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

rELATIONS BTWEEN PARENTING AND CHILDREN’S SOCIOEMOTIONAL AND COGNITIVE FUNCTIONING IN CULTURAL CONTEXT
Cultural norms and values serve to shape the significance, or functional meanings, of parenting behaviors (Bornstein, 1995), as indicated in their relations with children’s developmental outcomes. Researchers have investigated the role of culture in affecting the relations between parenting and children’s adjustment (Chen, Liu, and Li, 2000). In the section that follows, we review and discuss work on the significance of the major dimensions of parenting in different cultures.
Parental Warmth and Children’s Socioemotional and Cognitive Functioning
It has been argued that parental warmth may have universal positive implications for children’s development (Rohner, 1986; Rohner, Khaleque, and Cournoyer, 2005; Rohner and Smith, 2019). The findings from different societies appear to support this argument; despite cross-cultural variations in the level and form of parental affective expressiveness in childrearing (Cheah et al., 2015; Wörmann et al., 2012), higher parental warmth generally tends to be associated with children’s competence and positive adjustment in social, academic, and psychological domains at the within-culture individual level (Chen, Rubin et al., 1997; Eisenberg, Liew, and Pidada, 2001). For example, Bronstein (1994) observed family interactions between parents and children at 7-12 years in a small city in central Mexico and found that parental warmth (showing affection, praising the child) was positively associated with children’s cooperative and compliant behaviors and negatively associated with children’s resistance. In a study with 4-year-old children in China, Chen, Wu, Chen, Wang, and Cen (2001) conducted observations of parenting behaviors at home and child aggression in peer interactions in a laboratory setting. Maternal warmth and responsiveness (e.g., loving gestures such as hugging, smiling, physical comfort, praise, supportive responses) were negatively associated with child aggression. Kim and Rohner (2002) found in a sample of Grades 6-12 Korean American students that maternal and paternal warmth as reported by adolescents was positively associated with academic achievement. These results suggest that parental warmth and emotional support constitute important social and psychological resources for children and adolescents to learn appropriate social behaviors and achieve in school.
Nevertheless, how parental warmth contributes to the development of specific behaviors or qualities may vary across cultures, depending on the extent to which the behaviors or qualities are valued in the society. In a 2-year longitudinal study with elementary school children in China, Chen and colleagues (2000) found that maternal warmth positively predicted perceived self-worth and negatively predicted loneliness and depression, whereas paternal warmth positively predicted social competence and school achievement and negatively predicted aggression. The differential significance of maternal warmth and paternal warmth might be related to the culturally prescribed distinct roles of the mother and the father in Chinese families. As indicated by Ho (1987), like their Western counterparts, Chinese mothers are responsible for providing care and affection to the child in dealing with tasks and problems in daily life. Unlike Western fathers, who typically interact with the child like a playmate, however, Chinese fathers are expected and required to help children learn social values, develop appropriate behaviors, and achieve in academic areas because, as the authority figure in the family, fathers have the most responsibility to maintain and enhance the status and reputation of the family. This is clearly stated in the famous Three Character Classic – “It is the father’s fault if a child is not well educated” (Mo, 1996). Therefore, whereas mothers are more sensitive to children’s emotional problems, fathers may provide greater guidance and assistance to children in learning social skills and achieving school success.
As another example, Chen et al. (2003) examined relations between maternal parenting and toddlers’ complaint behaviors in a clean-up setting in China and Canada. Maternal warmth was positively associated with toddlers’ committed compliance (working willingly and wholeheartedly on the clean-up task without adult’s sustained control) in China, but situational compliance (generally cooperative but requiring repeated maternal control to stay on task) in Canada. Thus, warm and supportive parenting may be beneficial for the development of self-control in both China and Canada. However, due to specific cultural expectations, parental effort may be directed to the socialization of different child behaviors in toddlerhood, such as internally driven self-control in China and controlled behavior that is maintained by external prompts in Canada.
Parental Control and Children’s Socioemotional and Cognitive Functioning
Relations between parental control and children’s developmental outcomes vary evidently across cultures. Whereas parental psychological control is associated with more maladaptive socioemotional and cognitive functioning than parental behavioral control in general (Stattin and Kerr, 2000), both types of parental control seem to be associated with fewer child adjustment problems in many non-Western societies than in Western societies, with a few exceptions (Wang, Pomerantz, and Chen, 2007). The endorsement of parental authority in non-Western cultures and the encouragement of child autonomy in Western cultures may provide a basis for parents and children to view and react to the use of control strategies in parenting and eventually affect their significance for child development.
Several cross-cultural studies with North American and Asian families showed that, whereas high parental control, particularly psychological control, was associated with children’s externalizing (e.g., aggression, rule-breaking behaviors) and internalizing (e.g., anxiety/depression, somatic complaints) problems in North America, these associations were not significant in Asian nations such as Hong Kong and South Korea (Fung and Lau, 2012; Kim and Rohner, 2002; Rudy and Halgunseth, 2005). For example, Louie and colleagues (2013) found that, whereas parental control (e.g., shaming) reported by European American parents was positively associated with child anger and dysregulation, the associations were not significant for Asian American and South Korean families. Similarly, Ho, Bluestein, and Jenkins (2008) found that relations between parental ratings of control or harsh parenting and teacher ratings of child aggression differed in European Canadian and South Asian Canadian families; the relation was positive in the European Canadian group but negative in the South Asian Canadian group.
Chao and Aque (2009) examined how Asian (Chinese, South Korean, and Filipino descent) and European American youth reacted to parental control (e.g., “If my parent insists that I do exactly as I’m told [or brings up past mistakes when s/he criticizes me]”), then I would feel [1=not angry to 4=very angry].”). The results showed that Asian adolescents felt less angry with parental strictness and psychological control than European American adolescents. The attitude of gratitude for parents’ sacrifice and a sense of family responsibility are likely to reduce the negative emotional reactions of Asian adolescents. Adolescents’ feelings of anger served a protective function in buffering against the effects of parental psychological control on behavioral problems among European American, but not Asian American, adolescents. Chen et al. (2000) also found a complicated pattern of relations between parental control and children’s adjustment outcomes in Chinese children. Specifically, this 2-year longitudinal study showed that paternal control positively predicted later social competence for children who were initially competent, but positively predicted aggression for children were initially high on aggression. Paternal control appeared to promote adaptive development for children who were competent, but exacerbate behavioral problems for children who lacked self-regulatory abilities and displayed negative emotional reactions.
Parental control also seems to have weaker effects on children’s behaviors in African American, Latin American, and other group-oriented societies than in European American societies. Deater-Deckard and Dodge (1997) reported that parental harsh discipline in early childhood, based on interviewers’ ratings, was predictive of later teacher ratings of externalizing problems among European American children, but not African American children. Similarly, Ispa and colleagues (2004) found that parental intrusiveness or directiveness in mother-infant interactions positively predicted later child negative behavior and decreased engagement with the mother in European American and more acculturated Mexican American families, but not in African American or less acculturated Mexican American families. Wood and colleagues (2017) studied the moderating role of acculturation in relations between parental control and toddlers’ behaviors among Puerto Rican families in the United States. Mothers’ frequent use of control (e.g., assertive commands in a clean-up session such as “put that in the box”, prohibitions such as “you cannot play anymore”, physically controlling behaviors such as taking toys from child and physically orienting child toward toy box) was related to child defiance with negative emotions for families reporting high levels of acculturation, but not for less acculturated families. Wood et al. (2017) argued that parental control had less harmful effects on children’s development when it was exerted in the context of Latino cultural values that endorse familismo and repeto. Finally, Atzaba-Poria (2011) found that parental authoritarian control tended to be associated with more externalizing and peer problems among Israeli children than Former Soviet Union (FSU) children. Taken together, these findings indicate that parental control and directiveness may be associated with children’s social and behavioral functioning in different manners in different societies. Group-oriented cultural values in Asian, African American, and Latino societies appear to mitigate the adverse impact of parental control, including harsh discipline, shaming, and other types of psychological control, on child development that is often seen in Western societies.