Infants & Young Children: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Early Childhood

Intervention by Bhandari RP; Barnett D, published in 2007.

The main research guiding this article is that "Prior research suggests
that relatively strict parenting is associated with positive outcomes for
African American but not European American children." They want to know
whether factors combined with ethnic background, such as a stressful life,
could better explain this statistic. They studied 31 African American families
and 22 European American families, at 4 and 8 years of age, all from
similarly impoverished backgrounds. Their ultimate findings show that stress
more than ethnic background may be the key to understanding the
differences between restrictive parenting among different races.
I was personally interested in this study because I had always wondered
about the correlation between restrictive parenting and positive outcomes in
the child's future. I've had friends that screamed insults right to their parents
faces who never were reprimanded for it or any other actions, and then I
have those who were so sheltered until they went to college that they had
never seen an R rated movie before then. I wished that I could look ahead
20-30 years and see what differences the strictness of parents made. I
wondered whether it was more nature or nurture, and if there was a way to
change a "bad egg" through a different parenting style, or if they already are
who they are.