Parenting...What's that?

First and foremost, it should be pointed out that parental beliefs vary a considerable amount across cultures. Although I expected parental beliefs, I personally was greatly surprised to see just how much difference there is. Such variation can be accounted for by something called the "Developmental Niche". Super and Harkness developed the framework for taking on a contextual perspective on childhood. It studies a process of development as a function of their interactions between the child and their environment. The framework itself consists of 3 subsystems: physical and social settings in which children live, child rearing practices and customs and psychology of caretakers in terms of their beliefs and values. Mention of these 3 subsystems alone was enough of an explanation for me to understand why there was so much variation.

After reading a few articles on the topic, I came across some interesting findings. Findings such as most European parents emphasized a great importance of family activities as well as meal time. One Italian mother even discussed how she and her husband reorganized their work schedules just so they could have 3 meals a day. In contrast, American parents gave most attention to developmental and school related activities. Meal time was talked about the least.

What threw me for a loop in some context was that many parents rejected the idea of "pushing" or even encouraging their children to do well academically. They claimed that such encouragement may even be detrimental to their happiness. I of course, am opposed to "pushing: your child into doing anything, but I completely disagree with not encouraging your child to do well.I do get where these parents are coming from in that if a child wants to do well and excel they will ... on their own terms. However, I believe positive encouragement is necessary, for many things. Necessary for support, motivation, etc. It is essential. From personal experience, if I didn't have encouragement from my parents, I would not be where I'm at, nor, would I be the person that I am today!

With regards to meals, I found it interesting that most of the European parents who had high priority for meal, gave such a high ranking primarily for the fact that they believed meal ti me to be a time to enhance family relationships and talk about problems.

Lastly, the one thing that I found quite intriguing was a certain difference between American and Italian parents. American parents claimed they schedule family time whereas Italian parents seem to find family time in routine activities.