<\/span><\/h2>\nPlay isn\u2019t the only area where we see widespread variations in child development practice. Breastfeeding is generally accepted as a good thing. It is considered important everywhere. But weaning varies hugely. In the United States, six months of exclusive breastfeeding is recommended. But some children are breastfed until three years old and weaned gradually. In some cultures, as another baby is born, the previous child is weaned abruptly. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), the newborn is passed around to be suckled by a number of women. We don\u2019t know which practice, if any, is best for child development.<\/p>\n
The takeaway message to policy makers is that they should consider diverse cultural practices of child rearing when developing advice to parents as well as in making policy. This is particularly important in countries with culturally diverse populations.<\/p>\n
Parents in different cultures have different goals. For example, in technological societies, we socialize children to think in complex ways about technology. That might not be best in countries that lack the same technological resources.<\/p>\n
We should also be willing to learn from other cultures. Capitalism, which drives so many Western attitudes to child development, is only a few hundred years old. It\u2019s worth looking at other societies, less influenced by these values. We are beginning to recognize that they could teach us a lot about how to rear children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Diverse practices in children\u2019s play in cultures call for skepticism that Euro-American child development approaches are best everywhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":7223,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5780,438],"tags":[28,449,448,35,267,400,396,454,455],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6431"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6431"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21097,"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6431\/revisions\/21097"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}