The Impact of Parenting Style on Preschoolers’ Theory of Mind Development: A Cross-cultural Perspective

Abstract

Parenting styles usually divided into authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive parenting impact children's development. Previous studies showed a correlation between parenting styles and children's theory-of-mind understanding as a key social cognitive ability. What is more, parenting styles reveal a cultural difference. Combining with the cross-cultural perspective of East-West and collectivism and Individualism, western nations tend to be individualistic. In contrast, eastern nations are more likely to be collectivistic, and these different cultures influence parenting styles. With these impacts, children's theory-of-mind understanding in the east and west showed a diverse level of development. In the study, it was found that western children showed a superior understand of the theory of mind than those in the eastern. In addition, the sequence of children's acquisition of theory of mind varies in east and Anglo-West. Additionally, eastern children's mastery of executive function as a key factor relative to children's theory of mind within their parental parenting influence is diverse compared with those in western. Although present studies indicated a correlation between parenting and preschoolers' theory-of-mind development, there are three limitations and relevant future directions: a) the studies focus more on preschoolers' cross-sectional research but fewer on middle-aged children in longitudinal research to discuss whether parenting styles can predict their later development; b) parenting styles was seldom directly connected with theory-of-mind development to assess their relation, and also the measured approach of the theory of mind is more likely to be assessed with children's individual skill instead of general skills; c) parenting styles are evaluated with a unitary way adapted from Baumrind's theory that is incomprehensive and inflexible.