Culture and the construction of habits in daily life: implications for the successful development of children with disabilities

The developmental niche, a theoretical construct for the study of the child in cultural context, has been usefully applied to the analysis of environments of disabled individuals. In this article, the authors review the three components of the niche (settings of daily life, customs of care, and the psychology of the caretakers), with particular reference to issues of disability. Two case studies are presented as illustrations of the importance of parents' culturally constructed ideas, or ethnotheories, as either challenges or supports to the work of the occupational therapist. The article concludes with a consideration of cultural variability in parents' ideas of successful development, with illustrations from research in Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States. The developmental niche framework is relevant to concepts of 'habit' as used in occupational therapy. It is also helpful for considering how the environment of the disabled individual,including cultural assumptions about what constitutes an agenda for successful development may be modified to promote full participation in meaningful activities in the community.