Influence of cultural conception and community context on local child care

Abstract

In Cuba, the study of child care in daycare centers has gained relevance in recent decades; it currently reveals specificities generated by cultural gender constructs and the sociocultural context, which typify the ways of life of the people who perform this work according to the sense and meaning that the act of caring represents for them. Understanding the work carried out by child caregivers necessarily involved recognizing the established differences among them; therefore, it was important to delve into care from the distinctive cultural standpoints of the art of caring. For these reasons, the article's objective was to determine the cultural components involved in the practice of child care in daycare centers, taking into account the community context of the city of Bayamo. Theoretical methods such as historical-logical, analysis-synthesis, and induction-deduction were used for this purpose; empirical methods such as scientific observation and triangulation; as well as the techniques of questionnaires and interviews. These allowed for the characterization of the study communities, taking into account the differences that distinguish them, and the determination of the main cultural components that condition the forms of child care: the educational level of the caregiver, the cultural gender constructs, and the sociocultural context anchored in the communities where the daycare centers are located.