Growing up in a challenging environment: A cultural analysis of self-regulation development in poverty

Poverty is associated with many types of life adversities and child developmental problems. Among various physical and mental developmental outcomes that could be affected by poverty, self-regulation abilities are of critical importance for leading a successful life. In this article, we provide discussions regarding the different developmental pathways of self-regulation in poverty, embedded within various cultural settings. We discuss examples of higher self-regulation performance in children grown up in poor environments and argue that self-regulation assessment should be more focused on real-world conditions, especially taking the saliency of the goals and the cultural context of the situation into account. This article aims to put forward the idea that poor environments, in terms of Western lifestyle standards, may provide cultivating settings in which the child can build-up self-regulation by actually getting involved in real-life situations while not being exposed to various dangers and stressors often associated with poverty.