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Using a randomized control trial design we tested the effectiveness of a culturally sensitive adaptation of the Video-feedback Intervention to promote Positive Parenting and Sensitive Discipline (VIPP-SD) in a sample of 76 Turkish minority families in the Netherlands. The VIPP-SD was adapted based on a pilot with feedback of the target mothers, resulting in the VIPP-TM (VIPP-Turkish Minorities). The sample included families with 20-47-month-old children with high levels of externalizing problems. Maternal sensitivity, nonintrusiveness, and discipline strategies were observed during pretest and posttest home visits. The VIPP-TM was effective in increasing maternal sensitivity and nonintrusiveness, but not in enhancing discipline strategies. Applying newly learned sensitivity skills in discipline situations may take more time, especially in a cultural context that favors more authoritarian strategies. We conclude that the VIPP-SD program and its video-feedback approach can be successfully applied in immigrant families with a non-Western cultural background, with demonstrated effects on parenting sensitivity and nonintrusiveness.

According to the family stress model (Conger & Donnellan, 2007), low socioeconomic status (SES) predicts less-than-optimal parenting through family stress. Minority families generally come from lower SES backgrounds than majority families, and may experience additional stressors associated with their minority status, such as acculturation stress. The primary goal of this study was to test a minority family stress model with a general family stress pathway, as well as a pathway specific to ethnic minority families. The sample consisted of 107 Turkish-Dutch mothers and their 5- to 6-year-old children, and positive parenting was observed during a 7-min problem-solving task. In addition, mothers reported their daily hassles, psychological distress, and acculturation stress. The relation between SES and positive parenting was partially mediated by both general maternal psychological stress and maternal acculturation stress. Our study contributes to the argument that stressors specific to minority status should be considered in addition to more general demographic and family stressors in understanding parenting behavior in ethnic minority families.

The primary goal of this study is to test the hypothesis that beliefs about the ideal sensitive mother are similar across Dutch, Moroccan, and Turkish mothers living in the Netherlands. A total of 75 mothers with at least one child between the ages of six months and six years described their views about the ideal sensitive mother using the Maternal Behavior Q-Sort (Pederson, Moran, & Bento, 1999 ). These views were highly similar within and across cultural and socio-economic groups. Nevertheless, family income fully mediated the relationship between ethnic background and sensitivity beliefs; income of minority mothers was lower which was in turn predictive of a lower sensitivity belief score. Our findings suggest that the main behavioral markers of sensitivity are valued by mothers from different cultural backgrounds. The role of socio-economic status in sensitivity beliefs is consistent with the Family Stress Model.

Interventions for parents of young children often focus on enhancing parental sensitivity. A cognitive match on treatment goals has been shown to relate to the quality of the relationship (or alliance) between a therapist and the person receiving intervention, which in turn predicts the effectiveness of interventions. However, in multicultural societies therapists and patients do not always share the same ethnic background, which could influence their match on treatment goals. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that there is a cognitive match regarding the importance of sensitivity in early childhood parenting across Dutch and Moroccan, Turkish, Surinamese, and Antillean ethnic minority mothers and youth mental health professionals in the Netherlands and Turkish mothers and youth mental health professionals in Turkey. A total of 105 mothers with at least one child between the ages of 6 months and 6 years and 98 female professionals described their views about the ideal sensitive mother using the Maternal Behavior Q-Sort (Pederson et al. in Manual maternal behavior Q-sort version 3.1, ). Both professionals' and mothers' beliefs about the ideal mother converged strongly with the concept of sensitivity and within and across cultural groups of mothers and professionals. These findings point to a cognitive match on sensitivity beliefs between mothers and professionals with different cultural backgrounds. Our findings suggest that early childhood parenting interventions focused on enhancing sensitivity fit the beliefs of mothers of young children in different cultural groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]