Papaligoura Z. Developmental consequences of early parenting experiences: Self-recognition and self-regulation in three cultural communities. Child Development

This study relates parenting of 3-month-old children to children’s self-recognition and self-regulation at 18 to 20 months. As hypothesized, observational data revealed differences in the sociocultural orientations of the 3 cultural samples ’ parenting styles and in toddlers ’ development of self-recognition and self-regulation. Children of Cameroonian Nso farmers who experience a proximal parenting style develop self-regulation earlier, children of Greek urban middle-class families who experience a distal parenting style develop self-recognition earlier, and children of Costa Rican middle-class families who experience aspects of both distal and proximal parenting styles fall between the other 2 groups on both self-regulation and self-recognition. Results are discussed with respect to their implications for culturally informed developmental pathways. There is a growing awareness that universal devel-opmental tasks may be solved differently in different sociocultural environments (Greenfield, Keller, Fu