Autonomy and Relatedness During the Preschool Period: An Examination of Parent-Child Interactions Within and Across Cultures

Abstract

This thesis explores parents’ promotion of both autonomy and relatedness in their interactions with their preschool children. In particular, it examines these behaviours in contexts beyond those that have been the traditional focus of research to date: mothers living in the Western world. To achieve this, a novel coding system was developed for observations of parent-child interactions: the Cross-cultural Observations of Parents Interacting with Children (COPI-C) Coding System. Using the COPI-C, the first study of this thesis explores mothers’ autonomy- and relatedness-promoting behaviours from a cross-cultural perspective by comparing samples of Canadian mothers and Singaporean mothers. In contrast, the second study explores autonomy- and relatedness-promoting behaviours from an intra-cultural perspective by comparing samples of Canadian mothers and fathers from the same families. Importantly, in addition to describing cross-sample differences in autonomy- and relatedness-promoting behaviours, both studies also examine the theoretical correlates of these behaviours (i.e., socialization goals, the child-parent attachment relationship, children’s socio-emotional functioning) and how context (either culture or gender) might moderate these associations. In Study 1, results identified several differences between Canadian and Singaporean mothers, with Canadian mothers generally displaying greater autonomy-promoting behaviours and Singaporean mothers generally displaying greater relatedness-promoting behaviours. Singaporean mothers tended to endorse greater interdependent socialization goals, but cross-sample differences in socialization goals did not account for cross-sample differences in maternal autonomy- and relatedness-promoting behaviours. Still, several autonomy- and relatedness-promoting behaviours showed differential associations with child outcomes across cultural contexts: some behaviours predicted positive child outcomes in one context, but not the other. In Study 2, results identified several differences between Canadian mothers’ and fathers’ autonomy- and relatedness-promoting behaviours. Furthermore, parents’ interdependent socialization goals varied as a function of an interaction between parent gender and child gender. Together, the studies presented herein highlight the importance of considering the socio-cultural context in understanding parent-child interactions and their developmental correlates.