The Relation between Parents’ Child-Rearing Behavior and Their Socioeconomic Status in a Developing Country Context: A Case from West Bengal, India

Abstract

This study examines variation in parents’ child-rearing behavior based on their socioeconomic status (SES) in the context of a developing country. The impact of different aspects of SES on the probability of practicing several child-rearing behaviors was examined individually based on a data of 1373 households in West Bengal, India. The study found that components of SES explain great shares of the variance in parents’ child-rearing behaviors and the variation was bi-dimensional. There was variation between parental practices due to a change in SES, and also each practice was affected differently for each component of SES. Mother’s level of education was found to play a consistent and most significant role in improving parent-child regular interaction.

Maternal self‐efficacy development from pregnancy to 3 months after birth

“…(1) The education level of parents plays a special role in child‐rearing practices (Ghosh & Rausch, 2020). Investigations into the effects of maternal education level on maternal self‐efficacy provide mixed results, but those with diverse or disadvantaged samples indicate lower maternal self‐efficacy among mothers with lower education backgrounds (e.g., Wang et al., 2021).…”