Abstract
Recent research has explored the relationships between family and cultural issues, claiming attention on the need to consider and evaluate cultural values and beliefs as useful factors to promote positive family adjustment and parenting outcomes (Cardoso and Thompson, 2010; Taylor et al., 2012). This paper explored self-perception of parental role, family maladjustment and cultural beliefs in a sample of Italian parents. More specifically, 204 mother and 204 fathers of adolescents (13–17 years old) filled self-report questionnaires about family system maladjustment (Family Assessment Measure-III), self-perception of parental role (Self-Perception of Parental Role), parents’ beliefs and attitudes toward the family (Attitudinal Familism Scale), and parents’ cultural values (Cultural Values Survey). Results showed that parents have a similar self-perception of family functioning and they share common cultural beliefs and values toward the family. However, fathers felt more satisfied and involved in parenting then mothers and they were more able to balance the different roles of their life. Mothers and fathers showed a similar path of correlations, in which greater level of satisfaction in parenting and better ability in role balancing correlated with a more positive family adjustment. Moreover, a higher perception of family maladjustment was associated to lower levels of family cohesion and cooperation. Furthermore, higher levels of satisfaction were associated to higher scores in family solidarity, equality among sexes and equality in decision takers. These results introduce important implications for family studies in Italian culture, and open to comparison with parenting in other cultures.
Highlights
The last two decades have been marked by a substantial attention to children’s well-being that can be generally understood to encompass physical, social, and emotional health (Statham and Chase, 2010)
As stated in the final report about positive family functioning edited by the Australian Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (2010), family functions refers to a variety of characteristics encompassing several domains such as emotional attributes, family governance issues, engagement and cognitive development, physical health habits, quality of intra-familial relationships, and social connectedness
In self-perception of parental role, both parents shared the same level of satisfaction, fathers supported that being a parent allows them to be more involved in different roles beside parenthood than mothers
Summary
The last two decades have been marked by a substantial attention to children’s well-being that can be generally understood to encompass physical, social, and emotional health (Statham and Chase, 2010). And Cultural Values depression), and less positive outcomes such as diminished social competence and self-esteem later in life (Scaramella et al, 1999; Smetana et al, 2002; Barnes et al, 2006; Dishion et al, 2008; Abu-Rayya and Yang, 2012; Letourneau et al, 2013; Ferro and Boyle, 2014; Angley et al, 2015) Those findings claim for research in this area, in Italy which was rated in the middle/bottom third of the rank in a recent report on well-being in European children (Bradshaw and Richardson, 2009). The current study was firstly aimed to compare genuine Italians mothers and fathers focusing mainly on their self-perception of parental role, such as family adjustment and cultural beliefs (e.g., identification of individuals with their family members, family solidarity), instead of on parenting beliefs and practices (Bornstein et al, 2001; Hsu and Lavelli, 2005; Vieno et al, 2009). Parents’ familistic values were expected to be associated with parenting satisfaction and family positive functioning (Cardoso and Thompson, 2010; Taylor et al, 2012)
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