Parenting Across Cultures: Using Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages to Analyse Parent Education Books in India and the United States

When raising children, parents in many cultures often turn to a variety of resources, including parenting books, to assist them in the challenging task of parenting. With the worldwide availability of thousands of parenting books, it is important to know whether or not the advice offered in them is developmentally appropriate. A content analysis was conducted of parenting books from India and the United States to determine whether or not the advice offered supported Erikson’s ideas about healthy development, which the authors consider to be developmentally appropriate. While there were some cultural differences in the advice offered in the books, overall all books were supportive of Erikson’s theory.