**2. Parenting strategies in Nigeria & Cameroon**

Individualistic cultures tend to give priority to independence and the pursuit of individual achievement, whereas collectivistic cultures tend to place more emphasis on the individual's contribution to the well-being of the family and the community [5]. The implication here is that there are cultural differences between individualistic and collectivistic societies, and these differences are variations in values that are of particular importance to each society and differential emphases placed upon particular practices in the society [3, 6]. The cultural values of a society thus shape people's values in that society and consequently their interactions with their children and their parenting styles. This inference is what informed the deduction that in collectivistic countries parents tend to promote values such as helpfulness, conformity, and

The promotion of different values in different cultures would affect child outcomes in such cultures because each culture would have different goals and expectations of their citizens and children in such cultures would be socialized under different conditions. As such an effective parenting style in one culture may not be as effective as in other cultures. In a study carried out on cultural differences in parenting styles the researchers found cultural differences in effective parenting styles practiced by White American and Asian American families [7]. They found that White American families practiced authoritative parenting which involves support in form of (hugging and praising their children), and control in form of (setting clear expect‐ ations and moderate limits). These parental behaviours are also taken as parental warmth and acceptance. In the case of the Asian American families, who are made up of Chinese and Fillipino Americans, it was found that they are stricter in their parenting strategy and exhibit high control over their children and they lack warmth [7]. The researchers found that these Asian American families practice this parenting approach because they believe that control is necessary to parenting and strictness is an attempt to protect their children and not to inhibit them. They found that the Chinese Americans in particular value respect for authority, devotion to parents, emotional restraint (which is developed as a strategy for saving face later in life), and education. They also found that Chinese parents who train their children are very involved with their children's lives and they must have been using these parenting strategies, ( e.g. authoritarian parenting strategy + involvement which indicates love), including (physical discipline -which they found difficult to practice in the U.S.), to achieve their goals of parenting which include developing these values in the children. They also found that the Fillipino Americans are interdependent and they depend on each other for support because they value reciprocal relationships. They also value affection and closeness and protection for their children especially their daughters. These values must have also guided their parenting strategies. In addition, it was also reported that first- generation Chinese youth from author‐ itarian homes do just as well in school as those from authoritative homes indicating that although authoritative parenting may benefit some ethnic groups it is not necessarily more

Families as social groups are influenced by the context around them and family relationships and parent-child interactions are each influenced by cultural context [4]. Depending on the culture therefore there are differences in child rearing practices. It has also been suggested that if parenting behaviour is consistent with cultural values then children in that culture will accept

interdependence within the family [5].

80 Parenting in South American and African Contexts

beneficial than authoritarian parenting [7].

Baumrind (1971) categorized parenting strategies into three types of parenting style namely authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive parenting styles. She described authoritarian parenting as restrictive and punitive, placing firm limit and control on children with little or no verbal exchange, and is said to be associated with social incompetence and poor communication skills [11]. Authoritative parents put some limits and controls on their children's actions, but they allow verbal dialogue which promotes parental responsive‐ ness, encourages independence, social and cognitive competence, self reliance and social responsibility in the children. In permissive parenting few or no rules and little or no controls are exerted over the children. The children under this parenting style are given complete freedom to make their life decisions and behave autonomously and independent‐ ly [11]. This type of parenting style is also presumed to be associated with social incompe‐ tence and lack of self control [12, 10].

In Nigeria, parenting strategies embrace all the three single parenting styles that has been described [10], with emphasis on obedience to authority and compliance with parental instructions [13]. This emphasis arises from the fact that, Nigeria being predominantly a hierarchical and patriarchal nation, the traditional society values respect for elders and authority figures and in particular parental authority in a family where the man is the head of the family. As a result many Nigerian parents demand for obedience to parental authority, and compliance with parental instructions from their children. However many of the parents accompany such demands for obedience and compliance with instructions, with responsive‐ ness, love, care, sensitivity, reciprocal dialogue, and explanations for parental disciplinary actions. The combination of demand for obedience and responsiveness by parents allows Nigerian children to perceive their parents as authoritative some of the time and authoritarian at other times. This inference has been supported by research findings that indicated that authoritative and authoritarian parenting styles as well as their hybrids are significantly practiced by Nigerian parents [14, 13]

In Cameroon, child bearing is highly valued and beliefs and practices concerning child rearing vary by ethnic group. However certain values are commonly held by the ethnic groups. These values include the importance that the Cameroonians attach to learning by example and learning through play. They also attribute importance to observational learning by teaching their children to observe and imitate tasks performed by adults [15, 16]. It has been reported that the dominant family pattern in Cameroon is the patrilineal and extended or joint family [17]. This family pattern promotes interdependence, and the culture of the society is collectiv‐ istic and communal in orientation [4, 3]. The Cameroon parents (represented by Nso people in this write up, and who live in the Anglophone sector of Cameroon) engage in relationshipsupporting parenting practices. These practices involve parental monitoring of children's health, teaching life skills to the children and stimulating their growth and development [3, pp. 138]. Good parenting to this group of Cameroonians consists of parents taking the lead with monitoring, instructing, training, directing and controlling infants' activities [3]. These parenting practices reflect a collectivistic society with an authoritarian parenting strategy.

rents feel helpless or indifferent) [17]. He further stated that while the Cameroonian parents were struggling to preserve the traditional authoritarian parenting stereotype, they have been forced to become "unconsciously permissive" in their parenting style, which is tagged "indirect parental impact on children", [17, 22]. This form of indirect parental influence on Cameroon children has been claimed to be effective, and effective because of a mecha‐ nism of self-regulation which exists within the peer culture and which is maintained by the power inherent in the expectations and directives of absent (authoritarian) parents whose direct intervention is no longer needed [22]. In essence the situation in the Cameroo‐ nian society seems to be that, in each family, there is the generation of an ambivalent father image which is "domineering" and "inaccessible" and which has "delegated the socializa‐ tion process" to the peer culture. The deductions made and inferences arrived at, [17] have provided explanation for the dichotomy or ambivalence between the traditional authoritar‐ ian parenting stereotype seemingly adhered to by Cameroonian parents [3, pp138] and the prevailing permissive parenting strategy practiced by them especially mothers whose responsibility it is to nurture their infants and young children, [18]. The implication is that Cameroonian parents practice a form of permissive parenting strategy that is peer culture centred and driven by invisible and underlying authoritarian power of parents and promoted early in the children's life by their mothers' permissiveness. It is therefore expected that Cameroonian adolescents and young people would report authoritarian parenting style, permissive parenting style, and authoritarian/permissive parenting style

Cultural Variations in Parenting Styles in the Majority World Evidences from Nigeria and Cameroon

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/57003

83

hybrid as the parenting strategies adopted by their parents in bringing them up.

**3.1. General method**

availability of the participants.

**3.2. Parenting style scale used**

**3. Studies on parenting styles using Nigerian and Cameroon samples**

The design used for the studies reported here was cross sectional. The participants were assessed only once but at different times and different periods and from different locations and different schools. The sampling method used was convenience sampling based on

The parenting style scale used for the studies being reported here is a 20 - item parenting style scale adapted from the parenting care scale, originally developed by Baumrind, (1971)[10]. The Baumrind's parenting care scale that was available to the researcher and which was adapted consists of 20- items. Seven of the items (7) measures authoritarian parenting style, another seven (7) measures permissive parenting style, and the remaining six (6) measures authorita‐ tive parenting style. Response to Baumrind's parenting care scale items is a "Yes" or a "No".

The adapted parenting style scale used for the studies reported here also consists of 20- items, but which contains items from Baumrind's version and items from Rohner's (1990) acceptance - rejection questionnaire [23]. In this scale, 5 of the items measures permissive parenting style,

An internal consistency alpha coefficient of.86 was reported for this scale.

On the other hand in a study carried out on cultural differences in parenting and infant's socialization, in which two traditional farming community families ((Cameroon Nso families), & (India Gujarati Rajputs families)) and one western middle-class families (German families), were compared, it was found that parenting strategies in the two community families pro‐ moted communion [18]. Further, it was found that the Cameroonian and Indian infants were exposed to multiple caregivers and social cohesiveness within extended family networks. This finding further affirms the collectivistic and communal nature of the Cameroonian society. However, the results of the study also indicated that the socialisation strategy, used by Cameroon parents with their infants, was more indulgent (permissive) than that of the Indian parents. This second finding tends to portray the Cameroon parents as permissive and not authoritarian. It is however possible that these two parenting styles are actually being practiced by Cameroonian parents.

Deductions made from a study on family structure and juvenile delinquency [17], provided some insight into this possibility. According to these deductions, the traditional Cameroonian culture acknowledges and sanctions the authority of the father over his family but fails to specify a routine childcare role for him. The father therefore represents only an authority figure in the family but distant from his children, with a rigid attitude and emotional-non involve‐ ment posture. This father role omission created a gap between the high and lofty status and high esteem accorded the fathers in the culture and their appropriate and qualitative inputs needed for their children's adequate development. In turn this gap was maintained by the societal attitude towards fathers who tend to be tender and nurturing towards their infants and young children, in that such fathers are either seen as effeminate or behaving inappropri‐ ately [19]. This societal position created confusion for the contemporary Cameroonian parents who struggle with the conflict between traditional and modern directives regarding parenting [17]. It was also asserted that the values of Cameroonian parents create the conditions that permit children to spend more time within the peer culture and less in the parent-child dyads [17]. As such most toddlers in Cameroon learn more from each other than from their parents or other adults, and the responsibility for the development of toddlers therefore falls less on parents and more on the children themselves or other children within the peer culture, [17, 20, 21-22].

From this indirect parental influence on the socialization of Cameroon children, it was inferred that Cameroonian parents especially fathers seemed to have evolved from being authoritarian and emotionally distant from their children to being permissive but still emotionally distant, (a situation in which control is now given over to children, with very few rules if any exist at all and these rules are inconsistently enforced, and where pa‐

rents feel helpless or indifferent) [17]. He further stated that while the Cameroonian parents were struggling to preserve the traditional authoritarian parenting stereotype, they have been forced to become "unconsciously permissive" in their parenting style, which is tagged "indirect parental impact on children", [17, 22]. This form of indirect parental influence on Cameroon children has been claimed to be effective, and effective because of a mecha‐ nism of self-regulation which exists within the peer culture and which is maintained by the power inherent in the expectations and directives of absent (authoritarian) parents whose direct intervention is no longer needed [22]. In essence the situation in the Cameroo‐ nian society seems to be that, in each family, there is the generation of an ambivalent father image which is "domineering" and "inaccessible" and which has "delegated the socializa‐ tion process" to the peer culture. The deductions made and inferences arrived at, [17] have provided explanation for the dichotomy or ambivalence between the traditional authoritar‐ ian parenting stereotype seemingly adhered to by Cameroonian parents [3, pp138] and the prevailing permissive parenting strategy practiced by them especially mothers whose responsibility it is to nurture their infants and young children, [18]. The implication is that Cameroonian parents practice a form of permissive parenting strategy that is peer culture centred and driven by invisible and underlying authoritarian power of parents and promoted early in the children's life by their mothers' permissiveness. It is therefore expected that Cameroonian adolescents and young people would report authoritarian parenting style, permissive parenting style, and authoritarian/permissive parenting style hybrid as the parenting strategies adopted by their parents in bringing them up.
