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This study examined the influence of parenting on academic achievement motivation among elementary school children in the United States and Japan based on Baumrind's parenting typology. Previous works have shown that authoritative parenting (parenting that encourages children to be independent but still places limits and controls on their actions) tends to yield positive academic outcomes for Western children. Conversely, Asian children are likely to attain better academic goals with authoritarian parenting (restrictive and punitive styles in which parents exhort children to follow their directions and respect their work and effort). Recently, cultural changes have been observed in both countries, but the parenting styles that characterize each culture may still remain. Thus, it was predicted that (a) authoritative parenting will be associated with higher academic achievement motivation among modern American children, and (b) authoritarian parenting will be associated with higher academic achievement motivation among modern Japanese children. Two hundred eight students from an American elementary school and 312 from a Japanese elementary school completed measures of achievement goal orientations and parental attitudes. Results indicated that American children acquire the benefit of academic achievement motivation with both authoritative and authoritarian parenting styles today. There was no support for the prediction that contemporary Japanese children obtain higher academic achievement motivation with authoritarian parenting style.
Parenting processes in Asian cultures and their influences on child outcomes remain a central focus of inquiry in the child development literature. However, much of that research has tended to generalize the findings on child socialization dynamics and child academic outcomes across Asian societies. The pertinent literature has often neglected to consider the fact that although cultural similarities exist across Asian societies, there are also differences, albeit sometimes subtle. Many authors (e.g., Brown & Iyengar, 2008; Choi, Kim, Kim, & Park, 2013; Roskam & Meunier, 2009; Smith & Moore, 2012) have argued that because specific individual and contextual characteristics influence the child socialization process, it is faulty to assume that the relationship between parenting and child outcomes is generalizable across or even within cultures because similar socialization practices may present vastly dissimilar results across cultures.
Although numerous studies have documented the association between parenting and a wide range of child academic outcomes in Asian societies, less work has focused on Japanese children. Bassani...