Cultural meanings of parenting behavior: The case of the Italian population

A great body of research has underlined the relevant role that parenting plays on child development (Bornstein, 2002). At the same time, Authors have stressed the different meaning that parental practices might acquire dependent on the specific cultural context in which it has been considered (Zappulla& Lo Coco, 2001; Chen, Liu & Li, 2000). To shed further light on these issue, the goal of this study was to analyze in deep the cultural meaning of parenting, particularly about some practices, such as punishment, protective behaviours, encouragement of independence and to be successful. Semi-structured interviews designed to explore the constructs under examination were conducted with 50 sicilian middle-class mothers (Mean=38,7; SD=4,7) having a child of 4-5 years. Most of them worked (63%), the others were housewives (37%). Subjects were asked at home a series of opened questions about the relationship with their children. The interviews were analysed using an observational instrument, T-Lab (Lancia, 2002; 2003), belonging to the family of the software designed to produce maps which represent text content, whether single text or several texts being compared.