Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 2007, 48, 487–497 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9450.2007.00618.x

© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. ISSN 0036-5564.

UNCORRECTED PROOF

Blackwell Publishing Ltd Development and Aging

Child-rearing goals of Estonian, Finnish, and Swedish mothers

TIIA TULVISTE,1,2 LUULE MIZERA,1,2 BOEL DE GEER2 and MARJA-TERTTU TRYGGVASON2

1University of Tartu, and Centre of Behavioral and Health Sciences, Estonia2Södertörn University College, Sweden

Tulviste, T., Mizera, L., De Geer, B. & Tryggvason, M.-T. (2007). Child-rearing goals of Estonian, Finnish, and Swedish mothers.Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 48, 487–497.

In the present study, the child-rearing goals of mothers of 4- to 6-year-old children from Estonia, Finland, and Sweden were compared. Thedeveloped Child-Rearing Goals Questionnaire consisted of three different tasks: open-ended questions, item rating, and item ranking. All motherswere similar in valuing highly self-maximization, but differed in emphasis on traditional child-rearing goals (e.g., conformity, obedience, polite-ness, being hard-working, etc.). The Swedish mothers tended to stress the characteristics connected with self-maximization as well as self-confidence and children’s happiness, but did not value the traditional child-rearing goals. The Estonian mothers attached a great significanceboth to the traditional characteristics and to self-maximization. The Finnish mothers also stressed both traditional and non-traditional values,but to a lesser extent than the Estonians. The Swedish and Finnish mothers’ child-rearing goals were relatively homogeneous. In contrast, theEstonian mothers were generally less focused on any specific goal. Mothers with a lower level of education stressed traditional goals morethan mothers with a higher level of education. The results are discussed in the light of the possible effect different cultural contexts have onmaternal child-rearing goals: bringing up children in stable welfare societies (such as Sweden and Finland) in contrast to a rapidly changingsociety (such as Estonia).

Key words: Child-rearing goals, Estonia, Finland, Sweden.

Professor Tiia Tulviste, Department of Psychology & Centre of Behavioral and Health Sciences, University of Tartu, Tiigi 78–336, 50410 Tartu,Estonia. Tel: (372 7) 375906; fax: (372 7) 375900; e-mail: tiia.tulviste@ut.ee

INTRODUCTION

The study examines the influence of the socio-cultural con-text that the parents live in on their child-rearing goals bycomparing the child-rearing goals of mothers from relativelystable welfare societies (such as Finland and Sweden) withthose in Estonia – a country in rapid socio-economicaltransformations.

Parental views regarding children and child-rearing havereceived considerable attention in the literature since the 1950sbecause of their importance in understanding and explain-ing the variation in people’s parenting behaviors that, inturn, have an impact on the child outcome – for example, onthe development of social and moral values (see Hirsijärvi& Perälä-Littunen, 2001; Hoff, Laursen & Tardif, 2002;Holden, 1995). The existing studies document that con-textual factors, like family’s cultural background, socio-economic status and neighborhood safety, family income,parental educational level and occupation, are shapingchild-rearing values and goals. Despite the popularity ofcontextual influences on parental child-rearing goals as atopic of study, there are still many unanswered questionsconcerning the nature and extent of the differences, andtheir relationship with broader cultural ideologies and cul-tural models of raising children.

Cultural differences in child-rearing values and goals

To date, a great number of cross-cultural studies on child-rearing values have been carried out. Most of them havefocused on the question of how broader cultural ideologies– individualism vs collectivism, independent vs interdependentself, etc. – are reflected in parental child-rearing values. Inthese studies, parents from industrialized Western cultures,such as European American (Harwood, Handwerker, Schoel-merich & Leyendecker, 2001; Harwood, Miller & Irizarry,1995), German (Friedlmeier, Busch & Trommsdorff, 2003),and Swedish (Ekstrand & Ekstrand, 1987) with their empha-sis on individualistic values connected with self-achievementand self-actualization, have been compared with parents fromnon-Western cultures with predominantly collectivistic values,where the cultural ideal is interdependence and conformity.For example, Harwood et al. (1995) found that both work-ing and middle-class US mothers wanted their children whengrown up to possess the qualities of self-maximization, whereasPuerto Rican mothers valued respectfulness and properdemeanor. Generally, the Asian cultures have been found toemphasize values that reflect the collectivist orientation, likeobedience, hard-working, and honest. In a recent compara-tive study, parents under the influence of the Chinese culture(both Taiwan Chinese and Chinese American) were found to

488 T. Tulviste et al. Scand J Psychol 48 (2007)

© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

value stereotypically collectivistic traits (neatness, politeness,obedience, respect, etc.) more than mothers from the Americanmainstream culture (Jose, Huntsinger, Huntsinger & Liaw,2000). Similarly, Friedlmeier et al. (2003) showed that mothersfrom individualist Germany valued person-oriented charac-teristics more highly than mothers from collectivist Koreaand mothers from Brazil, where both individualism and col-lectivism were found to be high. Another comparative studyof parents’ expectations for their children’s behavior foundthat parents in Sweden stress independence and assertive-ness significantly more than parents in India (Ekstrand &Ekstrand, 1987).

Many recent comparative studies have shown that thecollectivism–individualism dichotomy is often too simplisticto adequately explain the vast range of found cultural differ-ences in parental child-rearing values. On the one hand, mothersfrom the dominant US culture differ also from mothersbelonging to other cultures with individualist orientation.For example, a comparative study on child-rearing valuesfound that adults from the US valued independence, hardwork and leadership more than adults from Australia,Belgium, Canada, France, Japan, Iceland, Italy, the Nether-lands, Norway, Spain and West Germany (Baer, Curtis, Grabb& Johnston, 1996). On the other hand, mothers from cultureswith dominantly collectivistic orientation have been foundto hold some values typical of individualistic orientation,and vice versa (Leyendecker, Harwood, Lamb & Schoel-merich, 2002; Wang & Phinney, 1998; Wang & Tamis-LeMonda,2003). A comparison of the US mothers’ child-rearing valueswith those of Taiwanese mothers demonstrated that, althoughthe former were more consistent with the individualistic ori-entation, the maternal values of American and Taiwanesemothers should not be dichotomized as collectivist and indi-vidualist, as in the item ordering task the US mothers ratedthe values of connectedness most highly (Wang & Tamis-LeMonda, 2003). In another study, Lin and Fu (1990) foundthat Taiwanese parents rated independence and achievementhigher than mothers from the US.

The findings have aroused a debate about the nature ofcultural ideologies and models that shape the developmentalpathways. Generally, two different cultural pathways ofdevelopment have been identified in the literature: socializa-tion towards independence with an emphasis on individualisticvalues related to self-achievement, self-actualization, self-expression and autonomy; and socialization towards inter-dependence which places importance on group membership,interdependence, and conformity (see Greenfield, Keller,Fuligni and Maynard, 2003). Many authors see bipolar con-ceptions of cultural models as too simplified and reductive,and postulate the coexistence of both cultural models in everycultural group and each individual, yet in varying degrees.Other authors support Kagitçibasi (1996, 2005) and arguethat agency and interpersonal relatedness are two universalneeds in every culture, proposing the existence of a thirdcultural model of parenting – the model of autonomous

relatedness that combines emotional interdependence witheconomic independence. According to Kagitçibasi, in cul-tures with autonomous relatedness, the socialization goalsfocus on independence and autonomy as well as on the inte-gration into the family. Although many authors stress thedynamic interrelatedness between parental beliefs and valuesand the socio-cultural context parents live in, fewer studieshave been conducted to compare the socialization of childrenin families from countries that are relatively similar. At thesame time, such studies might help to understand the relation-ship between cultural context and child-rearing values –whether, how, and to what extent do parents from similarcultures differ in their child-rearing goals and values?

Child-rearing goals and cultural change

One possible explanation for the contradictory findings ofprevious cross-cultural studies is the fact that cultural valueschange over time along with the societal changes. Most studiesreporting that parents’ child-rearing goals reflect broaderdichotomous cultural ideologies were carried out earlierthan those studies reporting differences in goals of parentsfrom the same broader cultural ideologies. According to thecontextual approach to the child development that stressesthe impact of cultural and social factors on socialization, thechild-rearing values and practices depend not only on thecurrent cultural context, but also on the context of past andthe context of future (Cole, 1996; Valsiner, 2000). Similarly,according to Rosenthal and Roer-Strier (2001) the child-rearing goals depend on what is considered to be an adap-tive adult in that particular culture. One of the limitations ofprevious research is the fact that cultural change has receivedlittle attention in empirical studies of child-rearing values.Across cultures, the studies have demonstrated a generalshift toward more individualistic values, emphasizing thecapacity of the individual to stand as a self-sufficient person.In the US, the continuous shift away from the valuation ofobedience towards a growing preference for autonomy hasbeen taking place already since 1958 (Alwin, 1988). For example,adult preferences for child qualities linked to autonomy,self-fulfillment, and self-agency in criteria (self-sufficiency,self-reliance) were found when compared to the traditional,other-oriented criteria of the past (Arnett, 1998). Anotherstudy showed that young and middle-aged adults used sig-nificantly more agency attributes, whereas older adults usedcommunion attributes in their self-representations (Diel,Owen & Youngblade, 2004). Although there appear to besome general generational changes in human behavioracross many cultures, there are other factors to be taken intoaccount. For example, differences are likely to occur alsobetween the value systems of countries undergoing a rapidsocietal change (such as modern Estonia after the collapseof the Soviet Union in 1991) and countries with a long his-tory of stable democracy and welfare (such as Sweden andFinland). Until now, little is known about the likelihood and

Scand J Psychol 48 (2007) Child-rearing goals 489

© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

extent of changes in socialization patterns in transitionalsocieties, where parents are likely to emphasize and encour-age such characteristics that are desirable for meeting thedemands of a rapidly changing society (Lin & Fu, 1990;Tudge, Hogan, Snezhkova, Kulakova & Etz, 2000; Tulviste& Ahtonen, 2007). To fill this gap, the present study com-pares the child-rearing goals of mothers from relativelystable welfare societies to a society in transition.

Socioeconomic status and child-rearing goals

Many researchers stress the importance of the family’ssocioeconomic status in the transmission of values (see Hoffet al., 2002, for overview). The works of Kohn (1959) and hisfollowers indicate that parents tend to value in their childrenthe characteristics that they have found to be important inorder to achieve success in their own endeavours: working-class parents place a greater emphasis on conformity thanon self-direction in their children, whereas middle-classparents value self-direction over conformity. According toCashmore and Goodnow (1986), middle-class parentsemphasize “developmental values” (such as independence,eagerness to learn, ambition, achievement motivation, etc.),whereas working-class parents seem to be concerned withmore “traditional” values (e.g., neatness, obedience, respectfor adults). According to a comparative study on parentalvalues and beliefs in Estonia, Russia, the US and SouthKorea (Tudge et al., 1999), the middle-class parents in allcultures were more likely to stress the importance of self-direction than the working-class mothers. Parental educa-tion has been found to be the most important variable inaccounting for SES-related differences in parental child-rearing goals (Hoff et al., 2002). Besides parents’ education,family income plays an underlying role here. Some authors(Cashmore & Goodnow, 1986; LeVine, 1974) propose thatparents are concentrating on goals related to self-actualizationonly when the child’s material welfare has been guaranteed.At the same time, some more recent findings have challengedthe dichotomous view that the middle-class parents in allcultures are more likely to stress the importance of self-direction, whereas the working-class parents value conformityin children. As to the SES-related differences in mothers’and fathers’ socialization values in Estonia and Finland,a study by Tulviste and Ahtonen (2007) found that theeducational level had an impact on the type of categoriesused in the spontaneous descriptions of preschool-agechildren only as far as the fathers were concerned. Forexample, less educated Estonian and Finnish fathers(without a college degree) were more likely to name charac-teristics related to conformity than more educated fathers.At the same time the educational level had no significantinfluence on the mothers’ answers. Another study on Esto-nian adolescents’ mothers’ socialization values (Tulviste &Mizera, 2007) found that although all mothers placed agreat emphasis on independence, SES-related differences

occurred in the conformity values. Namely, the motherswith a lower educational level were more likely to emphasizethe conformity values than mothers with a higher educa-tional level. Thus, we found it interesting to compare SES-related differences in parental values related to conformityand self-direction in Estonia, Finland and Sweden to checkthe possibility that the SES-related differences appear clearlyonly in the extent of valuing conformity and other traditionalgoals in their children, but not in valuing self-maximizationand self-direction.

The present study

The first objective of the present study was to compare thechild-rearing goals of mothers of 4- to 6-year-old children inthree neighboring countries – Estonia, Finland, and Sweden.The study differs from most previous cross-cultural studieson child-rearing values that have seldom dealt with parentsfrom relatively similar cultural backgrounds (Harkness,Super & van Tijen, 2000). The Child-Rearing Goals Ques-tionnaire (Tulviste & Mizera, 2007) used in the current studyconsisted of three different tasks: open-ended questions,item rating and item ranking tasks. It is possible that signifi-cant cultural differences among similar cultures appear onlyin mothers’ spontaneous value judgments – in answers to theopen-ended questions (see Tamis-LeMonda, Wang, Kout-souvanou & Albright, 2002). In addition, answers to theopen-ended questions allow us to check whether child-rearing goals we chose to include in our list of items used inrating and ranking tasks correspond to those spontaneouslynamed by mothers from all three cultures. To find the cul-tural meaning of the characteristics, the respondents wereasked to provide examples of each characteristic named inthe answers to the open-ended questions.

For a bystander, Estonia, Finland and Sweden have manysimilarities: all three are members of the European Union,have a low population density, Nordic mentality, and preva-lently Protestant morale, to name a few. According toHofstede (2001), Estonians, Finns, and Swedes are relativelysimilar to each other in comparison with other countriesalso in respect of individualism and power distance, thoughEstonians were found to be closer to Finns than to Swedes.However, there are also many differences between the coun-tries. Sweden is famous by its long traditions of equalityideology (Daun, 1996) and liberal child-rearing practices. Acomparative parental value study (Dahlberg, 1992) foundthat Swedish mothers were less strict in their child-rearingpractices than mothers from 15 other European countries.They were giving more freedom to children and supportingless conformist behavior and obedience. In Estonia, by con-trast, a lasting support for more traditional child-rearingvalues and practices has been shown. In a recent compara-tive study, the Estonian mothers placed higher emphasis oncontrolling children than mothers living in Finland andSweden, and demonstrated strict control over their children’s

490 T. Tulviste et al. Scand J Psychol 48 (2007)

© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

behavior during real-life mother-child interactions (Tulviste,Mizera, De Geer & Tryggvason, 2003).

However, Finnish mothers also seem to emphasize tradi-tional values somewhat more than Swedish mothers. A com-parative study on mothers’ value preferences found thatmothers living in Sweden (the Estonian, Finnish, and Swedishmothers) placed more emphasis on the values of self-direction(creativity, curious, independence) and less on conformity(obedience and politeness) than the Estonian mothers livingin Estonia and Finnish mothers in Finland (Kants & Tulviste,2000). Consistently with these findings, a comparative studyon child-rearing values and styles of Finnish and Norwegianparents (Sethi, Aunola & Vanhatalo, 2000) reached the con-clusion that Finns appreciated benevolence, universalism,power, tradition, and conformity more than Norwegians.

Although mothers participating in the current study hadsimilar socio-economic background, it should be mentionedhere that the life standard in Estonia is still remarkablylower than in the Scandinavian welfare countries of Finlandand Sweden (GNP per capita in 2004 was 50, 115, and 116,respectively). It is possible that the differences in the coun-tries’ financial level might influence the child-rearing goalsof the parents. On the other hand, it is also possible that themany changes that have taken place in Estonia during thelast decade (the possibility to travel abroad, contacts withpeople from other countries, exposure to the Western massmedia, etc.) have transformed the old child-rearing goalsand are reflected in a new combination of traditional andnon-traditional parental child-rearing ideologies. A previouscomparative study on parental values and beliefs in Estonia,Russia, the US, and South Korea (Tudge et al., 1999) didnot find any significant cultural differences in mothers’valuation of self-direction in their children. The authors attri-buted the high emphasis on children’s self-direction that wasfound also in Estonia and Russia to the rapid cultural andeconomic changes taking place in these countries. Similarly,previous research on socialization practices has indicatedthat in quickly developing countries (e.g., China) parentsemphasize and encourage characteristics desirable formeeting the demands of rapidly changing societies such asachievement and independence (Lin & Fu, 1990).

According to the first hypothesis, the study will revealcultural differences in the traditional child-rearing goals –e.g., conformity, obedience, politeness, being hard-working –rather than in those connected to self-maximization – e.g.,independence, having an exploring mind, setting own goals.Namely, in comparison with other mothers, we expectedmothers from Estonia to be more concerned, and mothersfrom Sweden to be less concerned, with the traditional child-rearing goals, and the Finnish mothers to stress them lessthan Estonians, but more than Swedes. The second objectiveof the study was to compare the SES-related differences inchild-rearing goals. We expected the less educated mothersto stress more the traditional child-rearing goals than themore educated mothers, whereas we expected the child-

rearing goals related to self-maximization to be highlyvalued by all mothers participating in the study.

METHOD

Participants

Forty Estonian, 40 Finnish, and 42 Swedish mothers of preschoolchildren (ages from 4 to 6 years) participated in the study: the mothersof 20 boys and 20 girls (M = 5.1 years, SD = 0.6) in the Estoniansample, the mothers of 20 boys and 20 girls (M = 5.0 years, SD =0.5) in the Finnish sample, and the mothers of 22 boys and 20 girls(M = 5.1 years, SD = 0.6) in the Swedish sample. The Estonianmothers’ mean age was 32.48 years (SD = 5.23), the Finnish mothers’mean age was 36.10 years (SD = 5.59), and the Swedish mothers’mean age was 36.81 years (SD = 4.91). The mothers’ mean agediffered significantly across samples, F(2, 119) = 7.97, p < 0.001, dueto the fact that the Estonian mothers were significantly youngerthan the Finnish and Swedish mothers. 60% of mothers in the Finnish,62.5% of mothers in the Estonian, and 69% of mothers in the Swedishsample had a university degree. The data of the Swedish familieswere collected in Stockholm, Sweden. The Estonian data were collectedin Tallinn and Tartu in Estonia. The Finnish data were gathered inOulu in Finland.

Measures

The Child-Rearing Goals Questionnaire used in the survey con-sisted of three parts.

Open-ended questions. The participating mother was asked to write(1) which characteristics she likes in her child (to emphasize threemost relevant traits), (2) which characteristics she would like herchild to possess as an adult (to emphasize three most relevanttraits), and (3) which of her own main values she would like to passon to her child. To enable comparisons of cultural meanings of thecharacteristics, the mothers were asked to provide examples of eachcharacteristic they mentioned. For example, the mothers explainedwhat they meant by the characteristics they have named: outgoing –talks a lot, is not afraid of new contacts, social – likes to be withpeople and to communicate, kind – a good friend, independent – canplay on his own, has many own ideas, etc.

All characteristics that were named were translated into Englishand categorized by two researchers into the following categories:self-maximization characteristics, traditional characteristics, academiccharacteristics, and social-oriented characteristics. Table 1 presents thedefinitions and examples of all value categories. The examples providedby mothers helped in coding the characteristics into categories. Dis-agreements were resolved through discussion. Inter-rater reliabilityof coding the characteristics translated into English was calculatedbetween two researchers. The Cohen’s kappa value was 0.84.

The rating task consisted of a list of 20 child-rearing goals devel-oped by Tulviste and Mizera (2007), and was loosely based on thefindings of a comparative pilot study (see Kants & Tulviste, 2000)revealing the Swedish mothers’ significantly greater emphasis onself-direction, and smaller emphasis on obedience in contrast to theEstonian and Finnish mothers of adolescents (for a full list of items,see Table 4). The mothers were asked to indicate their agreement-disagreement with each item on a four-point Likert-type rating scale(1 = I certainly disagree, 2 = I rather disagree, 3 = I agree to someextent and 4 = I certainly agree).

Salience ratings of single items (item ranking). In addition to theresponses given to the items of the Child-Rearing Goals Questionnaire,

Scand J Psychol 48 (2007) Child-rearing goals 491

© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

the mothers were asked to choose three principles that were mostimportant to them among the 20 listed goals, and to rank themaccording to their importance.

Procedure

All participating families were monocultural, and recruited viapreschools. The Child-Rearing Goals Questionnaire was given to themothers who agreed to their children’s participation in a compara-tive peer interaction study, and they were asked to return the com-pleted questionnaires to a kindegarten teacher. The original versionof the questionnaire was developed in Estonian, and translated intoSwedish and Finnish, using back-translation procedures, for thepresent study.

RESULTS

Cultural differences in child-rearing values and goals

The results of the open-ended questions. Table 2 shows theproportions of categories of characteristics listed by motherswhile answering the open-ended questions about their ownchild (questions 1, 2, and 3) across cultures. As expected, wefound that the Estonian mothers named more, and theSwedish mothers less, traditional characteristics than othermothers, and the Finns were between the Estonians andSwedes in this respect, differing significantly from bothsamples. The finding that Swedish mothers named more,and Estonian mothers less self-maximization characteristicsthan others, contradicted the prediction. All mothers namedsocial-oriented characteristics in the same amount. An un-expected finding was that the Estonian mothers listed morecharacteristics related with academic success than the Finnsand Swedes.

Table 3 presents the proportions of the characteristicslisted most frequently by Estonian, Finnish and Swedishmothers, answering the open-ended questions of the Child-Rearing Goals Questionnaire regarding what they like intheir own child, the characteristics they desire in the childwhen grown up, and the characteristics they would like topass on to their child. As depicted in Table 2, the favoritecharacteristics spontaneously mentioned by mothers withdifferent cultural background varied significantly. For example,hard-working was frequently mentioned by the Estonian andFinnish mothers, whereas never mentioned by the Swedish

mothers. In contrast, happy was never mentioned by theEstonian mothers. At the same time, the mothers from thesame sample listed similar characteristics, regardless ofthe child’s gender.

The results of the item rating task. Table 4 shows the meanvalues and standard deviations of ratings given to the child-rearing goal items per sample. To examine whether the ratingsof items were associated with Country (Estonia vs. Finlandvs. Sweden) and Gender (mothers of boys vs. mothers ofgirls), we performed a series of two-way ANCOVAs on allitems separately with mothers’ age as a covariate, because ofthe possibility that the mother’s age would change the patternof the results (the older one is, the more one values conformity).A Country effect was found on several items, but no effectof Gender, or Gender and Country interaction. Two-wayANCOVAs showed that mothers’ age had a significantimpact only on the emphasis on the child to be self-reliantand independent, F(1, 118) = 7.49, p < 0.05, due to the factthat older mothers rated these goals lower. Table 4 presentsthe results of one-way ANCOVAs performed on all items toidentify the effect of Culture.

The mothers’ ratings were subjected to principal com-ponents analyses with Varimax normalized factor rotation.A principal components factor analysis yielded a three-factor solution that explained 42.97% of variance. The firstfactor was named Conformity factor, as it included itemssuch as Trustworthy, Polite, Respect elders, Hard-working andObedient. The second factor was named Self-maximization

Table 1. Definitions and examples of value categories

Value category Definition and content

Self-maximization Referring to values related with the development of one’s self-potential and individuality, like self-confidence, independence, curiosity, and autonomy

Academic Referring to values connected to school success, like smartness and intelligenceTraditional Referring to values emphasizing the traditional (Lutheran) morals and proper conduct, like diligence,

honesty, politeness, and working hardSocial-oriented characteristics Referring to values stressing relatedness to other people, like respect for others, sociable, friendly

Table 2. Distribution of characteristics related to each value categoryfor Estonian, Finnish and Swedish mothers

CategoryEstonian(%)

Finnish (%)

Swedish (%)

Self-maximization 33 F,S 48 E,S 65 E,F

Academic 10 F,S 3 E 1 E

Traditional 26 F,S 15 E,S 3 E,F

Social-oriented 31 34 30

Notes: Superscripts show significant differences among groups according to the Scheffé test at p < 0.05, the groups are marked as follows: E = Estonian mothers (n = 40); F = Finnish mothers (n = 40); S = Swedish mothers (n = 42).

492 T. Tulviste et al. Scand J Psychol 48 (2007)

© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

Table 3. Positive characteristics listed most frequently by Estonian, Finnish and Swedish mothers of boys and girls

Table 4. The results of ANCOVAs for item rating task across samples

Mothers Characteristics

Characteristics liked in own childEstonian

Boys kind, helpful (17%), witty, smart (11%), curious (9%), social (9%)Girls kind, helpful, friendly (23%), social (11%), smart, wise (7%)

FinnishBoys social, outgoing (16%), happy, positive (9%), tender (6%)Girls social, outgoing (16%), happy (16%), empathic (8%)

SwedishBoys curious (13%), social (10%)Girls happy (11%), curious (9%), social, outgoing (9%), loving (9%)

Characteristics desired in child when grown upEstonian

boys social, outgoing (10%), honest (10%), smart, witty (10%)girls hard-working (14%), honest (13%), kind, friendly, helpful (11%)

Finnishboys social, outgoing (27%), honest (22%), self-confident (12%)girls social, outgoing (23%), self-confident (14%), honest (14%)

Swedishboys curious (14%), independent (12%), happy (7%), imaginative (7%)girls high self-esteem (14%), curious (9%), happy, merry (6%), social, outgoing (6%), independent (6%)

Characteristics mothers would like to pass onEstonian

boys honest (21%), hard-working (17%), conscientious (17%), tolerant (17%)Estonian

girls conscientious (14%), honest (12%), hard-working (10%)Finnish

boys honest (20%), tolerant (17%), social, outgoing (13%)girls optimistic, positive (14%), honest (14%), hard-working (11%)

Swedishboys curious (15%), positive (8%)girls optimistic, positive (20%), high self-esteem (18%)

ItemsEstonian mothersM (SD)

Finnish mothersM (SD)

Swedish mothersM (SD)

F-values(2, 118)

1. to raise my child into a trustworthy person 3.88 (0.33) 3.77 (0.42) 3.79 (0.42) ns2. to give my child as much freedom of action as possible 3.35 (0.53) 3.00 (0.45) 3.24 (0.48) 5.69** E>F

3. to rear my child to be a polite and pleasant companion 3.90 (0.30) 3.63 (0.49) 3.50 (0.59) 7.39*** E>F,S

4. that my child was materially secured 3.43 (0.68) 3.20 (0.52) 3.33 (0.53) ns5. that my child could try the role of a leader 2.78 (0.73) 2.64 (0.67) 3.10 (0.66) 4.72* S>F

6. that my child would believe in one’s abilities 3.92 (0.27) 3.98 (0.16) 4.00 (0.00) ns7. that my child would have imagination and creativity 3.75 (0.44) 3.75 (0.44) 4.00 (0.00) 6.83** S>E,F

8. to teach my child to trust oneself in every situation 3.70 (0.46) 3.70 (0.46) 3.71 (0.15) ns9. that my child would be a respected person 3.68 (0.69) 3.12 (0.69) 3.62 (0.49) 9.32** F<E,S

10. to give my child as much right to decide as possible 3.18 (0.50) 3.43 (0.55) 3.21 (0.61) ns11. to raise my child to be independent 3.90 (0.30) 3.55 (0.55) 3.76 (0.43) 6.40** E>F

12. that my child would make an effort to fulfill one’s aims 3.83 (0.45) 3.70 (0.46) 3.73 (0.50) ns13. that my child would grow up to be an influential person 2.65 (0.74) 2.41 (0.59) 2.60 (0.80) ns14. that my child would respect elders 3.83 (0.38) 3.82 (0.38) 3.52 (0.55) 6.19** E,F>S

15. to teach my child to set one’s own goals 3.90 (0.30) 3.57 (0.55) 3.68 (0.47) 4.66* E>F

16. that my child would grow up to be a hard-working person 3.95 (0.22) 3.68 (0.57) 2.98 (0.47) 49.32*** E>F>S

17. that my child would be obedient 3.13 (0.65) 3.10 (0.50) 2.78 (0.52) 4.47* E,F>S

18. that my child would be smart and intelligent 3.95 (0.32) 3.35 (0.53) 3.17 (0.59) 25.22*** E>F,S

19. that my child would have an exploring mind 3.82 (0.38) 3.73 (0.51) 3.63 (0.58) ns20. that my child would be successful 3.67 (0.53) 3.44 (0.64) 3.15 (0.65) 5.59** E>S

Notes: Superscripts show significant differences among groups according to the Scheffé test at p < 0.05, the groups are marked as follows: E = Estonian mothers (n = 40); F = Finnish mothers (n = 40); S = Swedish mothers (n = 42).* p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001.

Scand J Psychol 48 (2007) Child-rearing goals 493

© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

factor, as it included the items Freedom of action, Trusthimself/herself, Independent, Fulfill his/her aims, Set his/hergoals and Curious. The third factor was named Power factor,as it included such items as Leader, Believe in own abilities,Respected person and Influential person.

A multiple regression analysis revealed that country andmaternal educational level predicted 38% of the variance ofthe Conformity factor scores, F(2, 117) = 37.77, p < 0.00001. Thestrongest predictor was the country (β = 0.56), but maternaleducational level (β = 0.24) made also a strong contributionto the Conformity factors scores. The Conformity factor scoresof Estonian mothers were significantly bigger than those ofFinnish and Swedish mothers, the Swedish mothers’ scoreswere significantly smaller than the scores of Estonian andFinnish mothers, the scores of Finnish mothers were signifi-cantly bigger than the scores of Swedish mothers and signifi-cantly smaller than the scores of Estonian mothers. Conformityfactor scores of mothers with lower educational level were higherthan the scores of mothers with higher educational level.

The scores of the Self-maximization factor were predictedby 4% by country and maternal education, F(2, 117) = 3.63,p < 0.05, where the only significant contribution was madeby country (β = 0.233), due to the fact that the scores of theIndependence factor of Estonian mothers were significantlybigger than the scores of Finnish mothers. There was nosignificant impact of country and maternal education on thescores of the Power factor. Thus, the results of the item ratingtask supported the second hypothesis according to which

educational differences occur in valuing conformity in children,whereas self-direction is highly valued in each sample.

The results of the item ranking task. Table 5 presents thedistribution of items selected by mothers as their three mostimportant child-rearing principles. The results of the itemranking test supported the first hypothesis, as the Swedesclearly preferred characteristics related to self-maximization(belief in one’s abilities), whereas the Estonians valued tradi-tional values (hard work) as highly as self-maximization.

As Table 5 demonstrates, there was a remarkable consensusbetween the Swedish mothers (93% of them selected beliefin one’s abilities among the three most important values),contrary to the apparent lack of agreement between theEstonian mothers (there was no absolute favorite among themost popular items exploring, set one’s own goals, independ-ence, belief in one’s abilities, smart, and polite). The Finnishmothers’ favorite choice was belief in one’s abilities, followedby trustworthy, set one’s goals and exploring (see Table 5).

As to ranking three most important values, the Swedesshowed again a remarkable consensus: 69% of them placedthe item belief in one’s abilities in first place. The same itemwas selected as the most important value by 32.5% of Finnishmothers, followed by trustworthy (30%) and exploring (12.5%).The Estonian mothers had no clear favorites in selecting themost important child-rearing goals: independence was selectedby 17%, hard work by 15%, and trustworthy and smart bothby 12.5% of the Estonian mothers.

Table 5. The distribution of Estonian, Finnish and Swedish mothers choosing each item among the three most important child-rearing goals

Items

Estonian mothersM (SD)

Finnish mothersM (SD)

Swedish mothersM (SD) Total

F-values(2, 118)

1. to raise my child into a trustworthy person 0.25 (0.44) 0.43 (0.50)S 0.12 (0.33)F 0.26 (0.44) 5.29*2. to give my child as much freedom of action as possible 0.03 (0.16) 0.05 (0.22) 0.00 (0.00) 0.02 (0.16) ns3. to rear my child to be a polite and pleasant companion 0.18 (0.38)F 0.03 (0.16)E 0.12 (0.33) 0.11 (0.31) 3.10*4. that my child was materially secured 0.10 (0.30) 0.03 (0.16) 0.05 (0.22) 0.06 (0.23) ns5. that my child could try the role of a leader 0.25 (0.44) 0.43 (0.50)S 0.12 (0.33)F 0.26 (0.44) 5.29**6. that my child would believe in one’s abilities 0.30 (0.46)F,S 0.73 (0.45)E,S 0.93 (0.26)E,F 0.66 (0.48) 26.00***7. that my child would have imagination and creativity 0.08 (0.27)S 0.08 (0.27)S 0.55 (0.50)E,F 0.24 (0.43) 22.94***8. to teach my child to trust oneself in every situation 0.03 (0.16) 0.00 (0.00) 0.00 (0.00) 0.01 (0.09) ns9. that my child would be a respected person 0.00 (0.00) 0.00 (0.00) 0.02 (0.15) 0.01 (0.09) ns10. to give my child as much right to decide as possible 0.00 (0.00) 0.08 (0.27) 0.00 (0.00) 0.02 (0.16) ns11. to raise my child to be independent 0.35 (0.48) 0.18 (0.38) 0.31 (0.47) 0.28 (0.45) ns12. that my child would make an effort to fulfill one’s aims 0.23 (0.42) 0.20 (0.41) 0.05 (0.22) 0.16 (0.36) ns13. that my child would grow up to be an influential person 0.00 (0.00) 0.00 (0.00) 0.24 (0.15) 0.01 (0.09) ns14. that my child would respect elders 0.08 (0.27) 0.05 (0.22) 0.00 (0.00) 0.04 (0.20) ns15. to teach my child to set one’s own goals 0.28 (0.45) 0.08 (0.27) 0.12 (0.33) 0.16 (0.36) ns16. that my child would grow up to be a hard-working person 0.38 (0.49)S 0.30 (0.46)S 0.00 (0.00)E,F 0.22 (0.42) 10.88***17. that my child would be obedient 0.00 (0.00) 0.00 (0.00) 0.00 (0.00) 0.00 (0.00) ns18. that my child would be smart and intelligent 0.28 (0.45)F,S 0.00 (0.00)E 0.00 (0.00)E 0.09 (0.29) 15.17***19. that my child would have an exploring mind 0.45 (0.50) 0.30 (0.46) 0.31 (0.47) 0.35 (0.48) ns20. that my child would be successful 0.15 (0.36) 0.20 (0.41) 0.07 (0.26) 0.14 (0.35) ns

Notes: Superscripts show significant differences among groups according to the Scheffé test at p < 0.05, the groups are marked as follows: E = Estonian mothers (n = 40); F = Finnish mothers (n = 40); S = Swedish mothers (n = 42).* p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001.

494 T. Tulviste et al. Scand J Psychol 48 (2007)

© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

Maternal education and child-rearing goals. Mothers with lowerlevel of education tended to select the items trustworthy,F(1, 120) = 8.04, p < 0.01, respect elders, F(1, 120) = 4.45,p < 0.05, and leader, F(1, 120) = 8.04, p < 0.01, more frequentlyamong the three most important child-rearing goals thanmothers with higher educational level. Imagination, in turn,was more frequently selected among most important child-rearing goals by mothers with higher educational level,F(1, 120) = 3.96, p < 0.05.

Comparison between open-ended, rating, and ranking tasks.Mothers spontaneously mentioned every child-rearing goalincluded in the list used in ordering and ranking tasks,except happy that was frequently mentioned by the Swedishmothers, sometimes by the Finnish mothers, and never bythe Estonian mothers. Although all three tasks providedunique insights in the child-rearing goals, they gave similarresults in respect of the mothers’ traditional values. Theresults about valuing self-maximization for children werecontradictory: Estonian mothers named spontaneously andchose among the three most important child-rearing goalsfewer characteristics related to this value type than Finnishand Swedish mothers, whereas they rated self-maximizationitems even higher than Finnish mothers.

DISCUSSION

The study differed from most previous studies by comparingmothers’ child-rearing goals in three relatively similar coun-tries – in Estonia, Finland and Sweden – that despite theirdifferent political history and economic situation showmany similarities. We expected that the Estonian motherswould mention more traditional characteristics than themothers from Finland and Sweden, answering to the open-ended questions regarding what they liked in their children,would like in them as grown-ups, and which of their owncharacteristics they would like to see in their children. Thefindings of the study that mothers from Estonia valued tra-ditional characteristics more and mothers from Sweden lessthan others, while Finnish mothers valued them significantlyless than Estonians but more than Swedes, supported ourhypothesis.

The study showed that, contrary to our expectation, theEstonian mothers spontaneously mentioned self-maximizationcharacteristics relatively less, and Swedish mothers morefrequently than other mothers, and Finnish mothers morefrequently than the Estonians but less frequently than theSwedes. An unexpected result was that Estonians placeda great emphasis on characteristics related to academicachievement such as smart, wise and intelligent, differing inthis respect from Finnish and Swedish mothers. Culturaldifferences occurred in preferring somewhat different char-acteristics. For instance, Estonian mothers liked theirchildren to be kind and helpful, Finnish mothers social andoutgoing, and Swedish mothers curious, social, happy, and

cheerful, independently from the maternal educational level,the child’s sex, and whether they had in mind the child nowor as a grown-up.

Furthermore, there were some characteristics, listed onlyby mothers from one sample that were absent in answers ofmothers from other samples. For example, the Swedishmothers of boys and girls, and the Finnish mothers of girlsfrequently mentioned happy, merry, etc. Only a few Estonianmothers listed such characteristics. In an autostereotypestudy with ninth-grade Swedish students, 42% of them men-tioned that they considered happy to be a prominent charac-teristic of Swedes (see Daun, 1996, p. 184). Similarly, in aninterview survey (Westin, 1984), happy and nice were theadjectives that Swedish adults named most frequently. TheSwedish parents named happy twice more than any otherdescriptor also while describing their children (Harkness &Super, 2006). It is important to mention here that motherswere asked to name the three characteristics that they likemost in their child. It is possible that Estonian motherswould have listed also characteristics like happy, optimisticand merry, if the choice would not have been limited tothree. Part of the explanation probably also lies in the factthat in Estonia, rapid social, political, and economic changesare still taking place, whereas Sweden is a well-establishedwelfare society.

It is important to mention here that the examples given bymothers about the listed characteristics generally demon-strated that the named characteristics had similar meaningsfor mothers with different cultural background. The onlyexception here is being happy, which seems to have a some-what different cultural meaning for Swedes and Finns. Forthe Swedish mothers happy means that children are often/easily/always laughing and smiling, that they freely expresstheir happiness. Sweden seems in this respect to be similarto the US, where happy people are mainly perceived aslaughing and easy-going. Sweden is generally seen as one ofthe most Americanized North European countries, whereAmericanization is especially obvious in the youth culture(see O’Dell, 1993). For Finns, happiness seems to be more aninner state (live fully the small joys of life, expressing happi-ness with one’s whole being). An important characteristicdesired in children as grown-ups was, for the Estonian andFinnish mothers, being hard-working, while this was nevermentioned by Swedish mothers. Many Estonians and Finns,but no Swedes, named frequently honest as a desirable andliked characteristic. Obedience was among the desirable orliked characteristics only in the eyes of some Estonianmothers.

Peng, Nisbett, and Wong (1997) suggested that peopleprefer to list values they lack, but would like to possess overthose they actually have. Unlike most research on character-istics desired in children and parental goals, the resultsreported here were obtained by questions addressing paren-tal views about their own children – what they like in theirown children at the moment and as grown-ups. As a result,

Scand J Psychol 48 (2007) Child-rearing goals 495

© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

mothers named those characteristics that their childrenreally possessed rather than listing characteristics theywould like in children in general. The so-called deprivation-based preferences emerged in interviews with open-endedquestions asking about children’s qualities as grown-ups. Inthese responses, Finns frequently named social and openwhile talking about both sexes – the characteristics Finns asa nation do not hold, according to the popular stereotype(see “the silent Finns”, Lehtonen & Sajavaara, 1985; Hill,1992; Sajavaara & Lehtonen, 1997). They explained thecharacteristics by gets easily acquainted with other people,talks to other people, having good relations with other people.In future studies, it would be interesting to add the questionWhich attributes would you like to see in your child ? to checkthe suggestion that mothers prefer to list values they liketheir children to possess over those they actually have.

Although all mothers rated highly many items relatedto self-maximization, in the item rating task the Estonianmothers rated these items significantly higher that the Finns.As to the maternal educational level, it did not play a rolein valuing self-maximization in their children. At the sametime, mother’s education had an impact on valuing confor-mity in their children – less educated mothers placed greatervalue on these items. As expected, the Estonians valued con-formity the highest, the Swedes the lowest, while the scoresof the Finnish mothers were significantly bigger than scoresof the Swedish mothers and significantly smaller than thescores of the Estonian mothers.

An interesting finding was that in the salience ratings ofsingle items, the Swedish mothers demonstrated the homo-geneity of their goals. In child-rearing they seem to befocused on children’s self-confidence, as 69% of themselected belief in one’s abilities as the most important value,and 93% among the three most important values. Also theFinnish mothers had clear preferences while ordering itemsaccording to their importance: 73% of them chose belief inone’s abilities among three most important child-rearinggoals. Is the homogeneity of parental values typical of stablesocieties? It seems to be the case, taking into account thatEstonian mothers were not focused on any specific category.They selected altogether 13 different items as the mostimportant (in contrast, Finns 9 and Swedes 8), and all wereconsiderably less popular choices than the Finnish andSwedish favorites. Namely, the most popular – exploring –was named among the three most important child-rearinggoals only by 45%, and the second – hard-working – by 38%of Estonian mothers. This evidence is consistent with Wangand Tamis-LeMonda’s (2003) finding of complexity anddiversity in Taiwanese mothers’ child-rearing values, com-pared with those of American mothers. The authors attri-buted it to rapid social and political changes in Taiwan. Itmight be that a rapidly changing country like Estonia needspeople with diverse characteristics. It might also be thatwhen a closed society became open, it brought along a greatvariety of new ideas, including those concerning child-

rearing, whereas certain traditional socio-cultural characteris-tics (like hard work) might still be a successful strategy foradapting to the demands of the changing society. Finally, itcould also be that our measure did not capture some child-rearing goals important for the participating mothers.

There were only two characteristics that emerged from theopen-ended answers of the mothers that were not includedin the rating-questionnaire items. Mothers, especially theSwedish mothers, named frequently high self-esteem – in ourlist of 20 questionnaire items the item belief in one’s abilitieswas used. Also, the characteristics being happy, merry, to beable to enjoy life that many Swedish and Finnish mothersfrequently mentioned were not included in the list of itemsused in the rating and ranking tasks. Therefore, it would beinteresting to add some items to the pre-identified list ofchild-rearing goals, and to check whether the Swedishmothers’ views about child-rearing are as homogeneous asthey appeared in the current version of list of parental goals(where happy, merry, optimistic, etc. were lacking).

All three methods demonstrated that in comparison withFinnish and Swedish mothers, Estonian mothers placed thestrongest emphasis on “being hard-working”. At the sametime, the Swedes valued it the least. This finding cannot beexplained only by the different economic level of the coun-tries, as Finland is doing economically equally well withSweden, but Finnish mothers stressed this characteristicmore than their Swedish counterparts. Furthermore, work-ing hard has been found to be highly valued also in the US(Wang & Tamis-LeMonda, 2003). Here the fact that equalityis stressed in Sweden together with a strong governmentalsocial support system might play a role. In this respect,Sweden seems to differ from the US – in contrast, a highlyindividualistic and competitive culture (Spence, 1985) whereproductivity and hard work are highly valued. This differ-ence between the US and Sweden was found also in a com-parative study of distributive justice, showing that Swedishchildren supported equal allocation of resources (based onneeds), whereas American children supported performance-based equity, distributing rewards in proportion to workinputs and productivity (Enright, Bjerstedt, Enright et al.,1984).

In our study, all tasks demonstrated that smartness andintelligence are more important characteristics for the Esto-nians than for the Finns and the Swedes. It might reflect thefact that education has been traditionally one of the centralvalues for Estonians, and that children’s success in life isbelieved to depend on their academic achievements. It wouldbe interesting to compare the meaning and importance ofschool success and maternal causal attributions concerningtheir children’s school success in these three countries. Itshould perhaps also be mentioned that Estonian schools arestill known for their relative strictness and high demands. Itis possible that in an Estonian school it is easier to be suc-cessful by being smart, intelligent, hard-working, polite, andnot having high self-esteem, whereas in schools in Sweden

496 T. Tulviste et al. Scand J Psychol 48 (2007)

© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

successful is rather a curious pupil with good social skillsand high self-confidence. As Estonia is a country in transi-tion, it is possible that the above-mentioned differences willsoon disappear. Shifts in educational paradigms are likely toresult in changes in the way a particular characteristic isperceived. During the last decade, the meaning of shyness asa cultural value has changed in Chinese schools throughreforms in the educational system. Shy students are nolonger popular among their peers, they are seen as timid anddull, whereas outspokenness is found desirable (Chen, Cen,Li & He, 2005).

In sum, although the mothers participating in the currentstudy were from relatively similar neighbouring countries,there were both cultural similarities and differences in theirchild-rearing goals. Mothers differed mainly by putting adifferent emphasis on the traditional child-rearing goals (e.g.,conformity, obedience, politeness, being hard-working). TheSwedish mothers tended to stress the characteristics con-nected with self-maximization as well as self-confidence andchildren’s happiness, but did not value traditional goals fortheir children. The Estonian mothers seemed to embrace theindividualistic self-maximization goals while simultaneouslyputting a great emphasis on the traditional values, but didnot stress some values (happy, merry, positive) typical ofwelfare societies. The Estonian mothers’ high expectationsfor their children’s characteristics and behavior can be seenas typical of societies with ongoing rapid social, political,and economic changes. For example, Rosenthal and Roer-Strier (2001) found that the Soviet-born mothers in Israelexpect their children to be efficient, achievement-oriented,hard-working, and organized adults to succeed in life, whileIsraeli-born mothers promote the children’s cognitive com-petence as important for the development of confident self-esteem. It was found that traditional values co-existed withnon-traditional values also in the beliefs of Finnish mothers,although Finns stressed both traditional and non-traditionalvalues to a lesser extent than Estonians. The level of educa-tion had no impact on valuing self-maximization, whereasthe less educated mothers stressed traditional goals morethan the more educated mothers.

As to the debate of cultural models, the results of thestudy demonstrate the complexity and coexistence of in-dependence and interdependence in the mothers’ child-rearingideas, as well as the existence of more cultural pathways ofdevelopment than these two. Further studies should bedesigned to answer the questions whether in countries likeEstonia and Finland where both cultural models coexist,yet to a different degree, it is the case of autonomous related-ness proposed by Kagitçibasi (1996, 2005) or not. At leastexamples of characteristics provided by mothers in theopen-ended task did not allow us to say that parents wouldlike their children to be emotionally interdependent only intheir family.

Finally, it should be noted that the present article presentsthe results of a pilot study of a preliminary nature. Although

significant differences appeared already between relativelysmall samples, it is clear that the number of participantsshould be multiplied in future research.

Research for this article was supported by research grants from theBaltic Sea Foundation in Sweden (No. 3000902) and the EstonianScience Foundation (No. 6511). We would also like to thank MaaretAhtonen for helping to gather additional Finnish data.

REFERENCES

Alwin, D. F. (1988). From obedience to autonomy: Changes intraits desired in children, 1924–1978. Public Opinion Quarterly,52, 33–52.

Arnett, J. J. (1998). Learning to stand alone: The contemporaryAmerican transition to adulthood in cultural and historical con-text. Human Development, 41, 295–315.

Baer, D., Curtis, J., Grabb, E. & Johnston, W. (1996). What valuesdo people prefer in children? A comparative analysis of surveyevidence from fifteen countries. In C. Seligman, J. M. Olson &M. P. Zanna (Eds.), The psychology of value: The OntarioSymposium (vol. 8, pp. 299–328). Mahwah, NJ: LawrenceErlbaum.

Cashmore, J. A. & Goodnow, J. (1986). Influences on Australianparents’ values: Ethnicity versus socioeconomic status. Journalof Cross-Cultural Psychology, 17(4), 441–454.

Chen, X., Cen, G., Li, D. & He, Y. (2005). Social functioning andadjustment in Chinese children: The imprint of historical time.Child Development, 76, 182–195.

Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Dahlberg, G. (1992). The parent-child relationship and socializationin the context of modern childhood: The case of Sweden. InJ. L. Roopnarine and D. B. Carter (Eds.), Parent-child socializationin diverse cultures (pp. 121–137). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Daun, Å. (1996). Swedish mentality. University Park, PA: Pennsyl-vania State University Press.

Diel, M., Owen, S. K. & Youngblade, L. M. (2004). Agency andcommunion attributes in adults’ spontaneous self-representations.International Journal of Behavioral Development, 28, 1–15.

Ekstrand, G. & Ekstrand, L. H. (1987). Children’s perception ofnorms and sanctions in two cultures. In Ç. Kagitçibasi, Growthand progress in cross-cultural psychology (pp. 171–180). Berwyn,PA: Swets North America.

Enright, R. D., Bjerstedt, A., Enright, W. F., Levy, V. M. Jr., Lapsley,D. K., Buss, R. R., Harwell, M., Zindler, M. (1984). Distributivejustice development: Cross-cultural, contextual, and longitudinalevaluations. Child Development, 55, 1737–1751.

Friedlmeier, W., Busch, H. & Trommsdorff, G. (2003, August).Characteristics of an ideal child. Paper presented at the XIthEuropean Conference on Developmental Psychology, Milan, Italy.

Greenfield, P. M., Keller, H., Fuligni, A. & Maynard, A. (2003).Cultural development through universal developmental tasks.Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 1–23.

Harkness, S. & Super, C. (2006). Themes and variations: Parentalethnotheories in western cultures. In K. Rubin & O. B. Chung(Eds.), Parenting Beliefs, Behaviors, and Parent-Child Relations:A Cross-cultural Perspective (pp. 61–79). New York: PsychologyPress.

Harkness, S., Super, C. M. & van Tijen, N. (2000). Individualismand the “Western Mind” reconsidered: American and Dutchparents’ ethnotheories of the child. In W. Damon (Series Ed.) &S. Harkness, C. Raeff & C. M. Super (Vol. Eds.), New directionsfor child and adolescent development: Vol. 87. Variability in the socialconstruction of the child (pp. 23–39). San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Scand J Psychol 48 (2007) Child-rearing goals 497

© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

Harwood, R. L., Handwerker, W. P., Schoelmerich, A. & Leyen-decker, B. (2001). Ethnic category labels, parental beliefs, andthe contextualized individual: An exploration of the individualism-sociocentrism debate. Parenting: Science & Practice, 1, 217–236.

Harwood, R. L., Miller, J. G. & Irizarry, N. L. (1995). Cultureand Attachment: Perceptions of the child in context. New York:Guilford.

Hill, R. (1992). We Europeans. Brussels: Europublications.Hirsijärvi, S. & Perälä-Littunen, S. (2001). Parental child-rearing

beliefs. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 16, 87–116.Hoff, E., Laursen, B. & Tardif, T. (2002). Socioeconomic status and

parenting. In M. H. Bornstein (Ed.), Handbook of parenting.Vol. 2. Biology and ecology of parenting (2nd edn, pp. 231–252).Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Hofstede, G. (1991). Cultures and organizations: Software of themind. London: McGraw-Hill.

Holden, G. W. (1995). Parenting attitudes toward childrearing. InM. H. Bornstein (Ed.), Handbook of parenting. Vol. 3. Statusand social conditions of parenting (pp. 359–392). Mahwah, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum.

Jose, P. E., Huntsinger, C. S., Huntsinger, P. R. & Liaw, F.-R.(2000). Parental values and practices relevant to young children’ssocial development in Taiwan and the United States. Journal ofCross-Cultural Psychology, 31, 677–702.

Kagitçibasi, Ç. (1996). Family and human development across cul-tures. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Kagitçibasi, Ç. (2005). Autonomy and relatedness in cultural con-text: Implications for self and family. Journal of Cross-CulturalPsychology, 36, 403–422.

Kants, L. & Tulviste, T. (2000). Mothers’ value preferences andcultural context: A cross-cultural comparison of Estonians,Swedes and Finns. In A. L. B. Smolka (Ed.), Abstracts: III Con-ference for Sociocultural Research. July 16 to 20, 2000 (p. 18).Campinas, São Paulo, Brasil: State University of Campinas.

Kohn, M. L. (1959). Social class and parental values. AmericanJournal of Sociology, 68, 337–351.

Lehtonen, J. & Sajavaara, K. (1985). The silent Finn. In D. Tannen& M. Saville-Troike (Eds.), Perspectives on silence (pp. 193–201).Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

LeVine, R. A. (1974). Parental goals: A cross-cultural view. TeachersCollege Record, 76, 226–239.

Leyendecker, B., Harwood, R. L., Lamb, M. E. & Schoelmerich, A.(2002). Mothers’ socialisation goals and evaluations of desirableand undesirable everyday situations in two diverse cultural groups.International Journal of Behavioral Development, 26, 248–258.

Lin, C.-Y. C. & Fu, V. R. (1990). A comparison of child-rearingpractices among Chinese, immigrant Chinese, and Caucasian-American parents. Child Development, 61, 429–433.

O’Dell, T. (1993). Those practical U.S.A. pants: Swedish youth andAmericanization. Nord Nytt, 53, 41–55.

Peng, K., Nisbett, R. E. & Wong, N. Y. C. (1997). Validity problems

comparing values across cultures and possible solutions. Psycho-logical Methods, 2, 329–344.

Rosenthal, M. K. & Roer-Strier, D. (2001). Cultural differences inmothers’ developmental goals and ethnotheories. InternationalJournal of Psychology, 36, 20–31.

Sajavaara, K. & Lehtonen, J. (1997). The silent Finn revisited. In A.Jaworsky (Ed.), Silence: interdisciplinary perspectives. Berlin:Mouton de Gruyter.

Sethi, R., Aunola, K. & Vanhatalo, O. (2000). Parental childrearingpractices, beliefs and values in Finland and Norway. Paper pre-sented at the 15th International Congress of the InternationalAssociation for Cross-Cultural Psychology, Pultusk, Poland,July.

Spence, J. T. (1985). Achievement American style: The rewardsand costs of individualism. American Psychologist, 40, 1285–1295.

Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Wang, S., Koutsouvanou, E. & Albright,M. (2002). Childrearing values in Greece, Taiwan, and the UnitedStates. Parenting: Science and Practice, 2(3), 185–208.

Tudge, J., Hogan, D., Lee, S., Tammeveski, P., Meltsas, M., Kulakova,N., Snezhkova, I. & Putnam, S. (1999). Cultural heterogeneity:Parental values and beliefs and their preschoolers’ activities inthe United States, South Korea, Russia, and Estonia. In A.Göncü (Ed.), Children’s engagement in the world. Socioculturalperspectives (pp. 62–96). Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Tudge, J., Hogan, D. M., Snezhkova, I. A., Kulakova, N. N. & Etz,K. E. (2000). Parents’ child-rearing values and beliefs in theUnited States and Russia: The impact of culture and social class.Infant and Child Development, 9, 105–121.

Tulviste, T. & Ahtonen, M. (2007). Child-rearing values of Estonianand Finnish mothers and fathers. Journal of Cross-CulturalPsychology, 38, 137–155.

Tulviste T. & Mizera T. (2007). Socialization values of Estonian pre-adolescents’ mothers. Manuscript submitted to publication.

Tulviste, T., Mizera, L., De Geer, B. & Tryggvason, M.-T. (2003).A comparison of Estonian, Swedish, and Finnish mothers’ con-trolling attitudes and behavior. International Journal of Psychology,38, 11–18.

Valsiner, J. (2000). Culture and human development: An introduction.London: Sage.

Wang, C.-H. C. & Phinney, J. S. (1998). Differences in child rearing atti-tudes between immigrant Chinese mothers and Anglo-Americanmothers. Early Development and Parenting, 7, 181–189.

Wang, S. & Tamis-LeMonda, C. S. (2003). Do child-rearing valuesin Taiwan and the United States reflect cultural values of collec-tivism and individualism? Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology,34, 629–642.

Westin, C. (1984). Majoritet om minoritet: En studie i etnisk toleransi 80-talets Sverige: En rapport från diskrimineringsutredningen.Stockholm: Liber.

Received 20 April 2006, accepted 17 May 2007