Culture and Parenting Xinyin Chen, Rui Fu, and Wai Ying Vivien Yiu

CULTURE and parenting ATTITUDES
As required by the demands of social, economic, historical, and ecological circumstances, societies specify the outcomes that children are expected to develop, which are indicated by values of children’s specific behaviors, such as obedience, cooperation, independence, and emotion expressivity (Bornstein, 2012; Dennis, Talih, Cole, Zahn-Waxler, and Mizuta, 2007; LeVine, 1988; Ogbu, 1981; Rogoff, 2003). Cultural values constitute a basis for parental judgments of, and affective reactions to, children’s behaviors. Chen and French (2008) argued that two basic dimensions of social-behavioral functioning, social initiative and self-control, are reflected in most of these values and characterize major socialization goals across cultures. Social initiative refers to the tendency to initiate and maintain social participation, especially in challenging situations. Children who tend to display anxious and fearful reactions to social novelty or perceived social evaluation may experience difficulties in spontaneous engagement in social participation. Self-control refers to the ability to modulate reactivity in interactions to maintain social appropriateness, which is often indicated by cooperative or defiant–aggressive behaviors in social situations.
In most Western cultures, because a major socialization goal is to help children develop autonomy and self-expression, social initiative is highly valued and strongly encouraged in childrearing. Although self-control is viewed as useful for personal achievement, the culture generally emphasizes maintaining a balance between the needs of the self and those of others; undercontrol and overcontrol are both considered maladaptive in social and psychological adjustment and thus not encouraged in socialization. In many non-Western group-oriented societies, social initiative is not highly appreciated because it typically does not interfere with group harmony or interpersonal relationships. However, controlling personal desires and behaviors in social settings is strongly emphasized because it is critical to group functioning. Cultural values of social initiative and self-control may affect parental attitudes toward specific behaviors, such as sociability (active social initiative with effective control), defiance–aggression (high social initiative and low control), and shyness–inhibition (low social initiative and adequate control to constrain behaviors and emotions toward self; Chen and French, 2008).
Parenting Attitudes in Socialization of Social Initiative and Related Behaviors
Parental attitudes toward children’s social initiative may be indicated by how parents view and support children’s social interaction, particularly play with peers. Edwards (2000) argued that, in cultures that value social initiative and self-expression, parents tend to encourage their children to engage in active social interaction, such as fantasy or sociodramatic activities in play with others. Sociodramatic behavior and pretense in play allow children to express their inner interests and personal styles while controlling their social-evaluative anxiety in interaction (Chen and French, 2008; Farver, Kim, and Lee, 1995). Relatively few sociodramatic activities are exhibited by Bedouin Arab children (Ariel and Sever, 1980), East Asian children (Farver et al., 1995; Parmar, Harkness, and Super, 2004), Mayan children (Gaskins, 2000), and rural Brazilian children (Gosso, Lima, Morais, and Otta, 2007). The results from the Six Culture Study showed that children in Nyansongo (Kenya) and Khalapur (India) displayed significantly lower levels of overall social engagement than children in Taira in Okinawa (Japan) and Orchard Town (USA; Edwards, 2000). Moreover, children in Nyansongo and Khalapur were less active, and their activities involved fewer fantastic characters or themes. Whereas socioecological conditions (e.g., the structuring of activities, physical settings) are related to differences in children’s play, cultural norms and values influence parental attitudes about whether children’s play is stimulated or directed to develop social initiative skills. As noted by Edwards (2000), mothers in Orchard Town were more likely than mothers in Nyansongo to encourage their children to entertain themselves by playing and to direct their play to be imaginative, such as playing birthday party, riding horses, and other sociodramatic activities.
In a cross-cultural study of parental values and attitudes in Israeli and Palestinian samples, Feldman and Masalha (2010) examined the extent to which parents valued a set of child behavioral attributes. Israeli parents placed higher value on social engagement and self-expressiveness in childrearing than did Palestinian parents. Chinese parents traditionally tend to be unsupportive of children to display initiative-taking (Chao, 1994; Chen et al., 1998), which is incompatible with the requirements of a contemporary urban, market-oriented society. Chen and Li’s study (2012) revealed that parents in urban families were more likely than parents in rural families to appreciate and value children’s qualities of social initiative. Urban parents seemed to realize that it would be important for their children to learn initiative-taking skills to adapt to the competitive environment.
Culturally based parental attitudes are also demonstrated in studies of children’s shyness-inhibition, which represents a low level of social initiative. Chen and colleagues (1998) examined relations between maternal acceptance, rejection, and punishment-orientation and shyness-inhibition among 2-year-olds in Canada and China. Children’s inhibition was assessed in free play and stranger-with-toys (e.g., a toy dump truck, a black, noisy, and "smoking" toy robot) sessions in the laboratory (García Coll, Kagan, and Reznick, 1984), and mothers completed a measure of positive and negative childrearing attitudes. The results indicated that child inhibition was positively associated with mothers’ rejection, concern, and punishment orientation in Canada. However, the results were the opposite in China: Child inhibition was positively associated with maternal warm and accepting attitudes. Different parental attitudes toward shyness-inhibition were also found across cultures in middle to late childhood. Whereas the Western literature consistently indicates positive associations of shyness with parental disappointment and rejection (see Rubin, Coplan, and Bowker, 2009, for a review), shyness in elementary and high school children, especially girls, in China was found to be positively associated with parental approval and support (Chen, Dong, and Zhou, 1997; Chen, Rubin, and Li, 1997). Kim, Rapee, Oh, and Moon (2008) found that shyness was positively associated with positive parent-child relationships and parental acceptance in Korean adolescents, but not in Australian adolescents. There is evidence suggesting that Latin American parents may also have more positive attitudes than European American parents toward children’s shyness and social anxiety (Varela, Sanchez-Sosa, Biggs, and Luis, 2009).
Parenting Attitudes in Socialization of Self-Control
Self-control has been valued and encouraged in most cultures, perhaps because it is required for performance on both individual and group tasks (Eisenberg, Zhou, Liew, Champion, and Pidada, 2006; Maccoby and Martin, 1983; Whiting and Edwards, 1988). Parents typically start to make effort to help children learn self-control in the first or second year of life when children understand adults’ demands (Kopp, 1982). Nevertheless, research has shown that parents in more group-oriented cultures tend to place greater emphasis on children’s self-control (Chen and French, 2008). Keller and colleagues (2004) argued that whereas behavioral control is often viewed as interfering with the child’s freedom in individualistic cultures, it is viewed as a duty, indicating social maturity and competence, in group-oriented cultures. In many East Asian societies, such as China and South Korea, training children to exert control is a major socialization goal from early childhood to adolescence because controlling one’s behavior according to social rules is viewed as a critical component of cultivating innate virtues (Chao, 1995; Ho, 1986). According to the Confucian principle of filial piety, children must learn and maintain absolute obedience to parents. The higher expectation of children’s self-control in Chinese and some other Asian societies is also related to the belief that human behavior is malleable and controllable (Stevenson and Lee, 1990). The poor control of one’s own behavior is considered incompetent and unacceptable because it is attributed to a lack of effort. Consistent with this argument, Chen and colleagues (2003) found that, relative to North American parents, Chinese parents expected their children to maintain a higher level of behavioral control. Kohnstamm, Halverson, Mervielde, and Havill (1998) found that Chinese parents paid more attention than Western parents to children’s conscientiousness or diligence and were more concerned about the lack of control in their children. Similarly, in a study of parental values and goals, Jose, Huntsinger, Huntsinger, and Liaw (2000) asked parents “How important do you think it is to encourage the following personality traits in your child?” and found that both Taiwan Chinese and Chinese American parents rated persistence, concentration, precision, calmness, and neatness as more important than European American parents. The results clearly indicated that Chinese parents had expectations of a high level of self-control in their children.
Greenberger, Chen, Beam, Whang, and Dong (2000) examined parental attitudes toward misconduct and undercontrolled behaviors in samples of senior high school students in Los Angeles (the United States), Seoul (South Korea), and Tianjin (China). The results showed that U.S. adolescents had higher scores than Korean adolescents, who in turn had higher scores than Chinese adolescents on problem behaviors, such as risk-taking, substance use (e.g., drank hard liquor), fighting with others, and school misconduct. The proportion of U.S. adolescents who engaged in various problem behaviors was twice that of South Korean, Chinese, or both (e.g., 52%, 18%, and 11% engaged in “hitting or threatening to hit someone” in the United States, South Korea, and China, respectively). More importantly, according to adolescents’ reports, parents in South Korea and China had more negative attitudes toward, or greater sanctions against, adolescents’ involvement in misconduct than did U.S. parents. South Korean and Chinese parents were clearly less tolerant of adolescents’ under-controlled behaviors than American parents.
A similar study was conducted by Hackett and Hackett (1993) through interviewing Gujarati parents, who emigrated from India and East Africa in the 1970s, and English parents of 4- to 7-year-old children in Manchester, England. When asked about a situation in which a peer hit their child or grabbed a toy from their child, significantly more Gujarati parents than English parents said that they would encourage their children to exert self-control and that they disapproved of hitting back or getting the toy back by force. When their child had a fight with a peer, more Gujarati parents would stop the fight immediately and punish their child, whereas more English parents would ignore the fight. The results indicated that Gujarati parents were less tolerant of their children’s undercontrolled behavior than English parents.
Dodge and colleagues (Deater-Deckard and Dodge, 1997; Deater-Deckard, Dodge, Bates, and Pettit, 1996; Pinderhughes, Dodge, Bates, Pettit, and Zelli, 2000) conducted several studies about parental attitudes and their relations with aggressive and misconduct behaviors among African American and European American children. The results generally indicated that African American parents, particularly in low socioeconomic status, were more likely than European American parents to endorse the use of harsh discipline, including physical punishment. According to the authors, the experiences of heightened social and life stress among African American parents may affect their cognitive-emotional processes (e.g., increased sensitivity) in response to socially provocative situations. The parenting attitudes of African American parents and corresponding strategies they use may serve to prepare their children to function in social settings in which others might treat them harshly. For example, when presented with hypothetical vignettes describing situations in which a child engaged in misbehavior (e.g., threatening peers who excluded the child from a game), African American parents were more likely than European American parents to make hostile attributions (e.g., the child acted with hostile intent or in a negative-trait-like manner). Moreover, African American parents were more worried than European American parents about their children growing up to have problems in the future (Pinderhughes et al., 2000). Thus, African American and European American parents may differ in their attitudes, such as concern, anxiety, and vigilance, about children’s under-controlled behaviors.
Cultural values of familism/familismo and respect/repeto in Latin societies are commonly believed to be associated with parenting attitudes (Halgunseth, Ispa, and Rudy, 2006; White, Zeiders, Gonzales, Tein, and Roosa, 2013). Familismo is concerned with feelings of loyalty to the family and commitment to the family over individual needs and desires. Latinos place higher value on family responsibility than European Americans, which is reflected in childrearing (Fuligni, Witkow, and Garcia, 2005; Halgunseth et al., 2006). The goal of repeto is to maintain close relationships through respect for others, particularly elders. In Latino societies, children from the early years are socialized to learn rules of respect for parents and other adults (Valdés, 1996). The values of familismo and repeto are associated with the emphasis on parental monitoring, including high expectations of child obedience, self-control, and harsh parenting, which are believed to be important for familial solidarity and deference (White et al., 2013).