Child Behavior and Child Rearing in Japan and the United States: An Interim Report

Mother-infant interaction and acculturation: I. Behavioural comparisons in Japanese American and South American families

“…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).…”

“…The absence of these differences might simply indicate that these behaviours are strongly canalised during early infancy (Waddington, 1942(Waddington, , 1966(Waddington, , 1977 or that both groups of infants were visited and observed at (more or less) optimal times of day. Alternatively, it may be that infants are still in the processes of acquiring culturally mediated self-regulatory controls over emotion expression (e.g., Caudill & Schooler, 1973;Clancy, 1986;Uba, 1994). Although silence may be valued in Japan, direct verbal communication is valued in US society; thus, it may be in infants' best interests for mothers to socialise in some domains according to the expectations of the culture in which infants are being reared.…”

Attitude Transference and Deviant Behavior: A Comparative Study in Japan and the United States

“…In less individualistic cultures like Japan, on the other hand, parents and young children are conceptualized as occupying less of the discrete universe (Hoffman 2003). 1 As a result, it is less likely that the children are objects of intense control and power within the family because they are considered unable to understand and follow the edicts of the parents (Caudill and Schooler 1973).…”

Child and mother play in cultures of origin, acculturating cultures, and cultures of destination

“…Notably, Argentine and Japanese parenting emphasizes interdependency between dyad members, and these parents tend to engage in more social interactions with their children, whereas US parenting tends to encourage children's interpersonal independence as well as interest in and exploration of the environment (Bornstein et al, 1999;Caudill & Schooler, 1973;Hess, Kashiwagi, Azuma, Price, & Dickson, 1980;Markus & Kitayama, 1991;Parke & Buriel, 1998). One larger contemporary perspective on these specific cultural differences that captures a critical distinction between the nation states we studied can help to explain why we expected to find contrasting cultural emphases in child-mother play.…”