The Culture and Identity Forum touched on and raised several questions concerning infants in multicultural contexts, and also arrived at some answers. At the same time one can conclude that we already have compelling research knowledge to be taken seriously, and yet, we know far too little. We are only just beginning to reach a new understanding of how profoundly and comprehensively culture impacts parenting and early socioemotional and cognitive mental development.
At the population level research on migration and problems of minorities show that cultural discrimination still is a huge problem for humanity. As the articles by von Klitzing Νthis issueΝ and Boris Νthis issueΝ point out, there are multiple socioeconomic problems and psychological challenges, in particular for parents with young children and in the transition to parenthood. Recurring or prolonged separations, social isolation, and intensive "homesickness", which can be a sign of a loss of one's "attachment context", often create traumas or end up in tragedies where infants and toddlers are the silent victims. Parenting and parenthood are inextricably linked to the culture of origin but the socialization goals of the parents for their child force them to adapt to a new culture. Parenting becomes stressful and overwhelmingly conflictual.
At the professional level the present research data creates real concerns. Fitzgerald Νthis issueΝ writes about cultural impact on the methods used in both clinical and research work in our field. All assessments and measures, which are either based on observation or focus on relationships and interaction, are dependent on and biased by cultural issues. Emde Νthis issueΝ points out how important it is to combine the cultural aspect with assessments of normality and pathology and include these in our diagnostic classification systems and procedures. Fitzgerald's and Emde's convincing arguments lead to two notions.
Firstly, so far we have only been able to concentrate on reliability aspects when using evaluation or therapeutic methods in different cultures. Reliability of translations of questionnaire-based methods is routinely handled and cross-cultural inter-rater reliability of observational methods is beginning to enter discussions, but until now questions about validity in different cultures have been beyond the scope of our reach. Validity in assessing early interaction in different cultures, for example, parental sensitivity, is tied to the values of any given culture. Therefore, the ability to address issues of validity needs much more multicultural research and understanding.