This study addresses a paradox in the literature involving the parenting style of Asians: Chinese parenting has often been described as "controlling" or "authoritarian". These styles of parenting have been found to be predictive of poor school achievement among European-Americans, and yet the Chinese are performing quite well in school. This study suggests that the concepts of authoritative and authoritarian are somewhat ethnocentric and do not capture the important features of Chinese child rearing, especially for explaining their school success. Immigrant Chinese and European-American mothers of preschool-aged children were administered standard measures of parental control and authoritative-authoritarian parenting style as well as Chinese child-rearing items involving the concept of "training." After controlling for their education, and their scores on the standard measures, the Chinese mothers were found to score significantly higher on the "training" ideologies. This "training" concept has important features, beyond the authoritarian concept, that may explain Chinese school success.

Beyond parental control and authoritarian parenting style: understanding Chinese parenting through the cultural notion of training

The debate on individualism: Indigenous psychologies of the individual and their role in personal and societal functioning.

Western psychologies have traditionally given greater importance to self-development than to interpersonal relatedness, stressing the development of autonomy, independence, and identity as central factors in the mature personality. In contrast, women, many minority groups, and nonWestern societies have generally placed greater emphasis on issues of relatedness. This article traces the individualistic bias and recent challenges to this view. It is proposed that evolutionary pressures of natural selection result in two basic developmental lines: interpersonal relatedness and self-definition, which interact in a dialectical fashion. An increasingly mature sense of self is contingent on interpersonal relationships; conversely, the continued development of increasingly mature interpersonal relationships is contingent on mature self-definition. Conclusions include implications for social policy and for facilitating more balanced development of both dimensions in all members of society.

Individuality and relatedness: Evolution of a fundamental dialectic.

Immigrant parents from Cambodia, Mexico, the Philippines, and Vietnam and native-born Anglo-American and Mexican-American parents responded to questions about child rearing, what teachers of first and second graders should teach their children, and what characterizes an intelligent child. Immigrant parents rated conforming to external standards as being more important to develop in their children than developing autonomous behaviors. In contrast, American-born parents favored developing autonomy over conformity. Parents from all groups except Anglo-Americans indicated that noncognitive characteristics (i.e., motivation, social skills, and practical school skills) were as important as or more important than cognitive characteristics (i.e., problem-solving skills, verbal ability, creative ability) were to their conceptions of an intelligent first-grade child. Parental beliefs about conformity were correlated with measures of kindergarten (5- and 6-year-olds) and first- (6- and 7-year-olds) and second-grader (7- and 8-year-olds) children's school performance (i.e., teacher ratings of children's classroom performance; Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills reading, math, and language scores; and Sternberg Triarchic Abilities Test scores).

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/1131436

Parental Beliefs and Children's School Performance.

Results from 4 experiments and an analysis in which all data from 444 English and Japanese children are pooled show (a) a linear increase in understanding false belief with the number of older siblings, (b) no such effect for children younger than 3 years 2 months, (c) no helpful effect of younger siblings at any age (despite the large sample), (d) no effect of siblings' gender, and (e) no helpful effect of siblings on a task measuring children's understanding of how they know something. Discussion involves speculation about how older siblings may assist children (e.g., through pretend play and mental state language) and how different aspects of a theory of mind may develop through different means.

Older (but not younger) siblings facilitate false belief understanding.

This paper summarizes beliefs and values about child-rearing and education in Japan at a time when direct Western influence was minimal. The chief materials for the analysis are documents written by experts of those times for the general public. Japanese writers argued that children are innately good rather than evil; environmental factors rather than innate ones account for differences among children; and children are autonomous learning beings rather than passive to experience. Goals were related either to maintenance of harmonious human relationships or to faithful performance of one's assigned task. The basic method of training was to observe children's maturation and assign age-appropriate tasks to them. Young infants were conceived as competent beings in the sensory and perceptual domain, but they were also thought to be unstable and fragile. Observational learning and internal regulation of behavior by older children were emphasized. Up to the age of seven, adults did not deal with boys and girls d...

Japanese Concepts of Child Development from the Mid-17th to Mid-19th Century

A significant stride toward the comparative study of control

After describing the background and current state of historical interests among Japanese developmentalists, this article stresses the value of the direct participation of developmentalists in historical study. Japanese historical materials on childrearing were analysed from a developmental point of view and their relation to cultural, social, and economic contexts in five historical epochs was examined. The results revealed historical continuity of basic beliefs and values in Japanese ethnotheories on childrearing and hum an development, and their relation to certain structural and functional aspects of Japanese society was demonstrated. A new term, the "ethnopsychological pool of ideas" (EPI), is presented to denote a reservoir of knowledge, practices, sentiments, and values that maintains diverse components across historical periods. The ethnopsychological pool of early modern Japan contained divergent key components based on which a few schools of modern academic theories on child development can be co...

Japanese Childrearing Advice in its Cultural, Social, and Economic Contexts

In a series of exploratory studies to develop instruments for measuring field dependence in young children, a total of 312 Japanese middle-class children, ages 5 to 6, served as subjects. Without changing the essential nature of the original test, the geometric Embedded-figures test attained relatively high internal consistency (KR-20 in the .80's) and stability (R = .83 to .52, at intervals of 1.5 to 13 mo.). Correlation pattern between the Embedded Figures Test and Wechsler subscales similar to that of older subjects was influenced by the speed factor in embedded figures and Wechsler performance scales. Correlation between Kato's portable Rod-and-frame test and embedded figures was significant only in boys. In addition, the correlation pattern between the rod and frame and the preschool Wechsler was not consistent with Witkin's conceptualization. A newly developed darkroom Rod-and-Frame Test correlated with embedded figures for both sexes. Additional analyses indicated the need for more refined instruct...

Assessment of field dependence in young children.

Administered were Kagan's Matching Familiar Figures Test and a group intelligence test to 151 male and 130 female Japanese 2nd graders, and detailed analyses of responses were made. While matching response time was high in internal consistency, errors were much less consistent. Variant positions were differentially selected by 4 groups, and the position where correct variants were placed partially accounted for “the error variance” of errors. But it seemed that errors of the matching test could not be made reliable enough simply by refining and lengthening the present version of Kagan's test. While slow-accurate, fast-accurate, and slow-inaccurate children adjusted their response time to item difficulty, fast-inaccurate children failed to do so. Almost all of these results were replicated in third and fifth graders. By the ordinary scoring method of intelligence test, the 4 matching groups differed from each other only in girls. But by adjusting the scores for errors, intelligence test performance came to...

http://pms.sagepub.com/content/43/3/731.full.pdf

Hideo Kojima

Papers

Japanese Concepts of Child Development from the Mid-17th to Mid-19th Century

A significant stride toward the comparative study of control

Japanese Childrearing Advice in its Cultural, Social, and Economic Contexts

Assessment of field dependence in young children.

Some psychometric problems of the matching familiar. figures test