It isn't appropriate to have 'laundry lists' of beliefs about people of
different ethnicities, national origins, or cultural identities.

Cultures don't come in neat little boxes, with the "Hispanic" box separate
from the "Italian" box, separate from the "Indian" box.  It also is not the
case that everyone in the "Hispanic" box shares the same beliefs, or that
all the people in the "Indian" box share the same beliefs.

"Culture" for any one person is a vast, shifting, ever-changing amalgam of
beliefs, knowledge, attitudes, and practices.  It varies not only by what
country you live in, or where your parents came from, but also by such
variables as your age, educational level, occupation, sex, income level,
specific denomination of religion, specific interests, and of course many
other things.  There are vast regional differences between different areas
of the US -- Texas is a whole 'nother country, as they say, and even within
one state/region, there are differences between north and south, urban and
rural, etc.  In Delaware, it's "above or below" the D&C canal.

It is very helpful to have a general knowledge of the concepts of cultural
anthropology -- that people HAVE cultural beliefs, that people have
DIFFERENT assumptions about the world, different goals, different ideas.  It
is very helpful to understand one's OWN cultural beliefs, to know WHAT you
believe, and WHY you believe what you do, and what impact that has on your
life, your actions, your relationships.  It is very helpful to be respectful
of other people's beliefs -- not to assume that everyone thinks like you,
has the same beliefs and assumptions, the same goals.  And not to dismiss
other people's beliefs as "superstition," or "ignorance" or just plain
stupid/wrong.

But it is dangerous to think that you can come up with a laundry list of
beliefs and practices for different cultural groups that will be of much use
when dealing with specific, individual mothers.

I recently participated in some focus-group research with mothers of
children with developmental delays.  One of the groups was the
"Spanish-speaking" group and they brought in an interpreter, since I don't
speak Spanish.  The interpreter was a highly-educated, well-to-do, woman who
was originally from the Dominican Republic.  One of the mothers was a Native
American from Mexico, who did not speak Spanish very well at all.  The
interpreter didn't understand how someone from Mexico could not be a native
Spanish speaker.  The various mothers in the group ranged in age from 17 to
40, in education level from not yet out of high school to college-educated,
and from extremely poor to quite well-off.  They didn't share much of
anything, "culturally," and they didn't differ in any systematic way from
the mothers of the non-Spanish-speaking focus groups.  In fact, the poor
women in all groups shared the same problems -- no health insurance, no
transportation to take their kids to therapy, no access to computers to
search for information and treatment options for their children, etc.  The
better off women in all groups shared concerns with each other, but not with
the poor women.

Kathy Dettwyler (anthropologist)

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