One person's 'spoiling' is another's freedom to become: overcoming ethnocentric views about parental control.

Gaining cultural self-awareness by health and human services professionals in areas that are bastions of conservatism like childrearing is particularly difficult to achieve. It is argued that polarized ideas about parental control dominate the Anglo Dominant Culture's value orientations, reflected in both popular and scientific literature. Parental permissiveness is cast into an opposing category of 'noncontrol', imbuing it with negativism. Prejudice against Eskimo childrearing is examined in that context and a method is offered to 'loosen' the grip of Anglo beliefs about parenting.