PERSONAL VALUES AND SELF-REPORTED CHILD-REARING ACTIVITIES OF ESTONIAN AND RUSSIAN PARENTS IN ESTONIA

1. Culture and parenting There is a growing awareness that universal developmental tasks may be solved differently in different sociocultural environments (Bornstein and Cheah 2006). Culture may be defined in several different ways. At the centre of every concept of culture is the expectation that different nations possess different beliefs and behave differently in respect to parenting (Bornstein and Cheah 2006). Tudge (2000) defines culture as a web of values, beliefs, meaning systems and practices; therefore, variability in the patterns of values and beliefs that exists within societies, such as in the USA and Russia, should not be ignored or treated as evidence of intrasocietal culture. To paraphrase Tudge, we may say that one important level of intrasocietal culture is the way in which parents raise their offspring. Cross-cultural comparisons show that virtually all aspects of parenting, whether beliefs or practices, are shaped by cultural habits (Bornstein and Cheah 2006). Parenting is a contribution to the 'continuity of culture' by helping to define cultural patterns and by transmitting cultural information from generation to generation (Darling and Steinberg 1993). For children of ethnic minorities, the cultural influence presented by the dominant culture appears to be a constant threat to their traditional values, and thus may counteract the socialization process. It is therefore important to identify the different values which constitute socialization. Greater awareness about the core values of the majority and minorities may prevent confusion of norms and marginalization amongst ethnic minority families (Lefley 1976). Thus we may say that parenting practices reflect cultural meaning systems (Harwood et al. 2001). 2. Russians in Estonia It is widely accepted that cultural heritage and beliefs, as well as social factors associated with ethnicity in the country of residence, have important effects on parenting behavior (Forehand and Kotchick 1996, Kotchick and Forehand 2002). Approximately 26% of Estonian inhabitants are of Russian origin (Statistics Estonia 2008). Most of them are immigrants who arrived in Estonia after World War II and their descendants. As knowledge of the Estonian language amongst the Russian population is in many cases poor or lacking (Pavelson 1997, Nimmerfeldt, Schulze and Taru 2011), their chances to acquire education or find a job, and eventually their socioeconomic status itself, is lower than that of Estonians (Statistics Estonia 2008). Thus, one influential factor in the child-rearing habits of Russians and Estonians is probably their differing socioeconomic statuses, and not only the different cultural backgrounds. The correlation between upbringing and culture has been widely researched, and different connections between the two have been found. There has been much talk about individualism and collectivism (or sociocentrism) as important factors in child rearing. In one study on this topic (Realo and Allik 1999), researchers compared the samples formed by respondents from the USA, Estonia and Russia, and concluded that collectivism is the highest amongst Russian respondents and lowest amongst Estonians. They also stated that Russians living in Estonia were less collectivistic than the Russians living in Russia (ibid.). Realo and Allik (1999) connected this fact with the results of research carried out by Vetik (1995), in which it was concluded that 72% of Russians living in Estonia have adopted an 'Estonian' identity. Other researchers have drawn the same conclusion (Pettai 2000): The Russian community in Estonia has constructed a new, Estonian-Russian identity (Fein 2005, Vetik 1995). Similar results were obtained by Lambert (1987), who examined the values and parenting habits of immigrants in the USA and Canada, as well as by many other scientists (Akhtar 1995). Lambert (1987) studied the values of two social groups: parents residing in each of the countries of origin, and comparable groups (immigrants) of parents established in Canada or the USA. …