Variations in Parenting Styles: A Cultural Perspective on Child Development

1. Parental behavior varies along at least two dimensions • Responsiveness/Acceptance • Control (“Demandingness”)

2. Authoritarian • Low acceptance/responsiveness • High control • Power-assertive discipline • Ex: “Do it because I say so” • More likely to use physical punishment

3. Authoritative • High acceptance/responsiveness • Moderate control • Set clear standards and consistently enforce rules • Responsive to children’s needs and point of view

4. Discipline based on reasoning/explanation • “It’s not ok to hit people because it hurts them.”

5. Permissive • High acceptance/responsiveness • Low control • Make few demands for mature behavior

6. Neglecting/Disengaged • Low acceptance/responsiveness • Low control

7. Authoritarian Childhood: • Anxious • Unhappy • Dependent/Easily Frustrated (esp. girls) • Hostile/Aggressive (esp. boys)

8. Authoritarian Adolescence: • Poorer social skills and lower academic achievement than children of authoritative parents • Better school performance and less problem behavior (e.g., drug use, truancy) than children of permissive or neglecting parents

9. Authoritative Childhood: • High self-esteem • High self-control • Generally positive mood

10. Authoritative Adolescence: • Good social skills • High academic achievement • Low in problem behaviors (e.g., drug use, truancy)

11. Permissive Childhood: • Low self-control • Overly demanding and dependent on adults

12. Permissive Adolescence: • Low academic achievement • More problem behaviors (e.g., truancy; drug use)

13. Neglecting/Disengaged • Childhood: • Low self-control • Low self-esteem • Disturbed attachment relationships (disorganized)

14. Neglecting/Disengaged • Adolescence: • Low academic achievement • Poor social skills • Many problem behaviors • Truancy, drug use, delinquency, sexual promiscuity, depression

15. Parenting styles (and their “effects”) may not generalize to all ethnic/cultural groups

16. Rudy & Grusec (2006) • Examined correlates (parental emotion and cognition) of authoritarian parenting in individualist and collectivist cultural groups • Examined relations between children’s self-esteem and • Authoritarian parenting • Parental emotion and cognition

17. Hypotheses (Within-Groups): • Authoritarianism and negative maternal emotion and cognition would be related only in the individualist group • Authoritarianism would be more strongly negatively associated with children’s self-esteem in the individualist group • Maternal emotion and cognition would be related to children’s self-esteem in individualist and collectivist groups

18. Method • Mothers and their 7- to 12-year-old children living in Toronto (33 dyads in the collectivist group, 32 in the individualist group)

19. Mothers completed questionnaire measures assessing • Parental warmth toward the child • General negative affect toward the child • Positive view of the child • Negative cognitions: discipline situation • Anger: discipline situation • Authoritarianism • Collectivism • Children completed a measure of self-esteem

20. Results • H4: Within the individualist group only, authoritarianism was associated with maternal emotion and cognition (Table 2, p. 74) • H5: Maternal authoritarianism was not associated with children’s self-esteem in either group

21. H6: Maternal emotion and cognition were associated with children’s self-esteem in both groups (Table 3, p. 75) • Overall, findings suggest that authoritarianism may have different meanings in different cultural groups