International Journal of Behavioral

Development
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Parenting in Indonesia: Inter- and intracultural differences in mothers' interactions with their young
children
Jolien Zevalkink and J. Marianne Riksen-Walraven
International Journal of Behavioral Development 2001 25: 167
DOI: 10.1080/01650250042000113
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International Journal of Behavioral Development

2001, 25 (2), 167175

# 2001 The International Society for the

Study of Behavioural Development

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pp/01650254.html

DOI: 10.1080/01650250042000113

Parenting in Indonesia: Inter- and intracultural

differences in mothers interactions with their
young children
Jolien Zevalkink and J. Marianne Riksen-Walraven
University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands
The interactions between 76 lower-class Indonesian mothers and their young children were observed
both at home and in a structured play setting. Maternal interactive behaviour in the play session was
compared with that of Japanese, Dutch, and Surinam-Dutch mothers observed in a similar setting.
The interactive behaviour of Indonesian mothers was found to be more similar to that of Dutch and
Surinam-Dutch mothers than to that of Japanese mothers. Mothers supportive behaviour in the
structured play session was signi cantly related to their sensitivity at home. Maternal interactive
behaviour in the two settings was also signi cantly but differentially related to characteristics of the
immediate and socioeconomic context. The results suggest that socioeconomic factors have a
stronger impact on the quality of parenting than cultural factors and that the observation of motherchild interactions in different settings may tap different aspects of parenting.

The everyday experiences of young children during interactions with their primary caregivers are assumed and found to
affect various aspects of their development. Attachment
researchers, for example, have shown parents sensitive
responsiveness to their infants signals and needs to predict
childrens attachment security in both Western (De Wolff &
Van IJzendoorn, 1997) and non-Western cultures (Vereijken,
Riksen-Walraven, & Kondo-Ikemura, 1997a). Other measures
re ecting the quality of parents behaviour in interactions with
their children have also been shown to predict other aspects of
child development as well. For example, parents emotional
support, their respect for the childs autonomy, adequate
structure and limit setting, and the quality of their instructions
as observed in structured play and instructional settings have
been shown to predict not only childrens cognitive and
socioemotional development but also the occurrence of
behavioural problems across cultures (Erickson, Sroufe, &
Egeland, 1985; Riksen-Walraven, Meij, Hubbard, & Zevalkink, 1996; Vereijken et al., 1997a). With a few notable
exceptions (e.g., Ainsworth, 1967; LeVine et al., 1994),
research regarding the quality of parent-child interaction in
non-Western societies is still quite scarce. In the present study,
mother-child interaction was therefore studied in Indonesia,
which is the fourth most populated country in the world with
about 200 million people. We compared Indonesian mothers
interactive behaviours to the interactive behaviours of mothers
from other cultures. We also examined the differences among
the Indonesian mothers. In order to gain greater insight into
the observed differences, we related the quality of the mothers
interactive behaviours to various characteristics of the caregiving context.
In both early and contemporary reports on Indonesian
parenting, two characteristics stand out in particular. First,
Indonesian parents rarely use physical punishment such as
slapping or beating and are generally rather permissive. When

disciplinary tactics are unavoidable, they like to entice the child

with promises, scare the child, scold severely, embarrass the
child in front of others, or atter the child. A second
characteristic is the relative indulgence to childrens wishes
and needs prior to weaning and the relative indifference with
regard to their demands after weaning at about the age of 3
years (e.g., Danandjaya, 1989; DuBois, 1944; Fischer, 1950;
Geertz, 1961; Mead, 1953; Mead & Macgregor, 1951;
Widjaja, 1989). Whether parents with infants or toddlers
actually behave differently towards their children than parents
with preschoolers will therefore be examined in the present
study.
In order to compare the interactive behaviours of the
Indonesian mothers to the interactive behaviours of mothers
from other cultures, mother-child interactions were observed
in the standardised structured play setting previously used
to observe Dutch (Meij, 1992), Surinam-Dutch (RiksenWalraven et al., 1996), and Japanese (Vereijken, et al.,
1997a) mothers with their children. In this setting, the quality
of support the mothers give their children during problem
solving and play can be evaluated using ve rating scales:
emotional support, respect for the childs autonomy, the
provision of structure and limits, quality of instructions, and
hostility towards the child (Erickson et al., 1985). Both the
Dutch and Surinam-Dutch samples had a lower socioeconomic status (SES), whereas the Japanese sample was mixed.
A comparison of these three samples (Riksen-Walraven &
Zevalkink, 2000) showed the Surinam-Dutch mothersmany
of whom have to cope with the stress of single parenthood and
adapting to a new cultureto provide signi cantly less
emotional support for their children than indigenous Dutch
and Japanese mothers; they also showed less respect for their
childrens autonomy than the other mothers. The Japanese
mothers proved to be particularly good at providing emotional
support for their children in this setting; they scored

Correspondence should be sent to Jolien Zevalkink, Centre for Child and Family
Studies, Department of Education , Leiden University, PO Box 9555, 2300 RB
Leiden, The Netherlands; e-mail: zevalkink@fsw.leidenuniv.nl .

The authors are grateful to Mariacristina Reciputi for her assistance in scoring
the mother-child interaction s and Imas, Atu, Eni, and Atika for collectin g the
eld observations.

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168

ZEVALKINK AND RIKSEN-WALRAVEN / PARENTING IN INDONESIA

signi cantly higher on the emotional support scale than the

mothers from both of the other samples. We expected the
quality of the Indonesian mothers support to also be higher
than that of the Surinam-Dutch mothers, in part because of the
relatively high levels of stress encountered in the latter sample
and in part because Indonesian mothers have been found to
resemble Japanese mothers in being relatively permissive and
indulgent with their young children (Azuma, 1982; Takahashi,
1990).
It should be noted that the interactive behaviour of
Indonesian mothers in a structured play session with their
child may not re ect the quality of their everyday interactions
at home (e.g., Borduin & Henggeler, 1981; OBrien, Johnson,
& Anderson-Goetz, 1989; Seifer, Sameroff, Anagnostopolou,
& Elias, 1992). For this reason, we also observed the mothers
interactive behaviour at home and related this to the quality of
her behaviour in the play setting. Unstructured home
observations are assumed to have high ecological validity,
particularly when they are made across the entire day and
involve a variety of situations (e.g., Leyendecker, Lamb,
Scholmerich, & Fricke, 1997). We used Ainsworths sensitivity
rating scale to assess the quality of the mothers interactive
behaviour at home. Parental sensitivity or sensitive responsiveness is generally taken to characterise the quality of the parentchild interaction (De Wolff & Van IJzendoorn, 1997), and
Ainsworths rating scale has proven to be particularly suitable
for observation in normal home situations across a longer
period of time (e.g., Grossmann, Grossmann, Spangler, Suess,
Unzner, 1985).
We expected the mothers to behave relatively similar across
the two settings because the quality of parenting depends for a
large extent on such parental characteristics as personality and
developmental history (Belsky & Isabella, 1988). Conversely,
unfavourable living conditions, such as lack of living space and
play materials, a crowded house, and heavy household duties,
may negatively affect the quality of the everyday interactions
with a child. We therefore assumed that the observations in the
structured play setting would reveal more of the mothers
potential competence whereas the observations in the
natural home setting would reveal her actual performance.
In other words, we expected a moderate but signi cant
correlation between the quality of maternal interactive behaviour in the two settings.
Finally, we not only compared our Indonesian mothers to
mothers from other cultures but also paid attention to
differences in mother-child interaction within our sample.
Research has shown that parental education, occupational
level, and income (often combined into a more global SES
measure) are important determinants of parenting quality in
Western countries. In order to examine whether this also holds
in non-Western cultures, such as Indonesia, we included both
lower and lower-middle class families in our sample.
Rather than limit our analyses to these general indicators of
SES (e.g., Skinner, 1985), however, we also examined a
number of other family characteristics and contextual variables. We chose ve domains as particularly relevant to the
Indonesian caregiving context: Family structure, education,
wealth, health, and residential mobility. Because Indonesia
encompasses a large variety of ethnic groups, it was decided to
focus on a single ethnically homogeneous group. Our sample
consisted of Sundanese-Indonesians, who are the original
inhabitants of the western region of Java and constitute the
second largest ethnic group in Indonesia (Garna, 1984). In the

following, the possible relevance of the ve different domains

of contextual characteristics for the quality of the SundaneseIndonesian caregiving will be considered.
Variables in the domain of family structure may be important
for various reasons. Sundanese-Indonesian parents are known
to marry at a young age (i.e., become a parent at a young age)
and prefer a large number of children (Adimihardja & Utja,
1991; Warnaen et al., 1987), as re ected by the high number
of children on average when compared to other Indonesian
ethnic groups (Central Bureau of Statistics, 1991). In other
cultures, the in uence of family structure on parenting has
been found to occur via such variables as mother parity (Fish &
Stifter, 1993), maternal age (Ragozin, Basham, Crnic, Greenberg, & Robinson, 1982; Stevens & Duf eld, 1986), family
extendedness (Harrison, Wilson, Pine, Chan, & Buriel, 1990),
and also family size and composition (Garrett, Ngandu, &
Ferron, 1994; Gecas, 1979).
Education appears to be important because it not only
determines the instructive quality of parental remarks (Bernstein, 1972) but also the manner in which emotional support is
provided (Bradley et al., 1989; Fish, Stifter, & Belsky, 1993).
Many of the Sundanese-Indonesian parents have high educational aspirations for their children but relatively low levels of
education themselves. In contrast to Javanese-Indonesians,
moreover, they do not facilitate the process of education much
with their actual behaviour or support towards their children
(Widjaja, 1989). In light of signi cant improvements in the
Indonesian education system (Oey-Gardiner, 1991), however,
Sundanese-Indonesian children have increasing opportunities
for secondary education.
Wealth is often found to be strongly related to education.
Variables in the domains of education and wealth are often
taken together to indicate SES. Such variables as income and
occupation have been found to be associated with supportive
parental behaviour in several studies (e.g., Conger, Ge, Elder,
Lorenz, & Simons, 1994; Cotterell; 1986, Farran & Haskins,
1980; Greenberger, ONeil, & Nagel, 1994; Skinner, 1985).
The majority of Sundanese-Indonesians have a relatively low
SES and may often experience large uctuations in income.
The occupational status of the parents can vary from farmer or
construction worker to civil servant or teacher. The variables in
the domains of education and wealth were kept separate in the
present study in order to assess their independent contributions to the quality of parental care.
In the domain of health, such variables as nutritional status,
number of vaccinations, and household hygiene were considered to be relevant because the health status of a child can
in uence the parent-child interaction. A sick or undernourished child can give fewer and less clear signals and also not be
very open to stimulating interactions, which makes it much
more dif cult for a parent to provide support (e.g., ScheperHughes, 1992). Malnutrition is often encountered in lower
SES families in South East Asia and approximately 30% of the
children suffer moderate to severe forms of malnutrition
(Bengoa & Donosos study as cited in Kotchabhakdi, 1985).
Similarly, a healthy nutritional status has been reported for
51% of the children in West Java 5 years and under and a mild
form of malnutrition for 37% of the children in 1987 (Biro
Pusat Statistik, 1987). Health problems may negatively affect
the quality of care and both the childs motor and mental
development in populations where energy protein malnutrition
is endemic (e.g., Pollitt, 1983). Other researchers have found
the quality of parent-child interactive behaviours to be

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 2001, 25 (2), 167175

signi cantly related to such preventive health activities as

bringing their children to health centres for vaccination
(Alderman & Garcia, 1994; Cogswell & Sussman, 1979; Tapia
Uribe, LeVine & LeVine, 1993) and providing nutritious meals
(Myntti, 1993; Pollitt, 1983; Zeitlin, 1991).
Finally, residential mobility has generally been found to
negatively in uence parenting (Rohner, Hahn, & Koehn,
1992), although a move that constitutes a major improvement
in the social and economic situation of the family may have a
positive effect (Larner, 1990). Residential mobility is relatively
high among Sundanese-Indonesian families who tend to move
from rural areas to the city or within the city for mostly
economic reasons. Sundanese-Indonesians may also resent the
move because they are generally very committed to their place
of birth and family of origin (Suhamihardja, 1984; Warnaen
et al., 1987). That is, residential mobility may be very stressful
for these people and thereby negatively affect the quality of
mother-child interactions.
In the present study, we expected the quality of maternal
support observed in the structured play session to be relatively
independent of the characteristics of the physical home
environment and more related to such variables as educational
level. The degree of maternal sensitivity observed in the home
was expected to be related to characteristics that can either
promote or restrict mother-child interactions, such as the
availability of toys or the amount of living space per person. In
examining the quality of parenting by Sundanese-Indonesian
mothers with their young children, we followed four steps.
First, we asked whether the mothers behaviour with younger
children (infants and toddlers) differed from that with
preschoolers. Next, we compared the quality of support
provided by the Sundanese-Indonesian mothers in a structured
play session with the quality of support provided by mothers
from other cultures observed in the same structured play
setting. Third, we examined how the supportive behaviour of
the Sundanese-Indonesian mothers in the structured play
session related to the degree of sensitivity observed during
everyday interactions with the child in the home. Finally, we
examined how the quality of the interactive behaviour of the
Sundanese-Indonesian mothers observed in two settings
related to various characteristics of the caregiving context.

Method
Research site
The participants lived in urban kampungs in the northern
part of Bandung, West Java. An urban kampung is a residential
area with a large amount of substandard housing and narrow
pedestrian pathways. Unoccupied plots and areas for growing
vegetables often lie between the houses. A kampung also has a
minimum of such facilities as electricity, water, garbage
collection, and sewage drainage (Guinness, 1986). The
population density in our research site was about 9000 persons
per square kilometre in 1990 (Pemerintah, 1990). A more
complete description of the general living conditions can be
found in Zevalkink (1997).

Participants
The original sample consisted of 80 Sundanese-Indonesian
mother-child dyads. Families from two different SES groups

169

were selected at random, which resulted in 48 dyads from low

SES families and 32 from lower-middle SES families.
Socioeconomic status was de ned in terms of family income,
parental occupational status, and educational level of both
parents. In the low SES families, parents were employed as
unskilled or semiskilled labourers and had only a primary
school education at best. In the lower-middle SES families,
parents had skilled labour or white-collar jobs and a high
school education at best. Most of the families were identi ed
via clinical records at a local health registration centre where
the rst author worked as a volunteer prior to data collection.
A household survey was conducted by the rst author to
gather the relevant contextual data and check whether the
families met the selection criteria or not: SundaneseIndonesian, children younger than 6 years of age, and low
SES or lower-middle SES. No family refused to participate,
although one family had some initial doubts due to a negative
prior experience with the health centre. No incentives were
offered to recruit families. The data sets for four dyads
proved to be incomplete due to an unexpected move (n 1),
the birth of twins (n 1), and overanxiety on the part of the
child in the structured play session (n 2). These dyads were
therefore excluded from the analyses. Of the 76 dyads
remaining, 36 of the children were rst-born and 40 were
later-born. The average age of the children was 38.74 months
(SD 19.90; range 1278). The mother-child dyads were
divided into two age groups depending on the age of the
child: 41 infants and toddlers (1236 months: 19 girls, 22
boys) and 35 preschoolers (3772 months; 17 girls, 18 boys).
Slightly more than half (57%) of the mother-child dyads lived
in a nuclear family; the other dyads lived in an extended
family household.

Procedure
The mothers and children were visited at home by the rst
author with an average of three formal visits per family (range
25) lasting an average of 1.1 hours per visit. The home visits
yielded 3.2 observation hours per child (range 27). By
means of participant observation and ethnographic interviews,
data were collected with regard to routine mother-child
interactions and the mothers child-rearing values and
aspirations. The observations were written in the form of a
narrative report. In addition, three trained local research
assistants visited the families an average of three times for
three hours to gather specimen descriptions of the caregiverchild interactions across the entire day. One of the local
research assistants and the rst author administered the ITHOME for infants and toddlers or the EC-HOME for
preschoolers (Home Observation for Measurement of the
Environment; Caldwell & Bradley, 1978). After data collection in the homes, the mothers and children were invited to a
local facility within easy walking distance of their homes for
the structured play session.
The structured play session lasted an average of 15 minutes
with four to six episodes (depending on the childs age) of two
or three minutes. During each episode, the mother was asked
to let the child perform a particular task. She was told that she
could help her child whenever she felt she needed to. The tasks
consisted of activities such as ball play, reading a book, or
putting a puzzle together. For the infants and toddlers, the last
episode was a free play situation.

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170

ZEVALKINK AND RIKSEN-WALRAVEN / PARENTING IN INDONESIA

Instruments and measures

Quality of maternal interactive behaviour. Mother-child interaction was observed at home during everyday interactions and
in a structured play session elsewhere. The quality of maternal
interactive behaviour at home was rated using the 9-point
Sensitivity Scale developed by Ainsworth, Bell, and Stayton
(1974). This assessment was done by the rst author on the
basis of her narrative reports and the specimen descriptions
from the eld assistants. Four months after the initial ratings,
the rst author rated 14 of the subjects again. It was not
possible for other trained members of our research group to
rate mothers sensitivity because the specimen descriptions
were written in the Indonesian language. The test-retest
reliability for the sensitivity ratings at home was found to be
.94 (Pearson correlation).
In the videotaped structured play session, the quality of
support provided by the mothers was assessed using ve 7point rating scales developed by Erickson et al. (1985):
Supportive presence (i.e., expression of positive regard and
emotional support for the child), respect for autonomy (i.e.,
recognition of and respect for the childs individuality,
motives, and perspectives), structure and limit setting (i.e.,
adequacy of mothers attempts to communicate her expectations with regard to the childs behaviour and enforce her
agenda), quality of instruction (i.e., the degree to which
instructions are attuned to the childs focus, stated clearly,
paced at a rate that allows comprehension, and graded in
logical steps understandable to the child), and hostility (i.e.,
expression of anger, dismissal, or rejection of the child).
These scales were chosen because they were speci cally
designed to evaluate the quality of maternal support during
tasks requiring her help or instruction and have also been
successfully used with children between 12 and 42 months of
age from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds (Erickson
et al., 1985; Juffer, 1993; Meij, 1992; Riksen-Walraven et al.,
1996; Vereijken et al., 1997a). The ve rating scales were
applied independently by the two authors and a trained
graduate student. Interrater reliability was computed for 16
dyads and found to be .90 for supportive presence, .86 for
respect for autonomy, .79 for structure and limit setting, .89
for quality of instruction, and .79 for hostility (Pearson
correlations). The ve scales were signi cantly intercorrelated, with correlations ranging from .23 to .67 (p < .05).
Cronbachs alpha for the ve rating scales was .76. In
addition to the separate scale scores, we also computed a
composite score for the quality of maternal support in the
structured play session by summing the ve scale scores after
reversal of the score for hostility.
Contextual variables. To assess the characteristics of the
caregiving context that might affect the quality of the
mothers interactive behaviour, 37 measures were derived
from the household survey, health records, ethnographic
interviews, and two subscales of the IT- and EC-HOME
(Caldwell & Bradley, 1978). Each of the measures t in one
of the ve domains: Family structure, education, wealth,
health, or residential mobility. Measures of family structure
were the number of siblings, age of both parents, household
size (de ned as the number of people living in the same
house and sharing meals), living arrangement (nuclear/
extended), number of remarriages for mother and father,
and number of siblings in the family of origin for each of the

parents. Measures in the domain of education were level of

education for both parents, and the number of children in the
family previously or presently attending preschool. Furthermore, we computed the average level of education for the
extended family members, including the childrens grandparents and aunts and uncles. Measures of wealth included
the number of consumer durables (sum score of six items),
safety of the physical environment, provision of play
materials, quality of housing (bad/average/good), living space
per person (in square metres), total income, and occupational
status for both parents. Measures in the domain of health
included the prevalence of life-threatening health problems
(no problems/one person in the family/two or more people/
one person died/two or more died), the actuality of health
problems (never/past/present), nutritional status (malnourished/undernourished/average/above average), and expenditures on food per person (e.g., rice, milk, meat). Other health
measures were sanitary conditions in the house (no bathroom/
bathroom without water tap/bathroom with water tap), ratio
of children vaccinated, and use of contraceptives (no/yes).
Mobility measures included the number of times moved, time
spent in present place of residence, and distance to dwellings
of relatives (same house/in neighborhood/not near). Mobility
was further measured by the place of family origin (rural/
urban) and the distance of the place of birth for both parents
from the present location (this neighbourhood/surrounding
neighbourhoods/other area of the present city/outside the
present city).

Results
Quality of maternal interactive behaviour with
younger and older children
As can be seen from Table 1, the quality of the mothers
interactive behaviour at home and the overall quality of
support provided in the structured play session did not differ
signi cantly for the two age groups. However, t-tests on the
separate rating scales for the quality of maternal support
provided in the structured play session revealed two signi cant
differences between the age groups. The mothers provided less
emotional support and more structure and limits with the
preschoolers when compared to the infants and toddlers. This
means that the mothers of the preschoolers in the structured
play session were less emotionally responsive and more strict
with their children than the mothers of the younger children.
At home, however, the mothers of the older children did not
behave less sensitively than the mothers of the younger
children.
To investigate the possibility of interaction effects between
age and gender, a MANOVA was conducted with the six rating
scales as the dependents. No interaction effects were found. A
main effect was found for age, F(6, 67) 5.26, p < .01, similar
to the results for supportive presence and structure/limit setting
described earlier. No signi cant main effect of gender was
found, but univariate analyses showed a signi cant gender
difference for structure and limit setting, F(1, 72) 4.42, p <
.04, with boys receiving more structure and limits from their
mothers than girls (M 5.00, SD 1.19 and M 4.43, SD
1.24, respectively).

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 2001, 25 (2), 167175

171

Table 1
Differences in the quality of interactive behaviour of Sundanese-Indonesian mothers
with younger vs. older children
Quality of interactive behaviour

Infants and toddlersa

(n 41)
M

(SD)

(SD)

T-value

5.83

(1.53)

5.80

(1.59)

0.08

3.71
4.07
4.44
3.39
1.07
22.54

(1.29)
(1.10)
(1.35)
(1.32)
(0.26)
(4.04)

3.00
4.06
5.06
3.94
1.29
22.77

(1.35)
(0.84)
(1.03)
(1.55)
(1.05)
(4.51)

2.33*
0.07
2.22*
1.68
1.26
0.24

Sensitivity at home
Support in structured play sessiond
Supportive presence
Respect for autonomy
Structure and limit setting
Quality of instruction
Hostility
Overall

Preschoolersb
(n 35)

*p < .05 (two-tailed). N 76. a Children with average age of 21.95 (SD 8.75).
average age of 56.91 (SD 10.38). c 9-point rating scale. d 7-point rating scales.

Intercultural differences in quality of maternal support

in the structured play session

Children with

consisted of 26 mother-child pairs observed when the child was

12, 18, and 30 months of age (Meij, 1992). For the present
study, we used the results assessed at 30 months. All of the
dyads lived in two-parent families that were all lower SES; the
mothers educational level ranged from low to moderate. The
videotaped session lasted 15 minutes and included four tasks.
As can be seen in Table 2, the Sundanese-Indonesian
mothers provided signi cantly less emotional support for their
children than the Japanese mothers who provided signi cantly
more emotional support than the Surinam-Dutch and Dutch
mothers. The same pattern was found for respect for
autonomy, with the Japanese mothers more respectful of their
childs autonomy than the other mothers. Sundanese-Indonesian mothers were found to provide more structure and set
stricter limits on their childrens behaviour than both the
Japanese and Surinam-Dutch mothers. No signi cant differences between the samples were found for the quality of
instruction that the mothers provided. With regard to hostility,
we found Sundanese-Indonesian mothers to be less hostile
towards their children than the Surinam-Dutch and Dutch
mothers. Unfortunately, hostility scores were not available for
the Japanese mothers.
It should be noted that the ages at which the children were
observed differ across samples. One way to check for possible
age-related differences is to compare the subsample of
Sundanese-Indonesian infants and toddlers (mean age 22
months) with the samples from the other cultures (see Table 1

The quality of support provided by Sundanese-Indonesian

mothers was compared with that of mothers from three other
cultures: Japanese, Surinam-Dutch, and indigenous Dutch.
The Japanese sample consisted of 45 mother-child dyads,
living in Tokyo, Japan (Vereijken, Riksen-Walraven, & Van
Lieshout, 1997b). The mothers and children were observed at
home when the child was 24 months of age. All of these dyads
lived in two-parent families with a mixed socioeconomic
background and a maternal education level ranging from low
to high. The videotaped interaction session lasted an average of
17.5 minutes and consisted of ve tasks similar to the ones
used with the younger Sundanese-Indonesian children. Two of
the tasks were also used with the Surinam-Dutch and
indigenous Dutch samples. The Surinam-Dutch sample
consisted of 38 mothers originating from Surinama former
Dutch colony in South Americaand now living in the
Netherlands. The mothers were observed at home with their
18-month-old child. This group served as the control group in
an intervention study reported elsewhere (Riksen-Walraven
et al., 1996). Half of the mothers in this group were single
parents; they all had a lower SES; and they all had a low to
moderate educational level. The interaction session lasted 25
minutes and consisted of ve instruction tasks, a reading
episode, and a free play episode. The indigenous Dutch sample

Table 2
Inter-cultural differences in quality of maternal support in a structured play session
SundaneseIndonesiansa
(N 76)
M (SD)
SP
RA
SL
QI
HO

3.38
4.07
4.72
3.64
1.17

(1.36)
(0.98)
(1.24)
(1.45)
(0.74)

Japaneseb
(N 45)
M (SD)
4.76
4.87
4.24
4.00

(1.09)
(1.12)
(1.22)
(1.23)
n.a.

SurinamDutch c
(N 38)
M (SD)
3.63
3.84
4.08
3.92
1.47

(1.34)
(1.29)
(1.02)
(1.05)
(0.73)

Dutch d
(N 26)
M (SD)
3.81
4.19
4.23
3.38
1.65

(1.81)
(1.50)
(1.68)
(1.72)
(1.41)

Signi cant contrastse

J > SI**, SD**, D**
J > SI**, SD**, D*
SI > J*, SD**
(J > D***)
SI < SD*, D*

SP Supportive presence; RA Respect for autonomy; SL Structure and limit setting; QI Quality of instruction; HO Hostility; n.a. not available. a Low
education , mean age of children 38 months. b Low to high education , children 24 months old (Vereijken , 1990). c Low education , children 18 months old (RiksenWalraven et al., 1996). d Low education , children 30 months old (Meij, 1992). e t-tests: *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .10 (two-tailed); SI Sundanese-Indonesians,
J Japanese, SD Surinam-Dutch, D Dutch.
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ZEVALKINK AND RIKSEN-WALRAVEN / PARENTING IN INDONESIA

for the means and standard deviations). This analysis revealed

two deviations from the pattern of ndings found for the total
Indonesian sample (see Table 2). First, the nding that
Sundanese-Indonesian mothers provide more structure and
set stricter limits on their childrens task behaviour than the
Japanese and Surinam-Dutch mothers disappeared when we
restricted the Sundanese-Indonesian sample to the younger
group. The second difference was found for quality of
instruction. Whereas the mean score for the quality of the
Sundanese-Indonesian mothers instruction originally did not
differ from that observed for the Japanese sample, the mean
score for the younger Sundanese-Indonesian group was
signi cantly lower than that for the Japanese group. In other
words, Japanese mothers provide higher quality instructions to
their 24-month-old children than Sundanese-Indonesian
mothers (t 2.18, p < .05).
In short, the intercultural comparison showed the quality of
interactive behaviour of Sundanese-Indonesian mothers to
largely resemble the Surinam-Dutch and Dutch mothers. An
important difference is that the Sundanese-Indonesian mothers
expressed signi cantly less hostility towards their child than the
Surinam-Dutch and Dutch mothers. More generally, the
Japanese mothers provided their young children with particularly high quality emotional support and were more respectful
of their childrens autonomy than the mothers in the other
samples.

Quality of mothers support in the structured play

session as related to her sensitivity at home
We next related the quality of maternal support provided in the
structured play session to the sensitivity of the mothers
behaviour at home. As shown in Table 3, the mothers
sensitivity at home signi cantly correlated with all ve aspects
of her support in the laboratory setting. Supportive presence,
hostility, and quality of instruction in the laboratory setting
were more strongly related to sensitivity at home than respect
for autonomy and structure/limit setting. The signi cant
correlation between the overall quality of support in the
structured play session and sensitivity at home (r .46, p <
.01; two-tailed) indicates that a mothers behaviour in the
somewhat arti cially structured play setting re ects the
quality of her everyday interactions with the child to some
extent. As the correlation was only moderate, however, clear
differences in the quality of maternal behaviour in the two
situations appear to be the case. In the next section, we will
relate maternal behaviour in the two settings to characteristics
of the caregiving context and perhaps shed some more light on
the observed differences between the two settings.

Table 3
Correlations between quality of maternal interactive behaviour
observed in two settings
Sensitivity at home
Supportive presence
Respect for autonomy
Structure and limit setting
Quality of instruction
Hostility
Overall quality of maternal support
*p < .05; **p < .01 (two-tailed).

.43**
.27*
.24*
.38**
.31**
.46**

Quality of maternal interactive behaviour in two

settings related to contextual characteristics
To investigate which contextual characteristics contribute to
the quality of maternal interactive behaviour, we correlated
each of the separate characteristics with maternal sensitivity at
home and the overall quality of the support provided in the
structured play session. We could, of course, have combined
the contextual variables in a factor analysis but preferred
keeping the variables separate for two reasons. First, we did not
want to cross domain borders and form broad constructs like
SES before examining the separate contributions of the
contextual variables in this relatively rare Asian sample.
Second, a factor analysis often creates murky variables
hiding possible separate relationships with the dependent
variable. For more information on the intercorrelations
between the various contextual characteristics, the reader is
referred to Zevalkink (1997) or Zevalkink, Riksen-Walraven,
and Van Lieshout (1999). Inspection of Table 4 shows
maternal interactive behaviour at home (i.e., sensitivity) to be
more strongly related to the various contextual characteristics
than maternal behaviour in the structured play setting.
Maternal sensitivity at home shows a larger number of
signi cant correlations and stronger correlations with the
contextual variables than the quality of support in the
structured play situation. As can be seen from Table 4,
mothers who are sensitive at home are better educated than the
other mothers and have a higher educated husband with a
better quali ed job. Sensitive mothers have a relatively high
family income, which is also visible in the quality of their living
environment: They live in higher quality housing with more
living space per person and better sanitary conditions, and their
children are provided with play materials in a relatively safe
physical environment. Mothers who interact sensitively at
home also have better nourished children who are also more
likely to have attended or attend a preschool. Some of the
contextual characteristics were also related to the quality of
maternal interactive behaviour in the structured play setting as
well. Those mothers found to be more supportive in this
situation also had a relatively high level of education (along
with their parents), a higher occupation, and a higher family
income. Their children were more likely to have play materials
and to attend preschool. In addition, mothers who were more
supportive in the structured play setting proved to be older,
had changed residence more frequently than the other
mothers, and more often have children who have been
vaccinated.
We conducted two multiple regression analyses next to
discover which combination of contextual variables best
predicted the quality of maternal interactive behaviour in the
two situations. All of the contextual variables found to be
signi cant in the previous analyses (see Table 4) were included
as predictor variables and not combined into broader
constructs for similar reasons stated in the previous paragraph.
This produced 13 contextual variables to predict mothers
sensitivity at home and 9 contextual variables to predict the
quality of maternal support in the structured play session. All
of the independent variables were found to be linearly related
to the dependent variables and could thus be included in the
analyses. As the case-to-variable ratio was minimal (Tabachnick & Fidell, 1989), we applied the regression analysis
exploratively and not to test hypotheses. Multicollinearity
between the independent variables was not detected. The

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 2001, 25 (2), 167175

Table 4
Pearson correlations between quality of maternal interactive
behaviour in two settings and contextual variables in five domains
(N 76)
Variables per domain

Family structure
Age of mother
Education
Educational level mother
Educational level father
Preschool attendance
Education level mothers parents
Education level fathers siblings
Wealth
No. consumer durables
Safe physical environment
Provision play materials
Quality of housing
Living space per person
Total amount of income
Occupational status mother
Occupational status father
Health
Nutritional status target child
Sanitary conditions
Ratio children vaccinated
Residential mobility
No. times moved

Structured play:
Overall support
quality

Home
sensitivity

.29*

.16

.23*
.15
.38**
.24*
.16

.40**
.32**
.37**
.16
.30*

.14
.08
.28*
.06
.09
.24*
.23*
.06
.19
.20
.33**
.23*

.40**
.23*
.42**
.35**
.34**
.36**
.22
.37**
.27*
.34*
.18
.00

*p < .05; **p < .01 (two-tailed) .

highest intercorrelation was found for the educational level of

the father and his occupational status (r .65, p < .01). We
also checked for normality, linearity, and homoscedasticity of
the residuals and did not nd any abnormalities. Multiple
linear regression analyses were applied in a stepwise manner
(Cohen, 1988; Tabachnick & Fidell, 1989) as this is the most
exploratory regression technique available.
With regard to maternal behaviour in the structured play
setting, the variance between the mothers was completely
explained by preschool attendance, R2 .15, F(1, 68) 11.57,
p < .01. The other contextual variables did not add
signi cantly to the prediction equation. For mothers sensitivity at home, the provision of play materials was selected as the
best predictor in the rst step, R2 .17, F(1, 68) 14.23, p <
.01. In the next step, occupational status of the father was
found to increase the amount of explained variance by a
signi cant 10%, F change 8.57, p < .01. In the nal step,
the nutritional status of the target child explained an additional
7% of the variance, F change 6.76, p < .05. Together, the
three contextual predictors explained 34% of the variance in
the mothers sensitivity at home, F(3, 66) 11.08, p < .01.
Not one of the other contextual variables signi cantly
increased the amount of variance explained.
In short, Sundanese-Indonesian mothers with either the
target child and/or older siblings either presently or previously
attending preschool provided higher quality support in the
structured play setting than mothers from families with no
preschool attendance. At home, mothers with more toys
available to their child, husbands with comparatively higher
jobs, and better nourished children also appear to be more
sensitive to their children than the other mothers.

173

Conclusions and discussion

The present study of Sundanese-Indonesian mothers interactive behaviour has revealed various interesting ndings.
Contrary to our expectations, the interactive behaviour of
Sundanese-Indonesian mothers in a structured play setting
resembled the behaviour of lower class Dutch and SurinamDutch mothers more than the behaviour of Japanese mothers.
The observations of the mothers interactive behaviours in the
structured setting proved to be ecologically valid, as indicated
by signi cant correlations with the sensitivity of her behaviour
when observed at home across an extended period of time.
Similar to samples from other cultures, the quality of the
interactions between Sundanese-Indonesian mothers and their
young children appears to be signi cantly related to a number
of socioeconomic features and aspects of the immediate
caregiving context.
The nding that the Sundanese-Indonesian mothers resembled the Surinam-Dutch and Dutch mothers more than
the Japanese mothers came as a surprise to us. The only
difference from the Surinam-Dutch and Dutch mothers was
that the Sundanese-Indonesian mothers displayed less hostility
in their interactions with their children. This nding supports
the general observation mentioned in the introduction to this
paper, namely, that Indonesian parents rarely use physical
punishment and tend to be rather permissive with children.
This difference in the expression of hostility is probably the
only real intercultural difference revealed by our study. The
nding that the behaviour of our Sundanese-Indonesian
mothers resembles that of Surinam-Dutch and Dutch mothers
(with a comparable socioeconomic status but profoundly
different cultural backgrounds) more than the behaviour of
Japanese mothers (with a culturally similar but socioeconomically different background) suggests that factors associated
with socioeconomic status more profoundly affect the quality
of parental support for children than cultural factors.
Partial support was found for the prediction that Indonesian
parents will be more lenient and emotionally supportive with
children under the age of three than with older children. The
overall quality of maternal support for younger and older
children did not differ, which corresponds to what has been
found for immigrant Chinese mothers (Kelley & Tseng, 1992).
Examination of the separate rating scales, however, showed an
age-related shift in the provision of support in the structured
play session. The mothers of older children were less
emotionally supportive and more strict in a task situation than
the mothers of younger children. Similar results for maternal
emotional support have also been found in a Dutch longitudinal study, which showed a signi cant decrease in the
degree of emotional support provided between the ages of 18
and 30 months (Meij, 1992).
The quality of the interactive behaviour of the SundaneseIndonesian mothers in a structured play setting was positively
related to the quality of their behaviour at home. In the
introduction to this paper, we argued that similarity in the
quality of maternal interactive behaviour across situations
re ects parenting competence and thus such stable
personal resources as the intelligence, education, personality
characteristics, and developmental history of the mother
involved. In addition to a signi cant consistency, the interactive behaviour of our Sundanese-Indonesian mothers also
showed considerable variation across the situations that we
observed. This variation is most likely caused by other, more

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174

ZEVALKINK AND RIKSEN-WALRAVEN / PARENTING IN INDONESIA

contextual, performance factors. Our results suggest that

characteristics of the immediate caregiving contextsuch as
availability of toys, quality of housing, and living space per
personmay considerably affect the quality of a mothers
interaction with her child at home. Whereas the structured play
settingwith interaction-promoting conditions and a relative
absence of distractionsprovides the mother with the opportunity to show her interactive competence, her everyday
behaviour or performance at home can be clearly hampered
by the stress of dif cult living conditions or heavy household
duties. In our study, siblings or other children were often
present during the mother-child observations at home. In some
of the families, the mothers were caring for several young
children, a baby in need of breast feeding, a toddler demanding
snacks (jajan), and a preschooler running back and forth.
Mothers and children are known to be most engaged with each
other during object play and social interaction and less engaged
during such routine situations as feeding and getting dressed
(Lamb, Leyendecker, & Scholmerich, 1998). This implies that
intense engagement between mother and child, as shown
during dyadic object play, will be more frequently observed in
families where they can afford the toys and a safe oor to play
on than in households with no such toys and a mud oor.
The different relationship of the mothers interactive
behaviour in the two settings to the various contextual
characteristics provides greater insight into the signi cance of
the maternal behaviour observed in the two situations.
Sensitivity at home was correlated with a larger number of
contextual variables and the correlations were also stronger
than those for the quality of maternal support in the structured
play setting. Sensitivity at home was strongly related to
variables in the domain of wealth, with more sensitive mothers
apparently living in a relatively rich and more prosperous home
setting. Mothers quality of support in the structured play
setting was more strongly related to variables from other
domains. This supports our prediction that the impact of
socioeconomic characteristics on maternal behaviour will be
reduced when mothers are observed with their children in a
standardised situation. We also found older mothers to be
better teachers in the structured play setting. Furthermore, the
best predictor of the mothers behaviour in the structured play
setting was children attending or having attended preschool.
Similar to mothers supportive behaviour in the structured play
setting, preschool attendance may also re ect an active
educational orientation on the part of the mothers. The
correlation of the quality of support provided by mothers with
vaccinations for their children re ect the same phenomenon,
namely, active attempts by mothers to in uence the well-being
of their children. Interestingly, maternal sensitivity at home
was positively related to the nutritional status of the child; wellnourished children were found to have more sensitive mothers.
This seems to indicate that sensitive mothers provide better
food for their children, as suggested by Myntti (1993) and
others. It is also possible, however, that well-nourished
children are less fussy during everyday interactions and thereby
make it easier for their mothers to respond sensitively (e.g.,
Wachs et al., 1992). Similarly, the absence of a relation
between childrens nutritional status and mothers behaviour
in the structured play session (which is new and interesting for
children and also does not last too long) may re ect less
fussiness of the children; the mothers may also be less
hampered by daily hassles and thus better able to deal with
their children in the structured play situation. This implies that

low nutritional status may be a risk factor for less than high
quality care, particularly when combined with relatively poor
living conditions.
Our study has shown that the quality of support provided by
Sundanese-Indonesian mothers for their preschoolers can be
validly observed during everyday interactions at home and also
in a standardised play setting. The mothers behaviour as
observed at home clearly re ects the impact of social and
economic aspects of the caregiving environment. The mothers
behaviour in the structured play setting appears to be less
affected by such contextual characteristics and more affected
by the mothers basic competence. It is tempting to assume
that maternal behaviour at home is more representative of the
childrens everyday interactive experiences than maternal
behaviour in a standardised play setting and thus a better
predictor of the childs social and emotional development,
which is assumed to re ect the history of the mother-child
interaction. This is certainly an interesting topic for future
research. In the meantime, it is recommended that the quality
of mothers interactive behaviour be observed in both the home
and a standardised setting in order to attain a complete picture.
Manuscript received December 1998
Revised manuscript received May 1999

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