Meaning & use
child rearing practice
Last updated
Meanings
nouncountable
A usual way that parents or caregivers raise and care for children, especially one shared by a group or culture.
Grammar: Countable: you can say 'a practice', 'many practices' or 'these practices'.
Patterns
- a child rearing practice
- traditional child rearing practices
- child rearing practices in a country
Sleeping in a separate room is a common child rearing practice in many Western countries.
The study compared child rearing practices in urban and rural families.
Some child rearing practices are passed down from grandparents to new parents.
noununcountabletechnical
The general activity or subject of bringing up children, seen as a field of study or advice.
Grammar: Uncountable here: no article and no plural, as in 'experts in child rearing practice'.
Patterns
- child rearing practice
- research into child rearing practice
- advice on child rearing practice
Her book on child rearing practice became a standard text for nurses.
Universities offer courses that combine child rearing practice with child psychology.
He has thirty years of experience in child rearing practice.
Word forms
| plural | child rearing practices |
|---|
Common combinations
- traditional child rearing practices
- Traditional child rearing practices vary greatly from one community to another.
- adopt a practice
- Many immigrant families adopt the child rearing practices of their new country.
- cultural child rearing practices
- Cultural child rearing practices shape how children learn to behave.
- compare child rearing practices
- The report compares child rearing practices across ten countries.
- a change in child rearing practice
- There has been a big change in child rearing practice over the last fifty years.
Synonyms and how they differ
- parenting practice
- Very close in meaning, but it puts the focus on the parents' role rather than on the whole activity of raising a child.
- upbringing
- Refers to the way one particular child is raised, not to a shared or repeated custom, so it is usually uncountable and rarely plural.
- childcare practice
- Often means the practical care of children's daily needs, such as feeding and safety, rather than long-term methods of raising them.
Word family
- child rearing noun
- The activity of raising children, often used before another noun, as in 'child rearing methods'.
- childrearing adjective
- A one-word spelling used mainly before nouns, as in 'childrearing years'.
- rear verb
- To bring up a child; more common in British than American English.
- raise verb
- The usual American verb for bringing up children.
Commonly confused: child rearing practice or childbearing? child rearing practice or practise?
child rearing practice vs childbearing
Childbearing means having babies, that is pregnancy and birth, while child rearing is about bringing up children after they are born.
child rearing practice vs practise
In British English 'practise' is the verb and 'practice' the noun, so the noun in this phrase is always spelled 'practice'.
Practice
Which sentence uses the phrase correctly?
Choose one answer.
'Practices' is the countable plural, so it fits after 'several'. Option 2 uses the British verb spelling 'practise', which cannot be a noun here; option 3 wrongly makes 'child' plural before a noun; and option 4 uses the singular after 'several', which does not agree.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “child rearing practice”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.