ABSTRACT
We have been studying everyday socialization in Taiwanese families for more than a decade, focusing on personal storytelling, shaming, and other valueladen discursive practices that help to orient young children within a moral universe. One of our key Wndings is that Taiwanese families embrace a didactic orientation with unusual avidity and faith in the eYcacy of explicit teaching. Compared to their American counterparts, Taiwanese youngsters from middle-class, urban-dwelling families routinely participate in narrative practices that resound loudly with didactic vibrations. They are exposed repeatedly to parental and sibling voices who invoke moral rules, shame the child for wrongdoing, distinguish sharply between right and wrong, remind and re-remind the child of misdeeds committed in the distant past, and link here-
and-now transgressions to previous lapses. From an American standpoint, this version of socialization may look rather monolithic and unilateral, with children oVered little room to maneuver beyond either acceding to or defying parental authority.
