Mothers' goals for adolescents in the United States and China: content and transmission

The current research examined how children are socialized toward culturally valued goals during adolescence in the United States and China. 221 mothers listed and ranked their 5 most important goals for their children (mean age = 12.85 years). Children also ranked the importance of the goals and explained why they were or were not important to them. Mothers from the 2 countries held some similar goals (e.g., for children to be prosocial), but also differed. Most notably, American mothers placed heightened emphasis on children maintaining feelings of worth as well as pursuing what they enjoy. Chinese mothers stressed children achieving outcomes to a greater extent, as did African (vs. European) American mothers. European American children’s rankings of importance were the least similar to those of mothers, and they gave the fewest autonomous reasons for importance indicating that goal adoption was weakest among European American children. The findings suggest that the transmission of goals from one generation to the next may be weaker in the United States, particularly among European Americans, than in China