasoning and behav-
ior is necessary to form a moral identity, it is
also necessary that morality per se is regarded as
central to one’s sense of self (Blasi, 1993, 2004).
Another issue is the extent to which someone
with a moral identity is focused on self-interest.
Researchers generally agree that having a moral
identity entails a commitment to causes larger
than the self (Narvaez & Lapsley, 2009), but
Walker and colleagues have highlighted that
moral identity development is more likely to
be successful if self-interest lines up with or at
least does not run counter to these larger causes
(Frimer & Walker, 2009; Walker, 2013).
Given Erikson’s long-standing prominence in
theory on identity development in general and
given his focus on adolescence as the key time
for identity formation (Erikson, 1950), it is not
A r n e t t J e ns e n 237
surprising that developmental scholars addressing
moral identity also have homed in on adolescence
(Hardy, Walker, Olsen, Woodbury, & Hickman,
2013). They have observed that it is an important
time in life for the acquisition of a sense of respon-
sibility (Nunner-Winkler, 2007), the emergence of
substantial consideration for others (Carlo, 2006;
Youniss, McLellan, & Yates, 1997), consistently
feeling positive emotions when making moral
rather than selfish decisions (Malti et al., 2012),
and some measure of moral expertise (Narvaez &
Lapsley, 2005). Damon and his colleagues have
recently argued for a research focus on the devel-
opment of purpose in adolescence—a kind of
coherent moral commitment that would seem to
be a developmental prerequisite to a fully formed
moral identity (Damon, 2008; Damon, Menon, &
Bronk, 2003).
Focusing not only on the individual personality
characteristics of adolescents, Hart and colleagues
(Hart, 2005; Hart, Atkins, & Ford, 1998; Hart &
Matsuba 2009) have developed a model of moral
identity development that also emphasizes broad
social factors. For example, Hart and Matsuba
(2009) found that volunteering in adolescence is
dependent on an interaction between poverty and
the proportion of children to adults within a com-
munity. In American communities with low rates
of poverty, there is more youth volunteering as the
ratio of children to adults goes up. In communities
with high rates of poverty, however, there is more
youth volunteering as this ratio goes down. Their
argument, in short, is that moral engagement and
development of moral identity depend not only on
characteristics of the individual, but also on social
contexts.
Much of the research on moral identity and
exemplars has been conducted in the United
States. Hardy and Carlo (2011) have called for
research on the role of culture, including among
diverse groups within the United States. In this
regard, a recent chapter by King, Mueller, and
Furrow (2013) on the cultural issues involved in
research with exemplars is illuminating (see also
King, Clardy, & Ramos, 2014). Their points would
seem to apply equally to research on moral identity
because exemplars represent the pinnacle of iden-
tity development. Two of the key points are that
there is bound to be cultural variation on criteria
for having attained moral identity and exemplar-
ity, and that methods commonly used in this line
of research, such as one-on-one interviews, are not
equivalent in their familiarity and meaning across
238 Mor a l R e a s on i ng
cultures. Thus, King and colleagues encourage col-
laboration between researchers and local leaders in
order to better contextualize findings and ensure
that generalizations rest on valid theoretical and
methodological approaches.
In sum, theory and research on moral identity is
burgeoning. Additional future attention to culture
in this area could open up fruitful research direc-
tions. Given cultural variation in the ways that
the life course is partitioned and the key purposes
assigned to each phase, one might expect an inter-
action of development and culture in moral iden-
tity. Probably the oldest known conception of the
life course is in the Dharmashastras, the sacred law
books of the Hindu religion. Although first written
about 3,000 years ago, this concept continues to
hold sway in the everyday lives of Indians (Kakar,
1998). For instance, the third stage of vanaprastha
in the Hindu Indian life course begins in middle
adulthood and literally means “forest bound.” It
entails moral ideals of gradual disengagement from
social responsibilities and material attachments in
order to focus on contemplative spiritual pursuits.
According to Saraswathi, Mistry, and Dutta (2011),
the ideals of this stage find behavioral expression
among Indian adults who, on reaching 60 years
of age, either pass on their property to their chil-
dren or let them know of their will, and also in the
“throngs” of older adults who worship at temples
during early morning and late evening prayers.
This example indicates how indigenous notions of
developmental moral ideals raise useful research
questions for future scholarship on moral identity.
These include the extent to which moral identity is:
(a) based in personality or social roles, (b) reshaped
and redefined at different points across the entire
life course, and (c) inclusive or exclusive of various
material and immaterial self-interests.
The Cultural-Developmental Approach
The intersection between development
and culture is explicitly addressed by the
cultural-developmental approach. This fairly new
theory focuses on how life course developmental
trajectories for diverse kinds of moral reasoning
vary across cultures (Jensen, 2008, 2011, 2012,
in press b). The cultural-developmental approach
introduces the concept of a “template.” The tem-
plate charts trajectories across the life course for
three kinds of moral reasoning: the Ethics of
Autonomy, Community, and Divinity—a tripar-
tite distinction originally proposed by Shweder
and his colleagues (Jensen, 1995; Shweder, 1990;
Shweder, Much, Mahapatra, & Park, 1997). The
trajectories are proposed as a template in the sense
that their emergence in childhood, and slopes of
development from childhood through adulthood,
depend on the prevalence of the three Ethics
within a culture and the hierarchy among them.
Briefly, the Ethic of Autonomy involves a focus
on persons as individuals. Moral reasons within
this ethic include the interests, well-being, and
rights of individuals (self or other), and fairness
between individuals. The Ethic of Community
focuses on persons as members of social groups,
with attendant reasons such as duty to others and
concern with the customs, interests, and welfare
of groups. The Ethic of Divinity focuses on per-
sons as spiritual or religious entities, and reasons
encompass divine and natural law, sacred lessons,
and spiritual purity.
Research on the three ethics has involved inter-
views about hypothetical vignettes, issues of general
discussion in the society of study (such as suicide in
the case of terminal illness), and participants’ own
moral experiences. These have been analyzed with
the standard coding manual for the three ethics
(Jensen, 2004). Each reason is coded into one of
the three Ethics of Autonomy, Community, and
Divinity, allowing for an assessment of the degree
to which a person uses each. Each reason is also
coded into one of numerous subcategories. The
manual differentiates from 13 to 16 subcatego-
ries for each ethic, such as “Self’s Psychological
Well-Being” and “Rights” for Autonomy, “Duty
to Others” and “Social Order or Harmony Goals”
for Community, and “Scriptural Authority” and
“God-Given Conscience” for Divinity. Apart
from facilitating careful and comprehensive cod-
ing of all of a person’s moral reasons, the use of
subcategories allows for an assessment of the spe-
cific type of moral concept used within an ethic.
Research has also surveyed people on their use of
the three ethics by means of three different ques-
tionnaires. The questionnaires vary on the extent to
which they pertain to personal or impersonal moral
experiences, and specific or general moral issues
(Guerra & Giner-Sorolla, 2010; Jensen, in press c;
Jensen & Padilla-Walker, in press; Padilla-Walker
& Jensen, 2014).
Findings from both interviews and question-
naires have shown the presence and reliable differ-
entiation of the three ethics among notably diverse
age and cultural groups (Arnett, Ramos, & Jensen,
2001; Guerra & Giner-Sorolla, 2010; Guerra,
Giner-Sorolla, & Vasiljevic, 2013; Haidt et al.,
1993; Hickman, in press; Jensen, 1995, 1997a,
1997b, 1998b, 2008, Rozin et al., 1999; Vainio, in
press; Vasquez et al., 2001).
The cultural-developmental template for the
Ethics of Autonomy, Community, and Divinity
was based on findings for the three ethics. It
was also based on a large set of valuable find-
ings from different research traditions, includ-
ing cognitive-developmental and domain theories
(e.g., Piaget, 1932/1965; Kohlberg, 1984; Turiel,
1983), cultural psychology and anthropology per-
spectives on morality (e.g., Shweder et al., 1990;
Trommsdorff & Chen, 2012; Whiting & Edwards,
1988), and research on the origins and development
of prosocial emotions and norms (e.g., Thompson,
2012; Warneken & Tomasello, 2006). Findings
were synthesized with an eye to what reliably and
validly had been replicated across age and cultural
groups (see Jensen, in press b).
Figure 15.3A shows the template of trajectories
for each ethic from childhood into adulthood.
The argument is that Ethic of Autonomy reason-
ing emerges early in childhood across cultures. The
degree to which persons use this ethic stays rela-
tively stable across adolescence and into adulthood,
although there may be some decline in adulthood
in cultures where there is a strong push for collec-
tivity or submission to divinity. Furthermore, the
argument is that the specific types of Autonomy
reasons that persons use are likely to change with
age. For example, findings indicate that children
more than adults invoke self-interest, whereas
adults surpass children on concern for the welfare
of other individuals.
According to the cultural-developmental
approach, the Ethic of Community rises across the
life course, both in degree of usage and diversity
of types of reasons. For example, findings have
consistently indicated that younger children in
Childhood Adolescence Adulthood
Autonomy
Community
Divinity
Fig. 15.3A The cultural-developmental template of moral
reasoning.
A r n e t t J e ns e n 239
diverse cultures invoke Community reasons, such
as family interests and customs (Kohlberg, 1984;
Miller et al., 1990; Olson & Spelke, 2008; Shweder
et al., 1990; Thompson, 2012). Moral reasoning
related to the family is likely to rise in the course
of adolescence and adulthood as a person’s aware-
ness of and experiences with diverse types of fam-
ily considerations increase, such as duty to family
in addition to family interests and customs (Miller
et al., 1990). By late childhood and adolescence,
Community reasons that pertain to social groups
other than the family are added (Carlo, 2006;
Whiting & Edwards, 1988), including concern for
friends (Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006) and
peers and authority figures in places such as school
and work (Schlegel, 2011). Cross-sectional and lon-
gitudinal findings have shown that by late adoles-
cence or adulthood even more Community reasons
are invoked, such as a focus on societal organiza-
tion (Eisenberg, Carlo, Murphy, & Van Court,
1995; Eisenberg et al., 2002; Nisan, 1987; Walker,
1989; Zimba, 1994).
Turning to the Ethic of Divinity, the cultural-
developmental proposal is that its use will often
be low among children but will rise in adolescence
and become similar to adult use (Jensen, 2008).
This potential infusion of divinity reasoning
in adolescence may especially characterize reli-
gious cultures that emphasize scriptural author-
ity or that conceptualize supernatural entities as
largely distinct from humans, such as possessing
omniscient and omnipotent abilities. The reason
is that these culturally articulated religious con-
cepts are of such an abstract nature that they may
be readily translated into moral reasoning only
by adolescents whose cognitive skills allow for
more abstraction than those of younger children
(Adelson, 1971; Keating, 1990; Kohlberg, 1976;
Piaget, 1972; Trommsdorff, 2012). In cultures,
however, where scriptural accounts of supernatural
entities are less salient or where people regard such
entities as less distinct from humans, it is possible
that Divinity concepts are more accessible to and
hence used more by children in their moral reason-
ing (Saraswathi, 2005).
The developmental trajectories in Figure 15.3A,
as mentioned, have been presented as dynamic.
The cultural-developmental approach empha-
sizes that development and culture co-modulate
and that there is a need to know not only about
ontogeny, but also about culture in order to make
reasonably specific predictions about development.
For example, research has found that religiously
240 Mor a l R e a s on i ng
Use of Ethic
Autonomy
High
Community
Low Divinity
Age
Childhood Adolescence Adulthood
Fig. 15.3B  Hypothesized expression of template among reli-
gious liberals.
conservative adults in the United States reason
substantially in terms of the Ethics of Divinity
and Community, but de-emphasize the Ethic of
Autonomy. Religiously liberal adults, in com-
parison, emphasize the Ethics of Autonomy and
Community, but not Divinity (e.g., Jensen, 2008;
McAdams et al., 2008). These findings on the
different hierarchies of ethics translate into dif-
ferent expectations for developmental trajecto-
ries of moral reasoning within the two religious
cultures (Jensen, 2008, 2011). Within religiously
liberal groups, as illustrated in Figure 15.3B, the
expectation is that children, adolescents, and
adults frequently will use the Ethic of Autonomy.
Community reasons will be rarer among children
but will then become quite common among ado-
lescents and adults. Divinity will be used infre-
quently at all ages, and, if it emerges, this will
only occur in the course of adolescence. Figure
15.3C shows predictions for religiously conserva-
tive groups. The expectation is that these children,
adolescents, and adults will use Autonomy infre-
quently. There may be some decrease over the life
course because of the strong emphasis on renounc-
ing self-interest among religious conservatives.
Use of Ethic
Divinity
High
Community
Autonomy
Low
Age
Childhood Adolescence Adulthood
Fig. 15.3C  Hypothesized expression of template among reli-
gious conservatives.
With respect to Community, the expectation is
that its prevalence will rise steadily from child-
hood to reach a high level in adulthood. The Ethic
of Divinity will be low among children but will
then rise markedly in adolescence and remain high
throughout adulthood.
A recent series of publications has provided
support for the cultural-developmental approach
while also pointing to future research topics. The
Ethic of Autonomy has indeed been found to be
lower among adults than children and adolescents
in India where there is an emphasis on familism
and communalism (Kapadia & Bhangaokar,
in press) and among religiously conservative
American communities where submission to
divinity is paramount (Hickman & DiBianca
Fasoli, in press; Jensen, in press a; Jensen &
McKenzie, 2014). With respect to Autonomy rea-
soning, recent research also indicated a decline
from childhood into adulthood among religiously
liberal Americans, rather than the predicted steady
trajectory (Jensen, in press a). This is rather strik-
ing because most major developmental theories
of moral development, from Piaget to Kohlberg
to Turiel, have positioned Autonomy reasoning at
the endpoint of moral development. After all these
years, it seems that room remains for more exami-
nation of the actual extent of adult use of the Ethic
of Autonomy—even in cultures where Autonomy
is prevalent.
The Ethic of Autonomy does appear be partic-
ularly high among people in their late teens and
20s who live in cultures where there is a period
of emerging adulthood (Arnett, 2000, 2004, this
volume). The primacy of this ethic was observed by
Guerra and Giner-Sorolla (in press) in four of the
five different cultures they examined. Emerging
adults reasoned more in terms of Autonomy
than the other two kinds of ethics in Brazil,
Israel, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.
The interesting, if not entirely surprising, excep-
tion was Japan, where Autonomy was tied with
Community. Hickman and DiBianca Fasoli (in
press) also found that among Hmong immigrants
to the United States, emerging adults emphasized
the Ethic of Autonomy, whereas their parents did
not. As they poignantly explain, “they are dealing
with the competing demands of Hmong moral
models handed to them by their parents and
relatives versus those that are more prevalent in
American society (such as their non-Hmong peers)
and more typical of American emerging adults.”
Finally, even among American Latter Day Saint
emerging adults, Padilla-Walker and Nelson (in
press) have found evidence for considerable atten-
tion to the Ethic of Autonomy, even as the Ethic of
Divinity was generally rated as significantly more
important.
The Ethic of Community, as predicted by the
cultural-developmental approach, has been found
to be higher among adults than among children
and adolescents. This was the case in recent research
with Indian participants (Kapadia & Bhangaokar,
in press) and among both religiously liberal and
conservative participants in the United States
(Jensen, in press a). There is clearly a need, however,
for more research. The findings are cross-sectional.
They are also limited to three cultural groups, even
if these are notably diverse.
With respect to the Ethic of Divinity, the thesis
that an infusion of divinity reasoning takes place
in adolescence in religious cultures that empha-
size scriptural authority and abstract conceptions
of the supernatural found support in a compari-
son of American evangelical children, adolescents,
and adults (Jensen in press a; Jensen & McKenzie,
2014). Hickman and DiBianca Fasoli (in press),
too, observed low use of the Ethic of Divinity
among American evangelical children but high use
among their parents, and they surmise that adoles-
cence must be when the shift occurs.
Turning to a different religious tradition,
Pandya and Bhangaokar (in press) have exam-
ined the cultural-developmental proposal that the
use of Divinity in moral reasoning may emerge
at a fairly young age within cultures such as
India where religion suffuses everyday life. They
found that Divinity reasoning in Indian children
is common and just as common as Autonomy
reasoning. In interviews, children responded to
vignettes, including one in which the choice was
to help an injured kitten or proceed to play soc-
cer in an important school tournament. Speaking
in terms of the Ethic of Divinity, an 8-year-old
girl reasoned that: “God has given life to the kit-
ten, so her life is precious and we must save her.
Like all animals and plants, God exists in the
kitten too, and so, it is our duty to save her or
at least do what we can to help her feel better.”
The early developmental prominence of the Ethic
of Divinity among Indian children supports the
cultural-developmental proposal. Unexpectedly,
however, Pandya and Bhangaokar also found that
third-graders used Divinity significantly more
than sixth-graders. Furthermore, Kapadia and
Bhangaokar (in press) who studied adolescents
A r n e t t J e ns e n 241
and adults from the very same city and context
in India found low use of the Ethic of Divinity,
as compared to the Ethics of Autonomy and
Community. These findings would seem to call
for replication, preferably with comparable stimu-
lus materials across age groups of children, ado-
lescents, and adults. As Pandya and Bhangaokar
write, there is a “lacuna in contemporary moral
psychology” of research on divinity considerations
(see also Trommsdorff, 2012). It is a lacuna, that
at a minimum, goes back to Freud and Piaget.
Attention to the role of religion in morality has
been on the rise (e.g., De Waal, 2013; Markus &
Conner, 2013), and the inclusion of the Ethic of
Divinity in the cultural-developmental approach
provides a theoretical starting point for additional
research.
In sum, the cultural-developmental approach
provides a new conceptual approach to moral psy-
chology, along with research tools for surveying
and coding moral reasoning. Research findings
support a co-modulation of ontogeny and culture
in the development of moral reasoning. Research
also suggests that even if babies are moral (Bloom,
2013), they are instantly immersed in different cul-
tural environments, and, as they grow into adult-
hood, they become increasingly culturally diverse
in their moralities.
There is a need for longitudinal and sequential
research on the cultural-developmental trajectories
to better understand the complementary roles of
ontogenetic development and culture. It would also
be useful for future work to further examine inter-
sections among the three ethics in development and
behavior (for one such study, see Padilla-Walker &
Nelson, in press), as well as the processes whereby
each of the three ethics are either promoted or sup-
pressed in the course of development (see descrip-
tion below of study by DiBianca Fasoli, 2013).
Future research could also fruitfully address con-
nections between the cultural-developmental
approach and identity theory. For example, one
might expect that a person who has arrived at a cer-
tain constellation of ethics that is applied across an
array of moral issues (i.e., a moral identity) would
be particularly likely to experience fluctuation in
this constellation of ethics during periods of devel-
opmental change (e.g., moving from one phase of
the life course to another) and during periods of
cultural change (e.g., within a culture as a whole
or in the context of moving from one culture to
another).
242 Mor a l R e a s on i ng
Key Recurrent Topics
Care, Beneficence, and Prosocial Morality
In the late 1970s and 1980s, Gilligan (1977,
1979, 1982) came to the conclusion that there are
two kinds of moral orientations. She based this
on interviews with American children and adults
about hypothetical moral issues and on interviews
with women who were contemplating having an
abortion. One is a “justice” orientation, focused
on how to negotiate among competing individual
interests and rights in an impartial manner. This
orientation, according to Gilligan, is characteristic
of a male gender identity. The other orientation,
however, pertains to “care” and is more charac-
teristic of a female identity. Here, the concern is
with bringing into harmony one’s own needs with
the needs of those with whom one has relation-
ships. Reflecting on Kohlberg’s Heinz dilemma, an
11-year-old girl voiced this orientation: “If he stole
the drug, he might save his wife then, but if he
did, he might have to go to jail, and then his wife
might get sicker again, and he couldn’t get more of
the drug and it might not be good. So they should
really just talk it out and find some other way to
make the money” (Gilligan, 1982, p. 28). Gilligan
argued that care had not received adequate atten-
tion in moral development research.
It is noteworthy that Gilligan’s call to listen to
different moral voices occurred in the context of
her broader critique that there had been a lengthy
history of downgrading girls and women in psy-
chological theory. She noted, for example, that
Freud thought that girls developed a less indepen-
dent and impartial conscience than boys and that
Piaget deemed girls less committed to negotiating
complex moral rules. Across cultures, research on
gender differences has more often than not found
that children, adolescents, and adults—whether
female or male—speak of both care and fairness
(e.g., Shimizu, 2001; Walker, 1984), although there
may be other kinds of gender differences in regards
to morality (e.g., Krettenauer et al., 2014; Malti
et al., 2012). Gilligan’s differentiation of two orien-
tations in the late 1970s, however, spurred and fit
with new lines of research on multiplicity in gen-
eral and caring in particular.
Research has shown the emergence of caring
and prosocial behaviors in infancy and toddler-
hood (Vaish & Tomasello, 2014). This research
has primarily been conducted in Europe and the
United States. Findings indicate that very young
children show tendencies toward collaboration,
helping persons in need, sharing the rewards of
joint activities, and protesting when someone
engages in destruction, theft, or violation of group
norms (Thompson, 2012; Vaish & Tomasello, 2014;
Warneken & Tomasello, 2006). In response to sit-
uations in which someone needs help, toddlers and
young children also express recognition of this need
in both their reasoning and emotional expressions
of sympathy and empathy (Eisenberg, Lennon,
& Roth, 1983; Hoffman, 2000; Zahn-Waxler,
Radke-Yarrow, Wagner, & Chapman, 1992). In a
recent review, Vaish and Tomasello (2014) argued
that early prosocial tendencies are universal and
based in the evolutionary human heritage of inter-
dependence and group-mindedness. They also
conclude that “all of these tendencies are modi-
fied significantly by socialization and culture such
that they might eventually look quite distinct
across different groups and individuals” (p. 294).
Trommsdorff (in press a, in press b), too, has
argued that early prosocial tendencies find cultur-
ally diverse expressions in development.
Indeed, research has documented notable ways
in which care and prosociality take distinctive
cultural forms. Findings from India, for example,
have documented that children and adolescents
speak of care. Their reasoning, however, empha-
sizes role-based duties (Bersoff & Miller, 1993;
Miller, 1989, 1994; Miller & Bersoff, 1992; Miller
et al., 1990; Miller & Luthar, 1989). In a research
program spanning more than two decades, Miller
and her colleagues have furthermore shown that,
in India, beneficence and care for others is consid-
ered obligatory. The Indian concept of dharma, in
particular, entails responsibility to care for friends
and family members. Duty is seen as inherent in
one’s social roles. This perspective, according to
Miller, is different from the starting assumptions
of cognitive-developmental and domain theories
that regard care as discretionary (Miller & Bland,
2014). It also departs somewhat from Gilligan’s
argument that caring is important as long as it does
not override self-interest (Miller & Bland, 2014).
Cultural research has also shown that care and
prosociality are extended not only to other indi-
viduals, but also to communities as a whole, such
as family and school (Shimizu, 2000, 2001). In
interviews, Shimizu (2001) found that Japanese
adolescents argued, for example, that they had a
responsibility to repair broken school property
because they were affiliated with the school and
so that the school would look well-maintained
to others. As one student explained, “When I see
something broken, I try to fix it … [because] when
we have guests visiting the school, I wouldn’t want
them to see the school property broke and think,
‘This school property looks great on the outside,
but not on the inside.’ ” (Shimizu, 2001, p. 468).
Relatedly, Chinese have the concept of filial piety
that entails moral obligations not only to indi-
vidual family members but also in regards to the
welfare and reputation of the family as a whole
(Dien, 1982; Hwang, 1999). Furthermore, within
a variety of Asian cultures, such as the Hmong,
moral reasoning about obligations to the family
unit encompasses not only living members but also
ancestors (Hickman & DiBianca Fasoli, in press).
Padilla-Walker and Carlo (2014a), in a recent
edited volume on prosociality, encouraged a mul-
tidimensional approach. This includes consider-
ation of different “targets” of prosociality (such as
a stranger, family member, and peer group), differ-
ent “types” of behavior (such as helping, cooperat-
ing, and promotion of norms), and varying extents
of “cost to self” (ranging from self-regarding to
entirely self-denying; Padilla-Walker & Carlo,
2014b). The motive to care about individuals and
groups, then, seems to be universal. Why we care,
how we care, and in regards to whom, however,
varies with development and among cultures. The
vast majority of research on prosocial reasoning,
emotions, and behavior has been conducted with
children and adolescents (Padilla-Walker & Carlo,
2014b). Research with adults of different ages would
help to clarify how seemingly universal early proso-
cial tendencies come to “look quite distinct across
different groups and individuals,” to return to the
words of Vaish and Tomasello (2014). Presumably,
this would tell us about culture as well as about the
parameters of our evolutionary heritage.
Social Contexts and Processes
The field of moral psychology has seen a steady
expansion of the social contexts of moral devel-
opment that scholars take into account. In fact,
recent research increasingly focuses not only on
the moral reasoning of the individual, but also
on how social contexts frame and drive moral
reasoning and development. Around the turn
of the 20th century, Freud (1930/1961) empha-
sized parents and family—a focus that con-
tinues today (e.g., Grusec & Goodnow, 1994;
Kochanska, Forman, Aksan, & Dunbar, 2005;
Walker, Hennig, & Krettenauer, 2000). Given
A r n e t t J e ns e n 243
the nature of Victorian middle-class child care,
Freud focused in particular on mothers—a focus
that has been expanded as middle-class Western
child care arrangements have changed and as
researchers have reported on cultures with highly
diverse family systems (e.g., Edwards, Ren, &
Brown, this volume; Harkness, Mavridis, Liu, &
Super, this volume; Morelli, this volume; Shwalb
& Shwalb, this volume).
In the course of the early part of the 20th cen-
tury—as mass education in Europe and the United
States became common and compulsory—Piaget
(1932/1965) emphasized peers. This focus not only
continues but is burgeoning. Undoubtedly, this is
because mass education now has worldwide reach.
Also, with modernity and globalization, adoles-
cents and emerging adults have become increas-
ingly agentic and autonomous vis-à-vis adults
(Giddens, 1990), and, as such, they have more
scope for individual moral identity formation and
the promotion of civic change. In many ways, this
is reflected in research on the values of youth cul-
tures, peer and friendship groups, and youth civic
organizations (e.g., Flanagan, Lin, Luisi-Mills,
Sambo, & Hu, this volume; French, this volume;
Hammack & Toolis, this volume; Larson, Jensen,
Kang, Griffith, & Rompala, 2012; Youniss &
Smollar, 1985; Youniss & Yates 1997).
Half a century ago, anthropologists (Whiting &
Child, 1953) described the relation between cul-
tural beliefs and practices as a “custom complex”
consisting of “customary practice and of the beliefs,
values, sanctions, rules, motives and satisfactions
associated with it” (quoted in Shweder et al., 2006,
p. 872). This idea usefully captures the way that
individual moral reasoning occurs in contexts
of common behaviors within family, friendship
groups, school, and so forth. Research documents
the development of custom complexes in diverse
cultures. Masses of research in the United States,
for example, document how the development of
moral reasoning and emotions that is based on
sensitivity to the feelings of others, fairness, and
reciprocal cooperation occurs in the contexts of
authoritative and sociable parenting and egalitarian
peer and school cultures (see Killen & Smetana, in
press; Whiting & Edwards, 1988). A substantial
research record among Chinese shows that moral
reasoning and emotions focused on role-based
reciprocity, improving the self, and social har-
mony occur in the contexts of a training style of
parenting (Chao & Tseng, 2002), prosocial peer
groups (Chen, 2011), and mentor–mentee models
244 Mor a l R e a s on i ng
of schooling (Li, 2011, 2012). In short, the develop-
ment of particular kinds of moral reasons occurs in
synergy with multiple behavioral contexts to form
what essentially is a custom complex.
There is more to the story, however. Contexts
do not always convey the same moral messages.
From a developmental perspective, it is notewor-
thy that, generally, there is a rise with age in the
number of social contexts that a person is part of
(Whiting & Edwards, 1988)—although perhaps
in old age there is a tapering off. From a cultural
perspective, it is noteworthy that with modernity
and globalization there also is a rise in the number
of contexts to which a person is exposed. Family
is undoubtedly salient everywhere, although fam-
ily composition and who is considered a family
member varies widely. But media, for example, is
a context that has grown in significance in daily
life at remarkable speed during the past decades,
and, while media such as TV and the Internet have
spread globally, they are also still more prominent
in urban than rural areas (Rubenstein, 2014) and
used more hours of the day by children in devel-
oped than developing countries (Jensen & Arnett,
in preparation). As the number of contexts that
a person is involved with increases with age and
modernity, there will be exposure to more diver-
gent moral messages, as well as to greater selec-
tion on the part of the individual to interact with
contexts and messages that resonate most (Jensen,
2003, 2011; Jensen & Arnett, 2012; Jensen, Arnett,
& McKenzie, 2011).
A recent study of adolescent–parent dyads in rural
and urban Thailand illustrates how these dynamics
among development, context, and cultural change
impact moral reasoning (McKenzie, 2014). In the
rural area, examined by the researcher, adolescents
and parents spent a lot of time together in family
and village contexts. In discussing moral issues that
they had experienced, the rural dyads were simi-
lar in their use of the three Ethics of Autonomy,
Community, and Divinity. All rural participants
especially emphasized Community consideration.
In the urban area, there were more contexts, includ-
ing media and commercial venues, and adolescents
and parents spent less time together. Compared
to the rural dyads, the urban ones reasoned more
in terms of the Ethic of Autonomy and less in
terms of the Ethic of Community. Globalization
appears to have opened up a gap between the two
Thai communities in contexts and moral reason-
ing, even if they are a mere 25 miles apart. There
was also a gap among the urban dyads, with
adolescents speaking more of Autonomy and less
of Community than their parents. Whereas urban
parents used Autonomy and Community reason-
ing roughly equally, urban adolescents’ moral rea-
soning was dominated by the Ethic of Autonomy.
Thus, although urban adolescents and their parents
both live in a globalizing cultural community, their
level of exposure and developmental openness to
experiences with globalization differed, as reflected
in their moral reasoning.
Turning to processes of moral development,
Shweder and Much (1986) argued some time ago
that everyday social communication is a significant
constitutive factor in the development of moral
reasoning. As described earlier, moral psychol-
ogy has come a long way in focusing on people’s
everyday moral experiences rather than pursuing
an exclusive focus on vignettes and hypothetical
issues generated by researchers. What is still lack-
ing to large extent in research, however, is atten-
tion to the social communicative process of moral
reasoning. The vast majority of research still asks
individuals to generate moral reasons in inter-
views or to select among reasons on questionnaires.
Some recent research, however, has analyzed rea-
soning as an interpersonal or group phenomenon.
DiBianca Fasoli (2013; Hickman & DiBianca
Fasoli, in press), for example, conducted a micro-
linguistic analysis of conversations between young
children and parents from a religiously conserva-
tive American congregation. The aims were to
compare the moral reasoning of the two age groups
and delve into the ways that parents and children
respond to one another. As it turned out, parents
regularly sought to reroute their children’s reason-
ing from a focus on Ethic of Autonomy to Ethic
of Divinity considerations. These findings speak
not only to the co-modulation of moral develop-
ment and culture, but also to a particular com-
municative process within the family whereby that
co-modulation takes place.
Focusing on group processes, Larson and his
colleagues have examined how cognition, includ-
ing moral considerations, develops over time as
adolescents take regular part in community orga-
nizations (Larson, 2000, 2007; Larson & Angus,
2011; Larson et al., 2004; Larson & Hansen,
2005). Through qualitative analyses of longitudi-
nal data, they have found that adolescents, through
joint conversations and participation, increased on
collective perspective-taking, empathy for others,
and recognition of diverse moral codes. To give an
example, Jackie, an American 14-year-old, reported
that a year before joining SisterHood she had been
engaged in antisocial activities: “getting into fights
and getting into gangs … I really didn’t care
about people. I had no remorse.” But she said that
SisterHood, “surely did help me, because … this
year, I think about people’s feelings more, and how
I would feel if that was me” (Larson et al., 2012).
As Larson et al. (2012) point out, traditional societ-
ies have long organized adolescent rites of passage
with the aim of passing on responsibility for moral
value systems to youth, and, although overseen by
adult community members, it is notable that youth
typically participate in these rites as members of a
peer group (see also Schlegel & Barry, this volume).
Traditional rites of passage do not really allow for
much diversity of moral codes, unlike the kinds of
urban American youth groups studied by Larson.
Both, however, indicate how moral reasoning and
values are developed through interactions—com-
municative and behavioral—in social groups, such
as among peers.
To give one final example of the importance
of moral reasoning as more than an internal pro-
cess, a recent study asked American children,
adolescents, and adults from religiously liberal
and conservative communities to reason about
public moral issues, in which they rendered
judgments for people in general, and about pri-
vate moral experiences, in which they evaluated
their own behavior (Jensen, in press a; Jensen &
McKenzie, 2014). One striking finding was that,
contrary to the widespread idea that these two
groups on opposite sides of the so-called culture
wars (Hunter, 1991) simply speak different moral
languages (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009),
it turned out that they calibrate their morality
depending on the context. For example, con-
servative adolescents and adults frequently used
Ethic of Divinity reasoning, but more so for pub-
lic than private issues. Among liberals, Divinity
was mainly invoked by adults and only in con-
templation of private issues. The religious conser-
vatives and liberals, then, have come to diverge
with age on what they think should be the moral
lingua franca of society.
Taken together, the findings from the three
research programs suggest that the development
of moral reasoning in humans involves intra- and
interpersonal dialogical processes. Morality, in
part, is a process in which we have internal dia-
logues using some distinct private moral reasons
for weighing our behaviors. Morality is also a social
process in which we dialogue, debate, and argue
A r n e t t J e ns e n 245
with others. We do this person-to-person, such as
between a child and a parent. We also do this at the
level of groups, such as among peers and within the
public sphere.
A fuller understanding that moral development
involves intra- and interpersonal reasoning will
require more research. Furthermore, it is worth
keeping in mind that the field of moral develop-
ment has reams of publications in which individu-
als essentially reason about public issues. In this
light, it is perhaps not so surprising that predictions
about their individual behaviors from their reason-
ing have been hard to establish. If we want to know
about individual moral behavior, we might do bet-
ter by focusing on private moral reasoning and on
the actual moral dialogue between individuals in
everyday social contexts, such as in their families
and civic groups.
Future Directions
Before concluding, I wish to highlight what
I take to be two promising and important future
research directions. One calls for a focus on the
entire life course, and the other pertains to new
questions arising in the face of globalization.
From Origins to Old Age
Recent theory on moral development and psy-
chology has been characterized by a search for cog-
nitions and emotions that constitute foundations
of moral behavior. This search has often focused
on biological foundations through evolutionary
and neuroscience research and on early develop-
mental foundations through research with infants
and young children (for reviews, see Bloom, 2013;
Thompson, 2012). Babies do indeed show a vari-
ety of moral sensibilities (Bloom, 2013; Vaish &
Tomasello, 2014), but they are not particularly
diverse in their morality. As should be clear from the
present review of findings, however, adults from dif-
ferent cultures are diverse. There is universality and
also increasing multiplicity with development. This
implies that it is insufficient to reach conclusions
about moral development on the basis of research
with children, let alone young ones. Research
across the full life course is necessary. We need to
ask to what extent do early moral reasons remain,
change, or disappear? And to what extent do new
moral reasons emerge later in life? Recently, Bloom
(2013) wittily observed that “there’s some truth to
the claim that lot of developmental psychology is
the study of the interested and alert baby” (p. 25). It
246 Mor a l R e a s on i ng
truly is time that the field moves beyond the kind of
fixation on young children that also characterized
Freud’s work almost a century ago.
Globalization
As should also be clear from the present review,
today’s children and adolescents growing up in
urban areas all over the world typically are exposed
to moral messages from many sources: parents,
peers, after-school counselors, extracurricular
activity coaches, television, magazines, websites,
and so forth. Adults, too, are exposed to myriad
local and global contexts. What moral messages
do these sources convey? To what extent do the
messages reinforce or work against one another?
These are important questions for future research.
Meanwhile, in a number of areas of the world,
especially rural and poor ones, the social con-
texts are different. Children’s daily access to mass
media is much less pronounced. Adolescents, espe-
cially girls, are far less likely to attend secondary
educational institutions. Adults spend little time
involved in the global economy. Children, adoles-
cents, and adults in rural communities spend more
time in the contexts of family and small commu-
nities. What are the implications for their moral
development?
Certainly, globalization does involve a massive
and powerful movement of Western images, people,
and ideas—including moral ones—to the rest of
the world. But the flow also runs in the other direc-
tion. As scholars have pointed out, globalization
may be met with a variety of individual and group
responses, from resistance to new ideas, to whole-
hearted assimilation of the new ideas, to integration
or hybridization of multiple kinds of ideas (Giddens,
1990; Hermans, this volume; Jensen & Arnett,
2012). A focus specifically on how these processes
come into play in regards to moral ideas is timely.
Conclusion
As mentioned at the outset, moral development
researchers have often aspired to provide moral pre-
scriptions. Piaget (1932/1965) held that autonomy
is better than heteronomy. Kohlberg (1981) boldly
asserted that his stage sequence was simultaneously
descriptive and prescriptive of moral development.
It seems no mere coincidence that he published
The Philosophy of Moral Development (1981)
before The Psychology of Moral Development (1984).
But therein also lies the problematic issuethat let-
ting one strict philosophical definition of morality
determine psychological research is bound to leave
out the emic and diverse features of people’s moral
lives. Of course, the other side of the matter is
that detailed, descriptive, explanatory, and predic-
tive accounts of these emic and diverse features do
not, in and of themselves, lead to unambiguous
policy. As should be fairly clear from the present
review, theories and research vary on how clearly
and explicitly they are aimed at prescription and
policy. Moving from description to prescription, in
fact, requires what I—with a nod to my Danish
compatriot Søren Kierkegaard—would call a “leap
of philosophy.” As we conduct research on moral
reasoning and development in a global world, we
need to give increasingly careful consideration to
the extent to which we are making such a leap—
implicitly or explicitly. We would probably also do
well—and here I am leaping—to appreciate that
even as theories of moral reasoning and develop-
ment differ, they may still make contributions to
the collective scientific enterprise.
The research questions that Freud and Piaget
raised about morality almost a century ago in
regards to its definition, development, and context
remain highly relevant. Contemporary research
findings have demonstrated some pervasive pat-
terns for how children and adults define morality,
how they develop morally, and common contexts
of moral relevance. Current and emerging research,
however, is also seriously reframing Freud’s and
Piaget’s questions. This reframing is taking place
in light of the fact that children in different parts
of the world grow up and live in different cultural
circumstances. This reframing is also taking place
in light of the fact that children and adults live in
a rapidly globalizing world of cultural change. The
new focus then is on the plural definitions, devel-
opmental pathways, and contexts that children,
adolescents, and adults experience with respect to
morality.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Jeffrey Arnett, Anne Colby, Sam
Hardy, Allison DiBianca Fasoli, Kyle Matsuba,
Joan Miller, and Laura Padilla-Walker for their
helpful and incisive feedback on this chapter.
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 C H A P T E R

16 The Interaction Between Culture

and the Development of Creativity

Catalina Mourgues, Baptiste Barbot, Mei Tan, and Elena L. Grigorenko

Abstract
There is no creativity without culture because creativity is a phenomenon that results in products
and ideas that are valued differently within different cultural contexts, to be appreciated, embraced,
cultivated, or rejected. For decades, studies have outlined contrasting conceptions of creativity
across cultures or emphasized the role of the cultural context in the development, expression, and
assessment of creativity. In this chapter, the authors discuss the development of creativity in light of
cross-cultural, bicultural, and multicultural studies after presenting a general overview of creativity
as a field of investigation in psychology, including a general definition and related “cultural variations”
of its conception. The authors also consider how cultures’ increasing proximity to each other and
globalization may ultimately impact creativity as a field and as a tangible psychological phenomenon.
Key Words:  creativity, cross-cultural creativity, bicultural creativity, multicultural creativity,
development of creativity, creativity and education

It would be difficult these days to find anyone
who would dispute that creativity is important
and has value—to both individuals and to society.
Creativity is frequently cited as a key ingredient to
economic development and global progress that
may make the difference between success and fail-
ure in facing many of life’s challenges (e.g., Cheng,
2010; Dubina, Carayannis, & Campbell, 2012;
Grigorenko & Tan, 2009). The need to encourage
it and nurture its growth as a part of general educa-
tion has become an imperative in many Western
and Eastern cultures, yet this has not proved an
easy task to fulfill. As the world shrinks through
increased global communication and human
mobility, contrasting conceptions of creativity
across cultures have emerged, along with bicultural
and multicultural perspectives on the concept. For
decades, studies have emphasized the role of cul-
tural context in the development, expression, and
assessment of creativity, and the field is increasingly
enriched with studies of creativity in bicultural and
multicultural contexts. What emerges from these
bodies of literatures is that conceptions, mani-
festations, and evaluations of creativity necessar-
ily change over time and across cultures, but also
within cultures.
In this chapter, we consider the development
of creativity throughout the life span, but espe-
cially in school-aged children, in light of recent
cultural studies of creativity. First, we present a
current overview of creativity as a field of investiga-
tion in psychology, including a general definition
of creativity and related “cultural variations” in
its conception, the main aspects of creativity gen-
erally studied, and related approaches to its mea-
surement. Second, we discuss the most influential
cultural factors for the development of creativity
in children, as identified in both “monocultural”
(i.e., within a single culture) and cross-cultural (i.e.,
comparative) studies. Third, we discuss the effects
of the interactions among multiple cultural con-
texts for the development of creativity, especially

255
within bicultural (within two coexisting or inter-
acting cultures) and multicultural contexts, explor-
ing how they have been found to particularly foster
creativity. Finally, we consider how these merging
cultures may ultimately impact creativity as a field
and as a tangible psychological phenomenon.
Creativity: Its Nature and Assessment
Because creativity can be studied from
many angles, expressed in many domains, and
understood at many different levels (Kozbelt,
Beghetto, & Runco, 2010), it has been associated
with a wide range of definitions, conceptions, theo-
ries, and manifestations. The all-encompassing
commonly accepted view, then, is that it is a phe-
nomenon resulting from the actions of a particular
group or person, at a particular time, in a particular
environment, with a particular outcome or product
that is both original/new and useful/valuable (e.g.,
Amabile, 1996; Kaufman, Plucker, & Baer, 2008;
Sternberg & Lubart, 1995).
How creativity is valued within a culture var-
ies greatly, and although the outcomes of creativity
are generally positively connoted in Western cul-
tures (e.g., leading to beneficial advances in many
domains of art and science)—viewed as “a central
source of meaning in our lives” (Csikszentmihalyi,
1996, p. 1) and essential to proper human devel-
opment (Runco & Cayirdag, 2013)—the “dark
side” of creativity has been increasingly recognized
(Cropley, Cropley, Kaufman, & Runco, 2010).
This darker perspective suggests that creativity out-
comes are not necessarily “useful or valuable” but
may also be malevolent as a function of the values
and decisions that are ancillary to actual creative
work (Runco, 2010). For instance, in an experi-
mental situation in which people are required to
resolve ethical dilemmas (such that maximized
self-interest and the desire to maintain a positive
view of oneself are maintained), dishonest behav-
ior can result from better performance in divergent
thinking: that is, cheating may be discovered as
a creative choice, and individuals may undertake
this option, arguing that others in the same cir-
cumstances would do the same (Gino & Ariely,
2012). Clearly, how creativity is regarded (e.g.,
positively, negatively, even suspiciously) within the
norms and values of a sociocultural environment
will influence the nature and evaluation of creative
work. It may also moderate the changes we might
see in children’s creativity development. Exploring
these interactions is highly relevant as children
and the general population become more exposed
256 T h e I n t e r ac t ion Be t w e e n C u lt u r e a n d t h e De v e l opm e n t of C r e at i v i t y
to environments that are increasingly culturally
complex.
Although the scientific study of creativity began
with a focus on the lives of creative “geniuses”
(e.g., Newton, Bach, Picasso), researchers became
aware that in acknowledging only eminent or “his-
torical” creativity, many other everyday examples
of creativity were being ignored (Beghetto &
Kaufman, 2007; Csikszentmihalyi, 1996; Stein,
1953). Later conceived as a psychological abil-
ity normally distributed (Guilford, 1950), vari-
ous qualitatively distinct levels of creativity were
conceived to extend conceptions of creativity into
the realm of ordinary individuals, including the
child. The Four C model of creativity provides the
framework for these levels (Beghetto & Kaufman,
2007; Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009). The concept
of genius-level, “Big-C” creativity, which describes
eminent, society-changing creativity (cf. Simonton,
1999; e.g., the creation of the incandescent light
bulb; Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony) was extended
to create a concept of everyday or “ little-c” creativ-
ity (e.g., a child writes an imaginative story; a chef
creates a new dish), which many of us engage in
day to day. The latter was then extended to con-
ceive “mini-c” creativity, to describe the personally
novel and meaningful interpretations that children
in particular make as they seek to understand their
experiences and the events going on around them
(e.g., a child realizes that sometimes people cry
when they are happy, not only when they are sad,
or has an insight about the relationship between
addition and subtraction). The fourth level, “Pro-c,”
represents the developmental and effortful level
beyond little-c that has not yet attained Big-C sta-
tus. Anyone who attains professional-level exper-
tise in any creative area is likely to have attained
Pro-c status, the level at which professional team-
work may occur (Beghetto & Kaufman, 2007;
Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009).
Most of the research on creativity to date
focuses on four basic categories of creativity
study, often referred to as the “four P’s”: pro-
cess, product, person (or personality), and place
(or press), see Kozbelt (2010) and Rhodes (1961).
Process describes the sequence of actions (and
thinking processes) that are engaged when an
individual is acting creatively, from the inception
of an idea to its fruition in a creative outcome or
product. Products are the discernible outcomes of
creative activity. They may be theories, systems,
ideas, or things. In the realm of Big-C creativity,
they are generally large-scale, well-recognized,
and have enduring effects on a given field, society,
or culture, such as Shakespeare’s corpus of plays.
Little-c products may include small-scale artistic
creations by students or weekend artists or a novel
solution to an everyday problem. Mini-c, as con-
ceived by Beghetto and Kaufman (2007), results
in internal, interpretive, or transformative events
that are closely connected with learning, such
as the generation of personal knowledge, intel-
lectual connections, or insights, yet these are not
generally considered “products.” Creative persons
refer to the set of individual abilities and traits
that contribute to creative achievements (person-
ality traits, motivations, cognitive skills, habits,
and attitudes). Creative individuals may be iden-
tified within their domain of expertise—paint-
ers, architects, writers, mathematicians—and are
often studied via the measurement of traits that
may predict creative behavior, such as openness
to new experience, the ability to cope with con-
flict and tension, or a sense of humor (Kozbelt et
al., 2010; Rhodes, 1961). Finally, place or press
(for “pressure”; Rhodes, 1961) refers to the rela-
tionship of the creative person to her environ-
ment. Consider the circumstances leading to
the invention of the first basket or wagon, or the
simple desire to make one’s room more pleasant.
Hence, context is a crucial aspect of creativity,
which emphasizes the physical and sociocultural
sources of creative production and the essential
nature of creative products as a response to envi-
ronmental forces (Amabile, 1996; Barbot, Tan,
& Grigorenko, 2013; Csikszentmihalyi, 1988;
Lubart, 1990).
Componential models attempt to capture
the complexity of creativity by mapping out the
interactions of the abilities, traits, dispositions,
processes, and contexts (i.e., the four P’s) that
contribute to creative behavior (Lubart, 1999a)
rather than conceptualizing creativity as an uni-
tary construct. These models include Amabile’s
three-component model (Amabile, 1983; 1996),
Sternberg and Lubart’s investment/confluence
approach (Sternberg, 2006; Sternberg & Lubart,
1991), and Csikszentmihalyi’s systems approach
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1988). In Amabile’s model,
the three necessary components for creativity are
domain-relevant skills, the mental processes rel-
evant to creativity, and motivation. This view situ-
ates the source of creativity within the individual.
According to the investment approach (Sternberg
& Lubart, 1991), six distinct but related resources
must be available: intellectual abilities, knowledge,
Mou rg u e s , B a r b o t, T a n, G r ig or e n k o
styles of thinking, personality, motivation, and
environment. These resources come together pro-
ductively when a creative person chooses to invest
them in the pursuit of a new or out-of-favor idea
that has potential (buying low), persists in spite of
initial resistance, and then gains eventual accep-
tance (selling high). Csikszentmihalyi’s systems
view, in contrast to Amabile’s, conceives of the
social system as the dominant attributor of creativ-
ity. Within the system, a creative individual inter-
acts in a domain and a field, and these both change
as society changes. What is judged to be creative,
then, is determined by the gatekeepers of the field,
that is, the members of a society.
Thus, the different componential models of cre-
ativity emphasize the different degrees to which a
number of individual and environmental resources
(cognitive, personality/conative, motivational and
emotional, material conditions, culture) interact
during the creative process. According to these
approaches, individual differences in creativity
result from differences in people’s endowments
of these key factors (Lubart, 1999b; Sternberg &
Lubart, 1995). Therefore, these models allow us to
understand little-c creativity as well as the rarity
of Big-C creativity, given the low probability that
all of the key factors combine “optimally” for any
given individual.
However, most creativity studies generally
focus on a limited set of factors involved in cre-
ative potential, in particular the cognitive factors.
Indeed, there are currently hundreds of tests and
other measurement instruments that have been
developed to measure specific aspects of creativ-
ity (Barbot, Besancon, & Lubart, 2011; Plucker
& Makel, 2010), but the most commonly used are
tests of divergent thinking (e.g., Guilford, 1967),
a central ability for creativity. In divergent think-
ing tests, cognitive processes are used to produce
many ideas or answers to a single stimulus or
problem. These tests usually emphasize the quan-
tity of ideas generated in answer to the problem
(the generative component, fluency, being indica-
tive of greater potential for creativity), as well as
their quality (in particular, their originality—that
is, the relative infrequency of the response in the
tested population—and elaboration, the degree of
details added to the “base” idea). Of this tradition,
the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT;
Torrance, 1974) is commonly used with both chil-
dren and adults in cross-cultural studies because it
has been translated into 35 languages (Kim, 2006;
Millar, 2002).
257
Different researchers have drawn attention to
the lack of ecological validity and the limited use-
fulness of these measures in cross-cultural contexts
(Plucker & Makel, 2010). Indeed, the use of spe-
cific tests suppose that a particular conception of
creativity is held by the cultures being compared,
and it is possible that the individual is assessed for
skills not situated in their daily life, thus detract-
ing from the ecological validity of the evaluation
(Russ & Fiorelli, 2010). For example, the use
of divergent thinking tests as a basis for cultural
comparison supposes a conception of creativity
that relies on “productivity,” the making of many
ideas, which may be more appropriate in cultural
contexts that value this particular aspect of creativ-
ity. Indeed, several authors (Amabile, 1983; 1996;
Niu & Sternberg, 2002; Westwood & Low, 2003)
offer examples of how the novelty (originality) and
usefulness (appropriateness) of creative ideas might
be modulated by culture. For example, Hempel
and Sue-Chan (2010) present a study showing that
Israelis tend to emphasize the originality of ideas,
whereas Singaporeans focus more on providing
details for their ideas. Hence, divergent thinking
tests provide useful estimates of creative poten-
tial but are not equivalent to creative potential—
divergent thinking being merely one very specific
component of it (Runco, 1993; 2008); these tests
are therefore estimates of creative potential greatly
colored by culture because every culture does not
emphasize this ability in the same ways or to the
same extent.
Instead of focusing on limited aspects of the
creative person (such as divergent thinking), which
may indirectly impose a cultural bias on the general
conception of creativity, product-based assessments
are another common way to measure creative
potential, and these virtually call upon the entire
set of factors involved in creativity (e.g., cogni-
tive, motivational, emotional). In these techniques,
judges are asked to make subjective evaluations of
creative products that are generated by individuals
in standardized conditions to make them compara-
ble. This approach permits the use of various tasks
to assess creativity products in many domains,
such as stories, collages, poems, and other artifacts
(Baer & McKool, 2009; Kaufman, Baer, Cole, &
Sexton, 2008; Niu & Sternberg, 2001). Amabile’s
Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT; 1983) is
one such method. In this approach, no emphasis
is placed on a particular component of creativity
(products are assessed as a whole), and the specific
conception of creativity being used by the judges
258 T h e I n t e r ac t ion Be t w e e n C u lt u r e a n d t h e De v e l opm e n t of C r e at i v i t y
is not important. Rather, the dynamic, social con-
struction of creativity is reflected in the judges col-
lectively. Considering that, within a culture, the
concept of creativity is shared, assessment by judges
can provide a reliable and consensual assessment of
an individual’s level of creativity (Baer, Kaufman,
& Gentile, 2004).
However, notably, it has been proposed that the
CAT may not resolve all of the cross-cultural dif-
ferences that exist between cultures (Chen et al.,
2002). Thus, Chen and colleagues incorporated
into their study design a “derived etic approach”
(Berry, 1989), in which a shared concept is devel-
oped by the two cultures. In an iterative process,
the participants of different cultures critically
examine their own conceptions and build equiva-
lent concepts and variables (Berry, 2013). When
the “universal” concept is jointly constructed, it
is then possible to assess products in both cultures
using a common concept of creativity, thus allow-
ing their comparison within the same framework
of reference. However, as consensus is reached, the
specificity and particularity of each culture’s con-
ception of creativity are necessarily modified. In
their study, Chen and colleagues (2002) explored
whether European-Americans and Chinese dif-
fered in their creation and evaluation of drawings
of geometric shapes. The drawings were judged by
Chinese and European-American judges using the
derived etic approach and the CAT. Results showed
high consensus between the European-American
and Chinese judges and great similarity in the cre-
ativity of drawings generated by the two groups,
showing that a derived etic approach could be
used to build a common construct across cultures
and produce a valid measure of creativity. This
approach becomes increasingly useful as we con-
sider the cultural differences that have been found
to exist among cultures and these cultures’ increas-
ing proximity to each other in globalized societies.
Cultural Variations in the
Conception of Creativity
Culture may be defined as a set of shared tradi-
tions, having presumably a shared national expe-
rience and history, and a common set of beliefs,
values, and preferences for behavior (Lubart, 1990;
1999b). Although explicit theories and definitions
of creativity have generally converged across cul-
tures on the essential characteristics of novelty and
usefulness (some form of applicability) and that cre-
ativity is measurable and can be developed to some
degree (Lubart, 2010), comparative cross-cultural
research on creativity has yielded key differences
among cultures. These differences are most notable
in each culture’s implicit or informal and explicit
conceptions about the process or purpose of cre-
ativity, the types of productions that may be con-
sidered creative, and the characteristics generally
associated with creative individuals. These implicit
beliefs play a strong role in who is considered cre-
ative, what is considered creative, and the best
method for the assessment of creativity.
Comparisons between Eastern and Western
cultures (Asia and North America, generally) have
dominated cross-cultural creativity studies, and
these have illustrated qualitative differences in the
conception of creativity and their possible sources.
For example, Lubart and colleagues (Lubart,
1999b; Lubart & Sternberg, 1998) compared
Eastern and Western implicit conceptions of cre-
ativity in anthropological, literary, and philosophi-
cal sources and found these conceptions to be quite
distinct. Both East and West appear to consider
novelty and cultural appropriateness as important
aspects of creativity, yet the former emphasizes
creative processes and practices that are spiritually
oriented and embedded in a cultural tradition. The
latter appears more centered on productions that
generally emerge from individuals who break from
tradition or stand apart from the collective (Lubart,
1999b; Lubart & Sternberg, 1998). Another way in
which conceptions of creativity have been found to
differ is in notions of what is useful or appropriate.
Although novelty was found to be equally impor-
tant to the recognition of creativity across three
cultures, when considering equally creative prod-
ucts, Chinese assigned greater desirability to novel
products, whereas Japanese and American evalu-
ators found functional items to be more desirable
(Paletz & Peng, 2008).
These differing conceptions necessarily influence
the kinds of products that may be considered cre-
ative. In different cultures, creativity may be exer-
cised within particular constraints. For example,
Yoruba figure carvings maintain a certain style in
the fashioning of the ear and the face, yet variation
(i.e., originality) may be expressed in what is held
in the figure’s hand, in the associated ritual items
and costumes, and in the arrangement of the fig-
ures in relation to each other. In Bali, sculptures of
gods or ritual dances are not permitted much varia-
tion, but carvings of kitchen gods, certain theatrical
and musical performances, and woven containers
may display much more variety and originality
(Mumford, 2003). A different kind of constraint
Mou rg u e s , B a r b o t, T a n, G r ig or e n k o
may be the social values of a culture. It has been
found that cultures that emphasize the value of the
group or collective over the individual will find more
socially oriented productions to be more appropri-
ate or useful. For example, contributing to society
or fulfilling one’s role in life are important aspects
of creativity in China (Lubart & Sternberg, 1998),
where the individual creator’s identity or agency
are seen as secondary, and usefulness to society is
held to be primary, even over originality. Further,
in a comparison of Israeli and Chinese organi-
zations, it was observed that the Chinese social
context tended to be more constraining because
peers or managers were likely to expect conform-
ing or uncertainty-avoiding behavior (Hempel &
Sue-Chan, 2010). Finally, creative products that
are commonly found in one culture may be rare in
another, thus enhancing their originality. Hence,
Yoruba-style figures will probably be found to be
more original outside of the Yoruba culture.
Cultural conceptions of creativity include both
explicit and implicit beliefs that individuals may
hold about the defining characteristics of creative
persons and who may be expected to be creative.
Implicit beliefs indicate how nonexperts conceive
creativity (Runco, 1999; Sternberg, 1985). Runco
and Johnson (2002) define implicit theories as con-
stellations of thoughts and ideas about a particular
construct that are held and applied by individuals,
and these contribute to the development of explicit
theories by professionals (Pizzingrilli & Antonietti,
2010). Studies surveying people’s opinions on cre-
ativity in the United States, Great Britain, Brazil,
Argentina, Cuba, China, Korea, Singapore, India,
and Romania, among other countries, have found
a core set of creative traits in common (Erez &
Nouri, 2010). These include basic cognitive skills,
such as the ability to connect seemingly dispa-
rate ideas, formulate questions, and imagination;
aspects of personality that lead to action, such as
independence, self-confidence, and the willingness
to take risks; and motivational attributes such as
energy, ambition, and enthusiasm (see Kaufman
& Sternberg, 2006). Differences have also been
found in people’s conceptions of what contributes
to creativity. In some cultures, “sense of humor,”
“aesthetics,” and “aesthetic sense” are cited as char-
acteristics of creative people in the United States,
but not in some Asian cultures; likewise “inspires
people,” “makes a contribution to the progress of
society,” and “is appreciated by others” are cited
by Hong Kong Chinese, but not North Americans
(Lubart, 2010; Rudowicz, 2003).
259
Press and Creativity Development
Across Cultures
Over the past few decades, there has been an
increasing interest in the development of cre-
ativity, both in within- and between-culture
(cross-cultural) studies. Less an exercise in “rank-
ing” countries’ performance, these studies have
been more exploratory with respect to the nature
of creativity and how it may manifest itself and
develop differently in different cultures (Lubart,
1999b; 2010). As we consider the most influential
aspects of context (or press) on the development of
creativity, studies from cultures that have put cre-
ativity near the top of their educational agenda are
particularly informative. Many of them emphasize
the general environmental conditions that initially
foster the development of creativity in children up
to adulthood and even into old age (e.g., Albert &
Runco, 1999; Amabile, 1989; Csikszentmihalyi,
1996; Lubart & Sternberg, 1998; Runco &
Cayirdag, 2013; Russ & Fiorelli, 2010).
Specifically, there are particular environmen-
tal conditions that may support the development
of certain processes and personality traits that are
central to creativity, including cognitive processes
such as divergent and convergent thinking, the
processes involved in imagination and pretend
play, and traits such as willingness to take risks and
openness; many of these can be observed and mea-
sured in children (Russ & Fiorelli, 2010). Yet no
one expects creativity in children to be the same as
creativity in adults, and, in early childhood, cre-
ativity will often be expressed at the level of mini-c
(Kudryavtsev, 2011). Whatever its earliest forms,
according to developmental theories of creativity,
creativity may develop from potential to achieve-
ment given the right circumstances (i.e., person–
environment interactions; Kozbelt et al., 2010). The
question is, what are the conditions that may fos-
ter the development of these processes and traits?
In these formative stages, environments proximal
to the individual—such as family, home environ-
ment, and the classroom—are essential to the
development of creativity, having the potential to
encourage or stifle it.
First, family structure and background—the
social and home environment—represent one
important microenvironment for creativity (as
opposed to the macroenvironment of national
culture). The literature suggests that probably the
most important aspect of this environment is the
provision of certain kinds of freedom. Hence,
authoritarian styles of parenting have been related
260 T h e I n t e r ac t ion Be t w e e n C u lt u r e a n d t h e De v e l opm e n t of C r e at i v i t y
negatively to creativity (Eisenman & Cherry, 1970;
Fearon, Copeland, & Saxon, 2013). Children who
can express themselves both emotionally and intel-
lectually in multiple ways—through imaginative
play, fulfilling curiosity, investment in a domain
of interest—seem to develop with higher capacities
for creativity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996; Runco &
Cayirdag, 2013; Subotnik, Olszewski-Kubilius, &
Arnold, 2003). All aspects of family structure that
support this context appear to be important to
creativity development. For instance, Gaynor and
Runco (1992) reported that firstborn children are
overrepresented in musicians, and they tend to
obtain higher scores in divergent thinking. Yet it
was also reported that children with more siblings
may benefit creatively from sibling interactions and
that they also tend to obtain higher scores in verbal
divergent thinking. Additionally, parental attitudes
and beliefs concerning child rearing may influence
the amount of independence and autonomy that a
child is allowed to exercise, and these may make
room for original thinking and freedom from con-
ventional ways and norms. In fact, parent beliefs
about creativity are generally less influential to cre-
ativity development than their general beliefs and
attitudes concerning children’s independence and
need for respect and freedom (Runco & Cayirdag,
2013). It has also been found that parents’ levels
of creativity tend to be higher than their children’s
and also are predictive of their children’s levels of
creativity (Fearon et al., 2013).
The second microenvironment of importance
is the school environment. Davies and colleagues
(2013) reported in a review of 210 articles, pre-
dominantly from European countries, the key
characteristics of environments and conditions that
are most effective in promoting creative skills in
children in a school context. They include physi-
cal environment, availability of resources/materi-
als, use of the outdoor environment, pedagogical
environment, use of other environments beyond
the school, play-based learning, effective and flex-
ible use of time, and relationships between teachers
and learners. With respect to the teacher-learner
relationship, which is among the most important
characteristics of the classroom, high expecta-
tions, mutual respect, the modeling of creative
attitudes, flexibility, and dialogue are among the
most important features (Davies et al., 2013). Two
general aspects seem most influential: the struc-
ture, atmosphere and operation of the classroom,
and the attitude of the teacher toward creativity.
In the structured environment of the classroom,
assessment, limitation of choices, pressure to con-
form, competition, and rote learning can dura-
bly compromise creativity development in school
(Beghetto, 2005; Kudryavtsev, 2011). Much of the
school environment’s influence on creativity comes
from the implicit expectations that are embedded
both in classroom procedures and teachers. As an
illustration, Wallach and Kogan (1965, as cited in
Runco & Cayirdag, 2013) found that the same cre-
ative activity proposed in different classroom con-
texts evoked very different responses. When given a
divergent thinking task in a test-like environment,
only children who routinely did well on traditional
academic tests scored highly. When the same
exercises were presented as a game that would not
be graded, many who usually did not do well on
traditional academic tests were able to perform at
very high levels. Therefore, students’ expectations
of their own performance within certain contexts
may affect creative outcomes. Similarly, teachers’
implicit views may lead to expectations of behavior
or performance that lead to erroneous judgments
(Rosenthal, 1991). For example, teachers may
expect “ideal” or well-behaved students to also be
creative and may then judge them to be so, whether
they are or not. In addition, it has been found that
teachers’ implicit views of creative children’s attri-
butes may cause them to treat these children either
positively or negatively (e.g., Runco & Johnson,
1993; Scott, 1999; Westby & Dawson, 1995).
Thus, both home and school environments can
affect the development of creativity profoundly by
encouraging it or discouraging it, either implic-
itly or explicitly. Explicit methods to encourage
the development of creativity in the classroom
have mostly taken place in the Western world.
For example, alternative pedagogies in France
(Montessori and Freinet) resulted in higher cre-
ative performance in students compared to those
exposed to traditional school pedagogy (Besançon
& Lubart, 2008; Besançon, Lubart, & Barbot,
2013). In the United States, interventions to
foster creativity have often taken the form of
training for specific thinking processes such as
divergent thinking (Lubart & Guignard, 2004)
and short-term interventions, resulting in mixed
outcomes (Russ, 2003). More successful interven-
tions have involved efforts to improve children’s
play skills, such as dramatic play, imaginative play,
and affective play (Moore & Russ, 2008). In the
United Kingdom, Craft and colleagues’ implemen-
tations of Possibility Thinking (question-posing,
play, immersion, innovation, risk-taking, being
Mou rg u e s , B a r b o t, T a n, G r ig or e n k o
imaginative, self-determination, and intentional-
ity), in which adults place a high value on enabling
children’s agency, yielded encouraging results in
preschool-aged children of 5 years and younger
(Craft, McConnon, & Matthews, 2012).
It must be noted, however, that the United
States and the United Kingdom have reported
teachers’ difficulty with integrating creativity into
the traditional classroom routines. Via question-
naire and qualitative observations of the learning
community, Eckhoff (2011) found that preservice
teachers valued creative thinking but were unsure
about how to support it in early childhood class-
rooms, viewing such classrooms as restrictive
teaching environments dominated by top–down
curricula. Similarly, Burnard and White (2008)
in the United Kingdom recognized the challenge
to teachers in teaching creativity while meeting
demanding requirements for academic perfor-
mance. A Finnish study also reflected difficulty
in implementing creativity learning activities; it
was found that although primary school teachers
found play enjoyable and possible to integrate into
the activities of the classroom, the implementation
of “process play” (Morgan & Kennewell, 2006) in
which play-oriented (low-risk), child-led learning is
engaged, was found least often (Hyvönen, 2011).
These exemplify how some European countries
have been working to develop their own methods
and strategies to address the fostering of creativity
within the school context.
Asian studies also report an increasing impera-
tive to nurture children’s creativity in the classroom,
with ongoing struggles to do so. A comparative
study of Asian cultures—Chinese, Taiwanese,
and Hong Kong—showed that teachers believed
in the importance of teaching creativity, yet their
attitudes and beliefs about the implementation of
creativity learning in the classroom were gener-
ally negative (Chien & Hui, 2010). Teachers either
believed that the school context resisted this kind
of teaching (Taiwan), that teaching creativity was
not the purview of the school but of the home
(China), or that no changes in the curriculum were
needed or could be made (Hong Kong). The ten-
sions caused by the conflict between positive asso-
ciations with creativity and negative experiences
with its practice in schools is unpacked further in
a Hong Kong study that found multiple levels of
conflict between teaching creativity and the school
context, on the individual, system, and cultural
levels; these seemed to stem from basic discrepan-
cies between traditional beliefs about culture and
261
education and new ideas promoting creative learn-
ing (Cheng, 2010).
Regarding teachers’ implicit views of creativ-
ity, in a survey of the literature on teachers’ per-
ceptions of creativity in the classroom (Skiba, Tan,
Sternberg, & Grigorenko, 2010), findings from
the United States generally revealed some distance
between teachers’ expressed support of creativity
and acceptance of creative behavior in the class-
room. In cross-cultural studies, differences with
India were found, with the United States’ teachers
favoring attitude- and intellectual-related defini-
tions of creativity over their Indian counterparts
(Runco & Johnson, 2002). In Chinese and Korean
studies, teachers have been found to view creative
traits as socially undesirable (Chan & Chan, 1999;
Seo, Lee, & Kim, 2005). Hence, although cultural
differences have been found, teachers’ contradic-
tory views about the characteristics of creative chil-
dren seem fairly consistent across cultures.
Whether resulting from similar environmental
factors (such as teachers’ discrepancies between
implicit view of creativity and beliefs about culture
and education) or not, developmental trajectories of
creativity in childhood show similar patterns across
cultures. In general, most developmental (longitu-
dinal and cross-sectional) studies have shown a
clear increase of creativity from childhood to ado-
lescence, yet the development of creativity appears
to follow nonlinear paths. The majority of these
studies have proposed that the major determinant
of creativity is the variety of ideas that are gener-
ated in a problem-solving context within the ide-
ation phase of the creative process (Zeng, Proctor,
& Salvendy, 2011). Divergent thinking tests gen-
erally represent closed-problem and open-solution
situations more related with problem recognition
and expressive problem solving than with creativ-
ity per se (Zeng et al., 2011). However, despite the
fact that this is not a comprehensive measure of
creativity, divergent thinking tasks have been used
in several studies, and many conceptions of creativ-
ity development have been based on this kind of
measure.
One of the best known of such studies was
undertaken by Torrance, who collected data using
his TTCT (Torrance, 1962) from approximately
350 Minnesotan K–12 students over a 5-year
period (1959–1964). Cross-sectionally, he identi-
fied a notable downturn in creative performance
in fourth graders, which he coined “the fourth
grade slump” (Torrance, 1962; 1967). Presenting
data from a randomly selected set of 100 third,
262 T h e I n t e r ac t ion Be t w e e n C u lt u r e a n d t h e De v e l opm e n t of C r e at i v i t y
fourth, and fifth graders, he confirmed this pat-
tern of results longitudinally (Torrance, 1967) and
proposed that this pattern might be the result of
the behavior changes required by formal schooling;
that is, adaptation, compromise, and the accep-
tance of social authority. Several other Western,
within-culture studies have examined creativ-
ity development in various ways and in different
populations using different measures and different
research designs and have produced similar results.
Studies of creativity development in children
in other countries show similar variations; that
is, general upward growth with dips or slumps in
creativity at various age points along the way (e.g.,
Camp, 1994; Charles & Runco, 2001; Claxton,
Pannells, & Rhoads, 2005; Smolucha & Smolucha,
1985). Several of these studies, in agreement with
Torrance, cite characteristics of the school envi-
ronment as the likely source of these fluctuations
in creativity development (Lau & Cheung, 2010;
Smith & Carlsson, 1983; Urban, 1991). A 3-year
cross-sequential (simultaneously cross-sectional
and longitudinal over four time points) study of
primary school children’s divergent thinking using
adapted culture-free nonverbal divergent thinking
tests traced creativity development in two groups
of children, one in Luxembourg and the other in
Germany (Krampen, 2012). At the first measure-
ment occasion, children were in grades K–3; by
the third measurement occasion, children spanned
grades K–6. Luxembourg is a multilingual nation
with three official languages (French, German,
and Letzeburgisch); also, approximately 40% of
its population has a migration background with a
different primary language (generally Portuguese,
Italian, or English). The German sample was
monolingual with only a 5% migration back-
ground. Therefore, the only difference in the imple-
mentation of the two parallel administrations was
that tests were administered in the language of the
child’s choice in Luxembourg, but monolingually
in Germany. Despite these cultural differences,
results revealed that all cohorts in both groups
showed similar patterns of growth in divergent
thinking over time, with two distinct slumps—one
shortly after school entry, between first and sec-
ond grades, and the other between fifth and sixth
grades in Luxembourg, and third and fourth grades
in Germany (Krampen, 2012). The authors inter-
pret these results as strong support for Torrance’s
proposal of systematic irregularities or slumps in
children’s creativity development. Similarly to
Torrance, they explain the first slump as a response
to the rising demands of education for children’s
social conformity, acceptance of authority, and
convergent over divergent thinking. The second
slumps in both countries correspond to place-
ment strategies that take place in the fourth grade
in Germany and the sixth grade in Luxembourg,
which cause a great deal of stress for students,
teachers, and parents alike. Given the notable cul-
tural heterogeneity of Luxembourg’s population
and the relative homogeneity of Germany’s, one
might have expected more contrasting results. In
sum, studies are more or less consistent in identi-
fying specific slumps during childhood that may
reflect the demands of schooling but also how these
demands interact with the cognitive development
of children.
Yet, recent bicultural and multicultural studies
provide some insight into how such varied cultural
contexts might affect creativity.
Biculturalism and Creativity
Bicultural experiences occur when two cul-
tural identities coexist in an individual. A set of
research has suggested that the experience of living
or working in other cultures can stimulate creative
abilities (Leung & Chiu, 2010; Leung, Maddux,
Galinsky, & Chiu, 2008b; Maddux, Leung, Chiu,
& Galinsky, 2009). For example, correlational
studies have shown that in different creativity tasks,
individuals who are living abroad show better per-
formance than do those who are not living abroad
(Hempel & Sue-Chan, 2010). Supporting these
results, Fee and Gray (2012) hypothesized that liv-
ing abroad triggered different cognitive processes
necessary for adaptation to the new culture. In the
process of adaptation, the individuals internalized a
series of cognitive adjustments as a means of coping
in the new environment. Fee and Gray developed
the expatriate creativity hypothesis (expatriates are
defined as people who spend a period of time living
and working in a foreign country). They assessed
the creative thinking skills of a sample of expatri-
ates and a control group of non-expatriates over
the first 12 months of expatriation. During this
time, the expatriates showed significant increases
in creative thinking abilities and cognitive flexibil-
ity. Maddox and Galinsky (2009) showed that the
time lived abroad is related to better performance
in creativity in the figural domain and in making
creative associations between ideas compared to
individuals who had not lived abroad.
However, not all of the individuals who were
living or working abroad appeared to increase their
Mou rg u e s , B a r b o t, T a n, G r ig or e n k o
creativity. The process of cultural adaptation—
or acculturation—can be defined as a change in
attitudes, beliefs, norms, values, and behaviors to
be more consistent with those of a local, foreign
culture (Berry, 1989; 1997; Furnham & Bochner,
1986; Ward, 1996). The processes of cultural adap-
tation could develop in different ways and through
various attitudes. Berry (1989) classified these atti-
tudes into four groups: assimilation, integration,
separation, and marginalization. Individuals who
adopt an integration perspective are more inclined
to develop a bicultural identity; that is, an iden-
tity characterized by identification with the values
and beliefs of both cultures, the culture of origin
and the hosting culture (Berry & Sam, 1997).
These individuals tend to develop higher creativ-
ity outcomes. For example, bicultural individuals
are particularly sensitive to cultural cues, espe-
cially if they identify with the cultures represented
(Hong, Morris, Chiu, & Benet-Martinez, 2000).
In a study by Tadmor, Tetlock, and Peng (2009),
expatriate experiences produced more complex
thinking when the expatriates identified with both
their home and host cultures. Therefore, a success-
ful acculturation process allows the expansion of
cultural restrictions on what is considered creative,
which ultimately could affect positively psychologi-
cal outcomes such as creativity (Leung, Maddux,
Galinsky, & Chiu, 2008a).
In contrast, individuals may experience cultural
changes as “culture shock” and feel overwhelmed
by seemingly insurmountable cultural differences
(Ward, Bochner, & Furnham, 2001). In this case,
individuals handle the stress of culture shock by
clinging to the beliefs, values, and behaviors of
their own culture; thus, as a result of exposure
to a foreign culture, they may become more rigid
(Chao, Chen, Roisman, & Hong, 2007; Leung
et al., 2008a).
Studies show that creative performance in bicul-
tural contexts is influenced by different factors.
For example, Mok and Morris (2010) show that
the degree of bicultural identity integration (BII;
Benet-Martinez, Leu, Lee, & Morris, 2002) has an
effect on creative performance. A group of Asian
Americans with high BII obtained higher original-
ity scores in divergent thinking tasks when com-
pared with Asian Americans with low BII. Leung
and Chiu (2010) found that even brief exposure to
multicultural information could improve creativ-
ity. Students who were shown information about
Chinese culture, American culture, and both
together showed better performance in creativity
263
tasks. But, more interestingly, those students who
were exposed simultaneously to both Chinese and
American cultures obtained the highest scores.
Hence, the authors suggest that the cognitive jux-
taposition of seemingly non-overlapping ideas from
two cultures activates a creative mindset and pro-
duces creative outcomes.
Perceived cultural distance—subjective com-
parisons between cultures—is another factor that
affects creative outcomes. Experimental studies
have shown that the manipulation of the perceived
cultural distance has an effect on creative perfor-
mance (Cheng & Leung, 2012). That is, the mind-
set that people adopt to compare cultures could
affect their performance on creativity tasks. Cheng
and Leung (2012) found that individuals who
are exposed to dual-cultural information that has
higher levels of perceived cultural distance show
better performance in creative insight tasks when
they are personally predisposed to or experimen-
tally manipulated to adopt a difference (vs. simi-
larity) mindset. In contrast, in the same situation
with lower levels of perceived cultural distance, the
mindset adopted by the individual did not have
an effect on his creativity performance. Thus, this
study showed the importance of the interactions
between perceptions about cultures and individual
attitude. Both factors may be potentially important
in explaining why not all bicultural experiences
similarly increase creativity skills.
Concerning children in bicultural situations,
illustratively, Lau and colleagues (2013) studied
bicultural effects in children using a four-group
design, which differs from the normal two-group
design in experimental studies of bicultural effects.
The comparison of French children living in Paris
and Chinese children living in Hong Kong seems
particularly relevant because Paris has been viewed
as the European crossroads for ideas and scien-
tific knowledge (Mouchiroud & Lubart, 2006)
and Hong Kong as the meeting point of Eastern
and Western cultures (Lau, Hui, & Ng, 2004).
The authors found some interesting mixed bicul-
tural effects favoring verbal divergent responses
for French children and graphic integrative
responses for Chinese children. Compared with
the Paris-French children, the bicultural Hong
Kong-French children had significantly higher
scores in figural fluency, figural flexibility, and
figural uniqueness of Wallach-Kogan Creativity
Test (WKCT; Wallach & Kogan, 1965) requiring
only verbal divergent responses but significantly
lower scores in the graphic divergent-exploratory
264 T h e I n t e r ac t ion Be t w e e n C u lt u r e a n d t h e De v e l opm e n t of C r e at i v i t y
measure of Evaluation of Potential Creativity
(EPoC; Lubart, Besancon, & Barbot, 2011).
Compared with Hong Kong-Chinese children, the
bicultural Paris-Chinese children had significantly
higher scores in the graphic measures of creativity
in EPoC but significantly lower scores in fluency
and flexibility in both verbal and figural tasks.
The authors suggest that these results are related
to the different bicultural experiences of the chil-
dren. The Chinese children in France go to French
school, whereas the French children in Hong Kong
attend a French-language school. Thus, the differ-
ences between the bicultural and monocultural
groups of children could be related to both the cre-
ativity domains developed previously by their own
cultures and the new requirements of their guest
cultures.
Correspondingly, bilingualism could be under-
stood as a natural consequence of BII development
(Simonton, 2008). Different studies have argued
that bilingualism is associated with better perfor-
mance on creativity tasks (Kharkhurin, 2008).
The initial meta-analysis by Ricciardelli (1992)
showed that most studies reflect a positive relation-
ship between bilingualism and different measures
of divergent thinking. For example, Kharkhurin
(2007) found that Russian-English bilingual col-
lege students outperformed their English mono-
lingual counterparts on fluency, flexibility, and
elaboration in divergent thinking. However, simi-
lar to cross-cultural studies, the results for bilingual
studies vary according to the mother tongue and
the kind of second language acquired. For instance,
Kharkhurin (2008) revealed that Russian-English
bilingual college students showed a better per-
formance than their English monolingual coun-
terparts on fluency, flexibility, and elaboration in
divergent thinking. In another study, Kharkhurin
(2009) found that Farsi-English bilingual students
showed greater originality compared with their
Farsi monolingual counterparts but showed no
advantages in generative capacity.
Together, these findings suggest that the effect
of bilingual development on creativity differs across
cultures and that the influence of bilingualism on
cognitive and creative abilities should be consid-
ered within the sociocultural context. In addition,
different findings may be due to proficiency in the
second language or the degree of bicultural iden-
tity integration. Chen, Benet-Martínez, and Harris
Bond (2008) argue that bicultural identity is not
only a phenomenon that occurs in individuals as
a result of immigration, but also is a phenomenon
present in majority groups who come into contact
with other cultures, leading to multicultural and
multilingual societies (e.g., Hong-Kong, Quebec,
or Catalonia).
The Multicultural Context and
the Development of Creativity
An idea that has firmly taken root is that mul-
ticultural contexts and multicultural experiences
increase knowledge about the world and in this way
increase the creativity of individuals. In fact, many
current practices in educational and organizational
settings are based on the assumption that multi-
cultural experiences foster creativity (Leung et al.,
2008a). However, how creativity may be improved
in these contexts has only recently been explored.
Leung, Maddux, Galinsky, and Chiu (2008a)
showed that multicultural experiences increase
creative performance and the use of some
creativity-supporting cognitive processes. The
bulk of studies concerning multicultural contexts
and creativity are those related to working teams
in industry and other business or commercial set-
tings (Stahl, Maznevski, Voigt, & Jonsen, 2010).
The general idea is that improvement in creative
products is related to a culturally heterogeneous
team composition in which each member brings to
the team new ideas, different perspectives, and sev-
eral strategies for problem solving (Leung & Chiu,
2010). In other words, a multicultural context
may enhance the knowledge and skills of a team
(Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005; Tadmor &
Tetlock, 2006). Complementarily, a study by
Tadmor and colleagues (2012) explored whether
the performance in creativity in a brainstorm-
ing session improved compared with individual
performance when multicultural experiences and
individual creativity were controlled. Their result
showed that dyads performed best on a creative
task when both dyad partners had high levels of
multicultural experience even when individual cre-
ativity levels were controlled. These results suggest
that multicultural experiences are important pre-
dictors of team creativity.
However, a meta-analysis by Stahl and col-
leagues (2010) suggested that the relationship
between creativity and multiculturalism is not
direct. The size of the groups, the type of task, and
team tenure, among other variables, may affect
the overall creativity and productivity of a team.
Multicultural teams may be more creative because
multiculturalism in a team improves divergent pro-
cesses, but it also could decrease the convergent
Mou rg u e s , B a r b o t, T a n, G r ig or e n k o
processes that are also involved in the creative
work. In other words, the team could be more pro-
ductive with respect to generating new ideas but
could struggle to make decisions about and engage
with a specific idea. In sum, whereas cross-cultural
comparisons of creativity development in mono-
cultural contexts reflect many similarities among
cultures (as well as some differences), it seems that
the richer inquiries and environments for creativity
may be found in multicultural contexts. When one
country borrows things from another (concepts,
products, practices) without a sense of dual iden-
tity, as in some bicultural situations, the exchange
may not foster creative outcomes. In these cases, it
is likely that those elements that are shared across
cultures (although recognized as foreign) are prone
to blending. Therefore, creativity is not enhanced.
On a smaller scale, many schools in the United
States have multicultural groups. Considering the
studies reported in this chapter, we might expect
this condition to make children more creative.
However, we found no information to support this
empirically. Multicultural studies in children have
instead focused on the management of cultural
differences in the classroom and the difficulties of
multilingualism (Cvikić, 2012; Patiño-Santos &
Rubinstein, 2012). This may be closely related with
the fact that schooling and the goals of teachers,
as observed earlier, may not be supportive of the
development of creativity. The study of creativity
development in multicultural groups—how to turn
diversity into innovation, in the classroom and out-
side of it—may be the next step in nurturing cre-
ativity worldwide.
Conclusion: Accomplishments,
Limitations, and Future Inspirations
In this chapter, we explored different aspects of
how creativity is conceptualized, how it is devel-
oped, and the cultural factors that have influenced
the perception, development, and assessment of
creativity. Over the years, a great deal has been
learned about how children become creative
within various cultures throughout the world.
Studies focused on understanding the role of mul-
ticultural contexts in the development of creativ-
ity have shown more clearly how different cultural
elements and factors can shape the development
of creativity. For example, cross-cultural studies
have shown how implicit and explicit conceptions
of creativity manifest themselves in different cre-
ativity profiles across cultures; some cultures are
more oriented to promote novel ideas whereas
265
others are more centered on the usefulness of the
ideas (Lubart, 1999b; Sternberg & Lubart, 1995).
Implicit and explicit conceptions of creativity also
play an important role at the school and family
level because they may promote or suppress the
exploration of new environments or learning strat-
egies, which are related to the fostering of creativ-
ity (Runco & Cayirdag, 2013; Smith & Carlsson,
1983). At the same time, general patterns found
in other studies have indicated interesting indi-
vidual differences in the development of creativity.
Some of these differences are related to how indi-
viduals internalize the culture (develop precon-
ceptions) and the kinds of experiences to which
they are exposed within their particular cultures.
Bicultural studies have provided an important
source for understanding how individual and
contextual variables interact to produce new and
innovative ideas. Further studies in this field are
conceiving more experimental designs to address
these interactions (Maddux, Adam, & Galinsky,
2010; Saad, Damian, Benet-Martinez, Moons, &
Robins, 2012).
Yet one of the many remaining challenges in the
field is to develop assessment tools and other strate-
gies to evaluate the multiple aspects of creativity
and simultaneously compare their performance
across cultures while appropriately taking into
consideration different cultures’ conceptions of
creativity. With proper strategies, we may be able
to discern either the creative differences between
cultures or what they share in common creatively
but not yet the two together. A second, intriguing,
and imminent challenge we face is that, although
several studies have shown the effect of a multicul-
tural context on creativity, we do not know how
and by what mechanisms their interactions may
change over time. Each day seems to bring these
questions closer to home.
Knowing that the current flow of immigration
will most likely lead to increasing numbers of mul-
ticultural societies, what are the implications for
creativity? Looking ahead, we can only speculate
about the way multicultural contexts—the press
of the future—will change the face of creativity.
According to a sociocultural view of creativity,
such as Glăveaunu’s proposed cultural framework
of creativity (2010), the creator is connected to pre-
vious creations (existing culture), others (society),
and the new artifacts created. The creator, in this
view, will become a multicultural “we,” and the
products made in these new contexts will be dis-
tinct from any other age.
266 T h e I n t e r ac t ion Be t w e e n C u lt u r e a n d t h e De v e l opm e n t of C r e at i v i t y
Yet how will these creative products or ideas—
whatever they are—be judged? In her comparison
of Eastern and Western conceptions of creativity,
Rudowicz (2003) noted that in explicit views of
creativity newness seemed valued by the West but
not the East, which held adaptation to be more esti-
mable, and that the logical approach was practiced
more by the West versus the intuitive approach of
the East. When these views merge, how will nov-
elty be weighed? Or usefulness? In a context of
multiculturalism, what will be considered original?
The “derived etic approach” (Berry, 1989), in
which a shared concept is developed by two cul-
tures, now seems prescient because such agree-
ments may soon need to be made within a country
or within what may be seen as a new culture. Will
divergent thinking still be relevant? What will the
East’s moral conception of creativity contribute to
the West’s? These are merely examples because cur-
rent trends predict contributions from all corners of
the earth. In trends followed by Kim (2011), cre-
ativity would appear to be decreasing since 1990,
even as IQ scores have risen. In addition, it has
been observed that creativity appears to diminish
in immigrants after two generations (Simonton,
1999). Yet, according to the research presented ear-
lier concerning creativity in these contexts, future
multicultural societies have the potential to be more
creative than ever. The question is, will they be?
Acknowledgments
This work would not have been possible with-
out the generous support of Karen Jensen Neff
and Charles Neff, who have always believed in the
importance of developing and recognizing chil-
dren’s creativity. We would also like to thank the
Spencer Foundation for its contribution.
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 C H A P T E R

17 Parental Ethnotheories and the

Development of Family Relationships
in Early and Middle Childhood
Sara Harkness, Caroline Johnston Mavridis, Jia Ji Liu, and Charles M. Super

Abstract
This chapter reviews research on the cultural organization of early and middle childhood, with
particular reference to how parents’ cultural beliefs (parental ethnotheories) influence practices
that define relationships within the family. The authors first consider the cultural construction of
developmental agendas for early and middle childhood—the shared expectations that parents hold
regarding what children should be able to learn and do at specific points in their development, then
review several theoretical frameworks for the study of parents’ ideas, practices, and their effects on
children’s activities and routines of daily life. An alternative approach is used, based on documenting,
comparing, and analyzing research on particular samples of families within geographically defined
culture areas and also considering the roles of fathers, siblings, and grandparents. The review also
examines how children’s temperamental differences are differentially perceived and responded to
across cultures. Avenues for future research are also suggested.
Key Words:  early childhood, middle childhood, parenting practices, parental ethnotheories, culture,
temperament, Asia, Africa, Europe, United States

In the early 1970s, Sara Harkness and Charles
Super spent 3 years living in Kokwet, a small, rural
community of Kipsigis families in western Kenya,
doing research on child development and fam-
ily life. Sara became a “new mother” there, and as
Kokwet consisted of just 54 households, everyone
knew about the “European” family and took an
interest in their latest member “Chepkemoi,” the
baby’s Kipsigis name indicating that she had been
born at night, in far-away Nairobi.
It was not long after their return to Kokwet
with the new baby that Sara was back to studying
the Kipsigis language under the tutelage of Arap
Maritim, a neighbor whose education gave him
some authority as a teacher, and our senior research
assistant Lila Grace. On a cool afternoon as they
sat in the living room of what had once been a
British settler’s home—now on loan by the com-
munity to the researchers—the Kipsigis lesson was
interrupted by the cries of little Chepkemoi, who
was just waking up from a nap in her room on the
other side of the house.
“I’ll just wait to finish this section of the les-
son before getting her out of bed,” Sara thought,
not wanting to interrupt the teacher and perhaps
thinking that picking up fussing babies too quickly
might “spoil” them. Her Kipsigis mentors, how-
ever, knew better—and also saw that the new
mother needed guidance from more experienced
parents.
“Pick up the baby, Sara,” they advised; it was
clear that she had already kept the baby waiting in
distress longer than proper. Sara hastened to pick
the baby up, and the lesson continued without fur-
ther interruption as Sara nursed her baby.
On a later occasion, Sara and Lila Grace arrived
at the homestead of the Mitei family and encoun-
tered the following scene, as we have described

271
elsewhere (Harkness & Super, 1996). Mrs. Mitei,
whom we were to interview on this occasion, was
busy chopping wood outside her hut, wielding a
large ax with practiced dexterity as she split a log
into pieces small enough for the cooking fire inside.
As usual, several of her seven children could be
seen nearby doing other chores, playing, or sitting
together. Our attention was immediately drawn to
one child, however. Two-year-old Kibet was sitting
by himself on a tree stump, wailing lustily and kick-
ing his feet against the stump; his face was screwed
into a picture of anger and misery even though few
tears were in evidence. The scene was striking in
the contrast between the agitation of the little boy
and the calm lack of concern of his mother.
“What’s the matter with Kibet?” Lila asked after
the customary greeting. Mrs. Mitei’s answer was
succinct but expressive: “Kasinyin” (literally, “his
work”). The child was “doing his thing,” as we
might have put it—there was nothing really wrong
with him so no further attention was required, and
he would soon enough get over it on his own.
Although quite different in their apparent regard
for a child’s emotional state, both of these scenar-
ios reflect well-practiced cultural scripts in which
the parents we observed could either tell us what
should be done or simply demonstrate it. The cus-
toms of care that these scripts illustrate are, in turn,
instantiations of parental ethnotheories about the
nature and needs of babies and toddlers; together,
they represent two of the three components of the
Developmental Niches of children in this particu-
lar community. (The third component, settings of
daily life, creates the context for the other two: see
Harkness & Super, 2012; Super & Harkness, 1986,
2002). The two scenarios also illustrate the devel-
opmental specificity of children’s culturally orga-
nized niches—a point that we take for granted in
our own cultures while sometimes finding it sur-
prising in others. Like development itself, however,
the niches of children as they progress from one
culturally recognized stage to the next build on
each other, elaborating internally consistent themes
over time (Super & Harkness, 1999). One of our
tasks as students of development across cultures is
to understand the logic of this locally understood
consistency and how it plays out (or fails to play out,
in some instances) in the relationships that parents
construct with their children, as well as in the rela-
tionships that children build with each other.
In this chapter, we review research on the cul-
tural organization of children’s lives in early and
middle childhood, with particular reference to
272 Pa r e n t a l E t h no t h e or i e s a n d t h e De v e l opm e n t of Fa m i ly R e l at ions h i p s
the ways that parents’ cultural beliefs, or parental
ethnotheories, are instantiated in practices that in
turn define relationships within the family. We first
consider the cultural construction of developmen-
tal agendas for early and middle childhood—the
shared expectations that parents hold regarding
what children should be able to learn and do at spe-
cific points in their development. We then review
several theoretical frameworks for the study of par-
ents’ ideas and practices and their effects on chil-
dren’s activities and routines of daily life, including
an ethnographically derived set of distinctions
based on cultural regions. Most of the published
literature concerns mothers and children, but we
also consider children’s relationships with fathers,
siblings, and grandparents. Our review also consid-
ers how individual differences in children’s temper-
ament are differentially perceived and responded to
across cultures. In conclusion, we reflect on what
has been learned about culture and family rela-
tions, and we suggest avenues for future research.
Developmental Expectations: Setting
the Agenda for Parenting
Although universal stages of childhood are rec-
ognized across different cultures, parents’ expecta-
tions of the particular skills or competencies that
children should have mastered at these stages vary
dramatically. Recognition of such culturally con-
stituted “developmental timetables” was an early
discovery of cross-cultural research (Ninio, 1979)
that proved generative of a continuing tradition.
As Edwards, Gandini, and Giovaninni (1996)
explain, developmental timetables are important
for children’s actual development because they lead
to early mastery of culturally valued competencies
(see also Edwards, Ren, & Brown, this volume).
A great deal of research on developmental time-
tables has used a questionnaire created by a team
of US and Japanese researchers (the Developmental
Expectations Questionnaire [DEQ]; Hess,
Kashiwagi, Azuma, Price, & Dickson, 1980). The
DEQ was developed to measure adults’ expecta-
tions of child behavior in seven domains: Emotional
maturity, Compliance, Politeness, Independence,
School-related skills, Social skills, and Verbal
assertiveness. Looking back at the content of the
DEQ, it is not surprising to find that the instru-
ment itself reflects both its historical and cultural
context. A few items (notably “Makes phone calls
without help,” “Can tell time to a quarter-hour,”
and “Looks things up in picture encyclopedia”)
reflect skills that are no longer needed in quite the
same form, given the digital revolution of recent
decades. Some items seem (at least to us) particu-
larly “American” (e.g. “Spends own money care-
fully,” “Stands up for own rights with others”)
whereas others seem more “Japanese” (e.g. “Gives
up reading or TV to help mother,” “Gets own way
by persuading friends”). The items, to be rated in
relation to “children in general,” are to be assigned
to one of three age groups (younger than 4 years,
4–6 years, and 6 years or older), thus capturing the
transition from early to middle childhood.
Using a slightly adapted version of the DEQ,
Goodnow, Cashmore, Cotton, and Knight
(1984) compared the developmental timetables
of Lebanese-born mothers residing in Australia
with Anglo-Australian mothers, and they also
reanalyzed Hess et al.’s earlier data on US and
Japanese mothers. They found that both the
Anglo-Australian mothers and the US mothers
had earlier expectations than did the Lebanese
and Japanese mothers, particularly with regard to
social skills with peers and verbal assertiveness.
Relatedly, the Anglo-Australian mothers, who
had earlier expectations for school-related skills,
more frequently reported teaching their children
such skills before their children entered school.
Although these mothers were somewhat more edu-
cated on average than their Lebanese counterparts
(neither group was highly educated), mothers’ years
of schooling were not significantly related to dif-
ferences in their developmental expectations; the
authors concluded that the differences they saw
were essentially cultural.
Further research by Goodnow and her associates
(Goodnow, 1996) provides additional insight into
cultural differences between the Anglo-Australian
and Lebanese-born mothers by focusing specifically
on developmental expectations related to household
chores. The Anglo-Australian mothers expected
their 5-year-old children so do “some regular job,”
although the jobs the mothers mentioned—for
example, putting pajamas under the pillow, mak-
ing their bed by pulling up the duvet—were, as the
authors put it (p. 319), in the nature of “self-care.”
In contrast, the Lebanese-Australian mothers
thought it “laughable” that one would expect any
regular chores of children this age because they
were considered “still babies.” Notably, however,
these “babies” were expected to help look after or
entertain a younger sibling—a responsibility that,
as the authors pointed out, few Anglo-Australian
mothers would assign to a 5-year-old child. For the
Anglo-Australian mothers, thus, the child’s ability
H a r k n e s s , Joh ns t on M av r i di s , J i L i u, S u pe r
to complete chores (of whatever sort) of increas-
ing complexity was considered part of a culturally
constituted developmental agenda, whereas for the
Lebanese-Australian mothers it was not.
Studies such as these support the proposition that
“developmental timetables” are themselves cultural
constructions expressing widely held beliefs about
the nature of children’s development and parents’
roles in helping their children succeed. Within the
framework of the DEQ, the trend toward earlier
expectations by parents in the United States was
strongly confirmed by Edwards and colleagues’
(1996) comparative study of middle-class parents
and preschool teachers in a New England town
and an Italian city, with the US parents expressing
the very earliest expectations—especially for social
and verbal development—of any study to date. The
authors did not find expected differences in the
opposite direction for certain social skills that they
had observed to be strongly socialized in the Italian
context—a finding that may have been related to
the extremely early expectations of the US parents
or to the possibility that the questionnaire itself was
not able to capture such qualitative differences. For
whatever reason, it appears that US, Australian,
and perhaps other British-diaspora middle-class
cultural groups have relatively early developmen-
tal expectations for children’s skills in expressing
themselves verbally and being assertive and outgo-
ing with peers.
Group differences in expectations have also
been found in studies carried out in low- or middle-
income countries when more educated, often urban
mothers are compared to their less educated coun-
terparts in rural areas, as in Williams, Soetjiningsih,
and Williams’s (2000) report on developmen-
tal timetables in Bali. They propose that some
low-income countries may be characterized as
having “dualistic economies and social systems,”
in which the more educated, affluent, and urban
communities may have come to represent different
cultures with regard to beliefs and practices con-
cerning children’s development. Even within the
same community, however—as illustrated by von
der Lippe’s (1999) study of mothers’ in low-income
areas of Cairo, Egypt—more educated mothers
(especially those working outside the home) may
have earlier developmental expectations for their
children and more positive verbal interactions with
them. The author emphasized, however, that in
general, all the Cairene mothers valued a control-
ling, restricting, and protective style of childrearing
and “even the educated working mothers favoured
273
passivity, compliance, and morality, suggesting
that change toward a more sociable child-rearing
style is slow even in the face of intense and perhaps
unrealistic hopes that education could change the
fate of their children” (p. 723). Strikingly, the home
environments of these children seemed to offer lit-
tle stimulation through either traditional activities
that might be more readily found in rural house-
holds or through activities typical of more edu-
cated, child-centered urban families: the Cairene
children were not allowed to play outside, and there
was little room for indoor play or need for their
help with household tasks.
A comparable instrument to the DEQ for assess-
ing parents’ developmental expectations in tradi-
tional societies has not yet been proposed, but some
studies suggest fruitful directions. For example,
Akinaware, Wilson-Oyelaran, Ladipo, Pierce, &
Zeitlin (no date), cited in Harkness, Super, Barry,
Zeitlin, & Long, 2009) carried out a survey of
child care and development of young children
in five different community samples in Nigeria,
including rural and urban Yoruba communities, as
well as other ethnic groups (e.g., Fulani, Efut, Efik,
Kwa, and Terawa). Mothers in each sample were
interviewed about the child’s health and behavior,
maternal socialization practices, and aspirations
for the child’s development. In these communities,
the researchers found, mothers expected that by
3 years of age children should be able to exercise
control over their bodily functions, communicate
clearly, and feed themselves. By about 5 years,
children were considered capable of dressing them-
selves, running errands, and greeting elders. Such
children should be able to interact outside the fam-
ily in a social and helpful manner. The increased
physical development of the 5-year-old, which
awarded the child greater mobility, also dictated
additional responsibilities: a child who was able
to run down the street to play with friends would
also be capable of fetching water, buying bread, and
delivering messages. By 7 or 8 years, the child was
deemed fully a member of society. Seven-year-olds
were expected to obey and respect their elders, care
for themselves and younger siblings, and assist in
the home and in the workplace. By around 8 years,
children were expected to be able to think for
themselves.
As one might imagine, these traditional expec-
tations were tied to specific practices intended to
help a child accomplish these goals. Walking, for
example, was encouraged by standing up facing
the baby and backing up as the baby approached.
274 Pa r e n t a l E t h no t h e or i e s a n d t h e De v e l opm e n t of Fa m i ly R e l at ions h i p s
Parents emphasized the importance of early motor
development as a practical matter: from the age
of 2 years on, children should begin to care for
themselves and help their parents—dressing and
undressing themselves, taking care of their own
belongings, helping parents with small errands,
participating in domestic chores, and making small
purchases at the local stores. Some parents even
described training their children so that by 4 years
of age, the child could herd cows alone, riding on
a horse!
The relationship between developmental expec-
tations and parents’ broader perceptions of their
children is demonstrated in a study in Kokwet (the
rural Kipsigis community in this chapter’s open-
ing vignette), compared to a middle-class sample
in the town of Duxbury, Massachusetts, then a
quiet distant suburb of Boston. The task of doing
an errand, which figures prominently in research
in sub-Saharan African studies (Zeitlin, 1996), was
generally perceived in Kokwet as a sign not only of
maturity, but also a good indicator of the child’s
personality. Mothers of children aged 3–10 years
old were asked whether each of their children in
that age range was old enough to be entrusted
with a local errand and also whether the child was
old enough for the mother to know “what kind
of child” he or she was. For the Kokwet mothers,
judgments of whether the child was old enough to
go to a local shop to make a small purchase (a walk
of 5–20 minutes from home) and whether the child
was old enough for the mother to know its person-
ality, increased in parallel from age 3 to 9 years,
with about two-thirds of the mothers of 6-year-olds
expressing positive judgments of both. In contrast,
70% of the New England mothers thought they
could judge their child’s personality at age 3, and
this proportion rose to 100% for the 6-year-olds.
The New England age trend in mothers’ judgments
of whether the child was old enough to make a small
purchase independently in one store at a local shop-
ping mall while the mother was at a different store
(an adaptation of the Kokwet measure), however,
generally paralleled the Kokwet age trend but never
reached 100%, even for children aged 9. Evidently,
the Kokwet and Duxbury mothers were using dif-
ferent kinds of criteria for judging their child’s
personality. For the Kokwet mothers, a child’s per-
sonality could not really be judged until the child
was old enough to carry out errands responsibly: at
that point, some children distinguished themselves
by carrying out the errand as instructed, without
getting distracted along the way. For the Duxbury
mothers, in contrast, the child’s personality could
be known much earlier because other aspects of
behavior such as verbal communication were seen
as more relevant.
Culturally based developmental timetables carry
strong mandates for children’s acquisition of a vari-
ety of skills at particular ages, with implications
for parents, teachers, and policy makers. As Zigler
(2006, p. xi) stated in relation to the challenge of
early childhood education in the United States,
“Too many children were arriving at Head Start
already seriously behind what one would expect of
a 3-year-old.” He did not explain exactly what one
should expect of 3-year-olds in the United States at
the present time—perhaps that seemed self-evident
for the audience he was writing to. Concerns such
as these about whether children are “ready” for
school or even preschool inevitably translate to
concerns about whether parents are doing their job
well. For our present purposes, thus, the culturally
based developmental timetables that parents hold
for their young children are important because
they set the agenda toward desired cultural goals
along a prescribed and generally shared timeline.
This agenda, in turn, determines the substance of
daily roles and family relationships that the child
experiences.
Cultural Variability: The Search
for General Principles
Researchers who study cultural variability in
parenting and children’s development are almost
inevitably drawn to a larger question: is there any
predictable order in this variation, or is each cul-
tural group a unique entity that bears no com-
parison with others? Although some scholars have
argued for the latter perspective, there is a long tra-
dition within both anthropology and psychology of
efforts to find the key determinants of variability—
and thus to be able to group cultures together into
larger categories. Several of these are particularly
relevant to the study of parent-child relationships.
Subsistence Types and Parenting:
A Cross-Cultural Analysis
In 1959, cross-cultural psychologists Herbert
Barry, Irvin Child, and Margaret Bacon (1959) pub-
lished an analysis of economic subsistence patterns
and childrearing practices in a worldwide sample of
104 societies described in the ethnographic litera-
ture as represented in the Human Relations Area
Files. Societies were rated in terms of the degree
to which they depended on the accumulation and
H a r k n e s s , Joh ns t on M av r i di s , J i L i u, S u pe r
storage of food. At one end of the distribution were
hunting and gathering societies, where daily efforts
at foraging, fishing, or hunting provided food for
immediate consumption. At the other end were
societies based on pastoralism or agriculture, where
animals must be faithfully tended and crops must
be planted, tended, stored, and used planfully until
the next harvest. The authors argued that, in soci-
eties with high food accumulation, there would
be a need to train children to be responsible, con-
servative, and willing to defer to seniors to ensure
survival of the group. Societies characterized by
low food accumulation, on the other hand, would
encourage the development of initiative and imagi-
nation in finding food for the day. The results
confirmed expectations: societies high in food
accumulation tended to have stronger “socializa-
tion pressures” toward children’s obedience and
responsibility, whereas low-accumulation societies
encouraged achievement, self-reliance, and inde-
pendence in children. The association between sub-
sistence type and socialization practices was found
to be so consistent that the authors concluded that
“a knowledge of the economy alone would enable
one to predict with considerable accuracy whether
a society’s socialization pressures were primarily
toward compliance or assertion” (p. 59).
Barry, Child, and Bacon’s study has assumed
the status of a classic in anthropology: on the
basis of their work, social anthropologists do
indeed predict (with considerable accuracy) the
type of parenting styles that will be encountered
in small-scale non-Western, traditional societies.
Other cross-cultural research has shown that father
involvement is also related to subsistence types,
with higher involvement in societies characterized
as having a “lack of material accumulation, such
as land, cattle, or money” (Hewlett, 2004, p. 186).
Harkness and Super’s field research in a “high
food-accumulation society,” the Kipsigis of Kenya,
illustrates the general pattern: children in Kokwet
were socialized to be responsible and obedient,
and they were expected to help with cow herding,
agricultural tasks, food preparation, and infant
care (Harkness & Super, 1991; Harkness & Super,
2012). The general association between economic
subsistence and child socialization is also reflected
in changes documented among the !Kung people
of the Kalahari desert in southern Africa, a tradi-
tional hunting-and-gathering society undergoing
the transition to a sedentary agricultural lifestyle
(Draper & Cashdan, 1988): whereas !Kung chil-
dren living in their traditional habitat were granted
275
a longer period of infancy and were expected to do
little work until well into adolescence, parents liv-
ing in sedentary agricultural settlements attempted
to train their children to help out with the ongoing
work of the household. Interestingly, Barry, Child,
and Bacon’s cross-cultural finding on subsistence
types and childrearing is also borne out by a recent
comparative study of parenting attitudes and
expectations among the circumpolar indigenous
Sami (who traditionally relied on herding reindeer
and hunting) and mainstream Norwegian mothers
and fathers (Javo, Ronning, & Heyerdahl, 2004).
The authors report that the Sami parents were more
permissive and their children were more indepen-
dent than their Norwegian peers.
Notably, Barry, Child, and Bacon’s model of
subsistence types and socialization pressures did not
require conscious thinking on the part of parents
who were assumed to train their children—logi-
cally—for the kinds of tasks and roles that would
be needed in the future. Similarly, a theoretical
model proposed by John and Beatrice Whiting (B.
B. Whiting & Whiting, 1975; J. W. M. Whiting,
1977) hypothesizes a direct relationship between
“maintenance systems” (social, economic, and
political structures) and parenting, without the
necessity of conscious parental reflection. As they
put it, “It is not assumed that parents [choose par-
enting styles] in any conscious way, though this
might be the case in some instances, but rather that
different daily life routines dictated by different
sets of environmental and historical factors impel
parents to interact with children in different ways,
to assign different tasks, and to reward and pun-
ish different ways of behaving” (B. B. Whiting &
Whiting, 1975, p. 71).
Women’s Workload and Parenting:
Comparative Field Studies
As further elaborated by Beatrice Whiting
(1980), the subsistence base of the culture shapes
women’s workload, which then becomes the proxi-
mal determinant of parenting style. This perspec-
tive on the role of parents as socializing agents
represents a notable departure from psychological
literature focused on parent–child interaction: in
essence, B. Whiting proposed that parents have a
greater effect through their “assignment” of chil-
dren to different settings, insofar as these settings
determine the whole array of interactions that chil-
dren experience. But children, according to this
approach, are not the only ones whose behavior
is shaped by their settings of daily life—parents
276 Pa r e n t a l E t h no t h e or i e s a n d t h e De v e l opm e n t of Fa m i ly R e l at ions h i p s
themselves are also assigned by their cultures to
different settings with their own distinctive profiles
of personnel and activities. Fathers’ involvement in
the care of young children, for example, was found
to vary dramatically across cultures, and this varia-
tion appears to be mediated by the more general
division of labor between husband and wife, their
degree of emotional intimacy or aloofness, and
associated living arrangements. In societies such
as sub-Saharan groups where husband and wife
customarily eat and sleep apart and have separate
spheres of responsibility, fathers’ involvement with
the care of infants was found to be minimal or even
culturally proscribed; in societies characterized by
high intimacy and sharing of work roles, on the
other hand, fathers shared child care tasks with
their wives (B. B. Whiting & Edwards, 1988).
The settings of mothers’ own lives were found
to contribute to three different behavioral “mater-
nal profiles” in field studies based on a world-
wide sample of communities (B. B. Whiting &
Edwards, 1988; B. B. Whiting & Whiting, 1975;
see also Edwards, Ren, & Brown, this volume).
B. B. Whiting and Edwards (1988) found that
mothers’ behavior with their children across this
worldwide array could be considered in terms of
four main categories: nurturance, training, con-
trol, and sociability. Cultural differences in the
relative frequencies of these behaviors formed
the basis for suggesting three different styles of
mothers: the “training mother,” found in all the
sub-Saharan agricultural societies; the “control-
ling mother,” found in other agricultural com-
munities of the Philippines, Mexico, and north
India; and the “sociable mother,” found only in
the American community of Orchard Town,
where sociability was the second most frequent
type of behavior after control (unlike the other
samples, in which sociability was ranked third or
fourth). Each of these profiles was explained in
terms of the ecology of mothers’ lives. Mothers
in the sub-Saharan communities were generally
farmers as well as housewives; their husbands
were less involved in agriculture after plowing
and sowing the fields, and much of the hoeing,
weeding, and picking was left to the women.
Under the direction of these “executive mothers,”
as they also have been described, children were
essential workers in the home and fields, help-
ing with everything from child care and cooking
to animal herding. The “controlling mothers,”
in contrast, had less work beyond child care,
due to the fact that their husbands did more
agricultural work and also participated more in
domestic work; in addition, these women often
had other women who were coresident in the
household—for example, sisters, sisters-in-law,
grandmothers, or mothers-in-law—who might
also be relied on for help with running the house-
hold and taking care of the children. The “socia-
ble mothers,” found only in the US middle-class
sample, differed from all the others in having
smaller, more isolated households with few other
adults available in the immediate surroundings.
Under these conditions, Whiting and Edwards
suggested, mothers turned to their children for
companionship.
Dividing the World into Two: Contrasts
of Parenting Across Cultures
The Whitings and their associates emphasized
the influence of the environment—including par-
ticularly mothers’ workload and the ecology of
their own daily lives—as proximal determinants
of mothers’ childrearing styles. More recently, the
work of Robert LeVine and others has brought
attention to other dimensions of difference in the
ecology of parenting across cultures (LeVine et al.,
1994). In particular, LeVine points to the role of
population differences in child survival—both
actual and anticipated—as they influence the ways
that parents attend to infants and young children.
He suggests that “what parents want for their chil-
dren” can be conceptualized in terms of a univer-
sal hierarchy of goals, ranging from ensuring basic
survival to the acquisition of economic capabilities,
and finally to the attainment of locally relevant
cultural values. In traditional agrarian societ-
ies with high infant mortality rates, such as have
been prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, he argues,
parents’ caregiving behavior is organized by the
most basic goal of ensuring survival past infancy.
In urbanized industrial societies with low infant
mortality rates, on the other hand, LeVine suggests
that parents’ goals are oriented around the child’s
acquisition of skills and cultural values. These dif-
ferent parental goals are expressed in differential
rates of “proximal” caregiving behavior (such as
holding the baby) versus “distal” behavior (talk-
ing to the baby), with mothers in high-mortality
societies providing more of the former type of care
(Richman, Miller, & LeVine, 1992).
The “proximal-distal” dichotomy is also a core
part of a theory of cultural differences in infant
care practices proposed by Heidi Keller (2007),
who argues that there are two basic prototypes
H a r k n e s s , Joh ns t on M av r i di s , J i L i u, S u pe r
of communities and their respective psycholo-
gies: one typified by the traditional village such
as the Nso village in Cameroon that she and her
colleagues have studied, the other represented by
middle-class communities in western Germany.
Each type of community fosters a particular kind
of “self,” which is either interdependent or indepen-
dent. Other intermediate societies show a mixture
of these two types of selves and their expressions in,
among other things, parenting beliefs and practices
Keller, 2007; see also Keller, this volume).
The dependent/interdependent contrast in com-
munities has also been conceptualized in terms
of two distinctive “developmental pathways” by
Greenfield and her associates (Greenfield, 2009;
Greenfield, Keller, Fulgni, & Maynard, 2003).
As Raeff, Greenfield, and Quiroz (2000, p. 464)
describe the contrast: “In an independent develop-
mental pathway, social obligations are individually
negotiated; opportunities to select social relation-
ships (personal choice) and to act freely in those
relationships (individual rights) are maximized.”
The contrast between postindustrial, mostly
Western societies that prioritize individual devel-
opment and traditional agricultural societies
characterized by more interdependent family rela-
tionships extends to sibling relationships. Weisner’s
pioneering cross-cultural studies have shown that
in these latter societies, siblings are expected to
maintain close relationships involving not only
emotional but also material support throughout
their lives (Weisner, 1989; Weisner & Gallimore,
1977). Relatedly, Cicirelli (1994) contrasts sibling
relationships in industrialized versus nonindustri-
alized societies, noting that they tend to be discre-
tionary in the former but mandatory in the latter.
During early and middle childhood, older siblings
in traditional societies are often not only caretakers
but also teachers of their younger brothers and sis-
ters (Maynard, 2002; Rabain-Jamin, Maynard, &
Greenfield, 2003). In contrast to care by mothers
or other adults, however, older siblings’ care and
teaching tends to be mixed with play (Farver &
Wimbarti, 1995).
Both Keller and Greenfield’s conceptualizations
can be seen as elaborations on (or responses to)
the individualism versus collectivism (I/C) frame-
work, which has been widely used in cross-cultural
comparative research on parenting and child
development. As described by Triandis in an early
formulation, “Individualists give priority to per-
sonal goals over the goals of the collectives; collec-
tivists either make no distinctions between personal
277
and collective goals, or if they do make such dis-
tinctions, they subordinate their personal goals to
the collective goals” (Triandis, 1989, p. 509).
Although the apparent simplicity of the I/C
contrast makes it an attractive organizing concept,
researchers have encountered problems in its appli-
cation to a variety of cross-cultural comparisons.
In recent years, therefore, there has been increas-
ing recognition that both autonomy and related-
ness are basic human needs that must be nurtured
to promote healthy development, beginning in the
family (Kağitçibaşi, 2007; Tamis-LeMonda et al.,
2007).
Social Change: Three Types of Families,
and One Empty Cell
Prominent in this theoretical argument is the
work of Çiğdem Kağitçibaşi, a Turkish psycholo-
gist whose college and postgraduate training in
the United States contributed to her cross-cultural
perspective on family relations and individual
development. She suggests that the emphasis
on individualism/independence found in much
Western research and clinical literature is actually
a cultural product that “reflects the individual-
istic ethos of the Western [especially US] world”
(Kağitçibaşi, 2005, p. 405). In this mindset, she
argues, independence in the sense of agency (free-
dom to make one’s own choices) tends to be con-
fused with interpersonal distance. Recognizing the
difference between these two meanings of inde-
pendence, she proposes a two-dimensional model
in which the first dimension, Agency, contrasts
autonomy to heteronomy (lack of self-direction),
while the second, Interpersonal distance, contrasts
separation to relatedness. Kağitçibaşi applies this
conceptualization to cultural variability in fam-
ily relationships across cultures and over historical
time, finding three cultural types of family mod-
els (the fourth would be dysfunctional families).
The first is the family model of interdependence,
stressing an obedience orientation in children;
this model is often found in traditional agricul-
tural societies. The second, the Independent family
(found in the postindustrial West and especially in
the United States), features high agency and sepa-
ration as goals for children’s successful develop-
ment. The third model features psychological (but
not material) interdependence; instead, this model
combines encouragement of autonomy for the chil-
dren but in the context of continuing close family
relationships, resulting in the development of what
Kağitçibaşi calls the “autonomous relational self.”
278 Pa r e n t a l E t h no t h e or i e s a n d t h e De v e l opm e n t of Fa m i ly R e l at ions h i p s
Kağitçibaşi notes that this kind of family model is
typical of many societies in transition from tradi-
tional to modern (see also Kağitçibaşi, this volume).
In summary, almost all of the models of parent-
ing, family, and child development reviewed here
draw connections between socioeconomic struc-
tures and family relations, and they all propose a
very small number of types of parenting. The only
exception is the I/C contrast, which was originally
proposed to explain global variation in corporate
management styles (Hofstede, 1980) and then
adopted more widely as a way of conceptualizing
differences between Asian and Western (especially
US) personalities (Markus & Kitayama, 1991).
Barry, Child, and Bacon’s (1959) study examined
socialization pressures in low vs. high “food accu-
mulation” cultures, that is, between hunting and
gathering societies on the one hand and agricultural
ones on the other. Although hunting and gather-
ing groups figure prominently in the ethnographic
literature, they are almost nonexistent in today’s
world—at least in the places that cross-cultural psy-
chologists tend to do research. On the other hand,
traditional agricultural groups remain common
around the world, and Barry, Child, and Bacon’s
characterization of them is in close agreement with
more recent work that contrast them with post-
modern “Western” cultures. LeVine’s framework,
for example, contrasts traditional societies (e.g.,
African villages) where infant mortality rates are
high and parents thus focus primarily on the physi-
cal survival of their children to postmodern societ-
ies, where parents usually assume that their children
will be healthy and therefore focus on developing
children’s individual capacities. Likewise, both
Keller and Greenfield contrast “proximal” care-
taking styles focusing on care of the baby’s body,
typical of traditional agricultural societies, to “dis-
tal” caretaking that involves more attention to the
baby as an interactive and intelligent social partner,
a parenting style found in educated, postmodern
urban societies. Beatrice Whiting’s three “mater-
nal profiles” also contrast mothers in traditional
agricultural societies to mothers in a middle-class
US town but she further subdivides the traditional
societies into two types—the “training mothers”
of sub-Saharan Africa, where children are needed
to help out with the work of the household, and
the “dominant mothers” in India, Okinawa, the
Philippines, and Mexico, where children are not
expected to contribute so much. Last, Kağitçibaşi’s
framework, with its added differentiation between
two aspects of “independence,” again returns to a
socioeconomic basis for explaining differences in
families across cultures.
Parent–Child Relationships
Across Culture Areas
Although these general frameworks have
made important contributions to understanding
cross-cultural differences in parenting, they may
fall short when attempting to describe the many
facets of parents’ relationships with their children.
An empirically based regional approach that groups
communities together according to observed simi-
larities across a wide variety of domains—whether
or not they can be neatly summarized in a single
descriptive term—is helpful for setting realis-
tic expectations of what one is likely to find in a
particular cultural place, much as anthropologist
George Peter Murdock (1963) mapped constel-
lations of cultural and linguistic traits around
the globe. As Whiting and Edwards (1988) note,
mothers of young children everywhere must meet
several universal challenges of parenting, including
taking care of the child’s physical well-being, pro-
viding emotional support and protection from fear-
ful experiences, and teaching manners and skills
appropriate for their age and place. The question
for cross-cultural researchers then becomes how to
conceptualize the differing ways that mothers—as
well as fathers and other caretakers—meet these
challenges of childrearing and how they construct
relationships with children in the process.
The theoretical approaches to parenting and
culture that we have considered, although distinct
from each other in some ways, are consistent in
identifying a small number of themes that tend
to occur together in various combinations across
cultures. These universal themes are transformed
into culture-specific patterns by virtue of the
ways that they are combined, in addition to their
embeddedness in the larger culture. The result is
cultural models of parenting—or parental eth-
notheories—that are universally recognizable yet
culturally unique. Although a review of all the
major (let alone smaller) culture areas of the world
is beyond the scope of this chapter, we apply this
approach to three areas for which there is substan-
tial published evidence: Asia, sub-Saharan Africa,
and Western industrialized societies.
Asia: Proximal Care, Disciplined
Moral and Academic Training
The cultural model of parenting that emerges
from many studies in East Asian societies combines
H a r k n e s s , Joh ns t on M av r i di s , J i L i u, S u pe r
proximal physical and emotional care with a strong
emphasis on moral and intellectual training. This
combination may seem paradoxical from a Western
cultural perspective, and, in fact, it violates the pro-
posed divide between “proximal” caretaking (typi-
cal of traditional agricultural societies with high
infant mortality rates) with the more “distal” style
(attributed to educated parents in the industrialized
“West”). This Asian profile of maternal care has also
been the focus of a debate in the literature regard-
ing the applicability of Baumrind’s (1971) parenting
classification, according to which Asian parents have
been categorized as “authoritarian.” Chao (1994),
among others, disputes the validity of Baumrind’s
classification scheme, suggesting instead the Chinese
concept of “training.” She proposes that what looks
like authoritarian behavior is better conceptualized
as preparation for successful development in the
Asian cultural context. In particular, Chao argues
that the element of hostility inherent in Baumrind’s
US-based “authoritarian” parenting style is not pres-
ent in the “training” style described by Chao, which
may be both nurturant and strict.
Elements of both these themes are evident in
research with Asian populations from infancy
to middle childhood. Among the earliest work,
Caudill and Weinstein (1969) documented a close-
ness and intimacy between Japanese mothers and
their infants much greater than in their US sam-
ple. More recently, Harkness and her associates
reported that mothers in their middle-class Korean
sample preferred having a great deal of physical
contact with their babies during both waking and
sleep (Harkness, Super, Moscardino, Rha, Blom,
Huitrón, Johnston, Sutherland, Hyun, Axia, &
Palacios, 2007). One mother described a sometimes
lengthy process of putting her 2-month-old baby
down to sleep, in which the mother would make
a slow transition from holding the baby upright,
to holding her horizontally, to very gently plac-
ing her in her crib or on a sleeping mat—only to
start all over again if the baby woke up in the pro-
cess. Another mother provided a similar descrip-
tion, adding that “When she goes to sleep, I always
sleep next to her—that way she can sleep well”
(Harkness et al., 2007, p. 29). Yet these same moth-
ers were already promoting early learning in their
young infants -- one reported playing audio tapes
for her baby in Korean and English, commenting
“The earlier she starts the better” (Harkness, Super,
& Mavridis, 2011, p. 84).
The cultural emphasis on early academic learning
is shared widely across the East and Southeast Asian
279
region. In two related studies, Parmar, Harkness,
and Super (2004, 2008) found that immigrant par-
ents from several Asian countries residing in the
United States were similar to each other in valu-
ing and supporting early academic achievement
for their preschool children. In contrast to their
Euro-American counterparts, these Asian parents
saw themselves as teachers for their children, and
they encouraged learning by purchasing educational
toys for the children, requesting homework assign-
ments from the preschool (or creating them), and
engaging in academic teaching with the children.
The Euro-American parents also wished to teach
their children, but saw themselves more as playmates
(although their “play” was often didactic).
There is also a culturally distinctive empha-
sis across much of East Asia on teaching chil-
dren to feel “shame” at an early age, as described
by Fung’s longitudinal ethnographic research
among middle-class families with young children
in Taiwan (Fung, 1999). She found that this pro-
cess was already well under way (albeit in a playful
manner) by the time the children were 2.5 years of
age, with the intent of teaching children to distin-
guish right from wrong and to desire to improve
themselves. Likewise, Miller, Wiley, Fung, and
Liang’s (1997) comparative study of mothers’
personal storytelling in the presence of young
children reports that Chinese mothers used story-
telling to teach moral and social standards, whereas
Euro-American mothers used it to entertain and
affirm the good qualities of the child. Moral teach-
ing in this cultural context may also involve learn-
ing “situational-appropriate deceptive skills” in
order to preserve social harmony, an important
quality, as demonstrated by Wang, Bernas, and
Eberhard’s (2012) study of Chinese mothers and
their 4-year-old children. In their study, naturalis-
tic observations of the mother–child pairs at home
revealed many instances of direct teaching about
the importance of honesty; at the same time, how-
ever, the mothers modeled how to use deception in
social situations with others when it was helpful for
avoiding conflicts.
A similarity to the socialization of moral rules
in East Asia, here regarding emotion display, is
evident in Raval and Martini’s (2011) research on
middle-class mothers in Gujarat, India. Mothers
of 6- to 8-year-old children reported that they
discouraged their children’s expressions of anger
or sadness, but welcomed communication of
physical pain. A common theme expressed by the
mothers was the importance of “making the child
280 Pa r e n t a l E t h no t h e or i e s a n d t h e De v e l opm e n t of Fa m i ly R e l at ions h i p s
understand” and therefore calmly accept distress-
ing situations rather than protesting or trying to
change them. As the authors comment, “our quali-
tative data suggested that mothers wanted their
children to understand that they should accept
and adjust to the situation, because internalization
of this important cultural value is a critical step
toward the larger goal of becoming a socially inter-
related person” (p. 854).
The connections among early socialization for
moral and academic learning and mothers’ expres-
sion of emotional closeness are demonstrated by a
study of mothers’ beliefs in Hong Kong and the
United States regarding parents’ roles in children’s
learning (Ng, Pomerantz, & Lam, 2013). In con-
trast to parents in the United States, the researchers
found that the Hong Kong mothers thought that
children’s learning reflects morality and that par-
ents’ support of learning, in turn, is an expression
of love. This triad of cultural beliefs can be seen as
the foundation of an East Asian cultural model for
parenting young children.
The great majority of research on parent-
ing in Asia has focused on mothers. In East Asia
(China, Korea, and Japan), according to Shwalb,
Nakazawa, Yamamoto, and Hyun (2004), fathers
have been largely absent from this research until
more recently “because affective relationships
between mothers and children are considered more
important than father–child relationships in these
cultures” (p. 147). This cultural model is described
as based in Confucian tradition, which dictates
complementary roles for mothers and fathers, with
mothers as nurturers and fathers as authority fig-
ures. Interestingly, however, Confucian teaching
also advised that fathers should be kind to their
children. As Li and Lamb write (2013, p. 18),
“Parental strictness and kindness were not only
both emphasized, they were also viewed as com-
patible.” In this regard, then, fathers’ culturally
prescribed roles (and thus presumably their behav-
ior) seem parallel (rather than complementary) to
the Chinese maternal “training” style described by
Chao. Aside from the cultural proscription regard-
ing emotional closeness between fathers and their
children, Chinese fathers are expected to become
more involved with their children as teachers when
children reach school age (Li & Lamb, 2013).
Although the Confucian tradition has been pow-
erful in all three East Asian countries, Nakazawa
and Shwalb (2013) suggest that the emphasis on
paternal strictness was never as strong in Japan,
and, following World War II, the “kindness” part
of the cultural model became the norm for Japanese
fathers. In recent years, economic change has cre-
ated yet another common family scenario in which
fathers are absent for long days at work or even
move elsewhere to support the family financially.
As in East Asia, India has been traditionally
patriarchal, and women’s rights were restricted—
a pattern that has more recently changed, at least
in principle. Hindu teachings, although affirming
the authority of the father, also make ample room
for the mother as a central figure in the family,
especially in relation to her sons. Chaudary (2013)
contrasts this family configuration with Western
families: “If the Western family is centered around
the conjugal relations between husband and wife,
there is no denying that the central unit of the
Indian family is the mother and son” (p. 73). Indian
fathers are thus expected to be more emotionally
distant from their children—a pattern similar to
East Asian fathers but with its own cultural flavor.
Nevertheless, according to Chaudhary, studies in
recent years show a trend toward increased par-
ticipation of fathers in the care of their children,
together with the increase in nuclear families.
Grandparents, especially grandmothers, appear
in the research literature on Asian families as impor-
tant sources of cultural knowledge and advice.
In Japan, grandmothers have been described as
providing instruction in manners, moral expecta-
tions, discipline, and expectations of lifelong learn-
ing, congruent with mainstream Japanese culture
(Woods 1996).
Grandmothers in Asian cultures tradition-
ally reside with adult children and share in family
maintenance tasks. Sandel, Cho, Miller, and Wang
(2006) found that Taiwanese grandmothers viewed
themselves as temporary caregivers who would dis-
cipline disobedient children and offer child care
advice to their daughters-in-law. These grandmoth-
ers played a major role in their grandchild’s first
years of life, only gradually relaxing and relinquish-
ing control back to the mother when the child
began school. Cho and colleagues (Cho, Sandel,
Miller, & Wang, 2005) investigated Taiwanese eth-
notheories on self-esteem and, similar to the report
by Miller and colleagues (Miller, Wang, Sandel, &
Cho, 2002) on mothers, found that Taiwanese
grandmothers were likely to see self-esteem as a
peripheral childrearing goal. Although the grand-
mothers admitted to praising their grandchild,
they did so sparingly for fear that too much praise
would make it difficult to administer harsh disci-
pline when needed. Taiwanese grandmothers also
H a r k n e s s , Joh ns t on M av r i di s , J i L i u, S u pe r
noted the importance of adapting caregiving prac-
tices to the child’s temperament/personality (gexing
[Mandarin] or ko-seng [Tai-gi]).
Although grandparents’ ethnotheories are influ-
enced by the local culture, various factors (including
generational differences, their own relationships,
and child characteristics) affect how their beliefs
unfold and become practices. Goh and Kuczynski
(2010), working in Xiamen, China, observed that
the nature of the grandparent–grandchild rela-
tionship is often strained by tensions between
mothers-in-law and the young mothers. Using case
studies of four families over the course of 6 months,
the authors discovered discrepancies in disciplinary
philosophies and methods between mothers and
grandmothers. Young children sometimes exploited
this to their advantage, while at other times they
acted as mediators between the two adults. In rural
India, Sharma, Shapru, and Mahajan (2009) found
that mothers and grandmothers who differed in lev-
els of education also differed in their ideas about
spoiling a child, “floor freedom,” and discipline and
control.
Dynamic processes, including contact with
other groups (e.g., immigration) and changing
environmental contexts, affect grandparents’ ideas
about caregiving and, ultimately, their practices.
The potential implications of this can be seen in
immigrant families. Nagata, Cheng, and Tsai-Chae
(2010) described a high-contact, hierarchically
based grandmothering style in Chinese-American
immigrant grandmothers residing in the United
States, which they attributed to traditional values
of filial piety. The primary goals reported for their
grandchildren were good character, morality, and
high academic achievement, which they actively
sought to instill through the provision of direct
guidance and advice—typically at mealtimes.
Although these grandmothers had frequent contact
with their grandchildren, they reported knowing
their grandchildren only “so-so,” a change from
the times in which they grew up. In contrast, for
third-generation Bangladeshi British children,
grandparents were found to combine traditional
and Western teaching practices to suit individual
learning (Gregory, Ruby, & Kenner, 2010).
Sub-Saharan African Agricultural
Societies: Training for Early Motor
Development and Family Responsibilities
The sub-Saharan African cultural emphasis on
early attainment of motor skills (primarily sitting
and walking) has been widely documented (see
281
Super & Harkness, this volume). Interpretations of
the phenomenon of “African infant motor precoc-
ity” have shifted over the past few decades from
a biological explanation (with its potentially racist
overtones) to a recognition that—regardless of pos-
sible innate differences across groups—traditional
African childrearing practices include a strong
focus on the importance of early motor develop-
ment. Recent research also illustrates the culturally
based connections between early motor develop-
ment and other socialization goals held by par-
ents. For example, Moscardino, Nwobu, and Axia
(2006) described cultural beliefs and practices of
Nigerian immigrant mothers of infants in Italy,
finding that the mothers reported early expecta-
tions for walking with the goal of helping the child
to become autonomous as soon as possible. Physical
independence, in turn, was seen as essential for the
child’s ability to learn early responsibilities in the
household.
As noted above, socialization pressure for obe-
dience within the context of the household is a
central component of training for early family
responsibility in sub-African agricultural commu-
nities (but see a contrast case in the forager culture
described by Shwalb and Shwalb, this volume).
This is evident in child language socialization as
observed by Harkness and Super (Harkness, 1988;
Harkness & Super, 1977/2008) in a Kipsigis com-
munity of western Kenya. Noting the very low rate
of mother–child speech to children aged 2–3 years
of age (Harkness, 1977), they concluded that par-
ents’ goals for their children’s language develop-
ment focused primarily on comprehension rather
than production—that is, understanding com-
mands rather than asking questions. Relatedly,
mothers’ joint attention with young children
tended to be oriented not to the child herself, but
rather to an even younger sibling whom the child
might be helping to take care of in the presence of
the mother. In research on the neighboring Gusii
people, LeVine and his associates (LeVine et al.,
1994) describe training for obedience and respect
as a cultural model, “with its goal of a compli-
ant child who comprehends maternal commands,
obeys and makes few demands… . a child, in other
words, who fits into the hierarchical organization
of the home and does not undermine it.” As they
elaborate further, “In the context of this model,
praise is explicitly rejected by the Gusii mothers as
a verbal device that encourages conceit and would
make even a good child rude and disobedient,
meaning disruptive of the hierarchy” (p. 254).
282 Pa r e n t a l E t h no t h e or i e s a n d t h e De v e l opm e n t of Fa m i ly R e l at ions h i p s
Obedience, however, is not the ultimate goal
in African parental ethnotheories of child devel-
opment; rather, it is an essential component of
widely shared concepts of social intelligence (see
Nsamenang, this volume). Among the Kipsigis of
western Kenya, Harkness and Super (1992b) found
that children’s “intelligence” was often judged in
terms of the ability to carry out household chores
capably without supervision, as in the research
described earlier related to mothers’ developmen-
tal judgments about the child’s ability to run an
errand. Similar observations of socially situated
intelligence have been made for the Ivory Coast
(Dasen et al., 1985), Zambia (Serpell, 1993), and
Nigeria (Mundy-Castle, 1974). “Social cognition
[in Africa] translates into responsible intelligence,
not in abstraction,” according to Nsamenang
(2006, p. 296), “but primarily as it enhances the
attainment of social ends.” The immediate goal is
a child who can be relied on from an early age to
carry out a variety of responsibilities in the house-
hold. For example, an analysis of children’s time
allocation in a rural Kipsigis village showed that
children’s time spent in “work” activities began
to rise from the time the child was just 2 years of
age, reaching about half the child’s waking time by
age 6 (Harkness & Super, 1985). Similarly, Tudge
and colleagues (2006) report that working-class
preschool-aged children in the town of Kisumu,
Kenya, were spending one-fifth of their time in
work activities—almost twice as much as children
in their US and Brazilian samples.
The early training for family responsibility
and the concept of socially situated intelligence in
sub-Saharan African families is a joint project of
the entire family, one including fathers and older
siblings as well as mothers. In many African soci-
eties, polygyny is the preferred form of marriage
(at least for those men who can afford more than
one wife). Family structure in this context consists
of subunits of each mother and her children, with
the father at the top of the hierarchy. The father’s
prescribed relationships with his young children
may thus be distant; in fact, in the Kipsigis com-
munity studied by Harkness and Super (1992a;
Super & Harkness, 2009), fathers were not even
supposed to see their newborn infants until they
were at least 1 month old. In the Gusii com-
munity of Nyansongo, Kenya, studied by the
LeVines (LeVine & LeVine, 1963; B. B. Whiting
& Edwards, 1988), fathers were present in the
immediate environments of their young children
only about 10% of the time (although it is notable
that this is the same as father presence for the New
England fathers in their cross-cultural study).
Fathers in this and other African communities
virtually never participated in child care of infants
and toddlers, and they seldom played with or held
them (B. B. Whiting & Edwards, 1988). A more
detailed analysis of fathers’ roles in the community
of Kokwet (Harkness & Super, 1992a) shows that
although fathers were present with their young chil-
dren about the same amount of time as a compari-
son group of middle-class fathers in New England,
their contexts of activity varied widely. Like the
Kokwet mothers, the fathers in this community
shared social space with their children mainly in
the contexts of eating or doing household chores
such as watching the cows, and this trend was more
pronounced with the child’s increasing age.
Siblings in sub-Saharan agricultural communi-
ties have also been shown to play important roles as
caretakers of younger children, under the supervi-
sion of their mothers (Harkness & Super, 1992c).
In this arrangement, the mother delegates respon-
sibility for the immediate care and entertainment
of her baby from about 4 months of age up to age
2 years, when the toddler is considered old enough
to join the mixed-age sibling group. The mothers—
who are the main farmers in some communities
while their husbands care for the cows or tend to
the business of the household or community—are
usually near enough so that they can be reached in
case of need, but the sibling caretakers can be as
young a 5 or even 4 years of age. By the time a child
reaches age 10, she (usually the caretaker is a girl) is
considered too old to be satisfied with infant care.
Sibling caretakers are expected to be playmates as
well as nurturers of their small charges, and, in this
regard, their role differs sharply from that of the
mother who generally does not regard play with her
infants as part of her responsibility.
“The West”: Themes and Variations
Recent comparative studies that include con-
temporary “Western” cultures often contrast
individualism or independence with its opposites,
collectivism or interdependence, with Western
middle-class cultures representing the individual-
istic side. This kind of comparison usually reflects
some truth, but as we comment above, that single
line of contrast encompasses very little of the cul-
tural reality of parent-child relations. Indeed, a
closer look at cultural places within the Western
world reveals greater complexity. For example,
Suizzo (2002, 2004) studied middle-class mothers
H a r k n e s s , Joh ns t on M av r i di s , J i L i u, S u pe r
of infants and young children in Paris, finding
elements of both individualistic and collectivistic
orientations. She concludes that individualism and
collectivism are mutually independent dimensions
of difference that can coexist harmoniously within
individuals and cultures. She further describes a
Parisian cultural model of parenting that has dis-
tinctive features such as “awakening and exposing
the child to diverse stimuli,” including the “educa-
tion of taste” in foods.
The International Study of Parents, Children,
and Schools (ISPCS), carried out in seven Western
countries (Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden,
Poland, Australia, and the United States) identified
cultural themes and practices distinctive to each
place (Harkness & Super, 2005; Harkness, Super,
et al., 2011). For example, when asked in an inter-
view format to describe their child, parents focused
selectively on different qualities in the different
groups, indicating, the authors suggest, features of
a shared cultural model of the child in each place.
In all the samples children were often described as
“sociable,” “loving”, “active” and “strong-willed.”
Beyond this common core of parental perceptions,
however, differences emerged in the particular kinds
of qualities that parents in each place chose to focus
on. Among the US parents, the highest frequency
descriptors included “intelligent” and “cognitively
advanced,” as well as “independent,” “rebellious,”
and “adaptable.” In contrast, the Italian parents
rarely described their children as intelligent and
never characterized them as cognitively advanced;
Instead, they talked about their children as being
“easy,” “even-tempered”, “well-balanced,” and
“simpatico”—a group of characteristics suggesting
social and emotional competence. The Spanish par-
ents also emphasized social competence but with a
nod toward being a responsible member of society,
mentioning “socially mature” and having a “good
character”. In contrast to the Italian parents, how-
ever, the Spanish parents also often highlighted
their child’s qualities of being intelligent and alert.
Each of the other groups (in the Netherlands,
Sweden, Poland, and Australia) produced their
own distinctive pattern.
In a related publication (Harkness, Zylicz, et al.,
2011), the ISPCS research team analyzed time allo-
cation of the children aged 3, 4.5, and 7–8 years
in six of the same samples (omitting Australia for
technical reasons), along with how parents talked
about the children’s daily activities. Children in
the three northern European samples (Poland, the
Netherlands, and Sweden), for example, had the
283
most time for play, whereas the southern European
samples (Spain and Italy) recorded the most time
for meals. The US sample was distinctive in that
the children spent the most time in school-related
or developmental activities, but they also spent
more time watching TV.
Different meanings of these activities for parents
were evident in the parent interviews. For example,
consistent with their children’s greater time alloca-
tion to school-related and developmental activi-
ties, the US parents talked a great deal more about
these activities than did parents in any of the other
samples, but they had relatively little to say about
meals. In contrast, the Dutch families saw meals as
an essential time to bring the whole family together
so that, as one father said, they could “listen to
each other” and feel that “we are in one family.”
The Italian and Spanish parents also emphasized
the importance of meals for sharing emotions and
experiences, and the Polish parents emphasized the
importance of spending time together as a fam-
ily, whether in the context of meals or doing other
things.
A notable aspect of time together for the Italian,
Spanish, and Polish families was its inclusion
beyond the nuclear family, a feature of family life
also noted by Kremer-Sadlik, Fatigante, & Fasulo
(2008) in their comparative analysis of “family
time” as described by parents in Rome and Los
Angeles. Fathers in these comparative studies gen-
erally agree with their wives on goals and activi-
ties for their children, and in this sense there is
little differentiation between parents. A separate
research tradition, however, has focused specifically
on fathers and their roles within families (Hewlett,
1992; Lamb, 2004; D. W. Shwalb, Shwalb, &
Lamb, 2013). Although some of this literature
reports on fathers in particular countries within the
Western world, the question of what is culturally
distinctive in each place is generally not addressed
(in contrast to studies of fathers in non-Western
societies). Instead, recent research on fathers in the
Western world tends to focus on issues facing fami-
lies in all postindustrial societies.
A prominent theme in this research has been
the question of how “involved” fathers are, along
with measuring the actual time that fathers spend
caring for or in the company of their children. In
general, researchers report that fathers in Western
middle-class communities now spend more time
in child care and that there is a higher expectation
of emotional closeness with their children than in
earlier eras. Some researchers caution, however,
284 Pa r e n t a l E t h no t h e or i e s a n d t h e De v e l opm e n t of Fa m i ly R e l at ions h i p s
that changes in the nature of the father–child rela-
tionship over historical time may be exaggerated.
For example, Lewis (2013) comments that “there
is evidence to suggest that the Victorian father [in
the United Kingdom] was much more involved in
domestic life than we give him credit for” (p. 333),
and even at present, “given the continuing stereo-
types of masculine and feminine roles, much of
this involvement gets air-brushed out of most pic-
tures of contemporary family life” (p. 352).
The actual exclusion of fathers in Western soci-
eties from their children’s lives is described as due
to a variety of factors including family changes
(e.g., divorce or separation), nonresidential father-
ing, and the sometimes impermeable boundary set
by mothers and the extended female family, par-
ticularly grandmothers, as described in relation
to fathers in Russia (Ultrata, Ispa, & Ispa-Landa,
2013). On the other hand, new “father-sensitive”
family policies, particularly in northern Europe,
offer (and support) more possibilities for fathers to
spend time at home with their infants and young
children (Haas & Hwang, 2013; O’Brian, 2004).
Yet fathers in all these societies confront a basic
conflict over the primacy of their role as economic
providers for the family versus the current moral
and social imperative to participate more fully in
the direct care of their children (O’Brian, 2004;
Smyth, Baxter, Fletcher, & Moloney, 2013).
Curiously, less research is available on what
father involvement (or “engagement”) actually
consists of beyond general descriptions of child
care and the observation that fathers are often
more playful with their children than are moth-
ers, particularly with regard to physical play
(Lamb & Lewis, 2004). However, a vignette of
one well-educated American father details his
engagement in his son’s education, cheering him
on at sports events, and sociable activities with the
family or community and—illustrating a particu-
larly American cultural model—spending what
is often referred to as “quality time” with his son
on a regular basis (McFadden & Tamis-LeMonda,
2013). Notably absent from this description are
work activities of any sort (although they may well
have taken place). A similar picture emerges from
a study of time allocation to different activities of
fathers and their young children in the Boston area
and in a rural Kipsigis village of Kenya (Harkness
& Super, 1992a). Interestingly, fathers in both cul-
tures were present in the immediate environments
of their young children for about the same propor-
tion of the child’s waking day (about one-quarter
to one-third of that time), but, unlike the Kokwet
fathers, the Boston fathers’ time with children
included activities such as bedtime routines, watch-
ing TV or reading books, and playing.
Like fathers, grandparents in Western middle-class
societies have received relatively little attention in
the cross-cultural literature. One reason for this may
be that grandparents, especially in the United States,
are seen as peripheral to the nuclear family. Cherlin
and Furstenberg (1986) coined the term “norm of
non-interference” to describe the unobtrusive nature
of many American grandparents’ relationships with
their grandchildren. These grandparents played with
the grandchildren and assisted occasionally in tasks
like babysitting, but abstained from major childrear-
ing responsibilities. Relatedly, Sandel and colleagues
(Sandel et al., 2006) found that European-American
grandmothers of 3-year-olds were reluctant to give
advice or discipline young children; instead, they
saw themselves as companions who played valuable
but limited roles.
To return to the theme with which we began
this section: What of individualism and indepen-
dence as defining features of parent-child relations
in Western culture? The Dutch parents did stress
independence as a valued quality of the child—an
independent child, they often commented, would
stick to his or her own ideas regardless of what
others thought and would not be dominated by
others. Otherwise, however, the parents in these
studies had little to say about this theme—perhaps
because they largely took it for granted. In addi-
tion, it may be that other socialization goals took
priority in these parents’ minds. In particular,
the uniquely strong emphasis in the US samples
on cognitive development and relatedly “stimula-
tion” (Harkness, Super, Mavridis, Barry, & Zeitlin,
2013) suggest that the US parents were more con-
cerned about high achievement than they were
committed to the child’s independence—at least in
terms of the child making his or her own choices
and taking responsibility for them. The primacy of
“stimulation” as an essential aspect of good parent-
ing, in this model, is illustrated by DeCaro and
Worthman’s (2007) study of parents’ ideas and
time allocation for their young children in a US
sample. They conclude that these parents worked
hard to shield their children from the complexity
and overload of their own schedules while provid-
ing the children with optimal levels of stimulation
and continuous supervision. Mothers, in par-
ticular, were described as “tethered” to their chil-
dren’s schedules. The goal of providing a context
H a r k n e s s , Joh ns t on M av r i di s , J i L i u, S u pe r
for optimal development is in turn closely related
to the uniquely American preoccupation with
self-esteem (Miller et al., 2002), considered essen-
tial for the child to succeed in what is perceived
as a highly competitive world. In this culturally
constructed scenario, independence in the sense of
separation will come all too soon, when the child
leaves home for college and beyond.
The Interaction of Culture
and Temperament in Children’s
Family Relationships
Although culture shapes parents’ beliefs and
practices of care, temperamental differences
among children influence family relationships
in ways that are themselves culturally organized.
Modern temperament theory (Chess & Thomas,
1984; Kagan, Snidman, Arcus, & Reznick, 1994;
Rothbart, 2012) has delineated several dimensions
of variation—for example activity level, sensitivity
to intense stimulation, and shyness in novel situ-
ations—that appear to have a strong inborn, bio-
logical basis, even though their ultimate expression
may be altered by both learning and maturation.
Chess and Thomas’s (1984) concept of “goodness
of fit” between a child’s temperament and aspects
of the immediate environment gains special signifi-
cance when cultural variability in that environment
is taken into account (Super & Harkness, 1994b).
The degree of fit between a child’s temperament
and those characteristics most valued in the culture
thus plays an important role in setting the param-
eters of parent–child relations.
Ethnographic research in a variety of cultures
has documented parents’ beliefs and expecta-
tions about child qualities that reflect tempera-
ment. Cervera and Méndez (2006), for example,
found that that babies and toddlers considered
difficult (chechón) by their Yucatec mothers were
ones who cried a lot and could not be left alone
while the mother did her chores. The quality of
being chechón was believed by mothers to be
partly inherited, but also partly learned, and thus
it could be diminished by not responding to the
child’s every fuss. An intensely expressive toddler
with frequent negative mood, by this account,
might therefore be treated differently from a
calmer and more cheerful sibling and also dif-
ferently from a similar child in another cultural
setting where mood is not so determinant of “dif-
ficultness” (Super et al., 2008).
Geertz’s (1959) description of childhood in Java
describes another pattern of parental concern, but
285
here framed as a developmental agenda. Javanese
infants, Geertz reports, were seen as being easily
upset by unpleasant experiences such as loud noises
(corresponding to temperament concepts of sensi-
tivity, reactivity, or sensory threshold). In order to
prevent children from being harmed by evil spirits
while in this vulnerable state, the Javanese parents
he studied thought it essential to shield infants
through gentle practices such as slow weaning from
the breast. By 4 or 5 years of age, however, children
were considered old enough to be trained to show
calmness and emotional self-regulation (also aspects
of temperament), along with wariness and a sense
of shame and deference. Lutz (1983) reports similar
parental goals among the Ifaluk of Micronesia: the
development of metagu, defined as an apprehensive
awareness or sensitivity around strangers and as a
reaction to the anger of elders. The socialization of
metagu began as early as 1 year, as parents made
use of situations like stranger encounters as teach-
able moments and displayed anger at their child’s
misdeeds. In both Java and Ifaluk, therefore, par-
ents held specific goals for a kind of calm humility,
and one can imagine that children not tempera-
mentally suited to this posture – those who were
intense and highly reactive – might have developed
more problematic relationships with their parents.
To date, there have been few empirical
cross-cultural studies examining parents’ ideas or
practices related to children’s temperament as cur-
rently conceptualized in the research literature. It
is important to note that the essential initial ques-
tion about temperament and culture—can we see
the same dimensions of temperament variation in
all societies?—appears to have a positive answer.
The specific behavioral items used in temperament
questionnaires, when appropriately translated and
adapted to the local environment, are generally
found to correlate about the same way in the United
States, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Sweden,
Poland, Russia, China, Kenya, and elsewhere
(Gartstein et al., 2006; Gartstein, Knyazev, &
Slobodskaya, 2005; Sleddens, Kremers, Candel, De
Vries, & Thijs, 2011; Super et al., 2008; Super &
Harkness, 1994b). Nevertheless, there is a small
number of contrary reports, and they raise impor-
tant questions about dimensions of temperament
that such questionnaires, all based on initial work
in the US, do not include (Nakagawa & Sukigara,
2005), as well as what parents think they are see-
ing when observing a specific behavior (Chen et al.,
1998; B. J. Shwalb, Shwalb, & Shoji, 1994). Other
studies, using adapted questionnaires, have tried
286 Pa r e n t a l E t h no t h e or i e s a n d t h e De v e l opm e n t of Fa m i ly R e l at ions h i p s
to evaluate observed differences in the average rat-
ings of infants and children in selected cultural
groups (Arbiter, Sato-Tanaka, Kolvin, & Leitch,
1999; Gaias et al., 2012; Gartstein, Slobodskaya, &
Kinsht, 2003; Porter & Hsu, 2003).
Most central to a consideration of how child
temperament affects family relationships in vari-
ous cultural contexts, however, is the issue of
“goodness of fit,” mentioned earlier. Super, Axia,
and colleagues (Super et al., 2008), for example,
compared which aspects of temperament appeared
“difficult” to mothers of 3- to 8-year-olds in
Italy, Australia, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain,
Sweden, and the United States using the Behavioral
Style Questionnaire (McDevitt & Carey, 1978).
Several characteristics were frequently associ-
ated with “difficult” ratings, including low
Adaptability and negative Mood. A strikingly dif-
ferent pattern was found in Italy, where there was
no correlation between negative Mood and overall
Difficulty; furthermore, the Italian mothers were
the only ones for whom there was a relationship
between low Approach and Difficulty. Drawing
on interviews as well as the local knowledge of the
Italian research team, it was confirmed that shy,
inhibited behavior (low Approach) was problem-
atic, but the free expression of emotion (includ-
ing negative, fussy expressions of Mood) was
not. What was critical to the parent–child rela-
tionship was maintaining “emotional closeness.”
Moscardino, Altoè, and Axia (2008) also found
a cultural preference for a sociable (versus a shy)
child in a separate Italian study. Other examples
of differential effects of temperament as a cultural
product are reported by deVries (1984), Korn and
Gannon (1983) and Super and Harkness (1994a).
In summary, parental ethnotheories form a par-
ticular template of meanings in which a child’s
temperament differentially activates developmen-
tal pathways, yielding contrasting outcomes for
both the child’s individual development and for
family relationships.
Conclusion and Future Directions
In this chapter, we have considered the role
of parental ethnotheories—the culturally shared
beliefs that parents hold regarding children, fami-
lies, and themselves as parents—that motivate
and organize practices of care for children, with
consequences for the development of family rela-
tionships during early and middle childhood.
Developmental timetables, as parents’ expecta-
tions for children’s development have been referred
to, provide clear evidence of the role of culture in
shaping parents’ thinking, given the presumably
universal, biologically driven processes of develop-
ment that determine approximately when children
achieve various competencies. As we have seen,
however, Zigler’s (2006) idea of “what one would
expect of a 3-year-old” (p. xi) actually varies dra-
matically across cultures, with preliteracy skills
emphasized in some cultures, whereas in others the
skills expected of children at that age have more to
do with learning to respect one’s elders and begin
participating in the daily work routines of the
household. Following such expectations, there is
good observational evidence that children actually
do acquire various competencies at particular ages
that would seem impossible in other cultural con-
texts. As noted earlier, the child’s involvement in
the activities derived from parents’ developmental
expectations form the basis for the child’s relation-
ships with other members of the family.
The study of cross-cultural variability in devel-
opmental timetables and their consequent parent-
ing practices is but one part of a larger theoretical
enterprise, that of formulating general principles
according to which researchers can not only catego-
rize but also predict parental beliefs and practices
in various cultural communities. Barry, Child,
and Bacon’s (1959) seminal analysis of subsistence
types and socialization pressures set an important
precedent that is still echoed in other more recent
models, including the Individualism/Collectivism
dimension and frameworks based on contrasts
between traditional (mostly rural) communities
and modern (mostly urban) ones. These frame-
works have been found helpful for cross-cultural
research because they offer a simplifying scheme
for ordering and interpreting particular observa-
tions. They identify themes of parenting that, in
turn, are expressed in practices—for example, the
theme of “proximal” versus “distal” parenting.
Usually derived from a limited set of cross-cultural
observations, the thematic labels often imply more
than the label itself describes; this can lead to
“poorness of fit” between the model and ethno-
graphic reality, especially in examples far removed
from the original observations. Thus, for example,
“proximal” parenting as observed in an African vil-
lage often entails not only intensive physical care
and constant physical closeness, but also a low level
of verbal interaction between the mother and her
infant or toddler. In contrast, parenting styles for
infants in Asian cultures may involve both physical
closeness and a high level of verbal interaction.
H a r k n e s s , Joh ns t on M av r i di s , J i L i u, S u pe r
In contrast to dimensional and categorical
frameworks, we have proposed a culture region
approach based on observed similarities across a
wide variety of domains within areas defined by
geographic or historical ties. It should be noted
that this approach is different from the “patterns
of culture” proposed by Ruth Benedict (1934), and
it should not be confused with Margaret Mead’s
(1930) insightful yet sweeping characterizations of
the cultural places she studied, nor with the “cul-
ture and personality” school of anthropology in
the mid-20th century (LeVine, 2001). Regardless
of which theoretical framework one finds most
useful for cross-cultural research on children and
families, understanding the thinking and behav-
ior of individuals will always be enhanced by
understanding how their particular characteris-
tics, including temperament, fit (more or less well)
with the parameters of their developmental niches
(Super & Harkness, 1994b).
As this review has indicated, studies of par-
enting and the development of children’s family
relationships have drawn from a rich array of theo-
retical frameworks for understanding variability
across cultures. Although these frameworks have
advanced the cross-cultural study of child develop-
ment and parenting, it is also evident that they can
prevent researchers from achieving a fuller under-
standing of how children’s relationships are shaped
in any particular instance. Much of this problem
could be solved, we believe, by greater attention
to parental ethnotheories that guide parenting
practices in varied ways across cultures. In order
to understand how children’s family relationships
develop within the family, we need to know not
only how children and parents behave, but also
what parents and other caregivers actually think
about themselves as parents and about the nature
of children, and how these ideas set the agenda for
bringing up children to be successful members of
their families and communities.
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 C H A P T E R

18 In and Out of the Classroom:

The Intersection of Learning
and Schooling Across Cultural
Communities
Maricela Correa-Chávez, Heather Mangione, and Kaitlin Black

Abstract
This chapter examines how teaching and learning is organized in many communities around the
world. It contrasts how child learning is organized by Observing and Pitching In (Rogoff et al., 2013) in
communities where schooling has historically not been central to childhood with how learning is
often organized in schools and highly schooled communities. The focus is on children’s inclusion in
community and family activity, the initiative they take in participating in activities, and the different
forms of attention and communication fostered and used in these contexts. The chapter also
examines the sociocultural context of school and the changes observed in communities as schooling
has become more common over generations. It briefly explores variations in schools, as well as
variation in engagement with school, and suggests that school ways of learning and community ways
of learning might co-exist to form part of a child’s repertoire of learning practices.
Key Words:  schooling, “Observing and Pitching-In”, learning, childhood, cultural practices

Now at her age … it’s essential that at her
stage of growth … well, we’ve always instilled
in her that she has to go to school. That’s
primary. And we are always vigilant, she is
as well, with her homework and things that
they have to do in school. (P’urhépecha father
speaking about his child’s school experience)
… attending for longer periods and at earlier ages
They always sent us, or you see, they sent us to
learn, but if you ask me if I heard [as a child],
if someone said “Finish school, it’s important”
well, no… . No one was telling us, “go to
school.” (P’urhépecha mother speaking about
her own childhood school experience)
— Correa-Chávez, Mejía-Arauz, Keyser Ohrt, & Black, in press
The opening quotes were taken from a research
project in which Indigenous Mexican (P’urhépecha)
parents were asked to reflect on their childhood
school experience as well as those of their current
children. As the quotes illustrate, in some families,
school is now seen as a fundamental part of child-
hood, a child’s “primary task,” as the father said.
But the quotes also show that, historically, this
has not always been the case. Currently in many
people’s minds, childhood, school, and learning are
concepts that are linked to one another. Worldwide
more children are attending school, and they are
than ever before (UNESCO, 2007). However
compulsory age-graded schooling as is common in
most industrialized communities today has only
been a staple of childhood in the United States for
about 150 years. In many other areas of the world,
school has been a central institution of childhood
for far fewer years (Hernandez, 1997; Rogoff,
Correa-Chávez, & Navichoc-Cotuc, 2005).
In this chapter, we explore school as a sociocul-
tural context that changes child and family lives in
both subtle and obvious ways. Drawing on some
of our own research, as well as on those of our
colleagues, we also explore how learning may be

292
organized differently in communities that do not
have a long history of schooling, as well as how the
institution of school has traditionally organized
learning. We build heavily on the work of Rogoff
and her colleagues who have extensively exam-
ined the organization of learning in Indigenous
communities of the Americas and have called this
cultural pattern of teaching and learning, learning
by observing and pitching in (previously learning by
intent community participation; see Rogoff, Moore,
Correa-Chávez, & Dexter, 2014).
This chapter, however, will not focus on the dif-
ferent interrelated facets of learning by observing
and pitching in (see Rogoff et al., 2014, for a full
examination). Rather, we examine some aspects of
this learning tradition and extend them slightly
by adding examples from communities outside
of Indigenous North and Central America. We
pay particular attention to children’s inclusion
and initiative in participating in productive fam-
ily and community activity as central to learning
by observing and pitching in, and we contrast it
to the segregation of children in specialized activi-
ties that is common to school and highly schooled
communities. We also discuss how patterns of
attention and communication may be different in
children and caregivers as they engage extensively
in the institution of school. We end by examining
the sociocultural context of school and the changes
that have been observed in communities as school-
ing has become more common over generations.
We briefly explore variations in schools, as well as
variation in engagement with school, and we end
by suggesting that school ways of learning and
community ways of learning might be able to co-
exist to form part of a child’s repertoire of learning
practices.
Patterns of Organizing Learning In
and Out of School
Children Are Included: Learning by
Observing and Contributing
Ethnographic and cultural comparative research
from many areas of the world where school has his-
torically not been central to childhood has dem-
onstrated that in many communities a primary
way in which children learn is by being integrated
and contributing members of their families and
communities beginning at a young age (Cancian,
1964; Chamoux, 1992; Corona, 2001; Lancy,
1996; LeVine et al., 1994; Paradise, 1994; Rogoff,
2003; 2011; Suina & Smolkin, 1994; Ward, 1971).
As “legitimate peripheral participants” (Lave &
C or r e a- C h áv e z , M a ng ion e , Bl ac k
Wenger, 1991), children have wide access to com-
munity activity and the expectation is that they will
learn by observing and contributing where possible
(Rogoff, 2003; Ward, 1971; also see Gaskins, this
volume).
As part of being an integrated contributing
family and community member, children often
first take responsibility for self-care with little
intervention from adults from an early age. For
example Indigenous Peruvian Matsingenka tod-
dlers experiment with heating their own food with
fire under the watchful eyes of family members,
even if sometimes they end up with scalding food
in their mouths. And, by the time they are 3, many
of these children start practicing cutting wood and
grass with machetes and knives (Ochs & Izquierdo,
2009). Yucatecan Mayan children between 3 and
5 independently bathe and dress themselves and
in general are not monitored from moment to
moment, often being out of their mother’s sight,
unsupervised, for long periods of time. Children
are competent at maintaining activities early on
with little or no pressure of encouragement from
their parents who only provide what help is actu-
ally needed (Gaskins, 2000). These children wash
their own clothes and the clothes of younger sib-
lings, enjoying the adult responsibilities and tak-
ing pride in helping their busy parents. In contrast
to middle-class US parents (Harkness & Super,
1996), Yucatecan Mayan parents in this commu-
nity did not consider play to be an important part
of their children’s development, reporting rather
that development occurs through watching oth-
ers, assuming responsibility, and practicing work
(Gaskins, in press).
Likewise, Guatemalan Mayan 3- to 5-year-olds
are often reported to be their own primary care-
giver (Mosier & Rogoff, 2003). Inuit children also
help out as a matter of course, but only when the
child is ready to do so. Young children are not
forced to help out around the home, although if
they attempt to do so they will be praised for their
behavior. Yet, by the time they are in middle child-
hood, Inuit children begin to help adults without
being forced. They also anticipate what needs to be
done and take care of it before it becomes a prob-
lem (Briggs, 1991).
Comparable examples of child contributions
can be found in other communities where school-
ing has historically been limited. In Ngecha,
Kenya, young children between the ages of 6 and
10 are frequently responsible for the care of infants
for hours at a time, freeing mothers to focus on
293
other work (Edwards & Whiting, 2004). These
“child nurses” (typically but not always young girls)
carry the baby around as they engage in work and
play. If a situation arises that the child nurse cannot
manage alone, an older adult nearby will intervene.
Similarly, from the time they are born, Efe
children in the Democratic Republic of Congo
develop relationships with their caretakers and
become part of the networks that tie the Efe adults
together (Morelli, in press). These children grow
up in a highly social environment, which allows
the children to develop trust and cooperation
with those around them. The children are able to
explore around the camp, helping adults with nec-
essary tasks such as gathering firewood or garden-
ing (Morelli, Rogoff, & Angelillo, 2003). Children
mimic the work of adults and are rarely found play-
ing games specifically for children or playing alone.
Even the youngest of children can be found helping
adults through tending the fire and cooking, thus
contributing in meaningful ways to village life.
Traditionally, in Hawaii, it was also considered
important for children to contribute to the larger
family and not focus solely on individual accom-
plishments, as is often emphasized in school. In
learning how to contribute, children would spend
time quietly observing adults before exercising their
new skills and passing knowledge along to younger
children. In some Native Hawaiian cultural com-
munities, older children, particularly older girls,
took on major responsibilities within the family,
including care of younger siblings or other younger
children. In turn, toddlers would quickly learn to
rely on older siblings for help before turning to an
adult (Tharp et al., 2007).
Caregivers Behaving Like Teachers:
Preparing for School Learning
Before Starting School
The accounts of children engaging in productive
community activities stand in stark contrast to the
pattern often seen in middle-class communities of
adults simplifying activities for children through
step-by-step interactions, games, or mini-lessons.
Many of the practices and routines around which
many middle-class families organize childhood
interaction seem to be modeled on teaching and
learning scenarios common in school. The forms
of interaction are common in communities with
a long history of school but uncommon elsewhere
(Briggs, 1991; Gaskins, 1999; Heath, 1983; LeVine,
1980; Morelli et al., 2003; Scribner & Cole, 1973;
Ward, 1971). From very early in infancy, children
294 I n a n d Ou t of t h e C l a s s r o om
in communities with extensive schooling are often
talked to in specific “baby talk” registers (Fernald,
1985) that may serve to direct and manage children’s
attention, as is often done in school. In contrast,
Ochs and Schieffelin (1984) reported that adults in
Papua New Guinea and US Samoa did not engage
in baby talk or a simplified register when addressing
toddlers and infants, believing that it was the child’s
job to try to understand the adult.
This simplification and explanation, as well as
a desire to direct and manage the child’s attention,
may be related to the finding that highly schooled
mothers in the United States and Turkey provided
running commentary about ongoing everyday
interaction to their 12- to 24-month-old toddlers
who had also seen the interaction. This practice was
rare among mothers in a Guatemalan Mayan town
and among mothers from a South Indian commu-
nity, as was the practice of engaging toddlers in
“mini language lessons” by holding up objects and
asking their children in a sing-song voice “what is
this?” These mini language lessons were common
among the highly schooled mothers in the US and
Turkey (Rogoff, Mistry, Göncü, & Mosier, 1993).
Senegalese mothers in Paris with relatively little
schooling rarely label objects in the children’s envi-
ronment, preferring to draw children’s attention to
the relationships between people (Rabain-Jamian
& Sabeau-Jouannet, 1997). Similarly, Inuit care-
givers with limited experience with school rarely
engaged children in activities in which they labeled
objects for children; however, younger caregivers
who had gone to school more often labeled objects
for children and addressed them as conversational
partners (Crago, Annahatak, & Ningiuruvik,
1993). Although there is evidence that children can
learn when they are not engaged in lessons, there
seems to be the belief among folks with extensive
schooling that children will learn best (or most) if
they are engaged in school-like ways (see Stedman,
1997). Researchers interested in language learn-
ing, for example, have long argued that one of
the principal ways in which children learn is by
having adults label objects in the child’s environ-
ment (Waxman, 1999). This practice parallels the
transfer of information model that is often used
in classrooms (Erickson & Mohatt, 1982; Rogoff,
Matusov, & White, 1996).
Observations of 3-year-olds in four communi-
ties (of which two communities were middle-class
European-American) showed that middle-class
European-American toddlers were more commonly
engaged in language lessons that involved labeling
objects in the child’s immediate environment, an
activity that was rare among the other two commu-
nities. Children in the middle-class communities
were also more commonly engaged in child-focused
activities that involved scholastic play activities such
as singing the alphabet song (Morelli et al., 2003).
In contrast, toddlers in the other two communities,
Efe (Congo) and Guatemalan Mayan, were more
likely than European-American children to be
engaged in activities in which they had the oppor-
tunity to observe and engage in adult activities, but
they were rarely engaged in lessons with adults.
As middle-class highly schooled adults enter
into children’s activities and interests, they often
engage in effusive praise of the child’s accom-
plishments and mock excitement for the ongoing
activity (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984; Rogoff et al.,
1993). Inducing children to participate in the les-
sons and activities laid out for them appears to be
more common in communities where children are
segregated from productive adult activity, as in
school. Children who are involved in family efforts
at productive work may have less need of this
because they have the opportunity to see how their
contributions helped or hindered the task at hand
(Rogoff et al., 2013; Whiting & Edwards, 1988).
Children Taking Initiative in Activity
Among Indigenous Mazahua (Mexican) par-
ents, what is important in learning a new task (such
as sowing a field for the first time) is that the child
already had the chance to observe the activity. This
observation, they say, will trigger children’s desire
to work, even if the child didn’t directly contribute.
In interviews, parents emphasized the importance
of children’s desire to work. Not wanting to help
in work is seen as aberrant (de Haan, 1999). This
explanation is similar to Lancy’s (1996) observation
of Kpelle girls’ contributions in Central Liberia:
No one teaches a girl to wield a hoe. Her first
observation of hoeing occurs when she is still
wrapped on her mother’s back in a lappa. The
rhythmic movements no doubt rock her to sleep.
Before she can walk, she will repeatedly grab a stick
while she is sitting on the ground and lift it up
and then bring it down on the ground in a manner
clearly imitative of her mother and the other women
she’s watching. She may get her first hoe at age six.
The first time she uses a hoe she will have little
difficulty in using it, and, from then on, when her
mother is hoeing, she’ll be hoeing.
(Lancy, 1996, p. 144)
C or r e a- C h áv e z , M a ng ion e , Bl ac k
In both of these communities, as the learner
becomes increasingly able to participate he or she
will offer to contribute through small tasks or help.
These forms of assistance increase in importance
and centrality until the learner is ready to conduct
the activity on his or her own.
In interviews, 6- to 8-year-old children from a
Mexican community that has an Indigenous his-
tory and relatively recent experience with school
repeatedly indicated that they wanted to help and
contribute to their family and household. They also
reported engaging in tasks that contributed to the
well-being of the entire household, such as cooking
or running errands. In contrast, 6- to 8-year-olds
from a middle-class community where schooling
was central over generations in one of Mexico’s
largest cities reported a different attitude toward
helping. These children engaged less in activities
that benefited everyone in the household (often
their contributions were limited to cleaning up
after themselves) and rarely engaged in helping
behaviors out of their own initiative (Coppens,
Alcalá, Mejía-Arauz, & Rogoff, 2014).
Similar results have been found within a
P’urhépecha (Indigenous Mexican) community
when comparing the reported helping behaviors
of children from families where mothers have an
average of 6 years of schooling or an average of
12 years of schooling. Parents from families where
mothers have had many years of school report that
their children contribute less to household work and
activity compared to families where mothers have
fewer years of schooling, where children contribute
in extensive and meaningful ways (Mejía–Arauz,
Keyser, & Correa-Chávez, 2013). By way of con-
trast, ethnographic observations of 30 middle-class
dual-career families in the Los Angeles area found
that both children and parents are aware that par-
ents need help with household chores, yet adults do
not expect children to help out, and child contri-
bution is minimal. In the 30 Los Angeles families
observed, no child contributed to the household
without being asked to do so, and even when they
were asked children in 22 families resisted or refused
to help (Klein, Graesch, & Izquierdo, 2009).
Mejía-Arauz and her colleagues (2013) have
speculated that the social nature of interaction in
which children are embedded may contribute to
the child taking initiative in contributing to family
and community activities. In communities where
children are embedded in family and community
activities, children co-labor (or collaborate) with
more experienced others, contributing in small
295
ways to complex tasks, and the social nature of the
interaction makes it markedly different from wash-
ing the dishes on your own or cleaning your own
room or space without interacting with others. The
difference in the social context may help explain
why, in some communities, we find accounts of
children contributing in sophisticated adultlike
ways, whereas in other communities, parents strug-
gle to get children to pick up their socks. LeVine
and his colleagues (1994) reported that, in 1956,
6-year-old Gusii girls could be observed cultivating
small maize fields by themselves (from sowing to
harvesting). Yet, by the time they were 6, they had
already observed and contributed to these activities
along with others in their domestic group—some-
times adults and sometimes older children. In their
work examining generational transformations in
Indigenous communities of Mexico, Mejía-Arauz
and her colleagues (2013) pointed out that pro-
ductive child “work” is rarely something children
are sent to do alone. Usually, this contribution is
done with a close family member and only later do
children engage in the productive activity alone.
However, in these same Indigenous communities,
in families where school is considered the principal
work of childhood, children are often cajoled and
compelled into helping on small solitary chores. To
some extent, these solitary chores mimic the tasks
the middle-class children in Los Angeles were often
asked to do, such as taking out the trash, washing
their own hair, making their beds, and/or clearing
the table.
In many communities where children learn by
observing and pitching in, both adults and children
report that children participate with initiative, but
it is important to note that the community actively
supports this form of learning in ongoing interac-
tions with children, thus this form of participation
is a mutually constituting process. For example,
Yucatecan Mayan women learning to be midwives
can only participate in birthing gradually and are
guided by experts. Any particular woman’s actions
and extent of participation would be decided
between the novice and the expert or experts super-
vising her participation (Jordan, 1989). Similarly,
Childs and Greenfield (1980) noted that although
Zincacantecan Mayan girls take the initiative in
learning how to weave at around age 9, more expe-
rienced others are nearby to share their perspec-
tive with the learner and demonstrate important
components of the process when the young girls
cannot accomplish something on their own. This
process changed as the community participated
296 I n a n d Ou t of t h e C l a s s r o om
more extensively in commerce and schooling
(Greenfield, 2004). However, even in the absence
of interpersonal interaction around a joint activity,
as in the just noted examples, there are community
values around inclusion of children, and children
are aware of these values. These values and expecta-
tions undoubtedly guide children’s behavior, espe-
cially their attention to ongoing events.
Paying Attention to Others:
Simultaneous and Open Attention
Skills at observation seem to be especially impor-
tant as children learn when to pitch in and coor-
dinate with others because adults do not routinely
engage in behaviors that mark or direct children’s
attention to “important events.” Gaskins (2000)
notes how life in a Yucatecan Mayan community is
primarily organized around adult work. Children
are expected to contribute to this work; however, if
they cannot contribute because they are young or
unskilled, it is expected that they will observe or at
least not disrupt adult activity. The children in this
Mayan community were rarely engaged in special-
ized child-focused activities.
European-American middle-class toddlers
also learn by attending to others (Akhtar, 2005;
Oshima-Takane, Goodz, & Devernsky, 1996);
however, many of the routines of childhood and
school are oriented to getting children to narrow
their attention and pay attention to what adults
deem important. Often, when something is of
interest, adults will engage in exaggerated actions
and behaviors to direct the child’s attention to
the object, person, or activity (Fernald, 1985;
Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984; Rogoff et al., 1993), a
behavior that has been referred to as “teacher talk”
(Paradise, Mejía-Arauz, Silva, Roberts, & Rogoff,
2014). This training to these certain forms of atten-
tion may lead to different cultural patterns in how
people pay attention from a very early age. This
is evident in the fact that, by the time they are in
school, European-American children agree with
the assumption that they can only pay attention
to one thing at a time (Flavell, Green, & Flavell,
1995). However, other attentional patterns are evi-
dent in different cultural communities.
In one study with multiple participants in which
mothers demonstrated novel toys to toddlers,
middle-class European-American toddlers, as well
as their mothers, were more likely to alternate their
attention between the events (visibly placing one “on
hold”) when there were multiple events of interest. In
these same instances, Guatemalan Mayan toddlers
and their mothers were more likely to simultaneously
attend to both ongoing events (with no visible hold).
Mayan toddlers engaged in simultaneous attention
at a lesser rate compared to their mothers, but their
rates were comparable to the European-American
mothers (Chavajay & Rogoff, 1999; Rogoff et al.,
1993). Follow-up studies have also found cultural
differences in simultaneity of attention to ongoing
events. Children whose families came to the United
States from Indigenous regions of Mexico often
skillfully attended to several events simultaneously,
without interrupting their attention to one event as
they attended to another. They did so more often
than European-American middle-class children
and US Mexican heritage children whose mothers
had extensive school experience, who more often
attended to one event at a time, interrupting each
in rapid alternation (Correa-Chávez, Rogoff, &
Mejía-Arauz, 2005). A second study examining
what the children paid attention to showed the
Mexican heritage and European-American children
attended to the same things, but in different ways
(Roberts, Mejía-Arauz, & Rogoff, 2010). When this
study was replicated in a cosmopolitan Mexican city
and a nearby pueblo with recent Indigenous history,
children from the town used more simultaneous
attention, and children in the cosmopolitan city
(who came from families that had extensive experi-
ence with the institution of school) used more alter-
nating attention (Roberts et al., 2010).
The skills of attending simultaneously to sev-
eral events might facilitate learning by observing
by allowing monitoring of possibly important sur-
rounding events without interrupting the activity
at hand. This conjecture is supported by research
showing that Mayan 4-year-olds were more alert to
ongoing events compared to European-American
4-year-olds in a middle-class community (Silva,
Shimpi, & Rogoff., 2012). Gaskins and Paradise
(2009) argue that in communities where children
are expected to observe others and pitch in, chil-
dren develop “open attention,” which they define as
“attention that is both angled and abiding” (p. 99).
They argue that the attention of children and
adults in these communities is “on call” at all times
and becomes second nature. This wide-angled and
abiding attention allows children to pick up on and
remember events that might be of interest in the
future. As an example, 3-year-old Mayan children
in the Yucatan can report with accuracy where
every member of their household is and what he or
she is doing in a way that mirrors adult reports of
what is taking place in the village (Gaskins, 2000).
C or r e a- C h áv e z , M a ng ion e , Bl ac k
This open attention to one’s surroundings can
also help provide protection and safety in poten-
tially dangerous situations. When a 3-year-old
Matsingenka child (Indigenous Peru) wandered
too close to a cliff and tumbled a few feet down
a ravine, the mother responded by admonishing
her son for being careless in his attention (Ochs &
Izquierdo, 2009).
Learning Through Third-Party Attention
Learning through keen observation entails not
only simultaneously attending to multiple events,
but also paying attention to communication and
activities not specifically directed to the learner.
Spontaneously attending to surrounding events can
be key to learning in communities where children
have opportunities to be present during the full
range of community interactions. In one study in
which some children were on the periphery as one
child taught a game to another child, middle-class
European-American children were more often
off-task and distracted than were Navajo children
who more often maintained attention to the game
and the instruction even when it was not relevant
to their turns or moves (Ellis & Gauvain, 1992).
Similarly, when middle-class European-American
and Guatemalan Mayan mothers were show-
ing their toddler how to engage with a novel toy,
older Mayan siblings were more likely to observe
their mother and younger sibling compared to
European-American older siblings who were more
likely to be engaged in their own individual activ-
ity (Silva et al., 2012).
In learning through observation, the respon-
sibility for learning is shared between the learner
and the expert, thus minimizing the need for the
“child-focused” instruction commonly found in
schools. In this learning context, it appears to be
the responsibility of the child to attend to and
learn from several ongoing events at once without
having key concepts pointed out for her or him.
Ethnographies have shown that Mesoamerican
Indigenous heritage children can be adept at learn-
ing in these contexts (Deyhle & Swisher, 1997;
Paradise, 1996). While helping their parents,
9-year-old Mexican Mazahua children appeared to
know when they could be momentarily engaged in
another activity, but once their parents began a new
task, they would immediately move closer or pay
more attention (de Haan, 1999).
When Guatemalan Mayan siblings were being
shown how to make novel toys, children from more
traditional families attended to instructions that
297
were addressed to their sibling twice as much as
European-American children (Correa-Chávez &
Rogoff, 2009). They did this although they were not
encouraged to attend to their sibling. Rather, they
were given a distracter toy and sat at a separate table
as they waited their turn at making a different toy.
Compared to Mayan children, European-American
children were more likely to be bored and distracted
as they waited. They were also more likely to engage
in behaviors designed to “call” the adult’s attention.
The Mayan children almost never engaged in dis-
ruptive behavior, often sitting quietly and intently
observing their sibling’s activity.
This sustained third-party attention has also
been observed in US Mexican heritage chil-
dren whose families likely have experience with
Indigenous ways and limited experience with for-
mal schooling (López Correa-Chávez, Rogoff, &
Gutierrez, 2010; Silva, Correa-Chávez, & Rogoff,
2010). Additionally, in all these third-party atten-
tion studies, observing others’ activities was related
to effective learning. When the children were
given the opportunity to construct the same toy
as their sibling had made a week and a half later,
the children who attended more needed less help
to complete the toy on their own. These patterns
were true for the European-American children as
well: those children who observed more needed
less help at constructing the toy on their own.
This suggests that although the pattern of actively
observing others may be found more often in
communities of Indigenous history, children in
European-American middle-class communities
can also use it as a learning tool.
Although many of the examples thus far have
centered on situations in which children visually
observe others in their environment, it is important
to point out that this form of learning is not lim-
ited to observing with one’s eyes. One study found
that 10-year-old Tohono O’odham children on the
Tohono O’odham reservation (Arizona) recalled a
story told by an adult regardless of whether they
were told the story directly or overheard the adult
tell the story to another child (Tsethlikai & Rogoff,
2013). However, rural children who participated
more in traditional Tohono O’odham cultural prac-
tices, including traditional storytelling, recalled
more than children who participated less in these
practices. Additionally, the language socialization
literature is full of examples of children learning
words, forms of interaction, and information by
overhearing (Heath, 1983; Miller, Potts, Fung,
Hoostra, & Mintz, 1990; Schieffelin & Ochs,
298 I n a n d Ou t of t h e C l a s s r o om
1986; Ward, 1971; Watson-Gegeo & Gegeo 1986).
It is likely that these skills at observation and moni-
toring others’ ongoing activity are also related to
being able to skillfully coordinate group interac-
tion and collaboration, which is the topic we turn
to next.
Cultural Patterns of Collaboration
and Coordination in Interaction
Many studies have shown the benefits of col-
laboration in helping children accomplish novel
or complex tasks (Azmitia, 1988; Gauvain &
Rogoff 1989; Teasley, 1995; Tudge, 1992; Tudge,
Winterhoff, & Morgan, 1996). However, children
must learn the cultural skills of effectively collabo-
rating with one other. It stands to reason that these
skills would be learned in interactions with others
and that these would vary across different cultural
communities.
Comparative cultural research suggests that
in communities with Indigenous history, specific
patterns of interaction and collaboration may be
related to children’s familiarity with Indigenous
and school ways of organizing teaching and learn-
ing. For example, Guatemalan Mayan mothers
with 0–2 years of schooling were more likely to
engage in multiparty collaboration when working
with three children compared to Mayan moth-
ers with 12 or more years of schooling who were
more likely to subdivide tasks (Chavajay & Rogoff,
2002). When three siblings engaged with a novel
science exhibit, US Mexican heritage siblings
tended to blend agendas, building off what their
siblings were doing in a smooth and undisputed way
and rarely interrupting ongoing activity, whereas
European-American siblings tended to engage with
one another by interrupting the other’s activity
and discussing turn-taking (Angelillo & Rogoff,
2005). Similarly, US Mexican heritage children
whose families were more familiar with the ways
of rural Mexico and had fewer years of schooling
were more likely to engage as a group when folding
origami compared to US European heritage chil-
dren and Mexican heritage children whose mothers
had 12 or more years of schooling (Mejía-Arauz,
Rogoff, Dexter, & Najafi, 2007). When working
on a three-dimensional puzzle, Mexican heritage
siblings whose families emigrated from rural areas
of Mexico and whose mothers averaged 7 years of
schooling were more likely to organize their inter-
actions collaboratively through joint engagement
where the siblings were working with one another
and building off one another’s efforts. Conversely,
the Mexican heritage siblings whose mothers had was as important as verbal interaction in leading
12 or more years of schooling were more likely to to theory development and change in the activity.
work solo on the puzzle (Correa-Chávez, 2011). In referring to two particular participants (LS and
Paradise and de Haan (2009) describe a situ- TF) Azmitia and Crowley (2001) wrote:
ation in which Mazahua teachers and students
While LS did not state her belief that the stories
collaborated as a classroom unit while installing
needed to be lined up and TF did not state her
classroom windows. All of the children, regardless
view that symmetry was important, both built
of skill level, collaborated with the teacher to put
towers that contained these features, a finding
the panes of glass in place. Less experienced chil-
that demonstrates once again the importance of
dren carefully watched the older children in order
non-verbal demonstrations for theory building,
to understand how to do difficult parts of the task,
refinement, and testing in this task and in science in
assuming responsibility for those parts they could
general. (p. 71)
handle. The teacher did not give direct instructions
A replication of the earthquake task that spe-
or manage the children’s work, and the children
cifically examined the verbal strategies used by suc-
did not explicitly ask for help. However, through
cessful teams found that extensive discussion of the
coordinating their actions, the children and teacher
task did not necessarily lead to success on the task
were able to complete the task.
or to productive collaboration. In fact, the most
successful and effective teams engaged in what the
Patterns of Communication
authors called “rapid prototyping,” building and
when Working Together
testing ideas with minimal discussion (Apedoe,
Although scholars have stressed the importance
Mattis, Rowden-Quince, & Schunn, 2010). From a
of talk in collaboration (Teasley, 1995), in commu-
Vygotskian point of view, it makes sense that much
nities where children are accustomed to integrat-
of the shared understanding in these collaborations
ing themselves into community and family work
would come from joint activity and use of tools, as
without interrupting others, many collaborative
well as through talk (Vygotsky, 1978).
interactions may rely heavily on the act of work-
Peruvian Matsingenka adolescents, for example,
ing together as an organizer in addition to talk. In
are highly skilled at accomplishing everyday tasks
some circumstances, engaging in large amounts of
in a clear and efficient manner, and they do so with-
talk may not necessarily be the most effective way
out needing to talk about what needs to be done
to accomplish an activity or organize collaboration,
or how to coordinate it (Ochs & Izquierdo, 2009).
as in the window repair example in the preceding
However, schools and people from highly schooled
paragraph.
communities seem to prioritize talk as a marker
Joint activity, as well as talk, was important
of engagement and learning (Dixon, Levine,
when older siblings in the United States were teach-
Richman, & Brazelton, 1984; Kim, 2002; Li, 2005;
ing a younger sibling how to construct a model
Maynard, 2004; Rogoff, 2003). Zinacantec Mayan
windmill. Although the siblings used talk to com-
children with only a few years of school used more
municate, they were more likely to use nonverbal
talk when teaching a younger sibling compared to
interactions in teaching compared to interactions
children who had not been to school, who tended
involving peers. Younger siblings were more likely
to use more bodily closeness and bodily guidance
to observe their older sibling’s activity and imitate
as teaching tools (Maynard, 2004). Triads of US
it, and older siblings were more likely to block their
Mexican heritage children whose families were
younger sibling’s move when the younger one was
more familiar with rural ways were more likely to
about to make a mistake, then correctly place the
engage in multiple nonverbal turns at communica-
piece for the younger sibling (this activity was rare
tion (what the authors called nonverbal conversa-
among peers who also served as teachers). Younger
tion) in organizing interactions compared to triads
siblings taught by an older sibling performed
of European-American children and Mexican heri-
better on a posttest than those taught by a peer
tage children whose mothers had extensive school-
(Azmitia & Hesser, 1993).
ing. The European-American children were more
Similarly, when pairs of multiethnic college stu-
likely to organize their interactions only through
dents collaborated to design a block structure that
chat or talk. The Mexican heritage children whose
would withstand an earthquake simulation, explic-
families had high schooling were intermediate
itly stating a shared theory did not necessarily lead
between the two (Mejía-Arauz et al., 2007).
to good progress on the task. Nonverbal interaction

C or r e a- C h áv e z , M a ng ion e , Bl ac k 299
 Nonverbal conversation and communication
through multiple means may be less common in
communities where children are prepared for com-
munity life by being segregated and taught through
lessons, as opposed to being included in the role
of legitimate peripheral participant, because there
are fewer opportunities to engage around the activ-
ity or object in question (Lave & Wenger, 1991).
Specialized formats of verbal communication are
often seen in lessons and are more common in fam-
ilies with extensive school experience (Dixon et al.,
1984; Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984; Rogoff et al.,
1993). European-American middle-class toddlers
in two US communities were rarely exposed
to adult work although they engaged in many
child-focused activities (Morelli et al., 2003).
Increasingly, in middle-class communities, chil-
dren around the world spend more time engaged
in lessons and less time exposed to productive adult
work. These differences are apparent when compar-
ing across nations and also when comparing across
social classes within a country (Coppens et al.,
2014; Correa-Chávez, et al., in press; Mejía-Arauz
et al., 2013; Tudge et al., 2006). However, there is
some indication that white middle-class children in
the United States engage in more talk than do chil-
dren in other middle-class communities. In a com-
parison of middle-class toddlers in three countries,
white, middle-class toddlers in the United States
engaged in conversations with adults on topics that
were not the current focus of activity almost twice
as often as the middle-class toddler in Brazil and
Kenya (Tudge et al., 2006).
While working on school tasks (drawing pic-
tures, working on puzzle, and playing with tinker
toys) with their kindergartners, Hawaiian moth-
ers used more nonverbal assistance and less ver-
bal assistance compared to US mainland mothers
(Speidel, Farran, & Jordan, 1989). Other studies
have indicated that Hawaiian mothers use more
co-participation and modeling when working with
their children on a task than do mothers from the
US mainland (Tharp et al., 2007). In a comparison
of Gusii (Kenyan) and US middle-class mothers’
teaching strategies with their infants, Gusii moth-
ers were more likely to repeatedly model the activi-
ties in which they wanted their child to engage. US
mothers, in contrast, were more likely to break the
desired action down into small steps and verbally
explain to the child (Dixon et al., 1984; Richman,
Miller, & LeVine, 1992).
Similarly, when they were helping children build
a market stand, teachers in a Mazahua town took
300 I n a n d Ou t of t h e C l a s s r o om
the opportunity to verbally motivate the child and
define the situation. The teachers would interrupt
the activity to repair something in the event it went
wrong and would not move on unless the child had
demonstrated an understanding of the situation.
This pattern was very different from the strategy
used by the Mazahua parents of beginning to build
the stand while the child watched and contributed
to the best of her or his abilities. In interviews, the
Mazahua parents stressed that the way children
learn to do things is by first seeing other people
do them (de Haan, 1999). However, when adults
in the United States were asked how they knew
learning was taking place, the presence of talk was
referred to as an important marker of learning and
engagement (Kim, 2002; Li, 2005; 2008).
The cultural skills of learning how to moni-
tor others’ interactions and find the appropriate
moment in which to merge with ongoing events
without interrupting or disrupting others appears
to be learned early on. When learning how to oper-
ate novel toys, Mayan toddlers were more likely to
request help from their mothers using gaze, touch,
and body posture compared to European-American
toddlers who hardly ever used those methods in
asking for help (Rogoff et al., 1993). In another
study, US Mexican heritage children were ten
times more likely to wait for the precise moment
to request help from an adult (by waiting patiently
and checking that the adult was not busy before
asking) compared to US European-American chil-
dren (Ruvalcaba, López, Rogoff, Correa-Chávez, &
Gutierrez, 2012). When working together on a joint
project, Mexican heritage children whose mothers
averaged 7 years of schooling tended to organize
collaboration in ways that did not privilege talk
by relying on joint activity and nonverbal forms
of communication in addition to words. Mexican
heritage children whose mothers had 12 or more
years of schooling prioritized talk in coordination
and interaction (Correa-Chávez, 2011; Mangione,
Correa-Chávez, Moreno & Mejía-Arauz, 2012;
Mejía-Arauz et al., 2007).
The Sociocultural Context of School
Maternal Schooling and Transformation
Across Generations
Throughout this chapter, we have alluded to the
importance that participation in the cultural insti-
tution of school has across generations. Research
has demonstrated that maternal participation in the
cultural practice of school has far-reaching implica-
tions for children of the next generation as mothers
may organize interactions with children in ways
that reflect the organization of school (Chavajay
& Rogoff, 2002; Laosa, 1980; 1981; LeVine et al.,
1991; Mejía-Arauz, Rogoff, & Paradise, 2005;
Moreno & Valencia, 2002; Richman et al., 1992;
Rogoff et al., 1993). It is probable that parents
who have spent 12 or more years in schools would
interact with children in ways that are consistent
with the interactional patterns common to school
and that these lessons might replace other forms
of organizing interaction (Crago et al., 1993;
Richman et al., 1992; Rogoff, 2003).
Mayan mothers with more years of schooling
organized child interactions through turn-taking
and subdivision of activities in ways that resembled
school more so than Mayan mothers with fewer
years of schooling (Chavajay & Rogoff, 2002).
Mexican immigrant mothers with more years
of schooling provided more verbal explanations
during a visit to a science museum compared to
Mexican immigrant mothers with fewer years of
schooling (Tenenbaum, Callanan, Alba-Speyer,
& Sandoval, 2002). When teaching children,
Mexican-American mothers with more years of
schooling relied more on question-and-answer
interactions if they had many years of schooling;
Mexican-American mothers with fewer years of
schooling relied more on modeling (Laosa, 1981;
1982; Moreno, 2000).
As with Mayan mothers, Gusii mothers in rural
Kenya are impacted by what they learn in school,
which in turn affects the interactions they have
with their children. In the 1950s, researchers noted
that Gusii mothers rarely acted as teachers or play-
mates for their children, rather acting as “manag-
ers, protectors and disciplinarians.” (LeVine et al.,
1994, p. 90). However, in recent years, the educa-
tion these mothers receive has changed due to the
process of modernization, which has changed the
values, attitudes, and behaviors of mothers (LeVine,
1980). Gusii mothers with higher levels of schooling
(7 years) now view infant care through a more edu-
cational lens, believing that a trained professional
can teach the infant better than the mother. LeVine
(1980) suggests the mothers have internalized the
notion that learning best happens with a more for-
mal instructor than simply a parent bearing the
responsibility for the education of the child.
Children whose mothers have more years of
schooling also tend to exhibit forms of interaction
and group organization common to school. US
Mexican heritage children whose mothers aver-
aged seven grades of school tended to rely more
C or r e a- C h áv e z , M a ng ion e , Bl ac k
on observation as a source of information and
attended simultaneously to multiple ongoing events
more often than did US Mexican heritage children
whose mothers had 12 or more years of schooling
(Correa-Chávez et al., 2005; Mejía-Arauz et al.,
2005). Mayan children whose mothers averaged
three grades of schooling attended more to infor-
mation directed to others compared to Mayan
children whose mothers averaged 12 or more
years (Correa-Chávez & Rogoff, 2009). Similarly,
Mexican heritage children in the United States
whose mothers averaged 7 years of schooling paid
attention to third-party activity more than US
Mexican heritage children whose mothers had
more than 12 years of schooling (López et al.,
2010; Silva et al., 2010).
Additionally, school changes children’s learn-
ing opportunities by altering the environment and
expectations that surround childhood. As school
becomes a defining characteristic of childhood,
parents increasingly define school and schoolwork
as a child’s obligation, duty, and work, while at
the same time child contribution to the household
decreases (Mejía-Arauz et al., 2013; Rogoff et al.,
2013). Children’s expectations about the future are
also changed with school attendance and certifica-
tion, becoming an increasingly important part of
their goals and expectations for the future (Rogoff
et al., 2013). Along with these, fertility declines
(reducing the number of siblings and related chil-
dren) and age gradation in school becomes more
stringent, thus reducing interaction between multi-
age peers (Hernandez, 1997; Rogoff et al., 2005).
Variations in Schools and Variation
in Participation with Schools
However, although these patterns of change
have been found in the literature for many areas
of the world, schools across the world also vary in
how they organize interactions between children,
between children and adults, and in what they con-
sider to be important learning goals for their stu-
dents (Tobin, Wu, & Davidson, 1989). Even within
one cultural community, the goals of schooling and
the methods employed by teachers are going to vary
depending on the intent of school. For example,
among the Fulbe of Northern Cameroon some chil-
dren attend two different kinds of school: Qur’anic
school for learning the Qur’an by rote in Arabic and
public school introduced by the Colonial French in
the early 1900s. The forms of learning and expecta-
tions of both kinds of school have traditionally been
different, with the Qur’anic school emphasizing
301
imitation, repetition, and memorization without
explanation. However, as more Fulbe attended
both types of schools and became teachers, they
also adapted elements of each kind of instruction
in the two contexts. In the Qur’anic schools, for
example, some teachers added songs and collective
instruction (previous instruction had been solitary),
whereas in the public school some new Islamic
elementary schools were introduced that taught
both religious and nonreligious subjects side by side
(Moore, 2011).
Many researchers interested in the academic
success of children form nondominant communi-
ties in the United States have suggested that one
of the contributors to disengagement with school
among children whose cultural heritage differs
from the dominant heritage may be a mismatch
between home culture and school culture. For
example, Tharp and his colleagues (2007) have
argued that Hawaiian schools do not reflect the col-
laboration and intent with which Native Hawaiian
children are accustomed. Whereas Hawaiian
children tend to prefer learning from older
children in groups, schools are structured for
individual work, without much opportunity for
collaboration to take place. Additionally, chil-
dren are not accustomed to following the instruc-
tions of a teacher because outside of school they
are relatively independent and can contribute to
the group with little adult supervision. Teachers
are also trained to teach a concept by breaking
it down into its smaller components first, before
synthesizing it later. Outside of school, Hawaiian
children learn tasks as a “whole” rather than in
parts: they know what the final product or end
goal is before they learn the task, which gives
meaning to the learning process. Programs such
as the successful Kamehameha Early Education
Program (KEEP) were developed to connect
the learning practices inside of school to those
of the community. These programs have since
been adapted to other communities and popula-
tions (Cooper, 2011; Trumbull, Rothstein-Fisch,
Greenfield, & Quiroz, 1998).
In communities in which Western schooling
is becoming more prominent, some parents have
also expressed worry that schools’ ideals and values
may not be compatible with the ideals of the com-
munity. Matsigenka parents report that the chil-
dren of the communities’ mestizo teachers “noisily
interrupt them with ‘Escúchame’ (Listen to me!),
demand food, but do not help in any way” (Ochs &
Izquierdo, 2009, p. 396). Similarly, many elder
302 I n a n d Ou t of t h e C l a s s r o om
P’urhépecha reported that parents were ambivalent
about sending their children to school because they
believed school taught children to be lazy (Keyser
Ohrt, 2009).
Can Multiple Ways of Learning Coexist?
Although participation in school may familiar-
ize people with the forms of teaching and learning
common in school, it is important to point out that
increased participation in school is accompanied
by a number of other demographic changes, such
as a decrease in number of children in the family,
more limited involvement in the extended fam-
ily, migration, urban experience, and occupations
requiring credentials (Chavajay & Rogoff, 2002;
LeVine et al., 1991; LeVine, LeVine, & Schnell,
2001; Richman et al., 1992; Rogoff et al., 2005;
Rogoff & Angelillo, 2002). There is likely no one
“active ingredient” responsible for the changes
across generations; rather, the cultural research
points toward constellations of practices and pat-
terns that seem to fit together across different parts
of the world. Increased maternal schooling and
changes in child learning and socialization is one
such pattern (Levine et al, 2003; Rogoff, 2003).
However, rather than having one pattern of partic-
ipation and learning necessarily replace another, as
may be suggested by some of the current research,
it may be possible for children to develop a reper-
toire of learning practices that includes multiple
ways of approaching learning (Gutierrez & Rogoff,
2003).
There is some indication that children who are
exposed to and have participated in multiple ways
of organizing teaching and learning can recognize
aspects of that cultural form of learning even if
they cannot label the forms of interaction. When
shown videotaped interactions of children work-
ing together in forms either consistent with school
ways or with learning by observing and pitching
in, bilingual Mexican heritage children who were
attending US schools were able to identify forms
of collaboration and interaction where the chil-
dren on the videotape talked “with their eyes and
with their hands.” European-American children
who were familiar only with school ways were less
likely to identify communication or collaboration
if it did not include talk (Roberts & Rogoff, 2012).
Similarly, Mexican heritage children in the United
States behaved in a way consistent with the cultural
value of respeto when they were working with an
adult regardless of how much experience their fam-
ily had with schooling. Children in both groups
rarely interrupted the adult’s activity; however,
European-American middle-class children were
more likely to interrupt the adult and insist on her
attention (Ruvalcaba et al., 2012). Research with
bilingual children has shown that it is not necessary
for one cultural system—language in this case—to
replace another (Zentella, 1997). Bilingual chil-
dren can recognize and reflect on their language
choices in a number of different situations and can
choose accordingly. It may be possible for the cul-
tural forms of learning to coexist as well. However,
in order for this to happen, an important first step
is to understand and value forms of learning that
are not modeled on school and to acknowledge
them as a valid form of organizing learning.
Understanding the different ways in which
learning can be culturally organized is especially
important given the mobility of people and ideas
in today’s world. UNICEF (2012) estimates that,
worldwide, there are more than 33 million inter-
national immigrants aged 0–19, and presumably
many of these children are attending school in a
new cultural context. Additionally, as we have
shown and argued, even within one country there
can be vast variability in the cultural organization
of children’s lives and learning opportunities. By
not attempting to understand and build on some
of the learning tools that children already have, we
are missing opportunities to engage with children
and expand their existing repertoire of practices.
Moreover, many of the skills and behaviors that
children learn while engaging in productive activ-
ity with family and community, such as taking
initiative in learning, learning to skillfully interact
with multiple participants, and being able to pay
attention to and extract information from multiple
sources, are skills that are considered valuable in
school and work contexts. These qualities and skills
are likely to be ones we want to encourage and fos-
ter in all children.
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 C H A P T E R

19 Gender Across Cultures: Sex and

Socialization in Childhood

Shagufa Kapadia and Jigisha Gala

Abstract
This chapter addresses the intricate interface between gender and culture, highlighting its pervasive
influence on child development. It begins with an overview of gender as a social and cultural construct
and discusses the major theoretical perspectives on gender development. We then discuss in
detail the environments of gender socialization across cultures. Presented next is a developmental
perspective on how gender has a profound effect on select developmental domains such as emotional,
cognitive, and social. The final section contains critical reflections and recommendations for future
research integrating culture and gender to better understand gender socialization and move toward
transformative change and a more gender equitable world.
Key Words:  gender, childhood, culture, development, socialization, stereotypes

The intricacies of the culture–development their self-worth from “other-oriented” expectations

interface were best revealed to the first author in
the course of her doctoral research on women’s
empowerment and its linkages with psychosocial
variables, wherein self-esteem was posited as the
key variable. Experiences with women’s empow-
erment in the Indian context indicated that one
of the most persistent obstacles to impede Indian
women’s development is their negligent attitude
toward themselves as a result of their preoccupa-
tion with sociocultural roles. For example, many
women neglected seeking health treatment because
they were preoccupied with familial and cultural
roles and responsibilities. Women in Indian soci-
ety derive much worth from fulfilling the needs of
others, often at the expense of their own needs and
wishes. Paradoxically, the cultural perspectives on
self revealed that these very elements of self-sacrifice
and primacy to others’ needs are culturally central
in shaping Indian women’s construction of self.
The culture–gender–development interface was
thus brought to the fore in the form of a seemingly
irreconcilable situation in which women derived
and roles that are culturally valued but may restrain
development. On one hand, performance of famil-
ial roles and fulfilling others’ expectations garners
immense goodwill and positive feedback that con-
tributes to self-worth; on the other hand, situations
in which the woman’s personal wish or desire con-
flicts with family expectations evoke much anxiety,
guilt, and dissonance that in turn impinge on the
woman’s sense of self. Such dilemmas are partic-
ularly evident in the context of marriage partner
selection in instances in which the young woman’s
choice of a prospective partner does not correspond
with that of her parents. Irrespective of the deci-
sion, the woman experiences immense difficulty,
self-reproach, and blame. The following voices of
two young women are illustrative of this situation:
Deciding in favor of own wish: “The decision would
be extremely difficult, because the girl has to leave her
parents in a very miserable condition as the daughter
has gone against their wish; it would be difficult for
them to account for her action to samaj (society). Even

307
 if they do not understand her, but she understands them
and she has to take the decision for her life so it is very
difficult to choose between your parents and your life.”
Deciding in favor of parents’ wish: “She will feel
guilty as she is parting from someone who she knows
she will be happy with. So in a way she will be leaving
her life so to speak because she won’t be happy with
any other person if she really is into a deep relationship
with the boy. And especially if she is leaving a person
for a reason with which she does not agree (different
social background/caste), nor is it important for her. So
she will feel guilty that after all she is letting down the
boy and she is supporting the parents, despite knowing
that they are wrong.”
Encounters with such dialectics brought forth
greater cognizance of and engagement with cul-
ture, thereby urging the first author to delve deeper
into cultural and gender perspectives in human
development.
How culture influences the development of gen-
der has long fascinated scholars of human devel-
opment. Best (2010) contends that the Whitings’
seminal six-cultures research on mapping the cul-
tural influences on gender socialization was an early
and important contribution. Using observational
methodology, the research focused on children
within the family context to examine gender dif-
ferences in aggression, nurturance, responsibility,
and help- and attention-seeking behaviors among
six cultures (India, Kenya, Mexico, Okinawa, the
Philippines, and the United States). The study dem-
onstrated that the culturally determined settings;
social agents; tasks assigned; and interactions among
parent, siblings, peers, and children affect the devel-
opment of gender-related experiences and behaviors.
Most consistent gender differences were found in
the domains of nurturance, dominance, and aggres-
sion. Girls demonstrated more nurturance than did
boys, who showed more aggression and dominance.
This was attributed to differential task assignment,
in that girls were assigned more domestic and sib-
ling care tasks compared to boys, especially in India,
Mexico, and Okinawa. The research highlighted the
“cultural roots” (p. 542) of gender differences, spe-
cifically the role of cultural beliefs and socialization
experiences on gender development. Contemporary
research on the theory of gender development con-
tinues to delve into these aspects.
Gender, a sociocultural construction, is an
inherent facet of socialization that begins at birth
and continues throughout the life span. Irrespective
of variations in form and approach, socialization
308 G e n de r Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
for gender roles is ubiquitous, so much so that even
“learned roles” often tend to be regarded as a natu-
ral phenomenon. Gender is omnipresent across
developmental domains, across cultures, and across
life span.
This chapter highlights the role of gender in
child development across cultures. It is organized
into four sections. The first section discusses the
epistemology of gender development, including a
focus on theoretical perspectives in understanding
gender. The second section presents an overview of
the roles of macro- and microenvironments in gen-
der socialization. In the third section, we address
how gender impinges on select domains of develop-
ment and the cross-cultural similarities and varia-
tions therein. In the final section, we share some
critical reflections on the topic and outline recom-
mendations for future research integrating culture
and gender to elicit a culturally sensitive under-
standing of gender development with the larger
goal of advancing in the direction of transformative
change toward a more gender-equitable world.
Epistemology of Gender
Gender as a concept represents a crucial debate
in human development viz. nature versus nur-
ture: how much of the “sex” differences are biologi-
cal, and to what extent are these a result of social
acculturation? Societies attach their own meanings
to the biological concept of sex to create social dis-
tinctions between the two sexes, male and female,
thereby creating the distinct categories of men and
women. Societal structures, such as family, law, and
religion, embellish these categories in culturally dis-
tinct ways. The distinction between the terms “sex”
and “gender” emerged in the 1970s, when feminist
social scientists began to use the word “gender” to
expand the notion of a fixed meaning for the sex
category into one that included, in addition to biol-
ogy, culture-specific meanings and cross-cultural
differences (Magnusson & Marecek, 2012).
Best (2010), however, notes that this concep-
tual dichotomy between sex and gender creates
an arbitrary dichotomy between biological and
social influences and hinders our understanding
of cultural and self-perceptions of “maleness” and
“femaleness.” This is because we are products of
both biology and environment, simultaneously
and inseparably. Sex and gender are intertwined;
they interact and they coexist. Alex, Wiklund,
Lundman, Christianson, and Hammarström
(2012) echo a similar concern among the medi-
cal fraternity who reveal that sex cannot be merely
limited to biology and that there is no biology that
operates in isolation. They state that sex is not static;
it is fluid and changeable. Citing an example, they
point out that, in English, it is much easier to say
“sex segregated” than “gender segregated,” which
highlights a limitation of the concept of sex in
the English language. In Swedish, by comparison,
gender is already inscribed within biological sex
and therefore the term “sex” gives a more holistic
understanding of the concept. The term “gender”
also has subcategories related to gender constructs,
power structures, and femininities and masculini-
ties. A person can be biologically male yet respond
in ways that are culturally categorized as feminine.
The nondichotomous nature of sex and gender has
been captured using the interesting metaphor of a
Mobius band—a loop with no end: “The outside of
the Mobius band is related to as biology/sex and if
you follow the band, suddenly you are on the inside
of the band and it has become gender … you fol-
low the band and end up on the outside again and
gender has gone back to biology” (p. 4). Alex et al.
suggest that we understand gender as “biological
sex with a holistic perspective,” in which biologi-
cal sex is intertwined and engulfed by social and
cultural factors. Clarifying our conceptions of sex
and gender and understanding the nature of their
interplay can have major implications on all facets
of human development.
Theoretical Perspectives
on Gender Development
As with any other aspect of human growth and
development, theorists and developmentalists have
established the role of both nature and nurture in
the learning and development of gender. Gender
development theories fall broadly within frame-
works that emphasize the role of either biology,
environment, or both. Maccoby (2000) brings to
the fore the limitations of socialization and cog-
nitive perspectives that have largely focused on
individual differences in outcome, and she instead
draws attention to the study of robust group- and
social context-based gender outcomes. She argues
for an integration of the ethological and psycho-
biological perspectives with the cognitive and
socialization perspectives to understand better the
enactment of gender.
The ethological perspective describes instinc-
tive elements in a species’ behavioral repertoire and
draws attention to those situations in which sex dif-
ferences may occur, rather than emphasizing gen-
eralized trait differences. In the psychobiological
view, genes and environment have a bidirectional,
reciprocal relationship; hence, the expression of par-
ticular genes will depend on the different social con-
ditions offered by individuals with whom a child
interacts. Cultures create and offer different con-
texts to children, and these in turn affect the degree
and nature of sex differentiation. Whereas biologi-
cal perspectives enable an understanding of robust
and consistent gender differences across cultures,
the cognitive and socialization perspectives are rel-
evant to understanding within-sex variations and
differences among cultural groups and contexts.
However, both theoretical frameworks—those
that emphasize the role of biology (e.g., brain
structure, hormones, neurochemicals) as well as
those that focus on early experiences (e.g., psy-
chodynamic, social learning theories)—are reduc-
tionist and universalist in their perspectives, and
often represent knowledge that may be partial and
skewed. In response to the androcentric and ethno-
centric biases in “science,” feminists and cultural
psychologists have raised several questions related
to classical theories and methodologies. To begin
with, the a priori categories of “man” and “woman”
are subject to scrutiny. “Doing gender” includes
not only conformity, but also nonconformity
because both are in relation to the set gender norms
in a given society. Cultural psychologists argue that
understanding a developmental psychology must
take into account “cultural background, historical
epoch and social categorization” (p. 31). Feminist
theories take into account the “experience” of the
individual in building knowledge (Magnusson &
Marecek, 2012).
Feminist Perspectives
Feminist approaches and methodologies help
to critically examine the presumed link between
“female” and “feminine” social roles and “male”
and “masculine” roles. Feminist researchers inves-
tigate how “interpersonal” and “situational” sur-
roundings lead to the development of gendered
identities. The experience and influence of a certain
situation may vary for a man and a woman. Social
rewards and penalties play a major role. Feminists
point out that power equations and linguistic issues
serve to mask these lopsided equations in knowl-
edge generation and application. For instance,
Sharon Lamb’s work (1991, in Magnusson &
Marecek, 2012) on linguistic practices in psycho-
therapy revealed that euphemisms and “linguistic
avoidance” absolved men of their responsibility for
violence against women.
K a pa di a , G a l a 309
 In addition, Reddok (2000) observed a
Eurocentric linguistic bias and noted that the
“historical records are laced with racism, sexism,
and imperialist sentiments” (p. 32). The language
environment of children is abundant with words
and expressions referring to what is “girl stuff” and
what is “boy stuff” (Magnusson & Marecek, 2012).
Moreover, because language is inextricably linked
to concepts and epistemology, it is imperative that
its role in perpetuating set patterns and categoriza-
tions be acknowledged. Feminist approaches also
differ remarkably from traditional approaches in
the sense that they recognize plurality in experi-
ences across classes and cultures (Reddock, 2000).
Cultural Psychology Perspective
Cultural psychology is an overarching inter-
disciplinary perspective that offers understanding
of how culture and psyche make up one another
(Shweder et al., 2006). Cultural psychology con-
tends that very few components of the human
psyche are hardwired or fundamental such that
their developmental pathway is immutable and pre-
cludes transformation through cultural participa-
tion. Differences in children’s worlds arise because
of the material, social, and cultural conditions of
child development. Cultural conditions refer to the
local ideational models that combine beliefs and
moral norms to give meaning to the child’s world
and development. Cultural psychology recognizes
that child development is intimately bound to the
process of socialization, which involves “orienting
oneself in systems of meaning” (p. 742). Gender is
interwoven into cultural worldviews across societies
and hence forms an inherent, pervasive, and almost
naturalized constituent of child socialization.
As Magnusson and Marecek (2012) observe,
“People do not ‘do gender’ in a social and cultural
vacuum” (p. 34). Using symbolic and behavioral
terms at the local level, caregivers and educators
organize the child’s world in consonance with a
cultural inheritance of what is good and normal,
thereby giving culture-specific meanings to gen-
der. Caregivers also balance the acceptance of
the broader cultural goals with what they desire
for their children. Cheah and Chirkov (2008), in
their study with Aboriginal and Euro-Canadian
mothers of young children, show that when choos-
ing goals for socialization, mothers do not indis-
criminately accept all culturally sanctioned values
but rather accept them to varied degrees. In addi-
tion, Morrow’s (2006) review of recent UK-based
studies reveals that children actively learn and
310 G e n de r Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
relearn gender. The studies she included in her
review prioritize children’s (middle-childhood)
voices in descriptions of their daily lives and
gender-difference experiences with families, peers,
public space, and out-of-school care.
In summary, although some of the theoretical
perspectives grant agency to the child (e.g., cogni-
tive and social learning to an extent), they propose
universal trends, as if “all girls” and “all boys” are
two distinctly separate categories. Other perspec-
tives, by contrast, recognize the roles of culture,
context, and socialization on gender development.
Children do not exist in isolation from their con-
texts, there is no universal child, and factors at the
individual level, as well as at the meso- and mac-
rolevels, impinge on the gender constructions and
gender identities of children across cultures, con-
texts, and other markers of social identities, such
as class, ethnicity, and religion (Morrow, 2006).
However, for policy makers, it is imperative to
recognize “gender not as a category of exclusion
but as a problematic construct that is constantly
restructuring itself” (Tripathy, 2010, p. 113). The
next section discusses the influence of contexts and
examines the role of various agencies in gender
socialization.
Gender Socialization Environments
Macro Environments of
Gender Socialization
The child’s ecosystem consists of various
agents working at the macro- and microlevels
(Bronfenbrenner, 1979), each of which plays a role
in shaping the child’s development and identity
during childhood. How societies are structured at
large impacts child socialization. Munroe (2004)
studied the relationship between social structure
and sex role choices among 3 to 9 year-old chil-
dren in four cultures, two of which (the Logoli of
Kenya and the Newars of Nepal) were structured
patricentrically (virilocal residence, patrilineal
descent, strong sex stereotypes) and two (the Black
Carib of Belize and American Samoans) that were
not structured patricentrically (neolocal or bilocal
residence, etc.). Children in the former two societ-
ies (the Logoli and the Newars) with salient gender
differentiation were expected to choose same-sex
roles and culture-specific gender-based tasks com-
pared to children in the nonpatricentric societies.
Overall, the results indicated that, across societies
and age levels, children demonstrated same-sex
preference, with the preference increasing with
increasing age. However, among the Newars in
Nepal, a patricentric society, the same-sex prefer-
ence declined with age. That Newar women have a
somewhat higher status than what generally exists
in patricentric societies (e.g., partial control over
money, along with the right to dissolve marriage
and remarry) is posed as one plausible explana-
tion for this finding. The research also highlights
motivational elements involved in children’s active
negotiation of the meaning of their choices, thereby
bringing into play the constructivist perspective of
Vygotsky.
Attitudinal changes at the macrolevel also influ-
ence gender socialization, albeit at a slow pace, in
part because state policies are also slow to change.
For example, although Japanese individuals and
families are moving toward egalitarian roles, some
state policies make it practically difficult for fathers
to take care of their children. Selfless commitment
to work as a macrolevel cultural value conflicts
with the idea of division of child care responsibility,
and this is reflected in the leave policy for parents
in Japan (Morrone & Matsuyama, 2010). Similarly,
in India, although a macrolevel analysis shows that
many women have joined the workforce, working
mothers experience more guilt for not being able to
spend time with their children, with one of the rea-
sons being the lack of alternative child care facili-
ties (Vindhya, 2011).
Studies with Latino families in the United
States show that parental beliefs that affect their
children’s gender socialization are largely shaped
by demographic factors. These include the use of
Spanish or English by parents, whether parents
were born in the United States, and the level of
parental education, all of which affected parental
attitudes pertaining to the gender roles of their
adolescents (Raffaelli & Ontai, 2004). The impact
of state-level welfare policies and education on dif-
ferential gender relations is observed in Spain and
Finland (Mínguez, 2010). In Spain, although the
state’s family policies were not amenable to creating
new gender-related norms, education served as an
important asset in downplaying the impact of such
state policies. In Finland, irrespective of the level of
education, most people moved toward egalitarian
gender relationships owing to that country’s favor-
able institutionalized family policies. In addition, a
country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and wom-
en’s participation in economic employment are
important factors responsible for this change. Using
the World Values Survey, Seguino (2007) observed
a shift toward more egalitarian gender roles and
expectations in general. She notes that when GDP
drops, patriarchal values resurge promptly. She also
found that women’s economic engagement is inde-
pendently related to more equitable gender norms,
irrespective of culture and region. Levey and Silver
(2006), using the Generations Survey in Japan and
the United States, reveal that gender differences do
not exist in value orientations when controlled for
demographic and human capital variations, except
in individual orientations, where men scored higher
than women in both countries. Even though Japan
and the United States are comparable in terms of
postindustrial affluence and economic systems,
data revealed that each nation’s overall culture was
more significantly linked to gender differences in
value orientations rather than to the gender of the
person, thus highlighting that gender differences
are neither systematic nor consistent when macro-
level factors are taken into consideration.
Family
A child’s family or home is the primary source
of socialization during the early years. At home,
role models, reinforcements, and approval or disap-
proval by significant adults promote the develop-
ment of gender identities that are congruent with
the larger society and culture. Imitation of parents
or siblings (especially same-sex) is the second most
important form of gender socialization within the
context of the family.
Gender-differential socialization is prevalent
across societies, albeit in different intensities and
forms. The welcome greeting that a child receives is
the first such instance. Son preference is very high
among many cultures. Comparing Turkmenistan
and Azerbaijan families, Hortaçsu, Bastug, and
Muhammetberdiev (2001) revealed that Turkish
men desired greater numbers of children soon after
marriage and preferred sons in relation to the Azeris.
Women showed such preference only when they
were forced to choose. In traditional Indian society,
for example, although the birth of any child is an
occasion to celebrate and share sweets with family
and friends, there is a difference in the type of candy
offered for a girl or a boy: sons are welcomed with a
more expensive sweet. In India, the concept of sewa
(service) and sacrifice are necessary qualities in girls.
A girl is also trained for self-denial and self-negation
because she must learn to be subservient and obedi-
ent to older women, especially her future mother-in-
law; otherwise, she will face disapproval from her
conjugal family and bring disrepute and disgrace
to her parents (Dube, 1998). In general, girls in
India are socialized to adjust to whatever they may
K a pa di a , G a l a 311
encounter in their affinal home rather than social-
ized into specific roles (Ganesh, 1999). Therefore,
some girls maybe socialized to be homemakers and
serve their family members after marriage, whereas
others maybe socialized to be educated and bring
home a paycheck, depending on the expectations
of their conjugal families. Also, as Bhogle (1999)
observed, in a complex culture such as India, which
is multireligious, multilinguistic, and has multiple
class and caste identities, it is impossible to con-
struct gender roles that can be generalized to all
sections of Indian society, and these roles do not
remain static throughout the life span.
Play materials for children are also largely
gendered. In an African context, for instance
(Murray & Turiel, 2012), girls usually receive figu-
rines that resemble babies and boys receive guns,
cars, and airplane models. Such practices send a
clear gendered message to the girl child that she
is expected to grow up to bear children and take
good care of them. The boundaries and limita-
tions of the girl child are clearly marked within the
kitchen. She is reminded to be happy within these
set boundaries, or she risks becoming a deviant. In
most families, boys are not allowed or expected to
play with “girl” toys, and they are cautioned not
engage in girls’ activities. If a boy child is found
holding his sister’s doll, he is usually subjected to
ridicule or punishment.
Along similar lines, a study on gender-based
economic socialization in Italian families revealed
parental inequality in the treatment of boys and
girls in that there was greater tolerance, generos-
ity, and trust in sons, who were considered ratio-
nal consumers. Girls, by contrast, were expected
to behave in a mature and responsible manner and
were often considered big consumers and spenders.
The value of saving and self-control was particu-
larly emphasized for young girls compared to boys.
In addition, girls got only half the pocket money
that their brothers received (Ruspini, 2012).
Siblings play a significant role in the acquisi-
tion of gender identity. Rust, Golombok, Hines,
Johnston, Golding, and the ALSPAC Study Team
(2000) examined the role of siblings in influenc-
ing gender-related behaviors. They found that the
presence of an older brother was associated “with
both masculinization and defeminization for girls
and boys, whereas the presence of an older sister
associated with feminization but not demasculin-
ization in boys and demasculinization but not fem-
inization in girls” (p. 299). Thus, the presence of
a same-sex older sibling was associated with more
312 G e n de r Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
sex-typed behaviors among younger siblings com-
pared to their same-sex single child counterparts
who subsequently indicated more same-sex typed
behaviors than did children with other-sex siblings.
More recently, particular interest has been
directed to the investment of fathers in families
with sons and how this affects gender socialization.
Raley and Bianchi (2006) contend that married
fathers in the United States invest increased time
in leisure activities in families where at least one
son is present. McNeill’s (2007) grounded theory
approach to understanding fathers as parents rather
than as men revealed that the hegemonic, dominat-
ing, competing idea of masculinity fails to account
for the love, tenderness, and care many fathers
demonstrate. The study participants included first-
and second-generation immigrants to the United
States from India, Africa, Greece, Portugal, Italy,
and Ukraine, and his data provide a broader onto-
logical, rather than a restricted hegemonic, view of
masculinity and fatherhood. Overall, however, the
traditional image of fathers as protectors and pro-
viders remains.
Peers
Peers affect socialization by reinforcing gender
and undoing stereotypes. Interactions with peers
in various play contexts shape and reinforce chil-
dren’s egalitarian and hierarchical ways of social
organization. A study with Japanese preschoolers
reveals that peers reprimanded, teased, and taunted
children for using gender-inappropriate language
more than their mothers did. Interestingly, moth-
ers of preschoolers revealed that their boys learned
this rough language after they entered preschool.
Girls also exhibited masculine linguistic forms
after joining preschool. Still, overall, boys’ speech
was assertive, commanding, and high-handed,
whereas girls’ speech was more collaborative,
explaining, and questioning. Yet, when the context
demanded, girls did use assertive and rough lan-
guage forms to negotiate or fight, but it was rare to
see boys using feminine linguistic styles. Therefore,
gender-distinctive language is dynamic rather than
fixed, dictated by the context of interactions and
relationships (Nakamura, 2001).
Another study that illustrates language and
gender socialization through peer interactions and
play reveals the importance of context in uphold-
ing traditional gender stereotypes or digressing
from them. Examining the use of directives and
imperatives in peer interactions as an indicator,
Kyratzis and Tarım (2010) noted that Turkish
preschool girls felt free to play down their gender
role identities in contexts that demanded them to
command boys, as when they played “mother” to
the boys. The girls knew that, in their culture, girls
talk softly and use a cooperative language, yet they
adapted their language and style of communication
according to their contextual role plays. However,
the influence of peers on children’s socialization
is not consistent for all children. The “social dos-
age effect” (i.e., the influence of peers) was more
predictable for children who spent more time with
same-sex peers (Martin & Fabes, 2001).
Apart from language, children also learn social
skills from each other. However, the skills learned
are mediated by gender. Social experiences some-
times serve to promote gender nonconformity, as
well as dampen it. A longitudinal study of children
from the upper Midwest of the United States by
Ewing Lee and Troop-Gordon (2011) reveals that
peer-victimized girls withdrew from both mascu-
line and feminine behaviors, whereas physically
and verbally abused boys reduced their engagement
in feminine behaviors, Yet, when social exclusion
was warranted, the boys’ engagement with tradi-
tionally feminine behaviors was amplified.
Education Settings and Books
Schools are important contexts for gender
socialization and the reinforcement of hegemonic
culture. Caregivers, teachers, peers, and media
accessible to children in a school context play
important roles in the process of creating the “two
cultures” that divide girls and boys and segregate
play. Winer and Phillips (2012) revealed that US
toddler boys were more exposed to poor-quality
care on all dimensions (structural, environmen-
tal, and process dimensions of quality) than were
girls, and they benefited from classrooms where
the girls outnumbered them significantly. This is
because toddler boys are more negatively perceived
and portrayed and also because caregivers perceive
closer bonds with girls. This study shows that care-
giver/teacher–child relationships play a vital role in
the quality of care provided to children as young as
2 years, even when the children of both genders are
not significantly different in their play behaviors.
Along similar lines, Bhattacharjee (1999) doc-
uments the everyday practices and routines of
school life in an urban Indian context and brings
out the “gender code” or “hidden curriculum”
found in many schools (p. 337). This curriculum
matches with the way gender is construed in the
larger society. These everyday routines include
segregation of boys and girls in the morning assem-
bly and sexual division of labor in classrooms. For
instance, roll call is taken separately for boys and
girls; boys mind the boys and girls mind the girls;
and when papers are to be distributed, girls do the
girl’s side and likewise for boys. Whereas girls are
entrusted with cleaning, sweeping, and picking
up teacups after teachers, boys run errands out-
side the school, carry furniture, and serve lunch
during midday. Kim (2012) also documents how
gendered stereotypes are reinforced among tod-
dlers in early-childhood classrooms in the United
States. For example, she observed that initially boys
might engage in rough-and-tumble play acciden-
tally. However, when caregivers take this as a sign
that boys are ready for outdoor play, the boys then
learn to engage in such play intentionally, so that
they get to go outside. On the other hand, girls are
reinforced to stand in line and wait. Similarly, boys
tend to manage to get access to more materials and
get more frequent and longer turns at their favorite
activities. The importance of both overt and covert
communication is highlighted here.
The language we use shapes our thoughts and
therefore our actions. The language used in school
textbooks and the manner in which the content
is transacted also is highly gendered. A study in
Uganda by Barton and Sakwa (2012) revealed that
although English textbooks are used to enhance
linguistic skills, teachers are completely oblivious
to the gendered nature of the content, which mar-
ginalizes girls. A series of experiments conducted
by Flaherty (2001) demonstrates how a language
with a gendered system, such as Spanish as com-
pared to English (which is a language with a lim-
ited gender system) shapes the perceptions of 5 to 7
year-old and 8 to 10 year-old English and Spanish
children in a task involving giving objects male or
female names and another task in which attributes
were to be granted to cartoons and objects. For 8
to 10 year-old Spanish children, gender assignment
corresponded with grammatical gender, whereas
for all English and for younger Spanish children,
gender assignment was based on the attributes
of the objects. Therefore, when gender tags are
acquired, perceptions are also gendered. Nicoladis
and Foursha-Stevenson (2012) make a similar
argument, stating that the knowledge of French,
another language with a grammatical gender sys-
tem, among English-speaking 8 to 10 year-olds
affected their classification of objects as male and
female. Monolingual English children and 3- to
5-year-old bilingual children classify objects as
K a pa di a , G a l a 313
mostly “male” rather than “female.” Only older
bilinguals showed the effect of French classifica-
tion. Although it is clear that language primes gen-
dered understanding, a study in Iran illuminates
the use of teaching Persian, Arabic, and English
languages to propagate and maintain the values
and ideologies of the dominant Islamic culture
and also to promote male dominance with every
increase in educational level (Foroutan, 2012).
On the Eurasian island of Cyprus, activity
books for toddlers also perpetuate gender norms.
For example, books show the father’s contribu-
tion to those activities that are considered mas-
culine and the mother’s supervision over activities
considered “feminine.” If a depiction involves
a child learning to cook a simple dish, the activ-
ity mentions the mother’s help; if the activity is
about learning to fly a kite, then the father’s help
is required. Such activity books have double out-
comes, both socializing children and reinforcing
parents in stereotypical gendered activities. Activity
books, pictured schoolbooks, and events organized
by the school can be starting points to challenge
gender roles and provide ways to present alterna-
tives that transcend conventional gender bound-
aries. However, this usually does not happen, and
instead schools create environments that reinforce
the children-mother-father family model as the
only option, thereby promoting the traditional
division of labor and gender boundaries (Ozkaleli,
2011). All major socializing agencies thus reinforce
gendered beliefs and behaviors in different ways.
However, instances of nongendered socialization
are becoming increasingly evident, as documented
in the following section.
Atypical Gender Socialization and Identity
The preceding sections argue that gender is con-
structed through the various agents of socialization,
yet parents of children with gender variant identi-
ties believe that gender is innate rather than socially
constructed. For example, when a little girl (tod-
dler) loves to do “girl things,” such as apply make
up, dress well, and go shopping, parents believe
that she is taking up gender cues; however, in the
case of a little boy who loves to do the same things,
parents believe that this gender was inherent to the
child. The parents must constantly explain and
account for their child’s “cross-gendered” behavior
to neighbors, schools, religious institutions, and
society at large (Meadow, 2011). They parents have
the option of either accepting their children’s broad
spectrum of behaviors that forms their gender
314 G e n de r Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
identities and protecting them from the critical eye
of society or forcing their children to adopt con-
ventional and restrictive “binary” gender identities
(Malpas, 2011).
Therapists and educators provide support to
these parents and children to protect their self and
alternate gender identities, by unlearning stereo-
types and prejudices.
The constructivist explanation usually under-
lies programs that focus on unlearning gender
stereotypes and offers space for transformation.
For example, Brinkman, Jedinak, Rosen, and
Zimmerman (2011) make a case for introducing
social justice programs into education and show
how such a program helps children to unlearn prej-
udices to a significant extent. They tested one such
program called Fairness to All Individuals through
Respect (FAIR) developed by Colorado University
and found that fifth-grade children’s engagement
in gender-specific prejudiced behaviors decreased.
In the United States, Kane (2006) notes two
trends in gendering of children by their parents:
one that conforms to the normative gender roles
and strict enforcement of gender typing, especially
by fathers, and the other in which the spectrum
of what is considered normative is broadened by
welcoming what parents perceive to be atypical
gender. Although true in case of daughters (before
they reach adolescence), it is not the case for sons.
Most parents, regardless of gender, ethnicity, social
class, sexual orientation, and partnership status,
very consciously try to maintain gender boundar-
ies to appease the hegemonic ideals of masculinity
or “anti-femininity” notions of traditional mascu-
linity. In her qualitative interviews with parents of
preschoolers, Kane explores not only the gender
construal of parents and the outcomes they seek for
their children, but also the subtle nuances of such
beliefs, including the why and how of the process
of specific gendering. It is interesting to see how
the genders of both parents and children interact in
the gendering of children. Although both mothers
and fathers nurtured the typical “girlish” behaviors
of their daughters, they not only accepted “boyish”
pursuits in girls, but also actively encouraged them.
This finding was echoed in Friedman, Leaper, and
Bigler (2007), where gender-egalitarian mothers of
3 to 7 year-olds used counterstereotypical speech
more with their daughters than with their sons.
In the case of boys, fathers especially disapproved
anything remotely feminine in their sons, includ-
ing ballet dancing. This was also true in the case of
mothers who perceived their partner’s disapproval
of their sons’ “atypical” pursuits. Single mothers
with heterosexual orientation could allow their sons
more leeway in experimenting with gendered iden-
tities because single mothers did not have to deal
with a husband who would enforce stereotypical
masculinity. On the other hand, lesbian mothers
were extremely conscious of their sons’ masculin-
ity because they felt that their “unconventional”
or different sexual orientation would subject their
sons to undue scrutiny if these boys exhibited gen-
der deviance (Kane, 2006).
A study in African-American families also
revealed that sons raised by single mothers were
more involved in family and child care work com-
pared to sons born to mothers with cohabiting
partners. Hill’s (2002) work with 35 such families
reveal that, across class and income groups, parents
supported gender equity; however, it was seen in
actual behavior only as one ascends to classes with
higher levels of education. Homophobia was also
highly prevalent among those families with lower
levels of education. Hupp, Smith, Coleman, and
Brunell (2010) also reveal that children of single
mothers had lower levels of gender-typed knowledge
compared to children of married mothers because
single mothers more often engaged in androgy-
nous activities. The study suggests that children
benefit when mothers model both feminine and
masculine behaviors. This may be true for fathers
as well. Higher educational levels were also linked
to egalitarian family structures both in Spain and
Finland, where otherwise the hold of traditional
gender segregation and division of house work and
responsibility were highly valued despite macro-
level changes in familial policies in these welfare
states (Mınguez, 2010). Notwithstanding evidence
of atypical gender socialization, the cultural norm
across societies favors gender-differentiated social-
ization. The following section discusses how gen-
der mediates child socialization and development
across select domains and cultures.
The Gender Grip: Across Domains,
Across Cultures
All cultures prescribe gender norms that give
rise to gender stereotypes and together these influ-
ence development in direct and subtle ways. The
childhood years are formative for the development
of prejudices and stereotypes concerning gender
norms and sexuality (Bos, Picavet, & Sandfort,
2012). Stereotypes give rise to behaviors that are
“gender coded” (Shields, 2012a). Stereotypes are an
integral part of the process of socialization because
they aid in training a child to become a functioning
member of the society. Although stereotypes serve
as a heuristic device to understand group charac-
teristics, they create trouble when they are blindly
applied to individual cases. The constricting nature
of stereotypes has been highlighted in a range of
domains. Aina and Cameron (2011) find that ste-
reotypes affect children’s intra- and interpersonal
relationships, their physical and psychological
well-being, access to resources, education, and
participation in corporate work later in life. These
researchers strongly recommend that early child-
hood education should not only focus on providing
developmentally appropriate programs, but also
provide an environment where children are encour-
aged to engage in critical thinking and develop “a
global, multicultural, anti-bias world view” (p. 18)
Across cultures, socialization largely reinforces and
maintains culture-based gender values, norms, ste-
reotypes, and biases, which in turn impinge on the
child’s emotional, social, and cognitive develop-
ment. The subsequent sections discuss the interplay
of gender across select developmental domains and
cultures.
Gender and Emotion
Emotions are cultural constructions built on
the basis of cultural values, beliefs, and norms, and
culturally salient emotions are acquired through
enculturation (Menon, 2000). Emotional develop-
ment (expressiveness) is substantially influenced by
cultural attitudes related to gender roles. Caregivers
respond to biological differences in cultural ways,
and these press for gender-differentiated emotional
expression to a large extent (an example being the
extensively prescribed rule that boys should not
cry, and girls should not be aggressive). Empirical
research has addressed gender differences in emo-
tion socialization in parental teaching style, par-
ent–child interactions, and display rules.
Mothers assume responsibility for the emotional
functioning of the family through gender-expected
displays of and teaching about negative emotions,
as well as through their contributions to children’s
emotional knowledge. This was demonstrated in a
study in the United States on gender differences in
the socialization of upper-middle-class Caucasian
preschoolers’ emotional competence. In this
same study, fathers, by contrast, played the role
of the loving playmate. Girls were also more
susceptible to parental socialization of emo-
tion (Denham, Bassett, & Wyatt, 2010). This
trend is also evidenced in a cross-cultural study
K a pa di a , G a l a 315
of mother–son and mother–daughter dyads in
three cultures: Argentina, Italy, and the United
States, and in two regions, metropolitan and rural.
Gender stereotypic patterns in continuity of emo-
tional availability of the mother and child were
indicated across cultures. From infancy to tod-
dlerhood, there was a decrease in emotional avail-
ability in mother–son dyads, whereas it remained
steady for the mother–daughter dyads. Both
biological-maturational as well as cultural expla-
nations are invoked to explain this gender differ-
ence. Girls, because of their faster maturation, may
be expected to develop emotion regulatory ability
more quickly than are boys. At the same time,
culturally, girls are more explicitly socialized to
experience self-in-relation, in turn enabling them
to engage in interactions requiring emotional skills
(Bornstein et al., 2010).
Gender differences in parental responses were
also evident in relation to the display of the same
emotion in girls and boys in the greater metropoli-
tan Washington DC area (Root & Rubin, 2010).
Mothers responded with more happiness to their
daughters’ happiness than did fathers of sons and
fathers of daughters in a hypothetical story situa-
tion, probably a reflection of the notion that males
may not be as expressive as females or that parents
respond according to their distinct parental roles.
Mothers assume a central role in nurturing positive
emotions in their daughters, whereas participation
in reinforcement of positive affect may not be a
priority for fathers, particularly in relation to sons.
With reference to anxiety, which is considered a
nonmasculine emotion, fathers reported that they
would respond with surprise to their sons’ anxiety,
indicating that displays of anxiety in boys are not
expected. And yet fathers reassured sons’ anxious
feelings more often than did mothers, who played
a proactive role in daughters’ anxiety in terms of
asking for more information to question feelings.
Thus, the child’s gender and the type of emotion
play a role in mediating parents’ gender-based
responses.
Gender-specific teaching of emotions is dem-
onstrated in yet another study in the United
States, this one with parents and 6 to 11 year-old
Caucasian middle- and upper-middle-class chil-
dren from an urban northeastern region. This study
indicated that mothers adopted an emotion coach-
ing approach (which refers to a style that views a
child’s experience of negative affect as generally
healthy and an opportunity for teaching) more
than did fathers, whereas the latter played a unique
316 G e n de r Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
role with sadness socialization, which was reflected
in their control of conversation with daughters.
With regard to the emotion of anger, mothers were
observed to have direct conversations with their
older daughters. The researchers attribute this to
the plausibility that mothers are more aware of
the negative consequences associated with anger
among females. Overall, both mothers and fathers
coached their sons more than their daughters
(Zeman, Perry-Parrish, & Cassano, 2010). Similar
gender differences were observed in Raval and
Martini’s (2011) research on mothers’ socialization
of child emotion in suburban middle-class fami-
lies in Gujarat, India, wherein mothers reported
less sympathy toward their daughters’ expressions
of anger than their sons’. The cultural explanation
for this finding relates to less acceptance of anger
in women, as represented in Indian-Hindu folk
theories, along with the notion that women need to
adjust to their husbands’ families and also uphold
the highest moral standards for society.
In a departure from studies with middle- and
upper-middle-class groups in the United States,
Chaplin, Casey, Sinha, and Mayes (2010) focus on
gender and emotion socialization in low-income
families, primarily African-American toddlers.
The emotions studied included anger, sadness,
and anxiety/fear. Findings suggest that caregivers
responded in ways that encouraged boys’ anger
and discouraged/punished girls’ anger. In addi-
tion, caregivers were more upset by girls’ displays of
anger, probably because such displays are inconsis-
tent with their gender role. Boys’ sadness and anxi-
ety were ignored, which could lead to a decrease
in these expressions over time. Contrary to the
trend seen in the middle-class context, this study
demonstrated greater dismissing responses for
girls’ sadness. In general, fewer gender differences
in response to sadness/anxiety were forthcoming,
perhaps alluding to a view that softer negative emo-
tions should be discouraged for both boys and girls.
The culture–gender–emotion interface is
more clearly elicited by studies including differ-
ent ethnic groups and cultures. Cervantes (2002)
explored cultural variations in gender emotions
with two groups of Mexican-descent mothers
in the United States, Mexican immigrant, and
Mexican-American. Gender differences were indi-
cated in the Mexican-American group wherein
girls exhibited more emotional utterances than
did boys, whereas the Mexican immigrant group
did not reveal any gender differences. This is
attributed to the centrality of the interpersonal
values of familismo (commitment and connected-
ness to family) and respeto (deference and affection
to adult authority figures) in the Mexican culture,
which are emphasized for boys and girls alike.
Mexican-descent mothers also tended to engage in
conversations comprising nurturing advice about
the social world that promotes empathy, aware-
ness of familial expectation, and critical thinking,
thereby providing children rich information about
other people’s emotions. Along similar lines, gender
difference in expression of emotion in attachment
practices is revealed in a five-country study includ-
ing Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Chile and Belgium.
Across the cultures, preschool girls expressed a
more secure narrative than did preschool boys in
terms of easier access to emotions in attachment
practices and more coherent articulation. However,
the magnitude of gender differences differed
across cultures. In comparison to Latin European
countries (Italy, Switzerland, and Belgium), girls
in Hispanic countries (Spain and Chile) received
higher security scores than did boys. The higher
family orientation and greater mother–infant prox-
imity among Latinos is offered as a plausible expla-
nation for this pattern.
Apparently, to a greater or lesser extent, empiri-
cal research across cultures has reported similar
gender differentials in emotion socialization and
development. In this context, Shields (2012b) raises
a more fundamental issue of the role that beliefs
about gendered emotions play in the maintenance
of structures of status and power. Beliefs that
people carry about gender-emotion have profound
impact on self-perception and evaluation of others.
Critiquing the differences paradigm, she contends
that such beliefs essentialize and fail to problema-
tize gender-emotion stereotypes, thereby precluding
inquiry into the implications of the same. Echoing
the views of feminist scholars, she advocates for a
“gender in context” (p. 429) approach that focuses
on unraveling context-specific variables that play a
role in shaping gender emotions. In addition, it is
also necessary to consider the intersectionality of
social identities such as age, ability, status, and reli-
gion because these are intricately intertwined in the
lived experiences of gender, and they offer space in
which to explore within-gender variability.
A relevant issue in this regard is the consid-
eration of children as active agents of their own
development, particularly emotional develop-
ment (Ahn, 2010). Along similar lines, Lui and
Choi (2013) investigated how Chinese children
aged 4–13 years use emotional display to ensure
gender-based division of child care tasks and
thereby influence gender inequities in the family.
Using a multimethod approach, the study dem-
onstrated that children make choices based on the
gender of the primary caregiver through strategies
such as emotional displays and protests geared
toward obtaining mothers’ compliance and atten-
tion and thereby rejecting fathers’ performance of
tasks that are understood as belonging to mothers.
For example, children were found to share their
thoughts, feelings, and jokes with their mothers
instead of their fathers and even initiated fewer
conversations with the latter, perhaps because of
the “disciplinarian” image of fathers in Chinese
culture. As a consequence, fathers tend to retreat
from such tasks, whereas mothers tend to give in
to children’s emotional displays, thereby reinforc-
ing the gender-differentiated pattern. Research
addressing such perspectives would offer a step for-
ward into understanding the complex area of gen-
der emotion development.
On the whole, it is clear that the roles parents
play in socialization for emotion are influenced by
cultural values and the parents’ own gender, as well
as by the child’s gender and the type of emotion.
Across cultures, gender stereotypic emotion social-
ization is evident to a greater or lesser extent.
Gender and Social Identity
Social development refers to the acquisition of
the ability to display socially appropriate patterns
of behavior. Cultural ideologies are shared models
of values and norms that guide people’s behavior
and reasoning. These ideologies, passed on through
generations, shape parents’ beliefs of child devel-
opment. The influence of the differences in these
ideologies on child-rearing practices was explored
by Suizzo and Bornstein (2006). They observed
joint play between 20-month-olds and their moth-
ers among 33 French and 39 European Americans.
Parent–child play has been linked to the acquisition
and refinement of important cognitive and social
skills, particularly pretend play that is directed
toward others, and is related to advanced language
and interpersonal skills. Cultural and gender dif-
ferences were found in the mothers’ solicitation
to engage in either symbolic or self-directed pre-
tend play. Also, differences existed in the amount
of verbal praises given by the mothers. Girls were
more often encouraged to engage in symbolic play,
and more frequently by American mothers. French
mothers encouraged more of self-directed pretend
play. American mothers verbally praised their
K a pa di a , G a l a 317
children more than did the French mothers, par-
ticularly the boys.
These differences in play and verbal praise were
attributed to the difference in the cultural ideolo-
gies of the European Americans and the French.
Child-rearing beliefs in the United States empha-
size individual achievement, competition, and the
perfectibility of the human being. A Lockenean
“tabula rasa” philosophy seems to pervade US
developmental practices, one that believes parents
can shape the child’s development. Hence, the
European-American mothers actively stimulate
their infants through verbal cues and praises. The
French uphold the innocent nature of the child and
the importance of social conformity. It is the par-
ents’ responsibility to teach their children specific
social rules. They are expected to provide stimulat-
ing activities that will “awaken” the child. However,
unlike Americans parents, French parents play the
role of a spectator rather than a complementary
actor (Bornstein, Tal, & Tamis-LeMonda, 1991,
as cited by Suizzo & Bornstein, 2006). The gen-
der differences found in the two cultures were
attributed to the role of different ideologies in
shaping child-rearing practices right from infancy,
and these differ based on the gender of the child
(Suizzo & Bornstein, 2006).
Aydt and Corsaro (2003) found that children
create their own peer cultures, wherein they reor-
ganize the knowledge gained from the adult cul-
tures into which they are socialized and actively
create their own interpretations (Aydt & Corsaro,
2003). These unique peer cultures negotiate gender
boundaries. Observations of same-sex and cross-sex
play among preschool children from the United
States and Italy showed how children actively cre-
ated their own boundaries, such as marking “boy”
territories (like the gymnasium) and “girl” territo-
ries without any suggestive cues from the teachers.
Because established cultural differences exist in the
adult cultures, it is expected to exist even within
the children’s peer cultures. The exact influences of
these cultural differences have not been explicitly
investigated. However, it sheds light on the agency
exercised by children in actively shaping their
gender constructs and forming their own gender
identities.
Children construct their gender identities based
on their gender schemas. Gender schema theories
maintain that gender-related information is orga-
nized into a schema, which is an abstract represen-
tation of the world around us. These schemas guide
our attention and social judgment. Individual
318 G e n de r Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
differences exist in the richness and complexity
of these gender schemas. This stems from the dif-
ferences in one’s familiarity with and exposure to
gender-related material, giving rise to a distinction
between gender-schematic and gender-aschematic
individuals (Lobel, David, & Gruber, 2000).
Yu and Xie (2010) studied the multiple dimen-
sions of gender identity and its effect on psycho-
logical adjustment in Chinese children (aged
9–12 years) and found that Chinese boys were more
content with their gender, but felt more pressure to
conform to their gender stereotypes. These findings
were consistent with that of previous research on
American children, thus highlighting the favorable
status held by men across societies and the superior-
ity and satisfaction associated with the possession of
masculine traits over feminine traits. However, this
felt pressure did not significantly affect the Chinese
children’s psychological adjustment as predicted.
This was attributed to the ruling Confucianism
ideology in China that teaches children to obey
social rules and discipline themselves to maintain
appropriate social conduct. Therefore, conforming
to their gender roles is a natural process for Chinese
children, unlike for American children who are
distressed by this type of conformity (Yu & Xie,
2010). Social development is therefore a concoction
that contains traces of potions from cultural ide-
ologies, parental socialization beliefs and practices,
and children’s active engagement in these interac-
tions, with the seasoning of gender sprinkled liber-
ally across these ingredients.
Gender and Cognitive Development
The grip of gender is thus evident in child
socialization and development. Cognitive theories
on gender development are interested in study-
ing the early origins of gender schemas. As early
as 14 months, even before they can talk, infants
have consolidated categories of what is male and
female. This indicates that cognition about gender
greatly precedes its manifestation in actual gender
stereotyping behavior (Martin & Ruble, 2004).
There is enough evidence to support the develop-
ment of gender stereotypic knowledge. Studies
have demonstrated that flexibility in stereotypical
thinking develops after 7 years and that it follows
a U-shaped trajectory in childhood. Gender ste-
reotypes are strongly learned by the age of 3 and
continue to grow stronger until age 7, after which
there is an increase in gender flexibility. However,
research does not adequately demonstrate how
spontaneous gender stereotyping in children
develops (Banse, Gawronski, Rebetez, Gutt, &
Morton, 2010). Studies conducted by Banse and
colleagues (2010), as well as by Martin and Ruble
(2004) show stability in the development of strong
stereotypes in toddlers and a corresponding stabil-
ity in understanding gender flexibility from 5 to
11 years of age. Yet the degree of gender flexibility
is insufficient to bypass overlearned gender stereo-
types: these stereotypes are activated when children
have little cognitive control and lack the cognitive
resources, attention, skills, and time to evaluate
these automatically activated stereotypes.
Serbin, Dubois, Colburne, Sen, and Eichstedt
(2001) studied the preferences of 12-, 18-, and
23-month-old infants (of Euro-Canadian and
West Indies origin) for gender-typed toys such as
dolls and vehicles, and whether they were matched
with faces and voices of male and female children.
The study revealed that gender-typed preferences
are established by 18 months and that girls could
match the faces and voices with girl toys and as
well as boy toys by 18 months, whereas boys could
not do so even by 24 months. By 24 months, girls
could select “gender-appropriate” female and male
dolls for gender-typed tasks. This differential selec-
tion was not evident in 24-month-old boys carry-
ing out these same activities. Clearly, girls have a
stronger cognitive component in understanding
gender; however, boys may have a stronger affec-
tive component for gender schemas because they
show strong preferences for male-typed toys and
activities but pay less attention to nonstereotypical
or feminine toys and activities. A study in London
of 4 to 8 year-olds revealed that children’s con-
ventional gender schemas do not develop before
their unconventional gender schemas. These chil-
dren were asked to supply reasons for identify-
ing the gender of figures in a series of drawings.
The researchers found that 4 to 5 year-olds pro-
vided unconventional reasons, such as “it is a girl
because she is wearing a trouser,” whereas 6 to 8
year-olds supplied more conventional reasons such
as “because she has long hair” (Tenenbaum, Hill,
Joseph, & Roche, 2010).
The problem with stereotypical thinking is that
children learn it very young, and this knowledge
is automatically activated. In addition, the rejec-
tion of this automated knowledge, even in face of
hardcore evidence against it, requires a cognitive
interjection—a process that mandates active reflec-
tion and effort. The problem is further compounded
because, whether one perceives the automatically
activated knowledge as accurate or inaccurate,
spontaneous gender behavior that stems from auto-
matically activated stereotypes remains unaffected.
In other words, even when a person views stereo-
types as inadequate and inaccurate, the individual’s
spontaneous behavior is guided by the automati-
cally activated gendered stereotypes that are learned
and “overlearned” very early in life. Adding to the
problem is that one is constantly bombarded with
stereotypical ways of thinking by the different agen-
cies of socialization, thus perpetuating the accumu-
lated “knowledge” of gender (Banse et al., 2010).
Conclusion and Future Directions
Gender is a fundamental, culturally univer-
sal social category. Its inclusion in developmental
research is becoming more visible, albeit in an
intermittent manner. Although the broad research
patterns represent remarkable gender-differentiated
similarities across cultures, scholars observe that
empirical evidence accrued to date is inconsistent
to establish gender differences in different domains
of child development. Some psychologists claim
inadequate research evidence of gender differences,
whereas others argue in favor of great differences.
Reporting gender disaggregated results is empha-
sized so as to dispel mistaken notions and address
gender differences in social planning. At the same
time, some feminist scholars object to the treat-
ment of men and women as homogenous unitary
categories because this reinforces stereotypes; at the
same time, they argue about the futility of report-
ing sex difference in and of itself because it has
little explanatory value. A relevant observation in
this regard is that sex/gender differences research is
able to measure, at best, the effect of socialization
practices and not “true” psychological differences
(Magnusson & Marecek, 2012).
Questioning the popular notion of gender
differences, Hyde (2005), in her review of 46
meta-analyses, found support for the gender simi-
larities hypothesis, which maintains that males
and females are similar on most, but not all, psy-
chological variables. Most studies across a range
of variables (such as mathematics performance,
verbal ability, aggressive behavior, and moral rea-
soning) and age show a small magnitude of differ-
ences. At the same time, exceptions are identified
in the domains of motor performance and sexual-
ity, and moderate differences are noted in physi-
cal aggression, along with illustrations that point
to the fluctuation of gender differences across life
span. She further discusses meta-analyses related
to aggression, academic performance, and helping
K a pa di a , G a l a 319
behavior to emphasize context—specifically, social
norm expectations—as a significant factor in deter-
mining the magnitude and direction of gender
differences.
Furthermore, Hyde (2005) contends that the
“overinflated claims of gender differences” (p. 590)
only reifies gender stereotypes (e.g., women as car-
ing and nurturing and men as lacking in nurtur-
ance). Certain widespread stereotypes, such as boys
are better at math than girls, can result in parents
overlooking a girl’s talent in math and thereby
undermine her confidence in succeeding in the sub-
ject. In the same vein, there is a tendency to short-
change boys in relation to issues of anxiety and
self-esteem. The “Boy Code”—a set of rules and
expectations that are internalized by males during
development—defines masculinity in opposition
to femininity, thereby leading to ridicule of men
who may not display such traits and hence com-
pelling them to maintain the masculine stereotype
(Pollack, 1999). Moreover, across societies, there
is less tolerance for boys’ than girls’ veering away
from gender stereotypes or for boys’ adopting and
displaying “feminine” characteristics or behaviors.
Not only does this compromise boys’ and men’s
development in select domains, such as healthy
emotional expression, but some of the deeply
entrenched masculine values, such as aggression,
have a deleterious long-term impact in the form
of violence against women. Transformation in the
notion of a “typical” man with the inclusion of
qualities such as empathy and nurturance would
go a long way in reducing gender-based violence
(Kapadia, 1999).
Much psychological research studies gender
as an “individual-difference or person variable”
(p. 260), which precludes deeper exploration of
its impact on child development. In this context,
Hyde (2007) discusses how gender needs to also be
posed as a social-stimulus variable because an indi-
vidual’s gender mediates others’ responses to that
person. Basu (2009), for instance, draws attention
to leadership positions wherein most women expe-
rience a “glass ceiling” that prevents their prog-
ress to top-ranking positions in management. The
problem is attributed to mindsets colored by gen-
dered stereotypical inaccuracies. In such cases, the
conceptual image—that is, the stereotype—limits
the perception and assessment of reality.
In supporting the gender-similarities argument
however, we draw attention to the need to continue
to look for and unearth those gender differentials in
early socialization that have detrimental short- and
320 G e n de r Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
long-term impacts on development in varying
forms and degrees across cultures. Locating gender
inequities in the patriarchal context (prevalent in
majority societies of the world) reveals the harm-
ful effects of systemic gender-based discrepancies
in power and decision-making that begin from
childhood and persist throughout the life span. An
example is the near universal gender-specific cul-
tural attitudes toward sexuality, as exemplified by a
tolerance for men having multiple sexual partners,
which makes women vulnerable to HIV infection
(United Nations, 2010). A more culture-specific
example is the varying nuances involved in social-
izing girls in the patrilineal Indian society that
hampers their development. Dube (1998) asserts
that, despite regional and class differences, girls are
essentially socialized for feminine tasks around the
house, including child care, with a view to facili-
tating their adjustment to the husband’s house-
hold. “Girl” work is imbued with the notion of
sewa—a sense of service and self-denial; qualities
that come to be regarded as “natural” and neces-
sary and thereby interwoven in values and prac-
tices. “The notions of tolerance and self-restraint
are also rooted in a consciously-cultivated feminine
role which is embedded in and legitimized by cul-
ture and cultural ideology” (p. WS 17). That the
girl will leave eventually to become part of another
family renders a certain tentativeness and ambigu-
ity to the socialization process, in turn affecting
the development of self-confidence and initiative.
For example, all the allegiance and loyalty that the
girl is trained for in her natal family has to later be
shifted to the family of her husband, and this is
conveyed through messages like “a woman should
be like water which does not have any shape of
its own and so can take the shape of the vessel in
which it is poured; nor does it retain any mark on
it.” Thus, rather than emphasizing absolute quali-
ties, the capacity to “adjust” in the affinal home
is encouraged and embedded in the socialization
process, with a sanction for manipulative strat-
egies to achieve this goal so as to secure a living
space for the self in the new household (Dube,
1988; Ganesh, 1999). “The double-speak of gen-
dered socialization” (Ganesh, 1999, p. 249) hence
imparts a mélange of messages to the girl child that
is likely to undermine her development.
Such explanatory accounts of gender socializa-
tion in different cultures and the social structures
therein not only enable understanding of “what”
beliefs are promoted but also “how” and “why” cer-
tain gender beliefs are constructed and maintained
(Pendleton et al., in press). Developmental research
has, to a large extent, addressed the “what” of devel-
opment and provided useful gender-disaggregated
data on different domains and highlighted how
gender identities influence developmental out-
comes. Nevertheless, this body of knowledge lacks
explanations of how these identities are formed,
are contested, and intersect with other sociode-
mographic factors in different cultures (Jackson,
2002).
Gender intersects in a complex way with age,
social class, caste, ethnicity, and religion. For
instance, the lived experiences of gender tend to be
vastly different for a girl growing up in an urban
upper-middle-class context and a girl living in a
low-income rural or tribal context. Such insights
are relevant from the perspectives of knowledge
enhancement, as well as application. Studies
addressing such intersections are few and far
between. In the same vein, it is necessary to under-
stand how contexts and situations impinge on gen-
der socialization that can also unravel behaviors
that depart from traditional gender stereotypes. For
example, girls on the street are found to be involved
in antisocial activities with peers, including experi-
menting with drugs and drinking alcohol, and, at
the same time, these same girls show positive quali-
ties such as high self-esteem, self-efficacy, and resil-
iency. The street context thus evokes both negative
and positive characteristics in girls (Sharma &
Verma, 2013). Such aspects are likely to come to
the fore as studies address gender-in-context.
In a critical departure from the principal dis-
course of gender discrimination in India, Sreenivas
(2010) contends that real-world caste- and
community-based inequalities are largely disre-
garded in interpretations of gender-based oppres-
sion/discrimination. Presenting the narratives
of two dalit women, she cautions against liberal
feminist discourses set in a secular framework that
extricate the girl from “her contexts her worlds and
her people” (p. 269). Treatment of gender as a cat-
egory abstracted from material circumstances in
a woman’s life fails to address all the complexities
that characterize gender and its complex enmesh-
ment with caste and community, thereby impeding
effective resolutions toward social equity.
In the same vein, cross-culture (-country) stud-
ies need to move away from treating culture as a
unitary category, a premise that fails to divulge the
complexities existing within cultures, especially
in vastly diverse societies such as India. Deeper
exploration of culture-specific gender ideologies
would bring us closer to understanding the cul-
ture–gender–development interface. A related
issue is the emergence of multiple worlds of child-
hood in the globalizing context. Although family
remains the primary site of socialization, children
today are growing up in a world that presents
increasing access to and interaction with “multiple
worlds” through media, both within and outside
their own culture. Research conceptualizations
need to address these contexts to elicit insight into
how the new intersections between one’s culture of
origin and the global culture impact gender devel-
opment, especially as these relate to alterations in
traditional gender precepts and prescriptions.
There is also a need to interweave multidisci-
plinary perspectives in gender–culture–develop-
ment research. In this regard, Jackson (2002) aptly
observes that gender inequality is inherently multi-
dimensional and hence cannot remain within the
purview of any one discipline. Along with multidis-
ciplinary perspectives, multiple methods, including
both quantitative and qualitative approaches, are
needed to capture the nuances of gender social-
ization and development. Whereas quantitative
methods yield macro trends and make us aware
of the magnitude of an issue (e.g., sex ratio), eth-
nographic methods unravel the “how” and “why”
questions that are most pertinent in changing gen-
der inequities.
Just as culture is indispensable to the study of
development, so is gender; gender is inherent to
human beings, and it shapes development right
from birth or even before birth (as evidenced in
sex-determination tests in India) and persists until
death. Like culture, gender is suffused with values
and beliefs. As Kanner (2002) observes, it is imper-
ative that developmentalists “engage in the inten-
tional, reflective process of making the cultural
values that frame their conceptions of development
explicit. This is because the values we have as devel-
opmentalists direct what phenomena we look for;
and frame how we judge, categorize and explain
what we find”(Kanner 2002, p. 144). This perspec-
tive has significant implications for understanding
gender and creating culturally sensitive models of
gender equity.
Finally, studies aiming to understand the
culture-gender-development interface need to guard
against adopting a static view of culture. Gender
ideology is entrenched in cultural traditions and
religion, and any attempt toward gender-equitable
transformation requires a critical analysis of tra-
ditional cultural precepts and practices (Kapadia,
K a pa di a , G a l a 321
1999). This is especially so in societies in which cul-
ture and religion are largely enmeshed (e.g., India).
Tripathy (2010) observes that attributing much
determining power to culture precludes any criti-
cism of it. He thus advocates a distinction between
culture and tradition (and religion) as a means of
preventing the essentializing of both culture and
gender. This is necessary to address accommoda-
tion to new ideas and, importantly, the agentic and
“interventionist” (p. 118) ability in individuals that
would enable them to bring about change. It is
this ability to initiate change that carves pathways
leading to the transformation of gender and other
social inequities.
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 PART
4
Adolescence
 C H A P T E R

20 Leaving Childhood: The Nature

and Meaning of Adolescent
Transition Rituals
Alice Schlegel and Herbert Barry III

Abstract
The transition from childhood to adolescence is marked by various kinds of rituals. Personal rituals
are determined by the individual to indicate his or her new age stage. Adolescent initiation ceremonies
are planned events that include one or more rituals. They range from private, family-based ceremonies
with one initiate, to large communal ones that involve all or most people of the community and initiate
several to many boys or girls. The presence or absence of initiation ceremonies is not random; they
are distributed by type of society and by which gender gets ceremonial recognition. Ceremonies
that transform children into adolescents are absent in modern industrial societies, and attempts to
introduce them have not been very successful. This chapter explores these issues.
Key Words:  initiation, social adolescence, life-stages, circumcision, ritual, cultural complexity

In the weeks leading up to his circumcision,
Mohammed looked forward to being one of the big
boys, but he feared the pain of the operation and the
soreness he would suffer later. Teasing by his older
brothers and cousins did not help, with their ter-
rifying stories of searing pain, gushing blood, and
frightening hints of things that could go wrong.
Mohammed was 12 years old in 1983 and lived in
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The first author was a guest
in his home there, a witness to his anxiety. His par-
ents responded by reassuring him that it was a very
minor operation with little pain and not much later
soreness, and they scolded the older boys for frighten-
ing him. They drew his attention to the celebration
that would follow, when scores of relatives and fam-
ily friends would gather for the feast in his honor.1
He would no longer be a child, but would have the
responsibilities of an adolescent preparing for his
future as an adult. His sisters did not have an initia-
tion ceremony; after menarche, they were expected
to follow the restrictions placed on menstruating girls
and women and to be modest in dress and demeanor.
During the first author’s field research on
the Hopi Indian Reservation in Arizona in the
1970s, women told of their adolescent initiation
ceremonies, which took place in their homes.
They went through a 4-day ceremony of grind-
ing corn, a domestic skill every Hopi girls learns
(cf. Beaglehole & Beaglehole, 1935). Corn was the
staple food, but it was also a sacred substance, both
symbolizing and containing the essence of life.
They sang as they ground. Afterward, their moth-
ers arranged their hair around two wicker hoops,
one over each ear, to resemble butterfly wings.
They wore their “butterfly wings” on important
occasions in the village, a lovely way of announcing
that they were no longer children but were adoles-
cents preparing for marriage and adult life. Their
brothers had no adolescent initiations: in his very
late teens or early 20s, a boy was initiated into one
of the four men’s societies in a communitywide
ceremony, after which he ceased being a boy (tiyo)
and became a man (taka). A girl (mana) became a
woman (wuhti) at marriage.

327
 In the Malay and Hopi cases, the initiation
ceremonies have religious components along with
their social meaning as indicating a transition from
one stage of life to another. In modern societies,
religious initiation rituals do not have this broader
social meaning. Christian confirmation, the Jewish
bar and bat mitzvah, and the Hindu sacred thread
ceremony all celebrate the initiate’s new status as a
person ready to take on religious responsibilities,
but they have no significance for the larger society.
This only happens when the religious community
is also the social community, and religious rituals
are rituals of the culture at large. Modern cultures
do not have such rituals that receive societywide
recognition, with some exceptions such as the
Malaysian ceremony. Attempts to construct them
have not been very successful, as we show in a later
section.
Biological adolescence is a characteristic of
our species, a period following puberty when
the individual is capable of reproduction but has
not yet attained full maturity in bodily growth
and cognition. Individuals of both sexes remain
heavily dependent on adults for socialization and,
with few exceptions, sustenance. Their behavior
alters as they move, more so than younger chil-
dren, into the larger world of adults. Peer rela-
tions are even more important than they were
in middle childhood, but at the same time their
responsibilities to their families, and often to
their communities, increase as they prepare for
adulthood. These patterns are found across the
range of human societies.
Social adolescence, however, is a product of
cultural beliefs and expectations. When it begins
and ends, the norms of adolescents’ behavior, and
how adults are expected to treat adolescents are
culturally defined (Schlegel & Barry, 1991). The
beginning of social adolescence generally coincides
roughly with early biological adolescence, the crite-
rion being some sign of reproductive maturity such
as girls’ breast development or, most commonly,
menarche, and boys’ development of secondary sex
characteristics such as facial or body hair and voice
change. In societies that do not keep calendars,
physical development rather than chronological
age is the criterion for the start of adolescence.
Many societies marked the transition from
childhood to adolescence with initiation ceremo-
nies for these children. These were preindustrial
cultures, those that existed before the Industrial
Revolution or before most of their customs had
been affected by it. (A few contemporary cultures,
328 L e av i ng C h i l dho od
often of ethnic minority communities, still hold
these ceremonies, at least for adolescents from more
traditional families.) The initiates in the ceremo-
nies were not necessarily of the same age, and when
these ceremonies were held at intervals of several
years for a number of initiates, the children might
have been at different levels of development as well.
In the majority of cultures, marriage signaled the
end of adolescence, although there were excep-
tions, such as the adulthood initiation for boys in
the Hopi case described earlier.
Some traditional cultures recognized a post-
adolescence, preadult youth stage, particularly for
boys. These were generally urban societies, like
ancient Rome or Europe of the Late Middle Ages
and later, and those with a warrior age-class, like
ancient Sparta and the African militaristic states of
the Swazi and Zulu. Marriage generally marked the
transition between this youth stage and adulthood.
In modern societies, the transition between youth
and full adulthood is gradual and depends on sev-
eral factors such as full employment, marriage, and
parenthood, with no single one being the definitive
signifier of adulthood. Arnett (2000) refers to the
transition stage of modern postadolescent youth
as “emerging adulthood,” a gradual change rather
than one defined by a specific event or activity.
Not all traditional societies had adolescent cer-
emonies. In many cases, there were simpler rituals
for indicating a change in age status. One example
is the Hindu sari party, a gathering of female rela-
tives at the girl’s home. They celebrated this change
by giving her new half-sarees, which she wore until
her marriage when she put on a full sari. Unlike
adolescent ceremonies, these were not obligatory.
This custom was practiced by most castes in south
India (Saraswathi Tharakad, personal communica-
tion, 2013).
Another kind of adolescent ritual is the boy’s
solitary retreat, during which time he sought a
vision or other encounter with the supernatural.
These might have been part of a larger ceremo-
nial process, or they might have stood alone as
rituals. The vision quest, widespread among North
American Indian tribes, served to move the boy
into adolescence in some cultures, whereas in oth-
ers it took place in late adolescence and moved the
boy out of adolescence into the next social age stage
(Markstrom, 2008).
Often, the transition out of childhood was
effected by personal rituals like a simple change
in appearance. Shortly before puberty or in early
adolescence, girls on the East Indian island of Alor
in the 1930s had their faces tattooed to enhance
their beauty; the slightly older boys let their hair
grow long and began to appear with items worn
or carried by older boys and men, such as swords
and cases for combs and hair ornaments (DuBois,
1944). Sometime around the age of 14, European
and American girls let down their skirts, from
above to below the ankle, and pinned up their hair,
while their brothers of the same age or slightly older
exchanged the knee pants of childhood for long
trousers. This single definitive change in appear-
ance continued to be customary in European and
European-derived cultures well into the industrial
period, as seen in paintings and photographs of
girls and boys in the late 19th century.
The transition from childhood to adolescence is
marked by a variety of ritual activities. The sim-
plest marker is the personal ritual like a distinc-
tive change in clothing style, its timing determined
by the individual, perhaps in cooperation with
parents who supply the resources. There may be
a celebration that is customary but not obligatory
for the transition to be socially recognized, such as
the sari party. Private ceremonies, like those for the
Malaysian boy and the Hopi girl in earlier times,
are obligatory. The most elaborate transition ritual
event, demanding the greatest expense of time,
labor, and goods for the community, is the com-
munity ceremony.
Modern societies lack adolescent initiation cer-
emonies and other forms of obligatory rituals. This
is not to say that they lack transition markers. The
12th or 13th birthday might be recognized as such
by some families; confirmation and the bar and bat
mitzvah may be taken to introduce new seriousness
in not only the religious, but also the social respon-
sibilities of the young person; entrance into high
school may be considered a transition into a stage
with greater responsibilities and freedom. But these
are individual and family interpretations, and none
stands out as a definitive ritual. In a later section,
we look at the reason for this.
What Ceremonies Do
Following Durkheim (1995[1912]), scholars in
several fields—psychology, sociology, archaeology,
cultural anthropology—have seen ceremonies as
ways of expressing and reinforcing social solidarity.
It is well understood that working together toward
any common goal, ceremonial or not, promotes a
sense of unity, possibly because people have to work
together, and the reciprocity of cooperation helps
engender trust.
Ceremonial Activity
Ceremonial cooperation seems to go beyond
simply working toward a common goal with a
common purpose, for ceremonies frequently elicit
strong emotions. These emotions express deeply
held beliefs and values, cultural components of
the participants’ personal identities. Ceremonial
cooperation often involves large expenditures of
time, labor, and goods with no necessary return
on investment, although the hope often is that the
gods or ancestors will reciprocate with blessings.
It sometimes seems as if highly elaborate and dra-
matic ceremonies are held simply for their own sake
because they provide a sense of purpose and struc-
ture and add drama and color to otherwise hum-
drum daily life. Ceremonies, like games and the
arts, fall within the domain of expressive culture,
and games, theatrical performances, and arts are
often involved in ceremonial production.
The weight given to ceremonies, however, sug-
gests that they satisfy more than a need for struc-
ture or a desire for entertainment and emotional
stimulation. Along with any psychological needs
they may satisfy, ceremonies require coordinated
action, often on the part of many individuals or the
entire community. Activities that reinforce social
ties provide a sense of security in the knowledge
that one is part of a larger, cohesive group. The
heightened emotions that accompany involvement
in ceremonial activity are probably reinforced by
emotional contagion among the participants, creat-
ing a sense of emotional unity.
Ceremonial cooperation, in and of itself, is a
means by which a loosely integrated community
can attempt to create or reinforce social coopera-
tion through unified purposeful action that arouses
strong emotions in the participants. Wiltermuth
and Heath (2009) found that any synchronous
activity led to a greater feeling of unity, and this feel-
ing led to an increase in future cooperation, at least
in the short run. Some form of synchronous activ-
ity, such as singing, chanting, shouting, or speaking
in unison, probably became a cultural universal or
near universal as our hominin ancestors gained the
cognitive capacity to be aware of this unity and rec-
ognize the heightened emotions they felt when they
engaged in synchronic activities. They were able
to harness these feelings and emotions by invent-
ing ceremonies. However, although ceremonies
may be momentarily effective in rallying emotional
responses, they have to relate to beliefs and values
that are part of the participants’ cultural or personal
identities if they are to have long-term effects.
Schlegel, Bar ry 329
 Atkinson and Whitehouse (2011) conducted a
cross-cultural study of what they define as the two
modes of religiosity: doctrinal and imagistic. The
doctrinal mode is one of frequent rituals of low
intensity and a body of doctrine passed on through
oral tradition or writing; the imagistic mode is
based on infrequent, climactic rituals of high
emotional intensity, in which ritual knowledge is
created and transmitted through collective partici-
pation. Adolescent initiation ceremonies are imag-
istic, in that they are infrequent and involve the
initiate in transition rituals that have deep personal
meaning. However, the size, location, and length
of ceremonies vary considerably across cultures,
as does the emotional intensity of the participants
and spectators. These imagistic ceremonies can be
either community or private ceremonies.
Large dramatic community ceremonies involve
multiple participants, as well as many spectators
during the public portions of the ceremony. They
may contain synchronous singing, chanting, danc-
ing, and costumes or masks worn by initiators.
These have been well-described and are highlighted
in most discussions of adolescent initiation. Other
adolescent initiation ceremonies are private, involv-
ing the initiate, his or her family, and possibly some
others at the ceremony itself or at a celebratory feast.
This type generally causes less intense emotional
arousal in participants, other than the initiate,
and spectators. Both the Malaysian circumcision
ceremony and the Hopi corn-grinding ceremony
are of this type. Both foraging cultures and literate
urban-centered ones tend to have private ceremo-
nies, if they have any; but these are found widely
distributed through other kinds of cultures as well.
Recognizing the Transition
out of Childhood
Van Gennep (1960/1908) was the first to address
the question of the transition out of childhood. He
proposed that the ceremonies celebrate the sepa-
ration from an asexual (or pre-reproductive) state
and the incorporation into a sexual (reproductive)
one. He made it clear that this is a social transition,
not necessarily tied directly to biological puberty.
Unfortunately, his work was largely ignored by
those writing about adolescent ceremonies, who
continued to refer to them as “puberty” ceremonies.
All adolescent rituals and private ceremonies
recognize a new stage of life for the adolescent.
The simple personal rituals have meaning primar-
ily for the individual and his or her family. Private
ceremonies signify a transition that has wider
330 L e av i ng C h i l dho od
implications. The individual is then expected to
take on new responsibilities and to behave in new
ways, in both private and public life. Community
rituals indicate that this transition is important to
the community, at least to its male members (boys’
ceremonies) or female members (girls’ ceremonies),
because it brings new members into the male or
female cohorts that are responsible for community
action.
Van Gennep did not ask about the worldwide
distribution of adolescent initiation ceremonies.
The sections that follow look at where adolescent
initiation ceremonies occur, how to account for
their presence or absence as a cultural practice, and
how they affect the participants. The data come
from a cross-cultural study of these ceremonies
using ethnographic reports on a sample of 186 tra-
ditional cultures (Schlegel & Barry 1979; 1980).2
Additional information comes from descriptions
of the ceremonies by anthropologists and others
who witnessed them. To avoid confusion, we use
the present tense when describing the ceremonies,
referring to them as they existed at the time the
information was collected. Many of the cultures no
longer conduct these ceremonies, whereas in some
other cases they are conducted rarely or by families
wishing to preserve traditions in face of the decline
of the old ways.
Finally, we ask why attempts to introduce such
ceremonies have not gone very far in modern cul-
tures. Even the individual rituals that character-
ized the transition from childhood to adolescence
in early 20th-century European and other modern
nations, such as specific and distinctive changes in
clothing to a more mature style, no longer exist.
Why is this? How is the transition from child-
hood to adolescence signified for contemporary
adolescents?
Where Adolescent Initiation
Ceremonies Occur
Africa and the Pacific region, especially aborigi-
nal Australia and New Guinea, are the principal
regions of large, dramatic boys’ ceremonies com-
prising many rituals, often those that cause pain,
like circumcision, or induce fear in the initiates.
Girls are the initiates in the majority of societ-
ies with ceremonies in native North and South
America. Europe is a world region in which few
societies since ancient times3 held these ceremonies,
although they may have existed in European tribal
cultures before the Roman conquest (Mitterauer,
1992). From what is known about the kinds of
cultural features found across the preindustrial
world, this regional distribution offers clues to
other cultural features, such as cultural complexity,
that can predict the presence or absence of these
ceremonies.
Distribution by Cultural Complexity
Adolescent initiation ceremonies can be plot-
ted along a trajectory of cultural complexity: small
mobile hunting and gathering bands; politically
independent villages that produce their own food
with simple farming and care of domesticated ani-
mals; groups of food- or craft-producing communi-
ties under the control of a political authority; and
states, in which tribute and some form of taxation
support the state and the specialized political and
religious authorities who control civic activities. The
largest states are those with urban centers, and these
generally have a written language. Some examples
of these are the states of the ancient world, the tra-
ditional Asian states, and the pre-Columbian states
of Mexico. Modern industrial societies, with their
great variety of occupations, trade networks, large
political bureaucracies, and specialized institutions
for everything from education to the military and
police, represent the greatest degree of complexity.
The subsistence economy is a crude but useful
index of social complexity. The five major tradi-
tional types are foraging (hunting and gathering);
pastoralism; incipient agriculture; extensive agri-
culture (horticulture or hoe agriculture); and inten-
sive agriculture, which relies on either animal labor
(to pull the plow) or highly specialized techniques
like the Aztec chinampas, the man-made island
gardens of Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico.
These types represent a general scale of control over
food resources. Pastoralism is an exception: sub-
sistence pastoralism, as in earlier African cattle
pastoralism, was small-scale, and animals were
exchanged through political and social networks;
traditional commercial pastoralism, such as most
of the pastoralism historically found in Eurasia and
North Africa and now worldwide, is generally on
a larger scale and links the pastoral community to
agricultural and urban communities. These types,
indicators of the general level of productivity, are
associated with the size and density of the local
population. Along with a higher level of produc-
tivity and a larger and denser population goes the
need for more complex forms of social and political
organization.
Adolescent initiation ceremonies occur most
often at the lower levels of technological and
political complexity, in communities of foragers,
those with incipient agriculture, and those with
extensive agriculture. Foragers predominantly hold
ceremonies for girls, whereas those practicing exten-
sive agriculture predominantly hold them for boys.
Pastoralists are evenly divided between those with
ceremonies for boys only and girls only. Consistent
with the distribution by subsistence economy, com-
munity ceremonies are more likely to occur when
the local community does not belong to a larger set
of communities linked together under a single ruler
or bureaucracy.
Ceremonies are held for boys only, girls only, or
both boys and girls separately. No society initiates
girls and boys together, although some men may
participate in girls’ ceremonies. and some women
may participate in boys’ ceremonies. In sum, ado-
lescent initiation ceremonies are more likely to
occur in the less complex societies; the more com-
plex the society, the more likely they are to hold
ceremonies for boys if they hold any.
These ceremonies may be small family-based
ones, like the Hopi girls’ and Malaysian boys’
ceremonies, or they may be community ones that
involve everybody as participants or spectators. The
latter kind are important primarily in less complex
societies, where sex and age are among the most
important determinants of one’s social responsi-
bilities and status, and gender is a major organiz-
ing principle for social action. Young (1965), a
sociologist, calls the ceremonies “sex-role dramati-
zations.” He explains the dramatic boys’ ceremo-
nies as emphasizing the importance of solidarity
among the men of these communities, where deci-
sions are generally made and actions carried out by
men collectively. These are communities without
centralized authority and are fragile and open to
fragmentation. It is likely that the collective action
is an attempt to counteract any tendency to fis-
sion. In other words, the community ceremonies
may be designed as much to reinforce cooperation
among the adult men as to induct boys into the
male cohort.
In more complex societies, other social catego-
ries, determined by wealth, rank, class, or caste,
override sex and age as defining one’s social posi-
tion. The private ceremonies or personal rituals that
are found in such societies express the assumption
by the individual of a new social role rather than
a movement into a gender-based cohort. At the
other end of the complexity scale, forager bands
are usually too fluid in composition to have strong
same-sex cohorts because it is quite common for
Schlegel, Bar ry 331
individual families to move from one camp to
another where they have kin, to take advantage of
better hunting or gathering opportunities. Both
foragers and urban civilizations (those that have
initiation ceremonies) more often initiate girls or
boys singly in ceremonies organized by the initi-
ate’s family. In all cases, however, the ceremonies
emphasize gender and preparation for culturally
defined gender roles and activities.
Exceptions to the General Pattern
Some cases do not fit this distribution by cul-
tural complexity. Private ceremonies also occurred
in small independent horticultural villages like the
Hopi. Gender was a major theme in Hopi symbols
and ritual, and much of the community action
was conducted by men’s and women’s ceremonial
societies, but girls were usually initiated into one of
the three women’s societies when they were small.
Boys’ initiation into one of the four men’s societies
came after adolescence.
The Tiwi, an Aboriginal tribe living on islands
off the coast of northern Australia, were foragers,
and yet, like some other Aboriginal peoples, they
had a series of rituals for boys that included several
large public ceremonies (Hart, Pilling, & Goodale,
1988). The adolescent ceremony was but part of a
long set of activities that took the boys away from
the family camps to camps in the bush, where
they lived under the supervision of adult men and
hunted and gathered their own food. This lasted
for about 10 years. In practical terms, this period
of isolation solved the problem of dealing with pos-
sible troublemakers, adolescent boys and youths
whose female agemates were married to older men.
Tiwi men did not marry until they were in their
30s, so isolating boys and youths removed the
threat of adultery, at least for this period of height-
ened sexual interest combined with lesser social
and emotional control.
Ceremonies in Complex Societies
Adolescent initiation ceremonies in literate pre-
industrial societies with urban centers are generally
private rather than communal. An example is initia-
tion in early Imperial Rome (and presumably other
cities of the Empire), where a ceremony was held for
young male citizens but not for the many foreigners
or slaves who also lived in Rome (and other Roman
cities). The Roman boy put aside the clothing of
childhood and assumed the toga virilis (the “manly”
toga) when his father deemed he was ready, before
age 17 at the latest. Accompanied by his father
332 L e av i ng C h i l dho od
and other adult male supporters, he walked to the
Forum where a priest performed a small ceremony.
Following that, they walked to the boy’s home,
where his family had prepared a feast in his honor.
After this, he was expected to participate in the civic
activities of older adolescent boys and unmarried
youths (Harlow & Laurence, 2002). There were no
comparable ceremonies for girls.
In its outline—a ceremony for a single initiate
conducted by a ritual specialist and attended by a
small number of observers, followed by a feast at
the boy’s home—the Roman ceremony is similar
to the Moslem Malay boy’s ceremony. Both are pri-
vate ceremonies, cultural customs of highly com-
plex societies.
Distribution by Gender
The predominance of girls’ ceremonies where
communities are very small and the level of pro-
duction is relatively low expresses the high value
placed on female health, strength, and reproduc-
tive capacity in such populations. The foraging
band or the very small settlement independent of
a larger organized political system can survive only
as long as it has enough healthy, fertile females to
perpetuate it, a condition that is not problematic
in larger settlements. Girls’ ceremonies emphasize
well-being and responsibility.
Brown (1963) proposed that features related
to the division of labor explain the presence of
girls’ adolescent initiation ceremonies. She found
that societies with a high level of female contri-
bution to household production, as in foraging
societies and those practicing horticulture, are
more likely to have ceremonies for girls than are
those with a low level of contribution, as in the
more technologically advanced societies, where
these ceremonies are for the most part absent.
Although cross-cultural data (Barry & Schlegel,
1982; Schlegel & Barry, 1986) support that, only
11 of 85 ceremonies for girls have them for more
than one initiate; that is, they tend to be small,
private ceremonies organized by the girl’s family
rather than large communal ones. In small forag-
ing bands, although the ceremony is private in
that it is organized by the initiate’s family, the
entire small community is invited to the celebra-
tion, sharing in the girl’s step toward adulthood.
In the larger settlements, this is not the case.
Girls’ ceremonies were once widespread among
American Indian peoples. Outside of the urban
civilizations of Mexico and Central America and
the Andes, most of these were foragers or practiced
incipient agriculture before Europeans colonial-
ism introduced horses, sheep, wheat, and other
goods. One girls’ ceremony still practiced is the
Apache Sunrise ceremony, put on by traditional
families after a daughter’s menarche (Markstrom,
2008). Formerly obligatory, it is now optional and
requires access to the necessary resources. The
ceremony covers several days and includes public
rituals, with general feasting and distribution of
goods. Greater access to goods and more efficient
means of transport—first wagons, now cars—have
made what was once a local event into one attract-
ing many people, often from long distances.
Summary
Adolescent initiation ceremonies occur where
adolescents enter a stage of life that has important
social or cultural meaning. The community ceremo-
nies generally induct children into gender-specific
cohorts that take an active role in civic life; that is,
all the men or all the women of the community act
as a unit in performing important civic activities.
Where social responsibilities are divided in other
ways, such as by class or wealth, or are under the
authority of a special institution, such as the state or
the Church, community ceremonies are less likely
to occur. Community ceremonies are more com-
mon for boys than for girls because civic action is
more often controlled by men in the kinds of com-
munities that hold these ceremonies, giving the
male cohort of the community greater social impor-
tance than the female cohort (cf. La Fontaine, 1985,
p. 163). The private ceremonies emphasize the new
responsibilities of the initiate and are focused on
one or a very few initiates, the individual rather
than the group. They are a formal recognition of
a new stage of life. Both the community and the
private ceremonies emphasize the separation of the
sexes and their different responsibilities and behav-
iors, as culturally defined.
Initiation and the Individual
Descriptions of initiation ceremonies often
include their effects on the initiates, particularly
if the ceremonies involve pain or fear, but no one
attempted to generalize and explain these effects or
use them to account for the presence of ceremonies
until anthropology became heavily influenced by
psychological theories. The first such attempt was a
study of boys’ ceremonies in a sample of traditional
societies (Whiting, Kluckhohn, & Anthony, 1958).
These authors proposed that ceremonies for boys
occur in societies in which exclusive mother–child
sleeping arrangements and a long postpartum
taboo on sexual intercourse promoted an excep-
tionally strong emotional dependence of the child
on the mother who devotes herself to her child’s
needs. When the father re-enters the picture, the
child sees him as a rival and resents him. (Although
this hypothesis grew out of Freudian psychology,
the authors did not assume a sexual basis to the
rivalry.) A function of the ceremonies is to prevent
open revolt against paternal authority. In a later
revision of this theory, Burton and Whiting (1961)
focused on the ceremony as breaking the boy’s
identity with his mother so that he could identify
with other males. These studies used a sample of 56
traditional societies, and initiation was only con-
sidered present if it included at least one of the fol-
lowing features: painful hazing, genital operations,
seclusion from women, and tests of manliness.
Thus, they excluded other forms of ceremonies that
mark the transition out of childhood.
It is true that the need to break the boys’ depen-
dence on their mothers is emphasized in some of
the highly dramatic boys’ ceremonies, especially
those of New Guinea (Herdt, 1982), but this is not
universal. Although our data supported an associa-
tion between mother–child households and pres-
ence of boys’ ceremonies, we proposed a competing
explanation (Schlegel & Barry, 1980). In societ-
ies with these taboos and sleeping arrangements,
the sexes lead quite separate lives as adults, rarely
working together or interacting much in daily life.
The ceremonies induct boys into the male cohort
of the community, but they also prepare boys for
an adulthood that requires greater loyalty to the
male cohort than to wives and domestic inter-
ests. Cultures with mother–child households are
a subset of a larger set of cultures that highlight
gender-based cohorts.
In New Guinea, the rituals are often designed
to remove pollution from the close contact with
females so that boys could grow into men (Keesing,
1982). These occur in cultures that denigrate women
and consider them polluting and often danger-
ous. Community initiation ceremonies emphasize
same-sex unity, but not all cultures require the deni-
gration of females in order to reinforce male unity.
As to the need to create a break with identifying
with the mother, by the time boys are 7 or 8 years
old, they spend much of their time with their
agemates in same-sex peer groups (Rogoff, 2003;
Weisner, 1996) and observe older boys and men
in their households and the surroundings. A male
identity is already well formed by adolescence.
Schlegel, Bar ry 333
Rather than affecting a break in identity with the
mother, these dramatic ceremonies of New Guinea
were instilling fear and denigration of women into
boys who previously saw women as loving and
nurturing.
Symbolic Approaches to Adolescent
Initiation Rituals
Some recent studies of adolescent initiation cer-
emonies have taken a symbolic approach in describ-
ing the ceremonies of individual cultures (Herdt,
1982). The initiation ceremony is analyzed in rela-
tion to other ceremonies of the culture, especially
life cycle ceremonies. The focus is on what these
ceremonies mean within the culture’s set of beliefs
and how these beliefs are transmitted through
words, material symbols, and symbolic action to
the initiates.
Many of these symbolic messages concern beliefs
about gender: women’s and men’s adult productive
and reproductive activities and responsibilities.
Often, these symbols are explicitly sexual. Some
ceremonies include rituals that mimic childbirth,
the meaning being that the boy has been socially
reborn as a member of the male cohort. A rebirth
ritual is not limited to Africa or the Pacific but
was also found in North America, among the
Powhatan Indians of Virginia (Rountree, 1989).
For upper-caste Hindu boys, the sacred-thread cer-
emony is one of spiritual rebirth, and the boys are
referred to as “twice-born.”
A rebirth ritual in cultures that have such rituals
only for boys expresses the belief that a boy must
be made into a man by men, whereas a girl natu-
rally grows into womanhood without the need for
intervention. However, rebirth rituals can occur
for girls as well, as among the Luiseño Indians of
California. Girls were buried up to the neck in
heated sand for several days, as in both a grave and
an earth oven (Bean & Shipek, 1978), after which
they emerged both reborn and “cooked,” a meta-
phor for transformation by cultural means.
Another gender-related belief in some cultures
is that boys or girls or both sexes retain a body
part belonging to the opposite sex that must be
removed for them to be fully male or female. This
is achieved by circumcision, removing the “female”
part of male genitals comparable to the labia, and
clitorectomy, removing the “male” part of female
genitals comparable to the penis. These operations
are adolescent transition rituals in some cultures,
whereas in others they may occur at other times
before adulthood.
334 L e av i ng C h i l dho od
Themes Underlying Symbols and
Actions in Adolescent Rituals
Sexuality and fertility are important themes in
the ceremonies of many cultures, represented by
visual symbols and symbolic actions. Responsibility,
often conveyed through exhortations as well as sym-
bolic activities, is the most common theme in boys’
ceremonies worldwide (Schlegel & Barry, 1979). In
girls’ ceremonies, both fertility and responsibility
are represented as themes in the ceremonies of forag-
ers. They reflect both kinds of contributions women
make, as mothers and as important economic con-
tributors, in communities with small, vulnerable
populations and a high dependence on women’s
food gathering. Tests of endurance, like running or
other physical activities, are demonstrations of the
initiate’s ability to carry out the strenuous demands
of adult responsibilities such as physically taxing
work or warfare.
Even though women do much of the produc-
tive activity in some parts of the world— in Africa
women farm, milk animals, and process milk; in
New Guinea women farm and tend pigs—their
productive contribution is unrecognized in girls’
ceremonies. The overriding focus is on fertility,
not responsibility or health and well-being. Even
though women do much of the labor, men control
the resources and all or most trade. At the same
time, they depend on wives to produce the sons
and daughters they need to succeed economically
and socially. Men depend on sons for labor where
paid employees, servants, or slaves are not available,
and it is to their advantage to keep older adolescent
boys and postadolescent youths under their control.
Men expand their social power and prestige in these
small-scale societies by expanding their body of
supporters. Some of these are their sons and kins-
men; others are men in their social networks. These
networks are maintained in various ways, but a very
common way is by creating ties of kinship through
marriage: men give daughters as brides to other
men, and they take the daughters of other men as
wives for their sons or, in polygynous societies, as
secondary wives for themselves. A focus on fertility
in girls’ ceremonies reflects the value of their fertil-
ity to their fathers, who have daughters to bestow on
future sons-in-law and to their future husbands as
the mothers of these valuable offspring.
Do Adolescent Ceremonies Mark
a Sharp Break with the Past?
Whether or not children go through an ini-
tiation ceremony, their new status as adolescents
results in many changes. There are likely to be some
changes made in appearance, such as new hair
styles, different clothing or ornaments, and perhaps
bodily alterations like tattoos or piercings. There
are certain to be changes in how they are expected
to behave and in how adults treat them. Peers
become even more important in their lives than
when they were in middle childhood, and same-sex
peer groups coalesce when there are enough ado-
lescents in a settlement to form a cohort (Schlegel
& Barry, 1991). These peer groups generally have
a distinct adolescent culture, which can include a
special vocabulary, games, and civic activities like
clean-up projects or performances that entertain
the community. As they mature into adulthood,
the succeeding adolescent cohort adopts this sub-
culture and adapts it to its own circumstances
(Schlegel, 2000).
Adolescent girls often have closer contact with
their mothers as their responsibility for domestic
tasks increases and as they accompany their moth-
ers to female work or leisure-time gatherings. Unless
girls’ adolescence is very short, this stage is a time
for strengthening the relationship between mothers
and daughters. Of course, closer contact may mean
more surveillance, which can result in some ten-
sion if daughters resent constrictions on their earlier
freedom, as did Hopi girls (Schlegel, 1973).
Adolescent boys most commonly work with
their fathers or other men on productive tasks,
often doing menial labor as they learn the skills
and develop the strength necessary to do the work.
Forager boys, however, hunt alone or with other
boys until they have had several years of practice
because an unskilled hunter might endanger the
success of the hunting party. In Africa and else-
where, adolescent boys may be given the job of
herding cattle or other animals away from the com-
munity, alone or in groups. Boys do not participate
much in men’s leisure-time activities. In a number
of cultures, adolescent boys sleep away from home
or may even live away from home with kin or other
people.
This break with the habits of childhood might
imply that adolescence represents a sharp break
from earlier socialization, one that requires a cog-
nitive reorganization. In fact, however, initiation
ceremonies mediate continuity, rather than con-
trast, with the socialization of young children. By
adolescence, children are quite familiar with the
same-gender cohesion and opposite-gender dif-
ferentiation that is expressed in the ceremony and
practiced in adult life. Sex differences are already
emphasized in many ways prior to the ceremony,
and there are significant difference in the socializa-
tion of girls and boys for obedience, industry, and
responsibility (Barry, Child, & Bacon, 1959; Barry
& Schlegel, 1980). Preparation for adult gender
roles begins much earlier than puberty.
That being said, there are cases in which the
concept of cognitive reorganization seems apt. The
highly dramatic public ceremonies, such as those
vividly described in ethnographic reports on some
cultures in New Guinea and Africa, in which boys
are forcefully ripped from their mothers’ arms,
frightened, treated harshly, even subjected to
repeated pain or disgusting substances, would seem
to require cognitive reorganization, particularly
when boys learn that their tormentors are their own
fathers, uncles, and neighbors, men who otherwise
would treat them kindly. This may add a sense of
betrayal to the trauma of the rituals. After they
have recovered, if not during the ceremony itself,
the purpose of the ceremony is explained in terms
of their cultural beliefs. These “higher purpose”
explanations make the rituals comprehensible to
the boys, who then are expected to interpret them
as a necessary hardship rather than cruelty on the
part of the initiators. Such explanations also jus-
tify the pain and fear the initiators inflict on the
initiates and make it possible, even imperative, for
adults to hurt and frighten defenseless boys.
Cognitive reorientation does seem necessary
in those cultures that denigrate women and use
the initiation procedures to affect this change in
beliefs and attitudes. A loving mother now is seen
as belonging to a class of dangerous beings, and the
girls whom the initiates now find sexually attrac-
tive can cause them much harm. We wonder if the
performance is not as much to reinforce this mes-
sage in the minds of the initiators as it is to instill
it in the initiated, as a way of controlling the doubt
and ambivalence that the men themselves may feel
about denigrating the women they love and depend
on (cf. Schlegel, 1990; Tuzin, 1982).
Pain and Fear in Boys’ Adolescent
Initiation Rituals
Rituals that inflict pain, induce fear, or both
occur in about two-thirds of boys’ adolescent cer-
emonies for which there is information (Schlegel &
Barry, in preparation.). They occur in about
one-third of girls’ rituals. Painful procedures
include genital operations, beating, scarifying, and
tattooing. Initiates might be frightened by such
things as masked figures that threaten them or
Schlegel, Bar ry 335
warnings of dangerous spirits lurking about ready
to do them harm.
The literature on boys’ ceremonies has tended
to emphasize harsh rituals, which are more likely
to occur in community than in private rituals, and
these bear examination apart from the general dis-
cussion on adolescent rituals. Girls’ painful rituals
have not been as well described because they are
often shorter rituals held in the home. Aside from
genital operations, widespread in African cultures,
the pain girls suffer is usually severe discomfort
during a period of seclusion, painful procedures
such as tattooing, or sometimes a fairly light beat-
ing, the last of which may be a fertility ritual (simi-
lar to the one depicted in the famous mural in the
Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii). In foraging soci-
eties, these are often tests of endurance, assessing
girls’ strength and capacity to persevere.
Atkinson and Whitehouse (2011) pointed
out that initiation ceremonies of all kinds often
inflict pain on initiates or force them to undergo
an ordeal. In many cases, this can be interpreted
as costly signaling (Cronk, 1994), an indication to
others of the worthiness and the loyalty of the ini-
tiate (cf. Sosis, Kress, & Boster, 2007). This inter-
pretation holds true for rituals voluntarily endured
by older individuals, particularly if they initiate the
person into an honored group such as an esteemed
religious cult or a warrior society. However, it is
difficult to think of this interpretation applying to
young adolescents because it is the fathers of the
boys who subject their sons to the ceremonies. The
boys do not do this voluntarily. It is true that some
adolescents, possibly those who are more mature
physically than their agemates, wish to be initiated
so that they can join the bigger boys, as reported
in some of the descriptions of African initiation
ceremonies. But most of the reports speak of boys
frightened by what they know will be painful or
upsetting. Children have died during their ordeals,
the explanation being some variant of “the spirits
took him,” so the fearfulness of boys, the anxiety
of their mothers, and the wariness of their fathers
even as they participate in the initiation of their
sons, are well-founded.
Painful rituals, at least for boys, seem to express
the special concern of older men about the author-
ity they exert over younger men. They are some-
times explained as instilling the habit of obedience
in adolescent boys, which, it is expected, they
will carry into postadolescence until they reach
full adulthood. In an unpublished study of harsh
rituals in boys’ adolescent initiation ceremonies,
336 L e av i ng C h i l dho od
Schlegel and Barry (in preparation) found a signifi-
cant association between the presence of such ritu-
als and strong training for obedience in childhood,
indicating that obedience is being reinforced, not
instilled. In societies without ceremonies or those
whose ceremonies do not include harsh rituals,
subordination of younger males may not be a mat-
ter of special concern. This may be because boys
and young men live apart from their fathers and
older men, as did the Nyakyusa boys and youths of
Tanzania, where there were no ceremonies for boys
(Wilson, 1963). In other cases, such as in ancient
Rome, boys and youths are subordinate because
adult men control the resources they need, backed
up by laws and institutional arrangements that
ensure that this control is maintained. Harsh ritu-
als are not needed to enforce control.
Ordeals
Personal ordeals for boys, undergone by each
boy individually, sometimes occur in societies that
lack initiation ceremonies. These were widespread
among North American Indian peoples in the form
of vision quests (Markstrom, 2008). A quest might
include a period of solitude in a sacred location,
remaining for 4 days and nights or longer with-
out food. Although boys in some cultures might
undertake a vision quest in early physical adoles-
cence, which then functioned as a transition ritual,
in other cultures this did not happen until the boy
was in his late teens or early 20s. Vision quests
might also be undertaken at other times later in life.
Various exercises designed to toughen boys, such as
forcing them to plunge into icy water in winter-
time, were also widespread in North America and
occurred throughout the boys’ adolescence. Hopi
boys endured this form of fortitude training by
fathers and uncles, while their sisters were endur-
ing sore backs and arms from all the corn-grinding
they had to do.
Initiation into Adolescent Youth Groups
Initiation into a youth group by members of
the group is somewhat different from the kinds of
ceremonies and rituals we have discussed (those
organized by communities or families or under-
gone by the individual with cooperation of the
family). Youth group initiations are organized
by the groups themselves, like the initiations of
adult brotherhoods or religious associations. Such
youth associations were common in preindustrial
Europe (Gillis, 1974; Roubin, 1977). In villages,
they included all boys or sometimes all adolescents;
along with confirmation, they served as transition
rituals. In cities, such groups were often differenti-
ated by occupation and entered when one became
an apprentice in that trade or profession. Initiation
for boys often included some hazing to test the
worthiness of the candidate.
Conclusion
Adolescent initiation ceremonies are a lens
through which many of the important social fea-
tures are projected. They are found in traditional
societies and are absent in modern industrial ones.
Rituals of transition frequently occur in traditional
societies that do not have full initiation ceremo-
nies, and these often take the form of a sudden and
distinctive change in clothing style or body decora-
tion as a public declaration of the person’s new age
stage. In Europe and European-derived societies,
these private rituals persisted into the industrial
period.
Large, dramatic community ceremonies occur
in small-scale societies where gender is a major
organizing principle of community action, and
they dramatize both the transition into adolescence
and the incorporation into gender-based cohorts of
the community. These involve most of the commu-
nity’s adults as participants or observers.
Private ceremonies are usually shorter, held for a
single initiate, and require the participation of only
the family and perhaps kin, neighbors, and fam-
ily friends. In this, they are similar to other private
ceremonies, like modern weddings. The initiation
rituals of complex traditional societies generally
are of this type. These are societies in which the
internal divisions are not gender-based but depend
on such features as occupation, social class, caste,
and possibly religion or ethnicity. The major civic
activities are not conducted by all the men or all
the women of the community, but are organized by
state bureaucracies, by economic institutions such
as guilds, by political institutions like factions or
civic districts, or by religious institutions.
One purpose of large communal ceremonies
may be to bring together into cooperative action all
the men (or, rarely, all the women) of the commu-
nity. When there are a number of initiates and the
ceremonies consist of multiple separate rituals, the
preparation for the ceremonies and participation
in them by all or most adult men of the commu-
nity require a large commitment of time and effort.
Their bonding with other men may be a conse-
quence of this investment because it compels men
to cooperate for a common ideological purpose.
This may be particularly important in small-scale
societies that lack strong institutions that enforce
social cooperation.
In traditional societies, adolescents are brought
into the company of adults of the same sex, social-
izing them for their adult gender roles and provid-
ing attainable models for appropriate behavior.
Where there is considerable separation of the
sexes, adolescent initiation ceremonies formalize
that separation. However, same-sex cohesion does
not necessarily imply a lack of common purpose
between the sexes or the absence of public activities
that include both women and men. Cultures may
recognize the complementarity of the sexes in spite
of very different gender roles.
Even without a ceremony, adolescents in tra-
ditional societies experience the transition into a
new stage of life, one in which their responsibilities
increase and they are seriously preparing for adult-
hood. They are judged by their behavior to a much
greater extent than they had been as children, and
their actions could have consequences that will
determine their future: whom they might marry,
the social networks that would support them, the
honor or shame they would bring on themselves
and their families. In this period of socialization
for adulthood, in most cultures, adolescents spend
more time with adults and are included as junior
participants in adult gatherings. That is how boys
learn to be men, girls learn to be women, and both
girls and boys learn how to be responsible adults.
Initiation ceremonies in traditional societies
focus on gender roles. The theme of responsibility is
the most common for boys and for forager girls. In
more complex societies, sexuality and fertility are
frequent secondary themes for boys and primary
ones for girls. Early adolescence is an appropriate
time for such ceremonies because young people
now have, or soon will have, the physical and men-
tal capacity for adult activities and can be trained
for marriage and their future occupations.
Many initiation ceremonies, especially com-
munal ones with harsh rituals, demonstrate the
authority that seniors have over their juniors.
Adolescents are often expected to contribute their
labor and skill to benefit the family or the com-
munity, yet they are still under the control of their
elders. This authority may last beyond adolescence,
when marriage or other markers of full adulthood
are delayed, sometimes for boys into their middle
or late 20s. Harsh rituals express this authority and
reinforce the obedience training the children have
already received.
Schlegel, Bar ry 337
 The private ceremonies also emphasize gender
activities and responsibilities, but they are orga-
nized by the initiate’s family and do not involve an
investment by the community. Such ceremonies
are usually more elaborate and expensive in terms
of goods and labor for richer or higher status fami-
lies than for poorer ones or those of lower status.
Initiation Ceremonies in Modern
Industrial Societies
Initiation ceremonies for adolescents seem
to have no place in the modern industrial world
because the community ceremonies that initiate
children into gender-based cohorts would have no
meaning. Transition ceremonies within a commu-
nity of religious faith have no broader social sig-
nificance. The personal rituals that occur only have
significance to the individual and are not required
for him or her to be recognized as an adolescent.
There have been attempts made to invent ini-
tiation ceremonies appropriate to more modern
times. The Jugendweihe, or “youth consecration”
for 14-year-old children, was one such ceremony
(Isemeyer & Sühl, 1989). In some German com-
munities, especially Protestant ones, confirmation
at age 14 became a de facto community initiation
ceremony for the local parish, but its significance
did not extend beyond that population. It was,
however, an occasion for celebration, one that was
absent in the lives of young people unconnected
to a church. The Jugendweihe was established
by humanist associations in the 19th century to
replace confirmation for these adolescents.4
Jugendweihe was co-opted by the Nazis as
“Youth Day” and continued under the commu-
nist regime of the German Democratic Republic.
Although it was designed to create a sense of
belonging to the state and readiness to undertake
the responsibilities of membership, the participants
saw it primarily as a festivity at which they received
presents. Today, there are Jugendweihe associations,
and about one-third of adolescents in the states
that formerly constituted the GDR sign up for the
ceremony.
There are other secular transition rituals in
modern society, in addition to the Jugendweihe and
rituals connected with school. These are private rit-
uals without larger social significance. Some Latin
American communities, in their home countries or
in the United States, celebrate the girl’s quincea-
ñera, a party given for the girl when she is 15. This
is her introduction to society, much like the debut
for some girls in Europe and America when they
338 L e av i ng C h i l dho od
reach age 18. These were originally announcements
of readiness for courtship and served as rituals
that marked the end of social adolescence and the
transition into the postadolescent, preadult stage
of youth. After her “coming out,” the girl formerly
was expected to attract suitors and prepare for mar-
riage. Now, both celebrations are simply parties
that have little effect on how the girl is treated or
behaves. They serve more as signs that her family
can afford the expense of the event.
The decline of transition rituals in modern soci-
ety reflects the changing nature of the transition
from childhood to adolescence. It is gradual and
may begin as early as the first signs of puberty,
when a girl in the United States may get her first
brassiere (oddly called a “training bra”). There are
various events along the way, each a small step into
adolescence, such as the 12th and 13th birthdays,
entering high school, starting to wear distinctive
“adolescent” clothing, taking ballroom dancing
lessons, and various other small markers specific to
region, ethnic community, or social class.
The transition to adolescence has strong simi-
larities to the transition to adulthood as an emerg-
ing state rather than one entered in a specific,
culturally defined way. We could call it “emerg-
ing adolescence,” a counterpart to what Arnett
(2000) calls “emerging adulthood.” The gradual
nature of the transition, marked as much by per-
sonal choices as by cultural dictate, expresses the
individualistic nature of modern society and the
diversity of cultural practices. Where beliefs and
values are diverse, there is little appetite for confor-
mity to a single set of ritual practices unless they
have clear political meaning, such as a presidential
inaugural ceremony, or economic benefits, such as
the rituals of the Olympics. The transition from
childhood to adolescence is an individual matter,
and each child, or his or her family, marks it in
individual ways.
Notes
1 According to Muslim belief, circumcision can take place
at any time before the boy is age 13. In some Muslim com-
munities of Southeast Asia, it has become a ritual in an
adolescent initiation ceremony, or a circumcision ceremony
may have replaced a different kind of initiation ceremony
that existed before these areas were converted to Islam
(for circumcision in Indonesian initiation ceremonies, see
Geertz [1960] and Mikarsa [2012]). Some authorities spec-
ulate that Jewish circumcision of infant boys was originally
part of an adolescent initiation ceremony in early Israelite
culture (Marcus, 2004). It is possible that both Muslim and
Jewish circumcision originated as an adolescent ritual prac-
tice of ancient Semitic peoples.
2 The code includes the information that some societies
interpret initiation as moving children into full adulthood.
That coding was based on claims made in the ethnographic
descriptions of those ceremonies from which the coders
retrieved the data. Based on later research (Schlegel &
Barry, 1991), this interpretation is incorrect; the ceremony
marks the transition to an adolescent stage, even though it
is brief in some societies.
3 Research available after that code was completed reveals
that the ancient Romans had a ceremony for boys
(Harlow & Laurence, 2002). The inclusion of Rome would
not change the findings in any significant way.
4 Descriptions of the Jugendweihe in English are found under
that heading in Wikipedia and on the website of Calvin
College: www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gal/jweihe.html.
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 C H A P T E R

21 Adolescent Risk and Resiliences

Across Cultures

Marcela Raffaelli and Maria I. Iturbide

Abstract
This chapter examines adolescent risk and resilience across cultures. It provides an overview of
resilience theory and identifies constructs applicable to the study of adolescence as a developmental
period. It then examines the role of culture in adolescent development. Next, the chapter examines
how issues of risk and resilience play out in three specific adolescent populations: children growing up
in immigrant families in the US, impoverished and homeless Brazilian youth, and war-affected children
around the world. The final section contains recommendations for future research synthesizing the
study of resilience, culture, and adolescent development. Integrating the study of resilience and the
study of culture can result in a more nuanced way of understanding developmental risk and resilience.
Key Words:  adolescence, culture, development, immigration, poverty, resilience, risk, violence, war

In 1990, as a new Ph.D. whose doctoral training
emphasized issues of development and culture, the
first author (Raffaelli) joined an international, mul-
tidisciplinary team of researchers developing and
evaluating an HIV/AIDS intervention for home-
less and working street youth in Brazil. I was not
hired because I had specific knowledge relevant to
the project but because I had lived in Brazil while
growing up (my father is Brazilian). For 2 years,
I spent about half my time in Brazil working with
the local research team. During this time, I filled
a number of notebooks with field notes, impres-
sions and questions, records of meetings with the
research team, and ideas for future research. Going
back through these notebooks, I see how themes
relating to culture and development emerged early
on and quickly assumed prominence.
Having lived in Brazil, I was used to see-
ing poorly dressed children unaccompanied by
adults in public settings, typically doing odd jobs
or begging. Driving around town, we would see
where these children slept (sometimes with their
families, often alone)—in shanty towns, under
highway overpasses, in cardboard boxes in a store
lobby. But it was not until I returned to Brazil in
1990 that I began to see street youth as a culturally
embedded phenomenon. For example, I quickly
started to pay attention to how cultural views of
gender were evident on the street. Whereas street
boys were sometimes described in the academic
literature as freedom-loving adventure-seekers,
girls were seen as vulnerable because of the tradi-
tional division of the world into male and female
spheres represented by the street and the home
(see Raffaelli et al., 2000). The prevailing view
was that to stay safe on the street, girls had to
pair up with a strong male; in the words of one
young woman, “A woman needs a man to take
care of her. He has the strength to defend her.”
But I soon learned that some girls found other
ways to protect themselves. During one visit to a
drop-in facility, I met two young women (aged 15
and 17) who had teamed up years earlier for pro-
tection. Calling themselves parceiras (partners),
they described a variety of strategies they used
to keep safe—staying together while working as

341
street vendors, sleeping together in hostels, teach-
ing each other how to fight. Another example of
how issues of culture emerged related to the use
of kinship terms. I noticed that young people liv-
ing on the streets often addressed adults as tio
(uncle) or tia (aunt). The use of kinship terms
with unrelated adults is common for Brazilian
children interacting with family friends but not
with strangers. By using these kinship terms,
impoverished children seemed to be making a
culturally appropriate claim for strangers’ care
and attention—and many adults accepted this
form of address and responded positively.
Inevitably, given my developmental background,
I began to wonder about the long-term impact of
street life. During an early visit, I gave a workshop
to the research team on adolescent development,
and we discussed the applicability of mainstream
developmental theories to street kids. That day
(and subsequently), the group pondered how street
youth might experience adolescence—for example,
how might psychosocial development be affected
by the fact that many youth had been responsible
for their own survival for years, so that becoming
“independent” of parents was not a salient issue.
We explored the possible impacts of street life on
normative development, including negative aspects
(e.g., pubertal delays due to undernutrition, effects
of inhalant use on cognition) and potential positive
ones (e.g., formation of strong peer bonds). We also
discussed the possible long-term implications of
street life for development (e.g., how lack of formal
education might affect future job prospects, issues
of physical health and well-being). And we talked
about the resources young people on the street
draw on as they negotiate daily life. These note-
books hold the seeds of a research program on the
developmental impact of poverty that has spanned
more than 20 years. This work has been informed
by several intellectual traditions, including the
study of resilience and development-in-context.
This chapter brings together these strands and
examines issues of adolescent risk and resilience
across cultures and contexts. This is a timely topic
because adolescents represent a greater share of
the world’s population than ever before, and they
face unprecedented challenges. The estimated
1.8 billion young people aged 10–24 comprise about
a quarter of the global population (Sawyer et al.,
2012), with most living in low- and middle-income
countries. Although generally healthier than previ-
ous generations of adolescents due to improvements
in global public health, young people around the
342 A d ol e sc e n t R i s k s a n d R e s i l i e nc e s Ac r o ss C u lt u r e s
world are dealing with a range of challenges (Diers,
2013). Some of these represent normative life events
that accompany the transition from childhood to
adulthood (e.g., embarking on a career, finding a
life partner). Others are the result of large-scale
social changes resulting from (among other things)
rapid urbanization; increased educational expec-
tations; economic interconnections among world
regions; and globalization of media, consumption,
and technology (e.g., Blum, Bastos, Kabiru, & Le,
2012; Larson, Wilson, & Rickman, 2009; Raffaelli,
Lazarevic, Koller, Nsamenang, & Sharma, 2013).
These global changes make adolescence a time of
potential risk, yet many young people successfully
transition into adulthood (UNICEF, 2011).
In this chapter, we examine factors contributing
to risk and resilience among adolescents, paying
particular attention to issues of culture. The chap-
ter is organized into four sections. The first focuses
on resilience theory and its relevance to the study of
adolescents. The second section examines the role
of culture in adolescent development. The third
section reviews existing literature to illustrate how
issues of risk and resilience play out in research and
interventions conducted in three adolescent popu-
lations: adolescents in immigrant families, impov-
erished and homeless youth, and war-affected
youngsters. In the final section, we make recom-
mendations for future efforts to integrate the study
of resilience, culture, and development.
Resilience Theory and Constructs
The study of resilience began more than
40 years ago in an effort to understand positive
developmental outcomes among children at risk of
developing psychopathology (e.g., Garmezy, 1970;
Rutter, 1979). The field soon broadened to con-
sider children experiencing other forms of adversity
(e.g., poverty, abuse, parental death; Masten, 1994,
Werner & Smith, 1982), and, since then, count-
less articles and multiple edited volumes have been
published. In a recent review, Wright, Masten, and
Narayan (2013) summarized four waves of research
on resilience. We draw on their review in the fol-
lowing paragraphs and refer readers to the full
chapter for a comprehensive overview of key trends
and controversies.
The first wave of resilience research focused
on describing the phenomenon of resilience and
delineating key constructs and methodologi-
cal approaches (Wright et al., 2013). A consensus
emerged that resilience should not be considered
a characteristic of the individual but rather as “a
process or phenomenon reflecting positive child
adjustment despite conditions of risk” (Luthar &
Zelazo, 2003, p. 510). There was general agree-
ment that two “fundamental judgments” must be
made before inferring resilience: a person has to
be “doing okay” in spite of exposure to “signifi-
cant risk or adversity” (Masten & Powell, 2003,
p. 4). Conceptual refinements and clarifications
were made over the years. For example, scholars
increasingly recognized the need to differentiate
between risk as a group-level phenomenon (e.g.,
being homeless) and how risks were experienced
in the life of an individual (e.g., specific hardships
associated with being homeless). Consensus was
also sought on what to call factors associated with
positive adaptation among risk-exposed individu-
als (Wright et al., 2013). Current resilience scholars
emphasize the need to differentiate protective fac-
tors (those that diminish the negative impact of risk
among exposed individuals) and promotive factors
(those that are positively associated with adjust-
ment regardless of level of risk exposure). Although
different factors may ameliorate risk exposure in
specific populations, accumulated evidence from
decades of research has yielded a “short list” of
potential protective and promotive factors oper-
ating at the level of the individual (e.g., cognitive
skills, self-efficacy), family (e.g., supportive caregiv-
ing, warmth), community (e.g., effective schools,
safe neighborhoods), and culture (e.g., protective
child policies, shared values regarding equity and
nonviolence; see Wright et al., 2013, Table 2.2).
By the end of the first wave of resilience research,
scholars had generated a shared language for talk-
ing about resilience and identified a common set of
factors associated with resilience.
During the second wave of resilience research,
scholars focused on understanding the processes
leading to resilience (Wright et al., 2013), in keep-
ing with a broader movement toward understand-
ing development from a systems perspective.
Scholars shifted their focus from identifying factors
associated with resilience to examining the dynamic
transactions between individuals and their contexts
that lead to resilience. Taking advantage of new
longitudinal datasets and increasingly sophisticated
statistical techniques, researchers studied pathways
of resilience over time and examined how specific
factors operating at various time points might fos-
ter positive adaptation. These studies have yielded
information about the contextual specificity of
risk and protective factors, the role of individual
appraisals in the resilience process, factors linked to
stability and change in resilience, and the impact of
timing of adversity (see Wright et al., 2013). Second
wave work highlighted the need to consider indi-
vidual adaptation within a larger context, in keep-
ing with ecological models of development (e.g.,
Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998).
Building on first and second wave investigations,
the third wave consists of interventions to foster
resilience (Wright et al., 2013). These translational
activities were designed to bring about improve-
ments in the lives of vulnerable individuals, but
also served to test models of resilience. The fourth
(current) wave of research integrates biological pro-
cesses into models of resilience and is “focused on
multilevel dynamics and the many processes link-
ing genes, neurobiological adaptation, brain devel-
opment, behavior, and context” (Wright et al.,
2013, p. 30; see also Cicchetti, 2010).
The field of resilience research has generated
valuable information about issues of risk, protec-
tion, and resilience across developmental periods.
Much early work on resilience focused on young
children, but considerable effort has been devoted
to the period of adolescence. This is due in part to
the growing availability of studies that followed
children from early life into adolescence and adult-
hood (see Werner, 2013). This work has yielded
insight into resilience across the life span. Some
work suggests that certain types of risks may have
a greater impact in later life than is apparent at the
time of exposure. For example, there are indications
that survivors of child sexual abuse may experience
a range of difficulties with adult relationships—
they lack sexual assertiveness, have multiple sexual
partners, have difficulties in interpersonal relation-
ships, and are at risk for sexual revictimization (see
DiLillo, 2001; Messman-Moore & Long, 2003, for
reviews). Other work indicates that major life tran-
sitions may offer opportunities to break earlier (per-
haps dysfunctional) patterns. For example, scholars
of developmental continuity and discontinuity
have introduced the notion of a “turning point”—
a pivotal moment that can result in a shift in an
individual’s trajectory (Schulenberg & Zarrett,
2006). Potentially life-altering situations include
attending a new school, entering the military, get-
ting married, and becoming a parent. These major
changes in life contexts can help young people
recover from past difficulties.
A parallel development to the study of resilience
was the emergence of the study of adolescence as
a distinct developmental period (e.g., Dornbusch,
Petersen, & Hetherington, 1991). Much of this
R a f fa e ll i, I t u r bi de 343
work focused on understanding normative devel-
opment, but the accumulated literature on adoles-
cence in primarily North American and European
contexts led scholars to conclude that adolescence
represented a time of heightened risk. For example,
one influential book published in 1990 proposed
that one in four US adolescents was at risk for
involvement in serious problem behaviors (e.g.,
school drop-out, delinquency, substance abuse,
teen pregnancy; Dryfoos, 1990). Scholars of ado-
lescent development noted that normative life
changes during this age period (including physical,
cognitive, and social transitions) were often associ-
ated with increased stress, particularly when they
occurred simultaneously (Compas & Reeslund,
2009). Moreover, in many industrialized nations,
adolescents are granted increased freedoms (e.g.,
later curfews, driving privileges, autonomy in
decision-making) that “encourage individual-
ism, independence, and self-expression” (Arnett,
1995, p. 617) but also provide opportunities for
increased risk-taking. As the study of adolescence
has evolved, constructs and terminology from the
field of resilience research have been increasingly
applied (e.g., Schulenberg & Zarrett, 2006; see
Compas & Reeslund, 2009, for a comprehensive
review).
Scholars studying resilience have long noted
that both risk and protective factors may be rooted
in cultural beliefs or practices (Luthar, 2006;
Wright et al., 2013; Ungar, 2012). We turn next to
a selective discussion of culture and its integration
in research on adolescent risk and resilience.
Culture, Risk, and Resilience
During Adolescence
Despite a long-standing interest in under-
standing how culture influences human behav-
ior, little consensus has emerged in how best to
define and operationalize culture within devel-
opmental research. In their chapter published in
the Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Lonner
and Adamopoulos (1997) noted that more than
200 definitions of “culture” existed in the social
science literature. This lack of definitional consen-
sus has resulted in lack of precision in the opera-
tionalization of culture within empirical research.
One issue is that theories differ in where they
locate culture. Some theories view culture as a
contextual factor that shapes the environment in
which the individual develops. An example of this
is Bronfenbrenner’s widely used ecological model
(e.g., Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998), which
344 A d ol e sc e n t R i s k s a n d R e s i l i e nc e s Ac r o ss C u lt u r e s
places cultural factors in the macrosystem (out-
ermost layer). This placement may lead to culture
being operationalized as a background or exog-
enous variables—but (as Bronfenbrenner stressed),
culture is not an external force but rather plays out
during everyday interactions, within the proxi-
mal processes that shape development. Because of
this, cultural theorists argue that culture should
be thought of as a “medium” for development—a
rich, all-encompassing environment that nurtures
and sustains growth. In this view, culture cannot
be thought of as separate from the person—cul-
ture permeates all aspects of development and
results in divergences in how individuals experi-
ence themselves and their worlds (e.g., Shweder &
Sullivan, 1993).
Given the challenges of defining and measur-
ing cultural constructs, many scholars engaged
in quantitative developmental studies (including
examinations of resilience) often do not incor-
porate cultural constructs as measured variables.
Instead, they address issues of culture in the intro-
ductory and concluding sections of their articles
and (perhaps) include one or two proxy measures
of cultural constructs as variables in their studies
(e.g., language, rural/urban residence). Another
common approach is to compare cultural groups
and attribute group differences to cultural factors.
A number of prominent scholars have critiqued
these approaches because they do not allow for an
explication of how specific cultural variables may
play out during development (e.g., Cauce, 2002;
Feldman & Rosenthal, 1994; McLoyd, 2004). In
an effort to move the field forward, scholars have
worked to identify measurable ways that culture
may operate in human development, three of
which are reviewed here.
First, the same factors may be relevant for all
groups, but differ in levels (e.g., means) and/or
salience (e.g., strength of association with other
variables). For example, there is cross-cultural
evidence that support from family members and
friends can serve as a protective factor, buffering
adolescents from the negative impact of stress. But
cultures may vary in the extent to which individu-
als receive support from different social partners;
Feldman and Rosenthal (1994) reported that
adolescents from Australia and the United States
reported higher levels of accepting/engaged parent-
ing than did Hong Kong youth. The role of support
from different social partners in reducing distress
may also vary across groups. For example, in con-
trast to some US studies indicating that support
from peers becomes more salient than support
from family members as adolescents move into
adulthood, a recent study of Mexican adolescents
and young adults indicated that the protective role
of family support remained strong across this age
period, with family support playing a unique role
in buffering youth from the harmful effects of
stress (Raffaelli, Andrade, et al., 2013).
Second, the same variables may be relevant
across groups, but variables may differ in structure
and form. An example would be religious or spiri-
tual beliefs and practices that facilitate coping in
times of stress (Wright et al., 2013). Although reli-
giosity may serve as a protective factor for members
of different cultural groups, there are variations
in the content of spiritual beliefs and the form of
spiritual practices. Similarly, a study of resilience
conducted in 11 countries revealed common pro-
tective factors (e.g., nurturing relationships, sense
of belonging) but little consistency in how these
protective factors were structured and expressed
across groups (Ungar, 2012). In terms of risk fac-
tors, environmental factors that threaten youth’s
well-being (e.g., violence, substandard living situa-
tions) can take different forms in different cultures
(e.g., Rutter, Champion, Quinton, Maughan, &
Pickles, 1995).
Finally, risk and protective factors may be
unique to a specific cultural or ethnic group. For
example, different risks may be present due to
unique historical experiences, such as colonization,
genocide, or forced migration. One study of Native
American Indian adults examined the role of his-
torical loss, conceptualized as personal loss (e.g.,
land, language), familial loss, and symptoms asso-
ciated with loss (e.g., anxiety, shame; Whitbeck,
Chen, Hoyt, & Dams, 2004). Historical loss medi-
ated the positive association between perceived
discrimination and alcohol abuse (i.e., the relation
became nonsignificant once historical loss was
entered into the model). Culturally specific protec-
tive factors have also been identified. For example,
in South Africa, it is believed that all individuals
are interdependent and responsible for sustaining
interdependence (Mokwena, 2007), which sup-
ports the belief of ubantu (i.e., “humanity, compas-
sion, and kindness”; Mokwena, 2007, p. 71). In a
qualitative study, ubantu was demonstrated when
displaced South African children were taken in by
extended family members and through the shar-
ing of resources such as food, basic necessities, and
knowledge by community members (e.g., relatives,
neighbors, teachers; Theron et al., 2011).
These examples illustrate some of the ways that
cultural factors may play out in studies of adoles-
cent risk and resilience. We turn next to a selective
examination of the empirical literature on adoles-
cent risk and resilience in varied cultural contexts.
Given space constraints and limitations of the
available literature, our analysis and examples are
illustrative and selective.
Risk and Resilience in Diverse Groups
of Adolescents: Three Exemplars
In this section, we focus on three populations
of young people and provide examples of how risk
and protective factors operate in their lives. We
draw on existing research and intervention studies
to examine the experiences of youth facing signifi-
cant threats to their well-being as a result of family
migration, poverty, or exposure to armed conflicts
and violence.
Balancing Old and New Ways: Sexual
Socialization in Immigrant Families
The number of international migrants world-
wide is currently estimated at 214 million people—
approximately 3% of the world’s population
(International Organization for Migration, 2010).
In some countries, migrants make up a significant
portion of the population. For example, 13% of the
US population is now foreign-born (Grieco et al.,
2012). About one-quarter of US children are grow-
ing up in immigrant families (defined as having
at least one foreign-born parent), and more than
half (60.5%) of Latino children have at least one
foreign-born parent (Clark, Glick, & Bures, 2009).
Accumulating evidence indicates that although
migration affords new opportunities, it may stress
families due to loss of support networks, disruption
of family roles, and acculturation-related strains
(e.g., Hernandez, Denton, & Macartney, 2007). One
important factor in immigrant families is the differ-
ential pace and extent of acculturation among adults
and children. Given differences in experiences and
exposure to the larger society, immigrant parents are
slower to adopt values, attitudes, and behaviors of the
host society than their children (Gonzales, Fabrett,
& Knight, 2009; Phinney, Ong, & Madden, 2000;
Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2001). The result-
ing acculturation gap can potentially contribute to
either family and individual well-being or distress,
depending on the domain of functioning (see Telzer,
2010, for review).
Some research supports the notion that accul-
turation gaps may represent a potential source of
R a f fa e ll i, I t u r bi de 345
family strength. For example, young people who
are more fluent in English and familiar with US
culture than their parents can serve an impor-
tant role as cultural brokers, helping their parents
navigate the new environment and gaining status
within the family (e.g., Chao, 2006; Morales &
Hanson, 2005), which can contribute to family
and individual well-being. Yet acculturation gaps
also have the potential to lead to family or indi-
vidual distress. In two studies of Latino families,
parent–child language discrepancies negatively
affected family communication (Tseng & Fuligni,
2000), and acculturation gaps were associated with
lower levels of family cohesion, adaptability, and
familism (Smokowski, Rose, & Bacallao, 2008).
One domain in which acculturation gaps appear
to be potentially problematic relates to gender and
sexual socialization. Immigrant parents face the
challenges of balancing their expectations (which
were shaped in their home country) with the new
influences their children are exposed to in the
United States (e.g., Azmitia & Brown, 2002; Grau,
Azmitia, & Quattlebaum, 2009; Kwak, 2003).
Socialization of children in many Latino families
is organized in ways that fit with descriptions of
traditional cultural norms and values. For exam-
ple, Latino parents typically grant less autonomy
to and place more responsibilities on daughters
than on sons (Domenech-Rodríguez, Donovick, &
Crowley, 2009). Discontinuities between the cul-
ture of origin and the new context are likely to
be heightened during adolescence (Kwak, 2003),
which represents a time of growing freedom from
adult supervision in many US families. Immigrant
parents are typically unfamiliar with aspects of US
youth culture that their children encounter, such
as slumber parties, overnight camps, and prom
night rituals. Concerns about dating are common,
particularly among parents of girls (for review, see
Raffaelli & Iturbide, 2009). Latina adolescents
report stricter rules about dating and sex, and
more conservative maternal expectations regarding
sexuality, than do their male counterparts (Hovell
et al., 1994).
These dynamics are illustrated in a series of
studies the first author conducted with student
collaborators over the years. Through retrospective
qualitative and quantitative studies, we examined
explicit and implicit strategies used by immigrant
Latino parents to shape and control their children’s
behavior. We investigated a range of topics, starting
with an exploration of how Latinas describe their
experiences of sexual socialization while growing
346 A d ol e sc e n t R i s k s a n d R e s i l i e nc e s Ac r o ss C u lt u r e s
up (Raffaelli & Ontai, 2001). This was followed by
quantitative and mixed-methods analyses of spe-
cific topics, including gender-related socialization
(Raffaelli & Ontai, 2004), adolescent dating expe-
riences (Raffaelli, 2005), and parent–child com-
munication about sex (Raffaelli & Green, 2003).
These studies confirm that socialization in
many immigrant Latino families is marked by
expectations and practices that are consistent with
traditional Latin American norms, including dif-
ferential treatment of sons and daughters, limited
communication about sexual topics, and curtail-
ment of girls’ romantic activities. Quantitative
analyses indicated that socialization practices were
linked to parental acculturation and demographic
variables, such that increased familiarity with US
culture and a higher level of formal education were
linked to more “American” socialization practices.
The studies conducted by Raffaelli and colleagues
did not permit systematic examination of whether
acculturation gaps were linked to sexual behaviors
of adolescents. However, a longitudinal investiga-
tion by Schwartz and colleagues (2012) revealed
that parent–child acculturation gaps (in the areas
of practices, values, and identification) were linked
to Latino adolescents’ greater involvement in sexual
risk taking.
This work on sexual socialization in Latino fam-
ilies has served as the foundation for interventions
with Latino families. It has long been recognized
that individuals are more receptive to interventions
that reflect cultural realities and are matched to
participants’ language, values, attitudes, and stage
of acculturation (see Castro, Barrera, & Martinez,
2004). For example, Lescano and colleagues devel-
oped a family-based intervention aimed at reduc-
ing sexual risk behaviors of Latino adolescents (see
Lescano, Brown, Raffaelli, & Lima, 2009). The
intervention was specifically designed to respect
parents’ values regarding teen sexuality while help-
ing them understand typical US norms, which
their teens are exposed to through peers and the
media. To address issues related to differential
acculturation, parents and children are encouraged
to discuss the social norms found in schools and in
the community, such as norms regarding sexuality,
teen romance, and parental monitoring. Parents
also have opportunities to interact with other
Latino parents, including parents who are more
acculturated or who hold different perspectives.
Also, while recognizing that maintaining cultural
values and practices is important, interventions can
stress the importance of parents learning English
(and children maintaining their Spanish) to facili-
tate family communication.
Taken together, this work highlights the
importance of understanding the role of culture
in immigrant families’ adaptation to life in their
new environment. Research is needed that includes
careful delineation of cultural variables, identifica-
tion of theoretically based processes that may serve
as potential risk or protective factors, and consider-
ation of multiple domains of functioning.
Impoverished and Homeless Brazilian
Youth: Risk and Resilience on the Street
Children and adolescents who spend their
time in street settings unaccompanied by adults
(i.e., street youth) represent a highly vulnerable
subgroup of impoverished young people. The pro-
portion of people living in extreme poverty (less
than $1.25/day) has fallen since the adoption of
the Millennium Development Goals, from 47%
in 1990 to 24% in 2010 (United Nations, 2012).
Yet more than a billion people worldwide continue
to live in extreme poverty and may be unable to
care adequately for their children. The presence of
youth on the streets of major cities in the global
South is a visible result of this poverty. For exam-
ple, despite striking improvements in Brazil’s eco-
nomic situation in recent decades, many Brazilian
children and adolescents are growing up in situa-
tions that threaten their immediate and long-term
well-being (for review, see Raffaelli, Koller, &
Morais, 2013).
There can be little doubt that impoverished and
homeless street youth are at physical and psycho-
logical risk. Many of these risks are shared with
other populations of disenfranchised youth. For
example, many street youth report high levels of
negative life events, face physical threats in their
daily lives (e.g., traffic accidents, violence), engage
in risky behavior (e.g., alcohol and drugs, unpro-
tected sex), and are involved in illicit survival activ-
ities (e.g., Campos et al., 1994; Hecht, 1998; Pinto
et al., 1994). Other risks appear to be culturally or
contextually specific. For example, Brazil’s repres-
sive military dictatorship (which lasted from 1964
to 1985) was associated with the creation of institu-
tions designed to contain and control impoverished
youth (Diversi, Moraes, & Morelli, 1999). In the
1970s and early 1980s, Brazil’s external debt and
high inflation triggered a major economic crisis
that curtailed government investments, resulting
in widespread poverty and lack of infrastructure
(e.g., housing, schools). These institutional and
structural challenges still affect the lives of Brazil’s
impoverished adolescents.
The risks that impoverished and homeless youth
confront have been associated with negative out-
comes in several studies conducted in Brazil. In a
shelter-based study involving 25 male street youth
(aged 13–19), boys who experienced high levels of
childhood adversity and recent negative life events
reported a greater number of physical health symp-
toms and lower levels of positive affect than boys
who had experienced less past or current adversity
(Raffaelli, Koller, & Morais, 2007). A large-scale
study of more than 900 14- to 19-year-olds from
impoverished neighborhoods revealed that greater
exposure to risk factors in the domains of family
(e.g., parental death, abuse), community (e.g., drug
trafficking, violence), and economics (e.g., fam-
ily unemployment, going hungry) was associated
with psychological and behavioral maladjustment
(Raffaelli, Koller, Cerqueira-Santos, & Morais,
2007).
Scholars have also noted evidence of resilience
in this population. For example, Brazilian street
youth in one study had similar levels of depression
to impoverished children living at home (DeSouza
et al., 1995). Young people on the street may have
access to resources that are not otherwise avail-
able to them, such as money-making opportuni-
ties (Hutz & Koller, 1997), social support (often
in the form of peer networks; Ennew, 1994), and
institutions that provide food, shelter, and other
services (Hecht, 1998). Few systematic examina-
tions of these potential protective factors have been
conducted, but there is emerging evidence that
social and individual factors can buffer youth from
the negative impact of poverty. In one quantita-
tive study, formal tests of moderation were con-
ducted to examine whether family support, school
attachment, and self-efficacy diminished the asso-
ciation between risk exposure and problem behav-
ior among more than 4,700 impoverished 13- to
17-year-olds from seven Brazilian cities (Raffaelli,
Koller, & Cerqueira-Santos, 2012). Composite
measures of risk exposure were associated with
increased involvement in problem behavior, but
protective factors diminished that association.
Other studies have focused on protective factors
that may be unique to street youth. For example,
youth with higher ratings on “street smarts” (a
measure of self-reported ability to obtain food, a
place to sleep, clothing, protection, and a place to
bathe/wash clothes) reported fewer physical health
symptoms than did those with lower scores on this
R a f fa e ll i, I t u r bi de 347
measure (Raffaelli, Koller, & Morais, 2007). These
studies provide suggestive evidence that many
youth growing up under conditions of extreme
poverty, including homelessness, may demonstrate
resilience.
This work highlights potential avenues for
intervention. Qualitative studies conducted in
youth-serving agencies provide emerging evi-
dence that culturally based individual and social
resources serve as important protective factors.
In her dissertation study, Morais (2010) con-
ducted observations and ongoing engagement
with youth and staff in a shelter serving home-
less youth. Findings indicated that youth main-
tained positive functioning by using an array of
resources to cope with difficult life situations.
Field notes contained numerous examples of
youth playing with one another or the program
staff, smiling, singing, joking, and expressing
positive emotions. Observers frequently noted
examples of solidarity and companionship among
youth and between youth and adults present in
the field site (e.g., the shelter staff, researchers).
In an earlier study, Morais (2005) described the
varied survival strategies used by youth, includ-
ing the “choice” of the street as an alternative to
a difficult home environment, the formation of
peer groups that provide material and emotional
support, the use of formal institutions to meet
material needs, and the ability to muster individ-
ual creativity to give meaning to life (e.g., artistic
talents, prowess in sports).
These studies suggest that individual youth
can draw on contextually and culturally relevant
strengths to overcome the challenges of street life,
and provide information that can be used to cre-
ate supportive environments for these youth. In
the long term, however, addressing the situation of
street youth will require implementation of social
policies that lead to structural transformation (e.g.,
poverty reduction, job creation, affordable hous-
ing, improved school quality). Key tasks for policy
makers will be to examine how social, political,
cultural, and economic factors shape and con-
strain the life choices and attitudes of youth, and to
identify what can be done to alter these factors in
ways that improve the well-being of children from
impoverished families.
Children and Armed Conflict
There are an estimated 40 armed conflicts
currently being fought around the world (Global
Security, 2013). These conflicts range in scope and
348 A d ol e sc e n t R i s k s a n d R e s i l i e nc e s Ac r o ss C u lt u r e s
impact from internal strife and insurgencies (e.g.,
small groups in opposition to the government) to
full-fledged civil wars to international wars involv-
ing different countries. Scholarly studies of young
people involved in and affected by armed conflicts
began in the late 1970s (see Barber & Schluterman,
2009, for review), but this population has only
recently received sustained attention from devel-
opmental scholars. In this section, we examine the
experiences of these youth.
Most youth affected by armed conflict are non-
combatants. It is estimated that three-quarters of
those killed or wounded in modern armed con-
flicts are noncombatants (Global Security, 2013).
Conflict also leads to widespread displacement of
families who may be forced to leave their homes
(and sometimes their country) in search of safety.
The United Nations estimates that 42.5 million
people (about two-fifths younger than 18) are cur-
rently displaced by conflict or prosecution (United
Nations, 2012).
Scholars have examined risk and protective fac-
tors among young people displaced or affected by
war. One study conducted in Afghanistan illus-
trates how cultural values and norms may serve as
both risk and protective factors for families when
war disrupts traditional ways of life and exposes
families to violence, poverty, and social inequality
(Eggerman & Panter-Brick, 2010). In this context,
conflict between family members can occur when
attempting to meet the needs put forth by cultural
values and traditions. This qualitative study, which
involved 1,011 Afghan child–caregiver dyads,
found that the inability to meet social and cultural
obligations (such as owning a home or arranging
a marriage for a child) resulted in psychological
distress for parents, as well as in a loss of honor
for the father. Family relationships in turn become
strained, in some cases resulting in violence against
oneself or other family members. However, partici-
pants also reported cultural values and social hope
themes as methods of improving their lives: iman
(faith), wahdatand ittifaq (family unity and har-
mony), khidmat (service), koshesh (perseverance
and effort), and akhlaq (morals); see Eggerman and
Panter-Brick (2010). These served as potential pro-
tective factors for war-affected families.
Other work calls attention to the importance
of considering how war-affected youth interpret
their situation. For example, a program of research
on youth and political violence conducted by
Barber and colleagues (summarized in Barber,
2008) showed that Bosnian and Palestinian youth
perceived the political violence they experienced
differently, with implications for their identify for-
mation. Almost three times as many Palestinian
youth (85%) felt that “the conflict was worth the
effort” than did Bosnian youth (27% males; 33%
females), and a larger proportion of Palestinian
youth (75% males; 66% females) disagreed with
the statement that “the struggle was hopeless” than
did Bosnian youth (41% males, 35% females). The
difference in how youth responded was attribut-
able to not only differences in the type of violence
encountered but also how they made meaning of
the conflict. Whereas Bosnian youth found the war
inexplicable and senseless, the Palestinian youth
had access to “a realm of meaning that comprehen-
sively detailed for them their identity and justified
and legitimized the goals and tactics of their fight”
(Barber, 2008, p. 307).
Another group of young people exposed to vio-
lence are those associated with armed groups as
“child soldiers.” These children (whose ages may
vary considerably) take on a range of roles—as
combatants, spies, providers of sex to adult fight-
ers, and servants (e.g., cooks, porters) (UNICEF,
2009). Although children and adolescents have long
served in the world’s armies, the phenomenon of
child soldiers has only recently come to the world’s
attention. In the 1990s, the United Nations com-
missioned a report on the impact of armed conflict
on children; the resulting document, known as the
Machel Report (after lead author Graça Machel),
focused attention on the situation of these young
people (UNICEF, 2009). Other reports and books
by rights workers, researchers, and clinicians fol-
lowed (e.g., Wessells, 2006). In the early 2000s,
several documentaries and feature films drew pub-
lic attention to child soldiers; one prominent exam-
ple was Invisible Children, filmed in 2003, about
the insurgent group Lord’s Resistance Army in
northern Uganda. A few years later, Ishmael Beah
published a book describing of his time as a child
soldier in Sierra Leone (A Long Way Gone: Memoirs
of a Boy Soldier). Taken together, this growing body
of work is yielding a picture of a small but highly
vulnerable population of youth.
The exact number of child soldiers is unknown
(estimates range from tens of thousands to several
hundred thousand), and no reliable statistics are
available. What is known is that boys and girls as
young as 6 or 7 years old have participated in armed
conflicts around the world, including in Africa
(e.g., Sierra Leone, Uganda), Asia (e.g., Myanmar,
Philippines), and Latin America (e.g., Colombia);
see UNICEF (2009). Children become involved
in armed conflicts for various reasons and through
various means (Wessells, 2006; 2009; Wessells &
Kostelny, 2009). In many cases, some degree of
coercion is common. In extreme cases, children are
kidnapped or forced into joining by being given the
“choice” to die or become a soldier. In other cases,
the “choice” is between joining and either killing a
loved one or being killed along with one’s family.
Some youth join up voluntarily or by choice, but
the decision to volunteer often stems from necessity
(e.g., nowhere else to go, need for food and pro-
tection) or a desire to be with family members. In
some cases, children may decide to join a conflict
to avenge a loved one or support the cause. Finally,
some young people are drawn to this life because of
its attractions (e.g., money, power, or glamour) or
the appeal of finding a surrogate family.
Once they are involved in armed groups, young
people are often (but not always) at risk of physi-
cal, psychological, and sexual abuse. However,
it has been noted that child soldiers’ experiences
vary widely, and multiple potential risk and pro-
tective factors have been identified. These include
the “type and frequency of exposure to the vio-
lence, motivation for involvement in the conflict,
cognitive and emotional processing of the conflict
and its violence, and [child soldiers’] response to
it” (Barber, 2009, p. 3). For example, a potential
source of individual variation in adjustment is how
and why child soldiers joined up (e.g., force, vol-
untarily). These variations are associated with the
type of incidents in which youth are forced to take
part (e.g., rape, killing others). Despite the frequent
use of coercion and abduction to “recruit” and con-
trol child soldiers, some scholars have pointed out
that youth are not simply mindless participants but
may be active agents in their choices, although the
options they have to choose from are often very
limited. For example, a 14-year old-girl was given
the “choice” of engaging in sexual services or hav-
ing her arm cut off—her decision to refuse to have
sex would allow her to maintain her moral integ-
rity, but losing an arm will clearly have long-term
effects (Wessells & Kostelny, 2009).
The effects of being a child soldier can be psycho-
logical (e.g., fear, depression, post-traumatic stress
disorder), physical (e.g., loss of limbs), social (e.g.,
community stigma), and economic (e.g., poverty;
Annan, Blattman, & Horton, 2006; Betancourt,
2012; Haroz, Murray, Bolton, Betancourt, & Bass,
2013; Wessells & Kostelny, 2009). Community and
family acceptance and support have been found to
R a f fa e ll i, I t u r bi de 349
be associated with positive psychosocial adjustment
among former child soldiers (Betancourt, 2012;
Wessells, 2009). Rehabilitating child soldiers often
involves addressing culturally specific beliefs that
may serve as both risk and protective factors. For
example, in some African countries, child soldiers
who have killed people may see themselves (and
be seen by others) as “spiritually contaminated”
or “haunted” by those they have killed (Wessells,
2009). This spiritual contamination is believed to
affect the larger community (not just the individ-
ual), and former child soldiers may be stigmatized
and ostracized. But indigenous beliefs also provide
an avenue for intervention, such as the use of tra-
ditional cleansing rituals that promote community
reintegration (Wessells, 2009).
Applied and intervention programs designed for
children of armed conflict must consider personal,
cultural, societal, and economic challenges. For
example, the Child Fund/Sierra Leone developed
a community-based program (Sealing the Past,
Facing the Future; Sefafu) to integrate girls and
young women who were former children of con-
flict back into their communities (Wessells, 2011).
This program demonstrates the complex set of
interrelated needs former child soldiers experience.
Because program participants were girls—some of
them mothers—issues of gender and culture are
also salient in this example. Through Sefafu, girls
were provided with medical services and tradi-
tional cleansing that allowed them to reintegrate
in to the community, which in turn elevated the
community’s acceptance of the girls. To further
strengthen community bonds, the program built
community awareness about the experiences of
girls in armed conflict by meeting with chiefs and
community members. The program participants
lived in an agricultural area and were taught about
crop production; however, when this did not pro-
vide enough income, girls were trained to make
crafts (e.g., sewing, weaving) that they could sell.
To start their small businesses the girls were pro-
vided with loans (which they had to pay back).
With an income, girls were able to pay for school.
Furthermore, by having an income the girls were
seen as good mothers and were perceived as more
marriageable.
As these examples illustrate, basic and applied
research with children involved in and affected by
conflict is yielding important information about
factors that foster resilience among highly vulner-
able youth. Given the diversity of contexts in which
conflict occurs, this work provides important
350 A d ol e sc e n t R i s k s a n d R e s i l i e nc e s Ac r o ss C u lt u r e s
opportunities to evaluate the role of culturally rel-
evant risk and protective factors.
Future Directions
In this chapter, we examined issues of adoles-
cent risk and resilience across cultures. The basic
and applied study of resilience across cultures has
uncovered a range of “global, as well as culturally
and contextually specific aspects to young people’s
lives that contribute to their resilience” (Ungar,
2008, p. 219). The literature on youth growing
up in a range of challenging situations provides
insight into individual, social, and cultural factors
that may protect young people from (some of) the
negative impacts of adversity. This work has impli-
cations for theory refinement, methodological
advances, and intervention development. In clos-
ing, we offer recommendations for future basic and
applied research.
First, there is a need for integration across
the often divergent fields of resilience, adoles-
cent development, and culture. As noted early in
the chapter, the study of resilience within devel-
opmental psychology has a long history, and
scholars have developed considerable consensus
regarding constructs, terminology, and meth-
odology. In contrast, scholars who approach the
study of resilience from other disciplines may use
different frameworks and approaches. For exam-
ple, cross-cultural studies of resilience often
incorporate mixed methods, including observa-
tions and in-depth case studies, that provide rich
information about how adolescents negotiate the
challenges they confront (e.g., Ungar, 2008).
However, it is difficult to compare the results
of such studies with those utilizing the type
of quantitative analyses favored by researchers
working from a developmental psychopathology
perspective (e.g., Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker,
2000). Dialogue and cross-fertilization across
disciplines would yield greater coherence in the
field and result in a more robust body of work
(see Jensen, 2011, for discussion of the value of
approaches that “bridge” cultural and develop-
mental approaches). On a related note, there is a
need for longitudinal investigations that incor-
porate an explicit examination of developmental
processes and examine the interplay of risk and
adjustment over time. At the most basic levels,
developmental changes (e.g., physical and sexual
maturation, cognitive development) affect how
young people interact with the world around
them, and thus one would expect developmental
differences in how risk and protective factors
operate (Wessells, 2009). Moreover, as noted
earlier in this chapter, exposure to risk may have
a delayed effect (negative effects emerge at a later
developmental stage), or major developmental
transitions may afford opportunities to alter
developmental pathways. Explicit consideration
of developmental issues within studies of ado-
lescent risk and resilience could provide valu-
able information about processes contributing
to resilience in the face of a range of threats to
development.
A major challenge for researchers and prac-
titioners is that the theoretical, empirical, and
applied literatures in the three areas of culture,
risk and resilience, and adolescent development
are all complex and constantly evolving. For
example, scholars working from a developmen-
tal psychopathology perspective are increas-
ingly considering biological factors in their work
(e.g., neurological, genetic, endocrine; Cicchetti,
2010), but these methods are difficult to imple-
ment in many research settings. Similarly, incor-
porating a cultural perspective into the study of
developmental risk and resilience requires care-
ful consideration of what cultural variables to
include and how to operationalize them in mean-
ingful ways. Just as importantly, noncultural
variables must be assessed to avoid incorrectly
attributing group differences to culture—for
example, it is critical to differentiate between
values and practices that are rooted in cultural
beliefs (e.g., views of appropriate conduct for
male and female youth), as opposed to those
that reflect situational constraints (e.g., family
constraints imposed by poverty). A potentially
fruitful way to address this challenge is through
cross-disciplinary collaborations: research teams
should include experts in each area to ensure that
research studies are adequately conceptualized
and designed. Yet conducting this type of work
can be extremely challenging. (For a discussion
of the challenges involved in developing shared
terminology and methods in a cross-national
study of resilience, see Ungar, Clark, Kwong,
Makhnach, & Cameron, 2005.)
Ultimately, efforts to integrate the study of risk
and resilience, culture, and adolescent develop-
ment is likely to yield important insights into risk
and protective factors operating at multiple levels
of the ecology and inform interventions and poli-
cies aimed at improving the lives of young people.
When developing intervention programs, it will
be important to pay careful attention to cultural
implications, developmental stage, and resources
available for intervention. Remaining attentive to
these issues will avoid the creation of “one size fits
all” approaches that may work in one setting but
not another (see Wessells, 2009, for a discussion of
this issue with respect to child soldiers). By inte-
grating concepts and methods from these diverse
fields of inquiry, scholars can generate culturally
nuanced knowledge about adolescent risk and resil-
ience across cultures.
Acknowledgments
Work on this chapter was supported by the
USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture,
Hatch Project #600108-793000-793323 (to
M. Raffaelli). The authors thank Michael Wessells
for his input on the chapter.
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doi: 10.1007/978-1-4614-3661-4
 C H A P T E R

22 Global Concerns in Adolescent

Health with a Case Study of India

Suman Verma and Anne C. Petersen

Abstract
Although much has been learned about global adolescence and especially global adolescent health
over the past decade, research has focused more on minority than majority world adolescents.
Further, more attention to adolescents has been paid by global policy and practice organizations
than by researchers. Young people aged 10–24 years constitute 25% of the global population and
demand our best research efforts. Although significant, global statistics fail to convey the importance
of cultural and social contexts for their roles in shaping adolescent health and development. This
chapter attempts to summarize what is known from global research and complements this relatively
disembedded information with culturally embedded knowledge from India.
Key Words:  context, culture, positive youth development, demographic opportunity, India,
reproductive health, mental health, HIV/AIDS, interventions

I still remember Salim, an adolescent with cere-
bral palsy who, one day while he was paint-
ing, suddenly looked straight into my eyes and
said: “You know, my father thought I was
asleep when he abandoned me in the garbage
dump.” My heart skipped a beat, but Salim only
paused, smiled, and continued with his work.
My real-life training in resiliency started here,
with these children who were living with pain-
ful memories—yet rising up with dignity to life’s
challenges.
—(Verma, 2014, p. 523)
Personal background
Both of us have significant experience in study-
ing and engaging the research of others focused
on adolescent development in varied settings. For
the first author, Verma, working with children and
adolescents in adverse conditions across countries
provided a rich sensitivity to cross- cultural issues.
She was born and brought up in India, a multicul-
tural country, and she grew up in a family with a
rich spiritual and cultural ethos. She was lucky to
get quality schooling in different states of the coun-
try. The Delhi University and the MS University of
Baroda provided the foundation for higher educa-
tion and preparation for transition to the realities
of the world of work. Her initial work experience
in the child welfare sector provided a sound base
in the ground realities of the state of children and
adolescents in India. As she moved on to academics
at Panjab University, she became more of an “aca-
demic activist” in her orientation (Verma, 2014).
Her research focus was on various child protection
issues, social deprivation, child work, life skills edu-
cation, time use, resiliency, and coping among ado-
lescents in adversity. Her long-term association with
International Society for the Study of Behavioral
Development (since 1993), with its interdisciplinary
membership, helped her to network and connect to
the international community of scholars while also
expanding her worldview of adolescence.
For Petersen, global experience with adolescence
has been through travel and global philanthropic

355
work and, for research, through reviews and interna-
tional meetings (e.g., Petersen, 2014). This interest
in learning about others began when growing up in
a small town in Minnesota but spending summers
in a tourist area that drew people from much of the
US Midwest. College at the University of Chicago
provided another huge leap in experiencing and
learning about diverse lives, supplemented by an
excellent education in “learning how to learn” from
a broader set of sources, including travel outside the
United States. Petersen became a researcher in that
intense environment and attended her first major
meeting outside North America in 1985, when
she participated in the meeting of the ISSBD in
Tours, France. At that meeting, she met scholars
from many parts of the world (although especially
from Europe because of the venue). She became
curious about global variations in social contexts,
even when focusing on puberty. From that time
forward, her outlook was certainly broader than
her sample or even the United States. Her curios-
ity and knowledge has expanded since that time,
fueled by learning from global colleagues.
Introduction
We now know much more than ever before
about adolescence and adolescent health glob-
ally. Yet there is uneven research coverage across
the globe, with adolescent health research (cf.,
special issues in Lancet, 2007, 2012) and related
fields (Arnett, 2008) almost entirely based on data
from the minority world. Much of the attention
to the topic of global adolescence has been led or
stimulated by service providers ranging from local
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to mul-
tinational government organizations (e.g., World
Bank, UNICEF). Although early childhood con-
tinues to receive the greatest attention on a global
level (e.g., Britto, Engle, & Super, 2012), major
organizations such as the United Nations Children’s
Fund (UNICEF; Diers, 2013), USAID (2012), the
World Bank (2007; Lundberg & Wuermli, 2012),
and the World Health Organization (WHO; 2001)
recognize that adolescence must be a focus if major
global health issues are to be addressed. Given this
attention by significant global practice and policy
organizations, researchers must have a clear focus
on the issues and opportunities of learning from
adolescents from the majority world (e.g., Wuermli,
Tubbs, Petersen, & Aber, In press).
There are several likely drivers of this recent
interest in global adolescent health. Three seem
relevant to mention here: (1) extension of interest
356 Gl ob a l C onc e r ns i n A d ol e sc e n t H e a lt h
in early childhood, (2) globalization of science,
and (3) adolescent-specific issues. Interest in early
childhood has lasted now for a couple of decades
and is still going strong (e.g., child survival in the
Millennium Development Goals [MDGs], the
eight human development goals established by the
United Nations (UN) in 2000 to provide targets for
countries goals and funder priorities, www.un.org/
en/development/desa/millennium-development-
goals.html). The interest in health has been focused
on child survival and has more recently extended to
early childhood education (e.g., Britto et al., 2012).
In addition, it is likely that earlier investments will
continue, especially where children are concerned;
that is, as the health of children has improved with
investments, attention to continuing health over
the life course, and particularly into adolescence,
has surfaced (e.g., Diers, 2013). Among studies
with longitudinal samples that began before or
since birth, many are now being continued into
adolescence.
As for the globalization of science, scholars and
science leaders (e.g., Suresh, 2012) have noted that
all science is now global, and developmental science
is definitely following this same trend, as evidenced
by this volume and others cited later. Most scientific
societies have been extending their membership
scope, as well as their program scope, to be more
international (e.g., the SRCD strategic plan, http://
www.srcd.org/sites/default/files/strategicplan.pdf).
Although some developmental science societies
began with an international focus (e.g., ISSBD,
http://www.issbd.org), other global structures
are also surfacing (e.g., International Consortium
of Developmental Science Societies, http://
www.srcd.org/advancing-field/srcd-initiatives/
international-consortium-developmental-science-
organizations). Media and electronic communica-
tions also add to the globalization of knowledge
and communication in developmental science.
Among the specific phenomena for adolescents
is the “youth bulge” or, as Diers (2013) terms it,
the “demographic opportunity.” In part because of
the efforts made in child survival, many more chil-
dren are now reaching adolescence, although with
increased morbidity and mortality (e.g., Diers,
2013). Diers (2013) cites the example of Brazil,
in which efforts such as those cited in the UN’s
MDGs have reduced infant mortality by 26,000
lives over the decade from 1998 to 2008, yet 81,000
more adolescents aged 15–19 died during the same
decade. Too often, nations have shifted resources to
meet those MDGs enhancing survival of children
and have put these same children (or their older
siblings) at risk during adolescence. Because of
situations like this, UNICEF is now looking at
the prospects of taking a life span perspective and
thinking systemically about its efforts (Diers, per-
sonal communication, 2014).
The increased population of adolescents (or
youth in some data) is especially concentrated in
the southern hemisphere, particularly in Africa.
Another issue emerging from the youth bulge is
youth unemployment, with its related social and
health issues. Even countries with higher enroll-
ments at the secondary and tertiary education
levels are experiencing high rates of youth unem-
ployment (International Labour Organization
[ILO], 2014).
In 2007, The Lancet published its first series on
adolescent health, focusing primarily on a few key
areas (e.g., sexual and reproductive health, men-
tal health, and substance use). More recently, in
2012, The Lancet updated the earlier information
but, more importantly, shifted focus to the young
people themselves, rather than only on their health
problems. This shift toward considering young
people in context is very important and one more
likely to support more comprehensive policies and
programs.
Other recent major publications have also
focused on adolescent health. For example,
Arnett (2012) edited a volume on adolescent
psychology in which almost all of the chapters
(organized into four sections representing five
continents, with the Americas organized within
one section and including 24 countries) included
health as a component. This volume was abridged
from the two-volume International Encyclopedia
on Adolescence (Arnett, 2007). The importance of
considering adolescence globally had been rec-
ognized for at least a decade before these recent
reviews (e.g., Larson, Brown, & Mortimer, 2002).
As early as 1999, a Study Group on Adolescence
in the 21st Century brought together an inter-
national set of scholars (largely involved with
the Society for Research on Adolescence, the
International Society for the Study of Behavioral
Development, and the Society for Adolescent
Medicine—now the Society for Adolescent
Health and Medicine) to consider possible life sce-
narios for adolescents over the next 30–50 years.
Researchers engaged in issues of global adoles-
cence at a set of conferences called “Adolescence in
the 21st Century: A Worldwide Perspective.” This
resulted in three publications on major issues and
trends in adolescent development from a global
perspective (Brown, Larson, & Saraswathi, 2002;
Larson, Brown, & Mortimer, 2002; Mortimer &
Larson, 2002).
The most recent Lancet review of adolescent
health (e.g., Sawyer et al., 2012) articulated clear
conclusions about adolescent health, some of
which were highlighted in other reports cited ear-
lier: (1) the population of adolescents (defined as
those aged 10–24 years) constitutes a significant
proportion—about one-fourth—of the world’s
population; (2) global attention to childhood has
increased survival to adolescence, with improved
health status; (3) inattention to adolescence has
meant that this group has not improved over the
same period of time, despite starting healthier;
(4) given that lifelong health behavior patterns
are established in adolescence, it is imperative that
attention be paid to healthy adolescent behavior;
and (5) more challenges to health now confront
adolescents than ever before. Thus, it is crucial to
know more about how to support adolescents to
become healthy, productive adults.
In this chapter, we review what is known and
identify what is not. We suggest highest priority
topics for research over the next decade. Central
to our recommendations is a more systemic con-
ceptual frame that recognizes key issues but also
considers important context factors that are likely
key leverage points in supporting positive behav-
ior or changing negative trajectories. We begin by
briefly examining models for development and
research, the sociocultural context, and key global
health indicators for adolescents across the globe.
As a case example, we review evidence from India
focusing on some key health issues that pose a chal-
lenge to the healthy development of adolescents in
that country.
Models for Development
Developmental models are inevitably systems
models. The classic Bronfenbrenner ecological the-
ory for development (e.g., Bronfenbrenner, 1979),
for example, is a systems model (Bronfenbrenner,
2005). The developing individual is embedded
within a set of social systems, all of which inter-
act with the individual in complex transactions.
Developmental science has advanced enormously
over the past couple decades, achieving greater
understanding of the developmental process and
identifying rigorous prevention approaches to
keep adolescents healthier. For example, we have
moved beyond stage theories for development to
V e r m a , Pe t e r s e n 357
understanding the importance of environment and
contexts (e.g., Bronfenbrenner, 2005; Sameroff,
2010, 2012; Rutter, 2014) and examining environ-
mental transactions at every level (Sameroff, 2012).
Research tests hypotheses about developmental
processes using all available methods—both quali-
tative and quantitative measures at the biological,
psychological, cognitive, and social levels, as well
as probabilistic statistics and rigorous research
designs (e.g., Rutter, Kim-Cohen, & Maughan,
2006; Sameroff, 2010). Rather than assuming that
there is a “normal” process for development, as
stage theories did, current developmental research
has found that “continuity is an epiphenomenon
of stable organism-environment relationships”
(Sameroff, 2012). The concept of developmental
cascades also represents an advance and refers to
the idea that functioning in one domain or at one
level of adaptation can spread to influence other
domains or levels of adaptive function (Masten &
Cicchetti, 2010). Developmental science is clearly
a systems science (also see Petersen, 2006, 2009).
Also key to developmental science is a diversity of
methods and multidisciplinary perspectives. Given
that developmental science is a systems science, all
the subsystems—from cell biology to macro social
systems and culture—are inherently involved,
requiring both quantitative and qualitative meth-
ods. Although longitudinal designs and analyses
are essential to documenting change, experiments
also play a key role in understanding causal factors.
A few decades ago, developmental science of ado-
lescence began integrating biology and behavior as
complementary rather than competing perspectives
(e.g., Petersen & Taylor, 1980). Advances in preven-
tion science have played a significant role in advanc-
ing developmental science by intervening with
developmental processes to improve outcomes (e.g.,
Catalano, 2007; Catalano, Gavin, & Markham,
2010; Dodge, 2011). Because most experiments that
one might engage with development are unethi-
cal, natural experiments have proved valuable in
increasing our understanding of developmental
processes, a research design probably best explored
by Rutter (e.g., 2002, 2014). Research comparing
cultural cases can be useful for hypothesis genera-
tion about the sources of variation in development
(e.g., Arnett, 2008). Finally, animal model research,
especially from nonhuman primates, is an impor-
tant source of developmental data, demonstrating
among many other important findings that social
factors can override negative genes (e.g., Cole et al.,
2012; Suomi, 1997; Sanchez & Pollack, 2009).
358 Gl ob a l C onc e r ns i n A d ol e sc e n t H e a lt h
Increasingly, developmental scientists also rec-
ognize that work in other sectors, such as global
human development as undertaken by UNICEF,
UNESCO, and similar organizations, is important
for us to understand and value. In particular, basic
data evaluations conducted by such implementa-
tion agencies in the multinational government and
nongovernmental sectors provide crucial informa-
tion that cannot easily be obtained from more con-
ventional research (e.g., Wuermli, Tubbs, Petersen,
Aber, & In press).
Importance of Sociocultural Context
Basic Global Demographics
There are no universally accepted definitions
of adolescence and youth. However, for statistical
purposes, the UN considers adolescents to include
persons aged 10–19 years and youth as those
between 15–24 years. Following some scholars
(e.g., Diers, 2013) we sometimes refer to adoles-
cence as the combined period of 10–24 years. We
have tried to indicate when data are based on a dif-
ferent age span.
Today, there are 1.2 billion adolescents aged
10–19 across the globe comprising approximately
18% of the world’s population (UNICEF, 2011).
The majority of adolescents (88%) live in devel-
oping countries (i.e., the “majority world”) where
they tend to make up a large proportion of the
population (see Figure 22.1). Current trends sug-
gest that the regional composition of adolescents is
going to alter by 2050 (see Figure 22.2). In 2050,
sub-Saharan Africa is projected to have more ado-
lescents than any other region. According to the
UN World Population Prospects Report ( UN,
2010), the number of adolescents and youth is at
an all-time high. In the coming decades, if global
fertility continues to decline, then the propor-
tion of young people aged 12–24 is actually set
to decline from 17.6% in 2010 to 13.5% in 2050.
Regional projections show that the proportion of
young people between ages 12 and 24 years liv-
ing in Africa is expected to rise from 18% in 2012
to 28% by 2040, whereas the shares of all other
regions will decline. The region comprising Asia
and the Pacific is expected to experience the sharp-
est decline, from 61% in 2012 to 52% in 2040.
India has the largest population of adolescents
(243 million) followed by China (207 million),
the United States (44 million), Indonesia, and
Pakistan (both 41 million).
In all regions, adolescent boys outnumber girls,
with the gender gap greatest in the Asia region.
 Eastern and
CEE/CIS Southern Africa
58 million 91 million
Industrialized
countries
118 million West and
Central Africa
94 million
Latin America
and Caribbean Middle East and
108 million North Africa
84 million

East Asia and Pacific South Asia

329 million 335 million

Fig. 22.1  Adolescent population (10–19 years) by region, 2009

Source: UNICEF (2011) www.unicef.org/sowc2011, accessed March 2, 2014.

Urbanization shows an upward trend, with more
adolescents living in urban areas. In 2009, around
50% of the world’s adolescents lived in urban areas.
By 2050, this share will rise to almost 70%, with
strongest trends projected for the majority world
countries (UNICEF, 2011).
Although adolescence is considered to be the
healthiest period of life, differences of mortality
and morbidity among adolescents across regions
are striking. Many adolescents have benefited from
improved health care services, education, access to
safe water, and other targeted areas of human devel-
opment that have been a part of the MDGs. In more
developed regions of Northern Africa, Eastern Asia,
and Western Asia, only 1% or less of 15-year-olds do
not survive to their 25th birthday. Concurrently, the
odds of dying during youth are almost twice as high
in South Asia and four times higher in sub-Saharan

1400

1200

1000
Population in millions

800

600

400

200

0
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050

World Least developed countries

Developing countries Industrialized countries

Fig. 22.2  Trends in the adolescent population, 1950–2050

Source: UNICEF (2011) www.unicef.org/sowc2011, accessed March 2, 2014.

V e r m a , Pe t e r s e n 359
Africa (UN, 2010). Despite some regional varia-
tions, there is commonality in the causes of
adolescent deaths worldwide, including communi-
cable diseases (HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and lower
respiratory-tract infection) and noncommunicable
diseases related to problem behaviors (motor vehicle
fatalities; violence; self-harm; alcohol, tobacco, and
other drugs; and risky sex leading to early or unin-
tended pregnancy; Patton et al., 2009).
In the past decade, the downturn in the global
economy has resulted in economic crises that have
affected social spending, particularly in some
industrial economies. The majority world countries
have also had their own set of challenges, leading
to a paucity of attention and resources devoted to
adolescents. Adolescents in these countries have to
deal with the intergenerational implications of the
prevailing economic crisis, including unemploy-
ment, climate change, environmental degrada-
tion, urbanization and migration, aging societies
and the rising cost of health care, and the HIV /
AIDS pandemic (UNICEF, 2011). Worldwide,
children and adolescents are denied the elements
of a healthy childhood and are victims of abuse,
violence, and exploitation. Many are forced into
hazardous working conditions or forced to fight in
conflict situations (UNICEF, 2006). Countries are
thus failing to provide the protection to which ado-
lescents are entitled.
The Progress for Children (UNICEF, 2009) is a
compendium of data that serves as a report card on
global and national efforts to protect the rights of
children (younger than 18 years) and also monitors
progress toward the MDGs. Data on child protec-
tion issues are more readily available now, although
gaps remain in data on issues that directly impinge
on adolescent health, such as sexual exploitation
and abuse, trafficking, and domestic violence. This
report highlights how children and adolescents
continue to be forced into work under harmful
conditions and are subject to violence by individu-
als whom they most trust in their homes, schools,
communities, and in institutional care. They
are easy targets for illegal recruitment by armed
groups. Girls especially are subjected to sexual vio-
lence and abuse, as well as to harmful traditional
practices such as child marriage and female geni-
tal mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). Such experiences
infringe on child rights in the most fundamental
ways, and children suffer both physical and psy-
chological harm, with irreparable effects.
The UN Study on Violence Against Children
(United Nations [UN], 2006) reports that
360 Gl ob a l C onc e r ns i n A d ol e sc e n t H e a lt h
500 million to 1.5 billion children experience
violence annually. Violence happens everywhere,
in every country and society and across all social
groups. Most violence occurs at the hands of
people whom children and adolescents know and
trust: parents, step-parents, schoolmates, teachers,
and employers. The most vulnerable groups are
children with disabilities, minority groups, street
children, adolescents in conflict with law, and refu-
gee and displaced children. Most children accept
violence as an inevitable part of life. Although the
consequences may vary according to the nature
and severity of violence inflicted; the short- and
long-term repercussions for children are very often
grave and damaging, both to their physical and
psychological health.
Certain repressive cultural practices continue to
persist in many countries, and these have serious
consequences on adolescent health. Globally, more
than 64 million young women aged 20–24 years
were married before age 18, with half of them living
in South Asia (UNICEF, 2009; see Figure 22.3).
Within South Asia, one-third of the child brides
are from India (see Figure 22.4). Boys are also at
risk for child marriage, although to a lesser extent
than girls (see Figure 22.5). UNICEF (2009) esti-
mates that more than 70 million girls and women
aged 15–49 years have undergone FGM/C in 28
countries in Africa, plus Yemen. Some 60% are
from sub-Saharan Africa, whereas 40% live in
Middle East and North Africa.
Child work and schooling are negatively corre-
lated. UNICEF (2009) reports that approximately
150 million children aged 5–14 years worldwide
are engaged in child labor (estimates based on data
from 102 countries). Child work is most common
in sub-Saharan Africa, where more than a third
of children work. Children in rural areas, espe-
cially girls, begin agricultural labor as young as
5–7 years, but most are adolescents. Countries with
high percentages of working children tend to have
low rates of children in school (see Figure 22.6).
At the international level, health information
systems mostly focus on the early years, whereas
health and education information on adolescents is
not widely available in many majority world coun-
tries. There has, however, been a refocus on the
second decade of life, and many efforts are being
made by nodal organizations such as UNICEF,
UNESCO, and WHO to collect and consolidate
information on adolescent developmental indica-
tors. The State of the World’s Children Report 2011
(UNICEF, 2011) highlights some recent trends
 CEE/CIS
2.2 million
Middle East and North Africa
3.5 million South Asia
32.6 million
East Asia and the Pacific
(excluding China)
5.6 million

Latin America and

the Caribbean
6.3 million

Eastern and
Southern Africa
6.5 million

West and Central Africa

7.8 million

Fig. 22.3  Number of women 20–24 years old who were married or in union before age 18
Note: Estimates are based on 96 countries representing 61% of the world population. The estimates were calculated using 2007
figures for the number of women 20–24 years old and 2000–2007 figures for the prevalence of child marriage. They do not
include China and its population because data on child marriage for China are not available in the UNICEF database.
Source: UNICEF (2009) www.unicef.org/publications/files/Progress_for_children, accessed February 10, 2014.

India
24.5 million Remaining
countries
31.9 million

Other countries in
South Asia
8.1 million

Fig. 22.4  Number of women 20–24 years old who were married or in union before age 18 (2007)
Note: Estimates are based on 96 countries representing 61% of the world population. The estimates were calculated using 2007
figures for the number of women 20–24 years old and 2000–2007 figures for the prevalence of child marriage. They do not
include China and its population because data on child marriage for China are not available in the UNICEF database.
Source: UNICEF (2009) www.unicef.org/publications/files/Progress_for_children, accessed February 10, 2014.
 20%
16
15% 14
10 10 10 11 11
10%

5%

0%
India Mali Senegal Bolivia Madagascar Mozambique Nepal

Fig. 22.5  Percentage of men 20–24 years old who were married or in union before age 18, in seven countries where prevalence is
10% or higher
Source: UNICEF (2009) www.unicef.org/publications/files/Progress_for_children, accessed February 10, 2014.

in adolescent health across the world. Adolescent
health has improved due to the heavy investments
governments have made in early childhood, infant
immunization, and nutrition, which has yielded
physiological benefits that persist into adolescence.
Injuries are a growing concern among adolescence,
with accidents being the greatest cause of mortal-
ity (Sleet, Ballesteros, & Borse, 2010). Substance
use and abuse pose serious health risks during
adolescence due to adolescents’ tendency to experi-
ment and take risks. A study on child poverty in
high-income countries indicated that adolescents
who smoke are three times more likely to use alco-
hol regularly and eight times more likely to use
cannabis (UNICEF, 2007).
Adolescent females are at a greater risk for nutri-
tional deficiencies than their male counterparts.
Data from developing countries show a consider-
ably higher incidence of anemia among female
adolescents aged 15–19 as compared to their
male counterparts. In nine countries in West and
Central Africa (aside from India), more than half of
girls aged 15–19 are anemic (see Figure 22.7). India
also has the highest underweight prevalence among
adolescent girls among the countries with available
data, at 47% (see Figure 22.8). The implication of
this trend is serious for young girls in India since,
in the given period (2000–2009), around 47% of
Indian women aged 20–24 were married by age
18 (UNICEF, 2011). Other issues highlighted by
the UNICEF report related to adolescent health
are that males are more likely to engage in risky
sexual behavior than are females, child marriages
continue to persist (although with reduced fre-
quency), unsafe abortions and early pregnancies
pose health risks for girls, and the risk of HIV and
AIDS poses challenges for survival and health in
high-prevalence countries. Adolescents with dis-
abilities continue to suffer from discrimination and
exclusion, and mental health problems account for
a large proportion of the disease burden among
adolescents in all societies (UNICEF, 2011).

100%

80%
School attendance

60%

40%

20%
0% 20% 40% 60%
Child labour

Fig. 22.6  Percentage of children 7–14 years old who work and school attendance rates
Note: The scattering of countries along the regression line in this chart indicates the association between child labor and school
attendance. High percentages of labor among children 7–14 years old are associated with low rates of school attendance. Low
percentages of child labor are associated with high rates of school attendance.
Source: UNICEF (2009) www.unicef.org/publications/files/Progress_for_children, accessed February 10, 2014.

362 Gl ob a l C onc e r ns i n A d ol e sc e n t H e a lt h
 80

70
68
66
60 63
59
57 56
50
52 51 51
49
40

30

20

10

0
ali

na

Fa ina

ni Leo rra

an ic
ga

di

ne
ng
ni

nz bl
M

ha

so

ne
ne

ia
In

rk
Be

ui

Ta pu
Co

Si
G

Bu
Se

of Re
d
te
U
Fig. 22.7  Prevalence of anemia among adolescent girls aged 15–19 in a subset of high-prevalence countries with available data
Note: The horizontal line at the 40% mark represents the threshold at which anemia is considered a severe national public health issue.
Source: UNICEF (2011) www.unicef.org/sowc2011, accessed March 2, 2014.

At the global level, universal primary education
has not yet been achieved, despite significant prog-
ress made over the last decade. According to the
State of the World’s Children 2011 report, primary
enrollment in developing countries was 90 % for
boys and 87% for girls in the period 2005–09, with
much lower levels of 81% and 77%, respectively, in
sub-Saharan Africa, the most disadvantaged region
(see Table 22.1). Millions of adolescents across the
world have not completed their primary education,
which would prepare them for secondary educa-
tion. More than 70 million adolescents of lower
secondary age are out of school, with sub-Saharan
Africa the most affected region.

50

47
40
40

35 34 34
30 33
30 29 28 27
20

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Fig. 22.8  Percentage of adolescent girls aged 15–19 who are underweight (defined as a body mass index of 18.5 or less) in a subset
of high-prevalence countries with available data
Source: UNICEF (2011) www.unicef.org/sowc2011, accessed March 2, 2014.

V e r m a , Pe t e r s e n 363
Table 22.1.  Summary Indicators of Educational Status of Adolescents.
Youth (15–24 years) Primary school enrolment Primary school attendance Secondary school enrolment Secondary school attendance
literacy rate 2004–2008* (%) ratio 2005–2009* (%) ratio 2005–2009* (%) ratio 2005–2009* (%) ratio 2005–2009* (%)
Net Net Net Net
Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Female

Africa 79 70 83 79 69 67 33 29 35 32
Sub-Saharan Africa 77 67 81 77 65 63 32 28 30 27
  Eastern and Southern Africa 81 73 88 87 68 69 35 33 24 22
  West and Central Africa 72 60 71 64 64 59 29 22 36 31
Middle East and North Africa 92 86 91 86 85 81 66 62 54 51
Asia 92 86 92 89 84 **
81 **
— — 56 **
50**
  South Asia 86 73 88 83 83 80 55 47
  East Asia and Pacific 98 98 98 97 89 **
88 **
65 **
67 **
63 **
65**
Latin America and Caribbean 97 98 95 94 92 93 72 77 68 74
CEE/CIS 99 99 93 92 82 81
Industrialized countries — — 95 95 — — 91 92 — —
Developing countries 91 84 90 87 80 **
77 **
54 **
53 **
52 **
48**
Least developed countries 76 67 85 81 67 66 33 29 30 28
World 91 85 91 88 80 *
77 **
61 **
60 **
53 **
48**
DEFINITIONS OF THE INDICATORS
Youth literacy rate: Number of literate persons aged 15–24, expressed as a percentage of the total population in that age group.
Primary school net enrolment ratio: Number of children enrolled in primary school who are of official primary school age, expressed as a percentage of the total number of children of official primary school age.
Secondary school net enrolment ratio: Number of children enrolled in secondary school who are of official secondary school age, expressed as a percentage of the total number of children of official secondary school age.
Primary school net attendance ratio: Number of children attending primary or secondary school who are of official primary school age, expressed as a percentage of the total number of children of official primary
school age.
Secondary school net attendance ratio: Number of children attending secondary or tertiary school who are of official secondary school age, expressed as a percentage of the total number of children of official
secondary school age.
Notes:
— Data not available.
**
Excludes China.
Source: UNICEF (2011) www.unicef.org/sowc2011, accessed March 2, 2014.
 The barriers to school attendance at the second-
ary level are more entrenched in the socioeconomic
conditions of communities and include unafford-
able costs, distance of school from home, transpor-
tation costs, and early pressure to contribute to the
family income. Across the majority world, girls lag
behind in school attendance. This is compounded
by other forms of disadvantage and discrimina-
tion that girls face, such as domestic labor, child
marriage, social exclusion, and early pregnancy
(UNICEF, 2010). According to the Education for
All 2012 report (UNESCO, 2012), the number of
out of school children has stagnated for the first
time since 2000. Quality education still demands
greater attention. There is greater urgency to ensure
equitable access to appropriate skills development
programs. This report reveals that around 200 mil-
lion young people need a second chance to acquire
the basic literacy and numeracy skills, which are
essential to learning further skills for work.
Sample Cultural Variations: India
As the country with the largest population of ado-
lescents, India makes a good case study for highlight-
ing issues in the majority world. India has more than
243 million adolescents who comprise 20% of the
country’s population (Census of India, 2011). The
steady growth in the country’s gross domestic prod-
uct over the past two decades, along with greater
government investments in welfare schemes, has
improved the health and developmental indicators
of adolescents across the country. But despite posi-
tive trends, challenges persist, particularly for girls.
There are stark gender disparities in education and
nutrition, early marriage, and access to health ser-
vices, especially against girls from socially excluded
sections of the society (UNICEF, 2011).
India ranked as high as 119 out of 169 coun-
try rankings in the UN Developmental Program’s
gender inequality index (GILL) in 2010 (UNICEF,
2011). The main indicators that reveal the extent to
which females are disadvantaged are intake of few
calories, low levels of participation in development
pursuits like education, low employment rates,
and low income generation with limited access
to available information and resources. In spite
of general acceptance of the International Labour
Organization (ILO) Convention on child work,
child labor is quite prevalent in the region (see also
Koller et al., this volume). Economic pressure and
the needs of survival have been forcing school-aged
adolescent girls to leave school and work in flour-
ishing export-oriented garment and electronics
industries. They suffer from exploitation and abuse
in terms of lower pay, lesser security, and excessive
occupational health hazards.
Ensuring the health, nutrition, and educational
needs of its adolescent population, particularly
girls, remains a key challenge for India. Female
health problems begin early, with higher mortal-
ity and morbidity noted for girl children from
infancy into adolescence (Greene, 1997; Jejeebhoy,
1996). Despite various initiatives undertaken by
the government to improve the health status of
girls, gender disparities persist (Ministry of Health
& Family Welfare, Government of India, 2013).
These differentials in morbidity and mortality are
directly related to discriminatory behavior between
boys and girls. A recent study in four villages in
the state of Haryana, India demonstrated the pre-
vailing trends in gender disparities in nutrition, in
health-care seeking and in schooling among ado-
lescents 10-19 year olds. The researchers reported
a higher mean nutrition, out-patient median
expenditure, and mean social score for boys when
compared to their counterparts. Out of the 94
households, 78 had gender disparity at least in any
one of the three domains, with nutrition being pre-
dominant (Selvaraj, et al., 2014).
Poor nutritional status during the childhood
years can have a long-lasting effect on the health
of the adolescent. Studies reveal a high prevalence
of undernutrition, nutritional disorders, anemia,
and vitamin A deficiency among adolescent girls
in India (Agarwal, Ghildiyal, & Khopkar, 1999),
with higher prevalence of anemia among girls when
compared to boys (36% vs. 17%) at 6–15 years
of age (Iyer, Sanghvi, Saiyed, & Sharma, 1998).
Another study conducted by researchers from the
National Institute of Nutrition on nutrient intake
among adolescent girls from low socioeconomic
groups in rural areas of Rajasthan reported that
the diets of adolescent girls aged 10–18 years were
deficient in calories by 26–36% and in protein
by 23–32%. The nutritional status as assessed by
body mass index revealed that 8.1% of the girls
suffered from grade I chronic energy deficiency
(CED), 66% from grade II CED, and 78.8% from
grade III CED. About 73.7% girls suffered from
anemia, and 43.6% had signs of vitamin B com-
plex deficiency (Chaturvedi, Kapil, Gnanasekaran,
Sachdev, Panday, & Bhanti, 1996). Similar trends
were observed in studies conducted later with rural
(Venkaiah, Damayanthi, Nayak, & Vijayragh,
2002) and urban adolescent population groups
(Rao, Balakrishna, Laxmaiah, Venkaiah, &
V e r m a , Pe t e r s e n 365
Brahmam, 2006). Adolescents’ knowledge about
the causes and symptoms of nutritional deficiencies
was found to be poor, irrespective of social class.
School- and community-based interventions con-
ducted to improve dietary awareness and reduce
nutritional deficiencies among adolescents using
varied interactive strategies have been found to be
effective (Kanani, 1995; Rao et al., 2006).
Gender disparities continue to exist in the health
and nutritional status of adolescents in India. Girls
are at a greater risk for nutritional deficiencies than
boys. Underweight prevalence among girls aged
15–19 is 47%, which is the world’s highest. Close
to 56% girls aged 15–19 are anemic (UNICEF,
2011). This has long-term implications for their
reproductive health since many marry before age
18. Both anemia and underweight are risk factors
in pregnancy, leading to a high incidence of mater-
nal mortality, which was 230 maternal deaths per
100,000 live births in 2008. Studies conclude that
gender discrimination at each stage of the female
life cycle contributes to nutritional deprivation and
health disparity, sex selective abortions (Sharma,
2003), neglect of the girl child, reproductive mor-
tality and poor access to health care for females at
all ages (Jain, 1999; Rao et al., 2006; Subramanian,
et al., 2006, WHO, 2014).
Significant progress has been made toward
gender parity in primary school attendance rates
when compared to secondary school. According
to the Annual Status of Education Report 2012
(ASER, 2012), the net attendance rate for primary
school is 83.3% (Boys: 85.2%, Girls: 81.4%); the
rate for secondary school is 53.7% (Boys: 58.5%,
Girls: 48.7%). Despite legal sanctions, 30% of
girls aged 15–19 years are married or in union,
compared to only 5% of boys of the same age.
Variations occur in the age of marriage, with
the incidence of younger age being higher in the
rural areas (56%) when compared to girls in the
urban areas (29%; Census of India, 2011) Several
government initiatives have been undertaken
to improve the health and nutritional status of
Indian girls and reduce the incidence of early
marriage. Several NGOs are working closely with
the government and civil society to improve the
health and nutrition of children, adolescents, and
women, with a special focus on the disadvantaged
groups.
Gender discrimination and the social divide
among castes and tribes continue to act as barri-
ers to advancing the development and protection
of rights of young people in India and strongly
366 Gl ob a l C onc e r ns i n A d ol e sc e n t H e a lt h
demonstrate our earlier point about the importance
of embedding adolescent development in a cultural
context. Increased investment in the country’s large
adolescent population will help prepare them to be
healthy and productive citizens. Although religious
factors are often cited, it is the societal structures
and common patriarchal kinship systems that lead
to the concentration of decision-making power in
the domain of men and the elderly. Where kinship
patterns are matriarchal and the system of dowry
is less prevalent, as in some southern states of India
(Kerala and Karnataka), the position of women is
much better (because of higher educational lev-
els and greater decision-making power within the
family) and gender differentials in mortality rates
are much less than in the northern states of India
(Ramachandran, 1989). Among the critical factors
resulting in poor female health and higher female
mortality are low levels of autonomy for women
in personal and household decisions, such as those
relating to children’s health and schooling and the
intrahousehold allocation of resources, including
food, access to medical treatment, and parental care
(Jejeebhoy & Sathar, 2001; Ramachandran, 2004).
To summarize, the characteristics that affect
adolescent health in India are son preference, gen-
der disparities, high population growth rates, poor
sanitation, and low educational levels, all of which
contribute to lack of awareness of primary health
care and nutritional deficiencies. Due to early ini-
tiation into adult roles and child bearing, many
adolescent girls experience high morbidity rates
(WHO, 2009). Diers (2013) draws attention to
the current state of adolescent girls in the majority
world and the recent thrust and initiatives under-
taken by UNICEF in working toward improving
the status of adolescent girls in majority world
countries such as India.
Sexual and Reproductive Health
The State of World’s Children report (UNICEF,
2011) on adolescence highlights some critical issues
in sexual and reproductive health across the globe.
The first issue is the age of initiation into sexual
activity. Girls are more likely to have engaged in
early sex in adolescence but are also less likely to use
contraception. Latin America and the Caribbean
region report the highest proportion of adolescent
females who have had their sexual debut before age
15 (at 22%). The lowest reported levels of sexual
activity for both boys and girls under the age of
15 occur in Asia. The second concern relates to
the gender disparity in practice and knowledge of
sexual and reproductive health. In a study covering
19 selected countries in the majority world, males
aged 15–19 were more likely than females to have
engaged in high-risk sexual activity with multiple
partners. Boys were more likely than girls to use
condoms, despite the fact that girls are at a greater
risk of sexually transmitted disease, including HIV.
In India, the prevailing sociocultural norms
in gender socialization are evident in child rear-
ing. During childhood, and particularly during
infancy, the reason for female disadvantage in sur-
vival is directly based on differential behavior on
the part of the parents, families, and households
depending on who is at the center of decision mak-
ing in the family. The general trend suggests that
women’s autonomy – in terms of decision-making,
mobility, and access to and over their economic
resources is constrained (Jejeebhoy & Sathar,
2001). The health and nutritional needs of adoles-
cent girls are not only negatively affected because
of restricted growth due to lack of adequate nutri-
tion (Seshadri & Kanani, 1992), but also because
of strong norms in this region against premari-
tal relations. Above all, the educational and skill
training options available to girls are limited, and
there is a high probability that their families will
arrange an early marriage. Although with legal
sanctions the age of female marriage is rising,
yet almost half of all women aged 20-24 were mar-
ried by 18 years in 2006 (International Institute
of Population Sciences & Macro International,
2007). Thus, high rates of adolescent fertility per-
sist, especially in the rural areas. As a consequence,
both maternal and neonatal mortality are higher
among adolescents. According to estimates, 45% of
all maternal deaths occur among those aged 15-24
(Office of the Registrar General, India, 2011) and
neonate mortality rates range from 54 per 1000
live births among those aged 15-19 to 34 and 38,
respectively, among those aged 20-29 and 30-39.
Rural adolescents are particularly at risk, with
neonatal mortality rates as high as 60/1000 when
compared to 31/1000 among urban adolescents
(International Institute of Population Sciences &
Macro International, 2007).
In a recent in depth review of sexual and repro-
ductive health situation of young people in India,
Santhya and Jejeebhoy (2012) highlight some of
the concerns and issues affecting adolescents in
this geographically and culturally diverse coun-
try. Youth residing in rural areas, with low edu-
cational levels, from economically disadvantaged
households and socially-excluded castes report
adverse reproductive health outcomes with females
more likely than males to experience negative
outcomes. This review outlines a number of bar-
riers at the individual, family, and systems levels
that make young people vulnerable. These barriers
include: limited awareness among adolescents of
sexual and reproductive health with limited agency
among females; limited support and communica-
tion among adolescents and their parents on these
matters; and limited exposure to sexuality educa-
tion in schools and colleges.
Youth sexual and reproductive health has
become a priority for policy-makers, programmers,
and researchers in India due to the country’s large
adolescent population and its high rates of child
marriage and child bearing. Given the high preva-
lence of iron deficiency anemia and reproductive
tract infections (Pande, et al., 2006) along with
poor health seeking behavior among adolescents
related to reproductive health problems (Joshi, et
al., 2006), there is need for youth-friendly services
in the community. Studies collectively endorse the
need and significance of accessible reproductive
health services and knowledge available to both
boys and girls from early years (Gandhi & Arora,
1993; Ghosh, Chowdhury, & Gill, 1997; Verma &
Saraswathi, 2002a). To summarize, understanding
the reproductive health needs of adolescents, both
physical and emotional, is crucial to their future
health and well-being. A spate of work is being
produced in the area of sexuality and reproductive
health in India. This may be attributed to several
factors, such as attention drawn to adolescent repro-
ductive health by international agencies, funding
possibilities, and the HIV threat. Studies report an
increase in the sexual activity, incidence of sexually
transmitted diseases, and clinical abortions among
unmarried adolescents in India. We are confronted
with problems related to premarital and marital
sex pertaining to largely rural and predominantly
illiterate groups on the one hand and the urban,
literate, school- or college-going population on the
other. The problem gets further compounded by
gender disparities and myths and misconceptions
associated with sexuality and reproductive health
among adolescents, combined with reluctance on
part of parents and schools to talk more freely
about sex ( Mahajan & Sharma, 2005; Verma &
Saraswathi, 2002b). It is evident that fertility con-
trol through stringent implementation of the legal
age for marriage and sex education and protection
of unmarried adolescent girls demand urgent atten-
tion. It is important to note that there is paucity of
V e r m a , Pe t e r s e n 367
available data on this topic related to out-of school
adolescents and street children and also on actual
practices among rural adolescent populations.
Adolescent population is a heterogeneous group
whose strengths and vulnerabilities vary greatly,
thus, health services and programs need to address
these unique service delivery needs using a multi-
sectoral approach (Bhatia & Swami, 2000; Santhya
& Jejeebhoy, 2012).
HIV/AIDS
Preventing the transmission of HIV/AIDS
is one of the most important challenges for ado-
lescent survival and health. The latest UNAIDS
Report 2013 reveals that, globally, an estimated
35.5 (32.2–38.8) million people were living with
HIV/AIDS at the end of 2012. More than 10 mil-
lion of them are young people aged 15–24 years.
Half of the 4.2 million new infections occurred
in youth of this age group. Each day, 5,000–
6,000 new infections occur among young people.
Sub-Saharan Africa contains almost two-thirds
of all young people living with HIV or AIDS
(6.2 million); 76% of them are females. The
region with the second highest prevalence is Asia,
which has an estimated 2.2 million young people
infected with the virus. The epidemic varies greatly
in different regions of the world; however, in each
region, young people are at center stage, both in
terms of new infections, as well as in being the
greatest potential force for change if they can be
reached with the right interventions (UNAIDS,
2013). There is increasing evidence from several
countries that where HIV prevalence is decreasing,
it is the young people who are driving the decrease.
They are much more likely to adopt and maintain
safe behaviors and respond favorably to preventive
interventions (WHO, 2006).
In 2008, an estimated 2.27 million people
between the ages of 15 and 49 years were living
with HIV in India. India carries the largest bur-
den of HIV behind South Africa and Nigeria. The
Country Progress Report of India (CPR India,
2010) presents an overview of the epidemic, the stra-
tegic national response and its impact, and future
challenges. India’s response to tackling the HIV/
AIDS epidemic is reflected in the policy framework
and approaches of the National AIDS Control
Organization (NACO) through implementation
of various programs across the country. There has
been a significant increase in coverage and infra-
structure; targeted interventions among high-risk
groups; care, treatment, support, and services; and
368 Gl ob a l C onc e r ns i n A d ol e sc e n t H e a lt h
counseling services with appropriate monitoring
and evaluation of program implementation.
Studies with youth stress the need for sex edu-
cation in schools and colleges to increase aware-
ness about sexual issues and behaviors, knowledge
and perception regarding reproductive physiology,
sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and con-
traception (Abraham & Kumar, 1999). Studies
with urban college youth show a high prevalence
of myths and misconceptions regarding anat-
omy, physiology, contraception, and STI preva-
lence (Bahulekar & Garg, 1997; Francis, Gill, &
Chowdhury, 1997). Sexual activity increases with
age and peer socialization (Tikoo, Bollman, &
Bergen, 1997). Religion, family, and educational
institutions have limited influence on morality
and regulation of sexuality among males, who
explored their sexuality through multiple partners
more than did females. The risk of STIs was high
among males because they practiced unsafe sex
and among females because of ignorance (Rahate,
Zodpey, & Bhalkule, 1997). The need for sex and
family life education in school and nonschool set-
tings is stressed and depends on the participation
of schools, mass media, health care professionals,
and community leaders (Abraham, 1998; Ahuja &
Tewari, 1995; Bahulekar & Garg, 1997).
Adolescent ignorance about sexual and repro-
ductive health is compounded by reluctance among
parents and teachers to impart relevant informa-
tion (Bhende, 1994; Pande, et al., 2006). The edu-
cational system is also ambivalent about imparting
sex education in schools and colleges. Several cul-
turally sensitive initiatives undertaken by the gov-
ernment in collaboration with UNFPA and NGOs
have successfully addressed the reproductive health
information needs of adolescents (UNFPA, 2009),
however, there is much scope for improvement in
the programs to make them truly need-based and
adolescent friendly (Santhya & Jejeebhoy, 2012).
Many interrelated and complex factors that put
adolescents at risk of STIs include poor socioeco-
nomic status, low levels of education and awareness,
unemployment, and migration (UNAIDS, 2013).
Urbanization tends to disrupt family relationships,
social networks, and traditional values while gen-
erating more opportunities for sexual encounters.
Lack of information about sexual matters, as well
as STI prevention, symptoms, and treatment, put
both male and female adolescents at high risk for
STIs in India (NCPI India Report, 2012).
Interventions with a focus on sex education,
including HIV/AIDS prevention, and life skills
education with young people have been found
to be effective. These interventions have resulted
in more frequent condom use, fewer sexual part-
ners, and significantly reduced sexual risk-taking
behaviors among the adolescents (Center for
Development & Population Activities (CEDPA),
2001; Malhotra, 2003).
Several initiatives have been undertaken by
the government of India under the aegis of the
National AIDS Control Organization, Department
of AIDS Control, and the Ministry of Health and
Family Welfare. The convergence framework of
the National Rural Health Mission provides direc-
tion for synergizing the strategies for prevention,
control, and management for STI services under
the Reproductive and Child Health Program
(RCH 2) and the National AIDS Control Program
(NACP 3). The RCH draws its mandate from the
National Population Policy (2000), which makes
strong reference to include STI and HIV/AIDS
prevention, screening, and management in mater-
nal and child health services. The NACP includes
services for management of STIs as a major pro-
gram strategy for prevention of HIV. The NACP
strategy and implementation plan makes a strong
reference to expanding access to a package of STI
management services both in general population
groups and for high-risk behavior groups, including
youth, with active engagement of the private sector
in provision of services (NCPI India Report, 2012).
India has been effective in reducing the number of
new infections by more than 50% between 2001
and 2012 (UNAIDS, 2013).
The Red Ribbon Express (RRE) is the world’s
largest mass mobilization campaign for HIV/AIDS
prevention. It is a special exhibition train that
travels across India disseminating the messages on
HIV/AIDS and general health in rural and remote
areas of the country. Along with the train, special
outreach programs are organized in the villages
through exhibition vans and folk troupes. The
project received overwhelming response across
the country. Eight million persons were reached,
and 81,000 district resource persons were trained.
The third phase of the campaign was launched
on January 12, 2012, on the occasion of National
Youth Day. Keeping in mind the higher vulnerabil-
ity of youth to HIV infection, the third phase also
focuses on youth. A special coach is designed to
address youth-specific issues in an interactive and
youth-friendly manner. The RRE has reached out
to people in rural and remote areas and has also
been successful in generating political support and
will, across parties, for HIV/AIDS program. The
NACP has extensively used folk media (traditional
folklore and forms of communication prevalent in
a community) as an innovative tool for developing
an effective communication package to reach pop-
ulations in rural, remote, and media-dark areas.
The campaign focusing on women and youth was
implemented in two phases across 476 districts of
24 states. Nearly 30,330 performances reached
about 0.5 million people with messages on HIV
transmission, prevention, care, support, and treat-
ment; HIV testing; and stigma and discrimination.
The immediate impact was a spurt in queries, espe-
cially from youth, for further information on HIV/
AIDS and on access to testing facilities (NCPI
India Report, 2012).
Mental Health
There has been recent attention to global adoles-
cent mental health by both multinational NGOs
(e.g., WHO, 2012) and scholars (e.g., Patel, Fisher,
Hetrick & McGorry, 2007). These recent reviews
conclude that mental disorders beginning in ado-
lescence place a significant burden of both physical
and mental illness in adulthood. Even during the
relatively healthy period of adolescence, 20% in any
year experience at least one mental health problem,
usually depression or anxiety (Patel, Fisher, Hetrick
& McGorry, 2007). Suicide is the most common
cause of death during adolescence and youth in
many countries, including the large countries of
India and China. Interestingly, a recent report on
child maltreatment concluded that this childhood
experience leads to significant mental and physi-
cal morbidity in adulthood (National Research
Council, 2014).
As the prior discussion suggests, much of the
global research on mental health focuses on mental
illness. A review of treatment programs for men-
tal disorders (Patel, Araya, Chatterjee et al., 2007)
for all ages suggests that although there are treat-
ments that have been proven effective in low- and
middle-income countries, the costs are usually pro-
hibitive. These authors recommend that preventive
approaches would be more cost effective.
A major reframing of the focus on treating men-
tal illness, especially for young people, has come
with the positive youth development movement,
largely driven by NGOs seeking programs that
would help adolescents and youth become healthy,
productive citizens as adults (e.g., Benson, Scales,
& Syvertsen, 2011; Yohalem, Granger, & Pittman,
2009). Lerner has perhaps been the most prolific
V e r m a , Pe t e r s e n 369
contributor to theory on positive youth develop-
ment (e.g., Lerner, Lerner, & Benson, 2011; Lerner,
Taylor, & vonEye, 2002) and is a leader in research
on the topic (e.g., Lerner, vonEye, Lerner, & Lewin-
Bizan, 2009). The positive youth development per-
spective has been broadly implemented and appears
to have many effective programs (e.g., Catalano,
Bergland, Ryan, Lonczak, & Hawkins, 2004). We
note, however, that this approach has been primar-
ily implemented in the United States and is only
beginning to spread more broadly. A conference on
positive youth development and responses to the
global economic crisis was held in Europe in the
fall of 2014 (SRCD, 2014). We now examine the
state of adolescent mental health in India.
Population-level studies on mental health and
the prevalence and incidence of psychiatric disor-
ders in adolescents are hard to find. Based on an
extensive review of the prevalence of psychiatric
disorders in school children in India, Malhotra
(1998) used a three-stage assessment of the epide-
miology of disorders in school children wherein
teachers’, parents’, and clinical assessments were
compared. The evidence pointed to a prevalence
rate of psychiatric disorders ranging between 7%
and 20%. The wide range is accounted for by the
nature of sampling designs and assessment mea-
sures used. Another study reported the prevalence
of mental disorders in child and adolescent pop-
ulation from Kerala as 9.4% (Hackett, Hackett,
Bhakta, & Gowers, 2000). Srinath, Girimaji,
Gururaj, Seshadri, Subbakrishna, and Bhola
(2005) report a prevalence rate in 4- to 16-year-old
children from Bangalore of 12%, mainly due to
enuresis, specific phobias, hyperkinetic disorders,
stuttering, and oppositional defiant disorder.
Overall, the most conservative estimate of severe
psychiatric disorder in India is 10% of the popula-
tion under age 14.
Recurrent diagnoses across studies indicate
that mental retardation, conduct disorders, neu-
rotic disorders, enuresis, and epilepsy are com-
mon problems. Bhola and Kapur (2003), in their
extensive review, evaluate available research on
the prevalence of child and adolescent psychiatric
disorders in India and highlight significant con-
ceptual and methodological trends. They identi-
fied 55 epidemiological studies conducted between
1964 and 2002 in community and school settings.
The settings were both rural and urban, and the
age range was between 3 and 16 years. The total
child and adolescent prevalence rate ranged from
0.48% to 29.40%. Reasons that accounted for this
370 Gl ob a l C onc e r ns i n A d ol e sc e n t H e a lt h
wide range were source of information, method
of elicitation, case definition, lower sensitivity to
certain disorders, higher threshold of tolerance for
certain symptoms, and certain sociocultural fac-
tors. Mental retardation, epilepsy, and enuresis had
the highest reported prevalence rates. Internalizing
disorders like anxiety and depressive and obsessive
compulsive disorders were infrequently reported in
community studies. The authors attribute this to
the cultural acceptance of internalizing symptoms,
particularly in girls, which may result in lower
reporting. Furthermore, dependence on parent and
teacher reports in many studies and the absence of
self-reports from children could have accounted for
underreporting of internalizing disorders. These
studies also offer little information about psychiat-
ric disorders in late adolescence. In the school set-
ting studies, the total prevalence rates ranged from
3.23% to 36.50%. The most prevalent disorders
included enuresis, mental retardation, and exter-
nalizing disorders such as conduct disorder and
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
There was a higher prevalence of externalizing dis-
orders in boys and internalizing disorders in girls.
The authors highlight (1) the need to provide an
understanding of developmental thresholds and
changes in the prevalence of disorders by age and
the need for multistage designs for more accurate
prevalence rates and (2) the need to include the
psychosocial correlates of psychiatric morbidity
among children and adolescents.
Hackett et al. (2000) identified multiple corre-
lates of psychiatric disorders in children and ado-
lescents in a sample from Kerala in South India.
These included male gender, low socioeconomic
status, less parental education, school failure,
impaired reading and vocabulary, and life events.
They recommend the need for longitudinal studies
in this area, and these are almost absent in India.
In another study on correlates of common men-
tal disorders (CMDs) among the youth in India,
Fernandes, Hayes, and Patel (2013) examined the
risk factors associated with a probable diagnosis of
CMD in an Indian youth sample in select urban
and rural areas of Goa. Analysis based on a com-
munity survey of 3,662 youth aged 16–24 years
reported the point prevalence of probable CMD as
7.87%. Those living in urban areas had a higher
prevalence of CMD (9.12%) when compared to
those from rural areas (6.60%). Independent risk
factors for CMD were being older (between 22 and
24 years); experience of physical abuse by parents,
teachers, and others; and sexual harassment and
sexual abuse. Sharing personal problems with oth-
ers was a protective factor. Sexual and recent physi-
cal abuse were independent risk factors for CMD
in both males and females. In addition, being older
and being able to discuss problems were associated
with CMD diagnosis in females but not in males.
Poor mental health is strongly related to other
health and developmental concerns among ado-
lescents, such as lower educational achievement,
substance abuse, violence, and poor sexual and
reproductive health (Patel et al., 2007).
In addition to substance abuse, suicide among
young people has emerged as a major public health
issue in India (Reddy, Gupta, Lohiya, & Kharya,
2013). The National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB)
of India reported a 27.7% increase in the recorded
number of suicides among youth between 1995 and
2005, with suicide rate of 10.5 per million (NCRB,
2005). Nearly 35% of suicides occur among youth
(15–29 years), with a rate of 152 per 100,000 for
girls and 69 per 100,000 for boys (Leo, 2003).
The effectiveness of some interventions for some
mental disorders in youth has been established;
however, further efforts are needed to expand the
spectrum of effective preventive interventions, to
improve their effectiveness and cost-effectiveness
in varied settings, and to strengthen the evidence
base (WHO, 2004). To reduce the health, social,
and economic burdens of mental disorders among
young people, it is essential that programs and poli-
cies in India pay greater attention to the preven-
tion of mental health problems and the promotion
of mental health through greater resource alloca-
tion within the overall health care system, capacity
building of professionals at the grassroots level, and
greater availability of quality mental health services
at the primary health center level, both in rural and
urban settings.
Interventions
Preventive interventions have become the pre-
ferred approach taken globally for broad-scale
reduction of problem issues, according to a recent
Lancet review of adolescent health interventions
(Catalano, Fagan, Gavin, Greenberg, Irwin,
Ross, & Shek, 2012). Although treatment is still
the most common approach globally (e.g., Patel,
Araya, Chatterjee, et al., 2007), this is likely to
shift. The burden of illness among adolescents
globally has shifted from communicable to non-
communicable diseases, thus requiring a different
approach to intervention. Preventive and promo-
tive policies and programs, usually referred to as
“prevention programs,” have been subject to rig-
orous testing in the minority world through con-
trolled trials over the past 30 years and have been
proven effective at reducing adolescent problem
behavior and improving health. These programs
focus on the factors that promote positive youth
development as well as reduce factors that pre-
dict problems. There has been a lag in apply-
ing these programs to low- and middle-income
countries, in part because these countries are just
beginning to recognize the period of adolescence.
Preliminary research suggests that the established
programs will be broadly efficacious (Catalano,
Fagan, Gavin, et al., 2012).
Several program initiatives in India address ado-
lescent health needs. In this section, we provide a
brief overview of programs initiated by the Ministry
of Health and Family Welfare, Government of
India (india.gov.in/topics/health-family-welfare).
Most of the programs carried out in collaboration
with UN bodies in the country target the adoles-
cent population. Many NGOs also are working
on the health needs of adolescents, with a spe-
cial focus on adolescent girls and particularly on
reproductive health issues. The rationale for this
special focus is on improving the general repro-
ductive health status of females and for reversing
the population trends. Other areas that these pro-
grams target are education, life skills development,
employment, and the political and social empower-
ment of youth (Santhya & Jejeebhoy, 2012). Most
program-implementing agencies adopt a holistic
and multisectoral approach to addressing various
issues within the sociocultural context in which the
adolescent lives.
The ILO is committed to the elimination of
child labor (which includes adolescents) through
its international program in the country. Several
program initiatives have been undertaken by the
Indian government and NGOs for the protection,
education, and rehabilitation of working chil-
dren in different sectors and on the streets. The
UNAIDS initiative Young People Talk AIDS is
a nationwide campaign to educate and mobilize
youth and school students around the issue of HIV/
AIDS. UNAIDS is actively working with the gov-
ernment to integrate the issue of HIV/AIDS and
reproductive health education into the school cur-
riculum, and there is a special focus on high-risk
groups, such as children of commercial sex workers
and street children.
Youth and adolescents are the main focus of
the Community Wide Drug Demand Reduction
V e r m a , Pe t e r s e n 371
program in the northeastern part of the country,
where the percentage of adolescent drug users is
perceptively higher than in the rest of the country.
This program targets adolescents both in and out
of school settings. Another related program of the
nationwide community drug demand reduction
program aims to use sports to divert attention away
from drugs and induce behavioral change among
youth.
Program initiatives with UNESCO focus on
education for all, the involvement of adolescents
and youth volunteers in civic engagement activi-
ties, peer education, and HIV/AIDS awareness and
education for adolescents in schools and programs
run by NGOs in the community.
The reproductive health programs in schools
and colleges aim to increase the awareness of popu-
lation issues among adolescents. The UNFPA sup-
ports many NGO initiatives on adolescent health
promotion, particularly for girls. Several initiatives
undertaken by UNICEF in the country focus on
advocacy and information generation for protec-
tion of child rights and on monitoring progress on
child protection issues, including those affecting
adolescents. The Child Protection program facili-
tates collective action to eliminate child trafficking
and prostitution, which affects many young girls.
A World Bank-initiated program, the Women and
Child Development Program, aims to improve the
health and nutritional status of adolescent girls
through activities such as supplementary feeding,
access to health care, and awareness generation on
health issues.
In India, a gap exists between investment and
need, and often the vulnerable youth popula-
tion is excluded from the very programs intended
to help them. The beneficiaries of youth poli-
cies and programs are often adolescents who
are already advantaged (typically, urban, older,
male, unmarried, and attending school). Policies
and programs repeatedly ignore large, neglected,
and pivotal subgroups of adolescents, such as
10- to 14-year-old out-of-school girls, girls at
risk of child marriage, rural adolescents living
without their parents, and young migrants at
risk of unsafe, exploitative work and trafficking
(UNFPA, 2009).
Conclusion
Adolescents/youth (aged 10–24 years) rep-
resent the largest age group in the world, but at
present they are experiencing numerous chal-
lenges to becoming productive adults. Global
372 Gl ob a l C onc e r ns i n A d ol e sc e n t H e a lt h
multinational organizations such as UNICEF
and the World Bank have recognized these issues
and are mobilizing resources to address them. But
researchers of adolescence are minimally engaged.
We recognize the challenges of obtaining the
multinational samples required to conduct the
large-scale research needed to illuminate these
issues. We know too little about which adoles-
cents are able to succeed in resource-constrained
contexts or the structures—both policies and
programs—needed to support them to do so. We
know from research in the minority world that
too much stress compromises the immune sys-
tem, rendering individuals less able to fulfill their
potential; this is likely to be happening in the
majority world, but at what scale? What would
change this picture? Those who immigrate create
a human resource loss for their nations and an
uncertain future for themselves, yet this is what
many choose to do. What are the costs? What
could be done to better capitalize on the potential
of adolescents globally so that they can become
the “demographic dividend” for their nations
(Diers, 2013)? Much basic research is needed
from researchers and samples in the majority
world.
Given that it seems urgent for researchers to
partner with those multinational NGOs that are
motivated to improve the situation for adolescents
globally, many promising programs are available.
Studies involving broad-based partnerships among
researchers, multinational government organiza-
tions, and NGOs testing the most promising pro-
grams in the majority world would yield many
valuable results. This cooperative undertaking
would advance knowledge about program effec-
tiveness on these important populations, engage
researchers from both the majority and minority
worlds and provide learning for all, and form part-
nerships among all stakeholders, thus increasing
the likelihood that the research will be relevant and
also providing the opportunity to test fundamental
questions.
By increasing partnerships among universities,
governments, international organizations, and
the private sector we can promote research that
examines public health programs that are close
to the supply of and demand for health services.
Researchers can provide answers to several cultur-
ally sensitive issues, such as how the system can be
structured, health-seeking behaviors, and how to
monitor developmental progress to build on the
efficacy of program implementation.
 The MDGs, along with the broadly adopted
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Discrimination Against Women and the
Convention on the Rights of the Child, provide
a framework of values and desirable actions with
respect to children and adolescents (UNFPA,
2009). None of the goals as outlined in these docu-
ments can be achieved without substantive and
prioritized investment in adolescent girls and other
vulnerable groups of adolescents. Investing in girl’s
education, particularly participation rights and
schooling during adolescence, is the best develop-
mental investment for improving adolescent health
and ensuring gender equality.
The peri-urban areas are the fastest growing
locations in the majority world. Adolescents living
in urban slum settings have rarely been the focus of
poverty alleviation policies in India. With increas-
ing rates of urbanization, this group needs special
attention to provide effective accessibility to health
services.
Major gaps in data on adolescents pose one of
the biggest challenges to promoting their rights.
Recent initiatives by the UN and others have
expanded our understanding of such vital issues
as violence, sexual abuse, and reproductive health
in adolescents, but not all countries are covered.
Additionally, there are a number of areas, such
as adolescent mental health, disability, and qual-
ity indicators for secondary education, where
data disaggregated by sex and age in most coun-
tries of the majority world are unavailable in suf-
ficient quantities (UNICEF, 2011). Thus, one of
the most urgent tasks in addressing adolescent
health, including mental health, is improving
and expanding the evidence base, particularly in
majority world countries. Systematic research on
the nature, prevalence, and determinants of ado-
lescent health problems and on prevention, early
intervention, and treatment strategies will be piv-
otal to ensuring adolescents’ right to health and
development in these settings. The situation of
adolescents globally is at a critical point, and many
of the necessary resources now exist. It is an excel-
lent time for action!
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 C H A P T E R

23 Cultural Roots of Values, Morals,

and Religious Orientations
in Adolescent Development
Gisela Trommsdorff

Abstract
Values, morals, and religious beliefs are organizing factors in the development of self- and worldviews.
These factors are assumed to be a driving force in adolescents’ agentic regulation of development,
which is embedded in the cultural context and influenced by universal and culturally specific processes.
Adolescents regulate their individual development by integrating values, morals, and religious purpose
in line with their self- and worldviews to achieve an optimal cultural fit. First, the relations among
culture, self-views, and worldviews in adolescent development are discussed. Second, selected
culture-informed studies on values, morals, and religious purpose as part of self- and worldviews
are presented. Third, the focus is on the developmental conditions relating these aspects. In the
conclusion, a model bridging the lens of culture and the lens of adolescent development is suggested,
specifying some psychologically relevant factors in this process.
Key Words:  culture, values, moral, religion, adolescent development, self-view, worldview, auton-
omy, relatedness

But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall
be unto you as one born among you, and thou
shall love him as thyself, for you were strang-
ers in the land of Egypt.
—(Leviticus 19:32)
In our studies of Japanese and German ado-
lescents’ experiencing parental influence attempts
(e.g., giving orders or instructions, objecting or
disapproving of an activity), Mary and John felt
rather rejected or at least not supported by their
parents (like most German respondents). By con-
trast, Yukiko and Akira (like most Japanese respon-
dents) felt supported in cases of parental influence
attempts. Different from their German peers,
they felt rejected or deprived of parental support
in cases of no apparent parental influence (control
or monitoring). German and Japanese adolescents
obviously experience and evaluate seemingly simi-
lar parenting differently (Trommsdorff & Iwawaki,
1989). The question is whether and how the respec-
tive subjective experiences are associated with the
prevailing cultural values of autonomy and related-
ness or with independence and interdependence. Is
parental control experienced as threatening adoles-
cents’ autonomy in a context where independence
is preferred? And is it experienced as fostering inter-
dependence in a context where independence is less
valued?
In another study, we were interested in adoles-
cents’ emotional and behavioral reactions when
experiencing a frustrating or disappointing situa-
tion (e.g., vignettes describing a peer who openly
criticizes the student for a bad performance or mak-
ing the student stumble and nearly fall down). In
this situation, Lisa (like most German adolescents)
reacted with anger and frustration, explaining the
peer’s behavior as motivated by aggressive inten-
tions; also, she was ready to retaliate. In contrast,
Japanese or Balinese adolescents, like Keiko or Sri,

377
usually reacted by explaining (excusing) the peer’s
behavior; they did not attribute negative intentions
to the peer, but instead they referred to their own
possibly unruly behavior that may have caused
the peer’s misbehavior. As a result, their behav-
ioral intention was not to retaliate but to restore
a harmonious relationship (by ignoring the peer’s
behavior or mentioning “so sorry”; Kornadt, 2012;
Trommsdorff & Ibaraki, 1989, unpublished data).
These observations indicate that harmful behav-
ior can be interpreted by the victim in very dif-
ferent ways—as aggression or as a mishap— and
thus shape either the hostile or harmonious qual-
ity of further interactions. Here, the question can
be raised whether the interpretation of the other
person’s behavior and the subsequent interaction
sequence is based on generalized views about the
self, the world, and their interrelation; that is,
the belief that the world (other person) should be
changed according to one’s own wishes (primary
control) or that the self should accommodate to the
world (other person; secondary control), or a bal-
ance between both.
In this chapter, I discuss whether such differ-
ences in interpretations and behavioral reactions
result from adolescents’ socialization of different
self- and worldviews that include individual values,
morals, and beliefs in line with the prevailing cul-
tural model of independence and interdependence
that are assumed to shape the meaning of auton-
omy and relatedness.
Culture-informed studies on adolescent develop-
ment are rare. Most research on adolescent develop-
ment has been carried out with European-American
samples, limiting generalizations of empirical
results. Textbooks on adolescence tend to refer to
culture in terms of adolescents’ subcultures or accul-
turation. Even less is known about cultural aspects
of values, morals, religious purpose, and their inter-
relations as part of adolescents’ self- and worldviews.
Recently, worldwide globalization—including cul-
tural, economic, and demographic change—has
widened the perspective of developmental psycholo-
gists, as evidenced by culture-informed publications
on adolescence (e.g., Arnett, 2006, 2012; Arnett &
Eisenberg, 2007; Brown, Larson, & Saraswathi,
2002; Trommsdorff & Chen, 2012).
Adolescence is characterized by significant bio-
logical, psychological, and social changes, with
nature and nurture interacting in these dynam-
ics. Normative and history-graded factors struc-
ture person-context relations (“goodness-of-fit”)
modified by adolescents’ socialization in multiple
378 C u lt u r a l R o o t s of Va l u e s , Mor a ls , a n d R e l ig iou s Or i e n t at ions
sociocultural settings. Processes of adolescents’
development are conceived of here in line with the
ecological model of development (Bronfenbrenner,
1979), the concept of developmental niche (Super &
Harkness, 1986), and the cultural model of indepen-
dence and interdependence (Markus & Kitayama,
1991). Accordingly, adolescents’ development is
embedded in the family, peer groups, school, work
place, media, institutions, and formal or informal
relationships, with cultural and biological factors
shaping the respective socialization processes.
Furthermore, I view developmental processes as
motivated by agency-regulating needs of autonomy,
competence, and relatedness (Ryan & Deci, 2000).
Different from Bontempo, Lobel, and Triandis
(1990), I do not assume collectivistic cultural pop-
ulations to be less agentic than individualistic cul-
tural populations (see Miller, Goyal, & Wice, this
volume; Trommsdorff, 2012a; 2012b).
The cultural context, as well as biological and
psychological factors related to the specific devel-
opmental age, are assumed to structure the rela-
tive valence and contents of these basic needs and
their impact on adolescents’ self- and worldviews.
Accordingly, inter- and intracultural differences
in adolescents’ self- and worldviews are assumed.
These self- and worldviews are basic orientations
that fit to the culturally preferred models and value
orientations (Trommsdorff, 2012a; 2012b). In this
chapter, I discuss how adolescents’ self- and world-
views are integrated in and resulting from adoles-
cents’ development of values, morals, and religious
purpose in their respective cultural contexts.
From a culture-informed perspective, questions
arise as to which developmental processes are uni-
versal and which are culture-specific. On the one
hand, adolescents universally are agents of their
development, actively construing and regulating
their development and dealing with various cul-
tural tasks, challenges, and boundaries. On the
other hand, adolescents’ developmental conditions,
tasks, outcomes, and trajectories differ across cul-
tures, while cultural factors and individual agency
interact in the process of development. Although
adolescents regulate their motivational, cognitive,
emotional, and social development, the ecological
context and cultural models shape adolescents’ self-
and worldviews, including their values, morals, and
religious purpose.
To summarize, the main question of this chap-
ter is how adolescents from diverse cultural con-
texts construe and regulate their development
by dealing with questions regarding the self, the
world, and their interrelations. Although cultural
models are assumed to provide developmental tasks
and answers to these questions, adolescents have to
interpret and choose from these various tasks and
answers. Therefore, adolescents attempt to develop
reliable and valid orientations for guiding their
goals, choices, and behavior as part of their identity
development. Values, morals, and religious beliefs
are organizing factors in this process underlying
the development of self- and worldviews—a pro-
cess assumed to be a driving force in adolescents’
agentic regulation of development (Trommsdorff,
2012a; 2012b).
This chapter is organized into three parts: First,
the relations among culture, self-views, and world-
views in adolescent development are discussed.
Second, I discuss selected culture-informed stud-
ies on values, morals, and religious purpose as part
of self- and worldviews. Third, I focus on devel-
opmental conditions relating these aspects. In the
conclusion, I suggest a model that bridges the lens
of culture and the lens of adolescent development,
specifying some psychologically relevant factors in
this process.
Culture, Self-Views, and Worldviews
Culture
Definitions of culture abound, referring to ritu-
als, myths, symbols, or cultural practices (Cole &
Packer, 2011). Cultures are not seen as homogenous
entities but rather as processes in interaction with
individual development. In their often-cited com-
prehensive meta-analyses, Oyserman, Coon, and
Kemmelmeier (2002) have pointed out variations
of psychological phenomena among and within
cultures in contrast to typological approaches
assuming homogeneity of cultures. While refrain-
ing from a typology of cultures, the notion of inde-
pendence/interdependence has been fruitful for
generalizing typical differences in the cognition,
emotion, behavior, and self-construal of individu-
als from different cultural contexts (Markus &
Kitayama, 1991). Such differences have been seen
as resulting from cultural tasks (Kitayama &
Imada, 2010) or from cultural models of agency
(Markus & Kitayama, 2004).
To capture more subtle differences in cultural
contexts and related self- and worldviews of indi-
viduals, here I conceptualize culture in line with
Bruner (1990) as a historically grown, shared
meaning system transmitted across generations.
The cultural context and related frames of meaning
may change during adolescent development.
Sociocultural changes imply heterogeneity,
diversity, and intracultural differences, all warn-
ing against the fallacies of a simple typological
approach. Accordingly, simple dichotomies of cul-
tural differences do not necessarily allow for the
specific cultural meaning of individual values, mor-
als, and religious behavior in the respective context.
When referring to a specific society, heterogene-
ity should be assumed. Terms like “Eastern” and
“Western” culture are therefore used here as hypo-
thetical constructs. Concepts like independence
and interdependence imply a relative priority of
either value depending on the respective cultural
context, situation, and developmental resources.
Cultural contexts constitute major challenges,
opportunities, and limitations for adolescent devel-
opment. The cultural contexts are often interrelated
and based on different cultural models of agency
(Trommsdorff, 2012a), shaping socialization pro-
cesses and influencing adolescents’ development of
values, morals, and religious beliefs as part of their
self- and worldviews.
Self-Views
Self-views focus on the past self, the present self,
and/or the future (possible) self of the individual per-
son in relation to his or her environment. Self-views
have been conceptualized as self-construals, giving
higher priority to the individual self (independence)
or to the sociocultural related self (interdependence).
In their theoretical approach to culture and self,
Markus and Kitayama (1991, 2004) assume that
the cultural model of independence or interdepen-
dence shapes an individual’s self-construals, which
mediate the influence of culture on behavior. In
individualistic cultures, people are assumed to view
themselves as relatively independent from others; in
collectivistic cultures, people are assumed to develop
an interdependent self, viewing themselves in close
relation to others. For example, whereas people in
European-American contexts describe themselves
in terms of their abilities, traits, and unique quali-
ties, people in East-Asian contexts describe them-
selves in terms of their social roles and obligations in
their various relationships with others (Markus &
Kitayama, 1991). The independent/interdependent
self-construal has been linked to a wide range of
psychological and behavioral outcomes explaining
cultural variations (e.g., with respect to cooperation,
modesty, self-esteem; Oyserman et al., 2002).
Distinguishing between individual-oriented
and social-oriented self-views should provide a
theoretical culture-informed approach for studying
T r om m s d or f f 379
adolescents’ values, morals, and religious pur-
pose. However, a simple dichotomy cannot fully
account for the interacting and rebounding fac-
tors in the dynamics of culture and development.
The Hindu conceptualization of the self differen-
tiating between the present and the transcendental
self (Mishra, 2013; Saraswathi, Mistry, & Dutta,
2011) is an example for the close relations among
self-construal and cultural values, morals, and reli-
gious beliefs.
Across cultures, various other aspects of
self-views and manifestations of the need for posi-
tive self-evaluation have been shown. Self-views
related to a promotion- or prevention-focused
motivation serve to enhance and protect one’s
self-worth (and self-efficacy) in line with the cul-
tural model of self (e.g., Hepper, Sedikides, &
Cai, 2013). Individuals who prefer interdependent
values orient their self-system in a way to protect
and enhance social harmony—a moral obliga-
tion in East Asian cultures. Relationship harmony
allows for experiencing a positive self-concept and
related well-being for Asian people (Kim & Tov,
2011). East Asians have been observed to be more
likely than European Americans to take into con-
sideration the perspective of other persons in their
self-view (Cohen & Gunz, 2002). This tendency
may affect the development of values and moral-
ity such that rule-oriented behavior is more readily
activated (cf. Gelfand et al., 2011).
Another aspect of cultural differences in
self-views is related to implicit theories of person-
ality, more specifically, the preference of a fixed
(entity) or a malleable view of the self influencing the
person’s motivation and goal setting (e.g., regarding
achievement, aggression, or self-regulation; Dweck,
1999; Rothbaum & Wang, 2010). A malleable or
incremental view of the self motivates the person
to engage in further efforts in case of failure in an
achievement situation. Accordingly, effort is highly
valued in Asian cultures.
Adolescents’ development of self-views includes
the selection of possible selves (Markus & Nurius,
1986) as aspects of future orientation (Seginer,
2009; Trommsdorff, 1983). Narratives from
Muslim girls how that collectivistic and individu-
alistic themes are combined, and collectivistic
themes were much more pronounced 10 years ago
(Seginer, personal communication, September 21,
2013). An ultra-orthodox Jewish girl says: “I want
to study nursing because I want to help people
and give them all the human kindness in me.”
A Muslim girl says: “I want to serve my people and
380 C u lt u r a l R o o t s of Va l u e s , Mor a ls , a n d R e l ig iou s Or i e n t at ions
in addition to getting higher education also study
religious studies so that I can teach everyone to be
close to religion and our nation.” These examples
may illustrate that the development of self-views
is shaped by the cultural model of self, including
cognitive and motivational aspects of self-other
relations (e.g., autonomy, competence, relatedness)
relevant for adolescents’ development of values,
morals, and religious purpose.
Worldviews
Self- and worldviews are influenced by the cul-
tural models for agency and include beliefs about
the fixed or malleable quality of the self and the
world and related control beliefs (e.g., primary and
secondary control; harmony control; Morling &
Evered, 2006; Rothbaum & Wang, 2010, 2011;
Trommsdorff, 2012a). Worldviews are generalized
beliefs about free choice (individualistic value) and
acceptance of fate and circumstances (collectivistic
value). Referring to the earlier narrative, German
adolescents’ beliefs about free choice activates
their resistance to parental control; in contrast,
the Japanese adolescents’ belief in acceptance of
circumstances allows for acceptance of parental
control.
Self-views and worldviews are interconnected
(Rothbaum, Wang, & Cohen, 2012). In the search
for orientation and identity, adolescents strive to
find answers to questions about how the self and
the world are related. In some cultures, socializa-
tion fosters the child’s view of the world as fixed
and as exerting causal agency while also fostering
a view of the self as malleable and accommodat-
ing to the world. This self- and worldview is the
basis for secondary control, a behavior motivated to
change the self to fit the world. By contrast, social-
ization experiences fostering the child’s autonomy
instead tend to foster the child’s view of the world
as malleable and as accommodating to the child’s
needs. This view of the self and the world underlies
primary control, a behavior motivated to change
the world to fit the self (Rothbaum & Wang, 2010;
2011). In the introductory example, Keiko and Sri
act according to a self- and worldview of second-
ary control, refraining from retaliation and instead
searching for their own mistakes, whereas Lisa
intends to retaliate, acting in line with a self- and
worldview of primary control. However, it would
be wrong to conceptualize primary and secondary
control as mutually exclusive because both usually
are more or less available to the individual person,
in balance, or one can have priority, depending on
developmental age and the cultural and situational
context. Worldviews can focus on the material and/
or the nonmaterial, supernatural world. The mate-
rial world is structured according to one’s experi-
ences with other persons (parents, peers), social
groups, social institutions, and the physical and
natural environment. The supernatural “other”
world is structured according to cultural values
and intuitive theories about the nonmaterial world
related to religious beliefs and spirituality.
When adolescents experience minor and major
threats to their self- and worldviews, they react
depending on combinations of risk and resilience,
contextual, and personality factors (Eisenberg &
Silver, 2011). Different kinds of self-regulation—
primary control (changing the situation) and/or
secondary control (changing the self by acceptance
of the circumstances, restructuring one’s goals)—
allow for successful coping. An example for primary
control in the case of experiencing major threats
to their self- and worldviews is when adolescents
engage in disobedience or aggressive behavior in
order to protect their values and moral intuitions.
In our introductory narrative example, the
Japanese (or Balinese) youths’ focus on limited
trust in their own efficacy (or on their own wrong-
doing) results in secondary control—accommo-
dating to the other person (controlling parent;
disruptive peer) and attempting to foster a harmo-
nious relationship. In contrast, the German youth
experiences a threat to the value of autonomy and
independence and reacts with primary control (and
feels morally justified to react against parents or
retaliate against peers).
Self- and worldviews develop in the cultural
context and serve as foundation for agency, fuel-
ing individual values, morals, and religious beliefs.
Self- and worldviews provide meaning and guide
adolescents’ agentic development. A Muslim girl
from Seginer’s study says: “The things I would like
to happen to me is be a high achieving student and
peace between the Arab nations and especially the
Palestinians and Israel” (personal communication,
September 21, 2013). This narrative may illustrate
the theoretical frame of this chapter: values of
autonomy and relatedness and moral and religious
purpose are part of self- and worldviews in adoles-
cent development.
Values, Moral, and Religious Orientations
as Part of Self- and Worldviews
According to Brewer and Chen (2007), culture
provides answers to basic questions about the self,
the world, and the goals to which one should aspire
through socialization and interaction processes.
Values, morals, and religious purpose in part serve
to answer these basic questions, which are of spe-
cial importance in adolescence.
Values
Individual values are part of self- and world-
views and function as a motivational force and as
desirable goals. Schwartz defines individual values
as “trans-situational goals, varying in importance
that serve as guiding principles in the life of a per-
son” (Schwartz, 2011, p. 464). Schwartz applies
two theories of value-related constructs: a cultural
level theory and an individual level theory. Cultural
value orientations function to regulate and orga-
nize societies; they reflect historical, sociostruc-
tural, economic, and ecological factors of societies.
Individual values are related to individual needs.
The psychological function of individual val-
ues may vary according to the prevailing cultural
model. For example, Rothbaum, Pott, Azuma,
Miyake, and Weisz (2000) have pointed out
that the different developmental trajectories of
US and Japanese adolescents are based on dif-
ferent values of autonomy and relatedness. The
authors characterize adolescents’ developmental
path in the United States according to the val-
ues of independence and self-direction and in
Japan by the values of interdependence and relat-
edness. Other studies suggest a cultural family
model. Kagitcibasi’s (2007, 2012) family change
theory distinguishes “independence” (prevail-
ing in the urban Western middle-class family),
“total interdependence” (associated with obedi-
ence and prevailing in the traditional rural fam-
ily), and “psychological interdependence” (with
focus on the autonomous-related self, involving
both autonomy and connectedness in moderniz-
ing societies). Based on cross-cultural studies of
adolescents’ family values (as part of the Value
of Children [VOC] Study), Mayer (2013) has
recently challenged this family change theory
by reformulating the family model of emotional
(psychological) interdependence, taking into
account the weakening of emotional interdepen-
dence in family relationships during modern-
ization (see also Trommsdorff & Mayer, 2012).
In their cultural view on socialization, refer-
ring to the cultural model of agency, Rothbaum
and Trommsdorff (2007) argue that autonomy
and relatedness coexist in Western societies,
whereas, in many East Asian societies, autonomy
T r om m s d or f f 381
is perceived as threatening relatedness and the
need to belong. Here, emotional interdepen-
dence is seen as most relevant and as providing
the basis for assurance, in contrast to trust, which
has to be negotiated between separate parties
(Trommsdorff & Rothbaum, 2008). However,
empirical studies are needed to specify the degree
of emotional interdependence characterizing the
culture-specific meaning of autonomy and relat-
edness (and its mutual relationship) in different
cultural and situational contexts and its function
for adolescent development.
Individual values represent priorities in life and
have a motivational function. Therefore, individual
values guide adolescents’ identity development and
goal setting (e.g., Saroglou & Hanique, 2006).
Although individuation and an increased prefer-
ence for autonomous behavior have been reported
for Western adolescents (Collins & Steinberg,
2006), inconsistent results have been reported
for non-Western adolescents (Fuligni, 1998).
With regard to family-related values, multilevel
cross-cultural studies based on data from the VOC
study (Trommsdorff & Nauck, 2005) show associa-
tions among adolescents’ values and family-oriented
future orientation (Mayer & Trommsdorff, 2010;
2012). For ultra-orthodox Jewish girls, keeping
a Jewish home, having a big family, and bringing
up children in the best of Jewish religious values is
seen as women’s most important destiny. Family
values (obligation, deference) are so obvious and
self-evident that they are not even mentioned in
narratives about the future by adolescent girls.
Adolescents from cultural contexts promoting indi-
vidualistic as compared to interdependent self- and
worldviews prefer less close family relationships.
This may affect their willingness to support aging
parents or which kind of support (financial, instru-
mental, or emotional support) they would provide
(Schwarz & Trommsdorff, 2005). Further, parent–
adolescent relationships in wealthy modern societ-
ies (with higher Human Development Index scores)
are more characterized by conflict (Trommsdorff &
Mayer, 2012). Data from the VOC Study on cul-
tural differences in the importance of traditional
family values of interdependence at a cultural level
were associated with higher subjective well-being of
younger adolescents (Schwarz et al., 2012).
It can be assumed that a cultural model of inter-
dependence fosters the importance that adolescents’
give to family values. However, in line with the
approach by Rothbaum and Trommsdorff (2007),
more specific definitions of this cultural model are
382 C u lt u r a l R o o t s of Va l u e s , Mor a ls , a n d R e l ig iou s Or i e n t at ions
necessary to allow for better understanding of the
relative meaning of the respective family values.
For example, the narrative earlier related shows that
when the value of close emotional interdependence
is not compatible with autonomy, the Japanese or
Balinese adolescent instead feels supported by con-
trolling parents. This is different from German
adolescents, for whom autonomy and relatedness
are associated based on less close emotional inter-
dependence. Emotional interdependence may be
fueled by shared cultural traditions. For example,
in Japan, amae (see Doi, 1973), a specific kind of
(mutual) dependency between mother and child, is
the basis for close emotional relatedness.
In Chinese (and other Asian) cultures, the value
of filial piety is an important part of the Confucian
value system; it involves obedience to parents and
attendance to parents’ needs. Filial piety is based
on family values that refer to reciprocal relations
between adolescents and their parents and to emo-
tional and material responsibilities and obliga-
tions across the life span (Chao & Tseng, 2002).
According to Confucian ethics, filial piety is
rooted in filial emotions of gratitude toward par-
ents and filial values (Cheah, Bayram Özdemir,
& Leung, 2012). Accordingly, filial piety can be
an indicator for family values of strong emotional
interdependence.
Rural and urban Chinese adolescents differ in
their attitudes toward family obligations and the
value of filial piety (Fuligni & Zhang, 2004),
indicating heterogeneity of culture. Furthermore,
sociocultural changes may affect value changes.
Cheah et al. (2012) discuss whether a decrease in
reported filial behavior of Chinese-Malaysian ado-
lescents indicates a process of individuation similar
to that of Western adolescents. In their indigenous,
child-centered approach on filial beliefs and values,
Yeh and Bedford (2004) point out intracultural
variance by further differentiating aspects of fil-
ial values. They demonstrate that reciprocal filial
beliefs based on close, affectionate parent–child
relationships decrease parent–child conflicts more
than do authoritarian filial beliefs focusing on obe-
dience and indebtedness to parents.
Chinese adolescents’ focus on duties and family
cohesion (Cheung, Lee, & Chan, 1994) is in con-
trast to the Western belief in children’s rights and
independence (Kuczinsky, 2002). Research on filial
beliefs and values (e.g., Yeh & Bedford, 2004) pro-
vides specific cultural explanations for the impor-
tance of family relations, indicating communal
values that impact the development of value-based
moral beliefs. Accordingly, filial piety characterizes
the values and moral purpose of adolescents in most
Southeast Asian and East Asian countries, indicat-
ing psychological conditions beyond the cultural
model of interdependence (e.g., the motivating
dynamics of adherence to moral purpose). Filial
piety is part of a culture-specific self- and world-
view to which these adolescents are socialized.
As our studies on the value of children in dif-
ferent cultural contexts have shown, in most
countries, adolescents prefer to have children for
fulfilling their need for emotional bonds. The
emotional value of children has increased while
the material (economic and social) value of chil-
dren has decreased globally during moderniza-
tion, remaining only important in traditional, less
affluent societies with higher values of interde-
pendence (Mayer & Trommsdorff, 2010; Mayer,
Trommsdorff, Kagitcibasi, & Mishra, 2012;
Trommsdorff & Mayer, 2012). However, the emo-
tional value of children, which is rather high in tra-
ditional and modern societies, may have a different
meaning depending on cultural values, as Mayer
(2013) has pointed out.
Another value related to the cultural model of
interdependence is the importance of self-regulation
in the service of the group; for example, by saving
face and behaving in ways that will not cause oth-
ers (especially one’s family) to lose face or by pro-
moting group harmony. Self-regulation according
to this value implies qualified knowledge of social
(e.g., parental) expectations, as well as the ability
and motivation to self-regulate in the service of
relatedness (e.g., following social rules, obeying
parents’ orders, succeeding in school). Controlling
one’s own impulses is an important value in most
cultures and can be seen as an indicator of second-
ary control; however, it can serve different goals
(Trommsdorff, 2012a).
Related to the value of saving face is the value
of focusing on others in contrast to focusing on the
individual self (Cohen & Gunz, 2002; Rothbaum
et al., 2012). Focusing on others serves the value
of relatedness and strengthens empathy and per-
spective taking by striving for social harmony.
Here, the worldview of secondary control (chang-
ing the self) has priority. In contrast, focusing on
the self promotes the values of independence and
autonomy while accepting social conflict. Here, the
worldview of primary control (changing the world)
has priority. Accordingly, different from Western
control theories (Heckhausen, 2002), a cultural
approach to control beliefs attributes primacy not
necessarily to primary control but, in the case of
a cultural model of relatedness, primacy is instead
related to secondary control. Self-regulation aim-
ing to serve goals of the social group contrasts to
self-regulation aiming to promote one’s individual
goals of independence, separateness, uniqueness.
Although this contrast is an oversimplification
that disregards intracultural variance and changes
in priority during adolescent development, research
on the function of cultural values has shown con-
siderable differences between Western and Eastern
cultural contexts such as focusing on the individual
self versus focusing on others (on social rules, on the
environment, or on situational settings). However,
individual values and related behavior can change
when affected by sociocultural changes, the devel-
opmental age of the adolescents, and situational
demands, as Chen, Wang, and Liu (2012) have
shown for Chinese adolescents in their longitudi-
nal study.
So far, values have been discussed as underly-
ing and fueling self- and worldviews. Values are
aspects of cultural contexts and motivating factors
for adolescent behavior in various domains of life.
Adolescent values are affected by sociocultural and
economic changes (e.g., modernization, rising afflu-
ence); however, at the same time, they can affect
sociocultural processes through group and indi-
vidual behavior in various social contexts. A self-
and worldview focusing on independence and
individual rights is related to emotions, cognitions,
and behavioral reactions that are different from a
self- and worldview focusing on interdependence
and relatedness. This can be seen in our example
of German and Japanese adolescents’ reactions to
parental control or to a peer’s wrongdoing. In the
next section, I discuss in how far moral emotions
are associated to the adolescents’ preference for val-
ues related to independence or interdependence.
Moral Purpose
Moral development in adolescence has been
viewed as the period during which the moral iden-
tity is established (Blasi, 1993). Morality develops
in the cultural context, guided by cultural values.
For example, dimensions of cultural values (mea-
sured at the cultural level) are related to adoles-
cents’ development of self, morals, and religious
orientations (Bond, Lun, & Li, 2012; Kasser, 2011;
Schwartz, 2012). However, due to its universalistic
stage-based cognitive approach to moral reason-
ing (Kohlberg, 1984), the majority of research on
moral development has, until recently, ignored the
T r om m s d or f f 383
role of culture. Other shortcomings of traditional
research on moral development are neglecting the
roles of emotions and of situational and intervening
variables influencing moral judgment and social
behavior (e.g., Gibbs, Basinger, Grime, & Snarey,
2007; Turiel, 1983).
Research on moral emotions has been growing
recently, due in part to evolutionary psychologi-
cal approaches and their possible biological basis
(“innate” morality). Topics of interest include the
roles of altruism and empathy in prosocial behavior
(Eisenberg, Morris, McDaniel, & Spinrad, 2009;
Rothbart, 2011) and the role of moral emotions
attributions for adolescents’ pro- and antisocial
behavior (see meta-analysis by Malti & Krettenauer,
2013). Haidt (2007) contrasts moral reasoning and
moral intuition, suggesting a Social Intuitionist
Model that assumes automatic, affect-laden pro-
cesses resulting in positive and negative emotions.
Anthropological and cross-cultural studies have
demonstrated the limits of the traditional univer-
sal cognitive theory of moral development (e.g.,
Miller 1997, 2001; Miller, Bersoff, & Harwood,
1990; Shweder, Mahapatra, & Miller, 1990). The
traditional approach to morality does not take into
consideration the various relevant community val-
ues related to interdependence or collectivism (e.g.,
in Confucianism, Buddhism, or Hinduism). Also,
notions of independence from formal behavioral
rules do not apply in cultures where the fulfill-
ment of one’s duties is the most important moral
purpose (Mishra, 2012; Saraswathi et al., 2011).
Here, moral behavior implies accepting one’s duties
and obeying rules in everyday behavior (e.g., diet,
communication among family and nonfamily
members). Obedience to rules and to authorities,
which differ in different cultural contexts, serves as
a moral principle. Transgressions can evoke moral
emotional responses, with guilt following private
transgressions or shame following publicly exposed
transgressions.
Recent theorizing on moral psychology focus-
ing on the role of culture enables the integration
of cognitive, emotional, and social aspects of
moral purpose (e.g., Haidt, 2007; Jensen, 2011,
2012; Rai & Fiske, 2011). The theoretical source
of these approaches is the work by Shweder and
colleagues (Shweder et al., 1990; Shweder, Much,
Mahapatra, & Park, 1997) suggesting a tripartite
distinction of three ethics and the moral motives
related to these three aspects, with differences
within and across cultures. The ethic of autonomy
focuses on the interests and rights of people as
384 C u lt u r a l R o o t s of Va l u e s , Mor a ls , a n d R e l ig iou s Or i e n t at ions
individuals, moral goals of the ethic of community
centers on the person’s duties and obligations to
others, and the ethic of divinity follows the moral
pursuit of connecting with the divine. The three
ethics have their roots in the Old Testament (Ten
Commandments).
A shortcoming of these culture-informed
approaches is the neglect of developmental issues.
Therefore, Jensen (2008) discusses a cultural per-
spective on the development of morality. Starting
from a critical evaluation of the traditional
cognitive-developmental approach to morality,
which ignores cultural values and worldviews per-
taining to spirituality, religion, or divinity, Jensen
suggests a template model extending Shweder
et al.’s (1997) notions of autonomy, community,
and divinity. The moral concepts may be related
to each other. For example, a community-based
morality may be fueled by spirituality, fulfilling
adolescents’ needs for security and belonging while
not threatening their autonomy.
According to Rothbaum and Trommsdorff
(2007), the value of autonomy and interdependence
may coexist, although the relationship between
both depends on the cultural meaning of autonomy
and relatedness. Referring to our previous example
on parenting, adolescents may experience paren-
tal influence as aversive in the case in which their
self-construal as an autonomous person is threat-
ened. This would also threaten a positive (trusting)
relationship with their parents. However, when ado-
lescents experience parental influence as indicating
a close interpersonal relationship, this would foster
the belief in assurance and belonging. This is in
line with the moral concept of community induc-
ing compliance. Accordingly, compliance based on
relatedness can indicate adolescents’ agency (see
also Miller, this volume; Trommsdorff, 2012a).
Jensen distinguishes between the degree and the
types of moral concepts that persons of different
ages use within an ethic. For example, in adoles-
cence, the salience of peers and collective social
contexts (e.g., school, work) may increase, shifting
community concepts more to nonfamilial groups
and broader social entities, at least in individualis-
tic cultural contexts valuing autonomy. Research is
needed to test if a developmental process observed
in individualistic cultures is also valid in cul-
tures where ingroup norms and values of inter-
dependence prevail. In cultural contexts valuing
relatedness, community concepts are instead con-
fined to the family and ingroup. Our own stud-
ies on preschool children from Indonesia show less
prosocial behavior toward strangers than in Israeli
or German children (Trommsdorff, Friedlmeier, &
Mayer, 2007). It can be assumed that family values
of emotional interdependence affect community
concepts in cultures where values of relatedness
prevail throughout development, thereby pro-
moting a stricter difference between ingroup and
outgroup.
Whether a community-oriented morality takes
into account the perspective and interests of others
beyond simply following the criteria of norm-based
duty and social rules is an open question. At least,
the reviewed studies on family values of interde-
pendence (Trommsdorff & Mayer, 2012) or our
studies on emotion regulation of Indian, Japanese,
and German children (Trommsdorff, 2012a) sug-
gest that both ways are possible, depending on
the cultural values. A further question is whose
perspective is taken into account and whether
“community” is defined as consisting of ingroup
members only, or if ingroup and outgroup mem-
bers are seen part of the “community.” This brings
us back to the main question of this chapter: how
far do values and morals integrate self- and other
orientation during adolescent development in a
cultural context?
Religious Purpose
Morality serves to integrate social
groups, constrain individuals, and join them
together: “Morality binds and builds” (Haidt,
2007). Similarly, the central role of religion can
be seen in the formation and integration of com-
munities (Durkheim, 1915/1965): religions pro-
vide a system of beliefs and practices related to the
sacred and unite believers into a moral community.
In early theorizing on the psychology of religion,
William James (1901/1997) assumed that religion
is based on the emotions of individuals who experi-
ence a relationship with the divine. Although social
anthropology provides functional, structural, and
psychoanalytical explanations for religion includ-
ing rituals and beliefs (Barnard, 2012), religious
beliefs have also been related to the development of
cultures (Kornadt, 2012) and the evolution of mind
and societies (Atran & Henrich, 2010; Norenzayan
& Shariff, 2008).
Religions focus on the sacred as part of the
natural and supernatural worlds, regulating inter-
personal interactions and relationships between
individuals and the sacred. Comparative stud-
ies have shown that polytheism, monotheism
(e.g., Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), animism,
totemism, and shamanism all have strict rules
and rituals (e.g., including taboos regarding food)
and often require obedience to an authority. In
Hinduism, beliefs about the sacred are assumed
to be a part of one’s self- and worldview inform-
ing values and moral purpose (e.g., Mishra, 2013;
Saraswathi et al., 2011). However, morality is not
necessarily tied to religion. According to anthropo-
logical studies in small-scale societies, the gods want
rituals but have limited moral concern over how
people interact (for an overview, see Norenzayan,
2014). In larger, more complex societies, the belief
in a “Big God” has emerged, organizing coopera-
tion and prosocial behavior (even toward strang-
ers): “religion’s role in regulating moral affairs
in large societies has been a cultural process that
coalesced over time, primarily where anonymous
societies took shape and expanded” (Norenzayan,
2014, p. 18). From an evolutionary perspective,
religion has been seen as providing a system to
suppress selfish behavior and increase group ori-
entation (Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008). Another
important source for religious orientation may be
the experience of death. In several cultures, bio-
logical conceptions of death are supplemented with
religious conceptions, focusing on a new beginning
in the afterlife, the soul, and supernatural entities
(De Cruz, 2013; Huang, Cheng, & Zhu, 2013;
Kornadt, 2012; Roazzi, Nyhof, & Johnson, 2013).
In line with the saying “morality binds and blinds,”
recent research has focused on the harmful effects
of religion in addition to the positive.
So far, there has been a lack of culture-
psychological studies on religion in general and
on the role of religiosity in adolescents’ self- and
worldviews in particular. An exception is Jensen’s
(2009) study on conceptions of God and the Devil
based on interviews with children, adolescents, and
adults. This work shows that these conceptions
address issues related to purpose in life and the
nature of good and evil. Taking a developmental
and motivational approach that includes the role
of culture and values may lead to a better under-
standing of adolescents’ religiosity. Religiosity is a
multidimensional phenomenon including several
aspects of religious commitment (e.g., frequency
of practicing religious rituals such as prayer, etc.),
subjectively felt religiosity (strength of belief), and
the perceived role of religiosity (e.g., for moral
behavior, positive emotions, coping; e.g., Emmons,
2005). Adolescence is a period of heightened aware-
ness and search for meaning and values with which
to identify. Values are motivating factors, especially
T r om m s d or f f 385
when they are closely related to moral and reli-
gious purpose or even considered “sacred” values
(Ginges & Atran, 2011; Weber, 1958). Religious
purpose and beliefs are related to adolescents’
development of values and moral orientation (e.g.,
“ethics of divinity”) when they serve the search for
meaning and self-identity as part of adolescents’
self- and worldviews. Accordingly, adolescents tend
to search for religious beliefs tied to moral values
as guiding orientations in the development of their
self- and worldviews.
Psychological studies on adolescents’ religious
purpose have recently increased, partly due to a rise
of religious fundamentalism and a heightened spir-
itual awareness among adolescents (Roelkepartain,
King, Wagener, & Benson, 2005). However, the
various kinds of religions (e.g., monotheism, syn-
cretism, pantheism) and their varying values and
moral beliefs have seldom been taken into account
in studies on adolescent religiosity. For example,
whereas Christians, Jews, and Muslims believe
in a personal God’s distinct identity, according
to Shinto, God exists in various phenomena of
nature. Hindu belief also recognizes various gods
who differ in their roles and characters. Whereas
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are character-
ized by specific (more or less abstract) moral prin-
ciples, Shinto is rather vague. The Shinto or Hindu
observer focuses on practical activities and rituals
in daily life as a path to supernatural agency.
The rise of new forms of spirituality is thought
to be relevant for positive youth development (King
& Roeser, 2009). Positive effects of spirituality
(e.g., spiritual dimensions of transcendence and
a daily relationship with the Divine) in fostering
internalization of cultural values, adaptation to
social roles, and focus on school achievement have
been shown for adolescent development in India
(Mishra, 2012).
Researchers have often reported a positive role
of religiosity for adolescents from Western and
non-Western cultures (e.g., Youniss, McLellan, &
Yates, 1999). For example, religiosity was related to
better academic achievement and fewer risky behav-
iors in African-American students (Abar, Carter, &
Winsler, 2009). French, Eisenberg, Purwono, and
Sallquist (2012) showed positive effects of religious
orientation on social development in Indonesian
Muslim youth in Java. Culture and religion were
related to the development of a self-protective
future orientation in Israeli Palestinian adolescent
(Seginer & Mahajna, 2012). Pearce and Hardie
(2012) demonstrated a positive role of religiosity
386 C u lt u r a l R o o t s of Va l u e s , Mor a ls , a n d R e l ig iou s Or i e n t at ions
in career orientation of US adolescent girls. Bond
and colleagues (2012) reported positive effects
of religion on the life satisfaction of adolescents
in different cultures. Shannon, Oakes, Scheers,
Richardson, and Stills (2013) demonstrated a sig-
nificant association between spirituality (beliefs
and experiences) and life satisfaction for at-risk
(exposed to violence) urban African-American
adolescents. Furthermore, prosocial aspects of reli-
giosity and spirituality were related to the life satis-
faction of Korean adolescents (Kim, Miles-Mason,
Kim, & Esquivel, 2013).
One explanation for the positive effects of reli-
giosity may be that religiosity provides meaning
and fulfills needs for belonging and autonomy.
For example, the development of moral and reli-
gious purpose has been shown to be related to
European-American adolescents’ need for attach-
ment (Granqvist, 2012). When God is seen as an
attachment figure, attachment to God may satisfy
adolescents’ needs for belonging and autonomy, pos-
sibly partly compensating for experiencing insuffi-
cient social support and success. However, the role
of attachment and autonomy for religious purpose
in other cultural contexts and for non-monotheistic
religions is not yet well understood and needs fur-
ther research. Depending on the cultural context,
adolescents may be less inclined to fulfill their need
for belonging and relatedness by attachment to
a benevolent and mighty God since their need is
fulfilled by the family and ingroup. Instead, the
monitoring function of God (one mighty God or
various specific gods) in defining morals and rules
for interpersonal behavior may be more relevant
for them. Other adolescents experiencing low
self-efficacy and restricted agency may delegate
“control” to God and religious institutions, thus
bolstering their self-esteem. Also, participating in
religious groups may fulfill the need for belonging
and agency, as suggested by studies on American
adolescents (Smith, 2011).
Most studies suggest that religion and religios-
ity are positively associated with moral purpose
and adolescents’ social development. However,
when needs for relatedness and autonomy are
fulfilled by religiosity, does this necessarily imply
positive developmental outcomes? For example,
Eisenberg, Castellani, Panerai, Eggum, Cohen,
Pastorelli, & Caprara (2011) discuss how changes
in religiousness would relate to developmental out-
comes; the authors identified individual differences
in the development of religious coping. Johnson,
Li, Cohen, and Okun (2013) and Kornadt (2012)
show that different concepts of God affect differ-
ent kinds of social behavior. A concept of God as
authoritarian (controlling, punishing) or benevo-
lent (forgiving, protecting) induces more aggressive
or more prosocial behavior in believers, respec-
tively. Negative effects of religiosity, such as vio-
lence and antisocial behavior, resulting from social
identity processes in specific groups cannot be
ignored (Ysseldyk, Matheson, & Anisman, 2010).
Recent acts of terrorism (e.g., Boston Marathon
attack) suggest that attachment to a Big God and
belonging to a religious group may satisfy a need
for power and, under certain conditions, may evoke
violent aggression against nonbelievers.
Furthermore, it can be assumed that adoles-
cents’ religious values and related moral behavior
support individual or relational agency, depending
on their self- and worldview and the respective cul-
tural context.
Relations Among Values, Morals,
and Religious Orientations
To date, research on values, morals, and reli-
gious purpose in adolescent development has
focused on only one or two of these phenomena
and has usually ignored the role of culture. Some
studies have discussed selected relations (e.g.,
among values and morality, values and religios-
ity, or morality and religiosity). For example, rela-
tions between values and religiosity were discussed
by Rokeach (1969) and in the meta-analysis by
Saroglou, Delpierre, and Dernelle (2004) based on
Schwartz’s model. Trommsdorff and Chen (2012)
included several culture-informed contributions
on the roles of values and religion in adolescent
adjustment (e.g., Bond et al., 2012; French et al.,
2012; Knafo, Daniel, Gabay, Zilber, & Shir, 2012;
Kornadt, 2012; Mayer & Trommsdorff, 2012;
Mishra, 2012; Pearce & Hardie, 2012; Saroglou,
2012; Schwartz, 2012; Seginer & Mahajna, 2012;
Trommsdorff, 2012b). However, the interrelations
among all three—values, morals, and religious pur-
pose—were not explicitly studied in that volume
because this was not its main topic. I would suggest
that self- and worldviews function as generalized
beliefs about the self, others, and the social, physi-
cal, and spiritual worlds. These generalized beliefs
are shaped by the cultural context and interrelate
all three—values, morals, and religious purpose—
as aspects of the cultural context.
In their study on minority groups of Jewish late
adolescents in Belgium, Saraglou and Hanique
(2006) investigated the influence of religion
and values on Jewish and other collective identi-
ties. Adolescents shifting from a Jewish identity
to a Belgian or to a transnational identity were
less religious and had less traditional values. In
a cross-cultural study on religiosity of adoles-
cents (based on data from the VOC Study), fam-
ily values, especially interdependence, mediated
positive effects of religiosity on optimism and sub-
jective well-being (Sabatier, Mayer, Friedlmeier,
Lubiewska, & Trommsdorff, 2011). Furthermore,
Mayer and Trommsdorff (2012) have shown dif-
ferent cross-cultural relations among family val-
ues and religious orientations in individual- and
culture-level studies. These and other studies show
that similarities between family values and reli-
gious orientation of the mainstream society are
associated with adolescents’ well-being, thus sup-
porting theories of cultural fit (Fulmer et al., 2010;
Higgins, 2012; Oishi, 2000) and predicting posi-
tive developmental effects when individual and cul-
tural values match.
Chinese adolescents do not consider religion to
be important, and atheism is the official state belief
in modern China. However, traditional Confucian
values of filial piety are strongly related to adoles-
cents’ moral purpose of obedience and indebtedness
to parents. The Confucian example thus indicates
that “taboo” values such as filial piety are affecting
moral purpose without being explicitly related to
religion. In a similar way, in many Western secu-
lar societies, values of intergenerational solidarity
are the basis for parental support. In contrast, in
various other cultures, family values and related
moral purpose (including ritualized filial duties
to parents and ancestors) are fostered by spiritual
beliefs in the other world. Family values and related
moral and religious purpose encompass the past,
present, and the future, for example, connecting
the individual person and the (powerful) ancestors.
Furthermore, interrelations among values,
moral purpose, and spirituality can be observed in
nonsecular cultures such as India. Mishra (2012)
explains how Hindu values are related to religious
beliefs and the respective religious and moral
socialization. In his study on the Hindu worldview,
Mishra (2013) claims that religious and spiritual
pursuits cannot be separated from each other;
furthermore, morality is not possible without
self-transcendence based on spiritual development.
Moksha, one of the Hindu worldviews, affects social
behavior and positive interpersonal and intergroup
relationships. Through moksha, the attainment
of one’s true, basically good self is possible, thus
T r om m s d or f f 387
allowing for moral actions. Developing a sense of
unity with others overcomes boundaries between
the self and others, in line with the belief that God
and our true self are one.
Religiosity is an important experience in ado-
lescent development when providing fulfillment
of basic needs. When religiosity is closely related
to adolescents’ values and moral purpose as part
of their self- and worldviews, strong motivational
dynamics can be expected, depending on the cul-
tural context and situational constellations. For
example, intergroup conflicts associated with inter-
religious relations may arise for adolescents from
immigrant families and ethnic minorities who face
the problem of managing dominant cultural val-
ues and expectations that differ from those of their
families (Verkuyten & Martinovic, 2012). The per-
ceived incompatibility between the values of the
host or majority group and the minority’s ethnore-
ligious community may induce frustrations due
to adolescents’ difficulties in building an identity.
This may give rise to aggressive behavior directed
toward the (majority) outgroup.
The need for group identity has been acknowl-
edged in much research on adolescence. Moral
commitment to the ingroup and related commit-
ment to sacred values may function as the most
powerful motivation for political violence when
experiencing threat against one’s ingroup (Ginges
& Atran, 2011; Ginges, Hansen, & Norenzayan,
2009). Experiencing humiliation or loss of con-
trol and honor increases the solidarity of (reli-
gious or other social) groups. Violent reactions are
perceived as legitimate, and terror activities are
acknowledged as a noble struggle in the name of
God (e.g., Putra & Sukabdi, 2013). Perceived col-
lective humiliation is the basis for nontraditional
forms of group identity that fuel moral reason-
ing and the motivation to violently pursue sacred
values, especially when values of masculine power
prevail (Kornadt, 2012). In those cases in which
religious purpose and sacred values are associ-
ated with ingroup identity and moral commit-
ment to the ingroup, the probability for violent
acts (e.g., “fighting to die for a cause”) increases
(Ginges & Atran, 2011). The authors refer to case
study interviews showing that most of the vio-
lent jihadis and suicide bombers adopted radical
Islam in adolescence when the search for identity
has high priority. When group identity is related
to a collective sense of honor and the expectation
of respect for the sacred values of one’s ingroup,
moral commitment as part of one’s social identity
388 C u lt u r a l R o o t s of Va l u e s , Mor a ls , a n d R e l ig iou s Or i e n t at ions
can serve as the basis for collective action (Drury
& Reicher, 2000). Sacred values may be related not
only to religious but also to moral purpose. Here,
adolescents’ need for autonomy, relatedness, and
competence can be assumed to be experienced as
collective needs. In the case that one’s own group’s
sacred values are not accepted or are even rejected
by the outgroup (nonbelievers), moral outrage
and political violence may result. For example, in
2006, two young Lebanese attempted a terrorist
attack in two trains in Germany in order to kill a
large number of “nonbelievers.” One of the adoles-
cent terrorists was reported to argue that terrorism
was a justified reaction to the publication of the
Mohammed paintings that he considered a crimi-
nal act (Emig, 2012).
As recent studies on sacred values, moral
commitment, and group identity have shown,
basic individual needs may be transformed by
cultural and group dynamic processes into col-
lective action. Accordingly, an extension of
self-determination theory that includes cultural
and social-psychological processes seems necessary
to explain the moral outrage and violence of adoles-
cents who are committed to fundamental religious
beliefs. Furthermore, recent theories on social and
relational morality discussing the relations among
values, morality, and religiosity (Graham & Haidt,
2012; Haidt, 2007; Rai & Fiske, 2011) should be
extended to questions of development in adoles-
cence. When religious group identification and
related strict ingroup norms are related to a moral
(sacred) worldview, the associations among religios-
ity, moral purpose, and values intensify. This may
be especially the case in adolescence when individ-
uals are searching for purpose in life, for autonomy,
and relatedness.
A recent example is the transformation of a
German adolescent, Eric Breininger, into a radi-
cal Islamist related to the “Sauerland-Gruppe”. He
was killed in Waziristan by soldiers from Pakistan.
Before his death, he described this act as his way
to paradise (Ghaffar al-Almani, 2009). His writ-
ing showed that he was searching for meaning,
experiencing a major crisis, and suffering from
various difficult exercises after a religious Muslim
convinced him to become a Muslim himself. As
a result of his further very rapid radicalization,
he finally left for a terrorist training camp of the
Islamic Dschihad-Union in Pakistan. There, he
suffered from physical pain during the tough train-
ing and from social isolation due to little Arab lan-
guage proficiency and the loss of two of his Muslim
“brothers.” However, he felt a moral obligation that
his way to paradise had to include such personal
sacrifices and also the death of the “nonbelievers.”
His harsh self-discipline and self-imposed psycho-
logical and physical suffering can be seen as indi-
cators for secondary control; however, they were
instrumental in his achieving primary control: the
killing of nonbelievers on his “way to paradise.”
Moral values can transform into sacred, abso-
lute, and even transcendent values, as this exam-
ple and as Ginges and Atran (2011) have shown.
Adolescents may engage in political acts of violent
extremism and self-sacrifice motivated by dynam-
ics of “sacred values” and moral commitment
(Kornadt, 2012). In certain sociocultural settings, a
combination of certain values and moral intuitions
may constitute a self- and worldview that “binds
and blinds.” This process may indicate the role of
situational strength affecting the roles played by
values, morals, and religious purpose in adoles-
cents’ development.
Conclusion and Outlook
Values, morals, and religious purpose are inter-
related as crucial components of adolescents’
self- and world views that provide meaning and
orientation. They are inextricably intertwined with
the respective cultural context through socializa-
tion processes. Abstract conceptions of cultural
values do not reveal their specific functions unless
the respective sociocultural context is taken into
account. For example, social orientations may be
functional in both egalitarian as well as hierarchi-
cal structures. Or, individualism may function well
when combined with social orientation or interde-
pendence. Therefore, the cultural and individual
levels of analyses have to be distinguished and pos-
sibly integrated by multilevel methods.
The cultural model of relative independence and
interdependence, the culture’s relatively tight or
loose structure, the respective situational strength,
and the adolescents’ social position, socialization
experience, and personality all contribute to shap-
ing adolescents’ agency and fostering their self- and
worldviews. Culture-specific socialization func-
tions through social interactions between adoles-
cents and their parents, peers, and other adults
in more or less tightly structured and regulated
social situations. Accordingly, adolescents’ indi-
vidual agency focuses on selecting goals in accor-
dance with their self- and worldviews. Beyond
the sociocultural context, and beyond individual
needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness,
adolescents’ agency is shaped by collective needs of
social identity.
Individual and collective agency, fueled by
self-regulation, constitutes adolescents’ agentic
development. Therefore, from a culture-informed
perspective, simply contrasting autonomy and
relatedness and independent and interdependent
values is misleading. It is instead assumed that
both autonomy and relatedness have different
functions: for example, autonomy aiming for inde-
pendence or autonomy aiming at self-endorsement
accommodating to social expectations (Chen,
Vansteenkiste, Beyers, Soenens, & Van Petegem,
2013). The different functions of relatedness, as
suggested by Rothbaum and Trommsdorff (2007),
have pointed to the culture-specific function of
relatedness as balancing autonomy in the search
for trust (between independent individuals) and
relatedness as resulting from a belief in assurance
(between interdependent individuals).
Self-regulation serving to reach individual or
collective goals in the face of difficulties and over
time can be promoted by adhering to specific val-
ues, morals, and religious purpose. The type of
self-regulation that is used depends on self- and
worldviews (malleable vs. entity) (Dweck, 1999)
and is based on control beliefs (e.g., primary, sec-
ondary, harmony control) (Morling & Evered,
2006; Seginer, Trommsdorff, & Essau, 1993;
Weisz, Rothbaum, & Blackburn, 1984), the relative
preference for approach/promotion- or avoidance/
prevention-focused goals (Higgins, 2012), and on
cultural models of independence or interdepen-
dence (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Self-regulation
is shaped by situational affordances and constraints
and guides culturally adaptive behavior in adoles-
cents’ development (Trommsdorff, 2009a; 2012a).
The interrelations among values, morality, and
religiosity are therefore manifest in adolescents’
self- and worldviews and their related preferences
for self-regulation and control. For example, when
experiencing diminished personal control, adoles-
cents may prefer to shift control expectations to
supernatural beings (God) or powerful others (e.g.,
closely knit social groups). Such belief in powerful
agents may foster values of obedience and confor-
mity to the respective authority and result in social
movements based in religion and peaceful activi-
ties (e.g., Gandhi, Martin Luther King) or result
in civil disobedience, violence, or terrorism. When
adolescents are motivated to align with the (power-
ful) agent’s expectations, their need for autonomy,
competence, and relatedness can be fulfilled. This
T r om m s d or f f 389
process may promote the agentic pursuit of “sacred”
values, intertwining morality with religion.
Interrelations among values, morality, and reli-
gious purpose depend on the fulfillment of the basic
individual needs of autonomy, competence, and
relatedness (see also the need to belong and to fit
in: Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Over & Carpenter,
2013). However, these individual needs may be
transformed into collective needs depending on the
given situation and cultural context and the strength
of normative rules. Accordingly, the need to achieve
collective autonomy, competence, and relatedness
may induce adolescents to conform to group norms,
imitate role models, and integrate group-oriented
values and religious and moral beliefs as part of
their individual self- and worldviews.
Therefore, it is suggested that we extend our focus
on the developmental and social-psychological pro-
cesses of person–environment interactions (e.g.,
specified by relational models and culture-informed
situational strength theory). Consequently, the
discussion on adolescents’ development of values,
morals, and religious purpose should be taking into
account both individual and collective self- and
worldviews.
This extension broadens the perspective beyond
the mainstream of psychological studies on adoles-
cence, which have neglected the vast and diverse
majority of the world’s population and ongoing
sociocultural changes. For example, in the future,
adolescents will encounter multiple cultures and
will have to adapt to changing interrelations
between tradition and modernity, stability and
change, autonomy and relatedness.
To date, the assumed dynamics of the cultural
mechanisms that shape adolescents’ values, mor-
als, and religious purposes have been discussed
as components of their self- and worldviews.
However, the substance of those mechanisms as
part of person–environment interactions in rela-
tion to adolescents’ developmental and situational
resources and constraints remains to be studied
in more detail. Furthermore, the role of culture,
situations, and norms in the development of val-
ues, morals, and religious purpose also needs more
empirical research.
In future research, cultural and individual dif-
ferences in the transmission processes of values,
morals, and religious purpose have to be taken
into account (e.g., Knafo et al., 2012; Knafo &
Schwartz, 2009; Trommsdorff, 2009b). Here, the
role of tightness of norms in the transmission pro-
cess has to be studied in more detail. Although
390 C u lt u r a l R o o t s of Va l u e s , Mor a ls , a n d R e l ig iou s Or i e n t at ions
normative socialization is an essential aspect of
children’s and adolescents’ development of values,
morals, and religious purpose in all cultures, cul-
tures differ how they prioritize the strictness and
contents of certain norms and practices, as well
as the strictness of sanctions when individuals do
not conform to these norms. Cultural socialization
therefore differs regarding the tightness or loose-
ness of norms and how these norms are transmitted.
In loose, secular cultures, for example, religion
is usually practiced only on specific occasions,
whereas in nonsecularized cultures, religious and
spiritual traditions function as cultural entities
and are performed and transmitted through prac-
tice in everyday life (Belzen, 2010). Therefore, in
traditional societies, moral development is closely
related and intertwined with religious develop-
ment. Rai and Fiske (2011) suggest that for many
people across various cultures “morality is religion”
(p. 67). In these societies, agents of socialization
refrain from verbal explanations of moral and reli-
gious principles and instead rely on sharing moral
and religious practices through rituals in the fam-
ily and community. In traditional societies, values
and religious and spiritual rituals are practiced
and experienced in everyday social activities; these
function as major transmission belts for adoles-
cents’ development of values, morals, and religious
purpose. This process refers to the assumed univer-
sal motivation to follow the conventional norms,
which are expressed in social activities and ritual-
ized behavior (e.g., for Java or India see Mishra,
2012; Mulder, 1996; Shweder et al., 1997).
In Western, secularized societies, the socializa-
tion of values, morals, and religious beliefs is based
on argumentative reasoning and explanations of
general models, the Zeitgeist, or abstract moral
principles. By contrast, in traditional, non-Western
societies, value transmission and the transmission
of moral and religious purpose is based on the ful-
fillment of clearly defined, concrete duties in every-
day life. These duties involve various rituals and
daily practices that structure adolescents’ devel-
opmental tasks and regulate their everyday behav-
ior as part of normative socialization processes.
Thereby, children and adolescents receive concrete
information about adequate situation-specific
behavior, enabling the development of realistic goal
setting and early self-regulation abilities that foster
the development of cultural fit in close cooperation
with adults and peers. Adolescents may have to
choose among cultural tasks by referring to indi-
vidual and/or collective agency.
 Universal and culturally specific processes
influence adolescents’ development of values,
morals, and religious purpose, which are embed-
ded in the cultural context. Although Brewer and
Chen (2007) suggest that cultures provide answers
to questions about the self, the world, and goals
to which one should aspire, these answers prob-
ably lack clarity and consistency and may have
multiple interpretations in “open” or “loose” cul-
tures where heterogeneity and ongoing changes
prevail, thus undermining the strength of the
situation. Accordingly, adolescents may have to
choose among cultural tasks and answers and
their respective meaning. Thus, adolescents regu-
late their individual development by integrating
values, morals, and religious orientations in line
with their self- and world-views by referring to
individual and/or collective agency to achieve an
optimal cultural fit.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the German
Research Foundation (DFG GZ, TR 169/14-
3) as part of the Research Group “Limits of
intentionality.” I am grateful to Hans-Joachim
Kornadt and Rachel Seginer for their valuable
comments, especially for Rachel’s reference to the
Old Testament and for providing narratives from
Israeli girls. I thank Holly Bunje for her careful
editing.
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 C H A P T E R

24 Identity, Politics, and the Cultural

Psychology of Adolescence

Phillip L. Hammack and Erin Toolis

Abstract
This chapter outlines a theoretical position on culture and human development grounded in cultural
psychology’s theses of psychological diversity, mutual constitution, and linguistic mediation, as well
as a view of identity and narrative linked to critical perspectives on language and power. Adolescence
represents the life course moment of cultural reproduction or repudiation, as adolescents begin to
form identities positioned in relation to existing narratives about the social order. A pronounced role
for politics is proposed in this perspective, as cultural actors and narratives are not neutral in relation
to existing power structures. Adolescent identity development is inherently political and assumes a
role in the maintenance or challenge of a particular social order. Culture and human development are
thus linked to politics in ways less frequently recognized in existing theoretical positions in cultural
and developmental psychology. Empirical examples from research examining narrative identity
development in distinct contexts illustrate the theoretical position.
Key Words:  adolescence, culture, cultural psychology, politics, narrative, identity, language,
development

In the period between puberty and adulthood, the
resources of tradition fuse with new inner resources
to create something potentially new: A new person;
and with this new person a new generation, and
with that, a new era.
—(Erikson, 1958, p. 20)
Language is not a neutral medium that passes
freely and easily into the private property of the
speaker’s intentions; it is populated—overpopu-
lated—with the intentions of others.
—(Bakhtin, 1981, p. 294)
During a hot 2007 summer in the suburbs
of Chicago, a group of Israeli, Palestinian, and
American adolescents gathered as part of a 2-week
experiment in coexistence. They met daily for
structured dialogue and then ate, played, and
laughed together. In many ways, their experience of
adolescence seemed remarkably similar. They could
speak a common language—English. (English
fluency is common among both Israelis and
Palestinians, although their first languages are
Hebrew and Arabic, respectively.) They were
excited about the same music and movies. Their
food preference was uniformly pizza or hamburg-
ers. Most of all during those 2 weeks, they wanted
time together, apart from the adult staff, to explore
their connections with one another.
An intercultural gathering such as that among
Israeli, Palestinian, and American adolescents
might at first glance suggest a new kind of uni-
formity to the adolescent experience—a universal
engagement and enchantment with the “global”
culture of music and film and a universal desire
for autonomy from adults (Arnett, 2002). But
Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans inhabit dis-
tinct national identities that are asymmetrically

396
positioned; these distinct identities do not pos-
sess equality with regard to politics and power
(Rouhana, 2004). American adolescents exist in
a context of global “superpower” status and hege-
mony (e.g., Chomsky, 2004). Israeli and Palestinian
adolescents exist in a context of long-standing
national conflict and asymmetrical status, with
Palestinians lacking formal statehood under con-
tinued Israeli military occupation (Gordon, 2008;
Rouhana, 2004).
A closer look at this 2-week exchange revealed
the way in which Israelis and Palestinians com-
peted for the attention and sympathy of American
adolescents—being the group positioned closest to
the “global” culture of Hollywood films and pop
music and also the “outside” group with regard to
the long-standing national conflict between Israelis
and Palestinians. Embedded within the dialogue
exchanges that occurred among these youth during
those 2 weeks was the rhetoric of conflict (Pilecki
& Hammack, 2014). As Israelis and Palestinians
engaged in conversation, they reproduced the stale-
mate of narratives that characterizes their national
conflict (Hammack, 2011a) and revealed the place
of adolescent identity formation in the larger pro-
cess of social stasis and change.
In this chapter, we present a theoretical position
on adolescent identity, politics, and culture and
review empirical work that illustrates its potential
to link diverse disciplinary perspectives on culture
and human development. Through the lens of cul-
tural psychology (e.g., Shweder, 1990; Vygotsky,
1978), critical theories of language and power (e.g.,
Volosinov, 1929/1973), and classic theoretical for-
mulations of adolescence (e.g., Erikson, 1968), we
articulate a co-constitutive perspective on culture
and adolescence in which we imagine adolescents
as both cultural “products” and “producers,” seek-
ing to strike a theoretical balance with regard to
agency and structure. We situate our perspective
within cultural psychology’s anchoring theses and
suggest an empirical approach grounded in narra-
tive. Cultural psychology’s emphasis on language as
a form of mediated social practice (e.g., Vygotsky,
1934/1962), coupled with the long-standing recog-
nition of identity development as a critical process
of adolescence (Meeus, 2011), leads us to theorize
narrative identity as a key construct of interroga-
tion for the cultural psychology of adolescence.
We recognize that there may be other theoretical
and methodological approaches that link identity
and politics in adolescence, but we suggest that
the emphasis on language inherent in a narrative
approach makes it particularly amenable to a cul-
tural psychology analysis.
Making the political nature of narrative identity
explicit through the concept of master narrative
engagement (e.g., Hammack, 2011b), we argue,
reveals the role of adolescence in social and political
action. Thus, we conceive of identity not as a static
category or personal trait but rather as a social and
cognitive process anchored in engagement with
language in its structured, storied form in rela-
tion to an existing “verbal-ideological” community
(Bakhtin, 1981). Our perspective on narrative iden-
tity development in adolescence is anchored in the
oft-neglected (in developmental psychology) politi-
cal aspect of narrative identity (cf. Somers, 1994;
Suny, 2001) because we view cultural reproduction
or repudiation as an inherently political process—a
process concerned with the reproduction, consoli-
dation, or revolution of power dynamics and hege-
monic social relations.
We begin with a brief review of the study of
culture, identity, and adolescence, grounding our
discussion in three theses of a cultural psychology
approach. We conceive of a cultural psychology of
adolescence that emphasizes issues of identity,
power, and language. We then present an integra-
tive perspective on culture, identity, and adoles-
cence that places narrative at its theoretical and
empirical center. We highlight research examples
that illustrate the vitality of this perspective and
conclude with suggestions for future research.
Identity and the Cultural Psychology
of Adolescence
Emerging in the industrial era as a distinct
period of the life course (Kett, 1977) and marked
by its transitional nature between the halcyon days
of childhood and the burden of adult obligations,
adolescence has captured the imagination of social
scientists and the public for more than a century.
With the formal establishment of developmental
psychology in the 19th and 20th centuries, adoles-
cence gradually came to be recognized as a critical
developmental period for theoretical and empiri-
cal interrogation (e.g., Blos, 1962; Erikson, 1959;
Freud, 1958; Gesell, Ilg, & Ames, 1956; Piaget,
1972). As ideas about adolescent “storm and stress”
(Hall, 1904) gave way to concerns of “youth rebel-
lion” and cultural upheaval in the mid-20th cen-
tury (Erikson, 1968; Keniston, 1971; Mead, 1970),
adolescence became a concern not just for develop-
mental science, but also for an anxious populace
uncertain of the outcome of cultural change.
H a m m ac k , T o ol i s 397
 Today, we take the developmental period of
adolescence as an inevitable moment of biologi-
cal and social transition for individuals (Casey,
Jones, & Somerville, 2011), occurring with increas-
ing universalism (although not uniformity) across
the globe (Brown, Larson, & Saraswathi, 2002;
Schlegel & Hewlett, 2011) as processes like glo-
balization create common contexts of development
(Arnett, 2002; Jensen, Arnett, & McKenzie, 2011;
Larson, Wilson, & Rickman, 2009). Contrary to
prior ideas, adolescence does not necessarily inevi-
tably entail “storm and stress” (Arnett, 1999), but
it does involve social and biological change (Casey
et al., 2011).
Adolescence, however, is not simply an individ-
ual experience; it characterizes a cultural process in
which an entire cohort within a community engages
with an inherited system of social practices, includ-
ing language, to either reproduce or remake the
social order (e.g., Erikson, 1968). The cultural psy-
chology of adolescence, we contend, represents the
study of adolescence as a process of person-setting
co-constitution, primarily through the study of
language practices, tool use, and mediated activity
(e.g., Rogoff, Baker-Sennett, Lacasa, & Goldsmith,
1995; Shweder, 1990; Vygotsky, 1934/1962, 1978).
These practices, however, are not neutral in relation
to existing social orders (Bakhtin, 1981; Volosinov,
1929/1973). Hence, the cultural psychology of ado-
lescence is, in our view, the study of how configura-
tions of power are maintained or challenged in the
course of a generation and how individuals partici-
pate in this social process in the course of their devel-
opment through a process of narrative engagement
(Hammack, 2008, 2011b; Hammack & Cohler,
2009). Identity, understood as a process by which
individuals navigate personal and social forces to
develop a workable “configuration” that provides
meaning and coherence (Erikson, 1959; Schachter,
2004, 2005), provides the empirical window for a
cultural psychology of adolescence.
Our theoretical position is rooted in three
anchoring theses of cultural psychology. First, cul-
tural psychology’s thesis of psychological diversity
suggests that we be chiefly concerned with “diver-
gences in mind, self, and emotion” (Shweder, 1990,
p. 1). Hence, one empirical goal of a cultural psy-
chology of adolescence is to document particular-
ity in the mental processes that occur at this life
course moment. Second, cultural psychology’s
thesis of mutual constitution conceives of persons
and settings as dynamically co-constitutive. The
idea of mutual constitution assumes that social and
398 I de n t i t y, P ol i t ics , a n d t h e C u lt u r a l P s yc hol o g y of A d ol e sc e nc e
psychological life occurs within the context of a
received cultural meaning system but that within
that system individuals engage in practices that
may alter the received system. Through participat-
ing in cultural practices (e.g., Gutierrez & Rogoff,
2003; Rogoff et al., 1995) or internalizing cul-
tural “schemata” or “models” (e.g., D’Andrade &
Strauss, 1992; Shore, 1996) or rebelling against
them, cultural actors shape and reshape the inher-
ited meaning system.
Our third anchoring thesis—cultural psychol-
ogy’s thesis of linguistic mediation—provides a
richer account of precisely how mutual consti-
tution occurs and a way to study psychological
diversity in adolescence. The idea of linguistic
mediation has a long history in the social sciences
and posits that language assumes a central role in
shaping thought (for review, see Lucy, 1997) and
that language is fundamentally a form of tool use
and hence a form of social practice (e.g., Vygotsky,
1934/1962, 1978). Vygotsky (1978) makes the
distinction between “social speech” and “inner
speech,” positing that the internalization and
appropriation of social speech guides our activity in
the social world. In other words, as we engage with
words and their meanings in a given sociohistorical
context, we become cultural actors who participate
in what Bakhtin (1981) calls a “verbal-ideological
community,” with implications for sociopolitical
development. Consistent with Vygotsky’s (1978)
ideas about social and inner speech, Bakhtin (1981)
argues that our utterances are populated by the
voices of others—namely, those of authority in
some verbal-ideological community. Hence, our
words are not just our own; they are made in and
through others.
These central theses of cultural psychology
have gradually become incorporated into ado-
lescent research. Diversity in the social and psy-
chological experience of adolescence has become
particularly well-documented, with research on
variability now expanding across the globe (e.g.,
Arnett, 2012; Brown et al., 2002). Perspectives
on psychological diversity in adolescence have
increasingly taken a critical approach in which
the Eurocentric bias of developmental science
is recognized. For example, Nsamenang (1995,
2006, 2011) reviews the history of developmental
research in Africa in both anthropology and psy-
chology, illustrating the way in which European
and American values and norms have been either
explicitly or implicitly imposed on the study of
the African life course. He argues that human
development in an indigenous African psychol-
ogy must be understood as cyclical, rather than
linear, and that norms regarding African devel-
opment must be indigenously conceived. In his
framework, social selfhood begins to assume
prominence in the African life course in infancy,
as the child is named. The place of the individual
in a community is thus highlighted from the ear-
liest age, in contrast to European and American
societies, which place greater emphasis on the
individual and the nuclear family than the com-
munity and the extended family. In most African
societies, adolescence is characterized by ini-
tiation rituals into adult roles, which are highly
cherished.
Research explicitly concerned with cultural
psychology’s thesis of mutual constitution has
focused on self and identity, although more rarely
among adolescents than might be expected. The
contrast between North American “indepen-
dent” or “egocentric” selves and Asian “interde-
pendent” or “sociocentric” selves has proved a
highly generative anchor for cultural psycholo-
gy’s empirical agenda (e.g., Markus & Kitayama,
1991, 2010; Shweder & Bourne, 1982). Recent
approaches have integrated consideration of
intersectional and class-based approaches to
examine the relationship between social inequal-
ity and individual psychological processes (e.g.,
Stephens, Markus, & Fryberg, 2012; Walby,
Armstrong, & Strid, 2012). Cultural psychologi-
cal approaches to mutual constitution have thus
gradually shifted to incorporate a view of culture
as linked to power and inequality (Gjerde, 2004),
as opposed to a “neutral” system of meaning (e.g.,
Fryberg, 2012). This research has generally not,
however, focused on adolescence or assumed a
developmental perspective.
Cultural psychology has focused more on spe-
cific processes, such as self or identity development,
than on developmental phases, such as adoles-
cence itself, in the cycle of mutual constitution.
Consistent with the thesis of mutual constitution,
we view adolescence as the moment in an individ-
ual’s life course and a society’s course of history in
which, to paraphrase Erikson (1958), an old order
is preserved or toppled. This order, we contend, is
culture itself—the system of meanings, symbols,
representations, language, and customs that cohere
within a human community. The empirical inter-
rogation of identity among cultural actors reveals
this process at work and provides a window into
cultural constitution as an active process. Our
general thesis, then, is that the cultural psychology
of adolescence is more than the study of variabil-
ity in a particular stage of human development.
Rather, if anchored in the theoretical position we
develop in this chapter, the cultural psychology of
adolescence is the study of social and political stasis
and change itself; it is the study of how individuals
psychologically reproduce the conditions of culture
in the course of their development by constructing
a narrative identity.
How precisely do individuals engage in these
processes of social reproduction and change? We
contend that language, and particularly the use
of language in narrative and discourse, provides a
window into this process in action. Cultural psy-
chology’s thesis of linguistic mediation is implic-
itly prominent in recent anthropological research
on adolescence. A number of recent studies in
sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and the
anthropology of education have examined the rela-
tionship between language and ideology in ado-
lescence, either explicitly or implicitly through the
lens of the linguistic mediation thesis. Researchers
have focused on adolescent language and its relation
to power with regard to ethnic or national identity
(e.g., Avni, 2012; Charalambous, 2012; Echeverria,
2003; Woolard, 2013), class or socioeconomic sta-
tus (e.g., Hicks, 2004; Pichler, 2006), and gender
(e.g., Georgakopoulou, 2005; Peterson & Calovini,
2004; Pichler, 2006). This emerging field of study,
situated primarily in anthropology, emphasizes
the way in which adolescents’ experience of the
social world is mediated through language and lin-
guistic practices that are not neutral with regard
to intergroup relations. A more explicit theoreti-
cal integration of linguistic mediation in the cul-
tural psychology of adolescence may generate new
cross-disciplinary collaborations that can link cul-
ture, language, and power in an integrative way.
We return to this research to review particular
examples following the next section, in which we
provide a fuller description of the idea of narrative
identity.
In sum, adolescence emerged as a cultural con-
cept in the context of industrialism and its shift-
ing implications for labor and social organization.
Originally conceived as a universal and inevitable
moment of “storm and stress” (Hall, 1904), ado-
lescence is now recognized as assuming diverse
processes and forms across the globe (e.g., Arnett,
2012). An approach anchored in cultural psychol-
ogy’s three key theses of psychological diversity,
mutual constitution, and linguistic mediation
H a m m ac k , T o ol i s 399
offers the potential to interrogate the dynamic link
between self and society. In the next section, we
integrate these perspectives into a coherent frame-
work for the study of identity, culture, politics, and
adolescence.
Narrative and the Politics of Adolescent
Identity: An Integrative Approach
Narrative: What Is It?
Language is socially organized into “dis-
courses,” or coherent accounts that convey mean-
ing about events, ideas, or concepts and categories
(e.g., Foucault, 1972; Parker, 1992). That is, words
come together through the acts of speakers and
writers to convey an idea, a sentiment, a stance
or position, and both social and psychological life
are dependent on this “conversation of gestures”
(Mead, 1934). Language thus assumes a form that
creates coherence and is positioned in relation to a
verbal-ideological community (Bakhtin, 1981).
A central form of discourse is the narrative or
story. A narrative represents a “spoken or written
account of connected events” (Narrative, 2013).
In our view, narratives represent the symbolic
tools through which adolescents begin to partici-
pate in cultural regeneration or resistance. They do
so through a process of master narrative engage-
ment in which they begin to make decisions about
inherited narratives of identity, history, and social
organization that either uphold or challenge the
status quo through their form, thematic content,
and ideological setting (Hammack, 2008). Hence,
adolescents make decisions (conscious or other-
wise) to participate in an existing verbal-ideological
community by adopting its language or to form a
new community and, in the process, a reformu-
lated culture. In challenging existing narratives,
adolescents alter the basis of shared meaning in a
verbal-ideological community.
A narrative approach emerged in the social sci-
ences around the same time as cultural psychol-
ogy to challenge the received paradigm of human
development (e.g., Bruner, 1990; Cohler, 1982;
Sarbin, 1986). Cohler (1982) challenged the stan-
dard ontogenetic view of human development, sug-
gesting that human development be conceived as
an interpretive science focused on the development
of a personal narrative across the life course. Bruner
(1990) posited that we make meaning through
narratives—a process that guides our intentional
action in a community—and suggested that cul-
tural psychology (and psychological science more
broadly) ought to devote greater empirical concern
400 I de n t i t y, P ol i t ics , a n d t h e C u lt u r a l P s yc hol o g y of A d ol e sc e nc e
to narrative. In the two decades that followed these
and other early formulations, a narrative paradigm
has come to thrive in psychology and beyond (see
Hammack & Pilecki, 2012; McAdams, 2011).
The majority of psychological theory and
research on narrative focuses on individual pro-
cesses and the function of narrative meaning-
making in relatively small-scale contexts. The
development of the life story has traditionally
been studied from an ontogenetic perspective,
tracing its development across the life span (e.g.,
McLean 2008; Pals, 2006; Pasupathi, Mansour,
& Brubaker, 2007). Furthermore, the majority of
these studies focus on middle-class, white, Western
participants. Although the act of storytelling itself
may be universal, research suggests that the value
and practice of narrative identity, as well as its
form and content, are culturally variable (Fivush,
Haden, & Reese, 2006). Thus, there is a need to
explore more macroanalytic cultural and historical
variation in narrative construction.
Empirical research on narrative identity has
revealed the significance of social and cultural con-
text. However, Bhatia (2011) suggests that narrative
research must go beyond attempts to understand
an individual story within the context of a single
culture and rather must consider how globalization
and intercultural conflict shape individuals’ expe-
riences of sameness and difference. Furthermore,
dimensions of cultural power and social posi-
tion have gone relatively unexplored, apart from
an interest in gender differences (e.g., McLean &
Breen, 2009; Thorne & McLean, 2002). Although
much research has focused on how environmen-
tal factors contribute to the shaping of a story
(e.g., McLean, 2005; Pasupathi & Hoyt, 2009),
rarely has research explored how stories shape our
environment and sculpt our narrative landscape
to effect societal change. In addition, the major-
ity of empirical work on narrative in psychology
has implicitly adopted an ontogenetic perspective
that seeks to chart narrative identity development
within a Platonic idea of universalism in human
development (e.g., McLean & Lilgendahl, 2008).
An approach situated within a cultural psychology
framework favors the study of particularity, vari-
ability, and narrative meaning-making in relation
to an existing social order in historical time and
place.
Why Narrative?
Our vision of narrative takes a more macro-
scopic perspective on the role individual actors play
in social stasis and change. We propose that narra-
tive is the tool through which cultural participants
use language to reproduce or recreate culture. They
do so through constructing personal narratives not
just about their own life events in the form of a life
story, but also about the events, ideas, and values
of a verbal-ideological community. Through this
narrative identity, they provide a window into the
process of culture in action (cf. Wertsch, 1998).
A narrative approach is particularly useful in
our view because it offers a clear path to the trans-
lation from theory to research practice. The narra-
tive concept is invaluable to the empiricist because
it refers to an actual tangible “product” of human
creation, even as its form may change across the
life course (Cohler, 1982). As opposed to more
intangible concepts posited to exist in minds or in
cultures, such as the “schema” or “cultural model”
(e.g., Shore, 1996) or “collective memory” (e.g.,
Halbwachs, 1992), a narrative exists in concrete
form. It may exist in a piece of literature or film, an
educational textbook, or in a recorded verbal inter-
action or interview. Narratives thus assume some
form accessible to the social scientist. They repre-
sent language embodied, either through cultural
artifacts widely available (e.g., Brockmeier, 2002)
or through the intimacy of a particular exchange
(e.g., Mishler, 1986).
Narratives provide direct empirical windows
into the central questions of a cultural psychol-
ogy of adolescence. The study of how narratives
converge and diverge across time (e.g., differ-
ent generation-cohorts) and place (e.g., different
nationalities) speaks to cultural psychology’s con-
cern with psychological diversity. The study of the
relationship between master narratives (i.e., existing
cultural scripts about events and social categories)
and personal narratives (i.e., life stories) provides a
window into the processes of mutual constitution
and linguistic mediation as they occur. Narrative
is thus an empirical tool for the cultural psycholo-
gist who seeks to transcend levels of analysis and
consider persons and settings as dynamically
co-constituted. In the remainder of this section, we
illustrate the utility of an approach that emphasizes
narrative in the study of adolescent identity and
culture by highlighting research that either explic-
itly or implicitly embodies this approach.
Example 1: Identity, Narrative
and Conflict
We began this chapter with discussion of an
intercultural exchange among Israeli, Palestinian,
and American adolescents. At the surface level of
interaction, these adolescents shared much in com-
mon in terms of their engagement with a global
culture of media, including music, film, and social
media such as Facebook. But in their conversations
with one another, as discussion turned directly to
the conflict that has divided Jews and Arabs in
Israel and Palestine for generations, we found evi-
dence of particularity in the adolescent experience.
Accounts of victimization, for example, assumed
distinct forms, as Jewish Israelis presented a narra-
tive of justified political violence (or “righteous vic-
timhood”) while Palestinians presented a narrative
of collective dispossession, humiliation, and des-
peration (Pilecki & Hammack, 2014). Narrative
became the site of contest between these two groups
of adolescents, the mechanism through which they
reproduced the rhetoric of conflict through their
own appropriation and dissemination of its foun-
dational narratives (Ben Hagai, Hammack, Pilecki,
& Aresta, 2013; Hammack, 2011a).
The social and psychological significance of
narrative for identity is particularly apparent in
settings of intractable conflict (e.g., Bar-Tal, 2013;
Hammack, 2011a). Radically divergent interpreta-
tions of history and collective memory construct
polarized narratives through which rival human
communities construct a sense of identity and
shared meaning. Personal narratives of Israeli and
Palestinian adolescents collected during the sec-
ond Palestinian intifada illustrate these dynamics.
Jewish Israeli adolescents narrated redemptive life
stories in which personal (e.g., divorce of parents)
and collective (e.g., political violence exposure)
challenges were framed as surmountable through
resilience and strength (Hammack, 2009, 2011a).
Palestinian adolescents, by contrast, narrated “con-
taminated” life stories (McAdams & Bowman,
2001) in which personal and collective challenges
were framed as insurmountable in the larger socio-
political context of continued military occupation
(Hammack, 2010a, 2011a; see also Barber, 2008,
2009). The personal narratives of adolescents thus
mirrored in form and tone the master narratives of
national identity that circulated with regularity in
Israeli and Palestinian societies during this time of
heightened violence (e.g., Bar-Tal, 2004). The struc-
ture of personal narratives thus secured the repro-
duction of the narrative conditions of stalemate in
the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis dur-
ing this historical moment (Hammack, 2011a).
Other conflict settings beyond Israel and
Palestine reveal similar dynamics at play in the
H a m m ac k , T o ol i s 401
relationship among youth, narrative, and con-
flict. At the height of the Troubles in Northern
Ireland, Ullah (1990) revealed the way in which
youth develop their identities in talk, negotiating
the meaning of various social identities relevant
in the conflict (e.g., “Irish” vs. “English”). In the
context of postwar Croatia, Daiute and Turniski
(2005) found that youth engaged with variable
discourses on the conflict between Serbs and
Croats, and they constructed personal narrative
accounts in relation to both dominant discourses
and their own interpersonal experience in the
postconflict period. These are just two additional
examples of the way in which adolescents assume
an active role in shaping culture through a pro-
cess of narrative engagement (for further exam-
ples, see Hammack, 2010b).
Example 2: “Youth Talk” and Positioning
Identity in Adolescence
Identity is performed and indexed through lan-
guage, which has both normative and subversive
potential. Empirical studies on “youth culture” and
“youth talk” have explored how adolescents exhibit
social creativity and explore, reproduce, and resist
social norms and categories on a microinteractional
level by positioning their identities through speech
acts (Charalamous, 2012). This line of research
asserts that identity work is being done even in fleet-
ing, everyday conversations through “small stories”
(Bamberg, 2004; Bamberg & Georgakopoulou,
2008) and that these conversations are situated in
relational history and cultural context. Because the
construction of the self is inherently dialogic, this
research examines how adolescents position them-
selves in relation to others.
This approach is valuable in understanding how
adolescents interpret, enact, and negotiate social
constructs such as masculinity and femininity.
Georgakopoulou (2005) examined the conver-
sations within a friend group of four adolescent
women in Greece over the course of 2 years, starting
when the women were 17. Discussing men whom
they were romantically interested in was a popular
topic of conversation, and Georgakopoulou found
that the women used a variety of linguistic resources
to construct men and masculinity in conversation.
The women invoked gendered identities, drawing
on stereotypes, intonation, and nicknames to cast
men either as “tough” or “soft” and infantile, and,
in doing so, both reproduced and challenged dom-
inant discourses of masculinity. As participants
dialogically constructed men as “the other,” they
402 I de n t i t y, P ol i t ics , a n d t h e C u lt u r a l P s yc hol o g y of A d ol e sc e nc e
simultaneously explored their sexual desire as well
as their femininity and gender identities.
Similarly, Rampton (2011) used a sociolinguis-
tic approach to study the ways in which British
adolescents use exaggerated, “stylized” Cockney
and posh accents, which represent binary ideologi-
cal categories, to perform class identity and navi-
gate social situations. In doing so, these adolescents
called attention to hegemonic socioeconomic strat-
ification and challenged the rigidity of class catego-
ries by moving between them. This work points to
the active agency of adolescents in negotiating the
existing social order through language, which is
inherently political and constantly shifting.
Charalambous (2012) provides another example
in her study of Greek-Cypriot adolescents taking a
Turkish class in a political and historical context in
which interethnic conflict had rendered the speak-
ing of Turkish a controversial practice. These youth
used playful speech to engage in taboo conversa-
tions that challenged dominant Hellenocentric
views of Turks and the act of learning Turkish.
Nevertheless, the covert nature of this discourse
suppressed any explicit political conversation. This
research highlights the agency of adolescents to
negotiate identity through everyday social interac-
tions and appropriate existing systems of meaning
for their own purposes.
Example 3: Agency and Resistance in the
Narratives of Homeless Youth
A third example of the way in which youth nego-
tiate and co-construct cultural meaning through
narrative identity can be found in the narratives
of homeless adolescents. In the United States, the
social category of “homeless” brings with it the
possibility for severe stigma and exclusion and thus
presents a serious challenge for the identities of
youth without housing (Kidd, 2007; Roschelle &
Kaufman, 2004). Classification into this category
mediates the everyday reality of homeless adoles-
cents and has a significant impact on their access to
power and resources, as well as how their behaviors
and identities are interpreted by others (Kerckhoff,
1995). Examining the rarely heard stories of this
marginalized population sheds light on the ways in
which they navigate contested narrative terrain and
suggests that adolescents belonging to low-status
groups can find agency and self-worth by resist-
ing the dominant cultural narratives that devalue
them. Two such narratives that exist in the United
States are the criminal narrative, which portrays
homeless youth as morally deficient, and the client
narrative, which portrays homeless youth as sick or
incompetent.
Within the criminal and client narratives, home-
less youth are defined by deprivation and denied the
possibility of self-worth, community, or hope. Some
work, however, has begun to move beyond deficit
models to explore the assets and resilience of home-
less youth (e.g., Bender, Thompson, McManus,
Lantry, & Flynn, 2007; Kidd & Davidson, 2007;
Lindsey, Kurtz, Jarvis, Williams, & Nackerud,
2000; Rew & Horner, 2003). Toolis and Hammack
(2014) used an inductive, narrative approach and
conducted in-depth interviews to elaborate the
ways by which these adolescents define themselves
and resist stigmatizing social categories imposed
on them by hegemonic discourses. This analysis
revealed that homeless adolescents resisted crimi-
nalization through counternarratives that located
the roots of poverty outside of themselves and
refused to accept blame for their exclusion from
the “American Dream.” In addition, participants
resisted the infantilization of the client narrative by
articulating fierce struggles for independence and
asserting the value of their experiences and abili-
ties. Thus, through narrative, marginalized adoles-
cents may restory their identities and participate in
reinterpreting the meaning of existing identity cat-
egories. Hence, although narrative can be a tool for
control, it can also be a tool for liberation (Gjerde,
2004; Hammack, 2010b).
Example 4: Stories of Sexual Identity
A final area of empirical inquiry in which our
theoretical position can be illustrated is in the
study of personal narratives of sexual minority (i.e.,
lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered [LGBT])
adolescents in the United States. Again, the focus
is on how mutual constitution occurs during ado-
lescence through a process of narrative engagement
that emphasizes the politics of language about social
categories. The United States has a long history
of persecution against sexual minorities by legal,
medical, and scientific authorities (Hammack &
Windell, 2011), and hence the meaning of a sexual
minority identity has changed considerably over
the course of the 20th and early 21st centuries
(Hammack, Mayers, & Windell, 2013).
The study of personal narratives of same-
sex-attracted adult men has revealed cohort-specific
identity development processes (Cohler, 2007).
Men born in the 1930s and coming of age in the
1950s engaged with a “sickness” narrative of homo-
sexuality, reproducing this discourse through their
own internalized stigma but also challenging it
through participation in the nascent gay and les-
bian civil rights movement (Hammack & Cohler,
2011). With the gay and lesbian social movement
of the 20th century, a redemptive master narrative
of sexual minority identity emerged, and individu-
als increasingly constructed personal narratives of
redemption through “coming out” and becoming
an active cultural participant in the gay and lesbian
community (Cohler & Hammack, 2006, 2007).
Young sexual minorities born in the 1970s and
coming of age in the 1990s constructed personal
narratives of redemption from stigma through par-
ticipation in the sexual minority community (e.g.,
Savin-Williams, 1998).
Language, as we have suggested, is not static
but rather a living tool of cultural reproduction.
Narratives and discourses, therefore, shift with
historical time. Cultural and political events play
a role in this shift, as the protest activities of the
mid-20th century altered the narrative of homo-
sexuality and resulted in a whole new discourse on
homosexuality, moving from a “sickness” to a “spe-
cies” narrative in which sexual identity gradually
became viewed as an unchosen trait akin to race
(Hammack et al., 2013). This discourse then con-
structed a new developmental context for subjectiv-
ity and self-understanding (Cohler & Hammack,
2007). But this “species” narrative began to be chal-
lenged in the 1990s with the “queer theory” move-
ment that rendered all social categories associated
with sex and gender dubious (e.g., Butler, 1990; see
Hammack et al., 2013). Gradually, the personal
narratives of same-sex-attracted adolescents again
began to shift in tandem with this shifting master
narrative of the stability and coherence of a “gay
identity” (Savin-Williams, 2005).
In the 21st century, same-sex-attracted ado-
lescents engage with multiple, competing master
narratives of the meaning of same-sex attraction
(Cohler & Hammack, 2007; Hammack & Cohler,
2009). Narratives of sickness, redemption through
participation in the gay community, and emanci-
pation from sexual identity labels all compete for
salience, with today’s adolescents coordinating
their own personal narratives in relation to these
discourses on the nature and meaning of same-sex
attraction (e.g., Hammack, Thompson, & Pilecki,
2009; Russell, Clarke, & Clary, 2009; Westrate &
McLean, 2010). Narrative identity development is
thus polyphonic (Bakhtin, 1984), and the discur-
sive content of personal narratives reveals much
about culture and identity as active processes of
H a m m ac k , T o ol i s 403
social construction. As same-sex-attracted youth
engage with existing discourses about the meaning
of same-sex desire and of sexual identity catego-
ries, they construct narratives that either repro-
duce or challenge an existing verbal-ideological
community.
Conclusion
For well over a century, the concept of culture
has provided a tool through which to understand
difference across human communities. Understood
as a system of shared meaning made manifest in
social practice, culture has provided a way to iden-
tify the universals and particularities of human
development (e.g., Shweder et al., 2006). An
interdisciplinary approach to the study of human
development in context requires frameworks that
theoretically link persons and cultures in a dynamic
way amenable to empirical study. The theoretical
position we have sketched in this chapter on the
cultural psychology of adolescence attempts to
offer such a framework.
Our guiding assumption is that adolescent iden-
tity formation is not simply an individual process
experienced with some regularity at a particular
moment of biological and social transition. Rather,
we conceive of adolescence as both individual and
cultural process, as a cohort of youth in a particular
cultural context engages with the content of some
verbal-ideological community and, through an
identity development process anchored in linguis-
tic mediation and appropriation, either regenerates
or resists the social order. Hence, our position privi-
leges concepts like historical time (i.e., membership
in a birth cohort) and narrative (i.e., the coherent
organization of language) in positing a role for ado-
lescent identity development in social stasis and
change. This emphasis on adolescents as linked to
the social order through their own process of devel-
opment is not necessarily new (e.g., Erikson, 1958),
but our attempt to integrate certain theoretical
principles and methodological practices under the
umbrella of a “cultural psychology of adolescence”
represents a novel endeavor. Here, we suggest three
concrete recommendations that might guide future
research conducted in the paradigm we propose in
this chapter.
First, we suggest that scholars of human devel-
opment make a decisive intellectual commitment
to a sociogenic, rather than ontogenetic, paradigm
of developmental science (Dannefer, 1984). This
commitment requires a shift from the dominant
404 I de n t i t y, P ol i t ics , a n d t h e C u lt u r a l P s yc hol o g y of A d ol e sc e nc e
Euro-American vision of Platonic universalism
in mental life, represented most significantly by
the work of developmental psychologists such as
Piaget in the 20th century (see Shweder, 2011).
Fortunately, a sociogenic paradigm is central to
other theorists in developmental science whose
influence has grown exponentially in the late
20th and early 21st centuries, namely Vygotsky
(Wertsch & Tulviste, 1992; Yasnitsky & Ferrari,
2008). But even a science of human development
anchored in Vygotsky’s central ideas benefits from
an explicit commitment to a sociogenic paradigm
that does not view developmental science as a teleo-
logical project. Put differently, a sociogenic para-
digm recognizes social science inquiry itself as a
historical enterprise (e.g., Gergen, 1973), and the
search for lawful regularities only stands to con-
struct cultural “mini-theories” that end up apply-
ing better to US college students than to the vast
majority of the world’s inhabitants (Arnett, 2008;
Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010). Attention
to adolescence as a historical and cultural process
shifts the endeavor away from prediction and con-
trol of the human life course toward understanding
and interpretation (see Cohler, 1982).
Second, we suggest that the interdisciplinary
study of human development and culture requires
attention to multiple levels of analysis—the indi-
vidual, the immediate social environment, and the
larger historical or “macrocultural” (Ratner, 2012)
context of development. The cultural psycholo-
gist of adolescence, then, studies individuals using
methods appropriate to the empirical question at
hand (e.g., an interview, a survey). But to study ado-
lescence as a process in relation to culture requires
an empirical analysis of culture itself in its symbolic
and material forms, whether through narratives
and discourses (e.g., Hammack, 2011a) or social
practices in action (e.g., Gutierrez & Rogoff, 2003).
Hence, methods that examine processes beyond
individuals, such as ethnography (e.g., Shweder,
1996), are vital to the cultural psychologist and can
be used in tandem with person-level analytic tools
(e.g., Hammack, 2011a).
Finally, we suggest that language in its active
use represents an ideal focus of empirical study for
the cultural psychology of adolescence and that
language represents the prism through which we
can interrogate adolescent identity development
directly. Language mediates our experience of the
social and political world, providing individuals
and groups with a sense of unity, coherence, and
purpose (e.g., Cohler, 1982; McAdams, 2011).
The empirical study of language using methods
linked to narrative and discourse (see Hammack
& Pilecki, 2014) provides a blueprint for the cul-
tural psychology of adolescence, for it is through
language practices that a generation resists or
reproduces a social order. We suggest, then, that
the study of language shift from margin to cen-
ter in cultural psychological approaches to adoles-
cence and identity development and that the link
between cultural discourse (or “master narratives”)
and personal discourse (or “personal narratives”)
becomes a primary goal for empirical interroga-
tion. Through the analysis and documentation of
this relationship, we access adolescence as a cul-
tural process, rather than an individual experience
of biological and social change.
Our view on adolescence and culture, like our
view on culture and human development more
broadly, is more integrative of politics than tradi-
tional approaches in US and European cultural
and developmental psychology. We do not view
human difference through the prism of “neutral-
ity” or equality with regard to global power and
hegemony (see Gjerde, 2004). Unlike critics of the
culture concept in anthropology, we see a contin-
ued use for culture in psychology and develop-
mental science (see Shweder, 2003). But the view
of culture we advocate is more closely linked to
perspectives that connect practices (and linguistic
practices especially) either directly to the state and
its “ideological apparatus” (Althusser, 1971) or to
some verbal-ideological community of resistance
(Bakhtin, 1981). In other words, practices and
discourses are positioned in relation to an existing
social order and its matrix of social hierarchy or
dominance among groups. A cultural psychology
of adolescence views processes of narrative engage-
ment and identity development as inherently
political, as the practices of youth either challenge
or reproduce the social order. Hence, the cultural
psychologist of adolescence considers not just the
immediate social context using ethnographic or
similar methods. Rather, she considers phenom-
ena like stratification and intergroup relations with
awareness of the political structure of the society in
which adolescence occurs.
To return again to the exchange of Israeli,
Palestinian, and American adolescents that began
the chapter, the cultural psychologist views adoles-
cence among these three distinct national groups
through the lens of language and power. Although
sharing a common experience of the “global” youth
culture (Arnett, 2002), these three national groups
inhabit radically divergent political cultures, and
they are saturated with stories that offer divergent
interpretations of history and present-day expe-
rience (e.g., Hammack, 2006; Kelman, 1999).
Narratives of victimization and justification col-
lide when Palestinians and Israelis come together
for dialogue (Pilecki & Hammack, 2013), and it
is precisely in the appropriation of narrative that
Palestinian and Israeli adolescents reproduce the
narrative stalemate of their long-standing conflict
(Hammack, 2011a). Social and biological changes
may mandate particular individual experiences
in adolescence, but a shared cultural and political
context mandates forms of subjectivity tied to com-
peting discourses related to power and intergroup
relations. Through a perspective on adolescent iden-
tity that emphasizes language and power, the cul-
tural psychology of adolescence can shed invaluable
light on adolescence as a cultural-historical process
and hence on the course of social stasis and change.
Acknowledgments
This chapter was completed while the first
author was supported by a William T. Grant
Foundation Scholar Award. Correspondence may
be addressed to Phillip L. Hammack, Department
of Psychology, University of California, Santa
Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064
USA. Email: hammack@ucsc.edu.
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H a m m ac k , T o ol i s 409
 C H A P T E R

25 Family in Adolescence: Relatedness
and Autonomy Across Cultures

Çiğdem Kağitçibaşi and Ceren Yalin

Abstract
This chapter addresses the intersection of adolescence, family, and culture with a focus on autonomy
and relatedness. Family relationships come to the fore in the study of adolescent development in
sociocultural context, and several theoretical and empirical studies shed light on the myriad factors
involved. The chapter provides an overview of the main lines of relevant research and theory focusing
on autonomy and relatedness. Kağitçibaşi’s family change theory is presented as a general framework
for understanding the systematic variations in the family in different socioeconomic-cultural contexts;
her autonomous-related self construct, of particular importance in adolescence, is also discussed.
Other theoretical perspectives are discussed that provide further support for the adaptive value
and importance of autonomy and relatedness in adolescent development. The immigrant family is
also studied because immigration presents a special case for analyzing the dynamics of change and
continuity in family relations. Theoretical and applied implications of the different outlooks are
discussed.
Key Words:  family, autonomy, relatedness, autonomous-related self, positive youth development,
family change theory

The topic of this chapter is ambitious because
it purports to unravel the intricate intersection of
adolescent, family, and culture in terms of auton-
omy and relatedness. We endeavor to make an
attempt at this challenging task by providing an
overview of theory and research focusing on fam-
ily relations as they impact the development of
autonomy and relatedness. Some theoretical per-
spectives that have helped to situate the adolescent
and the family in context are considered. In par-
ticular, the senior author’s theoretical perspective
on family change and the self is addressed in depth
because its contextual outlook promises to provide
a general framework for global systematic varia-
tions in family, as well as for the self developing
in the family, with a particular focus on autonomy
and relatedness (Kağitçibaşi, 1990; 2005; 2007).
Subsequent discussions will benefit from other
theories, in particular, stage-environment fit, posi-
tive youth development (PYD), and intentional
self-regulation perspectives, which have emerged
mainly from social developmental thinking and
research on adolescence. Environmental transfor-
mations, as seen in urbanization and immigration,
will be considered specifically as they impact the
family.
Thus, this chapter aims to provide an over-
view of some of the important work in the field.
However, given space constraints, a selective
approach is used. Family is a key topic of study in
several human sciences, such as sociology, anthro-
pology, and social history. However, this chapter
is limited to psychological research and theory on
the subject. Therefore, such topics as family struc-
tures (e.g., extended families, stem families, etc.)
and variations in these across time and space will

410
not be addressed. Even within psychology, our
perspective is basically social/developmental/cul-
tural, with a focus on adolescence and autonomy-
relatedness. Theoretical perspectives from clinical/
personality psychology, such as attachment theory,
family systems theory, and psychoanalytic and
neo-analytic orientations are not covered. The
cultural focus pervades this chapter and brings in
a more global approach to family and adolescent
autonomy-relatedness.
A Research Experience
To start, we would like to share with the reader a
research experience I (Kağitçibaşi) had early on, one
that had a profound effect on the subsequent devel-
opment of my theoretical views. It also taught me
to pay close attention to the intersection of human
development and culture. While I was a foreign
student in the doctoral program at the University of
California, Berkeley, the authoritarian personality
theory (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, &
Sanford, 1950) was still influential despite the
methodological criticisms addressed to it. Informed
by psychoanalytic theory, it claimed universal-
ity, where a coherent “personality syndrome” was
proposed that included anti-intraception, submis-
sion to and respect for authority, a hierarchical
orientation to human relations, rigidity, prejudice,
and conservative worldviews. Furthermore, such a
personality structure was hypothesized to develop
in a family context of parental hostility expressed
through strong parental discipline.
However, from my own experience, I knew that
respect for (legitimate) authority as well as strong
parental discipline were social norms in Turkey. In
other words, I was using a cultural lens in my per-
ception of human phenomena, and so I undertook
a cross-cultural study comparing American and
Turkish late adolescents. I found, first, that indeed
respect for authority was higher in Turkey than in
the United States, thus decreasing the coherence of
the “syndrome” in the former. In other words, in
Turkey, most people had a high respect for author-
ity regardless of other characteristics, whereas in
the United States respect for authority was high
only among those who also scored high on the
other traits of authoritarianism. Similarly, there
were meaningful cultural differences regarding
parenting that the late adolescents retrospectively
reported. Although the Turkish youth reported
stronger parental discipline in early childhood than
did the American youth, there was no difference in
their experience of early parental affection, again
questioning the theory. The resultant publication
began with the words,
Some findings of social psychology may refer
to general panhuman relationships; others hold
only within specific socio-cultural settings. Only
systematic cross-cultural comparison can separate
these or identify the limits within which particular
generalizations hold.
(Kağitçibaşi, 1970, p. 444)
This conclusion is widely accepted today in
cross-cultural psychology, although the study pre-
dated the emergence of cross-cultural psychology
as a special discipline. It paved the way to later
developments in my thinking and research uphold-
ing the strong intersection of culture and human
development. The study also involved an early
focus on adolescence, leading to my further work
on this important developmental period.
The Need for a Cultural Perspective
Adolescence is a period when the growing
human being comes into more direct contact with
the surrounding culture. Thus, we can inquire into
the nature of this contact: Where is culture at the
individual level? In other words, how do we link
individual and culture? It is not only that the indi-
vidual is nested within culture, but also that cul-
ture is in the mind and behaviors of the individual,
and this process is heightened during adolescence.
In Shweder’s words (1991, p. 27) “culture and the
person make each other up.” In other words, cul-
ture is in the mind, and mind is in culture. The
challenge, then, is to address this complexity.
Many studies find cross-cultural differences in
behaviors. However, comparisons often remain
at the descriptive level. For example, variations
abound in behaviors and self-construals observed
in individualistic and collectivistic cultures.
However, a deeper understanding of how or why
such variation occurs is often lacking. To develop
a better understanding of the question “Where is
culture at the individual level?” we need to look
deeper into the picture and study how and why
the individual comes to develop a particular mind
and behavior repertoire that is culturally meaning-
ful. We believe this requires taking a step beyond
describing the existing picture; we need to assume
a developmental perspective. This is how a human
infant’s “enculturation” or becoming a cultural
being can be studied, linking the individual and
the culture.
K ağ i t ç i b a ş i, Y a l i n 411
 Quite a bit of current cultural/cross-cultural
psychology is basically atemporal. It is informed
by a social psychological conceptual framework
to a large extent, and it attempts to link psycho-
logical factors with situational, environmental/cul-
tural factors, all occurring in the “present” or at a
given point in time rather than searching for the
antecedents of these phenomena in prior experi-
ence. Among cross-cultural researchers, social psy-
chologists are in the majority, and developmental
psychology has not yet had much influence, even
though cultural perspectives figure importantly in
developmental psychology.
The Need for a Developmental
Perspective
There is a growing need to take into consider-
ation some basic developmental questions. This
outlook is bound to be beneficial for cultural/
cross-cultural psychology because a developmental
perspective promises to provide us with insights
into the dynamics among biology and culture,
human universals, and cultural diversity (Keller,
Poortinga, & Scholmerich, 2002). Thus, a develop-
mental perspective is called for by a cultural focus
that involves attending to a great deal of diversity.
The concept of the “self” is a case in point. Much
cross-cultural research on the self has pointed to
the distinction between the independent (separate)
and the interdependent (related) self-construals
(e.g., Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Kitayama,
Duffy, & Uchida, 2007). In turn, these two types
of self-construal have generally been associated
with individualistic and collectivistic cultural con-
texts, respectively. Most cultural/cross-cultural
psychological work focuses on how individuals
with one or the other type of self-construal dif-
fer from each other in terms of their social cogni-
tions and behavior. Again, these studies deal with
the question, “what?” That is, what type of self is
prevalent in what type of culture? To develop an
understanding into how these variations in self
come about, the researcher needs to go beyond the
descriptive to a more basic, causal level of analysis.
Here, the question of how one or the other type
of self develops becomes relevant. Developmental
processes and childrearing in the family in differ-
ent sociocultural contexts need to be studied to
realize how variations in self emerge in different
socioeconomic-cultural familial contexts.
To further understand why a certain type of
child/adolescent socialization occurs in one par-
ticular familial socioeconomic cultural context and
412 Fa m i ly i n A d ol e sc e nc e
not in another, an even more basic level of analysis
is required. To deal with this type of question, the
researcher must delve into the functional (adaptive)
bases of child socialization in the family. Here,
there is a need to understand the reasons underly-
ing different childrearing patterns and socialization
values and their relative adaptability to different
environments. Such an understanding would pro-
vide information about how family interaction
patterns and child socialization are influenced by
the socioeconomic and cultural context and how
these, in turn, affect childrearing. It would help
explain diversity in human patterns; it would also
help the researcher predict when to expect a change
in these patterns because any changes in context
would have implications for changes in this chain
of relationships.
Asking the how? and why? questions regarding
variations in self-development leads the researcher
to look at the interface of socioeconomic factors
and lifestyles with family and human development.
From a global perspective, several concepts at this
interface can provide clues to significant relation-
ships. One of these concepts that can shed light
on the interface and that can serve as a mediating
variable between the sociocultural environmental
factors and individual outcomes is the “value of
children” (VOC). This is the value attributed to
children by parents, and it constitutes an impor-
tant context variable of childhood and adolescence
in all cultural settings.
Social Change and Family Change
A classic study on the VOC (the VOC Study)
was conducted in the 1970s in nine countries,
using mostly nationally representative sam-
ples of married adults in Indonesia, Korea, the
Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey,
and the United States (Fawcett, 1983; Kağitçibaşi,
1982). More recently, partial replications of the
VOC Study in several countries have been carried
out (e.g., Kağitçibaşi, Ataca, & Diri, 2010; Mayer,
Trommsdorff, Kağitçibaşi, & Mishra, 2012;
Trommsdorff & Nauck, 2005). VOC study results
have led to theoretical developments regarding the
family and the self developing in the family.
The values attributed by parents to children were
found to vary according to levels of socioeconomic
development, both within countries and across
them. An important finding of these comparative
studies, separated by about three decades, is the
greater salience of the economic/utilitarian VOC
attributed to children by parents in less-developed
contexts. Its importance decreases at higher levels
of socioeconomic development and affluence. In
contrast, the psychological VOCs attributed to
children, such as the love, joy, and pride that chil-
dren provide to their parents, are found to be as
important or in some cases even more important
at higher levels of socioeconomic development, as
seen, for example, in Turkey (Kağitçibaşi, 1982;
Kağitçibaşi et al., 2010).
Family Change Theory
Deriving from the VOC Study findings, as well
as from other relevant research, Kağitçibaşi has
proposed three different family models in differ-
ent socioeconomic-cultural contexts, comprising a
theory of family change (Kağitçibaşi, 1990; 2005;
2007). The theory involves a contextual conceptu-
alization of the family and of the self developing
in the family and provides a framework for under-
standing the global family phenomenon. It locates
the family in context (culture, living conditions/
socioeconomic status) and sheds light on the ques-
tion of why certain types of socialization occur in
certain types of context. It differs somewhat from
the other theoretical orientations (discussed later)
that focus more directly on the family without a
macro, social change-oriented outlook at the socio-
cultural context. The general framework is mani-
fested in three different family models in different
sociocultural economic contexts.
The family model of interdependence is proto-
typical of socioeconomic contexts in which there is
dependence on children and adolescents for family
livelihood, both while children are young and when
they grow up to be adults (Kağitçibaşi, 1990; 2007).
Economic/utilitarian value is attributed to children.
Childrearing is obedience-oriented and does not
promote autonomy because an autonomous child is
likely to develop into a separate independent adult
who might look after his own interests rather than
those of the family. Interdependence between gen-
erations is the rule.
The family model of independence is the con-
trasting family model, one that is prototypical of
urban middle-class families living in affluent con-
texts, particularly in Western individualistic con-
texts. Here, children tend to entail economic costs
rather than assets. This type of family engenders
self-reliance and independence in the growing
child, and especially in the adolescent, because
affluence and institutional welfare systems render
family interdependence less important. Cultural
values also foster independence and separation and
normalize them as requisites for “healthy” human
development (Kağitçibaşi, 1990; 2007).
The family model of psychological interdependence
is a synthesis of these two models. From a modern-
ization theory perspective, it is commonly assumed
that as societies modernize, there is a shift from the
family model of interdependence to that of inde-
pendence. Research shows, however, that, rather
than a simple shift, a complex change takes place.
This is especially true with changes from rural
agrarian lifestyles to urban lifestyles where col-
lectivistic “cultures of relatedness” persist. A third
pattern emerges (Kağitçibaşi, 1990; 2007), one in
which closely knit human/family relations (con-
nectedness) continue in the realm of psychological
intergenerational interdependencies while material
interdependencies weaken due to increased afflu-
ence and alternative old-age security resources for
parents. This explains why, in the VOC Study, eco-
nomic VOC decreased with socioeconomic devel-
opment, but psychological VOC did not change
or even increased (Kağitçibaşi, 1982; Kağitçibaşi
et al., 2010).
Empirical Evidence
There is increasing empirical evidence sup-
porting family change theory and specifically the
psychological interdependence family model. In a
recent study, Mayer, Trommsdorff, Kağitçibaşi, and
Mishra (2012) used the VOC data from Germany,
India, and Turkey. As expected, the independent
family model was most prevalent in Germany, the
psychological interdependence model in Turkey,
and the interdependent model in India. The results
portrayed the family model of psychological inter-
dependence, in which family values and emotional
VOC are fairly high, while utilitarian-normative
VOC posed a striking contrast to the family model
of interdependence, being almost as low as that in
the family model of independence. Also, exploring
the VOC data from Korea, Kim, Park, Kwon, and
Koo (2005) found “positive and close” families to
endorse relatedness and psychological VOC, as in
the family model of psychological interdependence
(Kağitçibaşi, 1990; 2007). Further work using the
VOC data in India (Mishra, Mayer, Trommsdorff,
Albert, & Schwarz, 2005), Indonesia (Albert,
Trommsdorff, Mayer, & Schwarz, 2005), and
China (Zheng, Shi, & Tang, 2005) concurred, and
a study examining the comparative findings of the
VOC Project from Germany, Israel, Palestine, and
Turkey (Kağitçibaşi et al., 2010) also supported
family change theory.
K ağ i t ç i b a ş i, Y a l i n 413
 Studies from diverse sociocultural contexts show
similar findings. For example, Yağmurlu, Citlak,
Dost, and Leyendecker (2009) found less-educated
mothers in Turkey to prioritize being consider-
ate and compliant as desirable child character-
istics while also expecting their children to look
after them in their old age. These responses exem-
plify the family model of interdependence. On the
other hand, mothers with higher education stressed
self-reliance and autonomy among their socializa-
tion goals. Nevertheless, the latter mothers shared
with the less-educated mothers the expectation for
warm and close relationships with the family. This
combination of autonomy and relatedness in the
socialization goals of the highly educated mothers
is typical of the family model of psychological inter-
dependence (Kağitçibaşi, 2007). In the same vein,
in Poland, Lubiewska (2008) demonstrated the fam-
ily model of psychological interdependence to be
the predominant model. In Brazil, Seidl-de-Moura
and colleagues (2008) compared mothers living in
small towns with those living in the capital cities.
Mothers living in small towns deemed interpersonal
relations to be most important, whereas mothers liv-
ing in capitals valued both relational and autonomy
dimensions equally, in line with family change the-
ory (Kağitçibaşi, 1990; 2007). Finally, in an urban
Inuit community living in Canada, McShane,
Hastings, Smylie, and Prince (2009) identified the
family model of psychological interdependence.
The Immigrant Family and Youth
Another body of research involving cross-cultural
studies exploring the family is carried out with
immigrant populations. Immigration is a global
human phenomenon of great importance. Both
rural to urban and international migration has a
transformative influence on the family. Although
immigration has been studied mostly by econo-
mists and sociologists, psychological research has
also carved a niche in this area. In particular, accul-
turation research has been increasingly focused on
family, parenting, and the adolescent in immigra-
tion contexts. It sheds light on family dynamics
and relations. Here, too, family change theory
provides a useful framework for understanding
acculturation because the distinctions between the
family models in the theory are relevant for fami-
lies at different acculturation levels.
Research on immigrant youth and the accul-
turation process that potentially influences both
adolescent-family relationship and the ado-
lescent’s own development brings forth novel
414 Fa m i ly i n A d ol e sc e nc e
conceptualizations of the parent-adolescent rela-
tionship. Although questioning some assumptions
held in the developmental literature about immi-
grant families, this body of literature provides alter-
native ways to understand the autonomy-relatedness
dynamics within the family during adolescence.
There is again a call for both a developmental
outlook, considering the acculturation process
as dynamic and extending over generations, and
also for a contextual outlook that would enable
analysis on several levels of the adolescent’s ecol-
ogy (Chun, 2006; Kağitçibaşi 2006; Leyendecker,
Schölmerich, & Citlak, 2006). Both would neces-
sitate longitudinal designs. Also, a strengths-based
approach, like that used in the PYD literature,
where strengths of immigrant youth are acknowl-
edged, and immigrants are considered assets to
the community, presents yet another alternative
for research on both immigrant populations and
adolescent-family relations (Lerner et al., 2011;
Silbereisen & Lerner, 2007).
Fuligni and Telzer (2012) turn around the ques-
tion of parental influence on adolescents by explor-
ing instead the contributions of adolescents to their
parents, which is particularly evident in the case
of immigrant youth. This unique aspect of immi-
grant families renders adolescents an asset to both
the family and to the host society because most
of their assistance to the family consists of acting
as liaisons between them and the host countries’
institutions. This phenomenon presents us with
an alternative point of view to the study of family
dynamics by switching the role of the “beneficiary”
from the child to the parent, while it also allows
for a strengths-based approach analysis from two
different angles: youth develop a sense of useful-
ness, as well as life skills, as a result of assuming
important duties within their family. Also, immi-
grant youth become assets for the host society and
their families because they alleviate potential nega-
tive interactions between the host culture and the
family who lack important knowledge about this
new culture, mainly vital language skills. Although
concepts such as “premature adultification” suggest
potential harms to the well-being of the adolescent,
a majority of studies report positive outcomes,
such as feelings of mastery, efficacy, independence,
maturity, and higher levels of academic motiva-
tion. Feelings of being a “good son/daughter” also
point to the adaptive outcomes through relatedness
within the family context (Fuligni & Telzer, 2012).
Acculturation literature mostly bases its argu-
ments and research questions on Berry’s model,
which classifies this process into four different
types, depending on the level of identification
with the host culture and the immigrant’s own
culture:  assimilation, separation, marginalization,
and integration (Berry, 2006). This bidimensional
model is mostly supported by empirical findings
that show integration (biculturalism) as an asset,
almost an “immigrant advantage” (Lerner, Lerner,
Bowers, & Lewin-Bizan, 2012; Leyendecker et al.,
2006; Sirin & Gupta, 2012). However, there are
two basic caveats: first, the model focuses on end
states rather than processes, which in fact require
more attention because acculturation spans both an
individual’s lifetime and extends across generations.
This is where a developmental approach is needed,
one that will also help clarify implications of the
acculturation process on the parent-adolescent rela-
tionship and its further implications on the adoles-
cent’s developmental trajectory. Second, the model
assumes the immigrant to have full choice, whereas
the dominant society can constrain their options
through formal (e.g., legal) and informal (e.g.,
discrimination) means. The need to also consider
the dominant society factors is generally better
accepted today, as expressed by Berry (e.g., Berry,
Poortinga, Breugelmans, Chasiotis, & Sam, 2011,
p. 321). Although there is emphasis on bicultural-
ism as both a strength and a quality that should
further be reinforced by host societies and govern-
ments, there is also the suggestion of a new fusion
model that might emerge as a separate entity within
the existing bicultural paradigm (Arends-Toth &
van de Vijver, 2006).
The need for both a developmental and a contex-
tual outlook is echoed by several researchers from
several different standpoints. Garcia Coll et al.
(2012) pose the critical question regarding applied
implications, in Bronfenbrenner’s terms, as how
the microsystems should align to create a mesosys-
tem for better outcomes in immigrant youth. On a
related note, Arends-Toth and van de Vijver (2006)
point to differing outcomes and/or dynamics in
different domains, particularly the social versus
the private domain. Although, as Garcia Coll et al.
(2012) point out, ties to the host culture might
benefit academic or career success, closeness to
the origin culture might create better outcomes in
terms of mental health. Sirin and Gupta (2012) also
suggest that the acculturation pattern itself might
differ according to domains and even subdomains.
On the other hand, the usefulness of developmen-
tal perspectives is underscored by findings such
as Leyendecker et al.’s (2006) “acculturation gap”
between parents, where, for example, one parent,
generally the father, is born in Germany and the
mother is a Turkish-born newcomer to the German
culture. Another example for such findings is the
differing outcomes in academic performance and
risk behaviors depending on the age at migration
(Garcia Coll et al., 2012).
Autonomy and Relatedness in the
Immigrant Family
Bringing the discussion back to autonomy and
relatedness dynamics in the family during adoles-
cence, research with immigrant families also points
to the emergence of the family model of psycho-
logical interdependence (Kağitçibaşi, 1990; 2007).
For example, Koutrelakos (2004) found decreasing
material but continuing psychological interdepen-
dencies in more acculturated Greek-American fami-
lies. An earlier study (Rosenthal, Bell, Demetriou, &
Efklides, 1989) found socialization goals of Greek
immigrants in Australia to combine autonomy
goals, like those of Australian mainstream moth-
ers, and respect, like those of Greek mainstream
mothers. Similarly, Yağmurlu and Sanson (2009)
found that Turkish immigrant mothers who were
more adapted to Australian society reported higher
levels of self-direction goals and lower levels of
obedience-demanding in their parenting.
Second-generation Turkish mothers in
Germany have been found to value autonomy and
self-maximization in their children significantly
more than first-generation mothers (Leyendecker
et al., 2006). However, the level of expectation
for the children to be respectful, starting from an
early age, was similar to that of the first-generation
mothers. In a study with Dutch, German,
Turkish-Dutch, and Turkish-German mothers,
Durgel, Leyendecker, Yağmurlu, and Harwood
(2009) found that mainstream Dutch mothers
showed a family model of independence, whereas
the values of Turkish immigrant mothers reflected
an interdependence model. The Turkish-Dutch
mothers who were better adjusted to the mainstream
culture endorsed autonomy goals and expected less
obedience from their children. Dekovic, Pels, and
Model (2006), in a study of six ethnic minorities
in the Netherlands, found strict parental discipline
and warmth to coexist in these families. Although
considered by the authors as an “unlikely combina-
tion,” this finding again points to a family model
of interdependence or psychological interdepen-
dence upholding close-knit relations. These studies
point to the usefulness of family change theory in
K ağ i t ç i b a ş i, Y a l i n 415
understanding the shift in parenting orientations
in immigration contexts.
The Autonomous-Related
Self in Adolescence
Moving from family to the adolescent, we can say
that the adolescent developing in the family model
of psychological interdependence tends to have an
autonomous-related self (Kağitçibaşi, 1996; 2007).
This may be considered an “integrative synthesis”
of the independent (autonomous-separate) self of
the family model of independence and the interde-
pendent (heteronomous-related) self of the family
model of interdependence. As mentioned earlier,
the childrearing orientation that contributes to the
emergence of this type of self involves autonomy
but also parental control rather than permissiveness
because the goal is not separation of the growing
child. Therefore, relatedness does not negate agency
because childrearing involves both parental control
and autonomy granting. This is an “order-setting
control” (Lau, Lew, Han, Cheung, & Berndt, 1990)
rather than a dominating (authoritarian) control. It
provides structure and is not necessarily perceived
negatively by the child. A recent study with Turkish
adolescents (Kaya, 2012) found this type of parental
control to be seen as “legitimate” and to be better
accepted by adolescents. This combination of con-
trol and autonomy granting in parenting echoes
Baumrind’s (1980) “authoritative parenting.”
The coexistence of autonomy and relatedness
in the “autonomous-related self” has not been
readily recognized in mainstream Western per-
sonality theory because it is often assumed that
to be autonomous, one has to separate from oth-
ers. Especially from a psychoanalytic perspective,
as understood by “object relations theory” and its
“separation-individuation hypothesis,” separation
is considered a requisite of autonomy from early
infancy onward (Mahler, 1972). This claim that
connected selves cannot be adequately autono-
mous has important implications for non-Western
collectivistic “cultures of relatedness” with their
closely knit human relations. The construct of
autonomous-related self challenges this claim.
This is a central debate in understanding ado-
lescence, also. The psychoanalytically informed,
individualistic perspective considers adolescence
as a period of second separation-individuation
(Blos, 1979), where separation or detachment from
parents is regarded as a requisite of the develop-
ment of autonomy (Steinberg & Silverberg, 1986).
More recently, this view has been challenged by
416 Fa m i ly i n A d ol e sc e nc e
attachment theory, self-determination theory,
and Kağitçibaşi’s self theory, which all conceive
of a close relationship with parents as nourishing
the development of healthy autonomy in adoles-
cence (Grossmann, Grossmann, & Keppler, 2005;
Grotevant & Cooper, 1986; Kağitçibaşi, 1996;
2007; Ryan & Deci, 2000). Nevertheless, there is a
continuing tendency in both academic and popular
psychology that associates adolescent “individua-
tion” with separation from parents.
Kağitçibaşi’s self theory (1996; 2005; 2007)
promises to bring clarification. It proposes two
dimensions underlying self and self-other relations,
namely, interpersonal distance and agency. The
interpersonal distance dimension extends from sep-
arateness to relatedness, reflecting the degree of con-
nectedness to others. The agency dimension reflects
the degree of autonomous functioning, extending
from autonomy to heteronomy. Autonomy refers
to volitional agency (i.e., being a self-governing
agent); heteronomy is the state of being governed
from outside. Interpersonal distance and agency
dimensions are distinct, so it is quite possible for
the different poles of each to coexist. Therefore,
autonomy and relatedness can be compatible, just
as autonomy and separateness can.
Empirical Evidence
Starting in late 1990s, cross-cultural research has
provided support for the autonomous-related self.
Close ties and attachment with parents, rather than
detachment, have been found to be associated with
adolescent health and well-being in the United States,
Russia, Korea, and Turkey (Chirkov, Kim, Ryan, &
Kaplan, 2003), as well as in Germany (Grossman,
Grossman, & Zimmerman, 1999), and a more
positive relationship was found between autonomy
and relatedness than between autonomy and sep-
arateness in the United States and in Korea (Kim,
Butzel, & Ryan, 1998). Studies with Chinese and
Chinese-American parents found them to endorse
both relatedness and autonomy (Jose, Huntsinger,
Huntsinger, & Liaw, 2000). Beyers, Goossens,
Vansant, and Moors (2003) found separation (inter-
personal distance) and agency to be two independent
dimensions in adolescence. Separateness from par-
ents was found to be associated with developmental
problems among adolescents in Turkey, the United
States, and Hong Kong (e.g., Aydin & Oztutuncu,
2001; Chou, 2000, Garber & Little, 2001). Phalet
and Schonpflug (2001) found autonomy goals and
achievement values of Turkish immigrant mothers of
adolescents in Germany not to include separateness;
and Meeus, Oosterwegel, and Vollebergh (2002)
found secure attachment with parents to promote
agency among Dutch, Turkish, and Moroccan ado-
lescents. Kwak (2003) noted a common preference
for both autonomy and relatedness to parents among
immigrant and European-American adolescents in
the United States.
More recent cross-cultural research corrobo-
rates these findings. McShane et al. (2009), in
their aforementioned study, found evidence for
autonomy and relatedness in urban Inuit parenting.
Celenk, van de Vijver, and Goodwin (2011) found
that the autonomous-relatedness of emerging adults
predicted relationship satisfaction in both Turkish
and British couples. Similarly, Tulviste, Mizera, and
De Geer (2012), studying Estonian mothers’ social-
ization values, found that through social change in
Estonia “there is a new integrative synthesis of social-
ization values that better responds to the changing
lifestyle and includes both the characteristics related
to self-direction and to conformity—a pattern that
fosters the development of autonomous-relational
self [as posited by] Kagitcibasi” (p. 494).
Overall, empirical support for the coexistence of
autonomy and relatedness also provides support for
family change theory. A 27-country study Georgas,
Berry, van de Vijver, Kağitçibaşi, and Poortinga
(2006) found family relations implying autonomy
and relatedness to coexist in the psychologically
interdependent families. The studies covered in this
section point to the utility of advancing the con-
cept of the autonomous-related self. They also show
that, especially in collectivistic cultures of related-
ness where family relatedness is highly valued, close
adolescent-parent relations provide a healthy devel-
opmental pathway. Indeed, some of this research
finds the autonomous-related self to be a healthy
model even in the individualistic United States.
Thus, from a basic needs perspective, this construct
promises to have universal validity (Kağitçibaşi,
1996; 2005). Other theoretical perspectives emerg-
ing from different research traditions are also rel-
evant for a focus on autonomy and relatedness in
adolescent development both within the family
context and outside of it. We next present two such
perspectives that have been important in the field.
Stage-Environment Fit: Changing
Dynamics of Autonomy and Changing
Domains of Relatedness
Autonomy and relatedness have also figured in
Eccles and colleagues’ work on early adolescence
over the past decades (Eccles et al., 1993; Eccles,
Barber, Stone, & Hunt, 2003). Investigating the
compatibility between the individual and his or her
ecology (what is known as a “stage-environment
fit”) and the changes that take place within this
relationship, Eccles suggests that the “storm and
stress” of adolescence is, for the most part, due
to the changing dynamics of control and auton-
omy within the family. Although she uses the
stage-environment fit perspective mainly to stress
the increasing need for autonomy in adolescence
and the consequences of this need not being met by
the family, several points on relatedness are worthy
of note. The argument on family, for instance, is
followed by a complementary finding: the increased
desire for freedom from adult control goes hand in
hand with a desire to maintain close and nurtur-
ing relationships with the family during the pro-
cess of gaining higher autonomy. In other words,
the adolescent’s demand for greater autonomy does
not imply a demand for separation; opportunities
for autonomy serve best when they are provided in
an emotionally connected and supportive context
(Eccles et al., 1993). This description is similar to
Kwak’s (2003) finding of adolescents’ preference
for both autonomy and relatedness with parents,
mentioned earlier. Here, a point on temporality
is also made: because early adolescence is a period
when the need for autonomy peaks, this “tempo-
rary perturbation” is followed by a renegotiation
that enables the parent-adolescent dyad to create an
interdependent relationship within which the ado-
lescent increasingly gains control. Thus, the “indi-
viduation” process is presented with an emphasis
on the equal importance of autonomy and related-
ness. It is to be noted, however, that this research
is conducted with Western middle-class groups; it
needs to be expanded across cultures.
Time with Family versus with Others
Eccles and colleagues (2003) also make a point
regarding relatedness outside the family context.
They suggest that asymmetry in the power dynam-
ics of the parent-child relationship make it desir-
able for the adolescent to spend more time in the
peer context, where the relationships are symmet-
rical (i.e., nobody has higher power or the right
for control over the other; Fuligni & Eccles, 1993).
Therefore, the distancing from the family that is
commonly regarded as typical of adolescence is
explained in terms of relatedness within another
context, one where autonomy finds expression
within this state of relatedness. In a review on extra-
curricular activities, Eccles and colleagues (2003)
K ağ i t ç i b a ş i, Y a l i n 417
present yet another context within which the ado-
lescent maintains close relationships with adults.
Extracurricular activities provide youth with
“access to caring non-familial adults,” and, with
the right mentoring, these adults have been found
to have positive effects on adolescents’ develop-
ment (Eccles et al., 2003). These findings further
substantiate the centrality of relatedness to indi-
viduals in one’s environment alongside increas-
ing autonomy for a healthy adjustment through
adolescence.
Another point to note is that the increase in time
spent with and influence by friends does not bring
about a decrease in time spent with and influence
by parents (Laursen & Collins, 2009). Also, the
change in quantity (amount of time) accompanies
a change in quality in relationships with friends,
such that new forms emerge (such as romantic rela-
tionships), and new levels are added to the existing
friendship culture, such as reputation, status, or
prestige (Brown & Larson, 2009).
A closer look into adolescents’ relationships with
individuals other than parents reveals new levels
of autonomy and, more particularly, relatedness
dynamics. Most underscored is the necessity for a
relational approach, one that allows for the detec-
tion of circular and reciprocal interactions between
distinct relationships (Brown & Larson, 2009;
Connolly & McIsaac, 2009). Although it is widely
accepted (and empirically supported) that parents
stay central to all interpersonal relationships in
adolescents’ lives, the entangled nature of relation-
ships with parents, siblings, friends, peers, and even
romantic partners is also acknowledged (Brown &
Larson, 2009; Connolly & McIsaac, 2009; East,
2009; Laursen & Collins, 2009).
Parents, first of all, affect adolescents’ friend
choices, mainly through their influence on their
children’s social orientations. It has been observed
cross-culturally that parenting styles relate to
friendship patterns of adolescents (Brown &
Larson, 2009). Although the degree of this inter-
connectedness has been found to show cultural
variation, the directionality, as stated before, goes
both ways: in some cases, quality of peer relations
acts as a mediating factor for parenting variables
(Beyers & Seiffge-Krenke, 2007; Brown & Larson,
2009). Relationship quality, however, has consis-
tently been found to be very similar across family,
friend/peer, sibling, and romantic relationships
(Laursen & Collins, 2009), perhaps again drawing
attention to a trajectory that starts in the family,
specifically with the parents.
418 Fa m i ly i n A d ol e sc e nc e
Sibling and Romantic Relations
An aspect of family relations that receives less
research attention—sibling relations—is also of
importance regarding relatedness across different
domains. Sibling relationships are unique, primar-
ily because so much is shared in terms of antecedents
for outcomes, and, compared to other relationships
in the adolescent’s ecology, siblings provide more
constancy, potentially serving as a buffer and sup-
port mechanism in the face of changes in family
structure (e.g., divorce, parental loss) and adjust-
ment problems in the friendship domain. Studies
addressing the correlates of sibling relationship
quality provide support for a positive influence in
the form of fewer adjustment problems and overall
positive mental health when good-quality relation-
ships exist between siblings (East, 2009).
Another aspect that is unique to the adolescent
period is the emergence of romantic relationships.
In fact, these relationships remain central to the
discussion of adolescence as a distinct life stage,
as first suggested by Stanley Hall (Arnett, 2006;
Sears, 2008). Continuity in relationship quality is
observed, underlining the centrality of parents to all
interpersonal relationships, as stated earlier. Also,
from a systems perspective, all previously existing
relationship forms (parental, sibling, friend) act as a
context for skill development for romantic relation-
ships. Contextual models of romantic development
also point to this transition leading to a “resolution
of developmental tasks,” namely, connecting with
others and establishing an independent sense of self
(Collins & Steinberg, 2006), which closely echoes
Kağitçibaşi’s autonomy and relatedness constructs.
Within this framework, Connolly and McIsaac
(2009) present a definition of autonomy that
greatly serves to strengthen the underlying argu-
ment regarding this construct here: they describe
it as both maintaining one’s identity and acknowl-
edging that of one’s relationship partners while
staying connected to “close others” (Connolly &
McIsaac, 2009).
Cultural Variations
Study of adolescent relationships in and out-
side of the family context is still recognized to be
lacking cross-cultural empirical support. Although
some studies are conducted in the Majority World1
regarding these constructs, more research is needed
to discover a solid ground for establishing simi-
larities and differences (Brown & Larson, 2009;
Connolly & McIsaac, 2009). Schlegel (2009)
presents an overview of cross-cultural research on
adolescence, albeit from an anthropological stand-
point, and concludes that there exist constants,
such as closer same-sex relationships within the
family and in other contexts, as well as variants,
such as family structures.
Particularly notable variations exist across cul-
tures with regard to adolescent ecologies beyond
the family and relations with peers and others. For
example, in contexts of less economic development
and especially poverty, adolescents tend to be work-
ing rather than at school. This “productive” role of
the adolescent in the interdependent family provides
them with a different status and lifestyle than what
research describes regarding Western middle-class
populations. Another diversity emerges in adoles-
cent “romantic” relations in those sociocultural
contexts where norms of sex segregation are promi-
nent and prohibitions exist regarding premarital
sexuality. In such contexts, romantic relationships
can only be “platonic.” Values and norms of moral-
ity and decency fitting with “the realities” of liv-
ing conditions and environmental requirements
can create profoundly different “cultures of adoles-
cence.” Many other examples of cultural variations
in adolescents’ lives can be given. Whereas socio-
logical and anthropological work provides us with
some insights into this global variability, most of it
is descriptive, and more psychological research is
needed to understand the underlying psychological
processes (e.g., see Brown, Larson, & Saraswathi,
2002). In particular, theoretical perspectives are
needed for a better understanding of commonali-
ties and diversities, as well as changes in these. The
theories of family change and autonomous-related
self development in adolescence and the support-
ing cross-cultural evidence covered up to this point
constitute promising beginnings.
Developmental Systems Theories
and Positive Youth Development
An approach that posits itself in opposition to
prevention science is seen in the PYD literature
(Bowers et al., 2011). Although intervention pro-
grams developed with the prevention approach are
aimed at reducing risk-taking behaviors such as
drug abuse, PYD interventions strive to utilize and
enhance the strengths and assets that lie within as
well as around the individual (Lerner et al., 2011).
The “assets” and strengths are emphasized that are
useful in creating adaptive outcomes particularly in
this period. Lerner (2005) operationalizes his PYD
approach with a “Five C’s” model. The Five C’s of
PYD can be conceptualized as the assets “within”
the adolescent that develop as a result of strengths
aligning with the assets “around” the adolescent
(namely, the ecological assets). The Five C’s of
PYD are identified as Competence, Confidence,
Character, Connection, and Caring. A more recent
addition to this model is the sixth C, Contribution
(to oneself, family, community, and civil society).
Empirical support demonstrates that higher scores
in all of the five C’s are associated with this sixth
C (Lerner et al., 2011). Taking a holistic approach,
this perspective expands beyond the family and
looks at the overall adolescent ecology, but the fam-
ily is still considered important.
In terms of the precedence of autonomy and
relatedness, especially in this period of “adjust-
ments to changes” in both the individual and the
environment, it is important to note that three
of the six C’s of PYD—namely, Connection,
Caring, and Contribution—denote relatedness.
Therefore, this approach stresses that the adoles-
cent’s connection with and caring for the persons
primarily within his immediate ecology, as well
as contributing to society, in turn conjointly pro-
mote a positive development in adolescence. It is
all the more valuable that this view, coming from
Western researchers, brings the relatedness ele-
ment into a predominantly pro-autonomy research
tradition. The six C’s ultimately outline the equal
importance of autonomy and relatedness, with
three of these elements (Competence, Confidence,
Character) implying autonomy and the other three
(Connection, Caring, Contribution) implying
relatedness.
Lerner et al. (2011) also identify four ecological
assets for the adolescent: (1) individuals, (2) institu-
tions, (3) collective action, and (4) access to resources
in one’s context. Here, again, the relationships that
the adolescent builds, rather than separation, seem
to be the ideal contributor to positive development.
Lerner’s further suggestions regarding intervention
science also reflect this view: intervention programs
are more effective in promoting PYD when the
“Big 3” are present; namely, “(1) Sustained, posi-
tive adult-youth relations; (2) Life skill building
activities; and (3) Youth participation and leader-
ship” (Lerner et al., 2011). Thus, PYD-informed
intervention science has to take into account both
autonomy and relatedness because “youth partici-
pation and leadership” and “skill building activi-
ties” imply autonomy, and “positive adult-youth
relations” imply relatedness. Again, although not
the research focus, family is also present in the
process.
K ağ i t ç i b a ş i, Y a l i n 419
Intentional Self-Regulation
Intentional self-regulation is among several
indicators of healthy adjustment put forth by PYD
researchers. Although a construct considered rel-
evant for adults, intentional self-regulation has
recently also been studied in adolescents (Kara,
2013). This is the case for relatedness taking part
in autonomy-building. Whereas self-regulation is
described as a process involving the modulation of
thought, attention, and affect guiding goal-directed
behavior (Karoly, 1993; Raffaelli, Crockett, &
Shen, 2005), intentional self-regulation refers spe-
cifically to a conscious effort to set and pursue
goals, as well as to evaluate this process. This type
of self-regulation embodies an aspiration to con-
struct a balance between environmental demands
and resources (Zimmerman, 2007).
The relationship between intentional
self-regulation and PYD has been established
through studies investigating various PYD-related
constructs, such as the five C’s (Gestsdóttir &
Lerner, 2007) and hopeful future expectations
(Schmid, Phelps, & Lerner, 2011). This essen-
tial skill, which theoretically parallels autonomy
because it implies an ability of the individual to
think, plan, and act as an autonomous being, has
been found to be related to nurturing parenting
(Brody & Ge, 2001). Different lines of research
also link autonomy-granting behaviors of par-
ents, in unison with monitoring control, to mas-
tery orientation (Gonzalez, Doan Holbein, &
Quilter, 2002) and to conscientiousness (Heaven &
Ciarrochi, 2008). Further investigation is needed
into the interplay between autonomy and relat-
edness in the family and the ensuing outcomes
regarding self-regulation, but extant research seems
to highlight these qualities in the family as deter-
minants of life skills. It is to be noted, however,
that cross-cultural comparative research is lacking
at this point.
PERGEL: An Example of an Applied
Approach to Early Adolescent Well-Being
Several of these perspectives have direct implica-
tions for applications and interventions toward pro-
moting adolescents’ well-being. An ongoing study
on early adolescence in Turkey incorporates most
of the above-mentioned points in an intervention
program that aims to contribute to socioemotional
development of early adolescents within the school
context. We provide a short description of this
study as a case in point for the applied significance
of the several theoretical perspectives discussed in
420 Fa m i ly i n A d ol e sc e nc e
this chapter. The PERGEL Project (Pozitif Ergen
Gelişimi: Positive Adolescent Development), com-
bining theoretical and applied approaches, targets
early adolescence in different contexts and strives
to support PYD by promoting its different aspects.
These aspects include positive self-concept, belief
in change and the importance of effort, positive
attributions for self and others, empathy and social
competence, effective communication skills, posi-
tive intergroup attitudes and conflict resolution
skills, and autonomous-related self. Throughout
a semester, weekly group activities are carried out
with sixth-grade students guided by trained group
facilitators. The program includes activities that
target autonomy, such as the promotion of the idea
of intelligence and skills as changeable attributes
that can be improved by effort, as well as activities
that aim to enhance relatedness, such as building
empathy and peaceful intergroup relations. Thus,
placing the PYD perspective at its core, the project
also makes use of Kağitçibaşi’s (1996; 2005; 2007)
autonomous-related self theory. Such a theoreti-
cally based comprehensive intervention program
for early adolescents from different socioeconomic
strata is a novel endeavor in Turkey. The existing
programs, mostly American, are not culturally sen-
sitive for the Turkish context. Combining a widely
accepted framework (PYD) with a cross-cultural
theory of self and family, the project aims in the
long run to create an effective evidence-based ado-
lescent support program that can be a part of the
guidance and counseling curriculum in schools.
Such an application is expected to contribute to
adolescent well-being. It may also be relevant for
implementation in other similar sociocultural
contexts.
Future Directions: New Syntheses
Across Cultures?
This chapter covered theory and research at the
intersection of family, adolescence, and autonomy-
relatedness in cultural context. Although quite a bit
of theory and research covered here originate from
work conducted in the United States, we have also
presented cross-cultural research and theory that
is promising for testing the generality of American
research findings and that may contribute to an
understanding of the global phenomena under con-
sideration. The diverse findings discussed in this
chapter point to significant patterns of changes in
lifestyles and the family. A very important underly-
ing cause is social change and globalization. Family
and adolescence need to be viewed from a global
perspective. In the Majority World, there is a uni-
versal urban shift. Global socioeconomic change
manifests itself particularly as large-scale urban-
ization. Demographic statistics from developing
countries show that, in 1990, the 10- to 19-year-old
youth population in rural areas was double that of
urban areas (600 million vs. 300 million); in 2015,
the numbers are expected to be equal; and in 2025,
the urban youth population is expected to exceed
the rural one by almost 100 million (World Energy
Council, 1999).
Such massive social structural change brings
about transformations in lifestyles that directly
impact families and adolescents. In urban lifestyles,
new environmental demands emerge for different
competencies as well as values, so that many of the
rural behaviors and outlooks lose their adaptive value
and are replaced by new ones. Accordingly, childrear-
ing patterns that are adaptive in rural traditional
society may no longer be adaptive in urban contexts.
However, such transformations tend to involve not
only replacement of the old, but also new syntheses
based on the interface of continuing cultural ele-
ments and changing lifestyles. The family model of
psychological interdependence (Kağitçibaşi, 1990;
2007) presents just such a synthesis, one in which
intergenerational relations involve psychological
interdependence and close-knit ties together with
material independence. The adolescent self develop-
ing here also manifests an integrative synthesis—the
autonomous-related self.
Although the family model of psychological
interdependence reflects much of the changing
family in the more developed, urbanized contexts
of the Majority World, it is not necessarily confined
to these contexts. A shift from the model of inde-
pendence to the model of psychological interdepen-
dence can also be expected because the latter model
satisfies both of the basic needs for autonomy and
relatedness and appears to be more optimal. In the
past decades, some evidence of such a change in
the direction of more relatedness in the individu-
alistic Western societies has been reported, as in
the study of European values (Inglehart, 2003)
and in American research (Oyserman, Coon, &
Kemmelmeier, 2002).
Studies of adolescence from Majority World
countries provide further evidence of such synthe-
ses. For example, Nsamenang (2002), describing
youth from sub-Saharan Africa, talks of a “vision
from the interface of competing indigenous and
imported images of adolescence” (p. 81). Similarly,
Santa Maria (2002) points out that, in Southeast
Asia, youth are increasingly mobile and spend less
time with family; however, when a difficulty arises,
a return to the family household for support is the
common practice. From Egypt to India, from Latin
America to China, similar syntheses are reported,
probably signifying common patterns of change
in collectivistic cultures despite diverse cultural
patterns (Brown et al., 2002). Indeed, on the one
hand, we speak of the emergence of a “youth cul-
ture,” manifested in such observable signs as simi-
lar music, dress, and hairstyles; on the other hand,
the deep cultural themes also continue, creating
fusion, synthesis, and, at times, confusion.
There is a need for more research into the main
topics covered in this chapter, research that uses
both developmental and cultural vantage points.
Such research should also have the potential to
both contribute to theoretical advancement in ado-
lescence and promote adolescent well-being. To
realize such potential, however, the cultural con-
text has to be taken seriously and studied at length.
More cross-cultural comparative studies on fam-
ily and adolescence are called for toward this end.
Through such work, we can develop a better under-
standing of the intersection of human development
and culture.
Note
1 A term used by Kagitcibasi to refer to the majority of the
world’s populations outside of the Western countries.
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 C H A P T E R

26 Cultural Templates for Child

and Adolescent Friendships

Doran French

Abstract
Friendships exist within activity settings (classrooms, work, play groups) and are impacted by cultural
blueprints that define their parameters. These rules are products of historical events, economic
and subsistence systems, parental beliefs, and religious and philosophical views. These rules impact
the behavior exhibited by friends with respect to intimacy, exclusivity, enhancement of worth, and
management of conflict. Studies of friendship in Indonesia and South Korea provide examples of the
range of friendship diversity. Whereas Korean friendships tend to be very intimate, exclusive, and
durable, Indonesian friendships are more likely to be low in intimacy, extensive, and more transient.
Individualism-collectivism models seem inadequate for explaining cultural variation in friendship, and it
is unlikely that a comprehensive theory of cultural variation in friendship patterns will emerge. Instead,
it may be more useful to look at prototypical patterns of friendship and map the extent to which these
are common in different cultures.
Key Words:  intimacy, culture, conflict, individualism-collectivism, Indonesia, Korea, friendship
prototypes

The comments of two student members of our
research team provide illustrations of the dramatic
differences in friendships in different cultures.
A native Korean woman studying in the United
States commented that she was often confused and
disappointed by the behavior of her US friend who
arranged weekend activities without consulting with
her. In contrast, an Indonesian young woman was
puzzled by the behavior of a German exchange stu-
dent whom she had befriended while this student was
studying in Indonesia but who had since returned
to Germany. She wondered why this German stu-
dent, who regularly e-mailed her asking about her
daily life, cared about her activities. Whereas the
Korean student’s comments reflected an expectation
that friendships are ideally intimate and exclusive,
the Indonesian student’s comments reflected a view
that dyadic friendships are often low in intimacy and
typically do not persist across time and separations.
Friendships between children and adolescents
occur across cultures, although, as reflected in
these comments, the forms that these take dif-
fer considerably (Bell & Coleman, 1999; Cohen,
1966; Krappmann, 1996). Findings of the exis-
tence of rudimentary friendship in nonhuman
primates suggest the likelihood that friendships
existed from the beginning of human evolution-
ary history. Female baboons, for example, develop
stable associations with others in their troops, and
these relationships afford them enhanced access to
resources, reproductive advantages, and increased
longevity (Silk et al., 2010). It is likely that friend-
ships may similarly provide humans with adaptive
advantages.
Although friendship is commonly construed
as a voluntary relationship, it nevertheless exists
within cultural systems of practices and shared
understandings (Suttles, 1970). McCall (1988)

425
suggests that friendships are guided by cultural
blueprints that specify who can and who cannot
be friends, the types of interactions that occur
between friends, and the emotional connectedness
that friends are expected to experience. This chap-
ter outlines some of the parameters along which
friendships between youth likely differ across cul-
tures. These parameters include rules about those
with whom it is permissible to develop friendships.
Other parameters include the provisions of these
relationships, including intimacy, instrumental
aid, extensivity, and enhancement of worth. The
management of conflict is essential for the develop-
ment and maintenance of friendships (Gottman &
Parker, 1986), and there are major cultural differ-
ences in how conflict is exhibited and managed
within relationships (French, 2011). This chapter
concludes with thoughts about theories explaining
culture and friendship and suggestions for future
research.
Children’s friendship interactions occur within
contexts of space, time, and activities that are
embedded within a larger cultural context (Farver,
1999). These contexts can be described as activ-
ity settings, a concept that has roots in ecological
models, Vygotsky’s (1978) theory, and the Whiting
and Whiting (Whiting & Edwards, 1988) behav-
ioral setting model. The concept of activity settings
is illustrated by Dyson’s (2010) anthropological
study of girls in an Indian Himalayan village that
details the manner in which friendships are situ-
ated within a system of work roles (i.e., leaf gather-
ing) and expectations about how children should
assist each other to accomplish this. As noted by
Whiting and Edwards (1988, p. 5):
Ecology and the social and economic organization
of society determine the daily routines of adults and
children, the individuals who frequent the same
settings, and the activities that are performed. The
scripts for daily life of each age group are consonant
with rules governing appropriate behavior in each of
the settings.
As noted throughout this chapter, schools serve
as primary settings for children’s peer interactions,
and features of these settings likely impact the
friendships that occur within them.
Origins of Cultural Differences
in Friendships
Many of the aspects associated with culture
stem from adaptations to address subsistence
requirements (Berry, Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen,
426 C u lt u r a l T e m pl at e s f or C h i l d a n d A d ol e sc e n t F r i e n d s h i ps
2002). These likely affect friendships because work
demands and living arrangements determine the
proximity to peers, the opportunities that chil-
dren have to interact with others, and the contexts
within which these interactions occur. Economic
systems have a major impact on children’s inter-
actions, in part because of effects on population
density. Konner (1975) argues that the probability
of children interacting with agemates throughout
much of human history was minimal, given the
small size of hunter-gather groups. The ability of
children to form friendships with others who are
similar to themselves on multiple dimensions,
commonly referred to as “homophily,” is likely
made possible by the increased population densities
that resulted from the development of agriculture.
Much of the interaction of children with non-
family members of similar ages occurs in schools.
By bringing together large populations of
same-age peers, schools make it possible for many
of the features associated with contemporary peer
relations (e.g., homophily of friendships, segrega-
tion by sex, and the existence of social networks
and crowds) to exist. Because of the importance
of school as a context for children’s friendships,
variations in schools across cultures, such as size
(Barker & Gump, 1964), as well as other features,
such as gender segregation, age mixtures, avail-
ability of unstructured time, school climate seg-
regation by race class, academic ability, academic
demands, and school climate, and segregation by
race, social class, or academic demands, likely
have an effect on children’s friendships (Jia et al.,
2009). For example, although both Chinese
and US high school students often attend large
schools, Chinese schools are often structured
such that students are with the same peers
throughout the day, whereas US students are
exposed to many others because of changing class
composition, free time, and extracurricular activ-
ities. Thus, we would expect that some features of
peer relationships that have been identified in the
United States, including the existence of crowds
and popularity structures, would be less likely to
exist in Chinese schools because youth interact
with small numbers of peers whom they know
very well. The intense focus on academic prepara-
tion in some countries (e.g., China and Korea)
limits the time that youth may interact with peers
in nonacademic contexts. The effects of this are
seen in findings that Chinese adolescents in late
high school report less companionship and inti-
macy with friends than US adolescents, a finding
that we interpret as occurring because their time
is consumed with studying for exams (Liu, Li,
Purwono, Chen, & French, in press).
Religious and philosophical systems may also
impact friendship because these relationships
become subject to systems of meaning and formal-
ized rules. One example includes Aristotle’s (1976)
ideas that elevate the elements of friendship focus-
ing on affection and promotion of happiness and
de-emphasize utilitarian aspects (Sherman, 1993).
The ideas of Confucius have also been very influen-
tial. He viewed friendship as one of five basic rela-
tionships necessary for a stable society and outlined
a set of obligations appropriate to this relationship
(Kim, 1996).
The applications by Triandis, Bontempo,
Villareal, Asai, and Lucca (1988) and Reis, Collins,
and Berscheid (2000) of the individualism and col-
lectivism model provide one of the few attempts to
provide a general explanation for cultural variation
in friendship. They argue that collectivists inter-
act with a small number of ingroup members with
whom they share very intimate and long-lasting
relationships. Individualists, in contrast, tend
to develop relationships that are low in intimacy
and duration. As will be shown below, however,
the limitations of this model are seen in findings
that variations in intimacy do not consistently cor-
respond to predictions. For example, Korea and
Indonesia, two cultures considered collectivist,
appear to be at the extremes of friendship intimacy
and durability and extensivity of friendships. The
question of the adequacy of this and other theories
of cultural diversity and friendship will be taken up
again at the conclusion of this chapter.
With Whom Can Children
Become Friends?
Bell and Coleman (1999) suggest that friend-
ships are almost always constrained by such factors
as social class, propinquity, and gender. Children’s
abilities to establish relationships with others of
different social classes and races may be limited by
community organization and school enrollments,
as well as by parental and societal restrictions.
Dyson’s (2010) anthropological field work with
girls in an Indian Himalayan village community
illustrates that it was difficult for children who
were members of different castes to become friends
because of restrictions on behavior considered
appropriately displayed to those who differ in caste.
Whereas gender segregation may occur through
child preferences, perhaps as a consequence of
differences in the preferences and play styles of
boys and girls (Edwards, 1992; Maccoby, 1998), in
some cultures, formal limits are established making
it difficult for cross-sex friendships to exist. In other
cultures, boys and girls occupy different environ-
ments based on gender-segregated work demands
or enrollment in same-sex schools. For example,
Wenger (1989) documents how the activities of
boys (herding) and girls (assisting mothers with
cooking and caregiving) in a Giriama rural Kenyan
community provided boys with greater access to
peers and increased autonomy than were afforded
to girls.
Finally, we see that parents have expectations
about children’s peer relationships and friendships
that differ by culture. Aukrust, Edwards, Kumru,
Knoche, and Kim (2003) found that parents in
four cultures differed in their views about peer
relationships of their preschool children; parents
from Korea and Sweden emphasized close friend-
ships more than either US or Turkish parents.
Although not tested, it is likely that parents act
upon these theories to guide their children’s peer
interactions in directions that are expected by the
culture (Lollis, Ross, & Tate, 1992). For example,
Korean parents more often than those in the other
countries valued their preschool child develop-
ing a best friend relationship, thus instilling at an
early age the cultural norm of establishing intimate
dyadic relationships (French, Bae, Pidada, & Lee,
2006). It is likely that these expectations provide
one mechanism for continuity of cultural patterns
of friendship across generations.
Friendship Qualities and Conflict
Much of the research on culture and friend-
ship has focused on differences in the qualities
associated with friendship in different cultures.
The theoretical background of much of this work
stems from Weiss (1974), who developed taxonomy
of social provisions that individuals seek in rela-
tionship with others. These provisions are similar
to those proposed by others (e.g., Berndt & Perry,
1986; Bukowski, Boivan, & Hoza, 1994; Parker &
Asher, 1993). The majority of research on culture
and friendships has focused on intimacy, instru-
mental aid, enhancement of worth, and the inten-
sivity and extensivity of friendships.
Intimacy
The considerable variation in the intimacy of
youth’s friendships is illustrated by the comparison
of child and adolescent friendships in Korea and
F r e nc h 427
Indonesia, two cultures that, although considered
collectivist, appear to differ considerably in their
emphasis on intimacy in friendships.
The intimacy of Korean relationships between
friends is described by the word cheong, which
refers to the melding of identities of friends such
that they are empathically capable of understand-
ing the other’s feeling and needs and address these.
Friendships are expected to be long-lasting and
very intimate, incorporating elements of uncondi-
tional acceptance, trust, and intimacy (Lee, 1994).
In contrast, anthropologists have described
Javanese social structure as less focused on specific
dyadic friendships and instead primarily focused
on integration into the community and social
networks (Jay, 1969). Koentjaraningrat (1985)
reported that social interaction of urban adolescents
typically occurs within clique groups. Noesjirwan’s
(1978) findings that Indonesian adults believe that
maintaining harmonious group relationships is
more important than developing a few close friend-
ships, a view opposite to that of Australians, pro-
vides further evidence of the prominence of group
membership over that of close dyadic friendships.
The empirical findings are generally consistent
with the view that the friendships of Indonesian
Javanese and Sudanese youth are less intimate
than those of their Korean or US counterparts.
Indonesian college students rated their friendships
as being less intimate than those of either Korean
or US students (French et al., 2006). In the same
study, we found that Korean students reported
more disclosure to friends than did either US or
Indonesian students in reports from 2 weeks of daily
dairies. Indonesia children reported less friendship
intimacy than others in three studies. Both French,
Pidada, and Victor (2005) and French, Rianasari,
Pidada, Nelwan, and Buhrmester (2001) found that
Indonesian students rated their friends as lower in
intimacy than did Indonesian students, although
these differences did not emerge in the analysis
of references to intimacy in open-ended descrip-
tions of friends. In an unpublished study, French,
McCandless, Zhang, Suryanti, Pidada, Purwono,
Lee, Zhang, and Ji (2013) found that Korean
seventh-grade adolescents reported more affection
toward friends than did Indonesian adolescents.
Additional evidence suggests that the friend-
ships of European Americans may be less close
than those of persons in some other cultures. Brain
(1976), for example, has argued that friendships in
the United States are without formal status, and, in
contrast to friendships in many parts of the world,
428 C u lt u r a l T e m pl at e s f or C h i l d a n d A d ol e sc e n t F r i e n d s h i ps
are often transient and lacking in emotional depth.
Further evidence that the friendships of US stu-
dents are somewhat less close than those in some
other cultures comes from the comparison of the
social interactions of college students in Hong
Kong and the United States (Wheeler, Reis, &
Bond, 1989). American college students reported
lower levels of self-disclosure during their interac-
tions with peers than did Hong Kong students.
Sharabany (2006) reported a series of stud-
ies assessing the friendship intimacy of multiple
groups within Israel. Consistent with the argument
that greater friendship intimacy exists within col-
lectivist than individualist cultures, she reported
that Arab children reported greater closeness
with friends than did Jewish children. In con-
trast, however, to these supportive results, lower
friendship intimacy was found in other collec-
tivist groups (i.e., Bedouin Arab and Jewish kib-
butz communities), thus illustrating the difficulty
of explaining friendship intimacy based on the
individualism-collectivism model.
In addition to mean differences between lev-
els of friendship dimensions across cultures,
differences may also emerge in the rates of devel-
opmental changes in conceptions of friendship.
Gummerum and Keller (2008) explored this ques-
tion by assessing the conceptions of friendship of
7- to 15-year-old youth in China, Iceland, Russia,
and the former East Germany using interview pro-
cedures developed by Selman (1980). Across coun-
tries, friendship conceptions followed a common
developmental progression. Whereas the youngest
children predominately focused on shared interac-
tions, older adolescents focused on mutual support
and trust. There were country differences in the
rate of these changes, with Chinese and German
youth outpacing those in Iceland and Russia. The
results of this study highlight the importance of
assessing developmental changes in views of friend-
ship, the likelihood that there are cultural differ-
ences in these changes, and the possibility that
cross-cultural differences in ratings of intimacy by
children of a given age might emerge because of
differences in the developmental rate of change.
Further research might profitably focus on compar-
ing developmental changes in friendship concep-
tions in cultures (e.g., Korea and Indonesia), which
have been shown to differ in friendship intimacy.
Variations in intimacy between friends across
cultures might also emerge in the specific ways that
this is expressed. For example, Gummerum and
Keller (2008) suggested that friendship intimacy
among Chinese youth incorporates self-disclosure
and sharing of secrets to a lesser extent that it does
in other countries. It is likely that additional cul-
tural differences exist in the ways that intimacy is
expressed.
Finally, as discussed by Way and Silverman
(2012), there are substantial methodological chal-
lenges in comparing levels of friendship intimacy,
as well as of other provisions across cultures. Much
of this research has relied on comparison of rat-
ings across countries, and it is important to supple-
ment this approach using multiple methods such as
observations, daily diaries, and ethnographic inter-
viewing to assess convergence across methods. The
dangers of relying on single sources of information
is illustrated by Way and Silverman’s (2012) find-
ings that the difference in friendship intimacy that
consistently emerges when comparing friendship
ratings of boys and girls is not present when eth-
nographic interviews of children about their friend-
ships are obtained. The methodological challenges
associated with comparing friendships across cul-
tures are addressed further at the end of this chapter.
Instrumental Aid
Providing some form of assistance, whether it
be material goods, helping with tasks, or facilitat-
ing access to resources, is likely an important part
of friendships in most cultures (Hartup, 1992;
Hays, 1988). This aspect of friendships tends to
be de-emphasized in US youth, perhaps in part a
function of philosophical views that friendships
are ideally based on affection rather than helpgiv-
ing, a view that is reflected in Aristotle’s distinction
between virtuous friendships and those based on
utility. These ideas were prominent in American
history (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, &
Tipton, 1985) and undoubtedly continue to be
reflected in contemporary values.
There are numerous studies suggesting that
instrumental aid is an important aspect of friend-
ships in many cultures. For example, Way (2006)
found that sharing of money and protecting friends
from harm were salient aspects of the friendships
of low-income black and Hispanic adolescents in
the United States. The importance of exchange
of instrumental aid to promote the social struc-
ture has been documented in the Philippines.
Hollnsteiner (1979) discussed the norms of reci-
procity that govern the exchange of goods and
services in the Philippines and the importance of
these exchanges for cementing social and commu-
nity relationships. Nydegger and Nydegger (1963)
made a similar observation of Philippine children
in the Six Cultures Study that the mutual assis-
tance expectations that were exhibited by adults
in Philippine society were paralleled by children’s
expectations to assist each other with schoolwork.
A theme that is prominent in interviews with ado-
lescents from mainland China is the appreciation of
mutual assistance of friends in learning and school
achievement (Chen, Kaspar, Zhang, Wang, &
Zheng, 2004). The importance of helping others
within Javanese and other ethnic groups within
Indonesia is reflected in the norms of mutual aid
that are fundamental to traditional Indonesian
social structures (Magus-Suseno, 1997).
Tietjen (1989) suggested that the provision of
instrumental aid is likely to be particularly salient
in the friendships of children in collectivist cul-
tures. Supporting this view are the results from
several cross-cultural comparisons of the impor-
tance of instrumental assistance on the friend-
ships of children and adolescents. French, Pidada,
and Victor (2005) used both rating scales and
interviews focused on the characteristics of ideal
friends to compare the qualities associated with
the friendships of US and Indonesian fifth- and
eighth-grade students. Across the two methods,
instrumental aid was a more salient aspect of the
friendships of Indonesian than US youth. The com-
parative de-emphasis of instrumental aid in North
American youth also emerged in the compari-
sons with Costa Rican (DeRosier & Kupersmidt,
1991), Chinese (Chen et al., 2004), and Cuban
youth (Gonzalez, Moreno, & Schneider, 2004).
Although these results provide support for Tietjen’s
(1989) hypothesis, it is possible that US youth
de-emphasize this aspect of friendship because of
negative social desirability.
Exclusivity
Triandis et al. (1988) argued that people in
individualist cultures tend to move easily across
multiple social groups, whereas those in collectivist
cultures tend to limit their interactions to a small
group of people that they know well. This argu-
ment leads to questions about whether the struc-
tural features of friendships, such as permeability
to outsiders and network size, differ across cul-
tures. The major empirical support for the Triandis
et al. (1988) argument comes from Wheeler et al.’s
(1989) comparison of the social interactions of US
and Hong Kong college students. Chinese students
interacted with fewer people than did US students,
a finding that was interpreted as supporting the
F r e nc h 429
hypothesis that collectivists limit their interactions
to a small network of ingroup members. Hong
Kong students also reported more intimacy and
group interaction than did US students.
Based on the Wheeler et al. (1989) findings, my
colleagues and I (French, Bae, et al., 2006) sug-
gested that two aspects of the structural features of
friendship interaction might vary across cultures.
First, it is possible that cultural variation exists in
the number of different people that individuals
interact with over time, with the tentative hypothe-
sis, based on the argument of Triandis et al. (1988),
that people in collectivist cultures typically interact
with fewer different people than do those in indi-
vidualistic cultures. Second, it could be expected
that the interactions of those in collectivist cultures
would be more exclusive than those in individual-
istic cultures. Thus, we could expect that exclusive
groups would be composed mostly of close friends.
We obtained convergent evidence from rating
scales and inspection of diary records that were
obtained daily over a 2-week period that Korean
friendships were the most exclusive, Indonesian
friendships the least, and the US friendships were
between these extremes (French, Bae, et al., 2006).
When Korean students were with close friends,
they were with only close friends 78% of the time.
In contrast, this exclusivity index was 62% for US
students and 51% for Indonesian students. The low
percentage of exclusive friend interactions seen for
Indonesian students is consistent with evidence
that a major focus of Indonesian social life is par-
ticipation in broad social networks. Consistent
with this view, Noesjirwan (1978) observed that
Indonesians were more likely than Australians to
engage casual acquaintances and strangers in con-
versation. When Korean students were with close
friends, most of the time these interactions did not
include others who were not close friends. As sug-
gested by this analysis, Korean students also tended
to interact in smaller groups than did either US or
Indonesian students.
The results of these studies of Korean,
Indonesian, and U.S. populations of different ages
suggest that there are consistent structural differ-
ences in the exclusivity of friendships. These pat-
terns of association likely reflect cultural norms
regarding peer relationships and are related to
expectations of intimacy. Whereas Koreans tend
to emphasize the establishment of very strong
dyadic friendships with whom they have very high
intimacy, Indonesians instead tend to empha-
size interaction within groups (Koentjaraningrat,
430 C u lt u r a l T e m pl at e s f or C h i l d a n d A d ol e sc e n t F r i e n d s h i ps
1985). There is evidence that these patterns are
encouraged at a young age, with Korean parents
encouraging their preschool children to form close
friends (Aukrust et al., 2003), whereas Indonesian
parents typically encourage children to play in
groups rather than engaging in dyadic interactions
with a “best friend.”
The patterns of exclusivity just discussed do
not correspond to those predicted by Triandis
et al. (1988). Whereas one would expect from
this argument that Korean and Indonesian youth
would exhibit the most exclusive friendships and
US youth the least, the two collectivist cultures
were at the extremes of this dimension, and the
European-American youth fell between these.
There are few studies of cultural and friendship
exclusivity, and further research on this dimension
of friendships deserves further attention.
Enhancement of Worth
Sullivan (1953) highlighted the role of same-sex
friends during childhood and adolescence in enhanc-
ing self-esteem and validating the self. Kitayama,
Markus, Matsumoto, and Norasakkunkit (1997)
suggested that the focus on self-enhancement is
more prominent in European-American popula-
tions than it is in Japanese and other cultures in
which interdependent views of self are prominent.
Similar arguments have been developed by Fiske,
Kitayama, Markus, and Nisbett (1998) and Tietjen
(1989).
There is some evidence from the study of chil-
dren’s friendships that is consistent with these posi-
tions. Chen et al. (2004) found that enhancement
of worth was more salient in Canadian children
than in Chinese children’s ratings of friendship
qualities. French, Pidada, Denoma, McDonald,
and Lawton (2005) found that 11- and 14-year-old
children in the US rated their friendships higher on
this dimension than did Indonesian children.
One fruitful direction of future research
might be to look at how these processes are
manifested in the daily life of children and ado-
lescents. One approach might be to look at con-
versations of friends to explore how self-esteem
promotion occurs in these interactions. Such
a study could build on the work by Dishion,
Spacklen, Andrews, and Patterson (1996) on
deviancy training by using a microcoding system
to explore how friends in different cultures focus
on enhancement of self-esteem perhaps by engag-
ing in conversations in which they exchange
compliments.
Conflict
The management of conflict is central to the for-
mation and maintenance of friendships through-
out the lifespan (Gottman & Parker, 1986).
Although children tend to experience less conflict
with friends than they do with nonfriends (e.g.,
Hartup, Laursen, Stewart, & Eastenson, 1988),
conflict management is essential because of the
ever-present possibility that conflict could disrupt
these relationships.
Conflict management within cultures can
be understood in reference to an assortment of
socially shared scripts (Kitayama & Markus,
1994). There is cultural variation in the character-
istics of these scripts, conditions under which they
are employed, and probability that they will be
exhibited. Conflicts are structured and unfold over
time (Shantz, 1987). The conflict sequence can be
thought of as occurring in four stages that include
(1) preconflict, (2) mutual opposition, (3) conflict
termination, and (4) postconflict periods. Processes
occurring during each of these stages vary substan-
tially across cultures (French, 2011). The precon-
flict stage is the least studied but perhaps most
interesting because there are considerable differ-
ences across cultures in the extent to which poten-
tial provocations are acknowledged and eventuate
in a conflict (Fry, 2000).
There is some evidence that the constructs of
individualism and collectivism and relative power
distance continue to be useful for conceptualizing
cultural differences in conflict (Leung & Wu, 1990;
Markus & Lin, 1999), particularly when compar-
ing countries such as the United States, Indonesia,
and China that are positioned at the extremes of
these dimensions. Models of conflict resolution
prominent among those of European ancestry in
North America tend to be based on notions of indi-
vidual rights and ideas that successful conflict man-
agement involves self-assertion, compromise, and
negotiation (Islakandar, Laursen, Finkelstein, &
Fredrickson, 1995; Laursen, Finkelstein, &
Townsend-Betts, 2001). In contrast, Javanese and
other ethnic groups in Indonesia tend to avoid
overt expressions of conflict by avoiding provoca-
tions, refraining from interacting with others with
whom one has conflicts, relying on polite and ritu-
alized forms of interaction, minimizing external
displays of strong emotions, and avoiding express-
ing strong opinions (Magus-Suseno, 1997; Mulder,
1996). Consistent with the ideas of Confucius,
Chinese view it as important to maintain interper-
sonal harmony and to attain this by being tolerant,
forgiving, and compromising with others (Wall &
Blum, 1991). Similar to Indonesians, Chinese tend
to minimize overt conflict, instead relying on with-
drawal or indirect methods of resolution (Bond,
1991). Bond and Hwang (1986) argue that it is
typical for conflicts to be managed by group leaders
who are responsible for regulating conflict among
persons in a group, mediating disputes, and keep-
ing order.
In general, children from individualistic cul-
tures display assertiveness and actively pursue
self-interests during conflict episodes. For example,
preschool children in the Netherlands more often
than children in Andalusia, a more collectivis-
tic society, were assertive and imposed their per-
sonal views during conflicts (Medina, Lozano, &
Goudena, 2001); children in Central Italy were
more adept than Canadian children at avoiding
and resolving conflicts between friends, mainly by
maintaining respect for rules (Schneider, Fonzi,
Tomada, & Tani, 2000); and Mexican youths
reported using concessions and shared princi-
ples to resolve interpersonal conflicts to a greater
extent than did US youths (Gabrielidis, Ybarra, &
Villareal, 1997). Chinese children have been found
to exhibit less conflict than North American chil-
dren (Benjamin, Schneider, Greenman, & Hum,
2001; Navon & Ramsey, 1989; Orlick, Zhou, &
Partington, 1990).
Comparison of the conflict behavior of US
and Indonesian children was provided by French,
Pidada, Denoma, McDonald, and Lawton (2005),
who interviewed 9- to 11-year-old children to
obtain descriptions of their conflicts with peers.
Indonesian children more often reported dealing
with conflicts by disengaging than did the US
children. This is consistent with the widespread
practice of maintaining interpersonal harmony by
avoiding both the issue of conflict and the con-
flicting party, a style of addressing conflicts that is
exhibited not only in daily life but is also displayed
by adults in business and political affairs (Friend,
2003). Understanding of the meaning of disen-
gagement is seen in the findings that exhibition of
this behavior by Indonesian children was positively
associated with teacher ratings of social status, sug-
gesting that such behavior is associated with social
competence in this culture.
The conflict behavior of Chinese children was
studied by French, Chen, Chung, Li, Chen, and
Li (2011) who observed how 9-year-old quartets
of unfamiliar Chinese and Canadian children
addressed a limited resource problem (i.e., a single
F r e nc h 431
attractive toy). Chinese children displayed pat-
terns of behavior likely to reduce conflict; they
more often spontaneously relinquished control of
the toy to others and reacted more positively to the
attempts by others to obtain the toy. Also emerg-
ing from this study was evidence that the “lead-
ership conflict management script” that has been
observed in adults (Bond & Hwang, 1986) is also
used by Chinese children. It was more common in
Chinese than in Canadian groups for one or two
children to attempt to structure the group actions
by invoking a general rule, a behavior that was less
frequently seen in Canadian groups. Most impor-
tant were findings that behavior displayed during
these sessions was associated with group status.
Children were asked to rate their liking for chil-
dren in their group. Whereas passive and reticent
behavior was associated with group acceptance for
Chinese children, assertion and object control were
associated with acceptance by Canadian children.
These results suggest that the standards of socially
competent responses to potential conflict differ in
these two cultures.
Note that the studies reported here focused on
cultural differences in conflict with peers in gen-
eral, rather than with conflict within friendships.
Although it is likely that the cultural scripts for
managing conflict with peers in general are simi-
lar to those used with friends, this has not been
directly explored. It would be useful to specifically
explore conflict within friendships using methods
such as questionnaires, experience sampling, direct
observation, or other techniques.
Concluding Comments
The preceding sections outline some of the
dimensions on which friendships in different cul-
tures typically vary. Although these likely con-
stitute the major dimensions, there are others
that could be considered. For example, it would
be useful to look at companionship provided by
friends across different cultures, a dimension that
is likely a function of differences in the opportuni-
ties that children have to interact with friends and
the settings that they jointly inhabit. For example,
Chinese adolescents report lower levels of com-
panionship with peers than has been typically
reported by US adolescents, a finding that is likely
attributable to the limited recreational opportuni-
ties afforded to high school Chinese students who
experience intense academic pressure.
Consistent with the premises just reported,
children’s friendships are situated within a larger
432 C u lt u r a l T e m pl at e s f or C h i l d a n d A d ol e sc e n t F r i e n d s h i ps
cultural context that defines the opportunities that
children have to interact, the settings in which
they inhabit, the behavior that is expected in these
settings, and cultural views about the expected
qualities of friendships (Gaskins, 2006). Intimacy
within friendships may also be partly a function of
other systems of intimacy that exist within the cul-
ture. For example, the existence of very strong and
intimate relationships with siblings or with other
extended family members may reduce the necessity
of establishing intimate relationships with friends
(Gaskins, 2006). As noted earlier, other aspects of
culture (e.g., structure of school, population den-
sity, and youth activities) have a strong influence on
peer interactions and friendships. Thus, it appears
very important for researchers who study culture
and friendship to avoid relying exclusively on the
results from the administration of questionnaires
and other measures and to focus as well on under-
standing the meaning of friendship within cultural
systems and patterns of daily life (Bukowski &
Adams, 2006).
Approaches to Studying
Friendship and Culture
There have been extensive discussions of meth-
odological issues relevant to the study of cultural
variation in child and adolescent social behavior.
These have largely focused on issues of translation
of measures, selection of appropriate comparison
groups, measurement equivalence, and the relative
utility of qualitative and quantitative approaches
(Schneider, French, & Chen, 2006; Vijver &
Leung, 1997). Instead of repeating this discus-
sion, this chapter focuses instead on two issues
that are particularly relevant to the study of friend-
ship in different cultures. First is the importance
of assessing the convergence of results obtained
using different methods, multiple reporting agents,
and replicating results with different samples that
incorporate different ages. Second is the utility of
using both within-culture and cross-culture com-
parisons when assessing friendship.
Multimethod Assessment
The study of friendship in different cultures has
been dominated by comparisons of mean values of
rating scales by persons in each of these cultures.
Although valuable, an excessive reliance on this
approach is problematic (Way, 2006) and intro-
duces the possibility that results obtained could
emerge because of such factors as differences across
cultures in response sets, the meaning of scale
anchor points, and cultural differences in the sen-
sitivity of people within a culture to particular fea-
tures of friendship (Schneider et al., 2006).
It is therefore essential that researchers address
these issues by appraising the convergence of results
obtained by accessing friendships through multi-
ple approaches. Among the many approaches that
could be used to study friendship are obtaining
diaries of daily interactions, using experience sam-
pling to assess the amount of time spent with peers,
observing the interactions of friends using ethno-
graphic participant observations, and employing
structured interviews.
Between- and Within-Culture
Assessments
Conducting within-culture comparisons of the
links between friendship characteristics and mark-
ers of social competence provides an alternative to
the method of comparing mean scores across cul-
tures. Two illustrations of the use of this approach
are provided below.
To determine the extent to which the meanings
of friendship were similar in the United States and
Indonesia, we (French, Jansen, Riansari, & Setiono,
2003) extended Cronbach and Meehl’s (1955) con-
struct validation approach to assess the extent to
which the network of empirical correlates of friend-
ship in Indonesia were similar to those that have
emerged in studies of US friendships. The obtained
correlations between social preference and number
of friends in Indonesia were similar in magnitude
to correlations obtained in US studies. Second, we
found that there was similarity between Indonesian
children and their friends on aggression, social
withdrawal, social preference, and achievement,
effects that were consistent with findings from the
United States. Because the empirical correlates of
friendship appear to be similar in the two cultures,
we concluded that there is similarity between the
construct of friendship, although, as noted earlier,
there are cultural differences between the specific
qualities associated with friendship in the two
cultures.
A second use of within-culture comparisons was
to assess the relation between loneliness and social
preference and friendship intimacy in 13- and
15-year-old urban youth in China and Indonesia
(Liu et al., in press). As expected from prior stud-
ies, Indonesian adolescents reported less intimacy
in their friendships than Chinese adolescents.
We hypothesized that adolescents are lonely to
the extent that their expectations of interpersonal
relationships are not met. Because friendship inti-
macy is particularly important for Chinese adoles-
cents, the failure to attain this is associated with
loneliness. In contrast, Indonesian adolescents are
very strongly focused on group acceptance, and
the failure to attain this was more predictive than
friendship intimacy.
Explaining Cultural Variation
in Friendship
The final section of this chapter returns to address
a topic that was raised earlier—explaining cultural
variation in friendship. This section includes a discus-
sion of the adequacy of individualism-collectivism
models and conflict with a discussion of alternative
explanations.
Individualism-Collectivism
As noted throughout this chapter, researchers
have attempted to utilize a model of individualism-
collectivism to explain variation in friendship. Part
of the difficulty of using this model to explain
friendship stems from the model itself, which has
been criticized for being overly simplistic and broad.
There have also been difficulties in measuring and
conceptually defining underlying constructs, and
divergent results have emerged from multiple stud-
ies conducted in the same county. Many cultures
incorporate both individualistic and collectivist
elements, and there are concerns that cultures that
are either classified as predominately individualis-
tic or collectivist differ in many ways (Oyserman,
Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002).
The difficulty in explaining cultural features
using the individualism-collectivism model is illus-
trated in this review of culture and friendship. It
is difficult to explain friendship intimacy using
this model when Indonesia and Korea, both gen-
erally considered to be collectivist, are at opposite
ends of the intimacy dimension. The findings that
the European Americans in the United States fall
between these extremes provide additional com-
plications. Similar inconsistencies with the model
emerge from a comparison of friendship extensiv-
ity, with Korean and Indonesia youth at opposite
ends of the dimension, and with the US youth
falling between these. On the other hand, the
individualism-collectivism model, as well as the
independent-interdependent model, are likely to
continue to be used because, at present, they seem
be useful in accounting for some differences across
cultures. For example, the available evidence seems
consistent with respect to explaining variation in
F r e nc h 433
instrumental aid and conflict. This, in conjunction
with the absence of an alternative theory that more
adequately fits the existing findings, means that
this model will likely continue to be discussed.
Alternative Explanations
of Culture and Friendship
It is unlikely that a comprehensive explana-
tion of cultural variation in friendships will be
developed. As noted earlier, culture is multideter-
mined and is likely a product of subsistence pat-
terns, history, and the influence of philosophical
and religious views. Korean culture, for example,
is strongly influence by its historical relation with
China and Confucianism, whereas Indonesian cul-
ture has been more strongly influenced by India
and more recently by Dutch colonialism and Islam.
Undoubtedly, some aspects of the contemporary
patterns of friendship that exist within these cul-
tures are a function of some of these influences.
One could similarly analyze the multiple factors
that have impacted friendship within any given
culture.
Future research on culture and friendships
might profitably focus on uncovering prototypic
patterns of friendships within cultures. Based on
the arguments of Cohen (2002), it is likely that
only a limited number of stable patterns of rela-
tionships exist. Although there are likely few cul-
tures in which all features of the prototype are fully
developed, nevertheless, it may be useful to catego-
rize friendships as approximating these prototypi-
cal systems. An attempt to categorize friendship
types in multiple cultures based on ethnographic
studies was attempted by Cohen (2002). This
analysis appears, however, to have limited utility
for categorizing friendship in contemporary urban
communities.
Several possible prototypes are suggested by cul-
tural systems of friendship that were reviewed in
this chapter. One such prototype exists in which
the family serves as the major social organization,
and most important relationships occur within the
extended family, with limited involvement with
nonfamily peers. This pattern of relationships is
described by Gaskins (2006) as existing within
Guatemalan Mayan villages and by Sharabany
(2006) as existing within Bedouin Israeli com-
munities. There are likely other cultures in which
family relationships are sufficiently strong and per-
vasive as to preclude the establishment of strong
relations with friends (Bell & Coleman, 1999). In
another possible prototype, individuals develop a
434 C u lt u r a l T e m pl at e s f or C h i l d a n d A d ol e sc e n t F r i e n d s h i ps
few very strong, intimate, and long-lasting rela-
tionships with one or more persons who may be
almost as important as family members. Korean
friendships in their ideal appear to correspond to
this prototype. Finally, an additional prototype
may be described by Israeli Kibbutz communities,
in which there is strong involvement with peers,
but limited strong dyadic friendships. This pattern
appears to come close to describing Indonesian
friendships as these existed in traditional villages.
It is important to recognize that culture is con-
stantly changing, and, consequently, we should
expect friendships as a cultural institution to also
change with the emergence of new prototypi-
cal patterns (Silbereisen & Chen, 2010). Use of
computers and cellular telephones is impacting
friendships in ways that are only beginning to be
studied. Online communication may expand the
size of adolescents’ social networks, enable them
to maintain regular contact with friends, and per-
haps provide a platform for intimate conversation
(Davis, 2012). On the other hand, these may be
associated extensive friendship networks with lim-
ited intimacy and reduced face-to-face interactions.
Perhaps further study will reveal the emergence
of a prototypical pattern that is associated with
media-focused friendships.
An additional friendship prototype is that of
the compartmentalized friendship, as described
by Adler and Adler (2001). These types of friend-
ships are nested within activity structures (e.g.,
soccer friends, academic friends, neighborhood
friends, online friends). Although individuals in
these activity structures may be close friends, these
relations may be short lived (as activities change,
so do friends) and confined to a limited number of
activities rather than existing across multiple activi-
ties. It remains to be seen whether this pattern is
sufficiently pronounced to rise to a prototypic
structure, but it appears to increasingly describe
friendship patterns of both children and adults in
contemporary society. This change may contribute
to the increased adult social isolation that has been
evolving in the United States over the past decades
(McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Brashears, 2006).
Researchers could begin to explore the relation
between these prototypical types of friendships in
relation to other features of the culture and to the
other relational systems that exist. It is likely that
prototypes additional to those just described exist.
It is also likely that, within many cultures, there
are hybrids of prototypical patterns of friendship.
Unfortunately, the task of searching for prototypes
and evaluating friendship systems is complicated
by the absence of systematic research on friend-
ship by anthropologists (Bell & Coleman, 1999).
As seen in this chapter, the paucity of research on
children’s friendships further complicates our abil-
ity to develop a comprehensive understanding of
friendship in different cultures.
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F r e nc h 437
 C H A P T E R

27 Education and the Youth

Phase: Patterns, Purposes, and
Problems in Global Perspective
Lynne A. Chisholm

Abstract
This contribution explores the purpose and meaning of education in the youth phase, particularly
as framed by the learning continuum of formal, nonformal, and informal education. It takes a global
perspective, contrasting the Global North and the Global South, highlighting inequalities in access
and participation to secondary schooling, including their gendered dimensions. Education significantly
structures the contemporary youth phase in the Global North, where young people face both
extension and intensification of learning demands. This is less so in the Global South, which thus
curtails the youth phase as transition process and cultural space. In very different ways, both sets
of overall circumstances can be understood in terms of youth life as a cultural workplace. However,
social and economic inequalities within and between countries and communities heavily circumscribe
the human development potential of the youth phase and the role education as a whole can and
should play in this process.
Key Words:  youth phase, learning continuum, educational inequalities, Global North and South,
youth culture, youth transitions

Introduction world: regardless of country, culture, and creed,

There is a kindergarten just up the road from my
present workplace, the United Nations Educational,
Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO)
Institute for Lifelong Learning, housed in one of
the splendid and spacious white stucco residences
of which there are so many in Hamburg’s affluent
neighborhoods. From the upper floors, a banner in
rainbow colors flutters in this northern city’s con-
stant breeze so that the façade conjures up fleet-
ing reminiscences of urban political squats, with
their penchant for vibrant street-front slogans.
Splashed across curious children’s faces, the ban-
ner reads “because education is more than learn-
ing.” This kindergarten is evidently dedicated to
the kind of welcoming, affirmative early education
that fosters the sustainable, rounded development
of curiosity, acculturation, and character. That is
nothing unusual in Hamburg, as elsewhere in the
youngsters typically start their schooling with
boundless enthusiasm for discovering more about
the world, their peers, and themselves.
In the poorest countries, in highly isolated
regions, and in cultures that place women and men
into separate, unequal hierarchies, the joy of that
first day at school may still never come. For many
more of these children, schooling will cease so early
that, as adolescence begins, formal education ends
forever. At the same time, the richest countries of
the world expect and insist that young people stay
in some form of education and training until they
reach the age of majority at—for most such coun-
tries—18 years of age, even though significant pro-
portions may and do leave as soon as the law allows
them to do so, typically at 15 or 16 years of age. By
this time, many young people cannot wait to get
out of school and never want to have anything to

438
do with education ever again: “Hey, teachers! Leave
us kids alone! All in all you’re just another brick in
the wall!”
Pink Floyd’s epic teenage rock hymn is
35 years old yet remains to this day an indel-
ible, good-natured icon of youth cultural protest
in Europe, North America, and Australia/New
Zealand. Ironically enough, it came out in late
1979, the year in which western European youth
labor markets began to collapse, ultimately to be
recast in a very different contemporary modern
world of much more extended and precarious
transitions between education and work, youth
and adulthood. In this sense, young people in the
world’s prosperous regions perhaps have a little
more in common with young people in the less
well-off countries than the majority of them used to
have in the decades that followed World War II—
and not only because of the globalization of youth
culture via media, mobility, and commodification.
Today, and from very different starting-points,
most young people around the globe have access
to and experience rather more education than was
the case 35 years ago. Many of them, wherever they
live, then find it difficult to establish an indepen-
dent life, especially in financial terms, although
what they might realistically hope to achieve var-
ies enormously according to their socioeconomic
background and the part of the world in which
they are trying to make a life.
Pink Floyd’s song line “we don’t need no educa-
tion” never chimed quite true, at least insofar as
education implies—among other things—cogni-
tive learning. Globally, 123 million young people
aged 15–24 (some 10% of the age range) in 2011
could not read and write, with the lowest youth lit-
eracy rates in sub-Saharan Africa, South and West
Asia, and in the Caribbean—in these regions,
between 2 and 3 in 10 of the age cohort remain
illiterate (see Table 27.1). Furthermore, two-thirds
of the world’s illiterate youth are female; the global
gender gap derives predominantly from three
world regions—South and West Asia, sub-Saharan
Africa, and the Arab States (UNESCO Institute
for Statistics [UIS], 2013: 16; see also Verma &
Petersen, this volume).
Table 27.1 shows the most recent global com-
pilation for youth illiteracy rates by world region
and for two countries in each region. These coun-
tries all provide recent data and have been selected
to illustrate the extent to which illiteracy rates
among young people differ between countries
within regions, as well as between world regions.
The reasons are both simple and complex. Most
simply, the poorest countries of the world are those
with the highest illiteracy rates. Their education
systems cannot reach everyone and are insuffi-
ciently resourced to provide good-quality school-
ing for all, let alone alternative forms of provision
for learning. At the same time, social and cultural
power relations intervene to regulate access to and
participation in formal education. This manifests
itself clearly in the case of gender. In countries with
higher rates of illiteracy, girls and women of all ages
are usually more likely to be illiterate than are their
male peers. Seven countries in Table 27.1 show
this pattern; only in Azerbaijan is the gender gap
a very small one (in a country and region with low
illiteracy rates). Conversely, six countries in Table
27.1 display a reverse gender gap, so that it is young
men who are more likely to be illiterate. However,
these countries’ illiteracy rates are much lower
overall, and the countries fall across a broad band
of developing and transition economies. Finally,
Table 27.1 includes Belarus, Cyprus, and Indonesia
as examples of countries with both very low illit-
eracy rates and gender parity in this respect. None
belong to the world’s leading economies, but each
stands as a specific example of how—in very dif-
ferent ways—historical, social, and political factors
interplay to favor placing priority on education as a
strategy for economic and cultural—although not
necessarily politically democratic—development
and sustainability.
In sum, the global picture suggests that gender
literacy gaps are at their widest (disadvantaging
girls and women, often significantly) in the poorest
countries of the world and at their narrowest (from
gender parity to small disadvantage for young men)
in the richest countries but that, between the two
ends of the scale (where most countries fall), pat-
terns are diverse and include examples of gender
parity as well as gender gaps in both directions.
However, for most countries of the world, analyses
that can account for the specific relations among
culture, education, and gender that result in par-
ticular patterns have still to be written.
The overall picture for the world’s richest coun-
tries also conceals disconcerting realities. Youth
literacy rates reach virtually 100% in Europe and
Central Asia, but the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD)’s 2009
Programme for International Student Assessment
(PISA) results indicated that 1 in 5 15-year-olds
in the European Union Member States read and
write too poorly to be able to sufficiently manage
C h i s hol m 439
Table 27.1.  Illiteracy Rates for Young Women and Men Aged 15–24 by World Region and for Selected Countries
in World Regions, 2009/2010/2011.

World region and Illiteracy rate Illiteracy rate World region and Illiteracy rate Illiteracy rate
selected countries young women (%) young men (%) selected countries young women (%) young men (%)

Arab States 13.5 6.8 Latin America & 2.6 3.2

Caribbean

Morocco 26.0 11.2 Dominican 1.9 3.9

Republic

Jordan 0.7 0.9 Uruguay** 0.8 1.6

Central & 0.8 0.5 North America & n/a n/a

Eastern Europe Western Europe

Bulgaria 2.3 1.9 Spain 0.3 0.5

Belarus* 0.2 0.2 Cyprus 0.2 0.2

Central Asia 0.2 0.4 South & West 25.1 13.4

Asia

Mongolia 2.7 5.9 Pakistan* 38.5 20.9

Azerbaijan* 0.1 0.0 Sri Lanka** 1.4 2.3

East Asia 1.2 1.1 Sub-Saharan 36.3 24.4

Africa

Cambodia* 14.1 11.6 Guinea** 78.2 62.4

Indonesia 0.2 0.2 Uganda** 14.5 10.4

World total 13.2 7.8

World region refers to UNESCO’s Education for All (EFA) program regions. For the youth literacy rate, the UNESCO Institute of
Statistics (UIS) only publishes data that covers at least 33% of the world regional population aged 15–24 years. Data are therefore not
available for North America and Europe, nor for the Pacific subregion. For further details, see UIS (2013), sect. 4 on methodology.
Data refer to 2011, unless so marked: *2009 data, **2010 data.
World total refers to the arithmetic average of all available data, including UIS estimates.

Illiteracy in this country is more widespread among young women

Illiteracy in this country is more widespread among young men
Illiteracy rates among young women and men in this country are similar
Source UIS (2013), Annex I, ­tables 3 and 5 (selected and amended).

the social and economic demands of everyday life
(EU Skills Panorama, 2012, p. 5). The 2012 PISA
findings throw up the same figure for the average
OECD country (i.e., the world’s leading economies)
and note that, in only a very few countries, does this
proportion fall to 1 in 10, thus confirming the sig-
nificant effect in many countries (but by no means
all) of socioeconomic status on inequity of educa-
tional outcome at 15 years of age (Organization for
Economic and Cultural Development [OECD],
2013, pp. 9, 13).
Education may be more than learning, but
faced with these kinds of bare statistics we can only
conclude that, in too many cases, whatever formal
education intends to achieve, it does not result in
sufficient core learning outcomes—that is, the
basic knowledge and competences that people need
to get along reasonably well in a complex world.
Wherever and however such young people have
encountered formal education, they are compelled
or they choose to pursue their human develop-
ment elsewhere. They do not stop learning infor-
mally in everyday life, but they turn their backs
on education. That is more than unfortunate,
because if there is one thing we definitely know
about motivation for and participation in further

440 E duc at ion a n d t h e You t h P h a s e

organized forms of learning throughout life, it is
this: the more you have had, the more you get and
the more you want to get—and vice-versa. People
who lose motivation for education and training
when they are young are likely to stay that way for
the rest of their lives. Quite apart from arguments
about the need to continually improve and renew
one’s knowledge and competences in fast-moving
economies and societies, if we concur that the core
purpose of education is human development, then
this has to be a serious issue for scholars (together
with educational practitioners and policy makers)
to address.
This introduction raises a number of intercon-
nected issues in relation to education and the youth
phase, at the core of which lie two questions:
• How can we make sense of the relations and
the differences among education, learning, and
human development?
• How can we characterize the purpose and
experience of education in the youth phase?
This chapter takes these issues further, as far as
possible with a global reach. This is most readily
achievable at a general conceptual level, although,
even here, the scholarly body of contemporary
knowledge on education, learning, and youth
draws almost wholly on the Western intellectual
tradition. At the empirical level, we face real access
constraints. For many parts of the world, little or
no research knowledge exists; where it does exist,
language barriers make much of it inaccessible for
most scholars outside the relevant scientific com-
munity. This issue affects all human science fields,
of course (International Social Science Council
[ISSC], 2010). In the case of education, inter-
national statistics constitute the main source of
information. These are undeniably important and
useful, yet they can only ever picture a tiny frac-
tion of what researchers need to know about edu-
cational realities.
The next section begins by clarifying the
anchoring terms used in this chapter—young
people, the youth phase, and the life-course—and
by distinguishing among education, learning, and
schooling. This leads into a discussion of educa-
tion as human development that unfolds within
individual and social learning processes; how-
ever, these do not necessarily always take place in
schools and universities, which are prime examples
of formal educational arrangements. This discus-
sion explores, therefore, the continuum of formal,
nonformal, and informal learning contexts and
processes, especially in terms of their renewed
importance for understanding what it might
mean to fashion education for all in the manifold
textures of 21st-century lives across the globe.
The spotlight then turns directly onto the struc-
tural relations between education and the youth
phase and, in particular, how formal education
has increasingly come to shape the youth phase
in time and space and for life prospects in the
longer term. Yet, paradoxically, youth as cultural
activity and expression seems once more to be
slipping away from the enveloping tentacles of for-
mal education, forging new kinds of autonomous
arenas for human development in everyday life.
Here, similarities and differences between young
people moving toward adulthood in the coun-
tries of the Global South and the Global North
open fresh horizons for making sense of youth in
a more organic, global perspective. Finally, the
conclusions reflect on developing a more evenly
constructed and open space for future theory and
research on education and youth that can speak to
and with the full world of scientific communities,
policy makers, and educational practitioners—set
against the backdrop of the eternal conundrum of
education as humankind’s ambivalent and contra-
dictory struggle to transcend and transform while
corralling and conserving.
Terms and Key Referents
Social science disciplines do not necessarily
use the same terms to denote what are—at least
on the surface of it—the same subjects of interest.
Where psychologists are likely to write “adolescent”
and “adolescence,” sociologists are likely to write
“young person” and “youth phase.” Educationalists
are prone to describe members of young age groups
in terms of their relation to educational systems—
hence, as school or higher education students, or,
in reverse, international reports designate “out-of-
school youth” and researchers refer to “drop-outs.”
Economists, for their part, denote people of all
ages as “human resources” and write about the
“youth labor force,” made up of trainees, appren-
tices, young workers, and the young unemployed
who are beyond compulsory school age but below
the demarcation point for membership in the adult
labor force (typically from 25 years old).
We can immediately see that disciplines have
different “takes.” Educationalists and—even more
so—economists analyze social subsystems, within
which human actors adopt certain identities, roles,
and tasks. Psychologists and sociologists focus on
C h i s hol m 441
the human subject as individual and social actor
in a plurality of cultural, economic, and political
contexts. Psychologists are likely to emphasize the
individual subject and to link human development
more closely to its biological and psychic dimen-
sions—hence, the preference for the term “adoles-
cence.” Sociologists generally privilege the social
subject, thus connecting human development with
its cultural and community dimensions—and so
they use the term “youth phase.” These distinc-
tions among disciplines are approximate, since,
for example, those educationalists closer to the
humanities very much place individual develop-
ment—personal, moral, and intellectual—at the
center of concern, whereas macrosociologists may
well focus on age cohort patterns and generational
changes in which individual subjects are not perti-
nent to the analysis. Moreover, social psychologi-
cal and microsociological perspectives and research
significantly overlap, whereas contemporary youth
research is an emphatically multidisciplinary field
in which themes and issues take precedence over
disciplinary antecedents.
In accordance with my own disciplinary heri-
tage as a sociologist of education, this chapter uses
the terms “young people” and “youth phase,” and
it will move as appropriate between the structural
and cultural analysis of education in relation to this
section of the population and this period of the life
course. But how are this section and this period
defined? As it happens, the youth phase is histori-
cally and culturally something of a moving feast,
one that, in modern societies, is but loosely marked
by the bodily and psychical changes of puberty and
its resolution.
In terms of the social construction of the life
course, the second half of the 20th century wit-
nessed an extension of the youth phase at both
ends: today, children become young people earlier,
and young people become adults later (Corsaro,
2005; Furlong & Cartmel, 2007; Galland &
Cavalli, 1995). There are several reasons for this
change, and education is implicated, as specifically
discussed in the later section on education and the
youth phase. For the purposes of this chapter—
especially given that this volume includes a section
devoted to young adulthood—a concept that has
emerged to come to grips with the extension of the
youth phase at its upper end—the terms “young
people” and “youth phase” refer above all to social
subjects between the ages of approximately 12
and 18 years. This period is consonant with that
of lower and upper secondary education in most
442 E duc at ion a n d t h e You t h P h a s e
countries; that is, such provision is intended (but
may not be compulsory) for young people in this
age group.
In fact, the lower end of the youth phase (around
12–16 years) has attracted relatively less social and
educational research interest, with the exception of
the rise of achievement testing in the past 15 years.
International education statistics also focus on
initial entry and exit points (i.e., children start-
ing primary school and young people completing
compulsory education) and less on the patterns in
between. Interest in transition from primary to
secondary schooling has primarily focused on the
reproduction of social inequalities, carried forward
by qualitative, ethnographic studies of schooling
and youth cultures (see, e.g., Brake, 2004; Richards,
2011; Suárez-Orozco & Qin-Hilliard, 2004).
This volume sets human development at the
forefront, in alignment with both life course and
education as social processes that—in myriad
combination between the forces of structure
and agency—frame and shape the constellation
and negotiation of opportunities and constraints,
chances and risks. Development is essentially an
open-ended process of change, comprising multi-
ple features that may not change in synchrony and
are not necessarily one-directional. This applies to
individual human development as a lifelong trajec-
tory, and it applies equally to human development
as aggregate processes of social change.
International development analyses are com-
monly anchored in economic variables (see, e.g.,
World Bank, 2013), but they also importantly
include an increasing variety of cultural and social
indicators that together attempt to summarize
the overall quality of life in given countries and
regions. Education indicators are key elements
of human development indices, and so these are
important sources of information with a global
range. Building in this kind of material is a way
to offset a little the imbalanced range of research
knowledge.
Before considering the purposes of education for
and in the youth phase, it is essential to recognize
that education is not equivalent to schooling, and
neither is it synonymous with learning. All three
contribute to individual and social human develop-
ment but in different ways. The next section thus
introduces in particular the continuum of formal,
nonformal, and informal education and learning.
The following section’s discussion of education
and the youth phase pays attention to differences
between the Global North and the Global South
(basically, what used to be called the developed
and developing world; for fuller understanding
of these terms, see United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP), 2013a, 2013b). This is inevi-
tably an oversimplification of enormous global
complexity, but it does set up some basic param-
eters, including charting the intransigent prob-
lematic of the social and cultural production and
reproduction of inequalities through education
itself. The focus lies on the period of secondary
schooling and draws attention to global inequi-
ties in base-level access and participation, which
reflects pernicious intersections between economy
and culture.
Education, Learning, and
Human Development
In classic sociological terms, education is a cul-
tural transmission process by which new members
of a society actively learn from its established mem-
bers and from experience what they need to know
in order to recognizably belong and concretely con-
tribute to the community (for comprehensive over-
views, see Hallinan, 2006; Torres & Antikainen,
2003). Education is thus a socialization process that
conveys, creates, and recreates legitimated norms,
values, attitudes, and behaviors, and it is a process
of acquiring the knowledge and skills required for
performing given tasks and functions within the
extant social division of labor (but it does not do
so evenhandedly or neutrally). As a corollary, indi-
viduals become social subjects whose multifaceted
sense of self, identity, purpose, and meaning define
how they position and understand themselves
within their reference cultural fabric.
This is the essence of how human develop-
ment takes place, on the basis that such processes
are inherently open-ended—social environments
change, and individual experience accretes con-
tinuously so that not only subjectivity, but also
capacity evolve and reconstitute themselves
over time (see, e.g., Ferguson, 2000; Fischman,
McLaren, Sünker, & Lankshear, 2005; McLeod &
Yates: 2006). Tensions and contradictions inevita-
bly arise, not least through encountering limits as
well as options and recognizing that others (indi-
viduals, groups, cultures) may see (and represent)
themselves and the world quite differently. These
experiences ideally foster the development of capac-
ity for critical reflection on the status quo, which is
the core motor for ongoing personal development
and the ability to adjust to changing circumstances
and demands across and throughout life.
Children and young people are “cultural appren-
tices” (Cohen, 1999) par excellence, of course—
and they are therefore the core educational target
group in any culture (but not the sole target: new-
comers can also be adult migrants with diverse
linguistic and cultural backgrounds, for example).
The educational processes in which they participate
can take place in different kinds of structures and
contexts. Schools are the paradigmatic example of
formal educational provision in modern societies,
so much so that school-type education has come to
define what education is altogether—when people
in everyday life talk in English about education,
they generally mean schooling. Formal education
refers to institutionalized and regulated cognitive,
affective, and practical learning in which cognitive
learning (knowledge acquisition, its autonomous
manipulation, and, ultimately, its production)
dominates both curricula and assessment.
But learning routinely takes place in nonformal
and informal settings, too (see, e.g., Chisholm, 2008;
Chisholm, Hoskins, & Glahn, 2005; Hager &
Halliday, 2009; Rogers, 2005). Nonformal educa-
tion—which is less institutionalized, little regu-
lated, and seldom records graded achievement—is
particularly significant during the youth phase.
Projects and activities offered through youth asso-
ciations, youth work, and community education,
together with faith-based groups and sports clubs,
provide complementary learning opportunities in
integrated and holistic ways, often linked with civic,
social, and environmental engagement or interna-
tional youth exchange programs. Nonformal youth
education includes cognitive learning, but practical
and affective learning are typically the more signifi-
cant dimensions, with particular emphasis placed
on personal and social development.
New media as educational channels bridge
nonformal and informal learning modalities. On
the one hand, they are increasingly intentional
learning arenas, whether via the use of interactive
educational software in schools (e.g., in modern
languages) or as offering e-tools for project-based
activities in community arts education (e.g., as
part of museum exhibitions). On the other hand,
digital media, including social networking plat-
forms, have become an integral part of most
young people’s everyday lives in the Global North
and are rapidly spreading in much of the Global
South. Their informal learning power is undeni-
able—still largely (but by no means wholly) cre-
ated and shaped by adults (few of whom are today
beyond their fourth life decade) and differentially
C h i s hol m 443
consumed by young people largely on their own
terms. A major new socialization space has opened
up in the past two decades, one with fundamentally
different ground rules than those holding sway in
conventional, real-time, face-to-face social environ-
ments with their human hierarchies of influence
and control (see, e.g., Drotner & Schrøder, 2010;
Ito et al., 2009).
Informal education speaks to the kind of inci-
dental, experiential learning that takes place
in everyday life and which, by its very nature, is
noninstitutionalized, nonregulated, and is neither
amenable nor subject to discrete evaluation. This
kind of largely self-directed, self-socializing kind of
learning is also of particular importance for young
people because it includes peer learning. Peer
groups, cliques, and youth subcultures offer auton-
omous arenas for interaction and experimentation,
opening up spaces for exploration of identity and
confrontation with difference, as well as avenues of
information and ideas that are not dependent on
immediate family and neighborhood resources and
networks.
Formal, nonformal, and informal learning are
distinct conceptual categories of activity and expe-
rience, but, in practice, most educational settings
are imbued with mixed characteristics (Chisholm,
2006; Colley, Hodkinson, & Malcolm, 2002;
Malcolm, Hodkinson, & Colley, 2003). In partic-
ular, informal learning, by definition, takes place
across the full range of cultural and social life—
including in school settings, of course, which offer
a multitude of learning opportunities outside the
classroom, for example, during breaks and along-
side cultural and sports events. Extracurricular
activities offered by schools (e.g., through teach-
ers, parent associations, and voluntary groups) are
equally examples of nonformal educational pro-
vision that are explicitly addressed to their own
students.
Historically speaking, informal education is
the “oldest” form of learning, nonformal educa-
tion expands with the growth of organized public
life (especially in modern urban civil society con-
texts), and the provision of mass formal educa-
tion emerged only in the past two centuries. Thus,
until very recently, organized and regulated forms
of learning have not been a significant avenue for
human development for the overwhelming major-
ity of the world’s populations and still are not
for some groups in some countries and cultures.
Informal learning, increasingly complemented by
nonformal provision, continues to hold particular
444 E duc at ion a n d t h e You t h P h a s e
significance for both youth and adult education
in Latin America, the Pacific, and in Africa (see,
e.g., Ikuenobe, 2006; Mejiuni, 2013; Merriam &
Grace, 2011; Nombuso Dlamini, 2008).
There are three main reasons for this. First,
nonformal and informal learning match cultural
and social traditions in these parts of the world
rather well because they place greater emphasis
on learning as a socially situated and collective
activity (see also Correa-Chávez, Mangione, &
Black, this volume; Nsamenang, this volume).
Latchem (2014) points out that an understand-
ing of cultural context is crucial to appreciate this
issue. Drawing on Hofstede’s (2001) dimensions of
culture, he describes the cultural framing of teach-
ing and learning in traditional, precolonial societ-
ies. In particular, collectivist values privilege social,
group-based learning, whereas the legitimacy of
what is to be learned derives from the combination
between relevance (for one’s role in contributing
to community needs) and status (of those guid-
ing the acquisition and practice of specific kinds
of knowledge and skill). The focus lies on building
consensus, solving problems in the here and now,
and takes a holistic perspective toward learning
that places importance on the affective and practi-
cal, as well as the cognitive. He goes on to report
examples of open and distance outreach learning
in the areas of agriculture, health, and ecology in
Africa, Asia, and the Pacific whose success is attrib-
uted to their directly interactive and participatory
methods, including combining conventional radio
with mobile telephones.
Second, because they are much less—or not
at all—subject to external regulation of content
and pedagogy, nonformal and informal modali-
ties facilitate the inclusion of indigenous knowl-
edge and epistemologies together with alternative,
more resolutely radical educational philosophies,
such as those derived from Paolo Freire’s liberation
theology (seeMcLaren, 2000). Essentially, radical
pedagogy argues that education should stand at
the service of the marginalized and excluded and
should equip both young and adult learners with
immaterial resources for achieving the economic,
political, and social transformation of their com-
munities. This implies very significant change in
curricular content and teaching-learning meth-
ods, as well as in terms of opening up access and
enabling participation across the board. Formal
education is highly institutionalized and is firmly
regulated by the state and its agencies—change
takes place slowly and incrementally and will not
fundamentally challenge the existing social forma-
tion. Nonformal and informal learning contexts
are much more flexible and open to multifaceted
content and method.
Third, providing institutionalized and ubiq-
uitous formal education along similar lines to
that which first emerged in Europe and North
America requires a level of public resource invest-
ment that cannot be met in many African and
Asian countries. Furthermore, physically isolated
areas with thinly dispersed populations render
this problem not only more expensive to resolve,
but also demand different kinds of solutions. The
radio schools developed for the mid-20th-century
Australian outback were not economically or prac-
tically feasible for poorer countries with a low level
of technical infrastructure—the digital galaxy is
changing that picture, but as yet slowly. Satellite
digital technologies obviate the need to erect masts
or lay underground cables to provide high-speed
comprehensive access to the Internet and the
learning opportunities and resources it can bring
to everyone’s doorstep. Mobile devices can be used
anywhere, and, with solar-powered gadgets, it
will soon be possible to dispense with immobile
power sources. Virtual educational infrastruc-
ture can be brought to people wherever they are,
and the end-user hardware is increasingly able to
withstand climatic extremes and rough handling
conditions. Lack of public and private financial
resources is the main barrier, even if costs con-
tinue to fall as technologies become routinized.
UNESCO (2014) reports from an opportunistic
online user survey in cooperation with Nokia and
the Worldreader Mobile platform that mobile tele-
phones are already widely used as reading devices in
developing countries, especially by well-educated
young adult men who are much more likely to own
mobile telephones and to use the Internet via these
devices. Those young women who do have such
access, however, are much more likely to be highly
active mobile readers. These findings echo the
broad thrust of educational research knowledge
across the globe: social inequalities in educational
access, participation, and outcome are ubiquitous
and assert themselves at each and every turn; at
the same time, in the case of gender, once girls and
women manage to gain access to learning oppor-
tunities of all kinds, they are likely to become avid
and successful learners who may well outpace their
male peers.
The key point here is that informal and nonfor-
mal modalities have a stronger impact on shaping
the landscape of educational provision and partici-
pation in other world regions than they have had so
far in Europe, North America, and Australia/New
Zealand. Furthermore, the crucial role that infor-
mation and communications technology (ICT)
will certainly play in these developments implies
that young people will be at the forefront of design
and implementation, much more so than was the
case when European mass educational systems were
introduced, because it is young people who are
“digital natives” and the sociability of interactive
e-media dovetails well with youth cultural styles
(Erstad & Sefton-Green, 2012; Iwilade, 2013).
Cultural traditions play an important role in the
extent to which nonformal education and training
opportunities are widely available and the degree
to which both nonformal and informal learning
are socially valued and recognized. Measuring par-
ticipation in nonformal education is difficult to
achieve and for informal learning a virtual impos-
sibility (for an exploratory attempt with 25- to
64-year-olds in the European Union, see Kailis &
Pilos, 2005).
There are two main reasons for such difficul-
ties. First, measuring participation demands that
participation is recorded and that such records are
assembled in standardized ways. This happens only
in formal education, which comprises institution-
alized and regulated provision—and in which par-
ticipation is either compulsory for a given period
of time or for which course registration is manda-
tory both for participation and for certification.
Educational statistics depend on these procedures
for their very existence and were designed to depict
and monitor formal education systems. Such data
are fundamentally supply-driven—that is, they
reflect the logic and structuring of formal educa-
tion institutions, both in the categories they use
(such as primary, secondary, and tertiary partici-
pation rates) and in their perspective on participa-
tion (cross-sectional and aggregate data for given
educational sectors and levels). Nonformal educa-
tion is subject to much less regulation (by the state
and public agencies), its organization is generally
less institutionalized, consistent participation is not
necessarily required or systematically recorded, and
“course completion” seldom ends with a certificate
that holds recognition for formal educational or
labor market purposes. These characteristics do
not fit the ways in which statistical indicators and
data collection procedures have been developed to
analyze education and training participation and
outcome.
C h i s hol m 445
 Second, what counts as educationally relevant
participation and outcome is inherently difficult to
define appropriately and precisely, all the more so
when the perspective shifts to demand-driven pic-
turing—that is, grounded in what people under-
stand for themselves as learning opportunities and
experiences. Here, breadth, phasing, and variation
of participation modalities are critical parameters,
whereas the educational meanings people attach to
activities in which and from which they perceive
themselves to have learned are not specifiable with-
out directly interactional inquiry, and these mean-
ings can relate to a wide range of kinds of learning
outcomes that have precious little to do with col-
lecting certificates and diplomas. Survey inquiries
must prespecify their data collection categories,
and it is always difficult to uncover the frameworks
of meaning that underlie the resulting data pat-
terns. These characteristics pose major problems
for the operationalization of nonformal education
participation and insurmountable problems in the
case of informal learning, which by definition is
integrated into everyday life. This also accounts for
the rising focus on measuring learning outcomes
rather than participation, on the grounds that it
matters little where, when, and how people have
gained knowledge and competence—the main
issue is what they demonstrably know and can do,
whatever their stage of life. However, much of what
people know and can do may be palpable in human
action but remains opaque to testing and calibra-
tion techniques—the most evident example is that
of interpersonal and social skills.
Qualitative inquiry can illuminate these
uncharted territories of learning, but its coverage
remains patchy and restricted, especially for the
purposes of transnational analyses. For the moment,
then, it is mainly international surveys that offer
initial and partial glimpses. Recent Labour Force
Survey data (Eurostat, 2009, pp. 98–99) suggest
that, in 2007, on average about 10% of those aged
15–54 in the 27 European Union Member States
(and more than 25% in Denmark and the United
Kingdom) participated in nonformal education
and training. Age makes little difference in most
countries, but almost everywhere (except in Greece
and Cyprus where such participation is generally
low, and in Sweden where such participation is
generally high), better educated 15- to 29-year-olds
are much more likely to engage with nonformal
education. During the youth phase, nonformal
education participation not only complements for-
mal education, but it also fosters civic engagement
446 E duc at ion a n d t h e You t h P h a s e
and sociopolitical participation—in short, it favors
empowerment and the development of active dem-
ocratic citizenship, as qualitative analyses from
around the world confirm (see, e.g., Hill, 2001;
Stevick & Levinson, 2006).
As far as formal education is concerned, the
United Nations’ Human Development Index
(HDI; see UNDP, 2013a, 2013b) is a composite
indicator with three key dimensions: health, educa-
tion, and income. It can monitor changes between
and within countries as well as across time, and its
ultimate purpose is to estimate overall quality of
life (Nussbaum & Sen, 1993). Material prosperity
and economic development are thus not overriding
factors, and the index turns up only partial cor-
relations between income levels and education or
health variables. This means that policy decisions
make a difference, and these take their cue not only
from available economic resources, but also from
cultural and social values.
The HDI groups countries into four categories
according to their HDI index value as made up
by its three dimensions of health, education, and
income. The “very high” group includes countries
falling into the top quartile of HDI values; coun-
tries in the “high” group fall into the second quar-
tile; in the “medium” group into the third quartile;
and countries with the lowest HDI values, falling
into the bottom quartile, belong to the “low” group
(for full details, see UNDP, 2013a, pp. 140-143).
The 2012 edition of the HDI forefronts the faster
progress made in low and medium human develop-
ment categories since 1990, with the leading econ-
omies of the Global South—Brazil (now in the
“high” group), China, and India (now both in the
“medium” group)—making enormous strides in
purely gross domestic product (GDP) terms alone
and with significant rises for 40 Global South coun-
tries’ HDI values since 1990. However, at the same
time, progress in the world’s 47 least developed
countries (the overwhelming majority of which are
in the sub-Saharan Africa region) has remained
slow (UNDP, 2013b, pp. 1–3). Educational
inequalities are assessed in the HDI by combining
figures for the average number of years at school
for 25-year-olds and for children of school entry
age. On this basis, educational inequalities have
fallen somewhat in most world regions between
1990 and 2010, but from significantly different
starting points and most noticeably—also globally
at the lowest levels—in Europe and Central Asia
(UNDP, 2013b, p. 5). Education is self-evidently
a crucial driver for human development, both in
its own right and—most especially for girls and
women—as a relay for improving standards of
health as well as contributing to economic develop-
ment (UNDP, 2013b, p. 11).
So far, this chapter has drawn attention to the
extent to which young people participate in edu-
cation and has highlighted the relevance of tak-
ing into account the continuum across formal,
nonformal, and informal modalities of education
and learning. But how are education and the youth
phase related to each other in the first place?
Education and the Youth Phase
There is nothing inevitable about the youth
phase, not even that it exists at all: the life course
and its constituent phases are social construc-
tions that make loose use of the physiological life
cycle to demarcate across time (Chisholm, 2014).
In premodern cultures, the onset of puberty (real
or normatively expected) prompts transition from
childhood to adulthood and is marked by highly
diverse initiation rituals (see Schlegel & Barry, this
volume). This stage is typically of brief duration in
comparison with the youth phase in modern cul-
tures. Initiation is about learning how to become
an adult, so the youth phase is essentially a period
of preparation and transition. In contemporary cul-
tures, it has also taken on an autonomous character
via youth lifestyles and subcultures (see Dolby &
Rizvi, 2008; Helve & Holm, 2005; Nilan & Feixa,
2006) whose commodification together with more
symmetrical parent–child relations have given chil-
dren more space for individuation, and, as a con-
sequence, children accede as “tweenies” earlier to
“youth life” (Mørch, 2003).
This has led to seeing the youth phase as a mora-
torium, a time during which young people are free
to pursue their personal development and discover
what it is they want to be and to do with their lives.
In fact, this notion has its origins in early modern
European bourgeois culture and initially applied
mainly to young men (for a sociohistorical over-
view, see France, 2007). Affluent modern societies
have been able to afford ever-longer moratorium
periods for increasing proportions of young people,
anchored in lengthening periods of initial educa-
tion and training, including through to university
degree level. This only became widespread in the
second half of the past century, and it is impor-
tant to bear in mind that socioeconomic status
continues to play an important role: in general, the
better-off the family, the more normative are “indi-
viduation moratoria” and the more likely it is to
observe extended youth phases, thereby construct-
ing “choice biographies” (Diepstraten, Du Bois
Reymond, & Vinken, 2006).
Conversely, young people from unfavorable
socioeconomic backgrounds—and therefore the
majority of young people in poor and developing
countries—do not enjoy this advantage to the same
extent, if at all. Here, the expectation can only be
that they earn their own living as soon as possible,
both to relieve their parents and, often enough, to
contribute to the household income (see, e.g., Agbu,
2009). However, recent decades’ chronic teetering
crisis in youth labor markets across much of the
world—sharpening again following the 2008 global
financial crisis (International Labour Organization
[ILO], 2012)—has perforce resulted in a general-
ization of the extended youth phase. This might
be described as the spread of a “negative morato-
rium” in the sense that large numbers of young
people are hemmed into quasi-autonomy. They
have—depending on their cultural context—vary-
ing degrees of personal and social autonomy, but
poorer prospects of economic autonomy for increas-
ing periods of time. It takes longer and has become
more complex to find a secure footing in the labor
market, whereas the level and range of qualifica-
tions, credentials, and competences that employers
demand rises incessantly. In the developing world,
precarious and casual jobbing around and innumer-
able varieties of low-return micro-self-employment
are typical for young people as well as for adults—
indeed, researchers now argue that this has become
characteristic of youth transitions in the Global
North (Cuervo, Crofts, & Wyn, 2013).
Extended and fragmented youth transitions
to adulthood are expressed not only in the tran-
sition from education to the labor market, but
equally in delayed and complex routes to estab-
lishing an independent household, entering into
stable partnership, and having one’s own children
(Cole & Durham, 2007; Leccardi & Ruspini,
2006). Conversely, rapid and turbulent transition
patterns—including early exit from formal edu-
cation—are likely to signal socioeconomic disad-
vantage that will persist throughout adult life.
The pertinent issue for this section, however, is
the role that education today plays in underpinning
extended youth phases or, in its absence, in cur-
tailing chances for a positive moratorium. Longer
periods of formal education inevitably imply lon-
ger periods of material dependency, but they also
provide a basis for longer processes of personal
and social exploration supported by consistent
C h i s hol m 447
cognitive challenge. In other words, when young
people stay in school to 18 rather than leave at 14,
this potentially favors human development. Purely
instrumental accounts of extended education and
training underplay this crucial dimension of edu-
cation as the prime motor for the formation of the
active and critically reflective subject—whereby
participation in nonformal youth education is no
less significant than schooling. This adds to the
intensity of educational experience in the sense
that young people are not only going to school, but
also using their free time outside school for alterna-
tive modes of learning. None of the points raised in
this paragraph is an absolute: poor-quality school-
ing and disaffected students are much less likely to
foster human development, whereas some of those
compelled to leave school early may well achieve
their human potential through informal learning.
The everyday lives of young people in the 12–18
age range and living in countries of the Global
North (effectively, the world’s leading advanced
economies) are firmly structured by formal edu-
cation; that is, by lower and upper secondary
schooling together with, in some countries, initial
vocational education and training provision. In
these parts of the world, the obligation to attend
school or participate in parallel forms of education
and training nowhere ends before 14, seldom ceases
before 16, and sometimes extends to 18 or 19 years
of age (UIS, 2012, table 1, pp. 86–89; 90; Figure 2,
p. 10; Figure 3, p. 12. For practical purposes, almost
all young people do participate accordingly (tru-
ants, drop-outs, and special cases aside), although
not all will receive a certificate of successful com-
pletion or pass the relevant examinations. In the
countries of the Global South (i.e., the world’s
transition and developing economies), compulsory
education characteristically ends between the ages
of 12 and 14 (in Myanmar and Pakistan at 10 years
of age; in Bangladesh, Laos, and Madagascar at
11 years of age; UIS, 2013). In practice, young
people may leave school earlier than this, whereas
in some countries many children, especially girls,
never attend school regularly or at all. The figures
for 2010 (the latest available on going to print; UIS,
2012, p. 11) indicate that almost half (47%) of the
world’s primary school-aged children who are
not presently enrolled in school are unlikely ever
to do so. As Table 27.2 shows, large gaps open up
between world regions in this respect.
Behind these percentages lie daunting num-
bers: more than 30 million primary school-aged

Table 27.2.  Primary Enrolment Rates and Distribution of Primary School-Aged Children Out of School by
World Region, 2010.
World region ANER (%) Unlikely ever to No longer in Likely to enter school
enter school (%) school (%) in the future (%)

Sub-Saharan Africa 77 55 20 25

Central Asia 94 51 8 41

South & West Asia 93 49 45 7

Arab States 88 49 11 41

Central & Eastern 95 36 9 55

Europe

Latin America & 95 38 7 56

Caribbean

East Asia & Pacific 96 15 47 38

North America & 97 2 19 79

Western Europe

World average 91 47 26 27
ANER, adjusted primary net enrolment rate. This represents the total number of pupils or students of official primary school age who
are enrolled in primary or secondary education, expressed as a percentage of the corresponding population. It measures actual school
participation of the official primary school-aged population. In some cases, national data sources relate to 2011 (rather than 2010). Except
for Central Asia and North America/Western Europe, world region ANER percentages are partial imputations due to incomplete country
coverage because data are only available for between 33% and 60% of the region’s population (UIS, 2012, pp. 62, 82).
Source: UIS (2012, pp. 10, 190; ­figure 1 and table 23—amended).

448 E duc at ion a n d t h e You t h P h a s e

children do not currently attend school in
sub-Saharan Africa—in absolute terms account-
ing for half of the total number of out-of-school
children in the world. Table 27.2 also includes
net primary enrolment rates by world region. Not
surprisingly, the figure for sub-Saharan Africa is
noticeably lower than for all other world regions.
Furthermore, South and West Asia return high
primary enrolment rates but, at the same time,
most of those children in the relevant age group
who are currently not in school have already ceased
to attend or are never likely to begin school at all.
Such patterns (which can also be seen slightly less
sharply in Central Asia and the Arab States) reflect
marked inequalities and polarizations of educa-
tional access and participation.
Hence, in many countries of the world, the policy
focus still remains on achieving universal primary
education, and, in real terms, secondary schooling
is likely still to be a minority privilege—once more,
a privilege disproportionately enjoyed by boys. In
sub-Saharan Africa, 2010 gross enrolment rates in
secondary education reached only 40% of the rel-
evant age cohorts (including repeaters); in South and
West Asia only 59% (UIS, 2012, p. 191, table 23).
Once girls have access to school, they are less likely
to drop out or to have to repeat a year than are their
male peers—this holds for most countries in the
world and is especially noticeable in Latin America
and the Caribbean, where levels of repeating are
comparatively high in many countries (UIS, 2012,
chap. 2). Furthermore, secondary and postsecond-
ary vocational education and training pathways
continue to be less systematically available and less
widely taken up in the Global South (UNESCO
International Centre for Technical and Vocational
Education and Training [UNEVOC], 2013). In
comparison, general secondary education in the
Global North is increasingly a terrain on which
girls succeed at least as well as boys, although gen-
dered subject specialization choices—where these
are structurally foreseen—remain marked, and boys
continue to predominate in technical and vocational
education and training (for a recent overview of the
overall picture for Europe, see Eurydice, 2009).
These differences and their consequences are
important for both life chances and human devel-
opment. To begin with, the youth phase in the
Global South is not so firmly structured by school-
ing and certainly not for so long as is the case in the
Global North. Other things being equal, the youth
phase fades out at an earlier age as young people
begin to earn a living and found their own families
from their mid-teens onward. This inevitably tilts
the balance of youth cultural life toward the early
teenage years and hence toward less autonomous
spaces for its development and expression in every-
day life. Peer socialization and youth cultures
remain more closely tied to the immediate social
localities of school and neighborhood and to the
supervision of parents and adults in those contexts.
Furthermore, the primary setting for young peo-
ple’s individuation is less that of formal education
and more that of nonformal and informal learning
in everyday life in the family, the local community,
and, subsequently (frequently equally informally
structured), in working environments.
The overall picture would therefore suggest that,
in such societies, human development during the
youth phase favors the production and reproduc-
tion of cultural continuity together with the for-
mation of subjectivities in which the individual
and the social are highly integrated. Contemporary
intersections of tradition and modernity, however,
prompt reflection on the consequences for subjec-
tivities, values, and lifestyles among the young.
Current modernization theories, most particu-
larly in analyzing postcolonial societies, no lon-
ger contend that modernization is a homogeneous
phenomenon and unilinear process (see, e.g.,
Appadurai, 1996). Creeping “Westernization” in
rapidly urbanizing Asian and African societies is
immediately evident yet diverse kinds of hybrid-
ization between indigenous and “transnational”
lifestyles and values are no less striking, paradig-
matically so in youth cultures (Anagnost, Arai, &
Ren, 2013; Henseler, 2013; Nilan & Feixa, 2006;
see also Brown, Larson, & Saraswathi, 2002).
The relative salience of formal education within
youth life as a whole is therefore a significant fram-
ing factor, but secondary schooling itself holds a
specific purpose, in John Dewey’s (1916/2012) sense
of reconstructing frameworks of experience. This is
first reflected in its structuring: in contrast with the
broad sweep of comprehensive primary education,
secondary schools display higher degrees of internal
differentiation (subjects, tracks, streams), and sec-
ondary education systems are more likely to distin-
guish between general and vocational schools and
between schools for different ability bands. With the
transition to secondary schooling around the age of
12, young people confront diversities within which
they must find and are given educational and social
positions that presage differing kinds of futures.
These differentiation processes are taken up in the
identity work that individuation in the youth phase
C h i s hol m 449
implies, whereby tensions and contradictions arise
and may engender resistance against the attribution
of identities, capacities, and futures that young peo-
ple oppose and reject and against the nonrecognition
of who they are and want to become.
Second, in comparison with the more integrated
pedagogy of primary education, secondary school-
ing focuses above all on cognitive learning and
introduces a stronger instrumental dimension into
motivation for learning. Secondary education pre-
pares young people either to continue on to further
and higher education (its original prime purpose;
see World Bank, 2005, chap. 1 for a compact socio-
historical account), or—increasingly via vocational
training—to enter the labor market. The more
schooling is dominated by instrumental rational-
ity, the more values-based rationality loses contour,
so that the initial joy of learning is increasingly
replaced by the obligation to learn with demonstra-
ble and legitimated outcomes. Those young peo-
ple with prospects of a positive moratorium may
experience disillusionment and seek compensation
in individuating, motivating alternatives beyond
schooling. Those facing a negative moratorium
are more likely to be skeptical of the promise that
formal educational credentials will lead to decent
employment and so they “chill out” from school-
ing altogether. This simmering crisis of the mean-
ing and value of education evidenced in the Global
North (see Heckhausen & Shane, this volume) is
not transferable to the Global South, where access
to education altogether is the key issue, and young
people are in no doubt that securing the best pos-
sible education and qualifications is the only way to
improve their future standard and quality of life.
Formal education does not directly generate
the youth phase, but it plays a significant role in
structuring its patterns and meanings, and it has
exercised a key role in the extension of the youth
phase well into young adulthood. In the Global
North, being a secondary school student is becom-
ing like a full-time unpaid occupation, and rising
proportions of young people stay in the educa-
tion and training system beyond the minimum
school-leaving age—which itself has gradually
risen since the 1950s. At the beginning of this cen-
tury, the minimum threshold for securing reason-
able employment prospects in the Global North
was already the completion of upper secondary
education. Fifteen years later, postsecondary cre-
dentials are desirable, and initial higher educa-
tion enrolments continue to expand despite the
onset of falling cohort sizes in some countries.
450 E duc at ion a n d t h e You t h P h a s e
Furthermore, evidence of community engagement,
active involvement in organized sports and leisure
activities, together with voluntary work and intern-
ships have become essential components of young
people’s strategies for getting a toehold in further
education and the labor market. In other words,
the competition has continued to sharpen, so that
the concept of a positive moratorium begins to lose
credibility as the “rush-hour of life” (Bittman &
Rice, 2000) reaches down into the everyday lives of
16-year-olds in the Global North.
Teenagers in the Global North hence experi-
ence both extension and intensification of learn-
ing demands. Their school lives stretch ever
further into the future, the pressure to succeed
rises, and the range of achievement demands
expands and spills over into leisure, voluntary,
and social activities—into the domains of nonfor-
mal and informal learning that were traditionally
beyond the reach of performance and evaluation
criteria. The potentially negative consequences for
young people’s well-being have drawn consider-
able public debate. Here, however, the interest
lies in the implications for the meanings attached
to the youth phase. It could be argued that the
concept of the youth moratorium is losing perti-
nence altogether as a result of its colonization by
the instrumentalization of youth life as a whole
for the purposes of the demonstrable and cali-
brated shaping of the social subject. Furthermore,
where the transition to social adulthood (secure
employment, housing, family building) recedes
to a far-away, hazy horizon and in fast-changing
worlds where preparation for something else is a
permanent feature of human development, the
rationale for the youth phase as transition begins
to dissolve.
Perhaps today’s young people in the Global
North are actually more like educational workers,
literally learning on the job. It is worth recalling
that beginning work between 12 and 14 years of
age was still typical for very significant proportions
of European populations going to school before
World War II and, in some of these countries, was
still not uncommon in the 1960s. The workplaces
are now schools, but with fuzzy boundaries, so that
youth life becomes a cultural workplace to be taken
seriously. Paradoxically, this kind of perspective
brings young people in the Global North conceptu-
ally closer to their peers in the Global South who
are much more likely to be leaving school earlier
and trying to earn a living or performing domes-
tic labor (or both). The conceptual similarity thus
lies in their common experience of youth life as a
ubiquitous, multidimensional workplace. The criti-
cal difference lies in the reality of their respective
economic and social circumstances: youth poverty
and marginalization frame educational chances
and risks for a minority in the Global North but a
majority in the Global South.
The differences are stark. The OECD (2012,
pp. 14–16) reports that its 34 member coun-
tries (the world’s leading economies) provide for
13 years of formal education, typically beginning
between 5 and 7 years of age and of which usu-
ally at least 9 years are compulsory (through to
completion of lower secondary schooling between
14 and 16). In 25 OECD countries, at least 4 in
5 15- to 19-year-olds are still in the educational
system, and, since the mid-1990s, participation
has risen on average by at least 10%. Girls are
now almost everywhere in OECD countries more
likely to complete upper secondary education than
are boys, in some countries (such as Iceland and
Portugal) very significantly so. Yet despite greater
occupational ambition in their mid-teens, young
women are still more likely than their male peers
to find themselves outside employment and educa-
tion after the end of compulsory schooling and into
young adulthood (OECD, 2012, pp. 16, 22, 86).
The World Bank’s recent global report on sec-
ondary education points out that in recent decades
the gap between the Global North and the Global
South has narrowed with respect to completion of
primary schooling but has widened for the second-
ary sector (World Bank, 2005, p. xviii; see also EFA
Global Monitoring Report Team, 2012, chap. 5).
In low-income countries, policy and resources
have focused strongly on primary and basic edu-
cation (in the push to achieve Education for All
[EFA] by 2015; see EFA Global Monitoring Report
Team, 2014). In these countries, secondary schools
are often not within easy traveling distance from
home, and they typically entail financial outlay
(fees, books, materials), which inevitably accentu-
ates personal and social disadvantage (gender, eth-
nicity, socioeconomic status, geographical location)
in access and participation. In addition, in many
low-income countries, significant numbers of those
attending primary schools are actually of second-
ary school age, whereas upper secondary schools not
infrequently host students of lower secondary age;
such students are at particular risk of ultimate non-
completion of studies (UIS, 2011, p. 11).
Although lower secondary education is for-
mally compulsory in many low-income countries,
in practice, participation and completion rates
vary widely between individual countries and are
extremely low in some—for example, in 2009, only
36% of Tanzanian students and 13% of those liv-
ing in Niger went on from primary to secondary
schooling. The provision–participation gap is espe-
cially wide in much of the sub-Saharan African
region, and for lower secondary completion rates it
widens still more—in effect, throughout the world
there is a strong correlation between secondary
education participation ratios and national pros-
perity (UIS, 2011, pp. 13–14, 20–22).
The gender gap at this level shows more complex
patterns between individual countries, but, from
the viewpoint of world regions, in Latin America
and the Caribbean the past 15 years have seen a
widening gap to the disadvantage of boys, one that
also continues to increase through to upper second-
ary school completion. Over the same period, the
gender gap to girls’ disadvantage in most of East
Asia and the Pacific has largely disappeared, in
much of South and West Asia it remains signifi-
cant, in the Arab States this gap is still visible, and
in most of sub-Saharan Africa it opens up even
more at upper secondary level. Finally, in these four
world regions, together with Central and Eastern
Europe, girls in the lower secondary education age
range are more likely not to be attending school
than are boys—once more with the highest rates
in sub-Saharan Africa and in South and West Asia
(UIS, 2011, pp. 18, 20, 26–27, 39).
Gender disparities in schooling—as is the case
for ethnic minorities and migrant groups, for
which very little material is available beyond North
America, Europe, and Australia/New Zealand—
arise in good part in interaction with other disad-
vantaging factors, such as living in isolated rural
areas, and in particular with socioeconomic back-
ground. But international education statistics also
indicate that cultural traditions with respect to gen-
der relations and gender-specific divisions of labor
do have an impact. However, in-depth sociocul-
tural analyses of gender and education for specific
countries and communities are still not available
for most of the world; statistical indices are but a
descriptive starting point (see, e.g., UNESCO,
2010; World Economic Forum [WEF], 2013).
The extent of the gaps between the Global North
and the Global South in access to, participation in,
and completion of basic education—that is, through
to the end of lower secondary schooling—leads to
the conclusion that the youth phase for the majority
of young people in low-income countries not only
C h i s hol m 451
covers a shorter period of time, but that also family
and work play particularly salient roles in configur-
ing human development processes, generally privi-
leging the reproduction of cultural tradition and the
social power relations in which these are embedded.
Poor material circumstances together with repres-
sive states and societies may place strong brakes on
the empowerment potential of formal education and
of autonomous youth culture—but, as youth move-
ments in favor of girls’ schooling in Afghanistan and
sociopolitical change in the Arab Spring countries
have once again shown, young people can and do
become critically reflective, active democratic citi-
zens regardless—profiting from the free-floating
diversity of nonformal and informal learning expe-
riences (see, e.g., Feixa, Pereira, & Juris, 2009;
Larémont, 2012; Pechtelidis, 2011; Pfaff, 2009).
Where school offers a haven of promise and
protection—as for girls growing up in highly tradi-
tional patriarchal national and familial cultures—it
becomes the very guarantor of a youth moratorium
in resistance to the reproduction of social inequali-
ties, including severely unequal gender relations.
The knowledge that women’s historically long road
to emancipation has everywhere passed via educa-
tion serves as a momentary glimpse of global simi-
larity: the educational success of today’s girls and
young women in the OECD countries builds on
exactly the same insight and motivation.
Conclusion: Toward a Glocal Discourse
Social theory on the contemporary youth phase
addresses itself to two core phenomena: the exten-
sion and fragmentation of transitions to adult-
hood, and the growth and meaning of autonomous
youth culture. These developments are framed
both within processes of individualization at the
societal level and in the context of persistent, in
some respects deepening, social inequalities at
multiple levels. Education’s role in all this is inevi-
tably ambivalent and contradictory: its emanci-
patory potential for individual and social human
development meets its match in processes of social
and cultural reproduction as generated and relayed
through schooling.
Longer periods of initial formal education in
principle facilitate positive youth moratoria and
hence enriched human development opportunities
for increasingly more young people. At the same
time, where schooling delivers neither its intrin-
sic nor its instrumental promises, it engenders
enforced youth moratoria that corral young people
into closeted and closed life spaces and futures.
452 E duc at ion a n d t h e You t h P h a s e
Nonformal youth education’s greater openness and
flexibility of content and pedagogy offers balanc-
ing potential and alternative spaces for individual
development—but the degree of its provision varies
considerably even in the richest countries, and, on
the whole, the young disadvantaged are less likely
to participate.
Youth cultural contexts, which open up oppor-
tunities for self-directed and peer-based informal
learning, are dependent on autonomous time
and space for engagement—and given cultural
commodification, to some extent on monetary
resources. Here, too, social inequalities prestructure
opportunities. Where young people can secure, one
way or another, the access infrastructure for par-
ticipation, they can partly compensate cultural
and economic barriers—as the global popularity of
mobile devices and social media testify.
However carefully summary accounts such as
those just discussed are formulated, they are indel-
ibly marred by the fact that theoretical picturing
of the youth phase derives almost wholly from the
Western intellectual tradition and from research
carried out in the Global North, social anthro-
pological studies of ritualized transitions in pre-
modern cultures notwithstanding. This body of
intellectual work—however astute it may be—is
then carried over as a base template for ordering
and understanding the patterns, purposes, and
problems of the contemporary youth phase in the
Global South. The analysis of gender relations
offers a parallel, in that—for example—the study
of occupations and careers has its roots in the pat-
terns and meanings of men’s working lives, which
can result in a deficit perspective on women’s work-
ing lives.
Schooling as a social institution is itself a
paradigmatic example of template transfer,
directly via colonization and more indirectly via
Euro-American economic and cultural hegemony.
Education may genuinely be the best answer any-
one can offer for individual, social, and economic
human development, but, under current circum-
stances, much of the world cannot achieve mini-
mum benchmarks for access and participation.
Leveling off the playing field through a greater
global redistribution of resources is an unavoidable
precondition for changing this state of affairs, but
rethinking education as a global challenge is no less
pertinent. The schooling of Western modernity
may not be the optimal template for education for
all in today’s world. It could be analytically help-
ful to think anew through the lens of culturally
differentiated continua of formal, nonformal,
and informal learning modalities and practices
and, in doing so, consciously not to begin from
Euro-American theoretical and empirical vantage
points.
Moreover, schooling and youth stand in rela-
tions of tension: in structuring youth life, mod-
ern education both democratizes and disciplines
the youth phase. In opening up opportunities
for development and change, schooling equally
specifies legitimated subjectivities, identities, and
knowledge. Coming to terms with such tensions
lies at the heart of human development yet little is
known about culturally specific varieties of resis-
tance and accommodation from a globally differ-
entiated perspective.
Research knowledge on the youth phase is
weighted toward charting education–employment
transitions, characteristically quantitatively, com-
plemented by largely qualitative studies of peers
and cliques, subcultures and social movements,
and lifestyles and values. This second category is
strongly dominated by Europe, North America,
and Australia, with a relatively autonomous scien-
tific community in Latin America and an emerging
scientific community in Eastern Asia that draws in
particular on North American perspectives. Little
of this kind of work is well-funded.
Because of its immediate policy relevance, edu-
cation–employment transitions research attracts
more funding from governments and state agen-
cies, but globally only a minority of countries
can afford such resource-intensive human sci-
ence research. For its part, educational research
is traditionally a nationally circumscribed field of
activity. To date, knowledge at the global level
is very much made up of international educa-
tional statistics whose purpose is essentially non-
evaluative description rather than theoretically
informed research and analysis—this kind of
information is assembled to guide and monitor
policy action, not to serve the thematic interests
of scientific communities. Furthermore, impor-
tant as this information is for making visible the
extent of social inequalities in access, participa-
tion, and outcome within and between countries
and communities, it cannot uncover the complex
processes of human action within educational
systems that produce and reproduce not only cul-
tural and political diversity, but also social and
economic inequality.
Theory and research into education and the
youth phase faces, therefore, multiple imbalances
that make it extraordinarily difficult to compose
plausible accounts of their interactions and the
implications of these with adequate cultural and
social specificity. At root, there is only one way to
improve matters and that is to invest in human
development—in this case, to support, in every
way possible, the emergence of sustainable special-
ist scientific communities throughout the world
and the improvement of young scholars’ research
apprenticeships in the interest of strengthening
both independent intellectual creativity and inter-
cultural communication capacity. That is, after all,
what education should be doing for much younger
people than young scholars; but perhaps this is the
whole point of the exercise: the purpose of educa-
tion for one and all is human development in order
to enrich the quality of people’s lives.
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C h i s hol m 455
 C H A P T E R

28 Child Labor: Homes, Streets,

Armies, Factories, and Stores

Silvia Koller, Luciana Dutra-Thomé, Normanda Araujo de Morais,

Carlos José Nieto Silva, and Juliana Prates Santana

Abstract
The main topic of this chapter is children’s and adolescents’ labor. When working in unprotected
and illegal settings, labor activities are described as harmful to their development and a violation of
human rights. However, children’s and adolescents’ labor present positive aspects as well, when not
affecting their schooling, health, and development. A general overview of child and adolescent labor
is described while considering guides and laws established by the International Labor Organization
(ILO). Domestic work, commercial sexual exploitation, and participation in armies are emphasized as
sources of invisible or naturalized child labor. The chapter addresses child labor with an emphasis on
developing countries. It also highlights the association between child labor and structural problems
such as poverty, low education, extended work hours, and violence.
Key Words:  child labor, vulnerability, poverty

Child labor is a worldwide problem that came
to our attention due to the nature of our research
interests and practices. We work with populations
at risk, such as those living on the street, in situa-
tions of domestic and community violence, and in
poverty, and who lack access to education and basic
human rights. Throughout our research and inves-
tigations, we occasionally must report situations of
human rights violations to human rights protection
services or the police.
Our research group is the Center of Psychological
Studies (CEP-RUA). The group was originally
called the Center of Psychological Studies of Street
Children because the main focus of our work was
with individuals who live on the streets. Over time,
the target population became more diverse, and a
variety of profiles and topics were accounted for
in our research (e.g., the elderly; child, adolescent,
and adult workers; teen pregnancy; transition to
adulthood; and the measurement of psychologi-
cal variables applied in a Brazilian context). Our
focus remained on populations at risk. The main
theoretical concepts and approaches considered in
our investigations address the dynamics between
protective and risk factors, the ecological human
approach, and positive psychology. CEP-RUA
is composed of researchers from different states
within Brazil, as well as from different countries
(e.g., Colombia, Mozambique, Peru, Portugal,
and Uruguay). This broad network enables us to
consider both diverse contexts’ within Brazil and
outside the country. As a consequence, the group
acts as an observatory of developmental processes
in vulnerable environments, considering and rec-
ognizing human development’s particularities
and divergence when compared with “normative”
development.
In Brazil, we interviewed boys and girls who were
victims of sexual exploitation in order to under-
stand their perspective. Often, they left home due
to domestic violence and chose the “streets” as an
alternative to escape the suffering they faced inside
their homes. These are complex cases, associated
with structural violence, poverty, sexual and labor

456
exploitation, and violation of human rights. As
the researchers focused on the interaction between
individuals and their contexts, we considered eco-
nomic, political, cultural, and historical influences
on human development. The research exposes
intriguing personal experiences. For example, in a
case study of a 14-year-old girl and victim of sexual
exploitation, she stated, “I have sex to survive, that
is my work, and I like my life.” She left home due
to domestic violence and found the streets to be
a place of opportunity to express her autonomy.
Now living outside the home, she continued to be
emotionally and physically abused, although she
did not realize it. The girl classified the men with
whom she had sex as her “boyfriends,” considering
that some of them were frequent clients. She also
stated “I am a beautiful girl, and guys are interested
in dating me. I have fun with that. I was never
forced to have sex with someone I did not want to
be with.” She does not want to go back home or to
find another job.
One of the main issues in dealing with child
labor lies in structural problems. There are interest
groups surrounding children and adolescents that
use persuasive strategies to attract and lead these
young people to believe that working is a worthy
choice, regardless of the conditions. In Colombia,
a different situation highlights a similar problem.
Children associated with armed groups (i.e., rebel
armies) frequently join them voluntary. One of the
recruitment tactics of these groups is promoting
that children and adolescents can make decisions
about their future, just like any adult. And after
they became a part of an illegal armies groups
(IAG), it is difficult to give up: “They teach you
little by little, first with a.38 and then with a big-
ger gun. I was shooting an AK-47 before I was
8 years old” (Bernardo, demobilized from a para-
military group, quoted in Human Rights Watch,
2003, p. 17).
The situations and testimonials described led
us to recognize child labor as a matter of human
rights and social justice. Child labor has become
a prominent international issue due to its impact
on child and adolescent development and health
(International Labor Organization [ILO], 2004).
In this chapter, we first provide general informa-
tion about global child labor, including findings
on the risks and benefits. In the second section, we
delve into particular forms of work in different con-
texts. Specifically, we focus on domestic work in
family and nonfamily settings, commercial sexual
exploitation, and armies.
K oll e r , Du t r a-T hom é , Mor a i s , N i e t o, S a n t a n a
Child Labor: Prevalence,
Benefits, and Risks
Child labor refers to labor activities performed
by children under 18 years old who are below the
legal minimum age permitted for work under the
laws of each country. It means they are too young
to work, or, in cases where they are old enough to
work, the activity is dangerous or unsuitable.
Worldwide, there are more than 246 million child
and adolescent workers between 5 and 17 years
of age (ILO, 2012a). More than 100 million of
these workers have no access to any education, and
leisure time is not within reach for the majority.
Child labor deprives children of their childhood,
potential, and dignity and is harmful to their
development. Children and adolescents may be
paid or unpaid, with varying degrees of risk and in
different sectors and contexts (ILO, 2004).
In 2010, the Conventions No. 138 on the mini-
mum age for admission to employment and No.
182 9 on the worst forms of child labor were rati-
fied by 156 and 175 of the 183 member states of the
International Labor Organization (ILO), respec-
tively. Despite the fact that a significant number
of countries ratify these conventions (ILO, 2012a;
Beghini, & Quinn, 2012), child labor differences
in scale and focus are observed among them. For
instance, child labor is observed on a smaller scale
in developed nations and is a more widespread
practice in underdeveloped nations (ILO, 2012a).
Between 2000 and 2008, the number of chil-
dren between 5 and 14 years engaged in child
labor decreased by 20%. This trend was not
observed in workers between 15 and 17 years
of age who worked in unsafe conditions.
Approximately 113.6 million children are work-
ing in Asia and the Pacific Region, 65.1 million in
the sub-Saharan African region, and 14.1 million
in Latin America. The situation is most severe in
sub-Saharan Africa, where 1 in 4 children and
adolescents are working, compared with 1 in 8
in Asia and the Pacific Region, and 1 in 10 in
Latin America and the Caribbean. The interna-
tional community established the elimination of
the worst forms of child labor as a target for 2016
(ILO, 2012c).
Vulnerability and Protective and Risk
Factors Associated with Child Labor
Vulnerability is an individual predisposition to
develop various forms of psychopathologies or inef-
fective behaviors in crisis situations or the suscep-
tibility to a negative effect on development (Pesce,
457
Assis, Santos, & Oliveira, 2004). A dysfunctional
family, unemployment, poverty, poor access to
health care and education, a shortage of structural
work, and early involvement in economic activities
are situations that may increase a young child’s vul-
nerability (Sapienza & Pedromônico, 2005).
Young people living in developing countries
experience a shortage of structural work that gener-
ates problems such as social inequality. In a con-
text of labor insertion marked by competitiveness
and qualification requirements, the prevalence of
low-paying formal and informal jobs leads to poor
living conditions and social problems (Bastos,
2003; Cardoso, 2013; Traverso-Yépez, 2002).
Also, early involvement in economic activities is
associated with poverty contexts, violence, and poor
housing and working conditions. In Latin America,
for example, adolescents and children belonging
to low socioeconomic status (SES) families are
involved in performing household chores and tend
to enter the labor market early. Low-SES environ-
ments are composed of the poor populations of
urban centers whose living conditions are precari-
ous and who have limited access to health care, edu-
cation, basic sanitation services, and a low family
income. In these families, children acquire freedom
of movement at a relatively young age because they
are encouraged to seek autonomy and independence
with regard to caring for themselves without adult
supervision (Watarai & Romanelli, 2005).
Another structural problem that increases vul-
nerability is unemployment. Worldwide, 73 mil-
lion of young individuals aged between 14 and
24 years are unemployed, and more than 200 mil-
lion are working and earn less than US$2 per day.
And at least 10% of them are inactive, meaning
they are neither working nor studying (Bartfay,
Bartfay, & Wu, 2013; Cardoso, 2013; ILO, 2012b).
In vulnerable contexts, both protective and
risk factors exist. Protection means providing the
developing person with conditions for growth and
development. Protective factors modify, enhance,
or change personal and group responses to certain
risks for maladjustment and reduce the impact of
risk. The two main types of protective factors are
individual characteristics (e.g., self-esteem, mood,
and optimism) and social support (e.g., material,
emotional, informational, and counseling).
Considering that the impact of work activi-
ties for children and adolescents is acknowledged,
legal measures and public policies work as protec-
tive factors. For instance, in Brazil, the Adolescent
Apprentice contract (Law 5598/2005, Brasil,
458 C h i l d L a b or
2005) is an example of a protected work activity
in which young workers are engaged in protected
professional settings that do not negatively affect
their educational or leisure activities. The contract
requires school attendance, a special schedule for
the performance of activities, a program of techni-
cal and vocational education, and training appro-
priate to the job market.
The work activity itself may also function as
a protective factor and promote roles of growth,
human development, stimulation of creativity, and
social approval (Forastieri, 1997; Oliveira, Fischer,
Amaral, Teixeira, & Sá, 2005), provided that this
work does not affect schooling or the health and
development of the child or adolescent (ILO,
2004). For example, helping parents with small
household chores or with the family business or
engaging in gainful activities to support personal
expenses outside school hours is considered posi-
tive work. This type of work is not the target of
eradication programs because it may contribute to
the well-being of children and their families, help-
ing children to acquire skills and assisting them in
the development process and future insertion into
the labor market.
Working may also bring a sense of acquired
legitimate social identity to young people and
their families (Heilborn, 2000). An exploratory
study pointed out that workers aged between
10 and 13 years in Brasilia (Federal District,
Brazil) perceived their work experience as liberat-
ing, enabling them to pursue their life projects,
whereas school was experienced as a place of duty
(Martinez, 2001). A study developed in the State
of Minas Gerais (Brazil) identified pleasure in the
act of playing at work in several working children’s
lives: many turn shopping carts (working tools)
into play objects (Marques, Neves, & Neto, 2002).
Hence, although they would behave seriously and
quietly, adopting an early adult stance, they would
also express themselves as children when creating
spaces for play at work (Bonamigo, 1996).
Despite the fact some young workers classify
their work activity as positive, this does not mean
they do not recognize its negative aspects. A research
study was conducted in Ribeirão Preto (SP, Brazil)
with 10 male adolescents between 16 and 18 years
of age who were attending high school in a public
institution. They were inserted into the formal or
informal labor market and revealed their difficulty
in managing their appointments. Although they
valued the work experience, they complained about
how little time they could spend with friends and
family. The long working hours constituted the big-
gest complaint among respondents, given the need
to reconcile their work with school attendance.
Despite the fact that the respondents did not con-
sider work detrimental to academic performance,
they reported difficulty in studying due to fatigue
(Watarai & Romanelli, 2005).
Even with the potential benefits of working,
some type of work configures risk factors. Risk fac-
tors are related to negative life events that increase
the likelihood of people experiencing physi-
cal, social, and emotional problems. Risk factors
include poverty conditions, family disruptions,
experience of some form of violence, illness of the
individual himself or of a family member, and
significant losses. These events increase the indi-
vidual’s vulnerability to negative effects on devel-
opment (Pesce et al., 2004).
The list of risk factors is extensive and provides
a sense of the hazardousness, insalubrity, and hard-
ship involved in child labor. Child labor not only
leads to diseases and accidents but also damages
the dignity of children and adolescents. The health
consequences include fractures, cuts, amputations,
hearing loss, brain and eye damage, infections,
poisoning, burns, musculoskeletal disorders, respi-
ratory diseases, drug addiction, fatigue, malnutri-
tion, AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases,
unwanted pregnancy, and social stigma linked to
delinquency. Death is also reported as a possible
consequence of early labor (ILO, 2004).
A study conducted with 724 adolescents work-
ers in public schools in São Paulo (Brazil) identi-
fied negative factors involved in their labor activity,
such as (a) responsibility for tasks for which they
do not feel experienced, (b) excessive activities and,
(c) stress-inducing psychosocial demands incom-
patible with their developmental time (Oliveira
et al., 2005). In Rio de Janeiro, Asmus et al. (2005)
observed that the main occupational diseases in an
outpatient clinic specializing in the health of ado-
lescent workers (with an average age of 16 years)
were musculoskeletal diseases, upper respiratory
tract infections, allergic diseases, eye problems, and
hypertension. A study by Fischer et al. (2003) with
354 students in São Paulo revealed that, although
87.6% of the patients surveyed considered them-
selves healthy, they reported feeling fatigue (81.6%),
drowsiness (55.1%), daytime sleepiness (46.3%),
and body aches (62.2%). The study also identified
an association between work and sleep reduction,
indicating that their work schedules affect adoles-
cents’ sleep–wake cycle.
K oll e r , Du t r a-T hom é , Mor a i s , N i e t o, S a n t a n a
Dynamics Between Risk
and Protective Factors
The dynamics between risk and protective fac-
tors will be explained using two examples: the first
is associated with education and the second with
labor activities. Education is the main instrument
supporting higher levels of human capital and
the promotion of individuals’ welfare. At school,
children and adolescents have the opportunity to
develop social relationships, networks of friends,
and contacts (Abramovay, Castro, Pinheiro, Lima,
& Martinelli, 2002), which are protective factors.
Conversely, young students are concerned about
getting a job, which leads them to question the
relevance of formal education for their insertion
into the labor market, given the demands of expe-
rience to start a labor activity—an obstacle that
may be regarded as a risk factor. In that context,
many students drop out of school to work, which
compromises their training process and profes-
sional qualifications. The paradox of the previous
experience requirement is established for the first
job. When searching for their first job, a large
contingent of young people experience difficulties
resulting from different factors, including low skills
and a low degree of political articulation compared
with competing adults. Additionally, there is a lag
of formal education, considering the new demands
for skills and knowledge, which is a source of vul-
nerability (Abramovay et al., 2002).
The second example refers to labor activity,
which may simultaneously be a protective and a risk
factor. Professional experience may be assessed as a
protective factor when referring to forms of work
that are considered positive, such as the adolescent
apprentice’s experience regulated by Brazilian leg-
islation (Brasil, 2005) and assisting with house-
hold activities. For young people, engaging in paid
activities may contribute to their wellness and the
wellness of their families. This process is a means
to facilitate the acquisition of skills, assist in the
development process, and aid in their future inser-
tion into the labor market. Precisely for this reason,
youth work remains regarded as natural and neces-
sary for families of low SES. However, the protec-
tion factor of work may represent a risk factor as
well because the valuation of work may discount
the effects of work on young people’s health and
their establishment of identity and academic life. In
Brazil, many parents believe that they have fulfilled
their obligation to provide for their children’s edu-
cation at the end of middle school (Guimarães &
Romanelli, 2002); these parents encourage an early
459
onset of labor activity that allows young people to
pay for their own expenses and sometimes con-
tribute to household expenses (Barros & Santos,
1996; Guimarães & Romanelli, 2002; Marques,
Neves, & Neto, 2002; Sarti, 1996). Nevertheless,
this type of work activity is not always compatible
with the individual’s developmental process and
can even be damaging to health, identity formation,
and academic success (Amazarray, Dutra-Thomé,
Souza, Poletto, & Koller, 2009).
Four Kinds of Child Work
In the preceding section, we reviewed differ-
ent types of child labor and how they are related
to risks, benefits, and long-term sequelae. Here,
we turn to a more in-depth account of four kinds
of child work: domestic work in the child’s home,
domestic work at a third-party home, commercial
sexual exploitation, and participation in armies.
We provide this in-depth account to illustrate the
structural problems associated with the trivial-
ization of child labor and also to highlight those
interest groups that reinforce this practice and use
seductive strategies to attract boys and girls to do
this work voluntarily.
Working in the Domestic
Context: General Aspects
Child and adolescent work in the domestic
context has been analyzed under two different
conditions: (a) the participation in the division of
domestic responsibilities within the family con-
text and (b) the work performed by children in
third-party homes.
Participation in household activities as part of
the family context is relevant for developing the
notion of responsibility among children and ado-
lescents (Goodnow, 1988; Warton & Goodnow,
1991). However, working for others may be a
condition of exploitation, one placing children in
what is characterized as a socially vulnerable situ-
ation (Hesketh, Gamlin, Ong, & Camacho, 2012;
Jacquemin, 2004; Santana & Dimenstein, 2005).
There is significant difficulty in scaling the num-
ber of child domestic workers worldwide and assess-
ing the level of family participation in household
chores. Both contexts of domestic work have two
common and fundamental aspects in the perfor-
mance of activities, namely, invisibility and gender
inequality. Invisibility is associated with the activ-
ity’s absence of payment or economic productiv-
ity and, additionally, with its unlawfulness and
degrading conditions of subordination to others.
460 C h i l d L a b or
Regarding gender inequality, girls’ performance of
domestic work is considered natural and a crucial
step for their development as women and wives in
many cultures. Girls are taught to cook, clean the
house, and wash dishes, while boys remain “pro-
tected” from these obligations and are served by
women. Thus, domestic activities, whether paid
or unpaid, are socially recognized as female. Child
and adolescent work outside the house is typical of
boys, and work inside the house is typical of girls
(Colonna, 2012; French, 2009; Hesketh et al., 2012;
Hook, 2010; Montgomery, 2009; Romich, 2007).
In Northeastern Brazil, the practice of seeking girls
from small cities to “help” with household chores
and “play” with the children is very common and
involves a reproduction of the inequalities of gender
and race (Santana & Dimenstein, 2005). In 2009,
62% of domestic workers were non-white children,
and 94.5% of them were girls (IBGE, 2010).
Domestic Work Within
the Domestic Context
The participation of children in household chores
is observed in various cultures. There is an increase
in such work from 7 to 12 years of age, which not
only reflects the child’s maturation, but also signals
a change in social expectations concerning their
participation in society. Such participation is made
invisible and is negated as work because there is a
mismatch between the actual help offered and the
predominant Western conception that child labor
might be injurious for children. As a consequence,
an insignificant value is assigned to the tasks, and
the time spent in the activities is underestimated.
Nevertheless, children and adolescents actually
perform housework, and designating their activi-
ties as chores is a technique used to minimize the
impact and relevance of the children’s contribu-
tions. In the context of domestic work within the
family, (a) girls typically work more than boys,
(b) younger adolescents perform more housework
than their elders as their elders begin to performing
more activities outside the household, and (c) chil-
dren work more when their mothers have jobs out-
side the home (Romich, 2007).
Work in the household context may yield posi-
tive effects, including learning practical and rela-
tional skills and developing required competences
and a sense of responsibility for a productive
adulthood (Romich, 2007). A positive correlation
between self-efficacy in young adults and the per-
formance of housework in the family of origin was
found by Riggio, Valenzuela, and Weiser (2010).
Housework contributed as a fundamental experi-
ence in developing a sense of competence.
An investigation with 702 children and adoles-
cents engaged in work activities within the domestic
context and other settings in the state of São Paulo
(Trzesniak, Libório, & Koller, 2012) indicated that
child labor was not always a sign of adversity and
risk. Depending on context, working may be a pro-
tective factor for the child’s adapted functioning.
This finding was also verified by Colonna (2012) in
Mozambique, in a study that focused on children
who take care of younger siblings and participate
in domestic activities. In the African context, these
activities are considered as part of a child’s normal
routines, not as configuring a developmental risk
factor. In this setting, caring for siblings and per-
forming housework represent more than a job and
are ways of life for children.
A study about how adolescents perceive house-
work within the family context identified the
development of responsibility as the main value
of housework (Bowes, Flanagan, & Taylor, 2001).
However, significant differences were observed
among adolescents. In the United States and
Australia, participants focused on the development
of individual responsibility, whereas adolescents in
the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Sweden attrib-
uted high value to social responsibility.
Although working within the family context
may present positive aspects, this activity, when
excessive and inappropriate, may become a source
of stress and suffering for children and adolescents.
In some cases, children assume many housework
responsibilities, care for younger siblings, or even
provide emotional support to parents, a situation
characterized as instrumental parentification. This
situation is extreme, wherein role reversal occurs
between parents and children, and the children
begin to take responsibility for the welfare of their
parents or older siblings or their physical care.
Children subjected to this situation may have low
self-esteem, high anxiety, difficulties in establish-
ing interpersonal relationships that endure into
adulthood, and limited education (Hesketh et al.,
2012; Hooper, 2007).
Domestic Work in Third-Party Houses
Although other studies indicate the positive
effects on development arising from housework
in the family context, the same finding is not
true for working children subordinated to others,
which is regarded as one of the worst forms of child
labor exploitation. A good relationship between
K oll e r , Du t r a-T hom é , Mor a i s , N i e t o, S a n t a n a
employers and children may be relevant for the
sense of wellness; however, it hides a series of rights
violations because children who are treated like
family fail to claim their labor rights and demand
adequate working conditions; instead, they enter a
submission and debt system and are exploited by
the family.
Children under 18 years of age who perform
activities including cooking, cleaning, and caring
for younger children or elderly people in nonfamily
houses are termed child domestic workers (CDW).
This practice is common in developing countries,
where mainly girls, especially those from rural
areas, are taken into the homes of families to assist
in caring for younger children and to do household
chores.
Housework performed by children is often
accepted and considered safe because the children
are in a “protected” family context, albeit not with
their own family (Hesketh et al., 2012). The invis-
ibility of this work means that there is no proper
monitoring of the living conditions of children.
In 2013, to commemorate the fight against child
labor, the ILO undertook a campaign for the eradi-
cation of child labor, particularly in the domestic
context, because of its invisible nature and the
frequent reports of child labor exploitation in the
domestic context. The proposal aims to ratify ILO
Convention No. 189 regarding housework and
integrate it into the general convention on child
labor. The ILO estimates that 15.5 million children
worldwide, 72% of whom are girls, are involved in
paid or unpaid work in nonfamily households.
In a study analyzing the living conditions
of 696 child domestic workers in India and the
Philippines, it was observed that Indian children
started working earlier (one-third before the age
of 12), and the main reason was poverty (Hesketh
et al., 2012). Although only 12% of Indian children
lived with their employers, these children worked
many hours a day, and only 8.6% had a day off.
In the Philippines, most children worked to keep
studying; 54% lived with their employers and were
mostly from the countryside. Regarding the psy-
chosocial impact of housework on the development
of children, the authors note that this impact var-
ies greatly depending on the conditions in which
the work occurs. Housework subordinated to oth-
ers was thus interpreted as not in itself represent-
ing a risk for development. The differences between
the two contexts (India and Philippines) stand
out among the reported results. In India, children
start work earlier, live with their families, are at
461
risk for physical abuse, rarely attend school, and
their psychosocial outcomes are low. Conversely,
in the Philippines, working children live with their
employers, are migrants, combine school and work,
have a good relationship with employers, and feel
proud of the work they perform.
These results imply that the variable housework
alone means very little, and the circumstances in
which the work occurs, the local culture, and the
children’s own perception of their work must be
considered (Trzesniak et al., 2012). For instance,
one of the concerns related to domestic child labor
refers to the children’s lack of education. In a study
conducted in Bolivia, girls who performed domes-
tic work under the subordination of others were
more likely to drop out of school early (Zapata,
Contreras, & Kruger, 2011). Similar data were
recorded by Jacquemin (2004) in the Ivory Coast.
However, work does not necessarily mean dropping
out of school. For the Filipino children in the study
just noted, the reason for continuing to work was
precisely so that they could stay in school (Hesketh
et al., 2012).
When analyzing the implications of child labor
for health, life satisfaction, and education in a shoe
factory and housework in the interior of São Paulo
State, Brazil, French (2009) observed that both
forms of work have negative impacts on children’s
wellness. The hours spent at work were negatively
related to physical health and school grades, while
caring for younger children during housework was
negatively associated with health and life satisfac-
tion. It should also be noted that this impact was
more evident among girls, who often take on a
double work shift.
Commercial Sexual Exploitation
of Children and Adolescents
The commercial sexual exploitation of children
and adolescents (CSECA) refers to any action
involving a child or adolescent’s body, whether
female or male, to earn benefits or sexual advan-
tages based on a relationship of power and com-
mercial exploitation (Leal, 1999, 2003; Libório,
2005). Victims worldwide “use” their bodies in
sexual activities for commercial purposes (e.g.,
earning money, food, consumer goods, car rides,
and drugs). CSECA happens visibly in the streets
of cities and towns, usually in areas related to rec-
reation and tourism, and invisibly in motels, hotels,
gas stations, and brothels.
CSECA is considered a work activity by ILO
Convention n182 (ILO, 2012a) because it refers
462 C h i l d L a b or
to the process of benefiting from others’ sexual
work by creating a sex market (live sexual relations
and/or photographs and footage of body images).
Alongside drug trafficking, CSECA is character-
ized as one of the worst forms of child labor, given
its nature and circumstances, which are harmful to
children’s and adolescents’ health and moral devel-
opment (Alberto, Silva, Gomes, Santana, & Soares,
2012).
Recently, Childhood Brazil (www.childhood.
org.br) organized a proposal for the classification
of the forms of child and adolescent sexual exploi-
tation based on the settings of the sex trade. Four
main forms were proposed: (1) organized sexual
exploitation—child and adolescent sexual exploi-
tation mediated by people or services, including
brothels, escort services, and nightclubs; (2) non-
organized sexual exploitation—child and adoles-
cent sexual exploitation without the presence of
an intermediary; (3) trafficking for the purpose of
sexual exploitation—seduction, abduction, trans-
fer, and accommodation of children and adoles-
cents to “feed” the sexual exploitation market; and
(4) children and youth pornography—the practice
of presenting uncovered body parts or represent-
ing sexual scenes with the aim of stimulating the
viewer’s libido.
CSECA is a phenomenon of international scope
and great complexity. Understanding this practice
involves placing it in a very comprehensive context,
one characterized by structural, social, and inter-
personal violence (Libório, 2004, 2005). Structural
violence is related to the state’s failure to enforce
public policies of quality (e.g., education, health,
housing, work, income, and leisure) to ensure chil-
dren’s social inclusion and quality of life. Social
violence is expressed regarding race, ethnicity, gen-
der, and generation and promotes a sexist, racist,
and adult-centric culture that leads to the devalu-
ation of blacks, women, and children/adolescents.
Finally, interpersonal violence occurs within inter-
personal relationships, which are strongly affected
by the hegemonic set of social values, and occurs
in both domestic environments and public spaces.
Structural, family, social, and personal aspects
thus tend to precede the implementation of
CSECA in the lives of children and adolescents
(Dutra-Thomé, Cerqueira-Santos, & Koller, 2011).
A look back at these children’s life contexts high-
lights many situations that contribute to their
subsequent involvement in CSECA, including pov-
erty, sexual violence in the family of origin, psycho-
logical and physical violence, the use of alcohol and
drugs, conflicts with the law, and a violent com-
munity context. Libório (2005) corroborated these
data in a study on the socioeconomic and family
characterization of 14 female victims of sexual
exploitation from Sao Paulo, Brazil. Most of the
interviewed girls were Afro-descendants from fami-
lies living in areas characterized by social exclusion.
In general, they were out of school, presented a low
level of education, and had experienced high levels
of family conflict since childhood. Also, they had
been victims of sexual and psychological violence,
neglect, and abandonment. These girls left their
homes because of the violence suffered, fleeing to
the streets when they were approximately 11 years
old. The street, in turn, was the “gateway” to sexual
exploitation. Finally, sexual exploiters (recruiters)
were present in most cases reported by Libório
(2005) and, according to the researcher, intensified
the link between adolescents and sexual exploita-
tion, thus complicating its disruption. A similar
socioeconomic and family profile was observed in
a study developed by Dutra-Thomé et al. (2011),
who conducted a case study with an adolescent
victim of sexual exploitation. In São Carlos, the
interior of São Paulo state, a broader framework of
social vulnerability was identified among children
and adolescents involved in CSECA (Bellenzani &
Malfitano, 2006), one including (a) broken or
frayed family ties, (b) migration from peripheral
areas lacking social amenities into the streets of
the central region of the city, (c) school evasion,
(d) practice of illegal acts, and (e) the abuse of psy-
choactive substances.
In addition to victims’ characteristics and their
perspectives on commercial sexual exploitation, it
is relevant to consider social, cultural, economic,
and psychological factors involved in the formation
of the “demand” for the sex trade. Restricting the
understanding of CSECA to the victim’s perspective
is understandably taking responsibility away from
the men and women who are clients and promoters
of the sex trade and who therefore actively contrib-
ute to its creation and maintenance. Studies have
demonstrated the relevance of understanding the
abuser’s perspective (perpetrator, sexual aggressor)
in addition to the victim’s structural, family, social,
and personal aspects (Cerqueira-Santos, Morais,
Moura, & Koller, 2008; Morais, Cerqueira-Santos,
Moura, Vaz, & Koller, 2007).
In an investigation with 239 Brazilian truck
drivers, Morais et al. (2007) reported that the
main determinants of CSECA from the truck
drivers’ perception were (a) social and economic
K oll e r , Du t r a-T hom é , Mor a i s , N i e t o, S a n t a n a
inequality, (b) a strong culture of male chauvinism,
(c) adult-centricity among truck drivers, (d) the
trend toward unaccountability of abused children
and adolescents, (e) limited knowledge, (e) and
consideration of the rights and development char-
acteristics of that population. Cerqueira-Santos
et al. (2008) performed a comparative analysis of
two groups of truck drivers (CSECA “clients” and
“nonclients”) belonging to the same study sample
as Morais et al. (2007). Results indicated that
truck drivers who were self-proclaimed CSECA
clients (n = 85) differed from the nonclients group
(n = 154). They reported spending more time wait-
ing for cargo, going out with adult prostitutes,
and having less knowledge about children’s rights.
However, the profiles of both groups, considering
demographic characteristics (age, income, educa-
tion) and occupational variables (work schedule
and days on the road) were quite similar.
In another study, Cerqueira-Santos et al. (2012)
examined the conditioning factors of CSECA
according to the perceptions of Brazilian con-
struction workers and comparatively analyzed two
groups of men: those who had sexual relations with
adolescents and those who did not. In total, 288
Brazilian construction workers were interviewed
in different Brazilian regions; 67% (n = 192) of the
respondents indicated the involvement of cowork-
ers in CSECA, and 25.4% (n = 73) reported their
own involvement. The main variables correlated
to the problem were involvement in adult prostitu-
tion, drug use, and the time lodged in construction
works. Thus, in both studies (with truck drivers and
large-company workers), involvement with adult
prostitutes, cargo-waiting time, and time lodged in
construction works were the most significant vari-
ables in predicting involvement in CSECA. “Sexual
desire” manifesting during cargo waiting time or
time spent lodged in construction was reported as
“uncontrollable” by the participants. That desire, in
turn, motivates the search for paid sexual services,
regardless of whether they are offered by children
or adults. Furthermore, in both contexts, many
CSECA “customers” may believe that the rela-
tionship between them and the child/adolescent
is purely commercial and that the child/adolescent
with whom they relate has a lower status than chil-
dren who are not involved in these activities (e.g.,
their own children and nephews/nieces).
Other factors are directly or indirectly related
to CSECA, such as (a) corruption, (b) lawlessness
or the existence of inadequate laws, (c) violation
of the laws, and (d) limited sensitivity of persons
463
responsible for the enforcement of these laws to the
harmful effects of sexual exploitation on children
(Alberto et al., 2012). In the opinion of the authors,
these factors favor commercial sexual exploitation
by criminal networks, individuals, and fami-
lies. In Brazil, the connivance of the police with
exploitative situations at gas stations was visible,
for example, in the studies developed by Morais
et al. (2007) and Cerqueira-Santos et al. (2008).
In some locations, for example, “sex with children/
adolescents” was seen as simply another product
among all the others offered (gasoline, diesel,
food, and drinks). Police cars drove through these
locations while children and adolescents exposed
themselves to the sex trade, and no protective atti-
tude toward children or customer accountability
was observed.
Furthermore, certain discourses and practices
still consider the children/adolescents respon-
sible for their own sexual exploitation situation,
attributing the reason for their involvement
in exploitation to their willingness and desire.
This view was observed even among workers
from the protection network for child/adoles-
cent victims of exploitation (Alberto et al., 2012;
Cerqueira-Santos, 2009). Victims also describe
exploitation as something natural. Children/
adolescents often have difficulties in recognizing
themselves as victims of a situation of exploita-
tion, thus incorporating the prevailing discourse
in society that engagement in CSECA is a sur-
vival “alternative.” For example, in the case study
by Dutra-Thomé et al. (20011), reported earlier
in this chapter, the participant (14 years of age,
involved in exploitation since 12 years of age),
regarded the activity as work that provided her
autonomy, subsistence, and survival.
According to Filgueiras and Hippert (2002),
CSECA is a degrading form of work, one that
distances individuals from the generating com-
ponents of human emotional, moral, and cogni-
tive development and from social recognition.
Some of the damages to health mentioned in
the literature as resulting from child/adolescent
involvement in CSECA are (a) the impairment of
physical, psychological, spiritual, moral, and social
development; (b) teenage pregnancy; (c) maternal
mortality; (d) injuries; (e) developmental delay;
(f) sexually transmitted diseases; (g) decreased
self-esteem; (h) decreased sense of trust in others;
and (i) decreased sexual satisfaction (Alberto et al.,
2012; Faleiros, 2000; Libório, 2004). The conse-
quences of sexual exploitation are felt to a greater or
464 C h i l d L a b or
lesser extent by each child and adolescent, depend-
ing on the personal characteristics and social sup-
port that each child will rely on.
Children Associated with Armed Groups
and the Colombian Case
One of the most widely discussed types of child
labor is related to the enrollment of juveniles in
armed conflicts and warfare as soldiers. In periods
of war, the recruitment of children into armies is
such a common and undesirable practice that, to
prioritize its eradication, the ILO () condemned it
as one of the worst forms of child exploitation.
UNICEF has recently proposed a change from
the term “child soldier” to “child associated with
armed forces and armed groups (CAAFAG)”
because the word “soldier” does not accurately
reflect the different roles that boys and girls carry
out when recruited or used for military purposes.
In general terms, according to the Convention on
the Rights of the Child (Hodgkin & Newell, 2002)
and the Optional Protocol on the Involvement
of Children in Armed Conflict by UN General
Assembly, Fifty­fourth Session (2000), a CAAFAG
is anyone under 18 years of age who participates
in an armed conflict by serving an armed group
in any of several different capacities (e.g., as com-
batant, spy, messenger, cook, or even a provider of
sexual services).
It is estimated that in the past decade the aver-
age number of boys and girls associated with armed
groups around the world varied between 250,000
and 300,000 (Coalition to Stop the Use of Child
Soldiers, 2008; War Child, 2014). Since 2010,
there have been at least 20 countries in which child
soldiers participated in armed conflicts (Child
Soldiers International, 2012). The conflicts in the
Central African Republic, the Republic of Chad,
the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, and
Sudan suggest that the African continent has the
highest rates of child participation in armed con-
flict. The arming of children with high-caliber fire-
arms in African conflicts is as grotesque as the child
bombs used by Palestinian paramilitary groups to
carry out suicide missions against Israeli soldiers
and civilians (see Coalition to Stop the Use of
Child Soldiers, 2004). It is thus imperative to ask
the following questions: What are the sociocultural
elements that connect children and youth to armed
conflicts? Moreover, how do these elements affect
the development of an adequate disarmament,
demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) program
for this population?
Health Effects of Childhood
Recruitment
Membership in armed groups in combat situ-
ations exposes children’s lives and their physical
(e.g., wounds, amputations, and scars) and men-
tal (e.g., anxiety, depression, aggressiveness, and
posttraumatic stress disorder) well-being at risk
(Betancourt et al., 2010, 2011, 2013; Denov, 2010;
Klasen et al., 2010; Klasen, Oettingen, Daniels, &
Adam, 2010; Klasen, Schrage, Post, & Adam, 2011;
Kohrt et al., 2008; Schultz, Sørensen, & Waaktaar,
2012). It takes away their childhood, separating
them from their families, disconnecting them from
the school system, and introducing them to a life
where playing is devalued and progressive experi-
mentation in different social roles is limited. In war
situations, children are obligated to participate in
or be present for all types of crimes and atrocities,
including murder, torture, and rape. Desertion is
considered a betrayal of the cause and can even be
punishable by death (Álvarez & Aguirre, 2002;
Human Rights Watch, 2003; McCausland, 2010).
Groups involved in armed conflicts recruit
CAAFAGs by various means, including abducting,
forced recruitment, threats, pressure, and manipu-
lation; some CAAFAGs even volunteer. In African
countries, the most common method of recruit-
ment was abduction. This method is also quite
common, although less so, in the Asian conflicts
in Nepal and Sri Lanka. In El Salvador, the major-
ity of boys in the conflict joined voluntarily. Age
of recruitment, average duration of participation in
the conflict, and prevalence of mental health prob-
lems after demobilization also varied across the 25
studies analyzed by Betancourt et al. (2013).
A recent systematic review of qualitative stud-
ies on psychosocial adjustment and mental health
in CAAFAGs found 21 studies from 10 different
countries (Betancourt et al., 2013). In spite of certain
methodological limitations in the studies summarized
(e.g., lack of validated measures of mental health), the
meta-analysis reported that increases in both inter-
nalized and externalized mental health problems
were positively associated with (a) abduction as a
form of recruitment rather than voluntary involve-
ment, (b) exposure to violence, (c) being female, and
(d) community stigma and were negatively associ-
ated with the age of recruitment. Temporarily, family
acceptance, social support, and educational/economic
opportunities were associated with improved psycho-
social adjustment (Betancourt et al., 2013).
Unfortunately, children who succeed in demo-
bilizing themselves from armed conflict face
K oll e r , Du t r a-T hom é , Mor a i s , N i e t o, S a n t a n a
several barriers to accessing mental health services.
To begin with, they face the cultural stigmata
associated with mental health services in many
low-income countries. Such countries often exhibit
low understanding and recognition of mental
health and invest little in the relevant social services
(Saxena, Sharan, Garrido, & Saraceno, 2006). In
addition, demobilized children face problems spe-
cific to their situation, such as the lack of adequate
government assistance to access, and even com-
munication with, programs or agencies that wish
to provide health services to them (Song, van den
Brink, & Jong, 2013).
Betancourt et al. (2013) did not find any stud-
ies in scientific journals concerning the partici-
pation of child soldiers in the most widespread
internal armed conflict currently active in Latin
America: the Colombian conflict. In what follows,
we attempt to give an updated perspective on the
events in this country by describing some of the
elements particular to the Colombian context that
affect the way children and youth are recruited into
and demobilized from armed conflict as soldiers.
Children Associated with Colombian
IAGS: Rural and Urban Conflicts
The current armed conflict in Colombia, which
has lasted almost 5 decades, is one of the oldest
internal conflicts on the American continent and
is considered a particularly rural conflict, originat-
ing in land-reform wars and wars to appropriate
lands for farming and livestock. In the past three
decades, a new agrarian element has been incorpo-
rated into the conflict: drug trafficking and armed
control of the production of illicit crops. Also, there
have been armed actions and fights for territorial
control in large cities, where the logic of war and
the characteristics of recruiting minors are dif-
ferent. In the urban context, such as in the poor
neighborhoods of Medellin, IAGs take control of
micro traffic zones, extort money from small local
businesses, and, in exchange, offer security in the
form of selective killings of drug consumers and
people living in the streets. The recruited youth
are those who are already familiar with guns and
the logic of urban criminality (Álvarez & Aguirre,
2002; Restrepo & Aponte, 2009).
Currently, the two illegal armed groups are
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia;
FARC) and the National Liberation Army
(Ejército de Liberación Nacional; ELN); a series
of neo-paramilitary groups or criminal groups are
465
also involved. The third element in the conflict
is the national government and its armed forces.
Historically, the FARC has had more economic,
military, and territorial power.
Although Colombian laws attempt to establish
18 years of age as the cutoff marking the socially
accepted entrance of a citizen into the adult world
(e.g., after this age, one may vote, drive a car, pur-
chase and consume alcohol or cigarettes, get mar-
ried), IAGs appear to not accept the commitments
signed by the government. The IAGs have their
own norms and set their minimum recruitment age
below 18 years in most cases. Studies concerning
youth and children demobilized from IAGs estimate
the average recruitment age reported by the demo-
bilized to be approximately 15 years (Álvarez &
Aguirre, 2002; Defensoría del Pueblo & UNICEF,
2006; Moreno, Carmona, & Tobón, 2010; Human
Rights Watch, 2003). Some children are recruited
much younger because their fathers or mothers is
a member of the guerrilla group; as early as age 8,
these children begin to be linked in some way to the
camp and training activities of the group (Álvarez
& Aguirre, 2002; McCausland, 2010).
In a 1999 communiqué, the FARC confirmed
that involvement in its activities is personal, volun-
tary, and restricted to individuals between the ages
of 15 and 30 years (Human Rights Watch, 2003). In
contrast, several studies (Álvarez & Aguirre, 2002;
Defensoría del Pueblo & UNICEF, 2006; Moreno,
Carmona, & Tobón, 2010; Human Rights Watch,
2003;) have found that many of the children and
adolescents demobilized from the FARC had been
recruited before the age of 15. The FARC appears
to be invoking the Geneva Convention of 1949 on
International Humanitarian Law in armed con-
flicts, which states that 15 is the minimum age for
recruitment to armed groups. It appears that they
are not aware of other, more up-to-date regulations
and agreements signed by almost all world govern-
ments, such as the Convention on the Rights of the
Child (Hodgkin & Newell, 2002) or the Optional
Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed
Conflict (UN General Assembly, Fifty­ fourth
Session, 2000), which establish 18 as the minimum
age for recruitment into armed forces.
All of the Colombian IAGs have continually
recruited children younger than 18 years of age.
Since the end of 1998, several different govern-
ment regimes have considered IAG soldiers under
the age of 18 as victims of the conflict. As a
result, the Colombian government has developed
a demobilization program that seeks protection
466 C h i l d L a b or
and familial and social reintegration for demobi-
lized children and youth (Procuraduría General
de la Nación, & UNICEF, 2006). This program
serves children who desert IAGs and turn them-
selves over to the government, as well as those
captured during hostilities. However, a number of
cases have been reported in which children who
turn themselves into the armed forces are used to
collect information about the war, identify pos-
sible guerrillas, or guide the national army to IAG
hideouts, actions that expose these children to
new risks and facilitate a different type of connec-
tion to the conflict.
It is currently impossible to know how many
child soldiers are involved in the Colombian con-
flict because the IAGs involved do not reveal this
information. The figure has been estimated at
approximately 10,000. In any case, from 1999 to
2012, the national government has served 4,836
minor ex-combatants through a special program
for demobilizing children and adolescents from
armed conflict (Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar
Familiar, 2012). The majority of demobilized chil-
dren are male (near 78%) and were demobilized
between 13 and 17 years of age (Observatorio
de Procesos de Desarme, Desmovilización y
Reintegración, 2009). However, the number of
demobilized minors may be greater: journalists
and human rights organizations have reported
that, during the AUC paramilitary DDR process
that took place between 2003 and 2005, a num-
ber of children and youth were secretly removed
from these armed groups. Their participation was
never reported, and they did not become involved
in the national government’s program for protec-
tion and service (Coalition to Stop the Use of Child
Soldiers, 2008).
Before concluding a final peace process with the
main guerrilla army in the Americas, Colombia
must increase its efforts to ensure that the policy
of protection of children demobilized from the
armed conflict will be effective. Psychosocial care
programs for these children should be based on
evidence. This process could be an example to the
world on how to achieve successful interventions
in children who have been victims of one of the
worst forms of child labor, participation in war as
soldiers.
Future Research
The current structural fragility of the configu-
ration of the working world in general is one of the
main causes of child labor. Unemployment, failure
to comply with labor laws, and difficulties in job
placement for people with both high and low edu-
cation levels contribute to children and adoles-
cents labor exploitation. The difficulties faced by
the worldwide child and youth population indicate
a need to closely examine that portion of society
and the urgent need for specific policies regard-
ing children and adolescents as real people with
rights who are worthy of pursuing healthy labor
activities.
The goal of eradicating child labor is benefited
when such labor is analyzed in association with
structural problems (e.g., poverty, low education,
extended work hours, and violence). These struc-
tural problems reinforce the trivialization of child
labor and aid the interests of groups using seduc-
tive strategies to attract boys and girls to work vol-
untarily. For instance, in Colombia, only peace, a
monopoly on weapons on the part of the national
army, and the demobilization of the IAGs will lead
to the end of the wartime practice of recruiting
youth into armed forces.
An important target of research and interven-
tion is the actors who may sustain the problem,
primarily parents of child workers and clients of
services offered by children and adolescents. One
of the major difficulties in removing children and
adolescents from the working world is the adults
around them who maintain the importance of
this activity. For instance, in Brazil, investiga-
tions developed with truck drivers and construc-
tion workers (Cerqueira-Santos et al., 2008, 2012;
Morais et al., 2007) revealed that their perspective
of sexual exploitation was characterized by lack of
knowledge and discernment in relation to child
labor. In Colombia, armed actors hide children and
adolescents associated with IAGs. Based on the col-
lusion of adults in the problem of child labor, it is
essential that investigations include both victims
and perpetrators. A global view of the problem may
provide the opportunity for researchers and profes-
sionals to develop risk maps, prevention programs,
and intervention models.
It is also important to recognize the potential
benefits of working for children and youth when
they are engaged in protected activities. An educa-
tive and not overwhelming work environment may
promote the growth of youth as persons or citizens,
incorporate feelings of self-esteem, and stimulate
creativity and social approval. Based on this bene-
fit, work activities that are not targeted for eradica-
tion might be used as protective factors to promote
children and youth positive development.
K oll e r , Du t r a-T hom é , Mor a i s , N i e t o, S a n t a n a
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 C H A P T E R

29 Adolescent Civic Development

Across Cultures

Constance Flanagan, Cynthia Lin, Helyn Luisi-Mills, Allison Sambo, and Ming Hu

Abstract
Two cultural frames (the nation-state and groupways) as lenses for understanding adolescent civic
development are explored. The authors argue that distinct cultural models of citizenship reflect
different definitions of the prerogatives and obligations that bind people in a political community.
These models change as groups challenge the status quo and as younger generations become part of
the body politic. Through their collective, public actions in the mediating institutions of civil society,
adolescents construct their civic identities and, in the process, contribute to social stability and social
change. Adolescents’ civic consciousness is built up over time via groupways (their everyday actions
and relationships of power as members of cultural groups).
Key Words:  dynamic civic identities, civil society, mediating institutions, groupways, generational
replacement, collective action, prerogatives and obligations

Adolescents’ civic development refers to the
ways that younger generations engage in collective
actions that contribute to their local communi-
ties, nation-states, and global societies. As a conse-
quence of their actions, both the young people and
their polities change. According to generational
theorists, political change is inevitable as each new
generation comes of age and replaces their elders in
the task of determining the future of their society
(Delli Carpini, 2006). Civic action is often char-
acterized within a narrow range of partisan and
electoral politics, but the focus on adolescents who
have not reached the age of majority enlarges its
meaning. Our understanding of civic development
is further enriched by examining the process across
cultures.
In this chapter, we engage two different inter-
pretive frames about culture and discuss the
explanatory power of each for understanding ado-
lescent civic development. First is the nation-state,
perhaps the most common approach for framing
discussions of civic agency insofar as people are
citizens of nations. Second is the frame of group-
ways, which we have adapted from cultural psy-
chology’s concept of selfways (Markus, Mullally, &
Kitayama, 1997) to refer to the accumulation of
activities and choices made over time by members
of groups, choices shaped in fundamental ways by
the position of status and power of that group in
the larger polity (Flanagan, Martínez, Cumsille, &
Ngomane, 2011).
We begin with an anecdote from our own
research experience and revisit it throughout
the chapter to illustrate our main arguments.
Following that, we present an ecological model
that emphasizes the collective quality of civic action
in public settings, as well as the reciprocal influ-
ences between the proximal and distal layers of
the model. Central to our argument is the role of
mediating institutions or mini-polities as public
spaces where youth build relationships and engage
in collective action with fellow members of their
communities. It is in the creative tensions of these
public spaces that younger generations construct

471
their civic identities and, in the process, contribute
to social stability and social change.
Insights from Practice
Some years ago, Connie Flanagan was con-
ducting studies in a high school with a majority
Arab-American student population. The goal of
the research was to gain insights about civic iden-
tity formation in the United States based on the
experiences of adolescents from different cultural
backgrounds. With rare exceptions, all of the ado-
lescents were citizens of the United States. Some of
their families had been in the country for several
generations; others were more recent immigrants.
Most fascinating in their conversations was the
facility with which the teens moved between iden-
tifying themselves as Americans or in opposition
to that identity. When discussing American foreign
policy, especially in the Middle East, many used
the term, “You, Americans,” severing themselves,
for the moment, from that civic identity. This nam-
ing of groups (You vs. Us) was, at once, a political
statement of objection to the policies of their nation
and an alliance and identification with their cul-
tural group—with other Arab-Americans and with
others in the Middle East. Among other things, we
learned from these interactions that some adoles-
cents develop their civic identity not just in groups
of others with whom they identify, but in opposi-
tion to those with whom they do not.
At other times, when discussing relationships
with their parents, many of the adolescents iden-
tified strongly as Americans, even employing the
term as an epithet that their parents or others in
their cultural group used to refer to how liberal
their social mores had become. One young woman
noted that the relative autonomy that her fam-
ily allowed her had earned them a reputation as
“Americans” in this Arab-American community,
“My family isn’t strict on what I do, or what I where
[sic] so my family is referred to as ’Americanized.’ ”
Others referred to tensions between generations
over typical parent–adolescent issues such as cur-
fews or dating as times when the teenagers were
“acting American.” When asked to describe times
when she felt “very American,” one young woman
referred to embracing opinions or beliefs that “my
culture doesn’t agree to” and another to “going
out with guys of their races.” The flexible way that
these adolescents managed their multiple identi-
ties alludes to the dynamic nature of cultural and
civic identities, especially for racial-ethnic minori-
ties and new immigrants. As Deaux (2008, p. 937)
472 A d ol e sc e n t C i v ic De v e l opm e n t Ac r o ss C u lt u r e s
observes from her studies of immigrants, “… the
zone of the hyphen for the hyphenated American
is a territory rich in meaning and dynamic in pro-
cess, belying efforts to impose simple categorical
systems.”
Cultural models of a political community
and a “good citizen” also are dynamic. The
Arab-American adolescents invoked a liberal nar-
rative about American identity when referring to
acts of self-expression that challenged their cultural
traditions. When we asked them to describe some
times when they “felt American,” several men-
tioned exercising religious freedom. Interestingly,
although some referred to their family’s choice to
follow Christian traditions, one young woman
discussed her decision to wear a hijab with full
awareness of its cultural and religious mean-
ing, as a mature informed decision, an act of
self-determination. This image of the autonomous
self who is responsible for her own decisions res-
onates with a Western interpretation of virtue as
the individual making self-determined choices
(Rosemont, 2004). But, even in the United States,
the bearer of individual rights has not been the only
model of a good citizen, although it has eclipsed
other images in recent decades. Sandel (1996)
points to an alternative “republican” narrative of
American identity, one common in earlier eras. In
that model, the role and responsibilities of a citizen
are paramount insofar as liberty is only achieved if
one deliberates with fellow citizens about how, col-
lectively, they want to live.
Dominant models of a good citizen have under-
gone change in other nations as well. In contempo-
rary China, for example, citizens are encouraged
to “stand out” rather than meld into the group.
As the state aims to grow the economy, con-
sumption and entrepreneurship are encouraged,
and parents are expected to nurture the unique
talents of their children. Such “model citizen”
actions oppose the definition of a good citizen
at the height of the socialist era when a citizen’s
identity was melded to the collective, and refer-
ences to individualism, privacy, and separation
of one’s fate from that of others were discouraged
(Anagnost, 2008). At the same time, in a context
of tight controls on free speech and assembly, the
entrepreneurial Chinese citizen has few outlets for
political action. Compared to their peers in Japan
or Korea, Chinese youth are members of more
associations but only politically sanctioned ones
such as the Communist Party or Youth League.
Apparently, membership in these organizations
has not affected the youths’ self-determination:
compared to their peers in the region, they have
greater respect for those in authority and place less
importance on youth having a voice in community
or state affairs (Min, 2010).
A “universal” definition of citizenship can be
found in Walzer’s simple summary: “A citizen is,
most simply, a member of a political community
entitled to whatever prerogatives and encumbered
with whatever responsibilities are attached to mem-
bership” (Walzer, 1989, p. 211). Note that the use
of the word “prerogatives” rather than “rights”
associated with membership in a political commu-
nity is an important distinction. For example, in
the Confucian social ideal, the interdependence of
members’ fates and the responsibilities associated
with their roles as citizens overshadow notions of
individual rights as a basis for citizenship (Ihara,
2004). Relationships and political integration
supersede autonomy and self-determination in con-
cepts of the self (Rosemont, 2004). In this model,
the goals of an individual largely coincide with the
common good—rather than being at odds with it
(Ihara, 2004).
Different models of the self and of a political
community imply alternative obligations as well.
In an autonomous rights-bearing model of a citi-
zen, fellow citizens must respect the right of one
another to free speech and opinion—but there is
no necessary obligation to listen or to find com-
mon ground. In a model where citizens’ roles as
co-members of a community are paramount, social
and economic guarantees take precedence over
rights to free speech and autonomy. Consequently,
fellow citizens have responsibilities to act on one
another’s behalf (Rosemont, 2004).
Fig. 29.1  Transactional Ecological Model of Adolescent Civic Development.
Fl a n ag a n, L i n, L u i s i-M i lls , S a m b o, H u
In summary, distinct cultural models of citizen-
ship follow, in part, from different cultural models
of the self and of a political community. That said,
models of citizens and their prerogatives and obli-
gations within political communities are dynamic:
they adapt to changing conditions and policies
within nations. They also change as younger gener-
ations explore and consolidate their civic identities.
The pace of that change may be most apparent in
parts of the majority world as younger generations
negotiate cultural clashes that emerge as the forces
of formal education, migration, and the Internet
impact their lives. For example, as we discuss in
our ecological model, youth in East African societ-
ies are negotiating the push of the Western models
of the rights-bearing self in their schools or as por-
trayed via the Internet at the same time that their
families and cultural groups emphasize the rela-
tional self and the collective good. For the remain-
der of our chapter, we use an ecological model to
illustrate the intersecting contexts that influence
adolescents’ civic identity formation.
Ecological Model
In the tradition of community psychol-
ogy and human ecology, we frame adolescent
civic development in a transactional ecological
model (Figure 29.1). An ecological model high-
lights the nested settings in which people develop
(Bronfenbrenner, 1979), and a transactional
approach attends to the interactions among per-
sons, groups, and organizations within and across
these settings.
Adolescents are at the center of this model, but
we refer to adolescents in the plural rather than
the singular to emphasize that civic action is not
Adolescents situated in
mediating institutions
Nation-state
Global community
473
done by individuals acting alone. Not only is the
civic domain an arena of collective action, it also is
a public domain. Consequently, the center of our
model places adolescents in mediating institutions
(schools, faith-based or cultural groups, commu-
nity organizations, public squares, social media,
etc.), public spaces where adolescents’ collective
actions with others are the bases for their civic
identity formation. Actions and ideas in those con-
texts are informed by policies and practices in the
communities and nations where adolescents reside.
Thus, the nation-state is an important lens through
which to frame culture as a force in civic identity
formation. Finally, nations are part of a global
community; the policies of nations are affected by
their membership in this global community, and
the choices of adolescents are informed by possibili-
ties and events in the global community.
At the same time, adolescents bring their unique
(cultural, religious, etc.) backgrounds with them as
they enter the public realm. Their civic identities are
informed by the knowledge, values, customs, and
meanings that are shared among a group of people
and that constitute a way of life (Jensen, 2008). In
addition, because adolescents from diverse cultural
backgrounds interact in the public realm, their col-
lective actions in those spaces will redefine the civic
ties that bind them with fellow citizens.
Mediating Institutions in Civil Society
“Civil society” has many meanings. Here it
refers to a third sector of society where the collec-
tive actions of people challenge and stabilize the
other two sectors, that is, the government and the
market. Civil Society includes formal organiza-
tions that “mediate” between individuals, families,
communities, and nations, as well as less formal
associations or “free spaces” that people create.
“Mediating institutions” refer to the public spaces,
physical or virtual, where members of the public
gather to decide together what is in their common
interest.
The public nature of the civic sphere is impor-
tant. As Arendt (1958) points out, the term “public”
signifies that things that appear in that realm can
be seen and heard by everybody and that this realm
brings everyone, regardless of status, social back-
ground, or beliefs, together. Thus, the public realm
is a more diverse context for civic identity forma-
tion than the more homogeneous settings of fam-
ily life. Consequently, although people will choose
different ways to live their own private lives, it is in
the public realm that a wide range of beliefs on how
474 A d ol e sc e n t C i v ic De v e l opm e n t Ac r o ss C u lt u r e s
best to live together in a society can be aired and
debated in the process of finding common ground.
During the Arab Spring the need for a public realm
in a democratic society emerged in interviews with
young Egyptian activists who challenged autocratic
rule and mobilized for a more democratic society.
These youth used a folk saying to contrast the pub-
lic claiming of their voice against the constraints
they felt about speaking up during the days of the
autocratic regime: the saying, “walking beside the
wall” referred to the people’s posture of staying
out of the way and letting the government handle
economic and political matters (Barber & Youniss,
2013). As one youth reflected, “I used to think
[about] what is right, but silently. Now I am not
silent anymore” (Youniss, Barber, & Billen, 2013,
p. 9). Claiming a collective voice in the free space
of the public square was described by other youth
as the signature accomplishment that would mark
their generation historically: “Our generation had
not given anything to the country. One generation
had the war of 1973 against Israel. Others were the
generation of the Suez Canal or the Aswan Dam.
But now I have participated and helped create an
event in the history of this country” (Barber &
Youniss, 2013, p. 71). Tellingly, this generation of
young people felt that, through their civic actions
that challenged Hosni Mubarak’s rule, they were
reclaiming their authentic identities as Egyptians
who, as a culture, had historically contributed to
world civilization.
The celebration of the “Arab Spring” in the
Western media should remind us that the historical
context in which particular civic actions are taken
frames the way they are interpreted. However, civic
organizing and action are not always perceived in
positive terms, especially when changes in state
policies are the reason for mobilization. For exam-
ple, in the aftermath of prolonged civil wars and
the recruitment of “child soldiers” into militias in
the nations of Eastern Africa, youth activism can
be perceived as threatening to the community and
can pose dangers to the youth themselves.
In contrast to the free spaces created by Egyptian
citizens, adolescents’ civic development is typically
shaped by the routine practices of mediating insti-
tutions. Those practices and the rationale defend-
ing them tend to reinforce dominant narratives
and beliefs (e.g., independent work in school trains
character and results in independent success in life;
a good citizen should help his comrades with their
school work; youth should remain silent and learn
from the wisdom of elders; students have a right
to disagree with their teachers, as long as they are
respectful). Civic concepts, beliefs, dispositions,
and identities flow from participating with others
in these practices. Because they are both routine
and because everyone “like me” does them, these
practices tend to reinforce the belief that they are
the natural, proper, perhaps the only way to do
things. Consequently, dominant cultural beliefs
gain hegemony and often are adopted even by
groups whose interests are marginalized by those
views (Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004).
With respect to adolescents’ civic development,
mediating institutions serve as “mini- polities” that
enable youth to practice what it means to be a citi-
zen of the larger polity (Flanagan, 2013). Many of
the practices of mediating institutions reinforce
dominant cultural narratives and thereby stabilize
political and economic systems by inculcating a set
of beliefs in younger generations. In other words,
societies are economic and political systems, but
they remain stable because societies also are think-
ing systems; that is, the citizens in them share a
set of ideas, values, and beliefs that reinforce and
legitimate the principles on which the political
or economic system is based. But the practices
of mediating institutions are not deterministic.
Citizens have agency, and younger generations
exercise that agency by taking advantage of the free
spaces of mediating institutions where they can
create alternatives to the status quo and even chal-
lenge existing policies and regimes in power.
The broken lines in the concentric circles of our
ecological model (see Figure 29.1) emphasize the
mutual influences of contexts on each other, the
mesosystem if you will (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). In
the civic identity formation of the Arab-American
adolescents, we witnessed the intersections of
religion, gender, the political dynamics of send-
ing and receiving nations at the macrolevel and
of vertical relationships between generations and
customs at the proximal level. Concerning the last
of these, some adolescents referred to times when
they asserted their independence and the cultural
clashes that ensued in their families as times when
they were “acting American.” These adolescents
brought ideas from their interactions in the pub-
lic domain into the private space of their families,
where generations wrangled over these intersecting
identities and redefined what it meant to be both
Arab and American.
The intergenerational dynamics to which
some of the youth alluded (“my parents let me
date boys from their cultures, so we’re considered
Fl a n ag a n, L i n, L u i s i-M i lls , S a m b o, H u
Americanized”) refer to the very practices whereby
the meaning of civic and cultural identities are
explored in relationships and are renegotiated over
time and across generations. The fluidity with
which the adolescents managed their intersecting
cultural identities illustrates the fact that culture
cannot be essentialized as if it were fixed or static;
rather, culture is collectively constituted by groups
of people in relation to each other within a particu-
lar place and time. Although we cannot capture the
historical context in our ecological model, it is the
case that the very ways that groups create and make
sense of their shared lives is always done in “rela-
tionship to others within specific social/economic/
political/historical contexts” (Reyes Cruz & Sonn,
2011, p. 205).
Because they hold multiple interlocking identi-
ties, and because they receive and create multiple
meanings about these identities, young people
often create hybrid identities—as insiders and out-
siders, as subordinated and powerful, as agents and
objects. Feminist scholars of color have used the
term “intersectionality” to draw attention to the fact
that individuals are members of multiple identity
groups (Collins, 2008). The following two exam-
ples illustrate how intersectional identities operate
in political mobilization. The first comes from the
2011 Arab Spring. Youth played significant roles in
that movement, but there are various intersectional
identities in the rather large and elastic category of
“youth.” After the mobilizations began, attention
was brought to the harassment and sexual assault
experienced by female participants. To address
it, young Egyptian women and allies formed Op
Anti-Sexual Harassment, mixed-gender groups
of volunteers identified by the boldly emblazoned
T-shirts that they wore in public (Op Anti-Sexual
Harassment/Assault, n.d.; Rowland, 2012). Their
primary purpose was to protect women from mob
assaults during mass mobilizations, but the broader
goal was to make visible and to take a public stand
against these entrenched forms of gender-based
violence within the society. In the context of a
movement to redefine Egypt as a democratic alter-
native to an authoritarian regime, large numbers of
people have seized the political moment to assert
that discrimination against women cannot be part
of the vision of a new democratic Egypt nor can
it be tolerated within the political movements that
seek a new society. In other words, Egyptian youth
are insisting that the vision of a democratic society
to which they aspire includes equal treatment of
women and that this (distal) aspiration can only be
475
realized by changing the (proximal) relationships
and practices of the very political organizations
(the mediating institutions) they have formed to
create the new social order.
The second example comes from Mische’s (2008)
research on youth activists in post-dictatorial Brazil.
As these activists networked and organized across
student movements, political parties, faith-based,
and other civic organizations, they created new
forms of political communication and different
kinds of publics. Based on her extensive tracking of
young activists as they navigated these networks,
Mische concludes that the interstitial spaces at the
intersections of multiple identities or projects allow
people to suspend the contentious relations defined
by particular identities and to generate new forms
of political communication and joint action.
Nation-State and the Social Contract
The nation-state is a second level of our ecologi-
cal model. Citizenship is fundamentally embedded
within a nation, and opportunities for adolescents
to explore and consolidate civic identities are
shaped by the principles and policies of the nation
where they reside. Our discussion of the role of the
nation-state in adolescents’ civic identity formation
is informed by social contract theory. Although
there are valid criticisms of social contract theory
that draw attention to the fact that those in power
tend to make the rules of the contract to the dis-
advantage of women and minorities (Mills, 1997;
Pateman, 1988), we use the framework to empha-
size that the principles that bind members of a
society together inform the practices of mediating
institutions (Flanagan, 2013).
Every nation operates based on some compact,
some set of rules and obligations by which the state,
the market, the institutions of civil society, and the
people live in harmony. Examples include the degree
to which the state monitors and exerts control over
the market or allows it free rein, whether and how
the state provides for the security and social welfare
of people, and the degree to which independence
and individual rights to self-determination or inter-
dependence and mutual responsibilities figure in
the model of selves and citizens. The stability of any
society will be undermined if actors in any of these
spheres violate the terms of the compact. Indeed,
the dissolution of the Soviet bloc in 1989 was due,
in part, to the collective perceptions of the citizens
of Eastern Europe that the state was not holding up
its end of the bargain of ensuring the health and
welfare of citizens and that the costs to citizens in
476 A d ol e sc e n t C i v ic De v e l opm e n t Ac r o ss C u lt u r e s
self-determination and low standards of living had
become too great to bear.
Notions of duty and obligation, on the one
hand, and prerogatives and entitlements, on the
other, describe a common structure that binds
citizens with their nation. Indeed, despite the fact
that the forms of organization in modern societies
are relatively recent phenomena in human evolu-
tion, Hatano and Takahashi (2005) contend that
some aspects of the civic domain may be privileged
knowledge; that is, knowledge that human beings
need to survive, including production, resource
distribution, division of labor, exchange, and social
status, which may be basic to the life of the human
species.
Although the structure of a social compact is
universal, the specific tenets vary for different poli-
ties, such as the degree to which governments, mar-
kets, or individuals are responsible for managing
risk; the degree to which resources are distributed
based on principles of equity, equality, or need; the
degree to which cultural diversity is celebrated or
outlawed in public institutions, and the like. The
terms of the social contract will vary across societ-
ies and even at different periods within a society
(e.g., as eligibility for social programs is renegoti-
ated, as the age range that defines “youth” for pol-
icy purposes is redefined, and so on).
Concerning changes in social policy or eligibil-
ity for social programs, two examples are illustra-
tive. The first comes from China and Vietnam,
where there has been massive within-country
migration, disproportionately of young people,
in search of employment. However, whereas job
opportunities may be located in one province,
young migrants have a hard time accessing services
such as housing, education, or health care in the
same community where they find jobs since they
lack a local residence card. A second example of
changes in state entitlement policies can be seen
in university students’ protests to the 2012 aus-
terity policies in Spain, Greece, and other parts
of Europe. Youth mobilized around their identity
as students to object to declining state support for
higher education.
Concerning the elastic definition of “youth,” the
structural lag or mismatch between the readiness
of youth to assume adult responsibilities and the
dearth of institutional, especially economic, oppor-
tunities in developing countries (Hamilton &
Hamilton, 2009) has resulted in official desig-
nations of “youth” for policy purposes in many
nations as persons between 15 and 35 or even 40.
By designating such targeted groups, the state is sig-
naling things such as their eligibility for particular
programs or their obligations to society (e.g., mili-
tary service) as members of the designated group.
As just one example, in response to the tightening
of European emigration policies that limited the
number of educated Cameroonians who could seek
their fortunes outside of their homeland, the rul-
ing party in Cameroon created a national youth
organization that made it easier for youth to access
state resources (Jua, 2003). This move by the state
may have been an attempt at creating a safety valve
insofar as other Cameroonian youth were attracted
to opposition and even secessionist movements at
the time (Fokwang, 2003). In fact, concerns about
the political defiance potential in the “youth bulge”
(the disproportion of young people as a percentage
of overall population in a society) has moved gov-
ernments to put youth at the center of policy agen-
das in many parts of the majority world (Fussell &
Green, 2002).
Cultures differ in how they define the obliga-
tions of citizens. For example, responsibility may
be construed by some as a choice, by others a duty.
The duties of citizens may be enforced by laws,
habits, or normative pressures, or a combination of
these. In some nations, citizens are bound by law to
vote or to aid in national defense or service. State
policies such as the age of compulsory schooling
and definitions of child abuse and neglect are just
some examples of the ways in which states act to
protect children’s welfare and prescribe what par-
ents can/should do. The construal of prerogatives,
entitlements, and rights is likely to differ as well.
Within a social citizenship framework in which
citizens are entitled to the provision of state ser-
vices to meet basic needs, health care is conceived
as a basic right of citizens. But rights also can be
understood as matters of self-determination (i.e., a
citizen’s right to voice his or her views).
Reciprocal Influences Between Levels
in the Ecological Model: Nations
and Mediating Institutions
In our ecological model, the broken lines
between the nation-state and mediating institu-
tions are meant to illustrate that the (social, eco-
nomic, political) principles that hold a society
together at the macrolevel shape and inform the
policies and practices of institutions at the micro-
level (Flanagan, 2013). It is in mediating institu-
tions that the rules of the social order (e.g., what
are our responsibilities to one another, what are
Fl a n ag a n, L i n, L u i s i-M i lls , S a m b o, H u
people’s prerogatives and duties) are enacted and
interpreted. The structure and practices of mediat-
ing institutions are shaped by the policies of nations
(e.g., whether public schools are free, which is the
official language of instruction, whether personal
symbols of cultural or religious difference can be
worn in public buildings, whether women and men
can assemble in public groups, what form of iden-
tity papers is required to apply for a job or to vote
in an election).
The mediating institutions of civil society also
compensate for failures of the state and the market
to provide for the needs of citizens. This is especially
evident in the majority world where states have
much less capacity to provide services—from edu-
cation to sanitation to health to security (Kassimir
& Flanagan, 2010). Self-help, charitable, or reli-
gious organizations—the nonstate, nongovern-
mental institutions often seen as the components
of civil society—play a significant role in filling in
for the functions that the state is not providing. In
Africa, many of these institutions provide services
directly (taking on a governance role) and also
make claims to other powerful institutions (a rep-
resentational role; Kassimir 2001). In this represen-
tational sense, such institutions also provide spaces
where citizens can engage in political work that
holds the state or market accountable, challenging
the government or market to perform their desig-
nated functions. For example, the Panchayat Raj
program in India informs women and marginal-
ized groups (dalits) about their rights as a means for
increasing participation in democratic governance.
The evolution of Set Setal in Dakar, Senegal, is
an example of how youth have created new politi-
cal organizations by challenging ineffective ruling
parties and providing some of the services that
were neglected by those parties (Diouf, 1996).
Faced with a general lack of educational opportu-
nities and with a dearth of employment opportuni-
ties for those who managed to get educated, local
athletic and cultural associations came together
with student organizations in the late 1980s and
1990s to call attention to their plight and to do
something about it. They first engaged in massive
and sometimes violent protest during an electoral
campaign against the return of the ruling party.
Having failed to prevent victory for the incum-
bents, some of the youth turned on ethnic minori-
ties in the city. Then, in what Diouf called an act
of purification for the violence, they set about to
clean up and beautify their neighborhoods, provid-
ing desperately needed public services and a sense
477
of public space while demonstrating an autonomy
from a political system from which they already felt
excluded. Neighborhood groups stood alongside
student organizations to act, self-assess, and change
direction toward self-reliance and more construc-
tive public purposes. The movement, known as Set
Setal, was a new form of doing politics by these
marginalized young people, one that created new
practices of citizenship out of a refusal to acquiesce
to the old forms of traditional political action.
The discussion of Arab-American students in
our opening account alludes to the role of medi-
ating institutions as contexts where civic identities
are explored. These adolescents attended a public
school where they pledged allegiance to the flag of
the United States of America, studied American
history, and engaged in service to their local com-
munity. Although the student body was a majority
Arab-American population, there were differences
in religious affiliation, with some students identi-
fying as Christian, others as Muslim. The student
body included students from diverse backgrounds,
and teachers generally encouraged open dialogues
in which students shared different perspectives on
social issues.
The fact that the public school was a site where
adolescents could have these conversations,
embracing and contesting what it means to be an
American, a space where they both pledged alle-
giance to the American flag and celebrated reli-
gious traditions such as Ramadan, made us think
twice about the role of the school in civic devel-
opment. Across most nations, schools are sites
where the principles of the social order tend to be
reinforced. Typically, schools encourage students’
identification with the dominant culture through
three common sets of practices: through the ethno-
centric biases of curricula, through explicit positive
narratives about the nation’s history, and through
adoption of symbols and practices of civil culture
(Barrett, 2007). These national narratives taught in
school may combine a sense of national pride with
enemy images that reinforce it. For example, the
strong identification with the nation found among
Chinese students has been attributed to practices in
schools that have inculcated both feelings of pride
in the thousands of years in which China was a
leading power and humiliation during the one cen-
tury in which the nation was partially colonized by
Western powers (Xie, 2009).
However, in addition to their role in reinforc-
ing the social order and allegiance to the nation,
mediating institutions such as schools also can be
478 A d ol e sc e n t C i v ic De v e l opm e n t Ac r o ss C u lt u r e s
free spaces where people challenge the way things
are and, by their actions, change the status quo
(Evans & Boyte, 1992). The administration and
staff at the school that we discussed in our case
study respected the decisions of some of the students
to fast in observance of Ramadan. This decision of
the adults in the school is critical to understanding
the role of schools as public spaces where the ties
that bind members of a community and the very
definition of the polity are regularly renegotiated.
In this example, the administrators and teachers
hold power over students, but they decided to share
authority and decision making—to respect and
include the cultural traditions through which the
students consolidate a sense of collective identity,
thus enabling them to incorporate their cultural
identities as they consolidate their American iden-
tities. In so doing, the actors expand what it means
to be an American (Flanagan, 2013). Schools have
also been sites where young people in other coun-
tries have claimed a free space. For example, in rev-
olutionary Turkey, the university was the contested
space where Muslim women adopted religious
symbols as a means of protesting their assigned
status and identity. Today, girls as young as 10 are
disrupting cultural routines and challenging gen-
der norms in parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and
India, risking acid attacks and even death as they
don their uniforms and go to school.
Groupways
In addition to the nation-state cultural lens, an
adolescent’s civic identity also reflects the degree
to which he or she identifies with a particular cul-
tural group. This alludes to the second cultural
lens (groupways) that we apply to civic identity
formation. Awareness of their identity as members
of a cultural group may develop, in part, from
attentiveness to how society treats people “like
them.” Our concept of groupways has resonance
with standpoint theory, developed by feminist
scholars steeped in Marxist traditions, to refer
to the fact that one’s knowledge and worldview
develop out of experiences that accrue due to one’s
position of power and privilege (or lack thereof) in
a society. Both material conditions and the rou-
tine practices of everyday life are shaped by domi-
nant structures and relations of power (capitalism,
patriarchy, colonialism, racism). According to
standpoint theory, groups who are oppressed in
these asymmetries of power have a particular,
so-called privileged knowledge about the systems
of oppression that constrain their freedoms and
about the individuals and institutions that hold
power over them. In many cases, their very lives
depend on their ability to assess or “read” those
who hold power over their lives. Struggles for lib-
eration, therefore, are best articulated from the
standpoint of those who are oppressed by the par-
ticular system (Hartsock, 1983).
To illustrate, we briefly summarize the civic iden-
tity formation of black South African youth living
under apartheid in the 1980s. Their “privileged”
view of apartheid as a system and of the relations
of power that held it up was different from an out-
sider’s view, no matter how sympathetic. Although
there were international “allies” who supported the
struggle against apartheid with, for example, dives-
titures of gold and rand campaigns, knowledge
about and resistance to apartheid was built up over
generations of black South Africans’ accumulated
experiences as an oppressed group in the social con-
tract of the apartheid regime. The repeated enact-
ments of being a second-class citizen and observing
its toll on one’s loved ones is the “privileged” per-
spective of the black South African’s standpoint.
However, for generations, apartheid had been suc-
cessful at keeping tribal communities isolated from
one another, to say nothing of the exclusionary
policies of the apartheid system that had denied
all black South Africans the prerogatives of citi-
zenship. In their rural communities and, for some,
separate so-called homelands, black South Africans
were largely cut off from the media and from fel-
low citizens until the 1980s when apartheid’s needs
for an educated black workforce meant that slots
in agricultural colleges opened for the generation
who was entering adulthood at that time. For the
first time, youth from different cultural and lan-
guage groups (e.g., Zulu, Xhosa, Tsonga, Venda,
Swazi, Ndebele, etc.) who had been cordoned off
from contact with one another attended college
together. Their worldviews were expanded by this
experience as they were exposed to the different
perspectives of fellow black South Africans and
of worlds outside of the narrow conclaves of the
rural areas and homelands to which they had been
assigned. Together in the relatively free space of the
agricultural colleges, they also explored the pos-
sibilities of political resistance and imagined that
another world beyond apartheid might be possible
(Ngomane & Flanagan, 2003).
Concerning their political identity formation,
W. E. B. Du Bois’s (2007) theory of the double
consciousness experienced by oppressed groups is
apt. To survive in the apartheid system, these young
Fl a n ag a n, L i n, L u i s i-M i lls , S a m b o, H u
people had to exist as second-class citizens. At the
same time, anger about the toll that second-class
status and grinding poverty had taken on their par-
ents had built up in their consciousness. It was the
historical intersection of a growing antiapartheid
resistance movement with their generation’s atten-
dance at predominantly black agricultural colleges
that enabled them to take collective action and ulti-
mately to change the course of their nation’s his-
tory. In summary, one advantage of a cultural lens
on civic identity formation concerns the epistemic
“privilege” of everyday life for oppressed groups.
That awareness may lie dormant, however, until
historical conditions render a free space to explore
that knowledge and its possibilities for imagining
an alternative political system.
Youth of color and their allies have, in various
movements, leveraged this kind of material and
embodied awareness into their movement activities.
For example, undocumented youth in the United
States sought to make their status visible with the
slogan “Undocumented, Unafraid” emblazoned on
posters and T-shirts in protest of anti-immigrant
bills (Seif, 2011). These youth had migrated with
their families to the United States when they were
young and had no documentation that allowed
them to participate in the civic process once they
came of age. At the transition from childhood to
young adulthood, they faced a political contradic-
tion: whereas their right to a public education in
the K–12 years was legally guaranteed by the gov-
ernment’s policies, at 18, they were cut off from
pathways to citizenship. In response, these youth
claimed a political identity as DREAMers, linking
their identities and aspirations to a very “American”
model of education and self-improvement. Their
political savvy illustrates the epistemic “privilege”
of their standpoint as “illegals”: they understand
relationships of power better than those who are in
power. As illegals in the system, it is incumbent on
them to know the system. Furthermore, the stereo-
type of “illegal” and the profiling policies targeting
their cultural group (citizens and undocumented
alike) united those who shared a Latino identity
and culture around a common political issue. Their
collective actions have resulted in victories includ-
ing increased access to higher education and a path
to citizenship for other undocumented youth.
Adolescents belong to multiple identity groups,
and their civic identity formation develops out
of the complementary and conflicting tensions
between these identities. In one way or another,
most of the Arab-American youth in our case
479
study identified as Americans while holding onto
their own cultural “other-ness.” They also were
negotiating what it means to be an Arab-American
at a historical juncture when Islamophobia was
ascending across the globe. Not surprisingly, these
adolescents, like other ethnic minorities, were
more aware of discrimination than were their
European-American peers. And experiences of dis-
crimination were associated both with a stronger
commitment to their cultural identity and with a
political awareness about how their cultural group
was excluded from full inclusion as citizens of the
United States.
At times, these adolescents exhibited a kind
of reactive identification with their ethnic group
and with their parents’ sending country, as Portes
and Rumbaut (2001) found in second-generation
American immigrant adolescents who experi-
enced discrimination. Note that it is not the act of
embracing one’s ethnic roots that poses a threat to
the person’s allegiance to the United States. Rather,
feeling excluded from the terms of the American
social contract, believing that one’s claims to
citizenship are conditional, causes individuals to
choose a form of ethnic identification that is a reac-
tive identity against an exclusionary one that privi-
leges some groups over others.
But a reactive identification is not the only
civic alternative. Adolescents from ethnic minority
groups in our studies were as committed to serv-
ing the United States as were their ethnic major-
ity peers; they also were more committed to other
forms of civic action, such as improving race rela-
tions and advocating for their people (Flanagan,
Syvertsen, Gill, Gallay, & Cumsille, 2009). Among
immigrants to the United States, discrimination
can motivate withdrawal from political action or
increased activism. In fact, Jensen (2008, 2010)
has shown that cultural stereotypes can motivate
a “counter-push” to discrimination when academi-
cally capable adolescents help out their peers in
order to challenge negative stereotypes about their
cultural group.
Among the Arab-American students, indi-
vidual experiences of discrimination were not the
only example of prejudice against their cultural
group. When we asked adolescents to name groups
who came to mind as an enemy of America, many
mentioned Arabs, Muslims, or people from the
Middle-East as popular images in the media. And
this was before September 11, 2001. Awareness
of such media images had implications for politi-
cal identity formation: those adolescents who
480 A d ol e sc e n t C i v ic De v e l opm e n t Ac r o ss C u lt u r e s
mentioned Arabs as a popular enemy image were
more likely than their peers who did not do so to
report personal instances of discrimination and to
express doubts that the tenets of the social con-
tract in the United States (i.e., equal opportunities
for education and treatment under the law) were
enjoyed by all groups (Wray-Lake, Syvertsen, &
Flanagan, 2008). In summary, adolescents develop
a critical consciousness (Watts, Diemer, & Voight,
2011) about the terms of the social contract in
their society as they make connections between
personal experiences of exclusion and the relative
position of power of their cultural group in the
larger polity.
The cultural lens expands the meaning of “ideo-
logical alternatives” that Erikson (1968) argued
adolescents will consider as they seek a concordance
between their own ideals and identities and those
of groups to which they belong. The very range of
alternatives for civic identity formation that ado-
lescents are likely to consider will vary based on
the cultural (as well as gender, class, etc.) groups
to which youth belong, as well as on the affec-
tion and allegiance they feel toward those groups.
With respect to the levels in our ecological model,
adolescents may have more freedom to negotiate
their multiple cultural and civic identities and to
embrace both if they reside in a nation with a lon-
ger history of immigration. In societies that have a
long history of large-scale immigration, the asso-
ciation between an individual’s ethnic and national
identity tends to be positive or to approach zero. In
contrast, the relationship is negative and seemingly
incompatible in countries where there has been a
shorter history of immigration (Berry, Phinney,
Sam, & Vedder, 2006).
Global Communities
Our outermost circle draws attention to the fact
that nations themselves are situated in global com-
munities. The very policies of nations, as well as
the ideas and choices of adolescents, are informed
by membership in a global community. There
are many examples that illustrate our point. For
example, multinational institutions and organiza-
tions such as the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund, the G-12, and the United Nations
have a significant impact on the policy choices
of nations, especially those in the developing or
majority world. The bases for credit, lending, and
interest rates can put governments in a dilemma of
repaying debt at the expense of providing services
to their citizens. International pressure in the form
of conditional country loans and the programs of
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) stress
the importance of national identities over ethnic
ones with the goal of equitable resource distri-
bution across ethnic lines. Even the good will of
Western media and the donor policies of interna-
tional NGOs inform the options that young people
will consider in their civic identity formation. For
example, appeals for aid in parts of the develop-
ing world that have been ravaged by war or natural
disasters emphasize images of despair rather than
agency. Consequently, to access aid youth may find
it necessary to assume the burden of a helpless iden-
tity (Hammack, 2010).
The clash of cultures between local and global
communities is most apparent in developing coun-
tries where migration from rural to urban areas
and global forces such as the Internet are intro-
ducing new conditions for exploring civic identi-
ties. Consider a village in Botswana where the arc
of a person’s life is organized around increasing
interdependencies. Therefore, developmental prac-
tices during one’s youth enable people to build a
wide range of relationships, through horizontal
relations in peer groups and through service to
different adult households (Durham, 2008). By
participating in these “groupways,” Botswanan
youth not only build relationships but also develop
a self-concept and a civic identity that is intimately
tied to fellow members of their cultural group. In
community gatherings, youth as well as elders have
a voice in community affairs, but it is the elders
whose role it is to “listen to the speeches of all the
others, and then, when the time is right, speak,
referring to others’ points, considering all the
angles, and relating these to ‘our customs’ before
forming and presenting their own understanding”
(Durham, 2008, p. 171).
This experience of a civic community contrasts
with the one that youth in many parts of Africa
experience as they move from rural to urban areas
in search of economic opportunity. Migration
to urban areas can expose young people to new
ideas about their rights in contrast to the routine
arrangements and roles in traditional communities
that can be restrictive, especially for women. For
example, in Ghana, women living in urban areas
report more access to health care services, as well
as greater empowerment in terms of their right to
health care when compared to the reports of their
peers in rural areas (Boateng & Flanagan, 2008).
But there are costs to migration as well, includ-
ing the loss in everyday experience of the web of
Fl a n ag a n, L i n, L u i s i-M i lls , S a m b o, H u
relationships, the clarity of roles, and the sense of
belonging and purpose that constituted life in the
rural community.
Even more dramatically, those who leave their
nation in search of better opportunities in other
countries often have no guarantees or protections
as citizens. They are stateless citizens, with little or
no protection in the receiving country and compar-
atively little clout from the sending country to rep-
resent their interests on the world stage. In short,
many youth in the majority world are wrangling
with a cultural clash over the values and images of
citizens and communities—the interdependent val-
ues and community roles of their family and tribal
groups and the individualist entrepreneurial values
of big cities and global (largely Western) culture.
In the context of globalization, youth also are wit-
nessing the reimagining of their cultural customs
and the rearranging of their local communities to
remain economically and socially viable.
The Internet and social media provide another
example of the global community that has punc-
tured the bubbles that some nations have tried to
create to manage the political actions of citizens.
Social media played an important role in mobilizing
crowds of protestors to Tahrir Square in January,
2011. As Barber and Youniss (2013) remind us, the
incident that ignited those protests was the beating
by security police of an Alexandrian man, Khaled
Said, and the uploading of the incident onto
Facebook for the public to witness and, ultimately,
to protest.
Social media also have been used to critique
mainstream media and politicians both for nar-
rowly framing politics to privilege those in power
and for treating “youth” as apathetic and disin-
terested. An example comes from the YoSoy132
movement in Mexico. In 2012, after a 12-year
hiatus, the Mexican Institutional Revolutionary
Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional; PRI,
which had formerly been in power for 71 years)
was reelected in a highly contested election. Across
the country, university students called for trans-
parency and equal access to information about
the election. In a public forum (which several
candidates refused to attend, citing expectations
of low youth turnout), 131 students turned out.
When politicians claimed that fewer than 131
youth attended, the students all posted their stu-
dent identification through social media in pro-
test. Joining in the protest, thousands claimed
solidarity and identified themselves as the 132nd
attendee. Starting the next day, through websites,
481
YouTube, a Facebook page, and Twitter, YoSoy132
challenged the mainstream media (which was
largely controlled by the administration in office)
to provide inclusive coverage of all of the candi-
dates and parties, not only the powerful or domi-
nant ones. Like the “illegal alien” DREAMers who
mobilized for access to higher education in the
United States, YoSoy132 embraced the derogatory
image of apathetic students as a symbol of their
movement and, in so doing, reframed the political
discussion: apathetic youth were not the political
problem. Rather, a narrow representation of politi-
cal choice offered by mainstream media and domi-
nant political parties was.
As such case studies illustrate, the participatory
potential of the Internet and new technology is only
realized when people on the ground take advantage
of it. Yang (2003) has argued that, although the
Internet facilitates civil society activities by offering
new possibilities for citizen participation, civil soci-
ety facilitates the development of the Internet by
providing the necessary social basis—citizens and
citizen groups—for communication and interac-
tion. Furthermore, he contends that the innovative
potential of the Internet is more likely to be real-
ized in contexts like China, where civil society is
relatively young. The incipient nature of civil soci-
ety means that it absorbs new things quickly and is
open to innovations, especially to those technolo-
gies that may meet its needs.
The Internet and other global forces also make it
possible for younger generations to engage in soli-
darity movements for social justice that transcend
the borders of cultures, ethnicities, and nations.
Three case studies illustrate the point. First, in
the spring of 2013, students at Yale University
protested the proposal of a US Department of
Defense-funded intelligence research center, the
US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM)
Center of Excellence for Operational Neuroscience.
In particular, the students objected to the DOD
plans to recruit immigrants as research subjects
in order to test new interviewing techniques for
gathering intelligence (Gonzalez & Goodman,
2013). Although the Yale students were not directly
affected, they acted as allies to draw attention to
the social injustice of exploiting a group with little
power to object.
Second, the movement for gay rights has tran-
scended the borders of nations, as illustrated in Mexico
City and Tijuana, where US influence through
media and tourism is strong. Mexico City now
boasts the largest lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender
482 A d ol e sc e n t C i v ic De v e l opm e n t Ac r o ss C u lt u r e s
(LGBT) community parade in all of Latin America,
in part due to influences from North America and
in part due to the city’s open policies, practices, and
laws. Although city-specific laws across Mexico exist
to protect the LGBT community from discrimina-
tion and give them rights to civil union and adop-
tion, many parts of the country have been more
reticent to adopt these laws. Yet Mexico City’s liberal
laws have a ripple effect. The combination of mas-
sive urban migration (disproportionately young) to
Mexico City from all parts of Latin America along
with the city’s liberal laws and tolerant social norms
portend significant changes in the political attitudes
of the younger generation, changes that would be
less likely to occur had they stayed in their home
communities.
A third example comes from women’s solidarity
in movements for social change in African nations
recovering from prolonged civil war. As Tripp
(2010) argues, the issue in these contexts is not
that cultural or ethnic differences don’t matter; it is
that, after many years of civil war, the women have
decided that those differences have mattered too
much, with deadly consequences. Thus, the goal
of women’s movements has been to unite women
around a common agenda that transcends ethnic
divisions. As a consequence, countries coming out
of years of civil conflict have actually doubled the
rates of women’s legislative representation in Africa
compared to nations that have not endured such
prolonged conflict (Tripp, 2010).
Conclusion
Adolescents’ civic development refers to the
ways in which youth become engaged in collec-
tive action to create the future of their local com-
munities, nation-states, and global societies. Our
understanding of that process is enriched by exam-
ining civic development through cultural lenses.
Adolescents’ civic consciousness is built up over
time in their everyday actions and relationships
as members of various cultural groups. The stand-
point of their cultural group(s) affords young peo-
ple a particular “privileged” understanding of their
social order. The identities and practices of cultural
groups offer critical narratives about the polity and
where one’s group belongs in it.
Younger generations make their mark on his-
tory and contribute to social change by redefin-
ing their cultural identities within new historical
conditions. Disproportionately, “youth” live in the
Global South, but we know the least about their
civic actions and aspirations and about how new
economic, political, and climate change conditions
are shaping those choices. They should be a priority
of future research endeavors.
According to generational theorists, political
change is inevitable as younger generations come
of age and replace their elders (Delli Carpini,
2006). Focusing on adolescents, then, should
provide a barometer for the future of their soci-
ety. Increasingly, however, the fates of societies
are intertwined as global forces shape the policies
of nations and the opportunities and choices of
younger generations. Consequently, the new forms
of civic actions that younger generations across the
globe are inventing provide a lens on the future of
societies and of humankind.
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 PART
5
Emerging and Young
Adulthood
 C H A P T E R

30 The Cultural Psychology

of Emerging Adulthood

Jeffrey Jensen Arnett

Abstract
This chapter explores the cultural themes and variations of emerging adulthood worldwide.
Similarities and differences among developed countries are described, including the European form
of identity development emphasizing freedom and leisure and the Asian form, tempered by values of
family obligation. Social class differences and the importance of tertiary education are also considered.
It is noted that emerging adulthood does not yet exist in developing countries as a normative
life stage, but may expand along with economic development in the 21st century. The chapter
also considers cultural beliefs that may underlie emerging adulthood, including the importance of
establishing independence and self-sufficiency before entering into adult commitments, that romantic
love should be the basis of marriage, that work should be identity-based, and that the emerging adult
years should be devoted to self-focused leisure and enjoyment. Whether these cultural beliefs apply
broadly to emerging adults worldwide remains to be investigated.
Key Words:  emerging adulthood, cultural beliefs, transition to adulthood, cultural psychology,
young adults, Europe, Asia

It is now 20 years since I first began studying
18- to 29-year-olds, and more than a decade since
I proposed emerging adulthood as a new life stage
in between adolescence and young adulthood, last-
ing from the late teens through the mid to late 20s
(Arnett, 2000). Although most of my research has
taken place on Americans, from the beginning,
I thought of emerging adulthood as taking place in
a historical and cultural context.
Three personal experiences have been important
in shaping my view of the cultural basis of emerging
adulthood:
• I was a postdoctoral fellow for 3 years at
the Committee on Human Development at
the University of Chicago during 1989–92.
The Committee combined psychology and
anthropology and gave me my first exposure
to anthropology. I read ethnographies there,
particularly Gilbert Herdt’s (1987) ethnography
of the Sambia of New Guinea, that made me a
cultural psychologist and permanently grounded
my understanding of human development in a
cultural context.
• I am married to a Dane—the editor of
this volume—and I have spent a lot of time
in Denmark over the past 25 years, including
a Fulbright Fellowship year in 2005–06. Our
regular trips to Denmark and my interviews with
Danish emerging adults, have served to underscore
for me that the experience of emerging adulthood
can vary widely depending on where you live. For
example, young Danes frequently take a gap year
(or two or three) in between secondary school and
further education or training, something that is
rare among American emerging adults.
• In the past decade, I have traveled to China
and India at the invitation of scholars there. On
my visits, I have met and observed many young

487
people in the age range 18–29, and this experience and young adulthood over the past half century
has provoked reflections on how their lives are in developed countries. Fifty years ago, most
similar to and different from the lives of emerging young people in these countries had entered stable
adults in developed countries. For example, I have adult roles in love and work by their late teens or
noted how their identity explorations in both love early 20s. Relatively few people pursued education
and work are restricted by the strong value on or training beyond secondary school, and, conse-
family obligations in both societies. quently, most young men were full-time workers
by the end of their teens. Relatively few women
From the beginning, emerging adulthood was
worked in occupations outside the home, and
proposed as a cultural theory. I emphasized that
the median age of marriage in 1960 was around
it exists only under certain cultural-demographic
20 years for women in the United States and most
conditions, specifically widespread education and
other developed countries (Arnett & Taber, 1994;
training beyond secondary school and entry into
Douglass, 2005). The median marriage age for men
marriage and parenthood in the late 20s or beyond.
was around 22, and married couples usually had
In a book on emerging adulthood (Arnett, 2004),
their first child about 1 year after their wedding
I proposed five features of emerging adulthood
day. All told, for most young people half a century
based on my research on hundreds of Americans
ago, their adolescence led quickly and directly to
aged 18–29 from diverse ethnic groups and social
stable adult roles in love and work by their late teens
classes. However, I emphasized that these features
or early 20s. These roles would form the structure
applied specifically to Americans and would not
of their adult lives for decades to come.
necessarily be found to apply to emerging adults in
Now all this has changed. A higher propor-
other cultures.
tion of young people than ever before—more
Since 2000, research on emerging adulthood
than 60% in the United States—pursue education
has taken place in a wide range of cultures in many
and training beyond secondary school (National
regions of the world, including Asia, North and
Center for Education Statistics, 2013). The early
South America, and Europe (e.g., Arnett & Tanner,
20s are not a time of entering stable adult work
2006; Douglass, 2007; Facio, Resett, Micocci, &
but a time of immense job instability; the average
Mistrorigo, 2007; Macek, Bejček, & Vaníčková,
American changes jobs 7–8 times from age 18 to
2007; Nelson & Chen, 2007). This research has
29 (US Bureau of the Census, 2012). The median
added a great deal to our understanding of the cul-
age of entering marriage in the United States is
tural variations in development during emerging
now 27 for women and 29 for men (US Bureau of
adulthood. However, it is important to delineate the
the Census, 2013). Similar demographic changes
underlying cultural basis of emerging adulthood as
have taken place in other developed countries
well. As cultural psychologists have emphasized,
(Douglass, 2007). Consequently, a new period of
understanding the cultural basis of development
the life course—emerging adulthood—has been
requires more than simply comparisons across dif-
created, lasting from the late teens through the
ferent cultures (Shweder et al., 2006): it requires
mid-20s.
an illumination of the cultural beliefs that underlie
I have proposed five features that distinguish
normative patterns of behavior.
emerging adulthood from the adolescence that
In this chapter, I begin by giving a brief over-
precedes it or the young adulthood that follows
view of the theory of emerging adulthood. Then,
it (Arnett, 2004). Emerging adulthood is the age
I summarize the demographic and cultural changes
of identity explorations; that is, the period of life
that have taken place in many regions worldwide
when people are moving toward making crucial
to lay the groundwork for the emerging-adulthood
choices in love and work based on their judg-
life stage. Next, I describe the demographic and
ment of their interests and preferences and how
cultural variability that exists in emerging adult-
these fit into the possibilities available to them.
hood worldwide. Finally, I propose some ideas
It is the age of instability because, in the course
on the cultural beliefs that may be at the heart of
of pursuing their identity explorations, emerging
emerging adulthood worldwide.
adults frequently change love partners, jobs, edu-
cational directions, and living arrangements. It
Emerging Adulthood: An Overview is the self-focused age because it is the period of
The theory of emerging adulthood proposes life when people have the fewest daily role obliga-
that a new life stage has arisen between adolescence tions and thus the greatest scope for independent

488 T h e C u lt u r a l P s yc hol o g y of E m e rg i ng A du lt ho od
decision making. It is the age of feeling in-between
because emerging adulthood is when people are
most likely to feel they are neither adolescents nor
adults but somewhere in-between, on the way to
adulthood but not there yet. Finally, it is the age
of possibilities because no matter what their lives
are like now, nearly everyone in emerging adult-
hood believes that eventually life will smile on
them, and they will achieve the adult life they
envision.
These features distinguish emerging adulthood
from adolescence or young adulthood but are not
unique to it. All of them begin in adolescence and
continue into young adulthood, but emerging
adulthood is when they reach their peak.
International Patterns: What
Applies Across Societies?
The theory of emerging adulthood was based
originally on my research involving about 300
Americans aged 20–29 from various ethnic groups,
social classes, and geographical regions. To what
extent does the theory of emerging adulthood
apply internationally? The short answer to this
question is that, demographically, similar patterns
indicate that the life stage of emerging adulthood
has appeared across developed countries, char-
acterized by longer and more widespread tertiary
education and later ages of entering marriage and
parenthood. However, the five features proposed
for American emerging adults have not yet been
investigated in other countries, and whether or not
they apply broadly is an open question.
As a demographic phenomenon, the evidence
for emerging adulthood depends greatly on what
part of the world is considered. Demographers
make a useful distinction between the “develop-
ing countries” that comprise the majority of the
world’s population and the “developed countries”
that are part of the Organization for Economic
Co-Operation and Development (OECD), includ-
ing the United States, Canada, Western Europe,
Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand.
The current population of OECD countries is
1.2 billion, about 17% of the total world popula-
tion (United Nations Development Programme
[UNDP], 2013). The rest of the human popula-
tion resides in developing countries that have much
lower median incomes, much lower median edu-
cational attainment, higher birth rates, and earlier
ages of entering marriage and parenthood. First, let
us consider emerging adulthood in OECD coun-
tries, then in developing countries.
Emerging Adulthood in OECD
Countries: The Advantages of Affluence
The same demographic changes described for
the United States have taken place in other OECD
countries as well. This is true of participation in
tertiary education, as well as of median ages of
entering marriage and parenthood (Douglass,
2007; Dubois-Reymond & Chisholm, 2006).
Participation in tertiary education is driven
primarily by changes in the global economy. Over
the past half-century, economies in OECD coun-
tries have shifted from a manufacturing base to
a base in information, technology, and services.
Many manufacturing jobs have been eliminated
by the increased use of machines to do jobs once
performed by employees. For example, it takes far
fewer workers to staff an automobile factory today
than it did 50 years ago because many of the jobs
are now mechanized. Other manufacturing jobs
have been moved from OECD countries to devel-
oping countries as companies seek to lower their
production costs by hiring cheaper workers.
Meanwhile, jobs in information, technology,
and services have surged in OECD countries.
Fewer automobile workers may be needed, but peo-
ple are needed to design the new machines making
production more efficient and less labor intensive.
An entire industry has grown up around computer
services that did not exist 50 years ago. The health
services area has burgeoned because people in
OECD countries live longer and need health care
during their later years. As a consequence of such
changes, an expanding proportion of young people
have obtained tertiary education. Table 30.1 shows
rates of tertiary education in a range of OECD
countries (UNESCO, 2013).
The change over recent decades is especially
striking for women. At the same time as the shift
from a manufacturing economy to an information/
technology/services economy has taken place, a
revolution in women’s roles and rights has taken
place, and the combination has brought young
women into higher education in vast numbers.
Fifty years ago, women across OECD countries
were much less likely than men to obtain tertiary
education. Now, in every single OECD country,
women exceed men in educational achievement, as
Table 30.1 shows.
Similarly, revolutionary changes have taken
place in median ages of entering marriage and par-
enthood. As opportunities expanded for women in
the workplace and in higher education, there was
less pressure on them to marry at a young age in
A r n e tt 489
Table 30.1. Gross Tertiary Enrollment, Selected place in OECD countries worldwide, and these
Organization of Economic Cooperation and changes laid the foundation for the rise of the
Development (OECD) Countries, 2010. new life stage of emerging adulthood. For most
Country Total Female Male people in these countries, the age period from the
late teens through most of the 20s is no longer a
South Korea 103 86 119 period of entering and settling into stable adult
United States 95 111 79 roles. On the contrary, it has been transformed
utterly, into a stage not of commitment but of
Finland 94 103 85 exploration, not of stability but of exceptional
instability, not of making enduring commit-
Australia 80 92 68
ments to others but of self-development. In short,
Spain 70 86 70 instead of making the transition from adoles-
cence to young adulthood at around age 20, as
Chile 66 68 64
young people did for most of the 20th century,
Italy 65 76 54 today young people in OECD countries experi-
ence adolescence through most of the second
Canada 62 72 53
decade of life, then emerging adulthood during
Israel 62 71 55 their 20s, then young adulthood beginning only
by the time they approach 30. The same demo-
Hungary 61 70 52 graphic changes have taken place in all OECD
United Kingdom 60 70 50 countries, and a common life stage of emerging
adulthood is now normative in across these coun-
Japan 60 56 63 tries. However, there is also substantial variabil-
Czech Republic 64 75 53 ity in how emerging adulthood is experienced, as
we will see in the following section.
France 57 64 50
Gross enrollment ratio is the total enrollment in a specific level Variations Among OECD Countries
of education, regardless of age, expressed as a percentage of the In every OECD country, young people now
eligible official school-aged population corresponding to the same
level of education in a given school year. For the tertiary level,
participate in tertiary education at higher rates
the population used is that of the 5-year age group following than ever before, marry later than ever before,
on from the secondary school leaving. Consequently, a country and have their first child later than ever before.
can have a gross enrollment ratio of more than 100 if some of
the participants in tertiary education are more than 5 years past
However, this pattern of demographic changes
leaving secondary school. is only the structure of emerging adulthood. The
Source: UNESCO (2013). content of emerging adulthood is how the years
from the late teens through the mid-20s are expe-
order to avoid the dreaded fate of becoming an rienced, and this varies widely among OECD
“old maid,” with only a marginal role in their soci- countries.
ety, and there was more incentive for them to wait Europe is the region where emerging adulthood
until they had finished a period of tertiary educa- is longest and most leisurely. The median ages of
tion and established themselves in the workplace entering marriage and parenthood are near 30 in
before entering marriage and parenthood (Cherlin, most European countries (Douglass, 2007). Europe
2009). For both young women and young men, the today is the location of the most affluent, gener-
Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s trans- ous, egalitarian societies in the world—in fact, in
formed premarital sex in many OECD countries human history (Arnett, 2007). Governments pay
from a rare and forbidden pleasure to a normative for tertiary education, assist young people in find-
experience. Cohabitation, too, changed from taboo ing jobs, and provide generous unemployment ben-
to tolerated in many countries. The combination of efits for those who cannot find one. In northern
premarital sex and cohabitation meant that it was Europe, many governments also provide housing
no longer necessary to get married in order to have support. Emerging adults in European societies
a regular sex life. make the most of these advantages.
The demographic changes of broader partici- Abundant insights on emerging adulthood in
pation in tertiary education and higher ages of Europe can be found in the ethnographic work
entering marriage and parenthood have taken of Carrie Douglass and her colleagues (Douglass,

490 T h e C u lt u r a l P s yc hol o g y of E m e rg i ng A du lt ho od
2005; 2007). Douglass and her colleagues are
anthropologists who set out to investigate the
human experience behind the European trend
of lower fertility rates. In the course of exploring
the basis of lower fertility rates, they inevitably
explored the larger question of how the nature of
young people’s lives have changed now that they
no longer devote their 20s mainly to marriage and
caring for young children. Consequently, they
unearthed a great deal of fascinating and important
information on emerging adulthood.
Douglass and her colleagues described the
diversity that exists across Europe, but the consis-
tent theme across countries was that young people
all over Europe want to enjoy a period of emerging
adult freedom and independence beyond adoles-
cence before they commit themselves to the endur-
ing responsibilities of adulthood. In Norway, for
example, most young people want to have children
eventually, but there are many prerequisites that
must first be attained: to live independently for
some years, to finish education, to be settled in a
job, and to have lived with a partner for some time
(Ravn, 2005). There is also the expectation that the
20s will include a period devoted to travel or some
other self-focused, self-developing activity. There
is a clear social norm that emerging adulthood
“should” be enjoyed for some years before parent-
hood is entered.
Douglass’s own ethnographic research in Spain
provides a complementary example from southern
Europe (Douglass, 2005). In recent decades, the
median marriage age in Spain has risen to nearly
30, and the fertility rate has plunged to among the
lowest in the world despite a strong cultural tradi-
tion of large extended families. There are a variety
of reasons for this change, including new opportu-
nities for women and high youth unemployment,
but the largest reason appears to be that young
Spaniards in their 20s prefer to focus on enjoy-
ing the freedom and fun of emerging adulthood.
Young people in their 20s repeatedly told Douglass
that marriage (and especially children) would put
a damper on their freedom to go out, travel, ski,
and “enjoy life.” This comfortable lifestyle is made
possible by remaining at home, with their par-
ents’ care and support until marriage. Asked why
they remained home well into their 20s, emerging
adults in Spain often retorted along the lines of,
“Why should we leave? We’re fine here. We live in
a five-star hotel!”
Eastern Europe, after decades of oppression
under communism, is rapidly headed toward the
Western European model of emerging adulthood.
For example, in the Czech Republic, the freedom
to “work, travel, and study” during the 20s is now
highly prized (Nash, 2005). Unlike in much of the
rest of Europe, low birth rates are viewed by Czechs
young and old not as a crisis but as a happy mani-
festation of the new freedoms young Czechs gained
with the fall of communism.
The lives of emerging adult “singles” are
romanticized in Czech popular culture. “Singles”
are young men and women of marriageable age
who choose not to marry but to enjoy an active
self-focused leisure life. They are depicted as part
of a global youth culture, with lifestyles that have
more in common with those of young professionals
in New York and Paris than with their own par-
ents. Rather than resenting the enjoyments of the
young, parents generally support and encourage
their children to enjoy the emerging adult freedoms
they never had.
The lives of Asian emerging adults in OECD
countries such as Japan and South Korea provide a
striking contrast to the self-focused leisure lives of
emerging adults in Europe. Like European emerg-
ing adults, Asian emerging adults in these coun-
tries tend to enter marriage and parenthood quite
later, usually around age 30 (Rosenberger, 2007).
Like European emerging adults, Asian emerg-
ing adults in these countries enjoy the benefits
of living in affluent societies with generous social
welfare systems that provide support for them in
making the transition to adulthood, for example
free university education and substantial unem-
ployment benefits.
However, in other ways, the experience of
emerging adulthood in Asian OECD countries is
markedly different from that in Europe. Europe
has a long history of individualism, dating back
at least to the Reformation, and today’s emerg-
ing adults carry with them that legacy in their
focus on self-development and leisure during
emerging adulthood. In contrast, Asian cultures
have a shared cultural history emphasizing col-
lectivism and family obligations. Although Asian
cultures have become more individualistic in
recent decades as a consequence of globalization,
the legacy of collectivism persists in the lives of
emerging adults. They pursue identity explora-
tions and self-development during emerging
adulthood, like their American and European
counterparts, but within narrower boundaries set
by their sense of obligations to others, especially
their parents. For example, in their views of the
A r n e tt 491
most important criteria for becoming an adult,
emerging adults in the United States and Europe
consistently rank financial independence among
the most important markers of adulthood. In
contrast, emerging adults with an Asian cultural
background especially emphasize becoming capa-
ble of supporting parents financially as among the
most important criteria (Arnett, 2003; Nelson,
Badger, & Wu, 2004). This sense of family obli-
gation may curtail their identity explorations in
emerging adulthood to some extent, as they pay
more heed to their parents’ wishes about what
they should study, what job they should take, and
where they should live than emerging adults do
in the West. In Japan, the derisive term parasite
singles has become a popular epithet for emerg-
ing adults who extend their individualistic iden-
tity explorations past the age of 30, and this is
one way of warning emerging adults of the risk of
social sanctions if they carry their individualism
too far (Rosenberger, 2007).
Another notable contrast between Western
and Asian emerging adults is in their sexuality. In
the West, premarital sex is normative by the late
teens, more than a decade before most people enter
marriage. In the United States, Canada, and in
Northern and Eastern Europe, cohabitation is also
normative; most people have at least one cohabiting
partnership before marriage. In Southern Europe,
cohabiting is still taboo, but premarital sex is toler-
ated in emerging adulthood.
In contrast, both premarital sex and cohabita-
tion remain rare and forbidden throughout Asia.
Even dating is discouraged until the late 20s, when
it is seen as a prelude to a serious relationship leading
to marriage. Parents often provide an educational
rationale for why their adolescents and emerging
adults should avoid dating (Lau, Markham, Lin,
Flores, & Chacko, 2009). “You should be focus-
ing on your education during these years,” they tell
their children, and dating would be a distraction
from this focus (Saraswathi & Oke, 2013). This
rationale fits well with the Asian cultural tradi-
tion of extolling education and learning. However,
there is also a long-standing cultural tradition of
sexual conservatism and female virginity at mar-
riage in Asian cultures. It seems likely that the ban
on dating, premarital sex, and cohabitation that
exists today in Asian cultures is in part a legacy of
this tradition. In cross-cultural comparisons, about
three-quarters of emerging adults in the United
States and Europe report having had premarital
sexual relations by age 20 versus less than 20%
492 T h e C u lt u r a l P s yc hol o g y of E m e rg i ng A du lt ho od
in Japan and South Korea (Hatfield & Rapson,
2006). Consequently, the identity explorations that
are typical among young Americans may not apply
to young Asians, at least with regard to love and
sex. More generally, the Asian form of emerging
adulthood may have distinctive features, different
from the West, that remain to be delineated.
Variation Within OECD
Countries: Social Class
In addition to variations across OECD coun-
tries in the content of emerging adulthood, there
is also variation within countries. One impor-
tant aspect of variation within countries is social
class. Social class is unquestionably an important
element in the lives of emerging adults, as it is in
the lives of people of other ages. Specifically, the
pursuit of tertiary education structures the lives of
some emerging adults but not others, and this dif-
ference has repercussions for their lives in emerging
adulthood and beyond.
For those who pursue tertiary education, their
lives are structured around going to classes and
doing course work. Many of them work at least
part-time as well to support themselves and to pay
educational expenses, which can make for a very
busy life. Those who are not in school but working
or seeking a job face the formidable challenge of
finding a well-paying, enjoyable job without edu-
cational credentials at a time when such jobs are
increasingly elusive. Furthermore, future prospects
vary greatly for these two groups, with those pursu-
ing postsecondary education having a higher likely
social class destination than those who do not, in
terms of income and occupational status.
Although social class is crucial to how the years
from the late teens through the 20s are experi-
enced, people in this age range can be designated
as emerging adults across social classes. At its core,
the birth of emerging adulthood over the past
half-century is a demographic phenomenon, aris-
ing from the substantial increase in median ages of
marriage and parenthood in every OECD country.
A half-century ago most people entered these roles
at age 20–22, placing them in “young adulthood”
right after adolescence, with adult responsibilities
of coordinating family life with a spouse, including
running the household, paying the bills, and caring
for children. Now that the median ages of enter-
ing marriage and parenthood have moved into the
late 20s or even the early 30s, a stage of emerging
adulthood has opened up between adolescence and
young adulthood, during which people are more
independent of their parents than they were as
adolescents but have not yet entered the roles that
structure adult life for most people. Young people
in lower social classes may enter these roles a year or
two earlier than their peers in the middle and upper
classes, but for most that still leaves a period of at
least 5 years between the end of secondary school
and the entrance into adult roles, certainly long
enough to be called a distinct life stage (Arnett,
Kloep, Hendry, & Tanner, 2011).
My research has indicated that there are other
similarities among American emerging adults
across social classes, beyond the demographic simi-
larities (Arnett, 2004; Arnett & Schwab, 2012). For
both the lower/working class and the middle class,
the years from the late teens through the 20s are a
time of trying out different possibilities in love and
work and gradually making their way toward more
stable commitments. For both groups, instability
is common during these years as frequent changes
are made in love and work. For both groups, their
hopes for the future are high, even though the real
prospects for those with relatively low education
are not favorable.
Emerging Adulthood in Developing
Countries: Low but Rising
Emerging adulthood is well-established as a
normative life stage in the countries described
thus far, but it is spreading in developing coun-
tries. Demographically, in developing countries
as in OECD countries, the median ages of enter-
ing marriage and parenthood have been rising in
recent decades, and an increasing proportion of
young people have obtained tertiary education.
Nevertheless, currently, it is only a minority of
young people in developing countries who expe-
rience anything resembling emerging adulthood.
The majority of the population still marries at
around age 20 and has long finished education by
the late teens or sooner, as illustrated in Table 30.2.
For young people in developing countries,
emerging adulthood exists only for the wealthier
segment of society, mainly the urban middle class,
whereas the rural poor have no emerging adult-
hood and may even have little adolescence because
they enter adultlike work at an early age and also
begin marriage and parenthood relatively early. As
Saraswathi and Larson (2002) observed about ado-
lescence, “In many ways, the lives of middle-class
youth in India, South East Asia, and Europe have
more in common with each other than they do
with those of poor youth in their own countries.”
However, as globalization proceeds, and economic
development along with it, the proportion of young
people who experience emerging adulthood is likely
to increase as the middle class expands.
For young people in developing countries who
do experience emerging adulthood, there are com-
plex identity challenges. It has been proposed that
many of them develop a bicultural or hybrid iden-
tity, with one aspect of themselves for participat-
ing in their local culture and a different aspect of
themselves for participating in the global economy
(Arnett, 2002; Jensen, Arnett, & McKenzie, 2012).
One example of retaining a local identity even as a
global identity is developed can be found among
young people in India. India has a growing, vigor-
ous high-tech economic sector, led largely by young
people. However, even the better-educated young
people who have become full-fledged members of
the global economy still mostly prefer to have an
arranged marriage, in accordance with Indian tra-
dition (Chaudhary & Sharma, 2007). They also
generally expect to care for their parents in old age,
again in accord with Indian tradition. Thus, they
have one identity for participating in the global
economy and succeeding in the fast-paced world
of high technology and another identity, rooted in
Indian tradition, that they maintain with respect to
their families and their personal lives.
Although the demographic patterns point to the
rise of emerging adulthood in developing coun-
tries, so far there is little research to shed light
on who experiences emerging adulthood in these
countries or how it is experienced. Here, as in other
areas of psychological research, the vast majority
of research is on people in OECD countries, espe-
cially the United States, and research on the devel-
oping countries that comprise more than 80% (and
growing) of the world’s population is relatively
scarce (Arnett, 2008). This can be seen as a great
challenge and a great opportunity, to study the
phenomenon of emerging adulthood as it spreads
around the world in the course of the decades to
come (Arnett, 2006).
Many Emerging Adulthoods
In sum, emerging adulthood is growing as a
worldwide phenomenon in demographic terms, yet
there is a great deal of variation worldwide in how
it is experienced, both across and within countries.
A useful analogy can be made here to the life stage
of adolescence. Cross-cultural studies, most notably
Schlegel and Barry’s (1991) study of 186 traditional
cultures, have found that adolescence exists in nearly
A r n e tt 493
Table 30.2. Gross Tertiary Enrollment, Selected whereas others live in cultures where virginity at
Developing Countries, 2010. marriage is prized and love relationships before
Country Total Female Male marriage are discouraged. Yet emerging adult-
hood can be considered to exist wherever there is
Iran 49 49 48 a period of at least several years between the end of
Saudi Arabia 41 42 40
adolescence—meaning the attainment of physical
and sexual maturity and the completion of second-
Philippines 28 31 25 ary school—and the entry into stable adult roles in
marriage or love and work. The structure of emerg-
Mexico 28 28 28
ing adulthood may be consistent in OECD coun-
China 27 28 25 tries, as in the demographic patterns of widespread
tertiary education and entering marriage and par-
Brazil 26 29 22
enthood in the late 20s or early 30s, whereas the
Indonesia 23 22 24 content—how it is experienced, what the real range
of educational and occupational opportunities is,
India 18 15 21 how much premarital sex is or is not tolerated—
Pakistan 8 8 9 varies greatly and may continue to do so.
At this point, emerging adulthood is not nearly
Ethiopia 8 5 11 as widespread as adolescence. It exists as a norma-
Kenya 4 3 5 tive life stage only in OECD countries. In contrast,
it exists in developing countries only among the
Gross enrollment ratio is the total enrollment in a specific level
of education, regardless of age, expressed as a percentage of the small but growing urban middle class and not in the
eligible official school-aged population corresponding to the same more populous rural areas where even adolescence
level of education in a given school year. For the tertiary level, the is often brief, and adult roles and responsibilities
population used is that of the 5-year age group following on from
the secondary school leaving. are entered into by the mid-teens for many people.
Source: UNESCO (2013). Nevertheless, in developing countries around the
world, the urban middle class is likely to continue
all human cultures as a period between the time to grow in the decades to come. It may be that a
puberty begins and the time adult roles are taken on. century from now emerging adulthood will be a
However, the length of adolescence and the nature of normative life stage worldwide, although it will
adolescents’ experiences vary vastly among cultures. continue to show variations within and between
Some adolescents attend secondary school, and some cultures, as adolescence does today.
drop out or never go (Lloyd, 2005). Most live in the
same household as their parents, but some become The Cultural Beliefs Underlying
“street children” and live among other adolescents in Emerging Adulthood
urban areas (UNICEF, 2003). Some marry by their The variations in emerging adulthood across and
mid-teens, especially girls in rural areas of develop- within countries are of great interest in understand-
ing countries, whereas others will not marry until ing this new life stage. However, there is more to
after adolescence and a long emerging adulthood. understanding the cultural psychology of emerging
Consequently, it makes sense to speak not of one adulthood than merely charting national and cul-
adolescent experience but of adolescences worldwide tural variations. Cultural psychology is fundamen-
(Larson, Wilson, & Rickman, 2010). Yet we still rec- tally about exploring the belief systems that underlie
ognize adolescence as a life stage that exists in nearly cultural patterns of thought and behavior. What,
all cultures, in some form. then, are the beliefs that underlie and sustain the
In the same way, we can expect that there are new life stage of emerging adulthood? I propose
likely to be many emerging adulthoods; that is, that there are four such interconnected beliefs: the
many forms that the experience of this life stage belief that independence and self-sufficiency should
can take depending on social class, culture, and be attained before entering into adult commitments,
perhaps other characteristics such as gender and the belief that romantic love should be the basis of
religious group. Some emerging adults obtain ter- marriage, the belief that work should be an expres-
tiary education, and some do not. Some live with sion of one’s identity, and the belief that the years
their parents during these years, and some do not. from the late teens through at least the mid-20s
Some experience a series of love relationships, should be a time of self-focused leisure and fun.

494 T h e C u lt u r a l P s yc hol o g y of E m e rg i ng A du lt ho od
 These beliefs may not prevail in every culture
where emerging adulthood is prevalent. All four are
individualistic, based on what Jensen (2008) calls
an ethic of autonomy, and they are most promi-
nent in Europe and the English-speaking OECD
countries (the United States, the United Kingdom,
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand). In the Asian
OECD countries of Japan and South Korea, these
beliefs wrestle with more traditional collectivistic
beliefs that promote the well-being and interests
of the group, especially the family, over the pref-
erences of the individual. It is an open question
which beliefs will ultimately prevail in this contest,
not just in Japan and South Korea, but also in the
many developing countries that have similar tra-
ditions of collectivistic values and where emerging
adulthood is expanding.
Becoming Self-Sufficient:
Learning to Stand Alone
In many cultures, becoming independent and
self-sufficient is seen as the central task of the
emerging-adulthood life stage. Emerging adult-
hood is viewed by young people in these cultures as
a time when they need to move away from depen-
dence on their parents and show that they can man-
age their lives on their own. It is important to them
to demonstrate, to themselves and others, that they
have learned to stand alone as self-sufficient persons
(Arnett, 1998). Only after this is accomplished do
they feel they are ready to enter binding long-term
commitments to others, such as marriage, parent-
hood, and a stable occupational path.
The social and institutional structure of emerg-
ing adulthood—or rather, the lack of structure—
enhance this emphasis on independence and
self-sufficiency. Emerging adulthood is unique in
the life span as the nadir of social and institu-
tional control. Children and adolescents live with
their parents, and their lives are structured by the
rules and requirements set down by their par-
ents and by the daily obligation to attend school.
Adults (beyond emerging adulthood) mostly live
with a spouse or other long-term partner, and
most have children. Their lives are structured by
their obligations in those relationships and by
the daily responsibility to perform work specified
by an employer. However, for emerging adults,
social and institutional structures are at their
weakest. Most still have regular contact with
their parents, but they are not bound to follow
their parents’ rules and wishes as they were when
they were younger, even if they still live at home.
Most have an employer, but they change jobs so
often that they may disregard any employers’
demands they consider onerous and simply move
on to the next job. Many of them attend college
or university, but if they occasionally decide not
to attend class or do the required reading, there
are few repercussions.
But the centrality of independence and
self-sufficiency in the lives of emerging adults is
more than just the consequence of their lack of
social and institutional structure: it is a belief they
hold among their highest values. This can be seen
in the criteria they value most for becoming an
adult. For more than a decade, I and many others
around the world have been asking young people
about the criteria they consider to be important
in marking when a person has become an adult.
This research has taken place among a variety of
American ethnic groups (Arnett, 2003) and in
countries including Argentina (Facio & Micocci,
2003), Austria (Sirsch, Dreher, Mayr, & Willinger,
2009), China (Nelson, Badger, & Wu, 2004), the
Czech Republic (Macek, Bejček, & Vaníčková,
2007)), Israel (Mayseless & Scharf, 2003), and the
United Kingdom (Horowitz & Bromnick, 2007).
With remarkable consistency across countries and
cultures, three criteria have stood out as crucial for
marking the attainment of adulthood: accepting
responsibility for one’s self, making independent
decisions, and becoming financially independent.
All three of these criteria reflect a belief in the
value of becoming independent and self-sufficient.
Accepting responsibility for one’s self means learn-
ing to handle life’s problems and the consequences
of one’s actions alone, without relying on others for
assistance. Making independent decisions means
deciding for yourself about matters large and small,
from what to have for dinner to whether to move in
with your love partner. Becoming financially inde-
pendent means reaching the point where you do not
rely on others to provide for you. For all three crite-
ria, interviews with emerging adults show that the
independence they seek is primarily independence
from parents (Arnett, 1998; 2004). Although most
continue to love their parents—and in fact they
often get along with them far better in emerging
adulthood than they did in adolescence (Arnett &
Schwab, 2012)—by emerging adulthood they may
not want their parents to be involved in their lives
to a degree that would compromise or obstruct
their pursuit of independence and self-sufficiency.
It is important to add that emerging adults see
this emphasis on independence and self-sufficiency
A r n e tt 495
as unique to their current life stage (Arnett, 1998;
2004). Almost none of them want to remain unfet-
tered indefinitely, and very few of them will remain
so beyond the age of 30. They see the attainment
of independence and self-sufficiency as the primary
challenge of their life stage. Once they have estab-
lished that they have learned to stand alone—and
only then—they will be ready to commit them-
selves to enduring roles and long-term commit-
ments to others in love and work.
Although I originally proposed these ideas
about the importance of independence and
self-sufficiency in emerging adulthood based on my
interviews with Americans (Arnett, 1998; 2004),
there is evidence that this is important in a vari-
ety of cultural contexts. As noted, the emphasis
on criteria for adulthood that have connotations of
independence and self-sufficiency has been found
in many countries around the world. Also worth
mentioning is an investigation by Leslie Chang on
“factory girls” in China, young women in their late
teens and early 20s who leave their rural villages
to seek work in China’s booming industrial cities
(Chang, 2008). In the cities, away from their fami-
lies, they quickly adopt a lifestyle that emphasizes
self-focused identity development and the pursuit
of independence and self-sufficiency. Yet there are
also differences from the Western pattern of emerg-
ing adulthood. For example, these girls send money
home to their families, and they often live in fac-
tory dormitories where there are many rules and
restrictions on their activities that few emerging
adults in the West would tolerate. Further cultur-
ally based and culturally diverse work will shed
more light on the different forms that the pursuit
of independence and self-sufficiency may take in
different cultures.
Studies of Chinese university students (Nelson
et al., 2004) and Asian-American emerging adults
(Arnett, 2003) have found a similar balance of
individualistic and collectivistic values in their
views of the most important criteria for adulthood.
They prize the three individualistic criteria men-
tioned, but they also rank highly the capability to
support their parents financially, a criterion never
mentioned in American interview studies (Arnett,
1998; 2004). They strive for autonomy even as they
also maintain a strong sense of obligation to their
parents.
Looking for Love: Finding a Soul Mate
Emerging adulthood is a life stage in which
young people move gradually toward making
496 T h e C u lt u r a l P s yc hol o g y of E m e rg i ng A du lt ho od
enduring commitments in love and work. With
respect to both love and work, cultural beliefs of
individualism often underlie emerging adults’
explorations.
With regard to love, the individualism of emerg-
ing adults is evident in their descriptions of what
they seek in a marriage partner. The modern ideal
for marriage in Western countries is to find one’s
“soul mate.” According to a national US survey by
the National Marriage Project, 94% of single 20-
to 29-year-old Americans agree with the statement,
“There is a special person, a soul mate, waiting for
you somewhere out there” (Popenoe & Whitehead,
2001). Young Europeans share this romantic ideal
in seeking a marriage partner (Douglass, 2005).
The soul mate ideal is highly individualistic.
A soul mate is someone who complements your
identity perfectly. This does not mean that a soul
mate is a perfect person; a soul mate is a person who
is perfect for you. All your needs, wants, and dis-
tinctive personal qualities fit snugly into the recep-
tors your soul mate provides. You feel completely
at ease with your soul mate because your soul mate
views life just as you do. There is no need for con-
flict because you and your soul mate want the same
things out of life.
Like most ideals, the soul mate ideal is elusive.
One reason for the later marriage age today than in
previous decades may be that it takes a long time to
find someone who resembles the soul mate ideal—or
to give up this ideal and settle for a flesh-and-blood
human being (Arnett, 2004). Until recently, find-
ing a marriage partner may have been relatively
simple (Cherlin, 2009). A woman looked for a man
who would be a good provider, a decent father, and
hopefully reasonably nice and attractive. A man
looked for a woman who would run the household,
take care of the children, and hopefully be reason-
ably nice and attractive. Many people within the
average person’s social circle would fit within these
broad guidelines. However, once the expectation for
a marital partner is a “special person” who is ideally
and uniquely suited to you, there may be very few
persons, perhaps only one, “somewhere out there,”
who will be deemed worthy, and finding that per-
son is likely to take a while.
But what about cultures in which personal
choice in marriage is circumscribed, and parents do
much of the choosing? In most of the world, there
is a long tradition of arranged marriages in which
young people barely knew their prospective spouse
prior to the wedding (Hsu, 1983; Prakasa & Rao,
1979). In these cultures, marriage was mainly a
transaction between families, not individuals. Love
was expected to grow after marriage, not be the
basis for entering marriage, and intimacy expecta-
tions were low (Hatfield et al., this volume). Married
couples spent little time alone with each other and
often did not even sleep in the same room.
Today, however, the tradition of arranged mar-
riage is dead or waning everywhere, and the soul
mate ideal is ascending. India is one place where
arranged marriage remains the norm, but, even
there, nearly 40% of young Indians now say they
intend to choose their own mates (Chaudhary &
Sharma, 2007). Furthermore, many arranged mar-
riages today are in fact “semiarranged” marriages
in which parents influence the mate selection of
their children but do not simply decide it without
the children’s consent (Naito & Geilen, 2003).
Parents may introduce a potential mate to their
child. If the young person has a favorable impres-
sion of the potential mate, they date a few times.
If they agree that they are compatible, they marry.
Another variation of semiarranged marriage is that
young people meet a potential mate on their own
but seek their parents’ approval before proceed-
ing to date the person or consider marriage. This
suggests a movement toward a balance between
individual choice and family considerations (i.e.,
between individualistic and collectivistic values).
Still, there remains little research on how emerg-
ing adults in the middle class in developing coun-
tries such as India and China view marriage, and it
is a question that merits investigation. Do emerging
adults in developing countries now have a soul mate
ideal of marriage, much like their counterparts in
the West? Or do they have less lofty expectations
for marriage, seeing it in the more traditional sense
as a practical arrangement for distributing respon-
sibilities of child care, providing for and running a
household, and the other requirements of daily life?
Looking for Identity-Based Work
Like love, the nature of work has changed
in recent decades. Work has been traditionally
regarded as an unpleasant but necessary require-
ment of life. In the Bible story, some 3,000 years
old, work is a punishment from God, the penalty
inflicted on Adam and Eve for their disobedience
in the Garden of Eden. Most work in the past of
10,000 years of human history has been agricul-
tural work, which is strenuous, boring, and subject
to random catastrophe. When industrialization
arose, the tedium of factory work became a dubi-
ous alternative to the tedium of field work.
In the modern postindustrial economy, all this
has changed. Few people in OECD countries
(1–2%) work in agriculture. More work in manu-
facturing, but the number is decreasing daily as
manufacturing jobs are replaced by automation
and companies relocate to developing countries
with lower wages and weaker labor laws. Instead,
there is a vast range of jobs in information, tech-
nology, and services. This economic change, along
with growing individualism, has spawned a cul-
tural belief that work should be enjoyable, not bor-
ing, and self-fulfilling, not deadening to the body
or soul.
Consequently, as they enter the job market,
emerging adults have high expectations for the
rewards of work. Unlike generations past, they do
not believe that work is inherently and irremedi-
ably arduous and dreary. On the contrary, they
believe that work should be enjoyable and fulfill-
ing, a form of self-expression (Arnett, 2004). In
the same way that they believe they can find a soul
mate who provides an ideal complement to their
identity, they are hopeful they can find work that
is an expression of their identity, an activity that
allows them to use their abilities to do something
they find engaging, gratifying, and self-fulfilling.
This attitude toward work can be frustrating
to employers who do not typically get up in the
morning and ask themselves, “Whom can I fulfill
today?” On the contrary, most ask themselves how
they can get their employees to do the most work
for the least amount of money in order to maxi-
mize company profits. This disconnect between the
expectations of employers and the expectations of
their young employees can lead to conflict in the
workplace and to high turnover. Surely, one rea-
son emerging adults change jobs so often during
the decade of the 20s is that finding identity-based
work is elusive, and they are quick to drop a job
that does not seem to promise this possibility in
favor of another job that might.
Their high expectations for work are also likely
to be frustrating to emerging adults themselves, ulti-
mately. Just as the search for a soul mate must end
in a partnership with a real person, warts and all,
the search for identity-based work is likely to end in
a job that is not everything one would have liked it
to be. Yet I have found that by the end of their 20s
most American emerging adults have made peace
with their dreams, in both love and work (Arnett,
2004). They may not have quite found their soul
mate ideal, but they have found someone they love
and who loves them back. They may not have found
A r n e tt 497
self-fulfilling work that they look forward to going
to every day, but they have found a job they can live
with for now as they continue to strive toward the
ideal of finding a job they truly love.
Glory Days: Emerging Adulthood
as a Time of Unparalleled Fun
Finally, one other key cultural belief that under-
lies the new life stage of emerging adulthood is
that it should be a time of unparalleled enjoyment
of life. This is when you have the most freedom
for self-focused fun. This is when you have the
chance to do things you never could have done
when younger and will never be able to do when
older: stay out until all hours partying with friends,
try unusual mind-altering substances, travel far
and wide on a slender budget, or take a low-paying
but adventurous job for a while.
Europe is the cultural area where this cultural
belief in emerging adulthood as a time of joie de
vivre is most pronounced, as shown in ethno-
graphic work by Carrie Douglass (2005) and her
colleagues. As mentioned earlier, most European
emerging adults prefer to spend the decade of their
20s enjoying travel, time with friends, and other
self-focused fun.
In my research on American emerging adults,
I have observed similar views of emerging adult-
hood as a peak time of freedom to enjoy life. In
a recent national survey I directed, 83% of 18- to
29-year-olds agreed with the statement, “This time
of my life is fun and exciting” (Arnett & Schwab,
2012). American emerging adults value the free-
dom and independence of the life stage and seek
to make the most of it, realizing that once they
enter adult commitments their “glory days” will
be over. They plan marriage, parenthood, and a
long-term job commitment for after those days are
over. Because they enjoy their emerging-adulthood
freedom and leisure, they view adulthood with
ambivalence. All of them realize they will enter it
eventually; virtually none vows to remain in his or
her glory days forever. But, like Augustine contem-
plating the virtuous life—“Make me chaste, Lord,
but not yet”—most are in no hurry to take on the
onerous responsibilities of adult life.
Do emerging adults outside the West have
a similar view of the emerging-adult years as a
time of peak freedom and leisure? Or are they
more focused on fulfilling their duties and fam-
ily obligations? There is little research yet to
answer these questions, but some interesting
clues come from research in Japan. Japanese
498 T h e C u lt u r a l P s yc hol o g y of E m e rg i ng A du lt ho od
secondary schools are notoriously demanding
and competitive, leaving little room for leisure
in adolescence (Rohlen, 1983; Stevenson &
Zusho, 2002). However, once they enter college,
grades matter little, and standards for perfor-
mance are relaxed. Instead, they have “four years
of university-sanctioned leisure to think and
explore” (Rohlen, 1983, p.  168). Japanese col-
lege students spend a great deal of time social-
izing with friends, walking around the city, and
hanging out together (Fackler, 2007). Average
homework time for Japanese college students is
half the homework time of secondary school stu-
dents (Takahashi & Takeuchi, 2007). For most
Japanese, their emerging adulthood is the only
time in their lives, from childhood until retire-
ment, that will be relatively free of pressure.
Until they enter college, the exam pressures are
intense, and once they leave college they enter a
work environment in which the hours are notori-
ously long. Only during their college years are
they relatively free from responsibilities and able
to enjoy extensive hours of leisure.
Future Directions
Although a great deal of research has taken place
on emerging adulthood over the past decade, it is
still a new field, and there is much to be learned. As
in many fields in psychology, most research so far
has taken place in the United States (Arnett, 2008).
Research in other developed countries has begun,
in areas such as identity (Luyckx, Goossens, &
Soenen, 2006 and relations with parents (Kins &
Beyers, 2010, but is in its early stages. Research in
developing countries is promising but is limited so
far (Nelson & Chen, 2007).
One important question to be investigated is
to determine the distinctive features of emerg-
ing adulthood in various cultures. The five fea-
tures described in this chapter were proposed for
American emerging adults, but they may or may
not apply to other societies and to the various cul-
tures within American society. Rather than inves-
tigating if the five features apply to other cultures
as well, it would be advisable to start fresh each
time, in these early years of emerging-adulthood
research, and ask what features are distinctive to
emerging adulthood in each cultural group where
it is studied. This will require the use of qualita-
tive methods because quantitative methods tend
to be laden with assumptions about what the find-
ings will be, especially in questionnaires that have
predetermined responses. Because little so far is
known, it is important to ask open-ended questions
that allow emerging adults to articulate their views,
and we must learn to develop our theories and ideas
from what they have to say about their lives.
In developing countries, emerging adulthood
exists demographically only among the relatively
small urban middle class who spend a longer time
on education and have later ages of entering mar-
riage and parenthood than most of the other young
people in their society. This represents a great
opportunity for researchers on emerging adult-
hood. Research can be done now in developing
countries, before emerging adulthood has become
normative, and continue through the 21st century
as the new life stage grows and spreads. It would
be fascinating to see how young people’s cultural
beliefs may change as their economies change and
as globalization brings them into increasing con-
tact with the lives of emerging adults in developed
countries (Arnett, 2002). To what extent will they
embrace the cultural beliefs described in this chap-
ter as underlying emerging adulthood in devel-
oped countries, and to what extent will they retain
their traditional culture beliefs and create new
forms of emerging adulthood that are distinctively
their own?
Conclusion
The rise of emerging adulthood stems funda-
mentally from the demographic changes that have
opened up a distinct new period between adoles-
cence and young adulthood, most notably greater
participation in tertiary education and later ages
of entering marriage and parenthood. However,
changes in cultural beliefs also, crucially, accom-
panied these demographic changes. Premarital sex
became more widely acceptable in many cultures,
decoupling sex from marriage and making it pos-
sible to have an active sexual life without entering
marriage. The roles and opportunities available
to women vastly expanded, removing the social
pressure for them to marry and have children in
order to have a legitimate place in their societ-
ies. Marriage became transformed from a practi-
cal arrangement for raising children and running
a household to an arena for romantic ideals of
soul-mate couplehood—at least in aspiration.
Work became transformed from a dreary duty
to an arena for self-expression—again, at least in
aspiration.
Emerging adulthood is a cultural theory,
and how emerging adulthood is experienced is
shaped by cultural beliefs. In many cultures,
these beliefs include the desirability of striving
for self-sufficiency before adult responsibilities
are taken on in love and work, the importance of
finding a marriage partner who ideally comple-
ments your identity, the importance of finding
identity-based work, and the desirability of using
the freedom of the emerging adulthood life stage
to pursue self-focused fun. Yet these beliefs are by
no means universal, and the individualism that
runs across these beliefs is tempered in cultures
that emphasize obligations to others. The field of
emerging adulthood is barely a decade old, and
one of its chief challenges in the years ahead will
be to chart the cultural themes and variations of
this new life stage.
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A r n e tt 501
 C H A P T E R

31 The Intersection of Culture,

Health, and Risk Behaviors
in Emerging and Young Adults
Laura Ferrer-Wreder, Kazumi Sugimura, Kari Trost, Senel Poyrazli,
Marie-Louise Klingstedt, and Sarah Thomas1

Abstract
This chapter provides a cross-cultural exploration of antisocial behavior, substance use, and sexual
behavior in relation to health among emerging and young adults. By summarizing what is known
about these risk behaviors and health in Sweden, Japan, and Turkey, the authors discuss differences
and commonalities between countries in terms of proximal causes and the relations between risk
behaviors and disease. Finally, the authors discuss the importance of the development of theories that
have the potential to bridge the not-so-distal connection between cultural resources, developmental
processes, and health. The chapter ends with an examination of selected themes across the respective
nations and recommendations for how to advance future research on risk and health in emerging and
young adults.
Key Words:  emerging adulthood, young adulthood, antisocial behaviors, substance use, sexual
behaviors, Turkey, Japan, Sweden

Personal Reflection is partly linked to taboos surrounding young peo-

The chapter authors are presently living in or
were born and raised in Sweden, Japan, or Turkey.
Much of this chapter involves a description of what
is known about health and risk behaviors—namely,
sexual and antisocial behavior and substance use—
in these three countries. With this focus, we illus-
trate how aspects of culture can be fundamental to
the global study of risk and health. A comparative
spirit is also central to our personal reflection.
Recently, in Japan, one of the chapter coauthors
asked school personnel for permission to conduct a
study on family relationships, risk behaviors, and
mental health. School officials declined the invita-
tion to participate. Their reason was that asking
questions about such subjects would likely cause
shame in students who had engaged in antisocial or
sexual behaviors. The Japanese and Turkish research
literatures on adolescent and emerging, and young
adult sexual and antisocial behavior are not as
extensive as one would wish, and this shortcoming
ple’s risk behaviors. In Japan, for instance, antiso-
cial and sexual behaviors among adolescents and
young adults are recognized but are often viewed
as an exception or as extraordinary, even though
many young people may engage in these behaviors.
In Turkey, there are cultural and religious prohi-
bitions against unmarried women and adolescent
girls having sexual intercourse. Accordingly, several
of the Turkish studies that have been conducted on
risk behaviors and health have been with university
students or married young adults (e.g., Boratav &
Çavdar, 2012), leaving questions about what might
be the situation for unmarried young adults not
attending university and for adolescents.
In Sweden, the literature on risk behaviors and
health, although more extensive than in Japan or
Turkey, can also be expanded. However, limita-
tions in this instance are less tied to taboos about
sex, violence, and drug use because social prohibi-
tions that exist for these behaviors tend to be more

502
specific or lacking. For example, legal drug use in
moderation among emerging adults (e.g., alcohol)
is viewed as a conventional behavior in Sweden. Yet
a person of any age would be expected to abstain
from alcohol when driving any distance due to laws
and informal social norms against drunk driving.
In other cases, past taboos are no longer socially
accepted. Sexual intercourse in the mainstream
Swedish culture, for instance, is viewed as a nor-
mal behavior for late adolescents and young adults,
regardless of one’s gender or sexual orientation (e.g.,
Danielsson, Rogala, & Sundström, 2003). Indeed,
social unconventionality in relation risk behaviors
is with us across the globe, yet it differs in expres-
sion and consequence. Stigma associated with risk
behaviors has, in some countries, contributed to
less inquiry into taboo behaviors. Although limited
in some cases, the literature on risk behaviors and
health in many countries is important, especially
in a comparative framework. When risk and health
are put in a context outside of the familiar, insight
is gained into the specific nature of the research
problems to be solved, leading to further investiga-
tion and a broadening of our conceptions.
This chapter involves a consideration of risk
behaviors and health. In some risk-protective
models, a risk behavior (which can be viewed as
a risk factor in some situations) is not necessar-
ily socially prohibited but functions as a prob-
ability marker or indication that an undesired
future outcome maybe more likely to occur (e.g.,
a physical disease state emerges, one is incarcer-
ated for a crime, or one becomes drug addicted;
Small & Memmo, 2004). Interwoven with this
idea is that, in some cultures, risk behaviors (e.g.,
any sexual behavior with another person or certain
types of sexual behaviors or substance use) are also
norm-breaking behaviors that have real repercus-
sions (e.g., self-silencing or social exclusion result-
ing in declines in social support and connection
to others in areas where it matters to the person;
Tankink, 2013). Taboos about risk behaviors also
have importance for the preservation of health. For
example, cultural taboos can contribute to how
people perceive their illness, its causes, and likely
solutions, as well as whether individuals seek out
health services, engage in health-promoting behav-
iors, or respond to interventions (e.g., Stutterheim,
Bertens, Mevissen, & Schaalma, 2013).
Conceptions of health and risk behaviors that
also break cultural norms form part of the cul-
tural scripts or meta-narratives in any given soci-
ety. These narratives are living, dynamic entities
F e r r e r-W r e de , S ug i m u r a , T r o s t, P oy r a z l i, K l i ng s t e d t, T hom a s
that are revived and redefined by people (Tankink,
2013) and such narratives “inform a person about
what gives life meaning, what is inspiring or dan-
gerous and risky or what is worth taking a risk
for… . This cultural ideology can be problematic
for people who have to cope with experiences for
which their culture has no constructive answer”
(p. 394). For many people, concerns about health
and engagement in risk behaviors are nuanced and
relevant parts of everyday life, but they also involve
taboos. By comparing and contrasting risk and
health in three countries, our intention is to make
transparent those aspects of culture that may have
importance to these risk behaviors and health, with
the wider aim of informing future research that
supports people in their efforts to preserve their
health despite taboos.
Chapter Organization
We begin with a brief explanation of constructs
that are fundamental to the chapter. After that,
the subsequent section describes young people’s
risk behaviors and health in relation to the disci-
pline of developmental psychopathology. This is
followed by a description of the empirical litera-
ture on young people’s risk behaviors and health
in Sweden, Japan, and Turkey. The focus on these
particular countries is useful considering that the
literature is dominated by studies from North
America and English-language countries such as
the United Kingdom and Australia (e.g., Stone,
Becker, Huber, & Catalano, 2012). This chap-
ter section also contributes to the international
literature by describing research findings that, in
some cases, have not yet been reported in English.
The chapter ends with an examination of selected
themes across the respective nations and recom-
mendations for how to advance future research on
risk and health in emerging and young adults.
Fundamental Constructs
Culture
Culture can include a combination of symbols
and behaviors shared between and built by mem-
bers of a group (Shweder et al., 2006). Aspects of
culture include “conceptions of divinity, nature,
society, and persons, and behavioral inheritances
consisting of common or habitual familial and
social practices” (Jensen, 2011, p. 4). Culture is
not distal. Rather, it operates as a condition that
infuses other levels of the individual’s ecologies
(Bronfenbrenner, 2005). In other words, people
503
can be viewed as living, open, and adaptive systems
that come into contact with cultural and biologi-
cal resources (Overton, 2010). These actors (i.e., the
person, culture, and biological forces) “merge” and
co-act on each other across time (Overton, 2010,
p. 7). Importantly, as already illustrated, culture
can also be central to the wider consideration of
what is desirable or taboo and thereby have bearing
on the scientific enterprise itself.
Health and Adulthood
Health can be viewed as “not only the absence
of disease or infirmity, but a state of complete phys-
ical, mental and social well-being” (World Health
Organization [WHO], 2011a, p. 1). Adulthood is
a developmental period that is ascribed social and
cultural meaning. Seeing oneself as an “adult” can
also be salient to how people view themselves and
act toward others (Arnett, 2011). This chapter pre-
dominately deals with health and risk behaviors
in people aged 16–39  years. Young adulthood is
thought to span the third decade of life, emerg-
ing adulthood can be viewed as occurring from
18 to 29 years, and the period of adolescence con-
sists of most of the second decade of life (Arnett,
2011). Although the main focus of this chapter is
on emerging and young adults, in some cases, for
theoretical or practical reasons, we include a con-
sideration of late adolescents, those aged 16 years
and older. Unless otherwise noted, the term “young
people” is used in this chapter from here on out
as an umbrella term for adolescents and emerging
and young adults. This usage is consistent with
developmental psychologists’ conceptualization of
when emerging and young adulthood are likely to
begin and end in many cultures (e.g., Arnett, 2011),
as well as on age ranges for the term “youth” (15–
24 years old) as used by the United Nations and
the term “young people” (10–24 years old) as used
by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2011a).
This chapter’s focus on young people is timely
given that too many young people’s health is at
stake both now and in the future (WHO, 2011b).
(See Table 31.1.) The global facts about young peo-
ple’s health are profound:
More than 2.6 million young people age 10 to 24
die each year, mostly due to preventable causes.
About 16 million girls aged 15 to 19 give birth every
year. An estimated 150 million young people use
tobacco. Approximately 430 young people aged 10
to 24 die every day through interpersonal violence.
(WHO, 2011b, p. 1)
504 T h e I n t e r s e ct ion of C u lt u r e , H e a lt h, a n d R i s k Be h av ior s
In the United States and in several European
countries, young adults are a risk group for
health-related risk behaviors such as substance use
(Mulye et al., 2009; Rehm, Room, van den Brink,
& Kraus, 2005). Areas of special concern regard-
ing young people’s2 health from a global standpoint
include early pregnancy and childbirth, HIV and
other sexually transmitted infections, poor nutri-
tion, undernourishment and obesity, violence and
unintended injury, substance use, and mental disor-
ders (WHO, 2011a). The right of youth3 to the best
health possible is laid out in more than one United
Nations Convention—calls for action on  this
front can be found in the UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child, as well as in the Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women (WHO, 2011b).
Risk Behaviors
This chapter focuses on a selection of risk
behaviors, namely sexual and antisocial behavior
and substance use. These risk behaviors are empiri-
cally associated with young people’s health (WHO,
2011b). Connections between health and antisocial
behavior (criminality or violence) and drug use
(e.g., addiction) are self-evident. However, relations
between health and sexual behavior require more
explanation. Several scholars have made arguments
for not automatically equating sexual behavior
with the contraction of a disease (e.g., Tolman &
McClelland, 2011). When sexual behavior is recast
in a wider, balanced context, it is more likely that
we will be able to hone in on “both positive aspects
and risk management and how they develop in tan-
dem or dialectically at the individual, relational,
and cultural levels into the overarching concept of
sexuality development” (Tolman & McClelland,
2011, p. 251). Accordingly, sexual behavior can
be a positive influence on one’s development (e.g.,
promoting changes in social, emotional, and
interpersonal domains of development), as well
as having health risk potential (e.g., engaging in
health-compromising behavior such as unpro-
tected sexual intercourse). A conceptualization of
sexual behavior as having positive and negative
potentials in relation to health and well-being is
also consistent with international priority areas for
public health action; for instance, youth-related
Millennium Development Goals, which call for
improvements in health connected to sexual behav-
ior, such as universal access to reproductive health
care for young women and reduced HIV incidence
(WHO, 2011b).
Table 31.1.  Health and Substance Use in a Selection of Nations.
Income Grouping Prevalence of raised Adults aged 20 Alcohol consumption Prevalence of smoking
and Nation blood pressure and older who are among adults aged any tobacco product
among adults aged 25 obese (%)h 15 and older (liters among adults aged 15
and older (%)g of pure alcohol per and older (%)j
person per year)
2008 2008 2008 2009
Male Female Male Female Male Female

Low-income

 Gambia 39.7 34.2 2.3 14.4 3.6 31 3

 Kyrgyzstan 38.5n 33.4n 11.7 21.6 4.7 45 2

Lower middle income

 Egypt 27.1 27.0 22.5 46.3 0.3 40 …

  El Salvador 27.8 20.7 20.2 32.9 4.0 … …

Upper middle income

Saint Vincent 35.4n 27.5n 16.4n 33.5n 5.0 18 6

and the
Grenadines

 Turkey 24.0 24.9 22.8 35.6 3.0 47 15

High income

 Japan 26.4 16.7 5.5 3.5 7.8 42 12

 Sweden 29.7 19.3 18.2 15.0 10.00 … …

Information in this table is directly quoted from the World Health Organization (2013). World health statistics 2013. (pp. 111, 115) and
income groupings are based on World Bank rankings (July 2012), and derived mainly on the basis of household surveys. Abbreviated notes
to the figures presented in the original report are also directly quoted from the report and are as follows (pp. 116–117).
g
Percentage of population aged 25 years and older with raised blood pressure (systolic blood pressure ≥140 or diastolic blood pressure ≥90).
Global Health Observatory. Geneva, World Health Organization, 2011.
h
Percentage of population aged 20 years and older with a body mass index ≥30.00 kg/m 2. Global status report on noncommunicable diseases
2010. Geneva, World Health Organization, 2011.
j
WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic, 2011: Warning about the dangers of tobacco. Geneva, World Health Organization, 2011.
Definition of indicator: smoking at the time of the survey of any form of tobacco, including cigarettes, cigars, pipes, bidis, etc. and
excluding smokeless tobacco. These figures represent age-standardized prevalence rates for smoking tobacco and should only be used to
draw comparisons of prevalence between countries and between men and women within a country. They should not be used to calculate
the number of smokers in a country, region, or globally.
n
No country data available. Estimate modeled using data from other countries and specific country characteristics.

Developmental Psychopathology, markers that signal whether an undesired future

Risk, and Health
Developmental psychopathology (Cicchetti,
2010) has informed inquiry into risk behaviors
and health, particularly in the areas of antiso-
cial behavior and addiction (e.g., Moffitt, 2006;
Zucker, 2006). This is a field concerned with
adaptation and dysfunction across the lifespan.
As in other disciplines, such as public health or
prevention science, developmental psychopathol-
ogy makes use of concepts such as risk and pro-
tective factors, which can be viewed as probability
outcome is more (i.e., a risk factor) or less likely
(i.e., a protective factor; Small & Memmo, 2004).
In a cumulative risk model, it is the interaction
and equilibrium of risk and protection that
makes the prediction of a later outcome more
precise (i.e., which groups would be more likely
in a particular cohort to be drug-addicted as an
adult).
From the vantage point of developmental
psychopathology and other related disciplines,
risk and protective factor profiles can vary in

F e r r e r-W r e de , S ug i m u r a , T r o s t, P oy r a z l i, K l i ng s t e d t, T hom a s 505

developmental or contextual salience. For exam-
ple, a literature review of studies from several
countries indicated that some risk and protective
factors important to young adult substance use
were unique to this developmental period and
included in the case of protective factors—cohab-
iting or being married, working, or university
graduation (Stone et al., 2012). In relation to the
contextual salience of risk and protective factors,
a case in point can be found in a literature review
of 30 European studies on antisocial behav-
ior among young people (Wong, Slotboom, &
Bijleveld, 2010). Results indicated that several
risk and protective factors generalized across
American and European studies; however, there
was also evidence of unique risks for subgroups.
For instance, single parenthood was related to
young women’s antisocial behavior in the United
States but not in the reviewed European stud-
ies (Wong et al., 2010). Researchers posited that
European social welfare systems may in part mit-
igate poverty associated with single parenthood
(Wong et al., 2010).
In developmental psychopathology, the iden-
tification of a risk or protective factor for an out-
come is seen as the starting point, and inquiry
should go beyond this to explain how the salience
of risk and protective factors are also modified in
the context of processes of lifespan change and
specific, substantive developmental processes (e.g.,
achievement of developmental tasks; e.g., in terms
of social interactions and competence development
across time; Cicchetti, 2010, p. 515). In the next
section, the focus is on three national literatures,
and although important and useful in a number
of regards, these literatures are predominated by
descriptive accounts of risk and protective factor
profiles among young people living in the respec-
tive nations.
Health and Risk Behaviors
in Three Countries
Historical, Social, and Cultural Factors
Sweden: Risks in a Liberal Society
In many ways, the Sweden of today can be
viewed as a socially liberal society, in particular
as it relates to fewer taboos about sexual behav-
ior, and there is also diversity in family structure.
For example, 54% of children are born outside of
a marriage (Eurostat, 2012), and same-sex mar-
riages have been legal since 2009. Add to this
liberalism a strong dose of expectations for social
responsibility, as well as aspirations for equality
506 T h e I n t e r s e ct ion of C u lt u r e , H e a lt h, a n d R i s k Be h av ior s
in terms of gender and sexual orientation, as well
as expectations for the care of individuals by
social welfare-oriented institutions. Sweden has
universal public health care as well as education,
including university education. Globally, Sweden
ranks amongst the highest on life expectancy,
education, gender equality, and standard of liv-
ing (United Nations, 2013). Sweden was the first
country in the world to legally prohibit corpo-
ral punishment of children, has a parental leave
act in which parents together have 480 days of
paid leave per child, and has a well-structured
public preschool system for children older than
12 months. All of these factors have bearing on
the characteristics of Swedish young people and
their health and risk behaviors.
Japan: Risks in a Society Undergoing
Rapid Economic Growth
and Changing Values
Long-standing mainstream Japanese cultural
values include an emphasis on collectivism as well
as care of individuals by society (i.e., social welfare
as expressed by universal public education and
health care) combined with competitive perfor-
mance contexts; for example, entry into and per-
formance in school including university and adult
professions. The historical times are also of impor-
tance in Japan: since the rapid economic growth
and urbanization after World War II, values and
beliefs, as well as lifestyles, in young people have
dramatically changed over time. This change is
interwoven with the characteristics of young peo-
ples’ health and risk behaviors.
Turkey: Risks in a Society that Mixes
Traditional Values with Movement
Toward a Globally Connected Society
Turkey is considered both a Middle Eastern and
European country. It has land in both regions and
is a culture that has traditional roots but is increas-
ingly becoming more globalized. This trend is more
visible in urban rather than rural settings. Some of
the contextual conditions relevant to young peo-
ple’s risk and health are connected to the main-
stream Turkish culture, subculture of the family,
socioeconomic background, and gender of the indi-
vidual. It is especially important to discuss gender
role socialization in a Turkish context. Children are
brought up based on cultural stereotypes related
to how each gender should behave (e.g., Oksal,
2008). Although some families follow a variety
of approaches, many families follow a traditional
mainstream Turkish cultural approach. Sons are
given more independence. For example, they are
allowed to go out with their friends and stay out
late in the evenings. Girls, on the other hand, tend
to be strictly monitored; behaviors like dating and
staying out late are discouraged. This permissive
style for boys and close monitoring of girls places
each gender at a different risk level when it comes
to problem behaviors. These are a few of the many
factors that have relevance to Turkish young peo-
ple’s health and risk behaviors.
Sexuality and Health
Sweden
Nonmarital cohabitation and premarital sex is
considered normative in Sweden. By age 15, one
can consent to sexual intercourse. It is generally
accepted that as long as one is in a monogamous
relationship, it is normative for late adolescents to
have sexual intercourse, although adolescent preg-
nancy is still viewed as undesirable (Danielsson
et al., 2003). The average age for first sexual inter-
course is approximately 16 years in Sweden. Sexual
debut does not usually involve alcohol or other
drugs (Trost, 2006). Those who have an earlier sex-
ual debut tend to have more sex partners in young
adulthood (Tikkanen, Abelsson, & Forsberg,
2012). Some research suggests that early initia-
tion of sexual activity in Sweden is associated with
continuing risk of STIs and unintended pregnancy
(Andersson-Ellström, Forssman, & Milsom, 1996).
In their longitudinal study of 522 Swedish girls fol-
lowed from early adolescence (age 14) to middle
adulthood, Magnusson and Trost (2006) reported
that early sexual debut was linked to specific repro-
ductive health consequences (e.g., multiple termi-
nated pregnancies) and other risky sex practices
(e.g., no contraception, more sex partners) in adoles-
cence and early adulthood and to poor reproductive
health in middle adulthood. Other sexual behavior
prevalence rates beyond sexual debut involve num-
ber of sexual partners. The percentage of 18- and
19-year-olds who have three or more sexual partners
in the last 12 months is 25% for women and 23%
for men, and the percentage of 20- to 24-year-olds
who report three or more sexual partners in the last
12 months is 19% for women and 26% for men
(Herlitz, 2008). In a study of 15,000 young Swedes
aged 15–29, one in five participants had sex with
someone they did not know before or had casual sex
with a friend (Tikkanen et al., 2012).
Cost-free state-provided abortions have existed
since 1975 in Sweden. This, however, did not
F e r r e r-W r e de , S ug i m u r a , T r o s t, P oy r a z l i, K l i ng s t e d t, T hom a s
appear to be related to an increase in abortions
among young adults in Sweden a decade follow-
ing this law. In 1992, cost-free medication-induced
abortion (using mifepristone) was introduced, and
the emergency contraceptive pill has been avail-
able without prescription at pharmacies since 2001.
From 1996 to 2003, there was a rise in the abor-
tion rate that some Swedish scientists attribute to
financial cuts in sex education and an increase in
unprotected casual sex (Sedgh, Henshaw, Singh,
Bankole, & Drescher, 2007).
Although contraception itself and contraceptive
information are widely available, about a quarter
of 16- to 24-year-olds report that they did not use
a condom at sexual debut, and STIs still remain
most represented in this age category (Herlitz,
2008). The rate of chlamydia, the most common
STI in Sweden, has been on a steady increase since
1997 in both young men and women. During the
past few decades, gonorrhea and syphilis have also
increased, and heterosexual men between ages 25
and 34 have highest incidence (Velicko & Unemo,
2009). The observed increase for women with gon-
orrhea has been for those aged 15–24 years; during
2007–2011, 62% of all female cases were repre-
sented in this age group. Sweden continues to have
one of the lowest rates HIV and AIDS in Europe
(WHO, UNAIDS, UNICEF, 2012).
Due to the substantial Internet infrastructure
in Sweden, young adults in Sweden are amongst
the most online in the world. As in most coun-
tries, those who are most on the Internet are aged
16–24 years (Findahl, 2012). More access and
greater popularity of social network sites have aided
the rise of Internet-based problems like negative
sex-related acts (i.e., grooming, prostitution; asking
for sex) and exploitation (i.e., posting or e-mailing
non/consensual photos online). Although most
remain online relationships, those who meet online
and are thereafter exploited offline tend to have
poor relations with their parents throughout their
childhood, report feeling poorly, and have low
self-esteem (Priebe & Svedin, 2009). Furthermore,
those most at risk for exploitation online and are
exploited thereafter offline tend to have a history
of sexual or physical abuse and have poorer health
than their counterparts who are not exploited
offline. The Internet seems to be yet another con-
text for abuse over time for these individuals. As a
result of increased abuse of varying types on the
Internet, organizations have been commissioned to
focus on Internet safety for young people (Swedish
Media Council, 2012).
507
 Other arenas for health information and inter-
vention work are educational institutions and
health services. Throughout their compulsory
education, Swedish children and adolescents par-
ticipate in sex education that includes information
on puberty, contraceptives, pregnancy, sexual ori-
entation, STIs, pedophilia, petting, pornography,
and prostitution. In regards to Swedish health
services, emerging adults are offered contraceptive
information and are encouraged to check for STIs.
Since the late 1960s, youth clinics have provided
information on intimate relationships, contracep-
tion, and STIs (Edgardh, 2002). These clinics
focus on those aged 25 and younger and are cost
free. Moreover, surveillance of STIs in general is
well monitored through electronic registries (see
Velicko & Unemo, 2009). Despite this and other
health initiatives, sexual exploitation and risky sex-
ual behaviors remain as societal concerns.
Japan
Sexuality is one of the most important top-
ics and one that represents a changing feature of
Japanese young people over the past few decades.
Partly in light of earlier biological maturation4 and
urbanization, adolescents experience sexual activi-
ties at an increasing younger age than in the past.
For instance, approximately half of university stu-
dents reported having had sexual intercourse: 54%
for males and 47% for females in 2011, relative
to 23% and 11% in 1974, respectively (Japanese
Association for Sex Education, 2013). This increase
took place from the late 1980s to the early 1990s,
a period characterized by the peak of an economic
bubble that also corresponds to the rapid spread
of personal media, such as cell phones and com-
puters, to young people (Japanese Association for
Sex Education, 2001). The increasing availability
of these tools has accelerated young people’s access
to media items with sexual content and to more
freely have romantic interactions outside of paren-
tal control. This trend is indicative of a changing
feature of Japanese young people, which has been
conceptualized as “privatization” and that refers to
an increased emphasis on leading one’s own private
life (Kuze et al., 1988). Thus, some Japanese young
people increasingly value individualism rather than
traditional collectivism.
Relative to the past, more adolescents and
emerging adults experience unintended pregnancy,
and the rate of abortion has risen since the 1990s,
especially in younger age groups; the rate is 7.1 per
1,000 teenage girls and 14.1 per 1,000 females aged
508 T h e I n t e r s e ct ion of C u lt u r e , H e a lt h, a n d R i s k Be h av ior s
20–24 (Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare,
2012b). The rate of STIs has been generally decreas-
ing for the past decade, but the period during the
late teens and early 20s is still the time of life when
one is most likely to contract some diseases such
as chlamydia, the most common STI in Japan
(Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, 2012a).
Importantly, the numbers of HIV infections and
AIDS cases has been steadily increasing, especially
in persons aged 20–39; specifically, 30.4% of new
HIV infections in Japan occur in persons aged
20–29 (Japan Foundation for AIDS Prevention,
2012).
Based on this situation, sex education and pre-
vention programs have been increasingly recog-
nized as important since the 1990s. Researchers
point out that many young people do not have
accurate information about the risks involved in
sexual behavior (Kihara, 2006). For instance,
although some contraceptives are effective for
prevention from unintended pregnancy and HIV
infection, approximately 20% of high school and
university students reported that they do not use
contraception at all when they have sex (Japanese
Association for Sex Education, 2013). Research
shows that Japanese emerging adults tend to have
negative feelings about the use of contraception
(i.e., condoms in most cases), and one of the major
factors is embarrassment caused by the purchasing
of condoms (Higuchi & Nakamura, 2009). On the
other hand, positive feelings toward one’s own sex-
uality have been associated with better awareness
of sexual risks and responsible contraceptive use in
emerging adults (Kusano, 2006). Clearly, sex edu-
cation and prevention programs for young people
in Japan may need to deal more with positive atti-
tudes toward sexual behaviors and relationships,
as well as providing evidence-based information
about sexual risks.
Turkey
Sexual health in Turkey is often viewed differ-
ently by women and men. As research indicates
(e.g., Celik & Esin, 2012), a concern among some
females in Turkey is to protect the hymen before
marriage; however, male youth often define sexual
health within the boundaries of HIV/AIDS and
protection from it. This gender difference is rooted
in a practice in which the families and the new
groom expect the bride to bleed as a result of break-
age of the hymen during the first sexual encounter
between the couple. Although female youth will
focus more of their attention onto preserving their
hymen, male youth may focus more of their atten-
tion onto how to protect against STIs. Premarital
sex for Turkish women tends not to be tolerated.
In one study with college students, 41% of male
students and 3.5% of female students reported that
they have had premarital sexual intercourse (Yasan,
Essizoglu, & Yildirim, 2009). The emphasis on the
hymen as sexual health, however, may lead to the
utilization of other forms of sexual behaviors such
as anal or oral sex, especially among the unmarried
female adolescents and young adults (Aras, Orcin,
Ozan, & Semin, 2007; Civil & Yildiz, 2010).
The mainstream culture in Turkey discourages
individuals such as researchers and policy makers
to study or address culturally sensitive topics such
as sexuality among adolescents or unmarried young
adults (Celik & Esin, 2012). As a result, research
in this area is limited, and educational programs
related to sexuality for these groups are scarce. Most
research related to sexuality tends to be conducted
with married individuals. Researchers infer from
these studies to identify health risk behaviors both
for unmarried and married young adults. An exam-
ple of such studies is a national survey (Hacettepe
University Institute of Population Studies, 2008)
that identified that young married adults’ knowl-
edge related to birth control methods was inad-
equate. Whereas birth control pills or intrauterine
devices (IUDs) were among the methods used, the
most popular method was the withdrawal method
(26%) among the group that was between the ages
of 20 and 29. The calendar method was used by
some others. In the same survey, when those who
were not using any type of contraception and who
were younger than 30 years were surveyed further,
it was found that 8% indicated not having any
knowledge about birth control methods. Therefore,
lack of knowledge related to contraception or the
use of ineffective methods could increase the likeli-
hood of unintended or early pregnancy.
As mentioned, many young people in Turkey
are brought up in a culture in which they are
taught that asking questions about sexuality is
inappropriate and that it is indicative of the young
person being interested in sexual activities. As a
result, the main source of information for sexual
and reproductive health-related topics is peers
(Celik & Esin, 2012). Internet resources also tend
to be used especially by older youth and young
adults, but to a lower degree compared to peers
as a resource (Cinsel Egitim Tedavi ve Arastirma
Dernegi, 2013). Even though in recent years places
such as the Youth Counseling and Health Service
F e r r e r-W r e de , S ug i m u r a , T r o s t, P oy r a z l i, K l i ng s t e d t, T hom a s
Centers were opened by the government to provide
individuals access to reproductive health services,
these centers are frequently not utilized. In Celik
and Esin’s (2012) study, it was found that although
some youth knew about the existence of these cen-
ters, they did not seek services there, fearing that
they would be seen by somebody they knew or that
what they ask or share may not be kept confiden-
tial. As a solution to this problem, peer education
methods could be utilized. Research shows that
peer education-type interventions show promise
in reducing risky sexual behaviors among sexually
active college students (Bulduk & Erdogan, 2012).
Antisocial Behavior, Substance
Use, and Health
Sweden
Swedish cultural views and legal policies on
adolescent antisocial behavior have a rehabilita-
tive, child welfare ethos rather than orientation
toward punishment, partly based on the idea that
care instead of prison protects adolescents from
too early or unnecessary iatrogenic prison experi-
ences (Janson, 2004). Adolescents are criminally
responsible at 15 years (Janson, 2004). Swedish
drug policy is aimed at promoting a drug-free life-
style among people in general and young people in
particular, with a special emphasis for this group
to delay the onset of alcohol and tobacco use, as
well as prevent young people’s death from alcohol
poisoning or other drug use (e.g., Swedish National
Institute for Public Health [FHI], 2012).
For several years running, according to school
surveys, Swedish adolescents reported lower alco-
hol, tobacco, and other drug use relative to com-
parably aged adolescents in several other European
countries (e.g., Hibell et al., 2011). A recent excep-
tion to this trend is an elevated amount of pure
alcohol that surveyed adolescents’ had during their
last drinking occasion (Hibell et al., 2011). Use of
illegal drugs is not common in Sweden on a pop-
ulation level (FHI, 2012). In various age groups,
however, use of illegal drugs is an important prob-
ability marker for other problems, such greater
tobacco use and alcohol use/misuse (FHI, 2012).
As in the research literature on antisocial
behavior, there is a concern about understanding
variability in patterns of substance use in females
and males (Hibell et al., 2011). According to a
national study not conducted in a school setting,
young women aged 16–34  years evidenced an
increase in lifetime cannabis use—the most com-
monly used illegal drug in Sweden from 2008 to
509
2011 (FHI, 2012). Young men (aged 15–24) and
emerging and young adult women (aged 25–34)
were more likely to report illegal drug use—such
as cannabis or amphetamine use—relative to other
age groups (FHI, 2012). In another survey, those
aged 18–34 years reported a lifetime prevalence of
illegal drug use of 19%, with full-time university
students more likely than those employed full-time
to report recent illegal drug use (FHI, 2012). In
Sweden, more focused information is needed on
16- to 24-year-olds in order to better determine
substance use patterns and risk/protective profiles
in an age group that appears to be at elevated risk
for illegal substance use (FHI, 2012) and thereby
other legal drug misuse.
Moving to antisocial behavior, in a Swedish
longitudinal study, Stattin and Magnusson
(1991) found that antisocial behaviors were stable
into adulthood. The long-term consequences on
health, however, are less generally known. In their
follow-up study of 1,947 individuals using antiso-
cial behavior as a predictor for adverse outcomes in
adulthood, Molero and colleagues (2010) reported
that those who expressed antisocial behavior before
the age of 15 tended to continue doing so into the
adulthood years (i.e., an early starter model of anti-
social behavior). Compared to non-antisocial peers,
these individuals used more substances, were hos-
pitalized more often, and even died earlier (Molero
et al., 2010).
In Sweden, an understudied group is youth who
are placed in compulsory care by social services due
to such circumstances as abandonment and abuse.
In some instances, those aged 20 years and younger
may be removed from their homes and be placed
in the care of social services based on their own
wish, or they can be sentenced to time-indefinite
care by social services without the consent of young
people or their parents (Janson, 2004). Being taken
into compulsory care by the social services can
happen when the young person’s home conditions
are viewed as significantly harmful to the youth’s
health or development. Compulsory care can also
take place in response to the young person’s behav-
ior, including criminal activity or other destructive
behavior (Janson, 2004).
In 2009, some youth in compulsory care
were interviewed (Swedish National Board of
Institutional Care, Statens Institutionsstyrelse
[SiS], 2010; N = 683): the sample was predominately
boys (67%), ages ranged from 12 to 20 years, and
participants reported multiple risks and problems
(e.g., drug problems, crime, or destructive behavior
510 T h e I n t e r s e ct ion of C u lt u r e , H e a lt h, a n d R i s k Be h av ior s
like running away, prostitution, vagrancy). Gender
was of interest in this study, and girls reported
being sick more often and assessed their health as
worse than did boys (SiS, 2010). Girls’ common
health problems were sleeping problems (68%),
back pain (39%), frequent headaches (43%), eat-
ing problems, or nausea and vomiting (24%); and
sex-related health concerns among girls were geni-
tal diseases (3%) and vaginal infections (5%; SiS,
2010). Some had gone through pregnancy (3%) or
abortion or miscarriage (16%; SiS, 2010). Although
important general population longitudinal studies
exist in Sweden and have been highly informative,
youth in compulsory care who experience multi-
ple problems are not regularly reported on in the
English-language research literature and thus merit
additional systematic research attention.
Japan
Researchers have pointed out that after World
War II there were four peaks in over-time trends
in the number of Japanese young offenders
(Mugishima, 1982; Okamoto, 2005). The first
peak came around 1951, immediately after Japan’s
defeat in war; this period was characterized by
property crimes (e.g., theft) caused by poverty. The
next peak, around 1964, reflected a youth culture
in the context of urbanization and industrialization
during a period of rapid economic growth. Young
people pursued pleasure, and this resulted in a
relatively high rate of violent crimes (e.g., assault)
and sexual crimes (e.g., rape). The flourishing of
a consumer-driven culture led to the third peak,
around 1983, when many young people commit-
ted less serious crimes (e.g., shoplifting and bicycle
theft) with simple motives including fun and curi-
osity. Antisocial behaviors among young people
since the fourth peak, around 1998, were diversi-
fied, with the number of young offenders fluctuat-
ing. Experts suggest that more serious crimes (e.g.,
robbery), sexual crimes (e.g., molestation), and sub-
stance use (e.g., amphetamines) have increased in
this period (Muramatsu, 2000). The use of amphet-
amines is particularly evident in some young adult
groups. For example, based on penal code offenses,
the rates of amphetamine drug use offenses were
0.3% for those aged 14–19, 3.6% for those 20–24,
and 7.0% for those 25–29 (Ministry of Justice,
2012). However, drug problems are generally not
common among Japanese young people (Ministry
of Justice, 2012).
Studies have found that developmental pro-
gression of antisocial behavior in Japanese
adolescents and emerging adults is similar to
the pattern of findings from studies conducted
in Western countries (Steinberg, 2011). For
instance, a 3-year longitudinal study of deviant
behavior among junior high school students
found a trajectory from mild deviant behav-
iors, such as smoking and truancy, to more seri-
ous ones, such as stealing and driving without
a license (Nishino et al., 2009). Generally, two
sets of risk factors have been identified. The first
set of factors is psychological. Several studies
reported that individuals with certain person-
ality characteristics are more likely to engage in
antisocial behaviors. These characteristics include
aggressiveness (Hamaguchi, Ishikawa, & Mieno,
2009), self-directedness (Sakai et al., 2007), and
self-assertiveness with low self-inhibition (Harada,
Yoshizawa, & Yoshida, 2009). The second set of
factors is contextual. Individuals with distal par-
ents (Nishino et al., 2009; Sakai et al., 2007) and
deviant peers (Nishino et al., 2009) are more likely
to develop antisocial behaviors.
Turkey
With respect to substance use, the use of ille-
gal drugs in Turkey is not as common as it is in
some European and North American countries
(Corapcioglu & Ogel, 2004; Turkish Drug and
Drug Addiction Monitoring Center, 2010). For
example, 4% of those between 15 and 16 years
of age have reported cannabis use within the last
year, and 3% have reported the use of solvents/
inhalants in the last year (Turkish Drug and Drug
Addiction Monitoring Center, 2010). However,
the prevalence rate of drug use is on the rise across
Turkey (Corapcioglu & Ogel, 2004; Turkish
Drug and Drug Addiction Monitoring Center,
2010). Drug use is especially prevalent in large cit-
ies, with more than half of drug users estimated
to be between the ages of 15 and 24 (United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2003). In
addition, male adolescents and young adults
report use of drugs more frequently than compa-
rably aged females (Gorgun, Tiryaki, & Topbas,
2010). Also, intravenous drug use has increased
in Turkey relative to the past (United Nations
Office on Drugs and Crime, 2003). However, no
Turkish information was found about the rela-
tion between intravenous drug use and infection
by HIV or hepatitis. Although the prevalence of
drug abuse has often been tracked by researchers
in Turkey, predictors of drug abuse (e.g., biologi-
cal, sociological, or psychological factors) have
F e r r e r-W r e de , S ug i m u r a , T r o s t, P oy r a z l i, K l i ng s t e d t, T hom a s
largely been overlooked (Ayvasik & Sumer, 2010).
These predictors, however, need to be identified
so that contextually appropriate interventions can
be developed. Drug use can increase the chance
of other antisocial behaviors, especially when
an individual with an addiction is experiencing
financial strain (e.g., United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime, 2003).
Antisocial behavior such as getting into fights,
stabbing, shooting, robbery, bullying, stalking,
sexual violence, and drug use among young people
in Turkey is on the rise in comparison to the past.
For example, the incidence of using weapons such
as a knife or a gun in physical violence has increased
over time (TBMM Arastirma Komisyon Raporu,
2007). Compared to the past, more individuals
today are carrying a weapon. For instance, a study
conducted with the tenth-graders in Istanbul found
that 23% of the youth reported having carried a
sharp object such as a knife, and 10% reported car-
rying a gun (e.g., Ogel, Tari, & Eke, 2006). Male
tenth-graders, however, were more likely to carry
and use a weapon than were female tenth-graders,
and, in the same study, 26% of these youth indi-
cated physically assaulting another person at least
once in their lifetime, 10% reported being part of a
gang, and 11% reported having gotten into trouble
with the law (Ogel et al., 2006). These antisocial
behaviors during adolescence may increase the
likelihood of similar antisocial behaviors in young
adulthood.
Researchers attribute the increase of delin-
quency and violent behavior in Turkey to changes
in the economic and social structure, as well as
to increases in the student population, which is
associated with increasingly crowded classrooms
(Unal & Cukur, 2011). In addition, contextual fac-
tors may increase young adults’ chances of engag-
ing in an antisocial behavior. In one study with
youth and emerging adults (Roberts, Gunes, &
Seward, 2011), more than 400 participants from a
prison (mean age 16 years) and a college were sur-
veyed (mean age 19 years). When the groups were
compared, the results showed that fewer incarcer-
ated individuals reported growing up in intact fam-
ilies than did the college group. The incarcerated
group was also more likely to be from high-crime
neighborhoods and from families with a low socio-
economic background. Among the college group,
gender seemed to serve as a protective factor against
delinquent behaviors. Female young adults were
less likely to engage in delinquent behavior com-
pared to male young adults.
511
 It is important to discuss sexual and physical
violence among married young adults in Turkey
because the average age of marriage tends to be
younger compared to that in developed nations.
Specifically, the average age of first marriage for a
woman in Turkey is 23, while it is 26 for a man in
Turkey (United Nations Economic Commission of
Europe, 2013). In a national survey assessing part-
ner violence among married couples (Hacettepe
University Institute of Population Studies, 2009),
it was identified that the younger groups had the
highest level of partner violence. Twenty-one per-
cent of women between the ages of 15 and 24
and 16% of women between the ages of 25 and
34 reported physical or sexual violence by their
husbands within the previous year. Another sur-
vey underlines physical and sexual violence as a
problem among single young adults who are col-
lege students. The survey conducted by Pinar and
Algier (2006) showed that 15% of these young
adults reported that they had been slapped or
punched by a friend/partner, 12% indicated they
were forced by a friend/partner to have sexual rela-
tions, and 1% indicated being subjected to sexual
violence.
Interpersonal violence, especially toward
women, could be explained by the patriarchal
values or mainstream gender role socialization.
Female chastity and protection of the family’s
honor is important. To protect the family’s honor,
male children can be given the right to control
the behavior of female members of their families,
restrict their autonomy, and use violence when nec-
essary. Other empirical research has shown that
18% of surveyed men believed that they have the
right to beat their wives, and 29% reported that
they had beaten their wives at least once (Ozcakir,
Bayram, Ergin, Selimoglu, & Bilgel, 2008). In
addition, there is a double standard when it comes
to the sexual behavior of females and males. Unlike
women, the culture recognizes heterosexual males’
sexual development and behavior as predominately
normative and expected, supporting the right to
sexual expression for some and, in some cases, to
the detriment of others, like female sex workers,
and in terms of interpersonal violence.
Prostitution and Health
Sweden
Youth in Sweden do seem accepting of prostitu-
tion. In Sweden, for those of consenting age, it is
illegal to purchase but not to sell sex. In a study
512 T h e I n t e r s e ct ion of C u lt u r e , H e a lt h, a n d R i s k Be h av ior s
conducted with 6,000 youths between the ages of
16 and 25, the Swedish National Board for Youth
Affairs reported that 43% think that it is acceptable
that other people have sex in exchange for some-
thing else (not necessarily for money), as long as it
is consensual, and approximately 12% would do it
themselves (Priebe & Svedin, 2009). In their study
of 876 emerging adults, Abelsson and Hulusjö
(2008) reported that 11.4% of young men and
7.4% of the young women had sold sexual services
online. Another study, however, shows that emerg-
ing and young adults who have prostitution experi-
ences, independent of providing sex or exchanging
for sex, were significantly different from their peers
who did not have prostitution experiences (Priebe
& Svedin, 2009). Those with prostitution experi-
ences had lower feelings of social belongingness,
worse financial status, poor psychological and
physical health, poorer self-concept, and higher
alcohol and drug use than their peers (Priebe &
Svedin, 2009).
Japan
One of the problems with which adults have
been concerned for the past two decades is Japanese
female adolescents’ involvement in deviant or
destructive sexual behaviors. Although the number
of juvenile victims of penal code offences has been
decreasing during this period, the number of teen-
age girls prosecuted for sexual offenses (e.g., por-
nography, prostitution) has been persistently stable
(National Police Agency, 2012). Some suggest that
contemporary teenage girls may be less resistant
to “commercialization of sex” than the previous
generations, and this puts them at risk (Uchiyama,
2000). There have been two major discussions
on the factors associated with this situation. One
explanation focuses on environmental changes in
contemporary Japan. The widespread prevalence
of cell phones and the Internet has weakened the
barrier against sex businesses coming into con-
tact with children and adolescents (cf. Shirai,
Tsuzuki, & Mori, 2012). In line with this notion,
the Japanese Internet Dating Site Control Act came
in force to protect children and adolescents against
sex-introducing services on the Internet (National
Police Agency, 2003). The other explanation
refers to psychological characteristics of contem-
porary adolescents in Japan. One study focusing
on female high school students found that those
who had engaged in paid dating, including sex,
expressed a stronger desire to receive compliments
from others or wanted to be viewed by others as
outstanding, relative to those who had not engaged
in this behavior (Sakuraba et al., 2001). This desire
was thought to be based on a feeling of loneliness,
poor interpersonal relationships, and sensation and
pleasure seeking that may be more common in an
individualized and consumer-driven society.
Turkey
Growing up in a culture where young women
are expected not to have sexual intercourse before
marriage, some male young adults seek other alter-
natives, such as the use of a sex worker. Prostitution
is legal in Turkey, and brothels are legal businesses.
Lack of knowledge about STIs and prevention
methods could put both customers and sex work-
ers at risk for STIs. Although research in this area
is limited, it is estimated that 50–70% of female
prostitutes working in brothels are infected with
trichomonosis, a type of STI (Daldal, Karaman,
& Atambay, 2002). In one particular study (Ocal
& Borekci, 2008), it was found that women work-
ing in brothels had inadequate knowledge about
STIs. They knew the most about HIV/AIDS,
but they had limited knowledge about syphilis
and hepatitis C. Another finding of concern was
that only 18% of surveyed sex workers used con-
doms. Researchers call for action to better educate
high-risk groups about safe-sex practices to prevent
the spread of STIs (Daldal et al., 2002).
Selected Themes Across Nations
Several specific commonalities are evident
from the described literature on risk behaviors and
health among young people in Sweden, Japan, and
Turkey. For example, male university students’
reports of having had sexual intercourse are not
uncommon in Japan (54%) and Turkey (41%).
Cannabis is one of the more widely used drugs
in Sweden and Turkey, and the sale of sex is also
legal in these two nations. The rate of young peo-
ple’s antisocial behavior in Japan and Turkey has
increased relative to the past, and, for both coun-
tries, urbanization and changes in the economic
and social structures are thought to play a role
in these changes. More broadly, Sweden, Japan,
and Turkey are, or are quickly becoming, postin-
dustrial information-based societies. Sweden and
Japan are considered to be high-income nations,
and Turkey is ranked as an upper middle-income
nation (World Bank, 2012). Globalization,
urbanization, and information exchange are also
F e r r e r-W r e de , S ug i m u r a , T r o s t, P oy r a z l i, K l i ng s t e d t, T hom a s
influential trends in these nations. In 2011, for
instance, mobile phone subscriptions were 119 in
Sweden, 105 in Japan, and 89 in Turkey per 100
people (WHO, 2013).
Being connected online, including participation
in social media, may make life more similar even
in geographically dispersed nations and thereby
accelerate the effects of globalization on young
people. An information-based society also may
open up new arenas for risk such as exploitation,
as described in the sections on Sweden and Japan.
Undoubtedly, life online also offers advantage and
possibilities, such as greater access to trade and uni-
versity education, and, more specifically in relation
to risk and health, access to online health services
and interventions. In all three nations, the Internet
and universities represent important future venues
for health-related interventions.
Although Sweden, Japan, and Turkey share
much, several specific differences are also clear
from the described literature. In comparison to
Japan and especially Sweden, Turkey appears to
have more marked gender role expectations. Unlike
Sweden, nonmarital cohabitation or premarital sex
in Turkey is either strongly discouraged or simply
not accepted, especially in rural areas and small
cities. Both Turkey and Sweden have health clin-
ics designed to educate young people about health
and sexual behavior; however, these clinics seem
to be more utilized in Sweden. These more specific
points of contrast, mainly in the domain of sex-
ual behavior and health, are in part connected to
efforts to maintain some traditional values in what
are changing societies. Sweden, Japan, and Turkey,
in varied life domains and to differing degrees, are
in the process of reconsidering values surrounding
individual choice, social responsibility, and the care
of others. However, in Turkey and Japan, relative to
Sweden, there appears to be more of a pull to main-
tain some traditional values, such as gender-role
expectations in Turkey or collectivism in Japan.
Thus, in Japan and Turkey, young people appear to
be navigating unique landscapes that hold a mix-
ture of old and new risks. For example, in Japan,
this is illustrated by the opposing depictions of
young people as sometimes avoiding contraceptive
use due to shame about purchasing of condoms in
contrast to young women’s greater participation in
paid dating and/or sex. These features offer illustra-
tions about how stability and changes in values can
alter the daily lives of young people in these three
nations.
513
Future Directions
The country profiles in this chapter highlight
promising specific aspects of culture that could be
measured in relation to risk behaviors and health—
promising constructs, for example, include values,
socialization practices, and cultural meta-narratives
and public policy related to health and taboo risk
and health-related behaviors. As Cicchetti (2010)
stated “considerations of cultural context must be
prominent when determining whether an individ-
ual has diverted onto a maladaptive pathway and
then deciding whether, or how best, to intervene”
(p. 514). Considerations of culture are clearly a road
to further scientific advances, both of a descriptive
and explanatory (i.e., theoretical) nature.
In keeping with the idea of description and
explanation, upcoming research endeavors would
also benefit from efforts to both describe and
explain risk and health. What is to be gained
by such an approach is exemplified by Moffitt’s
(2006) model of childhood-onset (life-course
persistent or early starter) and adolescent-onset
(adolescence-limited or late starter) antisocial
behavior. This model is a more specific theory
gleaned from the wider discipline of developmen-
tal psychopathology.
The early-late starter model of antisocial behav-
ior by Moffitt (2006) demonstrates the diversity
of development—in this case the development
of antisocial behavior—and emphasizes that, in
order to understand human development, empiri-
cal inquiry and theory-making should be geared
toward capturing such diversity. In Moffitt’s model
and in developmental psychopathology more gen-
erally (Cicchetti, 2010), there are multiple path-
ways or trajectories that individuals can take
toward a particular outcome (i.e., equifinality).
Thus, adolescents who are bearing the brunt of a
social welfare or criminal justice system response
to their criminal behavior may have arrived at that
point through a long history of norm-breaking
that began as a child (i.e., the early-starter model)
or as a relative first timer just beginning serious
norm-breaking (i.e., the late-starter model). The
origin of and change in the risk and protective
factor profiles of individuals following an early- or
late-starter trajectory differ, and the future likeli-
hood of criminal behavior also differs, with the
early-starters being more likely to continue and
late-starters more likely to desist from crimi-
nal behavior as they move from adolescence to
adulthood (Moffitt, 2006). Furthermore, not all
individuals in our example will respond in the
514 T h e I n t e r s e ct ion of C u lt u r e , H e a lt h, a n d R i s k Be h av ior s
same way to the social welfare or justice systems’
response to their criminality. Thus, people may
share a similar ecology but respond to those con-
ditions in dissimilar ways (i.e., illustrating the
concept of multifinality; Cicchetti, 2010). See
Raffaelli and Iturbide’s chapter for more on risk,
protection, and the multifinality-related concept
of resilience. Although contemporary models of
antisocial behavior, including Moffitt’s (2006),
have undergone further development and are
more nuanced than space limitations here allow
for detailed description, Moffitt’s general out-
line of early- and late-starter pathways of antiso-
cial behavior and development illustrate what a
change in thinking can do. Importantly, this and
other models, such as the one posited by Zucker
(2006) in the area of drug addiction, demon-
strate what is gained by moving from theories
and research designs that stop at description or
assume a determined outcome for all individu-
als who experience a given set of earlier or pres-
ent conditions (i.e., viewing human development,
including risk behaviors and health, as a closed
system) to documenting the diversity in develop-
ment that is accounted for by multidetermined
processes (e.g., equifinality, multifinality, devel-
opmental cascades) that can differ in what they
yield or can vary in expression across individuals
and ecologies. Such shifts in thinking and inquiry
are heartening, given that they provide meta-
phors for how to understand individual diversity
in development as a means to identify and test
more general, explanatory organizing principles
of human development. Such explanatory mod-
els of individual-level and ecological diversity are
promising in that such approaches may be able
to bridge the not-so-distal connection between
cultural resources, developmental processes, and
health.
Notes
1 Kazumi Sugimura, Kari Trost, and Senel Poyrazli share
second authorship and appear in random order.
2 Here, the term “young people” refers to 10- to 24-years-olds.
This age range and term is used by the World Health
Organization (2011a).
3 The United Nations defines the term “youth” as those
15–24 years old.
4 The decline in the age of menarche is a possible indica-
tor of earlier biological maturation. Similar to the secular
trends in other developed countries, the downward trend
in the age of menarche in Japan has steadily occurred
during the 1960s and the 2000s; the average age of men-
arche was 13 years, 2.6 months in 1961, and 12 years, 2.3
months in 2008 (Hinobayashi et al., 2009).
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 C H A P T E R

32 New Media, Social Change, and

Human Development from Adolescence
Through the Transition to Adulthood
Adriana Manago, Shu-Sha Angie Guan, and Patricia Greenfield

Abstract
This chapter presents developmental mechanisms by which new media drive development toward
increasing individualism. The authors establish basic principles regarding the impact of new media on
relationship development (increasing orientation to peers, relationship breadth, and choice) and on
identity development (increased capacities for control and emphasis on exploration, self-expression,
and hybrid identities) and review sociological, communication, and psychological theories, including
Greenfield’s theory linking social and developmental change. This theory predicts that new media
communication technologies will everywhere push development toward increasing individualism.
Cultural nuances—history, philosophical traditions, and institutions established prior to the
proliferation of communication technologies—may also influence how youth and families use new
media. The authors propose that greater intergenerational tensions arise with rapid technological
change. The chapter is a starting point for understanding how new media and cultural traditions
interact with globalization and sociodemographic shifts to produce changes in human development.
Key Words:  cultural change, new media, interactive media, communication technology, values,
relationships, identity

Allegory of the Cave, 2.0
In January 2012, in preparation for a research
project on intergenerational value change, the first
and third authors (Manago and Greenfield) vis-
ited with an Arab family in the village of Drijat in
the Negev Desert of Israel. Just a short walk from
the family’s three-story home of marble floors and
modern furnishings was a cave dwelling cut out
of rocks, the home of their ancestors until just a
generation ago. The three-room cave—one room
used to store food, one room for the animals,
and one where the family slept—represented a
way of life in Drijat that had been passed down
since biblical times by Falakhim Arab farmers
living in the south of Mt. Hebron. At the time
we visited the family in 2012, the father, Hadar
(a pseudonym), had transformed the cave where
he lived as a child into a tourist destination to
attract travelers visiting ancient historical sites in
the region.
Hadar invited us to sit with him on hand-woven
mats in the family room of his one-time subter-
ranean home. His teenage son, Ahmad (a pseud-
onym), brought us a tray of traditional Arabic tea
and tabun bread his mother had baked in a clay
oven. Meanwhile, Hadar regaled us with tales about
traditional customs and growing up in Drijat. He
warned us with a wink that, when he was growing
up, it was customary for visitors who had a seri-
ous matter to discuss to indicate their intentions to
their host by drinking their tea in one swift swill.
So we sipped our tea slowly as Hadar told us about
how he was the first in his family to attend school,
but then left school at age 16 to marry. He worked
as a construction laborer in the nearby Israeli city
of Arad to support his family, eventually acquiring

519
a lifestyle adapted to the postindustrial society
springing up around the Negev. When the sun
went down on the desert hills where his father and
grandfather had farmed, Hadar led us to a very dif-
ferent kind of family room in his present-day home.
There, we met Hadar’s other children and
his mother who, in keeping with Arab hospital-
ity, offered us more tea, fruit, and dates. As we
sat on sofas trying to make conversation, a tele-
vision placed prominently in the family room
drew one’s attention to its broadcast of an Arabic
program featuring men adorned in turbans
re-enacting nomadic life in the desert. Photos
of actual desert-dwelling Arab men in turbans,
Hadar’s father and grandfather, hung on the wall
just above the television set. Meanwhile, Hadar’s
children disappeared upstairs, except for Ahmad
who had served us tea in the cave; he migrated
over to the computer in the corner of the room.
Eyes transfixed on the screen, he scrolled down
his newsfeed on Facebook in Arabic, clicked and
navigated through a series of different windows,
and responded to flashing chat messages. With his
launch into cyberspace, Ahmad joins the ranks of
youth around the world ushering in new media
to their communities. These young people are
coming of age in the midst of profound changes
in cultural practices of communication and are
pioneering new channels through which humans
experience themselves in relation to one another.
Theoretical Approaches to New
Media and Social Change
In this opening ethnographic description, we see
rapidly shifting social milieus in the new millen-
nium that encapsulate not only new media technolo-
gies, but also a host of interlacing sociodemographic
changes. A theoretical framework that coheres the
multitude of sociodemographic changes illustrated
in this family portrait is Greenfield’s (2009) theory
of social change and human development. It spot-
lights the influence of sociodemographic change
on culture and human development when com-
munities shift from small, tight-knit, homogenous,
rural, and subsistence agricultural ways of life to
increasing involvement in large and heterogeneous
postindustrial societies with advanced levels of
formal education and more elaborate technology.
Greenfield adopts the concepts Gemeinschaft (com-
munity) and Gesellschaft (society) from sociologist
Ferdinand Tönnies (1887/1957) to describe the
array of sociodemographic factors constituting
social contexts of development. Gemeinschaft and
520 N e w M e di a , S o c i a l C h a ng e , a n d H u m a n De v e l opm e n t
Gesellschaft represent prototypical social ecologies
that anchor spectra of sociodemographic conti-
nua, such as economy, education, and technology.
When communities move in either direction along
any one of those continua, the sociodemographic
changes transform daily socialization practices and
the values and meanings embedded in those prac-
tices, as well as developmental outcomes.
Greenfield (2009) predicts that sociodemo-
graphic shifts in the direction of a Gesellschaft
typology—for example, increases in wealth, formal
education, technology, and cultural diversity—
drive socialization and development toward increas-
ing individualism and away from collectivism,
which are also conceptualized as existing on conti-
nua. Individualism and collectivism describe “cul-
tural syndromes” (Triandis, 1993) that manifest
differently across the life span in the practices, val-
ues, and goals pertinent to particular developmental
tasks. In the transition from childhood dependence
to adult responsibilities, hallmarks of high levels
of individualism under increasing Gesellschaft con-
ditions include prioritizing personal choice over
family obligation and independence over parental
obedience (Greenfield, Keller, Fuligni, & Maynard,
2003). A  high level of individualism is also epito-
mized in the emphasis on personal pleasure and
personal responsibility over family continuation in
sexual development and on personal fulfillment and
gender equality over adherence to complementary
and ascribed gender roles for the sake of group har-
mony (Manago, Greenfield, Kim, & Ward, 2014).
Greenfield’s (2009) theory hypothesizes that the
proliferation of new media in the West and in other
regions of the globe is an extension of Gesellschaft
conditions that push socialization practices and
values toward higher levels of individualism during
development from childhood to adulthood.
Two other major theoretical approaches, one
from the discipline of sociology and the other from
communication studies, present complementary
views on the implications of new media. Rainie and
Wellman (2012) describe research that suggests the
expansion of communication technologies gives
rise to a new form of connectivity that they term
networked individualism. In a society of networked
individualism, the individual is at the center of his
or her own personalized network, which is con-
structed based on shared interests, rather than on
kinship or common physical locales. Rainie and
Wellman argue that communication technologies
endow individuals with powerful tools to traverse
independently a variety of relationships in order
to acquire social capital, including information,
work collaborations, and social support (see also
Wellman et al., 2003). Social networking sites, for
example, enhance the ability of emerging adults
who go away to college to integrate into new social
milieus while remaining connected to old friends
and acquaintances across long distances and to call
on large networks of contacts for help and infor-
mation (Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2011). This
theoretical approach encourages us to think about
individualism not as a cultural syndrome of social
isolation, but rather as one in which mobile indi-
viduals connect with others via networks rather
than stable social groups.
Another theoretical approach, the media prac-
tice model (Steele & Brown, 1995), also highlights
the agency of the individual with the increasing
specialization of media. This model builds on uses
and gratifications theory (Rubin, 1994) in the field
of communication studies to focus specifically on
the use of media in the process of identity devel-
opment. Similar to uses and gratifications theory,
which encourages explorations into the personal
motivations, preferences, needs, and contex-
tual demands that influence how people use and
respond to media, the media practice model is
used to understand how individuals select, inter-
act, interpret, and apply media content to explore
their distinct identity concerns. Brown (2000)
argues that media have become both more diverse
and more specialized: from limited numbers of
television channels and outlets in the 1950s to a
multiplicity of media content targeted to particular
demographics, and now online forums that enable
users to create their own media. These changes
have given youth increasing opportunities to use
media to explore their distinctiveness in their social
worlds. Whereas the theoretical approach of Rainie
and Wellman (2012) helps to identify changes in
the composition of social networks at the level of
society, Steele and Brown (1995) illuminate how
individuals actively select and interpret media
in their daily lives to understand who they are.
These processes of identity exploration are impor-
tant components of individualism under modern
Gesellschaft conditions. Both theories are useful for
exploring the developmental implications of new
communication technologies because they provide
details on facets of individualism that are particu-
larly relevant to media. Greenfield’s (2009) theory
makes predictions that both networked individu-
alism and identity exploration are made possible
or enhanced as technology advances and becomes
more widespread in a Gesellschaft environment.
Because the theory explores both these issues in
the context of societal change and developmental
change, thus subsuming these two other theoreti-
cal frameworks, we rely heavily on Greenfield’s
theory in this chapter.
As we review the literature on new media and
developmental change, we focus on understand-
ing how the increasing penetration of new media
in daily life shapes the ability of the individual
to meet his or her unique interests and concerns
during preadolescence, adolescence, and emerging
adulthood. New media are defined primarily by
their interactivity and, it is important to note, are
increasingly accessed on mobile devices. Because
the transition from childhood to adulthood repre-
sents an important and sensitive period in the life
span for both relationship and identity develop-
ment (Erikson, 1968), we focus on how these spe-
cific developmental tasks are shaped by new media
communication practices.
New Media: Definition and
Proliferation Around the World
“New” media are distinct from “old” media,
which include books, magazines, television, and
movies, in that they are more intensely interactive
in ways previous media were not. This difference
is readily apparent when comparing Internet and
television use in the opening sketch. Consonant
with the media-practice model (Steele & Brown,
1995), the Arab family we interviewed selected
television programming that reflected their ethnic
identity and that resonated with the family’s (more
traditional) experiences in the world. With new
media, more idiosyncratic identity concerns are
projected onto the screen. Ahmad was immersed
in his online world, personally controlling his
media experience by making his own choices and
clicking on links that immediately satisfied his
personal interests. He also used his computer as
an entertainment portal to interact with peers on
Facebook. Consequently, media socialization and
peer socialization become more deeply entangled
as youth co-construct their own media environ-
ments (Greenfield & Yan, 2006). As young people
engage with online content produced or recycled
by peers, they choose and interpret content that
resonates with who they are and what they believe;
and those selected encounters further shape their
identity development.
The interactivity of new media has a number of
paradigm-shifting implications for communication
M a n ag o, G ua n, G r e e n f i e l d 521
(Lister, Dovery, Giddings, Grant, & Kelly, 2009). Table 32.1.  Internet Penetration Around the World.
In contrast to old media, new media require users’ World Region Internet Penetration Growth
creative participation; this requirement changes in 2012 (% of 2000–2012
patterns of production. Media conglomerates con- population using (%)
trol the creation and dissemination of information, the Internet)
art, and entertainment using old media; individu-
als are at the helm using new media, producing Africa 15.6 3,606.7
their own multimedia content online, expressing Asia 27.5 841.9
themselves on blogs or social networking sites,
and directing their attention where and when they Middle East 40.2 2,639.9
choose. All of these paradigm shifts in the new Latin America/ 42.9 1,310.8
media age of communication highlight the promi- Caribbean
nence of individual agency and the expression of
personal needs, desires, and preferences as users Europe 63.2 393.4
navigate and contribute to the real-time generation Oceana/Australia 67.6 218.7
of flows of human expression in virtual space.
These virtual flows of human expression are North America 78.6 153.3
widening to include a growing number of partic- World Total 34.3 566.4
ipants. The spread of new media is evidenced by
Data estimates from Miniwatts Marketing Group (2012b).
the increasing rates of penetration of information
and communication technologies (ICTs) in popula-
largely unaffordable in much of Africa (in stark con-
tions around the world. ICTs can be thought of
trast to Europe and North America), large jumps
as the infrastructure of new media. They include
in mobile adoption will continue to occur in many
hardware such as computers and mobile devices,
economically developing nations because mobile
as well as Internet software such as email, instant
broadband subscriptions are considerably cheaper
messaging, blogs, forums, virtual gaming worlds,
than fixed broadband subscriptions. Interestingly,
social networking sites, and other content-sharing
in the United States, smartphone adoption does
websites. Table 32.1 lists Internet penetration rates
not differ by income or education among those
in seven regions of the world and the change in
under age 30, but Latino, African-American,
those rates from 2000 to 2012. Taking the United
low-income, and non-college going users are most
States as an example, 36.6% of households in the
likely to report using their mobile devices as their
country in 1997 had access to a computer and 18%
main source of Internet access (Zickuhr & Smith,
had Internet access; by 2000, 51% of households
2012). The growth of Internet-enabled mobile
had access to a computer and 41.5% had Internet
devices points to the potential for new media to
access (Newburger, 2001). By 2012, the Internet
penetration rate in the United States was estimated
Table 32.2. Mobile Broadband Subscriptions
at 76.3% (Miniwatts Marketing Group, 2012a).
Around the World.
In Table 32.1, we see an unmistakable prolifera-
tion of ICTs and new media around the world, World Region Mobile Broadband Penetration
although a global digital divide is also clear; this (% of population with
divide also includes vast inequalities in broadband subscriptions)
speed in poorer regions of the globe (International Africa 11 (93 million subscriptions)
Telecommunications Union [ITU], 2013).
Nonetheless, the region with the lowest Internet Arab States 19 (71 million subscriptions)
penetration, Africa, also had the steepest growth
Asia-Pacific 22 (895 million subscriptions)
curve.
Another big wave of change is occurring with CIS (Former Soviet 46 (129 million subscriptions)
Internet-enabled mobile devices. Mobile broad- Republics)
band subscriptions have increased from 268 mil-
Americas 48 (460 million subscriptions)
lion worldwide in 2007 to 2.1 billion in 2013 (ITU,
2013). Table 32.2 lists broadband mobile device Europe 68 (422 million subscriptions)
penetration in six different regions of the globe. The Data estimates from International Telecommunications
ITU estimates that, although broadband remains Union (2013).

522 N e w M e di a , S o c i a l C h a ng e , a n d H u m a n De v e l opm e n t
become an incessant presence in our lives, perme-
ating daily activities and allowing people to remain
“connected” and transient at the same time.
How does this proliferation of communication
via new media technologies shift cultural practices,
norms, meanings, and values that shape develop-
ment? We first must acknowledge that the spread
of new media complicates already problematic con-
ceptualizations of culture as something shared by a
homogenous group of people living in a particular
locale. New media accelerate forces of globaliza-
tion in which information, ideas, and people tra-
verse geographic space, physical communities, and
national boundaries faster and more efficiently than
ever before in human history. In fact, these circum-
stances are characteristic of Gesellschaft societies,
which have smaller, relatively more Gemeinschaft
communities nested within them. Gesellschaft
societies influence one another through transpor-
tation systems and communication technologies
(Greenfield, 2009). Old media, such as newspapers
and television, initiated the transmission of ideas
across physical communities, expanding people’s
provincial points of view to contexts outside their
local experience (Lerner, 1958; Meyrowitz, 1985).
New media, with their on-demand access to a
perpetual flow of human expression, escalate the
potential for exposure to new horizons and give
youth more personal control in exploring them. We
argue in this chapter that the interactivity afforded
by new media, combined with access to people and
information in diverse communities unrestricted
by physical propinquity, undermines permanent,
stable communities and interpersonal interdepen-
dence, while intensifying practices that nurture
individual agency and values for personal fulfill-
ment in goals for development.
New Media as Instruments of Sociocultural
Change in Youth Development
We are certainly not the first to observe that
changes in communication technologies in the new
millennium yield a heightened emphasis on the
individual. As described earlier, networked individ-
ualism has been used in sociology to describe how
ICTs facilitate the replacement of tight-knit and
permanent face-to-face communities with person-
alized social networks centering on the individual
(Rainie & Wellman, 2012). The worldwide spread
of “electronic communication” is thought to pro-
mote individual agency because successful adapta-
tion to the information age requires high levels of
self-efficacy, self-regulation, and self-determination
(Bandura, 2002). Also, in informal education,
children and teenagers engage in opportunities for
self-directed learning as they pursue and develop
their unique interests online (Ito, 2010).
However, unmitigated adoption of individu-
alistic values, beliefs, and practices leading to
individual empowerment is likely to be an overly
simplified depiction of the developmental changes
occurring with technological changes in society.
According to the media practice model and uses
and gratifications theory, the ways in which media
are used and how they influence people depend
on the motivations and values they bring to the
encounter, as well as the environmental demands
that surround particular media use. For example,
an experiment in Ethiopia showed that 1 year after
a random sample of seventh and eighth graders
received a laptop, they had significantly higher
levels of individualistic values and independent
self-construals compared to those who received
no laptop or a laptop that stopped functioning
(Hansen, Postmes, van der Vinne, & Thiel, 2012).
Yet the two groups did not differ in their level of
collectivistic values, perhaps because Ethiopian
adolescents used the laptops in ways that also reso-
nated and reaffirmed their collectivistic values.
In fact, researchers noted that those with laptops
often shared their computers with other children
who did not have laptops, potentially fostering
cohesion and cooperation with others. Also, it is
important to note that there may be some draw-
backs to the increased emphasis on the individual,
at least in highly individualistic Western cultures,
in that new media such as social networking sites
can foster a preoccupation with the self and non-
clinical forms of narcissism (Malikhao & Servaes,
2011; Twenge, 2013).
Our aim in this chapter is to identify both new
opportunities and new challenges for development
with the expansion of new media and also to intro-
duce a global perspective on the issue by incorpo-
rating studies, when possible, on new media from
around the world. Although Greenfield’s theory
predicts that new media will shift development in
a common direction around the world, there may
also be cultural differences in how new media are
integrated into social life depending on the histori-
cal time points at which communities have shifted
toward Gesellschaft conditions. The introduction
of new media into families such as Hadar’s, where
there has been a shift to Gesellschaft conditions in
just one generation, will likely affect intergenera-
tional relationships, and thus social development,
M a n ag o, G ua n, G r e e n f i e l d 523
differently from the introduction of new media
in, say, Western locales where families have lived
under more Gesellschaft sociodemographic condi-
tions for multiple generations.
The remainder of this chapter is divided into
basic developmental tasks during the transition to
adulthood. We first review how new media shift
the ways youth orient to a relatively wider world
of relationships outside the family in their journey
to adulthood, and then we explore how new media
influence the construction of a coherent sense of
self. We suggest that new media create new tasks in
development that include learning to form mean-
ingful relationships of both depth and breadth
within networks of social relations, rather than
within stable communities. Youth must also learn
to construct coherent identities and a positive sense
of self-worth from exploration and self-expression
in these expansive social networks.
New Media and Relationship
Development
How does the multiplication of technological
tools that function to facilitate human connectivity
foster independence in development? It is important
to first establish that individualism in Gesellschaft
societies does not equate to individual isolation
or unmitigated autonomy. Humans are by nature
social animals who live in some form of social
organization requiring cooperation. Collectivism
denotes a form of social organization in which
individuals have an interdependent self-construal
such that their well-being is inextricable from and
overlapping with the well-being of the family or
clan, and thus the group is emphasized over indi-
vidual considerations (Markus & Kitayama, 1991;
Triandis, 1993). As individualism increases, indi-
viduals begin to have a more independent self-con-
strual, such that well-being is understood to be a
matter of personal responsibility, and thus the goals
and interests of the individual become prioritized
over those of the social group. In highly individual-
istic societies, individuals still forge interdependent
relationships, but they do so under the assumptions
that (1) their participation in those relationships is
determined by personal choice; (2) their involve-
ment hinges on whether the relationship meets
personal needs, including the need for social con-
nection; and (3) the terms of engagement are nego-
tiated by separate and distinct individuals of equal
status who have fewer restrictions when it comes to
leaving and pursuing alternative relationships. This
524 N e w M e di a , S o c i a l C h a ng e , a n d H u m a n De v e l opm e n t
description of individualism is also in line with the
concept of networked individualism (Rainie &
Wellman, 2012).
When sociodemographic factors such as com-
munication technologies shift in a Gesellschaft
direction, they facilitate this individualistic form of
sociality. As we outline later, an important mecha-
nism by which this shift occurs in human devel-
opment can be described in terms of the way new
media orient youth to peers. Unrelated peers offer
symmetrical relational contexts that elicit individ-
ual negotiations and co-constructions of relation-
ship terms, as opposed to relationships with kin
that are determined by birth and subject to rules
determined by parental authority (Youniss, 1980).
Heightened access to peers and the ability to access
social resources outside the family and physical
community according to one’s personal desires
become a critical way in which new media may
drive human development toward an individualis-
tic approach to social relationships.
New Media and Family Relationships
Although research in the early years of Internet
adoption indicated that time spent online was
detrimental to overall face-to-face social involve-
ment (e.g., Kraut et al., 1998), evidence sug-
gests that as the Internet and mobile devices have
grown more embedded in the fabric of our lives,
engagement with these technologies specifically
decreases youth involvement with the family at
home (Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 2008). For
example, a study with a nationally representative
sample of teenagers in the United States found
that the more they used the Internet for recreation
and to communicate with peers, the less time they
spent with parents (Lee, 2008). Research in vari-
ous locales confirms findings in the United States
that Internet use is associated with lower levels
of closeness between children and their parents.
Surveys with a national sample of teenagers in New
Zealand (Richards, McGee, Williams, Welch, &
Hancox, 2010); high school students in Ontario,
Canada (Willoughby, 2008); a national sample of
Jewish and Arab teenagers in Israel (Mesch, 2003);
fourth and fifth graders in urban Korea (Lee &
Chae, 2007); and teenagers in Beijing China (Lei
& Wu, 2007) all showed correlations between time
spent online and lower levels of perceived close-
ness to parents. An important caveat in the studies
in Israel, China, and Korea, however, is that fre-
quency of Internet use for educational purposes, as
opposed to using the Internet for entertainment or
to socialize with friends, was not associated with
lower levels of parental closeness (Lee & Chae,
2007; Lei & Wu, 2007; Mesch, 2003).
We cannot infer causality from these stud-
ies, yet it is not hard to imagine from our open-
ing anecdote that communication technologies
offer adolescents more opportunities to meet their
needs for social bonding and leisure outside family
time at home. In fact, interviews with Norwegian
teens suggest that increased orientation to peers via
mobile devices comes at the expense of interactions
with parents, thus undermining family rituals such
as family get-togethers or meal times (Ling & Yttri,
2006). Moreover, data from a large online sample
in North America showed that the more preteen
girls reported interacting with friends online, the
more they reported having friends their parents did
not approve of (Pea et al., 2012); these findings sug-
gest that new media can facilitate personal choice
in peer relationships over adherence to parental
wishes.
To be sure, it is not the case that technology
has a direct causal effect on family relationships.
According to uses and gratification theory, the
impact of new media technology on social life
depends on how people use it and the goals and
values they bring to new media (see Bargh &
McKenna, 2004). There are certainly ways new
media could be mobilized to facilitate family cohe-
siveness. For example, interactive gaming with
parents has been shown to be conducive to family
bonding (Padilla-Walker, Coyne, & Fraser, 2012),
social networking sites can help parents maintain
connections with their children when they move
away to college (Padilla-Walker, Nelson, Carroll,
& Jensen, 2010), and new media such as email or
Skype help international students and immigrant
families stay in touch and maintain filial piety
with families in their home countries (Kline &
Liu, 2005).
Yet, in all these instances, there remains an
overall direction of change in human development
toward individualism with increases in new media.
Even though new media can be utilized for family
bonding, it is exceptionally more common to use
old media with family members, such as watching
television or movies together, than it is to do so via
online gaming or any other form of new media,
such as email or social networking sites (Padilla-
Walker et al., 2012). Furthermore, maintaining
technologically mediated social connections with
children moving away to college or with family
members immigrating to distant locales precisely
exemplifies the “looser” social connections that are
facilitated by Gesellschaft technologies. The pres-
ence of communication technologies to stay in
touch from a distance can even serve as a rational-
ization for physical separation, as one immigrant
Chinese parent rationalized in separating from
her child, “when [my baby and I] are separated
we will continue to have contact on telephone and
the Internet” (Bohr & Tse, 2009, p. 278). In this
way, families may be more likely to see individual
pursuits of opportunities in separate physical set-
tings as an option for the future if they have new
media technologies at their disposal. Certainly,
new media can attenuate feelings of distance
when families are separated. For example, among
Chinese international students, open phone and
email communication with family members were
related to a greater sense of family cohesion, com-
pared with students who did not have this com-
munication (Kline & Liu, 2005). However, media
users perceive emotional bonding to be inferior in
technology-mediated communication compared to
in-person communication (Sherman, Michikyan,
& Greenfield, 2013). Moreover, physical separation
socializes individualistic approaches to relation-
ships (Keller, 2007).
Some argue that new media and mobile devices
heighten parents’ abilities to keep tabs on their
adolescent children, stay abreast of their location,
and monitor their social media activities. However,
new media and mobile devices are actually sources
of increased negotiation and sometimes conflict in
parent–child relationships, rather than sources of
authoritarian surveillance (Ling & Yttri, 2006;
Mesch, 2012). A large-scale survey in the United
States shows that parents who “friend” their adoles-
cent on social networking sites have more conflicts
with their child over social media use than those
who do not (Lenhart et al., 2011). Negotiation
and conflict are likely due to the increased agency
new media technologies provide adolescents; this
increased agency then shifts the power dynamics in
family relationships away from parental obedience.
For example, teens adept at navigating the expand-
ing social media scene maintain profiles on mul-
tiple social media sites to interact with peers away
from the potential surveillance of adults (Madden
et al., 2013).
Mesch (2012) describes how Arab youth in Israel
hide chat windows behind another parent-approved
window when a parent approaches. With a variety
of tools at their fingertips, adolescents can be quite
skilled at hiding their new media activities from
M a n ag o, G ua n, G r e e n f i e l d 525
parents (Rosen, 2007). This is especially likely to
be the case when children are more technologically
savvy than parents, a situation that can attenuate
parental authority in families such as Hadar’s who
are experiencing abrupt intergenerational shifts in
technology. Indeed, Mesch (2006) found higher
levels of parent–child conflict among families in
Israel when adolescents reported being the Internet
expert in the family and when they reported more
frequent Internet use.
New Media and Peer Relationships
The evidence is quite clear that as new media
spread, they become a conduit for youth to forge
deeper ties with friends outside the family (Gross,
2004; Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 2008).
Research also confirms this trend around the world;
for example, a longitudinal study in Singapore with
a national sample of 13-year-olds showed that, over
the course of a year, increases in Internet use stimu-
lated socializing with friends (Lee & Kuo, 2006).
In their review of the literature, Valkenburg and
Peter (2011) conclude that new media nurture
adolescents’ orientation to peers because they give
them the ability to circumnavigate restrictions such
as lack of transportation or parental rules, so that
they can maintain continuous engagement with
friends whenever they desire.
Because new media communications are asyn-
chronous and afford some level of audiovisual
anonymity, they can embolden youth to disclose
personal feelings or communicate concerns to
their friends more easily than in face-to-face situ-
ations (Davis, 2012; Valkenburg & Peter, 2007).
Computer-mediated communication can thereby
scaffold the development of social skills within
symmetrical relationships. Evidence for this comes
from a study in Bermuda, where adolescents
described how using social networking sites made
it easier for them to express themselves to their
friends and thus fostered a heightened sense of peer
belonging (Davis, 2012). Learning how to coopera-
tively construct interpersonal closeness and mutual
understanding through self-expression within sym-
metrical relationships during adolescence will be
necessary for coordinating chosen relationships in
a new-media Gesellschaft environment.
Unfortunately, youth must also learn to negoti-
ate negative peer experiences because a heightened
orientation to peers also means vulnerability to
cyberbullying, defined as “any behavior performed
through electronic media that repeatedly commu-
nicates hostile or aggressive messages intended to
526 N e w M e di a , S o c i a l C h a ng e , a n d H u m a n De v e l opm e n t
inflict harm or discomfort on others” where the
identity of the bully may or may not be known
(Tokunaga, 2010, p. 278). In Tokunaga’s (2010)
review of research, as many as 53% of adolescents
in US studies report being a victim of cyberbully-
ing, and they often hide bullying from parents.
The breadth of peer relationship experiences
that new media facilitate further speaks to indi-
vidualistic relationship development. The most vis-
ited website in the world after Google is Facebook
(Alexa, 2012), used primarily by adolescents and
emerging adults to keep in touch with close friends,
as well as with larger spheres of friends of friends
or peers known from school and social activities
such as sports teams, clubs, summer camps, and
travel abroad (Manago, Taylor, & Greenfield,
2012; Reich, Subrahmanyam, & Espinoza, 2012).
In accord with a uses and gratification theoretical
approach, there are likely to be cultural differences
in the use of social networking sites to accumulate
social connections; one study showed that female
European-American Facebook users maintain
larger online networks and were more likely to
express themselves in more public, less intimate
ways than were female Japanese Mixi users (Barker
& Ota, 2011).
Notwithstanding cultural differences, social
networking sites in general, whether it is Mixi in
Japan or Orkut in Brazil, make it possible for users
to conveniently establish a digital tie to larger num-
bers of friends than is possible in the offline world.
Consequently, friendship in the age of new media
connotes a more expansive, shallower, and more
diverse understanding of the term compared to
notions of friendship in a culture before new media
(Amichai-Hamburger, Kingsbury, & Schneider,
2013). Moreover, inherent activities on any social
networking site include creating a public profile and
posting comments to the public “newsfeed,” which
means communicating with large numbers of people
at once and also gathering information about people
one might not know very well (Ellison et al., 2011).
In fact, acculturating to Facebook involves increas-
ing orientation to public communications: Burke,
Marlow, and Lento (2009) used Facebook servers
to collect data among an international sample of
140,000 new users and found that individuals began
to share more publicly on status updates the more
that people in their network did so.
Although some may interpret sociality on social
networking sites as a superficial form of friendship,
learning about, communicating with, and travers-
ing through networks of individuals and groups is
advantageous for pursuing personal interests while
still remaining interpersonally connected. In fact,
social media sustain “customized sociality,” a form
of social relatedness in which personal control
and personal convenience in human connectivity
is amplified (Manago & Vaughn, in press). For
example, young people utilize social capital from
large online networks to seek out information and
other resources at their command, make connec-
tions to groups they have a personal interest in
but may not have access to in their physical com-
munities, or broadcast calls for social support to a
web of potential participants (Ellison et al., 2011).
Importantly, customizing one’s social resources by
building social capital via social media requires that
users engage in some level of public self-expression
(Burke, Marlowe, & Lento, 2010). This is a highly
individualistic form of communication with impli-
cations for identity development, a topic to which
we now turn.
New Media and Identity Development
Broadcasting one’s thoughts, feelings, opin-
ions, and image to online audiences represents the
next iteration of an individualistic style of com-
munication in the digital age. Communication
in individualistic cultures has been characterized
as direct, open, and geared to self-expression, as
opposed to the kind of communication exempli-
fied in Hadar’s description of traditional prac-
tices surrounding the drinking of tea—indirect,
implicit, and geared toward mitigating group dis-
cord (Gudykunst & Nishida, 1986). As new media
users attend to ongoing streams of 140-character
Tweets, post their current mood on a Facebook
status update, or comment on a YouTube video,
the scale of human self-expression escalates.
Communication practices that increasingly
emphasize giving voice to personal feelings and
thoughts signify heightened levels of personal
exploration in the process of identity develop-
ment. They also signify a shift away from forms
of identity that are ascribed by birth, developed
through participation in a kin group, and tied to
the land in Gemeinschaft environments. Youth
instead are using new media more agentically to
construct their identities by contributing to and
exploring multiple virtual landscapes of human
expression online.
An important thread tying together aspects
of exploration and self-expression in processes
of identity development via new media is the
magnification of individual control of outer
circumstances. Mastering the external, seek-
ing to influence others, and evoking an outward
effect through individual action and emotional
expression are characteristic of individualism
(Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Weisz, Rothbaum,
& Blackburn, 1984). In collectivistic cultures
adapted to Gemeinschaft environments, an
inwardly directed form of control that harmo-
nizes, rather than influences the outer world, is
more common. Technology essentially extends
the scope of humans’ capacity to devise more elab-
orate tools for harnessing resources and altering
environments to meet personal needs and desires.
Indeed, “change the world” is a ubiquitous phrase
in Silicon Valley, the staging ground for new
media (Packer, 2013). In the next two subsections,
we describe how increased control of external cir-
cumstances afforded by new media technologies
plays out in two important processes of identity
development in individualistic Gesellschaft societ-
ies: exploration and self-expression.
Control and Exploration
Old media, such as books, newspapers, and
television, have long been part of the infrastructure
in relatively more Gesellschaft environments con-
ducive to identity exploration. Individual explora-
tion of beliefs, values, interests, relationships, and
adult roles during identity development is desirable
when personal choice, freedom, fulfillment, and
equality are valued; when multiple perspectives
are available; and when flexibility in adult roles
is feasible (Arnett, 2010; Phinney & Baldelomar,
2011). Old media instigated exposure to multiple
perspectives and gave youth from different walks
of life channels for imagining a variety of possibili-
ties in adult roles. The advent of television provided
various social groups with equal access to informa-
tion and points of view, the rich and poor, children
and adults, women and men, cultural insiders and
outsiders, ethnic majority and minority members
(Meyrowitz, 1985).
Television also helps to transform identity dur-
ing the acculturation process; immigrants come
to a different understanding of themselves in the
world as they use media programming to gain
insights into the values and conventions of their
host society (e.g., Reece & Palmgreen, 2000). In
these ways, old media began to break down cul-
tural and social group boundaries and limitations;
however, old media, along with the information,
messages, and values they imparted, were still con-
trolled by those with the means to produce and
M a n ag o, G ua n, G r e e n f i e l d 527
distribute information and entertainment. New
media democratize not just access, but also the
production and distribution of human expression,
thus dispersing control to individuals (Lister et al.,
2009).
Under these circumstances, identity exploration
becomes increasingly oriented to creative and col-
laborative co-constructions of meaning. Youth in
the midst of identity exploration are exposed to the
lives and perspectives of different social groups and,
furthermore, have a hand in shaping what those
lives look like. For example, lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transsexual (LGBT) youth in rural America con-
nect with LGBT communities in Internet forums
to learn about other LGBT individuals and also to
contribute their own experiences in forum discus-
sions, thus co-constructing definitions of sexually
queer identities (Gray, 2009). Ito (2010) describes
how one young Chinese-American man devel-
oped his unique niche interest in Japanese anime
by posting to international anime news forums
and creating his own anime music videos. Another
study illustrated how ethnic minority adolescents
create groups on Facebook to communicate with
others interested in civic engagement around con-
temporary race relations (Tynes, Garcia, Giang,
& Coleman, 2010). As they participate in online
public discussions, they collaborate to define and
broadcast the issues ethnic minorities face, thereby
elaborating on their self-concepts as ethnic minori-
ties on their own terms.
Social identities, such as ethnic identities,
were formerly forged through shared experiences
in physical space but are now constructed sym-
bolically through mass media communications
and, most recently, via online networking. Old
media, illustrated by the Arabic television series
in the opening sketch of Hadar’s home, reflect
national, ethnic, gender, and class issues that
define the identities of its ethnic viewers (Mayer,
2003). These ethnic programs are resources used
to elaborate on social identities in the absence of
physical communities. Mexican-American girls
and their relatives in Mexico, for example, can
become part of an “interpretive community” in
which bonds can be maintained at a physical dis-
tance through shared interest in and discussion
of the latest drama on their favorite telenovela
(Mayer, 2003).
New media, notably diasporic websites, give
users the opportunity to do more than inter-
pret mass-produced ethnic media programming
together; they allow users to produce and share
528 N e w M e di a , S o c i a l C h a ng e , a n d H u m a n De v e l opm e n t
their own information and content (Matsaganis,
Katz, & Ball-Rokeach, 2010). Individuals them-
selves drive the discourse by exchanging messages
and uploading photos. Also indicative of change
toward increasing individual agency is the way that
solidarity and intersubjectivity on these diasporic
“cybervillages” do not derive from common kinship
or shared geographical space, but from “network-
ing” (e.g. Parham, 2004). That is, individuals use
diaspora websites to actively seek others who share
common interests, viewpoints, or ideologies stem-
ming from similar cultural backgrounds. Through
exploration and participation in these websites, the
content of ethnic identities becomes more abstract,
symbolic, and co-constructed.
Additionally, similar to the way LGBT youth in
rural America may be empowered by new media to
find similar others, children of immigrant families
can use new media to connect to peers in countries
of origin in ways that shape identity formation pro-
cesses. This may be especially relevant to second-
and third-generation adolescents who may have
a weaker direct link to their countries of origin
yet are struggling for self-definition in countries
where they are still marked as “forever foreigners”
by appearance (Zhou, 2004). Computer-mediated
communication with peers in countries of origin
can serve a symbolic function in constructing
cultural identities and values. This possibility of
cyberconnection with the ancestral country grants
immigrant youth higher levels of control over their
social settings and increases their range of identity
choices.
Rich illustrations of how ethnic identities are
symbolically constructed online come from youth
themselves. Bae (2010) describes Korean-American
teenager Eunbi’s home page (hompi) on the
Korean social networking site Cyworld. Eunbi’s
hompi includes photographs of herself using typi-
cal Korean feminine hand gestures that partially
cover the face to make it appear smaller and that
signal cuteness and coquettishness. In a follow-up
interview, Eunbi states that she does not post these
kinds of photos on the social networking site she
uses with her American friends—there she prefers
“a stylish, mature, and sophisticated look;” how-
ever, she posts the gesture photos on Cyworld to
“act like a cute girl as I did in Korea in the past. So
that I can still share with my friends in Korea …
This gesture confirms that we are Korean girls …
A lot of Korean models and actresses also pursue
this goal in photos” (p. 101–102). Immigrant youth
such as Eunbi are exploring and expressing their
bicultural social identities online by experimenting
with iconic representations and also incorporating
ethnic symbols curated from popular culture on
the Internet.
When identity development is freed from the
constraints of physical space and is instead con-
structed through explorations in cyberspace, bicul-
tural, transnational, or hybrid identities emerge
(Mitra, 2006). Users of diasporic websites are
not necessarily creating identities that align with
host or home country, but instead constructing a
third identity that is forged in the virtual space
between two physical places. Hybrid identities
may be particularly relevant for young women in
traditional societies who negotiate a more restric-
tive and limiting sense of self in their local context
while online they exhibit a more expressive identity
that challenges cultural restrictions (Mitra, 2004).
For example, some Arab girls from Qatar create
“fantastical, fabricated identities” on Facebook
to “express their unspoken desires,” unfulfilled
in their offline lives (Leage & Chalmers, 2010).
Others maintain two profiles, one on MySpace and
one on an ethnic-specific site. On MySpace, one
girl posts photos of herself going to concerts with
friends, and on the ethnic-specific site, she posts
information appropriate to the more traditional
culture shared by friends on that site; for example
she is more modest and refrains from posting pho-
tos of herself.
The development of hybrid or bifurcated iden-
tities speaks to how media provide the tools for
individuals to control their self-expressions as they
navigate and explore multiple and separate com-
munities on- and offline. Hybrid identities also
speak to the way in which cultural meanings and
values can persist via new media; as the media
practice model (Steele & Brown, 1995) would sug-
gest, youth bring to media the values and moti-
vations rooted in their ethnic identities. Online
self-expression is an opportunity to elaborate one’s
values and interests in exploring the self, and it also
presents an opportunity to reify the kind of person
one might imagine oneself to be.
Control and Self-Expression
New media technologies not only create new
possibilities for individuals to control the condi-
tions of their external social environments, but they
also provide them with the wherewithal to control
external manifestations of the self. To exist online
is to “write oneself into being” (boyd, 2008). Youth
using new media employ a heightened level of
control over self-expression because digitally medi-
ated communication is asynchronous, allowing for
pause, reflection, and editing; it offers choice in the
richness of audiovisual cues that transmit informa-
tion about one’s identity (Do I want to upload a
video of myself on YouTube, post a photo of myself
on Facebook that hides my face, tweet to my
friends, or blog anonymously?; see Valkenburg &
Peter, 2011). Given these affordances, youth actively
manipulate and control the identities they project
to audiences on new media websites (Manago,
Graham, Greenfield, & Salimkhan, 2008; Zhao,
Grasmuck, & Martin, 2008). They craft their
profiles for particular audiences, choose flattering
pictures, and select clever comments. Control does
not necessarily translate into false identities online,
but rather, it is about increased capability to mani-
cure a reflection of the self that one consciously
desires to project. Moreover, increased control may
intensify young people’s capacity to imagine pos-
sible selves, reify those idealized selves into a digital
format, and circulate them within online networks
(Manago et al., 2008).
Circulation of manicured selves in social spaces
is an important component to identity develop-
ment via self-expression using new media. Online
audiences contribute commentary to online per-
formances that corroborate and add legitimacy to
online identity claims (boyd & Heer, 2006). Also,
the more frequently and elaborately facets of the
self are shared with others, the more likely those
qualities are internalized and integrated into one’s
self-concept (Baumeister, 1986). Thus, online pub-
lic expressions are a way to seek feedback from an
audience of sounding boards in the process of rei-
fying a self one desires to be. One study with Dutch
adolescents showed boosts in self-esteem with pos-
itive comments in response to online expressions
in social networking sites (Valkenburg, Peter, &
Schouten, 2006). Other studies have found that
receiving attention for one’s status updates is an
important source of social support for college
youth in the millennial generation (Deters &
Mehl, 2012; Manago et al., 2012). Online feed-
back may be received even more intensely than
offline feedback because of its digital resonance
and replicability—that is, online commentaries
have a permanence that offline utterances do not
have, and they can be shared and distributed more
widely (boyd, 2008).
This public nature of online self-expressions
may intensify a self-consciousness regard-
ing how one appears to others during identity
M a n ag o, G ua n, G r e e n f i e l d 529
development. For example, emerging adults using
Twitter showed elaborate and complex consider-
ations of their online reputations, which included
desires to project their everyday lived experience
into cyberspace and be perceived as “authentic”
(Marwick & boyd, 2010). They were also expe-
riencing what the authors call “context collapse,”
the consolidation of all one’s social connections
into one amorphous audience of diverse values,
opinions, and perspectives so that it is impossible
to target one’s communications to a particular
listener. For this reason, the recipient of one’s
communications is an “imagined audience” mak-
ing the interpersonal connection increasingly dis-
tant, abstract, present for personal gratification,
and imagined for the purpose of one’s own need
to be heard.
Imagined audiences may explain why simply
“writing oneself into being” online, even with-
out the feedback, can lead to higher levels of
self-esteem. A correlational study found that col-
lege students who report using Facebook to pres-
ent themselves favorably (i.e., “I only show the
happy side of me”) feel better about themselves
and their lives compared to those who do not pres-
ent themselves favorably (Kim & Lee, 2011). Two
experimental studies showed that college students
assigned to a task in the presence of their Facebook
profile (Gonzales & Hancock, 2011) or asked
to write about their Facebook profile (Gentile,
Twenge, Freeman, & Campbell, 2012) had higher
levels of self-esteem after the manipulation com-
pared to participants in control groups. The
authors of these studies interpret their findings by
suggesting that participants were likely experienc-
ing a polished version of themselves occupying a
virtual public social space.
Studies such as these have led some to specu-
late that new media have increased narcissism in
the millennium generation in the United States
(Malikhao & Servaes, 2011; Twenge, 2013).
Indeed, there are correlations between narcissis-
tic personality and Facebook use among college
students in Western countries such as Canada
(Mehdizadeh, 2010) and Australia (Ryan & Xenos,
2011), and it is most strongly associated with using
Facebook to post status updates and pictures of
oneself. One study with Chinese university stu-
dents also found associations between narcissistic
personality and the frequency with which users
post status updates and upload attractive photos
(Wang, Jackson, Zhang, & Su, 2012). Even among
10- to 12-year-olds, research in the United States
530 N e w M e di a , S o c i a l C h a ng e , a n d H u m a n De v e l opm e n t
has found that fame is a salient value in their future
goals and seems to be internalized from engage-
ment with the popular culture associated with new
media (Uhls & Greenfield, 2012).
Manago (2014) has proposed that increasing
messages about fame and celebrity in popular
media (Uhls & Greenfield, 2011), combined with
new capabilities to manicure and broadcast the
self to large online audiences, promotes a form of
identity development that increasingly looks like
a branding of the self, similar to a commercially
advertised product. On the one hand, this could
be positive for identity consolidation: enhanced
capacities for personal exploration and com-
mitment to public articulations of the self to
(real or imagined) audiences could promote a
coherent and stable sense of self. On the other
hand, branding the self may be driving youth to
increasingly value themselves based on external
appearances. In fact, frequency of photo sharing
on Facebook correlated with increased central-
ity of appearance and social approval in one’s
self-worth among a sample of North American
college students (Stefanone, Lackaff, & Rosen,
2011). Privately based standards of self-worth,
such as virtue and family, were negatively corre-
lated with Facebook use.
Facebook use also provokes social compari-
son among young people such that people tend
to feel worse about themselves the more they
observe self-promotional content on Facebook
(Haferkamp & Kramer, 2011). Among 15-year-old
girls in Australia, Internet use is associated with
appearance comparison and body dissatisfaction
(Tiggemann & Miller, 2010). Studies on new
media and preoccupation with external appear-
ances in identity development have been mostly
conducted among more individualistic samples
in the West with longer histories of Gesellschaft
conditions; however, they may be the “canaries in
the coal mine,” alerting us to the potential pitfalls
of new media as they spread around the world.
Future digital generations will face an important
task in development to balance online expressions
and branding of the self with close face-to-face
relationships offline. Although it will be increas-
ingly adaptive to move dexterously through vari-
ous social communities and utilize online tools
to manifest the type of person one would like to
become, well-being may also depend on youth
being engaged in committed, close relationships
that are not contingent upon being an attractive
persona in cyberspace.
Conclusion
We have presented developmental mechanisms
by which new media drive development toward
increasing individualism. We established basic
principles regarding their impact on relationship
development (increasing orientation to peers,
relationship breadth, and choice) and on iden-
tity development (increased capacities for con-
trol and emphasis on exploration, self-expression,
and hybrid identities). Greenfield’s (2009) theory
related societal shifts to developmental shifts,
predicting that new media will everywhere push
development in the same direction. However,
cultural nuances in the specifics are also likely—
history, philosophical traditions, and institutions
established during long periods of Gemeinschaft
sociodemographic conditions may influence
how youth and families use new media. We pro-
vided some examples of this phenomenon and
highlighted the media practice model (Steele &
Brown, 1995) perspective that suggests youth
in various places around the world will engage
with media differently depending on their own
values and identity concerns; yet, interactive
media always move them in directions posited by
Greenfield’s theory of social change and human
development. We also showed evidence of uni-
versal tensions in intergenerational relationships
that arise with a swifter pace of change toward
Gesellschaft conditions. Our chapter is a starting
point for understanding how new media and cul-
tural traditions interact with globalization and
sociodemographic change to produce changes in
human development in coming generations of the
new millennium.
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 C H A P T E R

33 Social Mobility in the Transition

to Adulthood: Educational Systems,
Career Entry, and Individual Agency
Jutta Heckhausen and Jacob Shane

Abstract
In this chapter, the authors merge lifespan motivational theory with empirical studies to illustrate
how societal opportunities and constraints to social mobility influence individuals’ striving to attain
socioeconomic status. The authors begin by outlining key propositions of the motivational theory of
lifespan development. They then discuss current and historical societal conditions and belief systems
regarding social inequality and social mobility and how these belief systems impact individuals’ active
attempts to regulate their own development. Subsequently, the authors focus on the transition
from adolescence to adulthood and consider in greater detail possible avenues to social mobility. In
particular, they discuss how paths to social mobility are constituted by educational and vocational
training systems and how these paths are shaped by societal conditions and belief systems.
Key Words:  socioeconomic status, social mobility, adolescence, adulthood, motivation

We open this chapter by reporting on the
experiences of Jacob Shane, the second author
of this piece, as he transitioned back and forth
between two countries during his formative
years of late adolescence. This report sets the
stage for our reflections about how society struc-
tures the boundary conditions of social mobility
in the transition to adulthood. Here is Jacob’s
experience:  their education was noticeably absent. Indeed,
Looking back on my adolescence growing up in the
United States and New Zealand, I experienced two
different education systems that in turn directed
me toward two very different paths toward future
socioeconomic status. In the United States, my
teachers would constantly reinforce the idea that
I could achieve whatever I wanted in life, so long
as I worked hard and developed the ability needed
to succeed. This was the mentality of the American
school system, seemingly aimed at fostering
self-confidence and overly ambitious goal striving.
Everyone was expected to finish high school, and
nearly everyone was expected to attend some form
of postsecondary education.
When my family moved to New Zealand, the
messages changed. I entered school during what
would be 10th grade in the American school
system, and although the teachers were just as
encouraging as those I encountered in America,
the expectation that all students would continue
this was the final year of required education in
the New Zealand school system. The entire school
year was devoted to preparing for the final exams,
after which time students would choose to remain
in school with the intention of gaining vocational
training or attending university, or they would
leave school altogether and enter the work force.
To the chagrin of my parents, I chose the latter and
began working at a gas station after passing my
final exams. My family decided to move back to
America shortly after, at which point I re-entered
the American school system, progressed through
high school, university, and postgraduate training.

535
 Although the quality of education I received
in New Zealand was similar to the education I
received in the United States, the subtle differences
between societal expectations for pursuing higher
education between the two countries pushed me
toward radically different paths for social mobility.
Had my family stayed in New Zealand, I would
have most likely remained working service jobs,
perhaps with the hope of eventually owning my
own business. Instead, my family decided to return
to the United States, where the societal pressure
to pursue higher education pushed me toward the
roughly 12 additional years of schooling I received
in an effort to become a professor. In both cases,
the choice of how far I wanted to pursue education
and what career I wanted to attain was ultimately
mine to make, but the different and expectations
altered my educational and career goals, in turn
impacting my social mobility as I transitioned into
adulthood.
Chapter Preview
Modern lifespan developmental psychology
sees individuals as active agents in shaping their
own development and life course (Heckhausen,
1999; Lerner & Busch-Rossnagel, 1981). This
emphasis on individuals’ role in shaping their
own life converges with 20th- and 21st-century
cultural belief systems widely shared in Western
industrialized societies and particularly in the
United States, the homeland of the “American
Dream.” However, this notion of individuals as
active agents who directly contribute to their own
development is not a given and is not common to
all human societies. Instead, this belief system is
conditioned by the society in which the individual
lives. Societies, with their social structures, educa-
tional and employment institutions, and belief sys-
tems about what constitutes a successful life and
how to attain success in life, set the limits but also
serve as scaffolds of individuals’ agency in shaping
their life course. These societal influences shape
individuals’ action fields by providing specific
opportunities and constraints at different times
in life and for different social groups, such as for
men and women; younger, middle-aged, and older
adults; and people coming from low, middle-class,
and high social status.
Considering social mobility, the focus of this
chapter, societies vary greatly over time and across
the globe in important parameters of their citizens’
action fields. Important questions to consider when
assessing the opportunities and constraints present
536 S o c i a l Mobi l i t y i n t h e T r a ns i t ion t o A du lt ho od
in the action fields provided by a given society
include: How extensive are the differences in access
to resources between people at the top and at the
bottom of the social ladder? Is it feasible for an indi-
vidual to climb the social ladder, and do some hold
an advantage over others in this endeavor? When is
the best time in life to attempt such a climb? And
if one has missed the best time for social climb-
ing, can one catch up later in adulthood? Which
factors determine whether one is successful or not
in climbing the ladder or avoiding a fall down the
ladder? Is moving up in society mostly due to an
individual’s capacities and strivings, or mostly due
to having the right kind of social support, or is it a
matter of luck?
Different societies answer these questions dif-
ferently, and it stands to reason that individuals in
these societies are influenced accordingly in their
objective opportunities, as well as in their belief
systems about inequality, what constitutes success
in life, and how to actively strive for a successful
life. Although this is a new area of inquiry, we
already have some initial empirical evidence from
life course sociology and lifespan developmen-
tal psychology to begin to answer some of these
questions.
In this chapter, we first briefly present our moti-
vational theory of lifespan development with its
specific propositions about individual goal engage-
ment and disengagement with developmental
goals. We then discuss the general societal condi-
tions and belief systems regarding social inequal-
ity and social mobility. Subsequently, we zero in on
the transition from adolescence to adulthood and
consider in greater detail possible avenues to social
mobility, including the educational and vocational
training system. Throughout the chapter, we use
the examples of Germany and the United States to
illustrate universalities and differences in the action
fields that societies provide for development-related
goal striving. At first glance, these two countries
may not seem so very different in their social struc-
ture and belief systems. However, there are some
critical differences between the United States and
Germany in the scope of social inequality; their
educational institutions, vocational training, and
the canalization of careers; and in common belief
systems about social inequality and social mobil-
ity. Collectively, these differences render these two
countries interesting counterparts for comparison;
however, they by no means completely capture
the diverse strategies individuals adopt across all
societies.
Motivation and Individual Agency
in Lifespan Development
According to our theoretical approach, indi-
vidual agency can be described in terms of two
basic characteristics: (1) the striving for control
of the environment (i.e., primary control) and of
oneself (i.e., secondary control) and (2) the orga-
nization of behavior into goal engagement and
goal disengagement cycles (Heckhausen, 2011;
Heckhausen & Heckhausen, 2010; Heckhausen,
Wrosch, & Schulz, 2010).1 This coordinated moti-
vational system allows individuals to actively influ-
ence their own development across the lifespan.
The motivational theory of lifespan development con-
ceptualizes this process and has generated a sub-
stantial amount of empirical evidence in support of
a number of the theory’s central propositions (for
review, see Heckhausen et al., 2010). Here is a suc-
cinct summary of the four major theoretical propo-
sitions, followed by a more detailed discussion of
relevant aspects.
First, the theory proposes that striving to con-
trol one’s environment is fundamental for adaptive
functioning in general and development across the
lifespan in particular. This striving for primary
control encompasses striving to control one’s own
developmental future (e.g., educational degree,
career).
The second major proposition reflects three
lifespan trajectories: (1) the capacity for pri-
mary control follows an inverted U-shape (rapid
increase in early life, peak in midlife, decrease in
old age), (2) primary control striving is stable and
highly desirable across the lifespan, and (3)  sec-
ondary control striving (i.e., directed at self, see
more details in the section “Lifespan Trajectories
and Congruence Between Control Striving and
Control Opportunities”) increases with socioemo-
tional and cognitive maturation and the increasing
need to compensate for failure and control for loss
in advanced age.
The third proposition is that individuals’
attempts to regulate their development are most
effective when their control strivings are congru-
ent with opportunities for goal attainment at the
given time in the lifespan. This includes specific
institutional and structural characteristics of a
given society. Thus, to be successful, individuals
have to carefully optimize their selection of goals
to reflect the best fit with age-graded opportunities
in society.
Finally, the fourth major proposition of the
motivational theory of lifespan development
addresses the way in which control striving is
sequentially organized into action phases of goal
engagement and disengagement. After selecting a
particular goal (e.g., to try to obtain admission in
a 4-year college), the individual should mobilize all
behavioral and motivational resources to pursue
the goal (phase of goal engagement). Then, when
opportunities are declining below a critical point or
costs for further goal pursuit become prohibitive,
the individual should disengage from the goal and,
as needed, use compensatory secondary control
strategies of self-protection. Disengagement will set
free resources for engagement with new or adjusted
goals that are attainable.
Primacy of Primary Control Striving
Building on earlier theory (Rothbaum, Weisz, &
Snyder, 1982), the motivational theory of lifespan
development distinguishes between control striv-
ings directed toward the external environment (pri-
mary control strivings, “change the world”) and
motivational strategies directed toward the self, its
goals, cognitions, and emotions (secondary con-
trol strivings, “change the self”; see Heckhausen &
Schulz, 1995; Heckhausen et al., 2010). These
motivational strategies are mutually reinforcing,
allowing individuals to sustain commitment to or
discretely disengage from an ongoing goal pursuit.
For instance, while actively pursuing a goal, indi-
viduals can strengthen their volitional commitment
by enhancing the perceived opportunity for and
their personal control over attaining the pursued
goal (Gollwitzer, Heckhausen, & Stellar, 1990;
Gollwitzer & Kinney, 1989; Heckhausen, 1999;
Heckhausen & Gollwitzer, 1987; Heckhausen &
Heckhausen, 2010). These selective secondary
control strategies (Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995)
facilitate the individual’s goal-directed investment
of thought and effort (selective primary control
strivings), particularly during times of change
or uncertainty (Hall, Perry, Ruthig, Hladkyj, &
Chipperfield, 2006; Poulin & Heckhausen, 2007).
To help illustrate this, consider Mary, a hypotheti-
cal American who recently graduated from a uni-
versity with a degree in biology and a career goal
of becoming a physician. After selecting this career
goal, Mary may selectively engage with attain-
ing her career goal by taking the medical school
entrance exams (MCAT) and applying to medical
schools (selective primary control strategies), tell-
ing herself that she has the skills needed to become
a physician (selective secondary control strategies).
These selective engagement strategies increase the
H e ck h au s e n, S h a n e 537
chances that Mary will successfully attain her
career goal of becoming a physician.
Lifespan Trajectories and Congruence
Between Control Striving and
Control Opportunities
Of course, not all goals are attainable. Indeed,
motivational theory contends that the most adaptive
developmental goal pursuits are those that have an
intermediate level of success/failure (McClelland,
1961). Thus, individuals must develop strategies to
compensate for inevitable failures experienced in
goal pursuits. Examples of compensation strate-
gies include seeking help or alternative means to
attain the goal (compensatory primary control) or
downwardly adjusting the pursued goal to some-
thing more attainable, disengaging altogether from
the goal, discounting the value of the previously
pursued goal, or using downward social compari-
sons (compensatory secondary control strategies;
see Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995). Returning to our
hypothetical American example, if Mary experi-
ences setbacks or failures in her pursuit of becom-
ing a physician, she will need to compensate in
order to maintain her motivational resources that
can then be directed toward future goal pursuits.
For instance, after being rejected by all the medical
schools she applied to, Mary may seek help from
others and enroll in an entrance-exam preparation
course (compensatory primary control strategies)
or downplay the importance of becoming a physi-
cian and adjust her career goal to something more
attainable, such as a physician’s assistant (compen-
satory secondary control strategies). The capacity
to disengage from goal pursuits allows individuals
Primary
control
capacity
Secondary
control striving
Childhood
Fig. 33.1  Hypothetical lifespan trajectories for primary control capacity and primary and secondary control striving (adapted from
Heckhausen, 1999).
538 S o c i a l Mobi l i t y i n t h e T r a ns i t ion t o A du lt ho od
to maintain their motivational resources and then
direct these motivational resources toward future
goal pursuits. Indeed, goal disengagement is a pow-
erful component of individuals’ long-term capac-
ity to influence their own development (Wrosch,
Scheier, Carver, & Schulz, 2003).
Primary control striving remains a stable
source of motivation throughout the life course
(see stable line for primary control striving in
Figure  33.1), whereas the goals that individuals
pursue with their primary control striving are gen-
erally adjusted to an individual’s available primary
control capacity at a given point in the life course.
When considering the transition to adulthood,
individuals are experiencing a rapidly increasing
capacity to control the attainment of their pursued
goals (see curvilinear increasing curve for primary
control capacity in Figure 33.1). In addition, indi-
viduals are also learning secondary control strate-
gies that will allow them greater control over the
regulation of their motivational commitment or
disengagement from goal pursuits (see linearly
increasing curve for secondary control strategies
in Figure  33.1). Despite this general increase in
individuals’ capacity to regulate their development
as they transition into adulthood, specific goal
pursuits (e.g., finishing education, having a child,
entering a career) need to be adjusted to both the
individual’s age- and social-graded control poten-
tial (Heckhausen, 1999). The opportunities to
obtain most important life goals follow a general
pattern of increasing, peaking, and then decreas-
ing opportunity. Thus, individuals must respond
to the constraints to and opportunities of goal pur-
suit enacted through biological maturation (e.g.,
Primary control
striving
Midlife Old age
the “biological clock” and childbearing) and soci-
etal institutions (e.g., the age-graded structure of
the education system).
How Congruence Plays Out for
Developmental Regulation
Social, cultural, and economic constraints
direct individuals toward particular develop-
mental goal pursuits and are tightly tied to an
individual’s age, both in terms of biological and
maturation processes and in terms of expected
behavior patterns for different age groups (Baltes,
1987; Heckhausen, 1999). In effect, individu-
als internalize societal norms regarding what
goal pursuits are appropriate for different ages in
the lifespan, in turn directing their personal goal
engagement toward these age-appropriate goal
pursuits (Neugarten, Moore, & Lowe, 1965). The
age-graded goals that societal norms and con-
straints direct individuals toward are referred to as
developmental tasks (Havighurst, 1948) or devel-
opmental goals (Heckhausen, 1999), and these
parallel individuals’ lifespan trajectories of primary
control capacity (Figure 33.1). These maturation
and aging processes are reflected in the expecta-
tions society has for appropriate goal pursuits at
particular points in the lifespan. In turn, societal
norms and institutions direct goal choice by pro-
viding age-graded opportunities to pursue develop-
mental “on-time” goals and age-graded constraints
to hinder the pursuit of “off-time” goals. For exam-
ple, while pursuing a higher education degree after
one has transitioned into adulthood can produce
positive results, it will require additional effort and
increasingly conflict with other important develop-
mental goal pursuits (e.g., family building).
The societal facilitation of developmen-
tal goal pursuits allows individuals to pursue
age-appropriate (on-time) goals with less effort and
less constraints than age-inappropriate (off-time)
goal pursuits. Thus, individuals’ engagement
toward on-time goal pursuits is congruent with
societal opportunities, making goal engagement
strategies generally adaptive.
Action Phases of Engagement
and Disengagement with
Developmental Goals
The action-phase model of developmental regula-
tion has been developed in the context of the moti-
vational theory of lifespan development to generate
specific predictions about the control strategies used
to pursue or deactivate goals at different phases in
the lifespan (Heckhausen, 1999; Heckhausen et al.,
2010). People try to influence their own develop-
ment by selecting important developmental goals
to pursue, actively engaging their behavioral and
motivational resources with these goals, and then,
when opportunities dwindle or costs become for-
midable, disengaging and adjusting or reselecting
new goals to engage with. This sequence comprises
what we call the cycle of action phases in develop-
mental regulation (Figure 33.2).
In the first phase of the action phase cycle, indi-
viduals need to select an appropriate goal to pursue.
Optimized goal selection can be attained by using
certain heuristics for goal choice (Heckhausen
et al., 2010). We have already discussed the first
optimization heuristic (goal–opportunity congru-
ence), that motivational strategies are not adaptive
in and of themselves; instead, motivational strate-
gies become adaptive when they are congruent with

Rubicon: Deadline:
Goal decision Loss of opportunities

Goal engagement
Not urgent Urgent After failure:
Compensatory
Increased selective secondary control
Optimize Selective
primary and
opportunity match, primary control
secondary control
consequences and Selective
Compensatory After success:
diversity secondary control
primary control Capitalize on
success;
New action cycle

Fig. 33.2  Action phase model of developmental regulation (adapted from Heckhausen, 1999).

H e ck h au s e n, S h a n e 539
an individual’s capacity to control the attainment
of a given goal. The second optimization heuristic
(consider interdomain and long-term consequences)
is that goal pursuits should have positive (or at least
nondetrimental) effects on individuals’ capacity
to pursue important developmental goals in other
domains of their lives or in the longer term future.
In this way, individuals should maintain synergy
between goal pursuits in order to maximize the
effectiveness of their limited motivational resources.
For example, consider a middle-class American
married man with children and his investment of
motivational resources into his career development.
This man’s investment of motivational resources
toward career goals would be considered adaptive to
the extent that it has a long-term positive (or at least
nondetrimental) impact on his relationships with
his wife and children. The third optimization heu-
ristic (diversity of goals) is that individuals should
not become too specialized or narrow in their goal
pursuits. Instead, individuals should maintain a
range of goal pursuits across important life domains
(goal diversity). This heuristic prevents individuals
from becoming overly dependent on attainment of
a given goal and provides greater long-term develop-
mental potential by allowing individuals to simul-
taneously develop across multiple life domains.
In the words of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
(1605/1615), “It is the part of a wise man to keep
himself today for tomorrow, and not venture all his
eggs in one basket.”
Implications for Individual
Agency in Social Mobility
When applying the motivational theory of lifes-
pan development to social mobility, it is clear that
a society where there is both some (albeit not too
extreme) social inequality and some social mobil-
ity provides good opportunities for individuals to
actively influence their own development across the
life course. Moreover, in order to make use of the
potential for social mobility present in a given soci-
ety, an individual needs to perceive this potential
for social mobility and expect personal access to
the relevant resources, abilities, and motivational
investment necessary to strive for upward mobil-
ity. Such beliefs about the degree of social mobility
in a given society and the means by which upward
mobility is achieved are likely a product of at least
two sources, the “dominant ideology” (Huber
& Form, 1973) and individuals’ autobiographi-
cal and vicarious (from family and peers) experi-
ences regarding social mobility (see, e.g., Kluegel
540 S o c i a l Mobi l i t y i n t h e T r a ns i t ion t o A du lt ho od
& Smith, 1986; and, more generally, Berger &
Luckmann, 1966).
Dominant societal ideologies about social
inequality and mobility vary diachronically across
human history and synchronically across different
societies at the same historical time. The following
sections of this chapter discuss historical emergence
and cross-national variation of social inequality
and its reflection in commonly held beliefs about
both the sources of inequality and the potential
and means of social mobility.
Social Inequality, Social Mobility,
and Societal Belief Systems
Through Human History
In this section, we pull together work from
different disciplines in the social and behavioral
sciences, such as evolutionary psychology, anthro-
pology, sociology, and archeology, to outline the
past and present of social inequality. In this dis-
cussion, we juxtapose “objective” social inequality
and social constructions of social inequality as they
pertain to different societies at different points in
human history.
A Brief History of Social Inequality
Social inequality and social mobility are not a
given in human communities. Many ancestral and
existing (e.g., the !Kung in the Kalahari, the Inuit in
the Arctic, Indigenous Australians) hunter-gatherer
societies are egalitarian, sharing and communally
using all important resources, providing generally
equal status yet differentiated labor roles for men
and women, and having no individual ownership
of resources (Hayden, 2007). There is controversy
about the earliest emergence of social inequality
and whether it preceded or followed the widespread
establishment of farming and the domestication
of animals (Hayden, 2007). It seems uncontested,
though, that among humans it was the production
of surplus food that ultimately gave rise to private
ownership. Archeological finds of burials with elab-
orate grave goods that require hundreds of work
hours (White, 1993) provide the first solid evidence
for social inequality during the Upper Paleolithic
period (50,000–10,000 years ago). Such extravagant
burials could only have been provided for a privi-
leged subgroup, with the majority of group members
having to provide their labor (Hayden, 2007).
Inequality between peasants on the low end and
nobility at the high end was similar across fertile and
populous areas around the globe until about 1800,
when a substantial divergence took place (Pinto,
2013). Around that time, Australia, Canada, the
United States, and New Zealand became substan-
tially wealthier, followed by Japan and Europe in
the early 1900s. Since the middle of the nineteenth
century, the average standard of living is no longer
primarily predicted by one’s position in society but
instead by one’s geographical location. This great
international divergence between the Western and
industrialized societies and the rest of the globe has
stretched social inequality to nearly twice what it
was in the early 1800s (Milanovic, 2009).
Social Inequality Today
Social inequality varies greatly across the globe.
Figure 33.3 shows Gini coefficients2 for each coun-
try. Between countries, the Gini coefficient ranges
between 23 for Sweden and 63 for South Africa, with
Germany at 27 and the United States at 45 (Central
Intelligence Agency, 2013). The darker shades in
Figure 33.3 indicate greater social inequality and are
more common among developing countries in South
America and Africa, but also hold for China and the
United States. People living in more unequal nations
are less healthy, have shorter life expectancies, and
experience higher crime rates and other negative
social outcomes (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009). The
lightest shades in Figure 33.3 indicate lower Gini
coefficients, and thus the least social inequality
is shown for most of Central Europe and particu-
larly for the Scandinavian countries. However, even
within these European countries that have relatively
more equality, the consequences of social inequality
can be severe and are even observable when looking
within a city. For example, in Glasgow (Scotland),
a man living in Carlton, the poorest neighborhood,
has a 28-year shorter lifespan than a man living in
Milngavie, the most affluent neighborhood (CSDH,
<.25 .45–.49
.25–.29 .50–.54
.30–.34 .55–.59
.35–.39 >.60
.40–.44 No data
Fig. 33.3  Social inequality around the globe as reflected in Gini coefficients by country.
2008). In addition, the effects of social inequality on
morbidity and mortality exist in a graded fashion,
with differences observable between each rung of the
social ladder.
Although inequality has been rising in
Westernized countries since the Industrial
Revolution, recent decades have produced a rapidly
increasing spike of inequality in Western European
countries and particularly in North America
(OECD, 2011). In Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) coun-
tries, the top 10% of earners receive nine times
more income than the poorest 10%. Figure 33.4
shows changes in inequality assessed by Gini coef-
ficients for major OECD economies since 1985
(OECD, 2011). The globalization of markets has
increased the competition between companies and
between individuals (e.g., skilled versus nonskilled
workers), particularly in countries where social
inequality is based mainly on individual resources
(e.g., the United States, the United Kingdom)
and not buffered by state-regulated welfare sys-
tems (as in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and the
Netherlands; Blossfeld et al., 2007). This interac-
tion between globalized market forces and the
economic and welfare systems present in a given
country produces substantial variability of social
inequality across countries and can be as high as 14
to 1 (richest to poorest 10%) for countries such as
the United States, Israel, and Turkey, or even 27 to
1 for Mexico and Chile (OECD, 2011).
What are the implications for social mobility
given this present state of inequality? For one, as
shown in Figure 33.5, the recent and substantial
increase in social inequality in most Western indus-
trialized societies has rendered it harder for indi-
viduals from the poorest part of the population to
Gini coefficient
H e ck h au s e n, S h a n e 541
 1985 2008 (Ê)
Little change Decreasing
Increasing inequality in inequality inequality
0.50

0.45

0.40

0.35

0.30

0.25

0.20

0.15
Ki ael 1

m
te ico

te Is s

N ust ly
Ze lia
nd

Ca n
er a

Lu erla y
m s
Fi rg
Cz S land
Re en

N lic
en ay
k

un e
Be ary
m

ey

e
e

xe nd

ec
G ad
et an

ar
pa
A Ita
at

do

iu
u

an

rk
w
b
ew ra

h ed
ala
ni ex

re
m
bo
n
N m

pu
r

Ja
St

or

lg

Tu
n

Fr
ng

ec w

G
M
d

H
h

D
d
U

ni
U

Fig. 33.4  Changes in income inequality. Source: OECD Database on Household Income Distribution and Poverty.

attain upward social mobility. Similarly, the most relative deprivation of material resources in the low-
affluent are unlikely to fall on the social ladder, a est quintiles of society is so dire and disproportion-
phenomenon referred to as “stickiness at the ends.” ate that it produces distinct disadvantages for these
This negative correlation between social inequal- individuals’ opportunities to attain upward social
ity and mobility has been referred to as the “Great mobility. For instance, the quality of the neigh-
Gatsby Curve” (see Figure 33.5, from Corak, 2013, borhood a child grows up in (including crime rate,
Figure 33.1). Even in a society like the United States, quality of schools) dramatically alters the steps and
where Americans might subscribe to an ideology second chances given to individuals, making the
of upward mobility for everyone, increasing social prospects of successfully progressing through the
inequality is associated with increasingly greater educational system and attaining a promising career
restrictions to social mobility. This is so because the prohibitively difficult for those born and raised in

0.5 Italy United Kingdom

United States
Generational earnings elasticity (less mobility ------>)

France
0.4

Japan
Germany
0.3
Sweden New Zealand
Australia
Canada

0.2

Finland Norway
Denmark

0.1
20 25 30 35
Income inequality (more inequality ------>)

Fig. 33.5  The Great Gatsby curve: More inequality is associated with less mobility across the generations (adopted from Corak,
2013, Figure 1).

542 S o c i a l Mobi l i t y i n t h e T r a ns i t ion t o A du lt ho od

impoverished neighborhoods. In other words, it is
harder to climb a ladder when the rungs are further
apart (Noah, 2012).
Attitudes Toward Social
Inequality in the Past
In ancient and feudal societies, inequality was
viewed as a natural state of affairs that was inescap-
able and unquestioned (Elias, 1969). Most ancient
and feudal agrarian societies had a rigid social
structure that did not allow for mobility between
the social classes, with the possible exception of the
clergy or military. In such societies, the idea of qual-
itatively changing one’s social status in the commu-
nity from what one’s parents were to a new status
within one’s lifetime was unthinkable. Inequality
in these feudal societies was largely manifested
and maintained by a social structure wherein peas-
ants toiled the fields in the countryside to produce
the surplus that the nobility and their entourage
(craftsmen, clergy, artists) lived on. The dominant
belief was one of limited resources and productive
potential, a zero sum game in which anyone’s gain
will be his neighbor’s loss. The pronounced social
inequality of these societies is maintained not only
by social sanctions and power of the nobility, but
also by the nature of the morality of peasantry
based on social and religious constraints that con-
ceived of the social class system as God-given, inev-
itable, and the natural state of affairs (Elias, 1969).
Economic behavior of the individual aimed at prof-
iting individually from the need state of another
individual would have appeared as unnatural dur-
ing this era (Thompson, 1971).
With the rise of capitalism, individuals lost
their attachment to the land, moved about geo-
graphically, and became less bound by the social
structure and morality code of their community
of origin. Moreover, production forces expanded
rapidly and conveyed the perceived freedom of
unlimited economic growth. Individuals in emerg-
ing capitalist societies could rise without condemn-
ing their neighbor to fall (Macfarlane, 1991). Thus,
gradually, the communal morality of the zero sum
game was transformed into one in which individu-
als (not families or communities) improve their lot
with or without negative consequences for their
neighbors, and, eventually, the need state of the
other becomes the valued profit opportunity of the
self. This allowed for individual economic goals to
achieve material advantages and to become unre-
strained by communal, family, and religious values
and practices.
Belief Systems About Social
Inequality and Mobility
With the rise of capitalism, individualistic and
meritocratic belief systems developed in Europe and
North America. Economic and religious origins are
common across the continents, but additional fac-
tors related to political and other cultural specif-
ics of American history led to the development of
a specific and particularly pronounced version of
individualistic beliefs in America that came to be
known as the “American Dream” (McNamee &
Miller, 2009).
The unbridled individualism exalted by the
American Dream is partly due to Adam Smith’s
principles of a free market economy, including
the notions of private ownership, competition
between individuals, rational self-interest, and a
laissez-faire approach of the government (Smith,
1776/1976). These principles were widely accepted
in the capitalist world, albeit in Europe the role of
the government is viewed differently (see the sec-
tion “Transition to Adulthood: Opportunities and
Constraints in Different Societies”). Converging
with these economic principles, the Protestant
belief system and morality code further ideal-
ized the prevailing belief that individual striving
for worldly distinctions is necessary to live a suc-
cessful life and, especially in its Calvinist form,
is linked to the notion of being predestined for
salvation (Weber, 1905/1958). In short, individu-
als would work hard to be successful—that is,
upwardly mobile in society—in order to prove to
themselves and others that they were predestined
for eternal salvation. “Industry, frugality, and pru-
dence” became the prime virtues of early capital-
ism (Wiess, 1969) and inspired early American
moralistic novels such at the rags-to-riches stories of
Horatio Alger (1832–1899).
In addition to these economic and religious
origins, American individualism was strongly pro-
moted by the country’s historical roots as a nation
of immigrants, explorers, and pioneers. Individual
freedom and chances to succeed in this New World
promised to overcome the Old World constraints
imposed by the European aristocracy and create a
new American “natural aristocracy of talent and
virtue” (Jefferson, 1813). The American colonists
and their successors cherished the political freedom
from feudalistic reigns and celebrated the indi-
vidual’s potential to achieve a position in society
reflecting the individual’s merit. Moreover, explo-
ration and expansion of the western frontier selec-
tively favored another specific element in American
H e ck h au s e n, S h a n e 543
individualism, the strong optimism and reliance on
one’s strengths (“can do” attitude) to capitalize on
the opportunity provided in the face of hardship,
obstacles, and constraints to upward social mobility.
The notion that everyone can make it to the
top, inherent in the American Dream, has impor-
tant consequences, even and especially today under
heightened pressure from economic turmoil. The
prospect of upward mobility hypothesis (Bénabou &
Ok, 2001) proposes that even those at lower
income levels will not strongly advocate for income
redistribution because of the prevailing belief that
they themselves stand a chance to climb the social
ladder. Thus, the American Dream and its meri-
tocratic conceptions are the ideological glue that
has kept Americans at all rungs of the social ladder
willing to tolerate the substantial inequality of life
outcomes. Increasingly, this ideology is clashing
with reality, as we discuss later.
In contrast to the United States, European his-
tory set up a different approach to social inequal-
ity. European societies embrace social inequality,
causing individuals within these societies to view
themselves as socially stratified into owners and
workers, employers and employees. The individ-
ual agent in European societies does not aspire to
embark on a lonely struggle up the social ladder
but rather views him- or herself at a certain and
unalterable place in a socially stratified society
(Geissler & Meyer, 2006; Kleining & Moore,
1968; Moore & Kleining, 1960). This is not to
say that Europeans have no hope to improve their
lot in life and do not work to enhance their stan-
dard of living and their children’s future. Instead,
we are arguing that in many European countries
individuals largely forego the striving for social
mobility and replace it with a notion of belong-
ing to, identifying with, and fighting for the inter-
ests of their own social strata or class (Bourdieu,
1982; Kleining & Moore, 1968). European his-
tory is saturated with the struggle between the
classes of capitalist owners on the one hand and
workers on the other (Bourdieu, 1982; Marx,
1958). European history has also given rise to
powerful unions and socialist, social-democratic,
and communist parties of the working class
in all major European countries. These move-
ments have fought for better working conditions,
higher salaries, health care, and pensions, and
have demanded from the government in welfare
what they could not directly wrangle from the
employers. Thus, in most European welfare states,
meritocratic principles are ameliorated by highly
544 S o c i a l Mobi l i t y i n t h e T r a ns i t ion t o A du lt ho od
esteemed values of protecting the less fortunate,
be it via governmentally managed entitlements as
in Scandinavian countries, collective bargaining
contracts as in Germany and France, or via family
and community support (Italy, Spain, Ireland; see
Blossfeld et al., 2007).
As a consequence of the different historical roots
of European societies, the dominant ideology in
Europe is not one of unlimited social mobility for
each individual, but one of unequal opportunities
for those at the top and those at the bottom that
need to be compensated for by policies, services,
and monetary support for those at the lower rungs
of the social ladder. Under the current conditions
of increasing constraints to government-funded
welfare systems, people at the lower rungs of soci-
ety and especially the marginalized youth in those
countries with the weakest economies (e.g., Spain,
Italy, Greece) are not inclined to blame themselves
for a lack of success in climbing the social ladder, but
will instead protest against inequality and threaten
those holding political power in their countries.
How Social Structure and Institutions
Set up the Action Field for Individuals’
Developmental Agency
When thinking about the way in which a system
can regulate change along a time-ordered path, a key
model from developmental biology comes to mind,
Waddington’s epigenetic landscape (1942; 1957). In
Figure 33.6, developmental paths of a cell are shown
as golf balls on a landscape. The cells start out from
similar states (omnipotent state) and then, due to
partitions in the hilly landscape, take either one of
two valleys pushed by relatively minor environmen-
tal forces at the decision point; then the ball (cell)
runs down the valley until it comes to another deci-
sion point, and so on and so forth throughout the
cell’s development. The developmental outcomes of
two cells after several distinct paths are taken at deci-
sion points becomes exponentially more different
than the point of origin and first decision because
the paths through the valleys take the cells (balls)
further and further away from each other.
Moreover, as Figure 33.7 shows, epigenetic
landscapes can be monostable (only one path is
favored by the landscape), bistable (two paths are
favored), or multistable (more than two paths are
favored). The multistable canalization reflects the
situation in the German educational system with
its three-tiered structure: a 10-grade Hauptschule
leading into lower level, blue-collar (construc-
tion, baker, hairdresser) apprenticeships; a more
 (a)
Fig. 33.6  Canalization of developmental processes: Waddington’s epigenetic landscape (Waddington, 1957).
challenging 10-grade Realschule leading into
medium (electrician, car mechanic) or higher level,
white-collar (insurance, banking) apprenticeships;
and a 12/13-grade Gymnasium leading to univer-
sity admission and higher level apprenticeships.
Finally, the landscape between the valley paths
can be more or less mountainous (see high vs. low
profile in Figure 33.8). If the hills between the val-
ley paths are high and steep, it is more difficult to
leave a given path. Under these high-profile condi-
tions, the system as a whole is more stable but also
provides less opportunities for individual agents to
change paths after a decision point.
The decision points in these epigenetic land-
scapes can be likened to developmental transitions
when the individual can take different paths. The
transition to adulthood is an important and prob-
ably the most consequential developmental transi-
tion in the life course. It is during the transition to
adulthood that individuals have a chance to ven-
ture away from their parents’ social status.
t
pu
r in
Ψ Bistable
eo
Tim
Ψ Ψ
Output
Fig. 33.7  Different phases of epigenetic canalization.
(b)
Most modern societies hold a large potential
for social mobility, so that individuals face major
chances for upward but also risks of downward
social mobility, both within an individual’s life
course and between generations. However, cer-
tain characteristics of societies can enable or
constrain individuals’ chances to move up the
social ladder (Buchholz et al., 2009; Heckhausen,
1999). First, there are sociostructural constraints
that pertain to the social inequality of access
to important resources for social mobility, for
example, access to high-quality schools and col-
leges. Corak (2013) argues that the main driving
factors for increasingly constrained social mobil-
ity are associated with, as the economist puts it,
“the human capital of children” (Corak, 2013,
p. 80). Higher incomes provide access to better
neighborhoods, better child care facilities, and
better schools, tipping the balance in the favor of
children from higher income groups. Put into the
context of the epigenetic landscape model, this
Monostable
Multistable
Current biology
H e ck h au s e n, S h a n e 545
 Does the
standard
landscape
change when
parents
are poor?

High profile => low permeability Low profile => high permeability

Fig. 33.8  High versus low profiles in epigenetic landscapes.

means that pronounced social inequality may Transition to Adulthood: Opportunities

create substantial obstacles to social mobility by
preventing the individual from moving from one
path to the other.
Another important societal influence in social
mobility comes from institutional constraints. For
instance, the German K–12/13 education system is
organized into three tiers after grade 4 (or in some
states grade 6). Switching between different tiers is
difficult, albeit not impossible. Again, these differ-
ent kinds of constraints in the German educational
system may constitute obstacles between paths that
render switching from one stable path to another
close to impossible.
The third potentially constraining influence on
social mobility comes from internalized ideolo-
gies about social inequality and beliefs about the
causes of upward and downward social mobil-
ity (see detailed discussion earlier). The dominant
American ideology, with its notions of plentiful
opportunities for everyone, individualistic expla-
nations of success and failure in life, and the accep-
tance of unequal rewards (Huber & Form, 1973)
seems ideal for fostering strong and sustained indi-
vidual striving for upward mobility. However, to
the extent that these social mobility goals may be
unrealistic, such striving may well become con-
tinuously frustrated and thus ultimately depleted.
On the other hand, continued and strong striving
might bear better outcomes than confining oneself
to what seems to be more realistic goals with less
steep ambitions for social climbing. The challenge
for research in this area is to identify the societal
and economic conditions under which either of
these statements is true.
and Constraints in Different Societies
In general, life course transitions are those
phases of life most sensitive to the interplay
between sociostructural conditions and an indi-
vidual agent’s capacities (e.g., effort, ability,
self-regulated goal pursuit). It is during transitions
that individuals can exert their greatest effect on
their own future life course (Heckhausen, 1999).
Transitions provide chances for growth and
upward social mobility, as well as risks for decline
and downward mobility, thus reflecting the soci-
ety’s general potential for social mobility as well
as the specific mobility potential of the particular
transition in question.
If transitions in general hold the promise of
amplifying individuals’ influence on their own
future, this holds true even more for the transition
from adolescence to adulthood. In this transition,
adolescents’ dependency on their family of ori-
gin wanes as they establish their own career and
family as an adult. The transition to adulthood
concentrates social mobility because it is both a
critical transition within a life course and between
generations as young adults leave the parental
social context and strive to attain their own. The
transition to adulthood also amplifies any differ-
ences in psychological and social resources that
individual youth bring to the challenge. And it
is also during this transition that individuals’ are
most vulnerable to adverse effects of the histori-
cal, economic, or social context, as was shown by
Glen Elder in his pioneering analysis of children’s
life courses during and after the Great Depression
(Elder, 1974).

546 S o c i a l Mobi l i t y i n t h e T r a ns i t ion t o A du lt ho od

 Different nations and their societal structur-
ing of the transition to adulthood differ greatly in
several major respects: (1) the extent to which the
transition and its stations are predetermined by
established institutions of school education, voca-
tional training, and modes of entry into the labor
market; (2) the extent to which the adolescent can
influence the transition and, in fact, needs to take
an active role; and (3) the consequences the transi-
tion has for an individual’s long-term career pros-
pects. Regarding the latter, we find, for instance,
more restricted mobility in Germany compared
to the United States after entering a career. This
difference in career permeability greatly affects the
long-term implications of the early adulthood tran-
sition into work life because early gains or losses
in social status have more long-term consequences
under conditions of low career track permeability.
Unified Versus Segregated
Institutions for Education
and Vocational Training
Regarding the structure imposed by educational
and vocational institutions, the more unified and
universally institutionalized the path across the
transition from school to work (e.g., the German
dual system of apprenticeship concurrent with
formal education), the less influence that indi-
viduals’ varying social and cultural resources and
self-regulatory motivational capacities have on
their eventual social status attainment. Thus, uni-
fied educational (one school for all) and vocational
(centrally and professionally regulated appren-
ticeship training) institutions can be expected to
weaken the translation of social inequality from
individuals’ family-of-origin to their social status
as an adult. An inverse effect should result from
educational and vocational institutions that seg-
regate and thus enhance social inequality. A tell-
ing example is the three-tiered German school
system with its early point of diversion (Schnabel,
Alfeld, Eccles, Köller, & Baumert, 2002). Here, the
German school system with its three-tier segrega-
tion makes for a particularly pronounced accumu-
lation of social inequality across the school career.
In contrast, the unified high school system in the
United States, albeit maintaining social differen-
tiation, shows less amplification of social back-
ground influences by allowing greater permeability
between educational trajectories.
Institutionally or socially structured segregated
paths into adult employment hold the promise of a
life trajectory of opportunities along the canalized
path. This is advantageous for those on track
because their development and career are buffered
against disturbances, much like the golf balls in
Waddington’s epigenetic model that roll securely
in their crevices (Waddington, 1942; 1957). But,
at the same time, the canalized paths into work
life can become dead ends and alleys into poverty
and social exclusion, as compellingly demonstrated
for the marginalized youth in British society by
Bynner and Parsons (2002).
One of the most highly structured school-to-
work transitions is the dual vocational training
system (Duales Ausbildungssystem) in Germany
that is best tailored to the graduates of the
German middle-tier high school (Realschule).
After completing the 10th grade of Realschule, the
16-year-old Realschul-graduates set out to secure
one of the cherished positions as an apprentice in
a local business. Employers willing to offer these
apprenticeships go by school grades, entry tests,
and interviews when selecting from a large appli-
cant pool. Apprenticeships vary widely in social
prestige (different income, long-term promotions
prospects, and social respect). As a consequence,
the best strategy to secure an optimal vocational
training position is to calibrate one’s apprentice-
ship ambitions to one’s school grades, and that is
exactly what we found in the German context.
The Realschul-graduates closely calibrated the
social prestige of the apprenticeship they aspired
to with their own school grades, a process that
unfolded during their final year in school when
finding an apprenticeship became increasingly
urgent (Heckhausen & Tomasik, 2002). Moreover,
those youth who were most committed to finding
an apprenticeship adopted the following strategy
of sequential goal adjustment in terms of social
prestige of apprenticeship: start fairly ambitious,
then adjust downward when you experience failure
(unsuccessful applications) and upward as soon as
you have secured at least one position (Tomasik,
Hardy, Haase, & Heckhausen, 2009).
Strong and sustained engagement with a par-
ticular goal—here finding an appropriate appren-
ticeship—is highly normative in these strongly
canalized pathways. So much so that, for exam-
ple, those Realschul graduates who took longer
to become active in applying for apprenticeships
ended up extremely worried and hurried late in
their final year before graduating (Nagy, Hollube,
Wolf, Köller, & Heckhausen, 2005). Moreover,
those who supplemented their goal engage-
ment with self-regulatory efforts to enhance their
H e ck h au s e n, S h a n e 547
volitional commitment benefitted at least in their
subjective well-being (girls and boys) and objec-
tive apprenticeship attainments (girls; see Haase,
Heckhausen, & Köller, 2008). And such extra
volitional self-regulation was even able to offset the
detrimental effects of highly stressful life events
such as a death in the family or parents’ divorce
on one’s goal engagement for an apprenticeship
(Poulin & Heckhausen, 2007).
As we explained earlier, in the United States, the
transition into work life is weakly structured and
thus probably more influenced by informal advan-
tages and disadvantages of social class (Hamilton,
1990; Heckhausen, 2002). However, the path
through the educational system is highly norma-
tive, with one type of school for everyone, albeit the
quality of the school may vary across very unequal
neighborhoods and schools. Nevertheless, the gen-
erally accepted path in American society is one
from high school to college and from college into a
career on some socially upward trajectory. In some
parts of the United States, such as California, this
notion is even institutionalized, as in the California
Master Plan of Higher Education (California State
Board of Education, 1960). Although other states
offer similar educational structures, California is
unique in the degree to which it provides a system-
atic and scaffolded progression from high school to
community college to university. Youth, even those
from socially disadvantaged families and high
schools, can enroll in community colleges and from
there transfer to California State Universities or
even to one of the research-oriented Universities of
California. Accordingly, individuals’ goal engage-
ment with highly ambitious educational goals (e.g.,
get a bachelor’s degree at a research university) is
generally very high and carries even those youth
who started out with less than stellar prospects to
greater success than those who adjust their aspira-
tions to more modest educational goals (e.g., get
an associate’s degree from a community college; see
Heckhausen & Chang, 2009). As it turns out, such
engagement with educational goals in order to be
successful needs to be focused exclusively on educa-
tion, instead of simultaneously entertaining ideas
about one’s desired career outcomes (Heckhausen,
Chang, Greenberger, & Chen, 2012).
Societal Underregulation Enhances
Influence of Individual Resources
Another way by which social inequality is pre-
served and perhaps even amplified is through a sys-
tem of underregulation that renders informal and
548 S o c i a l Mobi l i t y i n t h e T r a ns i t ion t o A du lt ho od
noninstitutionalized differences decisive for the
entry into an adaptive career. Such informal differ-
ences could pertain to such sociocultural resources
as upper-class-oriented social networks and a set of
behaviors, values, and beliefs associated with the
upper rungs of the social ladder (Bourdieu, 1982;
Corak, 2013; Heckhausen, 2011). This may well
be the case for the “forgotten half” of high school
graduates in the United States who do not go on to
college but seek employment in primary and sec-
ondary labor markets.3 In fact, Hamilton (1990)
argues that the “floundering period” endured by
these adolescents bears great risks for them and
may be the cause of many social and psychologi-
cal problems, including teenage pregnancies, drug
abuse, and delinquency. It is within such underreg-
ulated circumstances that individual agency and
the different resources the individual can mobilize
for goal pursuit play a greater role than in any other
societal constellation.
In our own empirical work, we have investi-
gated career-related goal pursuit among recent high
school graduates (Shane, Heckhausen, Lessard,
Chen, & Greenberger, 2012), university students
(Shane & Heckhausen, 2013), and young and
middle-aged adults (Shane & Heckhausen, 2012).
Among the high school graduates, we found that
strong beliefs in the influence of such control-
lable factors as one’s own effort and social contacts
positively influence control striving for career goals
(Shane et al., 2012). In contrast, those recent grad-
uates who believed that luck is decisive for entering
a career successfully were not spurred on to greater
control striving for their career goal.
When it comes to the transition from college
to career, students hold ambitious aspirations for
climbing the social ladder and attaining substan-
tially higher socioeconomic status than their par-
ents. Similar to what we found for recent high
school graduates, among these university graduates
control-related beliefs are predictive of control striv-
ings (Shane & Heckhausen, 2013). Specifically, we
identified two pathways: those who believe that a suc-
cessful transition into work life is a function of their
own effort and ability versus those who believe it is
a function of uncontrollable luck. The meritocratic
view of personal control over the transition seems
to promote career engagement and more prestigious
career expectations. In contrast, the more fatalistic
view of the transition into work life was associated
with tendencies to disengage from career goals.
Additional empirical support for the influ-
ence of individual motivational resources on the
establishment of a career during the transition
to adulthood comes from the longitudinal Youth
Development Study, covering the span from 18
to 31  years (Vuolo, Staff, & Mortimer, 2012).
The study finds that young adults who maintain
high ambition and certainty about their long-term
career goals managed to maintain employment and
attain higher hourly wages even during the reces-
sion years in 2008/2009. Finally, using long-term
follow-up data from the Midlife in the United
States (MIDUS) study, we find that among adults
in established careers, strong engagement in the
work domain is informed by perceptions about
the controllability of career improvements, as our
theory’s congruence principle (i.e., congruence
between perceived control and control striving)
predicts (Shane & Heckhausen, 2012). Moreover,
individuals who base their work-related engage-
ment on strong perceived controllability attain bet-
ter work-related and health outcomes 9 years later.
In contrast, those who invest heavily in the work
domain even though they do not see much chance
for control end up suffering negative consequences
for their mental and physical health, although they
may still be successful in climbing the career ladder.
Meritocratic Beliefs Clash
with Unequal Opportunities
for Social Classes
The widening gap in access to personal, social,
and cultural resources in the past two decades
have meant that close to 50% of the US popu-
lation has at best severely limited chances for
upward mobility (Economic Mobility Project,
2012). Intergenerational transmission of income
inequality in United States is substantially greater
compared to, for example, Germany (Economic
Mobility Project, 2007), despite the more segre-
gating educational system in Germany. Yet polls
still show that a greater percentage of Americans
(i.e., 69%) are convinced that people get rewarded
for intelligence and skills as well as effort (61%),
whereas in other countries only 39% (28%, respec-
tively) endorse such an answer. Only 19% of US
respondents stated that it is essential to come from
a wealthy family to get ahead, whereas in non-US
countries, 28% thought so (Economic Mobility
Project, 2007).
One can only wonder how long this gap
between dominant meritocratic ideology and eco-
nomic reality can be sustained. At some point, the
realities of an unparalleled surge in social inequal-
ity, the economic downturn, and the enormous
and continued increase in college tuition are likely
to undermine the younger generation’s trust in the
American Dream and its meritocratic conceptions
and thus render the delicate balance of unrealis-
tic beliefs and conflicting individual experiences
untenable. Indeed, recent polls suggest that only
16% of recent university graduates believe that
their generation will achieve more financial suc-
cess than the previous generation, and a little less
than half expect to personally attain more finan-
cial success than their parents (Stone, Van Horn,
& Zukin, 2012). This pessimism is echoed by older
generations, of whom only 47% believe that their
children will attain a higher standard of living
than they themselves attained compared to 62%
in 2009 (Economic Mobility Project, 2011), and
82% believe that finding employment is harder for
today’s young adults than it was for previous gen-
erations (Taylor et al., 2012).
One is reminded of Bourdieu’s phrase of the
“betrayed generation” when talking about the
bleak career prospects for graduates of Europe’s
universities after the mass expansion of univer-
sity enrollment in the 1960s and ‘70s. Today, the
future prospects of European and American youth
is everything but promising. And in the United
States, an adherence to the American Dream adds
insult to injury because it implies that a failure to
march up the social ladder is the individual youth’s
fault. It does not seem likely that the ideological
pacification of the American Dream and its meri-
tocratic ideas about the cause of social mobility will
work for much longer.
Conclusion
Human society has developed to be structured
in terms of different social strata having unequal
access to resources. Societies differ in opportuni-
ties for social mobility; that is, the degree to which
an individual can move up or down the social lad-
der, both within an individual’s lifespan and across
family generations. Extreme social inequality con-
strains social mobility, especially for the lowest
and highest social strata (Corak, 2013). Individual
agents in different societies across historical time
and place have had widely varying opportunities
to exert their own influence on their social status.
Moreover, individual agency is the most influen-
tial during life phases of transition, and, in the case
of social mobility in modern societies, the critical
phase occurs during the transition into adulthood,
although some societies allow for some mobility in
adulthood itself.
H e ck h au s e n, S h a n e 549
 Individual agency is fueled by the basic motive
to exert control over one’s environment and one’s
own future. Striving for such primary control is
organized into cycles of goal selection, goal engage-
ment, and goal disengagement as opportunities fade
or goal striving becomes too costly. During phases
of goal engagement, behavioral and motivational
investment should be selective and focused. When
encountering strong reasons to disengage, such
disengagement should be discrete and organized
rather than gradual or oscillating. Disengagement
from a given overly ambitious goal allows the rein-
vestment of behavioral and motivational resources
into either adjusted (somewhat less ambitious)
goals or into entirely different goals pertaining to
different domains of life and functioning.
Individuals can select goals based on general
expectations about timing during the lifespan that
are based on biological changes and societal insti-
tutionalization of educational and career-related
milestones (e.g., school graduation, vocational
training, retirement). Beyond these general pat-
terns, goal setting of youth in the transition after
high school and into college and vocational careers
has been found to reflect specific characteristics of a
given society. In particular, goal calibration can be
narrow under conditions of highly transparent and
specific career entry requirements (e.g., by employ-
ers offering apprenticeships in Germany) and
extremely ambitious for longer term goals that are
supported by institutionalized ladder-type scaffolds
(e.g., California Master Plan of Higher Education).
Consequences of initial outcomes in the youth-to-
adulthood transition also vary by society. Some
societies allow more change between developmen-
tal (educational, career) paths during adulthood,
thus providing a multistable epigenetic landscape.
Other societies offer less permeability after young
adulthood and thus provide more narrowly cana-
lized trajectories of education and career develop-
ment throughout adulthood.
It is striking that dominant ideologies about
social mobility do not or only partially reflect
the reality in a given society and, in important
cases, stand in stark contrast to existing patterns
of social mobility. In line with unified educa-
tional institutions (the high school system) in the
United States, American youths cherish high edu-
cational and career ambitions corresponding with
the “American Dream.” Yet actual opportunities
for upward mobility are severely restricted for the
lower social strata, partly because of the stark dif-
ferences in income, but not least because the social
550 S o c i a l Mobi l i t y i n t h e T r a ns i t ion t o A du lt ho od
inequality in neighborhoods and commensurate
constraints to high schools can turn even unified
educational institutions into conduits of social seg-
regation. In addition, the transition into work life
is severely underregulated and thus renders youth
from lower social strata especially vulnerable to the
effects of informal inequalities in access to financial
resources and particularly to social capital in terms
of important social connections and comme-if-faut
behavioral patterns (Bourdieu, 1982).
It is a fascinating challenge for ongoing (Haase,
Heckhausen, & Silbereisen, 2012; Heckhausen &
Shane, October 2012; Shane & Heckhausen,
2012; October 2012; Shane & Heckhausen,
May 2013) and future research to longitudinally
examine how today’s youth wrestle with overly
ambitious expectations of social mobility as it
conflicts with increasingly constrained opportu-
nities. Over the past three decades, most coun-
tries have moved toward greater inequality and
the associated higher obstacles to social mobility
(see Figures 33.4 and 33.5). These developments
have the potential to undermine beliefs in meri-
tocracy and the confidence of a majority in the
effectiveness of personal agency within the societ-
ies they live in. Far from leading to resignation
and submission, many, and especially the young,
have chosen to deepen and widen the striving for
primary control, from striving for control over
one’s life to a striving for control over one’s soci-
ety (Heckhausen, 2010). And so the transactional
efforts of individuals to enhance their opportuni-
ties in life may join forces with the leverage of the
collective and develop the kind of power that can
overcome undue societal constraints of lifespan
development, reaching far beyond the individual’s
immediate social ecology.
Notes
1 For an elaborate discussion of modes of control and cul-
ture, see Heckhausen and Schulz (1999) and Schulz and
Heckhausen (1999).
2 The Gini coefficient is a standard indicator of income
inequality that can range from 0 (each member of a com-
munity gets an identical income) to 1 (all income goes to
one person).
3 Of Americans 25 years of age or older, 85.7% have at least
a high school degree, and 28.5% have a bachelor’s degree or
higher (US Census Bureau, 2013). In 2010, 41% of 18- to
24-year-olds were enrolled in a postsecondary school, an
increase from 35% in 2000 (US Department of Education,
2012). In 2005, 59% of first-time university students in
America who attended a 4-year degree program full-time
completed the program within 6 years (US Department of
Education, 2013).
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H e ck h au s e n, S h a n e 553
 C H A P T E R

34 Work and Work Migration

Within and Across Countries
in Emerging and Young Adulthood
Barbara Schneider, Guan Saw, and Michael Broda

Abstract
Across the globe, most young people aged 15 through their early 20s work, primarily in positions that
are short-term, part-time, low-pay, and low-skilled. Because work is such an enduring phenomenon
in the lives of youth and young adults and often helps to shape life paths, migration patterns, and
generational change, it is critical to outline the role work and work migration play in the lives of young
adults. This chapter describes the types of work in which youth are typically employed and analyzes
the relationships between employment opportunities and higher education attainment across nation
states. Finally, the last section discusses how the pressure for employment opportunities among all
youth, regardless of their education attainment, drives their migration patterns worldwide.
Key Words:  youth, schooling and work, apprenticeship programs, postsecondary attainment,
STEM careers, entrepreneurship, unemployment, work migration

Throughout the world, most young people
aged 15 through their early 20s work. The types of
jobs young people hold are primarily short-term,
part-time, low-pay, low-skilled, and fail to lead
to full-time employment (World Bank, 2012).
Assuming that such employment will facilitate
long-term educational plans and careers, many
young adults who live in industrialized coun-
tries work in these types of jobs while in second-
ary and postsecondary school (Eurostat, 2009;
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development [OECD], 2012a). Among develop-
ing countries, this trend to work while in school
is also increasing (OECD, 2012a). Not all youth
are in school; some drop out before graduating
from elementary or secondary school of their own
volition, while others are sometimes taken out by
their families to work. Few of these young people
who search for employment find opportunities for
full-time well-paying jobs. The recent economic
slowdown has particularly affected this group,
and the number of unemployed youth has risen
dramatically. High unemployment rates among
young adults have raised deep concern over possi-
ble consequences on political stability, health, emo-
tional and social well-being, and technological and
other types of innovations (International Labour
Organisation [ILO], 2011a; World Bank, 2012).
In the search for work, many unemployed youth,
including those with advanced degrees, migrate,
from region to region within a nation and from
country to country, seeking better opportunities.
Young people who attain postsecondary degrees
are sometimes employed in jobs that seemingly do
not require a college degree (Vedder, Denhart, &
Robe, 2013). Despite the skill set needed for such
jobs, those with postsecondary degrees are more
likely to be hired than those with only secondary
high school diplomas. This preference trend for
hiring college-educated youth is rising worldwide
(Eurostat, 2009; OECD, 2012a). Increasingly, the
work skills of today are not necessarily the work skills
of tomorrow, especially in the areas of science, tech-
nology, engineering, mathematics, and computer

554
science (STEM; Goldin & Katz, 2010). The chal-
lenge is in finding work and education opportuni-
ties that match youth interests and develop their
knowledge and skills for nonroutine cognitive and
interpersonal skills while recognizing that routine
cognitive and craft skills, such as those found in
physical labor with repetitive physical tasks, are less
likely to be in demand (OECD, 2012b).
Beginning in the late 1980s, the United States,
much like other industrialized countries, experi-
enced a rising tide of ambitious adolescents who,
regardless of their socioeconomic status and loca-
tion in their respective country, expected to enroll
in college. These high educational expectations
were shared by their parents and repeated by their
teachers and counselors, albeit, with less conviction
and often with limited information. The age of
the Ambitious Generation (Schneider & Stevenson,
1999) was the inspiration of our current work, as it
was clear not all high school students would even-
tually matriculate to college and an even smaller
number would graduate. This is particularly true
for those who attended secondary schools where
the majority of the students resided in low-income
families and were members of US underrepresented
racial and ethnic minorities. Many of these stu-
dents enter the labor market or enroll in 2-year col-
leges and fail to achieve their degrees. This group
of young people, then and today, are increasingly
finding themselves in unstable jobs with low wages
and few opportunities for promotion.
Trying to understand what conditions are pre-
venting young people from enrolling in postsec-
ondary schools that matched their interests and
abilities has been the focus of our work and the
motivation behind a new quasi-randomized trial
designed to increase college enrollment in STEM
fields among low-income and minority students.
All of us have been involved in various stages of
this work: Guan learned about this work in Taipei
and came to Michigan State University to work
with me on these problems, and we both encour-
aged Michael to join us in building the bridges
between the worlds of practice and policy with
measurement and quantitative methods. Both of
these young scholars are windows into conducting
better research and a more promising future for
the lives of many youth in the United States and
globally.
The arguments and data in this chapter consti-
tute our continuing desire to alter the life chances
of those who often find themselves with few oppor-
tunities, not because of their interests or talents, but
rather because of the social context in which they
live. Although we recognize how difficult change
is, we have written this chapter highlighting partic-
ular conditions that could be improved by simply
calling attention to what constitutes youth work,
including human trafficking and forced domestic
work. Merely including these types of work in the
numbers of youth employment and the conditions
of their work would highlight why we must under-
stand and document what work young people
are engaged in, including those in postsecondary
school, and what the life consequences are of such
varied experiences.
This chapter begins by describing the types of
work in which youth are typically employed. This is
followed by an analysis of the relationship between
employment opportunities and higher education
attainment across nation states. To understand
work patterns among young adults, it is critical to
view work opportunities and their relationship to
postsecondary pathways and what the prospects are
for the long-term employment of today’s youth. The
last section discusses how the pressure for employ-
ment opportunities among all youth, regardless of
their education attainment, is manifested in their
migration patterns worldwide.
Youth and Work
The United Nations estimates that there are
more than 1.8 billion youth aged 15–29 in the
world, with most of them living in developing or
less-developed countries. This population is dis-
tributed among Asia (60%), Africa (17%), the
Caribbean (9%), and the Middle East (4%), with
a remaining small percentage in Latin America
(United Nations [UN], 2011). Population pro-
jections indicate that although rapid growth is
expected in sub-Saharan Africa, moderate growth
is projected in South Asia, Latin America, and the
Caribbean. In countries with developed economies,
the proportion of youth population is expected to
decline (UN, 2011).
Most developing countries are experiencing a
“youth bulge,” in which young adults represent
more than 30% of the working-age populations,
with projections indicating that this situation is
likely to persist for several more decades (ILO,
2012a). In many of these countries, the number
of higher education institutions, although grow-
ing, cannot accommodate all of those individu-
als wanting to pursue higher education (OECD,
2012a). Moreover, there are not enough jobs in the
labor market to accommodate the skill sets of those
Sc h n e i de r , S aw, Br oda 555
youth not attending postsecondary school or receiv-
ing additional vocational training (ILO, 2012b;
OECD, 2012b). In developed countries, the situ-
ation is less problematic; however, even youth with
higher education degrees often find themselves dis-
advantaged relative to employed older adults, espe-
cially during periods of economic recession (World
Bank, 2006). The challenge is creating high-quality
jobs for youth that meet young people’s aspirations
and lead to long-term and self-fulfilling employ-
ment (Arnett, 2004; see Arnett, 2014, this volume).
There are signs that we may be approaching a world
crisis in which the youth population is outpacing
the number of available employment possibilities.
Globally, it is estimated that youth are three
times as likely as adults to be unemployed, and
these proportions are even higher in South Asia
and Southeast Asia, where youth are five times as
likely to be unemployed as adults (ILO, 2012a;
2012b). According to the report Global Employment
Trends for Youth 2012 (ILO, 2012b), in 2011, nearly
75 million young adults were out of work across
the globe. Females are more likely than males to
be unemployed, but these differences are not pro-
nounced (females 13.1%, males 12.6% in 2010).
Within developing countries, the youth unemploy-
ment rate is higher in urban rather than rural areas.
Although it is often assumed that less-skilled
youth are more likely to be unemployed and find
it difficult to secure employment, highly educated
youth in some countries also face difficulty find-
ing work. The unemployment rate for highly edu-
cated youth is high in regions such as the Middle
East and North Africa (World Bank, 2006). In
Tunisia, for example, in 2011, the unemployment
rate for young university graduates is close to 30%
compared to about 20% for those with secondary
education (Boughzala, 2013). Moreover, although
nearly 40% of the unemployed in Tunisia wait at
least 1 year until finding a formal job, the most
educated wait even longer. Within poor countries,
educated youth from wealthy advantaged house-
holds also have difficulty finding work, and many
of these recently college-educated young people
leave their country of origin—creating some-
thing of a “brain drain” on the existing population
(World Bank, 2006).
Very poor youth need to work and will often
take any jobs that are available. This creates another
set of challenges. In some poor countries where the
unemployment rate may not be low, many young
people nonetheless live in impoverished conditions.
This suggests that relying strictly on unemployment
556 W or k a n d W or k M ig r at ion W i t h i n a n d Ac r o s s C ou n t r i e s
as an indicator of the lack of work opportunities
for young adults can be misleading, especially with
respect to measures such as health and well-being.
In some developed and developing countries,
some young adults will remain unemployed for long
periods of time (Eurostat, 2009; OECD, 2010a).
This is particularly the case for youth cohorts that
entered the labor market during periods of reces-
sion. Disadvantaged youth, as measured by lack of
a high school diploma, minority or immigrant sta-
tus, or living in a low-income household, are partic-
ularly vulnerable to chronic unemployment. Youth,
much like adults when encountering long periods
of unemployment, can become discouraged, lead-
ing to periods of neither work nor attending school.
But the consequences for youth are particularly
dire because young people need the experience of
working to acquire skills relevant to the labor mar-
ket. If unemployed and out of work for a long time,
youth are unlikely to become integrated into jobs
that can improve their human capital and in turn
lead to future productive employment.
Nature of Youth Employment
The state of being unemployed is only part of
the problem; the nature of the work young people
undertake, especially in some countries, is unlikely
to move them into more stable high-paying jobs.
Young people make up a disproportionately large
share of the world’s working poor (ILO, 2011b).
Many of these working poor youth are in the agri-
cultural sector.
When examining the distribution of the
employed population in the industrial sector, sta-
tistics show that young adults are more likely to
work in “wholesale and retail trade,” “manufac-
turing,” “construction,” and “hotels and restau-
rants.” A study documenting types of work among
immigrants reports a similar distribution by eco-
nomic sector among young migrants (McKenzie,
2008). Comparing cohorts with those who are
older, today’s young adults tend to engage in lower
skilled jobs requiring fewer qualifications. In
European countries, for example, more than half
of the young workers aged 15–24 were employed
in elementary or low-skilled nonmanual occupa-
tions, such as clerks or sales and services workers
(Eurostat, 2009). However, only one-third among
those aged 25–29 and 30–54 were hired in these
same low-skilled level jobs. Hiring opportunities
for temporary jobs follow the same trend as that
of more stable jobs. The job share of temporary
employment among youth and young adults has
also significantly increased over the past decade,
especially when compared to earlier cohorts of
similar ages.
In the past decade, especially after the global
financial crisis, there has been an increasing trend
to hire young people in temporary and part-time
work around the world (ILO, 2012a; 2012b).
Several recent reports indicate that young people
are trapped in nonstandard or informal jobs that
do not meet their ambitions, and their transition
to more permanent and better-paid work contin-
ues to be delayed (Eurostat, 2009; ILO, 2012b).
Large numbers of young workers are still in tem-
porary jobs 5 years after leaving secondary school-
ing (Eurostat, 2009; ILO, 2012a). According to the
European Union (EU), less than 10% of adults older
than 30 work in temporary employment, whereas
about 40% of young workers work as temporary
employees. A similar trend has been documented
for part-time employment among youth workers
across all countries (OECD, 2010b; ILO, 2011b).
Most recently, the proportion of youth aged 15–24
engaged in part-time work worldwide rose from
19.9% in 2000 to 27.8% in 2010 (OECD, 2010b).
When unemployment rates are estimated for
youth, they typically exclude those who are in
school preparing for future careers. The transi-
tion from school to work is a complex undertak-
ing that is impacted by the nature of the schooling
system—including how many years students are
expected to stay (and actually remain) in school,
workforce demands, and global and local economic
35
Total tertiary enrollment (millions)
30
25
Fig. 34.1  Total tertiary enrollment versus unemployment rate in member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD), 15- to 19-year-olds. Data obtained from OECD Stat Extracts, http://stats.oecd.org.
Total tertiary enrollment
Unemployment rate
2000
Year
conditions. In some countries, students are not
employed while in school and only look for work
when they have completed their degrees. In other
countries, students work full- or part-time while
in school. Among OECD countries, it was esti-
mated that, in 2010, approximately 47% of 15- to
29-year-olds were in school, 37% were employed,
and 16% were neither employed nor in education
and training (often referred to as NEETs). Among
those who are in education, nearly 20% are also
employed (OECD, 2012a). It is important to note
that these OECD statistics include students in
secondary school as well as those in tertiary insti-
tutions. As seen in Figure 34.1, among OECD
nations, trends in unemployment mirror trends in
tertiary enrollment for youth aged 15–19. Increases
in unemployment (the dotted line in Figure 34.1)
among NEET youth were fairly steady over the past
15 years and matched a similar increase in tertiary
enrollment among students in the same age group.
Secondary Schooling and Work
In the United States, most students are
expected to stay in secondary school until the age
of 18. Presently, among those in secondary school,
nearly 90% work part-time at some point during
this span (Lee & Staff, 2008). Studies show that,
in general, smaller amounts (less than 20 hours)
of part-time work in high school are not detrimen-
tal and that most students work in jobs that are
short-term and low-paying (Zimmer-Gembeck &
Mortimer, 2006). However, research also shows
20
Unemployment rate (%)
18
16
14
2005 2010
Sc h n e i de r , S aw, Br oda 557
that long hours of employment (more than 20
hours per week) negatively impact high school
achievement, college attendance, persistence,
attainment, and long-term wages (Marsh &
Kleitman, 2005). About 18% of employed males
and 15% of employed females fall into this cate-
gory, with higher than average rates for black and
Hispanic students (Ross et al., 2012). Making
causal claims about work and school achieve-
ment, however, is challenged by the correlation
between work intensity and student background
characteristics, such as social class, race, and eth-
nicity, and familial education expectations. Lee
and Staff (2008), for example, demonstrate that
the relationship between work intensity and aca-
demic achievement (and school dropout) can vary
widely by student background and propensity to
work, and they suggest that part-time work in
high school may interact with student charac-
teristics in complex ways to impact educational
outcomes.
Although most students in the United States
work at some point, the number of students who
leave high school and are employed is relatively
small because most industries and jobs in the US
service sector require a high school diploma (Bureau
of Labor Statistics [BLS], 2009). The situation in
college is similar, with about 70% of undergraduate
students working part-time jobs while enrolled in
postsecondary institutions, including 20% work-
ing 20 or less hours per week, 30% working 20–34
hours per week, and 20% working 35 or more hours
per week (Ross et al., 2012). However, among those
in 2-year institutions, the proportion of students
working full-time is considerably higher than for
those in 4-year institutions.
For young people who are both in school and
employed, their work experience can take many
forms, from an apprenticeship that could lead to
a full-time job, to a low-skill part-time job to earn
extra money to help defray expenses. Some stu-
dents may enroll in a full-time education program
that meets only in the evenings while maintaining
a full-time job during the day. This combination
of work and school is found in the Netherlands,
Denmark, Iceland, and Switzerland, all of which
have educational systems specifically designed so
students can divide their time between their edu-
cational studies and work.
Apprenticeship Programs
Apprenticeship programs are growing at both
the secondary and tertiary levels. Some have
558 W or k a n d W or k M ig r at ion W i t h i n a n d Ac r o s s C ou n t r i e s
suggested that early apprenticeship programs can
be an effective way for preparing young people
for future career choices. The structure and sys-
tems of apprenticeships vary considerably among
countries. Even within the OECD, countries differ
both in their emphasis on vocational training and
in the balance between school-based vocational
programs and programs that combine schooling
with site-based technical training (Ryan, 2000). In
Ireland, for example, vocational programs account
for less than 5% of the secondary education sector,
whereas the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic,
Austria, and Belgium all exceed 70% (OECD,
2010a). Furthermore, across the OECD, propor-
tions of school-based versus blended vocational
programs vary widely, from Luxembourg, Norway,
and Australia, which have a high proportion
(>80%) of school-based programs, to Denmark
and Switzerland, which both have high proportions
of blended school and work programs (>90%). In
developed countries, research shows that formal
apprenticeship (in both secondary and tertiary
education) has a positive effect on employment
and wages—especially for females; furthermore,
European countries with strong apprenticeship
programs (Germany, the Netherlands) demon-
strate lower ratios of youth unemployment to adult
unemployment (OECD, 2010a).
Some education systems, such as those in
Germany, Austria, Denmark, Switzerland, and
Taiwan, have apprenticeship programs as part of
their formal education structure. While in second-
ary school, students are sorted into those planning
on working in specific jobs and those planning on
attending university. While in secondary school,
these students are directly involved in work activi-
ties. The contents of these programs are determined
jointly by the government, trade unions, and
employers. Students are paid a proportion of the
salary a qualified worker would earn in that same
occupation and are awarded a certificate upon
completion of a written and practical exam.
Some apprenticeship programs are supported by
the national government, which provides incentives
for companies to recruit and train young workers,
as seen in Australia, Canada, Denmark, and France
(Ryan, 2012). In France, small businesses receive an
additional subsidy from the government to recruit
young apprentices. In Australia, firms employing
new trainees and apprentices receive preferential
treatment in bids for new government-funded proj-
ects. Canada uses a different approach, directing
incentives to students if they enter and complete
training in one of their designated “Red Seal”
trades (ILO, 2012a).
Apprenticeship programs specifically designed
for secondary students have been criticized as
pushing students too early into careers and trades
without giving them a longer period of explora-
tion, thereby hindering knowledge and skill devel-
opment that they may need for higher education
and future careers (Nilsson, 2010; Sweet, 2013).
Students are often sorted into these programs on
the basis of some type of exam taken while in sec-
ondary school, and their occupational futures are
more or less decided based on the results. Some
students have voiced strong concerns about the
rigidity of these programs and are unwilling to
accept apprenticeships or placements. Despite these
concerns, some governments have actively ramped
up their efforts to reform technical vocational edu-
cation and training programs. Recognizing that
many of these programs in the past were inad-
equately funded, inconsistently managed, and
ill-adapted to a changing workforce and job oppor-
tunities, governments and institutions are engaged
in redesigning programs so that the knowledge and
technical skills offered to the students will provide
them with success in the labor market.
The United States has also undertaken
stronger apprenticeship programs by offering
dual-enrollment programs in their secondary
schools (Thomas, Marken, Gray, & Lewis, 2013).
In 2010–2011, for example, the National Center for
Education Statistics (NCES) reports that 82% of all
public high schools had students who were enrolled
in dual-credit courses. This measure is distinct
from the percentage of schools that offer advanced
placement (AP) or international baccalaureate (IB)
courses (69%), or both AP/IB and dual-enrollment
courses (59%). Thomas et al. (2013) further report
that 76% of high schools had students enrolled
in academically focused dual-enrollment courses,
whereas 49% had students who dual-enrolled in
career or technical courses. Dual-enrollment pro-
vides students with opportunities to work in some
fields while concurrently receiving high school
course credit and job-specific training. However,
these programs usually do not receive governmen-
tal support (despite often requiring special trans-
portation and other costs), and students rarely
receive bonuses for entering such programs. The
dual-enrollment programs for students entering the
labor force or 2-year postsecondary institutions for
certificates or degrees in specific fields tend to pro-
vide instruction to the students in postsecondary
schools or at the work site (52%) with a somewhat
smaller number (48%) offered on-site in the high
schools.
The difficulty with many of these programs
is matching the incentive for apprenticeships
with students’ interests and motivation. In the
United States, traditional credential-based incen-
tives appear to be only marginally effective. For
example, in 2010–2011, only 14% of public high
schools reported students having earned postsec-
ondary training certificates, and only 7% reported
students having earned associates degrees (Thomas
et  al., 2013). The percentage of students earn-
ing any postsecondary credit (about 90% of dual
enrollees) is quite high, but the causal link between
dual-enrollment and attainment of more advanced
degrees after high school graduation is unclear (An,
2013; Thomas et al., 2013). Often, students end up
in these programs because of low exam scores or
poor school performance, not because of their own
aspirations or knowledge of what types of jobs and
opportunities are or may become available.
In less developed economies, promises of future
employment can serve as fairly effective incen-
tive structures. For example, in many regions of
sub-Saharan Africa, the need for more technically
trained employees in the telecommunication field
is growing rapidly, and more youth are beginning
to enter shorter training programs that prepare
them for very specific telecom-related jobs. Overall,
however, the problem with designing effective
vocational training and apprenticeships seems to be
providing knowledge and skills that will withstand
obsolescence and change as technology systems
continue to be transformed.
Entrepreneurship and Self-Employment
Regardless of geographic region, young peo-
ple are actively involved in entrepreneurship in
developed, transitioning, and developing coun-
tries. Generally, the highest percentage of adults
participating in entrepreneurial and start-up
activity peaks in the age group of 25–34 across
the world (Xavier, Kelley, Kew, Herrington, &
Vorderwülbecke, 2013). The second highest entre-
preneurship participation occurs in the 35–44 age
group; however, in some economies such as Chile,
the Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea, the
United Kingdom, and the United States, adults
in this older age group actually have the highest
entrepreneurship participation rates. Because the
majority of the world’s young people are living in
developing countries where formal jobs are scarce
Sc h n e i de r , S aw, Br oda 559
and enrollment rates in secondary or tertiary edu-
cation are relatively low, encouraging young people
to be self-employed or start their own business has
an important role to play in reducing youth unem-
ployment. Recent studies have suggested that busi-
ness ownership in adulthood can be forecasted by
entrepreneurial career intentions observed as early
as in adolescence (Falck, Heblich, & Luedemann,
2012; Saw & Schneider, 2012).
In many developing countries, where young
women and men are not enrolling in school and
are unable to find and secure formal employment
opportunities, starting up a business or being
self-employed may be the only way to have a career
and make a living. This type of youth entrepreneur-
ship, referred to as “entrepreneurship by necessity,”
tends to be in sectors that require less education
or training such as agriculture, retail, transpor-
tation, and personal service. Necessity-motivated
entrepreneurship is not uncommon among the
poor and those who lack formal educational train-
ing, especially in countries that tend to have low
tax revenue as a percent of gross domestic prod-
uct (GDP), high levels of income inequality, low
levels of social security, and lower participation
rates in both secondary and postsecondary edu-
cation (ILO, 2012b; Listerri, Kantis, Angelelli,
& Tejerina, 2006; Schoof, 2006). According to
the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM)
study, more than one-third of entrepreneurs in
such countries as Ecuador, Malawi, Pakistan, and
Uganda chose to start businesses because they had
no other option for work in 2012 (GEM, 2013).
In contrast, less than 10% of necessity-driven
entrepreneurial activity has been reported in
developed countries such as Denmark, the
Netherlands, Slovenia, and Sweden. As opposed
to entrepreneurship by necessity, entrepreneur-
ship that emerges from the desire of youth to pur-
sue a good business opportunity, often referred
to as “entrepreneurship by opportunity,” tends
to be more pervasive among well-educated young
adults and in the high-income countries where
support activities can be found (Schoof, 2006).
Opportunity-motivated entrepreneurship typi-
cally relates to technological upgrading and inno-
vation businesses that may be drivers of economic
structural change and development. It should be
noted that, in many cases, it is not easy to distin-
guish between these two types of entrepreneur-
ship because they often overlap among young
people. Furthermore, other than economic entre-
preneurship, young people are also increasingly
560 W or k a n d W or k M ig r at ion W i t h i n a n d Ac r o s s C ou n t r i e s
engaging in other entrepreneurial approaches like
social entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, and
even public entrepreneurship.1 With high unem-
ployment rates and a growing youth population
emerging as critical social issues in regions such as
sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, encourag-
ing young people to be self-employed and to start
businesses and support such enterprises can be a
source of new jobs and economic growth crucial
for youth development and societal stability. On
the other hand, new companies, often at high risk
of business failure, are even more at risk during
periods of weak financial markets spurred in part
by a major economic crisis.
Neither in Education, Employment,
nor in Training
To trace the patterns and trends of young peo-
ple in transitioning from school to work, many
indicators have been developed and widely used,
including youth unemployment rate over time, the
duration it takes to find a first job after school, type
of jobs and salaries, how much time spent to transit
from a temporary position to “standard” or “per-
manent” employment, and the percent of youth
who are neither in education nor in employment
or training (NEET). Recent statistics from several
economic regions indicate that trends in the afore-
mentioned indices are generally alarming (Eurostat,
2009; ILO, 2012a; OECD, 2012a). The incidence
of NEET, however, reported a slight improvement
over the past decade until it worsened during the
economic crisis of the late 2000s. In OECD coun-
tries, for instance, the NEET rate among youth
aged 15–24 has declined from 16.0% in 1998 to
13.7% in 2008, but has increased back up to 15.8%
in 2010, suggesting that the global financial crisis
has hit the younger generation harder than those
who are older (OECD, 2012a).
In some European countries such as
Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia,
and Switzerland, which have relatively higher youth
participation rates in education and the labor mar-
ket, the incidence of NEET is less than 10%. Yet,
in some countries, even developed ones such as
Ireland, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Spain, and Turkey,
the NEET rate exceeded 20% in 2010. In other
words, at least one out of five young people living in
these countries is not in school or working. The rela-
tive proportion of NEET rates can be determined
by many factors. In Mexico, for example, the large
population of young females who are not in school
or working but are raising families contributes to
the elevated percent of NEETs (OECD, 2012a). In
2010, 26.6% of 20- to 24-year-olds and 29.8% of
young adults aged 25–29 were identified as NEETs
in Mexico. In some Asian countries such as Korea
and Taiwan, the NEET group includes youth who
are not considered as being in formal education but
who are training for postsecondary institutions or
studying for graduate school entrance examinations.
The growing size of the NEET population in
some countries not only reflects worsening eco-
nomic conditions but also suggests possible soci-
etal problems because young people who are not
engaged in the schooling system or employment
tend to be involved in underground or criminal
activity. Those young people experiencing NEET
tend to be more detached from the labor market
and from society, which may mean they are less
likely to be reintegrated into the workforce. For
individuals, long periods of time in NEET can neg-
atively impact future career development, earnings
prospects, and personal well-being. Many research-
ers have observed the relationship between unem-
ployment and poor mental health; to society as a
whole, the incidence of NEET means lost human
capital, loss of tax revenues for national economies,
and higher social costs and instability.
Leaving School Too Early
Some young people, especially in develop-
ing countries, may never attend school and start
working at an early age. Clearly, this population
faces steep obstacles in being able to cope with
our changing global society. Across the major-
ity of developing countries, almost 14% of young
people aged 10–30 have never been to school. In
these countries, there is a prevalence of child labor,
where young children are often working in agricul-
ture or engaging in domestic household work. In
sub-Saharan Africa, 35% of youth are estimated to
be engaged in child labor, and in 7 of 29 African
countries, more than half of children aged 7–14
are working. These young people who have never
been to school are unlikely to ever enroll in school
or training. These patterns tend to be intergenera-
tional, in that child labor is passed from one gen-
eration to another (World Bank, 2006).
Along with youth who never enter school, there
are those young people who enter school but fail to
attain an elementary or secondary degree. In some
developing countries such as Mexico and Turkey,
only about half of young people graduate from
high school (OECD, 2012a). High school gradu-
ation rates among a majority of OECD countries
are much higher, exceeding 75%. On average, in
OECD countries, approximately 84% of young
people completed high school education in 2010.
These graduation rates give an indication of the
extent to which young adults leave school without
a high school diploma. The consequences of leaving
school before graduating are severe. Prematurely
dropping out of school can lead to lower wages and
make it difficult to escape poverty as an adult.
In the United States, for instance, in 2011, the
median income of adults older than 25 years who
had not completed high school was about $15,500,
whereas the median income of their counterparts
who had earned a high school credential, including
an equivalent General Educational Development
(GED) certificate, was approximately $23,500 (US
Census Bureau, 2012). In terms of unemployment
rates, a higher percentage of high school dropouts
are out of employment than are adults who obtained
a high school diploma (US Department of Labor,
2013). The consequences of leaving school early are
not only just about wages and long-term earnings;
research also shows that such individuals are more
likely to have health issues, use illegal drugs, and
engage in illicit activities, and are less likely overall
to engage in civic activities.
One important group of school leavers that has
received considerable media attention are young
girls who are forced out of school because of reli-
gious and political reasons. Forcing young women
out of school into domestic chores or early marriage
is a global concern. Delaying marriage can increase
a woman’s personal income and also increase eco-
nomic development for nation states. A single year
of primary school increases women’s earnings from
10% to 20%; this percentage gain is slightly higher
for each additional year of secondary education
(15–25%; Psacharopoulos & Patrinos, 2004; US
Agency for International Development [USAID],
2012). Females forced to leave school are prevented
from obtaining the benefits of education, economic
programs, and access to social networks. This prac-
tice perpetuates the cycle of poverty and magnifies
lost career opportunities.
Forced early marriages are also a means by which
traffickers exploit young people for use in religious
rituals, street begging, and the sex trade (United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime [UNODC],
2012). Globally, there has been strong evidence
of girls and boys being forced into prostitution or
exploitative labor by family members or traffick-
ers who abuse and exploit children. Estimates of
the number of young people in these inhuman
Sc h n e i de r , S aw, Br oda 561
situations are difficult to obtain, and, in general,
these youth are not factored into global assessments
of employment. One way to bring more attention
to these situations would be to consider the number
of young people in such circumstances when calcu-
lating unemployed youth.
Postsecondary Education
Both policy makers and students seem to agree
that the key to successful long-term employment is
to continue one’s education after secondary school.
In the United States, the transition to postsec-
ondary school is commonly described as moving
either into a 2- or 4-year postsecondary institu-
tion. Additionally, there are for-profit certification
programs for fields such as cosmetology and truck-
ing. In the OECD and some developing countries,
undergraduate postsecondary programs sometimes
admit students at earlier ages than in the United
States and are broadly referred to as tertiary edu-
cation with first and second university degrees
(which in the United States would be specified as
undergraduate and graduate degrees). Worldwide,
the enrollment ratio in tertiary education rose
from 18.9% in 2000 to 27.1% in 2009 (United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization [UNESCO], 2011). In regions such
as East Asia, the Pacific, Latin America, and the
Caribbean, the enrollment rate increase has been
dramatic. In East Asia, it has almost doubled in
the past decade alone.
40 Total tertiary enrollment
Total tertiary completion
Number of persons (millions)
30
20
10
0
2000
Fig. 34.2 Tertiary enrollment and completion in member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD), 1998–2011. Enrollment and completion are both measured in millions of people. Enrollment data applies
to all 15- to 19-year-olds, whereas completion data corresponds to 19- to 24-year-olds. Data obtained from OECD Stat Extracts,
http://stats.oecd.org.
562 W or k a n d W or k M ig r at ion W i t h i n a n d Ac r o s s C ou n t r i e s
As shown in Figure 34.2, enrolling in a postsec-
ondary institution does not always lead to degree
completion. In the United States, for example, this
is a growing problem. Most recent statistics show
that only 58% of first-time, full-time students who
enrolled in a 4-year college seeking a bachelor’s
degree in fall 2004 graduated from that institu-
tion within 6 years (or 150% of normal comple-
tion time; US Department of Education, 2012).
At 2-year institutions, the graduation rate is even
lower. For those who are first-time, full-time stu-
dents who enrolled in fall 2007, only 30% of them
completed a certificate or associate’s degree within
150% of the normal time required (US Department
of Education, 2012). Additionally, most young
people are taking longer to complete their degrees
(Bowen, Chingos, & McPherson, 2009; Schneider
& Stevenson, 1999). Apart from socially and aca-
demically disadvantaged backgrounds, many
other factors contribute to the increasing time to
graduation and the high drop-out rates in col-
lege, including rises in college price, declines in
collegiate resources, financial aid constraints, stu-
dent employment, and student-college academic
mismatch (Bound, Lovenheim, & Turner, 2012;
Bowen, Chingos, & McPherson, 2009).
In contrast to the United States, among OECD
countries, the graduation rates for tertiary educa-
tion have increased between 1995 and 2010, with
the sharpest increase between 1995 and 2000. It
has been suggested that these increasing rates of
2005 2010
Year
completion can be attributed to a shift from lon-
ger programs to those that are only 3  years long.
In Finland, the rise in bachelor’s degrees has been
traced to increases in more academically oriented
programs. In Spain, Turkey, and New Zealand,
the rise in graduation rates for 2-year programs
has been attributed to the development of new
advanced-level vocational training programs.
In the United States, the postsecondary system
has a relatively organized transfer process. Students
can transfer between institutions from one state
to another—and the credits are determined by
the receiving institution. The transfer from 2-year
institutions to 4-year ones is also determined by
the receiving institution, although more recently
efforts have been made to provide greater articula-
tion between the two systems to help with costs
and avoid the duplication of courses that extends
the time in undergraduate school.
Bologna Process
In the EU within the past decade there has
been a movement to allow for easier transfers
among tertiary institutions. This reform, known
as the “Bologna Process,” was designed to create
a European Higher Education Area (EHEA) that
offers broad access to high-quality tertiary educa-
tion and further promotes EU citizens’ mobility
and employability (European Higher Education
Area [EHEA], 1999). Allowing for more transfers
is one of the core elements of the Bologna Process
(London Communique, 2007). This is especially
important in an increasingly global labor market
because countries will have shortages of certain
types of jobs and skilled workers, and such an
agreement allows for a more mobile employable
workforce. To individuals, cross-national mobility
creates opportunities for personal fulfillment and
the development of competencies, such as foreign
languages and multicultural understanding, which
are increasingly crucial and valuable in today’s
global labor market.
In recent years, researchers from countries
involved in this European cooperation started to
examine the impact of the decade-old Bologna
Process on student mobility and graduate employ-
ment (Schomburg & Teichler, 2011). An inter-
national analysis indicates that, from 1999 to
2007, the growth of foreign students enrolled in
postsecondary institutions in the Europe 32 area
(including EU-27, EFTA-4, and Turkey) was
about 82% (Teichler, Ferencz, & Wachter, 2011).
Approximately 58% of all foreign students in
2007 were from outside Europe, suggesting that,
after adopting the Bologna Process, more young
people from other parts of the world were attracted
to pursuing tertiary education in European coun-
tries. Although there is no comprehensive inter-
national survey or study evaluating the impact of
the Bologna Process on graduate employment and
mobility, a recent graduate survey collecting data
from nine European countries shows that 5–10%
of bachelor’s degree graduates and a slightly higher
percent of master’s degree recipients work abroad
after graduation (Schomburg, 2011).
Promoting Careers in STEM
In recent years, STEM has received consider-
able attention with respect to career development
worldwide (Kearney, 2010). Technological innova-
tion has long been an economic driver in the United
States, with more than half of total GDP growth
over the past 50 years attributable to innovation
(Goldin & Katz, 2010). Given this success, it is not
surprising that the United States is emphasizing
the need for more workers in STEM (BLS, 2009;
National Science Board [NSB], 2010; President’s
Council [PCAST], 2010). The need for STEM
workers is not merely specific to the US economy
but has global implications. Technological innova-
tion drives export growth, supports high-quality
jobs, and is assumed to improve the overall com-
petitive position of the United States. The impor-
tance of STEM workers is being emphasized across
multiple industries and occupations. In the EU-27
countries, for example, the number of physical,
mathematical, and engineering science profes-
sionals employed grew by 36% between 2000 and
2008, although it has decreased by 16% during the
global economic crisis of 2009–2011 (EU Skills
Panorama, 2012). The demand for STEM-related
workers is projected to increase by 9% in the next
decade in the EU-27 countries.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that
employment in STEM occupations is expected to
grow faster than in non-STEM occupations (BLS,
2009). Despite the need for more STEM work-
ers, the supply of STEM talent is not keeping up
with the demand for these workers (BLS, 2009;
Lacey & Wright, 2009). Although the number of
students receiving degrees from 4-year institutions
has increased, the share of students graduating with
STEM degrees has declined, including fields such
as engineering where the demand is especially high.
STEM participation and achievement gaps are
also prevalent among gender and ethnic and racial
Sc h n e i de r , S aw, Br oda 563
groups. Women are less likely to enroll in most
STEM fields, and the proportion of blacks and
Hispanics is lower than whites in all STEM fields.
Even though the United States produces the
largest number of STEM degree recipients, when
accounting for the size of the population and the
number of overall degrees awarded, other coun-
tries, such as Germany, graduate a larger share
of STEM degree holders. These smaller propor-
tions are also evident in the labor market, where
the United States ranks 23rd among the OECD
countries for its employment share of young people
aged 25–34 in STEM fields (note again that these
rankings take into account the ratio of the numbers
employed and degree recipients in these fields).
Recognizing that STEM is increasingly valued
as an employment skill and also that the employ-
ability needs of countries are likely to vary by eco-
nomic development, it is not surprising that we
see considerable movement of young people from
country to country. It is important to underscore
that this movement is also developmentally driven,
in that most young adults today do not see them-
selves as having one occupation or staying at a par-
ticular job for their entire work lives. The migration
of workers is a reflection of the overall instability
of our workforce, changes in technology, and the
desire of young people to pursue their aspirations
at this particular time in their lives. With the delay
in marriage and childbearing and the increasing
length of time in school, many young people are
exploring new learning and life experiences in dif-
ferent cities and countries. This movement, which
is reflected in their occupational choices, should
not be seen necessarily as an indication of their
eventual jobs or careers. Bachelor degree recipients
work as waiters, and environmentalists take tour-
ists on recreational trips to secluded endangered
areas; it is not just those with low levels of educa-
tion doing the exploring. Future lawyers, doctors,
and computer scientists are all exploring new and
different work habitats to learn about how societies
across the globe operate.
Work and Migration
Migration is a long-standing theme throughout
human history and is considered one of the defin-
ing global phenomena in our contemporary world.
Recent statistics show that there are approximately
214 million international migrants across the
globe (United Nations Department of Economic
and Social Affairs [UNDESA], 2011a), in addi-
tion to about 740 million internal migrants who
564 W or k a n d W or k M ig r at ion W i t h i n a n d Ac r o s s C ou n t r i e s
move within-nation (United Nations Development
Programme [UNDP], 2009). Although historically,
most migrants moved from developing countries to
developed countries, demographers have noted an
increasing trend of people moving between devel-
oping countries or South-to-South movements
(International Organisation for Migration [IOM],
2011; Ratha & Shaw, 2007; Sanderson, 2010). In
global and domestic labor migration processes,
youth play a crucial role. Many studies suggest
that people tend to move from one place to another
while they are young and not yet burdened with
family obligations (e.g., McKenzie, 2008; Rogers
& Willikens, 1986; Schwartz, 1976). According to
the World Bank (2006), the proportion of young
adults within the larger flow of international
migrants is often higher than the proportion in
their countries of origin, but such proportions vary
across destination countries, ranging from a low of
17–20% into such countries as Canada and Russia
to a high of 50% into Costa Rica. A recent report
released by the UNDESA (2011b) estimated the
age range of 18–29 accounts for between 36% and
57% of today’s international migrants in different
countries. For some countries, youth population
accounts for a large share of internal migrants. In
China, for instance, in 2009, an estimated 58.4%
of 145 million rural-urban migrant workers were
young adults under age 30 (National Bureau of
Statistics of China, 2011). In African countries
such as Mali, Nigeria, and Tanzania, the increasing
trend of young people migrating within a country
for employment opportunities has also been docu-
mented (see Tacoli & Mabala, 2010).
Responding to the forces of globalization and
changing economic structures within a country,
growing numbers of young males and females are
migrating to find jobs or pursue better careers.
Despite the numbers of young adults who migrate,
little is known about the characteristics of this
population. One possible explanation of why
young work migrants are understudied rests on the
relative availability of immigration data (Massey,
2010; United Nations Population Fund [UNFPA],
2006; Zlotnik, 1998). Many countries lack a sys-
tem for continuous migration reporting or do not
process and release this information. Among those
nations that publish migration data, the meaning
and scope of the statistics can largely differ from
each other; thus, it is extremely difficult to synthe-
size trends or compare across nations. Furthermore,
many national statistical agencies provide only
aggregated data on the age structure of migration,
rarely offering cross-tabulations of age with other
characteristics of interest (McKenzie, 2008). The
aggregate statistics, for instance, do not provide
microdata on young migrants’ participation in
education and the labor market, including the
types of jobs they might be seeking.
Despite the absence of complete data on migra-
tion flows, there is an extensive body of literature
on domestic and transnational movements of
young populations. Utilizing data from one or
several countries, researchers have provided some
insights into the interrelationships among migra-
tion, age, education, geography, and job opportu-
nity. Since early work by Sjaastad (1962), a number
of research reports have indicated the tendency
of people to move from lower income regions to
higher income regions and also that migration
flows increase with education and decrease with
age and distance moved (Schwartz, 1976). Recent
evidence from selected European countries, includ-
ing Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands,
Norway, Slovenia, and Sweden, show that in 2008–
2009, the age distribution of foreign migrants gen-
erally peaks between age 20 and 29 (UNDESA,
2011b). For young adults, the decision to migrate
is often associated with important life transitions,
such as attending college, starting work, or getting
married.
Education as Vehicle of Work Migration
Several factors appear to be driving the large
number of young migrants today. The first, as noted
earlier, is the increasing numbers of youth complet-
ing some college or tertiary education. Migration
is highly impacted by educational background
(Schwartz, 1976; Wozniak, 2010). As formal
schooling and training provide general and trans-
ferable skills in the labor market, obtaining higher
education increases the potential of young graduates
to migrate in order to maximize returns on their
knowledge and capabilities. It has long been docu-
mented that migrants are better educated than their
counterparts who remain. From the perspective of
a human capital theory of labor migration, educa-
tion is a determinant of migration, suggesting that
better educated individuals tend to move from one
place to another in response to economic incentives
emerging from disequilibria across spatially segre-
gated job markets (Bowles, 1970; Sjaastad, 1962).
Education is considered a vehicle by which
young educated adults migrate from low economic
regions to high economic regions within and across
countries. This is true not only in developing
countries, but also among the developed ones. For
example, when examining the impact of migra-
tion on wages for a sample of young men from
France, De´tang-Dessendre, Drapier, and Jayet
(2004) find a positive self-selection for highly edu-
cated migrants, supporting the idea that migration
depends on seeking out the best job opportuni-
ties. In the 1990s, when Italian unemployment
became increasingly concentrated in the South,
the flow of workers from the South to the North
was mostly limited to well-educated young people
(D’Antonio, 2000). Individuals with tertiary-level
degrees are much more geographically mobile than
their less-educated peers, especially when mobil-
ity is defined as making a long-distance move
(Kodrzycki, 2001; Moretti, 2012; Wozniak, 2010).
In the United States, for example, roughly 45%
of university graduates reside out of their states
of birth by age 30, as compared to only 27% of
high school graduates (Greenwood, 1975; 1997).
Internationally, developing countries such as the
Philippines, India, Mexico, and China have the
highest emigration stocks of high-skilled work-
ers with postsecondary background expatriates in
high-income economies (Docquier & Marfouk,
2006). A number of small nations, for example,
Guyana, Jamaica, Haiti, and Trinidad and Tobago,
suffer the most from brain drain, where more than
two-thirds of college-educated nationals choose to
leave (Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development [OECD], 2008).
Another factor behind rising cross-border
mobility of young people is the expansion and glo-
balization of postsecondary education around the
world. For many young students, leaving home to
attend college or study abroad is the first step in
moving to a new region or country that may offer
more job opportunities. For host cities or countries,
student migration is an increasingly important
source of better educated and highly skilled work-
ers. Traditionally, many countries allow foreign
students to work for a period upon graduation and
to alter their residential status if they find long-term
employment. According to the International
Migration Outlook 2011 report (OECD, 2011),
about one in four international students will stay
in the countries in which they studied. Some stay
because of marriage to a resident of the country
of study. The other major reason is that employ-
ers from host countries have increasingly begun to
target such international graduates who are rela-
tively mobile and multilingual, which helps them
to compete more effectively in global markets.
Sc h n e i de r , S aw, Br oda 565
Today, more countries have developed policies
that treat young students as future skilled workers
who should be enticed to remain and contribute
to the development of the local economy. Several
Western countries, including France, Ireland, the
Netherlands, and Canada, have recently intro-
duced or extended their working permit system to
make access to employment easier for foreign stu-
dents (Khalid, 2009; Legrain, 2007).
Low-Skilled, Temporary Workers, and
Unemployment Among Young Migrants
Although student mobility may account for a
significant proportion of the border-crossing young
population, work migration is not limited to those
young adults who have higher educational attain-
ment and seek high-income occupations. Indirect
evidence suggests that youth are likely to be impor-
tant actors in low- and medium-skilled and tempo-
rary labor markets that require no college degree
(UNDESA, 2011b). Many developing and devel-
oped countries accept migrant workers on a tem-
porary basis under special programs for seasonal
workers or workers with specific skills. These tem-
porary worker migration programs (e.g., tempo-
rary workers, seasonal workers, guest workers, and
contract workers), often found in the agricultural,
construction, or tourism industries, are more likely
to favor young people who are flexible and able to
adjust to a new environment and demanding work.
In addition, several countries such as Germany,
Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Switzerland,
and the United States, have policies allowing
the recruitment of “trainees,” most of whom are
young adults, to work while improving their skills
(OECD, 2006). “Traineeships” in these countries
sometimes reflect a camouflaged form of tempo-
rary lower skilled worker migration.
Poor employment prospects in many countries,
compounded by the recent economic crisis, have
placed many young migrants at risk of margin-
alization in the labor market. Between 2008 and
2011, the number of NEET youth rose sharply,
especially among migrants (OECD, 2012c). This
is particularly true in such countries as Greece,
Spain, Sweden, Ireland, and Italy. In some devel-
oped countries, statistics on unemployment among
migrants show that it is higher among young
foreign-born workers than among older migrants
or their native-born counterparts. As reported by
the OECD (2012c) in 2011, about 23% of young
immigrants were unemployed, whereas about 19%
of national youth and 11% of foreign-born adults
566 W or k a n d W or k M ig r at ion W i t h i n a n d Ac r o s s C ou n t r i e s
were out of employment at the same time. Similarly,
the share of temporary and part-time employment
in the labor market has increased at a faster rate for
young migrants than for native-born young people.
In sum, there appears to be a dichotomy within
the labor market among young migrants. On one
hand, increasing high-skilled labor demand gener-
ated by economic growth and technological change
in some cities and countries provides relatively bet-
ter job opportunities for young adults from other
regions within and across countries. On the other
hand, with an increase in temporary and part-time
employment since the recent global financial crisis,
many young movers have encountered compara-
tively high difficulty accessing quality, sustainable
employment. Young adults in new environments
are more likely to be unemployed or tend to enter
the labor market through low-quality jobs that
are low-paid, afford little job security, provide no
training opportunities, or do not match their skill
level. Growing duality in the labor market remains
a general concern in helping members of younger
generations navigate their career development.
Future Directions
To understand the work and migration pat-
terns of young people, it is critical to document
the work opportunities and their relationship to
postsecondary pathways across both developed
and developing countries. As the number of young
adults has increased, job opportunities for this
group of both educated and low-skilled work-
ers has decreased. Thus, the challenge worldwide
is to create high-quality jobs for youth that meet
young people’s expectations and lead to permanent
employment. Presently, we are facing a situation in
which the youth population is outpacing the num-
ber of available employment possibilities. We need
to be more critical and sensitive to the types of jobs
that are likely to provide young adults with viable
futures, such as those in STEM.
Across countries, one common indicator of
the occupational well-being of youth is based on
unemployment. However, unemployment figures
tend to be somewhat misleading because certain
populations are not counted, and in very poor
countries unemployment rates are confounded by
the few numbers of individuals who are actually in
the labor market. We need to construct better mea-
sures of work and understand the multiple path-
ways that young adults take, including part-time
work and part-time schooling and those in appren-
ticeship programs.
 The work migration among young people is a
reflection of the instability of the workforce over-
all, changes in economic structure, and the aspira-
tions of young people to pursue their ideal career at
this particular time in their lives. The duality of the
migrant labor market for young people—those who
are highly skilled and those who are willing to work
but can find few opportunities for jobs that match
their skill set—reflects the bifurcation that is present
in the young adult workforce overall. To enhance
economic and personal well-being, the worldwide
challenge is providing young adults reasonable path-
ways to navigate their entry into viable careers that
afford them high-quality sustainable employment.
Certainly, one solution to these problems is
more research, for example, learning which experi-
ences led some to have an easier, more successful
time moving into stable employment. What seems
to us as even more pressing is calling attention to
the numbers of young people out of work and their
prospects for employment among nation states,
especially in countries with political and economic
strife. Eradicating diseases, especially among
young children, is a major concern among many
developing and underdeveloped countries, but a
life without meaningful work can be as harmful
to individual well-being, as well as inciting social,
economic, and political instability. The challenge
is clearly more education opportunities, but, as we
have shown, in some situations those with postsec-
ondary degrees are more likely to be unemployed
than those who only attended secondary school
and received some technical training. From our
perspective, the more urgent task is creating jobs
for young people—whether in agriculture, technol-
ogy, or other fields—that require knowledge and
skill sets for tomorrow.
Acknowledgement
This material is based upon work supported
by the National Science Foundation under Grant
No. DRL-0815295. Any opinions, findings, and
conclusions or recommendations expressed in this
material are those of the authors and do not nec-
essarily reflect the views of the National Science
Foundation.
Note
1 Social entrepreneurship refers to the creation of viable socio-
economic structures, relations, institutions, and practices
that generate and sustain social outcomes and/or impacts
(Peredo & McLean, 2006); intrapreneurship refers to
the practice of entrepreneurship within an existing large
organization (Hitt, Ireland, Camp, & Sexton, 2001),
for example, 3M and Google give certain freedom and
resources to employees to create their own projects. Public
entrepreneurship refers to entrepreneurial activities that
involve innovations from those who combine public and
private resources in pursuit of their social objectives and/or
values for citizens (Morris & Jones, 1999).
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 C H A P T E R

35 Love, Sex, and Marriage

Across Cultures

Elaine Hatfield, Yu-Ming Mo, and Richard L. Rapson

Abstract
Most scholars today believe that passionate and companionate love are cultural universals—existing
in all cultures and historical eras. In this chapter, the authors begin by discussing cultural and
evolutionary theories about what people in different societies and in different eras tend to prefer
when selecting mates. They then summarize the traits that have been considered romantic, sexual,
and marital ideals in the West and in much of the world. Next, the authors discuss the advantages and
disadvantages of arranged marriages versus marriage for love. The chapter concludes by speculating
about the social changes that are on the horizon and how they may affect people’s preferences in mate
selection.
Key Words:  passionate love, companionate love, physical attractiveness, arranged marriage and love
matches, evolutionary theory, mate selection

Love is divine madness. A state of intense longing for union with

— Sufi poet Rumi
Love is a universal human emotion. Nonetheless,
culture is known to have a profound impact on
people’s definitions of love, their romantic and
marital ideals, whether they marry for love or have
an arranged marriage, and how they fare in such
marriages. Cultural studies allow us to gain an
understanding of the extent to which people’s emo-
tional lives are written in their cultural histories, as
well as “writ in their genes,” and in the interaction
of the two.
Defining Passionate and
Companionate Love
Scholars generally distinguish between two
kinds of love: passionate love and companionate
love. Passionate love is a powerful emotional state.
It has been defined as:
another… . Reciprocated love (union with the
other) is associated with fulfillment and ecstasy.
Unrequited love (separation) is associated with
feelings of emptiness, anxiety, and despair.
(Hatfield, Rapson, & Martel, 2007, pp. 760–761)
People in all cultures recognize the power of
passionate love. In South Indian Tamil families,
for example, a person who falls head-over-heels in
love with another is said to be suffering from may-
akkam—dizziness, confusion, intoxication, and
delusion. The wild hopes and despairs of love are
thought to “mix you up.”
Companionate love is a far less intense emotion.
It combines feelings of attachment, commitment,
and intimacy. It has been defined as:
The affection and tenderness we feel for those with
whom our lives are deeply entwined.
(Hatfield et al., 2007, p. 761)

570
The Universality of Love
and Sexual Desire
Passionate love is as old as humankind. In the
Istanbul Museum of the Ancient Orient is dis-
played the oldest love poem in the world—writ-
ten by a priestess. In 2030 BCE, a Sumerian scribe
pressed the poem into wet clay using a reed stylus,
then baked the clay. It reads: “Bridegroom, I would
be taken by you to the bedchamber. You have cap-
tivated me. Let me stand trembling before you …”
Today, most anthropologists agree that passionate
love and lust are universal experiences, transcend-
ing culture and time. Drawing on a sampling of
tribal societies from the Standard Cross-Cultural
Sample, Jankowiak and Fischer (Jankowiak, 1995)
found that in almost all far-flung societies, young
lovers talked about passionate love, recounted tales
of love, sang love songs, and spoke of the longings
and anguish of infatuation. When lovers’ pas-
sionate affections clashed with parents’ or elders’
wishes, young couples sometimes eloped—a risky
proposition since, in earlier times, those who wan-
dered too far from their own communities often
perished.
Social anthropologists have explored folk
conceptions of love in such diverse cultures
as the People’s Republic of China, Indonesia,
Turkey, Nigeria, Trinidad, Morocco, the Fulbe
of North Cameroon, the Mangrove (an aborigi-
nal Australian community), the Mangaia in the
Cook Islands, Palau in Micronesia, and the Taita
of Kenya. Although cultural values naturally have
some impact on the subtle shadings of meaning
assigned to the construct of love, in all these soci-
eties, people’s conceptions of passionate love and
other feelings of the heart appear to be surprisingly
similar. One impact of globalization (and the ubiq-
uitous MTV, Hollywood and Bollywood movies,
chat rooms, and foreign travel) may be to ensure
that when people around the world speak of “pas-
sionate love,” they are talking about much the same
thing (see Hatfield, Rapson, & Aumer-Ryan, 2008,
and Jankowiak, 1995, for a review of this research).
Few scholars have attempted to find out
whether companionate love (the love of married
couples) is a cultural universal. Most scholars
assume that companionate love is indeed found in
all cultures (Hatfield & Rapson, 2010; Ortigue,
Bianchi-Demicheli, Patel, Frum, & Lewis, 2010).
A few historians, however, are skeptical. Stone
(1977), for example, in The Family, Sex, and
Marriage: In England 1500–1800, insisted that,
in England during this era, the relationships
between men and women were remote, insisting
that because life was indeed “nasty, brutish, and
short, people failed to develop strong emotional
ties to anyone.” Historians have amassed consider-
able evidence to support this contention. So at the
moment, although scholars are fairly certain that
passionate and companionate love are to be found
in all cultures, they are not yet sure if such emo-
tions are common in all cultures or are fairly rare.
* * *
When studying love, sex, and marriage across
cultures, anthropologists, neurobiologists, and psy-
chophysiologists tend to focus on the pan-human
characteristics of love and marriage. Nonetheless,
cultural, environmental, and historical imperatives
also exert a profound impact on people’s romantic
and sexual attitudes, emotions, and behaviors. We
consider a good deal of this research, in a cultural
and biosocial mélange, in the following sections.
The Romantic, Sexual, and Marital Ideal
Characteristics Considered Desirable
in a Partner
Since Darwin’s (1871) classic treatise The
Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, cul-
tural and evolutionary theorists have attempted to
learn more about mate preferences. In an impres-
sive cross-cultural study, David Buss (1989a)
asked more than 10,000 men and women from 37
countries to indicate what characteristics they val-
ued in potential mates. The cultures represented
a tremendous diversity of geographic, cultural,
political, ethnic, religious, racial, economic, and
linguistic groups. Participants in the various cul-
tures varied in age, too: ranging from a mean age
of 16.96 years of age (in New Zealand) to 28.71
(in West Germany). Buss was interested in cul-
tural universals. He proposed (and found) that
whereas men worldwide cared greatly about their
partners’ looks and chastity, women cared more
about status, financial prospects, and potential
for being a good father. Scholars such as Kim
Wallen (1989) have taken issue with Buss’s con-
clusions. Wallen, for example, argues that culture,
geography, and financial resources turn out to be
a better predictor of men’s and women’s prefer-
ences than gender. In a reanalysis of Buss’s data,
Wallen found that men and women’s preferences
differed more in cultures where men possessed the
most power and income (such as Iran and Asian
nations). In more egalitarian cultures, gender dif-
ferences were small. In China, India, Indonesia,
Iran, Israel (the Palestinian Arabs), and Taiwan,
H at f i e l d, Mo, R a p s on 571
for example, young people were insistent that their
mates should be “chaste.” In Finland, France,
Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, and West
Germany, on the other hand, most judged chastity
to be relatively unimportant. A few respondents
even jotted notes in the margin of the question-
naire, indicating that, for them, chastity would
be a disadvantage. In spite of the amazing array of
mating arrangements across the world, one phe-
nomenon that is shared by all societies, regardless
of local mating practices, is the fact that falling
in love is not a matter of chance. Rather, there
exist forces that push two individuals into even-
tually entering into a committed relationship. In
traditional societies where arranged marriage is
practiced, the alliances formed between the two
families and potential resource exchanges are the
central determinants of marriage. However, even
in cultures where the extended family exerts little
to no influence on mate choice, people still do not
fall into love randomly.
Love cannot exist without attraction. On the
basis of research with college students in several
Western and Asian countries, Aron and colleagues
(1989) identified the major precursors of falling
in love. These include reciprocal liking, personality,
similarity, familiarity, social influence, filling needs,
arousal, readiness, specific cues, isolation, mysteri-
ousness, and appearance. Among personality traits,
intelligence, kindness, and generosity are desirable
in long-term partners (see Reis & Aron, 2008, for
a further discussion of the antecedents of passion-
ate and companionate love). But before the other
precursors can take effect, physical appearance is
generally the first thing we notice about another
person (Bailey, Durante, & Geary, 2011). In one
early study (Hatfield, Aronson, Abrahams, &
Rottmann, 1966), randomly assigned college stu-
dents at the University of Minnesota went on a
dance date with another participant. The research-
ers were interested in characteristics that predict the
enjoyment of the date and the desire to go on a sec-
ond date with one another. In spite of the fact that
the researchers had collected voluminous data on
participants’ personalities, intelligence, social skills,
and the like, it turned out that the only significant
predictor of attraction was men’s and women’s
physical attractiveness—a characteristic that was
equally important to both. Today, researchers such
as Finkel (2012) and Eastwick et al. (2013) still find
that although American men and women think that
men are far more preoccupied with appearance than
are women, in fact—in such thoroughly modern
572 L o v e , S e x , a n d M a r r i ag e Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
real-life-situations as computer matching, pick-ups,
and speed dating—both men and women appear to
care (and to care equally) about a potential partner’s
looks (see Sprecher et al., 2008, and Eastwick et al.,
2013, for a review of this research).
Traditionally, standards of attractiveness were
thought to arise through cultural transmission and
hence would vary according to local customs and
norms (Hatfield & Sprecher, 1986). In fact, tak-
ing a brief trip around the world quickly reveals
a plethora of beauty-enhancing practices that
may at first seem bizarre to many Westerners. For
example, among the women of the Kayan Lahwi
from Burma, a popular beauty-enhancing practice
involves placing increasing numbers of brass rings
around their necks in order to elongate them. In
Sepik River, Papua New Guinea men are decorated
with painful “crocodile scarifications,” which are
thought to prove their courage and to increase their
physical appeal. Among the women of the Mursi
tribe in Ethiopia, a beauty-enhancing practice
involves inserting a large plate in the lower lip in
order to stretch it.
Despite such cultural variability, recent research
has revealed that a few physical characteristics are
universally preferred. The perception of physical
attractiveness is robust to the point that consensus
in attractiveness has been found between people
from different cultures, between adults and infants,
and between humans and chickens (Gangestad &
Scheyd, 2005).
One trait that is thought to be universally
unattractive is fluctuating asymmetry (FA)—devia-
tion from perfect bilateral symmetry. FA arises
as a function of an individual’s ability to resist
developmental perturbations caused by patho-
gens. Those who are less able to resist pathogens
should therefore possess greater FA. In this way,
FA can be thought of as an honest signal of an
individual’s genetic fitness. Consistent with this
assumption, research has found FA to be inversely
related to facial attractiveness (Scheib, Gangestad,
& Thornhill, 1999). Another universally attractive
trait is facial averageness—faces with features that
are approximately average in size are judged as more
attractive than are faces with features that deviate
from the norm. This may be because average facial
features are indicators of good health (Rhodes
et al., 2001). Furthermore, average faces approxi-
mate the prototypical face of the population and
hence the information they convey may be easier
to process and are thus preferred (Winkielman &
Cacioppo, 2001). Other characteristics that may
be universally preferred include blemish-free and
sore-free skin (Symons, 1979) and lustrous hair
(Etcoff, 1999).
Many other characteristics are universally pre-
ferred but gender dependent. One such characteris-
tic is waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). For women, having
a hip that is relatively larger than the waist has been
found to be sexually attractive in many cultures,
with a high cross-cultural consensus of an hour-
glass figure of approximately 0.7 WHR being the
ideal female body form, although there does exist
some cultural variability. WHR is thought to be a
female fertility cue: a large hip is an indicator of
sufficient storage of lower body fat that functions
as the primary source of nutrient for the fetus
during pregnancy and as an indicator of the abil-
ity to give birth without complication, whereas a
relatively narrower waist is an indicator of nonpreg-
nancy. An hourglass figure therefore advertises that
the woman is highly capable of childbirth but is
not currently pregnant. In addition, women with
greater WHR are more likely to experience various
health problems. The preference for the hourglass
figure is so strong that it is evident even for con-
genitally blind men (Karremans, Frankenhuis, &
Arons, 2010). This preference for the hourglass fig-
ure exists in a variety of cultures, even though the
ideal weight in those cultures may vary greatly. It is
the shape, not the weight that matters.
Because men cannot become pregnant, it fol-
lows that the hourglass figure should not be consid-
ered to be an attractive male trait. Consistent with
this assumption, a WHR of 0.9 has been found
to be ideal for men (Singh, 1994), which is much
higher than the ideal WHR for women. On the
other hand, a high shoulder-to-hip ratio (SHR), or
a v-shaped torso, has been found to reflect the ideal
male body shape, presumably because having a high
SHR advertises the ability to engage in hunting and
combative activities, which were closely linked to
male reproductive success during much of human
evolutionary history (Hughes & Gallup, 2002).
Although the aforementioned traits convey
important information that is fundamental to
human survival and reproduction, and hence
may not vary greatly in their attractiveness value
across cultures, other traits are clearly influenced
by culture. Such cultural-bound traits may emerge
through the two separate but interrelated cul-
tural evolutionary pathways of transmitted culture
and evoked culture (Cosmides & Tooby, 1992).
Transmitted culture involves learning particular
cultural practices through social learning or through
behavioral modeling (Gangestad, Haselton, &
Buss, 2006). For instance, female pubic and axil-
lary hair removal did not become a widespread
beauty-enhancing practice in Western cultures
until recent times. The cause of this shift in prac-
tice can likely be attributed to the modeling of new
standards of bodily grooming practices through
marketing ploys to promote spurious hygiene
(Riddell, Varto, & Hodgson, 2010) followed by
reinforcement through social learning between
individuals. In addition, people may model the
mate choices of others (Place, Todd, Penke, &
Aspendorpf, 2010), and, as a consequence, some
personal characteristics may become especially
desirable within a culture. Because different cul-
tures transmit different information about beauty
standards, transmitted culture can thus be con-
sidered the primary mechanism that gives rise to
the amazing variety of beauty-enhancing practices
around the world.
The concept of evoked culture, on the other
hand, presupposes a universal domain-specific
psychology that responds adaptively to local
ecological conditions (Gangestad et al., 2006).
In this view, cultural psychological differences
emerged because people of different cultural
backgrounds are exposed to different environ-
mental stimuli and must therefore process dif-
ferent sets of cultural information, which then
generates different adaptive behavioral responses.
In other words, humans have evolved a sophisti-
cated mating psychology that takes into account
local conditions and may increase, decrease, or
shift the preferences for characteristics sought
in a partner in order to make fitness-optimizing
mating decisions (Gangestad & Simpson, 2000).
For example, a study involving participants from
30 countries between the ages of 16 to 40 years
revealed that women in countries of poor health
(as measured by the National Health Index) had
stronger preferences for highly masculine men
(DeBruine, Jones, Crawford, Welling, & Little,
2010). The researchers explained this phenomenon
in terms of women’s conditional mate preferences
for men who are able to sire offspring who can
better resist pathogens and thereby survive under
such harsh condition. Similarly, another study
involving 29 cultures revealed a positive relation-
ship between local pathogen prevalence and the
importance of physical attractiveness in a partner
(Gangestad & Buss, 1993). Characteristics that
we presently look for in a mate may be the result
of reproductive advantages our ancestors enjoyed
H at f i e l d, Mo, R a p s on 573
for having sought out these very same traits in
their mates during human evolutionary history.
However, because human conditions varied,
each trait may have had different fitness conse-
quences under different ecological and cultural
contexts. Furthermore, these different responses
may become the root of different cultural norms.
For example, in environments where long-term
biparental care is necessary for offspring survival,
the culture may come to value long-term com-
mitment between spouses, and moral codes and
institutional policies may gravitate toward main-
taining this type of relationship.
Weight is the most notorious trait that dif-
fers in its attractiveness value across cultures as
a function of evoked culture. In modern Western
culture, women strive to stay slim and men strive
to become strong and muscular in order to appear
attractive. In the United States, fat college men
are less popular and have a more dismal social
life than do their slimmer peers. Heavier college
women are also less likely to be in a relationship
and have fewer sexual experiences. However,
a quick survey of world opinion would quickly
reveal that thinness is far from a universal beauty
standard. In many parts of Africa, the ideal
female body weight is much heavier than the
Western ideal, and among Native Hawaiian and
Samoan cultures, being “big” is the equivalent
to being beautiful. One ecological factor under-
lying the variation in ideal female body weight
is food scarcity. In cultures suffering from food
scarcity, possessing excess storage of fat provides
a survival advantage for both genders, but the
effect is multiplied for women because additional
storage of fat is needed not just for survival, but
for childbirth as well. Our universal but flexible
mind takes these local conditions into account
to generate adaptive responses. In cultures where
starvation is prevalent, the adaptive responses
involve a shifting of male preferences for larger
women. Together with transmitted culture
effects, largeness eventually became the female
beauty standard in these cultures. Consequently,
eating disorders related to ideal beauty standards
that are common in the West—such as anorexia
nervosa and bulimia nervosa—are largely absent
in cultures with food shortage.
Other lines of research have demonstrated
that, in the West, young women are especially
flexible in the mating strategies they employ—
depending on relationship context (short-term or
long-term), ecological and social conditions, and
574 L o v e , S e x , a n d M a r r i ag e Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
cyclical fertility status (Gangestad, Garver-Apgar,
Simpson, & Cousins, 2007). During the fertile
phase of their reproductive cycles, women experi-
ence increased interest in extra-pair relationships
when their current partners are unattractive,
show increased short-term mating interest in
highly masculine men, place greater impor-
tance on the physical attractiveness of a partner
(Gangestad, Thornhill, & Garver-Apgar, 2010),
and dress in a sexier manner. This shift in pref-
erence has not been found for women who are
seeking long-term committed relationships. Men
also shift their preferences based on mating con-
text. For example, when looking for short-terms
mates, men place greater importance on the
attractiveness of women’s bodies over women’s
faces (Confer, Perilloux, & Buss, 2010).
Both men and women also respond flex-
ibly to the local availability of potential partners.
During economic recession, women may increase
their spending on beauty products in an effort to
attract a shrinking base of financially stable men.
In a cross-cultural study involving 48 cultures, it
was found that in cultures where women outnum-
ber men, the entire population tended to be more
promiscuous, whereas the opposite was true when
men outnumber women (Schmitt, 2005). Because
men on average possess a stronger preference than
women toward promiscuity by default (Buss &
Schmitt, 1993), in cultures where women outnum-
ber men, men are better able to exercise their pre-
ferred mating strategy through sheer opportunity.
But when women are the scarcer commodity, they
possess more power to exercise their default mat-
ing strategy of long-term, monogamy-based rela-
tionships (Schmitt, 2005). As many cross-cultural
studies on love and attraction have demonstrated,
despite the huge variety of customs in which love
relationships are formed around the world, the
bases of these relationships are far from random
and are heavily hinged on basic mechanisms of
attraction.
Deal Breakers
Joseph Carey Merrick—better known as the
Elephant Man—was arguably the least attractive
man who ever lived. He was denied many of the
life’s opportunities because of his foul appearance,
including any chance of a romantic relationship.
Similarly, in classic novels such as Hunchback of
Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera, physi-
cally deformed main characters inevitably had
their quests for love end in tragedy. Surely, some
characteristics are so appalling that the possession
of them become “deal breakers” that end all pos-
sibility of a romantic or sexual relationship.
Although a characteristic such as a physical
deformity is immediately apparent, other char-
acteristics do not rear their ugly heads until two
people have already dived deep into a committed
relationship. Then, these deal breakers may push
the relationship into dissolution. Cunningham
and colleagues (2005), in a series of studies with
American college students, identified major cat-
egories of behaviors that may be responsible for the
termination of a relationship. Among them, intru-
sive behaviors—harmful behaviors that are inten-
tionally directed toward the partner (e.g. physical
abuse, being overly controlling, being overly criti-
cal of the partner)—best predicted relationship
dissatisfaction and termination. Norm violations—
intentional behaviors that violate societal stan-
dards—also predicted relationship dissatisfaction
and termination. Having undesirable personality
traits may also force the partner to terminate the
relationship. In a longitudinal study of American
couples followed from courtship (in the 1930s) to
the 1980s, the strongest personality predictors for
divorce were neuroticism or negative emotionality
and lack of impulse control from the male partner
(Kelly & Conley, 1987).
Men and women may possess reproductive
interests and sets of evolved sexual strategies that
are at odds with each other. It then follows that
there should be gender differences in what con-
stitutes a romantic deal breaker, with men and
women becoming offended by the other’s preferred
sexual strategy. Consistent with this assumption,
research has found American women to be more
upset by their partners’ sexual assertiveness and
aggressiveness, whereas men are more upset by
their partners’ sexual withholding. In addition,
women were upset by their partners’ inconsiderate,
neglecting, and condescending behavior, whereas
men were upset by their partners’ moodiness and
physical self-absorption (Buss, 1989b). Across 37
cultures, Buss (1989a) found men to have a univer-
sal preference for long-term mates who are youth-
ful and physically attractive and women to have a
universal preference for long-term mates who are
of relatively high status. Given these preferences,
being overly homely for females and being penni-
less for males may both serve as deal breakers for
a romantic relationship. Among American married
couples, the decline in the wife’s physical appear-
ance has more negative consequences for marital
sexuality compared to the decline in the husband’s
physical appearance (Margolin & White, 1987).
Of course, at some point, people may decide
that no relationship is better than the inferior offer-
ings available to them.
Marriage for Love Versus Arranged
Marriages in Tribal Societies
Cross-cultural surveys document the variety of
mate selection systems that have existed and still do
exist in traditional societies throughout the world.
They provide information about the ubiquity of
polygamy versus monogamy in tribal societies
and indicate who generally possesses the power to
arrange marriages.
Polygamy Versus Monogamy
Fisher (1989) studied the marital arrangements
of 853 tribal societies sampled in the Ethnographic
Atlas (which contains anthropological informa-
tion on more than 1,000 representative preindus-
trial societies throughout the world). She found
that although almost all societies (84%) permitted
polygyny (allowing men to marry more than one
wife), men rarely exercised this option. Only about
10% of men had more than one wife. Most had just
one. A few remained unmarried. In 16% of societ-
ies, monogamy was prescribed. Polyandry (which
allows women to marry more than one husband)
was extremely rare. (Only 0.5% of societies permit-
ted this type of marital arrangement.)
Theorists such as Wilson and Daly (1992) have
observed, however, that although in theory men
and women may be required to be faithful to their
mate, in many situations, it is to a man’s or wom-
an’s benefit to break the rules and “mate poach.”
Thus, as a consequence of their evolutionary heri-
tage, so the argument goes, humans are likely to
possess cognitive structures designed to deal with
a multitude of cultural arrangements and contin-
gencies (see Barkow, Cosmides & Tooby, 1992;
Hrdy, 1999; and Wilson & Daly, 1992, for a dis-
cussion of the factors that make it advantageous [or
costly] for men and women to be monogamous or
to seek a variety of sexual partners). It seems, then,
that although societies allow a variety of marital
arrangements, in fact, monogamy is probably the
most common societal arrangement.
Who Possesses the Power to Decide?
As we observed earlier, the Ethnographic Atlas
contains anthropological information on more
than 1,000 preindustrial societies throughout the
H at f i e l d, Mo, R a p s on 575
world. When Broude and Green (1983) sampled
186 of these groups, they found that, in most
tribal societies, parents, kin, and young men and
women were supposed to consult with one another
about possible mates in this most important of
family decisions. In most societies, however, men
had considerably more power than did women in
determining their own fates. In only a minority of
societies were men and women allowed complete
power in selecting their own mates.
Modern-Day Societies: Marriage
for Love Versus Arranged Marriage
In the West, before 1700, no society ever equated
le grand passion with marriage. In the 12th century,
in The Art of Courtly Love, Andreas Capellanus
(1174/1957) stated that:
everybody knows that love can have no place
between husband and wife… . For what is love but
an inordinate desire to receive passionately a furtive
and hidden embrace? But what embrace between
husband and wife can be furtive, I ask you, since
they may be said to belong to each other and may
satisfy all of each other’s desires without fear that
anybody will object? (p. 100)
And Capellanus wasn’t even talking about pas-
sionate love—just love. To make his argument per-
fectly clear, he added: “We declare and we hold as
firmly established that love cannot exert its powers
between two people who are married to each other”
(p. 106).
Shakespeare may have written a scattering of
romantic comedies in which passionately mis-
matched couples hurtled toward marriage, but his
plays were the exception. Until 1500, most courtly
love songs, plays, and legends assumed a darker
ending—passionate love was either unrequited,
unconsummated, or it spun down to family trag-
edy ending in the suicide or death of the lovers. As
late as 1540, Alessandro Piccolomini would write
that “love is a reciprocity of soul and has a different
end and obeys different laws from marriage. Hence
one should not take the loved one to wife” (Hunt,
1959, p. 206). True to his times, and anticipating
the sweeping changes that would be sparked by the
18th-century Enlightenment, Piccolomini, as he
approached death, began to change his mind about
the value of love in marriage.
In the great societies of Asia—China, Japan, and
India (lands of arranged marriage, at least since the
end of the 17th century) and thousands of haiku
poems, Noh plays, and heroic legends later—the
576 L o v e , S e x , a n d M a r r i ag e Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
notion that passionate love and sexual desire are
bound to end badly, with shame, thwarted hopes
for marriage, eventual ruin, and suicide, has been
embedded in the Eastern psyche as an Eternal
Truth. Classical tales recount the doomed couple’s
suicidal journey to a chosen place, leaving forever
behind them familiar scenes, agonizing mental
conflicts, and the last tender farewells (Mace &
Mace, 1980).
For today’s young individualistic Americans
and Europeans, such tales of forbidden romance
may seem melodramatic. But to young Asian
romantics, who knew that passion had little chance
of flowering into marriage, the tales stood as sub-
lime tragedies. In traditional cultures, it was young
lovers who had to adapt, not society. Individual
happiness mattered little; what was important
was the well-being of the family and the main-
tenance of social order. As one Chinese woman
asserted: “Marriage is not a relation for personal
pleasure, but a contract involving the ancestors, the
descendants, and the property” (Mace & Mace,
1980, p. 134).
Arranged Marriages
Throughout history, cultures have varied mark-
edly in who possessed the power to select romantic,
sexual, and marital partners. As we have seen, in
the distant past, in most societies, parents, kin, and
the community usually had the power to arrange
things as they chose. Marriage was assumed to be
an alliance between two families. Families might
also consult with religious specialists, oracles, and
matchmakers (Jeedigunta, 2012). When con-
templating a union, parents, kin, and their advi-
sors were generally concerned with a number of
background questions. What was the young per-
son’s caste, status, family background, religion,
and economic position? Did his family possess
any property? How big was her dowry? Would
he fit in with the entire family? In Indian fami-
lies, for example, what families cared most about
in arranging a marriage was religion (whether one
was a Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, or Christian), caste,
social class, education, and family background
(Bumroongsook, 1992; Jeedigunta, 2012). If things
looked promising, parents and go-betweens began
to talk about the exchange of property, dowries,
and the young couple’s future obligations and liv-
ing arrangements.
Some problems were serious enough to rule out
any thought of marriage. Sometimes religious advi-
sors would chart the couples’ horoscopes. Those
born under the wrong sign might be forbidden to
marry (Bumroongsook, 1992). Generally, young
people were forbidden to marry anyone who was
too closely related (say, a brother or sister, or a cer-
tain kind of cousin). Sometimes, they were for-
bidden to marry foreigners. (In Thailand, Thais
were often forbidden to marry Chinese, Indian,
Japanese, Mons, or Malay suitors [Bumroongsook,
1992]). Similar assets (caste, family status, land,
and money) have been found to be important in a
variety of countries, such as India, Japan, Morocco,
and Thailand.
Today, in many parts of the world, parents
and matchmakers still arrange their children’s
marriages. Arranged marriages are common in
India, in the Muslim countries, in South Asia,
in sub-Saharan Africa, and in cultural enclaves
throughout the remainder of the world.
These days, even in the most traditional of
societies, however, parents and husbands are gen-
erally forced to balance conflicting interests. The
Moroccan tribal world, for example, is definitely a
man’s world. Men possess absolute authority over
their wives and children. They possess the power
to take several wives. They often promise their
sons and daughters to potential allies at very young
ages. Yet, even in Moroccan families, things do not
always happen as they are “supposed” to. In theory,
men may possess all the power, but in fact they do
not. Joseph and Joseph’s (1987) vivid descriptions
of Moroccan family life make it clear that, even
in that traditional society, compromise is often
required. When “all-powerful” Moroccan fathers
try to force their children into unappealing mar-
riages, sympathetic family members may employ
an avalanche of strategies to thwart them. Young
lovers may enlist an army of mothers, uncles,
brothers, neighbors, and business partners to plead,
threaten, and haggle on their behalf. Mothers may
warn prospective brides about their sons’ “faults.”
Young men may complain that an undesirable
bride is a witch. Young people may threaten to kill
themselves. Many rely on witchcraft or magical
charms to get their way. Sometimes these desperate
stratagems work; sometimes they don’t.
Within a single society, arrangements often
vary from ethnic group to ethnic group, class
to class, region to region, and family to family
(Bumroongsook, 1992).
In contemporary societies, both East and West,
most young men and women do meet, fall in love,
feel sexual desire, and live together or marry. In
the next section, we discuss the revolution that is
occurring in the ways young people (heterosexual
and homosexual) currently select their romantic,
sexual, and marital partners. We will see that,
throughout the world, parental power is crumbling
and arranged marriages are being replaced by the
ideal of marriage for love (Hatfield & Rapson,
1996; Jeedigunta, 2012).
Marriage for Love
Different cultures traditionally have had very
different views about the role of love in marriage.
Cultures with arranged marriages viewed love as
an explosive emotion that was neither logical nor
practical. Love posed a serious threat to the stabil-
ity of the family because young people were likely
to fall in love with and wish to marry someone
who was not suitable for the family (Jeedigunta,
2012). Cultures that allowed love marriages, on the
other hand, viewed passionate love far more posi-
tively. These cultures considered love to be the glue
that binds two individuals together into one cohe-
sive unit. Whatever traditional views once were,
however, the evidence suggests that the forces of
Westernization, globalization, and worldwide com-
munication are changing views of love—particu-
larly among the young.
In the West, romantic love has, for the past
century, been considered to be the sine qua non of
marriage. In the mid-1960s, Kephart (1967) asked
more than 1,000 American college students: “If a
boy (girl) had all the other qualities you desired,
would you marry this person if you were not in
love with him (her)?” In that era, men and women
were found to possess very different ideas about the
importance of romantic love in a marriage. Men
considered passion to be essential (only 35% said
they would marry someone they did not love).
Women were more practical. They claimed that the
absence of love would not necessarily deter them
from considering marriage. (A full 76% admit-
ted they would be willing to marry someone they
did not love.) Kephart suggested that whereas men
might have the luxury of marrying for love, women
(who possessed less legal, social, and economic
power) did not. A woman’s status and survival (and
that of her children) were dependent on that of her
husband; thus, she had to be practical and take a
potential mate’s family background, professional
status, and income into account.
Since the 1960s, sociologists have continued to
ask young American men and women about the
importance of romantic love. They have found
that, year by year, young American men and
H at f i e l d, Mo, R a p s on 577
women have come to demand more and more of
love. In the most recent research, 86% of American
men and a full 91% of American women answered
the question about whether they would wed with-
out love with a resounding “No!” Obviously, in
the West, romantic love is considered to be a pre-
requisite for marriage. Today, American men and
women assume that romantic love is so important
that they claim that if they fell out of love, they
would not even consider staying married! Some
social commentators have suggested that, with
more experience, these young romantics might find
that they are willing to “settle” for less than they
think they would, but as yet there is no evidence to
indicate that this is so.
How do young men and women in other coun-
tries feel about this issue? Many cultural psycholo-
gists have pointed out that cultural values have
a profound impact on how people feel about the
wisdom of love matches versus arranged marriages.
Throughout the world, arranged marriages are
still relatively common. It seems reasonable to
argue that in societies such as China, India, and
Japan, where arranged marriages are fairly typical,
they ought to be viewed more positively than in the
West, where they are relatively rare.
To test this notion, Sprecher and her colleagues
(1994) asked American, Russian, and Japanese stu-
dents: “If a person had all the other qualities you
desired, would you marry him or her if you were
not in love?” (Students could answer only “yes” or
“no.”) The authors assumed that only Americans
would demand love and marriage; they predicted
that both the Russians and the Japanese would
be more practical. They were wrong! Both the
Americans and the Japanese were romantics. Few
of them would consider marrying someone they
did not love (only 11% of Americans and 18% of
the Japanese said “yes”). The Russians were more
practical; 37% said they would accept such a pro-
posal. Russian men were only slightly more practi-
cal than were men in other countries. It was the
Russian women who were most likely to “settle.”
Despite the larger proportion of Russian women
willing to enter a loveless marriage, a large majority
of individuals in the three cultures would refuse to
marry someone they did not love.
In a landmark study, Levine and his colleagues
(1995) asked college students in 11 different
nations if they would be willing to marry someone
they did not love even if that person possessed all
the other qualities they desired. In affluent nations
such as the United States, Brazil, Australia, Japan,
578 L o v e , S e x , a n d M a r r i ag e Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
and England, young people were insistent on
love as a prerequisite for marriage. Only in tradi-
tional, collectivist, developing nations, such as the
Philippines, Thailand, India, and Pakistan were
students willing to compromise and marry some-
one they did not love. In these societies, of course,
the extended family is still extremely important
and poverty is widespread.
Research suggests that young men and women
today, in most countries throughout the world,
consider love to be a prerequisite for courtship and
marriage. It is primarily in Eastern, collectivist,
and poorer countries that passionate love remains
a bit of a luxury.
Strengths and Weaknesses
of Different Types of Marriage
In societies in which extended families are
the norm, arranged marriages are often preferred
because marriage is a decision that impacts the
entire family and its infrastructure. Those who
believe in arranged marriages claim that such
arrangements have many advantages for society
and for the young couple. Societal advantages
include the preservation of the society’s status
hierarchy, allowing political, religious, and famil-
ial authorities to control the lives of young people;
the facilitation of political and economic alliances
between families; and the preservation of family
assets and properties within the larger kin group.
For the young couple, the advantages include the
fact that parents may be wiser and more practical
in their selection than are the young. Young people
may be socially inept and have trouble finding a
mate. When parents make the selection, there will
be more community and family support for an alli-
ance. Arranged marriages tend to de-emphasize the
marital relationship and emphasize the individuals’
responsibility to the family and their offspring.
On the other hand, those in favor of allowing
young people to have the final word in choosing
a mate point out that young couples have a vested
interest in making a marriage work when they have
made the choice themselves. When couples love and
feel affection for one another, communication and
compromise are easier. Love may not be important
in tribal communities where people have a large
extended family for support, but in modern-day
industrial societies where couples must rely primar-
ily on one another, love and compatibility are cru-
cially important.
How do arranged marriages versus marriage of
love arrangements work out? The data are unclear.
A few studies (a very few) suggest that in traditional
societies, such as India, arranged marriages may
work out the best. Gupta and Singah (1982) inter-
viewed 50 couples living in Jaipur, India. Some had
married for love, while the others’ marriages had
been arranged. Couples were asked to complete
two scales—one assessing how much romantic
love they felt for their mate, a second asking how
much they liked him or her. At first (during the
first 5 years of marriage), it was couples who had
married for love who loved and liked their part-
ners the most. After that, however, the couple’s
feelings began to change. By the time couples had
been married 5–10 years, researchers found that it
was the couples in arranged marriages who were
most in love. Men (but not women) in arranged
marriages had also come to like their partners more
than before.
Most evidence, however, suggests that arranged
marriages possess societal benefits although
young couples may not find them totally satisfy-
ing. Blood (1967) asked Japanese men and women
whose marriages had been arranged or who had
married for love, and who had been married for
various lengths of time, how happy their mar-
riages were. Generally, parents had consulted with
their sons about their preferences before arrang-
ing a marriage; they were far less likely to have
consulted with their daughters. Blood found that
for men, it didn’t seem to matter much one way
or the other how their mates had been selected.
In general, Japanese men were happier in their
marriages than were women. Men were equally
happy in either arranged marriages or love mar-
riages. Women, on the other hand, seemed to pay
a cost for powerlessness. Overall, women were
less happy with their marriages than were men.
In arranged marriages, the longer women were
married, the more unhappy they grew with their
marital bonds. Women who had married for love
remained far happier over time.
In a similar study, Xu and Whyte (1990) sur-
veyed 586 women in Chengdu, in the People’s
Republic of China, who had married at some time
in the period from 1933 to 1987. Some of the mar-
riages had been arranged; others were free-choice.
The results were clear. Women were the happiest
if they were allowed to choose their own mates.
Marriages for love also seemed to be most stable.
At this time, divorce was rare in China (only 3.9%
of first marriages ended in this fashion), but Xu
and Whyte found that more arranged marriages
than free-choice marriages eventually ended in
divorce. At the moment, more research needs to be
conducted to determine the conditions that foster
a couples’ (and especially a woman’s) happiness in
various kinds of marital arrangements.
Regardless of the pros and cons of the various
possibilities, young men and women through-
out the world seem to have made their choice.
Increasingly, parental power is eroding. Young
people, men and women, are increasingly insisting
on marrying for love. In even the most traditional
of societies, most young people now agree that,
although parents should be consulted, they should
be free to choose their own mates (Ballard, 2010;
Bumroongsook, 1992; Jeetagunda, 2012; Hatfield
& Rapson, 1996). A  few societies—such as Iran
and Saudi Arabia—are changing more slowly, but
change is still in the air.
How Long Does Love Last?
Never let your heart open
With the Spring Flowers;
One week of love
Is an inch of ashes.
—Li Shang-yin, China, 9th century
Passion sometimes burns itself out. Consider
this exchange between anthropologist Shostak
(1981) and a !Kung (African) tribesman as they
observed a young married couple:
As I stood watching, I noticed the young man
sitting in the shade of a tree, also watching. I said,
“They’re very much in love, aren’t they?” He
answered, “Yes, they are.” After a pause, he added,
“For now.” I asked him to explain, and he said,
“When two people are first together, their hearts
are on fire and their passion is very great. After a
while, the fire cools and that’s how it stays… . They
continue to love each other, but it’s in a different
way—warm and dependable.” … How long did
this take? “It varies among couples. A few months,
usually; sometimes longer. But it always happens.”
Was it also true for a lover? “No,” he explained,
“feelings for a lover stay intense much longer,
sometimes for years.” (p. 268)
Fisher (2004) argues that the transient nature of
passionate love is a cultural universal. She believes
that our Homo sapiens ancestors experienced pas-
sionate love and sexual desire for very practi-
cal genetic reasons. Our hominid ancestors were
primed to fall ardently, sexually in love for about
4 years. This is precisely the amount of time it takes
H at f i e l d, Mo, R a p s on 579
to conceive a child and take care of it until it is
old enough to survive on its own. (In tribal societ-
ies, children are relatively self-sufficient by this age.
By this time, they generally prefer to spend most
of their time playing with other children.) Once
our ancestors no longer had a practical reason to
remain together, or so Fisher claims, they had every
evolutionary reason to fall out of love with their
previous partner and to fall in love with someone
new. Why were people programmed to engage in
such serial pair-bonding? Fisher maintained that
such serial monogamy produces maximum genetic
diversity, which is an evolutionary advantage. To
test her hypothesis that, generally, love is fleeting,
Fisher examined the divorce rates in collecting/
hunting, agricultural, pastoral, fishing, and indus-
trial societies, scouring ethnographic records and
the Demographic Yearbooks of the United Nations.
She found that, as predicted, throughout the world,
couples most commonly divorced in their fourth
year of marriage. She—like many evolutionary
psychologists—contends that today the same evo-
lutionary forces that influenced our ancestors shape
the modern cross-cultural pattern of marriage–
divorce–remarriage. Fisher’s ideas are stimulating,
but her exclusion of cultural forces, considering
their omnipresence in nearly all matters related to
love and sex, mandate a certain skepticism on the
part of the reader.
Historical Perspectives on Love and
Marriage
The human condition has changed so much
… that we can hardly imagine the way it
appeared to people whose lives really were
nasty, brutish, and short. This is why we need
to reread Mother Goose.
—Robert Darnton, 2009, p. 29
Any time scholars begin talking glibly about
“cultural universals,” historians tend to react with
skepticism. They prefer to emphasize the multiplic-
ity, variability, and mutability of human behavior.
They shy away from all single-cause explanations
for how cultures and individuals work, and they
revel in complexity, movement, and change.
Historical research reminds us that, throughout
time, people have embraced very different attitudes
toward love, sex, and marriage; have desired very
different traits in romantic and marital partners;
and have differed markedly in whether such feel-
ings were to be proclaimed to the world or hid-
den in the deepest recesses of the heart. In the real
580 L o v e , S e x , a n d M a r r i ag e Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
world, human sexual attitudes and behavior seem
forever in flux.
Some typical examples include the Hindu
philosopher Vātsyāyana, the author of the Kama
Sutra, who lived between the 1st and 6th century
CE and advised men and women to marry for love
while the Medieval Catholic church condemned
such sinful indulgence. The early Egyptians prac-
ticed birth control, and some Polynesians practiced
infanticide; Classical Greeks rewarded couples who
were willing to conceive; the Eskimos considered
it hospitable to share their wives with visitors;
Muslims jealously locked their wives and concu-
bines away in harems; Sumerian and Babylonian
temples were staffed by priests, priestesses, and
sacred prostitutes; the ancient Hebrews stoned
“godless” prostitutes; Hellenes idealized the pure
sexual love between older men and young boys;
and the Aztecs punished homosexuality by tying
men to logs, disemboweling them, covering them
with ash, and incinerating them (Tannahill, 1980).
Historians have also documented how pro-
foundly a society’s attitudes toward love, sex, and
intimacy can alter over time. Consider China,
which possesses an ancient culture. Its archeo-
logical record begins 5,000 years ago in the
Hongshan (Red Mountain) dynasty. Its historical
record begins 4,000 years ago in the Xia (or First
Dynasty). The oldest Chinese medical texts on love
and sexuality date from 168 BCE.
Traditionally, Chinese history is divided into
three periods: the Formative Age (prehistory
through 206 BCE), the Early Empire (206 BCE
to 960 CE), and the Later Empire (960–1911 CE).
The Chinese historian Ruan (1991) argued that
during the first 4,000 years of Chinese history,
attitudes toward passionate love and sexual desire
were generally positive—although hardly uniform
and unchanging during these epochs. Medical
texts dating back to 168 BCE make it clear that
the ancients assumed that love and sexual plea-
sure were two of the great joys of life. In the Late
Empire (1,000 years ago), during the Sung dynasty,
the Neo-Confucianists gained political and reli-
gious power, and Chinese attitudes began to alter,
gradually becoming more and more negative and
repressive concerning sex. Displays of love outside
marriage were forbidden, and erotic art and litera-
ture were often burned.
When the People’s Republic of China was
established in 1949, Communist officials imposed
even tighter controls on love and “inappropri-
ate” sexual activity. On a visit to Beijing, John
Money, a sexologist, reported: “I came across a slo-
gan: ‘Making love is a mental disease that wastes
time and energy.’ ” Gil (1992) noted:
A puritanical, if not heavy-handed, sexual
“primness” became firmly established… . This
included a denial of romantic love, the affirmation of
the absolute role of the collective over the individual
as a basic tenet toward which one should direct any
affections. The Great Leap Forward demanded,
in Communist parlance, the “renunciation of the
heart.” Party policy deliberately constructed an
altruism which sought (for every man and woman)
hard work during the day, without being “deflected
or confused” by love, sexual desire, or any strivings
for private happiness. (p. 571)
Today, of course, in China as throughout much
of the rest of the world, the winds of change are
blowing. Young people—perhaps as a consequence
of globalization (as evidenced in the availability of
international cinema, the Web, world travel, and
MTV)—are adopting more “liberal” or “worldly”
views of passionate love, sexual desire, marriage for
love (rather than arranged marriages), and romantic
and sexual diversity (see Robert Francoeur’s 1997
magisterial review for social changes occurring in
various countries; for more recent discussions of
current social changes, see Jeedigunta, 2012; Levine
et al., 1995; Parish, Laumann, & Mojola, 2007).
Sexual Motives Through History
Several theses have emerged regarding sexual
motives in Western history. The recent work of
Shorter (2005) asserts that sexuality is driven by
biology. It little matters the century or the cir-
cumstances—it is not social conditioning but the
biology of the brain that drives our desires. Those
sexual drives are, however, expressed in the con-
text of the times, shaped by community mores,
finances, social status, the power of the church,
and gender—among other things. D’Emilio and
Freedman (1997) argued that, in the United States,
“sexuality has been continually reshaped by the
changing nature of the economy, the family, and
politics” (p. xii). Other scholars have examined the
balance of power between men and women and
the related shifts in sexual behavior. However, no
single thesis seems to explain the variety of sexual
motives demonstrated over time.
Greeks of classical antiquity were known for
their pursuit of pleasure. Their enjoyment of “total
body sex” (Shorter, 2005, p. 19) recognized that
the entire body could be an erotic instrument. In
addition, philosophers, poets, artists, and others
noted sexual relations between adolescent boys and
their older male mentors. Men of the upper classes,
whose lives were steeped in wealth and physical
indulgence, pursued these homoerotic pleasures. It
would be safe to say that Greek and, later, Roman
men did it for pleasure.
During the Middle Ages, the Pope and his
religious enforcers likely frightened ordinary peo-
ple into curtailing sexual activities. The Church
taught that sexual desire outside of marriage, as
well as enjoyment within the marital bed, was
a sin—and the wages of sin were death. Most
couples resisted or ignored sexual longing and
endeavored to have sex only for the purpose of
procreation. Even late liberal thinkers on love and
marriage, such as Daniel Defoe, believed that a
marriage based in passion “brings madness, des-
peration, ruin of families, disgrace” (as cited in
Stone, 1977, p. 281).
In The Great Cat Massacre, Darnton (1984)
described French peasant life in the 16th and 17th
centuries this way:
Men labored from dawn to dusk, scratching the
soil on scattered strips of land with plows like those
of the Romans and hacking at their grain with
primitive sickles, in order to leave enough stubble
for communal grazing… . Great masses of people
lived in a state of chronic malnutrition. (p. 24)
Most peasants lived short and difficult lives,
leaving little energy to expend on sex. Darnton
(1984) concluded:
The peasant of early modern France inhabited a
world of step-mothers and orphans, of inexorable,
unending toil, and of brutal emotions, both raw
and repressed. The human condition has changed so
much since then that we can hardly imagine the way
it appeared to people whose lives really were nasty,
brutish, and short. This is why we need to reread
Mother Goose. (p. 29)
Stone (1977) confirmed that in the early mod-
ern period, sexual love played almost no part in
everyday life. Historical examples abound to dem-
onstrate that sexual motives and sexual behaviors
have varied widely over the years from classical
antiquity to present. People were motivated by
pleasure, by duty, by piousness, by fear, by power,
but rarely by love. While upper class Greeks and
Romans experimented freely with sexual behav-
ior, many Europeans of the Middle Ages turned
away from sexuality in compliance with the harsh
H at f i e l d, Mo, R a p s on 581
hand of the Catholic Church. In the 300  years
from 1500 to 1800, Europe and America showed
important changes in mentalité. The West began
to question patriarchal and repressive attitudes
and began to evolve slowly in the direction of the
more individualistic, egalitarian, and permissive
attitudes toward sexuality, love, and marriages
that are common today in the West—and rapidly
spreading to the rest of the world.
Future Directions: Guesses About
the Future of Love, Sex, and Marriage
One trend that has already begun is the promi-
nence of multidisciplinary research. In the late
20th century, debates raged as to what is “really”
important in shaping culture, love, and sex: culture
or biology. (At times, it felt as if we were caught in
the middle of a paintball fight, as we shouted [along
with many others] from the grandstands: “It’s
both. It’s both.”) Today, as you can see from our
discussion, most scholars acknowledge that cul-
ture, history, personal experience, chemistry, and
genetic factors all play their part in shaping people’s
romantic and sexual attitudes, feelings, and behav-
iors. All are inextricably entwined—shaping and
being shaped by the others.
What changes might we expect to see in the lon-
ger run? Yale historian Robin Winks once observed
that writing history is “like nailing jelly to the
wall.” But, he added, “someone must keep trying.”
Trying to describe sweeping historical trends and
then to predict future trends is even more difficult.
But let us, in a playful and modest spirit, make the
effort.
In a recent American Psychological Association
address, futurist and historian Richard Rapson
(2013) attempted to make some guesses about the
social changes one might expect to occur in the
next 25–50 years in the cultural, economic, and
technological areas. Among the cultural changes he
prophesied were such things as (1) the improved sta-
tus of women worldwide, (2) increasing acceptance
of multiple definitions of “family,” (3)  increas-
ing acceptance of interracial relationships, and
(4) increasing acceptance of homosexuality. These
all are continuations of current trends.
Also extending from current developments
will be economic and practical changes. Rapson saw
(1) increasing gender/economic equality, (2) more
consensual unions (fewer marriages), (3)  both
spouses working, (4) more long-distance relation-
ships, and (5) more cyberspace relationships.
582 L o v e , S e x , a n d M a r r i ag e Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
In projecting present-day tendencies into the
future, one has to assume that global developments,
such as war, the dislocations of climate change, ter-
ror attacks, unforeseen plagues, and the like won’t
profoundly disrupt the present day flow of history.
Nothing is guaranteed.
Also disruptive and tending toward exponen-
tial rather than incremental change is the realm
of technology, which fosters history’s most rapid
and profound transformations. Rapson proph-
esied (1) the fast growth of love, sex, and relation-
ships conducted on the Web—including fantasy
relationships; (2) increased computer matching;
(3) increased availability of pornography and tech-
nological sex; (4) cures for AIDS, STIs, and impo-
tence, which may unleash greater sexual activity,
freedom, and experimentation; (5) advances in
reproductive technology—including birth con-
trol, abortion, and the possibility of boutique
babies; and (6) people living into old age in greater
health, perhaps even with significantly expanded
lifespans.
There is no way to know whether Rapson is
right in his speculations, of course, but the pros-
pects of profound change seem highly likely, espe-
cially since they have been well under way for more
than a century and seem only to be speeding up.
The times they are a-changing.
Conclusion
The preceding studies, then, suggest that
the large differences that once existed between
Westernized, modern, urban, industrial societ-
ies and Eastern, modern, urban industrial societ-
ies may be fast disappearing. Those interested in
cross-cultural differences may be forced to search
for large differences in only the most traditional,
collectivist, and underdeveloped of societies—such
as those in Africa or Latin America, in rural China
or the countries of the Middle East. However, it
may well be that, even in these latter places, the
winds of Westernization, individualism, and social
change are beginning to be felt. In spite of the
censure of their elders, in a variety of traditional
cultures, young people are increasingly adopt-
ing “Western” patterns—placing a high value on
“falling in love,” pressing for gender equality in
love and sex, and insisting on marrying for love (as
opposed to arranged marriages). Such changes have
been documented in Finland, Estonia, and Russia,
as well as among Australian aboriginal people of
Mangrove and a Copper Inuit Alaskan Indian tribe
(see Jankowiak, 1995, for an extensive review of
this research).
Traditional cultural differences still exert a pro-
found influence on young people’s attitudes, emo-
tions, and behavior, and such differences are not
likely to disappear in our lifetime. In Morocco, for
example, marriage was once an alliance between
families (as historically it was in most of the world
before the 18th century) in which children had
little or no say. Today, although parents can no lon-
ger simply dictate whom their children will marry,
parental approval remains critically important.
Important though it is, however, young men and
women are at least allowed to have their say (see
Davis & Davis, 1995).
Many have observed that, today, two powerful
forces—globalization and cultural pride/identifica-
tion with one’s country (what historians call “nation-
alism”)—are contending for men’s and women’s
souls. True, to some extent, the world’s citizens
may be becoming “one,” but in truth the delight-
ful and not-so-delightful divisive cultural variations
that have made our world such an interesting and,
simultaneously, dangerous place, are likely to add
spice to that heady brew of love and sexual practices
for some time to come. The convergence of cultures
around the world may be reducing the differences
in the ways passionate love and marriage are expe-
rienced and expressed in our world. But tradition
can be tenacious, and the global future of passionate
love cannot be predicted with any certainty.
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H at f i e l d, Mo, R a p s on 585
 C H A P T E R

36 Dual and Communal

Parenting: Implications
in Young Adulthood
Heidi Keller

Abstract
Parenting can be understood as the transmission of cultural norms and values that are adapted to
particular environmental conditions. Thus, parenting merges biological predispositions with cultural
emphases. Two prototypical parenting strategies are discussed. Parenting in Western middle-class
families is regarded as prototypical of dual parenting. Exclusive attention is directed to the child from
birth on in a dyadic behavioral mode. Socialization efforts stress the child’s individual uniqueness and
emphasize a mental world of intentions, cognitions, and emotions. Parenting in subsistence-based
farm families is regarded as prototypically communal parenting. The child is embedded into the shared
attention of multiple caregivers. The prevalent behavioral mode is proximal, and socialization efforts
stress the communal nature of the self and role-based responsibilities, with early tutoring of these
behavioral modes. Implications for the definition of adulthood as related to parenting, as well as
continuity and discontinuity in developmental trajectories, are discussed.
Key Words:  evolutionary theory, culture, alloparenting, father, grandparents, subsistence, proximal
parenting, distal parenting, autonomy, relatedness

When my former student and long-time col-
laborator Bettina Lamm gave birth to her first
daughter, the whole lab group went to the hospital
to greet and congratulate the young family, who
stayed in a family room in the hospital for a cou-
ple of days. We all fell in love with little Johanna
immediately, looking at her, watching her, trying
to catch her gaze, talking to her, and assuring
her parents how wonderful she was. All of a sud-
den, our Cameroonian colleague Relindis Yovsi
became obviously very upset, asking us what was
wrong with us, going to the crib, picking up the
baby, holding her close to her body, and moving
rhythmically. We were as shocked by her behav-
ior as she was by ours. For the Germans, show-
ing love, affection, and admiration was visual and
verbal; for the Cameroonian, it was close body
contact and motor stimulation. This very moment
was the beginning of my real understanding that
parenting is as much a cultural project as it is a
biological one.
Biology provides universal predispositions for
allocating investments into the young and the
capacity to assess and process information from the
environment that is crucial for making such invest-
ment decisions. Culture selects, reinforces, and
shapes strategies from the universal behavioral rep-
ertoire according to cultural/contextual priorities
(Greenfield, 1996). Every human being is endowed
with universal parenting predispositions, as well as
with the mechanisms for cultural learning (Jensen,
2012; Tomasello, Kruger, & Ratner, 1993).
Therefore every human being is basically capable of
parenting. Differences in parenting styles as well as
qualities are rooted in environmental differences.
The environment shapes parenting strategies that
are adapted to the environmental and thus cultural
demands. Parenting is a dynamic process because

586
it consists of co-regulation among the interact-
ing partners; parenting is, moreover, a highly
person-specific process because multiple aspects,
such as gender of parent and child, sibling posi-
tion, parental relationship, personal resources, and
others, influence the relationship and its dynamics
(Grusec, 2011; Keller & Chasiotis, 2006).
Although mothers obviously allocate the high-
est investment into their offspring owing to intra-
uterine pregnancy and nursing, fathers’ investment
is also crucial for the offspring to grow and thrive.
Maternal death during childbirth and infant vul-
nerability were serious challenges for early humans,
so that females had to choose men who stayed and
helped with caregiving (Geary, 2005). It is the wom-
an’s decision whether she wants to continue to look
for a better mate or start reproducing. The proto-
typical male strategy, on the other hand, should be
more quantitative—that is, to invest less in more off-
spring—due mainly to the fact that it is difficult for
a male to know precisely whether he is the father of
an infant (“paternity insecurity”). Moreover, males
show greater variability in their reproductive rates,
from having no children to having many children.
Men have to decide between “cad versus dad” strat-
egies; that is, maximizing fertilization or parental
investment (Voland, 1998). The trade-off that indi-
viduals have to accept therefore entails the balance
of mating and parenting efforts. Studies of partner
selection have documented universal preferences for
the two sexes: females prefer partners with character-
istics indicative of economic success, whereas males
prefer females with characteristics that indicate
reproductive capacity (youth, health). In addition,
there is preference by both males and females for
mates who are similar to themselves in a variety of
characteristics (“assortive mating”). Parental invest-
ment constitutes the intergenerational link through
which the offspring experiences the socialization
style that the parents have developed as a result of
their own past, as well as of current experiences.
In the case of human beings, not only do time and
energy parameters of investment decisions have to be
taken into consideration, but also the psychology of
the phenotypic adult (Keller, 2000).
In addition to fathers, grandmothers also are
attributed a special role for rearing their grandchil-
dren. Evolutionary theories claim that longevity
beyond the reproductive years has only evolved due
to fitness optimization. The so-called grandmother
hypothesis (Williams, 1957) indicates that grand-
maternal support in raising grandchildren repre-
sented a selection advantage. It reduces the risk of
dying because of late motherhood for mother and
baby, and it facilitates daughters having more chil-
dren because of grandmaternal support.
Grandmaternal involvement is usually higher
than grandpaternal involvement because the
maternal grandmother can be sure that it is her
genetic offspring in which she is investing, whereas
grandfathers can never be sure in whom they invest
due to paternity insecurity (Voland, Chasiotis, &
Schiefenhövel, 2004). The evolutionary consider-
ations apply to all grandmothers, irrespective of
cultural background. Nevertheless, the role and
engagement of grandmothers vary considerably
across cultures.
In addition to parents, fathers, and grandmoth-
ers related others as well as nonrelated persons also
participate in an infant’s caretaking community.
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy argued (1999) that without the
help of others, mothers could not have been suc-
cessful in being the sole caregivers, and humankind
would not have survived. However, how these care-
giving networks are defined and how they function
is highly culture dependent.
In the following section, I first introduce the
conception of culture that is applied throughout
this chapter. Here, culture is understood as the
psychological representation of socioeconomic
milieus. Thereafter, two prototypical sociocultural
environments are portrayed with respect to their
parenting and childrearing philosophies: Western
middle-class families, which have delivered the
bulk of our current knowledge on parenting and
child development, and rural subsistence-based
farm families who differ substantially and system-
atically from the Western model. The consequences
of these different views will be briefly outlined,
with suggestions for some future perspectives.
The Relationship Between
Culture and Environment
We start with a definition of culture as shared
meaning systems and shared behaviors of individu-
als who live in similar circumstances (Greenfield &
Keller, 2004; Keller, 2007). Similar circumstances
represent ecosocial contexts that are composed of
sociodemographic dimensions: first, the level of
formal education, and then, related to this, age
of first birth, number of children, and household
composition. We have identified two prototypi-
cal and one hybrid ecosocial contexts that can be
regarded as representing different cultural milieus
(Keller, 2007, 2011a). Highly formally educated
middle-class families in the Western world start
Keller 587
their families in their late 20s to late 30s, have
few offspring, and live in nuclear families. Their
children are usually planned after an extended
educational moratorium and an intensive period
of self-actualization (e.g., through traveling). Their
socialization agenda is oriented toward psychologi-
cal autonomy (i.e., the early support of children’s
mental abilities in the form of cognitions, emo-
tions, intentions, and preferences as grounded in
a separate individuality and uniqueness; Keller,
2011a, 2012). This cultural milieu is highly over-
represented in the literature and has recently
been characterized as the WEIRD (white, edu-
cated, industrialized, rich, democratic; Henrich,
Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010) population because
it represents only around 5% of the world’s popula-
tion. “The neglected 95%” (Arnett, 2008) is com-
posed of around 30–40% of rural farmers with a
relatively low formal education, early parenthood
in the late teens, many offspring, and multigen-
erational extended households. The socialization
strategies of these families are oriented toward
hierarchical relatedness, with a major emphasis on
the child’s early integration into the family system
through obedience, respect for the elderly, dutiful-
ness, and cooperation (Keller, 2011a). A growing
number of individuals belong to a hybrid type of
highly formally educated middle-class families in
non-Western societies whose reproductive profiles
are in between the two prototypes. These fami-
lies emphasize autonomy as well as relatedness in
different modes and can form multiple combina-
tions of these dimensions. This classification is not
meant to be comprehensive for all of the world’s
population. It is, however, helpful in characteriz-
ing different models of parenting.
Socialization strategies form multilevel concep-
tions of symbolic, ideational, and physical com-
ponents. The most abstract level is represented
by socialization goals; that is, the more or less
realistic or idealized images that parents want to
achieve through socialization and education (e.g.,
they want a child who is obedient or a child who
is self-assertive or a child who is both in differ-
ent contexts). Parenting ethnotheories represent
a second level of socialization strategies in medi-
ating between goals and behaviors. They contain
ideas, beliefs, and attitudes, as well as norms on
how to reach socialization goals. They specify ideas
about what good parenting is, what a child should
do or not do, and what is supported and what is
suppressed in children’s development, and more.
Finally, the behavioral level comprises all social
588 Dua l a n d C om m u n a l Pa r e n t i ng
encounters, as well as the realization of contexts
(e.g., a stroller or a sling for child transportation).
All the levels are partly explicit and partly implicit
because much of parenting is intuitive; that is,
it occurs without explicit intention and control
(Papousek & Papousek, 1991). This is why there is
no one-to-one correspondence in empirical studies.
This situation is characterized as the behavior-belief
dilemma in the literature (McGillicuddy-deLisi,
1985; Sigel, 1985), expressing the fact that although
behaviors and beliefs are strongly related conceptu-
ally, there is not a high empirical correlation. The
conception of socialization strategies is depicted in
Figure 36.1.
Because of the dual nature of socialization
strategies, intuitive as well as intentional, multi-
method designs are needed to assess them, combin-
ing quantitative as well as qualitative approaches
(Keller, 2011b). Because our conception of culture
is not equivalent with country or society, careful
ecosocial analysis of the participants is necessary
prior to the assessment of socialization strategies.
Samples need to be composed from participants
with similar profiles. In the following sections,
two prototypical parenting strategies are character-
ized: parenting of Western middle-class families,
which follows the model of dual parenting, and
parenting in subsistence-based traditional farm
families, which follows the model of communal
parenting.
Parenting in Western
Middle-Class Families
Although for men it has long been a necessity
to settle economically in order to be able to sup-
port a family due to prevailing family models and
role prescriptions, for women it is a rather recent
phenomenon over the past 70–80 years to pri-
oritize education before founding a family. Due
to increased mobility and globalization, often
extended stays abroad contribute to professional
experiences and may further delay parenthood.
The decision to become a parent is mostly taken
deliberately, with the individual determining when
the time is ripe for having a child. Because many
adults have little experience with children, the
newborn is often the first and only child they have
ever held. Although the father’s participation as an
active parent has increased over the past decades,
it is mostly the mother who goes on parental leave
and carries most of the everyday responsibilities
of child care. Although in some countries (e.g.,
Germany) fathers are especially encouraged to
 Sociodemographic context

Relatedness
Autonomy
Cultural model

Socialization goals

Ethnotheories

Parenting behavior

Child development

Fig. 36.1  Socialization strategies from an ecocultural perspective.

go on state-based paternity leave, the numbers
are small and the time span for leave short. Yet,
parents as well as professionals in Western soci-
eties share the view that a father’s regular par-
ticipation in child care is important for children’s
healthy development (Hewlett, 2004). Mothers
and fathers mostly agree on socialization goals,
share similar ethnotheories, and perform similar
behavioral practices (Lamm & Keller, 2012). In
that respect, they can be regarded as represent-
ing dual parenting, at least during the children’s
early years. Because divorce rates are increasing in
Western societies, family development is often dis-
rupted, and children experience care from parental
as well as nonparental social partners in so-called
patchwork families. Single parenthood rates are
also rising in Western societies. Single parent-
hood may be deliberately decided on, especially by
more highly educated women, but it may also be
an unintentional consequence of unstable partner-
ships (e.g., Suro, 1992).
In line with child care professionals, parents
think of babies from the first day as separate indi-
viduals and unique personalities who have their
own will that needs to be respected (e.g., Keller,
2007). Lancy (2008) has labeled the child care
model underlying this model of parenting as neon-
tocracy, with the family, institutions, and the child
care industry centered around the individual child.
Thus, enhancing and supporting the baby’s indi-
viduality is an utmost goal of parenting.
The following excerpt from an interview
between a Los Angeles middle-class mother and
an interviewer about good early care in response
to picture cards that show different mother–infant
situations expresses this view (see for more details
Keller, 2007):
And then having some distance. Here is some
distance between mom and baby. And still it is
intensive, the free space, so that the baby can act… .
I need the distance some times, e.g. on the lap it
is very close … and to understand the distance,
yes he is an independent being. He is completely
different from me and his father. There has been
really something completely new created. Also this
fascination, I can only … I cannot understand it,
I can only sense it if I take some distance and look.
Mothers and fathers agree that it is important
for children to experience their parent’s exclusive
attention. This indicates that parent–child situa-
tions are typically dyadic, comprising mother and
baby or father and baby. Taking turns in attending
to the baby also creates some free time and personal
space for the parent who is not in charge. During
the first year of life, the interaction style can be
described as distal (i.e., extensive face-to-face con-
tact, object stimulation, and extended conversa-
tions). Typically, babies are lying on their backs and
mother or father is bending over the baby, main-
taining facial conversations with objects included
(see Figure 36.2).

Keller 589
Fig. 36.2  A typical interactional situation between a German middle-class mother and her 3-month-old baby daughter.
Body contact is rare, and body or motor stimu-
lation is restricted to small-scale movements like
moving the arm or a leg a little (Carra, Lavelli,
Keller, & Kärtner, 2013). Mother or father
involves the baby in protoconversations in which
they maintain a dialogic structure with the baby
being a quasi-equal partner. Parents ask many
questions, seeking the consent of the baby for
ongoing or planned activities, and explain in a
mentalistic discourse the baby’s own feelings,
wishes, intentions, likes, and dislikes to the baby.
Maintaining positive emotionality and support-
ing the expression of smiles and positive vocaliza-
tions is crucial for the experience of being a good
parent. Mind-mindedness or mentalization as the
parental capacity to read correctly the baby’s men-
tal states that lay behind its behavioral expression
and to comment on them adequately is regarded
as another expression of good parenting (Meins
et al., 2003). Conversely, babies also spend a great
deal of their time alone and with toys. The early
learning of not relying on somebody else and hav-
ing a relationship with oneself is also an impor-
tant socialization goal. The following excerpt from
an interview with a Los Angeles middle-class
mother in her mid-30s about the right way to care
for a 3-month-old baby expresses this attitude:M
(mother): And they don’t require having someone
there constantly. ‘Cause sometimes they get so
clingy and whiny, and that’s just ‘cause they don’t
know how to be alone. And it’s important for kids,
590 Dua l a n d C om m u n a l Pa r e n t i ng
for humans to having a relationship with them-
selves that they can be alone.
I (interviewer):  Mhm. When they are older?
M:  Uhm—even when they are babies, they
need to be able to just not have constant—
constantly somebody there.
I:  Mhm
M:  Helps them develop some self-identity.
This style of parenting is believed to prepare the
baby for a good start into his or her life journey. It is
believed to be related to the development of secure
attachment relationships, although the empirical evi-
dence is scarce (Keller, 2007). Nevertheless “attach-
ment parenting” has become a popular philosophy
for Western middle-class parents (e.g., “Families by
Design—Nancy Thomas Parenting,” 2013).
Although parenting changes over time to meet
the changing developmental status of the child, it
remains structurally consistent with respect to the
emphasis on individuality and the autonomy of the
child. The major behavioral mode is verbal—con-
versations and negotiations are verbally monitored.
Parents continue to be responsive to the child’s
wishes and preferences. The following excerpt is a
typical dinner situation for a German middle-class
family. Participants are the father, the mother,
the 4-year-old target girl child, and a 1½-year-old
brother who does not participate verbally in the
dinner conversation. For the occasion, this target
child is asked by the parents what the family should
eat. She decided on pasta with sauce, which was
accordingly prepared.
C (child):  No sauce… .
F (father) to C:  You do NOT want sauce?
C to F:  Nooo.
F to C:  Come on
M (mother) to C:  are you crazy. (.) Saskia, don’t
be silly! (getting louder)
F to C:  What are you doing?
C to F:  Don’t want to have SAUCE.
F to C:  No sauce?
C to F:  mhmh (negating) (C is nodding head)
F to C:  Come, I  will give you mine—let’ see.
↑Then I will have those with sauce (.) Yes,
and you will have those WITHOUT sauce. (.)
Please.—from papa—without sauce. please.
Without sauce. Here you are! (F takes plate
from child and hands her a plate with noo-
dles without sauce)
C:  (starts fussing) He took mine away. (points
at plate and starts crying)
F to C: But you didn’t want to have sauce.
(loud) (F looks at M)
F to M:  Oh wow!
F to C: But you did want noodles without
sauce. (.) Yeah, do you want to have your
sauce stuff back?
F to C:  But you said, you want them without
sauce!
It is obvious that the conversation is dyadic,
mainly between father and child with occasional
addresses from the mother to the child and some
comments between the parents. The conversation
centers around the child’s wants, which are all
responded to by the parents, taking into account
all the changes and loops of the child reasoning. In
this way, parents believe that they strengthen their
children’s self-esteem and confidence.
Parenting is also a scientifically based project, in
the sense that parents seek out information about
child development and quality parenting in numer-
ous parent guidebooks, specialized journals, and on
the Internet. Experts’ opinions are in high regard,
and journalists try to support their arguments with
scientists’ statements. Moreover, there are parent
blogs where parents themselves communicate with
each other, exchange ideas, and provide counsel-
ing for each other. Parenting is complemented by
numerous out-of-home activities in baby classes
and courses—from little Mozart and little Einstein
to art classes.
Although parenting is highly child-centered, the
couple’s relationship is an important moderator of
parenting. The couple’s relationship is addressed by
several conceptual positions. From an evolution-
ary point of view, Belsky, Steinberg, and Draper
(1991) proposed that marital quality is related to
the reproductive strategy. Marital harmony is asso-
ciated with a qualitative strategy (i.e., later parent-
hood, few children, and high parental investment),
whereas marital discord is associated with a more
quantitative strategy with earlier parenthood, more
offspring, and more investment in mating effort
than in parenting.
A couple turns into parents with the birth of the
first child. For Western middle-class families, this
often signals a complete change in their lifestyle.
Moreover, the daily life is full of challenges that
they are not prepared for. The baby is an unknown
creature, and the result is substantial insecurity in
how to care for a baby, let alone provide the best
possible care that supports the best possible devel-
opmental trajectory. There are often two conse-
quences: one is a decline in marital quality that
is often reported following the birth of the first
child. Le Masters (1957) was the first to talk about
“Parenting as a crisis.” Since then, many authors
have documented a decline in marital satisfaction
associated with becoming a parent (e.g., Belsky &
Kelly, 1994; Cowan & Cowan, 1992). The new role
and its responsibilities require a shift of attention
from within the couple, the renegotiation of par-
enting tasks, and the development of new ways of
coping with stress and conflict. The other factor
may be the occurrence of infant regulatory prob-
lems, especially concerning sleeping, crying, and
feeding (Gardner & Shaw, 2008). Infant regulatory
problems often also result in marital disharmony
and discord (e.g., Porter, Wouden-Miller, Silva, &
Porter, 2003) thus producing a vicious circle that is
not easy to break.
Thus, parenting in Western middle-class fami-
lies is scientifically oriented and represents a psy-
chologically and economically high investment.
Parents have the sole and legal responsibility for
their children and are the important caregivers at
least during the first years of life. Grandparents
are in regular contact with their grandchildren but
often live in different geographical regions so that
face-to-face contact is low (Georgas, Berry, van
de Vijver, Kagitcibasi, & Poortinga, 2006). If the
spatial situation allows personal encounters, grand-
parents play a role as entertainer, but not so much
Keller 591
as caretakers (Teiser, 2010). The following excerpt
from an interview with a German middle-class
grandmother about her relationship with her
grandchild illustrates this attitude:
I am happy when I see my grandchildren and I try
to teach them something and spend time with them
and be there for them. But I believe that the parents
have to do the child-rearing, not the grandparents.
It used to be like that but not nowadays. I am
just present for my grandchildren and want them
to feel comfortable with me. My children do
the child-rearing (Grandmother from German
middle-class; Participant 9).
In a study analyzing maternal and grandmater-
nal ethnotheories about early care, we found that
mothers of 3-month-old babies and their own moth-
ers did not differ in the content of their ethnotheo-
ries (Lamm, Keller, Yovsi, & Chaudhary, 2008).
A reason for this intergenerational stability was that
grandmothers adapted their parental beliefs toward
their daughters’ beliefs. This inversed transmission
process has been proposed by Keller and Demuth
(2005), who analyzed the ethnotheories of mothers
and grandmothers from two communities with an
independent sociocultural orientation using qualita-
tive methods. This adaptation by the grandmothers
could be due to their own experiences with societal
changes because many of them were still working
and thus confronted with continuing challenges of
adaptation. On the other hand, it could be a way
to deal with increasing individualization in which
interpersonal relationships are highly optional.
Individuals no longer depend on kinship ties but
rather choose their companions on the basis of simi-
larities of interests, opinions, and beliefs. Thus, it is
easier for a grandmother to maintain regular con-
tact and rewarding relationships with children and
thus grandchildren if she adapts to their attitudes to
at least some degree. A similar pattern has also been
described for European-American mother–grand-
mother pairs (Cho, Sandel, Miller, & Wang, 2005).
The European-American grandmothers explicitly
mentioned that they did not want to give childrear-
ing advice to their daughters or violate their auton-
omy as mothers.
Middle-class parents complement the educa-
tion of their children with out-of-home care, either
family-based or institutional. Their main moti-
vation, in addition to their intention to continue
participation in the labor force, is to give their chil-
dren opportunities to be together with other chil-
dren. Nevertheless, day care institutions have an
592 Dua l a n d C om m u n a l Pa r e n t i ng
educational mandate in most Western societies that
is based in the autonomy and self-determination of
the child (e.g., Gernhardt, Lamm, Keller, & Döge,
2014). Recently, there is a growing awareness that
day care teachers also have educational and parent-
ing ethnotheories and practices that form impor-
tant socialization environments for the children
in addition to the official, state-based curricula.
Obviously, parental satisfaction with day care and
the cooperation between home and institution is
best when the childrearing ideologies of caretak-
ers and parents overlap substantially (Britner &
Phillips, 1995).
Parenting in Subsistence-Based
Farm Families
Marriage and producing children constitutes the
transition to adulthood for many traditionally liv-
ing farm families. Formal education is rather low,
with an average of around 7 years, and reproduction
starts early. Despite the change in status and role,
daily life does not change much with being a par-
ent. Parenting is part of the traditional communal
life and structured through cultural prescriptions
and rituals. In many traditional farming commu-
nities, infants transcend through a rite of passage.
From his analysis of more than 200 cases from eth-
nographic and archeological records from all areas
of the world, historical epochs from the Mesolithic
to the present, and all types of subsistence patterns,
Lancy (in press) concludes that the common pat-
tern is that infants are placed on probation and not
immediately integrated into society. This morato-
rium may last from several days to months until
the transition is completed from the ancestral or
spiritual world from which the baby is assumed to
come into being a person (Lancy, 2008).
Lancy differentiates different models explain-
ing this lag. There may be an initial disengagement
and lack of maternal attention that is assumed to
have a protective function for minimizing grief in
environments of high infant mortality and mother
vulnerability due to general health problems (see
also Scheper Hughes, in press). This lag may have a
duration of 4 days, as for the Inuit (Balikci, 1970),
to 5–6 months, as for the Bororo (Fabian, 1992).
The accordance of parenthood can also be linked to
the “Not Yet Ripe” model (Lancy, 2008), as when a
Gusii child is not a valid human being until reach-
ing the age of sense at 6 or 7 years (LeVine, 2004)
or with the appearance of teeth in the Bariba child
(Sargent, 1988; for many more models and exam-
ples, see Lancy, 2008).
 The responsibility for a child is with the
extended family, where often the oldest male mem-
ber has the right to decide all social and material
issues of the clan. Nevertheless, child care is dis-
tributed among family members and sometimes
also nonfamily individuals, such as neighbors. In
these matters, elderly females are often the authori-
ties. Grandmothers thus play an important role
in the communal caregiving system; grandmoth-
ers actively participate in the care and education
of their grandchildren. This kind of involvement
depends on co-residence or at least living in the
same neighborhood, which is the case in extended
household arrangements. Active grandmaternal
care is based on similar childrearing scripts across
generations, which are rooted in similar life cir-
cumstances of the grandmaternal and the maternal
generation. Although occasional encounters with
the nonvillage world are present (e.g., a TV in one
of the richer households), the subsistence activities
and thus the daily life circle has remained similar
for generations. In an interview with the grand-
mother living in a Turkish extended family with a
low degree of formal education, she explained the
role of grandmothers:
Protecting them. Teaching them good things, give
them an understanding of education. Feeding them
when they are hungry. Drying them when they are
wet. Those things… . Good childrearing, becoming
a good member of the society. Those things, what
else could it be?
In a study comparing maternal and grandmater-
nal ethnotheories about best care for a small child,
we did not find differences across generations in
rural Nso families with respect to sociodemographic
conditions or parenting ethnotheories. Although
all mothers had almost completed primary school
(as compared with virtually no formal education
in the grandmother generation), mothers—like
grandmothers—lived from subsistence farming.
Therefore, the process of absolute transmission of
parenting (Vermulst, de Brock, & van Zutphen,
1991) was prevalent here, which has also been shown
in a comparison of rural Taiwanese mothers and
grandmothers who also held similar childrearing
beliefs (Cho et al., 2005).
In addition to grandmothers, older siblings,
other relatives such as aunts and cousins, and
neighbors may be involved actively in taking care of
small children. Before becoming a member of the
male society, boys also are caretakers. The follow-
ing is an excerpt of an interview with a 6-year-old
Nso boy concerning baby care:C (child): She has
carried the baby on the back.
I (interviewer):  Why is it good to be carrying
the baby on the back [name of child]?
C:  Because when the mother goes to the farm
and he is crying, they will then carry him
on the back and soothe him.
I: So when you back-carry him when the
mother is not around, he will not cry any
more?
C: Yes
I:  Why is it not good for the baby to be crying
[name of child]?
C:  Then he will be coughing and then he will
have nose bleeding.
The boy has the local knowledge how to soothe
a baby, and he will apply it if necessary. Nso chil-
dren think that they are the best caregivers for
small babies, not the mothers (Lamm, 2008).
Actually, the biological mother has a low hier-
archical position in a patrilineal and patrilocal
household. When we wanted to interview young
mothers in Gujarati Indian rural families, imme-
diately the mother-in-law or the husband showed
up to answer questions. Knowledge is not a matter
of private ownership that everybody is allowed to
distribute but a shared property, with distribution
rules in line with the family hierarchy (Greenfield,
1996). Young mothers know that they need to rely
on other caretakers to be able to fulfill their work-
load. Therefore they often also do not want to be
the sole or major caretaker (for different examples
of multiple caregiving arrangements, see chapters
in Otto & Keller, in press). For mothers, it is there-
fore very important that children are easy to han-
dle, which means that they can easily be taken care
of by different people (Otto, 2008). This practice
allows mothers to continue their chores and fulfill
their obligations, a situation that is closely watched
by the paternal family, especially mothers but also
sisters-in-law.
Nevertheless, many young women in some
areas, as in the Indian Gujarati families, return to
their natal homes to give birth to their first (and
often also later) children. Because this is often
located far from the husband’s family residency,
father and infant meet for the first time only after
several months or a year. Accordingly, fathers are
rarely involved in their small children’s everyday
life due to physical separation or to different role
assignments. For example, Nso fathers under-
stand their role as providers of material support
Keller 593
and not as interactional partners. In an interview
study with 34 Nso fathers, all agreed that provi-
sion of food for baby and mother is their utmost
duty. Sixty-nine percent of the interviewed fathers
thought that it is also their duty to provide mother
and children with clothes, hygiene products,
and medical supplies. Only 16% of these fathers
thought that playing with a baby during the first
year of life is an important paternal assignment
(Lamm & Keller, 2012). During the following
years, they consider that sending the children to
school and paying the fees is important, and they
want to decide about the future of their children.
Also, West African Fulani fathers are expected to
maintain an emotional distance to their children
(Johnson, 2000). Only distance allows fathers to
receive respect and obedience, which defines his
authority. Participating in children’s care is also not
expected from Beng fathers (Gottlieb, 2004) who
rather supervise their wives in being good moth-
ers (see also Riesman, 1992). Kipsigis fathers from
Kenya (Harkness & Super, 1992) believe that the
paternal look may harm the baby and the dirtiness
of the baby may compromise the maleness of the
father. In the Kenyan Gusii community, fathers
spent less than 5% of the day within a distance of
5 feet of their 0–30-month-old children (LeVine
et al., 1994).
The father’s levels of direct involvement in child
care seem to depend on the subsistence pattern of
the family and household size and composition.
Among the Aka foragers in the Central African
Republic, for example, Hewlett (2004) observed
an unusual high paternal involvement with 1- to
18-month-old children. Aka fathers spend more
than half of a 24-hour period within arm’s length of
their babies and hold and carry them for one-third
of the day. Hewlett proposed that less accumula-
tion of goods, regular cooperation in economic
and domestic issues between fathers and moth-
ers, absence of wars, low population density, and
monogamy are factors that support paternal par-
ticipation in small children’s care.
In any case, babies are cared for by multiple care-
givers from their first days of life and introduced to
the village community immediately. For example,
Alma Gottlieb described that, for the Beng people
from Ivory Coast, newborn babies are greeted by
the village, thus being exposed to a large number of
strangers (Gottlieb, in press). Multiple caregiving
with a special emphasis on siblings has also been
reported from Maya Indians (Maynard, 2002)
and in different sub-Saharan communities (see,
594 Dua l a n d C om m u n a l Pa r e n t i ng
e.g., Tronick, Morelli, & Winn, 1987; Weisner &
Gallimore, 1977; Whiting & Edwards, 1988).
The consent between the different caregivers
concerning socialization goals, the sharing of simi-
lar ethnotheories, and the performance of simi-
lar behavioral practices is substantial (Lamm &
Keller, 2012). All of the Nso fathers we interviewed
claimed that growing into the relational network of
the family is important as is developing respect and
obedience. They also mentioned that traditions and
cultural norms and values have to be inculcated
into their children (Lamm & Keller, 2012; see also
chapters by Edwards, 2014; Ren & Brown, 2014;
and Morelli, 2014, this volume, for further discus-
sion of communal caretaking).
The social system agrees that it is important for
children to never be the center of attention but also
never to be alone. Infants participate in the house-
hold’s daily activities; there are no extra spaces,
utensils, or attention given to the baby. Infants are
always in bodily proximity of a caretaker, who may
change quite often. Newborns are passed often
between women who hold, carry, and nurse them.
At the age of 6 weeks, an Efe infant spend more
time with other persons than with his or her bio-
logical mother (Ivey, 2000; Tronick, Morelli, &
Ivey, 1992).
During the first year of life, the interaction style
can be described as proximal (i.e., extensive body
contact and body stimulation). This does not, of
course, exclude other parenting systems, but they
are clearly subordinated under the leading systems.
Typically, babies are lying on their caregivers laps
when these are sitting, or they are attached to their
backs or hips when caregivers are moving around
from one place to another or doing chores like
sweeping the floor or selling food items. Attention
is distributed, co-occurring or divided between the
different activities (Saraswathi, 2003). This does
not imply that baby’s signals are ignored and not
given priority. The channel of attention is just not
face-to-face, but instead is mainly through body
perception (see Figure 36.3). Caregivers are atten-
tive and responsive to the infant’s body signals,
even the slightest (Chapin, in press).
If the caregiver’s exclusive attention is directed to
an infant, it occurs during body or motor stimula-
tion. For example, the Nso have a practice of strong
motor stimulation with the baby held facing out,
in an upright position, and being moved vertically
up and down. This practice is considered to be the
core of Nso parenting, without which a baby can-
not develop properly and thrive. Nso mothers have
Fig. 36.3  A typical Nso caretaking situation: an aunt is lifting the baby up and down, the typical motor stimulation pattern
of the Nso.
a quasi-medical ethnotheory, expressing that this
practice of lifting the baby up and down makes the
joints light, which is necessary for proper develop-
ment (Yovsi, 2003). The following excerpt from an
interview about early child care with a 39-year-old
Nso farm wife and mother of eight children gives an
example:I (interviewer): Why is that one good (a pic-
ture card showing body stimulation, that the mother
had selected as showing good maternal care)?
M (mother):  Because she is lifting the child up
as they are playing and he is feeling fine.
I: Why is it good to be lifting the child and
laughing with him like that? What happens
to the baby when the mother is playing and
laughing with him?
M:  The baby will be feeling fine.
“Feeling fine” is here not equivalent to joy or
positive affection, as it would be in the Western
middle-class conversational context. The inter-
views were conducted in Lamnso, the local lan-
guage of the Nso ethnic group, and “feeling fine”
is translated as not having health problems or other
developmental difficulties. Motor stimulation eth-
notheories focus on the infant’s health, safety, and
the promotion of early upright mobility, which
fosters the child’s early participation in the subsis-
tence of the family (Keller, Yovsi, & Voelker, 2002;
Lohaus et al., 2011).
Motor exercises, together with the practice of
caregivers being in close body contact with the
infant, have been documented as popular parent-
ing practices in different sub-Saharan traditional
rural communities, such as the Kipsigis and Kung
San (Harkness & Super, 2001), the Gusii (LeVine
& LeVine, 1963), the Wolof (Falladé, 1960), the
Bambora (Bril & Sabatier, 1986), and the Nso
(Keller et al., 2002, 2005).
The motor stimulation is performed rhythmi-
cally, often synchronized with verbal/vocal behav-
ior, as depicted in the following brief excerpt from
a conversation between a Nso mother with her
3-month-old baby son. The baby is looking briefly
to the mother and then into the room. The mother
is bouncing the baby rhythmically while she per-
forms sounds and words in the same rhythm: 
chikichik (.) chikichik (.) chikichik (.) chikichik
(.) chikichik (.) chikichik (.) chikichik (.) chikichik
(.) chikichik (.) chikichik (.) chikichik (.) chikichik
(.) chikichik (.) chikichik (.) chikichik (.) Tiketike=t
iketike=tiketike=tiketike=tiketike. Tiketike=tiketik
e=tiketike=tiketike=tiketike Tiketike=tiketike=tike
tike=tiketike=tiketike Tiketike=tiketike=tiketike=t
iketike=tiketike Tiketike=tiketike=tiketike=tiketik
e=tiketike.
(see Demuth, 2008)
Caregivers involve babies in protosongs, rather
than protoconversations. They maintain a syn-
chronous rhythmic structure, which involves
the baby in a joint social action. The baby thus
experiences togetherness and interdependence
with others instead of being separate and differ-
ent. The rhythmicity of verbal/vocal as well as
motor stimulation is culturally salient, so that
it is maintained also by migrants who otherwise
adopt more distal behavioral regulations (Carra
et al., 2013, for Anglophone West African immi-
grants in Northern Italy; for ethnotheories con-
cerning the importance of motor stimulation in
West African immigrants in Italy, Moscardino,
Keller 595
Nwobu, & Axia, 2006; see also Rabain-Jamin &
Wornham, 1990, 1993, for Francophone West
African immigrants in France). Generally, con-
versations are highly repetitive and consist of
commands and instructions instead of questions.
This style has been described in the literature as
repetitive style with special value being placed on
the social context, moral rectitude, and behav-
ioral consequences (Miller, Jung, & Mintz, 1996;
Mullen & Yi, 1995; Wang, Leichtman, & Davies,
2000). Emotions are viewed as disruptive and are
expected to be controlled (Wang, 2001; Wang
et al., 2000; cf. also Bond, 1991; Chao, 1995).
The following brief example from a farm wife
and mother’s conversations with her 3-month-old
baby demonstrates these elements:M (mother):
Faay! (flicks the lips and kisses the child)
M:  Mmh mmh mmh mmh mmh mmh mmh
mh. Mmh mmh mmh mmh mh mmh.
(M talks to others, lifts the child and laughs)
(M talks to others) Voc (flicks the lips & lifts
child) Voc voc voc. Ching ching ching
ching
M:  If you look at me again Mac! Yes.
M:  If you look at me. Oh Goddy! Oh Goddy!
M: If you look at me again. Oh Goddy! Oh
Goddy! (M shakes the arms of the child)
M:  Who are you looking?
M: Ching ching ching ching ching ching
ching. Ching ching.
M:  Be clapping hands sheey! (claps the hands of
the child together)
M:  Clap your hands oh. Shake your waist oh.
M:  Clap your hands oh. (M laughs & talks to
others)
(M talks to others, smiles & arranges the child´s
clothes)
M:  Clap your hands. (M talks to others) (child
voc) (M shakes child´s arms & smiles)
This conversation went on for an extended
period of time. As can be recognized, the mother–
infant play takes place in a social surrounding with
other people present and involved in the interac-
tion. It is highly repetitive, with many vocaliza-
tions and onomatopoetic references. What is also
interesting is that the baby is addressed by different
names (e.g., “faaye” which is a title in the tradi-
tional hierarchy). Often children are also addressed
as “grandmother” or “grandfather”—these refer-
ences link the baby to the world of ancestors and
the spiritual world, as discussed earlier. Each child
has different official names, at least a Western name
596 Dua l a n d C om m u n a l Pa r e n t i ng
and a traditional name, and they are differently
addressed at different phases of their lives.
Although multiple caregiving systems are
prevalent in the Nso community, maternal care is
especially linked to breastfeeding and its special
role in Nso parenting beliefs. There is a saying
that one can never become a real Nso without
being breastfed. Breastfeeding is not only done
on demand but often anticipatory. If the baby is
on the mother’s body, she will notice small bodily
signals and immediately start breastfeeding. This
is another mechanism to blur the ego boundar-
ies and support the development of a communal
identity. If the baby is roaming around with other
caregivers, they will bring the baby to the mother
if they notice small signs of fussiness. In other
rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa and
also in the South American Amazonas, babies
are also nursed by other women (see Everett, in
press).
Socialization strategies follow an apprentice-
ship model, with the caregiver being the expert and
the child being expected to learn by keen obser-
vation and imitation (Rogoff, 2003). The follow-
ing statements were made by Nso women whom
we interviewed about child care (see also Demuth,
Keller, & Yovsi, 2012):
The best way of learning is by showing the child
what is right. You instruct the child; you tell the
child what is right by doing that thing. Yes by doing
it. She learns faster when you do it and she sees than
just telling her.
And if you want to teach the child something,
you tell him to observe because that would help him
tomorrow …
Children never interrupt the activities of adults
and elder caregivers to seek out information and
advice. Also, these regulations are mainly nonver-
bal and co-occurring with ongoing other activi-
ties (Morelli, Rogoff, & Angelillo, 2003). Because
parenting is a communal obligation and subject to
public control, interindividual variability is low.
In a study addressing intercultural variability, we
found a high consensus among women from the
Nso villages concerning socialization goals as well
as parenting ethnotheories. In line with cultural
consensus theory (Romney, Batchelder, & Weller,
1987), it can be assumed that much consensus
among the informants of a cultural issue demon-
strates a domain of common knowledge that is
salient to every member of the cultural community
(Lamm & Keller, 2012).
 Farm families are also consistent in their parent-
ing orientations over the course of their children’s
development. The following short excerpt is part of a
transcript of a conversation of a Nso farmer mother
with her 3-year-old daughter. They were asked
to talk about an event that took place during the
past 4 weeks and in which they both participated
(Schröder, 2012).M (mother): We went to Mi’s
mother’s compound and she gave what to you, faay?
C (child): Who?
M:  Mi’s mother. What did she give to you?
C:   puff puff (this is a local staple)
M:  Sit on the chair. You went to the house of
Sallama and heard what that they were
doing?
C:   Mmh?
M:  You went to the house of Sallama and heard
what that they were doing there?
C:   Mmh?
M:  You went to the house of Sallama and heard
what that they were doing?
C:   I did not hear.
M:  I am saying that eh? You went to the house
of Sallama’s heard what that they were
doing there?
C:   They
M:  They were singing the song that what?
C:   They gave puff puff, you gave puff puff.
M:  They gave puff puff?
C:   You gave puff puff.
M:  And you ate.
It is obvious that the conversation is structurally
similar to the earlier exchanges between caregiv-
ers and babies. The conversation is highly repeti-
tive and centers around concrete behaviors (i.e.,
food and eating). The questions the mother asks
can be answered confirmatorily; she is not invit-
ing the child to contribute new information. The
context is social and deals with visits to neighbors.
What the child wants and wishes is not the topic
of the conversation, but rather what the child and
other people did. In this way, the child is socialized
into a role of being action oriented, to fulfill obliga-
tions and be supportive of the family system.
The traditional farm families are differently
organized than Western middle-class families.
The multigenerational household, with its many
members, permanent or transient, necessitates dif-
ferent subsystems. The couple’s relationship is not
in the foreground of the family system. Husband
and wife prioritize their relationships with their
families of origin to their marital relationship. In
case of patrilineal households, as is the case in the
Nso community, the paternal family is the center
of the household. Genders are rather segregated.
Couples do not normally spend time together;
men are engaged in male groups and do male
activities, whereas women are engaged in women’s
company. Even during family celebrations like
Christian communion, men and women sit in dif-
ferent parts of the church and celebrate later on in
different places. Couples do not go out for dinner
or for any other leisurely activities. Nevertheless,
they hold similar conceptions of what constitutes
a good marriage and a good partner. Astrid Kleis
(2013) interviewed West African couples living in
Guinea Conakry as well as those living in Berlin,
Germany, concerning their conceptions of family
and socialization strategies. West African mothers
and fathers equally valued the extended family over
the nuclear family as the best form of living. They
also agreed that the family of origin is of higher
value than the newly started family. Family unity
and mutual support are mandatory. Although men
and women live rather different lives, they agree on
basic childrearing values. Both parents appreciated
socialization goals like respect and obedience and
agreed that spoiling children would be a mistake.
Mothers and fathers agreed that they do not have
conflicts concerning childrearing. They gave high
importance to developing an African identity in
their children that seemed even more important in
a migration context (West African families living
in Germany). Otherwise, there was no difference
between West African mothers and fathers living
in Guinea Conakry or Germany.
Thus, parenting in relational networks empha-
sizes communal obligations more than maximiz-
ing individuality. Also, school attendance, which is
available in many farming communities from pre-
school to elementary school level and even beyond
sometimes, is subordinated to the necessities of
household chores such as harvesting or selling in the
weekly market. Nevertheless, school attendance is
regarded as important. Families and nursery school
teachers agree that the aim of preschools is to prepare
children for schooling. Therefore the curricula are
oriented toward school-related activities (Gernhardt,
Balakrishnan, & Drexler, 2014). Moreover, a com-
munal spirit is emphasized also in schools, with col-
lective activities like singing or marching.
Consequences
Children spending their first years in the dif-
ferent environments briefly characterized in the
Keller 597
preceding sections must differ in their developmen-
tal trajectories. Nevertheless, major developmental
theories (e.g., attachment theory) claim that there
is an evolutionary-based imprint for the develop-
ment of similar developmental qualities across cul-
tural environments based on similar conceptions of
parenting quality (van IJzendoorn & Sagi-Schartz,
2008). There is no doubt that early experiences
have consequences for later developmental achieve-
ments. Psychological (lifespan theory) as well as
evolutionary (life history theory) views in line with
the growing body of neurophysiological knowledge
about early brain development concur in assuming
that early experiences have lasting consequences
for later developmental achievements and in gen-
eral for the development of a conception of the self.
The argument put forward here is that the differ-
ent experiences in the context of dual or communal
parenting have substantial consequences for the
development of relationships and parenting of later
offspring (Keller, 2013; Keller & Kärtner, 2013).
Children growing up in dual-parenting mod-
els in Western middle-class families experience
themselves as separate individuals and autono-
mous agents from birth on, and they construct
and co-construct emotional bonds with mother
and father mainly in dyadic interactions that are
organized in a child-centered responsive mode.
This model represents classical attachment the-
ory (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978;
Bowlby, 1969/1971/1975/1982; Bretherton, 1987).
Especially evolutionary and cultural scientists have
stressed repeatedly that this model is not adap-
tive for the farmer village context described ear-
lier in this chapter (for summaries, see Otto &
Keller, in press; Quinn & Mageo, 2013 Morelli &
Rothbaum, 2007). The existence and presence of
multiple caretakers and alloparenting must have
consequences for the development of significant
relationships. The need for a change in perspective
is recognized, when, for example, Heinicke states
“that the study of attachment needs to be expanded
… to include multiple relationships” (1995, p. 307;
see also van IJzendoorn & Sagi-Schwartz, 2008).
This has important implications for the concep-
tion of attachment as a whole. I have proposed
that, especially in cultural contexts of multiple
parenting, the development of trust may rather be
based on physical availability of caretakers than on
emotional bonds (Keller, 2013). Much research is
needed to address and substantiate these issues.
With classical attachment theory, as well as with
evolutionary conceptions and neurophysiological
598 Dua l a n d C om m u n a l Pa r e n t i ng
research, I agree that the kind of relational net-
work that develops during the first years of life
has consequences for later relational development.
Therefore the family relationships characterized
earlier can be regarded also as a consequence of
early relational experiences. Thus, the definition
of young adulthood varies across cultural envi-
ronments, if family foundation is considered to
be a task of early adulthood. Moreover, cultural
environments differ with respect to the continu-
ity of life strategies involved in the solution of this
developmental task. It is a highly disruptive and
challenging event in Western middle-class fami-
lies, where it produces a complete reorganization
of the individual life, whereas it is a concomitant
consequence with no major changes in the life
of traditional village farmers. Of course, not all
members of cultural communities follow the pat-
terns that have been described in this chapter. For
example, single parenting is a special challenge
in both cultural communities described here.
Single parenting is often equated with the devel-
opment of difficulties in children in the Western
middle-class model because it is associated with
economic and social constraints—single parent-
ing may also be associated with non-normative
developmental trajectories in subsistence farmer
villages (Tyano, Keren, Herrman, & Cox, 2010).
For example, Hiltrud Otto observed in the Nso
villages that single mothers had a low social sta-
tus because they had to live with their family
of origin and were a burden on their economy
(Otto, 2008). Nevertheless, much more research
is needed to understand the complex dynamics of
parenting in cultural context.
Future Directions
In this chapter, I have portrayed dual and
communal parenting as associated with different
sociodemographic and sociocultural contexts. The
knowledge base from Western middle-class fami-
lies is broad, whereas the “neglected 95%” (Arnett,
2008) are grossly underrepresented in the litera-
ture. Some evidence about parenting practices from
subsistence-based farmers has been summarized
here, as well as some occasional reports from other
subsistence-based populations, for example, pasto-
rals like the Fulani (Yovsi, 2003) or hunter–gath-
erers like the Aka (Hewlett, 1991; 2004). Future
studies should systematically study parenting and
its consequences on children’s development and
on families in diverse cultural milieus. Moreover,
qualitative differences should be assessed within
the different milieus and form the basis for specific
prevention and intervention programs. The current
prevalent practice of taking knowledge accumu-
lated in the Western world by Western researchers
mainly using Western middle-class families and
applying it globally has been proved unhelpful
(Keller, in press). Culturally sensitive approaches
to parenting, its qualities, and its consequences
would also be beneficial for the growing numbers
of migrant families in Western societies.
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 C H A P T E R

37 Fathering Diversity Within Societies

David W. Shwalb and Barbara J. Shwalb

Abstract
This chapter discusses diversity among fathers, fathering, and fatherhood within two societies
(Chinese and Indian) and within two regions (Central/East Africa and the Caribbean). Case studies
from these locations illustrate diversity among fathers and are related to Bronfenbrenner’s
bioecological model. Eight categories of fathering diversity were derived from an analysis of contextual
influences within 15 societies and regions in Fathers in Cultural Context. Fathering takes place in
multiple contexts: (1) geography; (2) history; (3) family characteristics; (4) economic factors; (5) work/
employment conditions; (6) norms, beliefs, and values; (7) ethnicity; and (8) immigration/emigration
patterns. This classification of sources of diversity, extension of the bioecological model to include
a spatial system, Townsend’s analysis of American fathers’ multiple roles, and Hrdy’s consideration
of fathering as situation-specific all can contribute to future research and an elusive definition of a
pan-cultural core of fatherhood.
Key Words:  fathers, context, diversity, society, ecology, geography, history, family, father’s role

For my first research project in graduate school,
I (DWS) wanted to conduct a “cross-cultural”
study of fathers in Japan and the United States.
I asked my graduate advisor if he would include a
set of questions for fathers in his landmark study
of children and families in the United States,
Japan, and Taiwan but failed to persuade him to
add fathering to the scope of his already complex
project. Several Japanese psychologists had told me
previously that Japanese men seldom took part in
research, making it unfeasible to obtain their coop-
eration as participants.
I decided then to instead conduct a survey
among fathers of elementary school children in Ann
Arbor, Michigan, and in the city of Hiroshima.
Surprisingly, in Hiroshima in 1979, there was no
Institutional Review Board review required for my
research project. Based on good relations between
my Hiroshima University collaborator and the
teachers and principals of several schools, we
achieved an 85% return rate from Japanese fathers
with a wide variety of socioeconomic status (SES)
backgrounds. In Ann Arbor, where research partici-
pation was commonplace among residents, we were
subject to stringent review both by the IRB and the
school district’s research review board. The response
rate from Ann Arbor fathers was only 45%, and the
sample was almost exclusively college-educated.
My past dealings with fathers and researchers in
the two countries had led me to expect very dif-
ferent numbers in these response rates. Analyses
were limited to the data from college-educated
fathers in Hiroshima and Ann Arbor to preserve
some semblance of SES comparability between
the samples. Because the results could not be
generalized much beyond the diminished narrow
samples, we were only able to publish the data in
a small Japanese journal (Shwalb & Imaizumi,
1981). This was unfortunate because ours was the
first psychological study to compare fathers in the

602
United States and Japan. I learned from my first
venture in fathering research the folly of making
cross-cultural comparisons without understanding
how fathers perceive research participation in each
society, the pitfalls of sampling across nations, and
the critical importance of anticipating diversity of
subpopulations within each country.
Thirty-four years later, in the concluding chapter
of Fathers in Cultural Context (Shwalb, Shwalb, &
Lamb, 2013, p. 387), we recognized that “diversity
is a fundamental characteristic of fathering across
cultures. In fact, diversity describes fathering in
societies once stereotyped as homogeneous or het-
erogeneous, with high or low levels of immigration,
and characterized by large or small minority group
populations alike. We can often discern cultural
patterns of fathering, but it is also tempting to
answer the question, ‘What are fathers like across
cultures?’ with one word: ‘Diverse.’ ” The main pur-
pose of this handbook chapter was to revisit four
of the portrayals of fathering in Fathers in Cultural
Context and, as an epilogue to that volume, to pro-
vide a better classification and analysis of fathering
diversity within societies.
International Versus
Intrasocietal Diversity
Fathers in Cultural Context included a compre-
hensive review of fathering research in countries
and regions where half of the world’s population
lives, in societies of all sizes from both the indus-
trialized world and “majority world” (Kagitcibasi,
2007). Few of our chapter contributors identified
cross-national comparative studies of fathering,
and as editors we had to speculate to make gen-
eral statements about fathers in each society and to
compare the various portrayals of fathers between
chapters. In fact, our book reported more fathering
diversity within societies than between them, and
this within-society diversity was often described in
terms of commentary and generalities by chapter
writers rather than based on empirical research.
We recently asked several chapter contributors to
reconsider their respective literatures and to sup-
ply additional references specific to intrasocietal
diversity. Based on their responses and a rereading
of our book, we compiled an inventory of findings
on intrasocietal diversity. Unfortunately, there has
been mainly description of fathering diversity out-
side the West rather than explanation of either the
causes or effects of fathering diversity.
Why is it important to understand intrasoci-
etal diversity among fathers? Some readers may be
satisfied with modal portrayals of typical fathers,
but we knew from the onset of our work on Fathers
in Cultural Context that fathers are diverse within
every social group. We therefore asked every chap-
ter contributor to include a section on “subcultural
variations,” yet some audiences are not so interested
in a nuanced approach. For example, in 2012 when
we were asked to give a conference presentation in
the United States about Japanese fathering, the ses-
sion chairman asked us to “explain what today’s
Japanese fathers are like.” Similarly, when we were
invited in 2013 to speak about fathering in Tokyo,
the symposium organizers asked us to title our
speech “Fathering in the United States.” In response,
we made the general statements about “national ten-
dencies” that the organizers solicited, but inevitably
returned to the issue of differences between subpop-
ulations and among individuals. We have learned
that without a discussion of intrasocietal diversity, a
portrayal of fathers in any cultural group is incom-
plete (Nakazawa & Shwalb, 2013).
The emphasis here on within-society diversity is
in accord with the remark by Jonathan Tudge (2008,
p. 17) that “researchers interested in cultural issues
have paid too little attention to heterogeneity within
societies.” The international literature also confirms
his assertions that researchers too often use catego-
ries of diversity as independent variables in group
comparisons rather than showing how these factors
explain diversity and that there is diversity even
within subgroups (e.g., SES groups within a society
are themselves heterogeneous). Along these lines,
accounts of intrasocietal diversity are more often
concerned with diverse types of fathers than with
diversity in fathering behavior. Joseph Pleck (2013,
xv) further observed that while fathering research-
ers have sampled increasingly diverse groups since
the 1980s, the research is “stove-piped” in that each
group is studied independently without comparison
to other groups of fathers.
It was difficult to choose between using the
word “nations,” “societies,” or “cultures” in the
title of this chapter, and none of these choices was
entirely satisfactory. We distinguish between a
society (a social grouping that may equate with a
culture, nation, or both), a nation (a geographical
and political entity), and a “culture,” which we
define as a pattern of beliefs and behavior com-
mon to a social group and transmitted within
or between generations. We titled this chapter
“Fathering Diversity Within Societies” rather
than within “nations” or “cultures” because the
two regions we discuss here (Central/East Africa
S h wa l b, S h wa l b 603
and Caribbean) include numerous communi- intrasocietal diversity in fathering that emanate
ties, nations, and cultures, whereas the other two from outside the individual and are found at the
groups (Chinese and Indian fathers) are found macrosystem, exosystem, and microsystem levels of
worldwide and not only in the People’s Republic a bioecological model (Figure 37.1).
of China (PRC) or Republic of India. “Societies”
• Geography: The spatial location of the father
also seemed to be the most appropriate term
and what occurs in that place, whether in a city or
because it can be used to refer to people in both
rural area, a densely or sparsely populated region,
small-scale communities and in large-scale nation
or separated from versus living with his family,
states. Diversity in its many forms is synonymous
is the ubiquitous “foundation” (Michener, 1970,
with variability, and finally, a definitional distinc-
p. 670) of other sources of fathering diversity.
tion was made between “fathers” (including both
• History: Historical influences may be
biological and nonbiological “social fathers”),
long-term (legacy of patriarchy, filial piety,
“fathering” (behavior), and “fatherhood” (con-
colonialism; cohort differences between recent
ceptualizations of men’s roles).
generations), or short-term (changing views of
In addition to intra- and intersocietal diver-
fatherhood within a society or within an academic
sity, four other types of diversity are discussed
discipline).
in the fathering literature. First, there is diver-
• Family characteristics: Variations are found
sity in researchers’ choices of independent
in family structure, family size, and marital
variables, dependent variables, and research
or residential status (e.g., married, divorced,
designs. Second, scholarly disciplines (psychol-
cohabiting; mating patterns, etc.).
ogy, anthropology, sociology, family studies,
• Economic factors: These factors take effect
education, etc.) each have a range of theoretical
at the family level (SES, poverty, means of food
approaches to fathering. Third, diverse research
production for subsistence) and societal level
methods are found in studies of fathers in every
(prosperity, recession).
country or region featured in Fathers in Cultural
• Employment/work conditions: Such conditions
Context. Finally, Day and Lamb (2004) pointed
are seen in comparisons of fathers in single- versus
out the importance of diversity at the individual
dual-income families, work hours, employers’
level; that is, variability in individual behavior
support for paternal leave, and the like.
and attitudes based on biological, genetic, and
• Norms, values, and beliefs: Fathering may
psychological influences.
reflect diverse societal or subcultural ideologies or
In the remainder of this chapter we (1) classify
value systems that may be reflected in government
intrasocietal diversity into eight general categories
policies and laws.
that were relevant to most societies in our book,
• Ethnicity: Diversity has been identified
(2) view worldwide diversity of fathers based on one
between ethnic groups, defined in terms of the
common model, and (3)  form conclusions on the
group’s predominant language, culture, country of
common characteristics of fathers worldwide (i.e.,
origin, religion, and the like.
universal core roles of fathers).
• Immigration/emigration patterns: This type of
diversity is found, for example, in societies where
Categories of Fathering Diversity
men either travel abroad or from rural to urban
Within Societies
locations seeking work and in group comparisons
Diversity has not been the central focus of
based on the number of generations since a family
fathering research in most countries (Pattnaik,
immigrated.
2013, Shwalb & Shwalb, 2014). The locations
highlighted here (China, India, Central/East Table 37.1 illustrates these eight categories of
Africa, and the Caribbean) all have been previously fathering diversity within 15 nations or regions, as
discussed in terms of fathering diversity, whereas gleaned from the main chapters in Shwalb, Shwalb,
in most other countries outside of the United and Lamb (2013). This table provides an example
States and United Kingdom accounts of diversity or two of each form of diversity per country and
are sparse and speculative. Indeed, the full extent is an illustrative rather than exhaustive list. Under
of diversity among fathers cannot be estimated any category one might insert several complex con-
within most societies because of a lack of evidence. textual factors, and these examples are not neces-
The reports of fathering diversity in Fathers in sarily the best examples for any given society or
Cultural Context suggested eight main sources of region.

604 Fat h e r i ng Di v e r s i t y w i t h i n S o c i e t i e s
 Macrosystem
(Norms, values & beliefs
y of society or its subgroups) S
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Systems in outer ring permeate

all systems in inner rings

Fig. 37.1  The bioecological model related to fathering diversity within societies.

Adapted from Bronfenbrenner & Morris (2006). Figure courtesy of Paul R. Larson, Southern Utah University.

Fathering Diversity Within applies well to fathers, a “Spatial System: Location

an Ecological Model
As shown in Figure 37.1, an adapted version
of Uri Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model of
human development (Bronfenbrenner & Morris,
2006) provides a visual portrayal of how the preced-
ing eight sources of diversity may relate to fathers
and fathering. These sources of diversity clearly
appear within microsystems that involve direct per-
sonal interactions in one’s immediate environment
(e.g., based on family characteristics or workplace
conditions), exosystems that are manifestations of
culture that impact fathers indirectly (e.g., eco-
nomic systems or employment/family policies),
the macrosystem that encompasses culture-related
behavioral norms and values (e.g., norms, values
and beliefs, immigration/emigration patterns, eth-
nicity), and the chronosystem (history). We added
one other system to the bioecological model that
and Geography.” One’s geographic location may
impact on every other system, much as history or
time (the chronosystem) permeates other systems.
Although not considered to be contextual fac-
tors, characteristics of individual fathers (paternity
certainty, sexual orientation, incarceration, health
habits, personal history), mothers (education,
employment, attitudes toward father involvement),
and children (age, gender, temperament) also have
an impact on fathering diversity. Paternal fac-
tors fit best within the bioecological model in the
innermost “Fathers” circle whereas maternal and
child characteristics most often appear in the fam-
ily microsystem. One other important contextual
factor, the impact of the presence of other people
on fathers’ behavior, was emphasized only in the
literature on Indian fathers (see below). We did
not include this factor in Table 37.1 or Figure 37.1,

S h wa l b, S h wa l b 605
Table 37.1.  Examples of Eight Sources of Fathering Diversity in 15 Societies/Regions.
Location Geography History Family Economic Employment/ Norms, Values, Ethnicity Immigration/
Characteristics Factors Work Beliefs Emigration
Conditions Patterns

Arab Societies 22 nations across 7,000-year history Male as traditional Some of richest Urban/rural Values related to Islamic & Arab Migration to
Middle East & authority & poorest differences affluence of nation heritage oil-producing
North Africa nations in world nations

Australia Distances Post-WW2 Marriage Strong, stable Hard work to Egalitarianism Indigenous & 44% foreign-born
between coastal population age delayed; economic maintain rising foreign-born or with a foreign
cities; Sparse diversified extra-marital births growth living standard populations parent
pop. increasing

Bangladesh Fertile plains, Ancient history, Joint, extended & Poverty & dense Agricultural/ Islamic ideology 98% Bengali Emigration to seek
vulnerable coast; new nation nuclear families population low-income (ethnicity) employment
dense population Religion: 90%
Muslim 9% Hindu

Brazil Half of Slavery, Patriarchy; SES disparity; Increase in Blend of traditional Indigenous; Migration from
S. American land Colonialism; Declining family expanding women in & modern values Origins in slavery Europe, Asia,
mass Urbanized size economy workforce & colonization Africa
population

Caribbean Small island Slavery & Mate- /child- Developing Service Disparate African- vs. Migration to
nations Colonialism shifting of societies industry values between Indo-Caribbean N. America &
African-Caribbean dominant African- & Europe
Indo-Caribbean

Central/E. Climate & Colonialism Large families, high Lowest per Hunter/ Collectivism Diverse small-scale Migration to cities
Africa topography; mortality rates capita incomes gatherers societies
mostly rural among these
population societies/regions

China East coastal vs. Confucian legacy One Child Policy Transition to Floating Egalitarianism 55 ethnic Worldwide
western inland market economy population minorities, 91% Chinese culture
regions Han
India Colonization; Multi-chronicity; Patriarchal tradition Huge SES Legacy of Behavior impacted 81% Hindu 13% Vast diaspora
dense population Several millennia disparities caste system & by others’ presence Islam 2% Sikh
inequality

Japan Relatively Confucian legacy Small family, aged Chronic Decline Westernized, Brazilian, Chinese, Little emigration
small densely population recession in of lifetime traditionally Korean minorities or immigration
populated island post-bubble era employment group-centered
nation system

Malaysia Peninsular/ Several millennia; Traditional joint Rapid growth Modernizing Islamic ideology Malay, Chinese, Bangladeshi
island; relatively recent urbanization family; trend toward Indian, & & Indonesian
sparse pop. nuclear family Indigenous immigrant work

Russia Huge land mass; Pre-Soviet, Soviet, Nonresident fathers; Wealth & No job Negative narrative; Numerous ethnic Long history of
vast uninhabited post-Soviet eras alcohol use problems poverty guarantee in men undervalued groupings migration waves
areas polarization post-Soviet era out of Russia

Scandinavia Denmark, Welfare state Late marriage, Highest per Paternal leave Egalitarianism Relatively Asylum-seeking
Norway, Sweden, introduced cohabitation/ capita income relatively homogeneous Swedish
Finland divorce rates high among these common (8-13% immigrants
nations/regions foreign-born)

Southern Rich natural European Separation of >50% poverty Work location Traditional S. Africa: 81% Labor migration
Africa resources exploitation; families; father rates; wide SES isolated from engendered roles black 9% white within country
apartheid absence disparities families 11% ‘other’

United Urbanized, Impact of Divorce/ father Affluent; wide Trend toward Value placed Multi-cultural S. Asian,
Kingdom island nation recessions & world involvement SES disparities egalitarian on fathering; society E. European,
wars increased domestic & some fathers W. Indies waves
paid work marginalized of immigrants

United States Large land Urbanization High divorce rate; Significant Service & Egalitarianism & Growing sizes Melting pot
mass; coasts trends toward small wealth & technology pluralism of minority
vs. heartland; & nuclear poverty sector growth population
uneven pop.
distribution
See Shwalb, Shwalb, & Lamb, 2013, for full details.
but it is relevant to every microsystem or may be
viewed as a macrosystem norm or value placed on
sensitivity to one’s surroundings.
The preceding systems model and categorization
of sources of fathering diversity are all illustrated by
the following case story, a composite figure based
on several fathers we know.
Case Story: The Soldier Father
At age 32, he is a military officer and a father
of four. His father was highly involved in
his upbringing in an egalitarian two-career
nuclear middle-class family. Perhaps related to
their religious heritage, ethnicity, and aware-
ness of their ancestors’ history as refugees,
both he and his father value the perpetuation
of the family name through their sons, and
they share an interest in family history and
genealogy. He is highly involved in neighbor-
hood activities and with his religious commu-
nity, and his religion traditionally advocates
patriarchy that fosters an engendered division
of labor at home. He therefore prides himself
in a breadwinner role while his wife runs the
household, and takes responsibility for daily
childcare and housework. His social network
consists mainly of family friends met through
church activities, and his family’s shifting loca-
tion of residence is determined by the military.
Workplace conditions allow him to be home
every evening and on weekends, although he
has often been sent out of town for occupa-
tional assignments over extended periods of
time. He sees himself as an active and con-
cerned father who proudly took the paternal
leave afforded to him by his employer. He lives
in an affluent country which compensates him
well as an officer, and both his own personal
history and the strong position of the military
within his country have made it possible to
provide his family with a “good life.” Asked
what is most important to him, the soldier
replies that his service to his religion, family,
and country are all important, but his family
comes first.
Various aspects of the fathering role are displayed
in this soldier’s personal relationships in family,
neighborhood, church, and workplace activities.
What occurs in these microsystems is affected
by exosystem influences (e.g., economic condi-
tions, government policies in relation to family
and employment) as determined by the macrosys-
tem’s cultural values and norms (e.g., pro-military,
608 Fat h e r i ng Di v e r s i t y w i t h i n S o c i e t i e s
patriotism, and highest priority placed on the fam-
ily). His behavior can also be seen in the context of
a specific country (spatial system) in the 21st cen-
tury (chronosystem). This father’s roles are further
relevant to all eight of the sources of diversity listed
in Table 37.1.
Fathering Diversity Within Chinese,
Indian, Central/East African,
and Caribbean Societies
Let us now consider the specific sources of
fathering diversity within two highly diverse and
geographically dispersed cultural groups (Chinese
and Indian), and in two regions where diversity
is also a hallmark of fathering (the Caribbean
and Central/Eastern Africa). These four groups
were chosen from 15 societies/regions featured in
Fathers in Cultural Context because they provide
a balance of geography (three continents) and
small- versus large-scale societies, and because
each of these four locations has some distinctive
elements of fathering diversity. We include a short
case story of a father from each location to illus-
trate how individual fathers are subject to contex-
tual influences.
China
Qiu, like most Chinese fathers in the hospital,
was encouraged to stay with his wife during
the delivery.1 He helped push his wife into the
labour room, massaged her to ease her pain,
and guided her using techniques they learned
together in the prenatal classes. After the
exhausting days before and during childbirth,
Qiu was greatly relieved that both his wife
and child were in good condition, and he was
happy to have a son…
Looking back, Qiu views the inconve-
niences they experienced (insufficient hospital
resources and poor services) as inevitable con-
sequences of the huge Chinese population and
of the increasing popularity of institutional-
ized childbirth by Chinese women whose
forebears gave birth in their own homes with
the assistance of experienced, elder female rel-
atives and midwives. In fact, Qiu regrets that
such intrafamilial help is no longer available
in contemporary urban Chinese families. He
also thinks that fathers, who might not always
be competent assistants in matters such as
childbirth, now have to participate whether
or not they want to do so, because traditional
resources are not available in modern Chinese
 society… . Participation in childbirth was an
empowering experience for Qiu.
—(Li & Lamb, 2013a, pp. 15–16)
This case story was relevant to diversity in the
form of geography (urban PRC), history (21st cen-
tury), family characteristics (small family lacking
support from extended family), economic factors
(poor hospital services), and cultural values and
norms (past value of having a son; current norm of
father’s participation in childbirth). In addition, Qiu
was involved with the microsystems of his family and
wider community as impacted by the Chinese eco-
nomic system and family-related policies (exosystem)
and expectations for fathers from the broader culture
(macrosystem). We next consider broadly several
sources of fathering diversity in Chinese society.
Geographical Dispersion, Ethnicity,
and Migration Patterns
Beyond the PRC’s overall population of 1.35
billion (with about 20% of the world’s fathers),
large numbers of Chinese live in the PRC territory
of Hong Kong (7 million) and in Taiwan (23 mil-
lion), and there are 48 million overseas Chinese in
Indonesia (10 million), Singapore (2.8 million),
North America (4.8 million), Europe (1.7 million),
and elsewhere. Chinese fathers abroad are likely
to be affected differentially by all eight sources of
diversity listed in Table 37.1 in each location within
the diaspora. In the PRC, 91% of the population
belongs to the Han ethnic majority, but 55 minori-
ties account for a diverse ethnic population of more
than 110 million (only 11 countries in the world
have a greater population than 110 million). Li
and Lamb (2013a) asserted that communications
between Chinese inside and outside the PRC also
contribute to diversity and change in Chinese
fathering. For example, whereas Chinese notions
of fatherhood spread worldwide, alternative models
of fatherhood infiltrate and spread throughout the
PRC via returning expatriate Chinese and commu-
nications from the diaspora.
Employment Conditions: Urban/Rural
Migration and the Floating Population
As of 2010, 46.6% (621.9 million) of the PRC
population lived in cities or towns, compared with
an urbanization level of only 10.7% (57.7 million)
just 60 years earlier. It is predicted that by 2030 the
urbanization rate will be greater than 65%, with
a staggering 300 million increase of urban dwell-
ers in one generation. Large gaps in education,
literacy, and per capita income all favor urban over
rural locations. Kanbur and Zhang (1998) empha-
sized the importance of rural-to-urban popula-
tion migrations as well as migration from inland
Western China to the more industrialized and
highly populated coastal regions. They also noted
that in periods of economic hardship migrations
become more common within provinces from vil-
lages to provincial capital cities, rather than across
regions. The primary effect of these migrations on
fathers is that migration affects men by changing
their lifestyles and roles. For example, increases in
education, maternal employment, and living stan-
dards are all associated with urbanization and can
contribute to changes in father–child relations.
At the same time, the PRC’s “floating popula-
tion” consists of individuals who leave their regis-
tered place of residence (often rural) and move to
another place (often urban) to seek employment.
The size of the floating population, with a male
majority, is now estimated at 269 million (Li &
Lamb, 2013a), and this number is expected to
increase to 350  million by 2050. Some floating
fathers only see their children once a year, whereas
coresident urban middle class fathers can see their
children daily (Li & Lamb, 2013b). Biao (2007)
wrote that floating fathers usually leave their fami-
lies behind because the family must remain regis-
tered at its native address location to receive money
from the government or to avoid loss of the family’s
property. The floating population is connected to
another phenomenon called the “skipped genera-
tion,” consisting of children and grandparents left
behind by parents who migrate to cities from their
rural homes. In addition to men leaving behind
millions of wives, children, and grandparents, Biao
emphasizes that communities are also “left behind”
in terms of lower standards of living and educa-
tional quality. Certainly, leaving one’s children
changes the nature of fatherhood and influences
the children who grow up apart from their fathers.
Finally, millions of “floating” men are unmarriage-
able because they comprise an excess male popula-
tion in some locations.
Family Characteristics: One Child
Policy and Family Structure
Urban/rural diversity in Chinese fatherhood
is also associated with the 1979 One Child Policy
(Shwalb, Nakazawa, Yamamoto, & Hyun, 2010).
Various ways have emerged to circumvent the policy
in rural areas where farm labor is needed (e.g., in
rural China, additional children are permitted if the
S h wa l b, S h wa l b 609
first child is a daughter). In urban areas, a family
may pay a fine for having a second child, and other
couples have multiple children while living outside
China. The One Child Policy, overall, has reduced
the number of offspring and the size of families and
has enabled many families to give more time to the
single child because children have received the com-
bined attention of two parents plus the grandpar-
ents. In addition, educational expectations for the
only child have risen since 1979, and, under this
competitive pressure, parents place children for long
hours in after-school programs and other activities,
removing children from their families and fathers
(Li & Lamb, 2013a). Finally, because of population
control measures, multigenerational families have
become exceptional in the PRC, where only about
13% of urban families and 20% of rural families
are now three generational. This change in family
structure can affect fathering when fewer men in
either rural or urban settings (like Qiu in our case
story) can rely on extended family members to pro-
vide for their families or attend to their children.
Socioeconomic Diversity
and Social Mobility
In the context of increased living standards
and transition to a market economy, Li and Lamb
(2013b) found that educated Chinese fathers
with higher SES had more access to information
on Western-style fathering and more flexible atti-
tudes about gender roles compared to less educated
fathers who were more traditional in attitudes and
parenting styles. With fewer low-skill jobs available
to men and with increased female participation
in the labor market, the provider role has become
more problematic for men as their relative financial
contribution to family income declines in the face
of rising financial expectations.
As an example of diversity related to economic
conditions, Shek (2008) found that SES was associ-
ated with Hong Kong secondary school students’
perceptions of the quality of their fathers’ parent-
ing, more so than with perceptions of mothers’
parenting quality. Specifically, adolescents in their
sample who were economically “disadvantaged”
had a more negative perception of the quality of the
father–adolescent relationship and of their fathers’
quality of parenting. This may be because fathers,
more than mothers, were held responsible by teen
children for their poor economic conditions. In
effect, increased stratification by social class may
be leading to greater diversity in perceptions of the
effectiveness of men in their fathering roles.
610 Fat h e r i ng Di v e r s i t y w i t h i n S o c i e t i e s
Geography and Ethnicity:
Taiwanese Fathers
Although trends in both the PRC and Taiwan
are toward smaller families and later marriage
age, Chu and Yu (2010) reported two differences
between the mainland’s populous southeastern
region and Taiwan. First, arranged marriages are
still common in the PRC but have become rare
in Taiwan. Second, the Taiwanese divorce rate is
reportedly lower than in the Mainland southeast.
With regard to fathering, Chu and Yu’s survey indi-
cated that many fathers in the southeastern PRC
are still often viewed as disciplinarians whereas
day-to-day discipline remains the mother’s domain
in Taiwan. However, these authors speculated that
their findings may not generalize to the northeast
PRC region where mothers may also have taken on
the disciplinarian role. Links between geography,
ethnicity, and fathering cannot be definitive based
on one study, but these data suggest that one of the
father’s roles (disciplinarian) may be related to both
family structure and regional variations in norms
and values within broader Chinese culture.
History: Generational
Differences and Changes
Anthropologist William Jankowiak (2011)
observed various trends and a “transformation”
among urban families that have led to increased asser-
tiveness of mothers, which he claimed has changed
the father’s role within the family. Jankowiak’s
naturalistic observations of young fathers between
the 1980s and 2010 in public and private settings
have shown that young fathers became more active
with infants across the generations. Specifically,
increasing numbers of men took their babies for
walks and performed child care tasks, although
women retained the task of physical care of infants.
Compared to fathers in the 1980s, Jankowiak also
observed trends away from a preference for sons
and toward closeness to and value of daughters. He
described a new generation of closer and warmer
father–child relations in the context of a Chinese
family that is increasingly nuclear, smaller, and with
less authority held by the elderly. Generational diver-
sity also emphasized a trend toward dating and love
marriages in place of formal courtship and arranged
marriages. Jankowiak viewed this latter tendency as
supportive of Goode’s (1963) depiction of a global
trend toward urban marriage based on companion-
ship and emotion rather than on instrumental con-
cerns and on the free choice of both parties rather
than via arranged marriages. A final manifestation
of generational differences was the growing ten-
dency of educated urban fathers (and mothers) to
seek expert advice on parenting techniques.
Chinese fathering, in sum, appears to be charac-
terized by numerous sources of diversity (all eight
categories of diversity in Table 37.1) at all levels
of the bioecological model. Diversity is seen most
clearly in terms of within-PRC region, country,
ethnicity, rural/urban locale, migration and immi-
gration patterns, social class, governmental poli-
cies, and generational differences. Each of these is
likely to further diversify Chinese fathers and
fatherhood in the years to come, but unfortunately
research to date has seldom illuminated either the
causes or effects of diversity on individuals or social
groupings of Chinese fathers.
India
Now as his children enter adulthood, Chandan
is passionate, forceful, autocratic, and conser-
vative in matters he considers his responsibility.
He is intolerant of modernity and liberalism
where family relationships are concerned, and
is often angry and even unmanageable when
things don’t go his way. Chandan’s convic-
tion is guided by his devotion towards the
family; something so sacred that it cannot be
derailed by anyone. His son’s recent affections
and desire to marry is a current crisis for the
family. What he sees as his son’s momentary
lapse of reason cannot be allowed to jeopardise
his world. Apart from his disagreement with
the concept of love before marriage, the fact
that this young woman is from a different
ethnic community is an additional impedi-
ment. Chandan feels that children owe it to
the family to marry someone chosen through
the time-tested process of family arrangement
and that his honour, his word, and his world
would be crushed if such a thing came to pass.
In a moment of dramatic despair, he ordered
his son to declare him (Chandan) dead in writ-
ing if he insisted on marrying this woman.
—(Chaudhary, 2013, pp. 68–69)
This case story exemplifies the contexts of
history (generational differences), family char-
acteristics (patriarchal), cultural norms and val-
ues (reliance of father’s approval), and ethnicity
(father’s intolerance of young woman’s ethnicity).
In addition, these men are involved with the micro-
system of their extended family as influenced by
laws and policies regarding marriage (exosystem)
and expectations for fathers within broader Indian
society (i.e., that men can make decisions for their
adult children). Let us look next more generally at
Indian influences on fathering diversity.
Ethnicity
India, with a population of 1.2 billion, is
expected to have the largest population in the
world by 2030 and, like China, already accounts
for almost one-fifth of the world’s population
and fathers. Most accounts of Indian fathering
and families have focused on the Hindu (80.5%)
majority, but India also has sizable Islamic (13.4%
or 160 million), Christian (2.3%), and Sikh (1.9%)
religious minorities, and wide linguistic diversity,
with more than 30 languages spoken by more than
a million people. Psychologist Nandita Chaudhary
(2007, 2013, in press) has observed that even
within Hindu families there is more variation than
uniformity in family patterns. Although factors
such as religious background and social class may
have separate and combined effects on fatherhood
and fathering, empirical research on these sources
of diversity is almost entirely lacking.
Geography and History: Multiple Indias
Chaudhary (2013, p. 70) emphasized India’s
“multi-chronicity,” the simultaneous existence of
several historical levels of societal development
within one country. For example, while one sector of
Indian culture is in a technology-driven postmod-
ern era, another subpopulation has almost no con-
tact with the technological and economic changes
accrued over the past century. She also described
diversity within Indian culture as “mindboggling,”
with variability based on region, caste, religion, SES,
and language. Diversity may also be seen in terms
of transition to urban locations that emphasize
individuality, autonomy, mobility, consumerism,
higher education, and international employment.
Chaudhary (2013, p. 70) further emphasized the
importance of geography for diversity: “There are,
in fact, many Indias that one could write about.”
For example, Indian society has a historical legacy
of separate interventions in different regions of India
by the British, French, and Portuguese, as well as an
Asian influence in the lands bordering China and
Myanmar, all of which likely affected family life and
fathering among these locations.
Economic Factors: Socioeconomic Status
There is scant research evidence but much spec-
ulation on SES diversity among Indian fathers.
S h wa l b, S h wa l b 611
Kakar (2000) noted that while anthropologists
tend to study lower SES Indian families, psycholo-
gists usually study middle-class Indian families;
thus, research is not available to directly compare
these groups. Sriram and Sandhu (2010) stated
that middle-class urban mothers and fathers share
the value of working cooperatively for children’s
well-being and achievement. This view was sup-
ported by Roopnarine and Suppal (2003), who
found an association in modern middle-class fami-
lies between maternal employment and fathers’
egalitarian view of family roles. However, this
view of the middle-class father seemed to be con-
tradicted by Jain and Belsky’s (1997) finding of
greater paternal involvement in poorer families
than within middle- or upper-income families. Jain
and Belsky attributed their finding to the fact that
lower SES fathers had to work at home more for
the sustenance of the family and were thus in closer
contact with their children. As in other countries,
Indian families are characterized by social class
differences in family environment and resources
including material possessions, size and structure
of homes, and literacy and employment of par-
ents. Investigations are needed to demonstrate the
connections between these contextual factors and
diversity in fathering behavior.
Family Characteristics
The joint family composed of parents, their chil-
dren, and the children’s spouses and offspring in one
household was the modal structure of many tradi-
tional Indian families. But family structure now
varies by region (urban vs. rural locale) and SES,
with nuclear families (parents and children in one
household) predominant among lower SES families
(Sriram & Ganapathy, 1997). Sriram and Sandhu
(2010) reported that 30% of Indian families (54 mil-
lion families) are now urban and that the nuclear
family has become the predominant urban family
structure. Childrearing by multiple caregivers has
also been common in Indian society, and historically
the paternal role was that of provider, protector, and
disciplinarian, while mothers were responsible for
childcare (Sriram & Navalkar, 2013).
Situational Influences
Finally, Chaudhary (2013) emphasized the
significance for Indian fathering of the presence
of others (strangers and family members alike)
as a situational influence on fathering diversity.
She viewed this social psychological phenom-
enon as related to the legacy of extended family
612 Fat h e r i ng Di v e r s i t y w i t h i n S o c i e t i e s
households. Specifically, Chaudhary identified a
strong tendency for Indian fathers to avoid display-
ing preferential affection for any child and to avoid
expression of any such affection in the presence of
others. As a result, Indian men may have tended not
to interact with children while being observed by
researchers, and some may become more involved
at home with children when living in foreign set-
tings or in nuclear families where fewer strangers
and extended family members are present. It was
notable that India is the only culture for which we
have observed in the fathering literature such an
emphasis on sensitivity to the social situation. But
only future research will determine whether father-
ing is as situation-dependent elsewhere (“faculta-
tive”; see Hrdy, 2009) as it has been described in
India.
In summary, Indian fathering has been associ-
ated with every source of diversity in Table 37.1 in
relation to religious group, language, social class/
caste, family structure, level of modernity and
economic development, and (in perhaps a special
Indian manner) the presence of others. Fatherhood
is understood in the microsystems of the family,
neighborhood, religious, and wider community,
and it is most clearly impacted in the exosystem
by an economic system that results in extreme
social stratification. The impact of the chronosys-
tem (history) is notable for Indian fathers, and the
contexts of Indian fathering are changing rapidly.
Where a father lives in India (spatial system) is
related to his social status, ethnicity, and religion,
and all of these aspects of diversity impact on how
men behave as fathers. India’s “mindboggling”
variability suggests the value of future research on
how these contextual factors actually impact the
behavior within the diverse population of Indian
fathers.
Central and Eastern Africa
Ba’win has no living brothers, and has
encountered considerable loss in his life, expe-
riencing the death of nine children and two
wives. Even given the Bofi forager child mor-
tality rates of approximately 41%, his loss is
still considerably above average for his com-
munity. His age and experiences are apparent,
in his late 60s… . On most days, Ba’win is
in camp providing healing for clients or car-
ing for his youngest child and grandchild. His
youngest daughter, Kasey, is 3 years old and
his grandson, Lee, is 18 months old. During
one of my four-hour focal child observations
 of Lee, Ba’win was the primary careprovider
even when Lee’s grandmother and aunts were
present. Lee sat near or on Ba’win’s lap most of
the afternoon that I observed. Ba’win was not
Lee’s play-partner, but instead he held him
when Lee climbed into his lap, and cuddled
and patted Lee when he cried. They rarely
spoke to each other, but Lee’s attachment to
Ba’win was clear. At one point in the observa-
tion a sudden rain storm started and Lee ran
straight to Ba’win rather than to his grand-
mother or aunt (his parents were in the forest).
—(Fouts, 2013, pp. 151–152)
This case story shows that fathers must be
understood in terms of family characteristics (large
families, high infant mortality rate), geography
(village), economic factors (forager means to pro-
vide subsistence), and cultural beliefs (in healing).
In the family microsystem, fathers like Ba’win
are social fathers to their grandchildren, and eth-
nicity (Bofi) and history (long-time prevalence
of hunter-gather communities) reflect many ele-
ments of a complex and diverse picture of father-
ing within the small-scale societies of Central and
Eastern Africa.
Family Characteristics
Numerous contextual factors associated with
family life have been shown to contribute to
diversity in father involvement within African
small-scale societies. First, Katz and Konner
(1981) observed that in such communities monog-
amous and egalitarian spousal relations were fac-
tors that contributed to paternal involvement.
Hewlett (1991) later reported that within Aka
forager communities more involved fathers had
fewer brothers or relatives, married a wife from a
more distant location, married later, were monoga-
mous, or lacked a position of status within their
clan. Meehan (2005) then found in the same
societies that patrilocality (living with the hus-
band’s extended kin or clan) was also associated
with father involvement. Supportive of Hewlett’s
conclusions, Fouts (2008) showed that Aka and
Bofi forager fathers with fewer kin resources (e.g.,
fewer brothers) were more available to their chil-
dren. Finally, Fouts (2008) also related differences
in father involvement to the child’s age, observing
more involvement with infants (a period of maxi-
mum vulnerability), less involvement with tod-
dlers, and then an increase in paternal care from
ages 3–4 years (another period of vulnerability).
Economic Factors: Subsistence Type
Fouts and Hewlett concurred that there may
be greater proximity between Central African
fathers and infants/children in forager groups
(hunter-gatherers) than in small-scale societies
where the means of subsistence are agricultural or
horticultural (farming) or pastoral (herding). Most
recently, Fouts (2013) concluded from her own
work and from that of Hewlett and others that
active fathering is associated with husband/wife
egalitarianism and cooperation in subsistence and
child care, women’s work, lack of material accu-
mulation, lower testosterone levels among males,
and constraints on mothers who are nursing young
babies; most of these variables have been associated
with life in forager communities.
The Evolution of Diversity
Hewlett (1991, 1992) posited that ideologi-
cal, demographic, ecological, social, and psy-
chological factors were all related to fathering
diversity. According to his review of several
theoretical perspectives, evolutionary biologists
attributed differences in father involvement
within small-scale societies to (1) distribution of
females, (2) paternal certainty, and (3) individual
developmental factors. For example, in reference
to “distribution of females” Hewlett meant that
fathers were expected to provide more child care
in hunter-gatherer camps than in cities because
urban men would have to compete more for
mates in a town or village than would men in cit-
ies. Evolutionary theory also predicted that when
paternity was certain, men would invest more
in child care of children they knew to be their
own. Third, in the developmental course of early
childhood, children may or may not learn from
their own fathers that mating relationships are
stable and that fathers provide for their children.
Hewlett also mentioned the following factors as
relevant to fathering diversity in small-scale soci-
eties: warfare (more paternal involvement in the
absence of warfare), polygyny (more involvement
when one had fewer wives/children to divide
one’s time and resources among), the degree to
which men controlled women’s lives (affecting
how much time men spent in child care them-
selves), lack of resources, and the degree to which
men contributed to subsistence.
Overall, we have viewed fathers within Central
and East Africa as diverse according to geogra-
phy in the spatial system (large rural popula-
tion), history (gradual migration to cities), family
S h wa l b, S h wa l b 613
characteristics (relatively large and extended fami-
lies), and economic factors (fathering behavior
related to subsistence means). In addition, eth-
nicity (differences between numerous small-scale
communities) as an aspect of the macrosystem was
shown by Fouts, Hewlett, and others to account
for important variations in fathering in this region.
Many elements of the bioecological model having
to do with institutions seem less relevant to fathers
in small-scale societies than in larger societies, and
the microsystems of family and workplace seem
less distinct in these Central/East African villages.
Exosystem influences are most apparent in terms of
the economic system within each community. But
we may expect that more modern-day influences
shown in Figure 37.1 will impinge on fathering as
Central and Eastern Africa become more modern
and urban via the spatial system and chronosystem
(see also Townsend, 2013).
Caribbean
Rakesh is very reserved and maintains a good
deal of distance from his father and brothers
due to family disputes. Work is unpredict-
able and wages are generally low in his town.
On most days, he appears worried and the
demands of work keep him away from the
children… . On weekday mornings, Rakesh
drops the older child off at his full-day early
childhood program and the younger one off at
the maternal grandparents’ home before going
to work. He fusses about the older child’s
behavior and often threatens to discipline him
when he misbehaves. When he disciplines the
older child, the treatment can be harsh involv-
ing physical punishment and a series of stern
verbal reprimands. By all accounts, Rakesh
is more involved in the care of his children
than men of the previous generation. But his
involvement is mostly confined to taking the
children to places and events (e.g., church
social gatherings), physical discipline, and
watching television with them (e.g., wrestling
and sporting events). Rakesh sometimes looks
puzzled and uncertain about how he should
approach his responsibilities as a father. He
remains quiet for long stretches of time when
he is with the children.
—(Roopnarine, 2013, pp. 203–204)
The case story of Rakesh the Indo-Caribbean
father illustrates the importance of family charac-
teristics (disputes within his family, involvement
614 Fat h e r i ng Di v e r s i t y w i t h i n S o c i e t i e s
of grandparents), economic/work conditions (low
wages), geography in the spatial system (urban
location), and history in the chronosystem (gen-
erational differences in fathering involvement). His
involvement with children is related to the micro-
systems of the family, workplace, school (early
childhood program), and religious community.
Fathers like Rakesh are also affected by the exo-
systems of the mass media (television), economic
system, employment policies, and educational
systems and by the macrosystem’s societal norms
(expectation for fathers to discipline children) and
values (favoring strict discipline). We next sum-
marize some of the insights of Roopnarine and his
colleagues regarding specific elements of fathering
diversity within the Caribbean region.
Ethnicity
Psychologist Jaipaul Roopnarine (2013)
emphasized intrasocietal diversity in that ethnic
(African-Caribbean fathers vs. Indo-Caribbean
fathers) and social class variations account for the
most notable diversity among fathers in Caribbean
communities. In addition, his recent findings of
consistently high paternal warmth dispel negative
stereotypes of Caribbean fathers across all SES lev-
els based on the tendency of researchers to focus on
low-SES Caribbean fathers.
Ethnic diversity in the Caribbean dates back
several centuries. It has resulted in different lev-
els of economic advancement and educational
attainment between and within Caribbean societ-
ies. Within Indo-Caribbean culture, Roopnarine
(2013) described how the nuclear family, with its
higher marriage and marriage commitment rates,
has replaced the extended family as the norm and
in that most Indo-Caribbean children live with
their biological fathers. Roopnarine and his col-
laborators have pointed out a shift in the current
generation of this ethnic group from patriarchy and
strictness toward egalitarianism and higher levels
of warmth in the context of dual-income nuclear
families and a cultural shift away from Hindu tra-
ditions (see preceding section on Indian fathers).
Family Characteristics: Mate
Shifting and Child Shifting
According to Roopnarine (2013), and as evi-
dence of diversity between cultures, mate shift-
ing and child shifting are two examples of how
African-Caribbean family structure, marital
patterns, and child care are diverse and diverge
from European/American models. Compared
with Indo-Caribbean fathers, African-Caribbean
fathers may be more diverse in their marriage and
mating patterns (Roopnarine & Hossain, 2013).
For example, in mate shifting, some fathers may
have children with several partners and “shift”
partners over their adult years; in child shifting,
children are moved or “shifted” for care by relatives
and nonrelatives.
Economic Factors
Another source of diversity within the popu-
lation of African-Caribbean fathers concerns
one’s economic conditions (i.e., whether men
can provide for their children). As described by
Roopnarine (2013), many African-Caribbean men
first become fathers outside marriage in “mating
unions,” and their marriage rates are relatively low.
However, as these men gain economic status with
age, their marriage rates and marital stability may
increase toward middle age. Because of these pat-
terns and the prevalence of social fathers, many
African-Caribbean children grow up with little
contact with their biological fathers. Roopnarine
emphasized that intrasocietal diversity in fathering
should be viewed in the context of alloparenting;
that is, parenting by people other than biological
parents by multiple caregivers.
In sum, fathering in Caribbean communities is
diverse according to ethnicity (African- vs. Indo-
Caribbean), history (legacy of patriarchy, colo-
nization, and slavery), geography (differences in
fathering within and between various nations), fam-
ily characteristics (resident vs. nonresident, social
fathering, mate and child shifting), economic fac-
tors (SES), and immigration (to the United States,
Europe, etc.). Within the bioecological model,
fathers have been studied mainly in the microsys-
tem of the family, and the case of Caribbean fathers
challenges the notion of fatherhood as defined in
the context of marriage and permanent, stable
spousal relations. Caribbean economic influences
within the exosystem have often been discussed in
terms of SES differences. Finally, at the macrosys-
tem level of norms, values, and beliefs, fatherhood
has clearly diverged between African-Caribbean
and Indo-Caribbean men.
Conclusion: The Core Roles
of Fathers in Cultural Context
Michael Lamb (2010, p. 3) wrote in the intro-
duction to the most recent edition of The Role of
the Father in Child Development that “fathers
play a number of significant roles—companions,
care providers, spouses, protectors, models, moral
guides, teachers, and breadwinners… . Only by
considering fathers’ performance of these various
roles, and by taking into account their relative
importance in the socio-ecological contexts con-
cerned, can fathers’ impact on child development
be evaluated.”
What roles can be found globally and within
societies? Anthropologist Nicholas Townsend
(2002) described four elements of fatherhood in
the United States that encompass all the roles listed
in the preceding quotation from Lamb (2010). He
labeled them as follows: “intimacy” (emotional
closeness with a child), “provision” (enabling
one’s spouse or partner to nurture the children;
providing a material standard for family life),
“protection” (from physical danger and negative
influences), and “endowment” (giving one’s time,
money, and energy to children or family; making
possible opportunities such as sports, lessons, and
schooling; endowing children with character). Also
according to Townsend, American fatherhood is
expressed in the contexts of marriage, employment,
and home ownership, and he observed that all
four elements and three contexts are interrelated.
Townsend’s research sample consisted only of US
fathers, but it seems that the elements of father-
hood he described may be relevant internationally,
with the relative salience of each element and con-
text dependent on the ecology of each social group.
We would add “procreation” (Gilmore, 1991) to the
preceding four elements (roles) because procreation
may be the primary or only aspect of fatherhood
fulfilled by some men. In addition, the elements
and context from Townsend (2002) may be viewed
in terms of the bioecological model and the eight
categories of fathering diversity discussed in this
chapter.
How, then, shall we describe the international
essence of fatherhood if the literature provides an
incomplete and sometimes inconsistent picture
of diversity within societies? First, we can adopt
Townsend’s (2002) four elements of the father
role as a starting point for intra- and intersocietal
research, as either a common core or a range of core
roles. In addition, the eight sources of diversity in
Table 37.1, along with the three contexts identi-
fied by Townsend (marriage, home ownership, and
employment) and the bioecological model (Figure
37.1) all will provide clues for how to organize
future work on contextual influences. Ultimately,
we want to understand the psychological experi-
ence of fathering, cultural goals and values that
S h wa l b, S h wa l b 615
guide fathering, how fathers achieve cultural
goals and pass them on to future generations, and
whether the goals and behaviors of fathers change.
Unfortunately, there is currently insufficient data
to issue definitive conclusions about either the
core meaning of fatherhood or fathering diversity.
Moving ahead, in our opinion, comparative stud-
ies of intrasocietal diversity should precede interna-
tional comparisons. This is because cross-national
studies almost always fail to account for intrasoci-
etal diversity, and this results too often in unwar-
ranted conclusions and generalizations beyond the
scope of their samples.
Biological anthropologist Sarah Hrdy (2009,
p. 161) called human fathering “extremely faculta-
tive—that is, situation-dependent and expressed
only under certain conditions.” Chaudhary’s
depiction of Indian fathers as constrained by the
presence of others was a perfect illustration of fac-
ultative fathering, and Fouts (2013, p. 166) wrote
that “given the ample evidence that fathering is fac-
ultative (i.e., situation-dependent) and that fathers
adapt strategically to the constraints of their cur-
rent environment, fathering in urban vs. rural set-
tings may also have some distinct characteristics.”
But is this situation-dependence specific to Indian
and small-scale African society fathering? And are
fathers more affected by context, including intraso-
cietal contexts, than are mothers? If so, it is possible
that the paternal role may be more facultative and
variable than a more universal maternal role. That
will make it especially difficult to establish a core
international essence of fatherhood or fathering.
We predict that fathering diversity will increase
in the future within most societies. This prediction
is partly based on Gray and Anderson’s (2010) evo-
lutionary analysis, which indicated that fathering
worldwide is more diverse now than ever. Utrata,
Ispa, and Ispa-Landa (2013, p.  295) echoed this
sentiment as follows in their discussion of Russian
fatherhood: “Western scholars tend to agree that
fathering patterns are becoming more diverse,
as different subpopulations exhibit simultaneous
intracultural trends toward involvement or detach-
ment.” But whether the future reveals a global
convergence or global diversification of fathers’
roles (United Nations, 2011), or both, the study of
intrasocietal diversity will be essential for an under-
standing of fathers in cultural context.
Acknowledgments
We thank the following colleagues for their
insights, suggestions, and permission to reprint their
616 Fat h e r i ng Di v e r s i t y w i t h i n S o c i e t i e s
case stories: Michael Lamb, Nandita Chaudhary,
Hillary Fouts, Jaipaul Roopnarine, and Xuan Li.
We also appreciate the support of the Southern
Utah University Psychology Department (Britt
Mace, Chair), and acknowledge Lene A. Jensen for
her insightful comments on the earlier drafts of this
chapter. This chapter is dedicated to the fathers of
Thomas Hersch Gorder and Elijah Hyrum Shwalb.
Note
1 The four quotations from case stories about fathers from
China (Li & Lamb, 2013a), India (Chaudhary, 2013),
Central/East Africa (Fouts, 2013), and the Caribbean
(Roopnarine, 2013) are all copyright 2013 from Fathers in
Cultural Context by David W. Shwalb, Barbara J. Shwalb,
and Michael E. Lamb (editors) and reproduced by per-
mission of Taylor and Francis Group, LLC, a division of
Informa PLC.
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of the father in child development (5th ed., pp. 341–387).
New York: Wiley.
Shwalb, D. W., Shwalb, B. J., & Lamb, M. E. (Eds.). (2013).
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S h wa l b, S h wa l b 617
 PART
6
Middle and Older
Adulthood
 C H A P T E R

38 Cognition in Adulthood
Across Cultures

Angela H. Gutchess and Aysecan Boduroglu

Abstract
Although studies indicate that aging impacts a number of cognitive abilities, this research has largely
been confined to Western samples. This chapter reviews the budding literature on cross-cultural
differences in cognitive aging. Although cultures largely converge in the effects of aging on basic
processes including speed, working memory, and cortical thinning, some aspects of memory
appear to differ with age across cultures. For example, the content of autobiographical memory
and the influence of categorization on long-term memory differ across cultures for older adults.
Cultural differences are particularly robust in the domain of social cognition, including stereotypes
and expectations about memory with age, wisdom, and emotional processing and memory. The
chapter concludes with a consideration of some of the methodological challenges and suggestions
for promising future directions, with the authors advocating for additional cognitive aging research
with a cross-cultural perspective.
Key Words:  cognition, aging, culture, memory, attention, emotion, social cognition

To date, the majority of research on cognitive
aging has been conducted in Western nations, pri-
marily studying elderly of European descent. This
research demonstrates that a variety of cognitive
abilities are impaired in later life. Neurobiology
likely drives some of these changes, meaning that
declines should be universal across elderly despite
differences in strategies and cognitive lenses. The
generalizability of cognitive aging across cultures,
however, has been investigated little. Understanding
cross-cultural differences and similarities is of
increasing importance as populations age because
of the global challenge to support independent and
productive lives in the elderly. Furthermore, the
study of cultural differences has the potential to
uncover a variety of information-processing strat-
egies and to identify those that more successfully
sustain cognition with age.
The subjective perception of differences in aging
across cultures also makes this an interesting topic
of investigation. Reports of people who age well are
rife in the media, and we are quick to extrapolate
to the group or cultural level to ask what makes
those people age well. For example, we consume
news coverage of Sardinians living long lives,
adopt Mediterranean diets, or ponder why the old-
est living man and woman both hail from Japan.
When the first author embarked on the study
of cognition across cultures, she was struck by
the perception that older Chinese were far more
able-bodied than older Americans. When touring
the streets of Beijing, she passed men and women
carrying heavy loads while walking long distances
or squatting comfortably by the side of the road.
She wondered what about their lifestyle led them
to age better than their American counterparts,
but she also questioned the subjective nature of her
assessments. Systematic comparisons across cul-
tures are necessary to objectively evaluate poten-
tial differences in the trajectory of cognitive aging.

621
Whether cultural differences in stereotypes and
expectations about aging actually influence out-
comes is also important to consider, particularly in
light of the dramatic differences in views of older
adults across cultures.
The combined study of aging, culture, and cog-
nition is in its infancy, so many exciting questions
have yet to be addressed. This chapter focuses pri-
marily on Eastern versus Western differences, with
little consideration of subgroups within a nation.
This choice is for both theoretical and practical rea-
sons: specifically, we contend that culture operates
as a lens through which the world is viewed and
correspondingly processed rather than exerting its
effects in a hardwired, inflexible manner. Groups
within a larger culture should share some exposure
to shared cultural heritage. In addition, the bulk
of the research thus far contrasts East Asian (com-
monly Chinese, Japanese, or Korean) with Western
(American or Canadian; rarely Western European)
cultures within extant theoretical frameworks
(Nisbett, 2003). The research we discuss focuses
on adult development, typically comparing young
adults who are college-aged (18 to early 30s) to
older adults 60+, with occasional consideration of
middle-aged adults in their 40s and 50s. The next
section introduces a theoretical perspective to guide
the investigation of cross-cultural differences, with
and without consideration of age. Then, we review
research on cultural differences in cognition with
age, including comparisons of brain anatomy, basic
cognitive processes (e.g., speed of processing and
working memory), arithmetic ability, several aspects
of memory (long-term, source, categorization, auto-
biographical, and beliefs about memory), emotion,
and wisdom and problem solving. The final sections
discuss methodological challenges to the study of
cognition across culture and age, as well as suggest-
ing some promising future directions for research.
Theoretical Framework
Nisbett and colleagues (Nisbett, 2003; Nisbett
& Masuda, 2003; Nisbett, Peng, Choi, &
Norenzayan, 2001) propose that profound differ-
ences in the societal organization of ancient Greek
and Chinese civilizations shaped cognition in
ways that distinguish East Asians and Westerners
today. Because of “multiple, complex role relations
with other individuals … the socially interde-
pendent Chinese would always have been looking
outward, trying to coordinate their actions with
those of others while minimizing social friction”
(Nisbett & Masuda, 2003, p. 11163). Greeks led
622 C o g n i t ion i n A du lt ho od Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
more independent lives and had “fewer and less
complex social relations than did the Chinese… .
The independence of their lives might have given
them the luxury of attending to objects in light of
their personal goals in relation to them” (Nisbett
& Masuda, 2003, p. 11163). These differences led
the Greeks to adopt an analytic approach, empha-
sizing rules, objects, and their features and catego-
ries. In contrast, Chinese adopted a more holistic
approach, emphasizing relations between objects.
These differences are exhibited on a variety of tasks.
East Asians attend to contextual information, better
recalling background details of underwater scenes
(Masuda & Nisbett, 2001) and explaining the
behavior of an individual fish in terms of other fish
(Morris & Peng, 1994). Americans are more facile
with rule-based categorization (Norenzayan, Smith,
Kim, & Nisbett, 2002) and focusing on objects
while ignoring a conflicting context (Ishii, Reyes,
& Kitayama, 2003; Masuda & Nisbett, 2001).
When cultural differences are considered across
the life span, one might expect age to act as a “great
equalizer.” Based on the extent of age-related process-
ing declines, cross-cultural differences in cognitive
processing present earlier in life could be eradicated.
That may be the case for many abilities, but it is also
possible that culture has the opposite effect—that
of enlarging cultural differences over the life span
due the greater absorption of culture over a lon-
ger time period. Cultural effects can be malleable,
with testing location (Ji, Zhang, & Nisbett, 2004),
cross-cultural exposure (Elfenbein & Ambady,
2003; Norenzayan et al., 2002), and biculturalism
(Gardner, Gabriel, & Lee, 1999; Hong, Morris,
Chiu, & Benet-Martinez, 2000) impacting the
magnitude of cultural differences.
Park, Nisbett, and Hedden (1999) discuss the
effects of culture as increasing or decreasing cul-
tural differences across the life span depending on
task requirements. They challenge the view that
culture affects only “software” but not “hardware”
components of cognition, whereas neurobiological
aging exerts the reverse pattern of influence (Baltes,
1993; Geary & Lin, 1998). Instead, Park and col-
leagues suggest that even components typically
considered “hardware” can be molded by culture
and that resource demands determine whether cul-
tural differences will be magnified or minimized
on a task with age. Conspicuous cross-cultural
differences in the young can be obliterated by
cognitive aging when tasks are resource intensive,
such as working memory tasks. In this case, per-
formance declines more steeply with age for one
culture relative to the other. Automatic tasks with
low resource demands, such as social judgments,
should show maintenance of cultural differences
with age or possibly even further divergence due to
more extensive cultural immersion.
The dynamic interaction of culture and age
discussed by Park et al. (1999) is also recognized
by Li (2003) in her model of cross-level dynamic
biocultural co-constructivism. This model suggests
that cultural influences on cognition can only be
understood by investigating a variety of processes
over numerous time scales and contexts. Social
situations, an individual’s experiences, and genes
contribute to and are influenced by each other
across neurobiological, cognitive, behavioral, and
sociocultural levels and time scales of human
phylogeny, life span ontogeny, and moment-to-
moment microgenesis, suggesting that the contri-
bution of culture to cognition extends far beyond
the “software” components. Chiao and col-
leagues (2013) also argue for the importance of
a culture–gene coevolution approach, especially
highlighting the role of cultural neuroscience in
this endeavor.
Cultural Differences
in Cognition with Age
Brain Anatomy
Neural measures largely converge with behav-
ioral measures in revealing similar effects of aging
across cultures, such that brain volume decreases
with age and to a similar degree across cultures.
Chee and colleagues have found that older adults
of East Asian descent from Singapore show
age-related reduction in total cerebral as well as
hippocampal volume (Chee et al., 2009; see also
Chee et al., 2011). Regional volumes across sev-
eral gray matter regions, as well as in white matter,
showed reduction with age. As stated by Chee et al.
(2009), “despite differences in diet, lifestyle, body
structure and a lower frequency of APOE e4 carri-
ers in our East Asian cohort, the pattern of change
in cognition and brain measures was broadly com-
parable to similar studies conducted in Caucasian
populations and speaks to the generalizability of
processes involved in age-related decline in cogni-
tion and brain volume” (p. 265).
Because the cortex tends to atrophy and thin
with age, measures of cortical thickness serve as
a proxy for how the brain is aging. Even among
young adults, the thickness of the cortex varies
across regions, potentially reflecting the effects of
life experiences and the involvement of the regions
in processes differentially emphasized across cul-
tures. In a direct comparison of cultural differences,
a number of regions differ in cortical thickness
such that these regions are thicker in the American
young compared to the Singaporean young (Chee
et al., 2011). Few differences emerge for older adults,
with only left inferior temporal gyrus thicker for
Singaporeans than Americans. Chee et al. (2011),
however, caution against interpreting this as cul-
tural convergence with age due to high variability
in cortical thickness with age. This suggestion is
supported by a comparison of high-ability subsam-
ples of older adults in that the cultural differences
in this group are relatively similar to the pattern for
young adults. It is possible that aging mitigates the
effect of culture for the low-ability individuals such
that greater convergence may occur across cultures
for older adults who exhibit poorer trajectories of
cognitive aging (also see the chapter by Ryff et al.).
Basic Processes
In the emerging research on cross-cultural cog-
nitive aging, the most convergence across studies
occurs in the study of basic processes. Cognitive
building blocks such as perceptual speed and work-
ing memory capacity decline with age for both East
Asian and American populations, consistent with
the notion that these deficits in cognitive aging
result from neurobiological processes. Schaie,
Nguyen, Willis, Dutta, and Yue (2001) examined
whether a Chinese sample replicated the systematic
cognitive declines with age identified by the Seattle
Longitudinal Study. Indeed, the older three cohorts
(aged 50s–70s) performed worse than the younger
three cohorts (20s–40s) on measures of inductive
reasoning, word fluency, and verbal, spatial, and
numerical ability. Similarly, for a Singaporean sam-
ple aged 55–86, Chee et al. (2009) reported effects
of aging on speed of processing, executive function,
visuospatial memory, language, attention, and
verbal memory. Effects of aging were more pro-
nounced for speed of processing compared to other
domains. These findings converge with reports of
Western samples, indicating similar effects of cog-
nitive aging cross-culturally on basic processes. The
consistency across samples suggests that neurobio-
logical aging operates with little regard for the cul-
tural environment.
In terms of domain-specificity of cognitive
building blocks, Hedden et al. (2002) showed that
visuospatial measures of speed and working mem-
ory are ideal for equating samples across culture and
age, but digit-based measures favor Chinese (see
G u t c h e s s , B odu r o g l u 623
 Corsi blocks-forward Digit span-forward
18 18
Chinese Chinese
16 16
Americans Americans
14 14
12 12
Trials correct

Trials correct
10 10
8 8
6 6
4 4
2 2
0 0
Young adults Older adults Young adults Older adults

Corsi blocks-backward Digit span-backward

18 18
Chinese Chinese
16 16
Americans Americans
14 14
12 12
Trials correct

Trials correct
10 10
8 8
6 6
4 4
2 2
0 0
Young adults Older adults Young adults Older adults

Pattern comparison Digit comparison

35 35
Chinese Chinese
Americans Americans
30 30
# Correct

# Correct

25 25

20 20

15 15
Young adults Older adults Young adults Older adults

Fig. 38.1  The performance of younger and older American and Chinese participants on measures of speed and working memory.
Visuospatial measures are displayed on the left, exhibiting a pattern of cultural equivalence. Verbal measures are displayed on the
right, showing a pattern of cultural differences.
Adapted with permission from Hedden et al. (2002), ­figures 1 and 2, with permission of the publisher, American Psychological
Association.

Figure 38.1), presumably because of differences in
syllabic density across languages (discussed in the
section “Methodological Challenges”). Although
Geary, Salthouse, Chen, and Fan’s (1996) spatial
orientation results converge with Hedden et al.
(2002), their perceptual speed measures do not.
Geary and colleagues report an advantage for
American young over Chinese young on their visuo-
spatial measure but no cultural differences on their
numerical verbal measure. The conflicting results
between the two studies could reflect participant
sampling or properties of the measures; for example,
more familiar iconic patterns on the Geary et al.
(1996) measures could facilitate Americans’ per-
formance. Interestingly, the most striking finding
across both studies is the large age-related decline in
speed of processing. Advantages present for young
of one culture are reduced with age, especially for
higher processing loads (Hedden et al., 2002). This
is consistent with Park et al.’s (1999) position that
age-related neurobiological changes can eradicate
early-life cultural differences.

624 C o g n i t ion i n A du lt ho od Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
 The similar age-related decline across cultures
suggests that samples can be matched on levels of
basic cognitive abilities. This would allow for the
investigation of culturally driven differences in
higher order processes (e.g., qualitative differences
in memory errors), thus ensuring that cultural dif-
ferences in general intelligence do not contaminate
or confound the results. As shown in Figure 38.1,
the Corsi Blocks task (Wechsler, 1987) is a cultur-
ally invariant measure of working memory (but see
Chee et al., 2011, for cultural differences on forward
Corsi), and the Pattern Comparison (Salthouse &
Babcock, 1991) is a culture-invariant measure of
speed of processing (Hedden et al., 2002). Subtests
of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS;
Wechsler, 1981), normed across cultures, can be
used to match samples on world knowledge (e.g.,
Gutchess, Yoon, et al., 2006).
Arithmetic Ability
Initial work on strategy-dependent cognitive
domains reveals the same pattern as for basic pro-
cesses, with an overwhelming effect of aging with
little variation due to culture. One example of
this is arithmetic ability, in which studies reveal
a Chinese advantage in arithmetic for elemen-
tary and high school children (e.g., Stevenson,
Chen, & Lee, 1993). Investigating older adults led
Geary et al. (1996) to conclude that the dispar-
ity is a relatively recent phenomenon rather than
a long-standing historical difference, possibly due
to cohort differences in education in the United
States. Although young Chinese adults performed
better than young American adults, older adults in
both cultures performed similarly on measures of
mathematical ability. The advantage for the young
Chinese was limited to numerical facility; cultural
differences were not present on measures of speed
of processing or spatial orientation.
Long-Term Memory
Long-term memory declines with age are well
established across domains such as verbal and
visual materials, but providing effective strate-
gies such as deep or meaning-based encoding can
sometimes reduce age-related declines (Kausler,
1994). Because culture can be conceptualized as
conveying cognitive biases for information pro-
cessing, strategies emphasized by different cultures
could be more or less affected by age-related cog-
nitive changes. On the other hand, the neurobio-
logical effects of aging could have a more profound
effect than the subtle nuances of culture-specific
strategies, and any advantages seen in youth would
be obliterated by aging. Using the framework of
Park et al. (1999), strategies that are automatic and
largely dependent on knowledge structures should
lead to maintained or possibly larger cultural dif-
ferences with age. However, elderly should perform
similarly on resource-driven memory tasks. Thus
far, three domains of long-term memory—source
memory, memory for categorically related items,
and autobiographical memory—have been investi-
gated across cultures.
Source Memory
Source memory is a domain of striking
age-related impairments (Spencer & Raz, 1995).
Older adults perform poorly at binding or asso-
ciating information such as locations, colors, or
sources to items (e.g., remembering that the cat
was black or that a statement was read by a male
voice). Based on the cross-cultural work of Nisbett
and colleagues (Nisbett, 2003; Nisbett & Masuda,
2003), East Asians would be expected to better
associate contextual details with an item, relative to
Americans. Chua, Chen, and Park (2006) investi-
gated binding processes using statements presented
by speakers on a videotape. They found no effects
of culture, with similar declines in source memory
with age for Chinese and Americans. These results
converge with neuroimaging evidence (Goh et al.,
2007), suggesting that age-related source memory
and binding deficits are largely an effect of neurobi-
ology. Potential cultural differences in strategy do
not mitigate these effects.
Categorization and Memory
Another aspect of cognition that intersects
with memory involves the use of categories.
Investigation of cross-cultural differences in cat-
egorization has a relatively long tradition. Chiu
(1972) reported that American children tend to use
taxonomic categories and features, whereas East
Asian children use thematic relationships to group
pictures. Ji et al. (2004) extended this finding to
college-aged adults using linguistic stimuli, show-
ing that the relational bias is maintained for East
Asians regardless of testing language. A number
of studies report similar findings, with differences
in strategy use and response speed (Unsworth,
Sears, & Pexman, 2005), rule-based categorization
(Norenzayan et al., 2002), the role of functional
relationships (Schunn & Vera, 2004), effects of
category salience (Choi, Nisbett, & Smith, 1997),
G u t c h e s s , B odu r o g l u 625
and neural engagement (Gutchess, Hedden, Ketay,
Aron, & Gabrieli, 2010).
Even though young adults may differ in pre-
ferred categorization strategies, research suggests
that categorization ability is similarly affected by
aging across cultures. In a Hong Kong sample,
Chan and Poon (1999) reported the same pattern
of category fluency performance across the life span
as seen in Westerners. Category fluency decreases
throughout adulthood, suggesting changes to the
semantic network across development and experi-
ence. Likewise, elderly adults across cultures show
age-related declines in free recall but are similarly
aided by the presence of categories (Gutchess, Yoon,
et al., 2006). Nevertheless, there were cultural dif-
ferences in that older Chinese exhibited reduced
use of categories as a strategy compared to older
Americans, whereas young across cultures used the
strategy more similarly (see Figure 38.2).
Yang and colleagues took an interesting
approach, combining source memory and cat-
egorization paradigms to investigate cultural dif-
ferences across young and older adults in Canada
and China (Yang, Chen, Ng, & Fu, 2013). In this
study, participants first saw a picture of a person;
subsequently, they were presented with auditory
information regarding the person. This audi-
tory information was presented by either a male
or female speaker, and the gender of the speaker
actually corresponded with whether the person
was good or evil, which served as categories in this
study. Participants were then tested for their mem-
ory for the person as well as the source (or category)
of the information and whether the person was
good or evil. In Experiment 2, participants read the
ARC scores - high frequency
1
Transformed ARC score
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
Young
Americans
Fig. 38.2  On a measure of the use of categories in memory, cultural differences are more pronounced with age. Older Chinese are
less likely to use a strategy of categorical clustering (transformed ARC scores, on the y-axis) than are older Americans, whereas young
adults are more equivalent.
Adapted with permission from Gutchess, Yoon et al. (2006), ­figure 2, with permission of the publisher, Karger.
626 C o g n i t ion i n A du lt ho od Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
name of an item and then either viewed a picture
of the item or imagined the item. Once again, par-
ticipants’ memory was tested for the words and the
source of whether the item had been seen or imag-
ined. Results converged across the two studies to
indicate that the Chinese older adults were dispro-
portionately impaired on item memory (whether
the trial was correctly recognized as old vs. new)
compared to Americans, who did not exhibit an
age effect. The pattern was similar for source mem-
ory; although the interaction of age and culture
did not reach significance, there were trends for
larger effects of age for the Chinese than for the
Americans. Results were interpreted in line with
previous findings indicating that the memory of
Americans benefits from categorization more than
does East Asians’ memory. Yang and colleagues
speculated that providing categories (good/evil,
seen/imagined) at encoding supported memory,
allowing for the divergence of source memory find-
ings from Chua et al. (2006). The results of Yang
and colleagues are consistent with other studies of
categorization and memory that identify cultural
differences. Categorization appears to be one of the
most consistent domains of cultural differences in
the literature.
Autobiographical Memory
Although the study of categorization and mem-
ory focuses on stored knowledge, autobiographical
memory addresses memory for personal episodes
and events. There is considerable work on cultural
differences in autobiographical remembering, with
many studies sampling populations other than
typical young undergraduates extending all the
Young Elderly Elderly
Chinese Americans Chinese
Group
way to centenarians. One robust finding from this
literature is that, across many different cultures,
for middle-aged and older adults there is a distinc-
tive bump in the life span distribution curve for
personal (Rubin, Wetzler, & Nebes, 1986), public
(Janssen, Murre, & Meeter, 2008), and semantic
memories (Rubin, Rahhal, & Poon, 1998), as well
as for life scripts (Erdoğan, Baran, Avlar, Taş, &
Tekcan, 2008) and life stories (Berntsen & Bohn,
2009). This bump reflects the greater number of
memories retrieved from the second and third
decades of life, regardless of factors such as the age
of the participants (Bohn, 2010) or the number
of memories retrieved (Rubin et al., 1986). More
importantly, patients with Alzheimer disease, char-
acterized by severe memory loss, and centenarians
also show a similar pattern of life span distribution
of personal memories (Fromholt & Larsen, 1991;
Fromholt et al., 2003).
Even though memories across the life span typi-
cally involve a bump, research has shown that for
certain types of autobiographical memories there
are qualitative and quantitative memory differ-
ences across cultural groups. For instance, for
personal memories, Janssen, Chessa, and Murre
(2005) noted that although both Dutch and
American adults (ages ranging from 20 to 70, mean
38) showed a reminiscence bump, the American
adults had an earlier bump right around the onset
of teenage years (starting at age 13) compared to
the Dutch (age 15); this finding was consistent with
earlier reports that American adults reported more
teen memories compared to adults (all ages rang-
ing between 38 and 60) from Bangladesh, China,
England, and Japan (Conway, Wang, Hanyu, &
Haque, 2005).
Similar cross-cultural differences in the remi-
niscence bump for public memories have been
noted. Wang et al. (2009) demonstrated that
Chinese participants (aged 32–66) were more
likely to retrieve public memories from the third
decade of life compared to the Turkish, British,
German, and American participants. These results
were explained by the typical later onset of inde-
pendence and autonomy for Chinese individuals.
Also, Americans recalled more domestic public
events with greater numbers of “flashbulb” details
(e.g., place, time, source, activity, others present)
regarding these domestic events compared to the
other groups, a finding that was not immediately
explained by cultural differences in media coverage.
The very limited research on the qualities of
flashbulb memories has identified no cultural
differences, although the content of flashbulb mem-
ories is obviously locally determined. However,
future research needs to directly test whether
cultural differences exist in how certain global
public events (like 9/11 or the SARS epidemic)
are encoded, with a focus on cohort differences in
the impact of media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook) on the
retrieval and reconstruction of flashbulb features.
When cultural life scripts—the expected events
in the life of an average person—were compared
across countries and age groups, there was substan-
tial overlap in the top 10 events (e.g., beginning
school, beginning kindergarten, marriage, start-
ing college, having children, getting first job) listed
by Danish, Dutch, Turkish, and Qatari adults
(Ottsen & Bernsten, 2014). In all cultural groups,
both young and older adults listed more positive
than negative events, with the latter being slightly
more pronounced among older adults’ responses
(Bohn, 2010; for greater positivity reported by
older adults see Tekcan, Kaya-Kiziloz, & Odaman,
2012). Approximately 50% of the positive events
that were listed were expected to occur between
the ages of 15–30, during the typical reminiscence
bump period. What was striking, though, was that
the Qatari sample produced more unique and posi-
tive life events (e.g., circumcision; learning Islamic
rituals and the Quran; Islamic birth rituals; learn-
ing to pray, to fast, and going to mosque) dated to
the first decade of life. These events were character-
ized by a religious focus and led to a second bump
in the Qatari cultural life script data. These find-
ings suggest that life scripts, although somewhat
age-variant, are more open to cultural influences.
However, whether culture systematically influences
life stories and memory for particular personal
events remains an open question.
Another critical characteristic of life span mem-
ories is related to the onset and offset of childhood
amnesia; typically, people do not remember many
memories from the first few years of life. The lack
of memories from this period is believed to be
related to the lack of an organizational schema to
scaffold memory, as well as to the lack of an inde-
pendent self. Interestingly, research in the past two
decades has clearly demonstrated cultural varia-
tions in the offset of childhood amnesia. Although
Caucasian Americans were found to report earlier
and more specific childhood memories, Asians
and Asian Americans retrieved more general
memories of scripted events (Wang, Leichtman, &
White, 1998). Both urban and rural Indian par-
ticipants also reported general memories of later
G u t c h e s s , B odu r o g l u 627
onset (Sankaranarayanan & Leichtman, 2000;
cited in Leichtman, Wang, & Pillemer, 2003).
Interestingly, in New Zealand, natives (the Maori)
reported earlier childhood memories (from before
age 3) compared to Caucasian settlers (the Pakeha),
and this was attributed to the strong oral traditions
in the Maori culture, as well as to the cultural nar-
ratives of mutual experiences via adult–child con-
versations (Hayne & MacDonald, 2003).
Most recently, Boduroglu and colleagues dem-
onstrated that self-cultural priming in a Turkish
young adult sample impacted the content of ear-
liest childhood memories (Boduroglu, Tekcan,
Mutafoğlu, & Karadöller, unpublished manu-
script; also see Wang & Ross, 2005, for research
on self-construal and earliest childhood memories).
Specifically, participants primed to be more inde-
pendent and hence engage in an analytic mode
of thinking were more likely to retrieve memories
with greater perceptual detail and report memories
of familial, social, or emotional conflicts compared
to those primed with interdependence.
These findings from the autobiographical litera-
ture overall suggest that individual narratives and
life scripts are created in culturally specific ways
starting from early childhood. Although there can
be cultural differences in the qualitative content
and the timelines for autobiographical events, the
overall features of autobiographical memory, such
as the reminiscence bump and positivity of life
scripts, seem to be similar across cultures. Thus, at
least to date, what has been reported as cultural dif-
ferences in autobiographical remembering mainly
reflect culturally determined higher level influences
on what is readily available in memory.
Beliefs About Aging and Memory
Beliefs about aging can be based on culturally
stored knowledge rather than personal, autobio-
graphical experiences. One intriguing finding is the
suggestion that culture-specific stereotypes about
aging can affect cognitive performance. Whereas
Americans’ views of aging are largely negative, the
Chinese endorse more positive views of aging (e.g.,
Zhang, Hummert, & Garstka, 2002). Levy and
Langer (1994) found that Chinese elderly exhib-
ited better memory performance than American
elderly, whereas young adults from both cultures
performed equivalently. Furthermore, there were
positive correlations between the positivity of views
of aging and memory performance of older adults.
A path analysis suggests that the positive views of
aging mediate the influence of culture on memory,
628 C o g n i t ion i n A du lt ho od Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
implying that older adults will show less cognitive
decline if they are immersed in cultures endorsing
positive views of aging.
Unfortunately, the optimistic message about the
promise of culture to reduce deficits with age is at
odds with other research. Yoon, Hasher, Feinberg,
Rahhal, and Winocur (2000) failed to replicate Levy
and Langer (1994), finding that age plays a much
larger role than culture in cognitive performance.
Yoon and colleagues attribute the differences across
the two studies to task materials and use of com-
posite memory scores, which obscure variability in
cultural differences on the individual measures. In
Yoon et al. (2000), older Chinese Canadians per-
formed better than older Anglophone Canadians
on only the Visual Reproduction test (Wechsler,
1987), the measure most likely to benefit Chinese
because their language engenders fluency with
ideographs. Another challenge arises because
Chinese elderly do not report more positive stereo-
types of aging than American elderly. Although
Chinese young express slightly more positive views
of aging than American young, the elderly cohorts
hold similarly negative stereotypes in both cultures
(Boduroglu, Yoon, Luo, & Park, 2006). These ste-
reotypes were assessed using open-ended responses,
which largely converge with trait ratings measures
that show that Pacific Rim young (Harwood et al.,
1996) and elderly (Harwood et al., 2001) rate
elderly more negatively on physical descriptors.
For Chinese elderly, these negative views of aging
extend to the domains of wisdom and generosity,
in contrast to other Pacific Rim cultures that rate
elderly more positively than young on these traits
(Harwood et al., 2001).
Other studies have investigated cultural differ-
ences in expectations for changes with aging and
in memory function. Their findings are generally
consistent with reports of negative views of aging
in East Asian cultures, much as is the case for
Western cultures. One study comparing young,
middle-aged, and older adults found that South
Koreans reported more anxiety about aging than
did Americans. These cultural differences occurred
in fear of old people and concerns about psycho-
logical function and physical appearance (Yun &
Lachman, 2006). The subscale assessing fear of old
people exhibited diverging patterns with age across
the two cultures: whereas Koreans reported less
fear across the three age groups, reports escalated
with age for Americans. Another study with young
Koreans compared to Canadians explored expecta-
tions of the effects of aging for oneself versus others
(Ryan, Jin, & Anas, 2009). Across cultures, greater
change was expected as a function of increasing
age, and estimates were larger for others than for
oneself. The self-protective bias, however, was more
pronounced for Koreans than for Americans.
Differences in expectations about aging also
emerge between subcultures. Views of aging and
memory performance were assessed in young
(20–30 years), young-old (60–70 years), and
old-old (71–85 years) Sardinians, a group evidenc-
ing longevity and successful aging, and Milanese,
who were expected to represent the more negative
views of aging held in Italy and Europe. Indeed,
Sardinians reported more positive beliefs about
the effects of aging than did Milanese (Cavallini,
Bottiroli, Fastame, & Hertzog, 2013). For general
beliefs about memory, Sardinians expected later
memory decline and more control over memory
function in the future than did Milanese. Personal
beliefs about memory were more pronounced,
with Sardinians reporting more positive beliefs.
Subsequent work (Bottiroli, Cavallini, Fastame, &
Hertzog, 2013) suggests that, despite expectations
for declines in memory with age, Sardinians antici-
pate more malleability in the effects of aging; rat-
ings of improvement and stability differed from
Milanese. Moreover, Sardinians also outperformed
Milanese on a free recall memory measure, but
it could not be established whether this cultural
difference was an effect of views on aging (as in
Levy & Langer, 1994), lifestyle, or other differ-
ences impacting the success of aging or an effect of
sampling bias (Cavallini et al., 2013). Interestingly,
although these beliefs and memory performance
varied across cultural groups, the extent of cultural
differences did not vary across the life span.
Despite the large role of culture in shaping
knowledge and the history of greater reverence for
older adults in Eastern cultures, generally, cultures
converge in holding relatively negative stereotypes
about aging and in expecting declines in memory
with age. Although there are some suggestions that
more positive views of aging could lead to better
cognitive outcomes, the evidence is mixed.
Emotion
Cultural differences have also been tested for
emotional information, with a focus on the ways
in which motivations, such as information seek-
ing versus emotional well-being, may change with
age. Although young adults tend to remember
more negative than positive information, this trend
is reduced with age, sometimes referred to as the
“positivity bias.” Relative to younger adults, older
adults tend to remember negative, positive, and
neutral information at similar levels, although they
sometimes exhibit a bias to better remember posi-
tive information (Mather & Carstensen, 2005).
Such biases in memory and attention are thought
to reflect awareness of limited time remaining in
one’s life, leading to the prioritization of emotion-
ally meaningful experiences, according to socio-
emotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, Isaacowitz,
& Charles, 1999). Awareness of limited time
remaining in one’s life should be a universal phe-
nomenon, leading to the prediction that positiv-
ity biases should emerge across cultures, although
it is also possible to imagine that differences in
culture-specific historical events (e.g., Cultural
Revolution; the Great Depression) or living in
unstable environments with more exposure to neg-
ative events could impact the motivational biases of
older adults in unique ways across cultures.
In terms of the effects of culture on a positivity
bias in memory with age, a handful of samples have
been studied. Kwon and colleagues (2009) found
that Western reports of a positivity bias extended
to Koreans. Although young Koreans recognized
and recalled more negative than positive pictures,
older Koreans did not exhibit a bias in recall and
tended to better recognize more positive than
negative pictures. The pattern of a positivity bias
in memory recall has also been established for
younger and older Chinese (Chung & Lin, 2012)
and Hong Kong Chinese (Fung, Isaacowitz, Lu, &
Li, 2010). Chung and Lin (2012) further investi-
gated whether cultural differences in the view of
aging impacted the magnitude of the positivity bias
in memory. Despite finding that older Chinese had
a more positive view of aging than young adults
or older Americans, a participant’s view did not
affect the pattern of emotional memory perfor-
mance. American and Korean young also exhibited
the expected negativity bias in the recognition of
emotional backgrounds behind a variety of facial
expressions (Ko, Lee, Yoon, Kwon, & Mather,
2011). Older adults, however, did not show better
memory for negative pictures, serving as poten-
tial evidence for a positivity bias with age across
cultures.
Although the studies reviewed thus far indi-
cate negative biases in the young that are reduced
with age across cultures, this pattern is not uni-
versal. A study by Fung and colleagues (2008)
found that older adults in Hong Kong look away
from positively valenced stimuli, unlike American
G u t c h e s s , B odu r o g l u 629
older adults who exhibited a positivity bias com-
pared to young adults (Isaacowitz, Wadlinger,
Goren, & Wilson, 2006). Although these results
diverge from others (e.g., Chung & Lin, 2012; Ko
et al., 2011; Kwon et al., 2009), the discrepancy
could be accounted for by differences in the pro-
cesses being tested (memory vs. attention/eye gaze),
stimuli (photos of scenes vs. facial expressions), or
groups being examined. Importantly, a follow-up
study using different stimuli suggests that the
positivity bias of Hong Kong older adults may
be more pronounced for those with independent
self-construals compared to those with interdepen-
dent self-construals (Fung et al., 2010).
Culture may differentially impact the identi-
fication of emotions. Japanese young adults from
a college-aged sample are more impacted than
Americans at identifying the emotion expressed by
a target face when faces in the background context
display a different emotion (Masuda et al., 2008;
see Ko et al., 2011, for a replication with Korean
young). Correspondingly, Japanese performed bet-
ter than Americans at recognizing changed emo-
tional expressions in the background (Masuda et al.,
2008). A study by Stanley and colleagues using pho-
tos of faces rather than cartoons found that context
can impact the ability of Americans to recognize
emotional expressions; they replicated the finding
that East Asians (here, Chinese) were more impacted
than were Americans by the distractor faces
that served as context (Stanley, Zhang, Fung, &
Isaacowitz, 2013). In the test of emotion recogni-
tion, a target face was presented in an array of other
faces that all shared the same emotional expression
or had an emotional expression that differed from
the target face. Cultural groups differed in the rec-
ognition of fear emotional expressions when tested
in an array of surprise faces, with Americans per-
forming better than Chinese. Notably, the culture
effects persisted across groups of younger and older
adults in this study (Stanley et al., 2013).
Investigations into the interplay between emo-
tional contexts and central objects have moved
beyond the focus on facial stimuli to extend to the
study of memory for different types of emotionally
valenced backgrounds (e.g., pictures of puppies,
snakes). In the recognition of background contexts
presented behind emotional faces, young Koreans
performed better than young Americans. With age,
however, the culture effect does not simply go away.
Instead, the culture effect actually reverses, such
that older Americans remember more backgrounds
than do older Koreans (Ko et al., 2011).
630 C o g n i t ion i n A du lt ho od Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
Although generally there is support for a posi-
tivity bias with age across East Asian and Western
cultures, there are exceptions to this pattern. These
exceptions may be more dramatic as more diverse
samples, particularly in rapidly changing emerging
nations, are tested. Furthermore, cultural differ-
ences in attention to context, including differential
prioritization of object versus background informa-
tion, may interact with identification of and mem-
ory for emotional information.
Wisdom and Problem Solving
Very little research has addressed the effects of
aging across cultures on interpersonal social situ-
ations. A recent study (Grossmann et al., 2012)
explored wisdom in reasoning about scenarios,
including interpersonal ones. Young (post-college,
aged 25–40), middle-aged (aged 41–59), and older
adults (aged 60–75) from Japan and the United
States read articles describing intergroup conflict
and wrote responses about the conflict. These were
scored according to principles of wise reasoning.
Whereas wise responses increased with age for the
Americans, this was not the case for the Japanese.
For interpersonal conflicts, Japanese exhibited
wiser responses than the Americans for the younger
and middle-aged groups, with convergence in
older age.
Methodological Challenges
Although the study of cross-cultural differences
in cognition is ripe for further study, we want to
raise some methodological challenges for research-
ers to consider before we discuss future directions.
This section is limited to discussing those pitfalls
to which there are proposed solutions, although see
Park et al. (1999) and Park and Gutchess (2002) for
further discussion.
Equating Stimuli
Many subtle linguistic concerns are not
addressed by semantically equivalent transla-
tions. For example, Li (2003) suggests that subtle
syntactical differences in parental speech can
profoundly influence cognitive development of
children. A Chinese advantage with numbers
may reflect the lower syllabic density of digits
in Mandarin (versus English); this could impact
memory performance because words with fewer
syllables can be rehearsed more (Cheung &
Kemper, 1993; 1994). Given the fundamen-
tal contributions of syllabic density and sen-
tence structure to a language, translations that
are equally natural and comprehensible pose a
challenge.
Norming of stimuli can establish conceptual
overlap and equivalent familiarity across cultures.
To support future categorization studies, Yoon
et al. (2004a) collected category norms for 105 ver-
bal categories across American and Chinese young
and elderly samples (http://vitallongevity.utdallas.
edu/culture/Cat_Norms/index.html). Our experi-
ence with the categorization task used in Gutchess,
Yoon et al. (2006) suggests that overall category
structure should be considered in addition to famil-
iarity of individual items to create culture-fair lists.
Under the strictest criteria, only 13 of the normed
categories show equivalent structure across all four
groups. Nonverbal stimuli avoid some linguis-
tic concerns, and the Snodgrass and Vanderwart
(1980) line drawings have been normed for Chinese
and American young and elderly (Yoon et al.,
2004b; see http://agingmind.utdallas.edu/stimuli/
culturedb/pictnorms/). They identified 57 pictures
with equivalent name agreement and an additional
29 pictures with high concept but not name agree-
ment across the four groups. The norms provide a
strong foundation for future cross-cultural research
because they remove potential confounds with
item familiarity. Because the norms suggest sub-
stantial changes due to age alone, concerns about
cross-cultural differences could be magnified for
studies of aging, making it all the more important
to select normed items. Interestingly, subsequent
work (Yoon et al., 2006) indicated that the level
of specificity of the names varied more for the
Chinese sample than for the Americans and sug-
gests that this is another important characteristic of
stimuli to consider (see http://agingmind.utdallas.
edu/stimuli/culturedb/specificity/).
Response Scales
Interpretation of responses from Likert scales is
also a potential concern, given that East Asians are
more likely to use the midpoint whereas Westerners
are more likely to endorse extreme responses (Chen,
Lee, & Stevenson, 1995). However, this finding is
based on extremely large samples, has a small mag-
nitude, and does not extend to all tasks. In fact,
Yoon et al. (2004b) report the reverse finding.
Nevertheless, rating scales could pose difficulties
for the interpretation of self-reported informa-
tion. For example, the use of different reference
groups could jeopardize the validity of Likert mea-
sures cross-culturally (Heine, Lehman, Peng, &
Greenholtz, 2002). Differences in scale use could
be a particular concern for the study of aging if
self-presentation pressures are greater in one culture
than another, perhaps as a result of cultural differ-
ences in the stigma associated with dementia and
unhealthy aging (Ineichen, 1998). These concerns
may be addressed by including neutral or control
items to which groups should respond similarly and
by relating self-reports to behavioral measures.
Sampling
Sampling multiple cohorts poses additional
challenges. Park et al. (1999) recommend sampling
within a range of abilities, such as percentiles on
a normed measure, within each culture. Speed of
processing, working memory, and general intel-
ligence should be assessed using culture-fair mea-
sures. They also suggest sampling from different
socioeconomic strata within each culture to address
problems inherent to a cross-sectional approach, for
example, comparing samples with different levels
of education.
Future Directions
Many potential avenues for cross-cultural
research on aging are unexplored, and we are
excited to see future developments in this field. In
this section, we highlight three topics that hold
promise for future investigations with aging: atten-
tion, memory errors, and cognitive neuroscience.
Typically, East–West differences in young
adults’ processing of visual displays are explained
as differences in the attention paid to central versus
contextual elements. However, alternative cognitive
accounts have been proposed. Using a content-free
visual change detection task, Boduroglu, Shah, and
Nisbett (2009) demonstrated that East–West dif-
ferences in the processing of central objects versus
peripheral contextual elements could be explained
by cultural differences in attentional breadth, with
East Asians allocating attention to a broader region
and Americans focusing more narrowly. This par-
ticular attentional breadth proposal of cultural
differences could lead to further study at the inter-
section of aging and culture because it is known
than attentional breadth is significantly reduced
with age. Following Park et al. (1999), one would
predict that aging would eliminate cultural differ-
ences in such tasks of visual processing.
Another important domain for future research
necessitates a shift from current behavioral para-
digms that focus on overall accuracy differences
across conditions to paradigms in which cultural
differences in the relationship between reaction time
G u t c h e s s , B odu r o g l u 631
and accuracy can be directly explored. Ongoing
research from our labs investigating the impact of
attentional breadth on the identification of targets
amid congruent or incongruent flankers at differ-
ent eccentricities revealed no cultural differences
between young Turks and Americans in accuracy
across conditions (see Lin & Han, 2009, for related
work). However, accuracy–reaction time curves
did reveal cultural differences, with Americans tak-
ing more time to reach similar levels of accuracy as
Turks, especially when targets were flanked by near
incongruent distractors (Millar, Arslan, Gutchess,
Boduroglu, & Sekuler, 2013). Our findings high-
light how there may be subtle ways in which cog-
nition differs across cultural groups and illustrates
the need to utilize highly sensitive paradigms and
even to revisit earlier findings of cultural invari-
ance, both in young and old adults.
Although some research has addressed the
impact of culture on memory, little work has
addressed memory errors. By necessity, some
details and aspects of complex environments are
prioritized over others; cultural lenses contribute
to selection demands in information processing,
as well as shape the reconstruction of informa-
tion from memory (see Gutchess & Indeck, 2009).
Thus, memories can reflect the distinct values
and ideals, as well as the oft-used strategies, of a
culture. We recently found evidence (Schwartz,
Boduroglu, & Gutchess, 2014) that young
Americans were likely to make categorical mem-
ory errors more than were Turks, a people whose
culture has been shaped by Eastern and Western
influences. Although categories can support more
accurate memory in a culture (as discussed previ-
ously), categories can also make members of a cul-
ture more vulnerable to memory errors. Given the
compelling nature of many false memories and the
difficulty in discriminating veridical from errone-
ous memories, systematic cross-cultural differences
in memory errors could contribute to misunder-
standings across individuals and groups. Because
a loss of specificity in memory makes older adults
highly vulnerable to memory errors (Koutstaal &
Schacter, 1997), which can sometimes put them
at risk for fraud or manipulation, it is particularly
important to understand the influence of culture
on false memory with age.
Applying cognitive neuroscience methods
allows the assessment of whether the strong neu-
robiological component of aging operates simi-
larly across cultures (see Park & Gutchess, 2006).
As noted by Park and Gutchess (2002), cultural
632 C o g n i t ion i n A du lt ho od Ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
effects on neural function can operate either func-
tionally, whereby different neural routes support
task performance, or structurally, with actual
reorganization of a pathway. Cultures could differ
qualitatively, activating strikingly different neural
routes and reflecting strategy differences, or quan-
titatively, exhibiting magnitude differences in the
same network of regions as a function of difficulty
or effort. Paired with behavioral methods, func-
tional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) helps
evaluate these possibilities, as well as identify can-
didate strategies for further behavioral exploration
cross-culturally.
The distinction between resource-intensive
versus automatic processes should be reflected in
neural function. Cultural convergence would be
expected with age on highly demanding tasks that
are not strategy-dependent due to the contribution
of prefrontal cortex, which is particularly affected
by aging. Cultural differences should be main-
tained with age for automatic processes that rely
on relatively more intact regions. One of the first
fMRI studies to investigate nonlinguistic cultural
differences found that Americans recruit more
object processing regions than do East Asians, such
as middle temporal gyrus, which is responsible for
semantic processing of objects (Gutchess, Welsh,
Boduroglu, & Park, 2006). These data suggest that
cultural differences exist in low-level object-based
semantic processing, which should be maintained
with age. Similarly, East Asian elderly exhibit
reduced neural response to repeated object infor-
mation, although American elderly do not, sug-
gesting that cultural differences can emerge late in
the life span when resources are constrained (Goh
et al., 2007).
Conclusion
Investigation of life span samples is impor-
tant not only to assess the universality of cogni-
tive aging, but also to test the generalization of
cross-cultural differences. Individual variability
is underscored by Oyserman et al. (2002), who
warn against generalizing differences as “cultural,”
given this substantial variability within cultures.
Although it is important to realize that purported
cross-cultural differences do not characterize every
individual within a culture, the existence of general
tendencies across broad life span samples provides
credence that reported differences are valid.
A developmental approach incorporating the
study of aging holds promise to address the tran-
sience of cultural differences. Some evidence
suggests that environmental effects are flexible
and short-lived, such as biculturals momentarily
switching between modes of processing (Gardner
et al., 1999; Hong et al., 2000). On the other hand,
cognitive change in response to cultural milieu
may be relatively stable and slower than social
change (Kitayama & Duffy, 2004). Developmental
patterns suggest that culture may impact brain
organization early, with biases evident at age 2 in
tendencies to respond to item shape or substance
(Imai & Gentner, 1997). Attention to focal objects
or relationships are reinforced through socializa-
tion and language acquisition in childhood (as dis-
cussed by Nisbett, 2003). Additional studies with
samples across the life span can address questions
of transience versus stability of cultural effects,
especially because globalization and greater access
to shared media could lead to greater convergence
across younger cohorts.
The study of culture, cognition, and aging is
still in its infancy, but initial studies have laid the
groundwork for exploration of cultural differences
in a wide variety of cognitive abilities. Aging seems
to exert a greater impact on cognition than does
culture, with basic cognitive abilities and strategic
memory-based processes showing cultural equiva-
lence and age-related decline. However, future
investigations of social processes and cognitive
abilities supported by multiple competing strate-
gies may unearth the more subtle effects of culture
on higher level cognitive changes with age, par-
ticularly when paired with cognitive neuroscience
methods.
Acknowledgments
This material is based on work supported by
the National Science Foundation under Grant
Number BCS-1147707. Any opinions, findings,
and conclusions or recommendations expressed in
this material are those of the authors and do not
necessarily reflect the views of the National Science
Foundation. The authors also gratefully acknowl-
edge support from the Fulbright Scholars Program
(A. H. G.), and TUBA-GEBIP (A. B.).
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 C H A P T E R

39 Midlife Narratives Across

Cultures: Decline or Pinnacle?

Usha Menon

Abstract
This chapter explores variations in cultural meanings that three different cultural groups attach
to the middle years of life. Each conception of the middle years emerges as the unique product of
cultural assumptions about the life course and the meaning and purpose of life: for middle-class
Anglo-Americans, it is to be able to pursue one’s interests without hindrance; for middle-class
Japanese, it centers on personal growth and cultivating one’s talents and abilities during every phase
of life; for Odia Hindus, it is to be fully engaged in the world so as to fulfill one’s duties to family by
ensuring its material prosperity and spiritual well-being. However, despite these cultural differences,
a universal aspect of the experience of this life-phase is its centrality in the life course: being in the
middle, this phase of life is shaped and defined by its linkages and connections with the generations
that precede and succeed it.
Key Words:  middle age, mature adulthood, the prime of life, pure action, possibilism, social
maturation, mass longevity, decline ideology.

Introduction and physical and mental decline, is a “cultural fic-

This chapter explores the experience of the
middle years of life in three very different cultural
settings: an Odia Hindu temple town in east-
ern India, middle-class Japan, and middle-class
Anglo-America. Although the chapter elabo-
rates on those aspects of this life phase that are
culture-specific, it also attempts to demonstrate
that the events and experiences that characterize
it are, irrespective of cultural context, fundamen-
tally tied to changes in the roles and responsibilities
of preceding and following generations. Thus, its
location at the center of the life course appears to
encapsulate the universal significance of this phase
of life.
The term “middle age” is fraught with mean-
ings characteristic of one particular culture—that
of middle-class Anglo-America (Shweder, 1998).
Thus, middle age, with its connotations of midlife
crises, chronological markers like birthday parties,
tion” that gathers “realness” primarily in the cul-
tural world of middle-class Anglo-Americans.
Other cultural worlds have their own equally elab-
orated cultural fictions to imagine and experience
this phase of life (see Miller et al, this volume1)—the
Odia Hindu prauda (mature adulthood) and the
Japanese soonen (the prime of life), to name just
two—each the result of culture-specific concep-
tualizations of the life course and culture-specific
assumptions about the meaning and purpose of
life.
Given the cultural variability in indigenous con-
ceptualizations of the life course, it is difficult, as
Shore has observed, to make “simple cross-cultural
comparisons” (1998, p. 103) of any life phase, be it
middle age or any other. Therefore, I first examine
the various models of the life course that prevail
in the three cultural worlds being discussed here
before attempting a comparative study of variations

637
in cultural meanings attached to this life phase. In
the process, I explore cultural conceptions of the
self, as well as indigenous assumptions about cul-
ture and nature, and about the passage of time,
membership in society, and appropriate behavior.
My interpretive framework is derived from cul-
tural psychology—a field that has re-emerged, over
the past quarter century, at the interface between
anthropology, psychology, and linguistics (see
Cole, 1989; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Shweder
1990, 1991; Stigler, Shweder, & Herdt, 1990).
It assumes that cultural worlds are “intentional
worlds” (Shweder, 1990) that exist because of our
involvement in them. It maintains that we exist as
human beings—with agency, identity, subjectivity,
and a sense of self—because we interpret and make
sense of the events and experiences of our lives in
terms of the meanings and resources we seize from
our worlds—the very worlds that we create and
uphold through our thoughts and actions.
Maturity in Hindu India
An Odia Hindu Temple Town
I begin by introducing, very briefly, the Odia
Hindu temple town of Bhubaneswar because it pro-
vides the ethnographic data for discussing Hindu
conceptualizations of the life course and Hindu
meanings about the middle years of life.2 The tem-
ple town is a medieval urban settlement that goes
back to at least the 10th or 11th century (Panigrahi,
1961; von Stietencron, 1978). Much of the activ-
ity in this neighborhood centers on the temple,
dedicated to the Hindu god Siva, represented here
as the Lord of the Phallus, Lingaraj. A pilgrimage
center of some importance, it attracts substantial
numbers of the devout from North India, Bengal,
and Assam. Most families here continue to derive
their power and prestige because of hereditary con-
nections with the temple.
Several scholars (Menon 2002, 2011, 2013;
Seymour 1980, 1999; Shweder, 1991) have
described the Odia Hindus who live here as fairly
traditional in their beliefs and practices. Like other
Hindus, they believe in the relative permeability
of the human body. They conceive of bodies as
unbounded and porous containers, which, over the
life course, are partially shared and/or exchanged
with others through events like birth and mar-
riage and experiences like sharing food and liv-
ing together (Daniel, 1984; Lamb, 1997, 2000;
Marriott, 1976, 1990). Such events and experiences
are thought to continually alter and reconstitute
one’s physical substance.
638 M i dl i f e Na r r at i v e s ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
Although nuclear living arrangements do occur
here, extended households are regarded as the ideal,
the tendency being to maintain or move toward
such living arrangements rather than the reverse.
As Seymour (1999, pp. 63–69) has described, these
households are most commonly three-generational,
numbering at least 10–15 people who share a single
cooking hearth. They tend to break up when the
oldest member, either male or female, dies, and
each son sets up his own separate nuclear house-
hold, which over time becomes extended once again
when sons grow up, marry, and have children.
Similarly, arranged marriages continue to be the
norm. Marriage is a highly significant transforma-
tive ritual for both men and women because it com-
pletes them as social and moral beings—although
in slightly different ways. For Brahman men, there
are two sets of rituals: as boys, they undergo the
sacred thread ceremony that confers on them the
purity and prestige of the “twice-born,” and, later
as adults, the rituals of marriage complete them as
moral beings. In contrast, for Brahman women,
the rituals of marriage symbolize both rebirth (and
therefore, the ritual purity of being “twice-born”)
and their becoming fully moral beings.
Like Hindus elsewhere, residents of the temple
town believe that the primary task of any commu-
nity is to reproduce itself—the only way, as they
see it, to transcend the depredations of time. For
them, the family represents the most appropriate
site for such social reproduction. Therefore, both
men and women regard the “domestic domain”—
the home and the family—as the most vital sphere
of human actions. More importantly, within fam-
ily compounds, it is the senior women—married
mothers-in-law and senior wives—who control and
manage all household affairs (Marriott, 1998).
This representation of the temple town may
appear a far cry from the India portrayed in
Western media these days—the India that is expe-
riencing rapid socioeconomic transformation.
But this transformation, as most observers would
agree (OECD Economic Survey of India, 2010–11;
Yardley, 2009), is not experienced uniformly: some
parts of the country are modernizing rapidly while
others lag behind—and the temple town belongs
to the second rather than the first group. And so,
although sociocultural change is certainly not
absent here and never has been, it is more muted
than in other parts of the country. Thus, custom-
ary Hindu thinking and practice continue to guide
and shape the orientation of temple town residents
toward life and the world—as my visits to the
temple town since I did fieldwork tend to confirm
rather than contradict (see Hauser, 2008, 2010;
Tokita-Tanabe, 1999).
An Odia Hindu Conceptualization
of Adulthood
People in the temple town have their own cul-
turally distinctive way of talking about the life
course. First, they spontaneously postulate phases
to describe life span changes; thus, adulthood
occurs in three phases—jouvana or young adult-
hood, initiated, for both men and women, by mar-
riage, followed by prauda or mature adulthood,
which, in turn, is followed by the last and final
phase of life, briddha avastha or old age.3 Second,
they prefer not to identify these phases with spe-
cific chronological ages (Lamb, 1997, 2000; Vatuk,
1982, 1990)—only on being pushed do the more
articulate speak about appropriate age spans.
Third, Odia Hindus here do not include physical
or psychological transformations in their discus-
sions of the life course.4 Fourth, when talking of
life span changes, they speak in terms of changes
in duties and responsibilities. Because such changes
often accompany transitions from one family role
to another, these roles are a significant part of the
idiom for discussing life span transitions.5 Finally,
while maintaining that the male and female life
courses have the same sequence of phases, people
here emphasize that the duties and responsibilities,
as well as the emotional texture of each life phase,
vary according to gender.
prauda or Mature Adulthood
Odia Hindus of the temple town describe
prauda or mature adulthood as a time of complete
immersion in the affairs of this world. They regard
it as the most decisive, important, and demanding
phase in a person’s life for at least a couple of rea-
sons. First, mature adults have the duty to perform
the life cycle rituals of their children; by doing so,
they are preparing their children for the life that
lies ahead. Second, they are responsible for the
material prosperity and the spiritual well-being
of the entire family, in the present and in the near
future. Whether they succeed at these tasks or not
hinges on the discipline, forethought, and compe-
tence with which they manage this life phase.
Odia Hindu women are mature adults when
they occupy one of two particular family roles: that
of senior wife (purna bou) or still-married mother
of married sons (sasu6) (Menon & Shweder,
1998). Although there are no family roles that are
typically associated with mature adult men, Odia
Hindu men become fully mature adults only when,
as fathers themselves, their own fathers either die or
physical decrepitude and/or mental infirmity over-
takes the latter. Until they become the senior-most
man in the family, men remain sons—frozen in
immaturity, always overshadowed by the presence
of their fathers. When one compares a woman’s
experience of mature adulthood to that of a man’s,
a critical difference becomes immediately appar-
ent: in the former, marriage and motherhood are
implicated, whereas in the latter, it is fatherhood
and seniority. Thus, being married is integral to the
female experience of mature adulthood but not to
the male: a widower with adolescent children can
become a mature adult but a widowed mother,
although undoubtedly an adult, can never become
a mature adult.
Because being married is integral to mature
adulthood among women, particular events, such
as early widowhood or the permanent return of a
married daughter to her father’s home, can obstruct
the sequence of life phases, and a woman may never
experience mature adulthood. Inauspicious young
widows or permanently separated daughters are
anomalies that go against order and coherence.
From a practical point of view, there are no par-
ticular family roles that such women can occupy
and, therefore, no well-understood, clearly defined
duties and responsibilities that they can fulfill.
Odia Hindu women are well aware that prauda
is not guaranteed to all women, and this fact, in
their opinion, confers a special meaning to this life
phase.
Women here value mature adulthood because,
as senior wives and as married mothers-in-law, they
have control over their own actions and those of
others, they are central to the productive and dis-
tributive activities of their households, and they
are psychologically and morally coherent (Menon,
2013). Dominance, centrality, and coherence,
therefore, are the key features of mature adulthood.
Senior wives direct their juniors in cooking and
other household chores while continuing to be the
primary servers of food, a distributive responsibility,
steeped in prestige, and one that emphasizes their
centrality within the household. They are the public
faces of their families, entertaining guests, shopping
for the entire family, and representing it at neigh-
borhood celebrations such as weddings and sacred
thread ceremonies. They also begin to represent
the family in its relations with divinity—although
there are physiological and cultural limitations to
M e non 639
this involvement because they are young enough to
menstruate, to be sexually active, and to be involved
in the feeding and care of their children.
Mature adulthood reaches its zenith when a
woman welcomes into her household the wives of
her adult sons. As a married mother-in-law, a wom-
an’s position is unassailable. Building on the privi-
leges that she has begun to enjoy as a senior wife, a
married mother-in-law only supervises and manages
the household and all its activities and expenses,
making sure that everything runs smoothly and
efficiently (Lamb, 2000; Vatuk, 1987).
In terms of dominance and centrality, the two
family roles of senior wife and married mother-in-
law are almost equivalent. However, in terms of
coherence, a married mother-in-law experiences
greater coherence because she is better able to main-
tain bodily purity. This ability is relatively recent
and the direct result of two factors. First, when a
son marries and brings his wife into the family,
his parents usually cease being sexually active: the
job of reproduction has been passed on to the next
generation (Lamb, 2000; Vatuk, 1992). Second, at
this age, a woman is usually past menopause, and
there is no time of the month when she is polluted
(mara; Lamb, 2000; Reynolds, 1980). Although
bodily purity contributes to greater coherence, it
does more than that. Bodily purity and her con-
tinued involvement in the household’s productive
activities make a married mother-in-law the best
intermediary between the household and its gods.
As such, a married mother-in-law feels the most
coherent. It needs to be noted that this experience
of coherence, although partly cultural and partly
physiological, is uniquely female—this is the one
aspect of the female experience of mature adult-
hood in the temple town that men never share.
Odia Hindu men experience mature adulthood
quite differently. Even after they marry and are gen-
erally thought to have become young adults, their
family role continues to be that of son. Marriage
does not instantaneously transform their family
role as it does for women: there is no family role
labeled “ ‘new’ husband” as there is “ ‘new’ wife”
(nua bou). Rather, within 4–5 years of marriage,
a young husband and new father usually begins to
play an increasingly greater role in managing the
extended family’s relationships with the outside
world. This involvement usually marks the begin-
ning of the gradual, almost imperceptible shift
for a man from being a young adult to becoming
a mature adult. Odia Hindu men finally become
mature adults when, as fathers themselves, they
640 M i dl i f e Na r r at i v e s ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
replace their fathers both in the process of deci-
sion making within the family and in the fam-
ily’s interface with the community. At this point
in time, they are at the pinnacle of mature adult-
hood, but the marriage of an adult child—and for
Odia Hindus, the child must be a son—signals the
beginning of the end of this phase of mature adult-
hood (cf., Kakar, 1998).
Claiming that mature adulthood provides them
with opportunities for achieving well-being that
previously were and subsequently will become
unavailable to them, most Odia Hindus of the
temple town declare that this life phase is the
most satisfying in a person’s life (Menon, 2013;
Menon & Shweder, 1998)—although men are less
full-throated in their appreciation than women.
Given the nature of their work, the 40s and 50s do
not mark a time when the men of the temple town
are coming into their own in the workplace: they
are not climbing the temple town equivalent of
the corporate ladder. With work being peripheral
to their sense of self, and with the mature adult
women of the family controlling domestic activi-
ties, Odia Hindu men of the temple town do not
evaluate mature adulthood quite as positively as
their womenfolk—although they certainly prefer it
to both young adulthood7 and old age.
The Dharmasastric Model
of the Life Course
If this is the temple town conceptualization of
adulthood, what does traditional Hindu thinking
have to say about the various phases of the human
life course? The ideal life course as presented in
the Dharmasastras8 refers only to upper-caste men
and consists of four phases: the student/apprentice,
householder, forest dweller, and the renouncer,
with each phase having its distinguishing moral
code (asramadharma). Although this model may
appear to grant equal importance to each stage,
that is not the case: there are two crucially impor-
tant stages, that of the fully relational householder
and the arelational renouncer (Dumont, 1960).
The highlighting of these two stages is important
because it reflects one of the distinguishing features
of the Hindu worldview: the “persistent” tension
between dharma or world-affirming values and
moksa or world-renouncing ones (Dumont, 1970;
Heesterman, 1985; Kinsley 1993).
Although it is important to note this tension, it
is equally important to recognize the cultural sig-
nificance attached to being a householder. Despite
doctrinal differences, the Dharmasastras are
unanimous in considering the householder phase
of life as the most blessed. Ancient Hindu philoso-
phers—Gautama, Baudhayana, and Manu—all
assert that no other stage of life equals that of the
householder’s (Kane, 1941, p. 640). In fact, Manu
is quite explicit in his admiration for the house-
holder: he lauds this stage as the best of the four life
stages because the householder supports the other
three (Manu 6:89 [Doniger & Smith, 1991]).
While there are several differences9 between the
traditional four-stage Dharmasastric model and the
five-phase temple town model of the life course,
there is one highly significant similarity: the cen-
trality of the fully relational social being in both
models, the householder in the former and the
mature adult in the latter. This centrality is sig-
nificant because it taps into Hindu understandings
about maturity. Far from assuming “an opposition”
between “relationships and self-development,” as
Gilligan (1995, p. 122) suggests Western theories
of psychological and political development tend
to do, both ancient Hindus and modern Odias
view self-development and maturity as occurring
through the process of cultivating and maintain-
ing relationships with others. Thus, people become
mature adults, develop their sense of self most fully,
and exercise power most substantially by embedding
themselves in social and familial relationships—not
by severing connections and separating themselves
from others. People in this community, and Hindu
social and psychological theories more generally,
claim that to be human is to be part of society: far
from subscribing to any idea of “ontological indi-
vidualism” (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, &
Tipton, 1996, p. 143), social arrangements are seen
as part of nature and as more enduring and fun-
damental than the people who participate in them.
One cannot, therefore, opt to become part of soci-
ety—although one can certainly opt out of it, as
countless renouncers have done in their attempt to
achieve release (moksa) from the never-ending cycle
of rebirths and redeaths (samsara).
Other Hindu Meanings for
the Middle Years of Life
As I mentioned at the outset, Hindus are a
diverse group and, therefore, not surprisingly,
Hindus in rural north India differ from the Odia
Hindus of the temple town in their thinking
about the middle years of life. Indian psychoana-
lyst Sudhir Kakar claims that these north Indian
Hindus are quite unaware of middle age, in the
Anglo-American sense (Kakar, 1998). Only the
Westernized elite in Hindu India, he says, exposed
over many years to a steady influx of Western ideas
and concepts, can claim any familiarity with the
Anglo-American notion of middle age.
In contrast, Kakar’s north Indian respondents
claim that there are only three phases: childhood,
youth, and old age. Only when he pushed his sub-
jects did they recall adher-awastha, the middle
condition—the transition between youth and old
age. And, although the Hindi term adher-awastha
connotes decline, it also implies the wisdom and
mature intelligence that comes from experience,
through having lived in the world for many years.
The precipitating event that announces the
arrival of middle age, Kakar says, “is the marriage
of the first child—whether son or daughter—and
the confrontation with the procreative activity of
one’s offspring” (1998, p. 78). Interestingly, like the
Odia Hindus of the temple town, these Hindus
also conceive of middle age as being marked by
changing roles within the family—from father to
father of a married (and therefore sexually active)
son or daughter and from mother to mother of a
married son or daughter.10
To conclude, for Hindus, mature adulthood
involves expanding oneself more comprehensively,
extending oneself to become more inclusive, weav-
ing oneself more strongly into the fabric of the
family and the community. Furthermore, although
most men are likely to become mature adults,
this phase of life is by no means guaranteed to
all women. And when a woman does achieve and
experience mature adulthood, she considers herself
to be singularly blessed, interpreting the experience
as a sign that divine grace has touched her life.
Maturity in Japan
One of the more enduring tidbits in Western
folklore (Benedict, 1946; Rohlen, 1978) about
Japan centers on the idea that the Japanese view
aging positively: the old are respected, even
indulged, and they enjoy great freedom. And
although there is evidence to suggest that such atti-
tudes are hardly all-pervasive (Plath, 1972), most
observers of contemporary Japanese society would
agree (Lock, 1993, 1998) that the Japanese have a
unique perspective on the process of aging, and age
has particular salience in Japanese culture.
Even a casual observer notices that, in modern
Japan, age continues to order social rank and the
exercise of authority. Japan’s leaders, whether in
business, academics, or politics, tend to be gener-
ally older11 than most of their counterparts in other
M e non 641
parts of the world. Even in entertainment, where a
huge premium is usually placed on youthfulness,
Lock (1998) reports that older women are appreci-
ated and valued not merely for their artistic talents
but for their beauty. It thus appears that, in the
Japanese cultural world, age is associated positively
with both creativity and power.
However, this impression, although accurate, is
somewhat superficial because Japanese attitudes12
to aging are much more complicated. A closer
examination reveals a highly elaborated national
discourse on aging: a complex narrative that weaves
together several disparate elements from Japan’s
various traditions—themes of loss, regret, and fear
elaborated in classical literary texts from between
the 14th and 17th centuries (Formanek, 1992,
cited in Lock, 1998), as well as more positive orien-
tations toward aging that can be traced to Japan’s
Confucian and Zen Buddhist traditions. In trying
to understand what distinguishes Japanese under-
standings about aging, at least two related aspects
need to be mentioned: first, the Japanese concep-
tion of aging as a process of social maturation,
and, second, the Japanese view that the different
life phases offer endless opportunities for continual
personal improvement.
Aging as Social Maturation
According to the first, a person moves through
life as a member of a particular age-grade: he
or she matures as a social being and learns about
age-appropriate behavior through participating,
with fellow members, in community and family
rituals.13 Lock (1998) reports that birthdays are
infrequently celebrated as markers of individual
maturation and aging; biological transformations
evidently take second place to “social matura-
tion” as a member of a family and the community.
Rohlen suggests that this underemphasis of biol-
ogy reflects the Japanese view that socialization is
an all-important process that lasts a lifetime, the
clearly understood purpose of which is to create a
human being. The Japanese, therefore, see all of life
as “a time of becoming, not being” (1978, p. 132).
More importantly, becoming human is not guaran-
teed simply by the passage of time. The moral con-
notations attached to becoming human require that
people work at this process throughout their lives.
The Confucian Legacy of Possibilism
The second noteworthy aspect of Japanese
attitudes to aging is that they accept and experi-
ence aging as a natural process, in the sense that
642 M i dl i f e Na r r at i v e s ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
it involves “submitting” to nature and thereby
having access to a “nature-given reality” (Rohlen,
1978, p. 130). Given this cultural desire to become
one with nature and to experience bodily changes
due to aging as natural changes, the Japanese seek
to mirror in their personal lives the changes that
occur so smoothly and so predictably in the sea-
sons. Every season is appreciated for having its
own distinctive qualities, its own special beauties.
Similarly, every phase of life represents a distinct
set of experiences and opportunities and is thus val-
ued for its own unique potentiality.
The Japanese attitude to the passing of time
could, perhaps, be characterized as “fatalistic”
(Rohlen, 1978, p. 130): all phenomena in the man-
ifest world, it is thought, must inevitably submit to
time, and humans are no exception. To resist in any
kind of way, to combat the ravages of time, is an
exercise in futility—a sign of immaturity or folly
or both. But, and this is an important qualification,
an integral element of this submission to time is
to simultaneously explore the potential available in
every life phase for self-cultivation and human per-
fectibility. The fatalism that the Japanese appear to
display toward aging comes, then, with a particu-
larly striking twist: although accepting the effects
of aging, they are extraordinarily concerned with
the potential for human perfectibility that the pro-
cess brings in its wake.
Plath identifies this aspect of aging as part of
Japan’s Confucian-inspired “heritage of possibil-
ism” (1980, p. 5)—the idea that age is no bar to
continual personal improvement. Thus, the tradi-
tional Japanese understanding of aging is “much
more profound and challenging” (Rohlen, 1978,
p. 130) than just the notion that age, in and of itself,
must be respected and the aged valued because
they embody the experience and wisdom of years.
While acknowledging that the passage of time can-
not be resisted and will always result in change, the
Japanese strive to shape this change such that it
“centers on personal growth” and “looks to release
from the ‘self’ rather than its satisfaction, and
stands as the most important yardstick of personal
achievement and a life well lived” (p. 130).
“Pure Action” and Gender-differentiated
Paths to Personal Growth: Past
and Present
The Japanese define and understand personal
growth in a particular kind of way, as revolv-
ing around the idea of “pure action.” In Japanese
thought, “pure action” is said to result when the
motivation for it is totally pure. And motivation
becomes unquestioningly pure when one’s sense
of self is completely obliterated. Successful oblit-
eration of the self implies becoming part of nature,
blending seamlessly with the patterns and rhythms
of nature, no longer even aware of the actions one
performs. As Plath says, “You are not ‘commun-
ing’ with nature, but are nature, moving with it
in bursts of spontaneity that express the greatest
truth of human nature” (1980, p. 47, emphasis in
original).
Although this may sound too esoteric and
abstract for most people, it has practical implica-
tions for the way ordinary Japanese have lived their
lives. It explains the voluntary and rigorous prac-
tice of total and unquestioning obedience to the
demands of the moment, until one achieves “expert-
ness” in whatever one is doing. It also explains the
unwavering commitment that the Japanese have
displayed—men to work and women to mother-
ing. According to this logic, commitment leads to
“expertness,” which prepares the person for those
moments of “pure action” when, in the midst of the
humdrum activities of the workaday world, truth
and beauty converge.
The association between men and work and
women and mothering is hardly random. It repre-
sents the gender-differentiated paths toward per-
sonal growth that the Japanese have traditionally
considered appropriate. Until the turn of the 20th
century, women achieved personal growth through
striving for private rather than public goals, by
becoming “good wives and wise mothers.” In con-
trast, men achieved personal growth, and possibly
moments of “pure action,” through sincere and
diligent work in the public domain.
Thus, despite modernization, the pulse of life for
men and women has remained strikingly different
for most of the 20th century (see Ryff et al, this
volume). During this period, women constituted
a high proportion of the Japanese workforce, but
these were generally unmarried, younger women.
The Japanese have traditionally believed that a
married woman’s calling should be that of “special-
ist homemaker” or “professional wife” (Plath, 1980,
p. 139), tapping into those qualities of nurturance
and caring that nature supposedly has bestowed
on women (Lock, 1998). Although it is difficult
to imagine that all married women stopped work-
ing, Lock claims that, for much of the modern era,
the experience of marriage and motherhood has
been identical for all Japanese women, irrespec-
tive of class or educational levels. Until the end of
the 20th century, women married in their mid to
late 20s, and, by their mid-30s, their families—
consisting of the requisite two children—were
complete. She explains this unusual similarity in
women’s life experiences as a result of the national
discourse on aging14 that focuses and elaborates on
the various phases of life and appropriate life cycle
development.
From the traditional perspective, the transfor-
mation on marriage from an often thoughtless,
spoiled daughter into a caring, expert wife could
only be achieved through self-discipline and per-
forming one’s duty obediently, an often pain-
ful process according to many of Plath’s (1980)
subjects. In these older narratives, the transition
from young to mature adulthood is told in terms
of acquiring “expertness” in managing the house-
hold’s affairs and in supervising the activities of
other family members while supporting them
through the various exigencies of their lives. The
situation shifted somewhat in the late 20th century
when the two-generational nuclear family became
the national norm. During this period, Japanese
women derived meaning and purpose in their lives
not, as they had in the past, from the smooth and
efficient management of a large household, but pri-
marily from marriage and child rearing.
The situation today, in the early years of the
21st century, is startlingly different. Contemporary
Japan is experiencing an unusual and profound
social change: many young women appear to
be abandoning marriage and child rearing alto-
gether, giving up on the cultural ideal of being
“good wives and wise mothers.” Thus, in 2003,
fully 54% of women in their late 20s were unmar-
ried, up from 24% in 1980. And, the figure for
men in their early 30s is roughly the same: 43%
of them are unmarried, a number that is double
the figure for 1980 (Faiola, 2004). This decline in
marriage rates began with the economic stagna-
tion of the early 1990s when many Japanese men
doubted their abilities to maintain a family; how-
ever, despite recent improvements in the economy,
the trend toward lower marriage rates only seems
to have accelerated—and this time, women appear
to be opting out of marriage. Perhaps this is not a
decline but rather a postponement of marriage and
evidence for the existence of emerging adulthood
in contemporary Japan (see Arnett, this volume).
Clearly, female maturity in 21st-century Japan
can no longer be defined in terms of marriage and
child rearing; and, in the absence of substantial
research into the issue, hazarding a guess about
M e non 643
new meanings that the Japanese concept of female
maturity is likely to acquire is, I would suggest, a
little foolhardy.
Traditionally, for Japanese men, work has not
only been the fulcrum of their existence, it has also
been the medium through which they could real-
ize “pure action.” But work in contemporary Japan
is tending not to provide those opportunities any
longer. The average Japanese man today is a sala-
ried worker, employed by either the government or
a company. Although educational qualifications
and personal abilities are undoubtedly necessary
for career advancement, the critical variable that
decides “rank, responsibility, status, and monetary
reward” is seniority and its corollary, experience—
a reflection, some suggest, of the attitudes and ide-
als of traditional family businesses (Rohlen, 1978,
p. 144). Modern organizations in Japan, whether in
the corporate or public sector, try to recreate these
idealized and traditional family relationships but
fail because of their structure and scale. It is sim-
ply impossible to promote all employees at begin-
ning and subordinate levels to senior positions that
carry the same authority and respect. The idea that
companies and government offices are analogous
to “big families” and that all employees are “fam-
ily members” is harped on unceasingly, but, for
most employees, it rings false—the gap between
the ideal and the real is too great to sustain such a
myth. The vast majority of older employees, despite
being “family members,” do not ascend to higher
management positions and inevitably retire and
go home. And the worst of it is that, very often,
economic necessity compels these retirees to look
for another job in another company at a subordi-
nate level. As Plath says, older Japanese do not look
forward to “retirement” from work; instead, they
look to “rehirement” (see Plath, 1980, pp. 89–90).
For many Japanese men, therefore, the realities of
a postindustrial society are tending to seriously
undermine the intensity of their commitment to
work. And although “the conception of male adult-
hood as ‘flowering’ in the toil of work” (Rohlen,
1978, p. 145) may remain a major cultural theme,
new meanings are likely to emerge, thus redefining
the central experiences of male maturity.
Throughout the 20th century, in any compari-
son of female to male maturity, Japanese women
enjoyed a clear advantage over their menfolk: moth-
erhood, “the pinnacle of socially recognized produc-
tive maturity” (Rohlen, 1978, p. 145), remained an
option open to all women. For men, the possibility
of achieving such “socially recognized productive
644 M i dl i f e Na r r at i v e s ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
maturity” was strictly limited by the organiza-
tional parameters and the circumstances of their
work in a postindustrial society. Many men, there-
fore, never accomplish anything approaching such
maturity. But today, by turning away from mar-
riage and motherhood, Japanese women seem to be
voluntarily giving up this advantage.
It appears, therefore, that new ideas about per-
sonal fulfillment and thriving will necessarily have
to emerge as the Japanese reconceptualize both
male and female maturity. And in this reconcep-
tualization, traditional ideas about “spiritual edu-
cation” may continue to play a role (Plath, 1980,
p. 49). Many middle-aged Japanese deliberately
engage in avocations that cultivate and develop
their inner resources: fully half of Plath’s two
dozen interviewees were enrolled in classes to learn
the traditional arts of calligraphy, the tea ceremony,
flower arrangement, or the reciting of No drama
texts. Their goal, they told him, was not merely to
develop their skills but, more importantly, their
“discipline and self-composure” (p. 49).
The Middle Years of Life in Japan:
“Middle Age” or “The Prime of Life”?
Modern Japanese appear to have a rather
clear view of the middle years of life: Plath’s
subjects bracket this phase of life as beginning
in the 40s and ending around age 60 (1975). In
addition, there are many Japanese glosses for the
Anglo-American term “middle age.” The tradi-
tional term for this period of life has been soonen,
its chief meaning being the “prime of life.” The
word most commonly used today is chuunen, and,
in Plath’s opinion, it is the most literal transla-
tion of “middle age” although dictionaries do not
elaborate on its etymological roots. There is also
the premodern term shoro, or “beginning old age,”
which some think is a better gloss for middle age
because it includes meanings of loss and decline,
but its infrequent usage makes it a poor equivalent
for the Anglo-American term. And, finally, there is
jukunen, which includes meanings of ripeness and
wisdom and could be glossed as “mature in age and
wisdom” (Honde, personal communication).
Although those of Plath’s subjects who were
older than 40 did not resist the term chuunen
being used to describe them, they often suggested
other terms—unconnected with aging or middle
age per se—that they felt sounded better because
they connote fullness, activity, or weight in the
sense of wielding authority (see Plath, 1975). Many
used the term atsukmashisa, glossed as “boldness”
or “nerve,” to describe the ways in which they had
changed with age. With age and experience, the
Japanese feel, one can afford to relax and take liber-
ties—even with time-honored customs and prac-
tices (Plath, 1980).
In common with most other cultures, there
are in Japan no ceremonies or public recognition
of a person’s transition into middle age. However,
the end of middle age, which coincides with the
beginning of old age, is marked by a highly evoca-
tive ceremony in which 60-year-old Japanese put
on a bright red kimono symbolizing the noncha-
lance of early childhood and acknowledging the
never-ending cycle of rebirths and the continual
regeneration of the family and the cosmos (Lock,
1998, p. 58). And although no one today is likely to
consider 60 as old, it marks the threshold, in Japan,
of eligibility for social security benefits.
To conclude, the most distinctive feature about
traditional Japanese understandings of aging is that
time is not seen as a factor that erodes life’s pros-
pects; rather, the passage of time provides people
the opportunity to apprehend the essential truths
of life. The Japanese most certainly recognize the
physical facts of maturation and aging, but they
do not grant these physical changes any great or
overwhelming significance. Japanese culture and
society favor the mature and old over the young
not only because the former have the accumulated
experiences of a lifetime, but also because they are
supposed to have cultivated themselves as human
beings, becoming self-disciplined and persevering,
developing and maintaining personal integrity and
social responsibility. At the same time, maturity
holds out the promise of freedom, ease, and relax-
ation: it signifies the opportunity for each person
to experience and display his or her individuality
and uniqueness. And, finally, mature adulthood
is prized because it is the harbinger of old age, a
period of return to the insouciance of early child-
hood, when women, in particular, can give up
displaying “feminine reserve” (Lock, 1998, p. 59),
when they can be as forward as they please without
incurring social censure.
Anglo-American “Middle Age”
Middle-class Anglo-Americans possess the
uniquely 20th-century advantage of “mass lon-
gevity” (Plath, 1980, p. 1), an advantage that is
likely to change forever the way they perceive the
life course and its various phases. Already, those
Anglo-Americans born toward the end of the 20th
century are experiencing a new life phase, that
of emerging adulthood (see Arnett, this volume).
Inevitably, these expanded lifetimes will challenge
current conceptualizations of the life course, as well
as the particular life phase known as middle age—
but how? Will the fact that the 70s and 80s are
becoming experienced as physically and mentally
vigorous periods of a person’s life make a difference
in the ways that youth and middle age have custom-
arily been understood and defined? Is it conceiv-
able that understandings about aging will change
so radically that a person of 60 will be thought of
as continuing to grow, rather than as growing old?
Will the prevailing cult of youth (Gullette, 1998;
Rohlen, 1978) finally be undermined? It is difficult
to provide a definitive answer to any of these ques-
tions. Suffice it to say that whatever new meanings
are added on to the experience of an expanded
middle age, they will be refracted through the cul-
tural lens of middle-class Anglo-America with its
emphasis on the desirability of individual success,
on the importance of personal independence and
self-reliance, and on the moral superiority of hard
work and industriousness.
In an insightful and rather entertaining piece,
entitled “What to Call People Who Used to Be
Old?” that appeared in the editorial columns of
the New York Times (July 2, 2000), Clendinen
refers to a Harris poll conducted by the National
Council on Aging that found that nearly half the
people between the ages of 65 and 69 consider
themselves “middle-aged,” as do one-third of those
in their 70s. Clearly, for these people, Cumming
and Henry’s controversial yet influential disengage-
ment theory of the 1960s is completely outdated
(Cumming 1964; Cumming & Henry, 1961). More
importantly, Clendinen notes that the vocabulary
needed to talk about these extended lives has yet
to be developed. Even clinical psychologist Elliott
Jaques, himself now 83 years old, who coined the
highly evocative and enduring phrase “midlife cri-
sis” (1965) more than 35 years ago is at a loss: his
suggestion that the phrase “the third stage of adult-
hood” be used to describe the period between 62
and 85 years sounds less than catchy.
Investigations into the Experience
of Middle Age
Since the mid-1960s, several empirical stud-
ies have examined how Anglo-American men and
women conceive of the life course and, more par-
ticularly, negotiate middle age. Generally speak-
ing, these studies tend to agree that middle-class
Anglo-Americans conceive of the life course as
M e non 645
an individual’s journey from birth to death, an
irreversible sequence of stages in which chrono-
logical years or biological events mark significant
milestones. Lately, there has also been consensus
about the meanings that Anglo-Americans tend
to attach to middle age. Although scholars, during
the 1960s and ’70s, tended to highlight the nega-
tive aspects of this life phase, to focus on the crises
that are thought to characterize it (Levinson, 1978;
Vaillant, 1977), more recent work underscores the
positive aspects of middle age, the accumulated
resources that it brings, both internally and exter-
nally, to enable people confront the challenges
of life with equanimity (Baruch, 1984; Costa
et al, 1986; Keyes & Ryff, 1998; McAdams &
de St. Aubin, 1998; Mitchell & Helsen, 1990;
Neugarten, 1968; Peterson & Klohnen, 1995;
Ryff, 1989).
In 2004, an encyclopedic and multidisciplinary
survey of midlife development in the United States
was published. Entitled How Healthy Are We?
A National Study of Well-Being at Midlife (Brim,
Ryff, & Kessler, 2004), it consists of the findings and
analyses of a survey, conducted in 1995, with more
than 7,000 English-speaking adults ranging in age
from 25 to 74 years. Given the wealth of data, the
detailed interpretations, and the cross-disciplinary
perspectives that it contains, it is an extraordinarily
valuable reference tool for anyone interested in
issues of health and well-being in middle age in
the United States. More importantly, it presents a
robust and optimistic narrative about the middle
years of life. Its upbeat message is implicit in its use
of the term “midlife development” when discuss-
ing aging into the middle years: there appears to
be a deliberate attempt to get away from the nega-
tive connotations of “decline” attached to the more
commonly used phrase “middle age.”
In particular, it provides rather solid empirical
evidence to refute two of the more persistent myths
that dominate the Anglo-American conceptualiza-
tion of middle age—the psychological and physi-
cal costs of menopause and the midlife crisis. Thus,
only 12% of postmenopausal women interviewed
claim to have experienced hot flashes “almost every
day” (Rossi, 2004, p. 195)—the “sine qua non
of menopause” in the West (Lock, 1998, p. 63).
Furthermore, most greet the end of menstruation
with “only relief” (Brim et al., 2004, p. 15) rather
than the depression and distress that psychoana-
lysts and gynecologists claim to have observed.
In addition, midlife crises described as periods of
extreme emotional turmoil seemingly afflict only
646 M i dl i f e Na r r at i v e s ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
1 in 10 persons of those surveyed, suggesting that
such periods of emotional disturbance are rare for
both men and women (Wethington, Kessler, &
Pixley, 2004). Even more interesting is the finding
that middle age is period of relative equilibrium
characterized by few “turning points,” these turn-
ing points being defined as “experiences involving
fundamental shifts in meaning, purpose, or direc-
tion” (Brim et al., 2004, p. 28) in one’s life.
But does this upbeat representation of middle
age make the substantial claim that life gets progres-
sively better with age? Well, not exactly—although
it does attempt to reshape cultural understand-
ings about middle age among Anglo-Americans.
It contends that middle age is a good place to be
in, perhaps even the “best place to be” (Goode,
New York Times, February 16, 1999). At the same
time, it highlights the risks that lurk in the future.
Complaints of losses in personal growth and pur-
pose in life made by older midlifers are interpreted
as portending decline and losses that are likely
to characterize the next phase of life, old age. As
Ryff, one of the co-editors of the book, says, people
in midlife should “be mindful of what is ahead”
(Goode, New York Times, February 16, 1999).
This latest study has not abandoned the
decline ideology that is thought to characterize
Anglo-American conceptualizations of the life
course, but it suggests a somewhat different tim-
ing—instead of occurring in the fourth decade of
life, decline and losses are now thought to occur in
the sixth or seventh decade. It, therefore, redefines
middle age as the prime of life for middle-class
Anglo-Americans. Although this redefinition
can be ascribed, in part, to today’s stupendous
advances in medical science and technology, much
of it reflects ordinary people’s recognition of the
advantages of middle age: having a greater sense
of control over themselves and their environment
and more satisfying relationships with spouses,
children, other family members and friends (Brim
et al., 2004).
To conclude, for middle-class Anglo-Americans,
life consists of a linear progression of stages begin-
ning at birth and ending with death, in which
chronological years and/or biological events mark
significant milestones and experiences. In this
conceptualization, middle age is thought to mark
the beginning of the end of life; and, sometimes,
it is perceived as a time of crises. Even when there
is an attempt to extol the attractions of aging
or middle age, such extolling takes the form of
identifying those elements that embody some
typically youthful quality. For most middle-class
Anglo-Americans, then, “It is youth that epito-
mizes the American sense of wellbeing, and we pay
homage to its gods time and again throughout an
adulthood that inevitably leads us away from many
of its perquisites” (Rohlen, 1978, p. 130).
Middle Age in Popular Culture
While scholarly investigations into aging and
middle age accumulate, Gullette (1998) claims
that most middle-class Anglo-Americans learn “the
truth” about these topics from the media—from
magazines, novels, films, and television shows.
And, in the world of popular culture, confusion
abounds about middle age and the process of aging.
There are primarily two narratives that vie for peo-
ple’s attention: the one that claims that everyone
“dreads” (p. 5) aging, that one slips into middle
age unbeknownst to oneself, and that decline is the
dominant motif of middle age; and the other, more
optimistic counterdiscourse, much of it emerging
from academia, that seeks to persuade people that
middle age is a satisfying time of life.
Gullette contends that the counterdiscourse,
despite its sunny message, falls on deaf ears because
it lacks the emotional intensity and immediacy
that “the bad news about midlife aging” (1998,
p. 7) possesses in such abundance. In all the din of
conflicting messages, the one that is heard the most
often, the most insistently, and the most insidiously
is that of aging as “an unavoidable decline, like a
curse” (p. 7). And, significantly enough, despite the
inevitability of aging, the timing of this decline is
vague and unclear. Gullette suggests that part of
the power of “middle ageism” derives from this
uncertainty about its onset—what she terms its
“perverse undecidability” (1998, p. 27).
Leaving aside for the moment the cult of youth
thought to dominate popular culture, a distinctive
feature of the Anglo-American conceptualization
of the life course is its emphasis on the individual.
Maturation and aging are not social experiences
that a person goes through as a member of a family
or a community; rather, they are solitary “engage-
ments” (Plath, 1980) that an individual undertakes
as a singular entity. This is hardly surprising given
the prevailing ethos of individualism. The institu-
tion of privacy, the cultural salience and signifi-
cance of autonomy, child-rearing practices designed
to nurture and develop independence, all symbol-
ize the value and worth a human being is thought
to embody “simply because as an individual he is of
consequence” (Trilling, 1972, p. 24).
And what effect does this highly developed sense
of individualism have on the way people under-
stand and experience aging? The most obvious is
that changes in individual biology eclipse the social
experience of aging. More importantly, because of
the enormous significance granted to human biol-
ogy, advances in science and medical technology
have medicalized the entire process of aging; grow-
ing old is now redefined and diagnosed as a set
of medical problems that need to be treated. For
much of the 20th century, this medicalization was
less than evenhanded in its treatment of women, in
that middle-aged men were thought to be exempt
from biological aging, attention being paid only to
their work life, whereas women’s midlife experi-
ences were examined as being entirely determined
by their biology (Kaufert & Lock, 1991; Lock,
1998). However, by the end of the 20th century,
this “double standard of aging” (Sontag, 1972) was
over. Referring to more than 100 years of social his-
tory in the United States, Gullette (1998) makes
the case that most men today are as vulnerable to
the invidious influences of the “decline ideology”
as women. Life in a postindustrial society, charac-
terized by uncertainty and insecurity in jobs and
wages and the ubiquitous fiction of midlife male
menopause, contrive to create anxiety in all but the
most privileged of men.
To conclude, the prevailing ethos of individu-
alism makes the Anglo-American experience of
middle age less a process of social maturation and
more a solitary and singular journey in which
the individual traverses the life course, propelled
by a cultural ethos that emphasizes self-reliance,
personal independence, and individual success.
And the predominant narrative is one of loss and
decline—inevitably, so it would appear, because
death is the certain and unavoidable end to every
life. In this regard, however, the most recent study
of this phase of life (Brim et al., 2004) pushes back
against this narrative of loss and decline, seeming
to suggest that these negative experiences can be
safely postponed to old age.
Contrasts and Comparisons
Each of the three conceptions of “middle age”
presented in this chapter emerges as a unique “cul-
tural fiction” (Shweder, 1998), each the product
of cultural assumptions about the life course and
the meaning and purpose of life. For middle-class
Anglo-Americans, the purpose of life is to be free,
mobile, and active, able to pursue one’s inter-
ests without hindrance or undue influence; for
M e non 647
the Japanese, traditionally speaking, a valued,
meaningful life centers on personal growth, the
cultivation of one’s talents and abilities through
considerable effort and application; and for the
Odia Hindu, an important life goal is to be fully
engaged in the world and its activities so as to fulfill
one’s duties to the family by ensuring its material
prosperity and spiritual well-being.
Speaking as an Anglo-American about the
relationship between an individual and society,
Plath says:
We enter society out of concession to animal
weakness and practical need. But social
participation can only diminish us; our highest
self is realized in peak experiences that take us out
of the ruck of society. Our cultural nightmare is
that the individual throb of growth will be sucked
dry in slavish social conformity. All life long, our
central struggle is to defend the individual from the
collective. (1980, p. 216)
The Japanese and the Hindus, in contrast, par-
ticipate in social relations because they believe that
that is the only way available for humans to fully
experience their humanity: one realizes who one is
and where one is going through interrelationships
and interdependencies. For both the Japanese and
the Hindu, one is never born a human being; one
becomes human through living in society, through
participating in life cycle rituals, and through fol-
lowing customary practice. And exclusion from the
group, for both Japanese and Hindus, is the worst
kind of punishment. “Exclusion is depersonaliza-
tion … For without a circle of intimates to attend
to it, one’s human integrity is in peril, here and
beyond” (Plath, 1980, p. 217). Plath is speaking of
the Japanese, but he could as well be talking about
Hindus (see Kakar, 1982).
Not surprisingly, then, the most striking fea-
ture of the Anglo-American conception of adult
development and aging, and one that distinguishes
it from both the Japanese and the Hindu, is its
emphasis on the individual as people mature and
age rather than on the changing dynamics of social
and familial relationships. Given this emphasis on
the individual, it is perhaps to be expected that the
passing of life is marked in terms of chronological
years and biological events, terms rarely used by the
Japanese or the Hindus when describing the various
life phases. Despite this emphasis on chronological
change, the boundaries of Anglo-American middle
age appear somewhat fuzzy: not only is middle
age beginning and ending a little later, but, lately,
648 M i dl i f e Na r r at i v e s ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
the entire life phase is being extended to include
chronological years that were previously catego-
rized as old. This postponement and extension of
middle age may reflect an implicit recognition of
the 20th-century phenomenon of “mass longevity”
(Plath, 1980, p. 1). It appears that Anglo-American
middle age is more a state of mind when life’s cir-
cumstances and physiological changes accumulate
until, finally, an individual recognizes himself or
herself as having entered middle age.
In contrast to middle-class Anglo-Americans,
the Japanese and Hindus conceive of aging as a
social process rather than an individual experi-
ence of biological changes and transformations.
Notwithstanding this similarity, the Japanese
notion of possibilism is unique, nothing even
remotely similar being found in Hindu under-
standings of maturation and aging. In that respect,
Hindus tend to resemble Anglo-American midlifers
(see Brim et al., 2004). Both groups identify the
middle years as the prime of life, followed by an
old age characterized by the inevitable decline and
losses in physical ability and mental acuity.
In middle-class Anglo-America, the cult of
youth remains preeminent. Aging is tolerated only
to the extent that it allows people to retain “some-
thing of the carefree, mobile, active state typi-
cal of youth” (Rohlen, 1978, p. 130). And, in the
past several decades, advances in medical science
and technology have helped people postpone the
inevitability of aging. By comparison, Japanese and
Hindu conceptions appear more fatalistic in the
sense that nature is thought to have its way irrespec-
tive of human wishes. But again, there are differ-
ences in the Japanese view of biographical time and
the Hindu. The Japanese submit to the depredations
of time but simultaneously see within this submis-
sion a challenge and a potential for perfecting the
self. A mature adult, someone who is completing
this process of becoming human, is characterized
by wisdom, self-control, and cultivated abilities. For
Hindus, the passing of the years provides opportu-
nities to refine oneself. Through becoming vegetar-
ian, through fasting regularly, through reading the
scriptures, through meditation, through going on
pilgrimages, through practicing yoga, one cultivates
self-control and self-discipline and thereby becomes
more and more refined. Such self-refinement enables
one to disengage from the world in old age, the last
and final phase of life, and pursue the ultimate goal
of liberation (moksa).
Again, the emotional tone of the middle
period of life reflects and corresponds to cultural
understandings of aging. Thus, mature Japanese
adults, imbued by the idea of Confucian pos-
sibilism, talk of boldness15 (atsukamashisa) when
describing the changes that age has wrought on
them. The dominant motif of middle age among
the Japanese is, therefore, not decline; instead, they
view middle age as an opportunity for each person
to come into his or her own, a chance to experience
and display to the world his or her own individual-
ity, his or her own uniqueness. Comfortably famil-
iar with their social roles, they can now afford to
take liberties with cultural rules, they can be play-
ful, even a little self-indulgent.
For Odia Hindus, mature adulthood is a com-
plicated time, emotionally speaking. As mature
adults, self-assured and confident of their accom-
plishments, they enjoy a heightened sense of
well-being. However, two anxieties cloud this
contentment. The first results from apprehensions
about an uncertain future in which old age, and
the inevitable decline and dependence on others
associated with it, figures prominently. And the
second is about having to live up to a cultural ideal
that exhorts mature adults, both men and women,
to begin renouncing the pleasures of this world,
starting with sexual activities—the precipitating
event usually being the marriage of an adult child.
As Kakar suggests, perhaps this is the midlife cri-
sis that most Hindus face: “renunciation versus
involvement” (1998, p. 81), requiring them, if they
are to resolve this challenge positively, to develop
equanimity.
For middle-class Anglo-Americans, the emo-
tional texture of this phase of life would depend
on whether they have bought into the theme of
middle-age decline uncritically or not. If they have,
their predominant emotion would be the acute fear
of growing even older; although for those who have
not, this would be a time of considerable satisfaction
and well-being, though tinged with some anxiety
about the future and all that it foreshadows—old
age and the losses and decline that accompany it.
Each cultural conception of the middle years of
life is, as would be expected, saturated with cul-
tural meanings. Even elements that are commonly
acknowledged as a feature of aging in all three
cultural contexts—the experience of menopause,
for instance—acquire an entirely different empha-
sis and salience once they go through the pro-
cess of cultural construction. Thus, middle-class
Anglo-American women react to menopause with
little more than mild relief; for Japanese women,
menopause characterizes female aging but, because
of a cultural underemphasis on biology, it takes its
place as just another element in the larger process
of human aging; and for Odia Hindu women in
the temple town, menopause signals a momentous
transformation in a woman’s ability to maintain
bodily coherence and has the immediate impact
of allowing her unrestricted access to divinity, a
privilege that contributes enormously to her sense
of well-being.
Notwithstanding these cultural differences in
the experience of the middle years of life, there are
two aspects—perhaps universal—about this life
phase that all three cultural conceptions seem to
share, to a greater or lesser degree. The first is what
Neugarten, when describing the conduct of a mature
adult, refers to as “conscious self-utilization rather
than the self-consciousness of youth” (1970, p. 78).
This is a particularly apt way of describing the ways
in which all the peoples discussed in this chapter—
upper-caste Odia Hindus, middle-class Japanese,
and middle-class Anglo-Americans—experience
themselves as mature adults. All, as mature adults,
appear confident of their abilities to judge and
manage people, situations, and relationships so as
to obtain the results they seek; furthermore, while
continuing to be concerned by social approbation,
they are no longer driven by it.
The second is the idea that the “transitions
and meanings of mature adulthood are linked to
transitions in the sexuality, schooling, and family
formation of one’s adolescent children” (Shweder,
1998, p. xvi). This theoretical insight, articulated
first by Weisner and Bernheimer in their study of
the midlife experiences of Anglo-Americans who
had participated in the countercultural move-
ment of the 1960s, suggests that for these parents
“midlife actually is marked by its being yoked with
the adolescent developmental transition” (1998,
p. 217). And, far from having only local mean-
ings that do not travel well, this particular insight
can be readily applied to the Japanese and the
Odia Hindi context. Thus, a 53-year-old Japanese
employee told Plath that he would regard himself
an old man only after his daughters were mar-
ried and a grandchild was born: “Only after I’ve
graduated from those events” (1975, p. 54). And,
similarly, for an Odia Hindu married mother, the
marriage of her son and the entry of his new wife
into the family promote her to the very pinnacle of
mature adulthood.
One could perhaps extend this metaphor of the
middle and younger generation being yoked to
include the older generation as well. The universal
M e non 649
meaning attached to mature adulthood, then,
would derive primarily from the centrality of its
location in the life course. Being in the middle,
mature adulthood takes shape and is defined in
terms of linkages and connections with the genera-
tions that precede and succeed it. One is thrust into
mature adulthood when the person further along
in life’s journey accedes to old age; and, the pres-
tige and privilege of mature adulthood is further
endorsed when the person following in one’s path
has been socially processed.
Notes
1 As Miller et al. suggest, it behooves serious scholars to go
beyond conventional academic thinking that tends to lump
all Asians or all Easterners into one homogeneous group. As
this chapter demonstrates, there are substantive differences
between Japanese and Odia Hindu meanings about middle
age and about the process of aging.
2 I need to emphasize that I am being very specific here
because I am well aware of the diversity that distinguishes
Hindu communities, and I do not wish to make unwar-
ranted generalizations about other groups of Hindus.
3 The temple town conceptualization of the life course con-
sists of five phases: childhood (balya avastha), youth (kishoro
avastha), young adulthood (jouvana avastha), mature
adulthood (prauda avastha), and old age (briddha avastha).
I have, however, omitted mentioning the first two phases
because this paper is examining adulthood, in particular
the middle years of life.
4 They do not, for instance, mention pubertal changes or the
development of motor skills in an infant or menopause as
significant events or experiences.
5 The only exception is old age: people here describe this life
phase in terms of the physical and emotional changes that
characterize it—weakness, helplessness, and dependency.
6 The English term “mother-in-law” does not quite cap-
ture the meanings embedded in sasu. A Hindu marriage
is a sacrament, not a contract, and the rituals associated
with marriage begin the process of transforming the physi-
cal substance of the in-marrying woman into that of her
conjugal family (Inden & Nicholas, 1977). Thus, with the
passage of time, as a woman assimilates into her conjugal
family, there is less and less that distinguishes her from her
husband’s mother, her sasu, in terms of physical substance.
7 Young adulthood or jouvana is hard for both men and
women, although for different reasons. Although men do
not experience the wrenching, structural dislocation that
women do when they marry and have to leave their fathers’
homes for that of their mothers-in-law’s, they find young
adulthood stressful because of the difficulties they face in
finding suitable employment.
8 Ancient law books that expound on customary law and
practice.
9 The most obvious being the discrepancy in the number
of phases involved and the fact that the former pertains
only to upper-caste men, whereas the latter is said to apply
to both men and women. A more pertinent difference is
that the Odia Hindu conceptualization lacks an explicitly
defined transitional phase that separates mature adulthood
from old age.
650 M i dl i f e Na r r at i v e s ac r o s s C u lt u r e s
10 Kakar speculates that this “psychological transition of men
and women into middle age” would occur at around age 45
for men and 40 for women living in urban areas, whereas,
in rural areas, the equivalent ages would be a couple of
years younger.
11 The present Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, at
56 years of age, appears to be the exception that perhaps
proves this rule.
12 In trying to describe and explain these attitudes in a
comprehensive and detailed manner, I run the risk of
homogenizing all Japanese, of blurring the intracultural
variability that surely exists, and presenting an entire peo-
ple as a monolithic entity. Nevertheless, the Japanese artic-
ulate a degree of cultural self-consciousness that encourages
observers and commentators to assume such homogeneity.
Lock, for instance, talks of the “remarkable uniformity in
the creation of family life” and ascribes it to a cultural sensi-
tivity about movement through the life course since at least
the beginning of this century (1998, p. 56).
13 Although, according to Lock, modernization has led to the
former becoming more rare—except in some rural areas—
and the latter more important in contemporary Japan.
14 Lock (1998, p. 56) says that in Japan since the turn of the
19th century, a “genre of writing” known as “people’s life
span” discussed and elaborated in great detail the ideal life
course for people in diverse circumstances.
15 Interestingly enough, the Odia term for mature adult-
hood “prauda” includes the meanings of “audacity” and
“boldness.”
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 C H A P T E R

40 Explorations in Generativity
and Culture

Ed de St. Aubin and Mara Bach

Abstract
This chapter shows that any full exploration of generativity, the emerging midlife desire to invest
in the well-being of younger and future generations, must account for the salience of culture. The
chapter begins with a close examination of Erikson’s initial writings regarding generativity and culture,
with a focus on his mid-century observations of the Sioux and Yurok tribes and his analysis of two
generativity myths: Hitler’s 1941 Mein Kampf and a 1938 film about Maxim Gorky’s youth. This is
followed by an evaluation of generativity scholarship after Erikson that has been mindful of culture.
The authors end the chapter by presenting a set of suggestions for ideal modes of inquiry as this area
of scholarship is advanced in the future.
Key Words:  generativity, culture, Erik Erikson, personality, midlife development, custom complex,
emic vs. etic, Japanese culture, Mexican-American culture, narrative

“They think of you as very foolish.” Prominent
Japanese scholar Yoko Yamada delivered these
words to the first author of this chapter during
a lunch conversation in 1999, when both were
attending a conference in Kyoto that focused on
the concept of generativity. Generativity refers to
a process that emerges in midlife wherein adults
begin to shape the lives of younger and future
humans via parenting, mentoring, creativity, pro-
ductivity, and other relevant modes that invest in
the well-being of forthcoming generations. By this
time, Ed and his mentor Dan McAdams had cre-
ated a well-received heuristic model of generativity,
designed methods of quantifying individual differ-
ences in generativity, and published several articles
and an edited book on the subject. But Yoko was
correct. She had hit on an important truth.
The “they” in her quote signified the Japanese
scholars attending the conference and the “you”
referred to Ed specifically but also to the other US
academics present. She went on to explain that
we—the US folks—consistently referred to adults
who score “low” or “high” on generativity. We
spoke of research participants who were generativ-
ity exemplars, meaning that they scored very high
on measures of this variable in our research. And
we spoke of other participants as “nongenerative.”
Our entire enterprise seemed based on quantitative
individual differences in generativity. For Yoko and
her Japanese colleagues, this is foolish because gen-
erativity is not a phenomenon that resides within
the individual. It is a collective force that exists
within and between generations—moving toward
us from several generations ago and moving for-
ward to the far future. An individual adult is but a
conduit through which generativity is transferred.
Yoko went on to explain that seeking to find the
magnitude of generativity within individuals was a
misguided endeavor. Better to try and understand
the manner in which it flows within and between
age cohorts, the various ways it is received and
passed on. If you must examine this at the level of

653
the individual, Yoko explained, better to question
the “flavors” of one’s generativity or the “colors,” for
there may be important qualitative differences in
how adults manage this transaction. But no adult,
in her Japanese perspective, could be thought of as
more generative than another, or as less so, and cer-
tainly not as nongenerative.
This brief lunch conversation was an “aha”
moment for Ed. Despite the ubiquitous message
in the training and practice of academics who do
human development that one must consider cul-
ture when exploring any developmental phenom-
enon, it was this comment that most dramatically
conveyed the idea central to this book and to this
chapter: Culture matters!
We have thought much since then about the
meaning of culture within the study of generativ-
ity. This chapter provides an opportunity for us to
review the relevant literature in this area and to
articulate our current vision of how one interested
in generativity might consider culture. We begin
at the beginning with the inception of the con-
cept of generativity as a midlife psychosocial phase
of development. Erik Erikson, originator of the
term “generativity,” spent substantial time think-
ing and writing about culture and its impact on
the developing human and had much to say about
the connection between generativity and culture.
Surprisingly, much of what he wrote about gen-
erativity and culture has not been incorporated
into contemporary thinking in this area. We next
explore generativity research following Erikson
that attempts to account for cultural dynamics. As
we review this work and its key findings, we look
for effective design elements in methods used to
examine generativity and culture. This then leads
to a section that articulates key points to consider
as scholars continue in their efforts to understand
and explain the meaning of generativity, a phenom-
enon that is both culturally situated and one that
drives cultural change.
The Inception of Generativity: Erikson’s
Emphasis on Culture
Generativity is introduced in Childhood and
Society, the book published in 1950 that launched
Erikson onto the national scene. Fewer than two of
the 445 pages are dedicated to an explicit discus-
sion of generativity. It is presented as the seventh
and longest of eight psychosocial stages of human
development. The first five stages entail psychoso-
cial tensions that each results in an ego strength
(hope, willpower, purpose, competence, fidelity1) that
654 E x pl or at ions i n G e n e r at i v i t y a n d C u lt u r e
serves the developing individual well. But then, in
stage six, Intimacy vs. Isolation, the focus shifts, for
the psychosocial virtue gained here, love, puts the
well-being of another—an intimate life partner—
at the forefront. It is this shift to other-orientedness
and the acquisition of love during young adulthood
that leads to the lengthy adulthood stage seven,
Generativity vs. Stagnation. The love for one morphs
into the psychosocial mode of care for many. The
healthy midlife adult then, for Erikson, engages
in generativity by caring for a wide audience of
known and unknown others who populate younger
and future generations. Erikson flips the common
top-down conceptualization of socialization (adults
impact children) and suggests that the “need-to-
be-needed” during adulthood makes it such that
children (and the understanding that humans will
continue to procreate beyond one’s lifetime) shape
the development of the adult. Generativity compels
one to do what one can to improve the lives of those
in future life cycles.
The existential foundation of generativity is
a “belief in the species”—a perspective that the
human enterprise is worthy of one’s efforts. Given
this faith in humankind and being equipped with
the collective ego strengths one has acquired via
psychosocial development, the generative adult
engages in productive and creative pursuits that
allow him or her to positively impact the perpetual
cycles of life. In this brief treatment of the topic,
Erikson is careful to point out that generativity may
be enacted in myriad ways. Parenting is an obvious
path, but, to rephrase Erikson, generativity is about
an adult’s relationship to one’s “production” as well
as to one’s “progeny.” The list of potentially genera-
tive modes and products is extensive.
Erikson justifies the brevity of this section by
reminding the reader that the book is focused on
childhood stages. Otherwise, he notes, this would
have been “the central” section of concern. And yet
our read of the book is that it addresses generativ-
ity in many other chapters and that his very deep
appreciation of culture and its connection to gen-
erativity is repeatedly expressed, even if the word
“generativity” is not used. This component of his
writing is essential if we are to fully appreciate how
the original and still most significant generativity
theorist wove culture and generativity together.
Yet, recent examinations of generativity make no
mention of this. We are therefore compelled here
to carefully demonstrate how Erikson wrote about
the interweaving of generativity and culture in a
number of ways.
 Part two of Childhood and Society (1950) addresses
the Sioux and Yurok Native American tribes, on
whom Erikson conducted ethnographic studies
with his anthropologist colleague Scudder Mekeel.
Here, Erikson seamlessly connects geographic/
geologic/bio-ecosystem differences between the
living conditions of the two tribes to cultural val-
ues and beliefs that, in turn, shape generative prac-
tices such as child rearing and the intergenerational
transmission of skills needed for survival (hunting,
fishing). To supply an oversimplified and selective
example, the open plains and roaming buffalo herds
of South Dakota lead to a semi-nomadic Sioux
culture that valued modes such as aggressiveness
(needed to hunt buffalo and to fight off compet-
ing groups encountered), efficiency (repeated pack-
ing, moving, unpacking), small-group cooperation
(team hunting), nonownership (no permanent
home, few personal possessions), and generosity
(all must benefit from resources garnered by few).
Erikson demonstrates how these cultural modes
shape the expression of generativity in a number of
ways, including the actual birthing process, feed-
ing/nursing practices, toilet training, disciplining
children, and the socialization of sexuality.
Furthermore, he writes about the impact of
the “generativity schism” (our term, not his) that
occurred when the US government began to force-
fully implement socialization practices (e.g., child
care, hygiene training, faith rituals, discipline)
based on the cultural values of white Christian
bureaucrats. Generations of Native American
children were the objects of two separate and con-
tradictory forms of generativity: the traditional
Native American mode that had been practiced
for generations and the very different generativ-
ity coming from well-meaning but misguided
government officials. Erikson observes and writes
about the ramifications of this schism without ever
using the word generativity, yet the entire discus-
sion addresses how two different cultural sets of
values regarding the treatment of children merged
to form internal tensions in the Native Americans
he observed.
In another section of the book, Erikson presents
two case studies that once again fuse culture and gen-
erativity: one regarding Adolf Hitler (1889–1945)
and the other Maxim Gorky (1868–1936), the
Russian writer and political activist. These are
not psychobiographies proper, like Erikson’s
book-length treatments of Martin Luther (1958)
and Mahatma Gandhi (1969) that were to come
later, for these do not attempt to analyze the lives
lived by these men. Instead, Erikson tries to show
how two generativity myths—Hitler’s 1941 auto-
biography Mein Kampf and a 1938 film by Mark
Donskoi about Gorky’s youth—could only have
been spun within specific cultures (German and
Russian, respectively) at particular points in his-
tory. These are generativity myths in that each
blends reality with fiction to create a meaningful,
and perhaps propagandist, narrative about how the
generative forces in one’s childhood—parenting,
family productivity within the macroeconomy,
faith traditions, socialization strategies—influence
the developing man. For instance, the presenta-
tion of “the father” and his influence on the main
character (Hitler) in Mein Kampf is quintessen-
tial of the “German middle class father of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century” (p. 331).
Erikson spends more than eight pages outlining
the nuances and variations of “the German Father”
and how Hitler’s portrayal of his own father both
resonates with a German audience and also pro-
motes the intended narrative regarding the early
years of a great leader (himself). Erikson’s point
is that culture and modes/images of fathering are
inseparable. This generative path—fathering—
must be culturally situated.
Likewise, in his analyses of the film portrayal
of Gorky’s youth, Erikson carefully and elaborately
describes the cultural setting, tracing the histori-
cal movements that lead to this particular time
in Russia. He repeatedly warns his US readers
that their embeddedness within their own culture
makes it difficult to authentically understand this
particular intersection of time and place:
The Western observer at this point decides that the
picture has less than a moral, that it is amoral. It
may be however, that the picture merely poses moral
alternatives quite different from those to which our
Judaeo-Christian world is committed. (p. 382)
Again, the point being that the generative forces
depicted as acting on young Gorky are resulting in
a moral worldview of the main character that has
a coherence and logic that can only be understood
if we take the time to fully appreciate the complex
and foreign dynamics that define the culture in
which his life is situated.
In these and many other parts of Childhood
and Society, Erikson thinks and writes like a
mid-century anthropologist. Generativity, the
intergenerational transmission of values and skills,
is conducted via institutions, rituals, practices, and
habits that are to be understood via the culture
Au bi n, B ac h 655
of a people. This is in stark contrast to that brief
­chapter 7 on the development of the ego through
eight stages. Here, the focus is the individual and
the sequential acquisition of psychosocial virtues
over the life cycle. The goal is not to choose which
“read” of Erikson is correct—is generativity some-
thing that resides within the individual developing
adult, or is it a collective phenomenon existing at
the level of culture?—but to design ways of under-
standing how generativity is both an individual
and a cultural phenomenon. To employ a paint-
ing metaphor, one may concentrate on an object
in the foreground (individual level: development
of the ego, psychobiography, the generativity of
an adult), but this is only fully appreciated when
also seen as contextualized within the background
(culture). Most US generativity scholars and virtu-
ally all textbook authors fail to acknowledge the
cultural dynamics Erikson so painstakingly articu-
lated. Any one of the hundreds of US textbooks
that cover Erikson focuses on the individual level
and reifies his writings as simply outlining the eight
concrete steps of the life cycle.
It should not surprise us that Erikson is so
deeply concerned with the manner in which cul-
ture shapes individual development and function-
ing. This intellectual proclivity is closely tied to
personal experiences. He often straddled two sepa-
rate cultures in his life. He grew up in Germany
yet spent his adulthood in the United States. As
a boy, he moved daily from the Jewish culture
that his adoptive father established to his mostly
non-Jewish school. Born of a Scandinavian bio-
logical father (Friedman, 1999), he was tall, thin,
blue-eyed, and blond—not a look that helped him
blend in with the Jewish community of his adop-
tive father. Erikson (1975) writes about being
exposed as an outsider in both his Jewish culture
(called “Goy”) and that of his school (the “Jew”).
Finally, as a professor who had not attended col-
lege proper, Erikson never quite felt he fit into the
academic culture either, despite many prestigious
appointments (Friedman, 1999).
The salience of culture pervades Erikson’s other
writings on generativity as well. His most elaborate
treatment of the subject is Gandhi’s Truth (1969),
the Pulitzer Prize (general nonfiction)-winning
account of Mahatma Gandhi’s (1869–1948) gener-
ative efforts to shape an entire nation. Again, great
attention is paid to the cultural (and cross-cultural
dynamics of Great Britain and India) background
as he demonstrates how one man’s generativity
served as a catalyst for cultural change. Although
656 E x pl or at ions i n G e n e r at i v i t y a n d C u lt u r e
his other book-length psychobiography, Young
Man Luther (1958), focused on “identity crisis,” it,
too, provides detailed sketches of the culture that
shaped the sociohistorical background of Martin
Luther’s (1483–1546) life—a life that must be con-
sidered generative because it began the Protestant
Reformation and has impacted billions. As one
final example, Erikson dedicates an entire book,
Life History and the Historical Moment (1975), to
demonstrating the importance of contextualizing
the analysis of individuals (including himself and
Freud) within the larger sociohistorical culture.
In sum, Erikson, the man who generated the
concept of generativity more than 60 years ago,
consistently grappled with the complex relation-
ship that it has with culture. Culture determines
what is passed on from generation to generation
and culture shapes how generativity is performed.
Furthermore, generativity—the intergenerational
transmission of values and skills—is one key to
understanding the stability and the change in cul-
ture over time because it is the vehicle by which
culture perpetuates itself via the linking of succes-
sive life cycles. Erikson’s writings on generativity
were indeed generative because these influenced
many scholars and practitioners, yet most have not
continued in his mode of seeing the many nuanced
connections between generativity and culture.
Instead, most have examined generativity as a
midlife developmental aspect of the individual. We
now turn to the work of those who have attempted
to build on Erikson in expanding and deepening
our understanding of generativity and culture.
Generativity and Culture Since Erikson
In this selective review, we focus on the scholar-
ship that has intentionally included culture when
addressing generativity. Furthermore, we sought
writings that would provide us insights regarding
effective methods to study generativity at both the
individual and the cultural level—appreciating
the interconnecting dynamics between these units
of analysis. This is a rather small portion of the
larger collective work on generativity. The reader is
advised to see McAdams and Logan (2004) or de
St. Aubin (2013) for more comprehensive reviews
of studies that focus on generativity at the level of
the individual adult and to examine de St. Aubin,
McAdams, and Kim (2004) for a set of investiga-
tions into generativity within society, culture, and
social institutions.
The first book-length examination of genera-
tivity to build on Erikson’s publications was John
Kotre’s (1984) Outliving the Self. Kotre presents a
taxonomy of types of generativity and then spends
the bulk of the book telling and interpreting par-
ticular life stories in order to demonstrate how the
levels in the typology are manifested and interwo-
ven. Each of the four types of generativity—biolog-
ical, parental, technical, cultural—has a specified
mode, and each has a particular intended target.
Given the order listed here, the mode becomes
increasingly less concrete—from the passing of flu-
ids in biological generativity to the perpetuation
of abstract symbol systems at the cultural level.
Furthermore, the target of generativity moves from
narrow (my child) to diffuse (future generations).
By explicitly laying out these levels within the life
story examples, Kotre is able to show how generativ-
ity and culture are symbiotic—each requiring the
other to exist. At the technical level, for instance,
the skills that are passed on to an apprentice (target)
are those that are of value within a specific culture.
And by transmitting these skills from generation to
generation, technical generativity helps perpetuate
that culturally relevant skill.
A second major contribution is Kotre’s insistence
that narrative, as both a phenomenon of study and
as a method of inquiry, is the key to understanding
the relation between generativity and culture:
In the case of generativity, the narrative method
turned out to be well suited to the research content.
I found that stories were a natural vehicle for
carrying the meaning of life from one generation
to the next, and I found that both stories and
generativity could be understood only in relation to
an abiding culture. (1984, p. 267)
Noting that the strong individualism of US
adults results in a belief that the truly liberated self
exists outside of and independent from culture,
Kotre’s examination of generativity ends with a
strong counterposition:
If there is a single impression I might leave with the
reader of this book it is this: there is no such thing
as a culture-free self, and there is no way to outlive
the self without the vehicle of culture. Whether
one looks at the stories we tell about ourselves or
whether one looks at the marks we leave when we
die, culture inevitably appears. (1984, p. 269)
In sum, one way to elucidate the reciprocal sym-
biosis between generativity and culture is to listen
to narratives. The book outlines several ways in
which generativity and culture are connected (inter-
locking of the generative types), and it promotes
narrative psychology as the way to examine gen-
erativity within various cultural contexts. And yet
there are no cultural contexts included here other
than that of the contemporary United States.
To see how we might examine generativity in
a culture other than the United States, we turn
to a study that compared generativity as it exists
within two separate cultures (de St. Aubin, 2004).
It began with a search for an emic approach to cul-
tural psychology that would allow for an investiga-
tion of generativity as it is manifested in current
US and Japanese cultures. Emic designs are those
that frame concepts and dynamics from the per-
spective of the group being examined (Lett, 1996).
They begin from within a culture. These differ sig-
nificantly from the more typical etic studies that
apply the models and measures of the investiga-
tors to individuals and groups from other cultures
(Lett, 1996). Several false assumptions underlie
the logic of such an approach. Most notable is the
idea of universality—that the meaning of a con-
cept is identical across cultures as is its measure-
ment. Unfortunately, such studies are the most
common of cross-cultural and multicultural work
within research psychology today (Matsumoto &
Juang, 2013).
It was decided to employ a technique that
John and Beatrice Whiting, along with colleague
Irving Child (Whiting & Child, 1953), introduced
60 years ago in their comparison of parenting
practices among several cultures: the custom com-
plex. Shweder (see Shweder et al., 1998) has more
recently discussed the advantages of this method.
The idea is to begin with an issue that must be
addresses by all cultures. Shweder uses sleeping
arrangements as an example, but one can think
of many others: food preparation, reproductive
behaviors, labor and delivery of offspring, treat-
ment of recently deceased, and the like. Once the
custom has been chosen, the scholar creates a cus-
tom practice—detailing the particular behaviors
(what is performed, who is involved, where the
practice takes place) as these exist within a certain
culture. Once this custom practice is completed,
one builds a custom complex—this articulates the
web of cultural values, beliefs, rules, sanctions, and
symbols that are associated with the practice. Like
grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), this is
an approach that begins with a thick (Geertz, 1973)
description based on particular observations and
allows for culture-level analysis to emerge from it.
It is an emic process in that the starting point is
within the culture itself (custom practice), not the
Au bi n, B ac h 657
assumptions or proclivities of the researcher and
her discipline.
The two generativity-centered custom practices
chosen for the US–Japan comparison were the
caring for young children and the mentoring of
artistic talent. After elaborate descriptions of these
generativity practices as performed in two separate
cultures, de St. Aubin worked inductively to con-
nect the dots from the particular (custom practice)
to the general (custom complex: culture). Many
of these connecting lines require descriptions of
how historical, geographic, geologic, political, and
institutional realities of a particular culture shape
its generative modes. This provided a structure
by which to discuss many of the meaningful ana-
lytical points made by Erikson (1950) in his more
fluid presentation of generativity and culture. For
instance, just as Erikson traces the geographic/
geologic conditions of the two Native American
tribes to cultural modes that impact generativity,
de St. Aubin (2004) demonstrates how the popula-
tion stability and density of Japan (population of
128 million with 337 people per square kilometer)
results in a generativity quite different from that
of the open United States (315 million with 33 per
square kilometer), which also experienced major
waves of population movement. The Japanese con-
text includes a communal form of rearing children
(Kakinuma, 1993). Mothers are in close proxim-
ity to their own mothers. A mother in the United
States, with its history of migration (e.g., the East to
West frontier settlement; the rural South to urban
North movement of many African Americans) and
immigration, was much less likely to be rearing
children near to her own mother.
de St. Aubin continues by providing evidence
that the generativity custom of parenting was more
communal in Japan and that US mothers, because
of their lack of proximity to other like-minded
mothers, were more likely to consult parenting
experts via books and magazines. Culture and
generativity are linked, as Erikson suggests, and
the emic process of building custom complexes
from generative practices allows us to capture this
dynamic in different cultures.
As another example, consider how Erikson
(1950) carefully anatomized the shared German
“image” of the father and its association with
generativity in that culture. Likewise, a powerful
Japanese cultural image—amae—was evoked in
the process of building a custom complex from the
generativity practice of caring for young children.
Such cultural images speak to the shared visions
658 E x pl or at ions i n G e n e r at i v i t y a n d C u lt u r e
and values of a collective, and these translate to
culture-based ways of being generative. Amae,
which “refers to the indulged child’s presumption
and dependence on mother’s benevolence” (de St.
Aubin, 2004; p. 68), is the quintessentially Japanese
blend of succorance, obedience, filial piety, manip-
ulation, and dependence. It was first introduced to
Western readers as a “basking in another’s indul-
gence” (Doi, 1962, p. 8). It helps us understand a
unique quality of Japanese generativity. Mothers
in Japan care for the next generation in a way that
discourages the child’s exploration, minimizes the
mother’s expression of negative emotions (anger,
disappointment, frustration), and encourages con-
tinued reliance (of child on mother). Mother–child
amae, the ideal in Japan, looks like insecure ambiv-
alent attachment to US psychologists (Rothbaum,
Pott, Azuma, Miyake, & Weisz, 2000). Again,
culture and generativity are inseparable and emic
modes of inquiry elucidate this reality.
The methods lesson learned here is to begin from
within the culture. The move from the two genera-
tivity custom practices (parenting young children
and mentoring artistic talent) to custom complexes
provided a comparative analysis of Japanese and
US generativity. What it does not allow for is the
quantification of generativity or an examination
of generativity at the level of the individual (as a
psychosocial virtue) as this is contextualized by
culture. Two cross-cultural studies of generativity
have employed measures of generativity to adults
from separate cultures.
Penezić and colleagues (2008) sampled more
than 900 adults from Slovenia and Croatia as a
cross-cultural test of a model of generativity pro-
posed in the early 1990s (McAdams & de St.
Aubin, 1992). The authors predicted that adults
in the two cultures would present separate genera-
tivity profiles because Slovenia has moved faster
than Croatia since their inception (breakup of
Yugoslavia, 1991–1992) toward the cultural ideals
of freedom, growth, development, and progress of
the individual and society. The two variables exam-
ined are generative action and generative concern,
both of which are facets of the model being tested.
Measures of these components of generativity have
been developed (McAdams & de St. Aubin, 1992)
and widely used with US adults (de St. Aubin,
2013): the 20-item Loyola Generativity Scale
(LGS) quantifies concern and the Generativity
Behavioral Checklist (GBC) captures action.
Employing culturally appropriate measures is key
to investigations such as this. For this cross-cultural
study, Penezić and colleagues decided to remove
three items from the LGS (these mentioned vol-
untary work for charity, caring for the homeless,
and adopting children) based on factor analyses
of each group separately and combined. They alter
the GBC more dramatically, changing the response
scale, removing all but 11 of the original items and
adding nine additional items. Although the logic
of this transformation makes sense—“Since the
checklist originated from North-American culture,
we added some new items that are more specific
for the cultures in question” (p. 241)—the reader is
simply told that the researchers generated the nine
items, without further explanation of the process
and without including the actual items.
The results show that the groups do not score
significantly differently on generative action but
that, counter to the predictions stated, the Croatian
group scored higher on generative concern than
the Slovenians. The authors tell us that this “can be
interpreted as a consequence of the ravages of war
as well as postwar criminal and corruptive actions.
Due to these life circumstances many Croatian
people are very anxious about their personal mate-
rial and cultural standing in contrast to Slovenian
citizens, and more anxious about the future of
younger generations” (p. 243). In sum, differ-
ences in generativity, as quantified at the level of
the individual but then aggregated into two groups
representing separate cultures, have their source
in dynamics regarding cultural-level phenomenon
such as war, crime, and corruption.
Regression analyses show that significant pre-
dictors of generative action for the Croatians
include generative concern, communal goals, and
the importance of free time. For the Slovenians,
generative action is best predicted by generative
concern and communal goals, as well as by agen-
tic goals and the importance of being a parent.
These results lead the authors to make a number
of speculations regarding culture and generativ-
ity. For example, Slovenian generativity appears to
be closer to US generativity because the model—
designed by and tested on US adults—suggests a
blend of agentic and communal inner desires that
compel one toward generative action (both agentic
and communal goals predicted Slovenian genera-
tivity, whereas only communal goals were signifi-
cant for Croatian generativity).
Another interpretation regards the finding
that the importance of parenting is meaning-
fully related to generative action in Slovenia but
not in Croatia. There has been no cultural shift
in parenting in Slovenia since the transition from
Yugoslavia, where the focus has always been “love
and care of one’s children” (p. 246). But in Croatia,
the major increase in the salience of the church
(39% of the population reported as “believers” in
1989 increased to 75% in 1996) and its political
propaganda regarding parenting as functional—
“to increase the birthrate, to stimulate demo-
graphic renewal, and to fulfill one’s national duty”
(p. 246)—makes it such that parenting is no lon-
ger associated with generative action. Again, cul-
tural forces, such as state-implemented propaganda
regarding the meaning and function of religion
and parenting, influence the manner in which gen-
erativity is enacted.
That cross-cultural differences were found
is all the more striking when one considers the
similarity between Slovenia and Croatia, which
share a border and were both part of the same
country just one generation ago. To look at an
individual-level-measures cross-cultural study of
generativity that includes quite distinct cultures, we
turn to an examination of Cameroon, Costa Rica,
and Germany (Hofer, Busch, Chasiotis, Kartner, &
Campos, 2008). Here, the authors apply structural
equation modeling to what they consider to be the
three intrapersonal components of the model (Inner
Desire [motivation] leads to a generative Concern
[disposition], which leads to Commitment [goals]),
and they include an additional path from concern
to subjective well-being because this association has
been consistently demonstrated in past research (de
St. Aubin, 2013). The logic is to test whether this
path structure is replicated in all three very differ-
ent cultures—to see if there is a universality to the
“intrapsychic structure of generativity” (p. 6). Such
an investigation is unique and needed because it
examines how culture might influence the interre-
latedness of various facets of generativity.
There are also predictions regarding culture-
group-mean comparisons of the generativity motiva-
tions, dispositions, and goals. The rationale for these
predictions are rather blunt, lacking any detailed
articulation of culture-specific dynamics that may
result in differences in generativity when individual
scores are aggregated. They rely on the well-known
dimension of individualism-collectivism and
state that Cameroonians should score highest on
measures of generativity, because this is the most
collectivist culture, and that the German group,
with its Western individualism, should score low-
est. Costa Rica is expected to fall somewhere in
between those two. The actual findings here are
Au bi n, B ac h 659
that the Cameroonian adults, as a group, score
significantly higher than the Germans on genera-
tive inner desire, concern, and commitment. The
Costa Ricans score higher than the Germans on
generative inner desire and concern. Thus, there
was partial to strong support for the predictions
regarding culture-group differences in the means
of generativity measures. Such group comparisons
in the magnitude of generativity are an important
first step to cross-cultural psychology.
But this study goes beyond that to see whether
the internal mechanisms by which generative desires
lead to generative concern and then to generative
goals and well-being are the same across cultures.
Hofer and colleagues conclude that, with small to
medium effect sizes, the three cultures produce
models of such interconnectivity that can be con-
sidered identical. In sum, levels of generativity,
when aggregated, vary by culture, but the internal
dynamics may not.
Hofer’s research group takes great pains to make
sure the measures are appropriate for cultural com-
parison. To use the measure of generative concern
as an example, they begin with the English version
of the LGS, same as those who studied the former
Yugoslavian countries. The LGS was translated
and back-translated into Spanish and German for
the relevant groups. To then test for measurement
invariance so that the latent variables in the model
are acceptable psychometrically, an exploratory
factor analysis was first conducted. Five of the 20
items were found to have inadequate factor load-
ings in one or more cultural group and so were
dropped. Multiple confirmatory factor analysis was
then performed on the reduced LGS to test both
the measurement model and the structural model
(Satisfaction with Life Scale was included for this
step). Nested model comparisons demonstrated
that measurement equivalence can be assumed and
that the LGS may be used to compare the three
groups on generative concern and as a facet within
the models being tested.
Although the authors are to be applauded for
taking such efforts to establish what they (and
others: see Van de Vijver & Leung, 1997) con-
sider cross-cultural measurement equivalence,
this approach appears more etic than emic—and
rather ethnocentric. It assumes that a measure of
individual differences in generative concern that
was constructed and validated on US adults (the
LGS) is the ideal starting point for quantifying
generative concern in any and all other cultures.
The procedure allows for the removal of items, but
660 E x pl or at ions i n G e n e r at i v i t y a n d C u lt u r e
there is no reflection about how generative concern
may be manifested in other cultures in a way that is
not captured in the LGS items. The measure can be
reduced but not expanded. A more emic approach
would start from within the cultures being stud-
ied to see how generative concern exists in those
realities.
Although Kotre (1984) and de St. Aubin (2004)
have much to offer in their theoretical contribu-
tions, the inclusion of quantitative psychology
in these more recent studies greatly expands the
potential to tease apart important elements within
and between generativity and culture. Starting
with the simple evaluation of differences between
cultures by comparing means, the use of measures
also allows for testing the dynamics that link gen-
erativity facets to each other and to a wider array
of psychosocial correlates. This operates at both
cross-cultural and intracultural levels.
The research reviewed in this section can be
abstracted and summed to four basic methods
lessons for those designing studies of generativity
and culture. We start our next section with these
four lessons and then add three further criteria
that should guide further scholarship that attempts
to understand the manifestation of generativity
within a cultural context.
Guiding Principles for Generativity
Scholarship that Captures
the Salience of Culture
The first lesson learned from this literature
review is to be alert to the many interlocking
levels and different hues of generativity. As men-
tioned, Kotre (1984, 2004) does this quite well,
demonstrating the interrelatedness of the four
levels of generativity as these exist within specific
sociohistorical contexts. Another good example
is the work of Italian scholar Elena Marta, who
has focused her attention on “family generativ-
ity” as it is co-created by the two generations in a
home (parents and children). Noting the increas-
ingly extended phase of offspring dependency
during emerging adulthood in Italy, Marta and
colleagues have demonstrated that the quality of
family generativity strongly predicts the success-
ful resolution of separation-individuation (Marta,
Lanz, & Tagliabue, 2012.) Unlike US emerging
adulthood (Arnett, 2000), wherein those between
the ages of 19 and 28 are living separately from
parents yet are still dependent psychosocially and,
in part, financially, emerging adults of the same
age in Italy are most likely to be living in the same
home as their parents. This, according to Marta,
calls for a certain type of family generativity that
strikes the balance between providing for one’s
children and still allowing them to move toward
independence. Being mindful of the potential for
various levels of generativity and being aware of
the Italian cultural context has allowed this group
of researchers to advance our understanding of
generativity.
A second lesson is to follow an emic design,
which means to begin from within the culture of
interest and to check one’s personal, disciplinary,
and cultural assumptions. As our example at the
beginning of this chapter demonstrates, deeply
rooted assumptions about the nature of a develop-
mental phenomenon such as generativity, even for
those who have vigorously studied the concept—
perhaps especially for those folks—are often mis-
leading or irrelevant for a specific cultural context.
Like repetitive behavioral habits, these unchecked
assumptions have the effect of limiting possibilities.
By following an emic design, one remains open
to having these assumptions altered or shattered.
This, in turn, may lead to important insights that
advance scholarship.
Further, emic designs empower both those
being investigated and the culture within which
they exist while they simultaneously de-emphasize
the a priori models and speculations of the inves-
tigator. Just as Erikson (1950) made first-hand
observations of the Sioux and Yurok cultures, we
must start with the socially contextualized words
and behaviors of the people we wish to understand.
The custom complex discussed earlier is one tech-
nique that achieves an emic mode. Another ideal
emic approach is the grounded theory method
initially championed by Glaser and Strauss (1967)
because it allows meaning to emerge from that
which is located within the individual or culture
being examined. Description comes before analy-
sis. Theory is derived inductively from the bottom
up. This will advance our understanding of gen-
erativity. Rather than assume that generativity is
a force existing in various magnitudes within each
adult, the researcher must remain open to radically
different ideas, so that generativity may also be
perceived as a force flowing between generations,
one that embodies individual adults in qualitatively
different ways.
A third message is that narrative approaches are
an ideal avenue by which to investigate this area of
study. The telling of stories is a universally human
experience (Bruner, 1991). And the stories humans
tell are culturally contextualized so that by listening
closely for generativity themes in stories—whether
they are the individual life stories an adult tells of
his or her reconstructed past, perceived present,
and anticipated future or the collective stories evi-
denced in varied venues such as children’s books,
treasured myths, or media tropes—we gain insight
into generativity in a culturally sensitive manner.
McAdams’s (1984; 2001; 2006) advancement of
generativity scholarship focuses on the former—
individual life stories—and Erikson’s elucidates the
later—collective stories—in his analysis of genera-
tivity via the narratives in the Mein Kampf book
and The Childhood of Maxim Gorky film.
Kotre (1984, 2004) has connected generativity,
culture, and narrative with both individual and
collective stories. He notes that highly generative
cultures, such as the Puritans who landed and
settled in New England beginning in the 1630s,
maintain five types of stories that are infused with
generative meaning: epic, origin myth, story of
real life, parable, and the cautionary tale. Kotre
finds that less generative cultures, such as the
Virginians who landed some 500 miles south at
roughly the same time, also sustain these types of
narratives, but they are thin or void of generative
content.
Narrative modes of inquiry are emic and have
the potential to compel culturally significant
nuances to emerge. But this approach requires a
certain openness, as Andrews (2007) noted:
I wish to argue that cross-cultural narrative research
is predicated on narrative imagination … if we wish
to access the frameworks of meaning for others, we
must be willing and able to imagine a world other
than the one we know. (p. 489)
To grasp the meaning and subtleties of genera-
tivity in a culture other than one’s own, it is best
to start with stories, and to do so with an open
mind. Although narrative helps capture the poten-
tially distinctive meaning of generativity within a
particular culture, scholars must also continue to
find tools that allow for systematic ways to com-
pare generativity across cultures. And so the fourth
lesson learned is to include measures of individual
differences in the various components of generativ-
ity. We do not advocate that this be done in iso-
lation from the other techniques being discussed,
but administering such measures to adults from
separate cultures is one important path toward
examining cultural similarities and differences in
generativity.
Au bi n, B ac h 661
 To date, the most widely used assessment of
individual differences in generativity is the LGS,
a 20-item self-report measure that was designed to
quantify the generative concern facet of McAdams
and de St. Aubin’s (1992) model. As useful as
this measure has been in generativity research, it
must never be forgotten that it was designed for
and developed with samples of US adults. Simply
back-translating it into another language is insuf-
ficient because this fails to capture authentic
cultural equivalency. The prevailing method of
achieving cultural equivalence in a measure (Van
de Vijver & Leung, 1997), followed by Hofer et.
al (2008) in their cross-cultural study of genera-
tivity, begins with a measure from culture A, such
as the LGS, and then eliminates particular items
based on factor analytic work when the measure
is administered to participants in culture B. This
privileges culture A in that this is the starting point
of the process. There is no inclusion of items that
were originally constructed from within culture
B. This void precludes an emic mode. To rectify
that, items designed to assess generativity should
be generated from both culture A and B before
applying the factor analysis procedures commonly
used. Furthermore, the resulting factor analytic
work should be conducted on a combined sample
that includes adults from both cultures. We know
of no study that has done this and yet such a pro-
cess would assure a (bi)culturally relevant measure
of individual differences in generativity—and this
would do much to advance scholarship in this area.
Two of the remaining three principles are inter-
twined: train your research team in intercultural
competence, and immerse yourself in the culture of
interest. These may seem obvious, but reference to
a new study of ours exploring Mexican-American
generativity may help to demonstrate how these
have shaped our investigation into generativity
and culture. As we began to read widely in the
psychological literature that addresses Mexican
Americans, two unfortunate tendencies became
obvious. First, the vast majority of studies were not
of Mexican Americans per se, but of US Hispanics
in general. Almost all authors make statements
toward the beginnings of their manuscripts that
the several distinct ethnic groups that collectively
comprise the Hispanic population are unique
and do not necessarily share important cultural
realities such as religion, region of origin, gender
power dynamics, and the like, But then, as if the
significance of this truth did not exist, we find in
the methods section that the sample, which was
662 E x pl or at ions i n G e n e r at i v i t y a n d C u lt u r e
studied as a collective, was comprised of X% of
Mexicans, X% of Puerto Ricans, X% of Cuban,
and so on. Refusing to replicate this disconnect
between culture theory and method, we choose to
study only those individuals living in the United
States who were either born in Mexico or have a
parent who was.
The second trend was that most fell into the
“deficit-model” stack in that these focused on what
was wrong with these populations: school drop-out
rates, alcoholism, poverty, and other ills. Ours is a
strengths-based approach in that our core variable
of interest—generativity—is seen as the hallmark
of a healthy midlife adult. It is a psychosocial vir-
tue. Mexican Americans are one of the most stig-
matized and oppressed groups in the United States,
yet many are thriving. It would behoove us to
examine the strengths of this community to learn
more about resiliency factors.
This literature also revealed the values inher-
ent in Mexican-American culture that are relevant
to explorations of generativity. Three of the most
salient include family, faith, and personalism.
Mexican culture places great importance on main-
taining a close connection and relationship within
la familia (Bean, Perry, & Bedell, 2001). Falicov
(2005) refers to the extended family in particular
as “the basic social unit” (p. 231). The individual
relies on loyalty, reciprocity, and solidarity among
members of the family and views the family as a
source of support, strength, and inspiration (Marín
& Marín, 1991). Marín and Marín (1991) and
Comas-Diaz (2006) argued that Mexicans’ prefer-
ence for a strong familial orientation is the basis for
the prevailing collectivism of the culture (Bean et
al., 2001; Garcia-Preto, 1996 [2005]), with its val-
ues of interdependence, cohesiveness, cooperation,
and obligation to provide material and emotional
support to others. Like the “family generativity”
mentioned earlier in the Italian study (Marta et al.,
2012), deep appreciation for a specific culture may
change even the level of analysis. The salience of
family in Mexican-American culture may neces-
sitate a shift in our conceptual framing of where
generativity resides. Rather than existing in the
midlife adult, it may be better to look for it within
the family unit or as a psychosocial space between
family members.
The religious life of Mexican Americans may be
shifting in terms of the reduced percentage of that
population reporting to be Catholic (Hunt, 2012),
but the faith-based notion of fatalismo remains
ubiquitous (Neff & Hoppe, 1993). This is the belief,
a form of fatalism, that a divine providence governs
the world and that an individual cannot control
or prevent adversity. Therefore, the expression, “si
dios quiere” (“God willing”), is often expressed in
everyday conversation and punctuates the common
valediction “ le veo mas tarde, si dios quiere” (“I’ll see
you later, if God wills it to be so”). Some see this as
an adaptive response to the uncontrollable life situ-
ations that many Mexicans experience within US
society (Neff & Hoppe, 1993). This belief suggests
that an individual may feel a sense of vulnerabil-
ity and lack of personal control over what might
happen and perceives little responsibility for the
occurrences in his or her life. It is a kind of blend
of humility and passivity that would surely impact
the expression of generativity. These readings alert
us to be mindful of the possibility that the agentic,
self-determining, and self-promoting generativity
we see in Caucasian midlife US adults may be rare
in Mexican Americans. It may also be that faith is
more likely to play an explicit role in generativity
within this culture.
Personalism (personalismo), the third cultural
value likely to shape Mexican-American generativ-
ity, is a preference for understanding and dealing
with organizations and individuals through the
formation of personal relationships based on a con-
genial and personal manner, rather than adherence
to an impersonal and businesslike system of rules
and hierarchies (Marín & Marín, 1991). These
relationships are guided by the trust (confianza)
and rapport that is established with others and are
characterized by expressions of warmth, friend-
liness, and the sharing of personal information
(Santiago-Rivera, Arredondo, & Gallardo-Cooper,
2002). One might expect that generativity is rather
interpersonal and intimate in this culture, more
likely to be enacted person-to-person than, say, by
the donation of money to a charitable organization
one has never seen.
Research such as this, that captures the values
and modes of a culture, must be read and discussed
by the research team who will be conducting the
study. Readings on intercultural competency
(Byram, 2003) are also suggested because this will
prove instrumental in sample recruitment and in
later interpretation of data. Although the principle
investigator of our study does not speak Spanish
and has had little past engagement with the
Mexican-American community, all other members
of the team we have assembled are fluent in Spanish
and are either Hispanic themselves or have worked
in the community for a number of years. This is
crucial if sampling is to be successful because there
are barriers to sampling within this population
(Haak, Gerdes, Cruz, & Schneider, 2012) that can
only be surmounted via intercultural competency
or interpersonal connections (the personalism
referred to earlier).
The final point is the notion that generativity
shapes culture just as much as culture shapes the
expression of generativity within the individual.
One truism of cultures is that they change. And
a key dynamic in the development of a culture is
generativity because it includes both that which is
maintained from one generation to the next, but
also that which is modified and/or created to be
passed on to future generations. Japanese scholar
Takatoshi Imada (2004) has written explicitly
about how generativity is implicated in the evolu-
tion of culture. Combining Mannheim’s theory of
generation with Erikson’s life cycle model, Imada
demonstrates that generativity processes are the
foundation to how and why culture is both main-
tained and transformed over time.
Examining generativity as a force in cul-
tural change in our study of Mexican Americans
resulted in an appreciation for the importance of
grasping the acculturation process (Espenshade &
Hempstead, 1996). A significant element of the
Mexican-American experience is the varying
levels of acculturation experienced by individu-
als and subgroups (Santiago-Rivera et al., 2002).
Acculturation of immigrants is the ongoing process
by which an individual or group (1) incorporates
the life patterns of the host country and (2) modi-
fies the existence of patterns inherent in one’s native
culture. This can be a stressful process (Organista,
Organista, & Kurasaki, 2003), but the relation
between levels of acculturation and mental health
are unclear. Some report more acculturation to be
related to higher well-being (Bean et al., 2001);
others see a mixed relationship between accultura-
tion and mental health symptomatology (Cuellar,
Arnold, & Maldonado, 1995). It is important to
keep in mind which generational wave of immigra-
tion a research participant belongs to when assess-
ing the impact of acculturation because some have
reported a curvilinear relationship such that the
first (born in Mexico; residing in the United States)
and third (grandparent born on Mexico; residing in
United States) generations have the highest mental
illness rates. And some second-generation Mexican
Americans (parents born in Mexico) experience
dissonant acculturation. This occurs when a child
acquires cultural capital before the parent does,
Au bi n, B ac h 663
thereby upsetting parental roles and empowering
the child, giving him or her a more adult role at a
young age (Cuellar et al., 1995).
Acculturation, generativity, and cultural
change are interrelated in this sample of Mexican
Americans. The migration from Mexico to the
United States may be considered an act of gener-
ativity because the move is most often explained
as an attempt to make life better for one’s chil-
dren. Once here in the States, acculturation—
attempts to both assimilate and to maintain
Mexican culture—shapes the generative process
from one generation to the next, and this, in
turn, transforms the Mexican-American culture.
Conclusion: Explorations
of Generativity and Culture
Generativity might be seen, at one level, as
an attribute of the individual adult. But it is also
a cultural phenomenon because the culture in
which one is embedded determines what is valu-
able enough to pass on, and culture determines
the manner in which generativity is enacted.
Furthermore, culture itself is altered and/or perpet-
uated via generativity as one generation socializes
the next and responds to its needs. As this body
of research develops, we encourage scholars to seek
answers to a number of significant questions that
remain unanswered: what about those values that
are passed on via generativity that are damaging
to a culture (racism, heterosexism, etc.)? To what
extent is globalization impacting the generativity–
culture connection? Does generativity shift in some
cultures to accommodate rapid changes in technol-
ogy that render particular skills of an older genera-
tion obsolete? What of intracultural examinations
of generativity? Do stigmatized groups (ethnic and/
or sexual minorities) feel as compelled to contribute
to future generations as do mainstream members
of culture?
Note
1 Erikson added a brief discussion of these psychosocial vir-
tues in the second (1963) edition of Childhood and Society.
They do not appear in the 1950 version.
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 C H A P T E R

41 Adult Development in Japan

and the United States: Comparing
Theories and Findings About Growth,
Maturity, and Well-Being
Carol Ryff, Jennifer Morozink Boylan, Christopher L. Coe, Mayumi Karasawa,
Norito Kawakami, Shinobu Kitayama, Chiemi Kan, Gayle D. Love, Cynthia Levine,
Hazel R. Markus, Yuri Miyamoto, Jun Nakahara, and Jiyoung Park

Abstract
This chapter examines early conceptual formulations of adult development in the U.S. and contrasts
them with notably different conceptions of aging in Japan. Empirical research in both cultural contexts
points to evidence of psychological change in personality traits, well-being, and affect with aging in the
U.S., whereas Japanese studies have linked the well-being of older persons to life roles and activities as
well as examined the concept of ikigai (what makes life worthy).Gender differences are an emerging part
of the story, especially in Japan. The authors delineate multiple avenues for future research to broaden
the scope of scientific inquiries on adult development and aging in Japan as well as promote greater
exchange between cultural psychologists and adult developmentalists. More work is also called for to
link adult developmental changes to health and to examine historical changes in experiences of aging.
Key Words:  adult development, successful aging, roleless role, filial piety, ikigai, personality,
well-being, affect, health, history

During my first visit to New York as a young
foreign student, I went with my friend to a
cozy restaurant on the Upper East Side. It
was a small, family-like place with good food.
In the corner of the restaurant I saw an old
lady seated by herself. She was nicely made
up with a fine suit, well-cared for grey hair,
and matching nails and lipstick. But, I felt
sorry for her. I said to my friend, “Do you
see that graceful lady eating dinner by her-
self? I feel very sorry that she does not have
family with whom to share her nice meal. It
seems so lonely …” Before we finished eat-
ing, my friend responded to me, “You are
unfair. I think she has a nice life; she is rich
and can go to nice restaurants and dress well.
She is healthy enough to come by herself. Do
not tell me that she is lonely and sad.” Her
voice sounded almost upset. I was beginning
to learn that the way a person becomes happy
not only depends on personal qualities but
also on how one is brought up and what are
the messages from the surrounding culture.
Independence or control may be the most
prominent things in the American context,
but not for those in Japan.
—Mayumi Karasawa
The aim of this chapter is to review formula-
tions of adult development in two different cultural
contexts, with a focus on how personal growth in
the second half of life is theoretically conceptual-
ized and empirically investigated. We begin with a
brief review of theories of adult development gen-
erated over the past 50 years in US and European
contexts. These formulations describe psychologi-
cal and social changes thought to normally occur
across the decades of adult life. Such perspectives
are contrasted with how adult life in general and
aging in particular have been construed in philo-
sophical and religious traditions in Japan. This
juxtaposition highlights cultural differences in

666
the meanings attributed to old age and the soci-
etal responsibilities typically assigned to midlife.
A background theme is whether adulthood and
old age are construed positively and honorifically
or negatively and as problematic for the individual
and for society.
We then provide a distilled summary of
empirical evidence, first focused on findings from
U.S. studies and then contrasted with emerging
empirical work on adult development and aging in
Japan. The Western research documents a diverse
story, showing evidence of psychological growth
and development in certain areas, while docu-
menting psychological decline and losses in others.
Because the study of adulthood and later life is rela-
tively new in Japan, fewer studies are summarized,
although we do report new results from representa-
tive samples of Japanese adults who are compared
to representative samples of U.S. adults. The psy-
chological constructs examined are derived largely
from Western developmental theories. Nonetheless,
the findings document cultural similarities as well
as differences in age patterns. Japanese results fur-
ther underscore variation by gender. Overall, the
evidence, based on cross-sectional data, suggests
psychological gains and losses with aging in both
cultural contexts.
Our final section addresses needed future direc-
tions in the study of culture, adult development,
and aging. Particularly important are longitu-
dinal studies, which are essential to resolve the
inherent confounding of cohort and age effects in
cross-sectional research. Another promising venue
for future inquiry is to bring a developmental per-
spective to many of the questions and constructs
of interest in cultural psychology. For example,
what are the life course trajectories associated with
an independent model of personhood compared
to an interdependent model of personhood? Do
these models become more, or less, salient influ-
ences on behavior and self-evaluation as individu-
als grow older? We also call for greater research
on inequalities in adult development within each
cultural context—that is, whether opportunities
for personal growth and realization of potential
disproportionately accrue to advantaged (by educa-
tion and income) segments of society. We conclude
with a call to link studies of adult development to
research on adult health. Of interest is whether psy-
chosocial profiles of growth and well-being trans-
late to healthy regulation of diverse physiological
systems with aging and, thereby, to reduction in
risk for disease, disability, and dysfunction. A key
overarching question in such inquiry is whether
there are cultural differences in those psychological
aspects of adult development that are most condu-
cive to healthy aging.
Conceptual Formulations
and Cultural Contexts
Adult Development in the United States
Early Western formulations of adult develop-
ment can be traced to numerous sources (see Ryff,
1985), including Erikson’s (1959) psychosocial
stage model, Bühler’s basic life tendencies that
contribute to fulfillment in life (Bühler, 1935;
Bühler & Massarik, 1968), and Neugarten’s (1968;
1973) description of the executive processes of
personality in the middle years and the process of
interiority in old age. Across these endeavors, the
objective was to formulate the challenges and pos-
sibilities for growth that occur in middle and later
adulthood. For example, Erikson’s middle-aged
stage of generativity versus stagnation involved
moving beyond the self-directed concerns of estab-
lishing one’s identity in adolescence or the interper-
sonal needs of finding intimacy in early adulthood
to a middle-aged phase in which one is concerned
with establishing and guiding the next generation.
In old age, these concerns are replaced by the need
to find meaning in one’s life, resolve past conflicts,
and gain a sense of acceptance about what occurred
in earlier decades (i.e., Erikson’s stage of integrity
vs. despair). Similarly, Jung’s formulation of the
individuation process included a turning inward in
the later years to illuminate the self (Jung, 1933;
von Franz, 1964).
Empirical indicators were largely missing from
these formulations, which explains why they had
little presence in early scientific investigations such
as the Kansas City Studies of Adult Life (Williams
& Wirths, 1965), initiated by a group of scholars
at the University of Chicago. Interestingly, these
researchers wanted to study personal and social
adjustment in old age (Burgess, 1960), but they
recognized that their endeavor reflected aging in
Western societies. This early awareness of possible
cultural differences in how adulthood and aging
unfold was, however, lost in most subsequent stud-
ies. With regard to empirical indicators of “suc-
cessful aging,” the leading measure in the Kansas
City Studies was life satisfaction (Neugarten,
Havighurst, & Tobin, 1961), although the con-
struct was not well formulated theoretically and
lacked psychometric evaluation. Nonetheless,
extensive research generated in the 1960s and
Ryff et al. 667
1970s used assessments of life satisfaction (see
Cutler, 1979; Larson, 1978).
During the same period, a notably negative
portrayal of aging emerged in U.S. social geron-
tology, largely from the discipline of sociology.
Rosow’s (1974) formulation of later life socializa-
tion described old age as a “roleless role”—a time in
which individuals are unclear about their functions
and place in society. Kuypers and Bengtson (1973)
went further—they formulated the “social break-
down syndrome,” which involved pernicious pro-
cesses whereby lack of meaningful roles, diminished
normative guidance, and limited reference groups
precipitate negative self-attitudes among the elderly
and, ultimately, an internalized sense of reduced
competence. Two decades later, Riley, Kahn, and
Foner (1994) continued the negative portrayal via the
“structural lag” problem, which depicted American
institutions as failing to keep up with the added
years of life that many American were experiencing.
Like its sociological predecessors, this perspective
underscored the dearth of meaningful opportunities
for life engagement of older Americans in realms of
work, family, and community.
Taken together, these Western formulations
reveal marked discrepancies in how adulthood and
later life was construed. On the one hand, numer-
ous models described opportunities for growth
and continued development that occurred across
midlife and into old age. Such models were largely
neglected in empirical inquiries due to the absence
of credible assessment procedures. The early empir-
ical work, initiated in the 1950s and 1960s, focused
on the idea of successful aging measured in terms
of life satisfaction. By contrast, social gerontology
explicated numerous problems encountered by
those growing old in Western societies where few
meaningful role opportunities were provided that
allowed older adults to make use of their talents
and capacities. These tensions between aging as
development and growth versus aging as decline
and loss carried into the subsequent empirical stud-
ies reviewed in our section on empirical findings.
In the next section, we first examine how adult-
hood and aging has been characterized in Eastern
cultural contexts.
Adult Development and Aging in Japan
Although Erikson’s stage of generativity is a
prominent feature of middle-aged adult develop-
ment in Western contexts, the concern for estab-
lishing and guiding the next generation in Japan
arguably begins earlier in the life course. The ideal
668 A du lt De v e l opm e n t i n J a pa n a n d t h e U n i t e d S t at e s
way in which young children are reared encour-
ages obedience, filial piety, and dependence on
the mother, as described in the chapter by de St.
Aubin and Bach (this volume). Their chapter fur-
ther highlights that U.S. and Japanese formula-
tions of generativity meaningfully differ. Whereas
U.S. researchers have quantified individual differ-
ences in levels of generativity, this venture was seen
as foolish by the Japanese, who instead saw mean-
ing among the qualitative differences in generativ-
ity across adults.
The meaning of maturity in Japan, especially
social maturity, has also been extensively exam-
ined (Menon, 2001; and chapter in this volume)
with emphasis given not only to old age, but also
to the middle years of adulthood (Lock, 1998;
Plath, 1975). All phases of adult life tend to be
construed as continuing opportunities for personal
improvement; that is, as a “time of becoming, not
being” (Rohlen, 1978, p. 132). Aging across these
various periods is seen as a natural process that
involves submitting oneself to nature and natural
changes. All phenomena in the world must submit
to time, as exemplified by the change of seasons,
with each appreciated for its distinctive qualities
and special beauties. Similarly, every phase of life
represents distinct experiences and opportunities.
Personal growth or maturity within this perspec-
tive demands effort and application and a release
from the self toward pure action, which involves
blending seamlessly with the patterns and rhythms
of nature. There is no equivalent to these ideas in
the U.S. cultural context.
A further concept of relevance is ikigai, for
which there is no fully comparable English term.
The Japanese definition refers to having something
to live for, to experiencing the joy of goals and a life
worth living (Mathews, 1996; Nakanishi, 1999).
As discussed in subsequent sections, this psycho-
logical concept about one’s purpose in life in adult-
hood and old age has been extensively studied in
Japan as an influence on promoting better health,
defined in terms of how long one lives (mortal-
ity) and the degree to which one is free of later life
chronic conditions (morbidity).
The greatest emphasis, by far, in Japanese con-
struals of the second half of life pertains to the status
of the elderly in society. Traditionally, the elderly
have been respected in East Asian cultures, partly
due to the Confucian teachings of filial piety and
ancestor worship (Chow, 1991; Palmore & Maeda,
1985; Sung, 1995). According to the Confucian
guidelines, one needs to respect one’s parents and
care for them, which is reflected in the saying, “fil-
ial piety is the source of one hundred good deeds.”
The ancestor worship that requires reverence and
devotion to dead ancestors further reinforces the
importance of respecting one’s parents or grand-
parents because they are closer to dead ancestors.
We note that Rosenblatt’s chapter in this volume
addresses cultural beliefs about the relationship
between the deceased and the living.
Respect for the elderly is encoded in various
practices and institutions in Japan. For example,
although Mother’s Day and Father’s Day exist
in both the United States and Japan, Respect for
Elders Day exists only in Japan, and it is celebrated
as a national holiday. Furthermore, the Japanese
National Law for the Welfare and the Elders estab-
lished in 1963 stated that “the elders shall be loved
and respected as those who have for many years
contributed toward the development of society,
and a wholesome and peaceful life shall be guaran-
teed to them” (Palmore & Maeda, 1985, p. 87). In
contrast in the United States, the Older Americans’
Act established in 1965 does not refer to love or
respect for the elderly. This contrast underscores
Menon’s observation (in this volume) that in Japan,
unlike in the United States, aging is a continuous
process of social maturation, and different phases
of life offer different opportunities for personal
growth and improvement.
Other cultural differences pertain to how the
life course is construed. While illustrating the
amount of freedom and status allowed to individu-
als at different life stages, Ruth Benedict (1946)
contrasted the Japanese “arc of life” with the
American counterpart (see also Menon’s chapter in
this volume). In Japan, the greatest amount of free-
dom and initiative is allowed for young children
and older people, whereas people of middle-age
face more restrictions and little freedom. Thus, the
amount of freedom and status over the Japanese
life course seems to forms a U-curve. In the
United States, by contrast, the arc of life forms an
inverse U-curve. Young children receive a great
amount of discipline, which gradually decreases
as they grow more independent. The amount of
freedom and status peaks in the middle-age and
gradually declines as individuals grow older and
become dependent. These formulations suggest
that there are cultural differences in the status of
the elderly. For example, holders of higher political
offices (e.g., prime ministers or presidents) tend to
be much older in Japan than in the United States
(Menon, this volume).
At the same time, the size of the elderly popula-
tion is increasing in Japan more rapidly than in
any other country in the world (Statistics Bureau,
2011). Such drastic changes in population struc-
ture may impact the lives of the elderly. In fact, the
proportion of the elderly who live with their chil-
dren has been sharply declining in Japan, although
it is still much higher compared to Western coun-
tries (Ogawa & Retherford, 1993). Menon (this
volume) points out that “contemporary Japan
is experiencing an unusual and profound social
change.” Among others, many young women now
choose not to marry and bear children. Thus, the
traditional social structure that anchored the rela-
tionship between young and old has already begun
to erode. Whether such changes in demography
will lead to decline in respect for the elderly is an
open question (see also Rosenblatt’s chapter in this
volume). Even in a relatively recent study, Sung
(2004) found that young adults in Korea, which
shares the cultural norm for elder respect and
rapid demographic changes with Japan, reported
higher frequencies of diverse forms of elder respect
compared to young adults in the United States.
However, the Koreans also attached less impor-
tance to some categories of respect compared to
their U.S. counterparts.
A final observation regarding conceptions of
adulthood and aging in Japan is that paths toward
personal growth have traditionally been gender
differentiated. For women, opportunities for pure
action have involved being good wives and wise
mothers, whereas for men the proper sphere of
activity is the public domain, where pure action
involves sincere and diligent work. The rapid
economic growth that followed World War II
has reshaped the lives of many in the modern
era, although differing conceptions of maturity
for men and women remain part of the culture
(Plath, 1980). These observations, wherein gender
constitutes a stronger influence on psychologi-
cal changes with aging in Japan compared to the
United States, carry over into ongoing empirical
studies, as described next.
Empirical Studies of Adulthood
and Aging
Findings from the United States
Considerable empirical research has examined
evidence for or against Erikson’s (1959) stage model
of psychosocial development in adulthood and
later life. Whitbourne and colleagues used both
longitudinal and sequential designs to document
Ryff et al. 669
psychological changes consistent with the hypoth-
esized transitions from ego identity to ego intimacy
in early adulthood (Whitbourne & Waterman,
1979; Whitbourne, Zuschlag, Elliot, & Waterman,
1992). Others used cross-sectional designs to
examine Erikson’s midlife stage of generativity
(Keyes & Ryff, 1998; McAdams & de St. Aubin,
1998; Peterson & Klohnen, 1995), providing sup-
portive evidence of its ascendancy in the middle
years of adulthood. With the Mills Longitudinal
Study of women, Helson and colleagues docu-
mented other aspects of psychological change from
early adulthood to midlife and old age, linking
many to changing role statuses and life transi-
tions. For example, Roberts, Helson, and Klohnen
(2002) showed that women increased from ages
21 to 52 in norm orientation (being considerate
of others and less impulsive) and complexity (hav-
ing tolerance for human diversity and fallibility).
They also found increases in dominance, as well
as changes in femininity and masculinity (linked
with life circumstance such as divorce and partici-
pation in the paid labor force). Helson and Soto
(2005) documented further change in positive
and negative emotionality, psychological defenses,
and affect complexity, drawing guidance from the
Labouvie-Vief and González (2004) formulation
of emotion regulation. Data from the Mills study
were combined with two other longitudinal studies
(Oakland Growth Study, Berkeley Guidance Study)
to further substantiate increases with age in norm
adherence, decreases with age in social vitality, and
midlife peaks in dominance and independence
over a 40-year period (Helson, Jones, & Kwan,
2002). Taken together, these studies depicted mul-
tiple forms of psychological change consistent with
a developmental perspective on adult life (Helson,
Soto, & Cate, 2006; Ryff, 2008).
Other lines of empirical inquiry in U.S. stud-
ies have been built around trait psychology, where
initial claims about the stability of adult person-
ality (Costa & McCrae, 1980; 1988) were framed
as challenges to the earlier formulations from
Erikson and Neugarten. Using data from the
Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, Costa
and McCrae examined mean-level changes and
cross-time correlations and found little evidence
of psychological change in major personality traits
(neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, consci-
entiousness, openness to experience) during adult-
hood. Alternatively, using the Normative Aging
Study, Mroczek and Spiro (2003) found little
evidence for average change in neuroticism and
670 A du lt De v e l opm e n t i n J a pa n a n d t h e U n i t e d S t at e s
extraversion, but observed prominent individual
differences evident in rate of change over a 12-year
period. Older men became slightly less extraverted
over time, whereas younger men became slightly
more extraverted. Younger men also showed more
marked decline in neuroticism compared to older
men. Life events (marriage, remarriage, death of
spouse) were found to account for the different
rates of decline in neuroticism with age. Roberts
et al. (2006) conducted meta-analyses from 92 lon-
gitudinal samples and found significant mean-level
change in four of six traits from midlife to old age
(Roberts et al., 2006). For example, increases in
social dominance (a facet of extraversion), consci-
entiousness, and emotional stability were observed,
especially in young adulthood (ages 20–40).
Alternatively, in old age, decreases were evident in
social vitality (another facet of extraversion) and
openness. The patterns were characterized as “nor-
mative change” (i.e., change occurring in the same
direction for most people during a specific period in
the life course). Related efforts involve pursuing the
idea of personality trait development (Roberts &
Wood, 2006), wherein commitments to adult
roles in work, family, and community contexts are
thought to give rise to traits needed to accomplish
such roles, such as being conscientious and emo-
tionally stable. Caspi and colleagues (2005) have
equated maturity with the kinds of trait changes
that facilitate capacities to become productive and
involved contributors to society. Such thinking sig-
nals a return to early work on adult development at
the University of Chicago, specifically Havighurst’s
(1948) formulation of the “developmental tasks” of
adulthood (e.g., selecting a mate, starting a fam-
ily, committing to an occupation, taking on civic
responsibilities) through which individuals become
worthy, responsible members of society.
Still further lines of U.S. research on adulthood
and aging have involved the topic of psychologi-
cal well-being, which has been differentiated into
eudaimonic and hedonic components (Ryan &
Deci, 2001). Ryff’s six-factor model of well-being
illustrates a eudaimonic approach that was built
on many of the developmental theories described
earlier (Erikson, Bühler, Neugarten, Jung), as well
as on humanistic (Maslow, Rogers, Jahoda) and
existential (Frankl) perspectives and the writings
of Aristotle (see Ryff, 1985; 1989; Ryff & Singer,
2008). The empirical dimensions derived from the
model include autonomy, environmental mastery,
personal growth, positive relations with others, pur-
pose in life, and self-acceptance. Multiple studies,
including those based on nationally representative
samples, have shown sharply downward profiles
from young adulthood through midlife to old age
for self-rated purpose in life and personal growth
(Clarke, Marshall, Ryff, & Rosenthal, 2000; Ryff,
1989; 1991; Ryff & Keyes, 1995). Other dimen-
sions, such as autonomy and environmental mastery
have shown increments with age, whereas positive
relations with others and self-acceptance showed
little age variation. Those cross-sectional findings
have been augmented with longitudinal data from
two large surveys (Wisconsin Longitudinal Study,
Midlife in the United States [MIDUS]), the lat-
ter involving a national sample of adults (Springer,
Pudrovska, & Hauser, 2011). Data from both sam-
ples documented significant gains with age in envi-
ronmental mastery from early adulthood to midlife
and into old age. Autonomy also showed signifi-
cant gains across these age periods for the MIDUS
national sample. Alternatively, personal growth
declined across these age periods in both samples,
and purpose in life showed significant decline from
midlife to old age in both samples. Positive rela-
tions with others showed gains from early adult-
hood to midlife, whereas self-acceptance showed
mostly stability for the national sample.
Hedonic well-being, in contrast, involves con-
tentment, happiness, and enjoyment. Frequently
used empirical indicators have included assess-
ments of positive and negative affect, as well as life
satisfaction. Multiple investigators have employed
these measures to investigate age differences (e.g.,
Diener, Sandvik, & Larsen, 1985: Diener & Suh,
1997; Herzog & Rodgers, 1981; Liang, 1984;
Malatesta & Kalnok, 1984; Shmotkin, 1990). Most
of these cross-sectional studies have shown either
negligible age differences in well-being or age incre-
ments in life satisfaction and positive affect, con-
comitant with age decrements in negative affect.
The overall storyline on hedonic well-being and
aging has thus been quite positive. Mroczek and
Kolarz (1998), for example, used MIDUS data to
show curvilinear age increments in positive affect
with aging (ages 25–74) and linear decrements in
negative affect (same age range). Using the same
study, Prenda and Lachman (2001) documented
a positive linear relationship between age and life
satisfaction. Cohort differences rather than aging
(maturational) processes constitute a rival interpre-
tation for these effects. Thus, the 23-year study of
Charles, Reynolds, and Gatz (2001) offered impor-
tant longitudinal evidence that positive affect is
stable with aging whereas negative affect declines.
The recurrent evidence that life satisfaction,
happiness, and positive affect do not show down-
ward trajectories with aging (which theories of
social gerontology might have predicted) has led
to efforts to account for this generally upbeat mes-
sage about hedonic well-being and aging. Some
have suggested it may reflect intentional actions
older persons might take, such as flexibly adjust-
ing their goal pursuits (Brandtstädter, Wentura, &
Rothermund, 1999). Others have emphasized
“selectivity” processes, such as that older persons
better select their social interaction partners so as to
optimize their emotional experiences (Carstensen,
1995), or they selectively focus resources in certain
domains so as to optimize functioning (Freund &
Baltes, 2002). Later life affect regulation may also
involve affect optimization (constraining affect to
positive values) and affect complexity (amplifica-
tion of affect in search of differentiation and objec-
tivity; see Labouvie-Vief, 2003; Labouvie-Vief &
Gonzales, 2004; Labouvie-Vief & Medler, 2002).
In summary, U.S. research on psychological
changes in adulthood and later life has covered
wide territory over the past 40 years. Some stud-
ies have assembled empirical findings to support
Erikson’s psychosocial stages as well as ideas from
other developmental formulations (Neugarten,
Bühler, Jung). Along the way, trait researchers
challenged such claims, arguing that there was
little evidence of personality change in adult-
hood. Recent meta-analyses have, in turn, chal-
lenged the claims of trait stability with extensive
evidence of age-related shifts in key traits or their
facets. Indeed, a new emphasis is “personality trait
development,” which is believed to be anchored in
the roles and responsibilities of adult life. Another
arena of empirical inquiry has focused on psycho-
logical well-being, which has been partitioned
into two approaches. Eudaimonia emphasizes
such psychological constructs as purpose in life
and personal growth, which have shown sharply
downward trajectories with age in multiple stud-
ies; other dimensions, such as autonomy and envi-
ronmental mastery, have shown gains with age.
Hedonic well-being emphasizes happiness, life
satisfaction, and positive affect, which have con-
sistently shown either stability or gains with aging.
Numerous theoretical perspectives have been
advanced to account for this upbeat story, whereas
social structural factors, such as the structural lag
phenomenon, have been invoked to account for
the downward trajectories in certain aspects of
eudaimonic well-being.
Ryff et al. 671
 Despite these many avenues of empirical inquiry
in the United States, the question of cultural differ-
ences in these findings has rarely, if ever, been asked.
That is, whether stated explicitly or implied by the
nature of the conclusions drawn, this research has
been largely oblivious to whether any of the guid-
ing theories or related empirical results might be
relevant only in a Western, advanced, technologi-
cal society, such as the United States. This is why
the contrast with Japanese findings, which are less
extensive in scope, is centrally important to the
objectives of this chapter.
Findings from Japan
Scientific research on adulthood and aging is rel-
atively recent in Japan. Apart from research linking
ikigai to health outcomes in later life, few empiri-
cal studies have probed ideas related to Japanese
conceptions of personal growth (e.g., toward pure
action and oneness with nature) or the cultural
emphasis on filial piety and respect for elders.
Comparative work has, however, been conducted
on age differences in psychological well-being
in Japan versus the United States. We summa-
rize findings from these investigations along with
recent work examining cultural differences in the
link between aging and wisdom.
A growing number of studies in Japan have
examined the concept of ikigai and its links to
better health. The structure of ikigai has been
examined relative to other similar concepts, such
as psychological well-being, subjective well-being,
and quality of life (Kumano, 2006), with find-
ings indicating that the components of ikigai
(life-affirmation, goals/dreams, meaning of life,
meaning of existence, sense of fulfillment, com-
mitment) were largely distinct from other related
constructs of well-being and life quality. Sone
et al. (2008) investigated the association of “life
worth living” (ikigai) and all-cause as well as
cause-specific mortality in a prospective cohort
study involving more than 40,000 respondents.
Over a 7-year period, those who did not have a
sense of life worth living had a higher risk of death
as well as higher risk of cardiovascular disease.
Another prospective cohort study (Koizumi et al.,
2008) over the course of 13 years showed that men
with a strong sense of purpose in life (ikigai) had
reduced risk of death from cardiovascular dis-
ease. Most recently, Tanno et al. (2009) followed
more than 70,000 adults aged 40–79 from 1988
to 1990 in which ikigai was assessed with a life-
style questionnaire. After adjusting for numerous
672 A du lt De v e l opm e n t i n J a pa n a n d t h e U n i t e d S t at e s
sociodemographic factors and health behaviors,
both men and women showed reduced risk of mor-
tality from all causes among those with higher lev-
els of ikigai. Thus, considerable evidence supports
the view that longevity among Japanese adults is
linked with the perception that one’s life is worth
living and is purposeful.
The life roles and activities of older persons in
Japan have been linked to their well-being. For
example, Nakahara (2011) showed that being a
grandparent, particularly how it relates to one’s
identity, was linked with the frequency of con-
tact with one’s grandchildren, which in turn was
linked with grandparent satisfaction and subjective
well-being. Such findings underscore the central
significance of interpersonal embeddedness as a
crucial feature of well-being in the Japanese context
(see Menon, this volume; Kitayama et al., 2010;
Park et al., 2013). Studies from China also under-
score the active engagement of older adults in the
grandparent role, particularly in comparison to the
United States (Edward, Ren, & Brown, this vol-
ume). Volunteering among older persons in Japan
has also been studied. Nakahara (2013) found that
unpaid volunteering has a greater effect on life sat-
isfaction of the elderly living alone who have less
family-roles or social support from family than on
elderly persons living with family members. Such
findings suggest that relationships with people out-
side the home through unpaid work might act as
a protective effect against decreased life satisfac-
tion. This investigation was based on a U.S. study
(Greenfield & Marks, 2004) using MIDUS data,
which demonstrated that being a formal volunteer
can protect older adults with higher levels of role
loss from decreased levels of purpose in life.
Drawing on Western distinctions between
eudaimonic and hedonic well-being, our collabora-
tive team compared a Japanese sample of midlife
and older adults (Midlife in Japan, MIDJA) to a
national sample (MIDUS) of comparably aged
adults in the United States (Karasawa et al., 2011).
Guided by the conceptual frameworks described
earlier, we were interested in whether aging in
Japan might be more positive, given Buddhist,
Confucian, and Taoist philosophical traditions
(Hwang, 1999), combined with the aforementioned
negative portrayals of aging in the United States
(e.g., roleless role, social breakdown syndrome).
Partial support for the prediction was found. Older
compared to midlife adults in Japan showed higher
levels of personal growth, whereas the opposite age
pattern was evident in the United States—older
adults showed lower levels of personal growth com-
pared to midlife adults.
In both cultural contexts, however, purpose
in life scores were lower among older compared
to midlife adults, suggesting this aspect of well-
being may constitute an area of vulnerability for
aging adults in advanced, technological societies
like Japan and the United States. Interpersonal
well-being, as hypothesized, was rated signifi-
cantly higher relative to overall well-being among
Japanese compared to US respondents, but only in
young adulthood. Thus, the prominence of social
relational well-being was evident in the relatively
more interdependent culture of Japan, but findings
suggested possible decline in this emphasis with
age. Finally, women in both cultures showed higher
interpersonal well-being than men, but women also
reported higher negative affect compared to men in
both Japan and the United States. It is possible that
Japanese women may minimize the expression of
negative emotions while caring for children in an
effort to promote mother–child amae, the ideal in
Japan, as described in the chapter by de St. Aubin
and Bach (this volume). Perhaps the experience
and expression of negative affect among Japanese
women may thus change as children age and life
roles shift.
A more recent MIDJA study based on a large
probability sample of Japanese adults from Tokyo
was compared to the longitudinal follow-up of the
MIDUS sample (Karasawa, 2012). A key question
was whether the positivity trend evident in later life
well-being in the United States (i.e., age increments
in positive affect, age decrements in negative affect)
would be evident in representative sample from
Tokyo. We reasoned that the positivity effect may
be more pronounced in independent cultures that
encourage older persons to proactively select posi-
tive social experiences. These, in turn, may contrib-
ute to adaptive mental health outcomes. The results,
which included both eudaimonic and hedonic mea-
sures of well-being, showed that Americans, in fact,
reported more positive well-being with aging. For
example, with regard to life satisfaction and positive
relationship with others, age increments were evi-
dent in the United States, and they were contrasted
with age decrements in Japan. However, positive age
trends were found in affect balance (positive minus
negative affect) as well as in autonomy and envi-
ronmental mastery in both Japan and the United
States. The findings also revealed a number of
gender-by-age interactions, which generally tended
show more compromised profiles of well-being
among older Japanese men. These patterns may
relate to work by Ishida (2012) who pointed out that
older Japanese men have fewer relationships outside
of their marital partner. The lack of a wider social
network may mean that older Japanese men easily
lose key social support once their relationship with
a spouse is gone.
In a separate line of inquiry, the link between
aging and wisdom has been investigated with
a focus on U.S./Japanese cultural differences
(Grossman et al., 2012). Although wisdom has
been of interest throughout history and across
cultures and thus has many definitions, there is
some consensus that it involves certain kinds of
pragmatic reasoning needed to navigate important
challenges in life (Baltes & Smith, 2008). Cultures
differ notably, however, in how life conflicts are to
be approached. Japanese culture stresses interper-
sonal harmony and the importance of carefully
attending to relationships so as to avoid conflicts
and maintain stability in close relationships. In
contrast, American culture places more emphasis
on fulfillment of personal preferences and indi-
viduation in social relationships, which may allow
interpersonal conflict to flare (Markus & Lin,
1999). Grossman and colleagues examined how
culture influences reasoning about social conflicts
over the life span. The prediction was that social-
ization toward an interdependent social orienta-
tion in Japan may result in wiser reasoning skills
(e.g., recognition of multiple perspectives, limits of
personal knowledge, importance of compromise)
earlier in the life course as a way of preempting
social conflict. In contrast, Americans may con-
tinue to learn about conflict resolution over the life
course thus leading to greater gains in wisdom with
aging. As predicted, wise responses were shown
to increase with age among Americans, but not
in Japan. In addition, as predicted, younger and
middle-aged Japanese adults showed greater use
of wise-reasoning strategies than their same-aged
counterparts in the United States.
In summary, ongoing empirical research in
Japan has placed more of an emphasis on aging
per se than a focus on adult development. The
concept of ikigai has garnered considerable inter-
est as a potential influence on health and length of
life. Linked to the emphasis on worthwhile living,
Japanese studies have examined actual life engage-
ments of aging adults, such as being a grandpar-
ent or volunteering, which have demonstrated
positive links between these activities and subjec-
tive well-being. Direct comparisons of aging and
Ryff et al. 673
well-being have been conducted via the MIDJA
and MIDUS investigations. These have shown that
older compared to midlife adults show advantages
in some aspects of well-being in Japan (e.g., per-
sonal growth) and other aspects of well-being in
the U.S. (e.g., life satisfaction, positive relations
with others). In both cultures, positive age trends
were evident in autonomy, environmental mastery,
and affect balance (positive vs. negative affect).
Gender differences are increasingly evident in the
pattern of findings, underscoring vulnerabilities
among older men in Japan. Cultural differences
in how adults reason in resolving social conflicts is
another line of inquiry, wherein wise responses were
shown to increase with age in the United States but
not Japan, although among younger adults, wise
responses were more strongly evident in Japan than
in the United States. Taken as a whole, the just
described empirical summaries from these two cul-
tural contexts makes clear the striking paucity of
research that involves direct comparisons of aging
and adult development in both settings.
Future Directions
Building on the theoretical and empirical studies
described in preceding sections, we see many prom-
ising lines of inquiry for future research. These pos-
sibilities are organized into five themes: (1) lacunae,
or areas of missing research that follow from this
review; (2) the need for greater interplay between
cultural psychology and life course development;
(3) within-cultural differences, particularly as they
relate to issues of social inequality in opportuni-
ties for adult development; (4) the need to link
psychological changes across the adult life course
to health outcomes, including biological risk fac-
tors; and (5) the fundamental importance of longi-
tudinal studies that track intraindividual processes
across time while also attending to possible histori-
cal changes.
With regard to lacunae, our review makes clear
that the field of adult development and aging has
a longer history and thereby, greater record of sci-
entific productivity in the United States than in
Japan. Thus, a key message is the need to build a
parallel field in Japan, which may unfold with its
own theories, perhaps linked to traditions of fil-
ial piety deeply embedded within the culture and
current demographic trends. We drew attention to
the Japanese concept of ikigai, which appears to be
similar to purpose in life as studied in the United
States, although we note the two constructs evolved
from different theoretical and philosophical
674 A du lt De v e l opm e n t i n J a pa n a n d t h e U n i t e d S t at e s
traditions. Future inquiries need to ascertain what
is culturally common versus distinct in these close
concepts, as well as probe why some older persons,
but not others, possess these positive life outlooks.
Using an emic approach, as described in the chap-
ter by de St. Aubin and Bach (this volume), may be
especially fruitful in this venture because it calls
for perspective taking and concept generation from
the Japanese themselves. So doing may identify
culturally distinctive concepts, in contrast to the
etic methodology, which may illuminate culturally
common phenomena.
Our findings suggest the importance of attend-
ing to gender differences in future studies of adult
development and aging, noting that gender-role
prescriptions have traditionally been of greater
prominence in Japan than in the United States.
Other promising avenues of inquiry build on
U.S. studies investigating the influence of psycho-
logical traits in how life course processes of matu-
rity unfold. For example, significant life events
(e.g., divorce, remarriage, becoming a parent) may
be linked with personality characteristics (e.g., con-
scientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism) both in
predicting the likelihood of such events, as well as
in constituting forms of personal change that fol-
low in the aftermath of such transitions. Finally,
we underscore that our emphasis on theories and
empirical evidence on cultural influences on adult
development and aging in Japan and the United
States represent only two contexts. What has been
generated here thus needs to be augmented with
future work examining the generalizability of theo-
ries and findings to other Western or Asian cultures
and societies.
On the interplay between cultural psychol-
ogy and life course development, we note the
substantial body of research amassed to demon-
strate cultural differences in various domains of
psychological processes (Heine, 2010; Kitayama,
Duffy, & Uchida, 2007; Miyamoto & Eggen,
2013). This work has, however, been conducted
primarily with young adults. The upshot is that
little is known about how culturally characteristic
ways of thinking and feeling are patterned across
the life course. What has been established is that
the self tends to be viewed as an autonomous
being that is more independent from others in the
United States, whereas the self tends to be viewed
as an interdependent being that is fundamentally
embedded in relationships in Japan (Markus &
Kitayama, 1991; 2010). Whether these cultural
differences in self-views are maintained over the
adult life course or whether they change and show
divergent paths into middle adulthood and later
life is unknown. Neugarten (1968; 1973) long ago
described a process of turning inward in the later
years, which she asserted involved the individual
experiencing a sense of freedom from the norms
governing everyday life. Is this a quintessentially
Western idea, or might older adults across cultural
contexts see their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
as less constrained by surrounding norms as they
age? Paradoxically, such change could mean that
older U.S. adults might give themselves license
to be less independent as they age, whereas older
adults in Japan might experience a shift toward a
less interdependent self, perhaps especially for older
women. Whatever patterns of change (or stability)
are evident, these speculations point to empirically
tractable questions for future research.
Prior cultural studies have also shown that
emotional styles differ across cultural contexts.
For example, positive and negative emotions are
more strongly inversely related to each other in the
United States than in Japan (e.g., Miyamoto &
Ryff, 2011), suggesting that positive and negative
emotions are more differentiated in Japan. The
latter has been described as a dialectical emotion
style in Japan but, again, whether these culturally
different emotional styles persist or change across
the life span is not well understood, although
Western studies have suggested that emotional
complexity increases with age (Carstensen, Mayr,
Pasupathi, & Nesselroade, 2000; Labouvie-Vief &
Medler, 2002; Magai, Consedine, Krivoshekova,
Kudadjie-Gyamfi, & McPherson, 2006). It is thus
important to investigate if emotional complexity
also increases with age in Japan, or, alternatively,
if Japanese older adults simply maintain their dia-
lectical emotional styles. If the latter is the case,
it could have a net effect of reducing cultural dif-
ferences in emotional experience as individuals
grow old in both Japan and the United States (i.e.,
emotional complexity changes in the United States
begin to converge with dialectical emotional styles
in Japan).
Moving to variation within cultures, we note
that although extensive work has probed varieties
of cultural differences, relatively little attention has
been given to variation among individuals within
particular cultural contexts. Interestingly, some
within-cultural differences may be similar across
cultures. In this regard, we see value in pursuing
research at the intersection of adult development
and aging with studies of social inequalities. A key
question, posed years ago (Dowd, 1990), was
whether opportunities for growth and development
in adult life are equally distributed across society
or instead accrue disproportionately to advantaged
segments of society. Structural barriers, such as
economic divisions of labor and opportunities for
social action, often compromise chances for devel-
opment among disadvantaged constituents. That
is, opportunities for self-realization are granted to
those who are better educated and economically
privileged.
Research in the United States has documented
an educational gradient in eudaimonic well-being
(Ryff & Singer, 2002) such that those with college
degrees report higher levels on multiple dimen-
sions of well-being compared to those with only
a high school education or some college. A rel-
evant question is whether such patterns are evi-
dent in interdependent societies like Japan as well,
or might interdependent norms mitigate against
such inequality in experienced well-being? Further
inquiries are needed to illuminate how patterns
of growth and development across the life course
may vary depending on socioeconomic hierarchies
within Eastern and Western cultural contexts.
The fourth future theme mentioned earlier
involves mapping connections between profiles of
age-related social and psychological change with
health broadly defined. Across culture, the aging
process is inherently characterized by increased
profiles of disease and disability due to normative
biological declines that accompany growing old.
However, there is considerable variability in the
timing, severity, and cause of health declines as
people age. A key question is whether positive psy-
chosocial aging and continued adult development
might attenuate age-associated declines in health.
Similarly, and building on the preceding theme, it
is known that social inequalities defined by one’s
position in the socioeconomic hierarchy are also
significant influences on later life health (Alwin &
Wray, 2005). Thus, there are both protective (i.e.,
good psychological resources) and vulnerability
factors (i.e., socioeconomic inequality) bearing on
individuals’ health as they age. Importantly, and
not sufficiently understood, is that these influences
may also be contoured by cultural context. That is,
which psychosocial factors are salubrious or delete-
rious for health may differ depending on the cul-
tural setting.
For example, positive affect and life satisfac-
tion predict lower morbidity and mortality (e.g.,
Pressman & Cohen, 2005), whereas negative
Ryff et al. 675
affect predicts higher morbidity and mortality
(e.g., Kiecolt-Glaser, McGuire, Robles, & Glaser,
2002), particularly in the United States. These psy-
chological qualities may, however, reflect largely
independent values of Western culture. In Easter
cultural contexts, such qualities may play a smaller
role, whereas interdependent qualities, like having
flexible self-adjustment or experiencing dialecti-
cal emotions, may instead be especially important
for health. In fact, our recent research found that
negative emotions are linked with elevated bio-
logical risk in the United States but not in Japan
(Miyamoto et al., 2013). Other factors, such as
social support, may transcend cultural boundaries
and be equally beneficial to health in both cultural
contexts. However, even in this realm, our work has
shown stronger links between perceived social sup-
port and health in Japan compared to the United
States, albeit under particular conditions—namely,
that the support is needed (respondents report high
stress), and they can easily accept it (respondents
are low on neuroticism; see Park et al., 2013). We
have also shown that constructs of independence
and interdependence predict health and well-being
differentially in Japan and the United States
(Kitayama et al., 2010). What is missing from these
studies is a life course perspective—that is, when
do these patterns become evident as individuals age
and mature, and further, how persistent are they
across the adult life course?
With regard to inequalities and health, we have
examined psychological factors (neuroticism, opti-
mism, self-efficacy, mastery) as mediators of the
links between socioeconomic status and health,
with the findings showing both common and
culture- or gender-specific pathways (Kan et al.,
2014). For instance, sense of control and neuroti-
cism respectively mediated the association between
education and self-rated health in both the United
States and Japan, whereas self-esteem functioned as
a mediator only in the United States. Furthermore,
optimism was a mediator of the link between social
class and health among females in both countries,
but similar relationships were not found in either
American or Japanese males.
Another study (Morozink et al., 2010), based
on US data, has showed that aspects of psycho-
logical well-being moderate the influence of low
educational attainment on a biological risk factor
known as interleukin-6 (IL-6). This inflammatory
marker is implicated in numerous disease outcomes
(cardiovascular disease, cancer, Alzheimer disease)
and is known to be higher among individuals
676 A du lt De v e l opm e n t i n J a pa n a n d t h e U n i t e d S t at e s
with lower educational standing, but that inverse
association is moderated by levels of psychologi-
cal well-being. Thus, less-educated adults with
high levels of environmental mastery, purpose in
life, positive relations with others, positive affect,
and self-acceptance were protected from showing
elevated IL-6. Whether this pattern might hold in
Japan or whether other, more culturally attuned
factors (e.g., sympathy for others, dialectical emo-
tions) might be the relevant moderators is a worth-
while future question. Clarifying when in the life
course these patterns emerge and how persistent
they are across time is also important.
To be truly informative, future research must be
based on longitudinal data (capturing both individ-
ual and historical change) in Japan and the United
States. The central limitation of cross-sectional age
findings is that obtained age differences may not
be due to maturational processes, but instead may
reflect cohort differences, which imply changing
life contexts (i.e., living through a “different slice
of time”). Change in surrounding historical con-
texts also shapes lives in persistent and lasting ways.
For example, contemporary older persons in both
Japan and the United States experienced world
wars and significant economic downturns as part of
their adult journeys. They may also have had fewer
opportunities for advanced educational attain-
ment compared to younger-aged adults. These fac-
tors, which define the broader historical context of
people’s lives, are also essential for understanding
psychological changes that may be evident across
the decades of adult life.
Related to changing historical contexts,
we close with observations about the dramatic
growth in the size of aging populations in
both countries, but especially in Japan. This
major demographic change raises many impor-
tant challenges, not only in terms of the health
and well-being of the elderly, but for society as
a whole. Of interest in future research will be
whether patterns of intergenerational relations
change as older persons assume greater promi-
nence. Will the aged take on new roles, such as
volunteering, that may potentially benefit other
age groups? Alternatively, will previous U.S.
views of the old as occupying a “roleless role”
become increasingly salient in Japan as it faces
growing demands of an aged population that is
not contributing extensively to the market econ-
omy? What effect these realities will have on the
cultural tradition of filial piety is itself an impor-
tant future question. Whether in the East or the
West, what is certain is that advanced techno-
logical societies, such as Japan and the United
States, face notable challenges with regard to uti-
lizing the talents and capacities of their growing
aged populations while also caring for the ill and
dependent members among them.
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 C H A P T E R

42 Community Leadership and

Non-attachment in Later
Adulthood
Rachana Bhangaokar

Abstract
Global demographic trends, like increasing life expectancy and human longevity along with other
factors that affect “aging” contemporary societies, have restructured age-old beliefs about later
adulthood. This chapter focuses on community leadership in the later adult years. Recent research
on concepts like successful aging, wisdom, mentoring, and the role of older adults in community
leadership has uncovered many positive aspects of development in later adulthood. The chapter
also focuses on nonattachment and aims to unravel cultural variations in understandings of both
community leadership and nonattachment in later adulthood. Taking India as a case study, the
chapter delineates traditional ideas of detachment and spiritual advancement in the human life span
through the ashramadharma template. The complex developmental pathway of nonattachment from
worldly pleasures (materialistic, self-related) alongside involvement in community development
(other-oriented, service-driven) is explored. The influence of gender, caste, and social class are
highlighted to explain these experiences in contemporary Indian society.
Key Words:  later adulthood, civic engagement, volunteering, nonattachment, community leadership,
mentoring, positive development, Hindu life course

In 2011, while reviewing the results of three
preliminary studies on youth civic engagement in
India, I and three of my graduate students found
one common factor that motivated youth to take
up and continue civic engagement activities. That
common factor was finding the right mentor at the
right time from their everyday contexts! We found
that most of the mentors mentioned by our youth
participants were older than 50 years of age, were
engaged in taking up innovative social initiatives
in their local communities, and were not extended
family members. Many of the mentors had also
given up lucrative, stereotypical career paths later
in life in order to contribute to social development
causes. This finding triggered an interest to delve
deeper into the lives of mentors, older adults who
were in many ways “silent” leaders in their own local
communities.
Meeting one such mentor, Madhusudhan Agarwal,
founder of MAM Movies (http://mammovies.com/)
at the Sabarmati (Gandhi) Ashram, Ahmedabad, in
western India, was an insightful research experience.
Mr. Agarwal, trained in filmmaking in the United
States, left behind a lucrative career and the com-
forts it offered when he felt completely detached and
empty from within after making his first film. After
overcoming a deep internal struggle and opposition
from his family, he left the United States for India on
October 2 (Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday), 2004, in
search of himself and his stories of change. Soon, he
embarked on a journey to make a film about the life
of Dwarkoji Sundarani (aged 85 at that time), one of
the last active disciples of Mahatma Gandhi. To do
this, he traveled to Bodh Gaya in Bihar, India, where
Dwarkoji worked. (Gautam Buddha found enlight-
enment in Bodh Gaya.)

680
 The Samanvayawas ashram (a hermitage or a
monastery) was set up on April 18, 1954, with an
aim to harmonize science and spirituality (Varma,
2006). Through the ashram, Dwarkoji contrib-
uted significantly in educating and uplifting more
than 30 lakh musahaars (a Dalit or low-caste,
mouse-catching community) in the region. Mr.
Agarwal stayed with Dwarkoji at the ashram for an
extended period of time and learned “hands-on”
some of the most intense lessons in truth, service,
and nonattachment. On the day he was to leave the
ashram, Dwarkoji asked Mr. Agarwal “where, will
you go after this?” to which Mr. Agarwal replied
with the obvious: he would go back to his studio
and edit the film. Dwarkoji again poignantly asked
him, “where, after all, will you go, after this?” In
response to his prolonged silence, Dwarkoji said
calmly, “Go, find your own truth… . and every-
thing else will follow.” Reflecting on that experi-
ence and the turn of events in his own life, Mr.
Agarwal said to me, “I learnt the biggest lesson of
my life at Gaya—the destroying of want [moh] and
the search for your own truth, in your own life… .
Dwarkoji taught me to live with non-attachment—
that according to him was Moksha [salvation]—to
let go, while you continue living.”
Thereafter, Mr. Agarwal came to Ahmedabad
and formed MAM movies, an enterprise in film-
making that documented the lives of people who
lived out Gandhi’s mantra of being the change
they wanted to see in the world. Now, he is
actively engaged in training youth who intern at
MAM movies and practice Gandhian philoso-
phy by participating in service activities at the
Gandhi Ashram and across India. As part of the
“Yes, I am the Change” initiative, they undertake
journeys to the remotest regions of India to docu-
ment local stories of positive change and social
transformation.
Why was this instance insightful? Stories of
intrinsic transformation like that of Mr. Agarwal
and his work are few and far between. These are
stories of hope and optimism -—an alternative
perspective of social change and leadership, within
and outside, here and now, in small but effective
ways. Indian spiritual-philosophical views on non-
attachment are deep and complex. Their essence—
of “letting go while you continue to live”—is easier
said than done in the real world for anyone, at any
given time. But this philosophy of nonattachment
subtly underlies the meaning of life in India, and
an individual is expected to keep this ideal at the
core of self-understanding across the life span and
more so during later adulthood, when one actively
engages in responsibilities on multiple fronts.
These stories of transformation reiterate the
resilience of concepts like simplicity in thought and
being, kindness and compassion, giving without
expectation, cooperation, service, and truth—all
of which are essential contributors to the under-
standing of nonattachment, personal growth, and
self-actualization. Contemporary Indian society is
moving at breakneck speed toward consumerism
and economic affluence, resulting in a deep discon-
nect between a simple (also older) lifestyle that val-
ues sustainability and goodness for all against a life
that thrives on the principle of “my pleasure alone
and now.”
Importantly, the Mr. Agarwal’s story reflects
continuity in the transfer of Gandhi’s vision of
social transformation to Dwarkoji’s social devel-
opment initiatives in Bihar, then his vision of
nonattachment and service to Mr. Agarwal’s ini-
tiatives in Ahmedabad. The chain of transforma-
tive thought continues when it rubs off on young
interns (most of whom were born in postglobaliza-
tion India, after 1990) who work with Mr. Agarwal
and stay at the Gandhi Ashram to participate in
the process of “being the change.” Over the period
of a few decades, all three individuals—Gandhi,
Dwarkoji, and Agarwal—have come to exemplify
self-development and community leadership dur-
ing the later adulthood years, and the impact of
their work continues to inspire the next generation.
Later adulthood as a life stage signifies the
“beginning of the end,” as it were, of the human life
span. Increased human longevity and better health
indicators in most parts of the world have created a
need to re-examine the life stage of later adulthood
in a new light. This chapter begins with a demo-
graphic overview of the later adulthood years (data
available for age 60–65 and older) at the global
level, followed by trends for the same in Asia and
particularly in India. It then focuses on unraveling
cultural variations in later adulthood around two
main themes—community leadership and nonat-
tachment. Focusing on middle-aged individuals
older than 50 years of age, the chapter explores the
complex developmental pathway of nonattachment
from worldly pleasures (materialistic, self-related)
alongside involvement in community development
(other-oriented, service-driven).
Taking India as a case in point, the chapter
delineates religious-philosophical ideas of nonat-
tachment and spiritual advancement in the human
life span through the ashramadharma template.
Bh a ng aok a r 681
Later Adulthood: A Demographic
Overview
According to Haub (2011) from the Population
Reference Bureau, it is estimated that, between
2015 and 2020, for the first time in human his-
tory, the population of people aged 65 and older
will surpass that of children younger than 5 years.
This trend will continue worldwide until 2050,
when the elderly will comprise 26% of the world’s
population, compared to 5% in the 1950s and 16%
now. The demographic trends indicate a steady rise
in the percentage of elderly in total national popu-
lations by the year 2050. An estimated projection
of the percentage of elderly in the population in
2050 in different parts of the world is shown in the
Table 42.1.
According to United Nations, Department of
Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division
(2013) the world population of elderly in 2050
will be 32%, double that of the child population
of the world at that time. Although most nations
of the world are aging rapidly, most of the current
concentration of elderly populations is in the devel-
oped world. By 2050 however, many developing
nations, especially the newly industrialized ones,
will also have a sizeable elderly population (Bloom,
Boersch-Supan, Mcgee, & Seike, 2011). These
global demographic trends create huge challenges
for health care systems, as well as for policy mak-
ers responsible for social and economic security
provisions for the post-retirement aged population
around the world.
According to the World Population Data
Sheet 2013 (Population Reference Bureau, 2013),
Japan leads in the world’s elderly population with
a median age of 45 in 2010; this is expected to
become 53 in 2050. It is closely followed by Italy
and Germany, and this trend will remain as it is
into 2050. However, by 2050, South Korea will
catch up with Japan on median age, as well as expe-
rience an overall increase in its elderly population.
Israel, on the other hand, will be a “moderately
aging” nation with an increase in median age from
30 years in 2010 to 36 years in 2050.
The United States has more than 40 million
people today older than 65, which is comparatively
less than many developed European countries
(Jacobsen, Kent, Lee, & Mather, 2011). The US
population is expected to grow more quickly but
age more slowly than its economic counterparts in
Europe and Asia. Overall, in North America, only
4 years will be added to the median age, from 37 in
2010 to 41 in 2050. This will be accompanied by
682 C omm u n i t y L e a de r s h i p a n d Non-At t ac h m e n t i n Lat e r A du lt ho od
a drop in the US share in the global population of
elderly, which was 10.2% in 1950, 7.7% in 2010,
and will become 5.8% in 2050 (Kochhar & Oates,
2014).
Although the population of elderly in the devel-
oped world in the past decade or so has been ris-
ing consistently, the same was not believed true
for the developing world. This trend, however, is
estimated to change around mid-century, the main
reasons for which are low fertility and longer life
expectancy at birth. Today, there are an estimated
33 million “oldest-old” people, those older than 80,
who reside in the developing world. The numbers
in this group of the oldest-old are expected to rise
and remain concentrated in the developing world,
particularly Asia (United Nations, Department of
Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division
(2013)).
The Asia 2050 report by the Asian Development
Bank (2011) states that, in 2050, Asia will be home
to 53% of the world’s population, adding a bil-
lion more people to those residing in there today.
The South Asian contribution to this pool will be
the largest, influencing important economic and
social considerations, such as available working
age groups and dependency ratios in the region.
Against this background, Asia will have more than
860 million elderly by 2050.
With reference to demographic transitions and
economic stability, the report states that Asian
countries are divided into three tiers. The first tier,
Old Asia, includes countries of Northeast Asia
like Japan, South Korea, and China, which are
economically more stable but have begun their
demographic descent. The second tier, Young Asia
includes South and Southeast Asian countries like
Indonesia, Thailand, India, and Vietnam. These
countries are becoming economically stable and
will have a tilt in the balance of young and old
around 2030 or later. The last tier, Very Young Asia,
including countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan,
both with a huge number of young children, is far-
thest from economic development as well as demo-
graphic shifts. A rising dependency ratio, especially
in tier 2 countries (which are less developed than
tier 1 countries), creates challenges because a coun-
try may become older before it becomes richer and
then face the added burden of taking care of the
health and social security needs of the elderly.
In Asia, the trend in the rise of the elderly popu-
lation is estimated to be steady for now, but, in the
next 25 years, there will be a substantial increase in
numbers of elderly older than 75. Interestingly, the
Table 42.1.  Current and projected population of the population of women in Asia (and the world) will
elderly across the world. outnumber the number of older men in the coming
Regions and Percentage Percentage years. This trend is expected to remain stable for the
Countries of Elderly Projections next 50 years or so. Along with the rise in the num-
Population of Elderly ber of Asian elderly, the number of adult children
(>65 years) 2013 Population they will have will be fewer than ever before. This
(>65 years) 2050 trend will be particularly sharp in countries like
World 8 15.6 China (including Hong Kong), Japan, Singapore,
South Korea, Thailand, and Taiwan, which have
Developed 17 – lower levels of child bearing, leaving most elderly
Less developed 6 – women in these countries with less than two chil-
dren to look after them in their old age. With fewer
Least developed 3 – children, the traditional Asian family network,
Americas 10 – which encompasses the care of elderly in its folds,
is threatened, thus making adaption to a changing
United States 14 21.4 milieu a necessity (East West Center, 2002). Within
Brazil 7 22.5 the Asian region, India shows a dual demographic
trend. Alongside concerns about a burgeoning
Mexico 6 20.2 population, demographers now talk about reap-
West Asia 5 – ing India’s “demographic dividend” and of making
timely investments in harnessing human resources
Turkey 8 21.2 in a rapidly expanding population of children and
Israel 10 17.9 youth (Roychowdhury, Chandrashekar, & Ghosh,
2006). India faces the dual challenge of nurturing
Europe 16 – an enormous young generation and simultane-
Spain 18 34.5 ously caring for the well-being of its quietly grow-
ing elderly population. India is also home to more
Germany 21 32.7 than 1.2 billion people and will soon surpass China
Italy 21 33 as the world’s most populous country, by 2028.
Although China’s population decline will begin
France 17 25.5 by 2030, India’s population will keep growing for
Britain 16 24.7 several decades and begin declining only by 2100
(United Nations, Department of Economic and
Asia 7 –
Social Affairs, Population Division, 2013). China
Japan 25 36.5 has already secured a place in the tier 1 Asian coun-
tries, whereas India will remain in tier 2 for a long
S. Korea 11 34.9
time to come. A host of issues need to be addressed
China 9 23.9 in the light of these population trends: household
consumption versus production by the elderly,
Indonesia 5 15.8
health care status, income security, and living
India 6 12.7 arrangements to name a few.
The National Human Development Report
Africa 4 –
(Planning Commission of India, 2001) estimates
S. Africa 5 10.5 the elderly population in India (older than 60) to
reach 113 million, amounting to almost 9% of the
Kenya 3 6.3 total population in 2016. Currently, the southern
Nigeria 3 3.8 states have higher concentration of elderly as com-
pared to the eastern and northeastern states. The
Oceania 11 – state of Kerala has the highest percentage of elderly
Australia 14 – at 13%.
Overall, due to the higher life expectancy of
New Zealand 14 –
women, the proportion of elderly women older
Sources: Population Reference Bureau, 2013; Kochhar & Oates, 2014. than 60 is more than men in India. By 2050, the

Bh a ng aok a r 683
percentage of elderly men will be 20.2% whereas
that of women will be 22.4% of the total male
and female population, respectively. This is par-
ticularly true of states like Kerala, Andhra Pradesh,
Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Gujarat (Bose,
2000).
The northern states, known for a low female sex
ratio, as well as for the low social status of women
in many spheres, depict a more masculine elderly
population than do others. Generally, the status of
elderly men in Indian households is relatively bet-
ter than that of elderly women due to a variety of
sociocultural factors rooted in a patriarchal social
system. There are more elderly women who now
live alone than men. Thus, gender as a whole com-
plicates the experience of aging in India. Elderly
widows form a marginalized and vulnerable group
among the elderly in India; barring policy excep-
tions in a few Indian states, their contributions and
welfare needs are hardly recognized. (Desai et al.,
2010; Gopal, 2006).
With a rise in the number of nuclear fami-
lies and an increasing elderly concentration in
the urban areas (Planning Commission of India,
National Human Development Report, 2001),
the risk of marginalization for the elderly is now
a reality. Anticipating this, a National Policy for
Older Persons was announced by the government
of India in 1999 with an aim to improve societal
participation of the elderly and empower them for
better control over their own lives. Under the iden-
tified areas of intervention, the 2011 version of the
policy published by the Ministry of Social Justice,
Government of India (2011) refers only to exten-
sions in retirement age under the theme of “pro-
ductive aging” and promoting “multigenerational
bonding” by revisions in the value education school
curriculum. The policy thus remains essentially
welfare-focused, indicative of the dependence of
elderly well-being on bureaucratic state systems or
society at large. Although this skewed focus on state
welfare impairs promoting positive development in
the later years, it is indicative of the immense need
for culturally sensitive and contextually appropri-
ate programs of intervention that optimize human
development in the later years.
Both productive aging and multigenerational
bonding, as proposed by the policy, can become
drivers of change for the situations of elderly in
Indian settings. Although the economic resources
to meet this demographic change are limited, the
Indian sociocultural ethos provides an optimistic
framework to help the elderly (Chatterjee, Patnaik,
684 C omm u n i t y L e a de r s h i p a n d Non-At t ac h m e n t i n Lat e r A du lt ho od
& Chariar, 2008). Interventions for sensitiv-
ity toward the aged should be multipronged and
include all members, young and old, in the Indian
family environment. In response to the changing
trends in the life span, psychosocial preparation
for aging and empowerment in old age should
also begin sooner and in such a way that planning
for social and psychological well-being are just as
important as economic security or health concerns
in old age. One way of meeting this goal, in India
and probably elsewhere too, is to provide opportu-
nities and contexts for positive development in the
older population’s immediate settings.
Older adults can become assets to any society,
provided the contexts and conditions for thriving
and positive development are in place. An overview
of recent trends in positive development during the
later years will set the stage for understanding the
self–society interface in later adulthood. The next
section refers to global research trends in positive
development in different domains during the later
adulthood years.
Trends in Positive Development
in Later Adulthood
A large body of research on later adulthood
has focused on life transitions, stress, and conflict
rather than on positive aspects like thriving or
flourishing. Contributions from positive psychol-
ogy on developmental aspects of engagement, adult
goals and purposes, and a life well lived are quite
recent and need to continue (Nakamura, 2011). On
similar lines, Bundik, Yaeger, King, and Damon
(2010) mention that research focusing on positive
development in the later years is a recent trend, seen
only since the past two decades. They report stud-
ies conducted in the United States on thriving—a
process explaining thresholds of positive develop-
ment across the life span. With specific reference
to later adulthood, they state that the term “suc-
cessful aging” is often used to refer to later adults
who “thrive” when they demonstrate low risk for
disease and disability, high cognitive and physical
functioning, and active engagement with life.
In a longitudinal study on resilience, Kern and
Friedman (2010) identified factors like tempera-
mental disposition, internal coping mechanisms,
social support, and health behaviors that ensured
thriving among Americans in later life in the face
of challenges. Women particularly scored higher
on social support and health-protective behaviors
than men. From a clinical psychology perspec-
tive, Mitchell (2009) identified the development of
three dimensions in later life for women—the ethic
of care, acquisition of integrity, and a mature and
individuated ego—contribute to depth, vitality,
fullness, and enjoyment in the later years. Studies
with mature adults in recent years have added new
perspectives to the understanding of cognition,
emotion, and spiritual intelligence in the later adult
years.
Recent evidence from the United States on
adult cognition (Salthouse, 2012), with its focus
on accumulated knowledge and its applicability
in real-world situations, defies the age-old stereo-
type that declining cognitive abilities have negative
effects on overall well being in later years. It is now
well established that cognition alone does not deter-
mine successful functioning in life. Similarly, the
relationship between wisdom and age is now better
understood as recent research in the United States
highlights the role of personal experience, includ-
ing openness, reflectivity, and willingness to apply
experience in life, in helping to develop wisdom
across the life span (Sternberg & Jordan, 2005).
Across cultures, although generativity is the
hallmark of middle and late adulthood, wisdom
and emotional maturity are said to be strong pre-
dictors of life satisfaction in late adulthood (Berry,
Poortinga, Breugelmans, Chasiotis, & Sam, 2011).
Although the ability to experience emotions
remains more or less stable across the life span,
an individual’s ability to regulate emotions and
focus on the positive aspects of life increases dur-
ing late adulthood. Brummet, Babyek, Gronbaek,
and Barefoot (2011) emphasize that older adults
who experience positive emotions are more likely
to have a creative and flexible approach to problem
solving and aging. At the same time, their attempts
to maintain social and physical contacts are much
more expansive, contributing to overall well-being
in later years.
Strongman and Overton (1999) stated that
emotional control, social support, and resilience
contributed to successful aging in developed soci-
eties like the United States. Except for spiritual-
ity, the emotional satisfaction and well-being of
American and Maori (from New Zealand) later
adults were found to be strikingly similar. On the
basis of this finding, the researchers speculated
that, if empirically explored, spirituality may be an
important factor contributing to successful aging
across many cultures. Some evidence on these lines
is now available.
Spirituality and religion provide the neces-
sary buffering against mental health risks like
depression. In a study with Australian elderly living
in aged-care homes, Fleming (2008) mentions the
protective role of spirituality and helping behaviors
against depression. Residents who were spiritual
and helped others were less likely to feel depressed
because their lives seemed to have purpose. Jain and
Purohit (2006) found no difference in the levels of
spiritual intelligence between elderly living with
families and in old-age homes in Rajasthan, India.
Spiritual intelligence helped the elderly in families
and institutions alike to find purpose and over-
come monotonous routines and loneliness. Another
study conducted with elderly living in institutions
in Kolkata, India (Basu Mukherjee, 2013) found
that imposed exclusion caused social disabilities
in the elderly and negatively influenced their qual-
ity of life. However, being spiritual contributed to
their resilience to cope with an excluded existence
in the company of agemates in the institutions.
A longitudinal study by Dillon, Wink, and Fay
(2003) of 183 late adults born in the early and late
1920s in California showed that early investment
in religiousness helped individuals to cultivate gen-
erativity, and this relationship remained stable for
about 40 years. On the other hand, young adults
who had earlier self-expanding generative con-
cerns (need to outlive the self or attain immortal-
ity, power and impact on others) tended to turn to
spirituality in their later years. Spirituality was thus
positively related to generativity in the second half
of adult life for these individuals. The study also
demonstrated that spirituality in the later years did
not demonstrate indifference to the condition of
others in society.
In a study with Christian and Buddhist Chinese
Singaporean elderly, Jianbin and Mehta (2003)
found that religion and spirituality play an inte-
grative role and enable the elderly to age success-
fully. In some instances, they found that elderly
persons disengaged purposefully for introspection
or individual spiritual pursuits using meditative
techniques. They argue that the understanding
of successful aging must include the domain of
religion and spirituality and that the disengage-
ment endorsed by these elderly participants’ reli-
gious belief systems should not be categorized as
unsuccessful or troubled aging. Thus, introspective
inward journeys for self-development and leading
communally useful, purposeful lives are gradually
being recognized as important aspects of prepara-
tion for aging.
Levenson, Aldwin, and Cupertino (2001)
recommend a model of adult development that
Bh a ng aok a r 685
transcends the ontogenetic (Eriksonian and other
stage theories) and sociogenic models (socializa-
tion and social role centric models) to focuses
on self-development through liberative models
(religious-philosophical) that, by the cultivation of
egolessness, bring a person closer to wisdom in the
contemporary world. The liberative model draws
from various Eastern philosophical traditions like
Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism, Yoga, and contem-
plative Christianity. A reference to some of these
traditions is made in the subsequent sections on
nonattachment.
One of the elements of successful aging identi-
fied by Csikszentmilayi and Rathunde (1998) was
that of sustained community involvement, which
ensures purposeful engagement in societal activities
for the self and reinforces a sense of contribution
for individuals. This dual benefit to self and soci-
ety goes a long way toward ensuring optimal thriv-
ing experiences. A qualitative study by Kleiber and
Nimrod (2008) on a group of “learners in retire-
ment” supports this claim. Participants who chose
generative civic engagement activities that were
motivated by agentic (self-serving) as well as com-
munal purposes reported long-lasting and more
satisfying impact on the self (in terms of experienc-
ing pride and contribution) as compared to those
who chose activities only based on self-interest or
only for communal and service purposes.
Contexts within and outside the family that
provide for synergistic interactions between the
young and old seem to hold promise for optimizing
the developmental potentials of both. For example,
a study in Germany by Kessler and Staudinger
(2007) found that when adolescents and older
people cooperate, they create unique psychological
contexts that lead to motivation and unfolding of
intergenerational potential. Kelly (2008) refers to
those contributions made by older persons across
the world that cannot be measured economically,
such as household maintenance and volunteer work
in communities. She draws attention to the intro-
duction of “blended” retirement or phased-out
retirement plans by European corporations that
enable older persons to integrate into their com-
munities by reducing the number of working hours
and increasing spare time for leisure or volunteer-
ing. This not only enables better adjustment to
life after retirement, but also contributes to the
long-term well-being of older persons.
Referring to the concept of a “Big Society,” in
which individuals and communities rise to resolve
their own problems, Cox (2011) highlights the
686 C omm u n i t y L e a de r s h i p a n d Non-At t ac h m e n t i n Lat e r A du lt ho od
huge contribution of older persons in the United
Kingdom in the form of volunteering and other
forms of civic engagement, caring for grandchil-
dren, donating, and voting. The report strongly
supports the claim that a greater number of elderly
in the future may mean more civic action. The
majority of British older individuals from the study
were motivated to volunteer because they wanted
to help others or improve things in their commu-
nity. In addition to this, they volunteered to create
connections with others, put their skills to good
use, and respond to the needs of friends, family,
and communities. These were conscious efforts to
keep loneliness at bay in later life.
Cox’s (2011) report also cites ground-breaking
examples of a Big Society from around the world.
One of them is the system of Hureia Kippu—
translated as “caring relationship tickets” or “care
credits” (p. 39)—initiated by the Sawayaka wel-
fare foundation in Japan. The care credits, accu-
mulated by an individual through doing caring
tasks for the elderly, can be used by the person in
the future when they themselves are elderly. The
care credits can also be transferred to someone else
or exchanged. This system gains impetus through
the Atarashi kokyo or the “new public” concept that
redefines the relationship between the people and
the state. Under this scheme, anyone who helps an
elderly person in their locality earns credits that
can be transferred to the care of their own parents
in another geographical location. Similarly, by
taking care of elderly in nursing homes or hospitals
now, individuals can accumulate points to be used
for their own insurance needs.
Thus, perceived interdependence of goals for
self and society may help late adults get more
out of community involvement and civic engage-
ment activities. Later adulthood, beginning from
“middle age” (or the early 50s), is thus explored as
a catalyst in the process of honing the skills of the
young and attaining newer realms of community
contribution for the old. Generativity (outside the
family, in the larger society) through community
leadership and mentoring are critical processes to
enhance positive development during later adult-
hood. The next section focuses on community
leadership and mentoring in such contexts.
Community Leadership and
Mentoring: Implications
on Self and Society
Leadership as a construct is understood primar-
ily based on the personality traits of the leader.
Research on leadership styles and practices has
dominated literature in fields like business admin-
istration, political science, and organizational
psychology. However, leadership in social develop-
ment projects requires slightly different attributes
than those found for corporate executives, business
tycoons, or political leaders. Levit (2010) defines
such leadership as consisting of action, context, and
vision and requiring a leader to be an advocate as
well as a change agent for the cause at hand. With
specific reference to women leaders in the counsel-
or’s profession, she highlights the role of women as
mentors and mentees who must try to break exist-
ing leadership stereotypes if they are to engage in a
fuller exploration of their potentials.
Stewart (2008) mentions two popular and
dominant leadership styles—charismatic leader-
ship, which focuses on the heroic and persuasive
power of the leader, and transactional and trans-
formative leadership, which provides support and
rewards to transform individual behaviour. Avolio,
Walumbwa, and Weber (2009), in their review of
leadership trends, mention the rise of spiritual lead-
ership in many organizations, where the focus is on
a balanced integration of mind, body, spirit, and
heart.
Using data from the GLOBE project conducted
with middle-level managers across 62 different
societies, Mittal and Dorfman (2012) highlight
cross-cultural differences in service leadership,
which was found to be effective across cultures,
especially with reference to emphasis on the moral
integrity domain. European cultures scored higher
than other clusters on the egalitarian and empower-
ing domains, whereas South Asian cultures scored
higher than others in the domains of humility and
empathy.
Civic engagement and community service
are important contributors to self-development
and well-being in the later years. Hart, Atkins,
and Donnelly (2006) define community service
as any voluntary activity that benefits the com-
munity. They identify five features of community
service that may be closely linked to moral devel-
opment: namely, motivation, duration, type of
activity, extent of voluntariness, and the need for
reflection or critique. For leaders in community
development programs that work at the grassroots
level and use a bottom-up approach, a mix of ser-
vice and spiritual leadership may be desirable. For
effective community development programs and
sustainable social change, inspirational leadership
may also be an alternative to spiritual leadership.
Community leaders are influential individuals
and change makers from within or outside the com-
munity who take up causes that affect community
members. They are actively involved in resolving
issues for the betterment of the community and
society by building support networks. Community
leaders, more often than not, directly or indirectly
are also mentors to many of their young (or junior)
followers. These leaders become mentors not just
through explicit instruction, but also through their
own disposition and being. Their beliefs and ideolo-
gies of service, rights, or other human concerns for
community well-being bring effortless clarity to their
actions, inspiring or motivating others around them.
A life course perspective indicates that early
experiences of volunteering, especially during
adolescence and the transition to adulthood, in
service learning programs have a life-long impact.
Individuals who are part of service learning pro-
grams at these crucial junctures are most likely to
continue volunteering even in later life (Oesterle,
Johnston, & Mortimer, 2004). Mentoring and
community participation, especially with early
adolescents and youth, make older mentors feel
good about their roles in the community.
With reference to out-of-school and after-school
community programs in the United States, Zeldin,
Larson, Camino, and O’Connor (2005) mention
the usefulness of intergenerational youth–adult
relationships to building a strong sense of civil soci-
ety and community. This process required a strong
partnership between youth and adults, such that
the developmental needs of both were met, and they
could also meet the broader needs of the commu-
nity. In such contexts, the challenge was immense
for the middle-aged and older adults, a group that
included individuals older than 40, because they
needed to balance community needs with youth
potentials and take on the multiple roles of teacher,
coach, or task master to negotiate and sustain close
bonds that would enable community participation
and subsequent social change. Although the ages of
mentors in some cases may not correspond to later
adulthood as such, the mentoring roles played by
these individuals may not differ too greatly from
that of later adults.
Formal and organized contexts for youth–adult
mentoring are quite common in the United States
and other developed countries (e.g., mentoring and
service learning programs in schools and colleges).
The same, however, is not true for many other cul-
tural contexts, where mentoring may occur natu-
rally and in an informal manner.
Bh a ng aok a r 687
 In a study comparing mentoring in the United
States and Japan, it was found that across both
cultures, adolescents were more likely to ascribe
mentoring functions to adults than peers, relatives
than nonrelatives, and those belonging to the same
sex rather than the opposite sex. However, Japanese
adolescents were more likely to mention their
peers also as mentors as compared to American
adolescents. This was attributed to horizontal col-
lectivism and the explicit recognition of peers as
mentors in Japanese society (Darling, Hamilton,
Toyokawa, & Matsuda, 2002).
A study on youth community involvement in
postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina by Kasumagic
(2008) reported the lack of structured opportuni-
ties and role models for Bosnian youth from dif-
ferent ethnic backgrounds to be constructively
engaged in peace and rehabilitation activities in
the sensitive, war-torn region. One of the recom-
mendations from the study was the conscious need
for adults working with these youth to allow them
freedom of expression and the time and space to
build faith in adults and themselves as change
makers for rebuilding the country.
Mentoring in the Indian context is largely
defined within the parameters of the traditional
guru–shishya parampara (traditional teacher–dis-
ciple relationship) template. The guru is considered
to be a sacred, authoritative, and wise person, usu-
ally older and more experienced, while the disci-
ple must be committed, disciplined, and devoted
to the teacher (Ganapathy-Coleman, 2014). Very
few empirical studies in India explain mentoring
outside the fields of business or management. In
a significant departure from the traditional guru–
shishya (teacher–disciple) relationship, Rathore’s
(2011) study on mentoring of civically engaged
youth in India found that most mentors reported
giving freedom and choice to their mentees without
a strict imposition of hierarchy, either in their ideol-
ogies or in discipline involved in conducting activi-
ties. Like the parent–child relationship, there was a
nurturing bond between mentors and mentees, but
mentors maintained clear-cut boundaries of friend-
liness and professional distance from the mentees,
subtly negotiating areas of noninterference.
A study by Mehta (2010) on civically engaged
youth in Gujarat, India, identified the presence of
nonfamily mentors to be a significant factor for
youth to take up and continue with civic engage-
ment activities. Some participants who were in
their early 30s and involved in civic engagement
activities for more than 6 years had recently taken
688 C omm u n i t y L e a de r s h i p a n d Non-At t ac h m e n t i n Lat e r A du lt ho od
up mentoring roles and were active in setting up
their own organizations as community leaders.
Thus, in the Indian context, mentoring was more
likely to occur naturally or by chance rather than
in a formal or structured manner.
Results of an ongoing project (Bhangaokar,
2014) on mentoring relationships between civically
engaged youth and their mentors in organizations
in Gujarat, India, following a Gandhian philoso-
phy showed that Gandhian mentors never imposed
Gandhian principles over the mentees by way of
propaganda. Instead, they stringently followed
Gandhian principles of simplicity, nonviolence, and
dignity of labor in their own lives. Observing these
traits in the mentors inspired the mentees to adopt
some of these practices in their own lives. Close
interactions and training with Gandhian mentors,
as well as involvement in activities such as using
a spinning wheel (charkha) and wearing clothes
made out of handspun cotton (khadi), cleaning toi-
lets, traveling to remote villages, doing small acts
of kindness, and staying at the Sabarmati Ashram
in Ahmedabad strongly contributed to imbibing
Gandhian philosophy and changing youth percep-
tions about materialism, truth, and nonviolence.
Mentoring has positive effects on the mentor
also. Taylor (2007) gives supportive evidence on
the psychological benefits of mentoring: for the
mentors, mentoring was associated with fewer
depressive symptoms, enhanced self-esteem, bet-
ter health outcomes, and stronger social connec-
tions with other mentors, as well as with their own
families. Morrow-Howell, Hong, and Tang (2009)
reported that older adults, especially women and
those with lower education and from lower social
classes, perceived maximum benefits of volunteer-
ing for self and family. The lives of mentors and/
or community leaders thus represent a complex
mix of generativity for societal causes beyond the
self and immediate family. They adopt and prac-
tice clear moral ideologies to further the causes of
community leadership that they have taken up,
for example, belief in environmental conservation,
nonviolence, gender equality, or human rights. In
some ways, they have managed to create a balance
between their own needs as mentors or community
leaders and have switched to being service-oriented
in their approach. These factors are indicative of
movement along the continuum of self-related
attachment to service-driven nonattachment.
The next section explores prominent ideas of
attachment and nonattachment and their impli-
cations for later adults. Ideas of nonattachment
essentially stem from spiritual-philosophical and
religious schools of thought.
Attachment and Nonattachment
in Later Years
Nonattachment is an important spiritual-
philosophical theme in the developmental tran­
sitions that occur during later adulthood.
Nonattachment is mostly explained for the later
years, alongside the markers of mature adulthood.
Most explanations of nonattachment are inwardly
directed through prescriptions for self-restraint
and moving away from worldly pleasures in many
cultures. Service or compassion toward others is at
times built into these prescriptions.
Most theoretical knowledge about later adulthood
comes from postindustrialized Western countries.
Mainly along the dichotomy of attachment–
detachment and focusing mostly on the individual,
a sizable number of European and American stud-
ies explain the clinical and psychological dimen-
sions of coping in the older years. Stemming from
attachment theory, most European and American
studies discuss bereavement in later years or cop-
ing with the loss of attachment figures from a clin-
ical perspective (Bradley & Cafferty, 2001). In a
comprehensive overview of clinical psychological
studies on attachment in old age in Western societ-
ies from 1983 to 2012, Assche, Luyten, Bruffaerts,
Persoons, van de Ven, and Vandenbulcke (2013)
mention that older adults tend to have less
attachment relations than younger adults. Their
adult children feature prominently in meeting
attachment needs while they develop symbolic
attachment with God, indicative mostly of a com-
pensatory strategy for replacing attachment figures
lost to death. Attachment with God was influenced
by age, gender, socioeconomic status, hardships,
and stress, among other factors. God emerges as
an important attachment figure during later adult-
hood, especially in circumstances where elderly
have lost attachment figures in their own lives.
African Americans and those from lower socio-
economic sectors were more likely to demonstrate
strong attachment with God (Cicirelli, 2004).
Using attachment theory, Harris, Marshall, and
Schvaneveldt (2008) provide an interesting analy-
sis of marital rituals and laws in the Abrahamic
religions—Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.
Highlighting similarities among the three reli-
gions, they conclude that attachment relationships
with real-world figures like parents and spouses
define the features of attachment with God. Sacred
texts and religious laws play a very important role
in the formation of these attachment patterns.
Although there is ample research on later adult-
hood and attachment, very few studies focus on the
idea of nonattachment at an advanced age. There
seems to be a dearth of psychological research
materials in the area from European, American,
and other cultural contexts. Some anthropological
and cultural psychological work on conceptions
of personhood and old age provide insights into
experiences of aging across cultures, but few of
them directly refer to nonattachment as a concept.
For example, through her ethnographic studies on
the elderly in West Bengal, India, Lamb (1997)
argues against a single model of personhood in
either Western or Indian cultural systems. With
specific reference to the later years, she mentions
how the understanding of selfhood becomes more
concrete, unique, and partially separable from oth-
ers even in cultures like Indiagenerally assumed to
be “collectivistic.” In her study, elderly Bengali
women think about disengaging or freeing them-
selves of maya (illusion, worldly ties) as they age
and prepare for the last stage of life. Lamb’s work
reiterates two important ideas: one is the increased
significance of a personal psychological space,
including ideas of autonomy and unboundedness
that an aging person engages with. The second
is the intertwining of the cultural and religious-
philosophical concepts that support and facilitate
a person’s movement in the sphere of introspection
and self-analysis. Both processes will vary across
cultures and include many spiritual-religious ideas
in the background.
Assuming that many broad understandings of
nonattachment in old age may be prescribed in
religious-philosophical texts and principles, in the
next section, an attempt is made to illuminate these
understandings. Due to the lack of empirical stud-
ies on nonattachment, prescribed ideal states of
mature adulthood that incorporate ideas of nonat-
tachment are cited.
Nonattachment: A Religious-Philosophical
Understanding
Most religions and their scriptures prescribe
ideal roles and behaviors for followers. In some
religions, these are explained for specific life stages
like childhood or mature adulthood, whereas in
others there is only a blanket prescription of how
a person should be, irrespective of age, social role,
or status. An attempt has been made to focus on
these prescriptions of mature adulthood in Islam
Bh a ng aok a r 689
and Judaism and discuss nonattachment against
this religious/cultural backdrop.
Islam believes in nonattachment (zuhd) and a
life of simplicity over material possessions (www.
britannica.com). This process progresses in three
stages: a struggle to move away from worldly plea-
sures, nonattachment for exchange of rewards, and,
last, effortless nonattachment, when a person does
not think twice before giving up something. Sufism
also advocates living in the world while nonat-
tached to promote self-improvement, a lifestyle in
which death should not be mourned or feared but
embraced (Sen & Shafi, 2008).
According to Lapidus (1976), coordination
between an active worldly life and an inner life
full of strengths and ethical psychological virtues
determines maturity in Islam. Religious life and
practices are central to Islamic identity. Trust in
God and total surrender involves a deep under-
standing of one’s strengths and limitations, and
this becomes the basis for spiritual progression
for a Muslim. Islam recognizes that every human
being is incomplete and flawed, but the one who is
aware of his or her limitations is constantly striv-
ing to heal from inside while judiciously taking
up responsibility on the outside. Such people who
believe in truth (iman), patience (sabr), and divine
knowledge (tasdiq) are considered wise (halim).
As against this, the jahil (unbeliever, ignorant) is
driven by passion, lacks self-control, and is imprac-
tical in real life. A good Muslim adult thus lives a
life well synchronized with his or her context and
does not cling to worldly pleasures. One may safely
assume that, by and large, this deep understanding
of personhood and religion may appear only in late
and/or mature adulthood when one has adequate
insights about behavior from social and personal
experiences.
A study by Sarkissian (2012) using data from
the World Values Survey from nine Muslim
majority countries (Albania, Bangladesh, Burkina
Faso, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan,
Mali, and Turkey) illuminated interesting con-
nections between religiosity and civic engage-
ment. Contrary to evidence from the Western
countries, social trust and tolerance (contributors
to social capital) were not significantly related to
civic engagement activities. Instead, gender, edu-
cation, and religious behavior (especially daily
prayer) were stronger predictors of civic engage-
ment. Men, more than women, and highly edu-
cated individuals were more likely to be engaged in
civic activities. However, individuals who offered
690 C omm u n i t y L e a de r s h i p a n d Non-At t ac h m e n t i n Lat e r A du lt ho od
daily prayers regularly were less likely to take part
in other civic groups.
The wave of Islamic revivalism is represented by
the growth and popularity of the Tablighi jamaat,
which believes in going back to true Islam and, in
the process, embracing strict ritualistic practices
aligning with the Shariah law, especially for women.
Sacrificing spare time to learn about religion and
providing service in spreading it is one of the aims
of the sect. At the outset, these beliefs may seem
like resoundingly outdated patriarchal attempts
to control women. However, studies by Amrullah
(2011) in Indonesia and Ali (2011) in Australia
represent the inner journeys of self-improvement
toward more piety experienced by adult Muslim
women following the Tablighi jamaat in response
to modernity. Most of these women were aged
between 20 and 47 years; belonged to urban,
middle-, and upper-middle-class families; and
their seniority depended on the number of years of
enrolment in the sect.
Judaism constructs the idea of advancing age
without specific reference to nonattachment. The
elderly are given a revered place in society, but,
instead of focusing on withdrawal from attachments,
the emphasis is on continued participation and spe-
cialized contribution to communal living. According
to Rabbi Sedley (2012), old age should not be equated
with a burden but must be accepted as a blessing. The
elderly should hence be held in respect and esteem
as they are spiritually and intellectually on higher
ground and closer to God. Older people are consid-
ered to be the eyes of society who will lead the next
generation; hence, Jewish society places high pre-
mium on well integrated aging in society. The con-
cept of life-long learning for the sake of knowledge
and contributing to society to the greatest extent pos-
sible exemplify Jewish characteristics of old age. The
active engagement of elderly in volunteering activities
at schools to tutor younger children and care for their
grandchildren is strongly emphasized. The elderly
are encouraged to write their ethical will and discuss
details of their death with their family. The “letting
go” of life will become a reality only once the older
person is tired of life, and, even then, he or she is
encouraged to consciously prepare for death. Thus,
in Judaism, the idea of nonattachment, physical as
well as spiritual, is replaced with the concept of active
old age.
In Buddhism, the idea of detachment finds
more mention than nonattachment. Wong (2006)
analyzes the concept of detachment in Buddhism,
Daoism, and Stoicism and states that Buddhism,
like Stoicism, emphasizes that we should not be
emotionally attached to anything or anyone from
the outside world that can be taken away from us.
Buddhism advocates the impermanence of every-
thing and cautions us against any desire for mate-
rial possessions, power, and status, as well as people,
because such desire only brings suffering. Even the
family should be treated as a group of travelers who
come together, each one of whom departs from
time to time, depending on various circumstances.
However, Zhuangzi’s concept of detachment in
Daoism refers to “an inner withdrawal” (p. 213) in
which one continues in life as normally as possible.
The failure or success of our actions will not disturb
the individual who is adept at inner withdrawal.
These ideas resonate well with Hindu Indian ideals
of being a sthithapraygya or a person who is engaged
but nonattached because he treats failure and suc-
cess with equanimity. A study by Wijesinghe and
Mendelson (2012) on the management of type 2
diabetes by Sri Lankan Buddhist nuns found that
beliefs about detachment influenced their health
behaviors, such that they refrained from thinking
too much about life events and had accepted disease
as a natural and unavoidable part of life. Even the
nun who understood the scientific and genetic links
to her acquiring diabetes attributed it to her karma.
With specific reference to community leader-
ship and civic engagement, studies that give direct
evidence on nonattachment are few. But those link-
ing religious socialization with civic engagement
can be easily found. For example, a study in the
Netherlands found that lenient religious socializa-
tion, especially during adolescence and in Catholic
families, positively affected nonreligious volun-
teering in later life. In addition to this, religious
volunteering almost always “spilled over” to nonre-
ligious volunteering (Vermeer & Scheepers, 2011).
Similarly, Djupe and Neiheisel’s (2012) study on
Latinos in the United States gives strong evidence
that playing congregational leadership roles in the
church and participating in other small-group
church activities influences nonelectoral forms of
political participation.
The next section describes the ideas of nonat-
tachment from a Hindu Indian perspective.
Hindu Indian Perspectives
on Nonattachment
Nonattachment features strongly in many
Indian scriptures, most prominently in the
Bhagavad Gita (Song of God, sacred book of Hindus),
where an attachment to the fruits of one’s actions
is considered detrimental to self-development and
spiritual progress. Nonattachment with the results
of one’s actions defines the concept of karma (action
without attachment to the results of action), an idea
central to Hindu selfhood in India (Bhangaokar &
Kapadia, 2009). These verses from the Bhagavad
Gita (Chinmayananda, 2002) exemplify the con-
cepts of action, attachment, and nonattachment
in Hindu understanding. Mediated through non-
attachment is the interface between the atman
(spiritual self) and the Brahman (divine universal
power)—the cornerstone of self and personhood in
the Indian tradition:
Acts of sacrifice, charity and austerity should not
be abandoned, but should be performed; worship,
charity and also austerity, are the purifiers of even
the “wise.”
But even these actions should be performed
leaving aside attachment and the fruits, O Partha,
this is my certain and best belief.
(Chapter XVIII, Verse 5, p. 1106; Verse 6, p. 1107)
Actions beneficial to self and society, such as
sacrifice and charity (both necessary in commu-
nity service), are endorsed by the text and said
to purify one’s being. However, all these actions
need to be performed without attachment. Thus,
service to others is service in the real sense only
when done without attachment or the desire to
get something in return. The next two verses
signify the interface of the human ego with the
divine, an interface that rests on the idea of free-
dom from the notion of “mine” or ownership of
any kind. Karma yogis or those who follow the
path of karma in life (implying a possibility of
including all human beings because freedom
from karma is impossible) are expected to have
this attitude toward all their actions. The verses
endorse actions that must be performed by coor-
dinating all human faculties but solely for the
purpose of self-purification and transcendence,
without desires:
Yogis, having abandoned attachment, perform
actions merely by the body, the mind, intellect and
senses, for the purification of the self (ego).
(Chapter V, Verse 11, p. 334)
Having abandoned egoism, power, arrogance,
desire, anger and aggrandisement, and freed from
the notion of “mine,” and therefore peaceful—he is
fit to become BR AHMAN.
(Chapter XVIII, Verse 53)
Bh a ng aok a r 691
 Referring to the Bhagvad Gita, Bhawuk (2008)
refers to karma marga or the path of action (as
against the path of devotion [bhakti] or the path of
knowledge [gyana]) as the most significant path to
reach salvation or moksha because one can remain
engaged in everyday life by doing one’s duties in
a devoted but nonattached manner. The karma
marga or the path of action that integrates the
concept of nonattachment is really an attitude to
being. This attitude is adopted by many later adults
in their community service and mentoring work.
Nonattachment or anasakti is considered a
health-promoting attitude necessary to know one-
self. When combined with yoga, it leads to better
neuropsychological balance and aids in the over-
coming of materialistic desires and ahamkara (ego;
Salagame, 2011).
In India, the asramadharma theory of life span
development includes four major life transitions: the
first two stages of brahmacharya (stage of celibacy
and studentship) and grishastyashrama (stage of a
married householder and family life) that both focus
on fulfilling responsibilities through engagement in
the familial and social roles, and the last two stages
of vanaprastha (stage of a forest dweller) and san-
yasaasrama (stage of renunciation), which represent
withdrawal from worldly pleasures and renunciation
(Saraswathi & Ganapathy, 2002). The goal of for-
ward movement in this scheme is for an individual to
move closer to moksha (spiritual release) and spiritual
refinement through self-actualization (Kakar, 1981).
Nonattachment, an important attitude, remains the
crux of all the four stages, in which the performance
of righteous, role-related duties takes precedence to
propel the transitions forward.
The stage of vanaprasthasrama (leaving for the
forest) is of relevance to middle and later adult-
hood. Retirement and handing over of the family
responsibilities to the next generation is the hall-
mark of this stage, which de-emphasizes author-
ity and marks the beginning of a spiritual journey
for the individual. Saraswathi, Mistry, and Dutta
(2011) explain that the main task during vanapr-
astha is beginning to give up or dissolve individual
relationships, with a simultaneous emphasis on
lowering and controlling egoistical strivings.
The focus of this stage is on being generative
through selfless service to larger goals of com-
mon, public good. Nonattachment hence features
prominently in this stage, without which spiri-
tual progress to the next is meaningless. However,
engagement and transfer to the next generation of
the expertise that one has accumulated through the
692 C omm u n i t y L e a de r s h i p a n d Non-At t ac h m e n t i n Lat e r A du lt ho od
first two stages is also expected during this stage.
The stage is a stepping stone to the next stage of
sanyasasrama, which emphasizes total renunciation
and the spiritual pursuit of connecting with the
divine.
Hindus believe in the self as a spiritual entity
(soul or Atman) and self-realization as the most
significant goal throughout the life span. The
focus on transfer of expertise, self-discipline for
spiritual pursuits during late adulthood, and
transmigration of the soul also represent con-
tinuity that is not affected by old age or death
(Kakar & Kakar, 2007; Chatterjee et al., 2008).
In a study comparing disengagement theory and
the asramadharma scheme for older adults resid-
ing in old-age homes in Orissa, Mishra (2012)
found variations in belief and practice in which,
although elderly were disengaging from routines
tasks in everyday family life, they were replacing
these tasks with some duties within the old-age
homes where they now resided.
The merging of philosophical underpinnings of
community leadership and nonattachment can be
explained through the exemplary grassroots-level
initiatives of community leaders like Vinoba
Bhave, Sunderlal Bahuguna, and others in con-
temporary India. The social movements they
undertook motivated many others to adopt their
methods and ideologies such as fasting, holding
nonviolent protests, and practicing compassion to
combat social problems like corruption, rampant
deforestation, illegal mining, and the building of
huge dams and power projects. Individuals leading
such countermovements are often fighting for the
cause of sustainable development, ecological con-
servation, organic farming, and the rights of tribal
minorities and their rehabilitation. A few illustra-
tive cases explain this interface between commu-
nity leadership and an attitude of nonattachment
and simplicity.
Acharya Vinoba Bhave, a little-known social
reformer, was considered an heir to Gandhi’s leg-
acy. He initiated the Bhoodan movement (Gifting
of Land) in April 1951, in which he would walk
from one village to another, covering many states of
India every year, asking landlords to donate land to
landless cultivators (S. K., 1958). His ability to con-
vince people to give up their excess land was based
entirely on principles of simplicity and compassion.
Drawing on Hindu religious ideas and folklore,
by 1958, Vinoba accumulated close to 5 million
acres of land that would be distributed to land-
less farmers for agriculture and rural development
(Srivastava, 1967). The Bhoodan movement was sig-
nificant because it highlighted the need for rural
social reform that was divorced from the govern-
ment policies and considered people to be partners
in the process of social change.
Sunderlal Bahuguna, another Gandhian,
spearheaded the nonviolent Chipko (translated as
“embrace” or “gluing” oneself to trees) movement
in Garhwal and Uttar Pradesh regions to protest
against the green-felling of trees. The movement
was fueled by rural women who would embrace
trees, which were their main source of livelihood,
in order to save them from being felled by govern-
ment machinery. The movement rapidly spread to
other parts of the country where local self-help
groups protested against deforestation. Bahuguna
was also involved in the Save the Himalayas move-
ment against the building of the Tehri Dam and
in protecting the Ganges (Ganga Raksha Yatra),
which he successfully negotiated with the gov-
ernment after prolonged fasting (Sharma, 2009).
In 2009, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan,
India’s second highest civilian award for his
efforts.
Anna Hazare, a social worker from Ralegaon
Siddhi, Maharashtra, India, led the recent anticor-
ruption movement in New Delhi and was instru-
mental in making the Right to Information Act
a reality (www.annahazare.com). But before this,
Anna was responsible for transforming Ralegaon
Siddhi, a village on the verge of drought and prone
to a host of social problems due to poverty into a
model, self-sufficient village. He uses techniques
like shramdaan (donation of labor) to clean streets
in the village and employs other Gandhian forms
of resistance, such as nonviolent protests, to com-
bat social problems. A true Gandhian, Anna, to
this day, lives in simplicity at the village temple and
works actively to create community leaders in the
village. He has undertaken many fasts unto death
for public demands related to transparency in gov-
ernance (Dalal, 2010).
Jayeshbhai Patel is the founder of Manav
Sadhana, a social development organization asso-
ciated with the Sabarmati Ashram, Ahmedabad,
Gujarat, India. His father Ishwarbhai had worked
closely with Mahatma Gandhi and alone after
Gandhi’s death to improve rural sanitation using
sustainable resources. Through the Safai Vidyalaya
(cleanliness school), Ishwarbhai built innumer-
able toilets and innovative sanitation projects
in rural areas of India. In his father’s footsteps,
Jayeshbhai continues to work for the poorest of
poor with great compassion. For uplifting those
in poverty, Jayeshbhai urges community workers
to be “ladders” not “leaders” (http://mammov-
ies.com/jayesh-bhai-on-laddership/). He strongly
believes that the values of truth, compassion,
and kindness should effortlessly be a part of any
interaction with people in any work and, he reit-
erates the Gandhian principle of samdrasti (equal
vision, seeing everyone as equal). Jayeshbhai is
optimistic that future leaders will not lead from
the front, but will emerge from among the people
and become one with them through their work.
He recommends decentralization of power and
resources and concludes that human connections
of empathy and kindness are what will eventually
remain to define the future.
Vinoba Bhave, Sunderlal Bahuguna, Anna
Hazare, and Jayeshbhai are older adults. Their
beliefs and philosophies have taken shape because
of their struggles and immense sacrifices for social
causes. Each one and his work embodies a nonat-
tachment with results. They have been tirelessly
working in different settings to create local impact
by taking people together with them, as a collective
force.
Conclusion
The later adulthood years signify the impor-
tance of amalgamating the skills and strengths
acquired over previous life stages and putting them
to use for self and society. However, in the contem-
porary world, alongside the promise of contribut-
ing to society and positive self-development lies the
challenge of overcoming loneliness and isolation.
This is because, in most developed and develop-
ing societies, older people are being marginalized
and pushed away to the peripheries of active social
functioning. Given the demographic trends, most
societies realize the importance of taking care of
their rising elderly populations and engaging them
in meaningful activities that are useful to them as
well as to society. Policies and civil society initia-
tives in many parts of the world are actively inno-
vating in the social welfare sector to create safety
nets for the elderly.
If the theoretical and research focus on later
adulthood years shifts to positive development,
many creative solutions may emerge. With them
will also emerge the need to create contexts and
opportunities that support positive growth through
the last decade of life. However, preparation for old
age must begin in the late 40s or early 50s to buffer
the effects of sudden shifts due to retirement and
Bh a ng aok a r 693
other changes in family life. Mentoring, volunteer-
ing, and civic engagement are possible avenues that
act as catalysts in the process of successful aging
and positive development. However, the trends for
these forms of civic engagement in the later years
across the world are uneven.
In developed countries, formal programs of
civic engagement are already in place, whereas civic
engagement in the developing world is still largely
informal. More research is required to identify
the patterns and suggest models of civic engage-
ment among the elderly in the developing world.
Similarly, data are inadequate about gender differ-
ences in volunteering in old age in the developing
world. Hence, we do not know if enough older
women are willing or able to volunteer in their
local communities. Similarly, knowledge about
sociocultural barriers to elderly women’s positive
development within and outside the family are
not fully explored. These gaps need to be filled in
order to chart policies or interventions in the devel-
oping world. This is especially important because
the number of elderly in the developing world is
growing steadily, and the tables may turn around
mid-century.
Nonattachment as a concept is important for
service and volunteering during old age. Most world
religions explain nonattachment as self-refinement
and the letting go of desires. This inward journey
is essentially spiritual and hence deemed necessary
for smooth passage into old age. Concepts of wis-
dom and balance within and outside the self are
important features of nonattachment. In the same
way, shifting from self-focused vision to service-
focused action is also a necessity.
Nonattachment is often related to liberation
and expansion of the self in the spiritual sense.
Service to others or society without attachment
or expectations facilitates the process of nonat-
tachment in the true sense. According to Hindu
Indian beliefs, nonattachment cannot be achieved
without the destruction of desire. This process of
destroying desire, even in the form of recognition
or fame, will pave the way for selfless, compas-
sionate service. Values of compassion and equa-
nimity are emphasized in the process of attaining
nonattachment.
Research evidence is inadequate on ideas of
nonattachment, especially those from the develop-
ing world. Further research in this area can offer
stronger explanations of links between commu-
nity leadership and nonattachment as internal and
external processes.
694 C omm u n i t y L e a de r s h i p a n d Non-At t ac h m e n t i n Lat e r A du lt ho od
Acknowledgments
The author would like to acknowledge the
inputs of Ms. Krishna Zaveri, Mr. Vijay Vasava,
and Ms. Niyati Pandya in reviewing literature for
this chapter.
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 C H A P T E R

43 Death and Bereavement in Later

Adulthood: Cultural Beliefs,
Behaviors, and Emotions
Paul C. Rosenblatt

Abstract
Writing at the intersection of developmental perspectives, ethnographic research, and bereavement
studies, the author explores cultural beliefs, behaviors, and emotions connected to the end of life,
dying, and death of elders. The chapter discusses the substantial differences across cultures in who
the elders are, their experiences with loss, their treatment and standing, and what are considered
good and bad deaths for them. The author speculates about what it means when elders in many
cultures think that their culture and its treatment of them have declined and examines cross-cultural
differences in grief and death rituals when an elder dies. And for the many cultures in which spirits
of the dead remain actively present in the world of the living, the author speculates about the
implications of this belief for survivors and researchers.
Key Words:  aging, culture, death, dying, elders, grief, mourning, spirits

In this chapter, I explore cultural beliefs and
practices surrounding old age and the deaths of
elders. Cross-culturally, who are the elders, and
what is their place in society? What do elders make
of how they are treated by those around them?
What is the impact on elders of the many deaths
they have mourned and of widowhood? For an elder
who is close to the end of life, what is a good death,
and what kind of care and support might she receive
from others in her culture? What does a death of
someone in later adulthood mean to family and
community members? How might family and com-
munity grieve the death of an elder and deal with it
ritually? And in cultures in which the spirits of the
dead affect or even interact with the living, what
goes on following an elder’s death in the relation-
ship of survivors with the deceased elder?
Focusing on death and bereavement as they
are linked to the lives of elders, this chapter, like
others in this book, challenges simple, totaliz-
ing conceptualizations of human development
that are made without sufficient attention to the
diversity of world cultures. Paying attention to
variations across cultures gives us a wider range of
phenomena to make sense of than is convention-
ally addressed in the academic literature on death
and bereavement, and the emic views that come
from these cultures can be taken as conceptual
challenges to many conventional social science
conceptualizations. At another level, anyone who
lives in a community like mine, where a hospital
physician or other worker might in one hour treat,
say, a Hmong from Laos, a Nuer from Sudan, a
Somali, an Ethiopian, a Mam speaking Mayan, a
Tibetan, and a Bhutanese, can benefit from being
knowledgeable about and respectful of cultural
differences in beliefs and practices related to death
and bereavement in old age.
Who Is an Elder?
When I was carrying out ethnographic research
on the island of Bali, Indonesia, in the 1970s, one
of my informants was described to me by two other
Balinese as the most evil man in south Bali. In

697
contrast to their usual Balinese smoothness, these
two men were visibly uncomfortable and almost
seemed physically ill when they talked about him.
And he did seem to be about as peripheral in the
community as a man could be. Part of it was that
he had never married, which meant that nobody
wanted their daughter, niece, or granddaughter
to marry him. And no woman wanted to risk the
shame, and perhaps danger, of being partnered with
him. He had for years operated a brothel, which
in Bali was considered extremely evil and a dread-
ful spiritual pollution of the community. He had
served a long jail term, off the island, for black mar-
ket currency manipulation, which also made him
inappropriate as a husband. Because nobody would
marry him, he was the senior unmarried member
of the warrior caste (most Balinese are Hindus) in
south Bali. And as the senior unmarried member
of the warrior caste, when the Indonesian govern-
ment called for citizens to resist an alleged com-
munist coup, he was in charge of organizing the
killings. Thousands of Balinese who were leftist,
of Chinese ethnic orientation, or who were singled
out for some other reason by the Indonesian mili-
tary were killed (Robinson, 1995). If people had
looked at this man with repulsion before the time
of great violence, his responsibility for so many
deaths made it even more certain that he would
never marry. When I knew him, he was in his 40s,
but because he had never married he had the sta-
tus of a child when it came to certain community
religious and political situations. Married teenag-
ers could participate in important religious services
and community discussions. He could not. So, he
had the prospect of entering chronological old age
with the ritual and community governance status
of a boy in his community. And that, for me, was
a lesson about possible disconnects cross-culturally
between chronological age and what might seem to
be age-related statuses and roles.
In general, who is an elder varies from culture
to culture (Frazier & Glascock, 2001). Life expec-
tancy varies widely, reflecting such factors as the
frequency of deaths from warfare, HIV/AIDS
and other diseases, starvation, ecological disas-
ters, local public health and medical resources,
and changes in the economy and land use that
undermine life chances. Even within countries
like the United States, with an average life expec-
tancy that is quite high, there are cultures with
a very low life expectancy. With life expectancy
varying widely, there will be people in their 50s,
40s, and even younger who are elder in the sense
698 De at h a n d Be r e av e m e n t i n Lat e r A du lt ho od
that there are few community members who are
older than they, and they often find themselves in
demanding leadership roles. To illustrate, a few
years ago, I worked with a graduate student from
a country that ranks near the bottom of World
Health Organization (2013) life expectancy data.
She was in her early 40s, but she was one of a small
group of living elders in a large kinship group. So,
in addition to all her work as a graduate student,
she frequently was in communication back home
doing the work of an elder, for example, trying to
resolve disputes, authorizing certain rituals, and
making judgments about how many cattle should
be given as part of a marriage contract or to right
a wrong.
But then elderhood in some cultures with a
short life expectancy is defined in terms that would
make a person who is in his or her 40s unlikely to
be fully an elder. For example, among the Gusii of
Kenya, high standing as an elder male would be
measured by the size of his cattle herd, the number
of people in his kingroup, and the establishment
by married sons of appropriate start-up households
(Okemwa, 2002). Few Gusii men in their 30s or
40s would have done well by those standards. But
then, being in one’s 30s or 40s may make one not
quite up to the job of elder in other ways. For exam-
ple, there are now quite a few cultures in which
the position of “elder” may be occupied by someone
who lacks the life experience, learning, knowledge,
and demeanor to do the job well. To illustrate,
when Busisiwe Nkosi sought permission from local
elders in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, to inter-
view widows in their communities for our study
of Zulu widows (Rosenblatt & Nkosi, 2007), she
encountered some “elders” who were in their 20s
and clueless about the relevant cultural issues and
etiquette. They had legitimate elder status because
of hereditary succession, but having the status did
not mean that they had the knowledge and experi-
ence to do the job well.
Across cultures, there are wide differences in
the culturally meaningful life events that mark
the transition to elderhood. The event marking the
transition is often a life cycle event, such as having
a child reach marriageable age (Rasmussen, 1997,
writing about the Tuareg of Niger) or the birth of
a first grandchild. But there are cultures in which
someone becomes what might be translated into
English as “elder” when the person is somehow
failing, for example, when the person becomes
dependent on younger family members (e.g., Shore,
1998, writing about Samoa).
 To complicate the discussion, I think cul-
tures have nothing like a constant form, so that
what went on, say, 50 years ago still goes on.
Consequently, the elders of today have almost
certainly grown up in and may still be oriented
toward a different cultural world than are the
younger people around them. Hence, elders may
have traversed and be traversing a different devel-
opmental course than younger people because the
culturally available developmental experiences
and the cultural resources and standards have
changed. The current elders may have grown up
in a different economy, kinship, and technologi-
cal world; may have been educated differently;
and may be more likely to live in rural and/or
regionally traditional locations. They may have
statuses, roles, and religious beliefs and practices
that are not particularly meaningful to those who
are younger than they. They may be treated differ-
ently by younger people as they approach death,
not only because they are older but also because
they are in a sense from a different world than
those who are younger.
Still, in many cultures, there is the concept and
role of “elder,” and the “elders” may be respected as
they were in the past or even respected more than
in the past (Kulchyski, McCaskill, & Newhouse,
1999, pp. xvi–xvii). What elders have to offer in
cultures where they are valued might include what
is considered wisdom in the culture, a knowledge
of cultural and community history, expert knowl-
edge of the local language(s), knowledge of who is
related in what ways to whom, knowledge of prec-
edents in decision situations, religious knowledge
and authority, and knowledge about important
practical matters such as agriculture and healing.
The elders may have control over property, and
that control may enable them to have considerable
influence. Their children may, as in South Korea,
have the moral and legal duty to care for them
(Prendergast, 2005, p. 45). And if younger people
in some cultures struggle to find help and cultural
and psychological anchors, even elders who may
seem quite overmatched by circumstances may be
turned to for help and deferred to. Elders are often
a source of needed labor (including, in cultures
devastated by HIV/AIDS and other scourges, care
of their dying adult children and their orphaned
grandchildren; see Moeller & Sotshongaye, 2002).
In parts of the world where population growth
has outstripped the capacity of the land and the
economy to support the current population, an
elderly family member with agricultural land and a
willingness to care for young grandchildren may be
very much appreciated (e.g., Sangree, 1997, writing
about the Tiriki of Kenya).
In many cultures, the elders people honor and
treat well are their parents and grandparents,
people who have been important in their lives
since birth. Thus, a central role in nurturing and
socialization seems often to be a powerful force in
maintaining respect and caring by younger family
and community members. However, there are cul-
tures where the comparatively high status of elders
seems to come primarily from the ways elders are
collectively calculating in using the comparative
advantages they have. As one illustration, Bruun
(2009) wrote about the elders in a Tswana village
in Botswana using their crucial roles as sources of
knowledge and wisdom at funerals in ways that
enhanced and legitimated their power and status
in the community.
Although elders in many societies seem to be
respected, valued, and treated well, there are societ-
ies in which elders are treated less well. They may,
for example, be respected by some but also mocked
(e.g., Shore, 1998, writing about Samoa; Freeman,
2007, writing about the Bamana of Mali; and this
was my own observation doing field work in south
Bali, Indonesia, in the 1970s, with most disrespect
coming from teenage males). Also, where economy,
politics, technology, and much else have changed
markedly, for example in South Africa, much of
the traditional basis of elder respect has been lost
(Moeller & Sotshongaye, 2002, writing about the
Zulu), and this means, among many things, that
the young do not want to hear much that the elders
might reminisce about concerning ill-treatment by
whites in the Apartheid era (Van Dongen, 2005).
So, elders in various South African cultures com-
plain about not receiving respect from young peo-
ple and family members (e.g., Sagner, 2002, writing
about urban Xhosa; Moeller & Sotshongaye, 2002,
writing about urban Zulu).
In fact, there are powerful forces in some cul-
tures pushing toward ambivalence or even negativ-
ity with regard to elders. Elders can be recognized
as a draw on scarce resources (e.g., Sagner, 2002,
writing about urban Xhosa of South Africa). Their
knowledge and wisdom can seem irrelevant in a
rapidly changing political, economic, residential,
and technological environment. And elders may
make enemies by using their power and influence
to exploit others, to take resources from others, and
to make decisions and choices that somehow limit
or restrict the lives of others.
R o s e n bl at t 699
Elders Who Think the Past Was
Much Better than the Present
Elders in some societies are described as saying
that, in important ways, the present is not as good
as the past. I assume that, from their perspectives,
they are right. Despite the improvement of living
standards and life expectancy for billions of people
in the world, in many communities there is much
that has declined. There may be declines resulting
from climate change, warfare, disease, water short-
age, neoliberal trade policies, government land
use policies that force farmers off their land, and
structural adjustment programs that undermine
public services, including those supporting health
and education. There also may be declines due to
the cumulative effect of past and/or current colo-
nialism; the destruction of soil, forest, fishing, and
other resources; population growth; forced migra-
tion; widespread possession and use of deadly
weapons; the breakdown of traditional social con-
trols; and much more.
Also, elders may be concerned that, by the moral-
ity and standards they learned growing up, things
are bad (e.g., Bruun, 2009, writing about a village
in Botswana; Sagner, 2002, writing about urban
Xhosa of South Africa). Compared to the past, for
example, people may dress in ways the elders con-
sider immoral, may have lost values of community
sharing, may observe a sexual morality that allows
what elders consider an immoral amount of contact
between the genders in public, and young men and
women may violate the sexual morality that elders
hold to by having sexual relationships without mar-
riage. One could take any of these changes as merely
matters of generational differences in morality. But
there are practical concerns for the elders who are
entangled in those differences. If couples have
sexual relationships and conceive children without
being married, that may mean that an elder’s son
does not have a wife and children to help to care for
the elder. If community cooperation is not valued as
much as in the past, that means there is a narrower
range of people who might provide help to a needy
elder. Also, in cultures where morality violations are
understood to lead to supernatural forces causing
harm to families and communities, what is seen
as immoral may have real and unpleasant conse-
quences. For example, for the Tswana of Botswana
(Bruun, 2009, p. 14), the moral failings of younger
adults are seen by elders as responsible for drought
and cattle deaths.
But then, too, in some societies, elders are
occasionally or even often badly treated. They
700 De at h a n d Be r e av e m e n t i n Lat e r A du lt ho od
may be marginalized, isolated, and neglected by
family (e.g., Kwan, 1995, writing about Hong
Kong Chinese). They may be victims of violence
(Ferreira & Makoni, 2002, writing about urban
South Africa; Nkosi & Daniels, 2014, writing
about South Africa) and neglect by family mem-
bers who traditionally would have been responsible
for their care and help (Bruun, 2009, writing about
a Tswana village in Botswana; Sagner, 2002, writ-
ing about urban Xhosa of South Africa). Neglect
by family members is a serious problem in societies
where family support is the only support for the
elderly (Cattell, 1997b); their social security, their
assisted living, and their nursing home care come
from family. However, because people in a com-
munity are aware of that, in cultures where the
expectation is that there will be family support for
the needy elderly, there may be gossip about fami-
lies that neglect their elders (e.g., Rasmussen, 1997,
p. 137, writing about the Tuareg of Niger). And
that gossip may have the power to reduce or stop
the neglect.
But then, in some cultures where elders com-
plain that things are not as good now as in the past,
the evidence in support of their claims is not clear.
For example, among the Na/’hoansi of Botswana
(Rosenberg, 1997), elders complain about not
receiving family care and support when they actu-
ally do receive such care and support. And Bruun
(2009), who is cited earlier as saying that in vil-
lage Botswana the elders think things have become
much worse than in the past found in a report from
research done in the 1930s of a neighboring Tswana
group that the elders even back then were saying
that many young adults no longer treat their elders
with much respect (Schapera, 1940, pp. 269–270).
That could be taken to mean that, at least some
of the time, things may not have declined objec-
tively but that there is something in being an elder
that makes it seem that things have declined. Then
there is the question of what to make of complaints
that things have become worse when perhaps they
have not. Rosenberg (1997) suggested that among
the possibilities is that, although elders now receive
support like elders did in the past, the range of peo-
ple providing support is less than in the past, and
the elders see that narrower range of supporters as a
sign that many people are stingy rather than help-
ful with regard to needy or deserving elders. Also,
the elders might complain as a counter to whatever
resource-hoarding inclinations those who care for
them have. But in reality, the past was not neces-
sarily good for the Na/’hoansi. Rosenberg pointed
out, for example, that in the past there were times
when a family group could not provide the needed
care and support of a frail elder and so the life of
the elder was cut short.
Elder Grief over People Who
Have Died Before Them
By later adulthood, elders will have experienced
the deaths of many people who were important
in their lives (Hansson & Stroebe, 2007, p. 157;
Moss, Moss, & Hansson, 2001), and however
much they may seem to an observer to be living
an ordinary life, eating, working if they can, con-
versing with others, seeming to enjoy themselves
at least some of the time, they may also feel grief
at times or perhaps even more or less all the time,
for one, many, or all of their losses. This line of
thought is consistent with continuing bonds the-
ory in the bereavement field, the theoretical posi-
tion that people do not “get over” grief, that even
though it may transform, it also continues (Klass,
Silverman, & Nickman, 1996). Thus, bereave-
ment is arguably an important element in the lives
of elders.
In societies with comparatively long lifespans, it
may be more difficult for an observer to recognize
that an elder is carrying a grief load because some of
the signs of grieving and some of the signs of hav-
ing a body that is in old age are similar (Hansson &
Stroebe, 2007, pp. 165–168); for example, disrupted
social engagement, disrupted sleep, increased remi-
niscences about the past, and decreased atten-
tion to daily chores. Plus, an elderly person who
seems depressed may be mistakenly assumed to be
depressed by health issues and incapacities rather
than losses (Hansson & Stroebe 2007, p. 82). Then,
too, elder grief may differ from the grief of some-
one younger (Hansson & Stroebe, 2007, p. 156;
Moss, Moss, & Hansson, 2001; Rosenblatt, 1983,
pp. 118–119). Elders may benefit from having
learned through experiences with previous losses
to deal with thoughts about personal mortality, to
know what is culturally expected in bereavement,
and to have beliefs, ego defenses, emotional con-
trol techniques, ways of recruiting support, and
narrative constructing practices in place in dealing
with a loss. Conversely, having experienced mul-
tiple losses can lead to problems for an elder who
may have lost people who were not only of primary
emotional significance, but who were also provid-
ers of necessary assistance. That means they may
have less resilience and fewer social and economic
resources in dealing with any particular loss or the
accumulation of losses (Hansson & Stroebe, 2007,
pp. 155–158).
Consider elders who are widowed. Around the
world, there are more widows than widowers for
many reasons, including a common pattern of older
men marrying younger women (Cattell, 1997a).
One might assume that becoming a widow would
be emotionally difficult and that a widow would
grieve long and intensely for her dead husband.
And that is certainly so for some widows. But,
not uncommonly, practical concerns are mixed
with grief for the lost spouse or are dominant (e.g.,
Rosenblatt & Nkosi, 2007, writing about Zulu
widows in South Africa). Thus, a widow may be
grieving as much or more for the material losses
that accompany her husband’s death. That is, wid-
owhood not infrequently involves a loss of material
support, and so widowhood may usher in a time
of greater neediness. In fact, in some cultures, a
widow may lose access to her home, farm, gardens,
and other property as they revert to ownership
by the family of her deceased husband (Cattell,
1997a). Thus, widowhood can be a time of hunger,
poverty, and social marginality (Cattell, 1997a).
Conversely, for some widows, the husband’s loss
can be in some ways a positive thing. The husband
may have been an economic burden, may have been
violent toward her, may have been a threat to infect
her with sexually transmitted diseases, may have
been disloyal, and may have burdened her with care
for and subsistence support of him. So, the hus-
band’s death may be a release from difficulties. And,
for some women, widowhood is a time of greater
autonomy, greater control of household resources,
and greater control of the fruits of personal labor.
Thus, elderly widows among the Abaluyia of west-
ern Kenya may be glad to have control of their own
home and to be free of the obligation to feed a man
(Cattell, 1997a). Plus, either because she is a widow
or because she is postmenopausal, an older widow
may be free of onerous restrictions that younger
women must deal with—for example, the need
to have permission from a male relative to travel
(Cattell, 1997a).
From another perspective, elders can be
expected because of their history of losses to
have a private world of reverie inhabited largely
by people who have died and to feel continuing
bonds (Klass et al., 1996) with many of the peo-
ple whose deaths they have experienced. Possibly,
those bonds can be at times reassuring, ground-
ing, and a source of good feelings, but they can
also be burdensome. There are cultures in which
R o s e n bl at t 701
people are painfully aware that their environ-
ment is filled with reminders (places, things,
songs, events, people, etc.) that evoke memories,
thoughts and feelings about, and longing for the
dead—for example, the Rauto of New Britain
(Maschio, 1992). Rauto take their remember-
ing, longing, and sadness as positive reminders
of what they lost emotionally and materially, as
links between the generations, and as acknowl-
edgment of aspects of the self that have been lost
as a result of deaths. That may seem familiar to
someone from the United States or Britain, but
there is much about Rauto grieving that would
not be familiar. For example, there are expres-
sions of rage, forms of bereavement chanting, and
cultural logics concerning death and the dead
that would seem alien.
End-of-Life Care for Elders
In some cultures, typical elders near the end of
life reside in the midst of an extended family that
includes their children, children-in-law, grandchil-
dren, and grandchildren-in-law. One or a small
number of kin may have primary care responsi-
bilities for them, but most people who are around
them may nurture them in some way. There are
also elders in some cultures who have nobody to
care for them and, in fact, are neglected and even
tormented (Counts & Counts, 1991, writing about
the Kaliai of New Britain).
Care for elders is in many cultures more a
task of women than men. In modern Japan, for
example, there are strong societal pressures for a
middle-aged woman to care for her elderly par-
ents or parents-in-law even if she has a full-time
job and other demanding family responsibili-
ties (Lock, 1998). But, in the United States,
even though people in some ethnic groups—for
example, African Americans—are more likely
than people in others to take care of infirm elders
in a home situation (e.g., Rosenblatt & Wallace,
2005; Turner, Wallace, Anderson, & Bird, 2004),
there is quite an elaboration of institutional set-
tings in which people other than family care for
elderly who need such care. One might assume
that financially well-off and busy people from
countries where there are economic resources to
develop institutional care for infirm elders would
want such care for their elders and for themselves
when they are elders. But my own anecdotal con-
tact with academics from Thailand, South Korea,
and other economies that in principle could
afford to develop such institutions is that they
702 De at h a n d Be r e av e m e n t i n La t e r A du lt ho od
would feel quite uncomfortable with relegating
elders to the care of strangers or with themselves
being relegated to such care. However, a study
of Chinese immigrants to California showed
that there can be cultural routes to legitimating
care of elder family members by outsiders (Lan,
2002), for example, by incorporating the outsid-
ers into the family as fictive kin.
Meanings of Death for the Elderly
For elders near the end of life, there may be
some meanings of death that cross-culturally
are not so variable—perhaps death as the end-
ing of physical pain. But there are also meanings
of death for the elderly that are present in some
cultures and not others. For example, in Korea,
the meaning of death for elderly women includes
elevating their status so that they can enter the
world of men (Shin, Cho, & Kim, 2005), which
means that only after dying can they join the men
of the group into which they married and become
ancestors (provided they have borne a son, lived a
good life, and met other standards of excellence).
Also, in Korea, a good death is seen for men and
women as one occurring in old age (after having
been married and had a son), surrounded by fam-
ily and friends, and in comfortable surroundings,
rather than dying suddenly (Prendergast, 2005,
pp. 100–104). And, to take another example,
for the Lusi-Kaliai of New Britain (Counts &
Counts, 1991), there are not many good deaths
because most deaths are seen to be untimely and
caused by sorcery, but a few elderly people expe-
rience a good death, which is seen as quiet and
acquiesced to by the person dying. In addition,
another part of a good death for the Lusi-Kaliai
is the settling, prior to death, of personal social
and economic affairs, the balancing of debts and
obligations, and the severing of certain relation-
ships. A Lusi-Kaliai who has done this is seen as
socially dead months or even years before physi-
cal death, and the family and community may
even hold the mortuary ceremony for the person
while the person is alive and very aware. So, there
are cultures in which a good death can happen
before one is biologically dead.
Grief Following the Death of an Elder
As I implied earlier in this chapter, people may
have many reasons to grieve an elder’s death. The
survivors may feel the loss, for example, of the
wisdom of the elders, their curing powers, knowl-
edge of kinship relationships, and knowledge of
the physical ecology (e.g., Rosenberg, 1997, writ-
ing about the Ju/’hoansi of Botswana). There are
cultures in which elders are intermediaries in deal-
ing with the ancestors (e.g., Bruun, 2009, writing
about a village in Botswana), and the ancestors are
important because they are part of the hierarchi-
cal organization of social life and because they can
bring benefits and possibly harm. And a death can
also be upsetting because of its material conse-
quences, for example, that one has to pay expensive
funeral costs (Wellenkamp, 1991, writing about
the Toraja of Indonesia). So, the deaths of elders
may entail losses of many sorts, including losses of
valued leadership, help, knowledge, practical con-
nections with the ancestors, and economic losses.
Those who have been closest to the deceased
emotionally and who may have had the greatest role
in providing care at the end of life may have com-
plex feelings about their loss. They may grieve, but
they also may be quite angry and upset at a spouse
or parent who, by dying, abandoned them. They
may be angry and frustrated about the demands the
deceased put on them at the end of life. They may
struggle to come to terms with unfinished relation-
ship or emotional business with the deceased. Their
grieving may include elements of guilt over not
having had the appropriate feelings near the end
of the elder’s life, over having continuing resent-
ments and anger, over having accounts that need
to be settled, over relief that the elder has died, and
much more. Among other things, these emotional
complexities mean that it is problematic to call the
survivors or the deceased “loved ones” or to assume
that what they feel is simply sadness.
Grieving is inevitably entangled in culture. The
emotions that people experience and express when
someone has died are diverse across cultures and,
even within a culture, often seem to be complex,
changing, and not necessarily easy for people to
put to words in their own language, let alone for
anyone to translate those words into English. One
might say that following a death people commonly
feel grief—in which sadness may be a dominant or
common feeling, but sadness may be blended with
other feelings, for example, those that could be
glossed in English as anger, fear, anxiety, shame,
guilt, or loneliness. And sadness may be blended
with feelings that have no translation into English
(Rosenblatt, 2001; 2008).
In fact, there seem to be differences across cul-
tures in what is considered a normal emotional
reaction following a loss, how strongly people
express emotions in public, the emotions they say
they feel and that they display, how long their pub-
lic and private grieving seem to last or are expected
to last, and how much their grieving makes them
(or mourning rituals require them to be) less than
functional at their relationship and subsistence
tasks. There are quite probably differences across
cultures in the emotion schemes people use in
deciding what is going on when they feel depressed,
cry, or otherwise react to a loss in ways that in the
United States might be framed as grief (Shweder,
1994). There are also substantial cross-cultural
differences in what a death means to people, how
they explain a death, how much (if at all) they feel
responsible for a death, and the emotions they talk
about (Charmaz & Milligan, 2006; Currer, 2001;
Rosenblatt, 2001; 2012; Wierzbicka, 2003). People
in different cultures grieve differently (Rosenblatt,
2008; 2012). That does not mean that any particu-
lar person in a culture grieves in full accord with
the cultural pattern (Hollan, 1995). Instead, people
grieve in ways that may make selective use of the
various cultural elements that are available to them
and that are related to grieving.
Following the dominant standards of the field of
psychology, we may write as though grief is more or
less the same for every human. But it is a mistake to
use the standards that develop out of research and
writing derived from studies in a particular culture
to evaluate the grieving of people from diverse cul-
tures. We risk misunderstanding people, and, of
course, applying our cultural standards to people
from other cultures means we are not understand-
ing them in their own terms, not being respectful
of their culture-based realities and experiences, and
not advancing research and theory as well as we
might if we treated their ways of explaining things
as the basis for alternative theoretical schemes.
Even the vocabulary we use in writing and speak-
ing about grief represents one particular culture’s
set of categories and ways of organizing knowledge
concerning grief.
Death Rituals and Grieving
In some cultures, death rituals are more elabo-
rate for elderly people who have occupied impor-
tant roles in their kin group and community than
for other people (Rosenblatt, Walsh, & Jackson,
1976, p. 8). One could take the elaboration of ritu-
als for certain elderly in some cultures as a mark of
their status and importance, of how many people
they were connected to, and perhaps of how much
they were loved and/or feared. But the elabora-
tion also may stem from the need for transfers of
R o s e n bl at t 703
important roles and property. That is, during the
course of funeral ceremonies, there may be a formal
transfer of ritual, political, or other authority from
the deceased to one or more others, and there may
also be formal transfer of control of property—per-
haps land and livestock, perhaps ritual objects, per-
haps a dwelling, and even, in some cultures, wives.
A central part of formal funeral ceremonies in
some cultures is the definition of the cause of death.
In contrast to or in parallel with medical under-
standings of the cause of a death may be the estab-
lishment of a cause that centers on the malevolence
of a human or spirit-world agent. For example the
Kwanga of Papua New Guinea carry out elaborate
rituals to determine who caused a death (Brison,
1992), with the idea that even for an accident or
something that medical science takes as a medical
cause of death there may be a malevolent someone
who caused the accident or the fatal illness.
In the majority of cultures, funeral ceremo-
nies and mourning practices are spread out over a
substantial amount of time, often a year or more
(Rosenblatt et al., 1976). Typically, there is a final
funeral ceremony that ends the formal mourn-
ing. Some bereaved people may resist ending their
mourning after the final ceremony (e.g., Maschio,
1992, writing about the Rauto of New Britain),
perhaps because of a combination of still feeling
grief, feeling loyalty to the deceased, not wanting
to appear too eager to end their mourning, and
not wanting to go on to what would be next in
their lives after ending their mourning. But then
there are social and internal psychological pres-
sures to end mourning. Some people are simply
relieved to end their onerous mourning practices
(e.g., Rosenblatt & Nkosi, 2007, writing about
Zulu widows who typically observe a number of
severely limiting and difficult practices for a year
following the death of a husband). And some peo-
ple would feel shame if they continued to mourn
for an inappropriately long time (Maschio, 1992,
writing about the Rauto of New Britain). Shame
is, in fact, entangled in grief and mourning issues
in a number of cultures (Rosenblatt, 2010). People
may feel shame over continuing to mourn when
they are expected by others to end their mourning,
but they might also feel shame over such matters
as not continuing their mourning, the fact of the
death itself, what they perceive to be their neglect
or lack of appreciation of the person who died, or
their incapacity to keep the deceased alive.
From another perspective, if we think of
mourning practices as shaping the grief process and
704 De at h a n d Be r e av e m e n t i n Lat e r A du lt ho od
in some ways recruiting support for the bereaved,
there are many bereaved cross-culturally who,
because of migration, warfare, economic chaos,
or other disruptions, cannot engage in the proper
mourning practices. For example, Cambodians
who were refugees from the slaughter of a very
substantial proportion of their country’s popula-
tion often were in no position to carry out proper
mourning rituals or even to know what happened
to family members who there was every reason to
believe had died (Boehnlein, 1987). Bodies were
often in unknown locations, Buddhist priests who
were central to funeral practices were among those
most likely to be killed, and the violent deaths of
many relatives were a challenge in carrying out
proper religious rituals because death by violence is
believed to block a good reincarnation. So, added to
the grieving of many Cambodians over the deaths
of people in their lives and over terrible things they
experienced directly might be sadness, guilt, and
other discomforts over not carrying out the proper
or desired rituals.
Relationships with Deceased Elders
Perhaps any death of someone important in
one’s life is a loss of aspects of one’s self. One may
feel that one has lost the sharing of memories with
the other, the shared interaction patterns, the future
one anticipated having with the other, the roles and
selves one had uniquely in relationship to the other,
the help the other provided, and perhaps the possi-
bility of making amends, apologizing, and settling
scores. But for many people in the world, the death
of another does not end relationship, interaction,
or the active presence and influence of that other.
Consistent with continuing bonds theory (Klass
et al., 1996), there are rich ethnographic accounts
of the experience of continuing relationship from
around the world, but even from the United States,
Great Britain, and other economically developed
countries there is considerable evidence that many
bereaved people continue to maintain a relation-
ship with the deceased (e.g., Hallam, Hockey, &
Howarth, 1999; Klass & Walter, 2001).
Some research descriptions of relationships
between the living and the dead could be taken
as accounts of one-sided engagements, in which a
bereaved person acts as though the deceased could
receive communications but nothing comes back.
Similarly, a bereaved person may continue routines
(e.g., cooking for two) that were part of life while the
other was alive. She or he may celebrate the birthday
of the deceased and other days that had meaning
because of the deceased. She or he may continue to
hold on to, take care of, and even cherish the posses-
sions of the deceased. She or he may delay, perhaps
forever, notifying corporations and other entities
that send mail addressed to the deceased that the
other is no longer alive. She or he may continue to
be guided by the moral standards and values the
deceased espoused (e.g., Rosenblatt & Yang, 2004,
writing about how Korean adult offspring can feel
strong obligations, as part of their grieving, to honor
the values of their deceased mother). All of that
might go on without any signs that the deceased is
functional and aware of what is going on. But then,
many bereaved people in the United States, Great
Britain, and other economically developed societ-
ies may also experience sensory impressions of the
deceased. That is, they may, for example, see and
hear the deceased spouse.
Although rationalist versions of Western culture
would not grant the dead independent standing, in
most cultures, the deceased are understood to con-
tinue to exist as spirits or in some other form and
to have agency in the world of the living (Hallam
et al., 1999; Rosenblatt et al., 1976, pp. 51–53).
Typically, the spirits that the living report hav-
ing contact with are people who, when alive, they
knew well (Rosenblatt et al., 1976, pp. 55–56). Of
course, grieving people may maintain psychologi-
cal and emotional links with their memories of a
deceased loved one and with the identities they had
in relationship to the deceased. But what I am say-
ing is that, for most people in the world, the dead
are experienced as still functioning in some plane
of existence and as acting in the world of the living.
So, a case can be made for what Shweder (1986)
called “divergent rationalities,” with people who
live in a world in which spirits are real functioning
with different rationalities from those who deny the
reality of spirits. As Shweder argued, no rationality
can step outside of its own terms and assumptions
in order to evaluate itself and alternative rationali-
ties with something like neutral objectivity. So,
I would say that no matter what one’s rationality, it
would be best not to reject, on the basis of “scien-
tific” arguments, the rationalities of people who are
sure spirits exist and act in the world of the living.
I think it far more sensible to accept, appreciate,
and try to understand the rationalities of those who
believe in spirits. Also, for anyone who believes that
the rationalities in which the spirit world is a given
come from cultures very different from what one
finds in the United States, I must say that, in my
experience in interviewing hundreds of bereaved
people in the United States, it has not been uncom-
mon for a bereaved spouse, parent, offspring, or
grandchild to report seeing, hearing, or otherwise
sensing the presence of the deceased; to report
receiving communication from the deceased; and
to report other manifestations of the actual pres-
ence of the deceased. Sometimes those contacts,
when occurring soon after death, seem to have been
in the form of something like negotiation between
the living person and the dead—for example, about
what the new widow wants from her deceased hus-
band and how she will respect what he worked for
while alive. And that echoes what is reported from
some cultures (e.g., the Sora of India, Vitebsky,
1992) where initial funeral ceremonies include
some sort of negotiation between living and dead
about, say, the meaning of the death and the future
relationship between the person who has died and
those who are still alive.
The deceased (elders or not) who are experienced
by the living as acting in the world of the living
may be thought of as loving or protective pres-
ences, but they also may be considered frighten-
ing and dangerous (Klass, 1999; Rosenblatt et al.,
1976, pp. 58–62; Vitebsky, 1992, writing about
the Sora of India). They may be seen as dangerous,
for example, because they want the living to die
and join them, because they have a score to settle
with the living, or because as spirits they will pun-
ish those who violate certain cultural standards.
To illustrate, for a Taiwanese Chinese widow, the
spirit of a husband who in life was benevolent may
make great trouble, for example, if there is some
unfinished business to settle (Hsu, Kahn, & Hsu,
2002); but then widows are not helpless in dealing
with possibly troublesome spirits of dead husbands.
They may, for example, burn special spirit money
or may consult with spirit mediums who specialize
in relations between the living and the dead. But a
deceased husband in Taiwan may also be a protec-
tive and caring presence.
The dead also may need the living, or at least
certain of the living, in order to be treated prop-
erly in death, to become properly honored by fam-
ily and community members who are still alive, to
become fully and properly dead, or to move onto
the path in the spirit world that the dead should
travel. For example, in Korea, a dead person cannot
become an ancestor unless she or he has a living son
to provide food offerings, a proper grave site, and
the proper ceremonies (Prendergast, 2005, p. 97).
Among the Tana Toraja of Indonesia (Adams,
1993), a dead person’s spirit is doomed never to
R o s e n bl at t 705
make it to the land of the souls if the person’s fam-
ily does not carry out proper funeral ceremonies.
For similar reasons, among the Sora of India, elders
whose children have converted to Christianity fear
that, in death, their spirits will be “forgotten” and
neglected by those children who will refuse to talk
with them or feed them (Vitebsky, 2008).
Related to the view of the dead needing cer-
tain things from the living, in Chuuk state in
Micronesia (Dernbach, 2005), just as the living
have to learn to accept the fact of a death, the dead
have to learn to be dead, and the learning is accom-
plished by some spirits through episodes of possess-
ing living relatives (to give comfort and guidance
and to deliver important messages) or perhaps
through communication with the living via dreams
or Ouija boards. The possession or communication
satisfies the longings of the newly dead spirits to
comfort, be close to, make peace among, and oth-
erwise help kin, while at the same time establishing
for them that they are spirits and no longer alive.
Sometimes the possession or multiple possessions
around the same time show that the spirits may be
in strong disagreement about certain matters, so,
for Chuuk, the spirit world is not a place without
disagreements and conflict. At any rate, as the spir-
its of recent dead learn to be spirits and find their
place in the spirit world, they become progressively
less in contact with the living.
In the thinking and experience of people in
many cultures, the dead, with the passage of time,
typically become less interested in the world of the
living, less likely to act in the world of the living,
and more likely to be physically and spiritually
distant from the living (Rosenblatt et al., 1976,
pp. 63–65). Thus, as time passes, the dead may
communicate less, be less feared, have a narrower
range of roles in relationship to the living, and per-
haps may become more benign.
There is also the potential for survivors to con-
tinue to be loyal to the desires, wishes, and values of
a deceased elder. One can see this line of thinking
in theories about debts to the deceased (Barner &
Rosenblatt, 2008), which can be traced at least back
to theorizing by Marcel Mauss (1990). Whether or
not survivors have any sense of the deceased being
a presence in their lives or having the potential to
someday call them to account, people may still
have a sense that some actions benefit the dead and
some harm them. Fisher (2001) argued that people
who die may be seen by survivors as still having
a stake in the world. For example, if a deceased
elder wanted family members to work together
706 De at h a n d Be r e av e m e n t i n La t e r A du lt ho od
cooperatively and in harmony, the surviving fam-
ily members may continue to respect what the
deceased wanted because the wants of the deceased
elder are still meaningful to them. It would feel dis-
loyal to turn their backs on those wants.
Communication from and with dead elders is,
in many cultures, typically direct. But in some cul-
tures, the communication is mediated by shamans,
spiritualists, dream interpreters, and other third
parties (e.g., the Sora of India, Vitebsky, 1992).
A rationalist observer might think that there is no
reality at all to such mediated communication, that
the communication comes out of the mind of the
mediator and the scripts available in the culture
for such communication. But for the living who
communicate with deceased elders via some sort of
mediation, the communication may seem totally
authentic and be taken very seriously.
To complicate matters, in some cultures, there
are elders who are still alive but who are considered
to be transitioning out of the world of the living
and into the world of spirits and ancestors, and
they may be treated in ways that, from an outside
view, seem neglectful. For example, Barker (1997)
described the situation of the decrepit elderly on
the island of Niue in Polynesia. Elderly Niueans
who seemed close to death, particularly if they were
seen as having substantial power, were neglected by
others. In part, they were seen as being drawn into
the world of the dead by spirits already there, and
that made them in a sense obsolete in the world of
the living. Plus, there was too much risk for others
in dealing with someone who had the potential to
draw on spiritual forces to contaminate the living.
Niueans respect and admire their elders and grieve
when an elder dies, but they also try to avoid con-
tamination from the spiritual world that a decrepit
elder is in and in contact with.
Where Might Scholarship Go from Here?
A cultural perspective is welcomed in uneasy
ways by developmentalists (Modell, 1996), and the
reverse is also true—a developmental perspective
does not necessarily fit neatly in a situation where
scholars think in terms of culture. Developmental
thinking encourages us to generalize across the spe-
cies; a cultural perspective encourages us to attend
to the particularities of cultural meanings, under-
standings, and contexts. So, one place where schol-
arship might go from here is to advance the uneasy
dialogue between the two ways of thinking. In a
sense, each perspective challenges the other to ask
questions and attend to matters that do not make
sense, but, in that attending, there may be new and
interesting things discovered.
I also vote for developing conceptions of devel-
opment (in general as well as for the end of life)
based on the cultural understandings, vocabulary,
belief systems, and the like of peoples from cultures
where thinking about development is very differ-
ent from what is standard in psychological and
social science studies of development. Suggesting
this comes from a sense that, to a substantial
extent, psychology and social science conceptions
of human development and the research data that
provide most of the support for these conceptions
come from a relatively narrow range of cultures.
It could be very informative to challenge conven-
tional views of development and the language for
expressing those views with views and languages
from specific other cultures. For example, let’s see
where we can get to with a Hindu Indian concep-
tual framework for development based on Hindu
Indian beliefs, language, and understanding of
development (see Chakkarath, 2005, for prelimi-
nary ideas of where such work might lead). Or,
let’s explore how to study and make sense of the
development of the dead from the perspectives of
cultures in which the dead continue to grow and
change.
There also is a great need for additional psycho-
logically attuned ethnographic work in diverse cul-
tures. Although I have cited a number of valuable
ethnographic resources, the scattered studies that
are relevant provide illustrations and preliminary
ideas, not the firmer foundation that would be
provided by a large literature. Also, research in the
United States on elder grief is not plentiful (Moss
et al., 2001), and there is even less ethnographic
work on elder grief in other cultures. Nor is there
a strong literature on elders as would-be ancestors
or on survivor relationships with the spirits of their
deceased ancestors.
Another place for scholarship to go is to explore
how practitioners use chapters like this and what
the consequences are of the various ways of using
such chapters. I imagine practitioners could read
my chapter as a general guide to how to deal with
elders from exotic cultures and their families at
the end of life and how to understand and per-
haps deal with the survivors after the elder dies.
But I think a different kind of reading is prefer-
able. As Gunaratnam (2008) has argued, the idea
of cultural competence gained through reading or
verbal instruction from cross-cultural “experts”
may make trouble in dealing with people who are
ethnically and culturally different from the practi-
tioner. The general ideas in readings like this are,
I think, something like possibilities or hunches.
Cultures and people are complex, so simple gener-
alizations are risky to apply in practice. It is much
better to find ways to engage in genuine communi-
cation with someone who is ethnically or culturally
different, to learn what they are willing and able to
communicate about their beliefs, experiences, ways
of thinking, and understandings. So, eventually,
I would hope, the day will come when we can offer
frameworks, and our facts will be supplemented by
a chapter on how to interact sensitively and respect-
fully with diverse others about issues related to
aging, the elderly, the end of life, and bereavement.
Perhaps what is needed most of all is a language
and a system for thinking that captures the com-
plexity, diversity, subtlety, fluidity of thoughts and
reactions, and other aspects of life and death that
we miss while working toward simple generaliza-
tions, an organized written presentation of material
that satisfies the canons of writing scholarly mate-
rial, and all with a specific language and a specific
culture’s framing of things.
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R o s e n bl at t 709
 INDEX
A effect of values on self- and worldview,
Abaluyia people of Kenya, widowhood
among,€701
Abelsson, J.,€512
acculturation
“acculturation gap,”€415
adolescents in immigrant families,
414–416
among transnational families,€52–53
complications of,€53–56
dissonant acculturation, 663–664
and family disruption,€346
acculturative stress,€52–53
activity theory,€203
Adamopoulos, J.,€344
adher-awastha, Hindu Indian concept
of€midlife,€641
Adjaye,€D.,€62
Adler, P.€A. & P.,€434
adolescence
attachment and well-being,€416
autonomous-related self in, 416–417
autonomy and relatedness,€419
changes in dress and appearance, 329,
335,€337
definition of,€358
“emerging adolescence,”€338
global perspective on, 420–421
memories of among U.€S.€and Dutch
adults,€627
need for cultural perspective,
411–412
need for developmental
perspective,€412
relationships with siblings and roman-
tic partners,€418
social vs. biological,€328
terminology and key referents,
441–443
time with family vs. others, 417–418
transition into emerging adulthood,
488–489
See also adolescent transition
rituals,€330
See also “youth€phase”
Adolescent Apprentice contract
and protection against child labor
practices, 458,€459
adolescent development
culture as organizing factor, 379,€389
effect of moral purpose on self- and
worldview, 383–385,€390
381–383,€389
effects of religious purpose on self- and
worldview, 385–387,€390
and global concerns in adolescent
health, 357–358
narratives and the politics of identity,
400–404
relationship among values, morals, and
religious orientation, 387–389,€390
self-views of adolescents, 379–380
universal vs. culture-specific processes,
378, 390,€391
worldviews of adolescents, 380–381
adolescent€health
examples in India, 365–366
interventions and preventative mea-
sures, 371–372,€373
mental health, 369–371,€373
and models of adolescent development,
357–358
sexual and reproductive health,
366–368, 371,€373
sociocultural context, 358–365
adolescents
acculturative stress,€52–53
autonomy and relatedness, values
of,€389
autonomy and relatedness in immi-
grant families, 414–416
biracial and bicultural,€55
child labor practices in Brazil, 458–459
child marriages among, 360–361,
361,€366
children, having one's own,€383
citizen children,€48,€50
civic identity among,€472
commercial sexual exploitation of,
462–464
early sexual activity among,€366
educational status worldwide,€364
effects of immigration,€49
effects of large-scale social change,€342
engaged parenting of, 344–345
global and local identity,€33–34
global concerns faced by, 360,€362
globalization, repercussions of,€30,€36
global urban youth culture,€56
group identity, 388–389
identity formation, 237–238,€397
immigrant youth, outcomes of, 46,
414,€415
implications of Internet use,€30–31
informed consent in research,€17
instrumental parentification,€461
Internet and practice of
self-mutilation,€30
language and positioning of
identity,€402
literacy rates among, 439, 440,€440
marriage in transnational families,€55
and moral reasoning, 240–242
moral renewal at adolescence,
230–231,€234
narratives of homelessness, 402–403
narratives of sexual identity, 403–404
rising population worldwide, 356, 357,
358,€359
self- and worldviews of, 378, 379–381
self-regulation among, 383, 389,€420
social contexts of moral reasoning,
244,€245
“third-culture kids,” 34, 35,€36,€55
transition rituals around the world,
327–328
use of inner dialogue,€35–36
See also adolescent transition rituals
adolescents, civic development€of
dynamic civic identities, 472, 473,€482
global communities, 480–482
groupways cultural lens, 478–480
mediating institutions in civil society,
474–476, 477–478
within nation-states,€474
nation-states and the social contract,
476–477,€480
transactional ecological model of,
473,€475
adolescents, resilience€among
children and armed conflict, 348–350
culture and, 344–345,€351
impoverished Brazilian youth, 347–348
integrated approaches to studying,€350
narratives of homeless adolescents,
402–403
sexual socialization in immigrant
families, 345–347
theory and constructs, 342–344
adolescent transition rituals
and break with the past, 334–335,€337
and cultural complexity, 331–332
effects on individuals, 333–334
initiation into adolescent youth
groups, 336–337
711
adolescent transition rituals (Cont.)
locales and locations of, 330–333
in modern industrialized societies, 338
pain and fear in, 335–337, 337
purpose and effects of, 329–330, 333
symbolic approaches and underlying
themes, 334
transition out of childhood, 330
Adult Attachment Interview
(AAI), 22–23
adult development
conceptual formulations and cultural
contexts, 667–669
cross-cultural views of aging, 666–667
empirical studies of, 669–674
trends in future research, 674–677
adulthood, emerging
in Asia, 491–492
becoming self-sufficient, 495–496
in developing countries, 493, 499
distinguishing features of,
488–489, 498
in Eastern Europe, 491
and identity-based work, 497–498
love and marriage, 496–497
in OECD countries, 489–490
origins as cultural theory, 488, 489
premarital sex and cohabitation, 492
self-focused life and enjoyment, 498
and social class, 492–493
and social networking sites, 521
in Western Europe, 490–491, 498
worldwide variation in, 493–494, 499
See also adults, emerging
adulthood, late
community leadership and mentoring
in, 686–689
demographic overview of, 682–684
implications of nonattachment in,
689–691
neglect and mistreatment of
elderly, 700
Odia Hindu conceptualization of, 639
positive trends in, 684–686, 693
See also midlife narratives
adults, emerging
acculturative stress, 52–53
autonomous-relatedness among, 417
citizen children, 48, 50
effects of immigration, 49
global and local identity, 33–34
globalization, repercussions of, 30, 36
global urban youth culture, 56
health practices among, 504
marriage in transnational families, 55
origin of term “emerging adults,” 328
premarital sex and cohabitation,
502–503, 513
prostitution and health among, 512–513
psychopathology among, 505–506
risk behaviors, 504–505, 513
sexuality and health among,
507–509, 513
712 I n de x
social contexts of moral reasoning, 244
substance abuse and antisocial behav-
ior among, 509–512, 513, 514
Twitter use among, 530
affect
affective stance in language, 117–118
negative vs. positive among infants, 131
positive affectivity, 142, 143
Afghanistan, 348, 478
Africa
adolescent transition rituals in, 330, 335
Baganda group, East Africa, 84
development among children, 64
diverse cultures within, 69
early socialization of children, 62
ecocultures and human
development, 61, 62
families and gender socialization, 312
fathering diversity within, 606, 607,
612–614
holistic worldview in, 63, 68–69
human development research in,
63–66, 68
importance of social intelligence, 67
indigenous views of human develop-
ment, 398–399
open and distance outreach learning
in, 444, 445
rates of child labor, 561
rates of primary education in, 363
research within indigenous knowledge
systems, 66–68
social capital of children, 70–71
sub-Saharan agricultural societies,
281–283
women and aftermath of civil war, 482
youth literacy rates in, 439
See also African Americans
See also Africans
See also individual countries
African Americans
at-home care for infirm elderly, 702
attachment with God in later
adulthood, 689
authoritative parenting, 24
children and concealment of
emotions, 135
cultural variations and research, 17
families and gender socialization, 315
toddlers and emotional
socialization, 316
Africans
“African infant precocity,” discarded
theory of, 81
developmental goals among, 6–7
developmental trajectories in indig-
enous social science, 69–70
personality development and
individuation, 71–72
supernatural order and traditional
beliefs, 37, 61, 69, 70
Africentric scholarship, 66
afterlife
indigenous beliefs in Africa, 37,
61, 69, 70
relationships with deceased elders,
704–706
Agarwal, Madhusudhan, 680, 681
aging
Chinese vs. U. S. views of, 628
“cult of youth” in Anglo-America, 645,
647, 648
demographics of, 682–684
effect of psychosocial profiles on
disease risk and disability, 667,
675–676, 684, 688
eudamonia vs. hedonic well-being,
670, 671, 672
and globalization, 39
and inner dialogue, 35–36
interleukin-6 (IL-6) levels and
health, 676
Japan, system of “care credits” in, 686
Japanese views, 641–642
medicalization of aging process, 647
populations of elderly worldwide, 683
and power differentials, 4
protective effects of spirituality and
religion, 685
protective factors, 684–685, 693–694
respect for elderly in East Asian societ-
ies, 668, 669
respect for elderly in Judaism, 690
“roleless roles,” 668, 676
wisdom and aging, 673
aging, cognitive
cognitive performance among Chinese
and U.S. older adults, 624, 626
cultural differences in, 623–630
making cross-cultural comparisons,
621–623
methodological challenges to study,
630–631
agriculturists
and adolescent transition rituals, 331
children's chores, 188
parenting, 168, 275–276, 613
Aina, O. E., 315
Ainsworth, M., 151, 152, 160
Aka pygmy fathers, Central Africa, 167,
594, 613
Akhtar, Nameera, 115
Alaska Natives
cultural variations and research, 17
perceived competence in village
children, 217
Alberts, C., 37
Aldwin, C. M., 685–686
Alex, L., 308–309
Algier, L., 512
Ali, J. A., 690
Allwood, C. M., 67
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy
Soldier (Beah), 349
ALSPAC Study Team, 312
Altoè, G., 286
Amabile, T. M., 257
amae, Japanese cultural image of, 658, 673
Ambitious Generation (Schneider &
Stevenson), 555
the “American Dream,” 543–544, 546,
549, 550
American Psychological
Association (APA)
Ethical Principles of Psychologists and
Code of Conduct, 16
Amrullah, E. A., 690
ancestor worship, and filial piety in East
Asian societies, 668, 669
Anderson, K. G., 616
Andrews, D. W., 430
Andrews, M., 661
anemia
among adolescent girls in India, 365
among adolescents worldwide, 362, 363
antisocial behavior, among emerging and
young adults, 509–512
anxiety
among infants, 86–87
contamination anxiety, 32–33, 37
gender and emotion, 316
Aoro, C., 71
Apache Sunrise ceremony, 333
apprenticeship programs, for emerging
and young adults, 558–559
Arab-American adolescents
civic identity among, 472, 479–480
contextual influences upon, 475
schools as mediating institutions in
civic life, 478
Arab farmers, Israel, 519–520
Arabic-speaking countries
learning environments in, 223, 224
Quranic schooling in, 220, 224
trends in science education, 216
Arab societies, sources of fathering diver-
sity in, 606
Arab Spring, 474, 475
Arai, S., 83
Araujo de Morais, Normanda, 456–470
Arends-Toth, J., 415
Arendt, H., 474
Argentina
emotion socialization of infants, 138
public opinion on creativity, 259
Aristotle
on friendship, 427, 429
and perspectives on adult
development, 670
arithmetic
abilities across cultures, 100–101
among older adults, 625
armed conflicts
and children
348–350
death and bereavement in
wartime, 704
Arnett, Jeffrey Jensen, 30, 33, 328, 357,
487–501
Arran, S., 389
Art of Courtly Love, The (Capellanus), 576
Asai, M., 427
Asante, K., 36–37
Asia
adolescent sexual activity in, 366
demographic transitions in, 682–683
open and distance outreach learning
in, 444, 445
parental ethnotheories in, 279–281
youth literacy rates in, 439
Asian Americans
at-home care for infirm elderly, 702
authoritative parenting, 24
bicultural identity integration, 263
emerging adulthood among, 496
parenting practices of, 39
Asia 2050 report, 682
Asmus, C. I. R. F., et al., 459
asramadharma, Hindu concept of life
span development, 692
Assche, L. V., 689
“astronaut” children, 48
Atkins, R., 687
Atkinson, Q. D., 330, 336
atsukmashisa, Japanese concept of bold-
ness, 644–645, 649
attachment in infants
breastfeeding, 156
dual or communal parenting, 597–598
“secure base” behavior, 86–87
social harmony vs. individual
autonomy, 150
attachment in later adulthood, 689
attachment theory
cultural patterning of relational
values, 154
and exploration, 158
and feeding of children, 156
history and background, 150–151
and human evolution, 152–153
initial research, 151–152
role of culture and context, 153–154
and “secure base” function, 86–87, 157
secure vs. insecure patterns of attach-
ment, 151, 152, 158–159
standards of care for children, 154–155,
156, 160
attentional patterns
learning through third-party atten-
tion, 297–298
significance in early learning, 296–297
attentional processes, in infant
development, 85–86
Aukrust, V. G., 427
Australia
adolescent perceptions of
housework, 461
adolescent transition rituals in aborigi-
nal communities, 330
behavioral inhibition among
children, 133
developmental timetables of
Anglo-Australian mothers, 273
exclusivity in adolescent
friendships, 430
intimacy in friendships, 428
marriage customs in, 578
parenting of adolescents, 344–345
sources of fathering diversity in, 606
youth apprenticeship programs, 558
Austria, vocational education programs
in, 558
authoritarian personality theory, 411
autobiographical memory, among older
adults, 626–628
autonomy and relatedness
autonomous functioning and attach-
ment theory, 154
autonomous-related self, 416–417, 421
changing domains of relatedness,
417–419
cultural variations on, 418–419
and ensuing self-regulation, 420
equal importance of, 419
ethics of, 238–239, 495
in immigrant families, 414–416
and individualism vs. collectivism,
21–22, 24
and moral psychology, 8
and moral reasoning, 240–242
Avolio, B. J., 687
Axia, G., 121, 282, 286
Aydt, H., 318
Azerbaijan
families and gender socialization, 311
youth literacy in, 439
Azmitia, M., 299
Azuma, H., 66, 381
B
Babu, B., 84
Babyek, M. A., 685
Baby Facial Action Coding System
(BabyFACS), 129
Bach, Mara, 653–665, 668
Bacon, Margaret, 275, 276, 278, 287
Baganda group, East Africa, 84
Bahuguna, Sunderlal, 692, 693
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 29, 398
Bala Bbala Project, 214
Bali
conceptions of creativity, 259
developmental timetables in, 273
Balinese adolescents
interpretations of peer behavior,
377–378
and parental authority, 382
worldviews of, 381
Baltimore Longitudinal Study of
Aging, 670
Bamana people of Mali, definition and
status of elders, 699
Bame, Joseph, 61
Bang, H. J., 49
I n de x 713
Bangladesh, sources of fathering diversity Best, D. L., 308 Brahman Nepalese children
in, 606 Betancourt, T. S., et al., 465 emotion socialization of, 140
Bangladeshi-British families, role of Beyers, W., 416 rules for emotional display, 135
grandparents, 281 Bhagavad Gita, sacred text of Hinduism, brain
Banse, R., et al., 319 691, 692 prenatal and childhood growth of, 103
Baoulé people, Ivory Coast, 85 Bhangaokar, Rachana, 241, 242, 680–696 role of amygdala in activation of fear
bar and bat mitzvah, 328 Bhatia, S., 31–32, 400 and anxiety, 127
Barber, B. K., 348–349, 481 Bhattacharjee, N., 313 Brain, R., 428
Barbot, Baptiste, 255–270 Bhave, Vinoba, 692–693 Bram, C., 62
Barefoot, J. C., 685 Bhawuk, D. B., 692 Branco, A. U. & A. L., 34
Bariba people, parenting practices Bhogle, S., 312 Brazil
among, 592 Bhola, P., 370 Center of Psychological Studies, 456
Barker, J. C., 706 Bhoodan movement, India, 692–693 Childhood Brazil, 462
Baroni, M. R., 121 Bhowmik, D. K., 38 child labor in a domestic context,
Barry, Herbert, 275–276, 278, 287, Bhubaneswar, India, 638–640 460–462
324–340, 493–494 Bianchi, S., 312 commercial sexual exploitation of chil-
Barry, O., 87 bias, avoiding in research, 22–23, 24, 57 dren and adolescents, 462–464
Barton, A., 313 biculturality communication among toddlers, 300
Basotho people, of Lesotho, 119 bicultural identity integration, ethics of community, divinity, and
Bastug, S. S., 311 263, 264 autonomy, 241
Basu, S., 320 biculturalism and creativity, 263–265 marriage customs in, 578
Bates, E. A., 115 and hybridity, 33–34 public opinion on creativity, 259
Baudhayana, ancient Hindu using bicultural researchers, 56 risk and protective factors in child
philosopher, 641 Bigler, R. S., 314 labor, 458–459, 459–460
Baumrind, D., 279, 416 Big Society, concept of, 686 sources of fathering diversity in, 606
Bayley Scales of Infant Development bilingualism street kids in, 341–342, 347–348
and mental scales, 84 benefits for creativity, 35 Value of Children Study, 414
overview of, 80, 81 and coexisting ways of learning, 303 youth activists in, 476
and physical postures of daily and divergent thinking, 264 breastfeeding, and socialization of
life, 82, 83 using bilingual researchers, 56 children, 596
Beah, Ishmael, 349 Black, Kaitlin, 174, 292–306 Breininger, Eric, 388–389
beauty-enhancing practices across cul- Blasi, A., 237 Brewer, M. B., 381, 391
tures, 572, 573 Blood, R. O., 579 briddha avastha, Hindu Indian concept
Bedford, O., 382 Bloom, P., 246 of old age, 639
Bedouin Arab children, intimacy in Blurton-Jones, N. G., 188 Brim, O. G., 646
friendships, 428 Bodibe, R. C., 71 Brinkman, B. G., 314
Beer, J. S., 232 Boduroglu, Aysecan, 621–636, 628, 631 Britain
Beghetto, R. A., 257 Bofi forager fathers, Africa, 613 British-diaspora, expectations of, 273
behavioral domains, and infant develop- Bolivia civic contributions by older adults, 686
ment milestones, 84 child labor practices and language and identity in
behavioral inhibition, 133–134 education, 462 adolescence, 402
Behavioral Style Questionnaire, 286 children and cognitive achievement, public opinion on creativity, 259
Belarus, youth literacy in, 439 219–220 broadband subscriptions, worldwide,
Belgium Bologna Process, 563 522, 522
gender and emotional socialization, 317 Bond, M. H., 386, 431 Broda, Michael, 554–569
Jewish adolescents and Bontempo, R., 378, 427 Bronfenbrenner, U.
self-identity, 387 Bornstein, M. H., 138, 317 bioecological model of fathering diver-
vocational education programs, 558 Bororo people, parenting practices sity within societies, 605, 605
Bell, S., 427 among, 592 bioecological model of human devel-
Belmont Report, 16 Bosnia opment, 217, 357, 378
Belsky, J., 591, 612 children and armed conflict, 348–349 ecological model of culture, 344
Benedict, Ruth, 287, 669 postwar youth community immigrant families and youth, 415
Benga, Oana, 127–148 involvement, 688 modern-day childcare, 174
Beng people of Ivory Coast, parenting Botswana Broude, G. J., 576
practices among, 594 civic identity among youth, 481 Brown, J. D., 521
Bengtson, V. L., 668 definition and status of elders, 699 Brown, J. K., 332
Berk, L. E., 190 observational learning among Brown, Jill, 165–181, 173
Bermuda, online social networks among children, 205 Bruffaerts, R., 689
adolescents, 526 reminiscences of elders, 700–701 Brummet, B. H., 685
Bernas, R., 280 Bower, B., 30 Brunell, A. B., 315
Bernheimer, L. P., 649 Bowlby, J., 151, 152, 153, 160 Bruner, J., 400
Berry, J. W., 54, 67, 218, 263, 414–415, 417 Boylan, Jennifer Morozink, 666–679 Bruun, F. J., 700
Berscheid, E., 427 Bradley, C., 66 Bryant, D., 118

714 I n de x
Buddhism Caspi, A., 670 Childhood Brazil, 462
philosophy of detachment, 690–691 Castellani, V., 386 child labor practices
and views of aging in Japan, 642, 672 caste system, and friendships among child soldiers, 464–465
Bühler, C., 667 children, 427 domestic work within family home,
Buhrmester, D., 428 categorization and memory, among older 460–461
Bundik, M. J., 684 adults, 625–626, 626 domestic work within third-party
Burdelski, M., 120 Caudill, W., 279 homes, 461–462
Burke, M., 526 Celenk, O., 417 in India, 365, 371
Burma, beauty-enhancing practices Celik, K., 509 risk and protective factors, 457–459,
in, 572 Center of Psychological Studies, 459–460, 467
Burnard, P. Brazil, 456 sexual exploitation, 467
Burton, R. V., 333 Central African Republic, child soldiers trends worldwide, 457
Buss, David, 571, 575 in, 464 See also street kids
Cerqueira-Santos, E., et al., 463, 464 Child Protection Program, India, 372
C Cervantes, C. A., 316 children
California First-Year Mental Scale, 84 Cervera, M. D., 285 acculturative stress, 52–53
Callaghan, L., 63 Chad, Republic of, 464 acquisition of cultural
Cambodia, death and bereavement in Chan, A. S., 626 knowledge, 96–102
wartime, 704 Chan, T., 84 attachment vs. exploration, 151
Cameron, P. A., 315 Chang, Leslie, 496 attentional patterns among, 296–297
Cameroon Chao, R. K., 279, 280 authoritative parenting, 23–24
child fosterage in, 172 Chaplin, T. M., 316 avoiding cultural bias in assessment, 23
Nso infants and children, 130, 130, 136 Charalambous, C., 402 biracial and bicultural, 55
patterns of infant care, 586 charismatic leadership style, 687 child fosterage, 172–173, 178
role of grandparents in parenting, 593 Charles, S. T., 671 child marriages, 360–361, 366
social contract between state and chastity, cultural views on, 571–572 child welfare institutions, 176–177
citizens, 477 Chaudhary, Nandita, 281, 611, 612, 616 citizen children, 48, 50
studies of generativity in, 659–660 Cheah, C. S. L., 310, 382 commercial sexual exploitation of,
Camino, L., 687 Chee, M. W. L., 623 462–464
Campbell, C., 71 Chen, C. S., et al., 258 the “competent” child, 155–156
Camras, L. A., 129 Chen, E. E., 136 creativity, 256, 260, 261
Canada Chen, G. P., 624 cross-gendered children, 314
adolescent friendships and enhance- Chen, H., 431 cultural distance with playmates, 38
ment of self-esteem, 430 Chen, S. X., et al., 264 cultural influence and child develop-
behavioral inhibition among children, Chen, W., 625 ment, 192–195
133, 134 Chen, X., 134, 383, 387, 430 cultural patterns of collaboration,
beliefs regarding aging and memory, Chen, Y. -R., 381, 391 298–299
628–629 Cheng, C., 264 developmental trajectories, 8–9
gender and cognitive development in Cheng, W. J. Y., 281 development of social cognition,
children, 319 Cherlin, A. J., 285 104–105
Internet use and parental closeness, 524 Chess, S., 285 domain approach to moral reasoning,
Inuit family model of psychological Chessa, A. G., 627 235, 236
interdependence, 414 Chiao, J. Y., et al., 623 early childhood care and education,
managing conflict in childhood Chiapas, Mexico, 205 174–177
friendships, 431, 432 Child, Irvin, 275, 276, 278, 287, 657 effects of biculturalism, 264
work migration in, 564 Child Behavioral Questionnaire, 132 gender and social identity, 317–318
youth apprenticeship programs, childbirth, in Chinese hospitals, historical vs. universal child, 38–39, 40
558–559 608–609 immigration, effects of, 6, 49
Capellanus, Andreas, 576 childcare, adult and sibling, 166–174 initiative in activity, 295–296
Caprara, G. V., 386 grandparents as caregivers, 171–172 instrumental parentification, 461
caregiving increased competence in child interaction of culture and tempera-
distal vs. proximal, 277, 279 caregiving, 173 ment, 285–286
and schooling of young children, nonfamily caregivers, 167 learned self-care, 293
294–295 parents as caregivers, 167–169 and marriage in transnational
Caribbean siblings as caregivers, 169–171, 186 families, 55
adolescent sexual activity in, 366 variations of, 179 out-of-home care and daycare, 592, 593
education and work migration, 565 child-centered vs. family-centered activi- and power differentials, 4
fathering diversity within, 606, ties, 189, 191 public services for children in
614–615 child domestic workers, definition of, 461 Italy, 166
youth literacy rates in, 439 Child Fund/Sierra Leone, 350 research with, 17, 19, 20, 21
Carlo, G., 238, 243 childhood, early memories of, 627–628 socialization for chores, 87
Casey, J., 316 Childhood and Society (Erikson), 654, socialization in schools and child care
Cashmore, J., 273 655, 664n1 centers, 174

I n de x 715
children (Cont.)
social networks and attachment
theory, 152, 153
standard of good care, 154, 156, 160
“third-culture kids,” 34, 35, 36, 55
universal needs for primary care, 167
violence against worldwide, 360
work and play as culturally organized
activities, 187–189
See also early childhood
See also education
See also housework and chores
See also infants
See also middle childhood
See also play
children, and emotion
concealment of emotions, 135
cultural differences in functioning,
129–130
effortful control and regulation of,
132–133
norms and socialization practices,
135–141
parental talk, 140–141
rules for display, 134–135
socialization and outcomes, 141
socialization of toddlers, 138–139
theoretical frameworks to study devel-
opment, 128–129
children, cognitive development in, 198–213
cognitive-developmental approach to
moral reasoning, 234
in a cultural context, 204–209
and daily activities, 208–209
and ecological contexts, 217–218
evolutionary basis of, 203
and gender, 318–319
narratives, shared, 206
observational learning, 205, 209
sharing and learning, 205–207
sharing knowledge, 206–207
social learning processes, 200–202, 201
sociocultural context of, 200, 202–203,
203–204
transmitting cultural knowledge, 207
See also intelligence, cultural
manifestation of
children, in Africa
caregiving roles, 70, 71
early socialization of, 62, 63, 64
physical development of toddlers, 64
social capital of, 70–71
stages of development, 69
children, language development in
attunement to phonology, 113
emotional affect in language, 117–118
expressive vs. referential style, 115–116
linguistic markers of speaker certainty,
118–119
linguistic politeness, 119–121
and socialization, 114–115, 123
universal grammar vs. sociocultural
perspective, 112, 122
716 I n de x
children in adversity
amid armed conflict, 348–350
strength-based research on, 70, 71
Children of Different Worlds Study
(Whiting and Edwards), 168, 169
Children of Six Cultures (Whiting &
Whiting), 65
children's books
learning cultural emotion norms, 136,
137, 137
Child Report of Parenting Behavior
Inventory, 24
Childs, C.P., 296
child soldiers
in armed conflicts in Colombia,
465–466
and exploitation of children, 464
health effects of recruitment, 465
illegal armies groups (IAG), 457
roles assumed by, 349–350
“child study movement,” 80
Chile
entrepreneurship and self-employment
in, 559
gender and emotional socialization, 317
Chilisa, B., 63, 67
China
cognitive development in ancient
China, 622
creativity and social context, 259
demographic transitions in, 683
education and work migration, 565
emerging adulthood in, 487, 496
“floating populations” and “skipped
generations,” 609
historical attitudes toward love, sex,
and marriage, 580–581
integrating creativity into
classrooms, 261
Internet use and parental closeness,
524–525
managing conflict in friendships,
431, 432
marital happiness in, 579
marriage customs in, 576, 578
public opinion on creativity, 259
significance of instrumental aid in
friendships, 429
social contract between state and
citizens, 476
Value of Children Study in, 413
work migration in, 564
China, fathering diversity within,
608–611
ethnicity and urban/rural
migration, 609
generational differences, 610–611
geography and ethnicity, 610
one child policy and family structure,
609–610
socioeconomic diversity and social
mobility, 610
Chinese adolescents
autonomy and relatedness among,
416–417
civic development among, 472–473
friendships and enhancement of
self-esteem, 430
religiosity of, 387
schools as mediating institutions in
civic life, 478
views of filial piety, 382, 383
Chinese children
behavioral inhibition among, 133
child and adolescent friendships,
426–427
and concealment of emotions, 135
and concepts of moral reasoning, 234
emotional reactivity among infants, 131
emotion socialization of toddlers, 139
facial expressions among infants,
129–130
gender and emotional socialization, 317
gender and social identity, 318
institutional care for infants and tod-
dlers, 176–177
motor skills of 4-month-old
infants, 134
parental emotion talk, 140
parent-child conversations, 206
temperamental reactivity among
infants, 133
Chinese drawings, and assessment of
creativity, 258
Chinese families
care, beneficence, and prosocial
morality, 243
cultural emotion norms, 136
role of grandparents, 171, 172, 281, 672
social contexts of moral reasoning, 244
storytelling traditions, 280
Chinese older adults
arithmetic ability among, 625
beliefs regarding aging and memory,
628–629
cognitive ability and memory among,
625–628, 626
cognitive aging among, 623, 624
and grandparenting, 171, 172, 281, 672
protective effects of spirituality, 685
Chinese research participants
developmental goals among, 6–7
Chipko movement, protecting trees in
India, 693
Chirkov, V., 310
Chisholm, Lynne A., 438–455
Chiu, C., 263, 265
Chiu, C. -Y., 32–33, 35, 37
Chiu, L.-H., 625
Cho, G. E., 281
Choi, S. Y. P., 317
Chouinard, M. M., 199
Christianson, M., 308–309
Chu, C. Y., 610
Chua, H. F. C., 625, 626
Chung, C., 629
Chung, J., 431
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints, 241
chuunen, Japanese concept of
midlife, 644
Cicchetti, D., 514
Cicirelli, V. G., 277
circumcision, 327, 334, 338
citizen children, 48, 50
citizenship, dynamic models of, 472, 473
Citlak, B., 414
civic development
defined, 471
dynamic civic identities, 472, 473, 482
dynamic models of, 472
global communities, 480–482
groupways cultural lens, 478–480
mediating institutions in civil society,
474–476, 477–478
within nation-states, 474
nation-states and the social contract,
476–477, 480
transactional ecological model of,
473, 475
civic engagement
in Catholic countries, 691
in late adulthood, 694
in Muslim countries, 690
civic identity, 472
civil society, definition of, 474
cladistics, 96–97
Clancy, P. M., 119
Clendinen, D., 645
Cochran, M., 175
codes of conduct, professional
organizations, 16
Coe, Christopher L., 666–679
cognitive ability
and creativity, 257, 259
inborn capacity for, 214
in later adulthood, 685
cognitive aging, 621–636
arithmetic ability, 625
autobiographical memory, 626–628
and basic cognitive processes,
623–625, 624
beliefs about aging and memory,
628–629
and brain anatomy, 623
and emotion, 629–630
and interpersonal social
situations, 630
making cross-cultural comparisons,
621–623
and memory, 625–626, 626
memory errors across cultures, 631–632
methodological challenges for
research, 630–631
cognitive development
among U.S. and Singaporean
youth, 623
cognitive-developmental approach to
moral reasoning, 233–235
cultural context of, 200–202, 201,
204–209
dynamic systems and transactional
approaches, 204
evolutionary basis of, 203
and gender, 318–319
and globalization, 216–217
phylogeny of, 102–104
sociocultural context of, 199, 200,
202–203, 203–204, 209–210
uniquely human behaviors, 104–105
See also children, cognitive
development in
See also intelligence, cultural
manifestation of
cognitive function
absence of variation across cultures,
100–101, 101–102, 105–106
presence of variation across cul-
tures, 95–96, 96–102, 98–100,
105–106
and referential gestures, 101
spatial cognition, 100
cognitive neuroscience, cross-cultural
observations, 623, 632
cognitive reorganization, and adolescent
transition rituals, 335
cognitive skills vs. motor skills, 81
Cohen, A. B., 386–387
Cohen, D., 434
Cohler, B. J., 400
Colburne, K. A., 319
Colby, A., 237
Cole, M., 64–65
Cole, P. M., 135
Coleman, J. M., 315
Coleman, S., 427
collectivist cultures
common patterns of change in, 421
collectivity
and cognitive-developmental approach
to moral reasoning, 234
Collins, W. A., 427
Colombia, child soldiers in, 465–466
colonialism
and arrival of scientific psychology in
Africa, 63, 64
colonial French schools in northern
Cameroon, 301–302
Colonna, E., 461
Comas-Diaz, L., 662
communication and information tech-
nologies, 522, 523–524
community
and cognitive-developmental approach
to moral reasoning, 234
ethics of, 238–239
and moral psychology, 8
and moral reasoning, 240–242
community leadership
in Hindu India, 692–693
and mentoring in late adulthood,
686–689
and nonattachment in late
adulthood, 692
and successful aging in late
adulthood, 686
Community Wide Drug Demand
Reduction Program, 371–372
compulsory care, and youth in
Sweden, 510
confirmation, Christian, 328, 338
conflict management in friendships,
431–432
conflict zones
and adolescent narratives of identity,
401–402
child soldiers in, 464–465
minimizing harm for research
subjects, 21
women's solidarity in aftermath, 482
conformity, normative, 104
Confucianism
and filial piety, 382, 383, 387, 668–669
on friendship, 427
gender and social identity, 318
and managing conflict in
friendships, 431
midlife narratives in Japan, 637–638,
648, 649
and model citizenship, 473
traditions of parenting, 280
and views of aging in Japan, 642, 672
Congo, Republic of
child soldiers in, 464
Efe foragers and children, 149–150
Connolly, J. A., 418
Consedine, N. S., et al., 142
Consensual Assessment Technique, 258
conventional rules vs. moral
reasoning, 235
Convention on the Rights of the Child,
464, 466
convergent evolution, 97
convergent thinking and
multiculturalism, 265
Cook, H. M., 120
Coon, H. M., 379
Corapci, Feyza, 127–148
Correa-Chávez, Maricela, 174, 292–306
Corsaro, W. A., 318
Costa, P. T., 670
Costa Rica
significance of instrumental aid in
friendships, 429
studies of generativity in, 659–660
work migration in, 564
Cotton, Janice, 177
Cotton, S., 273
Cox, A., 686
Craft, A., et al., 261
crawling, and infant motor skill
development, 82
creativity
and biculturalism, 263–265
and cultural and linguistic diversity, 35
I n de x 717
creativity (Cont.)
cultural variations in the conception
of, 258–259
“derived etic approach” to assessing,
258, 266
development across cultures, 260–263
expatriate creativity hypothesis, 263
and hybrid identities, 34–35
multicultural context of, 265, 266
nature and assessment of, 256–258, 266
value of, 255, 256
Croatia
and adolescent narratives of
identity, 402
studies of generativity in, 658, 659
Cronbach, L. J., 433
cross-gendered children, 314
Crowley, K., 299
Csikszentmihalyi, M., 257, 686
Cuba
public opinion on creativity, 259
significance of instrumental aid in
friendships, 429
cultural adequacy of research
findings, 21–24
avoiding bias in assessment, 22–23
culturally broadening
constructs, 23–24
sampling and generalization, 21–22
cultural assimilation, 53
. See also acculturation
cultural-developmental approach to
moral reasoning, 238–242, 239
cultural-developmental scholarship
aim and scope, 4–5
approach to, 5–9
broadening and deepening
concepts, 6–7
theoretical frameworks, 7–9
units of analysis, 5–6
cultural dissonance, 54–55
cultural distances
and creativity, 264
homophily vs. heterophily, 37–38
and identity confusion, 36–38
cultural diversity
benefits for creativity, 35
and developmental psychology, 40–41
cultural emotion norms, 136–137
cultural milieus
and creativity, 258, 259
and developmental goals, 6–7
and familiarity with research
practices, 22
and friendships, 428–429, 431
and informed consent, 17–18
and moral development, 8, 235
multifaceted nature of, 5
and parenting practices, 19, 20, 21
and privacy concerns, 18–19
cultural psychology
of adolescence, 397–400, 404, 405
developmental perspective on, 667, 674
718 I n de x
and developmental psychology, 233
narratives and politics of adolescent
identity, 400–404
and perspectives on adolescence,
411–412
and perspectives on gender, 310
cultural socialization, effects of
immigration, 6
cultural stereotyping, avoiding in
research assessment, 22
cultural variation
on autonomy and relatedness, 418–419
in friendship, 426–427, 433–435
phylogeny of, 102
culture and adolescent development
culture as organizing factor, 379, 389
effect of moral purpose on self- and
worldview, 383–385, 390
effect of values on self- and worldview,
381–383, 389
effects of religious purpose on self- and
worldview, 385–387, 390
relationship among values, morals, and
religious orientation, 387–389, 390
resilience of culture among adoles-
cents, 344–345, 351
self-views of adolescents, 379–380
universal vs. culture-specific processes,
378, 390, 391
worldviews of adolescents, 380–381
culture and cultural practices
cultural emotion norms, 136–137
evoked vs. transmitted, 573
and generativity, 664
and temperament in family relation-
ships, 285–286
vs. nationality, 54
culture and globalization
and alternative educational
programs, 220
and cognitive development, 216–217
and formal learning environments, 219
and informal learning environments,
219–220
“culture shock,” 263
Cunningham, M. R., et al., 575
Cupertino, A. P., 685–686
custom complex study design, 657
cyberbullying, 526
Cyprus
school books and gender
socialization, 314
youth literacy in, 439
Czech Republic
adolescent perceptions of
housework, 461
vocational education programs, 558
D ontogeny of cultural variation in cog-
Daiute, C., 402
Daly, M., 575
Damon, W., 237, 238, 684
Daoism, and concept of detachment, 691
Darnton, R., 581
Darwin, Charles, 80, 571
Dasen, P. R., 65, 85
Davies, D., et al., 260
Dawes, A., 66
death and bereavement
directions for future scholarship,
706–707
end-of-life care, 702
expressions of grief and longing among
elderly, 701–702
grief following death of elders,
702–703
relationships with deceased elders,
704–706
rituals and grieving, 703–704
Deaux, K., 472
debutante celebrations, 338
DeCaro, J. A., 285
DeFoe, Daniel, 581
De Geer, B., 417
de Haan, M., 299
Dekovic, M., 415
Delpierre, V., 387
D'Emilio, J., 581
Demuth, C., 592
Denmark
age distribution of foreign
migrants, 565
emerging adulthood in, 487
linguistic politeness among
children, 120
religious discourse in, 231
work/study programs, 558
youth apprenticeship programs, 558
Denoma, J., 431
Dent, C. H., 120
deportation of undocumented family
members, 48
depression, and shyness, 134
Dernelle, R., 387
Descent of Man and Selection in Relation
to Sex, The (Darwin), 571
de St. Aubin, Edward, 653–665, 668
“destination states,” 46
De'tang-Dessendre, C., 565
“deterritorialization,” 36
developing countries
dualistic economies and social
systems, 273
entrepreneurship and self-employment
in, 559–560
“youth phase” in, 447
developmental anthropology
cognitive function, variations in,
94–95, 95–96
cultural influence and developmental
outcomes, 192–195, 632–633
nitive function, 96–102
developmental change, and effect on
childhood friendships, 428
developmental expectations
 across cultures, 273, 274
Developmental Expectations
Questionnaire, 272, 273
setting the agenda for parenting,
272–275
developmental goals
action phase of engagement and disen-
gagement with, 539–540, 550
cultural variation, 6–7
Developmental Niche framework
and adolescent development, 378
analysis beyond motor skills, 84
described, 82
researching, 88
western Kenya, 272
developmental psychology
adolescence, perspectives on, 397,
399, 412
and cultural psychology, 233
culture-informed studies on, 378
developmental psychopathology,
505–506
developmental systems theories,
419–420
Erikson's eight psychosocial stages of
development, 654
and lifespan trajectories, 539
shift from universal to historical
child, 40
developmental research, four phases
of, 88–89
developmental science
globalization of, 356
sociogenic vs. ontogenetic paradigm
of, 404
developmental trajectories, 8–9, 69–70
deVries, M. W., 286
Dewey, John, 449
dharma, Indian concept of, 243
Dharmashastras, oldest known descrip-
tion of life course, 238
dialogical self theory, 29, 35–36, 40–41
DiBianca Fasoli, A., 241, 245
Diers, J., 356, 366
Dillon, M., 685
Diouf, M., 477–478
disciplinary measures in transnational
families, 52
Dishion, T. J., 430
divergent thinking
biculturalism and verbal divergent
responses, 264
and bilingualism, 264
and creativity, 257, 262
vs. convergent thinking, 265
diversity within communities, impact of
transnational migration, 44–45
divinity
ethics of, 238–239
and moral psychology, 8
and moral reasoning, 240–242
Doku, P. N., 36–37
domain approach
to moral reasoning, 235–237
domain approach to moral reasoning, 236
Donald, D., 66
Donnelly, T., 687
Donskoi, Mark, 655
Dorfman, P. W., 687
Dost, A., 414
Douglass, Carrie, 490–491, 498
Draper, P., 188, 591
Drapier, C., 565
Drijat, in Negev Desert, Israel, 519–520
Drucker-Brown, S., 171
Dube, L., 320
Dubois, D. P., 319
Du Bois, W. E. B., 479
Durgel, E., 415
Dutch adolescents, attachment and
well-being, 417
Dutch adults, memories of
adolescence, 627
Dutch children
independence of, 285
managing conflict in friendships, 431
Dutch families
family model of independence, 415
time allocated for meals, 284
Dutra-Thomé, Luciana, 456–470
case studies of adolescent sexual
exploitation, 463, 464
Dutta, R., 238, 623, 692
Dyson, J., 426, 427
E educational status of adolescents
early childhood
economic subsistence patterns and,
275–276
family cultural variability,
278–279, 287
individualism vs. collectivism in,
283–285, 287
interplay of temperament and culture,
285–286
parental expectations of development,
272–275, 287
parent-child relationships across cul-
tures, 279–285, 287
parenting styles across cultures,
277–278, 287
relationships and early childhood
development, 165
in sub-Saharan agricultural societies,
281–283
time allocated to activities, 283–284
women's workloads and parenting
practices, 276–277
Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire
(ECBQ), 143
East Asian families
emphasis on early academic
achievement, 280
father-child relationships, 280
parental ethnotheories, 279–281
role of grandparents, 281
rule-oriented behavior, 380
East Asians, developmental goals
among, 6–7
East Asian societies
autonomy vs. relatedness, 381–382
filial piety in, 668–669
East Indian islands, adolescent transition
rituals, 328–329
Ebbinghaus illusion, 98–100, 99
Eberhard, P., 280
Eccles, J. S., et al., 417, 418
Eckhoff, A., 261
ecoculture
defined, 62
and early childhood socialization,
165–166
and human development, 61, 62
ecological contexts, and children's intel-
lectual development, 217–218
ecological systems theory and cognitive
development, 204
economic subsistence patterns
and adolescent transition rituals, 331
and parenting, 276–277
education
alternative educational programs for
working children, 220
apprenticeship programs, 558–559
creativity, and teachers, 260–261, 262
creativity in multicultural groups, 265
developmental readiness for
school, 275
worldwide, 364
formal schooling and cognitive devel-
opment, 202, 207
formal schooling vs. housework and
chores, 190
formal vs. informal learning, 218–220,
222–223, 225, 443, 444
gender disparities in, 365, 439, 451
and gender socialization, 313–314
general and vocational secondary edu-
cation worldwide, 449, 450, 451
leaving school too early, 561–562
limits of formal education, 440–441
measuring relevancy and outcome, 446
media resources for, 443–444, 445
open and distance outreach learning,
444, 445
and participation in social
movements, 452
patterns of organized learning,
293–300
promoting careers in STEM, 563–564
Quranic schooling, 220, 224, 301–302
rates of postsecondary education in
United States, 550
role of cultural traditions in, 445
secondary schooling and work,
557–560
segregated vocational institutions,
547–548
I n de x 719
education (Cont.)
sociocultural context of schooling,
300–303
tertiary education, increasing rates of,
489, 490, 494
three-tiered system in Germany,
544–545, 546
U. S. educational system, 548
universal primary education, 363, 366,
438, 449
as vehicle of work migration, 565–566
working while in school, 554
and youth transitions to adulthood,
447–448
youth unemployment and educational
levels, 554–555
See also intelligence, cultural
manifestation of
See also literacy
See also schooling
Education for All 2012, 365
Edwards, Carolyn Pope, 165–181
Children of Different Worlds Study, 168
developmental expectations, 272, 273
gender differences in childhood
chores, 188
maternal responsibilities, 154–155, 279
parental expectations of children's
friendships, 427
women's workloads and parenting
practices, 276, 277
Efe foragers and children (Republic
of Congo), 149–150, 152–153, 167,
208, 294
Eggum, N. D., 386
Egypt
and Arab Spring, 474, 475
developmental timetables of mothers,
273–274
Eichstedt, J. A., 319
Eisenberg, N., 386
Ekman, P., 129
Elder, Glen, 546
elders
continuing relationships with deceased
elders, 704–706
definition and status of across cultures,
697–699
directions for future scholarship on,
706–707
end-of-life care and concerns, 702
grief and bereavement among, 701–702
grief following death of, 702–703
longing for past, 700–701
The Elephant Man, 574
Ellis, J., 64
Elman, J. L., et al., 203
El Salvador, recruitment of child soldiers
in, 465
emotion
cultural dimensions of emotionality,
131, 132
culture-specific attitude toward, 141
720 I n de x
expression and regulation in late
adulthood, 685
and gender, 315–317
and moral reasoning, 232
negative-powerful vs. negative power-
less, 140, 143
in older adults across cultures,
629–630
emotional development
future research, 141–143
regulation and early development,
132–133
emotional development, among infants
cross-cultural differences in reactivity,
130–131
cultural differences in, 129–130
cultural differences in emotion social-
ization, 137–138
culture-sensitive approach to, 127–128
developmental markers of, 86–87
effortful control and emotional regula-
tion, 132–133
German mothers, 128
Japanese mothers, 128
negative vs. positive affectivity, 131
theoretical frameworks to study,
128–129
emotional expressivity
between mothers and infants, 138
restriction of, 139
rules for, 134–135
and social-cultural influence, 130
of specific emotions, 139–140
emotion socialization
emotion norms and socialization prac-
tices, 135–141
and outcomes, 141
socialization of specific emotions,
139–140
of toddlers, 138–139
empathy, and interdependence, 156–157
employment
in identity-based work, 497–498
social demotions among immigrant
parents, 51
emulation, and cognitive
development, 200
England
gender and cognitive
development, 319
gender socialization in schools, 313
marriage customs in, 578
Engle, P. L., 89
English families, rules for emotional dis-
play among children, 134–135
English language
and acculturation, 53, 54
implications for self-identity, 31–32
proficiency among immigrant
children, 51–52
proficiency among immigrant
parents, 51
and spatial cognition, 6
entrepreneurship and self-employment,
559–560, 567
environment, definition of, 96
environment and creativity, 260, 261, 262
environment of evolutionary adaptedness
(EEA), 151, 153
epigenetic landscape, 544, 545, 546
epistemic stance in language, 118–119
epistemology of gender, 308–309
Erikson, Erik
adolescence and cultural
changes, 399
adolescence and identity
formation, 237
and emic study designs, 661
ideological alternatives, 480
inception of generativity, 654–656
psychosocial stage model of adult
development, 667, 669
theories of adult development, 670
Erny, P., 65
Esin, A., 509
Estonia, socialization values of
mothers, 417
ethics
of autonomy, community, and divin-
ity, 238–239
and moral psychology, 8
See also research, ethical
considerations in
Ethiopia
beauty-enhancing practices in, 572
information technology use among
adolescents, 523
ethnic stereotyping, avoiding in research
assessment, 22
Ethnographic Atlas (Fisher), 575
eudaimonia, and adult well-being and
aging, 670, 671, 672, 675
Europe
adolescent transition rituals in, 330
emerging adulthood and self-focused
fun, 498
European-American drawings
and assessment of creativity, 258
European-American families
attentiveness among toddlers, 296
children learning through third-party
attention, 297–298
and children's language
acquisition, 294
children taking initiative in
activity, 295
collaborative communication among
children, 299, 300
cultural construction of everyday
activities, 191
cultural influence and child develop-
ment, 193, 194
cultural model of childrearing, 190
cultural patterns of collaboration
among siblings, 298
family chores in, 187–188, 188–189
 joint attention of mothers and
infants, 206
parent-child conversations, 206
storytelling traditions, 280
European Americans
authoritative parenting, 24
cultural emotion norms, 136
cultural variations and research, 17–18
developmental goals among, 6–7
emotional reactivity among infants, 131
parenting practices of, 19–20, 39
as a psychological study group, 186
European Higher Education Area, 563
Evaluation of Potential Creativity, 264
evidentials, 111, 118
evolution
and attachment theory, 152–153, 159
and cultural-developmental
scholarship, 8–9
and emotional development, 128
estimating heritable
predispositions, 96–97
evolutionary basis of cognitive
development, 203
and facial expressions, 129
and fathering diversity, 613
and milestones of infant
development, 79–81
Ewing Lee, E., 313
explanation-seeking questions, 199, 210
expressivity
emotional expressivity, 130, 139–140
facial expressions, cultural differences
in, 129–130
between mothers and infants, 138
restriction of, 139
Eze, N., 72
F childrearing practices, 275–276
Facebook
emerging adults and
self-expression, 530
peer relationships among emerging
adults, 526
facial characteristics universally consid-
ered attractive, 572–573
facial expressivity, cross-cultural differ-
ences in, 129–130
Fairness to All Individuals Through
Respect (FAIR), 314
Falakhim Arab farmers, Israel, 519–520
Falicov, C. J., 662
false belief reasoning, among children,
104, 105
families
autonomy and relatedness in immi-
grant families, 414–416
cultural perspectives on, 411–412
cultural variability among types of,
278–279
developmental perspectives on, 412
and ecological contexts for
development, 218
effects of social change on relatedness,
412–414
family-centered vs. child-centered
activities, 189, 191
family change theory, 413–414
family generativity, 660, 662
gender and emotional socialization in,
315–317
and gender socialization, 311–312, 314–315
importance of extended family in West
Africa, 597
importance of global perspective on,
420–421
intergenerational households in
India, 638
neglect and mistreatment of
elderly, 700
sexual socialization in immigrant
families, 345–347
“third-culture kids,” 34, 35, 36, 55
See also immigrant families
See also transnational families
The Family, Sex, and Marriage: In
England 1500-1800 (Stone), 571
family change theory, 413–414
family chores
“chore curriculum,” 188, 191
as culturally organized activities,
187–189
family disruption
and acculturation, 346
and homelessness, 347
and risk of child labor abuse, 459
and risk of commercial sexual exploita-
tion, 462–463
family relationships, development of
cultural variability, 278–279, 287
economic subsistence patterns and
new social media and family relation-
ships, 524–526
parent-child relationships across cul-
tures, 279–285, 287
and parenting styles across cultures,
277–278, 287
role of temperament and culture,
285–286
setting the agenda for parenting,
272–275
in sub-Saharan agricultural societies,
281–283
themes and variations in the West,
283–285
and women's workloads, 276–277
family values, and self-view of adoles-
cents, 382, 387
Fan, L., 624
Farsi-English bilingualism, and
creativity, 264
Fasulo, A., 284
fatalism
among Mexican American families,
662–663
in Japanese views of aging, 642
fathers
care of infants and toddlers, 167–168
core elements of fathering, 615–616
in European-American families,
282–283
and gender socialization, 312, 314–315
increasing roles for, 169
parenting by, 587, 588–589
profiles of paternal behavior, 168
roles and life stages in Hindu
India, 640
in sub-Saharan Africa, 282–283
in subsistence-based farm families,
593–594
time allocated for family life, 284
fathers, diversity within societies,
602–617
bioecological model of, 605, 605, 608
within the Caribbean, 614–615
categories of diversity, 604
within Central and Eastern Africa,
612–614
within China, 608–611
core elements of fathering, 615–616
examples from 15 societies and regions,
606–607
within India, 611–612, 640
international vs. intrasocietal diversity,
603–604
the soldier father, 608
Fathers in Cultural Context (Shwalb),
603, 616
Fatigante, M., 284
Fay, K., 685
Fee, A., 263
Feinberg, F., 628
Feldman, S. S., 344–345
feminist perspectives on gender,
309–310, 319
Fernandes, A. C., 370
Ferrer-Wreder, Laura, 502–518
fertility
and adolescent transition rituals, 334
control among adolescent populations
in India, 367–368
mating behavior influenced by, 574
Filgueiras, J. C., 464
filial piety
and aging in East Asian societies,
668–669
in Confucianism, 382, 383, 387
Finland
gender socialization in, 311, 315
integrating creativity into
classrooms, 261
Fischer, F. M., 459
Fisher, H. E., 575, 579, 580
Fisher, J., 706
Fiske, A. P., 390, 430
Fitneva, Stanka, 111–126
Five C's of Positive Youth
Development, 419
I n de x 721
Flanagan, Constance, 471–484
Fleming, R., 685
Foner, A., 668
forager societies
and adolescent transition rituals, 331, 332
children's chores in, 188
fathers' care of infants and toddlers,
167, 168
proximity between fathers and
children, 613
foster families, 172–173, 178
Four C Model of creativity, 256, 257
Four P's of creativity study, 256, 257
Foursha-Stevenson, C., 313
Fouts, H. N., 613, 614, 616
Fox, N. A., 135
France
collectivism vs. individualism in, 283
effects of biculturalism on Parisian
children, 264
youth apprenticeship programs, 558
Free Basic Education and Reentry
Policies (Zambia), 221, 222
Freedman, E. B., 581
Freire, Paolo, 444
French, Doran, 386, 425–437
French, J. L., 462
French families
gender and social identity, 317–318
joint attention of mothers and
infants, 206
Freud, Sigmund
gender and moral perspective, 242
modern reframing of concerns, 247
and the moral conscience, 230
and moral reasoning, 231
social contexts of moral reasoning,
243–244
Friedlmeier, Wolfgang, 127–148
Friedman, C. K., 314
Friedman, H. S., 684
Friedman, R. J., 135
friendships
approaches to studying friendship and
culture, 432–433
and enhancement of self-esteem, 430
exclusivity in, 429–430
in individualist vs. collectivist societ-
ies, 433–434
and instrumental aid, 429
intimacy in, 427–429, 432
and management of conflict, 431–432
new social media and depth of friend-
ships, 526, 527
prototypic patterns within cultures,
434–435
and work roles, 426, 427
friendships, among children and
adolescents
cultural variations in, 426–427
social strictures on, 427
Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de
Colombia (FARC), 465–466
722 I n de x
Fulani people (West Africa), parenting
practices among, 594
Fulbe people, of northern Cameroon,
301–302
Fuligni, A. J., 414
Fung, H., 280, 629–630
Furrow, D., 118
Furrow, J. F., 238
Furstenberg, F. F., Jr., 285
fusion culture, 35
G macro environments of gender social-
Gala, Jigishi, 307–324
Galinsky, A. D., 263, 265
Gandhi, Mahatma, 656, 680, 681
Gandhian mentors, India, 688, 692, 693
Gandhi's Truth (Erikson), 656
Gandini, L., 272
Gannon, S., 286
Garcia Coll, C., et al., 415
Garrett-Peters, P. T., 135
Gartstein, M. A., et al., 141, 142
Gaskins, Suzanne, 173, 185–197, 297, 434
Gatz, M., 671
Gautama, ancient Hindu
philosopher, 641
Gauvain, Mary, 198–213
Gay, J. A., 64–65
Gaynor, J. L., 260
Gaytán, F. X., 43
Geary, D. C., 624, 625
Géber, Marcelle, 81
Geertz, H., 285–286
Gemeinschaft, community, 520
gender
across cultures, 315–319, 321–322
and adolescent population worldwide,
358–359
and adolescent transition rituals, 330,
331–332, 332–333, 333, 337
and Anglo-American narratives of
midlife, 646, 647
and availability of education, 365
and cognitive development, 318–319
in the context of caste and
community, 321
cultural psychology perspective, 310
and emotion, 315–317
epistemology of, 308–309
feminist perspectives on, 309–310, 319
gender-differentiated paths and future
research, 674
gender-differentiated paths to personal
growth, 642–644, 669
and nutritional and health
disparities, 366
and social identity, 317–318
and street youth in Brazil, 341–342
gender development, theoretical perspec-
tives on, 309
gender differences
in behavior, 308
and children's household chores, 188
in displaying sadness vs. anger, 135
in moral reasoning, 242
negative-powerful vs. negative
powerless, 143
gender socialization environments,
310–315
atypical socialization and identity,
314–315
books and educational settings,
313–314
family, 311–312
ization, 310–311, 319–320, 321
peers, 312–313
generational change
and adolescent civic development, 483
and the Arab Spring, 474
parents and grandparents as
caregivers, 172
theories of, 471, 473
generativity
capturing the salience of culture in
scholarship, 660–664
and community service, 687
within cultures, 653–654, 655
effect of spirituality on, 685
generativity and culture since Erikson,
656–660
inception of generativity, 654–656
Generativity Behavioral Checklist,
658, 659
genetics
and cultural-developmental
scholarship, 8–9
and emotional development, 128
estimating heritable
predispositions, 96–97
genetic epistemology, 85
risk-taking genes, 131–132
Geneva Convention of 1949 on
International Humanitarian
Law, 466
geography
and fathering diversity within
societies, 604
and fathering within a bioecological
model, 605
Georgakopoulou, A., 402
Georgas, J., 417
German adolescents
interpretations of peer behavior,
377–378, 383
Jugendweihe adolescent transition cer-
emony, 338, 339
and parental authority, 377, 382
worldviews of, 380, 381
German families
cultural emotion norms, 136, 137, 137
cultural model of childrearing, 190
emotional development among
infants, 128
emotional regulation among
children, 133
 emotion socialization of infants, 138
family model of independence, 413
middle-class mother and 3-month-old
infant, 589
patterns of infant care, 277, 586
prosocial behavior of children, 385
social smiles among infants, 130, 130
typical dinner situation for, 590–591
German language, and linguistic markers
of speaker certainty, 118
Germany
age distribution of foreign
migrants, 565
demographics of aging in, 682
kindergarten in Hamburg, 438
social mobility in, 547, 549
studies of generativity in, 659–660
study on divergent thinking, 262–263
three-tiered educational system,
544–545, 546, 547–548
trainees and temporary migrant
workers, 566
Gesell, Arnold, 80, 81
Gesellschaft, society, 520
gestures, declarative, 101
Ghana
Mamprusi grandparents as child
caregivers, 171
traditional beliefs regarding
afterllife, 37
urbanization among women, 481
Gibbs, J. C., 235
Gifting of Land movement, India, 692–693
Gil, V. E., 581
Gilligan, Carol F.
caring vs. self-interest, 243, 641
moral orientations, 242
Giner-Sorolla, R., 241
Ginges, J., 389
Gini coefficient, 541, 541, 550
Giovanni, D., 272
Giriama in rural Kenya, children's peer
relationships, 427
Girimaji, S. C., 370
Girouard, N., 38
Glaser, B. G., 661
globalization
and cognitive development, 199, 216
effect on local cultures, 9
exclusionary vs. integrative
reactions, 37
and generativity-culture
connection, 664
global communities, and civic identity,
480–482
globalization of science, 356
global urban youth culture, 56, 421
global vs. local identities, 33–34, 421
implications of the Internet, 30–31
localization as response, 32–33
and moral perspectives, 235, 246, 247
and social contexts of moral
reasoning, 244
and understandings of romantic Great Cat Massacre, The (Darnton), 581
love, 571 Great Gatsby curve, and social
globalization, implications for self and mobility, 542
identity, 28–42 Greece
aging and globalization, 39 cognitive development in ancient
cultural distances and identity Greece, 622
confusion, 36–37 language and identity in
dialogical self theory, 29, 35–36, 40–41 adolescence, 402
flexibility and resilience of the linguistic politeness among
self, 40–41 children, 121
historical vs. universal child, 38–39 social contract between state and
hybrid identities, 33–36 citizens, 476
impact on human development, 29–30 youth outside both school and
open vs. closed minds, 29, 35–36 work, 566
promises and deceptions of Greek-Cypriot adolescents, language and
globalization, 31–33 identity, 402
psychological distance between Greek families in Australia, acculturation
cultures, 36–38 goals, 415
the self as a mini-society, 39–40 Green, S. J., 576
Global North and Global South Greenfield, Patricia, 519–534
compulsory education in, 448, avoiding bias in assessment, 23
448, 449 children taking initiative in
media resources and informal educa- activity, 296
tion, 443–444 contrasts of parenting across
youth civic development in, 482–483 cultures, 277
“youth phase” in, 447 proximal vs. distal caretaking, 278
GLOBE Project, in leadership, 687 Grigorenko, Elena, 214–229, 255–270
“glocalization,” 33 Gronbaek, M., 685
Gl veaunu, V. P., 266 Grossman, I., 673
Goh, E. C. L., 281 group identity, importance of among
Goh, E. L., 172 adolescents, 388–389
Golding, J., 312 group sleeping, in Indian families, 172
Goldschmidt, W., 65 groupways, definition of, 471
Golinkoff, R. M., 190 Guan, Shu-Sha Angie, 519–534
Golombok, S., 312 Guatemalan Mayan children
González, M. M., 670 attentiveness among toddlers,
Goode, W. J., 610 296–297
Goodnow, J. J., 273 cultural patterns of collaboration, 298
Goodwin, R., 417 and language acquisition, 294
Goody, E., 172 learning through third-party atten-
Goossens, L., 416 tion, 297–298
Gorky, Maxim, 655 self-care among, 293
Gottlieb, Alma, 594 Guerra, V. M, 241
Goyal, Namrata, 14–27 Gujarat, India, 688
Grace, Lila, 271–272 Gujarati children
grandparents role of grandparents in parenting, 593
as caregivers, 171–172 rules for emotional display, 135
as caregivers in foster families, 173 Gullette, M. M., 647
family relationships in East Asia, 281 Gummerum, M., 42, 428
in Japanese society, 672 Gunaratnam, Y., 707
parenting by, 587 Gupta, T., 415
role in middle-class Western families, Gupta, U., 579
591–592 Gururaj, G., 370
role in subsistence-based farm guru-shishya parampara, mentoring tradi-
families, 593 tion in India, 688
time allocated for family life, 285 Gusii people (Kenya)
Gray, P. B., 616 child language socialization, 282
Gray, S. J., 263 children taking initiative in
great ape clade activity, 296
brain development among, 103 collaborative communication between
culture among, 102, 103 mothers and toddlers, 300
gestures among, 101 cultural model of childrearing, 190
phylogeny of, 97, 97, 99 definition and status of elders, 698
I n de x 723
Gusii people (Kenya) (Cont.)
effect of maternal schooling on
children, 301
parenting practices among, 592, 594
transmitting knowledge to
children, 208
Gutchess, Angela H., 621–636
H Hedden, T., 622, 623–624, 624
Hackett, R. J., et al., 370
Hadza children, play and household
work, 188
Haidt, J., 384
Half the Sky Foundation, China, 176,
177, 179
Hall, G. Stanley
“natural history” approach to human
development, 80
romantic relationships in
adolescence, 418
Hamburg, Germany, 438
Hamilton, S. F., 548
Hammack, Phillip L., 396–409
Hammarström, A., 308–309
Handbook of Cross-Cultural Human
Development (1981), 4–5
Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology
(Lonner & Adamopoulos), 344
Hanique, B., 387
Hardie, J. H., 386
Hardy, S. A., 238
Harkness, Sarah, 79–93, 271–291
childcare by fathers, 169
“developmental niche” framework, 65
ecocultural perspective, 165
harmonious functioning, and attachment
theory, 154
Harris, W. V., 689
Hart, D., 687
Harwood, R., 415
Hasher, L., 628
Hastings, P. D., 414
Hatano, G., 23, 476
Hatfield, Elaine, 570–585
Haub, C., 682
Haun, Daniel B. M., 94–110
Hawaii
children's participation in daily
activities, 294
collaborative communication between
mothers and toddlers, 300
mismatched school and home
cultures, 302
Hawkes, K., 188
Hayes, R. D., 370
Hazare, Anna, 693
health concerns and risk factors
among emerging and young adults
worldwide, 504, 505, 513
prostitution and health, 512–513
related historical, social, and cultural
factors, 506–507, 513
sexuality and health, 507–509, 513
724 I n de x
substance abuse and antisocial behav-
ior, 509–512, 513, 514
health treatment
women's neglect of, 307
See also adolescent health, global
concerns in
Heath, C., 329
Heckhausen, Jutta, 535–553
hedonic well-being, and aging, 670,
671, 672
Hein, Sascha, 214–229
Heine, S. J., 186, 188
Heinicke, C. M., 598
Helson, R., et al., 670
Hempel, P. S., 258
Henrich, J., 186, 188
Herdt, Gilbert, 487
heritable predispositions
in cognitive functioning, 96–97
and cultural context, 97–102
Hermans, Hubert J. M., 28–42
Herzegovina, postwar youth community
involvement, 688
Hess, R. D., et al, 273
heterophily, role in cultural differences
and distance, 37–38
Hevern, V., 30–31
Hewlett, B. S., 594, 613, 614
Hickman, J. R., 241
Hill, S. A., 315
Hinduism
and adolescent development, 387–388
description of life course, 238
diversity within, 650n2
and family relationships, 281
gender and emotion, 316
midlife narratives in Hindu India,
637–638, 638–641, 648, 649
perspectives on nonattachment,
691–693, 694
sacred thread ceremony, 328, 334
sari party, 328
Hines, M., 312
Hippert, M. I., 464
Hirsch-Pasek, K., 190
Hiruma, N., 135
Hispanic Americans
civic engagement of undocumented
youth, 479
cultural variations and research, 17
diversity among, 662
significance of instrumental aid in
friendships, 429
historical contexts, in adult development
and aging, 676–677
historical loss conceptualized as personal
loss, 345
HIV/AIDS
orphaned children and foster families
in Africa, 172
preventing transmission among adoles-
cents, 368–369
Young People Talk AIDS, India, 371
Hmong families
care, beneficence, and prosocial
morality, 243
emotional reactivity among infants, 131
ethics of community, divinity, and
autonomy, 241
Hofer, J., 660, 662
Hofstede, G. H.
dimensions of culture, 444
individualism-collectivism index,
132, 132
Hollnsteiner, M. R., 429
Holodynski, M., 129, 130
homelessness
among Brazilian youth, 347–348
in Brazilian cities, 341–342
narratives of adolescents, 402–403
homophily, role in cultural differences
and distance, 37–38
homoplasy, 97
Hong, S. I., 688
Hong Kong
autonomy and relatedness among ado-
lescents, 416–417
cognitive ability and memory among
older adults, 626
early socialization for moral and aca-
demic learning, 280
effects of biculturalism on
children, 264
emotion socialization in families, 139
exclusivity in adolescent friendships,
429–430
integrating creativity into
classrooms, 261
intimacy of friendships, 428
parenting of adolescents, 344–345
positivity bias among older adults,
635–636
honorifics, 119, 120
Hopi reservation, Arizona
adolescent initiation ceremonies,
327, 330
Hopi reservation in Arizona, adolescent
initiation ceremonies, 332
Hortaçsu, N., 311
horticultural peoples, and fathers' care of
infants and toddlers, 168
housework and chores
children's responsibilities as they age,
188, 189
cultural construction of everyday
activities, 190–192
cultural influence and child develop-
ment, 192–195
as culturally organized activities,
186–187
developmental expectations
regarding, 273
foundational sources of cultural
beliefs, 189–190
gender differences in assignment, 308
 as protective factor against child labor
abuses, 458, 459, 460–461, 467
at transition into adolescence, 335
How Healthy Are We? A National Study of
Well-Being at Midlife? (Brim, Ryff,
& Kessler), 646
Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer, 587, 616
Hsu, C., 138
Hsueh, Y., 175
Hu, Ming, 471–484
Hulusjö, A., 512
human development
and education and learning, 443–447
holistic worldview in Africa, 63
impact of globalization, 29–30
individual and societal, 442, 452
periods of research in Africa, 63–66
United Nations Human Development
Index, 446
Human Development in a Cultural
Context (Nsamenang), 65
human subjects, protecting, 15–21
informed consent, 17–18
institutional review boards, history
of, 15–16
minimizing harm, 19–21
privacy concerns, 18–19
Humphreys ethnographic study on
homosexual practices, 16
Hunchback of Notre Dame (Hugo), 574
Hungary
adolescent perceptions of
housework, 461
linguistic politeness among
children, 121
hunter-gather societies
fathers' care of infants and
toddlers, 167
and parenting, 275–276
Hupp, J. M., 315
Hureia Kippu, Japanese concept of “care
credits,” 686
Hwang, K. K., 431
hybrid identities
and adolescent civic development, 475
among African children, 71, 449
and diasporic websites, 528–529
effects on innovation and
creativity, 34–35
global and local identity, 33–34
globalization and, 33–36
in modern India, 493
and moral perspectives, 235
Hyde, J. S., 319–320
Hyun, J.-H., 280
I activity, 367
Iceland, work/study programs in, 558
identity
civic identity in the developing
world, 481
and cultural psychology of adoles-
cence, 397–400
formation in adolescence, 237–238
globalization and confused identity, 36
identity explorations and emerging
adulthood, 521
narratives of political identity, 401–402
narratives of sexual identity, 403–404
and new and old media, 527–530
“youth talk” and adolescent
identity, 402
Ifaluk people of Micronesia
cultural model of childrearing, 190
culture and children's
temperament, 286
ikigai, Japanese concept of having a life
worth living, 668, 672, 673, 674
illegal armies groups, 349–350, 464–466
Imada, Takatoshi, 663
imitation, and cognitive
development, 200
immigrant families
acculturation of, 52–53
autonomy and relatedness in, 414–416
challenges faced by, 46
complications of acculturation, 53–56
diasporic websites and ethnic
identity, 528
disruptions in parenting, 49–52
future research directions, 56–57
reactive identification with sending
country, 480
sexual socialization in, 345–347
immigrant populations, minimizing
harm in research, 21
immigration
to countries with longer history of, 480
and cultural socialization, 6
densities of immigrants arriving
and leaving between countries
(2000-2005), 44
and families, 47–52
inalterability of moral reasoning, 235
independence
family model of, 278, 413
independence vs. interdependence
and adolescent development, 378, 382
and adolescent self-views, 379–380
and attachment theory, 160
developmental perspectives on, 412
independent vs. interdependent self, 154
India
child labor practices, 461–462
education and work migration, 565
emerging adulthood in, 487
fathering diversity within, 611–612
gender and emotion, 316
gender socialization and sexual
gender socialization in schools, 313
health interventions in, 371–372
Hindu perspectives on nonattachment,
691–693
hybrid identities in emerging
adulthood, 493
internal migration, 46
marriage customs in, 576, 577, 578
midlife narratives in, 637–638, 638–641
Panchayat Raj program, 477
perspectives on mentoring, 688
philosophy of nonattachment, 681
public opinion on creativity, 259
sources of fathering diversity in, 607
traditional patriarchy in, 281, 320
India, adolescents in
civic development among, 478
health concerns among, 365–366
mental health among, 370–371
preventing HIV/AIDS among,
368–369
religion and adolescent development,
387–388
transition rituals, 328
India, families in
behavioral inhibition among children,
133, 134
care, beneficence, and prosocial
morality, 243
emotion socialization of infants, 138
emotion socialization of toddlers, 139
ethics of community, divinity, and
autonomy, 241–242
expression of sadness vs. anger, 139
family model of interdependence, 413
gender differences and household
chores, 308
gender socialization, 311–312
grandparents as caregivers, 171–172
rules for emotional display among
children, 134–135
socialization of children, 280
Tamil family views on romantic
love, 570
India, later adulthood in
attachment and nonattachment, 689
autobiographical memory among older
adults, 627–628
demographics of aging, 683, 684
grandparents as child caregivers,
171–172, 593
relationships with deceased
elders, 706
Indian women, preoccupation with
sociocultural roles, 307
indigenous knowledge
defined, 68
and human ontogenesis in
Africa, 72–73
research themes, 68–72
indigenous social science
a call for development in Africa, 61–63
lessons from research, 67–68
individualism vs. collectivism
and attachment in children, 150
common patterns of change in collec-
tivist cultures, 421
developmental perspectives on, 412
and developmental tasks, 520, 521
I n de x 725
individualism vs. collectivism (Cont.)
development of family relationships,
283–285
display of emotions, 135
friendship, cultural variations in, 427,
433–434
friendship, exclusivity in, 430
friendship, instrumental aid in, 429
friendship, intimacy of, 428
friendship, managing conflict in, 431
and generativity, 653, 654, 657,
659–660
Hofstede's index, 132, 132
individualism and the “American
Dream,” 543–544, 546
individualistic emotional competence,
136, 139, 142
marriage customs, 582–583
and midlife narratives, 641, 647
narratives of Muslim and Jewish girls,
380, 381
networked individualism, 520, 521, 523
and new media, 523, 524
“parasite singles,” 492
and parenting practices, 277–278
potential inadequacy of construct,
21–22, 24
individuation
in African cultural settings, 71–72
and autonomous-relatedness, 417
and educational choices in youth, 449
Indonesia
affection in friendships, 428
definition and status of elders,
697–698, 699
exclusivity in adolescent
friendships, 430
intimacy in friendships, 425, 427–428
managing conflict in friendships, 431
prosocial behavior of children, 384–385
relationships with deceased elders,
705–706
significance of instrumental aid in
friendships, 429
Value of Children Study, 413
youth literacy in, 439
infant development, milestones of, 79–93
Bayley Scales of Infant Development,
80, 81, 82, 83, 84
beyond motor performance, 83–87
beyond Western milestones, 87
emergence and elaboration of, 79–81
emotional development, 86–87
genetic epistemology, 85
global vs. local norms, 88–89
locally developed scales, 87
memory and attention, 85–86
motor development, 81–83
research milestones, 88–89
infant-mortality rates, and parenting
practices, 277
infants
arithmetic abilities among, 100–101
726 I n de x
care in child welfare institutions,
176–177, 178–179
care of in subsistence-based farm fami-
lies, 594, 595, 595–596
conversational exchange with, 114–115
cultural differences in emotion social-
ization, 137–138
and developmental trajectories, 8–9
infant cognition, 96
infant regulatory problems and effects
on marriage, 591
minimizing harm in research,
19, 20, 21
moral development, 242, 243, 246
mortality rates and parenting
practices, 277
motor skills, 134
prenatal and infant language
learning, 113
public services for children in Italy, 166
sharing and cognitive development,
205–206
socialization by grandparents, 171,
172, 178
socialization by siblings, 169–171,
170–171, 178
social networks and attachment
theory, 152, 153
universal needs for primary care, 167
See also children
See also infant development,
milestones of
information and communication
technologies, 522
informed consent, ethical
considerations, 17–18
Inhelder, R., 65, 85
innovation, and hybrid identity, 34–35
institutional care for infants and tod-
dlers, 176, 178–179
institutional review boards (IRBs), 15–16
instrumental parentification, 461
intelligence, cultural manifestation of,
214–229
in the context of culture and globaliza-
tion, 216–217
and ecological contexts, 217–218
education in Zambia, 220–221
formal vs. informal educational set-
tings, 215, 218–220, 225
intelligence and culture as interwoven
concepts, 217
learning environments in Saudi
Arabia, 223–224
learning environments in Zambia,
221–223
practical vs. academic intelligence, 225
predetermined cognitive ability, 214
socially responsible intelligence, 221
various meanings of intelligence, 225
interdependence
and cognitive developmental approach
to moral reasoning, 234
and decreased social conflict, 673
ethnic minority families in the
Netherlands, 415
family model of, 278, 413
and health and well-being, 676
intergenerational households in Hindu
India, 638
interleukin-6 (IL-6), and health and
well-being, 676
internalization model of emotional
development, 129
International Encyclopedia on
Adolescence, 357
International Labor Organization (ILO)
campaign for eradication of child
labor, 461
on commercial sexual exploitation of
children and adolescents, 462
opposition to use of child soldiers, 464
International Migration Outlook 2011
report, 565
International Society for the Study of
Behavioral Development, 355, 357
International Study of Parents, Children,
and Schools, 283–284
Internet
diasporic websites and ethnic
identity, 528
and global communities, 481–482, 528
implications for self and identity, 30–31
and lower levels of closeness between
children and parents, 524
online commentaries and identity
development, 529
penetration worldwide, 522, 522
and social contexts of moral
reasoning, 244
Inuit people
and children's language
acquisition, 294
cultural model of childrearing, 190
family model of psychological
interdependence, 414
parenting practices among, 592
self-care among children, 293
Invisible Children (child soldiers in north-
ern Uganda), 349
Iran, language and gender
socialization, 313
Ireland
Northern Ireland, and adolescent nar-
ratives of identity, 402
vocational education programs, 558
youth outside both school and work,
560, 566
Irish families
motor skills of 4-month-old
infants, 134
temperamental reactivity among
infants, 133
Ishida, M., 673
Ishii, K, 117
Ishikawa, J., 83
Islam
origins of radicalism in adolescence,
388–389
and philosophy of
nonattachment, 690
Quranic schooling, 220, 224, 301–302
Ispa, J. M., 616
Ispa-Landa, S., 616
Israel
creativity and social context, 258, 259
demographics of aging in, 682
ethics of community, divinity, and
autonomy, 241
Internet use and parental closeness,
524–525
Negev Desert and village of Drijat,
519–520
project with Palestinian and U. S. ado-
lescents, 396–397, 401, 405
Value of Children Study, 413
youth outside both school and
work, 560
Israeli children
intimacy in friendships, 428
prosocial behavior toward
strangers, 385
Italian adults
beliefs regarding aging and
memory, 629
demographics of aging, 682
emerging adulthood in Italy, 660–661
Italian children
behavioral inhibition among, 133, 134
culture and children's
temperament, 286
emotional regulation among, 133
emotion socialization of infants, 138
infant temperament among, 131
linguistic politeness among, 121
managing conflict in friendships, 431
socializing toddlers for group partici-
pation, 175–176
Italian families
gender socialization, 312
parental descriptions of children, 283
time allocated for meals, 284
Italy
age distribution of foreign
migrants, 565
“child friendly city” of Pistoia, 166,
175–176
gender and emotional socialization, 317
gender and social identity, 318
Nigerian immigrant families in, 282
youth outside both school and work,
560, 566
Iturbide, Maria, 341–376
Iverson, J. M., 122
Ivory Coast
Baoulé people, 85
child labor practices and
education, 462
child language socialization, 282
Izard, C.E., 129
J infants, 128
Jackson, C., 321
Jacquemin, M. Y., 462
Jain, A., 612
Jain, M., 685
James, William, 29, 385
Jankowiak, William, 610
Janssen, S. M. J., 627
Japan
adult development and aging in,
666–667, 668–669, 674–677
at-home care for infirm elderly, 702
concept of Hureia Kippu or “care
credits,” 686
demographics of aging in, 682
emerging adulthood in, 498
emotional affect in language, 117
empirical studies of adult develop-
ment, 672–674
ethics of community, divinity, and
autonomy, 241
gender socialization in, 311
generativity in, 653–654, 658
health and risk behaviors in emerging
and young adults, 502, 506
marital happiness in, 579
marriage customs in, 576, 578
midlife narratives in, 637–638,
641–645, 648
peers and gender socialization, 312
perspectives on mentoring, 688
preschools in, 175
prostitution and health among emerg-
ing and young adults, 512–513
research on developmental timetables,
272–273
sexuality and health in emerging and
young adults, 508
sources of fathering diversity in, 607
study of fathering in, 602–603
substance abuse and antisocial behav-
ior in emerging and young adults,
510–511
trainees and temporary migrant
workers, 566
Japanese adolescents
interpretations of peer behavior,
377–378, 383
and parental authority, 377, 382
values of autonomy and
relatedness, 381
worldviews of, 380, 381
Japanese adults, interpersonal social situ-
ations and aging, 630
Japanese families
care, beneficence, and prosocial
morality, 243
children and concealment of
emotions, 135
Confucian traditions and parenting,
280–281
distal vs. proximal caregiving, 279
emotional development among
emotional reactivity among infants, 131
emotional regulation among
children, 133
facial expressions among infants,
129–130
globalization and identity
confusion, 36
“positive affectivity” among infants,
142, 143
privacy concerns, 23
rules for emotional display among
children, 135
Japanese language
linguistic markers of speaker
certainty, 118
linguistic politeness in, 119–120
Japanese mothers
concept of amae, 658
developmental timetables of, 273
joint attention of mothers and
infants, 206
parenting practices of, 19–20, 22
Japanese National Law for the Welfare of
Elders, 1963, 669
Java, intimacy in friendships, 428
Javanese children, interplay of tempera-
ment and culture, 285–286
Jayet, H., 565
Jedinak, A., 314
Jejeebhoy, S. J., 367
Jensen, Arthur, 81
Jensen, Lene Arnett, 3–13, 230–254
cultural perspective on morality, 384
ethic of autonomy, 495
repercussions of globalization for
adolescents, 30
role of religiosity in adolescent self-
and worldviews, 385
study on youth in India, 33
Jewish adolescents
effect of individual and family values
on self-view, 382
individualism vs. collectivism in life
narratives, 380
and self-identity in Belgium, 387
Jewish kibbutz communities, intimacy in
friendships, 428
Ji, L., 428
Ji, L. J., et al., 625
Jianbin, X., 685
jihadis, origins of radicalism in adoles-
cence, 388–389
Johnson, D. J., 259
Johnson, K. A., 386–387
Johnston, K., 312
joint attention
activities among children, 104
adults and children in language
learning, 113
mothers and infants, 205–206
I n de x 727
Joseph, R. & T. B., 577 maternal expectations of emotional cognitive developmental sequence,
Joshi, M. S., 134 development, 136 233, 235
jouvana, Hindu Indian concept of young proximal vs. distral caregiving, 278 and ethics of autonomy, 241
adulthood, 639, 650n7 social smile in infants, 130 levels of moral reasoning, 233, 234
Judaism, perspectives on advancing Keller, M., 428, 429 moral prescriptions of, 246
age, 690 Kelly, P., 686 Kokwet community of western Kenya,
Jugendweihe, 338, 339 Kemmelmeier, M., 379 271–272, 274, 283
jukunen, Japanese concept of mature Kempen, H. J. G., 33–34 Kolarz, C. M., 671
age, 644 Kenya Koller, Silvia, 456–470
Jung, Carl, 667 childcare by siblings, 169, 170 König, J., 34–35
children as caregivers, 293–294 Konner, M., 426, 613
K communication among toddlers, 300 Koo, J., 413
Kagan, J., 131, 133 definition and status of elders, 698 Korea
Kagia, J., 84 developmental timetables of mothers, affection in friendships, 428
Kağitçibaşi, Çiğdem, 410–424 271–272, 274 definition and status of elders, 699
autonomous-relatedness, 417, 418, 420 Kaoleni children, 188 demographics of aging in, 682
contextual and global considerations Logoli people of, 310 entrepreneurship and self-employment
in education, 220 See also Gusii people (Kenya) in, 559
cross-cultural perspective on family See also Kipsigis people of integrating creativity into
relations, 278 western Kenya classrooms, 261
family change theory, 381 See also Kokwet community of intimacy in friendships, 425, 427–428
Majority World, 421 western Kenya public opinion on creativity, 259
self theory of, 416 Kenyan villages respect for elders in, 669
socioeconomic status and family children's peer relationships in, 427 trainees and temporary migrant
life, 278 children's' perceived competence, 217 workers, 566
Value of Children Study, 413 perspective on practical vs. academic Value of Children Study in, 413
Western origins of scientific intelligence, 221 youth outside both school and
psychology, 63 Kephart, W. M., 577 work, 561
Kahn, R. L., 668 Kern, M. L., 684 Korean adolescents
Kakar, Sudhir, 611–612, 641, 649 Kessler, E. M., 686 autonomy and relatedness among,
Kaluli society Kessler, R. C., 646 416–417
language socialization, 115 Kharkhurin, A. V., 264 exclusivity in friendships, 430
shaming in, 117 Kilbride, C. P., 66 Korean-American adolescents, 528–529
Kama Sutra, 580 Kilbride, P. L. & J. E., 65, 84 Korean adults
Kamehameha Early Education Program Killen, M., 237 beliefs regarding aging and memory,
(KEEP), 302 Kim, H. Y., 49 628–629
Kan, Chiemi, 666–679 Kim, K. H., 266 identifying emotions, 630
Kanbur, R., 609 Kim, M., 427 meaning of death for elderly, 702
Kane, E. W., 314 Kim, S. D., 313 positivity bias among older adults,
Kanner, B. G., 321 Kim, T. C., 656 629, 630
Kansas City Studies of Adult Life, 667 Kim, U., 413 relationships with deceased
Kaoleni children in Kenya, play and King, P. E., 238, 684 spouses, 705
household work, 188 Kinnvall, C., 32 Korean families
Kapadia, Shagufa, 241, 307–324 kinship terms, as used by street behavioral inhibition among children,
Kapur, M., 370 kids, 342 133, 134
Karasawa, Mayumi, 175, 666–679 Kipsigis people of western Kenya distal vs. proximal caregiving, 279
karma, Hindu concept of, 691, 692 child language socialization, 282 Internet use and parental closeness,
Kärtner, J., 130 infant developmental milestones, 81 524–525
Kasumagic, L., 688 involvement of fathers in family life, parental expectations of children's
Kathuria, R., 67 284–285 friendships, 427
Katz, M. M., 613 parental expectations, 271–272 parent-child conversations, 206
Kaufman, J. C., 257 parenting practices, 594 Korn, S. J., 286
Kawakami, Norito, 666–679 Kitayama, Shinobu, 117, 379, 430, Kornadt, H. -J., 386–387
Kayan Lahwi people in Burma, 666–679 Kotre, John, 656–657, 660, 661
beauty-enhancing practices Kleiber, D., 686 Koutrelakos, J., 415
among, 572 Kleis, Astrid, 597 Kpelle-speaking people of Liberia
keguldo (eliciting stepping reflex in Klingstedt, Marie-Louise, 502–518 children taking initiative in
infants), 82 Klohnen, E. C., 670 activity, 295
Keller, Heidi, 586–601 Knight, R., 273 ethnotheories about children's play, 187
and ecocultural perspective, 165 Knoche, L., 427 observational learning among
infant care practices across Koentjaraningrat, 428 children, 205
cultures, 277 Kogan, N., 261 Kraemer, H. C., 84
maternal care of infants, 137 Kohlberg, L. Kremer-Sadlik, T., 284

728 I n de x
Kuczinski, L., 281 role in cognitive development, 203 Li, D., 431
Kumru, A., 427 and spatial cognition, 6 Li, M., 431
!Kung tribesmen, Africa universal grammar vs. sociocultural Li, S.-C., 623, 630
developmental timetables, 275–276 perspective on, 112 Li, X., 609, 610
love and marriage among, 579 using bicultural and bilingual Li, X. E., 280
play and household work, 188 researchers, 56 Li, Y. J., 386–387
sharing and cognitive development, Lapidus, I. M., 690 Liang, C.-H., 280
205–206 Larson, R., 493, 687 Lianyungang Social Welfare Institution,
Kuypers, J. A., 668 Larson, R. W., et al., 245 China, 177
Kwak, K., 417 Latchem, C. R., 444 liberation theology, 444
Kwanga people of Papua New Guinea, Latin America Liberia, 187, 205, 295
death and bereavement rituals, 704 adolescent sexual activity in, 366 Libório, R. M. C., 463
Kwon, Y. -E., 413 movement for gay rights in, 482 Liechty, Mark, 9
Kwon, Y., et al., 629 socioeconomic status and child life course
Kyratzis, A., 312–313 labor, 458 Anglo-American narratives of midlife,
youth entrepreneurship in, 560 645–646, 647
L Latino families and definition and status of elders, 699
Labouvie-Vief, G., 670 civic engagement by undocumented Dharmasastric model of, 640–641
Lachman, M. E., 671 youth, 479 Dharmashastras, 238
Lamb, Michael, 280, 604, 609, 610, 615 gender socialization in United divisions of, 9
Lamb, Sharon, 309, 689 States, 311 in Hindu Indian tradition, 639
Lamm, Bettina, 586 quinceanera, 338 hypothetical lifespan trajectories, 538
TheLancet sexual socialization in, 346–347 indigenous African views, 398–399
adolescent health interventions, 371 Latzko, B., 232 life transitions and recovery from
series on adolescent health, 357 Lau, S., et al., 264 abuse, 343
Lancy, D. F., 188, 207, 295, 589, 592 Lavallee, N., 65, 85 model of developmental regulation, 539
Langer, E., 628 Lave, J., 208 moral development over, 246
language acquisition Lavelli, M., 138 motivational theory of lifespan devel-
culture paths to, 114–116 Lawton, A., 431 opment, 537–540
and gender socialization, 313–314 leadership, styles of, 687 service learning and volunteerism, 687
membership in community of speak- Leaper, C., 314 and social mobility, 536
ers, 113–114 learning theory of emerging adulthood, 488
researching second language coexisting ways of, 302–303 trajectories in independent vs.
acquisition, 122 formal vs. informal, 443, 444 interdependent models of
and socialization of children, measuring relevancy and outcome, 446 personhood, 667
114–115, 294 media resources for, 443–444, 445 youth transitions to adulthood,
vocabulary structure, 115–116 open and distance outreach learning, 447–448
language development across cultures, 444, 445 Life History and the Historical Moment
111–126 role of cultural traditions in, 445 (Erikson), 656
affective and epistemic stances, 116–119 Lebanese-born mothers, developmental Likert scales, cross-cultural use of, 631
cultural pathways to language, 114–116 timetables of, 273 Lim, H. C., 84
future directions for research, 121–123 Ledbetter, P. J., 120 Lin, Cynthia, 471–484
linguistic politeness, 119–121 Lee, J. C., 558 Lin, Z., 629
mechanisms of cultural influence on Lee, O., 428 Lindegger, G., 37
language development, 122 Leiderman, P. H. and G. F., 84 linguistic mediation, and cultural psy-
scope of cultural influence on language Lento, T., 526 chology, 398, 399
development, 121–122 Lerner, R. M., 419 linguistic politeness, 119–121
social factors in language develop- Lescano, C. M., et al., 346 linguistic tone, heritability of, 98
ment, 112–116 Lessons from Africa (LeVine), 66 literacy
languages Leung, A. K., 35, 263, 264, 265 role in cognitive development, 203
and acculturation, 53, 54 Levenson, M. R., 685–686 youth literacy rates around the world,
English proficiency among immigrant Levenson, R. W., 129 439, 440, 440
children, 51–52 Levey, T., 311 Liu, J., 383
English proficiency among immigrant Levine, Cynthia, 666–679 Liu, Jia Li, 271–291
parents, 51 LeVine, R. A., 208, 277–278, 282, Lobel, S., 378
implications for self-identity, 31–32, 296, 301 local inquiry, in developmental
404–405 LeVine, R. A. & B. B., 65, 66 research, 89
multilingualism and multicultural Levine, R., et al., 578 localization
identity, 264–265 Levit, D. H., 687 global vs. local identities, 33–34
and narrative, 400–401 Levy, B., 628 as response to globalization, 32–33
normative and subversive potential Levy-Bruhl, L., 69 Lock, M., 642
of, 402 Lewis, C., 284 Logan, R. I., 656
referential nature of, 114–115 Leyendecker, B., 414, 415 Logoli people of Kenya, 310

I n de x 729
long-term memory among older Mali self-care among children, 293
adults, 625 definition and status of elders, 699 Matsui, Tomoko, 111–126
Lonner, W. J., 344 work migration in, 564 Matsumoto, H., 430
Lord's Resistance Army, Uganda, 349 Malti, T., 232 Mauss, Marcel, 706
loss, symptoms of among cultures, 345 MAM Movies, 680, 681 Mavridis, Caroline Johnston, 271–291
Louie, J. Y., 136 Mamprusi children in Ghana, grandpar- Mayan children
love ents as caregivers, 171 collaborative communication between
future trends in love and marriage, Manago, Adriana, 519–534, 530 teachers and children, 300
582–583 Manav Sadhana, social movement, effect of maternal schooling, 301
historical perspectives on, 580–581 India, 693 joint attention of mothers and
marriage for love, strengths and weak- Manigione, Heather, 174, 292–306 infants, 206
nesses of, 578–579 Manu, ancient Hindu philosopher, 641 participation in daily activities, 208
marriage for love in modern-day soci- Maori culture, and memories of early sibling care of, 594
eties, 577–578 childhood, 628 Mayer, B., 381, 387, 413
marriage for love in tribal societies, Marecek, J., 310 Mayes, L. C., 316
575–576 Marín, G. & B. V., 662 Mazahua people, Mexico
passionate vs. companionate, 570–571 Maritim, Arap, 270 children taking initiative in
the romantic, marital, and sexual Markus, Hazel R., 379, 430, 666–679 activity, 295
ideal, 571–574 Marlow, C., 526 collaborative communication between
transient nature of, 579–580 Marlowe, F. W., 168 teachers and children, 300
undesirable characteristics in a partner, marriage cultural patterns of collaboration, 299
574–575 changing customs worldwide, 582, 583 learning through third-party atten-
universality of, 571 child marriages, 360–361, 366 tion, 297–298
Love, Gayle D., 666–679 desirable characteristics in a partner, McAdams, Dan, 653, 656, 662
“loving dead,” in indigenous African 571–574 McCagg, P., 118
belief, 70 and effects of parenting, 591 McCall, G. J., 425–426
low-income families and emerging adulthood, 496–497 McCandless, M. A., 428
gender and emotional forced early marriage, 561–562 McCrae, R. R., 670
socialization, 316 historical perspectives on, 580–581 McDonald, K., 431
significance of instrumental aid in as life transition ritual, 328 McGraw, Myrtle, 80, 81
friendships, 429 marriage for love, strengths and weak- McIssac, C., 418
Loyola Generativity Scale, 658, 659, nesses of, 578–579 McKenzie, J., 30, 33
660, 662 marriage for love in modern-day soci- McNeill, T., 312
Lubart, T. I., 257, 259 eties, 577–578 McShane, K. E., 414, 417
Lubiewska, K., 414 marriage for love in tribal societies, Mead, George Herbert, 29
Lucca, N., 427 575–576 Mead, Margaret, 287
Lui, I, 317 polygamy vs. monogamy, 575 media
Luisi-Mills, Helyn, 471–484 possible future trends in, 582–583 and identity development, 527–530
Lundman, B., 308–309 semiarranged marriage, 497 new media and family relationships,
Lusi-Kaliai of New Britain, 702 and transnational families, 55 524–526
Luther, Martin, 656 undesirable characteristics in a partner, new media and peer relationships,
Lutz, C., 286 574–575 526–527
Luxembourg marriage, arranged new vs. old media, 521–523, 527–528
study on divergent thinking, 262–263 and family goodwill, 307 and sociocultural change in youth
vocational education programs, 558 in Hindu India, 638 development, 523–524, 531
youth outside both school and in modern-day societies, 576–577 Meehan, C. L., 613
work, 560 semiarranged marriage, 497 Meehl, P. E., 433
Luyten, P., 689 strengths and weaknesses of, 578–579 Meeus, W., 417
in tribal societies, 575–576 Mehta, D., 688
M Marsella, A., 29, 37 Mehta, K. K., 685
Maccoby, E. E., 309 Marshall, J. P., 689 Mejía-Arauz, R., et al., 295–296
Machel Report, on children and armed Marta, Elena, 660 Mekeel, Scudder, 655
conflict, 349 Martin, C. L., 319 memory and attention, in infant
MacLean, M., 134 Martini, T. S., 135, 143, 280, 316 development, 85–86
Maddox, W. W., 263, 265 Masten, A. S., 342 men, and marriage before age 18, 362
Madureira, A. F., 34 mathematical achievement, and house- menarche
Magnusson, C., 507 hold responsibilities, 222 decline in age of, 514
Magnusson, D., 510 Matsingenka people of Peru and societal expectations of adolescent
Magnusson, E., 310 attentiveness among toddlers, 297 girls, 327
Mahajan, R., 281 collaborative communication among Mendelson, C., 691
Make-a-Person Test, 67 children, 299 Méndez, R. M., 285
Malaysia, sources of fathering diversity mismatched school and home Menon, Usha, 637–652, 669
in, 607 cultures, 302 menopause

730 I n de x
 reported symptoms among
Anglo-American women, 646
view of among Indian and Japanese
women, 649
mental health
among adolescent populations,
369–371
of demobilized child soldiers, 465, 466
mental scales, in assessing infant
development, 84
mentoring
and community leadership in later
adulthood, 686–689
in later adulthood, 680
United States vs. Japan, 688
meritocracy and social inequality,
549, 550
Merrick, Joseph Carey, 574
Mesch, G. S., 525, 526
Mexican-American children
and coexisting ways of learning,
302–303
collaborative communication,
299, 300
cultural patterns of collaboration, 298
effect of maternal schooling, 301
and gender socialization, 316–317
learning through third-party
attention, 297
Mexican-American families
acculturation among, 663–664
concept of fatalismo, 662–663
concept of la familia, 662
concept of personalismo, 663
generativity among, 662–664
quinceanera ceremonies, 338
See also Latino families
Mexican children
observational learning among, 205
participation in daily activities, 208
taking initiative in activity, 295, 296
Zinacanteco siblings as caregivers, 169
See also Yucatec Mayan children
Mexican families
gender differences and household
chores, 308
and telenovela series, 528
Mexican Institutional Revolutionary
Party, 481–482
Mexico
education and work migration, 565
2012 Mexican elections, 481–482
P'urhépecha people, 292
youth leaving school too early, 561
youth outside both school and work,
560–561
Micronesia, relationships with deceased
elders, 706
middle childhood
economic subsistence patterns and,
275–276
family cultural variability,
278–279, 287
individualism vs. collectivism in, Mitei family, Kokwet, western Kenya,
283–285, 287 271–272
interplay of temperament and culture, Mittal, R., 687
285–286 Miura, Y., 118
parental expectations of development, Miyake, K., 381
272–275, 287 Miyamoto, Yuri, 666–679
parent-child relationships across cul- Mizera, L., 417
tures, 279–285, 287 Mizuta, I., 135
parenting styles across cultures, Mo, Yu-Ming, 570–585
277–278, 287 Mobius band, 309
in sub-Saharan agricultural societies, Model, S., 415
281–283 Moffitt, T. E., 514
time allocated to activities, 283–284 Mok, A., 263
women's workloads and parenting Molero Samuelson, Y., 510
practices, 276–277 Monin, B., 232
Middle East monogamy vs. polygamy, 575
Arab Spring, 474, 475 Moore, C., 118
youth unemployment in, 556 Moore, L. C., 224
Midlife in Japan study, 672, 673, 674 Moors, E., 416
Midlife in the United States study, 549, Morais, N. A., 348, 463, 464
671, 672, 674 moral development
midlife narratives and ethics, 8
aging as social maturation, 642 intra and interpersonal reasoning,
in an Odia Hindu temple town, 245–246
638–640, 650n3 moral identity theory, 237–238
Confucian legacy of possibilism, 642 morality
cultural variability in, 637–638 expectations of religious groups, 235
Dharmasastric model of life course, hypothetical moral dilemmas, 233
640–641 moral exemplars, 236, 237, 238
the experience of middle age, 645–647 moral motivations, 236–237
gender-differentiated paths to growth, moral purpose, 383–385
642–644 moral vignettes, 235, 236
Hindu meanings for the middle years as organizing factor in adolescent
of life, 641 development, 379
midlife in popular culture, 647 relationship with values and religious
“prime of life,” 644–645 orientation, 387–389
migration vs. religion, 385
and acculturation, 52–53 moral reasoning, 230–254
complications of acculturation, 53–56 care, beneficence, and prosocial moral-
destination states in United States, 46 ity, 242–243
mass migration vs. individual cognitive-developmental approach,
migration, 46 233, 233–235
work migration, 564–566 concepts of, 232–233
Milanese adults, beliefs regarding aging cultural-developmental approach, 233,
and memory, 629 238–242
Milgram obedience to authority domain approach, 236
study, 16 justice vs. care orientation, 242
Millennium Development Goals Kohlberg's levels of, 233, 234
and adolescent health, 356 over the life course, 246
and emerging and young adult social contexts and processes, 243–246
health, 504 worldviews and theories of, 230–231
reductions in poverty, 347 Morelli, Gilda, 149–164
universal primary education, 218–219 Mormons
Miller, Joan G., 14–27, 650n1 See Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
Miller, P. J., 280, 281 Day Saints
Mills Longitudinal Study of women, 670 Morocco
Mind, Self, and Society (Mead), 29 adolescent attachment and
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, well-being, 417
India, 371 marriage customs in, 577, 583
Mische, A., 476 Morris, M. W., 263
Mishra, A. J., 692 Morrow, V., 310
Mishra, R. C., 387–388, 413 Morrow-Howell, N., 688
Mistry, J., 238, 692 Moscardino, U., 282, 286
I n de x 731
mothers
breastfeeding among Nso people of
Cameroon, 596
care of infants and toddlers, 167
developmental timetables of, 273
and gender socialization, 314–315
maternal schooling and generational
change, 300–301, 302
profiles of maternal behavior, 168
sibling and maternal childcare in
Kenya, 170
styles of mothering across cultures, 276
See also parenting
mothers-in-law, roles and life stages in
Hindu India, 640, 650n6
motivational theory of lifespan develop-
ment, 537–540
hypothetical lifespan trajectories, 538
model of developmental regulation, 539
motor skills
beyond motor performance, 83–87
development in agricultural societies,
281–283, 595, 595
infant development milestones, 81–83
means and standard deviations for
4-month-old infants, 134
Mount Hebron, Israel, 519
Mourgues, Catalina, 255–270
Mozambique, child labor in a domestic
context, 461
Mroczek, D. K., 670, 671
Much, N. C., 245
Mueller, R. O., 238
Muhammetberdiev, O. B., 311
Mullen, M. K., 206
multiculturalism
and development of creativity, 265
multicultural identity, 31–32, 264–265
Mundy-Castle, A. C., 65
Munroe, R. L., 198–199, 310
Munroe, Ruth & Lee, 168
Munroe, Ruth & Robert, 4–5, 7, 65
Murdock, George Peter, 279
Murre, J. M. J., 627
Mursi tribe in Ethiopia,
beauty-enhancing practices
among, 572
Muslim countries, marriage customs
in, 577
Muslim girls, individualism vs. collectiv-
ism in life narratives, 380, 381
mutual constitution, and cultural
psychology, 398
N transition to middle childhood,
Nagata, D. K., 281
Na/'hoansi people of Botswana, 700–701
Nakahara, Jun, 666–679
Nakawaza, J., 280
Namibia
foster families in, 173
Himba people, 98–99
Narayan, A. J., 342
732 I n de x
narcissism, and use of new media, 530
narratives
cognitive development in children, 206
narrative tasks, 104–105
politics of adolescent identity,
400–404
understanding generativity and cul-
ture, 657, 661
See also midlife narratives
National Human Development Report,
India, 683
nationality vs. culture, 54
National Liberation Army,
Colombia, 465
National Policy for Older Persons,
India, 684
National Research Act (1974), 16
nation-states, and the social contract,
476–477, 480
Native Americans
adolescent transition ceremonies
among, 332–333
cultural variations and research, 17
Erikson's generativity work among,
655, 658
role of historical loss among, 345
vision quests among, 328, 336
Navajo families, emotional reactivity
among infants, 131
Negev Desert, Israel, 519–520
Nelwan, P., 428
neonate smile, cross-cultural differences
in, 129
neonatocracy, 589
Nepal
effects of globalization in, 9
emotional display among children, 135
emotion socialization of toddlers,
139–140
Newar people of, 310–311
recruitment of child soldiers in, 465
Netherlands
age distribution of foreign
migrants, 565
entrepreneurship and self-employment
in, 559
work/study programs, 558
youth outside both school and
work, 560
networked individualism, 520, 521, 523
Neugarten, B. L., 649, 667, 670, 675
neuroscience
and cultural-developmental
scholarship, 8–9
208–209
New, R.
10 Country Portraits, 175
Newar people of Nepal, and gender
socialization, 310–311
New Britain, elders and care of elderly
in, 702
New Guinea
adolescent transition rituals in, 330,
333–334, 335
beauty-enhancing practices in, 572
ethnography of the Sambia, 487
New Zealand
educational system of, 535–536
ethics of community, divinity, and
autonomy, 241
immigration from Polynesia, 36
Internet use and parental
closeness, 524
postsecondary graduation rates, 563
trainees and temporary migrant
workers, 566
Ngaujah, D. E., 67
Ngecha, Kenya, 170
Nguyen, H. T., 623
Nicoladis, E., 313
Nicolaides, Christina, 198–213
Nieto Silva, Carlos José, 456–470
Nieuwenhuys, O., 187
Nigeria
child care and development in, 274
Nigerian immigrant families in
Italy, 282
work migration in, 564
Nimrod, G., 686
Nisbett, R. E., 430, 622, 623, 625, 631
Niue, Polynesia, 706
Nkosi, Busisiwe, 698
Noesjirwan, J., 428, 430
nonattachment, philosophy of
benefits in later adulthood, 686
Hindu perspectives on, 691–693
implications in later adulthood,
689–691, 694
significance in India, 681
Norasakkunkit, V., 36, 430
Norenzayan, A., 186, 188
Normative Aging Study, 670
normative conformity, 104, 105, 134–135
norm psychology, 104
North Africa
youth unemployment in, 556
North America, adolescent transition
rituals in, 330
North American Indian tribes
adolescent transition ceremonies,
332–333
cultural variations and research, 17
Erikson's generativity work among,
655, 658
role of historical loss among, 345
vision quests, 328, 336
Northern Ireland, and adolescent narra-
tives of identity, 402
Norway
age distribution of foreign
migrants, 565
Internet use and parental closeness, 525
linguistic politeness among
children, 121
vocational education programs, 558
 youth outside both school and
work, 560
Nsamenang, A. Bame, 61–76
competing images of adolescence, 421
Eurocentric bias of developmental
science, 398
social cognition in Africa, 282
Nso infants (Cameroon)
caregiving practices, 277
cultural emotion norms, 136, 137, 137
emotion socialization, 138
social smiles among, 130
Nso people (Cameroon)
parenting practices among, 593–595,
595, 596
role of grandparents in parenting, 593
single mothers among, 598
Nuremberg Code, 15
nutritional status, and concerns in ado-
lescent health, 365
Nwobu, O., 282
Nyakyusa people of Tanzania, 336
Nyansongo, Kenya, 170
Nyasani, J. M., 72
Nydegger, W. F. & C., 429
O Panga Muntu Test, 67
Oakes, K. E., 386
obliges, utterances demanding a
response, 120
observation, and cognitive development,
200, 201, 204–205, 209
Ochs, Elinor, 112, 114–115, 119, 121, 294
O'Connor, C., 687
Ogutu, V., 71
Ohuche, R. O., 65
Okavango Delta, Botswana, 205
Okinawan families, gender differences
and household chores, 308
Okpara, E., 72
Okun, M. A., 386–387
Older Amercians' Act, 1965, 669
Oles, P., 35–36
Olowu, A. A., 71
One Child Policy, China, 609–610
“ontogeny-recapitulates-phylogeny,” 81
Oosterweegel, A., 417
Open and Closed Mind, The (Rokeach), 29
Optional Protocol on the Involvement of
Children in Armed Conflict, 466
Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD)
demographic changes in member
nations, 489
immigration to member nations, 44, 45
reports on formal education in mem-
ber nations, 451
tertiary education in member nations,
490, 490
youth literacy worldwide, 439, 440
Otaala, B., 65
Otto, Hiltrud, 136, 598
Outliving the Self (Kotre), 656–657
Out of Place (Said), 31
Ovambo culture, socialization of grand-
children by grandparents, 173
overimitation, and cognitive
development, 104
Overton, A. E., 685
Oyserman, D., 379, 632
P research, 17–18
Pacific Islander communities
identity confusion in New Zealand, 36
open and distance outreach learning
in, 444, 445
Padilla-Walker, L. M., 243
Pakistan
adolescent civic development in, 478
marriage customs in, 578
Palestine
children and armed conflict, 348–349
Value of Children Study in, 413
Palestinian adolescents, project with
Israeli and U. S. teens, 396–397,
401, 405
Panchayat Raj program, India, 477
Pandya, N., 241, 242
Panerai, L., 386
Papua New Guinea
communication with children, 294
death and bereavement rituals, 704
Paradise, R., 297, 299
parental ethnotheories
Asian, 279–281
and developmental timetables,
272–275, 287
economic subsistence patterns and
childrearing practices, 275–276
and family cultural variability,
278–279, 287
interaction of temperament and cul-
ture, 285–286
parent-child relationships across cul-
tures, 279–285, 287
and parenting styles across cultures,
277–278, 287
regarding children's play, 187
and socialization strategies, 588
in sub-Saharan agricultural societies,
281–283
themes and variations in the West,
283–285
women's workloads and parenting
practices, 276–277
parenting
African vs. European practices, 66
and attachment theory, 152
authoritative parenting, 23–24
coexisting discipline and warmth, 415
Confucian traditions of, 280
cultural models of childrearing, 190
and economic subsistence patterns,
275–276
emotion socialization, 315–316
ethnotheories about children's play,
187, 189–190
and expressions of creativity, 260
and friendship patterns of
adolescents, 418
gender and emotional socialization, 317
gender socialization, 311–312, 314–315
and giving informed consent for
and increased importance of children's
schooling, 301
and individualism vs. collectivism,
277–278
infant learning of emotional
norms, 127
and infant-mortality rates, 277
instrumental parentification, 461
Internet use and parental closeness,
524–525
interpretations of parental
authority, 377
minimizing harm in research, 19–21
parental emotion talk with children,
140–141
parental expectations across cultures,
271–272
parental leave policies, 168–169
parents as caregivers, 167–169
protecting family privacy in
research, 18–19
setting the agenda for parenting,
272–275
shared maternal and paternal child-
care, 168–169
styles of mothering across
cultures, 276
and surveillance of social media,
525–526
transnational families, 49–52
and women's workloads, 276–277
See also adolescents
See also children
See also infants
See also parental ethnotheories
parenting, dual and communal
African vs. European practices, 586
attachment parenting, 590
cultural models of childrearing, 587
overview of, 597–598
relationship between culture and envi-
ronment, 587–588
in subsistence-based farm families,
592–597
in Western middle-class families,
588–592
Park, D. C., 622–625, 630–632
Park, Jiyoung, 666–679
Park, Y. -S., 413
Parmar, P., 280
participation, and cognitive develop-
ment, 201, 201, 208–209
Partido Revolucionario Institucional,
481–482
I n de x 733
pastoralists
and adolescent transition rituals, 331
fathers' care of infants and
toddlers, 168
and parenting, 275–276
proximity between fathers and
children, 613
Pastorelli, C., 386
Patel, Jayeshbhai and Ishwarbhai, 693
Patel, V., 370
Patterson, G. R., 430
Pearce, L. D., 386
pedagogy, natural, 104
peer groups
and gender socialization, 312–313, 335
new social media and peer relation-
ships, 521, 526–527
peer cultures in Africa, 70
Pels, T., 415
Penezic, Z., et al., 658, 659
Peng, K., 263
PERGEL Project, 420
personality development, in African cul-
tural settings, 71–72
personality profiling, and human devel-
opment research in Africa, 64–65
personality traits, and inner
dialogue, 35–36
personal rules vs. moral reasoning, 235
Persoons, P., 689
Peru, 293
Petar, Dyado, 111
Peter, J., 526
Petersen, Anne C., 355–376
Phalet, K., 416
Phantom of the Opera, The, 574
Philippines
child labor practices in, 461–462
education and work migration, 565
marriage customs in, 578
significance of instrumental aid in
friendships, 429
Phillips, D. A., 313
Phillipson, C., 39
philosophical systems, and developing
friendships, 427
Philosophy of Moral Development, The
(Kohlberg), 246
phonology, in childhood language
acquisition, 113
phylogeny
of cognitive development, 102–104, 203
of cultural variation, 102
phylogenetic comparative methods, 97
physical characteristics universally con-
sidered attractive, 573, 574
Piaget, Jean
cultural context of human
development, 62
and ethics of autonomy, 241
gender and moral perspective, 242
modern reframing of concerns, 247
moral prescriptions of, 246
734 I n de x
and moral reasoning, 231
moral renewal at adolesence,
230–231, 234
observations of daughter, 85
social contexts of moral reasoning,
243–244
stages of infant development, 85
three mountains experiment, 38
Piccolomini, Alessandro, 576
Pidada, S., 428, 429, 431
Pieterse, J. N., 34
Pinar, G., 512
Pistoia, Italy, 166, 175–176
Pizarro, D. A., 232
Plath, D. W., 642, 643, 644, 648, 649
play
cultural construction of everyday
activities, 190–192
cultural influence and child develop-
ment, 192–195
as culturally organized activity,
187–189
foundational sources of cultural
beliefs, 189–190
playgroups and child care
centers, 174
pretend play among children, 104
toys and other resources for play, 192
Pleck, Joseph, 603
pointing and other referential
gestures, 101
Polish families
negative vs. positive affectivity in
infants, 131
psychological interdependence
model, 414
time allocated for meals, 284
politeness, linguistic, 119–121
Pollack, D. C., 34
polygamy vs. monogamy, 575
polygyny, in sub-Saharan Africa, 282
Polynesia
immigration to New Zealand, 36
neglect of elderly, 706
Poon, M. W., 626
Poortinga, Y. H., 417
Portes, A., 480
Positive Youth Development (PYD),
419–420, 420
positivity bias, 629, 630
Possibility Thinking, 261
Pott, M., 381
poverty
among immigrant populations, 50
and rates of volunteerism, 238
and risk of child labor abuse, 459
and risk of commercial sexual exploita-
tion, 462–463
power differentials
regional, 4
between West and non-West, 63
Poyrazli, Senel, 502–518, 514
Pozitif Ergen Gelişimi, Turkey, 420
Prates Santana, Juliana, 456–470
prauda, Hindu Indian concept of
midlife, 637, 639
Prenda, K. M., 671
primate cognition, 96–97
Prince, C., 414
privacy concerns
Japanese response to Adult Attachment
Interview, 23
protecting research subjects, 18–19
probabillistic epigenesis, and cognitive
development, 204
Progress for Children, 360
prosody and prosodic cues in
language, 117
prostitution and health, among emerging
and young adults, 512–513
protective factors
among homeless youth, 347–348
among those displaced by war, 348
family and friends as, 344
future study of, 350–351
religiosity and spirituality as, 345
vs. promotive factors, 343
psychological interdependence
ethnic minority families in the
Netherlands, 415
family model of, 413, 421
psychology
African vs. European, 72
norm psychology, 104
psychological diversity, 398
See also cultural psychology
See also developmental psychology
Psychology of Moral Development, The
(Kohlberg), 246
publication and research, regional power
differentials, 4, 5
Public Health Service Syphilis Study
(1932-1971), 15–16
Puchalska-Wasyl, M., 35–36
P'urhépecha people of Mexico
children taking initiative in
activity, 295
formal schooling among, 292
mismatched school and home
cultures, 302
Purohit, P., 685
Purwono, U., 386, 428
Q
Qatar
autobiographical memory among
adults, 627
hybrid identities among
adolescents, 529
quinceanera, 338
Quiroz, B., 277
Quranic schooling, 220, 224, 301–302
R
radicalism, religious, 388–389
Raeff, C., 277
Raffaelli, Marcela, 341–376 religious purpose and adolescent devel- emotion displays in children's story-
Rahhal, T. A., 628 opment, 385–387 books, 136, 137
Rai, T. S., 390 religious purpose and values and mor- public opinion on creativity, 259
Rainie, L., 520–521 als, 387–389 romantic relationships in adolescence, 418
Rakoczy, H., 118 religious systems and developing Rome, imperial, 332, 336
Raley, S., 312 friendships, 427 Roopnarine, Jaipaul, 612, 614–615
Rampton, B., 402 Ren, Lixin, 165–181 Rosen, L. A., 314
Rapson, Richard L., 570–585, 582 research Rosenberg, H. G., 700–701
Rathore, L., 688 avoiding bias in, 57 Rosenblatt, Paul C., 669, 697–709
Rathunde, K., 686 custom complex study design, 657 Rosenthal, D. A., 344–345
Rauto people of New Britain, emic vs. etic study designs, 657, 660, Rosow, I., 668
bereavement among, 702 661, 674 Rothbaum, F., 380, 381, 382, 384
Raval, P. P. and P. H., 135, 143, 280 four phases of developmental Ruble, D., 319
Raval, V. V., 316 research, 88–89 Rudowicz, E., 266
reactivity future directions in adult development rules vs. moral reasoning, 235
cross-cultural differences in, 130–132 and aging, 674–677 Rumbaut, R. G., 480
reactive identification, 480 generalizing research Runco, M. A., 259, 260
temperamental reactivity, 133–134 conclusions, 21–22 Russia
reconciliation and reintegration in indigenous social science, 68–72 marriage customs in, 578
programs, for children of armed methods of future research, 122 work migration in, 564
conflict, 350, 396–397, 401, 405 minimizing harm to subjects, 19–21 Russian-English bilingualism
Reddok, R., 310 and regional power differentials in and creativity, 264
Red Ribbon Express, 369 publication, 4, 5, 62 Russian families
Reeder, K., 120 response scales and sampling, 631 autonomy and relatedness among ado-
referential gestures, and cognitive research, across cultures lescents, 416–417
function, 101 capturing the salience of culture, emotional regulation among
Reich, Jodi, 214–229 660–664 children, 133
Reid, P. T., 21 cultural broadening of negative vs. positive affectivity among
Reis, H. T., 427 constructs, 23–24 infants, 131
relatedness and autonomy culturally appropriate in Africa, 65–66 positive affectivity among infants,
autonmous functioning and attach- equating stimuli for cognitive develop- 142, 143
ment theory, 154 ment, 630–631 sources of fathering diversity, 607
autonomous-related self, 416–417 using bicultural and bilingual Rust, J., 312
changing domains of relatedness, researchers, 56 Ryff, Carol, 646, 666–679
417–419 research, ethical considerations
cultural variations on, 418–419 in, 14–27 S
and ensuing self-regulation, 420 and compensation, 18 Said, Edward, 31–32
equal importance of, 419 cultural adequacy of protective Said, Khaled, 481
ethics of, 238–239 procedures, 15–21 Sakwa, L. N., 313
in immigrant families, 414–416 cultural adequacy of research Sallquist, J. A., 386
individualism vs. collectivism, findings, 21–24 Sally-Anne Task, 104
21–22, 24 cultural variations among Salthouse, T. A., 624
and moral psychology, 8 participants, 14–15 Sambia of New Guinea, ethnography
and moral reasoning, 240–242 Respect for Elders Day, Japan, 669 of, 487
relational emotional competence response scales, and cross-cultural Sambo, Allison, 471–484
among Efe foragers and children, 153 research, 631 samdrasti, Gandhian principle of
intercultural and intracultural Rest, J. R., 235 equality, 693
malleability, 142 Retschitzki, J., 65, 85 Samoa
vs. individualistic emotional Revolutionary Armed Forces of communication with children, 294
competence, 136, 139 Colombia, 465 emotional affect in language, 117
religion Reyes, J. A., 117 linguistic politeness, 119, 121
adolescents and religious purpose, Reynolds, C. A., 671 socialization of children, 114–115
385–387 Rianasari, M., 428 sampling and generalization, 21–22, 631
doctrinal vs. imagistic modes of, 330 Ricciardelli, L. A., 264 Sandel, M., 472
negative and antisocial effects of Richardson, F. J., 386 Sandel, T.L., 281, 285
religiosity, 387 Right to Information Act, India, 693 Sandhu, G., 612
as organizing factor in adolescent Riley, M. W., 668 Sanson, A., 415
development, 379 Roberts, B. W., 670 Santa Maria, M., 421
religious conservatives vs. liberals, 240, Rogers, E. M., 38 Santhya, K. G., 367
241, 245 Rokeach, M., 29, 387 Sapru, R., 281
religious groups and moral Role of the Father in Child Development, Saraswathi, T. S., 238, 493, 692
expectations, 236 The (Lamb), 615 Sardinian adults, beliefs regarding aging
religious initiation ceremonies, 328 Romania and memory, 629

I n de x 735
Sarkissian, A., 690
Saroglou, V., 387
Saudi Arabia
family life and education, 224
formal and informal learning environ-
ments, 223–224
student achievement in
mathematics, 223
traditional educational values, 216
Sauerland-Gruppe, 388
Save the Himalayas movement, 693
Saw, Guan, 554–569
scaffolding, and learning, 207
Scandinavia
parental leave policies in, 169
sources of fathering diversity in, 607
Schaie, K. W., 623
Scheers, N. J., 386
Schieffelin, Bambi, 112, 114–115, 117,
121, 294
Schlegel, Alice, 327–340, 418–419,
493–494
Schneider, Barbara, 554–569
scholarly research and publication
and African indigenous
knowledge, 66–68
African vs. European-American, 62, 64
indigenizing psychology, 66
regional power differentials, 4, 5
Schonpflug, U., 416
schooling
among subsistence-based farm
families, 597
attentiveness and learning,
296–297, 303
caregivers as teachers, 294–295
and child labor practices, 360, 362,
365, 462
and children's friendships, 426–427
children taking initiative in activity,
295–296, 303
coexisting ways of learning, 302–303
collaborative communication,
299–300, 303
compulsory schooling worldwide,
438–439, 448, 448, 449
cultural patterns of collaboration,
298–299, 303
formal vs. informal learning,
443, 444
general and vocational secondary edu-
cation worldwide, 449, 450, 451
increase in compulsory education, 292
learning by observation and contribu-
tion, 293–294, 303
learning through third-party atten-
tion, 297–298, 303
maternal schooling and generational
change, 300–301
measuring relevancy and outcome, 446
open and distance outreach learning,
444, 445
role of cultural traditions in, 445
736 I n de x
secondary schooling and work,
557–560
and youth transitions to adulthood,
447–448
schools
and gender socialization, 313–314
media resources for, 443–444, 445
as mediating institutions in civil
society, 478
variations among, 301–302
Schvaneveldt, J. D., 689
Schwartz, S. H., 381, 387
Schwartz, S. J., et al., 346
science, globalization of, 356
scientific psychology, arrival in
Africa, 63–64
Sealing the Past, Facing the Future, rec-
onciliation program, 350
Seattle Longitudinal Study (on
aging), 623
“secure base” behavior
in attachment theory, 151
and human attachment, 157–158
in infants, 86–87
Sedley, D., 690
Sefafu, reintegration program, 350
Seginer, R., 380, 381
Seguino, S., 311
Seidl-de-Moura, M. L., et al., 414
self-esteem
enhancement of in friendships, 430
as protective factor, 458
and use of new media, 530
self-expression, and new media, 529–531
self-innovation, “third position,”
34–35, 37
self-knowledge, in indigenous African
social thought, 71
self-mutilation, and adolescents, 30
self-regulation
among adolescents, 383, 389
intentional self-regulation, 420
Selman, R. L., 428
Sen, M. G., 319
Senegal
children's language acquisition in, 294
Louga area, 87
practical vs. academic
intelligence, 221
Set Setal movement, 477
Sepik River region of New Guinea,
beauty-enhancing practices in, 572
Serbin, L. A., 319
Serpell, R., 65, 67, 221, 222
service leadership, cross-cultural differ-
ences in, 687
Seshadri, S., 370
sexual abuse
protective factors and, 343
and risk of commercial sexual exploita-
tion, 462–463
sexual and reproductive health
among adolescents, 366–368
among emerging and young adults,
502–503
prostitution and health, 512–513
sexual desire and expression
changing customs worldwide, 582, 583
the romantic, marital, and sexual
ideal, 571–574
sexual motives through history,
581–582
transient nature of love, 579–580
undesirable characteristics in a
partner, 575
universality of, 571
sexual exploitation
commerical exploitation of children
and adolescents, 462–464, 467
and social networking sites, 507,
512, 513
street kids in Brazil, 457
sexual identity
adolescent narratives of, 403–404
and new social media, 528
sexuality
in emerging adulthood, 492
in emerging and young adulthood,
502–503
sexual socialization, 345–347
Seymour, S., 638
Shah, P., 631
shaming, in child-caregiver conversa-
tions, 117–118
Shane, Jacob, 535–553
Shannon, D. K., 386
Sharabany, R., 428, 434
shared intentionality, among
children, 104
sharing, and cognitive development,
200–201, 201, 205–207
Sharma, N., 281
Sharp, D. W., 64–65
Shek, D. T. L., 610
Shields, S. A., 317
Shore, B., 637
shoro, Japanese concept of old age, 644
Shorter, E. L., 581
Shostak, M., 579
Shwalb, Barbara J., 602–617
Shwalb, David W., 280, 602–617
Shweder, R. A.
culture and moral development, 384
custom complex study design, 657
divergent rationalities, 705
and moral reasoning, 238–239, 245
necessity of cultural perspective, 411
Shwemyar, Adela, 61
shyness, and depression, 134
siblings
collaborative actions among, 299
and gender socialization, 312
relationships with in adolescence, 418
siblings as caregivers, 169–171
in industrial vs. nonindustrial
societies, 277
 in Kenya, 293–294 socialization Society for Research in Child
and playtime, 186 from an ecocultural perspective, 590 Development, 16
in sub-Saharan Africa, 283 of children in community schools and Society for Research on Adolescence, 357
Sierra Leone, child soldiers in, 349, 350 services, 174 socio-cultural theories of emotional
Silver, C. B., 311 and the “competent child,” 155–157 development, 128–129
Silverman, L. R., 429 and education, 443, 444 socio-emotional selectivity theory, 629
Singah, P., 579 and moral reasoning, 232 Somalia, child soldiers in, 464
Singaporean adults peer socialization and new media, 521 Sone, T., et al., 672
cognitive aging among, 623 peer socialization in the Global soonen, Japanese concept of midlife, 644
and creativity, 258, 259 South, 449 637
entrepreneurship and practices and emotion norms, 135–141 Sora people of India, relationships with
self-employment, 559 and “secure base” function, 157–158 deceased elders, 706
protective effects of spirituality, 685 of shame, 117–118, 280 Soto, C. J., 670
Singer, D., 190 of specific emotions, 139–140 source memory, among older adults, 625
Sinha, R., 316 various parental strategies for South Africa
Sirin, S. R., 415 children, 588 civic identity of youth under
SisterHood, 245 social justice, and Internet-based apartheid, 479
Six Cultures Study, 429 movements, 482 definition and status of elders, 698
Six Cultures Study of Childrearing socially responsible intelligence, 221 traditional beliefs of
(Whiting), 64, 168 social maturation, in Japanese adults, 642 interdependence, 345
Sjaastad, L. A., 565 social media South America, adolescent transition
Skovdal, M., 71 and building social capital, 527 rituals in, 330, 338
Slobodskaya, H. R., et al., 133 and family relationships, 524–526 South Asia
Slovak Republic, vocational education and global communities, 481–482 demographic transitions in, 682–683
programs in, 558 online commentaries and identity marriage customs in, 577
Slovenia development, 529 Spacklen, K. M., 430
age distribution of foreign proliferation around the world, Spain
migrants, 565 521–523, 531 gender and emotional socialization, 317
studies of generativity in, 658, 659 and social change, 520–521 gender socialization in, 311, 315
youth outside both school and social mobility gender socialization in schools, 313
work, 560 implications for individual agency, 540 postsecondary graduation rates, 563
Smetana, J., 237 and meritocratic beliefs, 549, 550 social contract between state and
smiling, among infants, 86, 129, 130 opportunities and constraints in vari- citizens, 476
Smith, Adam, 543 ous societies, 546–549, 550 youth outside both school and work,
Smith, J. L., 315 social mobility, and the transition to 560, 566
Smylie, J. K., 414 adulthood, 535–553 Spanish families
Snarey, J. R., 234, 235 motivation and individual agency, infant temperment among, 131
Snodgrass, J. G., 631 537–540 parental descriptions of children, 283
social activities, preference for among social structures and individual time allocated for meals, 284
children, 104 agency, 544–549 spatial cognition
social class differences, effect on research societal beliefs through human history, and English language, 6
findings, 22 540–544 spatial frames of reference, 100
social cognition, 104–105 variations in opportunity speaker certainty, linguistic markers
social contracts between nation-states worldwide, 536 of, 118
and citizens, 476–477 social networking sites, and sexual Spearman, C., 217
social development of adolescents, and exploitation, 507, 512 spirituality
religiosity, 386 social networks and adolescent development, 386
social identity among Efe foragers and children, attachment with God in later
and adolescent transition rituals, 333–334 152–153 adulthood, 689
and gender, 317–318 among men in traditional societies, 334 protective effects of, 685
social inequality importance for African children, 69 spiritual leadership, rise of in
around the globe, 541 importance for immigrant organizations, 687
belief systems regarding, 543–544 parents, 50–51 Spiro, A., III, 670
brief history of, 540–541 vs. intimate friendships, 428 spontaneous-response tasks, 105
changes in income inequality, 542 social sensitivity Sprecher, S., et al., 578
Great Gatsby curve, 542 genetic component, 132 Sreenivas, D., 321
and meritocratic beliefs, 549, 550 in language development, 113–114 Sri Lanka, recruitment of child soldiers
past attitudes toward, 543 peer rejection and social in, 465
social inequality today, 541–543 withdrawal, 134 Srinath, S., 370
and societal underregulation, 548–549 social smile, among infants, 86, 129 Sriram, R., 612
social intelligence, 67 130 Stack, D. M., 38
Social Intuitionist Model, of moral Society for Adolescent Health and Staff, J., 558
development, 384 Medicine, 357 stage-environment fit, 417–419

I n de x 737
Stahl, G. K., et al., 265
Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, 168
standpoint theory, and civic identity,
478–479
stateless citizens, and civic identity, 481
State of the World's Children 2011,
363, 366
Stattin, H., 510
Staudinger, U., 686
Steele, J. R., 521
Steinberg, L., 591
stepping reflex, eliciting among
infants, 82
stereotypes
and gender socialization, 315
stereotypes, and gender socialization,
319, 320
Sternberg, R. J., 67, 257
Stevenson, D., 555
Stewart, A. C., 687
Still Face paradigm, 20
Stills, A. B., 386
Stone, L., 571, 581
stranger anxiety, among infants, 86–87
Strange Situation procedure
avoiding bias in assessing findings, 22
defined, 19, 151
minimizing harm in, 20
and secure and insecure attachment
patterns, 158, 159–160
Strauss, A. L., 661
street kids
in Brazilian cities, 341–342, 347–348
See also child labor practices
Strongman, K. T., 685
Study Group on Adolescence in the 21st
Century, 357
Suárez-Orozco, Carola, 43–60, 49
Subbakrishna, D. K., 370
sub-Saharan Africa
agricultural societies in, 281–283
development of infant motor skills,
595, 595
marriage customs in, 577
rates of child labor, 561
sibling care of children, 594
vocational education programs in, 559
youth entrepreneurship in, 560
youth literacy rates in, 439
subsistence-based farm families, parent-
ing in, 592–597
substance abuse, among emerging and
young adults, 504, 505, 505, 509–512
Sudan
child soldiers in, 464
intimacy in friendships, 428
Sue-Chan, C., 258
Sugimura, Kazumi, 502–518, 514
suicide, among young people in
India, 371
Suizzo, M.-A., 283, 317
Sullivan, H. S., 430
Sundarani, Dwarkoji, 680, 681
738 I n de x
Sung, K. T., 669
Super, Charles, 79–93, 271–291
childcare by fathers, 169
child language socialization, 282
culture and children's
temperament, 286
developmental niche framework, 65
early academic achievement for
children, 280
ecocultural perspective, 165
economic subsistence patterns and
parenting, 275
Suppal, P., 612
survival rates, of children and adolescents
worldwide, 356, 357
Suryanti, T., 428
Sweden
adolescent perceptions of
housework, 461
age distribution of foreign
migrants, 565
health and risk behaviors in emerging
and young adults, 502–503, 506
parental expectations of children's
friendships, 427
prostitution and health among emerg-
ing and young adults, 512
sexuality and health in emerging and
young adults, 507–508
substance abuse and antisocial behav-
ior in emerging and young adults,
509–510
youth outside both school and
work, 566
Switzerland
gender and emotional socialization, 317
trainees and temporary migrant
workers, 566
work/study programs, 558
youth outside both school and
work, 560
synchronous activities, benefits of in
community, 329
T Thomas, Sarah, 502–518
Tablighi jamaat concept in traditional
Islam, 690
Tadmor, C. T., 263, 265
Taiwan
integrating creativity into
classrooms, 261
relationships with deceased elders, 705
youth outside both school and
work, 561
Taiwanese families
children and concealment of
emotions, 135
cultural model of childrearing, 190
emotional regulation among
children, 133
grandparents in, 281, 593
parent-child conversations, 206
socialization of shame, 280
Taiwanese fathers, 610
Takahashi, K., 23, 476
Tamang Nepalese children
emotion socialization of, 140
rules for emotional display, 135
Tamil families, views on romantic
love, 570
Tan, Mei, 255–270
Tana Toraja people of Indonesia, rela-
tionships with deceased elders,
705–706
Tang, F., 688
Tanno, K., et al., 672
Tanzania
Nyakyusa people of, 336
work migration in, 564
Taoist philosophical traditions, and views
of aging in Japan, 672
Tape, Goze, 67
Tarim, S. D., 312–313
Taylor, A., 688
Telzer, E. H., 414
temperament
cultural differences in, 130–134
and culture in family relationships,
285–286
parental evaluation of, 131, 141
reactivity as behavioral inhibition,
133–134
tertiary education
graduation rates, 562–563
increasing rates of, 489, 490, 562
in OECD countries, 490, 562
in selected developing countries, 494
tertiary enrollment vs. unemployment
rates, 557
and work in emerging adulthood,
562–564
Tetlock, P. E., 263
Thailand
marriage customs in, 578
social contexts of moral reasoning, 244
Tharp, R. G., 302
Thomas, A., 285
Tietjen, A. M., 429
Tinbergen, N., 95
Tiwi aboriginal tribe of Australia, adoles-
cent initiation ceremonies, 332
Tobin, J., 175
toddlers
attentiveness among, 296–297
care in child welfare institutions,
176–177, 178–179
collaborative communication
among, 300
early childhood care and education,
174–177
gender and emotional socialization, 316
gender socialization in United
States, 313
moral development, 242–243, 246
parental communication with, 294
 and peer interactions, 174–175
public services for children in Italy, 166
socialization by grandparents, 171,
172, 178
socialization by siblings, 169–171,
170–171, 178
universal needs for primary care, 167
See also early childhood
Tohono O'odham children, Arizona, 298
Tomasello, M., 118, 243
Tönnies, Ferdinand, 520
Toolis, Erin, 396–409
Torrance, E. P., 262
Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking
(TTCT), 257, 262
Toshima, K., 83
Townsend, Nicholas, 615
trait psychology, and adult development,
670, 671, 674
transactional and transformative leader-
ship styles, 687
transmitting, in cognitive development,
201, 201, 207–208
transnational families, 43–60
acculturation of, 52–53
complications of acculturation, 53–56
densities of immigrants arriving
and leaving between countries
(2000-2005), 44
disruptions in parenting, 49–52
family separations, 47–49
future research directions, 56–57
immigration according to source
country, 45
patterns of migration, 44–46
perspectives on migration, 43–45
reunification of, 48, 49, 50
Trends in International Mathematics and
Science Study (TIMSS), 215, 223
Triandis, H. C., 277–278, 378, 427,
429, 430
Tripathy, J., 322
Tripp, A. M., 482
Trommsdorff, Gisela, 377–395
autonomy and relatedness in Western
society, 381, 384, 389
interdependence in mother-child
relationships, 133
Value of Children Study, 413
Troop-Gordon, W., 313
Trost, Kari, 502–518, 514
Tsai, J. L., 136
Tsai-Chae, A. H., 281
Tswana people, Botswana
definition and status of elders, 699
reminiscences of elders, 700
Tudge, Jonathan, 282, 603
Tulviste, T. L., 417
Tunisia, youth unemployment in, 556
Turiel, E., 235
Turkey
emotion displays in children's story-
books, 136, 137
peers and gender socialization, 312–313
Positive Adolescent Development
Project (PERGEL), 420
postsecondary graduation rates, 563
Value of Children Study in, 413
youth leaving school too early, 561
youth outside both school and
work, 560
Turkish adolescents
attachment and well-being, 417
autonomy and relatedness among,
416–417
respect for authority, 411
views of family discipline, 416
Turkish adults
cognition and memory errors, 631–632
earliest childhood memories
among, 628
health and risk behaviors in emerging
and young adults, 502, 506–507
prostitution and health among emerg-
ing and young adults, 513
sexuality and health in emerging and
young adults, 508–509
substance abuse and antisocial behav-
ior in emerging and young adults,
511–512
Turkish families
acculturation in Australia and
Germany, 415
emotion socialization in, 139
expression of sadness vs. anger, 139
parental communication with
toddlers, 294
parental expectations of children's
friendships, 427
psychological interdependence model,
413, 414
role of grandparents in parenting, 593
Turkish language, study by
Greek-Cypriot adolescents, 402
Turkmenistan, families and gender
socialization, 311
Turniski, M., 402
Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, 15–16
U ubantu, compassion and kindness among
U. S. adolescents
affection vs. instrumental aid in
friendships, 429
autonomy and relatedness among, 381,
416–417
child and adolescent friendships,
426–427
exclusivity in friendships, 429–430
friendships and enhancement of
self-esteem, 430
parenting of, 344–345
perceptions of housework, 461
project with Israeli and Palestinian
teens, 396–397, 401, 405
respect for authority, 411
U. S. adults
arithmetic ability among older
adults, 625
beliefs regarding aging and memory,
628–629
cognition and memory errors, 631–632
cognitive ability and memory among
older adults, 625–628, 626
cognitive performance among youth
and older adults, 623, 624
empirical studies of adult develop-
ment, 669–672, 672–673
interpersonal social situations and
aging, 630
perspectives on mentoring, 688
U. S. children
child and adolescent friendships,
426–427
collaborative communication among
toddlers, 300
concealment of emotions, 135
early socialization of, 280
emotional regulation among, 132–133
emotion socialization of infants, 138
emotion socialization of toddlers, 139
facial expressions among infants,
129–130
independence of, 285
infant temperment, 131
linguistic politeness among, 120
managing conflict in friendships, 431
motor skills of 4-month-old
infants, 134
parental communication with
toddlers, 294
parental descriptions of children, 283
parental emotion talk, 140
parental expectations of children's
friendships, 427
“positive affectivity” among infants,
142, 143
tempermental reactivity among
infants, 133
toddlers and gender socialization, 313
U. S. Special Operations Command
Center of Excellence for
Operational Neuroscience., 482
South Africans, 345
Uchida, Y., 36, 136
Uganda
child soldiers in, 349
gender socialization in schools, 313
Ullah, P., 402
undocumented family members
acculturation of, 53
civic engagement of, 479
deportation of, 48
unemployment
See youth unemployment
United Kingdom
civic contributions by older adults, 686
entrepreneurship and self-employment
in, 559
I n de x 739
United Kingdom (Cont.)
ethics of community, divinity, and
autonomy, 241
integrating creativity into
classrooms, 261
sources of fathering diversity in, 607
United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the
Child, 62, 63
Human Development Index, 446
Millennium Development Goals,
218–219
Study on Violence Against
Children, 360
United States
adult development and aging in,
666–667, 667–668, 674–677
Anglo-American narratives of midlife,
637–638, 645–647, 648, 649
demographics of aging in, 682
developmental timetables of mothers,
273, 274
educational system of, 535–536, 548
education and work migration, 565
emotion displays in children's story-
books, 136, 137
entrepreneurship and self-employment
in, 559
expression of sadness vs. anger, 139
fathering in, 602–603, 607
fathers in family life, 284–285
gender and social identity, 318
generativity in, 653–654, 658
grandparents as caregivers, 171
integrating creativity into
classrooms, 261
Internet penetration rates
nationwide, 522
intimacy in friendships, 428
marriage customs in, 577–578
mismatched school and home
cultures, 302
moral reasoning of religious
conservatives, 240
parenting practices, 317–318
promoting careers in STEM, 563–564
public opinion on creativity, 259
rates of postsecondary
education, 550
religious discourse in, 231
research on developmental timetables,
272–273
rules for emotional display among
children, 135
siblings as caregivers in, 171
social contexts of moral reasoning, 244
social inequality and transition into
adulthood, 548–549
socializing toddlers for verbal
proficiency, 175
social mobility in, 547
studies on gender and emotion,
315–316
740 I n de x
trainees and temporary migrant vocational education institutions,
workers, 566 547–548
transiency of friendships, 428 Vollebergh, W., 417
youth apprenticeship programs, 559 volunteerism, 238
urbanization von der Lippe, A. L., 273
and changes in civic identity, 481 vulnerable populations, minimizing
and concerns of adolescent harm in research, 21
health, 373 Vygotsky, L.
and developmental timetables of activity settings, 426
mothers, 273 collaborative communication, 299
and disruption of traditional life, 368 constructivist perspective and gender
and movement for gay rights in Latin socialization, 311
America, 482 inner speech vs. social speech, 398
and social contexts of moral reasoning, language and culture in development,
244–245 63, 122
of world population, 235 sociocultural basis of human intelli-
and youth cultures in Asia and gence, 202, 203
Africa, 449 and sociogenic paradigm of develop-
uses and gratification theory, 521, 525 mental science, 404
Utrata, J., 616 zone of proximal development, 201
V W
Vaish, A., 243 Waddington, C. H., 544, 545, 546
Valkenburg, P. M., 526 Wager, A. A., 219
Value of Children Study, 381, 382, Walker, L. J., 234
412–413 Wallach, M. A., 261
values Wallen, Kim, 571
and adolescent development, 385–386 Walumba, F. O., 687
effect on adolescent self- and world- Walzer, M., 473
views, 381–383 Wang, I., 383
as organizing factors in adolescent Wang, Q., et al., 627
development, 379 Wang, S.-H., 281
relationship with morals and religious Wang, X. L., 280
orientation, 387–389 Warao community, South
vanaprastha, sacred texts of America, 205
Hinduism, 238 Way, N., 429
Vandenbulcke, M., 689 Weber, T. J., 687
Vanderwart, M., 631 Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, 625
van de Ven, L., 689 weight, cross-cultural views of, 574
van de Vijver, F. J. R., 415, 417 Weinstein, H., 279
van Gennep, A., 330 Weisner, Thomas, 66, 170–171, 277, 649
van Meijl, T., 36 Weiss, R. S., 427
van Reken, R. E., 34 Weisz, J., 381
Vansant, I., 416 Wellman, B., 520–521
Vatsyayana, Hindu philosopher, 580 Wenger, E., 208
verbal proficiency Wenger, M., 188, 427
socializing infants for, 595–596 “Westernization,” and youth culture in
socializing toddlers for, 175, 597 Asia and Africa, 449
Verma, Suman, 355–376 West Indian children, gender and cogni-
Victor, A., 428, 429 tive development, 319
Vietnam, social contract between state “What to Call People Who Used to Be
and citizens, 476 Old?” (Clendinen), 645
Villareal, J. J., 427 Wheeler, L., 429
violence Whitbourne, S. K., et al., 669–670
against adolescents and children White, J.
worldwide, 360 Whitehouse, H., 330, 336
and risk of child labor abuse, 459 Whiting, Beatrice
and risk of commercial sexual exploita- behavioral setting model, 426
tion, 462–463 Children of Different Worlds
vision quests, 328, 336 Study, 168
visual habituation, among infants, 86 cultural influences on gender
vocabulary structure and development, socialization, 308
115–116 custom complex study design, 657
 economic subsistence patterns and par-
enting practices, 276
Handbook of Cross-Cultural Human
Development, 4–5, 7
maternal environment and parenting
practices, 277
maternal responsibilities, 279
Six Cultures Study of Childrearing, 64
three maternal profiles, 278
twelve-community study of mother-
ing, 154–155
Whiting, John
adolescent transition ceremonies, 333
Children of Six Cultures, 65
cultural influences on gender
socialization, 308
custom complex study design, 657
ecocultural perspective, 165
economic subsistence patterns and par-
enting practices, 276
maternal environment and parenting
practices, 277
Whitlock, Janis L., 30
Whyte, M. K., 579
Wice, Matthew, 14–27
widowhood
practical concerns and, 701
relationships with deceased
spouses, 705
Wijesinghe, S., 691
Wiklund, A. F., 308–309
Wiley, A. R., 280
Williams, P. D. & A. R., 273
Willis, S. L., 623
Wilson, J. Q., 236
Wilson, M., 575
Wiltermuth, S. S., 329
Winer, A. C., 313
Wink, P., 685
Winks, Robin, 582
Winocur, G., 628
wisdom, and aging, 673, 685
Wober, M., 64
women
aftermath of civil wars in Africa, 482
and barriers to education, 365
efforts against gender-based violence in
Egypt, 475
gender-differentiated paths to personal
growth, 642–644
increased educational levels in devel-
oped world, 489–490
leadership in the counseling
profession, 687
leaving school too early, 561
marriage before age 18, 361
menopause among Anglo-American
women, 646
menopause among Indian and
Japanese women, 649
neglect of healthcare, 307
proportion of elderly women in India,
683–684
rates of anemia and underweight in
adolescence, 362, 363, 366
roles and life stages in Hindu India,
639–640
women's workloads and parenting,
276–277
See also families
See also mothers
Women and Child Development
Program, India, 372
Wong, D. B., 690–691
Woodhead, M., 38
work, in emerging and young
adulthood
apprenticeship programs, 558–559
Bologna Process in European Union, 563
entrepreneurship and self-employment,
559–560, 567
leaving school too early, 561–562
migrants and temporary work, 566
nature of youth employment, 556–557
and postsecondary education,
562–564, 567
promoting careers in STEM,
563–564, 566
and secondary schooling, 557–560
tertiary enrollment vs. unemployment
rates, 557
those outside both school and work,
560–562, 566
unemployment rates, 556, 566
working while in school, 554
work migration, 564–566, 567
and “youth bulge” in worldwide
population, 555–556, 566
Working Boys' Center of Quito,
Ecuador, 220
World Bank, report on secondary educa-
tion worldwide, 451
World Health Organization
health of emerging and young
adults, 504
Multicentre Growth Reference
Study, 88–89
World Population Data Sheet 2013, 682
World Values Survey, 690
Wörmann, V., 130
Worthman, Carol, 165, 285
Wright, M. O., 342
X Z
Xie, D., 318
Xu, X., 579
Xue, Q., 43
Y
Yaeger, D. S., 684
Yagmurlu, B., 414, 415
Yalin, Celen, 410–424
Yamada, Yoko, 653–654
Yamamoto, T., 118, 280
Yang, G., 482
Yang, L., et al., 626
Yarczower, M., 84
Yeh, K. -H., 382
Yi, S., 206
Yoon, C., 628, 631
Yoong, T., 84
Yoruba communities
child care and development in, 274
conceptions of creativity, 259
Yoshikawa, H., 43
YoSoy132 movement, Mexico, 481–482
Young, F. W., 331
Young Man Luther (Erikson), 656
Young People Talk AIDS, India, 371
Youniss, J., 481
Youth Development Study, 549
“youth phase”
origins of term, 447
participation in social movements,
451–452
research and scholarship on, 453
use of term, 441, 442
youth unemployment
and child labor practices, 458, 459, 467
and educational levels, 554–555
and entrepreneurship, 560, 567
related social and health issues, 357
unemployment rates, 556
and work migration, 566
worldwide, 357
Yovsi, Relindis, 586
Yu, L., 318
Yu, R. R., 610
Yucatec Mayan children
attentiveness among toddlers, 297
cultural construction of everyday
activities, 191
cultural influence and development,
193, 194
cultural model of childrearing, 190
ethnotheories about play, 187
interplay of temperament and culture, 285
parental ethnotheories, 189
play and household work,
185–186, 188
schooling in daily activities, 296
self-care among, 293
Yue, G. A., 623
Yup'ik natives, Alaska, 217
Zahn-Waxler, C., 135
Zambia
cognitive development and household
activities, 216
formal vs. informal education in,
220–221
learning environments, 221–223
practical vs. academic intelligence,
222–223
study on children's reading
disabilities, 214
Zeitlin, M.F., 87
I n de x 741
Zeldin, S., 687 Zinacacantecan Mayan people, Mexico zone of proximal development (ZPD),
Zhang, L., 428 children's participation in daily 201, 207
Zhang, W., 428 activities, 208 Zucker, R. A., 514
Zhang, X.-B., 609 collaborative communication among zuhd, Islamic concept of
Zigler, E., 287 children, 299 nonattachment, 690
Zimbardo prison experiment, 16 schooling in daily activities, 296 Zulu people
Zimmerman, T. S., 314 siblings as caregivers, 169 definition and status of elders, 698

742 I n de x