Children and adolescents are influenced and structured by their surroundings and external factors such as familial backgrounds and cultural contexts. These factors become a considerable aspect of their identity development processes. All children experience significant transition events that have consistency with normal transitional periods that individuals go through from being a child to an adult (Levine et al., 2018). During development, one's identity is also structured, which includes the perception that an individual possesses of themselves. As an African American child in California, I was expected to go through the normal developmental experiences that shape the adolescent stage. They are also expected to develop desires and assertions of their independence while dealing with a world that is constantly filled with racial bias. Bornstein et al. (2019) state that children in the African American community live in stressful conditions in which they are expected to structure effective coping strategies for better functioning in society.
The home that I grew up in was founded on African American background. I was brought up in California in a community that was also made of several predominantly African American neighborhoods. This meant that I became constantly exposed to individuals with same skin color and beliefs system as me. I celebrated Kwanzaa and honored different aspects of the Black community not only on particular holidays but across the country. I became accustomed to diversity when I was 13 years old. I was constantly exposed to the social stigmas that were placed on people from my race and the stereotypes that were associated with the Black identity.
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Being around a large number of different African Americans who had considerably varying lifestyles, I never viewed people from my culture as acting in a specific way, and I did not have a negative view of the Black community. My parents brought me up to be proud of the community around me and to view myself as having the ability to do anything. However, I became constantly exposed to harsh remarks about my cultural background, which initially puzzled me, but I finally became used to the remarks. Until then, I did not believe that particular behaviors were linked to the Black community in the country. As I grew, all those that were around me were from the same community in different positions such as businessmen, pastors, athletes, activists, firefighters, and community leaders. This resulted in a constant affirmation in my power to be whatever I wanted to be and engage in considerable growth of my own identity. In this way, my sense of self was considerably structured. Whether by the constant reminders around me that I was an awesome leader, I was constantly encouraged to be proud of who I was and where I came from. My experiences of self against the community around me were so positive that external influences and ideas on who I was had a minimal impact on my own choices and decisions. I held the belief that irrespective of the social bias that was around me, I could do whatever I wanted to do if I applied myself. Having a predominantly African American community encouraged me to embrace my identity as a child, and even as I grew to adolescence, I found more comfort when I retreated to the community around me.
Despite being surrounded by a comforting African American environment; racism was an invisible social force that I was not able to elude. I experienced a phase in which I was vulnerable to the social bias of the media and other around me, which affected my ability to make my own decisions. Hence, based on this bias, I attempted to be 'cool.' Due to the influences around me, I made several attempts at stealing and hanging out on the corner, which was what the media seemed to expect of my community at the time. At the age of 15, I realized this was just an act that contradicted what my community was truly about. I had just been distracted by the outside pressures that plagued the African American community and sacrificed my ability to engage in reckless behavior. The family ties that existed in my African American community exposed me to factors such as sports and jobs, which enabled me to find the aspects of life that are interesting to me.
It is important to understand cultural context when assessing the development of children and adolescents. Child and adolescent development is an interactive process. All children are unique in their interactions with the world that surrounds them. Hence, invoking and receiving interactions with others and the environment also structures their thoughts and behaviors (Greenfield et al., 2018). Children that grow up in varying cultures receive particular inputs from their environment. Hence, an understanding of the cultural context is essential for understanding the ways in which the development of children and adolescents is shaped. This includes the different ways in which cultural exposure has an impact on the ways in which adolescents attend to themselves and their relationships with others. Children in different cultures differ in how they think concerning themselves and their relation to others (Levine et al., 2018). They also have different memorizations of the others. An understanding of the cultural context provides a better understanding of the developmental processes that an individual experiences.
Qualitative research acts as the best research method to assess the impact that culture has on cognition in children and adolescents. This method is mainly used for the comprehension of underlying reasons and motivations for a specific occurrence (Flick, 2018). It also presents insights into the challenges or assists the development of ideas for the topic being researched. In this case, the focus of the research will be the effects that culture has on the development of children and adolescents. This method presents the techniques required for uncovering trends in thoughts and opinions while also diving deeper into the issue. This type of research appeals to this subject because it will allow the researcher to make an investigation of the meanings that individuals attribute to their developmental processes (Silverman, 2016). It will also be useful in the establishment of a relationship between culture and the development of children. This method will also produce descriptive data that the researcher can use for interpretation while supporting the analysis of identified themes.
Growing up in an African American cultural context, my cognition and beliefs of who I was were dramatically different from those of those around me. I had completely different tastes in factors such as music and entertainment, while the people around me were more like me and less like the diverse cultures that I got exposed to in school. Based on my experiences, I came to the understanding that cultural context has a significant effect on the development of children and adolescents. This is because it affects the opinions and beliefs that individuals develop along with the identity of self that they have on. Qualitative research then acts as the best method for investigating the effect of culture on children's cognition and development. This is because this research method enables the identification of meaning behind the behaviors and actions of different individuals.
References
Bornstein, M. H., & Lansford, J. E. (2019). Culture and family functioning.
Flick, U. (2018). An introduction to qualitative research . Sage Publications Limited.
Greenfield, P. M. (2018). Studying social change, culture, and human development: A theoretical framework and methodological guidelines. Developmental Review , 50 , 16-30.
Levine, L. E., & Munsch, J. (2018). Child development from infancy to adolescence: An active learning approach . Sage Publications.
Silverman, D. (Ed.). (2016). Qualitative research . Sage.
Yang, Y., & Wang, Q. (2019). Culture in emotional development. In Handbook of Emotional Development (pp. 569-593). Springer, Cham.
