The Impact of Maternal Schooling and Occupation on Child-rearing Attitudes and Behaviours in Low Income Neighbourhoods in Cairo, Egypt

Abstract

As a developing country, Egypt and especially Cairo, is in a transitional phase between a traditional and a modern, education-based society and between traditional child-rearing values of passivity and obedience and new demands for academic competence. Education is seen by present day parents as the major vehicle for the future success and happiness of children and much effort is expended toward this goal. Thirty Cairene mothers from low income neighbourhoods with similar housing standards and crowding, but with different levels of education and occupational status were interviewed (1994-95) about socialisation values and practices and observed with their children in order to evaluate how mothers prepare preschoolers for the cognitive demands of school. It was anticipated that educated working mothers would be less traditional and engage their children in more active competence training (mediation of learning experience, MLE, and authoritative child-raising style, AC-R) as a mediator to children’s cognitive competence. These expectations were supported. The 30 mothers were generally found to emphasise a controlling, restricting, and protecting style of child rearing, with moral education, compliance, agreeableness, passivity, and loyalty as ideals. Observation revealed little verbal interaction or stimulation of children. Educated working mothers, however, expressed belief in earlier developmental timetables and endorsed the less traditional values of stimulating and interacting rather than controlling and expecting obedience of the child more than the remaining mothers. Educated working mothers were also more positively verbally interacting with their children during the interview than nonworking low-educated mothers. They scored higher on AC-R and on the MLE categories guiding and expanding in interactive play and these variables were related to the children’s cognitive competence (intelligence scores), also when the mothers’ intelligence was accounted for. Mothers’ educational and occupational levels did not predict children’s cognitive competence directly, suggesting that mothers’ child-rearing behaviours acted as mediators. Fathers’ educational level was not related to the children’s cognitive competence. The results point to the potential benefit of investing in girls’ (and future mothers’) education for the future of their children.

Early Life Predictors of Socio-Emotional Development in a Sample of Egyptian Infants

“…Infants belonging to uneducated mothers had a higher risk of getting below average composite score than those belonging to highly educated mothers. This finding is in concurrence with previous studies, which reported that infants of less-educated mothers are more likely to be exposed to inadequate dietary intake, poorer sanitation [ 71 ] and receive less cognitive stimulation, than those of more-educated mothers [ 72 ]. In addition, the current results revealed that infants of housewives had a higher risk of getting below average socio-emotional composite score than infants of working mothers.…”

Adolescent Perceptions of Parenting Styles in Sweden, Italy and Greece: An Exploratory Study

“…In the present work, we also considered the relation between SES and parenting styles. Consistent with previous studies ( Bronfenbrenner, 1958 ; Chen et al, 1997 ; von der Lippe, 1999 ) parents with high educational levels were described as more authoritative than parents with low educational levels in Sweden, Italy and Greece. On the contrary, in our sample, parents with low educational levels were not perceived as more authoritarian than parents with high education levels.…”

“… Chen, Dong, and Zhou (1997) highlighted that parental occupation and education correlated positively with authoritative parenting for both parents, while they correlated negatively with authoritarian parenting for mothers. Additional evidence derives from von der Lippe’s (1999) study, which shows that less-educated mothers reported less authoritative parenting compared to more-educated mothers. More recently, Worden and Carlson (2005) , as well as Gracia and Herrero (2008) , suggested that the higher-educated parents are more likely to reject the acceptability of physical punishment of children.…”

A cross-sectional investigation of parenting style and friendship as mediators of the relation between social class and mental health in a university community.

“…First, parenting style is related to social class: Working-class parents tend to have a less authoritative and more authoritarian parenting style than middle-class parents [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. These social class differences may exist because working-class parents have less autonomy in their jobs, fewer financial resources, and more disorder in their neighborhoods.…”