Presence and respect: Childrearing in an intercultural Chilean city.

Abstract

Parenting research underscores caregivers' fundamental role in offering children learning experiences and socializing them into specific sociocultural environments. Diverse parenting programs and initiatives to support caregiving have emerged and have helped many families; however, they still fall short in rooting their content in grounded knowledge of the material, social, and cultural context in which childrearing is occurring. This research sought to contribute to the Chilean literature on the notion of contextualized caregiving. Using an ethnographic approach, we examined the caregiving practices of seven low-income women mothers with their toddler children, from three Latin American countries (Bolivia, Chile, and Colombia) all living in an intercultural city. Data was analyzed using James Spradley's method. The different emphases between these women's childrearing practices and their meanings became central in the analytic process and two themes emerged: (a) immigrant women focused on protection from danger and teaching the social norms they valued, including respect and limits, and (b) local Chilean women emphasized caregivers' physical presence in their child's life; however, a tension was present around the need to "develop as a person" beyond mothering. The different, locally situated understandings and meanings that guide childrearing and the possible empirical implications of this difference are discussed.