ABSTRACT

 The main purpose of this study was to investigate the content of Romanian middleclass mothers` parental ethnotheories and the relationship between their cultural model, socialization goals and parental ethnotheories. To this end we have used a mixed method quantitative and qualitative design. The sample for the quantitative component of our study consisted of 72 middle-class Romanian mothers with children aged 0 to 2 years. Mothers completed self-report questionnaires that assessed their cultural models via their level of collectivist values as regarding family interactions, their socialization goals and their parental ethnotheories. The sample for the qualitative component of our study consisted of 11 middle- class Romanian mothers with children aged 3 to 23 months. Mothers participated in a picture based interview that investigated parental ethnotheories. The quantitative and qualitative results suggested that mothers from our sample have an autonomous-related cultural model. There was no evidence of mothers` relational socialization goals mediating the relationship between their level of collectivistic values and relational parental ethnotheories.

KEYWORDS: culture; autonomous-related; independence; interdependence; ethnotheories; socialization

PAGES: 191-208