I found this section to be very interesting. It is amazing the way we have modified language as we evolved to this point, producing modern vocal language. However, I think that incorporating hand gestures into our language helps us emotionally convey our message better. It is important to note that we have not evolved past hand gestures; they are still incredibly relevant to language and important in many cultures. To provide an example, sign language is a real form of language composed exclusively of gestures. It is true that vocal language can support a larger number of different words and that areas of our brains, like Broca's area, are specialized for this type of language. However, sign language is still incredibly relevant ad it too is progressing. I recently read an article about a college student who developed about a hundred new sign language movements specific to scientific terms and lingo. This will help sign-language using and hearing/speech-impaired STEM students to have access to more language, specialized in their field of study.

Could the added environmental stress of living in a city also contribute to urban girls reaching menarche earlier? Even if you do not find living in a city psychologically stressful, it is a setting new to the human body as city life is not something humans are exactly evolutionarily prepared for. Living in a city comes along with many threats and distractions. More related to culture, what about girls belonging to poor or underprivleged urban families? Does their environmental stress affect this trend?

I think we can export this idea to sex ed in schools. In some well-funded schools in progressive areas, students may receive a comprehensive sex ed program while a struggling school in a rural area may not convey quality health and sex ed information to students. These sex ed programs need to be culturally informed so that students from different backgrounds receive the message in a way relevant to their experience. By ensuring that all students are taught health and sex ed curriculum sensitive to their culture, we can reduce disparities in outcomes such as teen pregnancy, STD transmission, etc.

It is interesting to consider that suppression is not a universally bad thing. In this culture, we think of suppression as "bottling up emotions", a negative act that ends in an explosion. But in some cultures, suppression is an adaptive method to handling a negative emotional experience. When Americans think of the way other cultures suppress and hide their emotions, we often believe they are not handling the situation in the best way, as we are examining the situation through our cultural lens. While suppression does not have the best goodness of fit to our culture and how we operate, it can be an effective mechanism for some other cultures, just as some of our norms regarding emotion display may be considered toxic in other cultures.

This concept can be tied to naive dialect. While Asian cultures are able to identify with the middle ground and more neutral solutions, western cultures are driven to pick a side in conflict, and are less likely to remain neutral. Naive dialect, often rejected by the ideals of westernized culture, proposed the middle ground of a conflict is the most likely to contain the solution, rather that the dichotomies that Americans identify more easily with. This reminds me of individualistic vs collectivistic cultures. I believe that we can tie naive dialect to collectivistic culture in the way that choosing the middle ground is more of a compromise and choosing a solution that benefits the most people. Americans, who are more concerned with getting their way and choosing the position they personally identify with is reminiscent of the ways of individualistic culture.

It is interesting that extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness almost always appear, but openness to experience and neuroticism do not. Like the authors said, this could be due to the adjectives used or O and N could be missing from the culture. If the latter is the case, that would mean that openness to experience and neuroticism are more products of culture than they are products of temperament. Temperament is a term that describes the biological predisposition that we each hold, and it can have an effect on our personality. If these traits are absent in a culture, we can deduce that they are likely a product of nurture rather than nature, as not all humans in all cultures display levels of openness and neuroticism.

This part of the article makes me think of environmental racism, and how that might affect family structure/type of family. Environmental racism is a term that refers to environmental injustice in a racialized context, usually through policy and practice. For example, historically, minority populations have been forced into communities near factories, landfills, and other health/environmental hazards. How might these ecological features in situations like this affect family structure and type in terms of these people's means of sustinence? Referring to the textbook, what parenting styles are characteristic in places with different ecological features? Dangerous environment could affect the amount of playtime a child has outside. They might receive less cultural experiences if the family lives in an area with factories and landfills rather than museums and play theaters.