CULTURE AND

This chapter aims to contribute to the discussion about the quality of parent-child relations from a cross-cultural perspective. Kuczynski and the other authors in this volume are critical of the traditional and widely accepted assumption that parent-child relations are characterized by a static, asymmetric power structure and unidirec-tional causality-that is, that parents influence their children's development, but not vice versa. In contrast, the concept of a bidirectional parent-child relation recognizes the influence, agency, and power of the child. In line with Kuczynski, the present chapter starts with the assumption that parent-child relations are bidirectional in many aspects. In addition, however, it points out that parent-child interactions are embedded in a broader sociocultural context and that they there-fore differ in quality, function, and meaning in different cultures. Furthermore, the relation of unidirectionality and bidirectionality may also differ. The present chapter attempts to contribute to an understanding of parent-child relations from a culturally informed perspective in order to avoid ethnocentric theorizing. Parent-child relations have been studied mostly in Western cultures and by researchers who were socialized in the West and who there-fore tend to interpret their data from a Western perspective. Furthermore, researchers previ-ously studying parent-child relations have tried to do so in accordance with the experimental paradigm of natural sciences, using the concept of "independent " variables influencing "depen-dent " variables. These studies have regarded the cultural context as irrelevant or as a source of error variance; the cultural context was even ignored in order to exclude confounding factors. Therefore, one must ask whether the concept of bidirectionality (Kuczynski & Lollis, in press; Kuczynski, Marshall, & Schell, 1997) is univer-sally valid or instead applies only to the con-temporary Western world. This question can be answered only by means of cross-cultural studies. Authors ' Note: We are grateful for the valuable comments of the editor and the helpful suggestions by A. J. Sobczak an