流动和城市家庭中母亲的控制策略与幼儿顺从行为

Maternal control strategies and children's compliance among urban and rural-to-urban migrant families

对122名3岁幼儿及其母亲(流动家庭46户)进行评估,考察母亲控制策略的特点、母亲控制策略与幼儿顺从行为的关系以及家庭类别和性别在二者关系中的调节作用。结果表明:(1)流动和城市母亲使用最多的均是命令性控制;流动家庭母亲使用的强制性控制多于城市母亲,温和控制略少于城市母亲。(2)两类家庭中,不同强度的母亲控制都与幼儿的情境性顺从相关。(3)流动家庭母亲的强制性控制正向预测男孩的合作性顺从,负向预测其不顺从;流动家庭母亲的强制性控制负向预测女孩的合作性顺从。

An important issue in early socialization and human development is how parents exert control in parent-child interaction and how children comply with parental direction. Moreover, it is commonly believed that maternal control strategies may be affected by social-cultural contexts and their changes. Due to the dramatic social change in urban China over the past decades, for example, compared with their counterparts in the 1990 s, contemporary parents may use less coercive or power-assertive control strategies to encourage child autonomy. As a result, there may exist differences between urban parents and migrant parents with a rural background in their control behaviors. Nevertheless, little is known about migrant parents’ control strategies and their relations with children’s compliance behaviors. Thus, the primary purpose of the present study was to examine the control strategies used by urban and migrant mothers and their relations with children’s compliance. We were also interested in gender effects given that urban mothers might be more likely than migrant mothers to emphasize gender equality in childrearing.The participants in the study included 122 mother-child dyads（46 from migrant families）. Mother-child interactions and maternal and child behaviors in a clean-up sessions in the laboratory were videotaped. Maternal control strategies（gentle control, direct control, forceful control） and children’s compliance behaviors（committed compliance, situational compliance, noncompliance） were coded. Repeated measure, MANOVA, correlation analysis, and hierarchical regression analysis were conducted. The results first showed that both urban and rural-to-urban migrant mothers used more direct control strategies than other strategies. Migrant mothers used more forceful control and less gentle control than urban mothers. The results also showed that maternal control strategies were significantly correlated to children’ssituational compliance in the two groups. Specifically, migrant mothers’ gentle control and direct control strategies were positively related to children’s situational compliance, and urban mothers’ gentle control and forceful control were positively related to children’s situational compliance. Finally, family type and gender had moderating effects on the relations between maternal forceful control strategies and children’s compliance behaviors. Simple slope analysis showed that migrant mothers’ forceful control was positively associated with committed compliance in boys and negatively associated with committed compliance in girls. Migrant mothers’ forceful control was also negatively associated with noncompliance in boys. The relations between urban mothers’ forceful control and their children’s compliance behaviors were not moderated by child gender. These results suggest that social, economic, and cultural background factors may play a significant role in shaping parental control strategies and their functions in child development. Parenting practices interventions should take into account the economic and cultural features of the group the parents belong to, and also the children’s characteristics（e.g., gender）.