Parents’ ethnotheories of the nature and causes of children’s maladaptive behaviors among Chinese and US mothers

• In Event: 3-017 - Parents' ethnotheories of the nature, causes and management of child adjustment outcomes

Integrative Statement

Parent’s intuitive beliefs or ethnotheories about child behavior are critical components of child development and socialization (Harkness & Super, 1996). Cultural variations in how parents emphasize children’s undesirable characteristics through different socialization practices have been observed across early development (Miller et al., 2012; Ng, Pomerantz & Lam, 2007). Cultural differences in child socialization may be influenced by differences in parents’ intuitive beliefs about the nature and causes of maladaptive behavior. Despite the fact that parents in every culture have intuitive concepts of why children of different ages misbehave, comparative cross-cultural research on this topic has been sparse (Olson, Kashiwagi & Crystal, 2001). Even though parents’ reports of child maladaptive behaviors have been compared across different cultures, most investigators relied on translated versions of instruments that have been developed on Western samples. However, simply translating an instrument into another language does not mean that it has cross-cultural validity. To understand the nature of these concepts, they must be assessed directly in ways that allow parents to generate their own culturally-grounded beliefs.

Objectives: Our central aims were to use unstructured interviews to examine Chinese and American mothers’ intuitive concepts of maladaptive behavior, and structured interviews to examine parents’ causal attributions for children’s hypothetical misbehaviors. Our overarching goal was to identify cultural similarities and differences in associations between parents’ intuitive beliefs about the nature and causes of maladaptive behavior in young children.

Method: 56 American mothers in Ann Arbor, Michigan and 54 education-matched Chinese mothers in Beijing, China were asked to generate three of the most undesirable characteristics in 5-6-year-old children. Second, during semi-structured interviews, mothers were presented with six hypothetical vignettes in which children misbehaved, and were asked to explain why children would behavior in that manner. Figures 1 and 2 depict parents’ undesirable child characteristics and causal attributions for children’s misbehavior coded from interviews. Salient themes were reliably identified and coded by a bilingual team (ks =.86-98).

Results: Both American and Chinese mothers were most concerned about children’s social insensitivity. In contrast with the American mothers, Chinese mothers had fewer concerns about children’s aggressive and disruptive behaviors, but were more likely to designate cognitive and motivational difficulties as the most undesirable characteristics (Figure 1). Moreover, American mothers frequently attributed child misbehaviors to negative internal states and immature development, whereas Chinese mothers were more likely to attribute child misbehaviors to social learning and temperament (Figure 2). Furthermore, social learning attributions fully mediated cross-cultural differences in mothers’ concerns about cognitive/motivational difficulties (effect size = .20, CI = .03 - .38).

Conclusions: Our findings revealed cultural similarities and differences in parents’ concepts of children’s maladaptive behaviors. Understanding parents’ intuitive beliefs about maladaptive child behavior has great potential for illuminating cultural differences in the development and expression of child psychopathology. It also provides implications for clinicians and educators by elucidating mechanisms of variations in socialization practices across cultures and development.

Authors

• Ka I Ip, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Presenting Author

• Sheryl Olson, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Non-Presenting Author