Influences of Caregivers’ Cultural Norms, Values, Beliefs and Experiences on Caregiver Physical Aggression
Author: Lin
Funding: UCI, Chancellor’s Club Fund for Excellence Fellowship; Society for Research in Child Development Student and Early Career Council Dissertation Research Funding Award
This mixed-methods dissertation addresses whether cultural factors such as caregiver norms, values, and beliefs that have been associated with caregiver aggression within certain cultures are applicable to different cultures, as well as how immigrants’ experiences, acculturation, and generation status may play a role in this process. The first half of the study uses survey data to address how caregivers’ cultural norms, values, and beliefs (e.g., familism, filial piety, machismo attitudes) are associated with individuals’ experiences of physical punishment, to reveal cultural links to physical aggression for various groups. The second half of the study utilizes cross-cultural focus group data with mothers, who are Taiwanese and living in Taiwan, Taiwanese immigrants to the U.S., and U.S. born Taiwanese-Americans. These focus groups addresses mothers’ experiences parenting, disciplinary tactics used, and factors that inform their parenting and disciplinary tactics, to determine which risk and protective factors for physical discipline persist across all three groups and which are unique.