644 Maternal Regulation Strategies in the United States and Turkey A Brief Report Zeynep Çatay Istanbul Bilgi University Rhianon Allen Lisa Wallner Samstag Long Island University This study examines the cultural and socioeconomic differences in the regulation strategies of Euro-American and Turkish mothers. Participants are interviewed about how they would man- age their children’s problem behaviors under hypothetical scenarios. American mothers are found to rely more extensively on appeals to their own authority and on rules, whereas Turkish mothers employ appeals to consequences and other-oriented strategies to a greater degree. Higher socioeconomic status (SES) mothers use strategies that emphasize decision-making capacities more frequently. Keywords: parenting; culture; behavior regulation strategies C hild-rearing practices have been an important area of cross-cultural research, where cultural differences in value systems and self-construals are expressed as well as trans- mitted to new generations. In Western cultures, where a more independent model affects the patterning of self and other relationships, promotion of autonomy, self-sufficiency, and independence have been noted to emerge as important values that guide various aspects of parenting. (See Rothbaum, Pott,Azuma, Miyake, & Weisz, 2000, for a review.) In more collectivistic cultures, on the other hand, parents value familial interdependence, respect for authority, obedience, and emotional interdependence (Zayas & Solari, 1994). In these cultures, the close emotional bond between the mother–child dyad fostered in the early years and the child’s desire to please the mother later translates into a social sen- sitivity and willingness to accommodate to social expectations (Lebra, 1994; Rothbaum et al., 2000). This point was demonstrated by Conroy, Hess, Azuma, and Kashiwagi’s (1980) study comparing behavioral regulation strategies used by Euro-American and Japanese mothers. Conroy et al. found that Japanese mothers relied more on internally oriented appeal strate- gies while trying to manage their children’s undesired behaviors. Rather than exerting direct authority, they mostly referred to the consequences of the child’s behavior and the type of feelings it would engender in herself and others. They also relied more on persua- sion without an apparent demand of compliance but expecting that the child’s internalized desire to please the mother would result in his or her compliance. Euro-American mothers, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology Volume 39 Number 5 September 2008 644-649 © 2008 Sage Publications 10.1177/0022022108321179 http://jccp.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com Brief Report at CW POST CENTER on March 12, 2015 jcc.sagepub.com Downloaded from