PARENTING PRACTICES AND EXPECTATIONS AMONG MEXICAN MOTHERS WITH YOUNG-CHILDREN

Parenting practices and developmental expectations were examined in a sample of 221 Mexican mothers with very young children living in Guada lajara, Jalisco. They completed a Spanish version of the Parent Behavi or Checklist (PBC), a 100-item rating scale that measures parents' dev elopmental expectations, discipline, and nurturing practices. The psyc hometric properties of the PBC for Mexican mothers, including test-ret est reliabilities, were very similar to those found for mothers of you ng children in the United States. Younger Mexican mothers used more fr equent discipline and less nurturing with their young children than ol der mothers did. Married mothers nurtured their children more than unm arried mothers; young, unmarried mothers nurtured their children the l east. Lower nurturing scores were associated with lower education leve ls, and higher nurturing scores were associated with higher education levels. Mothers from higher socioeconomic levels held higher developme ntal expectations for their children, and they used less frequent disc ipline and more frequent nurturing practices than mothers from lower s ocioeconomic levels. These findings are consistent with those for moth ers of young children in the United States.