Parenting Beliefs, Behaviors, And Parent-Child Relations A Cross-Cultural Perspective

For years, researchers have been studying parental thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and the relationships that parents form and maintain with their children. Much of this research has been focused directly on the parent. But researchers are also determined to demonstrate that parents' cognitions about children and childrearing, parenting behaviors, and the quality of parent-child relationships actually contribute to the well- or ill-being of their offspring. In short, researchers the world over often find themselves in the business of demonstrating that parents matter. The purpose of this book, however, 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. In an effort to shed light on the culture of parenting and on parenting from a cultural and cross-cultural perspective, a group of internationally esteemed scholars from Asia, Europe, and North America exchanged information at a workshop sponsored by the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development. This three-day meeting took place at Seoul National University, South Korea in June 2003. The chapters in this book are drawn from the presentations of a diverse collection of researchers, each of whom presents a unique perspective on cultural manifestations of parenting beliefs and behaviors and parent-child relationships as well as on cross-cultural comparisons related to these topics.Rubin, Kenneth H. is the author of 'Parenting Beliefs, Behaviors, And Parent-Child Relations A Cross-Cultural Perspective', published 2006 under ISBN 9781841694382 and ISBN 184169438X.