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The purpose of the present study was to compare the parenting attitudes of AfricanAmerican, European American (native to the United States), Asian American, Asian-Indian, and Hispanic mothers (immigrant population who were not natives of the United States). Research has indicated that parents develop their parenting styles based on their cultural socialization, family background, personality style, and personality of their children (Belsky, 1984). One hundred and eighty two mothers participated in the study. The parenting attitudes of the mothers were measured using the Adolescent-Adult Parenting Inventory (AAPI, Bavolek, 1984), a 32 item assessment. I way ANOVA performed on each of the 4 subscale scores of the parenting attitudes indicated that the five cultural groups differed in their parental attitudes. Post-hoc Tukey tests for ethnic group differences in the parental attitude subscale scores yielded significant results for 16 of the 40 pairwise comparisons. These results suggest that some groups of ethnic mothers place stricter expectations, demands and control on their children.

Apoptotic-cell clearance is dependent on several macrophage surface molecules, including CD14. Phosphatidylserine (PS) becomes externalised during apoptosis and participates in the clearance process through its ability to bind to a novel receptor, PS-R. CD14 has the proven ability to bind phospholipids and may function as an alternative receptor for the externalised PS of apoptotic cells. Here we demonstrate that CD14 does not function preferentially as a PS receptor in apoptotic-cell clearance. Compared with phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylethanolamine, PS was the least active phospholipid binding to human monocyte-derived macrophages and showed no specificity for soluble or membraneanchored CD14. Significantly, PS-containing liposomes failed to inhibit CD14-dependent uptake of apoptotic cells by macrophages. PS exposure was, however, found to be insufficient for either CD14-dependent or CD14-independent apoptotic-cell uptake by phagocytes. The additional features that enable apoptotic-cell clearance are derived from mechanisms that can be divorced temporally from those responsible for the morphological features of apoptosis.

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