Maternal psychological control and preschool children’s behavioral outcomes in China, Russia, and the United States, by Olsen, Susanne Frost; Yang, Chongming; Hart, Craig H.; Robinson, Clyde C.; Wu, Peixia; Intrusive parenting: How psychological control affects children and adolescents. PsycBOOKS® – Jan 1, 2002
Abstract
Looks at the cross-cultural validity of the psychological control construct, using samples of young children (aged 40-79 mo) from the US, Russia, and China and their parents (aged 21-62 yrs). In addition to demonstrating some variance in the levels of parent-reported psychological control (highest for mothers of Russian girls; lowest for mothers of US girls), the authors found psychological control to be predictive of internalized and externalized child problems in all of the samples. The patterns of association varied by type of problem and by sex of child, which suggest the importance of testing for child sex differences. This study provides a foundation for comparative work on the relevance of parental psychological control to younger children’s functioning, in demonstrating that psychological control of younger children can be reliably measured via parental reports and that the growing evidence of the salience of psychological control to adolescent functioning cross-culturally can also be discerned among children in a variety of cultures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)