Parental Ethnotheories

Abstract

Parental ethnotheories, one of the subsystems of “developmental niche,” are defined as parental cultural beliefs on child‐rearing. Developmental niche is a theoretical framework developed to identify both universal and specific ideas and characteristics about childrearing among different sociocultural groups, and is composed of three subsystems: 1) the physical and social settings of a child's everyday life, 2) the culturally‐led customs and practices of child care and child rearing, and 3) the psychology of caregivers, or parental ethnotheories. Developmental niche is based on assumptions in which a child's developmental process is organized around cultural systems, and all three subsystems together define a child's living environment. Although the three subsystems can work as discrete functions, they operate interdependently in a cultural system.