Family Acculturation in Modern America
Parenting Behavior | Parenting Beliefs
Bornstein, Cote
America is a country composed of acculturating peoples; the countries of origin of those acculturating peoples are constantly changing; and the nature of acculturation itself is elusive. Current U.S. Census statistics indicate that one out of every five children under the age of 18, or 14 million children, in the United States are either immigrants themselves or the children of immigrant parents. Yet acculturation as a scientific phenomenon is not well understood; moreover, acculturation is a major transforming force on child health and human development. In the CFRS we study families acculturating to the U.S. from Japan and from South America. We assess acculturation and the role of acculturation on parenting, child development, and family life.
These studies of parenting cognitions and parenting behaviors provide insight into the nature of parenting cognitions and behaviors generally and those of immigrant mothers specifically, and therefore the parenting climate in which immigrant children are reared. Parents' self-perceptions and attributions help to explain how and why parents parent, and provide further insight into the broader cultural contexts of children's development.
Parenting Behavior
At 5 1/2 months, South American mothers in the U.S. engaged in more social behavior, talked to their infants more, and provided more auditory stimulation in their infants' environment than Japanese American mothers in the U.S. Like their mothers, South American infants engaged in more social behaviors than Japanese American infants, even when the behavior of the interactional partner was controlled. No cultural differences emerged in mother's nurturing, encouragement of infants’ locomotor development, or didactic behavior, suggesting that mothers in these two cultural groups foster children's health, physical, and cognitive growth, respectively, based on the infants' developmental needs rather than cultural proscriptions. Most of the infant behaviors showed no cultural differences, suggesting that these behaviors may be canalized during early infancy, or that cultural differences in these behaviors only become apparent at later ages. We also examined relations among and between maternal and infant behaviors. Japanese American and South American mothers' social behaviors related to their nurturing, language, and didactic behavior, suggesting that these mothers may be attempting to incorporate behaviors that are valued in both societies into their interactions with their infants. Only Japanese American infants’ social behavior related to their exploratory behavior. Mother-infant interaction appears to be complementary across different cultural contexts.
Parenting Beliefs
Another study investigated parenting cognitions (attributions, self-perceptions) among Japanese American and South American mothers longitudinally, when children were 5 and 20 months of age. Patterns of differences in the parenting cognitions of Japanese American and South American immigrant mothers appear to reflect traditional cultural beliefs about children and parenting. Mothers' cultural cognitions were largely stable, as were Japanese American mothers' parenting cognitions. Central to a concept of culture is the expectation that different peoples possess different ideas as they behave in different ways with respect to childrearing. We compared Japanese American immigrant mothers' parenting cognitions to mothers in Japan and European American mothers in the United States, and South American immigrant mothers' parenting cognitions were compared to mothers in Argentina and European American mothers in the United States. Generally, South American immigrant mothers' parenting cognitions more closely resembled those of mothers in the United States, whereas Japanese immigrant mothers’ cognitions tended to be similar to mothers in Japan or intermediate between Japanese and U.S. mothers. Our findings suggest that South American immigrant mothers more readily adopt U.S. parenting beliefs than Japanese immigrant mothers. One implication of this study is that immigrant mothers from different cultural groups do not necessarily share the childrearing beliefs of mainstream U.S. parents. The study also suggests that one should not simply take generation level into account when attempting to understand immigrant parents, but also the country of origin.