Designing an instrument to investigate young cape coloured mothers' childrearing practices in South Africa

This research focuses on the design and validation of a questionnaire that intends to investigate young mothers' child rearing practices in the social psychology across cultures framework. This instrument would assist teachers primarily in the field of early childhood care and education in creating more culturally responsive institutional care services. Questions about the regularity of young mothers' actions with regards to particular child rearing practices were asked in the questionnaire. The questionnaire was designed to measure five construct: a. autonomy, b. separateness, c. conformity, d. relatedness, and e. attachment. The first four constructs relate to the individualism-collectivism framework and the fifth to John Bowlby's attachment theory. A pilot test among (n=34) young Cape Coloured mothers in South Africa, between the ages of 18 and 35 was conducted and resulted in four of the five scales being validated. The findings show that the cultural complexities of childrearing practices within this group of people however calls for further research.