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Parenting behaviour described by mothers in a general population sample.
Margaret J J Thompson1, Alex Raynor, Deborah Cornah
1Department of Psychiatry, University of Southampton, UK. mt1@soton.ac.uk
Child: Care, Health and Development
|April 16, 2002
Summary
Mothers use diverse parenting strategies, including authoritative and authoritarian approaches, to manage children's difficult behavior. Parenting styles showed no association with child behavior problems, suggesting most variations are normal.
Area of Science:
- Child Psychology
- Parenting Studies
- Developmental Science
Background:
- Parenting behaviors are crucial for child development.
- Understanding the spectrum of maternal management strategies for difficult child behavior is essential.
Purpose of the Study:
- To document the variety of parenting behaviors mothers employ.
- To explore the relationship between parenting strategies and children's behavioral issues.
Main Methods:
- Cross-sectional study involving 67 mothers of 10-year-old children.
- Semi-structured and open-ended interviews were used to gather data on parenting behaviors.
Main Results:
- Mothers reported using both authoritative (e.g., reasoning) and authoritarian (e.g., physical punishment) behaviors frequently.
- Parenting behaviors within authoritative and authoritarian domains were intercorrelated, but showed little overlap between domains.
- No association was found between mothers' reported parenting behaviors and their children's behavior problems.
Conclusions:
- Parenting encompasses a wide range of behaviors within the normal spectrum, unlikely to pose significant developmental risks.
- Targeted parenting education funding should focus on extreme parenting practices rather than typical variations.