Reducing risk for children in changing cultural contexts: recommendations for intervention and training

Objectives: This paper proposes guidelines to both parents and professional s for the prevention and reduction of risk associated with cultural differe nces, conflicts and misinterpretations. These guidelines are based on a con ceptual framework derived from the multicultural reality of Israeli society and are supported by a growing corpus of studies on cross-cultural child d evelopment, immigration and minority families. Method: The paper is based on a conceptual model followed by practical impl ications for training and intervention. Results: Central to this paper is the concept of the "adaptive adult" which serves as a guiding metaphor for the organization of socialization goals, child-rearing ideologies, perceptions and values of socializing agents in a given culture or group. Childcare practices are defined as adaptive strate gies, that is, means for socializing children to become "successful adults. " The paper describes different types of "adaptive adult" metaphor (e.g., p ast and future oriented), and discusses images held by groups who have expe rienced either a duality of private and public culture or changes in their cultural contexts. The paper further explores and exemplifies the potential contributions of the proposed framework for a five step intervention plan with parents and for training of professionals in multicultural contexts. Conclusions: Children of families in changing cultural. contexts are often considered to be at risk for maltreatment. This is because such families ma y experience sociocultural and socioeconomic change and a loss of their for mer support networks. Parental acculturation stress and related dysfunction might also affect children. The risk increases when children are exposed t o systems with conflicting socialization goals and with contradictory defin itions of desirable child-care or supervision frameworks. Conflicts and cla shes between parents and socializing agents have been found to have long-te rm detrimental effects on children and families. Cultural differences may a lso result in misinterpretation of parental behaviors and misdiagnosis of a buse and neglect. Such conflicts and misinterpretations can be avoided if b oth parents and social agents learn to understand and to respect their cult ural differences, so that together, they can devise ways to bridge them. (C ) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.