Culture sets the agenda for parenting and defines what being a good parent entails. In this chapter, we review evidence for this point from both the popular literature and from cross-cultural academic research, including our own. Parenting ideas and practices in the United States, Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and East Asia are described as they relate to the challenges of being a good parent. Particular attention is given to the role of culturally based parental ethnotheories as a basis for action and reflection on oneself as a parent. The chapter concludes with consideration of how current rapid culture change creates new challenges for being a good parent and thus for emotion regulation and a sense of well-being.

In 1875 in Leipzig, Germany, Wilhelm Wundt established a laboratory for using the experimental method of physics to isolate and measure what were presumed to be the elements of sensation, perception, and ultimately the functioning of the psyche. His goal was to “mark out a new domain of science” (Wundt, 1874, cited in Schultz, 1975, p. 53). In this historical moment, it is said, lies the origin of modern psychology – scientific, empirical psychology, beyond the mere logic of the philosopher (Boring, 1950). In 1879, Leipzig University incorporated Wundt's laboratory, and in recognition of that event 100 years later, the American Psychological Association (APA) declared the centenary of the field itself. The APA was actually formed in 1892, with G. Stanley Hall presiding over a membership of 42 persons who were engaged in the advancement of psychology as a science (American Psychological Association, 2003).

When John Whiting came to publish his dissertation research on childrearing practices in a New Guinea tribe (Whiting 1941), he titled the work “Becoming a Kwoma.” The title was deliberately chosen to express the idea that children are not born with an understanding of their cultural identity, but that they must learn to think and act like members of a particular social group. This theme has received renewed attention under the rubric of “the acquisition of culture” (Schwartz 1981, Harkness 1990), drawing metaphorically from the field of child language to suggest the kinds of mental processes that may be involved in the child's learning of the culture. In both recent models of culture acquisition and earlier formulations of “childhood socialization,” the role of parents is taken as central.

Strangely, however, anthropologists have rarely examined the processes by which parents learn to be parents in a manner consistent with the beliefs and practices of their own culture. In traditional societies where the ethnographer could at least imagine a time before contact with western culture, the task of learning to be a parent as part of learning the culture may have seemed fairly straightforward. Ethnographic accounts of traditional societies in East Africa, for example, detail how children are trained to be child nurses at an early age, how they learn the lore of married life through the circumcision ceremonies, and how they begin married life and parenthood under the close supervision of their elders.