Parenting Beliefs, Behaviors, and Parent-Child Relations
A Cross-Cultural Perspective
Edited by Kenneth H. Rubin, Ock Boon Chung
Psychology Press – 2006 – 240 pages
The purpose of this book, is to present a rather simple argument. Parents' thoughts about childrearing and the ways in which they interact with children to achieve particular parenting or developmental goals, are culturally determined. Within any culture, children are shaped by the physical and social settings within which they live, culturally regulated customs and childrearing practices, and culturally based belief systems. The psychological "meaning" attributed to any given social behavior is, in large part, a function of the ecological niche within which it is produced. Clearly, it is the case that there are some cultural universals. All parents want their children to be healthy and to feel secure. However, "healthy" and "unhealthy," at least in the psychological sense of the term, can have different meanings from culture to culture.
Preface. Part I: Culture and Parenting. Bornstein, Cheah, The Place of "Culture and Parenting" in the Ecological Contextual Perspective on Developmental Science. Goodnow, Cultural Perspectives and Parents' Views of Parenting and Development Research Directions. Part II:Cultural Perspectives on Parents' Beliefs about Childhood, Parenting, and Parent-Child Relationships. Harkness, Super, Themes and Variations: Parental Ethnotheories in Western Cultures. Rubin, Hemphill, Chen, Hastings, Sanson, LoCoco, Chung, Park, Zappulla, Yoon, Doh, Parenting Beliefs and Behaviors: Initial Findings from the International Consortium for the Study of Social and Emotional Development (ICSSED). Part III: Cultural Perspectives on Parent-child and Family Relationships. Van IJzendoorn, Bakermans-Kranenburg, Sagi-Schwartz, Attachment Across Diverse Sociocultural Contexts: The Limits of Universality. Trommsdorff, Parent-child Relations Over the Life-span. A Cross-cultural Perspective. Verma, Sharma, Cultural Dynamics of Family Relations Among Indian Adolescents in Varied Contexts. Kim, Hyo and Parenting in Korea.