Beyond Parental Control and Authoritarian Parenting Style: Understanding Chinese Parenting through the Cultural Notion of Training

TLDR

Chinese parenting is often labeled as controlling or authoritarian, yet Chinese children achieve high academic success, creating a paradox. The study argues that authoritative/authoritarian labels are ethnocentric and fail to capture essential aspects of Chinese child rearing that explain their academic success. The authors compared immigrant Chinese and European‑American mothers of preschoolers using standard parental control scales and a Chinese‑specific “training” questionnaire. Controlling for education and standard parenting scores, Chinese mothers scored significantly higher on the “training” ideology, suggesting that this concept, distinct from authoritarianism, may underlie Chinese school success.

Abstract

This study addresses a paradox in the literature involving the parenting style of Asians: Chinese parenting has often been described as "controlling" or "authoritarian". These styles of parenting have been found to be predictive of poor school achievement among European-Americans, and yet the Chinese are performing quite well in school. This study suggests that the concepts of authoritative and authoritarian are somewhat ethnocentric and do not capture the important features of Chinese child rearing, especially for explaining their school success. Immigrant Chinese and European-American mothers of preschool-aged children were administered standard measures of parental control and authoritative-authoritarian parenting style as well as Chinese child-rearing items involving the concept of "training." After controlling for their education, and their scores on the standard measures, the Chinese mothers were found to score significantly higher on the "training" ideologies. This "training" concept has important features, beyond the authoritarian concept, that may explain Chinese school success.