How Cultures Care for Young Children, and Why It Matters
Presented by Professors Sara Harkness and Charles M. Super
This webinar was presented live on Wednesday May 3rd, 2023 at 4pm US Eastern time.Through the kindness of the presenter, a recording of the webinar is available here.
Professors Sara Harkness and Charles M. Super
Anthropologists (and others) have long documented cultural differences in how adults care for infants and young children. The theoretical framework of the Developmental Niche helps to understand how components of childcare are integrated in any particular cultural setting, and how they come to influence children’s development. We illustrate these points with examples from the U.S., the Netherlands, and Kenya, focused on gross motor skills and aspects of the HPA axis. We conclude with the observation that programs to advance the health and development of children around the world will be most effective if they acknowledge and incorporate cultural differences.
Sara Harkness is Professor of Human Development, Pediatrics, and Public Health at the University of Connecticut, where she also serves as director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Health, and Human Development. She earned a B.A. magna cum laude and with high honors in Comparative Literature from Brown University, and a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from Harvard University; subsequently, she was an NIMH post-doctoral fellow in psychology at Harvard, and earned a Master of Public Health degree from the Harvard School of Public Health. Her research focuses on how the culturally structured environments of children and families, in interaction with biological factors, shape children’s health and development. She has been editor of Ethos (the journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology) and is on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Behavioral Development and Child Studies in Diverse Contexts, as well as being editor of the Temperament Newsletter. In 2009, she received (jointly with Charles Super) an award from the Society for Research in Child Development for Distinguished Contributions to Cultural and Contextual Factors in Child Development. In 2022, she received, jointly with Charles Super, the Jean Lau Chin Award for Outstanding Psychologist in International Leadership Contributions, from Division 52 of the American Psychological Association.
In addition to her cross-cultural research, she has also been involved with intervention programs to help disadvantaged families and youth in Connecticut, and has served on federal review panels for the National Institutes for Child Health and Development, the National Science Foundation, the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, and the Agency for Health Research and Quality. She is the editor (with Charles Super) of Parents’ cultural belief systems: Their origins, expressions, and consequences, as well as author of many journal articles and chapters.
Charles M. Super is Professor of Human Development and Pediatrics at the University of Connecticut, and is Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Health, and Human Development. He received his B.A. in Psychology from Yale University, and a PhD from Harvard University in Developmental Psychology. His training in child clinical psychology was completed at the Judge Baker Guidance Center in Boston, and he has been listed in the Registry of Health Providers in Psychology. He has served as Field Director of the Child Development Research Unit at the University of Nairobi, Department Head for Human Development and Family Studies at the Pennsylvania State University, and Dean of the School of Family Studies at the University of Connecticut. He served two terms on the U.S. National Committee for the International Union for Psychological Science.
Dr. Super’s research focuses on the cultural regulation of development in infancy and childhood, and on interventions to promote the health and well-being of young children. He has participated in research and interventions in more than a dozen countries, and is Editor (with Pia Rebello Britto and Patrice Engle) of the Handbook of Early Childhood Development Research and Its Impact on Global Policy (Oxford University Press 2013, published with support from UNICEF and the Society for Research in Child Development). In 2009, he received (jointly with Sara Harkness) the Society for Research in Child Development’s Award for Distinguished Contributions to Cultural and Contextual Factors in Child Development. In 2022, he received, jointly with Sara Harkness, the Jean Lau Chin Award for Outstanding Psychologist in International Leadership Contributions, from Division 52 of the American Psychological Association.
To watch the recording of the webinar, please click here