This research will study the effects of household environment and parental care on child health and stress. The research will take place in the West Indies, where the anthropologist researcher and his students will conduct ethnographic, survey, and laboratory fieldwork. The project will try to measure child stress by hormonal assays, and other factors by quantitative observation techniques as well as standard ethnographic methods. This research is important because it will provide a test of a methodology for measuring stress that could be useful in comparative research. The information to be gained about the causes of child stress, including survey information, medical histories, in depth interviews and psychological tests have the potential to help explain stress in other situations of interest to society.
