Pediatricians provide a major source of knowledge for parents about children's behavior and development, although their advice is largely based on their own cultural values and beliefs in interaction with their personal and clinical experience. This review presents cross-cultural aspects of children's sleep behavior in industrialized and complex modern societies and provides a basis for understanding dimensions and mechanisms of cultural differences. We submit that it is the interaction between culture and biology that establishes behavioral and developmental norms and expectations regarding normal and problematic children's sleep. Pediatricians need to recognize the cultural environment in which children live and be knowledgeable about how cultural beliefs and values of both families and physicians interact with the needs and biological characteristics of individual children.
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January 2005
Supplement Articles|
January 01 2005
Children's Sleep: An Interplay Between Culture and Biology
Oskar G. Jenni, MD;
Oskar G. Jenni, MD
*Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, E. P. Bradley Hospital Chronobiology and Sleep Research Laboratory
‡Department of Pediatrics, Growth and Development Center, University Children's Hospital, Zurich, Switzerland
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Bonnie B. O'Connor, PhD
Bonnie B. O'Connor, PhD
§Division of Pediatric Ambulatory Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Brown Medical School, Providence, Rhode Island
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Address correspondence to Bonnie B. O'Connor, PhD, Division of Pediatric Ambulatory Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Rhode Island Hospital/Brown Medical School, 593 Eddy St, Potter Suite 200, Providence, RI 02903. E-mail: boconnor@lifespan.org
Pediatrics (2005) 115 (Supplement_1): 204–216.
Article history
Accepted:
August 05 2004
Citation
Oskar G. Jenni, Bonnie B. O'Connor; Children's Sleep: An Interplay Between Culture and Biology. Pediatrics January 2005; 115 (Supplement_1): 204–216. 10.1542/peds.2004-0815B
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