Parents’ Ethnotheories of Maladaptive Behavior in Young Children

Abstract

Parents' culturally influenced belief systems, or ethnotheories, are critical components of children's socialization. Beliefs about children's desirable characteristics motivate specific parenting activities and moderate the effectiveness of childrearing practices. However, relatively little attention has been given to parents' ethnotheories of children's undesirable behavior. From a few studies, we know that parents have culturally specific theories about the nature and management of children's maladaptive behavior that motivate their socialization practices. In this review, we identify gaps in the research and suggest that qualitative studies of parents' ethnotheories about the nature and management of children's deviant behavior have strong theoretical, empirical, and practical benefits for developmental science. Ethnotheories are shared cultural beliefs that provide a framework for how parents think about child development, child socialization, and family interaction (Harkness & Super, l996; White & LeVine, l986). Often implicit, ethnotheories are rooted in folk knowledge about what it means to be a successful member of society (Bruner, l990; Harkness & Super, l996).

Correlation between Parenting Style by Personality Traits and Mental Health of College Students

“…Some scholars proposed that mothers with lower education were more likely to indulge, oppress, punish, and Occupational Therapy International neglect children than mothers with higher education who advocate democratic upbringing [20]. Other researchers believed that older parents treated their children in a relatively effective way, while younger parents treated their children in a simple and rough manner [21].…”

Family Risk and Externalizing Problems in Chilean Children: Mediation by Harsh Parenting and Emotional Support

“…Although risk factors like poverty and maternal depression appear to be similar across settings, individuals' experiences of risks, their impact on parenting practices, and the meaning and function of these practices may vary in a culturally dependent fashion (Bornstein, 2010). Culture and cultural scripts offer a variety of definitions about accepted and nonaccepted behavior in children, contributing to specific ethnotheories or belief systems about children's behavior that ultimately guide parental socialization efforts (Olson, Lansford, Evans, Blumstein, & Ip, 2019). Cross-cultural studies of parenting and EP have consistently found significant within-and between-culture variance (Deater-Deckard et al, 2018), such that, for example, higher EP was predicted by within-culture (or individuallevel) differences in parental authoritarian attitudes and endorsement of aggression, and further augmented by differences in endorsement of aggression between-cultures (Lansford et al, 2018).…”

Child-parent interactions in American and Turkish families: Examining measurement invariance analysis of child-parent relationship scale

“…Although the study of cultural commonalities in parent-child relationships has a long history [12], only recently scholars have examined how parents' cultural belief and perceptions systems explain the nature and quality of parenting and family interactions in particular social contexts [13,14]. Given the implicit nature of parents' perceptions about their parent-child relationships in a particular cultural context [15], cross-national research entails methodological and theoretical difficulties when assessing parents' perceptions using quantifiable measures across and within cultures [4]. Using a translated version of the Child-parent Relationship Scale (CPRS), which was originally developed based on a Western sample, this study adds to the current discussion on the cultural relevance and reliability of measures used to examine parental perceptions about parent-child relationships across socio-cultural contexts.…”