Parental Control and Style in Australia and India: A Cross-Cultural Study

The research reported in this paper is an exploration of parental control, maturity demands and parenting style in Australia and India. In Brisbane. Australia parents of 100 preschool-aged children (100 mothers and 55 fathers) and in Hisar, India parents of 178 preschool-aged children (178 mothers and 149 fathers) participated. In Brisbane, parental data was collected through questionnaires. In Hisar. data was collected through interviews. For the Hisar study, the questionnaires were translated into Hindi. For parental control, Indian fathers were generally more firm than Australian parents and Indian mothers. Indian mothers were generally more harsh than Indian fathers and Indian parents were more harsh than Australian parents. For lax control, Indian parents were generally more lax than Australian parents and Indian fathers were more lax than Indian mothers. For maturity demands, Indian parents were more likely to expect self-control and independent behaviour than Australian parents. A high proportion of Australian and Indian parents fell into the permissive category of parenting style. In both cultural groups, with increase in children’s age, firm and harsh control and expectations for mature behaviour increased. Compared to less educated parents, more educated parents were less likely to use harsh and lax control and were more likely to use firm control. With higher parental education demands for mature behaviour increased.