French and American Mothers’ Childrearing Beliefs

Previous research on French parenting suggests that the French share characteristics with both individualistic and collectivist cultures, but cross-cultural studies remain scarce. For this study, 84 European American and 120 French mothers completed two measures of beliefs about childrearing practices with 1-day-old to 3-year-old children and long-term goals and values for children. Both groups believed stimulating practices to be more important than responsiveness practices. French mothers attributed greater importance to stimulating and less importance to responding than American mothers. Although both groups valued long-term goals representing inner psychological attributes more than those representing concrete achievements, French mothers valued concrete goals slightly more than American mothers. Results suggest that although French and European American parents’cultural models share some aspects of individualistic cultures, they are distinctly different. This study contributes to the argument that further differentiation of the individualism/ collectivism framework is necessary to adequately explain variations in cultural models of parenting.