Cultural Moderation of the Effects of Parenting: Answered and Unanswered Questions

In this article, I address the cultural moderation of the links between parenting and children's adjustment, and highlight avenues for research. First, I address whether cultural moderation effects occur. I review an inconsistent pattern of results, suggesting that cultural moderation effects are not robust in nature and raising the need to systematically uncover their parameters. Then, I consider the underlying mechanism of cultural moderation effects. Researchers agree that such effects stem from differential meanings of the same parenting behavior across cultures, but we still need direct evidence of how meaning variables account for cultural moderation effects. Such evidence can come from studies that incorporate four components: parents' behavior, children's adjustment, cultural variables, and meaning variables. Finally, I propose a theoretical model that outlines how different elements create and convey the meaning of parental behavior across three temporal stages: before, during, and after the behavior occurs.