Mexican And French Children’s Conceptions About Family: A Developmental Approach

The present investigation was designed to study the development of children’s conceptions of family, in relation to cognitive and cultural aspects. Sixty Mexican children and 60 French children were sampled from primary government schools. Twenty subjects from first, third and sixth grade levels composed each experimental group. Children were presented with an interview including 9 questions exploring the following aspects: type of bonds that children recognize in the family group, types of groupings considered as families by children, elements that children include as part of the family group and certain parental roles. Results showed both age and cultural group differences. Children’s conceptions are initially based on concrete and external aspects, while older children are more likely to employ abstract relational criteria for family definition. Nevertheless, complexity of children’s answers was related both to cognitive level and cultural group of origin, since Mexican children’s considerations about certain groupings as families, differed from French children’s considerations for the same groupings. Results are discussed in terms of actual findings about social knowledge developmental levels, and the relation between social influences upon cognitive structures.