A cross‐cultural examination of Aboriginal and European Canadian mothers' beliefs regarding proactive and reactive aggression

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to examine the maternal beliefs and practices regarding preschool children's proactive and reactive aggression, within a cross-cultural framework. Participants included 30 Aboriginal and 45 European Canadian mothers of preschoolers who provided their emotional reactions, causal attributions, socialization strategies, and parenting goals in response to children's aggressive behaviours. Results supported previous research that both groups of mothers generally responded negatively to both types of aggression, although there were differences in the extent of negative emotional responses expressed by mothers in the two cultures depending on the type of aggression. Mothers believed that reactive aggression was due to more external causes than proactive aggression and generally used more power assertive strategies in response to proactive versus reactive aggression. Aboriginal mothers were less anxious and used less power assertive strategies than European Canadian mothers. These findings speak to the importance of examining both similarities and differences in mother's beliefs and practices across cultures.

Mothers' Reactions to Preschoolers' Proactive and Reactive Aggressive Behaviours

“…Partially supporting our expectations and previous research on preschoolers (Cheah & Sheperd, ), the frequency of mothers' socialization strategies varied between proactive and reactive aggression. Specifically, our findings suggested that mothers used more indirect strategies (e.g., asking the child, teacher, or other children to find out more about the aggressive episode) and endorsed other‐oriented strategies (e.g., ‘telling the other child to behave properly because her child is not the only one who behaved inappropriately’ or ‘making sure that the mother of the other child is informed’) to intervene with reactive aggression.…”

“…Together, these findings suggest that mothers become more emotionally reactive when the aggressive act includes physical harm and is initiated by their own child. In line with Cheah and Sheperd's () findings, in the current study, we argued that Turkish mothers would perceive reactive aggression as a defensive reaction. Therefore, we expected that they would report feeling more negatively towards children's engagement in proactive aggression than reactive aggression.…”

“…Only one study examined mothers' emotional reactions to distinct functions of physical aggression in early childhood. In this study, Cheah and Sheperd () showed that both European and Aboriginal Canadian mothers responded with more negative emotions, including anger, disappointment, and anxiety, to preschool aged children's proactive as compared with reactive aggressive behaviours. Together, these findings suggest that mothers become more emotionally reactive when the aggressive act includes physical harm and is initiated by their own child.…”

“…Our findings also showed that mothers predominantly reported feeling anxiety in response to both forms of aggression. Interestingly, anxious feelings were not endorsed as predominant emotional reactions among mothers in other cultures, including European and Aboriginal Canadian (Cheah & Sheperd, ). One possible explanation for the high and predominant endorsement of anxiety could be related to Turkish mothers' feelings of efficacy in dealing with children's aggressive behaviours.…”

“…No other reliability estimates are available. Inter‐rater reliability values were found to range from 0.75 to 0.93 for parental socialization strategies across different cultural groups, including European American and Chinese (Cheah & Rubin, ), Aboriginal and European Canadian (Cheah & Sheperd, ), and Italian mothers (Schneider et al, ). In the present study, the first author coded all the strategy data.…”