Chapter 9 **Interventions for Enhancing Parenting Quality in Early Infancy 147**

Jenny A. Ortiz M., Eva Diniz Bensaja dei Schiró, Olga Alicia Carbonell Blanco and Silvia H. Koller

Preface

contexts across the country.

Values, beliefs, goals, ethno-theories, and childrearing practices are part of children´s devel‐ opmental niche [1]. They vary between cultures and across diverse contexts in specific cul‐ tures. Parental styles also vary in different families in the same cultural context depending on socio-demographic characteristics such as educational level of its members. We need to understand aspects of those niches in order to explain development and developmental tra‐ jectories. Generally, this is part of studies in parenting and there is an extensive literature in this subject. However, most of the studies are from a minority of countries populations [2] from North America and Europe. This book has nine chapters and it aims at contributing to the literature, presenting data from African and South American contexts, such as Brazil, Colombia, Cameroon, Ghana, Liberia and Nigeria. Brazilian studies are from a variety of

Seidl de Moura, Carvalho and Vieira´s chapter - Brazilian mothers' cultural models: Sociali‐ zation for autonomy and relatedness - focuses on evidence from Brazilian studies about mothers' parental models. Brazil is the largest South American country, with very distinct regions. The country hosts diverse historical and cultural backgrounds. Brazilian HDI has been growing equally in the three dimensions: health, education and income, but the coun‐ try still has a high index of concentration of income, despite federal government programs aiming at income distribution. The authors report evidence on mothers' beliefs and practices of care from several Brazilian cities located on diverse regions and of varied population size. The chapter introduction discusses the theoretical assumptions about human development and characteristics of the Brazilian context. The authors argue for the importance of studies of intra-cultural variations using varied methods to understand development in context and present and discuss mothers' socialization goals, maternal beliefs about practices of care of young children; mothers' "narrative envelope"; and mothers' ideas about their children. Piccinini, Alvarenga, Marin and Sobreira present in their chapter - Child-rearing practices of Brazilian mothers and fathers: Predictors and impact on child development - various issues related to childrearing practices investigated by the Center for Children and Families (NU‐ DIF / UFRGS) to which the authors belong. They discuss the predictors of childrearing prac‐ tices related to cultural differences, parental values, socialization goals and social class; the predictors related to individual characteristics of parents and of children; and the impact of childrearing practices on children's social competence and behavior problems. The studies they review indicate that childrearing practices are linked to the cultural and social context in which families live, including variations inside one country, especially a large one such as Brazil. They discuss the difficulty in identifying childrearing practices most commonly used by mothers and fathers when data from different regions and cultural backgrounds is com‐ pared and report differences related to the mother's cultural background, type of situation,
