Cultural Approaches To Parenting

This volume is concerned with elucidating similarities and differences in enculturation processes that help to account for the ways in which individuals in different cultures develop. Each chapter reviews a substantive parenting topic, describes the relevant cultures (in psychological ethnography, rather than from an anthropological stance), reports on the parenting-in-culture results, and discusses the significance of cross-cultural investigation for understanding the parenting issue of interest. Specific areas of study include environment and interactive style, responsiveness, activity patterns, distributions of social involvement with children, structural patterns of interaction, and development of the social self. Through exposure to a wide range of diverse research methods, readers will gain a deeper appreciation of the problems, procedures, possibilities, and profits associated with a truly comparative approach to understanding human growth and development.

Bornstein, Marc H.

Contents: Introduction. M.H. Bornstein, Approaches to Parenting in Culture. Part I: Conceptions of Parenting: Cultural Attitudes and Actions.H. Papousek, M. Papousek, Innate and Cultural Guidance of Infants' Integrative Competencies: China, The United States, and Germany. A. Pomerleau, G. Malcuit, C. Sabatier, Child-Rearing Practices and Parental Beliefs in Three Cultural Groups of Montreal: Quebecois, Vietnamese, Haitian. M.H. Bornstein, J. Tal, C.S. Tamis-LeMonda, Parenting in Cross-Cultural Perspective: The United States, France, and Japan. G.A. Morelli, E.Z. Tronick, Parenting and Child Development in the Efe Foragers and Lese Farmers of Zaire. T.B. Brazelton, Discussion: Cultural Attitudes and Actions. Part II: Consequences of Parenting: Dynamics of Enculturation.M. Sigman, T.D. Wachs, Structure, Continuity, and Nutritional Correlates of Caregiver Behavior Patterns in Kenya and Egypt. M. Shatz, Using Cross-Cultural Research to Inform Us About the Role of Language in Development: Comparisons of Japanese, Korean, and English, and of German, American English, and British English. J. Dunn, J. Brown, Becoming American or English? Talking About the Social World in England and the United States. B. Rogoff, J. Mistry, A. Goncu, C. Mosier, Cultural Variation in the Role Relations of Toddlers and Their Families. W. Kessen, Commentary: Dynamics of Enculturation.