CHINESE CULTURE AND PARENTING STYLE EDUCATION

Chinese Culture and Parenting Style Education

Table of Contents

Literature Review3

Parent-Child Interactions and Parenting Styles3

The Unilateral Framework3

The Bilateral Framework17

Social Competence and Parent-Child Interaction in Middle Childhood20

Child Temperament, Parenting Style, and Child Social Competence26

Parent-Child Relationship, Parenting Style, and Child Social Competence36

Family Functioning, Parenting Style, and Child Social Competence39

Bioecological Model and Child Developmental Outcomes41

Parenting Styles and Child Social Competence in the Chinese Culture43

The Only Child and Socialization Goals in Contemporary China45

Studies on Social Competence in Chinese Children49

References55

Literature Review

Parent-Child Interactions and Parenting Styles

The Unilateral Framework

Psychologists and educators have been interested in parental influences on children's development and behaviors at least since Dewey's work in the 1910s, the psychoanalytic movement in the 1920s, and behaviorists' work in child socialization research in the 1950s (Baumrind, 1966; Darling, 1999; Teti & Candelaria, 2002). However, the early efforts did not make clear-cut contributions to an understanding of parenting (Teti & Candelaria). It was Diana Baumrind's paper "Effects of Authoritative Parental Control on Child Behavior" in 1966 that set a milestone for the contemporary studies on parenting styles. By extending the work of the earlier researchers such as Baldwin (1948) and Sears, Maccoby, and Levin (1957) in identifying the key dimensions of parenting, Baumrind conceptualized three models of parental control: authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive. Baumrind argued that children raised by authoritative parents are more likely to be better socialized than those with authoritarian or permissive parents.

Later, Baumrind revised the unidimensional parenting control into two stylistic dimensions of parenting: responsiveness and demandingness (Baumrind, 1971, 1991b). Parental responsiveness was described as " the extent to which parents intentionally foster individuality, self-regulation, and self-assertion by being attuned, supportive, and acquiescent to children's special needs and demands" (Baumrind, 1991b, p. 62). Parental demandingness referred to "the claims parents make on children to become integrated into the family whole, by their maturity demands, supervision, disciplinary efforts, and willingness to confront the child who disobeys" (Baumrind, 1991b, pp. 61-62). Under this conceptualization, authoritative parents are not only warm and responsive to their children, but they set explicit expectations and standards for children's socially competent and age-appropriate behaviors as well. Permissive parents are also warm and responsive, but exert little control and demand few maturity behaviors. Authoritarian parents interact with their children in cold and unresponsive ways. Baumrind (1971, 1991a) asserted that by and large, children with authoritative parents show higher levels of social competence than those raised by parents exhibiting the other two styles.

Maccoby and Martin (1983) employed Schaefer's (1959) and Becker's (1964) strategy of two orthogonal (italic added) dimensions in classifying parenting patterns with responsiveness and demandingness, and extended Baumrind's topology of three parental models to four types of parenting patterns in a fourfold scheme: (a) authoritative, (b) authoritarian, (c) indulgent, and (d) neglectful. The neglectful parents are low in both responsiveness and demanding or control (Maccoby & Martin; Teti & Canderaria, 2002). These earlier frameworks and the associated parenting styles have become the theoretical foundation for many contemporary studies on parenting (Cowan, Powell, & Cowan, ...