Ideas about Parenting in Argentina, France, and the United States

Abstract

Central to a concept of culture is the expectation that different peoples possess different ideas and behave in different ways with respect to child rearing. In this study, we investigated ideas that Argentine, French, and US American mothers hold about their own and their husbands' actual child rearing, as well as what they consider to be ideal child rearing, in three parenting domains: social, didactic, and limit setting. For each domain, we analysed mothers' reports of their actual behaviours and of their husbands' actual behaviours; mothers' ideal expectations of their own and their husbands' behaviours; and mothers' dissonance with respect to parenting (i.e. the extent to which mothers' actual and their husbands' actual behaviours each agrees with mothers' ideal expectations for themselves and for their

A cross-cultural comparison of mothers’ beliefs about their parenting very young children

“…To compare parental beliefs, we administered the Parental Style Questionnaire. Because the PSQ was validated separately for each population (Bornstein, 1989; Bornstein et al, 1996; Venuti & Senese, 2007), and it was not tested for measurement invariance, to conduct substantive cross-group comparisons (Hui & Triandis, 1985; Knight & Zerr, 2010; Vandenberg & Lance, 2000), we ensured the measurement invariance of the PSQ and thereby ruled out ascribing cultural differences to response style variation or measurement artifact (Chan, 2000). …”

“…The Parental Style Questionnaire (PSQ; Bornstein, 1989; Bornstein et al, 1996) is a 16-item self-report scale designed to evaluate the frequency of mothers’ ways of interacting with infants or young children. PSQ items cluster into three parental style domains.…”

“…The PSQ subscales have demonstrated good internal consistency and construct validity (Bornstein et al, 1996; Bornstein et al, 2001; Venuti & Senese, 2007). In the present study, the internal consistency of the Social and the Didactic scales (Cronbach α) were acceptable for both samples (Streiner, 2003) and invariant (Feldt, 1969; p s > .31), αsocial = .66, αdidactic = .60, and αsocial = .61, αdidactic = .60, respectively, for the Italian and U.S. samples.…”

“…To evaluate parental beliefs, we administered the Parental Style Questionnaire (PSQ; Bornstein, 1989; Bornstein et al, 1996). To conduct a substantive between-group comparison, we evaluated configural, metric, scalar, and unique variance equivalences of the PSQ (Vandenberg & Lance, 2000).…”

Mothers’ Working Status and Infant Development

“…Parenting Style was assessed with the subscale of the Parenting Style Questionnaire developed by Bornstein et al (1996). The original scale, which was developed for mothers with 20-month-old children, consists of three subscales: social interaction (affective interchanges between mothers and children), didactic/material stimulation (mothers' attempts to direct children's attention to objects, properties, or events in the environment), and limit setting (mothers' attempts to socialize self-control in their children).…”