Parents' Role in Chinese and American Children's Academic and Emotional Functioning

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

Chinese children are more engaged in school than are American children. It is thus not surprising that they outperform American children in the academic arena. This edge has led to recommendations that American parents adopt Chinese parents' learning-related practices. Caution is warranted, however, because Chinese children perceive their competence more negatively than do their American counterparts, which may contribute to their heightened vulnerability to poor emotional functioning as they move into adolescence. Focusing on this phase of development in China and the United States, this project has three major aims: (1) Identify whether the heightened academic and dampened emotional functioning of Chinese (vs. American) children is due, in part, to the heightened reactivity of the glucocorticoid hormone cortisol in the face of challenge; (2) elucidate the role of parents' learning-related socialization practices in the differences between Chinese and American children's academic and emotional functioning; (3) determine why Chinese and American parents use different learning-related socialization practices, with attention to the effect of parents' learning-related beliefs. To investigate these aims, children entering adolescence and their mothers in China and the United States will participate in a three-wave project spanning a one-year period. A key strength of the project is its use of observations, self-reports, and biological assessments in different contexts (e.g., before and after challenge). Effective policies and programs aimed at what has been labelled America's "vanishing potential" require a sophisticated understanding of the forces that contribute to children's learning. This project will be informative as to whether and how best practices from China and the United States may be combined to optimize academic and emotional functioning among children. It will be the first to examine whether Chinese children's academic edge over American children may come at an emotional cost due to heightened biological reactivity to challenge. Moreover, the concern with elucidating the role of parents' learning-related practices in the differences in Chinese and American children's academic and emotional functioning moves beyond the largely descriptive research in this area to identifying underlying mechanisms. Because there is variability among parents within China and the United States in their learning-related practices, the project will provide insight into the effects of such practices within the two countries. In doing so, it will allow for an evaluation of the similarity of the socialization process in the two, an issue over which there is controversy. Together these advances will shape models of socialization which have an almost exclusively American foundation. Despite the import of research efforts involving multiple countries, such efforts are relatively rare. Thus, the proposed research will provide unique training opportunities.