The relationship between education, agency, and socialization goals in a sample of mothers of preschoolers

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Ecocultural Model of Development states that parents’ cultural model mediates the relationship between their educational level and their socialization goals. Cultural models refer to beliefs shared by members of a community, and they result from the combination of two dimensions: agency and interpersonal distance. Moreover, both agency and interpersonal distance are made up of explicit and implicit components. In the present study, we focused on how the explicit and the implicit components of the agency dimension of the cultural model are related to mothers’ educational level and socialization goals. The results on this sample (N = 141) suggest that there was a significant indirect effect of mothers’ educational level on their heteronomous socialization goals through the implicit component of the agency dimension, namely attributional style. The higher the mothers’ educational level, the more they attributed other individuals’ behaviour internally and the less they valued socialization goals focused on heteronomy. Moreover, the results suggest that the implicit component of agency is related to mothers’ socialization goals, while the explicit component is not. This is in concordance with research showing that the implicit components of individuals’ cultural model can be better used to differentiate between individuals from different cultures.