Cross-cultural comparison of maternal mind-mindedness among Australian and Chinese mothers

Abstract

Evidence suggests that parental mind-mindedness is important for children’s social-emotional development; however, almost all research exploring mind-mindedness has been conducted with families from Western backgrounds. The current study explored cross-cultural differences in mind-mindedness based on observed real-time interactions between urban Australian ( N = 50, M age = 30.34 years, SD = 3.14) and urban mainland Chinese ( N = 50, M age = 29.18 years, SD = 4.14) mothers and their toddlers (Australian: M age = 18.98 months, SD = 0.87; Chinese: M age = 18.50 months, SD = 2.25). Controlling for education, the Australian mothers used a higher proportion of appropriate mind-related comments and were less likely to use non-attuned mind-related comments than their Chinese counterparts, adjusting for total number of comments. Transcript analysis showed that the Australian mothers used more mental state terms referring to desires and preferences than Chinese mothers. Findings are discussed in relation to cultural influences in child-rearing goals, beliefs, and values and the need for cross-cultural validation of the mind-mindedness construct.

No evidence of an association between parental mind-mindedness at 9 months and language development at either 9 or 25 months in Swedish infants

“…To date, most research on MM during the child’s first 2 years has been carried out in the Western world, and especially in English-speaking contexts and in French-speaking Canada (Dai et al, 2019; McMahon & Bernier, 2017). A small-scale study investigated paternal MM in the United Kingdom and in Denmark and found no differences in MM between countries (Tharner et al, 2016).…”

“…Little is known about the cross-cultural validity of MM as a construct. To our knowledge, only three studies have been conducted to date in non-Western countries (Dai et al, 2019; Hughes et al, 2017; Wang et al, 2017), and only Dai et al (2019) have investigated MM below 2 years of age. Dai et al (2019) investigated MM among Chinese and Australian mothers of 18-month-olds during free-play.…”

Mind‐mindedness and self–other distinction: Contrasts between Japanese and British mothers’ speech samples

“…In contrast, British mothers showed more child‐centredness and mind‐mindedness than their Japanese counterparts even after the total amount of talk and maternal education were accounted for. These findings accord with cross‐cultural comparisons of mother–child reminiscing and parental mind‐mindedness between the West and East Asia: compared with their East Asian counterparts, mothers from Western cultures tend to make more comments overall (e.g., Minami & McCabe, 1995; Mullen & Yi, 1995), are more child‐focused (e.g., Wang, 2001; Wang & Fivush, 2005; Wang et al., 2000), and are more mind‐minded (Dai et al., 2019; Doan & Wang, 2010; Hughes et al., 2018).…”

“…Specifically, European American mothers made more mental‐state comments than immigrant Chinese mothers in the United States in a storytelling task (Doan & Wang, 2010), and made more autonomy‐related (including mental‐state) comments than mainland Chinese mothers in mother–infant interactions (Keller et al., 2007). Also, as discussed above, Western parents showed more mind‐mindedness towards their children than Chinese parents in both mother–child interactions (Dai et al., 2019) and parents’ speech samples about their children (Hughes et al., 2018). These contrasts seem to resonate with general findings of cultural differences in observational studies of mother–child reminiscing: European American mothers are more elaborative and child‐centred, facilitating children's participation, while Japanese, Chinese, and Korean mothers are less elaborative but more didactic and mother‐centred (Minami & McCabe, 1995; Mullen & Yi, 1995; Wang, 2001, 2007; Wang, Leichtman, & Davies, 2000; Wang & Fivush, 2005; see Wang, 2011 for a summary).…”

“…Regardless of culture, a positive relation was also found between theory‐of‐mind performance and mind‐mindedness. Similarly, Dai, McMahon, and Lim (2019) compared mothers’ mind‐mindedness during mother–child free play in urban Australian and urban Chinese families. They reported that, compared with their Chinese counterparts, Australian mothers spoke more overall and were more mind‐minded towards their toddlers using more mind‐related comments about desires and preferences.…”