Parenting Across Cultures

1. Parenting Across Cultures Jennifer E. Lansford Duke University Center for Child and Family Policy Durham, NC, USA

2. Key Parenting Tasks • Provide warmth, affection, cognitive stimulation. • Socialize children in a way that promotes desired behaviors. • Need to be sensitive to child’s age and developmental status.

3. Parenting in Context From UNICEF Standards for ECD Parenting Programs

4. The Importance of Cultural Context • Participants in the most influential journals in six sub-disciplines of psychology from 2003-2007: 96% were from Western industrialized countries, and 68% were from the United States alone (Arnett, 2008). • 96% of participants from countries with only 12% of the world’s population. • Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) societies (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010).

5. Parenting in Global Perspective Parents in all countries share goals of rearing their children to be successful, competent members of society, but what parents believe is necessary and how they behave to achieve their goals varies around the world

6. Form Versus Function of Parenting Adapted from Bornstein (1995)

7. Cultural Contexts of Parenting • Cultural contexts give parents and children a reference point for norms and expectations about how parents should behave toward children (Gottlieb & DeLoache, 2016) • Not all parents within a particular cultural group think and behave in the same way

8. Differences in Childrearing Aggression Across Countries • Across 24 countries, 29% of caregivers believed that corporal punishment is necessary to rear a child properly (range = 4% in Albania to 93% in Syria) • 63% of caregivers reported that their 2- to 4-year-old child had been corporally punished in the last month (range = 28% in Bosnia & Herzegovina to 84% in Jamaica) • 66% of caregivers reported that their 2- to 4-year-old child had experienced psychological aggression in the last month (range = 7% in Albania to 89% in Yemen) Lansford & Deater-Deckard, 2012, Child Development

9. Different Forms of Discipline • Parents hold a wide range of beliefs regarding the acceptability and advisability of different forms of discipline and use a wide range of actions to manage children’s behavior. • Although there are within-country differences in these beliefs and behaviors, many beliefs and behaviors appear to be shaped by the cultural context in which parents live.

10. Differences between Beliefs and Behaviors • Fewer caregivers believed that it was necessary to physically punish children than actually did so. • E.g., only 5% of caregivers in Montenegro believed that using physical punishment was necessary, but 47% reported that they had spanked their child in the last month (29% vs. 63% overall). ? Behavior

11. Association between Parental Warmth and Control • Warmth includes affection and acceptance, and is a universally “positively valued” dimension of parenting. • Control involves physical and psychological verbalizations and behaviors intended to modify the child’s thoughts, emotions and behaviors.

12. Correlations between Warmth and Control Correlations between warmth and control differ across countries Deater-Deckard et al., 2011

13. Recognize One’s Own Cultural Perspective • Ethnographic study with Gusii in Kenya (LeVine et al., 1994) • Co-sleeping, breastfeeding on demand, frequent physical contact, immediate consoling infant distress • Soothing rather than stimulating • Do not speak to infants in face-to-face interactions because believe infants are not capable of understanding speech • Do not praise older children for fear it will lead to rudeness and conceit • Shocked when told that American mothers do not usually sleep with their infants and distressed by how long American mothers took to respond to infant crying when shown videotaped interactions

14. Grapple with what is “acceptable” parenting in different cultures • Discipline • Supervision/monitoring/time alone • Traditional healing practices (e.g., cupping) • Especially salient for immigrant families

15. Understand Cultural Rationale for a Behavior Before Trying to Change It • Perrin et al. (2017): Biblical reframing of corporal punishment for conservative Christians who espouse “spare the rod, spoil the child” • Scientific evidence may not be sufficient to induce behavior change without attending to beliefs, values, and cultural norms

16. Cultural Differences in Beliefs about Child Development • Some groups believe that child development unfolds naturally over time, and there is little parents can do to change it (e.g., poor Yucatec Mayan parents in Mexico, Gaskins, 2000) • Other groups believe parents should mold child development (e.g., Luo saying, “A tree is shaped while young, or when it is grown up it breaks,” Oburu, 2011) ? Parenting Child Development

17. Cultural Adaptation of Parenting Programs • Durrant et al. (2017): Positive Discipline in Everyday Parenting • Low-cost hands-on activities to replace those requiring reading and writing in some settings • Modify scenarios to be locally appropriate • Balance standardization and flexibility

18. One-Size-Fits-All Programs vs. Adapted Programs • In a meta-analysis of 76 studies, mental health interventions that were adapted for use in particular cultures were four times more effective than interventions not targeted to a specific cultural group (Griner & Smith, 2006) • Interventions conducted in native language (if not English) were twice as effective as interventions delivered in English

19. Issues of Trust • Are interventionists from the same cultural group as the participants? • Many participants will have experienced high levels of stress in their daily lives • Provide transportation, childcare, and food as needed

20. 40 Parenting Programs in 33 Countries

21. National Parenting Program Strategies and Service Methods • 80%: educational courses on parenting and child development. • 40%: distribution of parent teaching materials. • 23%: training and manuals for healthcare and social workers. • 20%: community and mass media campaigns to dispense parenting information. • 10%: education and service delivery for parents of children with special needs.

22. What to do to promote “optimal” parenting and child outcomes in a culturally sensitive way?

23. Support nurturing care holistic child development • Parents in different cultures may construe supportive caregiving differently • Responsive Japanese mothers anticipate infants’ needs and proactively prevent distress; Responsive European American mothers wait for infants to communicate needs and then respond to those needs (Rothbaumet al., 2000) • Different environmental conditions in different countries sometimes lead to different forms of parenting • Among the Yoruba in Nigeria, interactions involving food are used by parents to teach their children key life lessons (Babatunde & Setiloane, 2014)

24. Build on a theory of change leading to desired results • Pay attention to dose (frequency, duration, timing) • Consider modalities (individual, group, media) • What barriers may face a particular community or cultural group?

25. Tailor content to the child’s developmental stage • People in different cultural groups sometimes have different expectations regarding what children are capable of doing at a particular age • Cultural practices regarding parenting of boys and girls may diverge more with the onset of puberty

26. Serve vulnerable children and their families • Risk factors for vulnerability may not be the same in different cultural contexts • Attend to stigma, discrimination, marginalization • In some contexts, people may avoid reporting abuse or avoid seeking services because of feelings of shame and fear of ostracism

27. Involve all key caregivers • Not just mothers, but also fathers, siblings, extended family members, and non-family caregivers (e.g., domestic workers common in many countries) • Frame other caregivers’ role not just as helping the mother but serving key functions in their own right

28. Adapt to context and build on positive parenting practices • Avoid deficit perspectives • Asian parents are sometimes characterized as harsh or lacking in warmth when assessed on questionnaires developed in the West to capture direct maternal affection demonstrated physically and verbally • Qualitative interviews (Cheah et al., 2015) found that Chinese immigrant mothers expressed warmth through taking care of children’s daily routine needs and providing guidance and educational opportunities

29. Integrate into existing delivery platforms • Save time and money by building on existing resources • Sustainability will be improved by connecting to local stakeholders • Capitalize on trust in local people and institutions rather than imposing as an outsider

30. Engage trained workforce and service providers • From a local perspective, who should deliver the program? • Teacher? Health care provider? Respected women in the community? Religious leaders?

31. Monitor and evaluate systematically • Engage local stakeholders in monitoring and evaluation • M & E should not be regarded as taking away resources from the program itself • Program working as intended?

32. The Better Parenting Programme in Jordan • Aimed at providing parents and caregivers with skills and information to enable them to promote the psychosocial, cognitive, and physical development of their children aged 0-8 years. • Child rights based and holistic approach.

33. Partner Organization

34. Reaching Fathers: Imam Guide • Fathers go to mosque for Friday prayers and respect the Imam. • Imams received training over a 6-day period, with additional resources for sermons mailed to them monthly.

35. Within-Culture Considerations • Socioeconomic status • Rural/urban • Regional cultures

36. Take-Home Messages • Just because a form of parenting is normative or endorsed, that does not mean that it should be accepted by researchers, interventionists, or policy makers as inevitable, necessary, or immutable. • Any attempt to change parenting behaviors should be undertaken in ways that are sensitive to the cognitive appraisals and emotional meaning of such behaviors in a given culture.

37. Thank you • For additional information, please contact Jennifer E. Lansford, lansford@duke.edu • Funding from NICHD, Fogarty International Center, and Jacobs Foundation