Ruth Chao

My research has involved exploring alternative conceptualizations, theories, and paradigms for capturing and understanding the parenting and childhood socialization of East Asian immigrant families, primarily Chinese. I have been particularly concerned with the area of parenting style, demonstrating the need for a reconceptualization of Baumrind’s widely-recognized parenting styles (i.e., comprising three types, authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive). Studies focusing on the relationship between parenting style and child outcomes like academic achievement have found some very contradictory results for Asian Americans, in general. That is, although the authoritative parenting style was most predictive of achievement for European Americans, this style was least effective in explaining Asian American achievement. I had proposed as a resolution to this paradox, that these parenting-style concepts are relevant for Asians, and I offered an alternative indigenous parenting style of chiao shun (i.e., a Chinese term that I have generally translated as “training”). The concept of training is based on a type of parental control that is distinct from the more “domineering” control that describes the authoritarian parenting style.