Parenting attitudes and children's understanding of mind - A comparison of Korean American and Anglo-American families

This study explores the relationship between maternal parenting attitudes and children's understanding of mind through a comparison of Korean American and Anglo-American families. It was hypothesized that children of authoritative mothers would perform better on theory-of-mind tasks than children of authoritarian families. Understanding of mind was assessed for 45 Korean American children and 52 Anglo-American children from ages 3 to 6. Mothers of the children completed a Parenting Attitudes Inventory (PAI), which measured three aspects of parenting style -a focus on behavioral control, freedom in learning, and encouragement of autonomy. Korean American mothers were generally authoritarian, though not exclusively so, and their 5-year-olds performed better on the theory-of-mind tasks than their Anglo-American agemates. For Anglo-American children, a negative relationship between an understanding of mind and authoritarian parenting attitudes was found. A general positive effect of authoritative parenting was not found. These results suggest that the same developmental endpoint can be reached in different cultures by different means, and that what constitutes 'good parenting' depends on a complex of attitudes and behaviors that can only be understood in their sociocultural context, (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.