Breaking The Clouds

C. Huntsinger from Northern Illinois University and P. Jose from Victoria University of Wellington also published their study “Relations Among Parental Acceptance and Control and Children’s Social Adjustment in Chinese American and European American Families” in the issue of Journal of Family Psychology 2009, Vol. 23, No. 3. The authors studied parental acceptance, control, and “Chiao Shun” (or, Jiao-Xun, the Chinese word for training) in 35 immigrant Chinese American families as well as 38 European American families (parents were mostly born in the States). Data were collected from children from preschool to 4^th grade.

They found that within the couples, fathers and mothers in Chinese American family group rated similar levels of acceptance and control; but they did not in European American family group. Parental acceptance and control showed to influence children’s social development. Parents who are warm and accepting has been associated with positive adjustment, while parents who are overly controlling and punitive as well as those who show affection but low levels of controlling are related to maladjustment among children and adolescents in the USA.

Findings from this study concluded that for Chinese American fathers and mothers as well as European American mothers, higher acceptance and greater control were linked to their children’s more positive psychosocial adjustment, while for European fathers, acceptance and control did not predict children’s outcome four years later. Among the limitations to this study are relatively small sample size and over-representation of well-educated individuals in both Chinese American immigrants and European American study groups.