Comparisons of parenting attitudes among five ethnic groups in the United States

The purpose of the present study was to compare the parenting attitudes of AfricanAmerican, European American (native to the United States), Asian American, Asian-Indian, and Hispanic mothers (immigrant population who were not natives of the United States). Research has indicated that parents develop their parenting styles based on their cultural socialization, family background, personality style, and personality of their children (Belsky, 1984). One hundred and eighty two mothers participated in the study. The parenting attitudes of the mothers were measured using the Adolescent-Adult Parenting Inventory (AAPI, Bavolek, 1984), a 32 item assessment. I way ANOVA performed on each of the 4 subscale scores of the parenting attitudes indicated that the five cultural groups differed in their parental attitudes. Post-hoc Tukey tests for ethnic group differences in the parental attitude subscale scores yielded significant results for 16 of the 40 pairwise comparisons. These results suggest that some groups of ethnic mothers place stricter expectations, demands and control on their children.