Perceptions of parents and adolescent outcomes in Pakistan

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine associations among perceived parenting variables (warmth, parental knowledge of their child's daily activities, shame induction and autonomy‐granting), and psychosocial outcomes in Pakistan, a culture about which little information is available in the psychological literature. Participants were early and late adolescent Pakistani boys (N = 156) and girls (N = 148). Girls perceived their parents as being warmer, more knowledgeable about their child's activities and whereabouts, and more autonomy‐granting than did boys. Warmth and parental knowledge associated with positive outcomes for girls, but not boys. Autonomy‐granting associated with positive outcomes in bivariate and multivariate correlations for both genders. In causal models, perceptions of parents influenced well‐being partly through the mediators of selfdenigration, positive self‐image and relationship harmony, explaining up to 21% of the variance in outcomes. The results are discussed in the light of Western findings and the social context of middle‐class urban Pakistan. The findings provide some support for self‐determination theory, which states that autonomy‐granting by parents facilitates offspring adjustment through internalization of parental values, even in non‐Western cultures.

Attitudes to School Science held by Primary Children in Pakistan

“…Dimmock (2000: 41) also refers to the ethnocentric bias in much research and the tacit assumption that the outcomes are universal. The sociological research of Stewart et al (2000) in Pakistan used a foreign self-esteem scale. The researchers found that the Pakistani factor analysis did not fit the pattern of the scale's previous usage, which demonstrates the necessity of rigorously testing scales developed in different cultural and educational contexts (Pell & Manganye, 2007;Van Rensburg et al, 1999).…”

“…A major characteristic of Pakistan society is an overall conformity with mutual interdependence rather than individual autonomy (Stewart et al, 2000). Children are expected to obey and readily accept the authority of their elders.…”

The Home Environments of Adolescents Whose Parents Legally Immigrated to the United States: Findings from the New Immigrant Survey

“…Research based in cultural theory shows that child rearing is influenced by cultural beliefs and that parents from different societies have different goals and different means of achieving goals for children (De Munck 2001;Rogoff 2014). Although some dimensions of the home environment (e.g., parental warmth) appear to take much the same form and have much the same consequence in all families (universal dimensions), other dimensions take varied forms and have more varied consequences depending upon child gender, culture, SES and other contextual factors (Bradley and Corwyn 2005;Nord and Griffin 1999;Stewart et al 2000;Xia et al 2013). It is also important to bear in mind that there are multiple dimensions of culture and variations within societies that influence how particular cultural values are enacted (Estrada-Martinez et al 2011;Warikoo and Carter 2009).…”

Introducing science experiments to rote-learning classes in Pakistani middle schools

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