AbstractChild abuse and neglect can be thought of as violations of children's rights. Declarations of children's rights have been formulated by adults; they are intended to be internationally valid, but little attempt has been made to find out what children themselves think about their rights, in any country.This study compared the views of Malaysian children and young adults with those of Australians. In both countries the right to love, affection and understanding ranked highly. Few children ranked highly their rights to freedom from fear of harm, or to protection; young adults ranked them more highly than the children. Most young people perceived schools as holding views very different from their own on children's rights. If schools are to perform a useful function in preventing abuse and neglect, children's views of schools may need to change, perhaps through changes in the schools.
AbstractThis study compared parenting across four non‐Western cultures to test cross‐cultural commonality and specificity principles in three aspects: measurement properties, parenting normativeness, and their associations with child outcomes. Both mothers and fathers (N = 1509 dyads) with preschool‐aged children (M = 5.00 years; 48% girls) from urban areas of four countries (Malaysia, N = 372; China, N = 441; Turkey, N = 402; and Japan, N = 294) reported on four parenting constructs (authoritative, authoritarian, group harmony socialization, and intrusive control) and their sub‐dimensions using modified culturally relevant measures. Teachers reported on children's internalizing, externalizing, and prosocial behaviors. The commonality principle was supported by two sets of findings: (1) full measurement invariance was established for most parenting constructs and sub‐dimensions, except that intrusive control only reached partial scalar invariance, and (2) no variations were found in associations between parenting and any child outcomes across cultures or parent gender at the construct level for all four parenting constructs and at the sub‐dimensional level for authoritarian and intrusive control sub‐dimensions. The specificity principle was supported by the other two sets of findings: (1) cross‐cultural differences in parenting normativeness did not follow the pattern of economic development but yielded culture‐specific patterns, and (2) at the sub‐dimensional level, the authoritative parenting and group harmony socialization sub‐dimensions were differently associated with child outcomes across cultures and/or parent gender. The findings suggested that examining specific dimensions rather than broad parenting constructs is necessary to reflect cultural specificities and nuances. Our study provided a culturally‐invariant instrument and a three‐step guide for future parenting research to examine cross‐cultural commonalities/specificities.Research Highlights This is the first study to use an instrument with measurement invariance across multiple non‐Western cultures to examine the commonality and specificity principles in parenting. Measurement invariance was achieved across cultures for authoritative and authoritarian parenting, group harmony socialization, intrusive control, and their sub‐dimensions, supporting the commonality principle. Cross‐cultural differences in parenting normativeness did not follow the pattern of economic development but yielded culture‐specific patterns, supporting the specificity principle. Both commonalities and specificities were manifested in associations between parenting and child outcomes across cultures.
