In the present study, the child-rearing goals of mothers of 4- to 6-year-old children from Estonia, Finland, and Sweden were compared. The developed Child-Rearing Goals Questionnaire consisted of three different tasks: open-ended questions, item rating, and item ranking. All mothers were similar in valuing highly self-maximization, but differed in emphasis on traditional child-rearing goals (e.g., conformity, obedience, politeness, being hard-working, etc.). The Swedish mothers tended to stress the characteristics connected with self-maximization as well as self-confidence and children's happiness, but did not value the traditional child-rearing goals. The Estonian mothers attached a great significance both to the traditional characteristics and to self-maximization. The Finnish mothers also stressed both traditional and non-traditional values, but to a lesser extent than the Estonians. The Swedish and Finnish mothers' child-rearing goals were relatively homogeneous. In contrast, the Estonian mothers were generally less focused on any specific goal. Mothers with a lower level of education stressed traditional goals more than mothers with a higher level of education. The results are discussed in the light of the possible effect different cultural contexts have on maternal child-rearing goals: bringing up children in stable welfare societies (such as Sweden and Finland) in contrast to a rapidly changing society (such as Estonia).

A B S T R A C TThe present article focused on two types of communicative intent (directing behaviour vs. eliciting talk) expressed by mothers and teenagers during everyday family interactions in Estonian, Finnish, and Swedish mono-and bicultural families. Three monocultural groups consisted of 17 Estonian, 19 Swedish, and 18 Finnish families living in their country of origin ; two bicultural and bilingual groups consisted of 18 Estonian and 18 Finnish families residing in Sweden. All the children were between 9; 0 and 13; 0. The results revealed that the Estonian monocultural mothers were highly directive and direct : issuing behavioural directives most frequently and using the highest proportion of imperatives among all samples. Contrary to our expectations, the mothers who tended to be more concerned with controlling their children's behaviour also elicited conversation more frequently from teenagers by using a larger number of information requests. These requests seemed to serve as another form of attempted control over adolescents' behaviour -their communicative behaviour. The Swedish monocultural children were more active in controlling their mothers' behaviour than their counterparts, possibly illustrating the Swedish value of generational equality.

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