The role of parents' control and autonomy support in the United States and China: beyond children's reports

Recent research on the effects of parents’ control (i.e., intruding into children’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior) on children’s psychological functioning in the United States and China has almost exclusively relied on children’s reports. Such reports may lead to inaccurate conclusions if they do not reflect parents’ practices to the same extent in the two countries. The current research addressed this issue in a study of 394 American and Chinese children (mean age = 13.45 years) and mothers. Children and mothers reported on mothers’ controlling and autonomy-supportive parenting; trained observers coded such parenting during a laboratory interaction between children and mothers. Information on children’s achievement was obtained. Children’s reports of parenting were modestly associated with mothers’ reports and weakly, if at all, with observers’ reports, with no difference in United States and China. The effects of parenting on children’s achievement were largely similar in the two countries, irrespective of reporter. Taken together, the current research indicates that the similarity of the effects of American and Chinese parents’ control documented in prior research is unlikely to be an artifact of differential correspondence between children’s reports and parents’ actual practices in the two countries.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2014

Author dc:creator

• Cheung, Sin Sze

Contributors dc:contributor

• Pomerantz, Eva M.
• Cohen, Dov
• McElwain, Nancy L.
• Rudolph, Karen D.
• Telzer, Eva

• Parents' control and autonomy support
• Culture
• Multiple-informants
• Children's achievement

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2013 Sin Sze Cheung

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/46701

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/46701