Culture is the sum total of the learned ways of doing, feeling, and thinking, past and present, of a social group within a given period of time. These ways are transmitted from one generation to the next or to immigrants who become members of the society. Culture is a group`s design for living, a shared set of socially transmitted assumptions about the nature of the physical and social world, goals in life, attitudes, roles and values. Culture is a complex integrated system that includes knowledge, beliefs, skills, art, morals, law, customs, and any other acquired habits and capabilities of man. All provide a pattern for living together.
A subculture is a group of persons, within a culture, of the same age, socioeconomic status, ethnic origin, education, or occupation, or with the same goals, who have an identity of their own but are related to the total culture in certain ways. Spanish-Americans, American Indians, and American Blacks represent subcultures. Regional, social-class, religious, and family subcultures also exist. A description of each follows.
Regional culture refers to the local or regional manifestations of the large culture. Thus the child learns the sectional variant of the national culture, for example, rural or urban, Yankee, Southern, Midwestern. Regional culture is influenced by geography, trade, and economics; variations may be shown in values, beliefs, housing, food, occupational skills, and language.
A social class also has its own culture. A social class is c cultural grouping of persons who, through group consensus and similarity of occupation, wealth, and education, have come to have a similiar status, life style, interests, feelings, attitudes, language usage, and overt forms of behavior. The people belonging to this group meet each other on equal terms and have a consciousness of cohesion. Social class is not only economic in origin, for other factors also contribute to superior status, such as age, sex, and personal endowment.
The more a class as a group becomes fixed, the more predictable is its patterns of attitudes and behavior. The child learns the patterns of his own class and his class attitude toward another class. The attitude patterns make up a culture`s value system, its conception of how people should behave in various situations as well as which goals they should pursue and how. The value systems of the general culture and of the subculture or social class may at times conflict.
Religious culture also influences the person, for a religion constitutes a way of living and thinking and therefore is a kind of culture. Family culture refers to the family life, which is part of the cultural system. The family is the medium through which the larger cultural heritage is transmitted to the child. Family culture consists of ways of living and thinking that constitute the family and sexual aspects of group life. These ways include courtship and marriage patterns, sexual mores, husband-wife relationships, status of men and women, parent-child relationships, childrearing, responsibilities to parents, and attitudes toward unmarried women, illegitimate children, and divorce.
The family gives the child status. The family name gives the child a social position as well as an identify; the child is assigned the status of the family and the reputation that goes with it. Family status has a great deal to do with health and behavior throughout life because of its effect on self-concept.
Family rituals are the collective way of working out household routines and using time within the family culture. Ritual is a system of definitely prescribed behaviors and procedures and it provides exactness in daily tasks of living and has a sense of rightness about it. The more often the behavior is repeated, the more it comes to be approved and therefore habitual. Thus rituals inevitably develop in family life as a result of the intimacy of relationships and the repetition and continuity of certain interactions. Rituals change from one life cycle to another-for example, at marriage, after childbirth, when children go to school, and when children leave home.
Rituals are important in child development because : (1) They are group habits that communicate ways of doing things and attitudes related to events, including family etiquette, affectionate responses beetwen family members, organization of leisure time, and education for group adjustment. (2) They promote solidarity and continuity by promoting habitual behavior, unconsciously performed, which brings harmony to family life. Many rituals will continue to the next generation, increasing the person`s sense of worth, security, and family continuity or identity. (3) They aid in maintaining self-control through disciplinary measures. (4) They promote feelings of euphoria, sentimentality, or well-being- for example, through holiday celebrations. They also dictate reactions to threat, such as at time of loss, illness, or death.
References :
Guralnik, David, ed., Webster`s New World Dictionary of the American Language (2nd college ed.). New York : World Publishing Company, 1972.
Ogburn, William, and M. Nimkoff, Sociology (2nd ed.). Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company, 1950.
Bossard, J., and E. Boll, The Sociology of Child Development (4th ed.). New York : Harper & Row, Publisher, 1966.
Murray, RB and Zentner JP., Nursing Concepts for Health Promotion, Second Edtion, Prentice-Hall, Inc, Englewood Cliffs, N.J, 1979.
