Cultural Differences In Co-Sleeping Culture

Attitudes surrounding co-sleeping vary greatly throughout different cultures, as do the shaping factors for these outlooks. In general, those from individualistic cultures go to great lengths to discourage co-sleeping, citing, possible long-term behavioral and health effects, safety risks and out-of-home child rearing advice as key determining factors in their decision. In contrast, parents from collectivist societies encourage close parental and child sleeping arrangements, naming emotional attachment as a fundamental reason for doing so. This assignment will focus on the differences between cultures, namely those considered individualistic and collectivist, concerning co-sleeping and the factors, which shape each cultures attitude and actions surrounding sleeping practices. Co-sleeping can be defined as a child sharing the same sleeping space as another individual. In addition, individualistic cultures can be defined, as a society based on the idea of promoting the freedom of the individual over the implementation of collective control. Contrastingly, collectivist societies can be defined a group of people, who adopt the social theory, which states that the welfare of the state is of greater importance than …show more content…
It can be said that out-of-home advice and accessibility is a key factor in sleeping arrangement decisions. Out-of-home advice will include both medical services (i.e. CAF’s, General Practitioner, Pediatricians etc.) and media based outlets (i.e. Newspapers, Television, Academic Literature). Participants will simply be asked the origin of the child-rearing advice they have garnered, (their results will be coded as “in-home”, “out-of-home” or “both”) and what their decision was concerning the sleeping arrangements of their child (co-sleeping or separate