Parenting styles and practices among Chinese immigrant mothers with young children

Abstract

This study investigated how Chinese immigrant mothers in the USA make meaning of their parenting styles and practices in rearing their young children (aged two to six). Twelve Chinese immigrant mothers were interviewed. A key finding reveals that the Chinese immigrant mothers' parenting practices reflected the indigenous concept of jiaoyang in the Chinese culture (with jiao meaning educating, teaching and training; yang meaning rearing; and jiaoyang implying educating and rearing). Another finding is that except for one mother, the rest practised authoritative parenting, combining high levels of both parental warmth and parental control. The Chinese immigrant mothers' parenting seemed to best reflect what Kagitcibasi described as the psychological interdependence interaction pattern of the family model with the childrearing orientation focusing on parental control, emotional closeness and child autonomy, leading to the child becoming both emotionally autonomous and related. Implications for future research and professional practice are discussed.

Keywords:

• Chinese immigrant parents
• Chinese parenting
• parenting styles and practices

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support for this research by a Students Partnering with Faculty Research Award (2008–2009) from Kean University.

While the three authors collaborated on data collection and analysis, this article was written solely by the first author.