Global Day of Parents

New ‘domain-specific’ models have begun to describe parenting as multifaceted and situationally determined. That is, parents are seen as flexibly deploying different practices or strategies in various situations. Importantly, children also interpret parenting behaviors , so similar practices may have different meanings depending on children’s developmental status and cultural context. Proponents of these approaches claim that systematic consideration of these factors will lead to better precision both in describing parenting and in understanding its effects. Adopting a behavioral systems approach , Grusec and Davidov described parenting in terms of the different child rearing goals and needs that are activated in different situations. They describe five domains of socialization :   protection (security, protection against harm),  control (acquiring societal expectations,  avoiding threats to autonomy occurring through parental overcontrol), guided learning (mastery of s...

In response to the cultural critiques of parenting styles , current research focuses on discrete dimensions of parenting , providing greater specificity in understanding parenting effects. For instance, behavioral control has been distinguished from psychological control and parental knowledge .  Psychological control  Psychological control, which is characteristic of authoritarian parenting , includes parental intrusiveness, guilt induction, and love withdrawal and is associated across cultures with internalizing and externalizing problems. Barber and his colleagues have identified parental disrespect as the specific mechanism causing these negative effects and have demonstrated that disrespect accounts for more of the variance in maladjustment than psychological control, broadly measured. Other than agreeableness, there is little evidence that personality variables moderate associations between psychological control and problem behavior. Drawing on self-determination theor...

 Authoritarian parentin g is widespread in non-Western cultures and among lower socioeconomic status (SES) and ethnic/racial minority parents in the U.S. Moreover, these factors may converge, as immigrant and ethnic minority families often live in poor communities characterized by dangerous neighborhoods, where authoritarian parenting may have protective effects . This has led to questions about whether authoritarian parenting is necessarily maladaptive in some contexts and to the claim that parenting must be assessed in terms of particular cultural values and indigenous concepts . For instance, although Chinese parenting is often described as authoritarian, punitive, and reflecting Confucian, child-centered, and beneficial concerns with strictness and child training. Chinese mothers also have been popularly described as “tiger moms” who employ fierce discipline to facilitate achievement and development.  Careful empirical research does not support this view, however. Per...