Child and Family Research, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 6705 Rockledge Drive, Bethesda, MD, USA.
World Psychiatry. 2013 Oct;12(3):258-65. doi: 10.1002/wps.20071.
In its most general instrumental sense, parenting consists of care of the young in preparing them to manage the tasks of life. Parents provide childhood experiences and populate the environments that guide children's development and so contribute to child mental health. Parenting is expressed in cognitions and practices. However, parents do not parent, and children do not grow up, in isolation, but in multiple contexts, and one notable context of parenting and child mental health is culture. Every culture is characterized, and distinguished from other cultures, by deep-rooted and widely acknowledged ideas about how one needs to feel, think, and act as an adequately functioning member of the culture. Insofar as parents subscribe to particular conventions of a culture, they likely follow prevailing "cultural scripts" in childrearing. Broadening our definition, it is therefore the continuing task of parents also to enculturate children by preparing them for the physical, psychosocial, and educational situations that are characteristic of their specific culture. Cross-cultural comparisons show that virtually all aspects of parenting children are informed by culture: culture influences when and how parents care for children, what parents expect of children, and which behaviors parents appreciate, emphasize and reward or discourage and punish. Thus, cultural norms become manifest in the mental health of children through parenting. Furthermore, variations in what is normative in different cultures challenge our assumptions about what is universal and inform our understanding of how parent-child relationships unfold in ways both culturally universal and specific. This essay concerns the contributions of culture to parenting and child mental health. No study of a single society can address this broad issue. It is possible, however, to learn lessons about parenting and child mental health from the study of different societies.
从最普遍的工具意义上讲，育儿包括照顾幼儿，使他们能够应对生活的各项任务。父母为孩子提供童年经历，并营造指导他们发展的环境，从而促进孩子的心理健康。育儿表现为认知和实践。然而，父母并非孤立地育儿，孩子也并非孤立地成长，而是在多种环境中成长，而育儿和儿童心理健康的一个显著环境是文化。每一种文化都有其特点，并与其他文化区分开来，其特点是存在关于人们作为文化的充分发挥作用的成员需要如何感受、思考和行动的根深蒂固且广泛认可的观念。只要父母认同文化的某些特定习俗，他们就有可能在育儿方面遵循普遍存在的“文化剧本”。从更广泛的定义来看，因此，父母的持续任务还包括通过使孩子为特定文化所特有的身体、心理社会和教育情况做好准备，来使孩子适应文化。跨文化比较表明，育儿的几乎所有方面都受到文化的影响：文化影响父母何时以及如何照顾孩子、父母对孩子的期望以及父母欣赏、强调和奖励哪些行为，以及不鼓励和惩罚哪些行为。因此，文化规范通过育儿在儿童的心理健康中表现出来。此外，不同文化中规范的差异挑战了我们关于普遍性的假设，并使我们了解到亲子关系以文化普遍和特定的方式展开的方式。本文探讨了文化对育儿和儿童心理健康的贡献。单一社会的研究不可能解决这个广泛的问题。然而，从不同社会的研究中可以了解到有关育儿和儿童心理健康的经验教训。
