"This Is My Family": Differences in Children's Family Drawings Across Cultures

In the present study, we examined the family drawings of preschool-aged children from three cultural contexts that represented different aspects of autonomy and relatedness. The final sample consisted of 53 children from urban Western middle-class families from Osnabrueck, Germany; 63 children from rural Cameroonian Nso farming families; and 59 children from urban middle-class families from Ankara, Turkey. The children were of similar age and did not differ in basic drawing abilities. The family drawings varied with cultural context and the respective orientation toward autonomy and relatedness, specifically in regard to the number and position of family members, the depicted absolute and relative size of family members, the details of facial features, and the emotional expression. Additionally, the positioning and spatial arrangement of family members on the paper can be linked to the children's familiarity with external frames of reference in drawings.