The disciplinary practices used by mothers to control their children in four ethnic groups in Australia are compared from a developmental perspective. A vignette approach was used in which each mother was asked to say how she would deal with 12 situations involving her oldest child at 8 years of age and at 4 years of age. The responses were coded as power assertion, love withdrawal, induction, and permissiveness. Twenty mothers of each of the ethnic groups, Geek, Lebanese, Vietamese, and Anglo, from the same socioeconomic level and geographic area were randomly chosen from lists of families that met the criteria for inclusion in the study. The results showed that for all four groups of mothers, power assertion was the most frequently used disciplinary technique. However, power assertion was reported less frequently by the Vietnamese mothers than by mothers from the other ethnic groups. Inductive techniques were relatively more often used with 4-year-old children and mothers were relatively more permissive with 8-year-old children.
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