Parenting Styles Across Cultures

2593 Words6 Pages

Introduction Parenting styles have been widely defined by Baumrind into three categories, authoritative, authoritarian and permissive. Parenting styles can be defined as a pattern of attitudes in how parents choose to express and communicate with their children. These styles are categorized based on the level of nurturance, parental control and level of responsiveness (Dwairy, 2004). Authoritative style exhibits high levels of demand, responsiveness and nurturance; authoritarian style exhibits high levels of demand but low levels of responsiveness, permissive style exhibits low levels of demand but high in responsiveness and nurturance (Dwairy, 2004). These parenting styles have been proposed to have a significant impact on a child’s development as well as academic achievement and psychological well-being. Children reared by authoritative parents are stated to have the highest levels of academic achievement, self-esteem, emotional adjustment and well-being according to Baumrind’s category of styles (Dwairy, 2004). However, these three categories are based on Western samples and have been said to describe parenting styles mainly in the West and question its limitations in describing parenting across cultures, as each style’s defining patterns may have different meanings across cultures. Article Reviews The study conducted by Li, Costanzo and Putallaz examined the relationship between parenting styles, socialization goals and social-emotional adjustment amid Chinese and European American young adults. The article states that European American parents emphasize self-development goals in their children more so than Chinese parents as Western culture is more individualistic than collectivistic (Li, Costanzo & Putall... ... middle of paper ... ...les it can be concluded that the concept of parenting styles universally exists as each culture exhibited a pattern of childrearing but the behavior and meaning that constitutes a category of parenting style differs across cultures. References Chao, R. K. (1994). Beyond parental control and authoritarian parenting style: Understanding chinese parenting through the cultural notion of training. Society for Research in Child Development, 65(4), 1111-1119. Dwairy, M. (2004). Parenting styles and mental health of palestinian–arab adolescents in israel. Transcultural Psychiatry, 41(2), 233-252. Li, Y., Costanzo, P. R., & Putallaz, M. (2010). Maternal socialization goals, parenting styles, and social-emotional adjustment among chinese and european american young adults: Testing a mediation model. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 171(4), 330-362.

Open Document