Where do young children spend their time? What activities are they involved in and who do they interact with? How do these activities and interactions vary across different societies and cultural groups? This book provides answers to these questions, by describing the lives of three-year-olds in the United States, Russia, Estonia, Finland, South Korea, Kenya and Brazil. Each child was followed for the equivalent of one complete waking day, whether at home, in childcare, on the streets or at the shops. Graphic displays and verbal descriptions of the children's everyday activities and interactions reveal both the ways in which culture influences children's lives and the ways in which children play a role in changing the cultural groups of which they are a part. This book also has a clear theoretical rationale and illustrates why and how to do cultural-ecological research.
• Includes end of chapter review questions, allowing readers to monitor their understanding of the material presented • Features three-year-old children from a range of different cultures, but all as part of a single project, using the same methods in each society • Features both cross-societal and within society comparisons • The theoretical foundation for the book is explained and the modes are based explicitly on the theory
Contents
1. Introduction and stage setting; 2. The daily lives of toddlers; 3. Cultural-ecological theory and its implications for research; 4. Methods; 5. Life in the cities; 6. Everyday activities; 7. Settings and partners; 8. Everyday lives; 9. The cultural ecology of young children.
Review
Review of the hardback: '… a welcome addition … Tudge's work makes important conceptual and empirical contributions to the developmental literature. It presents us with compelling arguments about the need to justify the choice of cultural units and observational categories in describing children's daily activities. It offers a theoretical framework for the study of culture and development, and proposes a broader conception of ethnographic research methodology. Finally, this work enables us to better understand the children of the majority world while providing new information about the children of the Western industrial world as it also guides future research in significant ways.' Human Development
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