In anticipation of a new century, it is useful to reflect upon how much greater the capability for awareness of our world is today than it was 100 years ago. Communication and travel achievements have erased many boundaries between us, and have made it possible to learn about children and families in cultural settings very remote from our own. This has resulted in an impressive body of evidence that motor development is somewhat variable and can be shaped to meet particular cultural demands. The early surge of interest in cultural variations in motor development has been tempered by information about other factors such as temperature and nutrition which may coincidentally influence motor developmental progress. This paper provides a comprehensive description of cultural variations in motor development, balanced by an emphasis on factors unrelated to or coexisting with culture which may be equally significant. The first part of the paper explores noncultural factors and the second part describes infants' and children's motor developmental patterns in the context of their cultural group. Cultures are determined and maintained through the transmission of values and behaviors from parents to their children. Parental expectations of children, influenced by grandparents and their parents, appear to have an effect on motor development which varies significantly across cultures and among individuals. Information related to parent expectations confirms that parents and grandparents are the most important allies for physical therapists working with children. (Pediatr Phys Ther 1995;7:103–111)
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Holly Lea Cintas (1995) studied this question.