The forms and functions of parental control and parental warmth across cultures: Evidence for commonality and specificity

This concept paper introduces a special section on Parenting Across Cultures: Bridging Commonalities and Specificities in Parental Control and Warmth . In this article, we explore how parental control and warmth manifest and function across diverse cultural contexts, emphasizing both common patterns and culturally specific practices. We acknowledge that contemporary parenting theories and models, even when they were first conceived based on an Anglo White-centric perspective, are increasingly being re-interpreted to describe culture-specific parenting behaviors. To better examine the functions of parental control and warmth across cultures, we advocate for the use of a dimensional approach that will more adequately describe the unique and shared aspects of parenting behaviors. This special section is a collection of four empirical studies that focused on understudied cultures, including families from Indonesia, Singapore, Türkiye, and Chinese immigrants in the United States. The overarching aim is to provide a more nuanced understanding of how parental control and warmth may contribute to children’s development and adjustment. The findings underscore the importance of considering cultural norms and children’s perceptions in parenting research, with implications for theory advancement, practice, and policy design and implementation.