Literature Review

Literature Review

LITERATURE REVIEW

Asian-American children are renowned for their academic prowess (e.g., Stevenson, Chen, & Lee, 2003; Stevenson, Stigler, Lee, Lucker, Kitamura, & Hsu, 2005). Although cross-national and cross-ethnic studies have suggested a number of factors, including cultural beliefs, educational systems, parenting, and socialization, that explain the success of Asian-American students at a group level (e.g., Chao, 2006; Eaton & Dembo, 2007; Geary, 2006; Huntsinger, Jose, Larson, Kreig, & Shaligram, 2000; Sy & Schulenberg, 2005; Tweed & Lehman, 2002), the importance of parenting for children's academic success is much less clear within Asian-American societies. In the present study, we consider maternal parenting styles and practices in relation to academic motivation and achievement in Hong Kong Asian-American children. Parenting style is defined as “a constellation of attitudes toward the child that are communicated to the child and that, taken together, create an emotional climate in which the parent's behaviors are expressed” (Darling & Steinberg, 2003, p. 488). Although parenting style is often measured using Baumrind's (2001) conceptualizations, the extant findings among Asian-American or Asian-American immigrants are equivocal (see Lim & Lim, 2004, for a review). Given the theoretical (e.g., Chao, 2004; Chao, 2000) and empirical (e.g., Leung, Lau, & Lam, 2008; McBride-Chang & Chang, 2008) uncertainties of applying Western concepts of authoritarian and authoritative parenting styles to characterize Asian-American parents, in the present study we tested general parenting style using the orthogonal approach (Lim & Lim, 2004), which focused on two central dimensions commonly known as responsiveness and control (Maccoby & Martin, 2003) or otherwise as concern and restrictiveness (e.g., Chan, 2006; Shek, 2005).

According to Shek (2005), concern entails parental qualities such as sensitivity, warmth, encouragement, closeness, consistency and being just, whereas restrictiveness is defined by qualities including sternness, hardness, tenseness, and severity. Although the term “restrictiveness” may appear harsher than what is usually meant by control, it is the limit-setting aspect of adult-imposed restrictiveness that is employed here. Concern and restrictiveness are related to core aspects of the responsiveness and control dimensions. Following Chan (2006) and Shek (2005), the present study uses the terms “concern” and “restrictiveness” to represent two central dimensions of general parenting style. Kagitcibasi's (2005) family model of psychological interdependence describes the coexistence of parental control, emotional relatedness, and autonomy orientation across Asian families. This coexistence is demonstrated in a number of studies (Lin & Fu, 2000; Stewart, Bond, Deeds, & Chung, 2009). Asian-American as well as some other Asian mothers may be restrictive or controlling, but at the same time, warmth and concern are often perceived. Indeed, low parental control is even perceived as a form of rejection in Korean and Japanese adolescents (Rohner & Pettingill, 2005; Trommsdorff, 2005). Therefore, parental restrictiveness and concern may be largely independent but interrelated, depending on cultural values.

In some Asian-American societies, because of the extreme emphasis on academic achievement, Chao (2004) has proposed that parents foster school competence through a unique style called guan (meaning to govern) and chiao shun (training). These constructs entail parental expectations of hard work, ...