Parenting Attributions and Attitudes in Diverse Cultural Contexts: Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

SYNOPSIS This Introduction describes the conceptual rationale, the general methods of the Parenting Across Cultures Project, and the analytic plan adopted in the articles in this special issue. Each article that follows this Introduction describes the parenting context and mothers' and fathers' attributions for successes and failures in caregiving and progressive versus authoritarian childrearing attitudes in each of nine countries: China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States. Results in each article address questions of similarities and differences in mothers' and fathers' attributions and attitudes and how highly mothers' attributions and attitudes are correlated with fathers' attributions and attitudes within a national group. The special issue concludes with an article that draws connections among the findings across the nine countries and outlines implications of similarities and differences between mothers' and fathers' parenting attributions and attitudes.