RABINOVICH, Elaine Pedreira. Ways of dwelling in Brazil and developmental context. Temas psicol. []. 1998, 6, 2, pp.105-115. ISSN 1413-389X.

In order to understand how the concrete way of living influences child development, we compared breastfeeding practices and sleeping environments of several low income groups: 60 children 0-2 years old and their families living in São Paulo city; 28 children living as homeless under a viaduct of São Paulo city; 28 children 0-3 years old and their families from a rural area in northeast Piauí State. Several methodologies were used, including direct observation and semi-structured interviews with writtem records of the dwelling and the sleeping room; photos and video. The main results pointed to the relevance of the type of family organization - nuclear or extended network -; to the stablishment of norms - from medical or traditional knowledge -; and to the continuity between groups - association between no-cradle /inter-dependency-living/f/late-weaning and co-sleeping. This study pointed to sleeping environments and to breastfeeding practices in low income Brazilian groups as opposed to the individualism, separateness and autonomy of western cultures and urbanization as a main aspect affecting the life system and changing rearing practices indicating that the analysis unit need to be broaden in order to avoid the ethnocentrical bias. As categories of analysis stemming from the dwelling, we proposed symbolic, corporality, temporality, poetics.

: developmental context; dwelling; sleep; breastfeeding.

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