Parents' Cultural Belief Systems

Parents' cultural belief systems have definite consequences for children's development. Parents are the main agents of socialization for their children during the period of their lives when they are most susceptible to influence. Because culture is a pervasive aspect of parental personality, cultural belief systems play a major role in the socialization process.

Culture is the shared meanings that people in a society give to important life events. These events include birth, death, commerce, mating, protection from hunger and bad weather, etc. Thus every aspect of human life and behavior is influenced by culture: "In a sense, to understand culture is to understand learned behavior" (Slonim, 1991, p. 5). Moreover, specific cultural value systems are transmitted from one generation to another.

Sigel and Kim (1996) describe a cultural common sense that adults develop, in terms of childrearing, religion, politics, etc. These ethnotheories and beliefs guide the parent and become part of the worldview that is passed along to children. Research by Harkness et al. (1996) confirms that, for middle class parents, the family pediatrician is an important source of root metaphors and cultural models of child development.

The means which parents use to transmit their cultural belief systems to their children are many and varied. Parents use teaching behaviors (actions and activities) that include reading books, exerting control over television viewing, and engaging in con

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en will hold similar positions. Parents from working class backgrounds often foster skills in their own children that will make them suitable for working class jobs. Thus children are taught the types of behavior and personal attributes appropriate to certain work environments: "Middle-class professional jobs are assoicated with . . . self-direction and the ability to manipulate interpersonal relations, ideas, and symbols; working class jobs . . . with respect for authority and conformity to external and imposed rules" (Delgado-Gaitan and Trueba, 1991, p. 85). Lower-class parents in urban societies tend to encourage less creativity and playfulness in their children, and are more controlling than their middle-class counterparts, who reinforce the "American dream" ideals of self-support and autonomy (Hughes, Jr. and Perry-Jenkins, 1996, pp. 175-176). Parents in agricultural societies tend to emphasize a high degree of independence in their children because this trait is well-suited to the hard, physical labor of farming. Gaskins' (1996) study of children in the Mayan culture confirms the influence of cultural beliefs about what the child should become on the child's development. The subjects of Gaskins' study live in a tradi

Category: Psychology - P