Uncovering parental ethnotheories in Türkiye: Parental beliefs and practices linkage

Parental ethnotheories delineate culturally shared beliefs about the nature of children and normative parenting in a particular cultural niche. Using a sequential mixed-methods design, we assessed parental ethnotheories in a non-White, educated, industrialized, rich, and developed cultural context of Türkiye and developed a parental beliefs scale (PBS) with a culturally informed emic approach in two studies. Study 1 relied on semistructured interviews with 125 Turkish parents (79 mothers, 46 fathers) to better understand parents' beliefs on the child's nature and proper parenting with particular attention to the key demographic characteristics reflecting intracultural diversity. This qualitative inquiry informed the generation of items for a PBS about the nature of children and parenting. In Study 2, we investigated the factor structure, measurement invariance, and the predictive power of the PBS on parenting behaviors with a nationally representative sample of 1,397 parents (796 mothers, 601 fathers) of children aged 3-17 years. Factor analysis revealed three factors representing constraining beliefs, autonomy-enabling beliefs, and beliefs in the malleability of the child. Structural and measurement invariance analyses partially supported the equivalence of the three-factor structure across parent and child gender and child age groups. Regression analyses indicated that constraining beliefs strongly and positively predicted psychological control and punitive behaviors. Autonomy-enabling beliefs predicted positive parenting, while malleability beliefs primarily predicted sociocultural control. Parent education and socioeconomic status moderated the effects of parental beliefs on parenting behaviors. The results were discussed based on parents' gender and socioeconomic status within a developing country, exemplifying a culturally informed assessment approach for the majority world. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).