IDEAS ABOUT PARENTING IN ARGENTINA, FRANCE, AND THE UNITED-STATES

Central to a concept of culture is the expectation that different peop les possess different ideas and behave in different ways with respect to child rearing. In this study, we investigated ideas that Argentine, French, and US American mothers hold about their own and their husban ds' actual child rearing, as well as what they consider to be ideal ch ild rearing, in three parenting domains: social, didactic, and limit s etting. For each domain, we analysed mothers' reports of their actual behaviours and of their husbands' actual behaviours; mothers' ideal ex pectations of their own and their husbands' behaviours; and mothers' d issonance with respect to parenting (i.e. the extent to which mothers' actual and their husbands' actual behaviours each agrees with mothers ' ideal expectations for themselves and for their husbands). The resul ts showed consistent parent, country, as well as parent-by-country eff ects, interpretable in terms of overarching cultural beliefs. The stud y of parents' ideas contributes to understanding why and how parents b ehave the way they do toward children, and provides insights into the broader social context of child development.