Introduction to the special section on parenting across cultures: Bridging commonalities and specificities in parental control and warmth

This article provides an overview of the articles in the special section on Parenting Across Cultures: Bridging Commonalities and Specificities in Parental Control and Warmth. To advance developmental science, we recommend using the cultural commonality and specificity framework in examining how the forms and functions of parenting behaviors might manifest similarly or differently across cultural context. This special section begins with a concept paper that introduces the commonality and specificity framework. This article highlights the importance of using established and validated theoretical frameworks in parenting science as a starting point, in the quest for establishing commonality in how parental control and parental warmth may look and function similarly across cultural contexts. At the same time, we recognize that against the backdrop of identifying generality, robust theoretical frameworks would and should allow sufficient room to accommodate specificities. These specificities would naturally arise due to differences in values and beliefs that families hold about desirable child socialization goals, and the ways through which these goals may be met. In this special section, we include studies that involve families with children from early childhood to adolescence residing in four societies—Indonesia, Singapore, Türkiye, and Chinese immigrants in the United States. These studies also employ diverse methods of inquiry, and their findings demonstrate the full utility of the cultural commonality and specificity framework in documenting and explaining where and how similarities and differences may occur.