Children’s Self-Regulation in Cultural Contexts: The Role of Parental Socialization Theories, Goals, and Practices

Abstract

Self-regulation is a complex multidimensional construct which has been approached mainly in Western cultural contexts. The present contribution examines the importance of considering the culture-sensitive nature of self-regulation by reviewing theory and research on the development of children’s self-regulation in different cultural contexts. This review of theory and research allows to suggest that widely shared values in a cultural group influence parental socialization theories, goals, and practices, which in turn have an impact on how children learn to self-regulate, the forms of self-regulation they develop, and the goals associated with self-regulation. Thus, this article concludes that more specific research is required to relate both the developmental and the cultural aspects of children’s self-regulation.

The Role of Teacher Regulatory Talk in Students’ Self-Regulation Development Across Cultures

“…English participants demonstrated higher levels of both effective metacognitive monitoring (awareness of errors) and effective metacognitive control (effective control of problems) than Chileans. This finding is consistent with previous studies which, although not testing the importance of proxies of cultural capital (such as parental education) for self‐ regulation, have indicated differences in levels of self‐regulation across nations in older students (Hinnant‐Crawford et al., ; Ongowo & Hungi, ; Tang & Neber, ) and very young children (see Jaramillo et al., , for a review).…”

“…Autonomy supportive talk was shown to have a positive effect on effective metacognitive control (effective control of problems) in Chilean participants, but a negative effect among English participants. This finding seems to be at odds with previous literature suggesting that autonomy support promotes self‐regulation in individualistic contexts (Jaramillo et al., ; Perry, ) and that directive communication might have a positive effect on self‐regulation in collectivist contexts (Lamm et al., ). But perhaps the results could be explained by the way in which autonomy supportive talk was operationalized within this study.…”

“…In this study, ethnicity was found to be a stronger predictor of self‐regulation than age or gender (Ongowo & Hungi, ). Similar findings have been discovered when comparing the levels of EFs among very young children (Jaramillo, Rendón, Muñoz, Weis, & Trommsdorff, ), older children and adolescents (Ellefson, Ng, Wang, & Hughes, ) from Asia and Europe. In these studies Asian children have systematically outperformed their European counterparts.…”

“…() found that maternal directiveness with their 9 months olds (structuring and strength of maternal initiatives) was a stronger predictor of children's self‐regulation (delay of gratification) at the age of 4 in the Nse than child‐centered sensitive autonomy support was among Germans. Authoritarian parenting styles have found to also have positive effects on other developmental outcomes in Asian and Latin American contexts (Jaramillo et al., ). We think this research represents an important antecedent indicating the timely relevance of exploring the developmental culturally adaptive functionality of teacher–student communicative interactions for children's self‐regulation.…”

Supporting Children's Early Development by Building Caregivers' Capacities and Skills: A Theoretical Approach Informed by New Neuroscience Research

“…More work needs to attend to how these approaches may be relevant or consonant in different cultural contexts within and outside the United States, that have different socialization goals and experiences. In particular, self‐regulation develops in accordance with the socialization goals of the culture in which a child is raised (Jaramillo, Rendón, Muñoz, Weiss, & Trommsdorff, ). Self‐regulation and executive function also have a developmental trajectory through late adolescence (and early adulthood), which raises the question of whether programs are more effective with younger parents, for whom these skills are still developing, than for older parents.…”