ABSTRACT
One way of thinking about the global-local distinction is the difference between the epistemic child (what all children, or all humans, hold in common) and the more anthropological approach of focusing on what is different between groups, particularly the impact of culture. To understand both the extent to which children are the same the world over and the differences between children, a good deal of research has been conducted on child-rearing practices in many different cultural groups. In order to show just how varied children’s experiences are, cross-cultural psychologists have largely been interested in “maximizing the differences” between the groups studied, often comparing White middle-class practices in some part of the industrialized world (typically North America) with practices from rural and/or poor areas of the “majority” world (Kağitçibaşi, 1996; Rogoff, 2003; Whiting & Edwards, 1988).
