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Parenting in Indonesia: Inter- and intracultural differences in mothers' interactions with their young
children
Jolien Zevalkink and J. Marianne Riksen-Walraven
International Journal of Behavioral Development 2001 25: 167
DOI: 10.1080/01650250042000113
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http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pp/01650254.html
DOI: 10.1080/01650250042000113
The everyday experiences of young children during interactions with their primary caregivers are assumed and found to
affect various aspects of their development. Attachment
researchers, for example, have shown parents sensitive
responsiveness to their infants signals and needs to predict
childrens attachment security in both Western (De Wolff &
Van IJzendoorn, 1997) and non-Western cultures (Vereijken,
Riksen-Walraven, & Kondo-Ikemura, 1997a). Other measures
re ecting the quality of parents behaviour in interactions with
their children have also been shown to predict other aspects of
child development as well. For example, parents emotional
support, their respect for the childs autonomy, adequate
structure and limit setting, and the quality of their instructions
as observed in structured play and instructional settings have
been shown to predict not only childrens cognitive and
socioemotional development but also the occurrence of
behavioural problems across cultures (Erickson, Sroufe, &
Egeland, 1985; Riksen-Walraven, Meij, Hubbard, & Zevalkink, 1996; Vereijken et al., 1997a). With a few notable
exceptions (e.g., Ainsworth, 1967; LeVine et al., 1994),
research regarding the quality of parent-child interaction in
non-Western societies is still quite scarce. In the present study,
mother-child interaction was therefore studied in Indonesia,
which is the fourth most populated country in the world with
about 200 million people. We compared Indonesian mothers
interactive behaviours to the interactive behaviours of mothers
from other cultures. We also examined the differences among
the Indonesian mothers. In order to gain greater insight into
the observed differences, we related the quality of the mothers
interactive behaviours to various characteristics of the caregiving context.
In both early and contemporary reports on Indonesian
parenting, two characteristics stand out in particular. First,
Indonesian parents rarely use physical punishment such as
slapping or beating and are generally rather permissive. When
Correspondence should be sent to Jolien Zevalkink, Centre for Child and Family
Studies, Department of Education , Leiden University, PO Box 9555, 2300 RB
Leiden, The Netherlands; e-mail: zevalkink@fsw.leidenuniv.nl .
The authors are grateful to Mariacristina Reciputi for her assistance in scoring
the mother-child interaction s and Imas, Atu, Eni, and Atika for collectin g the
eld observations.
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168
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Method
Research site
The participants lived in urban kampungs in the northern
part of Bandung, West Java. An urban kampung is a residential
area with a large amount of substandard housing and narrow
pedestrian pathways. Unoccupied plots and areas for growing
vegetables often lie between the houses. A kampung also has a
minimum of such facilities as electricity, water, garbage
collection, and sewage drainage (Guinness, 1986). The
population density in our research site was about 9000 persons
per square kilometre in 1990 (Pemerintah, 1990). A more
complete description of the general living conditions can be
found in Zevalkink (1997).
Participants
The original sample consisted of 80 Sundanese-Indonesian
mother-child dyads. Families from two different SES groups
169
Procedure
The mothers and children were visited at home by the rst
author with an average of three formal visits per family (range
25) lasting an average of 1.1 hours per visit. The home visits
yielded 3.2 observation hours per child (range 27). By
means of participant observation and ethnographic interviews,
data were collected with regard to routine mother-child
interactions and the mothers child-rearing values and
aspirations. The observations were written in the form of a
narrative report. In addition, three trained local research
assistants visited the families an average of three times for
three hours to gather specimen descriptions of the caregiverchild interactions across the entire day. One of the local
research assistants and the rst author administered the ITHOME for infants and toddlers or the EC-HOME for
preschoolers (Home Observation for Measurement of the
Environment; Caldwell & Bradley, 1978). After data collection in the homes, the mothers and children were invited to a
local facility within easy walking distance of their homes for
the structured play session.
The structured play session lasted an average of 15 minutes
with four to six episodes (depending on the childs age) of two
or three minutes. During each episode, the mother was asked
to let the child perform a particular task. She was told that she
could help her child whenever she felt she needed to. The tasks
consisted of activities such as ball play, reading a book, or
putting a puzzle together. For the infants and toddlers, the last
episode was a free play situation.
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170
Results
Quality of maternal interactive behaviour with
younger and older children
As can be seen from Table 1, the quality of the mothers
interactive behaviour at home and the overall quality of
support provided in the structured play session did not differ
signi cantly for the two age groups. However, t-tests on the
separate rating scales for the quality of maternal support
provided in the structured play session revealed two signi cant
differences between the age groups. The mothers provided less
emotional support and more structure and limits with the
preschoolers when compared to the infants and toddlers. This
means that the mothers of the preschoolers in the structured
play session were less emotionally responsive and more strict
with their children than the mothers of the younger children.
At home, however, the mothers of the older children did not
behave less sensitively than the mothers of the younger
children.
To investigate the possibility of interaction effects between
age and gender, a MANOVA was conducted with the six rating
scales as the dependents. No interaction effects were found. A
main effect was found for age, F(6, 67) 5.26, p < .01, similar
to the results for supportive presence and structure/limit setting
described earlier. No signi cant main effect of gender was
found, but univariate analyses showed a signi cant gender
difference for structure and limit setting, F(1, 72) 4.42, p <
.04, with boys receiving more structure and limits from their
mothers than girls (M 5.00, SD 1.19 and M 4.43, SD
1.24, respectively).
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171
Table 1
Differences in the quality of interactive behaviour of Sundanese-Indonesian mothers
with younger vs. older children
Quality of interactive behaviour
(SD)
(SD)
T-value
5.83
(1.53)
5.80
(1.59)
0.08
3.71
4.07
4.44
3.39
1.07
22.54
(1.29)
(1.10)
(1.35)
(1.32)
(0.26)
(4.04)
3.00
4.06
5.06
3.94
1.29
22.77
(1.35)
(0.84)
(1.03)
(1.55)
(1.05)
(4.51)
2.33*
0.07
2.22*
1.68
1.26
0.24
Sensitivity at home
Support in structured play sessiond
Supportive presence
Respect for autonomy
Structure and limit setting
Quality of instruction
Hostility
Overall
Preschoolersb
(n 35)
*p < .05 (two-tailed). N 76. a Children with average age of 21.95 (SD 8.75).
average age of 56.91 (SD 10.38). c 9-point rating scale. d 7-point rating scales.
Children with
Table 2
Inter-cultural differences in quality of maternal support in a structured play session
SundaneseIndonesiansa
(N 76)
M (SD)
SP
RA
SL
QI
HO
3.38
4.07
4.72
3.64
1.17
(1.36)
(0.98)
(1.24)
(1.45)
(0.74)
Japaneseb
(N 45)
M (SD)
4.76
4.87
4.24
4.00
(1.09)
(1.12)
(1.22)
(1.23)
n.a.
SurinamDutch c
(N 38)
M (SD)
3.63
3.84
4.08
3.92
1.47
(1.34)
(1.29)
(1.02)
(1.05)
(0.73)
Dutch d
(N 26)
M (SD)
3.81
4.19
4.23
3.38
1.65
(1.81)
(1.50)
(1.68)
(1.72)
(1.41)
SP Supportive presence; RA Respect for autonomy; SL Structure and limit setting; QI Quality of instruction; HO Hostility; n.a. not available. a Low
education , mean age of children 38 months. b Low to high education , children 24 months old (Vereijken , 1990). c Low education , children 18 months old (RiksenWalraven et al., 1996). d Low education , children 30 months old (Meij, 1992). e t-tests: *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .10 (two-tailed); SI Sundanese-Indonesians,
J Japanese, SD Surinam-Dutch, D Dutch.
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172
Table 3
Correlations between quality of maternal interactive behaviour
observed in two settings
Sensitivity at home
Supportive presence
Respect for autonomy
Structure and limit setting
Quality of instruction
Hostility
Overall quality of maternal support
*p < .05; **p < .01 (two-tailed).
.43**
.27*
.24*
.38**
.31**
.46**
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Table 4
Pearson correlations between quality of maternal interactive
behaviour in two settings and contextual variables in five domains
(N 76)
Variables per domain
Family structure
Age of mother
Education
Educational level mother
Educational level father
Preschool attendance
Education level mothers parents
Education level fathers siblings
Wealth
No. consumer durables
Safe physical environment
Provision play materials
Quality of housing
Living space per person
Total amount of income
Occupational status mother
Occupational status father
Health
Nutritional status target child
Sanitary conditions
Ratio children vaccinated
Residential mobility
No. times moved
Structured play:
Overall support
quality
Home
sensitivity
.29*
.16
.23*
.15
.38**
.24*
.16
.40**
.32**
.37**
.16
.30*
.14
.08
.28*
.06
.09
.24*
.23*
.06
.19
.20
.33**
.23*
.40**
.23*
.42**
.35**
.34**
.36**
.22
.37**
.27*
.34*
.18
.00
173
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174
low nutritional status may be a risk factor for less than high
quality care, particularly when combined with relatively poor
living conditions.
Our study has shown that the quality of support provided by
Sundanese-Indonesian mothers for their preschoolers can be
validly observed during everyday interactions at home and also
in a standardised play setting. The mothers behaviour as
observed at home clearly re ects the impact of social and
economic aspects of the caregiving environment. The mothers
behaviour in the structured play setting appears to be less
affected by such contextual characteristics and more affected
by the mothers basic competence. It is tempting to assume
that maternal behaviour at home is more representative of the
childrens everyday interactive experiences than maternal
behaviour in a standardised play setting and thus a better
predictor of the childs social and emotional development,
which is assumed to re ect the history of the mother-child
interaction. This is certainly an interesting topic for future
research. In the meantime, it is recommended that the quality
of mothers interactive behaviour be observed in both the home
and a standardised setting in order to attain a complete picture.
Manuscript received December 1998
Revised manuscript received May 1999
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