Developmental Psychology In the public domain 1998, Vol. 34, No. 4, 662-676 A Cross-National Study of Self-Evaluations and Attributions in Parenting'Argentina, Belgium, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, and the United States Marc H. Bornstein, O. Maurice Haynes, Hiroshi Azuma, Celia Galperfn, Sharone Maital, Misako Ogino, Kathleen Painter, Liliana Pascual, Marie-Germaine P~cheux, Charles Rahn, Sueko Toda, Paola Venuti, Andre Vyt, and Barbara Wright National Institute of Child Health and Human Development This study investigated and compared ideas about parenting in Argentine, Belgian, French, Israeli, Italian, Japanese, and U.S. mothers of 20-month-olds. Mothers evaluated their competence, satisfac- tion, investment, and role balance in parenting and rated attributions of successes and failures in 7 parenting tasks to their own ability, effort, or mood, to difficulty of the task, or to child behavior. Few cross-cultural similarities emerged; rather, systematic culture effects for both self-evaluations and attributions were common, such as varying degrees of competence and satisfaction in parenting, and these effects are interpreted in terms of specific cultural proclivities and emphases. Child gender was not an influential factor. Parents' self-evaluations and attributions help to explain how and why parents parent and provide further insight into the broader cultural contexts of children's development. In the burgeoning study of parenting, what and how parents think about their own parenting have both descriptive and ex- planatory values. Two salient aspects of parental thought are self-evaluations of parenting and attributions of parental suc- cesses and failures. In this study, we obtained information about mothers' self-evaluations of their competence, satisfaction, in- vestment, and role balance in parenting and about mothers' attri- butions for their successes and failures in diverse parenting tasks; we compared these self-evaluations and attributions among mothers in seven nations, including Argentina, Belgium, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, and the United States. Parents' ideas about their own parenting may not only shape parents' sense of self but also influence parenting behaviors or mediate the effectiveness of those behaviors and ultimately af- fect child development (see Goodnow & Collins, 1990; Hark- ness& Super, 1996; Holden, 1995; McGillicuddy-DeLisi & Sigel, 1995; Miller, 1988). Self-evaluations and attributions might anticipate parenting practices in the same way that Dar- ling and Steinberg (1993) construed parenting goals and values Marc H. Bornstein, O. Maurice Haynes, Hiroshi Azuma, Celia Gal- perln, Sharone Maital, Misako Ogino, Kathleen Painter, Liliana Pascual, Marie-Germaine P~cheux, Charles Rahn, Sueko Toda, Paola Verluti, An- dr6 Vyt, and Barbara Wright, Child and Family Research, National Insti- tute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. We thank members of the ESTUDIO I.P.M. Investigaciones en Psico- logia y Medicina, H. Bornstein, S. Galperfn, J. Genevro, G. Jaimsky, V. Lewis, J. Ruel, M.I. S~irate, K. Schulthess, J.T.D. Suwalsky, K.M. Tanner, K. Trivisonno, and F. Vander Linden for assistance. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Marc H. Bornstein, Child and Family Research, Laboratory of Comparative Ethology, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Building 31--Room B2B15, 9000 Rock- ville Pike, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-2030. Electronic mail may be sent to Marc_ H_Bornstein @nih.gov. 662 do: Parenting practices fall causally between self-evaluations and attributions, on the one hand, and child outcomes, on the other hand. Of course, children engender parenting beliefs and provoke parenting practices; child rearing is a transactional pro- cess. Nonetheless, self-evaluations and attributions exert direct effects on parenting practices, influence the relative effectiveness of parenting practices, and constitute important "emotional cli- mate" variables with respect to parenting practices, any of which influence child growth. How might these patenting beliefs link to parenting behaviors or child outcomes? Regarding self- evaluations, according to the self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1986), mothers who feel more competent in their role as parent, for example, can be expected to act with their children in more optimal and effective (warm, sensitive, and responsive) ways (e.g., Baldwin, Cole, & Baldwin, 1982; Johnston & Mash, 1989; Peterson & Seligman, 1984). Greater satisfaction with the ma- ternal role is associated with more favorable adjustment to moth- erhood (e.g., Owen & Cox, 1988). This is similar with attribu- tions. Mothers who attribute child-rearing failures to their own abilities versus their children's behavior, for example, behave in different ways toward their children (e.g., Dix, 1991). More generally, self-evaluations and attributions can be expected to mediate or moderate parents' behaviors (e.g., McGillicuddy- DeLisi & Sigel, 1995; Weiner, 1985). As mediators, self-evalua- tions and attributions convey the effects of events (like child behaviors) on parenting responses (like interactions). As mod- erators, self-evaluations and attributions may qualify the effects of events on parenting responses. Studying parents' self-evalua- tions and attributions also contributes to understanding the full social ecology of child development, including the settings in which the child lives, the customs of child care and child rearing, and the psychology of the child's caregivers, as Super and Hark- ness (1986) theorized in developing the concept of the child's "developmental niche." Ideas about parenting are multifaceted and are doubtlessly