Parents' Ethnotheories of the Nature and Causes of Positive Development and Maladjustment in Young Children: A Comparison of Spain and the United States

Abstract

Parents’ culturally specific understandings of their children, also known as ethnotheories, have been shown to hold strong implications for early child socialization and development (de Haan, et al., 2020; Super et al., 2020). However, extant research has typically only focused on middle childhood and emphasized parents’ views of positive or desirable child behaviors; moreover, the literature tends to define ethnotheories across a strict East/West dichotomy while relying on translated measures that may not have cultural validity (Su Cho et al., 2021). The main objective of this dissertation is to compare parents’ ethnotheories of the nature and causes of adaptive and maladaptive behaviors in young children across two Western countries, Spain and the United States, using tools generated through cross-cultural research. Relying on an interview protocol developed through conversations with parents around the world, we explored associations between parent-identified positive and negative traits (Chapter 2, Study 1) as well as attributions parents make for desirable and unwanted behaviors (Chapter 3, Study 2) in their children during the preschool period. Moreover, we examined the influence of factors like parent education and child gender in relation to identified child traits, including the most and least desired, and attributions for maladaptive child behaviors. Our comparison of interviews with Spanish and U.S. parents revealed meaningful differences in ethnotheories as represented by traits and attributions that both mirrored and contradicted cultural and gender expectations, as well as notable similarities that reflected a shared understanding of child behavior and development across cultures. Overall, results suggest a connection between the culturally-oriented values systems of both countries and the attributions parents made, as well as between culture and the characteristics parents hoped to see in their children and those they disapproved of. While American and Spanish parents made similar attributions in response to children’s withdrawn, anxious, and dysphoric behaviors, they diverged in their interpretations of externalizing behaviors. Both groups of parents prioritized traits associated with social cooperation and cognitive/motivational skills, with American parents also valuing active and independent traits and behaviors and Spanish parents emphasizing those associated with spiritual/moral principles. Implications of observed differences and similarities in parents’ attributional styles and developmental goals for their children relative to ethnotheories research and clinical practice are discussed.