Associations between Divorced Co-parents’ Remote Acculturation and Gaps in Authoritative Parenting in Globalizing Urban Turkey

• In Event: 1-019 - Implications of Remote Acculturation for Child and Youth Development in non-Western Contexts

Integrative Statement

U.S. cultural influences and growing urbanization have reshaped family structure and parenting dynamics in modern globalizing Turkish families (Kağıtçıbaşı, 2007). This presents a unique context to examine RA, as changing sociocultural views can amplify discrepancies in parenting practices among a rising number of divorced co-parents in Turkey (Amato, 2010; Kavaş & Thornton, 2013). The aim of the present study was to assess the association between divorced Turkish co-parents' RA and their parenting practices.

Prior research on RA showed that parents remotely exposed to U.S. culture may adopt more modern democratic parenting practices (Ferguson, 2013; Ferguson & Bornstein, 2012). For example, Jamaican mothers reported selectively adopting open communication and child autonomy-support (Ferguson & Iturbide, 2015). Similarly, previous research on Turkish immigrant mothers in the US and Australia showed that culturally integrated mothers were more likely to endorse authoritative rather than authoritarian parenting practices (Özdemir & Cheah, 2015; Yagmurlu & Sanson, 2009). However, gaps in parents’ acculturation have been associated with differing expectations for children’s family participation (Chance et al., 2013; Costigan & Dokis, 2006). In this study, I hypothesized that differential levels of RA among divorced Turkish co-parents would be associated with gaps in their parenting practices.

The sample comprised 177 urban Turkish divorced mothers from three cities, who reported on themselves (Mage = 30.26, SD = 4.80), and their ex-partners' (Mage = 29.93, SD = 4.61) remote behavioral acculturation using the Vancouver Index of Acculturation (e.g., “I am interested in being friends with Americans/Turkish, Ryder et al., 2001) and authoritative parenting (using the Democratic Participation subscale of the Parenting Styles & Dimensions Questionnaire (e.g.“ I/My ex-partner encourage(s) our child to freely express ideas”, Robinson et al., 2001) for their children (Mage = 12.32, SD = 3.92). Interaction and absolute score methods were used to operationalize perceived gaps in remote acculturation and authoritativeness, respectively. Sequential regression analyses were conducted, controlling for the number of siblings, non-custodial parent, parents’ conflict resolution, and social desirability.

Results revealed that among pairs of parents who were both highly Americanized in their behaviors, there was a smaller perceived gap in their authoritative parenting practices (β = -.204, p <. 01, Figure 1a). However, traditional mothers paired with Americanized fathers who adopted U.S. behavioral practices, reported a larger perceived gap in their authoritative parenting practices (β =.274, p <. 01, Figure 1b), suggesting that they disagree on their children’s democratic participation. These results highlight the value of exploring cross-dimensional parenting pairings in the RA literature, in alignment with recent evidence, which showed that divorced Turkish parents' differential levels of RA can also predict child adjustment (Giray & Ferguson, 2018). As researchers seek to understand the changing family mosaic in a globalizing urban Turkey, it might be important to keep in mind RA's implications for cohesive parenting harmony (or parental discord) after divorce.

Author

• Cagla Giray, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author