“…Thus, despite shared collectivist orientations, Japanese mothers behaved more privately than South American mothers. Consistent with previous research which has found that mothers of Japanese ethnicity are less openly emotionally expressive than US mothers (Caudill & Schooler, 1973;Uba, 1994), the Japanese American mothers in this sample engaged in less overt social behaviour than the South American mothers, who, like middle class Argentine mothers (Bornstein et al, 1999), engaged in high levels of social interaction. These ndings are consistent with the relatively greater collectivist orientation of South American nation-states, and these interpretations were supported by post-observation debrie ngs with informants from the two countries and in discussions with our research participants about their activity level and comfort in the observation (e.g., Japanese American mothers were more likely to say that they would feel uncomfortable breast feeding with observers present, for example, whereas South American mothers said it would not be a problem).…”