Ethnicity, Culture or Counseling Diveristy

Ethnicity, Culture or Counseling Diveristy

Ethnicity, culture, or counseling diversity: Cultural diversity and Children

One of the major factors in development of children is the influence of other members of the family. The first matter to be understood is the matters that constitute an ethnic group and how that is related to culture. One of the greatest effects of culture is on development of education. We have studied the result of cultural factors with regard to medical treatment as a test case. Regarding cultural factors, one of the main elements are built in beliefs of one ethnic group about another and these determine their behavior towards each other. The entire process of learning by children has been studied, but the effect of cultural diversity at that age needs to be studied more.

The changes in the twentieth century have come from four important changes in the society, and these have affected the children - an increasing participation of women in the labor force, a high and increasing absence of fathers from the household, the increased involvement of fathers when the family has succeeded in staying together and a very high amount of cultural diversity in United States. (Cabrera; Tamis-LeMonda; Bradley; Hofferth; Lamb, 2000) These changes have had high psychological effects on children and that needs study.

Method:

The method followed for this study is to find the facts as informed in certain studies and then come to a conclusion from the results of those studies. The concerned studies are all recent and have thus led to conclusions that will remain valid for at least a few more years.

Results and discussion:

An ethnic group refers to any group of individuals who had earlier shared a common geographic area and a shared identity as a group of people. Their culture is the common language they have, their history, beliefs and institutions that are the property of the group. They also develop value systems depending on the successes that are achieved by the group in their conflict with challenges and finding of opportunities in the area of their residence. This is what leads to groups of people who share similar ecological niches and historical experiences ultimately becoming a part of ethnic groups. These value systems are the main sources for our parenting practices and our evaluation of children as being good or bad. It also tells us of the requirements for a child to be successful in life. Even the socialization strategies used by parents depend on the set of values that they have grown up with. (Roosa; Dumka; Gonzales; Knight, 2002)

The parents also try their best to instill the same set of values in their children. Even when the parenting behavior looks similar from outside, the behavior may have different meanings within communities. This has been seen in the case of African-American and non-Hispanic White parents where similar actions were given different meanings. Some behaviors of the African-Americans were thought to be harsh or hostile by the whites, while the interpretation of African-Americans, standing as observers, was that the actions were a demonstration of love and warmth for the child. Some actions by African-American parents with their children was felt to be harsh and exercising a very high degree of control, and this was seen by observers among low-income African-American parents living in high-risk communities. Yet, it was seen that these actions produced healthy child outcomes which is different from what the actions had been seen to produce among middle-class, non-Hispanic whites. (Roosa; Dumka; Gonzales; Knight, 2002) Thus it is clear that the development of children is dependent on a number of factors and all those factors are not always easy to understand or the results of the actions comprehended.

One of the major concerns of all humans is with clinical care and at one stage of human life this is very important to all humans. At the same time when the individual gets old, it is important to note that there are differences in the role of family members when the treatment takes place. The role of ethnic minorities in this is very important in United States as they now constitute one third of the population. Some of these racial and ethnic groups do not give the same importance to autonomy of the patient in treatment when the disease is serious as also to end of life care for the individual. (Searight; Gafford, 2005) A lot of the children are now from marriages where one of the members of the marriage is from a different ethnic group and may have a different concept than the other. The question then comes is to the path that will be followed by the grown up child.

One of the most important relationships in United States is regarding the relationship between the blacks and whites and their cross cultural treatment. These attitudes help each of the groups react in a manner that is though to be correct by the other group. The attitudes have been clearly seen even when black patients have to come to white therapists even for psychological treatment. There are four expressions which may be called as different expressions of racism. The first of these are a feeling on bigotry among the whites and this consists of a conscious or unconscious feeling that whites are superior and the problems that are being seen in the black patient are due to the inferiority of the patient. Another way in which the white doctor may react is what may be called color blindness and this in psychological terms may be a type of refusal of the therapist to accept that there are color differences and certain results are caused by color difference. (Tharp, 1991)

The third attitude of the therapist may be paternalistic and this results in attribution of all the problems of the patient to the situation in the society and especially due to racism. This type of preconceived notion in the therapist will stop the therapist from understanding the contribution of the patient to the problem that the patient is facing. The fourth situation that the therapist may get into is in total belief in black power and this comes from a feeling of guilt. The result of this will be that the therapist will not be able to set the limits or correctly interpret the difficulties that the patient is facing. On the other side, the patient also may be acting in a manner to find out the attitudes of the therapist through a set of tests, and these are to find out as to what extent the therapist is accepting him as an individual.

This sort of a situation can be solved only when the therapist is able to understand the culture of the patient to some extent. This will enable the therapist to anticipate the feelings of the patients and his own reactions to working with black patients. This is also understood by younger persons and we can see that college youths clearly prefer to be treated by therapists who are similar to themselves. When we take samples from different areas, the results are a little different in different localities, but the preference of students is for counselors who are well educated, of the same ethnic group and gender and who share similar attitudes and values. The students generally use counseling services only when their preferences are met. (Tharp, 1991) This shows clearly that ethnic like and dislikes, and clear differences in ethnicity are realized from the beginning of human experiences.

The difference in culture carries on to affect the healthcare professionals also from those communities and whereas a white community doctor from United States would be likely to tell the complete truth, doctors from other communities would have a tendency to conceal serious diagnoses from patients as the disclosure of serious diagnoses may be viewed as being disrespectful, impolite or are even considered harmful for the patient. Among Hispanic, Chinese, and Pakistani communities, family members actively protect terminally ill patients from knowing about their own medical condition. This is the situation in many Asian cultures, as it is perceived to be unnecessarily cruel to inform a patient regarding a cancer diagnosis. This practice is not limited to only Asians, as even among people belonging to European background namely the Bosnian-Americans and Italian-Americans consider direct disclosure of illness as being disrespectful, and more importantly, inhumane. (Searight; Gafford, 2005)

These minorities now form a large portion of the population of United States. According to the 2000 census, only about 65% of the population of United States view themselves as white while others consider themselves to be from the following ethnic groups - black which comes to 13%; Hispanic -- 13%; Asian-Pacific Islander -- 4.5%; and American-Indian/Alaskan native which comes to 1.5%. In addition to this already 2.5% of the population view themselves as bi-ethnic and it is likely that this section of population will grow and there will be difficulties for the children to take decisions regarding medical treatment of the parents. (Searight; Gafford, 2005) There are also changes in the value systems of the different communities as the ecological situation of the communities change and this may be due to historical changes or shifts into new areas by the individuals. Even within the same group of individuals, the value systems may be different among individuals due to differences in income, occupation, conditions of living situations and the duration or the level of intensity of exposure to another culture. There are many sources of diversity within the same cultural group due to the relative influence of traditional culture values, socioeconomic features, the experiences of migration, the functional demands and requirements and cultural makeup of the ecological niche, and the duration and intensity of exposing to a different culture. (Roosa; Dumka; Gonzales; Knight, 2002)

One of the most important facilities that humans have is to draw inferences from limited knowledge. The question remains as to the starting time of this facility in humans. Experiments have been carried out in children of low age groups and even as low as five years to find out whether they have this capacity. The tests there had to be conclusive and thus categorization had to be distinctive and thus test whether the categorization led to inferences. It was seen that inferences were easily drawn from one category of animals to another. The subjects were told to imagine an island where all members of one category have a particular disease. Let us say that this animal was rabbits which is easy for the children to understand and relate to. The question was then put as to the proportion of another animal that had the disease also, let us say dogs. (Heit; Hahn, 2001)

The logic that was followed in estimation was that the similarity between the animals was mainly taken into account. The entire process of extension depended on similarity between the animals and the target or the animal for consideration. What this means in simpler terms is that it was easier for the children to make stronger inferences from rabbits to dogs than makes inferences from rabbits to bears. This is in line with the concepts of philosophy where the similarity between a premise and a conclusion is the most critical deciding factor of the strength of any inductive inference. In life drawing inference is however always dependent on multiple sources of evidence and multiple categories before an inference can be drawn. (Heit; Hahn, 2001)

The changes in medical ethics of United States have only come in the last 30 years as in this period the emphasis has moved from physician beneficence to greater insistence on patient autonomy. On the other side, in many Asian societies including those from India and Pakistan the decisions may be jointly taken by the family members and the physicians together. This difference in culture will also take effect on children who are exposed to it. For the terminally ill, the responsibility is for the family to take care. This situation leads to the doctor also being adopted ritually in the family in Pakistan and being addressed as parent, aunt, uncle or elder brother. The concern about care for the elders is different even between the whites and the blacks within United States. The concern of white physicians is likely to be more on the suffering that the patient is going through, black physicians and patients are more likely to be concerned about the suffering being spiritually meaningful as they always feel to life to have some value. On the other hand, Hispanics who are becoming a larger section of the population in America are not likely to appoint one person as being in charge as they are afraid of offending other relatives and they are likely to have the decisions taken consensually. (Searight; Gafford, 2005) Even when the person does not see this directly while growing up, the effects may be felt through some other sources.

Well we are all now aware that a major part of the ethnic differences and related differences among grown up citizens come from the development at the start of life, as children. There have been quite a few experiments on changing the position of children through Preschool Programs and the best effects were seen from the program taken up by David Weikart. This served 123 children with ages between the ages of three and four. The children were then followed by researchers till they reached the age of 27. According to the published research, these students showed higher scholastic performances in eighth grade, higher completion rates for completion of high school, higher rates for getting employed, lower levels of juvenile crime and arrests and lower rates of teenage pregnancy. The comparison was made with students who did not attend this preschool. (Bassok; Stipek; Inkelas; Kuo. 2003)

Another well-known study was the Carolina Abecedarian program for children and this also showed very strong effects. This was an intensive program starting from infancy up to the age of five and this had full day educational programs supported by medical and social services. There was also a program for education of parents. Here a follow up study of the children was conducted of 57 experimental children and 54 children as control when the children were 21 years old. It was seen that children who had gone through the program developed higher IQ as also higher test scores in both reading and math. The parents who put their children in this program were likely to be graduates from four-year colleges and had their children within one year of leaving college.

The programs were successful and thus a total of 12 such programs were prepared in the early part of 1980s to examine the long-term effects of the programs. There were differences in the programs regarding the age at which the children entered the programs and the services provided under the programs. Students who went through these programs were less likely to be put to special education classes and also less likely to be held back in a grade than the children in the control groups with them. Of the four programs that were surveyed, the children went through high school or were old enough for completion of high school, it was seen that the students through the special programs completed high school in greater proportion. (Bassok; Stipek; Inkelas; Kuo. 2003)

The interesting point is that for children growing up in United States, early childhood care and education have now become a very common experience. Most of the children entering kindergarten today generally have gone through some sort of preschool care and thus it can be said clearly that a greater share of kindergarteners of today has gone through preschool. These preschool and care centers try to develop the young children's early academic skills through different enriching activities and sometime even take up direct instruction. There are however wide differences in the quality of care that is given. This will certainly make an effect on the development of the child as has been seen in the analysis given earlier. Again, whether the children should be put in a center or not depends on ethnic differences. Hispanic children are less likely to be put in a care center than white children and the black children are most likely to be in a care center. (Magnuson; Waldfogel, 2005)

Thus the result of care centers may be to widen the gaps due to racial and ethnic differences of the children though the action of the care centers has no effect per se on the race or ethnicity. Thus it is important that children be enrolled in such care centers, and spends enough number of years and enough time in them. If this is done then the gaps due to ethnicity and race may be brought down to an appreciable extent. (Magnuson; Waldfogel, 2005) The concept of the roles of fathers by the children of today will be taken up by them based on their ideas of the roles of fathers and mothers as they have seen earlier. This will be carried on when they become parents. (Cabrera; Tamis-LeMonda; Bradley; Hofferth; Lamb, 2000) Yet considering the situations in the families of today, it is probably more important for the fathers to have a greater involvement in the development of children.

As already discussed earlier, one of the major sources of development of children is the mother, and among mothers from different ethnicity, there are significant differences in use of language. It has been seen that black and Hispanic mothers talk less to their children than white mothers and they also do not read to them every day. This leads to differences in readiness for school and it has been seen that when the mothers start talking to the children more, the differences between the races come down by a figure between 25 to 50%. Certainly it is a matter that parents can attend to if they want to. There was an examination of programs that served poor families and center-based programs. The families being poor led to an increase in minority families being served and the programs had a parenting component which improved nurturing by parents and discipline in the house. (Gunn; Markman, 2005)