Cultural Effects That Influence The Children

Jhumpa Lahiri is one of the most respected authors of our time while also being one whose books top the bestseller lists. She made her mark with a Pultizer-Prize-winning debut collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies. Lahiri returns to the short story format in Unaccustomed Earth, a collection of short stories that deal with loosely-related stories: families from the Bengali state in India who have moved to America to pursue careers and raise their children. Each story seems to feature parents who bring their children back to Calcutta each summer to visit relatives; each story features children who struggle to conform to their parents' traditional expectations as well as the cultural demands of an American adolescence. Loss marks the families Lahiri describes; they cope with this loss in alternately quiet and dramatic ways (Jhumpa, 2008). Each story in Unaccustomed Earth is exquisitely written; Lahiri's placid prose is a pleasure to read. In some ways the very quietness of this writing can serve to lull the reader, however, and given the recurrence of certain themes and plot points, the book feels like it's covering well worn territory by the last few stories. Alcohol abuse, drug use, truancy, and premarital pregnancy are attributed to a separate youth culture. There are, however, an increasing number of researchers who object to this negative image of adolescent culture and who argue for a more positive image of adolescent culture in modern society, its unique and important contributions, and its robust relationship with and similarities to adult culture. In the following section, these disparate points of view and the evidence for them are briefly examined.

What Is Meant By Peer Culture?

Children in these settings appear to adhere to and behave according to a set of "social rules" and behavioral routines. If such rules and routines are breached, then comments and negotiations between children follow. According to Lahiri (2008) children in these settings share a mutual understanding of actions and norms for procedures. This shared framework of understanding enables children to systematically interpret novel situations. Children in these settings engage in activities that focus on themes that are repeated and that all members of the peer group recognize.

Lahiri also examined the relationship between the social systems shared by children and the culture of adults (namely, teachers and parents). Lahiri suggested that there was a dynamic interchange of elements between the two cultures, with elements that appeared in one culture reappearing in the other. In 1994 Lahiri and Donna Elder discussed how this interchange between cultures is particularly interesting in adolescence, during which the adolescent peer culture, while maintaining its own unique social system, introduces rules and systems that facilitate belonging in the adult society. Other researchers have shared this view of a distinct adolescent peer culture with its own structure (Lahiri, 2008, 1-14). Support for this view of adolescent peer culture comes from a variety of sources.

Societal Factors Contributing to Adolescent Peer Culture

While contact between adolescents and their peers is a universal characteristic ...