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) _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html