Worldviews and Tough Love

Abstract

This proceedings paper introduces our work in progress, in which we present empirical evidence concerning effects of cultural differences on parents' attitudes toward children from unique U.S. and Japanese survey data. These data sets have been collected by Osaka University, and contain questions concerning worldviews and religions, hypothetical questions about parental behavior, and questions about socioeconomic variables. The data show that U.S. parents tend to be tougher than Japanese parents toward young children. Our empirical evidence indicates that people who are confident about issues related to worldviews tend to show tough attitudes toward their children. Our evidence also suggests that contents of worldview beliefs held by parents affect parent's attitudes toward children. Because U.S. parents are much more confident than Japanese parents in worldview issues, this cultural difference helps explain why U.S. parents are much tougher than Japanese.