Coppens Andrew D, Corwin Anna I, Alcalá Lucía
Education Department, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, United States.
Anthropology Department, Saint Mary's College of California, Moraga, CA, United States.
Front Psychol. 2020 Mar 12;11:307. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00307. eCollection 2020.
This study examined linguistic patterns in mothers' reports about their toddlers' involvement in everyday household work, as a way to understand the parental ethnotheories that may guide children's prosocial helping and development. Mothers from two cultural groups - US Mexican-heritage families with backgrounds in indigenous American communities and middle-class European-American families - were interviewed regarding how their 2- to 3-year-old toddler gets involved in help with everyday household work. The study's analytic focus was the linguistic form of mothers' responses to interview questions asking about the child's efforts to help with a variety of everyday household work tasks. Results showed that mothers responded with linguistic patterns that were indicative of ethnotheoretical assumptions regarding children's agency and children's prosocial intentions, with notable contrasts between the two cultural groups. Nearly all US Mexican-heritage mothers reported children's contributions and participation using linguistic forms that centered children's agency and prosocial initiative, which corresponds with extensive evidence suggesting the centrality of both children's autonomy and supportive prosocial expectations in how children's helpfulness is socialized in this and similar cultural communities. By contrast, middle-class European-American mothers frequently responded to questions about their child's efforts to help with linguistic forms that "pivoted" to either the mother as the focal agent in the child's prosocial engagement or to reframing the child's involvement to emphasize non-help activities. Correspondence between cultural differences in the linguistic findings and existing literature on socialization of children's prosocial helping is discussed. Also discussed is the analytic approach of the study, uncommon in developmental psychology research, and the significance of the linguistic findings for understanding parental ethnotheories in each community.
本研究考察了母亲们在讲述幼儿参与日常家务劳动时的语言模式，以此来理解可能指导儿童亲社会帮助行为和发展的父母民族理论。来自两个文化群体的母亲——有美国原住民社区背景的美籍墨西哥裔家庭以及中产阶级欧美家庭——接受了访谈，内容涉及她们2到3岁的幼儿是如何参与日常家务劳动的帮助的。该研究的分析重点是母亲们对关于孩子帮助完成各种日常家务劳动任务的努力的访谈问题的回答的语言形式。结果表明，母亲们的回答所采用的语言模式表明了关于儿童能动性和亲社会意图的民族理论假设，两个文化群体之间存在显著差异。几乎所有美籍墨西哥裔母亲在报告孩子的贡献和参与时，使用的语言形式都以孩子的能动性和亲社会主动性为中心，这与大量证据相符，这些证据表明在这个及类似文化社区中，儿童的自主性和支持性亲社会期望在儿童帮助行为的社会化过程中都很重要。相比之下，中产阶级欧美母亲在回答关于孩子帮助努力的问题时，经常使用的语言形式要么是以母亲作为孩子亲社会参与中的核心主体，要么是重新构建孩子的参与，以强调非帮助性活动。文中讨论了语言研究结果中的文化差异与现有关于儿童亲社会帮助行为社会化的文献之间的对应关系。还讨论了该研究在发展心理学研究中不常见的分析方法，以及语言研究结果对于理解每个社区中父母民族理论的意义。
