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A Study on the Multi-Dimensional Structure of Chinese Parents’ Warmth Behavior
- WANG Yan, CHNAG Lei
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Psychological Development and Education. 2007, 23(2):
68-75.
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Abstract
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Parental warmth and control have been two major focuses of parenting research in the West. Similar work has also been carried out in China. The cross cultural comparisons seem to suggest that Chinese parents are not as warm as Western parents and, to some ext ent, are also more controlling than Western parents. Whereas culture has been used as a convenient explanation for these differences, we believe that Chinese parents and Western parents may have different conceptualizat ions about warmth and, to a lesser degree, control. In the present study, we focused on warmth and tested the hypothesis that, whereas Western parents, as well as the instrument used to measure parenting, emphasize emotional or psychological warmth, Chinese parents might distinguish between motional and physical warmth. The latter refers to parental behaviors and actions directed at improving the child's physical or material well-being. We constructed parenting questionnaire items that were aimed to differentiate among emotional, health-oriented physical, and material oriented physical warmth. The sample was taken from two primary schools and one secondary school in Beijing and one primary and one secondary school in Shanghai. Primary school grades 2, 3 and 4 and secondary school grade 2 students and their parents were included in the sampling. The total number of students approached was 1040, of whom 905 had complete data from both the students and their parents and were included in the analyses. Of the 905 students, 49.2% were female and 50.8% were from secondary schools. The average age of students was 11.09(SD= 2.90). Among the 905 parents, 73.52% were mothers. The average age of parents was 39.26(SD=4.74). The Parenting Style and Dimensions Quest ionnaire(PSDQ) were administered to the parents. Of interest were the nine items that targeted emotional support and warmth. In addition to the PSDQ, parents were also given 23 self-constructed items of which 8 were related to emotional warmth(e. g., "I'll spend time to keep my child company"), 9 were related to health oriented physical warmth(e. g., "I am concerned with my child's diet"), and 6 were related to material-oriented physical warmth(e. g., "I will make sure that my child has a good material life"). Various child variables were also obtained. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses support the three-factor-model. The three factors were emotional warmth, health-oriented physical warmth, and material-oriented physical warmth. The average factor loading was 0. 62. Most of the goodness of fit statistics was satisfactory. On all three factors, parents of primary school children had higher scores than parents of secondary school students. The threewarmth factors showed both similar and different correlations with such child outcome variables as academic achievement, peer acceptance, and self-concept. For example, emotional warmth was more strongly correlated with child outcome variables than physical warmth and health-oriented physical warmth was least correlated with child social outcome variables. The different warmth dimensions were also more strongly correlated with child outcome variables for primary than secondary school children. However, all the correlations were moderate. These findings lend some support to our hypothesis that Chinese parents and children conceptualize parental warmth differently than what have been reported in the Western literature. Chinese parents emphasize both physical and emotional support of their children even though the former may not be felt by children as much as and thus has less effect on child social outcomes than the latter.
