Puerto Rican Children in Institutional Placement: A Study of 6 Children Admitted to Cardinal McCloskey School and Home Between January 1958 and December 1961 to Determine the Influence of the Cultural Factor on Their Adjustment and on Parental Attitudes Toward Placement
Abstract
In this study, the term "culture” has been defined as the composite of specific ways of thinking, feeling, and acting which differentiate one group from another. In recent years, there has been in social work practice an increasing awareness of the importance of culture in behavior and personality development. In order to understand the personality of the individual, we must recognize the pressures and stresses which arise from his particular cultural group. The development of the individual from infancy to the status of an adult member of his group can be viewed as the process of acculturation, that is, the process through which the individual becomes a social being. This process entails the integration of the physiological, psychological, and socio-cultural aspects of the individual’s development. It is the process by which personality is formed out of the individual’s experiences and relationships with people of a given culture. The human organism can develop its potentialities for a full and rounded life only through its living with others. A young child is dependent for his very life, upon the world about him. He grows to relative independence and acquires an identity as a mature person by a continuing process of interaction with his environment. How the individual manages to meet his needs and what patterns he will develop, depend on what the people around him think, believe, fear, and feel.
Subject Area
Individual & family studies|Latin American Studies|Social work
Recommended Citation
Rivera, Carmen Isabel, "Puerto Rican Children in Institutional Placement: A Study of 6 Children Admitted to Cardinal McCloskey School and Home Between January 1958 and December 1961 to Determine the Influence of the Cultural Factor on Their Adjustment and on Parental Attitudes Toward Placement" (1962). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI30670815.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI30670815
