Psychology and Developing Societies

This study examined the influence of acculturation strategies (integration and marginalisation) and personality variables of big five trials on acculturative stress among a convenience sample of 76 first generation adults who immigrated to Mauritius after transnational marriages. Response to a structured questionnaire revealed that integration was the most adopted acculturation strategy. Neuroticism, openness to experience and agreeableness emerged as significant predictors of integration and marginalisation (except agreeableness) strategies and acculturative stress. A hierarchical regression analysis revealed neuroticism, openness to experience and marginalisation as significant predictors of acculturative stress. The results suggest that both personality traits and mode of acculturation account for significant variance in the experience of acculturative stress.

The present study investigated the prevalence of lifestyle related concerns among school adolescents. The data were collected from 1,500 Indian school students enrolled in sixth to eleventh grades drawn from rural, urban, and metro settings. They completed an anonymous Adolescent Lifestyle Survey. The study documents the multiple concerns related to inappropriate dietary practices (fast food consumption, cold drinks, low fruit and vegetable intake), irregular sleeping habits, less religiosity, mild activity pattern, unhealthy daily routine and pursuance of different forms of risk behaviours. The study also showed an association of life style with several contextual variables (i.e., residential context, developmental stage and gender). The results suggest need for urgent attention to deal with the emerging concerns of risks and promoting factors of health through relevant policy-oriented reformulation, coordinated efforts among stakeholders, and initiating culturally appropriate lifestyle interventions among adolescents.

Indian immigrants bring from their country of origin a habitus that, in part, places them in a specific way in their own family as well as in the society. Being ‘middle class Indian’ both ‘disposes’ and also ‘positions’ a parent differently in relation to ‘mathematics education’ and its perceived value for their offspring. This serves to motivate the parents to ensure that the children are ‘good at maths’ as it may further enhance the value of the parents as immigrants in a host country that might in other ways (e.g., linguistically and racially) tend to disenfranchise and marginalise them. The discursive embedding of the history of migration, struggle and sacrifice and the pre-migration cultural capital of Indian immigrants explain how specific trajectories of families and home-based literacy-numeracy practices emerge and how these practices lay down the cognitive and motivational structures that may help Indian children internalise high educational ambitions and the desirable behaviour to achieve these goals. The logic of these literacy practices could be a logic of developing social psychological tools to overcome ethnic, racial and economic disadvantages.

Development has been for long an idea and an ideal that moulded the teleological movement of nations as well as that of individual self-realisation. The present paper looks at such a ‘paradigm of development’ in order to examine its impact on the social science research agenda on children in Brazil. Looking at issues concerning the modernisation processes and national development engendered contradictions, as far as a child’s position in a developing country was concerned. The seeming universality and taken for granted truth about development has concealed the relevance of evaluating its shortcomings, especially for those like children, who do not often benefit from its positive effects. The article questions whether there can be univocal value-directions and objectives whereby countries can envisage their futures. The effect of disembedding future cosmologies from given trajectories of development can have an impact on children’s research agenda as it opens up new ways to look at children and their social realities in developing countries.

The paper focuses on the constructions of the phrase—‘an ideal father’—by integrating findings from six different qualitative studies. Out of these six studies, five are from the city of Baroda while one is from Mumbai, both cities in western India. The total sample included 175 fathers, 50 mothers and 120 children. The studies used semi-structured interviews to elicit data from fathers and mothers about ‘who is an ideal father’? The study also sought children’s notions in the form of responses to open-ended statements. The data was analysed using themes from the generative-fathering framework (Dollahite, 2002; Dollahite and Hawkins, 1997). The results revealed that fathers were most influenced by their own parents in their ideals, followed by close relatives and other sources such as the media, mythology, friends and their respective spiritual gurus. The discussion focuses on understanding the results in terms of change and continuity in fatherhood ideals as well as the use of a generative framework for research on fatherhood.

This study explored parental beliefs surrounding prosocial behaviours and the parenting practices that promote them. A total of 47 mothers of young adolescents participated in one of the seven focus groups, three of which were conducted in Spanish with first-generation Mexican-American immigrants, two were conducted in English among second generation (US-born) Mexican Americans, and two were conducted with European Americans. Responses were coded using elements of the grounded theory approach, and results indicate patterns of shared and unique beliefs about prosocial behaviours in ways that reflect the sociocultural context and acculturative experiences of the respondents. Findings suggest that beliefs about prosocial behaviours and parenting are culturally-structured and dynamic—changing to reflect the experiences and developmental landscape of parents and children.