Handbook of Parenting

HANDBOOK OF PARENTING
This highly anticipated third edition of the Handbook of Parenting brings together an array of field-leading
experts who have worked in different ways toward understanding the many diverse aspects of parenting.
Contributors to the Handbook look to the most recent research and thinking to shed light on topics every
parent, professional, and policymaker wonders about. Parenting is a perennially “hot” topic. After all, everyone
who has ever lived has been parented, and the vast majority of people become parents themselves. No wonder
bookstores house shelves of “how-to” parenting books, and magazine racks in pharmacies and airports
overflow with periodicals that feature parenting advice. However, almost none of these is evidence-based. The
Handbook of Parenting is. Period. Each chapter has been written to be read and absorbed in a single sitting, and
includes historical considerations of the topic, a discussion of central issues and theory, a review of classical and
modern research, and forecasts of future directions of theory and research. Together, the five volumes in the
Handbook cover Children and Parenting, the Biology and Ecology of Parenting, Being and Becoming a Parent,
Social Conditions and Applied Parenting, and the Practice of Parenting.
Volume 5, The Practice of Parenting, describes the nuts-and-bolts of parenting as well as the promotion
of positive parenting practices. Parents meet the biological, physical, and health requirements of children.
Parents interact with children socially. Parents stimulate children to engage and understand the environment
and to enter the world of learning. Parents provide, organize, and arrange their children’s home and local
environments and the media to which children are exposed. Parents also manage child development vis-à-vis
childcare, school, and the circles of medicine and law, as well as other social institutions through their active
citizenship. The chapters in Part I, on Practical Parenting, review the ethics of parenting, parenting and the
development of children’s self-regulation, discipline, prosocial and moral development, and resilience, as well
as children’s language, play, cognitive, academic motivation and children’s peer relationships. The chapters
in Part II, on Parents and Social Institutions, explore parents and their children’s childcare, activities, media,
schools, and health care and examine relations between parenthood and the law, public policy, and religion
and spirituality.
Marc H. Bornstein holds a BA from Columbia College, MS and PhD degrees from Yale University, and
honorary doctorates from the University of Padua and University of Trento. Bornstein is President of the
Society for Research in Child Development and has held faculty positions at Princeton University and New
York University, as well as academic appointments in Munich, London, Paris, New York, Tokyo, Bamenda,
Seoul, Trento, Santiago, Bristol, and Oxford. Bornstein is the author of several children’s books, videos, and
puzzles in The Child’s World and Baby Explorer series, Editor Emeritus of Child Development and founding Editor
of Parenting: Science and Practice, and consultant for governments, foundations, universities, publishers, scientific
journals, the media, and UNICEF. He has published widely in experimental, methodological, comparative,
developmental, and cultural science as well as neuroscience, pediatrics, and aesthetics.
HANDBOOK OF PARENTING
Volume 5: The Practice of Parenting
Third Edition
Edited by Marc H. Bornstein

Third edition published 2019
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Taylor & Francis
The right of Marc H. Bornstein to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without
intent to infringe.
First edition published by Laurence Erlbaum Associates 1995
Second edition published by Taylor and Francis 2002
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-22877-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-22878-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-40169-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
For Marian and Harold Sackrowitz
CONTENTS
Preface to the Third Edition ix

About the Editor xiv
About the Contributors xvi
PART I
Practical Parenting 1
1 The Ethics of Parenting 3

Ross A. Thompson and Diana Baumrind
2 Parenting and Children’s Self-Regulation 34

Wendy S. Grolnick, Alessandra J. Caruso, and Madeline R. Levitt
3 Parenting and Child Discipline 65

Jennifer E. Lansford
4 Parenting and Children’s Prosocial Development 91

Tracy L. Spinrad, Nancy Eisenberg, and Carlos Valiente
5 Parenting and Moral Development 122

Judith G. Smetana, Courtney L. Ball, and Ha Na Yoo
6 Parenting to Promote Resilience in Children 156

Ann S. Masten and Alyssa R. Palmer
7 Language and Play in Parent–Child Interactions 189

Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda, Yana A. Kuchirko, Kelly Escobar,
and Marc H. Bornstein
vii
Contents
8 How Parents Can Maximize Children’s Cognitive Abilities 214

Karin Sternberg, Wendy M. Williams, and Robert J. Sternberg
9 Parenting of Children’s Academic Motivation 242

Adele Eskeles Gottfried
10 Parents and Children’s Peer Relationships 278

Gary W. Ladd and Becky Kochenderfer-Ladd
PART II
Parents and Social Institutions 317
11 Choosing Childcare for Young Children 319

Alice Sterling Honig
12 Parenting and Children’s Organized Activities 347

Deborah Lowe Vandell, Sandra D. Simpkins, and Christopher M. Wegemer
13 Parenting in the Digital Age 380

Rachel Barr
14 Parenting the Child in School 410

Robert Crosnoe and Robert W. Ressler
15 Parenting and Children’s Health Care 431

Carolyn Brockmeyer Cates,Victoria Chen, Caitlin F. Canfield,
and Alan L. Mendelsohn
16 Parenting and the Law 465

Caitlin Cavanagh and Elizabeth Cauffman
17 Parenting and Public Policy 491

James Garbarino, Amy Governale, and Kathleen Kostelny
18 Parenting, Religion, and Spirituality 515

Annette Mahoney and Chris J. Boyatzis
Index 553
viii
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
Previous editions of the Handbook of Parenting have been called the “who’s who of the what’s what.”
The third edition of this Handbook appears at a time that is momentous in the history of parent-
ing. The family generally, and parenting specifically, are today in a greater state of flux, question, and
redefinition than perhaps ever before. We are witnessing the emergence of striking permutations
on the theme of parenting: blended families, lesbian and gay parents, teen versus fifties first-time
moms and dads, genetic versus social parents. One cannot but be awed on the biological front by
technology that now renders postmenopausal women capable of childbearing and with the pos-
sibility of parents designing their babies. Similarly, on the sociological front, single parenthood is a
modern-day fact of life, adult child dependency is on the rise, and even in the face of rising insti-
tutional demands to take increasing responsibility for their offspring, parents are ever less certain
of their roles and responsibilities. The Handbook of Parenting is concerned with all these facets of
parenting . . . and more.
Most people become parents, and everyone who ever lived has had parents, yet parenting remains
a mystifying subject. Who is ultimately responsible for parenting? Does parenting come naturally,
or must parenting be learned? How do parents conceive of parenting? Of childhood? What does it
mean to parent a preterm baby, twins, or a child on the autistic spectrum? To be an older parent, or
one who is divorced, disabled, or drug abusing? What do theories (psychoanalysis, personality theory,
attachment, and behavior genetics, for example) contribute to our understanding of parenting? What
are the goals parents have for themselves? For their children? What functions do parents’ cognitions
serve? What are the goals of parents’ practices? What accounts for parents believing or behaving in
similar ways? Why do so many attitudes and actions of parents differ so? How do children influence
their parents? How do personality, knowledge, and worldview affect parenting? How do social class,
culture, environment, and history shape parenthood? How can parents effectively relate to childcare,
schools, and their children’s pediatricians?
These are many of the questions addressed in this third edition of the Handbook of Parenting . . .
for this is an evidenced-based volume set on how to parent as much as it is one on what being a parent
is all about.
Put succinctly, parents create people. They are entrusted with preparing their offspring for the
physical, psychosocial, and economic conditions in which their children eventually will fare and
hopefully will flourish. Amidst the many influences on each next generation, parents are the “final
common pathway” to children’s development, stature, adjustment, and success. Human social
inquiry—antedating even Athenian interest in Spartan childrearing practices—has always, as a matter
ix
Preface to the Third Edition
of course, included reports of parenting. Freud opined that childrearing is one of three “impossible
professions”—the other two being governing nations and psychoanalysis. One encounters as many
views as the number of people one asks about the relative merits of being an at-home or a working
mother; about what mix of day care, family care, or parent care is best for a child; about whether good
parenting reflects intuition or experience.
The Handbook of Parenting concerns itself with different types of parents—mothers and fathers,
single, adolescent, and adoptive parents; with basic characteristics of parenting—knowledge, beliefs,
and expectations about parenting—as well as the practice of parenting; with forces that shape
parenting—employment, social class, culture, environment, and history; with problems faced by
parents—handicap, marital difficulties, drug addiction; and with practical concerns of parenting—
how to promote children’s health, foster social adjustment and cognitive competence, and interact
with educational, legal, and religious institutions. Contributors to the Handbook of Parenting have
worked in different ways toward understanding all these diverse aspects of parenting, and all look
to the most recent research and thinking in the field to shed light on many topics every parent,
professional, and policymaker wonders about.
Parenthood is a job whose primary object of attention and action is the child. But parenting
also has consequences for parents. Parenthood is giving and responsibility, and parenting has its own
intrinsic pleasures, privileges, and profits, as well as frustrations, fears, and failures. Parenthood can
enhance psychological development, self-confidence, and sense of well-being, and parenthood also
affords opportunities to confront new challenges and to test and display diverse competencies. Parents
can derive considerable and continuing pleasure in their relationships and activities with their chil-
dren. But parenting is also fraught with small and large stresses and disappointments. The transition to
parenthood is daunting, and the onrush of new stages of parenthood is relentless. In the final analysis,
however, parents receive a great deal “in kind” for the hard work of parenting—they can be recipients
of unconditional love, they can gain skills, and they can even pretend to immortality. This third edition
of the Handbook of Parenting reveals the many positives that accompany parenting and offers resolutions
for its many challenges.
The Handbook of Parenting encompasses the broad themes of who are parents; whom parents parent;
the scope of parenting and its many effects; the determinants of parenting; and the nature, structure,
and meaning of parenthood for parents. The third edition of the Handbook of Parenting is divided into
five volumes, each with two parts:
CHILDREN AND PARENTING is Volume 1 of the Handbook. Parenthood is, perhaps first
and foremost, a functional status in the life cycle: Parents issue as well as protect, nurture, and
teach their progeny, even if human development is too subtle and dynamic to admit that paren-
tal caregiving alone determines the developmental course and outcome of ontogeny. Volume
1 of the Handbook of Parenting begins with chapters concerned with how children influence
parenting. Notable are their more obvious characteristics, like child age or developmental stage;
but more subtle ones, like child gender, physical state, temperament, mental ability, and other
individual-differences factors, are also instrumental. The chapters in Part I, on Parenting across
the Lifespan, discuss the unique rewards and special demands of parenting children of different
ages and stages—infants, toddlers, youngsters in middle childhood, and adolescents—as well as
the modern notion of parent–child relationships in emerging adulthood and adulthood and old
age. The chapters in Part II, on Parenting Children of Varying Status, discuss common issues
associated with parenting children of different genders and temperaments, as well as unique
situations of parenting adopted and foster children and children with a variety of special needs,
such as those with extreme talent; born preterm; who are socially withdrawn or aggressive; or
who fall on the autistic spectrum, manifest intellectual disabilities, or suffer a chronic health
condition.
x
BIOLOGY AND ECOLOGY OF PARENTING is Volume 2 of the Handbook. For parent-

ing to be understood as a whole, biological and ecological determinants of parenting need to
be brought into the picture. Volume 2 of the Handbook relates parenting to its biological roots
and sets parenting in its ecological framework. Some aspects of parenting are influenced by
the organic makeup of human beings, and the chapters in Part I, on the Biology of Parent-
ing, examine the evolution of parenting, the psychobiological determinants of parenting in
nonhumans, and primate parenting and then the genetic, prenatal, neuroendocrinological, and
neurobiological bases of human parenting. A deep understanding of what it means to parent
also depends on the ecologies in which parenting takes place. Beyond the nuclear family, parents
are embedded in, influence, and are themselves affected by larger social systems. The chapters
in Part II, on the Ecology of Parenting, examine the ancient and modern histories of parenting,
as well as epidemiology, neighborhoods, educational attainment, socioeconomic status, culture,
and environment to provide an overarching relational developmental contextual systems per-
spective on parenting.
BEING AND BECOMING A PARENT is Volume 3 of the Handbook. A large cast of charac-
ters is responsible for parenting, each has her or his own customs and agenda, and the psycho-
logical characteristics and social interests of those individuals are revealing of what parenting
is. Chapters in Part I, on The Parent, show just how rich and multifaceted is the constellation
of children’s caregivers. Considered first are family systems and then successively mothers and
fathers, coparenting and gatekeeping between parents, adolescent parenting, grandparenting,
and single parenthood, divorced and remarried parenting, lesbian and gay parents, and finally
sibling caregivers and nonparental caregiving. Parenting also draws on transient and endur-
ing physical, personality, and intellectual characteristics of the individual. The chapters in
Part II, on Becoming and Being a Parent, consider the intergenerational transmission of par-
enting, parenting and contemporary reproductive technologies, the transition to parenthood,
and stages of parental development, and then chapters turn to parents’ well-being, emotions,
self-efficacy, cognitions, and attributions, as well as socialization, personality in parenting, and
psychoanalytic theory. These features of parents serve many functions: They generate and
shape parental practices, mediate the effectiveness of parenting, and help to organize parenting.
SOCIAL CONDITIONS AND APPLIED PARENTING is Volume 4 of the Handbook.
Parenting is not uniform across communities, groups, or cultures; rather, parenting is subject
to wide variation. Volume 4 of the Handbook describes socially defined groups of parents and
social conditions that promote variation in parenting. The chapters in Part I, on Social and
Cultural Conditions of Parenting, start with a relational developmental systems perspective on
parenting and move to considerations of ethnic and minority parenting among Latino and Latin
Americans, African Americans, Asians and Asian Americans, indigenous parents, and immi-
grant parents. The section concludes with the roles of employment and of poverty on parent-
ing. Parents are ordinarily the most consistent and caring people in children’s lives. However,
parenting does not always go right or well. Information, education, and support programs can
remedy potential ills. The chapters in Part II, on Applied Issues in Parenting, begin with how
parenting is measured and follow with examinations of maternal deprivation, attachment, and
acceptance/rejection in parenting. Serious challenges to parenting—some common, such as
stress, depression, and disability, and some less common, such as substance abuse, psychopathol-
ogy, maltreatment, and incarceration—are addressed, as are parenting interventions intended to
redress these trials.
THE PRACTICE OF PARENTING is Volume 5 of the Handbook. Parents meet the bio-
logical, physical, and health requirements of children. Parents interact with children socially.
Parents stimulate children to engage and understand the environment and to enter the
world of learning. Parents provision, organize, and arrange their children’s home and local
xi
environments and the media to which children are exposed. Parents also manage child
development vis-à-vis childcare, school, and the circles of medicine and law, as well as other
social institutions through their active citizenship. Volume 5 of the Handbook addresses the
nuts-and-bolts of parenting, as well as the promotion of positive parenting practices. The
chapters in Part I, on Practical Parenting, review the ethics of parenting, parenting and
the development of children’s self-regulation, discipline, prosocial and moral development,
and resilience, as well as children’s language, play, cognitive, and academic achievement and
children’s peer relationships. Many caregiving principles and practices have direct effects
on children. Parents indirectly influence children as well, for example, through relations
they have with their local or larger community. The chapters in Part II, on Parents and
Social Institutions, explore parents and their children’s childcare, activities, media, schools,
and health care and examine relations between parenthood and the law, public policy, and
religion and spirituality.
Each chapter in the third edition of the Handbook of Parenting addresses a different but central topic
in parenting; each is rooted in current thinking and theory as well as classical and modern research on
a topic; each is written to be read and absorbed in a single sitting. Each chapter in this new Handbook
adheres to a standard organization, including an introduction to the chapter as a whole, followed by
historical considerations of the topic, a discussion of central issues and theory, a review of classical
and modern research, forecasts of future directions of theory and research, and a set of evidence-
based conclusions. Of course, each chapter considers contributors’ own convictions and findings, but
contributions to this third edition of the Handbook of Parenting attempt to present all major points of
view and central lines of inquiry and interpret them broadly. The Handbook of Parenting is intended to
be both comprehensive and state-of-the-art. To assert that parenting is complex is to understate the
obvious. As the expanded scope of this third edition of the Handbook of Parenting also amply attests,
parenting is naturally and intensely interdisciplinary.
The Handbook of Parenting is concerned principally with the nature and scope of parenting per
se and secondarily with child outcomes of parenting. Beyond an impressive range of information,
readers will find passim typologies of parenting (e.g., authoritarian-autocratic, indulgent-permissive,
indifferent-uninvolved, authoritative-reciprocal), theories of parenting (e.g., ecological, psychoana-
lytic, behavior genetic, ethological, behavioral, sociobiological), conditions of parenting (e.g., gender,
culture, content), recurrent themes in parenting studies (e.g., attachment, transaction, systems), and
even aphorisms (e.g., “A child should have strict discipline in order to develop a fine, strong charac-
ter,” “The child is father to the man”).
Each chapter in the Handbook of Parenting lays out the meanings and implications of a contribution
and a perspective on parenting. Once upon a time, parenting was a seemingly simple thing: Mothers
mothered. Fathers fathered. Today, parenting has many motives, many meanings, and many manifesta-
tions. Contemporary parenting is viewed as immensely time consuming and effortful. The perfect
mother or father or family is a figment of false cultural memory. Modern society recognizes “subdivi-
sions” of the call: genetic mother, gestational mother, biological mother, birth mother, social mother.
For some, the individual sacrifices that mark parenting arise for the sole and selfish purpose of passing
one’s genes on to succeeding generations. For others, a second child may be conceived to save the
life of a first child. A multitude of factors influences the unrelenting advance of events and decisions
that surround parenting—biopsychosocial, dyadic, contextual, historical. Recognizing this complexity
is important to informing people’s thinking about parenting, especially information-hungry parents
themselves. This third edition of the Handbook of Parenting explores all these motives, meanings, and
manifestations of parenting.
xii
Each day more than three-quarters of a million adults around the world experience the rewards
and challenges, as well as the joys and heartaches, of becoming parents. The human race succeeds
because of parenting. From the start, parenting is a “24/7” job. Parenting formally begins before
pregnancy and can continue throughout the life span: Practically speaking for most, once a par-
ent, always a parent. Parenting is a subject about which people hold strong opinions, and about
which too little solid information or considered reflection exists. Parenting has never come with a
Handbook . . . until now.
—Marc H. Bornstein
xiii
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Marc H. Bornstein holds a BA from Columbia College, MS and PhD degrees from Yale Uni-
versity, and honorary doctorates from the University of Padua and University of Trento. Bornstein
was a J. S. Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, and he received a Research Career Development Award
from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. He also received the C. S.
Ford Cross-Cultural Research Award from the Human Relations Area Files, the B. R. McCandless
Young Scientist Award, and the G. Stanley Hall Award from the American Psychological Association,
a United States PHS Superior Service Award and an Award of Merit from the National Institutes
of Health, two Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowships, four Awards for Excellence
from the American Mensa Education & Research Foundation, the Arnold Gesell Prize from the
Theodor Hellbrügge Foundation, the Distinguished Scientist Award from the International Society
for the Study of Behavioral Development, and both the Distinguished International Contributions
to Child Development Award and the Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Child Development
Award from the Society for Research in Child Development. Bornstein is President of the Society for
Research in Child Development (SRCD) and a past member of the SRCD Governing Council and
Executive Committee of the International Congress of Infancy Studies.
Bornstein has held faculty positions at Princeton University and New York University, as well as
academic appointments as Visiting Scientist at the Max-Planck-Institut für Psychiatrie in Munich,
Visiting Fellow at University College London; Professeur Invité at the Laboratoire de Psychologie
Expérimentale in the Université René Descartes in Paris; Child Clinical Fellow at the Institute for
Behavior Therapy in New York; Visiting Professor at the University of Tokyo; Professeur Invité at the
Laboratoire de Psychologie du Développement et de l’Éducation de l’Enfant in the Sorbonne in Paris;
Visiting Fellow of the British Psychological Society; Visiting Scientist at the Human Development
Resource Center in Bamenda, Cameroon; Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Psychology in Seoul
National University in Seoul, South Korea; Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Cognitive Science in
the University of Trento, Italy; Profesor Visitante at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in
Santiago, Chile; Institute for Advanced Studies Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professor, University of
Bristol; Jacobs Foundation Scholar-in-Residence, Marbach, Germany; Honorary Fellow, Department
of Psychiatry, Oxford University; Adjunct Academic Member of the Council of the Department of
Cognitive Sciences, University of Trento, Italy; and International Research Fellow at the Institute for
Fiscal Studies, London.
xiv
About the Editor
Bornstein is coauthor of The Architecture of the Child Mind: g, Fs, and the Hierarchical Model of Intel-
ligence, Gender in Low- and Middle-Income Countries, Development in Infancy (five editions), Development:
Infancy through Adolescence, Lifespan Development, Genitorialità: Fattori Biologici E Culturali Dell’essere
Genitori, and Perceiving Similarity and Comprehending Metaphor. He is general editor of The Crosscurrents
in Contemporary Psychology Series, including Psychological Development from Infancy, Comparative Methods in
Psychology, Psychology and Its Allied Disciplines (Vols. I–III), Sensitive Periods in Development, Interaction
in Human Development, Cultural Approaches to Parenting, Child Development and Behavioral Pediatrics, and
Well-Being: Positive Development Across the Life Course, and general editor of the Monographs in Parenting
series, including his own Socioeconomic Status, Parenting, and Child Development and Acculturation and Parent–
child Relationships. He edited Maternal Responsiveness: Characteristics and Consequences, the Handbook of
Parenting (Vols. I–V, three editions), and the Handbook of Cultural Developmental Science (Parts 1 and 2),
and is Editor-in-Chief of the SAGE Encyclopedia of Lifespan Human Development. He also coedited
Developmental Science: An Advanced Textbook (seven editions), Stability and Continuity in Mental Develop-
ment, Contemporary Constructions of the Child, Early Child Development in the French Tradition, The Role
of Play in the Development of Thought, Acculturation and Parent–child Relationships, Immigrant Families in
Contemporary Society, The Developing Infant Mind: Origins of the Social Brain, and Ecological Settings and
Processes in Developmental Systems (Volume 4 of the Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental
Science). He is the author of several children’s books, videos, and puzzles in The Child’s World and Baby
Explorer series. Bornstein is Editor Emeritus of Child Development and Founding Editor of Parenting:
Science and Practice. He has administered both federal and foundation grants; sits on the editorial boards
of several professional journals; is a member of scholarly societies in a variety of disciplines; and con-
sults for governments, foundations, universities, publishers, scientific journals, the media, and UNICEF.
He has published widely in experimental, methodological, comparative, developmental, and cultural
science as well as neuroscience, pediatrics, and aesthetics. Bornstein was named to the Top 20 Authors
for Productivity in Developmental Science by the American Educational Research Association.
xv
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Courtney L. Ball is a PhD candidate in Developmental Psychology at the University of Rochester.

Ball earned her BA in Psychology and Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and completed
her MA in Developmental Psychology at the University of Rochester. Her research focuses on early
moral development, with a specific interest in moral emotions, particularly empathy.
Rachel Barr is Professor of Psychology at Georgetown University and Director of the Georgetown
Early Learning Project. She holds a PhD from the University of Otago, New Zealand. She is primarily
interested in how children bridge the gap between what they learn from media and how they apply
that information in the real world and how parents facilitate learning from touchscreens, computers,
and television.
Diana Baumrind is a Research Scientist at the Institute of Human Development at the University
of California, Berkeley, where she directed the Family Socialization and Developmental Competence
Project. Baumrind received her AB from Hunter College of the City of New York and her MA and
PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Baumrind’s research focuses on parenting effects
and how contrasting childrearing patterns influence the development of character and competence
in youth. Baumrind is also concerned with social policy applications of research on the family and
cultural moderators of parent–child relationships.
Chris J. Boyatzis is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Bucknell in Denmark Sum-
mer Program at Bucknell University. Boyatzis was educated at Boston University and Brandeis
University and was previously affiliated with Wellesley College and California State University-
Fullerton. He is a past president of the Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality
of the American Psychological Association and is Associate Editor of Psychology of Religion and
Spirituality.
Caitlin F. Canfield is a Research Scientist at New York University School of Medicine and Research
Director for the Bellevue Project for Language, Literacy, and Education Success. Canfield received
her PhD in Developmental Psychology from Boston University and MS in Clinical Investigation
from New York University School of Medicine. Her research has emphasized the role of individual
differences in child characteristics, family processes, and environments in determining both children’s
outcomes and intervention impacts.
xvi
About the Contributors
Alessandra J. Caruso is a PhD student in Clinical Psychology at Clark University. Caruso received
her BA in Psychology at Georgetown University and was a Research Coordinator at Boston Children’s
Hospital. She conducts research on parenting and children’s motivation using a Self-Determination
Theory framework.
Carolyn Brockmeyer Cates is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Purchase College, State Uni-
versity of New York, and Research Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at New York University School of
Medicine. She received her PhD in Developmental Psychology from Lehigh University. Cates leads
projects designed to enhance language, literacy, and social-cognitive development through play- and
narrative-based intervention programs in preschool and primary care settings serving low-income
children.
Elizabeth Cauffman is Professor and Chancellor’s Fellow in the Department of Psychology and
Social Behavior and holds courtesy appointments in the School of Education and the School of Law at
the University of California, Irvine. Cauffman was educated at Temple University and Stanford Uni-
versity and previously was affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh. Cauffman’s research addresses
the intersection between adolescent development and juvenile justice.
Caitlin Cavanagh is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice and holds an adjunct appointment
in the Department of Psychology at Michigan State University. She received her BA at the Uni-
versity of Rochester and her MA and PhD at the University of California, Irvine. Her research
focuses on the intersections of psychology and the law and how social contexts shape adolescent
behavior.
Victoria Chen is Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of
Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell and Steven and Alexandra Cohen Children’s Medical Center at
Northwell Health. Chen graduated from the City University of New York Brooklyn College and
from the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center. She is a developmental-behavioral
pediatrician and currently serves as Co-Chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on
Early Childhood Research Network and Co-Chair of the Society for Developmental & Behavioral
Pediatrics Screening in Primary Care Working Group.
Robert Crosnoe is the C. B. Smith, Sr. Centennial Chair #4 at the University of Texas at Austin,
where he is Chair of the Department of Sociology. He received his PhD from Stanford University.
He is President of the Society for Research on Adolescence, Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary
Collaborative on Development in Context, and a Governing Board Member of the Council on Con-
temporary Families, as well as a past Governing Council member of the Society for Research in Child
Development and Deputy Editor of the Journal of Marriage and Family.
Nancy Eisenberg is Regents’ Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University. She received
her PhD in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests span the
domain of socioemotional development of self-regulation and its relations to emotion, socially com-
petent behavior, and maladjustment; empathy-related responding; moral reasoning; and personality
development. She has been an Associate Editor of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Merrill-
Palmer Quarterly, and Developmental Psychology and editor of Psychological Bulletin and Child Development
Perspectives. She was President of the Association for Psychological Development, Division 7 of the
American Psychological Association and Western Psychological Association. Her books include The
Caring Child, The Roots of Prosocial Behavior in Children, Altruistic Emotion, Cognition, and Behavior, and
How Children Develop. She edited Volume 3 in the Handbook of Child Psychology: Social, Emotional, and
xvii
Personality Development and several other books, including Empathy and Its Development and Review of
Personality and Social Psychology.
Kelly Escobar is a PhD candidate in Developmental Psychology at New York University. She
received her MS in Psychology from Villanova University. Escobar’s current research focuses on early
dual-language development, with a particular focus on individual variability and the early social con-
texts that shape children’s bilingual trajectories.
James Garbarino is the Maude C. Clarke Chair in Humanistic Psychology and the Senior Faculty
Fellow with the Center for the Human Rights of Children at Loyola University Chicago. Previously
he held the Elizabeth Lee Vincent Chair in Human Development at Cornell University and was
President of the Erikson Institute for Advanced Study in Child Development. He has served as an
advisor to the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse, the National Institute for Mental Health,
the American Medical Association, the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect, and the
FBI. His books include Miller’s Children: Why Giving Teenage Killers a Second Chance Matters for All of Us.
Adele Eskeles Gottfried is Professor Emerita of Educational Psychology, California State Univer-
sity, Northridge, and co-directs the Fullerton Longitudinal Study. She received her MA degree from
the University of Chicago, and PhD in Educational/Developmental Psychology from the Graduate
School and University Center of the City University of New York. Her study of parental employ-
ment served as a basis for a California Supreme Court ruling. She is the author of the Children’s
Academic Intrinsic Motivation Inventory, and numerous articles and books.
Amy Governale is a PhD candidate in Developmental Psychology at Loyola University Chicago.

Her research interests include how different dimensions of organized activity involvement, including
summer program participation, promote positive youth development among low-income, ethnically
diverse adolescents.
Wendy S. Grolnick is Professor of Psychology and Director of Clinical Training in the Frances L.
Hiatt School of Psychology at Clark University. She received her MA and PhD from the University of
Rochester. Grolnick’s research focuses on the effects of home and school environments on children’s
motivation as well as factors affecting the environments that parents and teachers create for their
children. She is the author of The Psychology of Parental Control: How Well-Meant Parenting Backfires and
Pressured Parents, Stressed-Out Kids: Dealing with Competition While Raising a Successful Child.
Alice Sterling Honig is Professor Emerita at Syracuse University. She received her BA from Barnard
College, MA from Columbia University, and PhD from Syracuse University. She served as Research
Review Editor for NAEYC’s Young Children. Among her books are Parent Involvement in Early Child-
hood Education, Risk Factors in Infancy, Little Kids, Big Worries: Stress Busting Tips for Early Childhood
Classrooms, The Best for Babies: Expert Advice for Assessing Infant/Toddler Programs, and Literacy, Storytelling
and Bilingualism in Asian Classrooms.
Becky Kochenderfer-Ladd is Professor in the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family
Dynamics at Arizona State University. Ladd earned her PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign in Educational Psychology. She studies children’s social development and peer relation-
ships. She is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology.
Kathleen Kostelny is a Senior Researcher at the Columbia Group for Children in Adversity at
Columbia University. She received her BA from Bethel College, MA from the University of Chicago,
xviii
and PhD from the Erikson Institution/Loyola University. She was formerly a Research Associate at
Erikson Insitute for Advanced Study in Child Development and is co-author of No Place to Be a Child:
Growing Up in a War Zone and other publications dealing with children and families at risk.
Yana A. Kuchirko is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Bellevue Project for Language, Literacy, and
Education Success Initiative at the Institute of Human Development and Social Change at New York
University. Kuchirko received her PhD in Developmental Psychology from New York University.
Her research focuses on infants’ language experiences across different contexts and cultures.
Gary W. Ladd is Cowden Distinguished Professor of Family and Human Development at Arizona
State University. Ladd earned his PhD at the University of Rochester and then held professorships at
Purdue University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was a Fellow at the Center
for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and served as Associate Editor for Child
Development and the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships and Editor-in-Chief of Merrill-Palmer
Quarterly. Ladd is the author of Children’s Peer Relations and Social Competence: A Century of Progress.
Jennifer E. Lansford is Research Professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy and Faculty Fel-
low of the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University. Lansford earned her PhD from
the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on the development of aggression and other behav-
ior problems, with an emphasis on how family, peer, and cultural contexts contribute to or protect
against these outcomes. She leads the Parenting Across Cultures project. Lansford is Associate Editor
of Developmental Psychology and the International Journal of Behavioral Development.
Madeline R. Levitt is a PhD student in Clinical Psychology at Clark University. Levitt received
her BA in Psychology at Bates College and worked as a psychometrician and research coordinator at
Massachusetts General Hospital. She conducts research on parenting and children’s motivation.
Annette Mahoney is Professor of Psychology and Director of Clinical Training at Bowling Green
State University. Mahoney was educated at Rice University and the University of Houston. She is the
President of the Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality of the American Psychologi-
cal Association. She is an associate editor of Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Mahoney was an
associate editor of the APA Handbook of Psychology, Religion and Spirituality, Vol. II.
Ann S. Masten is Regents Professor and the Irving B. Harris Professor of Child Development in
the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota. Masten completed her undergradu-
ate degree at Smith College, her PhD at the University of Minnesota in psychology, and her clinical
internship at the Neuropsychiatric Institute, University of California, Los Angeles. She is past Presi-
dent of the Society for Research in Child Development and Division 7 of the American Psychological
Association (APA). She is the author of Ordinary Magic: Resilience in Development.
Alan L. Mendelsohn is a General and Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrician and Associate Profes-

sor of Pediatrics and Population Health at New York University School of Medicine and Bellevue
Hospital Center. Mendelsohn has focused his career on reducing disparities in health and develop-
ment for young children in low-income families. He is Chair of the NIH/NICHD Biobehavioral and
Behavioral Sciences Subcommittee.
Alyssa R. Palmer is a PhD candidate in Child Development at the Institute of Child Develop-
ment within the University of Minnesota. She completed her undergraduate degree at The Pennsyl-
vania State University in Psychology. Her research interests focus broadly on individual differences
xix
contributing to risk and resilience, self-regulation, physiological reactivity and regulation, and the
influence of parent functioning and parent–child synchrony.
Robert W. Ressler is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at
Austin. He received his undergraduate degree from the College of William and Mary in Sociology
and Hispanic Studies. He conducts research on how community contexts promote the development
and education of children with a focus on Latinx, immigrant, and minority populations.
Sandra D. Simpkins is Professor of Education and Co-Director of the Certificate in Afterschool and
Summer Education at the University of California, Irvine. Simpkins received her PhD in Develop-
mental Psychology from the University of California, Riverside, and previously was a faculty member
at Arizona State University. Her work has focused on contextual influences that shape youth devel-
opment from childhood through adolescence. Simpkins is the lead author on a SRCD Monograph
entitled Parent Beliefs to Youth Choices: Mapping the Sequence of Predictors from Childhood to Adolescence.
Judith G. Smetana is Professor of Psychology, Director of the Developmental Psychology PhD

Program, and past Frederika Warner Chair of Human Development at the University of Rochester.
She obtained her undergraduate degree at the University of California, Berkeley, and her MS and PhD
in Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is past Secretary of the Society for
Research in Child Development. Smetana has been associate editor of Child Development and is cur-
rently Editor of Child Development Perspectives. Her research focuses on the development of children’s
moral and social reasoning, children’s and parents’ beliefs about parenting, and adolescent–parent
relationships in ethnic and cultural contexts. Smetana is author of Adolescents, Families and Social Devel-
opment: How Teens Construct Their Worlds and co-editor of the Handbook of Moral Development.
Tracy L. Spinrad is a Professor of Family Studies in the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and
Family Dynamics at Arizona State University. She earned her PhD in Human Development and
Family Studies from the Pennsylvania State University. Her program of research focuses on the socio-
emotional development of young children, particularly relations of children’s self-regulation abilities
to children’s social adjustment.
Karin Sternberg is a Research Associate at Cornell University. She has a PhD in Psychology from
the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and an MBA with a specialization in banking from the Uni-
versity of Cooperative Education in Karlsruhe, Germany. Sternberg worked as a Research Associate
at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and School of Public Health. She currently
works on projects pertaining to child development, as well as admissions in undergraduate, graduate,
and professional schools. She is the author of Child Development in the 21st Century and coauthor of
The Psychologist’s Companion, Cognitive Psychology, The Nature of Hate, and the New Psychology of Love.
Robert J. Sternberg is Professor of Human Development in the College of Human Ecology at

Cornell University and Honorary Professor of Psychology at Heidelberg University, Germany. Previ-
ously, Sternberg was IBM Professor of Psychology and Education and Professor of Management at
Yale. Sternberg’s BA is from Yale University, his PhD is from Stanford University, and he holds 13
honorary doctorates. Sternberg is a Past President of the American Psychological Association, the
Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, the Eastern Psychological Association,
and the International Association for Cognitive Education and Psychology. Sternberg is editor of
Perspectives on Psychological Science. Sternberg is a member of the National Academy of Education and
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has authored textbooks in introductory psychology,
cognitive psychology, and communication in psychology.
xx
Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda is Professor of Applied Psychology in the Developmental Psychol-

ogy program at New York University, where she co-directs the Center for Research on Culture,
Development, and Education and earned her BA and PhD. Tamis-LeMonda investigates infant learn-
ing and development in social and cultural contexts, with a primary focus on infant communication,
language, and play. She is Associate Editor of Infancy and Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
Ross A. Thompson is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Davis.

Thompson earned his AB from Occidental College and his AM and PhD from the University of
Michigan. He studies early parent–child relationships, the development of emotion understanding and
emotion regulation, the growth of conscience and prosocial motivation, and related topics concerning
the development of constructive social motivation. His books include Preventing Child Maltreatment
through Social Support: A Critical Analysis, The Postdivorce Family: Children, Families, and Society, and
Infant-Parent Attachment.
Carlos Valiente is Professor of Family Studies in the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family
Dynamics at Arizona State University. He holds a PhD in Family Science from Arizona State Uni-
versity. Valiente’s program of research identifies ways educators and parents can foster children’s social,
emotional, and educational success.
Deborah Lowe Vandell is Professor of Education and Psychology at the University of California,
Irvine, where she was the Founding Dean of the School of Education. She received her BA from Rice
University, her EdM from Harvard University, and her PhD in Psychology from Boston University.
She was previously on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin, where she was the Sears Bascom
Professor of Education. Vandell studies the short-term and long-term effects of afterschool programs,
extracurricular activities, and unsupervised time on children and adolescents from diverse families.
Christopher M. Wegemer is a PhD student in the School of Education at the University of Cali-
fornia, Irvine. Wegemer received degrees from Providence College, Columbia University, and the
University of California, Santa Barbara, in the fields of Applied Physics, Electrical Engineering, and
Global and International Studies, respectively. He studies identity development of adolescents in youth
empowerment activities.
Wendy M. Williams is a Professor in the Department of Human Development at Cornell Univer-

sity. She holds MA and PhD degrees in Psychology from Yale University, an MA in Physical Anthro-
pology from Yale, and a BA in English and Biology from Columbia University. Williams founded and
directs the Cornell Institute for Women in Science. She studies the development, assessment, training,
and societal implications of intelligence. Williams authored and edited The Reluctant Reader, How to
Develop Student Creativity, Why Aren’t More Women in Science?, and The Mathematics of Sex.
Ha Na Yoo is a PhD student in Clinical and Social Sciences at the University of Rochester. Yoo
received her BA in German Literature and Economics from Seoul National University and her MA
in Developmental Psychology from Yonsei University. Her research focuses on moral development in
childhood, specifically children’s developing conceptions of fairness, and the relation between moral
judgments and empathy.
xxi
PART I
Practical Parenting
1
THE ETHICS OF PARENTING
Ross A. Thompson and Diana Baumrind1
Introduction
Ethical parenting, above all, is responsible caregiving, requiring of parents enduring investment and
commitment throughout their children’s long period of dependency. The effort people put forth to
be responsible parents, as in other areas of their lives, is a function of their self-attributions concerning
the relation between their effort and outcome. As Bugental, Blue, and Cruzcosa (1989) have shown,
parents who attribute a child’s dysfunctional behavior primarily to the child’s disposition or to peer
influences rather than to their own practices are less likely to attempt to alter their disciplinary style
when it is ineffective or developmentally unapt, or to attempt to alter their child’s behavior when it
is changeworthy. Greenberger and Goldberg (1989) found that high-investment parents, as part of
their identity, believed that they could meet their children’s needs better than other adults, and there-
fore willingly sacrificed other personal pleasures to be with their children. Such parents (whom the
authors identified as authoritative) had higher maturity expectations, were notably responsive, and
viewed their children more positively than did less invested parents.
The ethics of parenting begins, therefore, with the assumption of responsibility for children. This
chapter is concerned with unfolding the nature of that responsibility in the context of the reciprocal
obligations of parents and offspring, and the responsibility of the state to support ethical parenting.
The moral obligations of parents to their children, and of the state to the family, have been long-standing
concerns of philosophy, the law, and psychology dating back to ancient times. This short chapter
does not attempt to comprehensively review this interesting history, nor to offer guidelines to con-
temporary parents about specific ethical dilemmas (e.g., should a parent ever lie to a child?). Instead,
we outline a theory of the ethics of parenting, rooted in traditional and modern views in moral and
political philosophy, that describes the needs and rights of children and the roles and responsibilities of
parents and the state for children’s welfare. We argue, in brief, that children’s rights are complementary
and reciprocal (but not equal) to those of parents, that parental responsibilities to offspring arise from
a developmental orientation to children’s needs and capabilities, that the state has an important role in
supporting parents but not assuming parental responsibilities, and that developmental scientists have
an obligation to contribute to public understanding of parenting and its influences. Such a theory
can, we hope, offer guidance for the specific dilemmas that parents often face and provide a compre-
hensive, thoughtful perspective on what parenting is for, and why, in relation to the needs of children.
The first part of the chapter concerns the ethical obligations of parents, with special attention
to the rights of children, the moral justification of parental authority, and the contrasting views of
3
protectionist, liberationist, and developmentalist approaches to understanding children’s best interests.

This section closes with a profile of parents’ developmental responsibilities to children, especially in
relation to the growth of character and competence. The second part of the chapter focuses on the
relations among parents, children, and the state. In this section, we describe the state’s interest in the
well-being of children and the conditions justifying the state’s intervention into family life to promote
children’s well-being. In doing so, we also seek to profile what the state does well, and poorly, in its
efforts to assist its youngest citizens. In the concluding section, we briefly consider the responsibilities
of developmental scientists for fostering ethical parenting.
The Ethical Obligations of Parents
The Rights of Children

Discussions of parenting often begin with the rights of children. But what are children’s rights,
and how are they justified? We propose that the moral norms of reciprocity and complementarity
offer a new way of regarding children’s rights not as absolute entitlements to self-determination and
autonomy, but rather as rights that develop in concert with children’s growing capacities to exercise
mature judgment.
In 1989 the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations General Assembly, 1989)
codified children’s entitlements in a document that was adopted by the UN General Assembly and
subsequently endorsed by more than 100 countries, but not by the United States. The survival, pro-
tection, development, and self-determination of dependent children are among the children’s rights
identified by the Convention. It was the inclusion of self-determination rights that accounts, in part,
for the reluctance of U.S. legislators to endorse the document. According to the Convention, chil-
dren have the right to express their views (Article 11); to have freedom of thought, conscience, and
religion (Article 14); to associate freely (Article 15); to privacy (Article 16); and to be protected from
all forms of physical or mental violence (Article 19). The Committee on the Rights of the Child, the
organization charged with monitoring and implementing the provisions of the Convention, inter-
preted Article 19, as well as Article 37 (which protects children against any form of cruel, inhuman,
or degrading treatment), as prohibiting all physical punishment.
In the United States, the debate over the ratification of the Convention sharpened fundamental
differences between liberals and conservatives concerning the desirable degree of interference by the
state in family life (the less, the better to conservatives) and the freedom with which a child should
be legally endowed (the more, the better to liberals). Liberals have urged ratification but criticized
the Convention for failing to explicitly proscribe physical punishment. Conservatives have strongly
and successfully opposed ratification, arguing that the document contains unwarranted restrictions on
the historical right of parents to regulate the physical, moral, intellectual, and cultural development
of their children. This liberal versus conservative polarity reflects a broader division in views of the
family that contrasts a hierarchical, paternalistic, authoritarian model that places obedience at the cor-
nerstone in the foundation of character (Dobson, 1992) with a children’s rights position that demands
for children the same civil rights as are possessed by adults (Cohen, 1980).
As the debate over the Convention in the United States illustrates, beginning with the rights of
children (or of parents) sharpens the perceived conflict between the rights of each within the family
and, inappropriately in our view, impedes thoughtful reflection on ethical parenting by polarizing dis-
cussion according to whether children’s rights or parents’ rights should be preeminent. The Conven-
tion neither acknowledges nor resolves the conflict created by its approach. We argue that it is much
more useful to consider children’s rights and needs within a developmental perspective and within
the context of the mutual obligations of parents and children, based on moral norms of reciprocity
and complementarity.
4
The Ethics of Parenting
The Moral Norms of Reciprocity and Complementarity

Instantiated by different value hierarchies in different cultures, a cornerstone of all ethical systems is the
moral norm of reciprocity, represented in Christian religion by the Golden Rule, “do unto others as
you would have them do unto you,” and in Buddhist thinking as karma or the sum of the ethical con-
sequences of one’s actions (Baumrind, 1980). Reciprocity refers to the balance in an interactive system
such that each party has both rights and duties, and the subordinate norm of complementarity states that
one’s rights are the other’s obligations. The norm of complementarity implies that if children have a
right to be nurtured (and not merely to seek nurturance), then there must be adult caregivers with a
complementary obligation to nurture. Children also incur obligations reciprocal to that right, such as
returning love and complying with parental directives, that motivate and enable caregivers to nurture
and guide them satisfactorily. Application of the principle of reciprocity requires, therefore, mutuality
of obligation and gratification and governs relationships within all stable social systems, including the
family. Thus, parents and children have reciprocal, not equal, rights. The view that the rights and obli-
gations of youthful status are reciprocal rather than identical to those of their caregivers acknowledges
reciprocity as a generalizable moral norm based on the mutually contingent exchange of resources and
gratification whose application is likely to produce the greatest good for the greatest number.
Consistent with the principle that children’s rights and responsibilities are complementary, not
identical, to those of their parents is the view that parents incur a duty to commit themselves to the
welfare of their dependent children, who in turn have a duty to conform to parental standards (Baum-
rind, 1978b). Because of their dependent status, unemancipated youth may claim from adults the
protection and support necessary for their growth and development, but may not claim the full rights
to self-determination appropriate to an emancipated, independent person. In practice this means
that parents may choose their children’s education, religion, and abode and, at least until adolescence,
censor their reading, media exposure, friends, and attire. As children approach adolescence, however,
their developing capabilities permit greater self-determination, and they also begin to relinquish the
privileges of childhood as they assume the responsibilities and entitlements of adulthood. The remain-
ing restrictions on their freedom provide adolescents with an essential impetus to becoming self-
supporting and thus self-determining. Exploitation or indulgence of the child by the parent interferes
with the child’s internalization of the norm of reciprocity and the child’s acknowledgment that her
or his actions have consequences for self and others. A marked imbalance between what is given
gratuitously and what is required of the child disequilibrates the social system of the family. Whereas
unconditional commitment to the child’s welfare and responsiveness to the child’s wishes motivate
young children to comply with their parents’ demands for maturity and obedience (Kochanska, 2002;
Parpal and Maccoby, 1985), noncontingent acquiescence to children’s demands is likely to encourage
dependency rather than to reward responsible self-sufficiency.
The reciprocal relations between the rights and obligations of parents and children have enduring
philosophical roots and constitute the basis of Rousseau’s (1767/1952, p. 387) social contract:
The most ancient of all societies, and the only one that is natural, is the family: and even
so the children remain attached to the father only as long as they need him for their pres-
ervation. As soon as this need ceases, the natural bond is dissolved. The children, released
from the obedience they owed to the father, and the father, released from the care he
owed his children, return equally to independence.
Radical proponents of liberating rights for children (Cohen, 1980; Holt, 1974; Kohn, 2005) negate
the principle of reciprocity by claiming simultaneously that because of their temporary dependence
children are entitled to beneficent protection, and yet because of their inherent status as autonomous
persons children should exercise equal self-determination as do adults.
5
The Moral Case for and Against Equal Rights for Children
The case for equal rights for children appeals largely to deontological universalist premises, which
maintain that what is morally right and obligatory is based on principles (such as justice) that have prima
facie validity, independent of whether they promote the common good. If children (like adults) are persons
of unconditional value and persons have the right to equal justice in all situations, then children’s
and adults’ rights are equally meriting respect. By contrast, the case for reciprocal rights for children
appeals largely to rule-utilitarian consequentialist premises intended to maximize welfare (i.e., the
welfare of the community and the family as well as of the child) at a given historical time and place
(see Frankena, 1973, for a succinct discussion of these and other contrasting theories of ethics).
The justification for children’s equal rights is commonly grounded in the universalist theory of
justice of Rawls (1971), who believed that to prove the validity of ethical principles of just treatment,
these principles must be selected in the hypothetical “original position” behind “a veil of igno-
rance” in which individuals are ignorant of their own specific interests, circumstances, and abilities
and cannot be biased by them. The “original position” assumes the priority of equal liberty as the
fundamental terms of association of all rational persons. Maximizing liberty in equal distribution is a
universal, objective end of human nature. This universalist view is the foundation for Rawls’s theory
of justice, but giving priority to the ideal of the free, autonomous individual is also a uniquely Western
notion that is at variance with the Eastern ideals of collective harmony and individual duty (Markus
and Kitayama, 1991; Schweder, 1990; Triandis, 1990). A focus on individual rights is not equipped
to address conflict between the rights of persons and the rights of the collective (Baumrind, 2004).
The children’s rights movement, which rose to prominence in the 1970s (Holt, 1974; Kohn, 2005;
Worsfold, 1974), claimed for children all the rights of adult persons, including the rights associated
with self-determination. In this view, children’s rights are entitlements and as such impose ethical
obligations on parents and the state. As interpreted by Worsfold (1974), Rawls’s universalist theory
claims that “in their fundamental rights children and adults are the same” (p. 33) and indeed that
children “have a right to do what they prefer when it conflicts with what their parents and society
prefer” (p. 35–36). This view of children’s rights is consistent with, and indeed derives from, the
foundational deontological principle of maximizing individual liberty of Rawls’s theory. Worsfold
supports his case for equal rights for children with two empirical claims and two moral principles.
The two empirical claims are (1) the first motive of everyone is to preserve her or his own personal
liberty, and (2) children have the same capacity as adults to know what they want and are capable of
weighing alternatives and acting on their decisions. The two moral principles are (3) all inequalities of
primary goods such as liberty must be justified by relevant differences between the people concerned,
and (4) people are not to enjoy a special advantage as a result of age, natural ability, or social status. If
the empirical claims (1) and (2) were both true, it might be appropriate to conclude, with Worsfold,
that children have the same self-determination rights as do adults—but a developmental analysis raises
significant doubts about their validity.
Concerning (1): It is doubtful that most people of any age value absolute liberty above all other
fundamental values. For example, there is an abundance of evidence that children of all ages, although
they would like to do as they please, accept parental authority as legitimate even when it is punitive as
well as firm and deprives them of liberty (Barber, Stolz, and Olsen, 2005; Catron and Masters, 1993;
Siegal and Barclay, 1985). Other interests are more important. Concerning (2): Immense differences
in knowledge, experience, and power make it impossible to conclude that children have the same
capacity as adults to know what they want and to weigh alternatives and act on their choices. Thus,
restrictions on children’s liberty rights based on their natural, developmental incapacities to exercise
those rights cannot be regarded as inequitable in the moral sense of being unjust.
Worsfold states that the two moral principles that justify equal rights for children [(3) and (4)]
are based on Rawls’s “original position” and “veil of ignorance,” and so they are. To be logically
6
secured, the equal rights for children position requires the “veil of ignorance”: Age cannot be taken
into account, and neither adults nor children may claim any special advantages even if their relevant
capacities are shown to differ greatly. But with regard to age distinctions, Rawls himself (1971) made
the argument for temporary restrictions on children’s liberty from paternalism, as did the major
philosophers before him (Locke, Hegel, Mill, Rousseau), emphasizing the priority of liberty as an
ultimate goal. In summary, then, the case for equal rights for children as set forth by Worsfold is not
convincing.
By contrast with deontological theorists, rule-utilitarian theories claim that the right, the obliga-
tory, and the morally good are a function of what is nonmorally good. On the assumption that
morality was made for humankind rather than humankind for morality, rule-utilitarians are primarily
concerned with the long-range consequences for humankind of acting on the ethical guidelines they espouse. Rule-
utilitarians (unlike rule-deontologists) claim that the rules that are right are determined by their long-
range consequences. An act is right if, and only if, it would maximize welfare (Brandt, 1998). What
is judged to be right in principle is based, not on a short-range cost–benefit analysis of individual acts,
but rather on the long-range consequences of applying the rule generally. The institutions of liberty
are valued highly, for example, because they assure rational pursuit of the progressive interests of
humankind. The right of parents to restrict the liberty of their dependent children is justified because
application of this right typically advances the best interests of the child and the common good of the
family and the state.
Unlike act-utilitarians, rule-utilitarians do not claim that each situation is different and unique,
but instead claim that general (but not necessarily universalizable) rules and guidelines must be for-
mulated in making moral claims. However, based on particular welfare considerations, a moral code
may vary from subgroup to subgroup within society. The principle of utility enters in determining
what the rules will be in like contexts, rather than what concrete action should be performed in a
given instance, as in situation ethics or other variations of act-utilitarianism. So in deciding whether
one should lie or tell the truth, the long-range consequences of lying in general must be considered,
not merely whether telling the truth or a lie in this particular instance is more beneficent in its effect.
Unlike the deontological injunction against lying in all circumstances, for instance, rule-utilitarians
would claim that to prevent a greater evil or to achieve a greater good in the long run, it would be
right to lie. The example often given is that one ought to lie to secure the safe haven of a potential
Holocaust victim.
Frankena (1973, p. 52) developed a “mixed deontological theory of obligation” that takes as
basic both the principle of beneficence (to do good and prevent or avoid harm) and the principle of
justice (equal treatment), but appears to give precedence to the principle of justice. By contrast, rule-
utilitarians incorporate the principle of social and distributive justice within the principle of utility
(or beneficence) by claiming that what satisfies the principle of utility or beneficence in the long run
must also satisfy the requirements of justice. For example, an unequal but equitable distribution of
resources can maximize total welfare (“to each according to his or her needs”), even within the family.
In formulating ethical guidelines for parenting, we adopt a modified rule-utilitarian stance, not dis-
similar to that which Frankena (1973) proposed, in that it emphasizes justice (in the sense of equitable,
not equal, treatment) as well as beneficence as underlying and unifying principles of morality. In our
view, both principles—beneficence and justice—must be taken into account in determining what
constitutes ethical parenting, but justice does not take precedence over beneficence.
Our “mixed rule-utilitarian theory” emphasizes a welfare-maximizing principle, but in addition
requires a separate justification for inequality of distribution of resources and goods. The justification
for equitable rather than equal distribution of resources to children within a family must be based on
age, gender, and/or sibling order differences in terms of needs, preferences, and capabilities. Justice is
not conceived simplistically as guaranteeing equal treatment in the short run, but rather as demand-
ing a justification for unequal treatment based on relevant differences between the people concerned.
7
Thus, with regard to the relationship between parents and children, unequal treatment as it relates to
liberty is justified on the ground that it will produce greater good in the long run because it is based
on relevant differences in needs and capabilities, by contrast with equal treatment that disregards these
differences. Children’s right to protection, support, and nurturance are greater and their right to self-
determination correspondingly less than their parents. Liberty is recognized as a good but not as the
primary good.
A Mixed Rule-Utilitarian Justification for Parental Authority

and Children’s Liberty
Until the 20th century, few questioned the justification for restricting children’s liberty in the family.
Despite his romantic view of childhood, even Rousseau argued for authoritative rule in the family on
the basis that parental rule “looks more to the advantage of him who obeys than to that of him who
commands” (Rousseau, 1754/1952, p. 357). The proprietary interests of parents in their children’s
welfare presumes an authority more benevolent than that of a disinterested third party. When parents
are exploitative, cruel, or incompetent, their authority is thereby rendered illegitimate. In a similar vein
more than 50 years later, Hegel (1821/1952, p. 61) wrote:
The right of the parents over the wishes of their children is determined by the object in
view—discipline and education. The punishment of children does not aim at justice as such;
the aim is more subjective and moral in character, that is, to deter them from exercising a
freedom still in the toils of nature and to lift the universal into their consciousness and will.
Similarly, the rule-utilitarian John Stuart Mill (1859/1973) restricted the ideal of self-determination
to individuals capable of assuming adult responsibilities, arguing that, although the adult generation is
not perfectly wise and good with regard to the interests of the next generation, it is wiser and better
in its judgments of what would benefit them than that generation is itself.
From a different philosophical perspective but with comparable relevance to parenting, Aristote-
lean virtue ethicists justify parental authority because of the tutelage it provides to enable children to
develop the practices and the practical wisdom necessary to the growth of virtuous character. Virtue
ethics regards ethical conduct not as the proper application of universalizable rules nor as deriving
from a consequentialist analysis, but rather as conduct that arises from virtuous character and practical
wisdom, and in this regard they are in agreement with most parents that character development is
foundational to socialized behavior. In the Aristotelean tradition, virtuous qualities develop through
habituation—the practice over time of virtuous conduct that derives, in part, from the enduring
efforts of parents to make such conduct habitual in children and thus ingrained in personality—com-
bined with the socialization of practical rationality in the application of virtuous character. Although
these influences begin early (Thompson and Lavine, 2016), a sustained period under parental guidance
is necessary to the development of virtuous qualities.
Parental authority, including the right to speak for their children and to discipline them, is ratio-
nally justified by children’s dependent status and relative incompetence, imposing on parents the obli-
gation to protect, nurture, and train children, and the right to reward and punish them contingent on
parents’ standards of desirable behavior. As parents do so, children learn to master the environment and
to develop a stable sense of self. Self-determination becomes a conscious predominant value during
adolescence with its constructive expression predicated on competence, an internal locus of control,
and an understanding of moral reciprocity—all capacities developed through the socialization process,
which includes parental limit setting. Unequal distribution of liberty is justified in the child’s mind, as
in the adult’s mind, by recognition of the relevant age-related differences between them. Prior to the
child’s acquisition of the ability to think logically and symbolically, parental authority is legitimated
8
in the child’s mind by the fact that the child is weak and the parent is strong and by the child’s strong
emotional attachment to the parent.
The disciplinary encounter, including the use of reward and punishment, is a necessary part of the
socialization process through which parents fulfill their obligations to their children. In families with
normally assertive toddlers, parental correction and management of child behavior are frequent. Con-
flictual interactions between young children and their parents occur from 3 to 15 times an hour and
even more often when children are defiant (Dix, 1991; Klimes-Dougan, and Kopp, 1999). Because it
is rare for a single disciplinary encounter to alter a child’s motivated behavior permanently, periodic
reinforcement and explanations are necessary. Properly handled, these recurring disciplinary encoun-
ters enable children to better understand the meaning of the request and its justification, internalize
the expectation, and even learn the skills of negotiation and thus promote their future autonomy as
well as immediate compliance.
Because punishment is necessarily aversive, it can be justified only when aimed at maximizing the
child’s long-term welfare. By preventing and reforming bad behavior and educating and encouraging
good behavior, mild punishment, when indicated, is intended to advance the welfare of the family
and the community, as well as of the child. Although parental use of power assertion is sometimes
disparaged by developmentalists (Grolnick, 2003; Gershoff, 2002; Holden, 1997), it is important to
distinguish confrontive from coercive parental power assertion and its effects on children (Baumrind,
2012). Coercive power assertion is arbitrary, preemptory, relies on threats and psychological control, and
is the kind of power assertion that characterizes authoritarian parents. By contrast, confrontive power
assertion is reasoned, negotiable, outcome-oriented, concerned with behavioral control, and is typical
of authoritative parents. Both are demanding and forceful, but their effects on children are different.
Consistent with earlier cross-sectional findings, for example, Baumrind, Larzelere, and Owens (2010)
reported that the longitudinal effects of confrontive as opposed to coercive parental power assertion
when children were preschoolers were beneficial: ten years later, adolescents showed greater cognitive
competence and self-efficacy and fewer problem behaviors. Sorkhabi and Middaugh (2014) reported
that parental use of coercive or confrontive power assertion was associated with differences in rela-
tional outcomes between adolescents and parents, with heightened affiliation when parents were
confrontive but not coercive.
The distinction between confrontive and coercive power assertion is important, because although
power assertion can be readily contrasted with reasoning and other forms of inductive discipline
for descriptive purposes, authoritative parents use both, and the combination promotes children’s
constructive obedience and responsible conduct (Baumrind, 2004, 2012, 2013a). When enlisted by
authoritative parents, power assertion is neither arbitrary nor harsh but marshaled to promote com-
pliance in the context of a responsive relationship in which children’s dissent is heard and respected.
Exercised in this manner, power assertion is consistent with parents’ ethical responsibility to socialize
children’s conduct and promote their responsible membership in society.
The Child’s Best Interest Criterion for Determining Ethical Parenting:

Protectionist, Liberationalist, and Developmental Perspectives
Another way of understanding alternative constructions of children’s needs and rights, and the ethical
responsibilities of parents, is to consider how best to define children’s “best interests.” It is incontro-
vertible that it is in children’s best interests to survive, develop fully, and be protected from harm. But
advancing beyond these minima reveals significant differences in views of children’s needs and the
responsibilities of adults as caregivers.
Protectionists and liberationists view children’s best interests differently, especially with respect to
children’s self-determination interests. Children’s rights advocates (Cohen, 1980; Kohn, 2005) adopt
a liberationist view and claim that it suffices for children to have a rudimentary understanding of
9
basic survival facts to entitle them to make their own decisions, whether or not they can do so wisely.
This liberationist argument from justice, based on deontological thinking, gives primacy to the right
to self-determination for everyone, including children, whereas the protectionist argument from a
consequentialist framework encourages children’s personal agency not as a moral right, but rather as a
developmental need to be weighed against other developmental needs.
Wald (1979) distinguished among four categories of children’s rights, two of which may be viewed
as protectionist and two as liberationist. The two protectionist rights are (1) “rights against the world,”
which pertain to adequate nutrition, housing, medical care, and schooling, which should be assured
by legislatures, not courts; and (2) “protection from inadequate care” by adults, especially parents, or
what are typically regarded as abuse and neglect allegations. The two liberationist rights are (3) “adult
legal status,” which would relieve children of status offenses or any other form of coercion that would
be unconstitutional if attempted with adults, and—the most controversial—(4) “rights against par-
ents,” which would enable unemancipated children to act independently of their parents and against
parental wishes.
From a justice perspective (which requires that like cases be treated alike), age must be shown to
be morally relevant in apportioning either rights or responsibilities. Wald pointed out that granting
children liberation rights is a mixed blessing at best. The disadvantage for children of having greater
adult-like legal status has been the increasing tendency of the legal system to treat children as adults
in the courts, thus holding them (as well as their parents) responsible for their criminal actions. If
distinctions based on age in the granting of liberty rights are thought to be unjustifiable, then so are
age-based distinctions granting children freedom from responsibility for criminal conduct based on
their developmental limitations. Conversely, if children are to be subject to status offenses, then their
age may entitle them to freedom from other kinds of criminal responsibility in the courts.
There is, however, a third perspective to children’s best interests that is an alternative to protection-
ist and liberationist views. From a developmentalist perspective, age is a highly relevant justification for
constraining children’s liberty. As is universally recognized, with increasing age children develop the
cognitive capacities for perspective taking, complex reasoning, and a decentered sense of self that are
relevant to the exercise of rights, including those related to autonomy. These and other cognitive skills
also enable children to increasingly perceive themselves in the context of social units and society, to
comprehend and willingly accept the responsibilities that come with citizenship, and to perceive their
actions in terms of near- and long-term futures. With increasing age children and adolescents also
acquire the capabilities necessary to function competently outside the family. Consequently, children’s
best interests compel changes with age in parental responsibilities related to nurturance and protec-
tion (greater when the child is younger) and restrictions on children’s exercise of autonomy or self-
determination rights (decreasing with children’s increasing age and competence).
A developmentalist perspective is not only ethically justified and empirically sound, it is also con-
sistent with how children themselves perceive their rights (Helwig, Ruck, and Peterson-Badali, 2014).
When children ranging in age from 8 to 16 responded to a series of hypothetical stories in which
parents (or other authorities) threatened to contravene a child’s nurturance or self-determination
rights, at all ages children endorsed the story character’s nurturance rights (e.g., continued access to
food and clothing), which were deemed parental responsibilities. By contrast, there were significant
increases with age in children’s endorsement of self-determination rights for the story character (e.g.,
keeping a diary private), with children increasingly referring to that person’s rights as justification
(Ruck, Abramovitch, and Keating, 1998). When mothers were interviewed about nurturance and self-
determination vignettes, the results were similar, although mothers were also attentive to the maturity
or capabilities of the story character to exercise self-determination rights (Ruck, Peterson-Badali, and
Day, 2002).
Children also endorse a developmentalist perspective in their everyday behavior. The imposition
of authority, even against the child’s will, is perceived by most children (as well as by their parents) as
10
age-appropriate during the first six years. This is especially so if disciplinary practices are consistent
with what children perceive to be normative for their culture and social group (Lansford, Chang,
Dodge, Malone, et al., 2005). During the preschool years, adult constraint—expressed as consistent
contingent reinforcement and regularity—helps to promote the child’s sense of security and her or his
belief that the world can be a safe, predictable place. Toddler compliance is most effective when the
adult briefly explains the rule and provides a consequence if the child persists in disobeying, reserv-
ing longer explanations for when punishment is over (Blum, Williams, Friman, and Christophersen,
1995). Preschool children in middle-class American families broadly accept punishment as suitable
across behavioral domains (moral, conventional, prudential), whereas by middle childhood children
are more discriminating, viewing punishment for violations of moral and safety concerns as accept-
able but for conventional transgressions as unacceptable (Catron and Masters, 1993). The importance
of using reason to justify caregivers’ directives increases with age. By early adolescence, children are
more likely to endorse parents who use reason rather than force or psychological control to justify
their decisions and demands, even in cultures with normative use of psychological control (Helwig,
To, Wang, Liu, and Yang, 2014).
With increasing maturity, children distinguish between personal issues (such as what clothes to
wear) and moral (such as bullying weaker children) or conventional issues (such as table manners), and
by adolescence tend to regard parental directives pertaining to moral issues as legitimate, conventional
or prudential issues (such as dietary injunctions) as somewhat less legitimate, and personal issues (such
as dress) as not legitimate domains in which parents may assert their authority (Nucci, 1981; Smetana,
1988, 2019). As children approach adolescence their growing need for independence, as well as their
capacities to think through their own best interests and to empathize with the needs of others, entitle
them to a vote as well as a voice in matters that intimately affect them in the personal domain, such
as custody disputes.
In summary, a developmentalist perspective argues that what constitutes children’s best interests
varies with the child’s age. The protectionist perspective emphasizes children’s need for nurturance
and protection from danger, including parental and societal neglect and abuse, at all ages. The libera-
tionist perspective emphasizes the child’s inherent right to self-determination, with liberty regarded
as the primary “good” to which children and adults are equally entitled. From the developmen-
tal perspective that we endorse, however, the child’s age is a highly relevant justification both for
restraining children’s liberty and for determining their rights to protection and nurturance. Justice,
according to natural law, must take into account real differences in ability and need in determining
the apportionment of privileges, responsibilities, and rewards. At each childhood stage the duties and
rights of parents and children differ, finally approximating the balance that characterizes a mature
adult–adult relationship. During the adolescent period the child gradually relinquishes the privileges
and limitations of childhood and assumes the responsibilities of adulthood, and is rewarded with
self-determination.
Parents’ Developmental Responsibilities: Shaping Children’s

Character and Competence
We have sought in this discussion to clarify the nature of children’s rights and parental responsibili-
ties and, in particular, to provide an ethical justification for parental authority that is consistent with
a mixed rule-utilitarian perspective and developmental science. But what are the purposes for which
parental authority is exercised? What, in other words, are parents’ developmental responsibilities to
offspring?
The power to shape children’s character and competence is an awesome responsibility requiring
conscious sustained and systematic commitment by dedicated caregivers. Parents are responsible for
contributing substantially to the development of ethical character and competence in their children
11
through their socialization efforts (Baumrind, 1998). Socialization is an adult-initiated process by

which young persons through education, training, and imitation acquire their culture, as well as the
habits and values congruent with adaptation to that culture. Children’s perspectives shape their under-
standing of parents’ socialization efforts, but their perspectives are strongly influenced by their parents’
perspectives, which are grounded in particular cultural contexts and instantiated in adult behavior. In
this section, we focus particularly on the development of the dual essentials of socialization—character
and competence—and then consider briefly the importance of culture in defining these essentials.
Character
The abilities to know right from wrong and to regulate one’s own actions led Waddington (1960) to
refer to human beings as “the ethical animal.” When its moral component is made explicit, character
may be thought of as personality evaluated. Character constitutes the ethical estimate of an individual
and refers to that aspect of personality that engenders accountability. These qualities of character have
traditionally been deemed virtues. Character is responsible for persistence in the face of obstacles and
inhibits immediate impulses in the service of some more remote or other-oriented goal. Character
provides the structure of internal law that governs inner thoughts and volitions subject to the agent’s
control under the jurisdiction of conscience. Within limits imposed by their competencies (cognitive,
affective, and physical), circumstances, and cultures, ethical agents are able to plan their actions and
implement their plans; to examine and choose among options; to eschew certain actions in favor of
others; and to structure their lives by adopting congenial habits, attitudes, and rules of conduct.
How may parents contribute to the development of a virtuous character in their children? Wilson
(1993) contended that children are born with the moral sentiments of fairness, duty, sympathy, and
self-control (see also Haidt, 2012). However, they also require cultivation of their moral sentiments by
socializing agents. The child’s moral sentiments are cultivated most effectively by caregivers who have
a clear sense of purpose; enforce their directives; and convey their messages simply, firmly, and consis-
tently. Through the disciplinary encounter and other means, caregivers attempt to induce children to
behave in accord with parental standards of proper conduct and to become aware that they have an
obligation to comply with legitimate authority and to respect the rights of others. The short-range
objective of the exercise of parental authority is to maintain order in the family, but this short-range
objective is subordinated to parents’ ultimate objective, which is to further children’s development
from a dependent infant into a self-determining, socially responsible, and moral adult. Becoming a
moral agent is not simply conforming unreflectively to internalized expectations of authority but also
constructing personal moral standards to guide conduct even when one is free from external induce-
ments or surveillance, and which form the basis for self-conscious moral reflection.
For parents who want their children to become autonomous moral adults, dispositional compli-
ance—uncritical internalization of society’s norms—is thus not the preeminent long-range childrear-
ing objective (Baumrind, 2013b). Rather, the objective is behavioral compliance combined with a
capacity for responsible dissent: to question authority, negotiate, resist injustice, and make thoughtful,
autonomous moral choices (Baumrind, 2004; Sorkhabi and Baumrind, 2009). Responsible dissent, a
constructive form of noncompliance, can be contrasted with persistent oppositional defiance, which
is unconstructive and unfocused general resistance and has negative consequences for children and
the family (Eyberg, Nelson, and Boggs, 2008; Morrissey and Gondoli, 2012). Parents encourage the
development of ethical agency in children by distinguishing between unconstructive and construc-
tive noncompliance strategies, and by encouraging the latter by negotiating with a child who mounts
a rational objection to a negotiable parental directive (Goodnow, 1994; Kuczynski and Kochanska,
1990). Provided that firm parental control has been exercised in childhood, far fewer rules will be
required in adolescence, and family power can be distributed more symmetrically (Baumrind, 1983,
1987; Baumrind and Moselle, 1985; Kandel and Lesser, 1969; Perry and Perry, 1983).
12
Disciplinary encounters are not the only—or even the primary—means by which parents influ-
ence the character development of their children. Of paramount importance is the manner in which
caregivers live their own lives by acting in accord with their beliefs, modeling compassion and cour-
age, engaging in physically and mentally healthy behaviors, and creating the family as a just institution
(Okin, 1989). As Okin, following in the footsteps of John Stuart Mill (1869/1988) argued, the fam-
ily is the first and most influential source of moral development. Justice in the family is modeled by
attending carefully to everyone’s point of view, distributing resources and tasks equitably by taking into
account preference, need, and ability, and establishing gender equity. If home responsibilities are ineq-
uitably distributed or distributed on the basis of gender without consideration of personal preferences
and abilities, children learn injustice and gender-based inequality in power and access to resources.
The mark of virtuous character differs somewhat in Eastern and Western thought. Personal integ-
rity marks exemplary character in Western thought. Integrity implies both wholeness and honesty.
Wholeness means that a person’s precepts and practices are consistent, that the same standards are
applied to means and ends, and that the dichotomy between self and other is transcended in under-
standing true self-interest. Honesty preserves trust in human relationships. Rule-utilitarians place a
high premium on truth telling and trust, although unlike Kantian deontologists, they do not claim
that truth-telling is an unconditional duty that holds in all circumstances, even if a life is forfeited
(Kant, 1797/1964). From a consequentialist perspective promise keeping and truth telling are, how-
ever, of sufficient utility in promoting the greatest good for the greatest number to justify an initial
presumption against lying. Truth telling is such a difficult discipline to acquire, however, and the
principle of veracity has such utility in social life, that parents need to act as models, especially when
it is awkward or uncomfortable to tell their child the truth. (For a differentiated treatment of the
subject of lying, see Bok, 1979; for a discussion of rule-utilitarian objections to deception research, see
Baumrind, 1971b, 1972b, 1979, 1985, 1992, 2013c).
The Eastern perspective on integrity differs from Western thought because the self is construed
as context dependent so that its identity is allowed to change with circumstances and relationships.
Jen, a cardinal Chinese virtue, is the ability to interact in a polite, decent, and sympathetic fashion
and to flexibly change one’s behavior in accord with the requirements of a relationship (Hsu, 1985).
Therefore, authenticity that requires people to focus their attention on their own inner feelings and
convictions rather than on the reactions of others is not considered as important as not hurting others
psychologically or disrupting harmonious interactions with them. In Eastern thought trust is based
on goodwill rather than on telling the whole truth because it is understood that how one acts is a
negotiated and shared social enterprise.
Ethical personality evolves by successive forms of reciprocity in which the capacity develops for
treating the other as someone like oneself rather than alien from oneself. From a young child’s dawn-
ing awareness of psychological states in others (i.e., theory of mind) emerges the earliest moral sensi-
bility in a preschooler’s sensitivity to the feelings, beliefs, and goals of others (Thompson, 2012, 2015).
By middle childhood, the child recognizes that stable social relationships, including those within the
family, are based on the reciprocal maintenance of expectations by social partners as well as on appro-
priate feelings of gratitude or grievance. Consequently, children actively solicit approval from adults
as well as peers and can understand the reasons for parental directives. Perceiving their peers as like
themselves in status and nature, they can better extend toward them genuine concern and compre-
hend their antithetical position in an altercation (Allen and Loeb, 2015). By early adolescence, youth
acknowledge reciprocity in their relationships with adults and adopt a considered view of existential
obligations that embraces an understanding of one’s obligations to others (Matsuba, Murzyn, and Hart,
2014). By acts of compassionate regard and respect for the rights of others, one invites reciprocal acts
of goodwill in time of need.
As children develop intellectually, socially, and emotionally, their character becomes shaped by
parental practices that include (1) the “scaffolding” of shared activity with the child that leads offspring
13
to new patterns of behavior and thought (Damon and Colby, 1987; Pratt, Kerig, Cowan, and Cowan,
1988); (2) inclusion in family habits of hospitality, compassion, and generosity that are extended to the
larger community (McIntosh, Hart, and Youniss, 2007); (3) direct training in role taking, sometimes
through parent–child conversation about helping (Thompson and Winer, 2014); (4) parental use of
induction and reasoning in preference to power; and (5) the child’s opportunities to observe loved
adults acting consistently with their expressed moral beliefs (Colby and Damon, 1992; Oliner and
Oliner, 1988). As a consequence, children become ethically sound by internalizing adult values of
kindness, fairness, and respect; experiencing empathy and sympathy for others; developing habits of
fair and considerate treatment of others; and forming personal standards of right and wrong that result
in a sense of obligation to others. Perhaps most important, parental practices focused on the principle
of compassionate regard for children will foster in children the ability to make inferences about how
others feel and respect for those feelings (Thompson, 2014).
Competence
Competence is effective human functioning in the attainment of desired and valued goals. The goals
that are valued in a culture are those that enable individuals to pursue their personal objectives within
the constraints imposed by the common good and by their social networks. The presence of virtuous
character, intelligence, creativity, and determination enable many people to make substantial contribu-
tions to society.
It takes virtuous character to will the good, and competence to do good well. Optimum com-
petence as well as good character in Western society require both highly developed communal and
agentic (self-assertive) attributes and skills, the two orthogonal dimensions of instrumental compe-
tence (see Baumrind, 1970, 1973; Baumrind and Black, 1967). In Western psychological literature
(Bakan, 1966; Ryan and Deci, 2017), agency refers to the drive for independence, individuality, and
self-aggrandizement, whereas communion refers to receptivity, empathy, interdependency, and the
need to be of service and engaged with others. The social dimensions of status (dominance, power)
and love (solidarity, affiliation), which emerge as the two orthogonal axes from many factor analyses
of Western personality characteristics (Baumrind and Black, 1967; Lonner, 1980; Wiggins, 1979), are
manifestations of agency and communion. Optimum competence requires a balance of highly devel-
oped agentic and communal qualities, and thus this is also a prized goal of childrearing. In practice,
the integration of the two modalities is represented by actions that resolve social conflicts in a manner
that is both just and compassionate and that promotes the interests of both one’s self and one’s com-
munity (Baumrind, 1982).
The young child’s development of competence is the product of increasingly complex interactions
of the developing child with socializing adults—primarily parents—who during the child’s early years
have the power to control these interactions. How parents socialize their children through disciplinary
encounters, conversational discourse, the examples provided by their own conduct, and other means
predicts crucial aspects of children’s positive and negative interpersonal behavior and socioemotional
and cognitive development. In the past, most socialization researchers implicitly assumed that inter-
nalization of society’s rules, represented by parental values, was the primary objective of childrearing.
However, today fewer parents and educators make that assumption. Internalization by one generation
of the rules of the preceding generation represents the conservative force in society, whereas the impe-
tus to social change comes about by the challenges each generation presents to the accepted values,
rules, and habits of the previous generation. Behavioral compliance and internalization of parental
standards are necessary but not sufficient childrearing objectives. In addition, the development of
moral autonomy and its constituents—including the ability to make reasoned, independent moral
choices, to understand the justification for moral expectations, to identify oneself as a moral being,
and to engage in responsible dissent—is also important.
14
We do not attempt here to review the literature on socialization effects as these contribute to the
development of competence of children (see the bibliographic references to Baumrind, 1966, 1968,
1996b, 1997a, 2013b; Maccoby and Martin, 1983). Instead, we describe the authoritative model,
which has to date proven to be the most effective childrearing style in generating high levels of both
agency and communion in European-American children. Authoritative parenting balances warm
involvement and psychological autonomy with firm, consistent behavioral control and developmen-
tally high expectations for social maturity and cognitive achievement. In contrast to authoritarian
parents who are highly demanding (enlisting coercive power assertion) but not responsive, permissive
parents who are responsive but not demanding, and unengaged parents who are neither demand-
ing nor responsive, authoritative parents are both highly demanding and highly responsive. On the
one hand, they provide firm control and high maturity demands, and on the other hand, they offer
warmth, responsiveness, and encouragement of autonomy (Baumrind, 1966, 1975, 1978a, 1980).
Authoritative parents emphasize the importance of well-timed parental interventions. They minimize
intrusions on a toddler’s autonomy by proactive caregiving, such as childproofing, quality time-in, an
abundance of positive attention and active listening; clear instructions; and progressive expectations
for self-help. Authoritative parents are receptive to the child’s views but take responsibility for firmly
guiding the child’s actions by emphasizing reasoning, communication, and rational discussion in inter-
actions that are friendly as well as tutorial and disciplinary.
The balanced perspective of authoritative parents is neither exclusively child-centered nor exclu-
sively parent-centered, but instead seeks to integrate the needs of the child with those of other family
members, treating the rights and responsibilities of children and those of parents as reciprocal and
complementary rather than as identical. Authoritative parents endorse the judicious use of aversive
consequences when needed in the context of a warm, engaged, and rational parent–child relationship.
Because children have their own agendas that include testing the limits of their parents’ authority,
disciplinary encounters are frequent, even in authoritative homes. At such times direct, confrontive
power assertion that is just sufficient to control the child’s behavior and is preceded by an explana-
tion most effectively reinforces parental authority concerning the standards that the child must meet.
Studies that focus on the mechanisms that characterize the authoritative parent show how authori-
tative parents encourage moral internalization, self-assertion, prosocial behavior, and high cognitive
performance. Their strategies include (1) scaffolding of children’s competence, including children’s
social competence, through shared activity and conversations (Pratt et al., 1988; Tomasello, 2016); (2)
reliance on person-centered persuasion rather than on coercion (Applegate, Burke, Burleson, Delia,
and Kline, 1985; Thompson, Laible, and Ontai, 2003); (3) monitoring of offspring and the use of
contingent reinforcement; (4) consistency with the “minimum sufficiency principle” (Lepper, 1983)
of using just enough pressure to enlist child compliance; (5) instantiation of the ethical principle of
reciprocity (Kochanska, 2002; Parpal and Maccoby, 1985); and (6) involved and engaged participa-
tion in the child’s life (Pomerantz, Ng, Cheung, and Qu, 2014; Rogoff, Moore, Correa-Chávez, and
Dexter, 2015).
Cultural Considerations
Converging findings support relations between the authoritative style of childrearing and instrumen-
tal competence in European-American middle-class children (Baumrind, 1971a, 1972a, 1983, 1989,
1991a, 1991b, 1991c, 1993, 1994, 1996a, 1996b, 1998, 2013b). Although alternative candidates for
optimal parenting may exist in diverse cultural contexts, no study has shown authoritative parent-
ing to be more harmful or less effective than any of the alternative parenting styles in promoting
children’s competence and character. The literature suggests that optimal parenting in any culture is
likely to have certain features that characterize authoritative parents—deep and abiding commitment
to the parenting role, intimate knowledge of their child and her or his developmental needs, respect
15
for the child’s individuality and desires, provision of structure and regimen appropriate to the child’s
developmental level, readiness to establish and enforce behavioral guidelines, cognitive stimulation,
and effective communication and use of reasoning to ensure children’s understanding of parents’ goals
and disciplinary strategies.
Just what combination of behavioral control, warmth, and psychological autonomy is optimal in
advancing children’s competence and character, and how each of these outcomes should be opera-
tionally defined, is likely to be moderated by social context (Lansford et al., 2005). Cultures differ
in their emphasis on the rights of individuals or their responsibilities to the polity (Whiting and
Whiting, 1975). The ideals of equality and liberty inherent in the Anglo-American Western tradi-
tion and of social harmony, purity, and collectivity in hierarchical collectivist cultures such as India
or Japan affect the parental attitudes and practices that are deemed desirable and the childrearing
goals that parents set forth for themselves and their children. The emphasis on children’s rights to
self-determination is predominantly a Western ideal. The Eastern sensibility of nonintrusive and
harmonious social relationships contrasts markedly with rights-oriented competitive societies such
as the United States.
In the context, therefore, of cultural diversity in conceptions of human needs, rights and respon-
sibilities, the roles of parents, and the goals of childrearing, a developmental orientation to parental
responsibilities—especially with respect to the development of character and competence—leads
to the conclusion that significant hallmarks of authoritative parenting are contributors to child
competence. As a consequence, “the ethics of parenting” embraces both broadly generalizable
(consistent with a rule-utilitarian framework) and culturally specific considerations. It could not be
otherwise, respecting as we must the constructions of children’s needs and parenting responsibili-
ties that characterize cultures and cultural groups. Moreover, the importance of culture increases
as we broaden our discussion from parents and children to considerations of parents, children, and
the state.
Parents, Children, and the State

Although the emphasis of moral philosophy is on the reciprocal responsibilities of parents and chil-
dren, the community also assumes a significant role in childrearing. Communities provide resources
that can assist adults in ethically responsible parenting. Material resources include income support,
affordable and high-quality childcare, and workplace practices that enable workers to be responsible
parents. Human resources include access to networks of social support, whether in formal contexts
(such as social services, parent support groups, or religious institutions) or the informal social support
systems characterizing many extended families and neighborhoods (Thompson, 1995). Communities
also advance ethical parenting by informally supervising and regulating parental practices to conform
them to cultural norms and to ensure child well-being.
That “it takes a village to raise a child” reflects the view that parenting is interpreted, supported,
and monitored by others beyond the family, which raises significant questions about the relations
between ethically responsible parenting and an ethically responsible society in which parenting
occurs. These questions are the concern of this section. What is the role of society in promoting
ethical parenting? Can the state ensure that parents fulfill their positive obligations toward offspring,
or can it only sanction them when they do wrong? What can the state do to ensure that parents act
in an ethically responsible manner? What are the justifications for the community’s intervention into
family life? In what other ways can the state support ethical parenting? By addressing these questions,
we may help to explain the complex and often troubled relationships between parents, children, and
the state. Although parents bear ultimate responsibility for the care and treatment of their children,
how the community treats families can make the responsibilities of ethical parenting either easier or
more difficult for adults to fulfill.
16
The State and the Family

The state—defined as national, state, and local governing bodies and associated institutions—has con-
siderable interest in the well-being of children. After all, children are citizens, as are their parents.
But children are citizens with different qualities. Children’s developmentally limited capacities for
thinking, judgment, and reasoning described earlier mean that children have different needs, capa-
bilities, and circumstances compared with other citizens. This means, consistent with the foregoing
arguments, that they require special protections and constraints on their liberty that are not offered
other citizens, such as laws governing their economic support; restrictions on child labor, drink-
ing, and driving; protections from sexual exploitation, abandonment, and corrupting influences; and
alternative judicial procedures for the treatment of juvenile offenders. Developmental limitations in
decision-making and reasoning also mean that, by comparison with adults as “persons” before the law,
children have limited autonomy and self-determination, and many decisions (such as consenting to
medical treatment and experimentation, and financial decisions) are made on their behalf (Cavanaugh
and Cauffman, 2019). Many of these limits on autonomy are developmentally graded, as earlier noted,
such that adolescents are legally entitled to exercise greater self-determination (e.g., privileges such
as driving; independent judgments in certain circumstances related to medical care; opportunities to
work) than are young children.
The state adopts an attitude of beneficent paternalism toward its youngest citizens. Such an attitude
neither demeans, disadvantages, nor exploits children (as is sometimes claimed by those adopting a
liberationist view of children) but instead, by treating children as a “special” citizen group, affords
special protections and restrictions suited to children’s unique characteristics and needs. The state’s
approach is consistent with the mixed rule-utilitarian perspective we described earlier with respect
to the ethical responsibilities of parents because each is based on a developmental orientation to the
exercise of external authority in relation to children’s capabilities and needs.
The state’s attitude of beneficent paternalism is deeply rooted in Western philosophical and legal
traditions, including the distinction by Hegel (1821/1952) between the obligations of family mem-
bership and state citizenship. From these traditions has arisen the doctrine of the state as parens
patriae—literally, “the state as parent.” Originally intended to protect the state’s interests in the prop-
erty interests of dependent children, the doctrine indicates that the state may act in loco parentis (“in
place of the parent”) to protect citizens who are unable to defend their own interests. The parens
patriae doctrine has become well established in Western law, and is invoked particularly in situations
when parents are unwilling, or unable, to protect the interests of offspring (Areen, 1975). In these
circumstances and others, the parens patriae doctrine can justify removing children from the family and
warrant other interventions into family life.
The state has other reasons to be interested in the well-being of its youngest citizens besides their
dependency needs. In particular, the maintenance of the community depends on children’s internal-
ization of values that are consistent with public goals and values. These values may derive from the
ideals of individualism, equality, competition, and liberty characteristic of the European-American
Western tradition, or the ideals of social harmony, collectivism, deference to authority, and cooperation
more characteristic of certain Eastern traditions. Children are expected to accept the values, customs,
and responsibilities of community life and to acquire the skills necessary to contribute meaningfully
to the community. These adaptive skills vary significantly according to historical time and location,
but whether they concern mastery of agricultural skills, literary and numeracy skills, or technological
competence, they constitute some of the essential capabilities valued for citizenship. Because of the
state’s interest in these facets of early socialization, educational institutions outside of the family have
become an almost universal feature of childhood (Crosnoe and Ressler, 2019).
The state thus has significant interests in the well-being of its children-citizens and promotes these
interests in a variety of ways that intrude on parents’ autonomy to rear children as they wish. In light
17
of these important state interests, indeed, are families necessary? This is not a casual or unimportant
question (Aiken and LaFollette, 1980; Houlgate, 1988). The ideal civic life envisioned in Plato’s (1979)
Republic divorced procreation from childrearing to ensure that children reared communally would
internalize the collective values and ideals necessary for social welfare and promote solidarity of inter-
ests among those responsible for collective well-being. Advocacy of collective childrearing has been
found in various places, from the institutional childcare centers of the old Soviet Union to traditional
Israeli kibbutzim, and from the Marxist critique of the bourgeois family (Engels, 1884/1962) to B. F.
Skinner’s (1948) utopian vision of the community of Walden Two.
If we claim that families are necessary for children’s well-being, however, then describing why they
are necessary can help to define the unique features of family life that the state should, above all, be
hesitant to violate or usurp. In moral philosophy as well as developmental science, three justifications
for the family are typically offered (McCarthy, 1988; Wald, 1975).
First, children thrive psychologically in the context of the intimate, unique, and enduring rela-
tionships they create with specific caregivers, and these relationships can best be found in family
life. This view is a cornerstone of classical psychological theories of early personality development
and is supported by a substantial empirical literature (Cummings and Warmuth, 2019; Thompson,
2006). Although families are often rent by separation and divorce, and family intimacy is threatened
by stresses of various kinds, it is rare that collective care is capable of providing children with the
kinds of warm, specific, reliable relationships with adults who know the child well that are typical in
most families (Sagi, van IJzendoorn, Aviezer, Donnell, and Mayseless, 1994). In institutional contexts,
turnover of caregivers and high staff caseloads typically militate against children developing enduring,
secure attachments to those who care for them.
Second, most parents are highly motivated by the love they naturally feel for offspring to advance
children’s well-being. Children are precious to them because parents regard offspring as extensions of
themselves biologically, socially, and personally, and thus parental nurturance is deeply rooted in spe-
cies evolution (Trivers, 1985). Although caregivers outside of the family can be motivated by strong
affectional ties to the children they care for, their motivational bases for childcare are nevertheless
different from those of parents and may not be as compelling.
Third, although they are all cultural members, parents rear their offspring with different values
and preferences, which ensures considerable social diversity in childrearing goals and outcomes. One
parent seeks to rear her or his child to be conscientious and responsible; another values creativity
and imagination; a third seeks to foster individuality and leadership. Within the broad boundaries of
acceptable parental conduct, these diverse parental practices ensure plurality in the attributes and char-
acteristics of children that is essential to a democratic society that values and benefits from the diver-
sity of its members. This is what John Stuart Mill (1859/1973, p. 202) called a “plurality of paths”:
What has made the European family of nations an improving, instead of a stationary por-
tion of mankind? Not any superior excellence in them, which, when it exists, exists as the
effect not as the cause; but their remarkable diversity of character and culture. Individuals,
classes, nations, have been extremely unlike one another: they have struck out a great variety
of paths, each leading to something valuable.
By contrast with the consistency in practices and goals that would necessarily characterize collective
forms of childrearing, families afford societal pluralism in child outcomes that is a desirable feature of
a creative, dynamic culture.
These arguments from moral philosophy, supported by the findings of developmental science,
confirm the unique contributions that parent–child relationships offer to children and, furthermore,
justify special provisions to protect these relationships from outside interference. They underscore
that respect for family privacy and parental autonomy in childrearing decisions should be protected
18
by the same state that has considerable interest in children’s well-being and their appropriate social-
ization. This is because the unique qualities of family life—intimate relationships, individuality, and
self-disclosure, a plurality of developmental paths—are violated by undue outside intrusions on the
family. As Blustein (1982, p. 214) expressed it, “privacy is a precondition of intimacy.” Stated dif-
ferently, the state’s interest in children’s well-being is advanced partly by its protection of family life
against unnecessary intrusions from the outside, including intrusions from state authorities who may
be motivated by the needs of children. There is thus a delicate balancing between the state’s interest
in child welfare and the state’s interest in family privacy.
This view is the basis for the long-standing legal deference to the preferences of parents in chil-
drearing decisions. In U.S. Supreme Court decisions beginning nearly a century ago (see Meyer v.
Nebraska, 1923; Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 1925), the Court has been clear that:
[i]t is cardinal with us that the custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in the parents,
whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the state can nei-
ther supply nor hinder. . . . And it is in recognition of this that these decisions have respected
the private realm of family life which the state cannot enter.
( Prince v. Massachusetts, 1944, p. 166)
Absent a compelling state interest, therefore, family life and parental decision-making concerning
the care of offspring are protected from the state’s intervention. Although this legal tradition and
its philosophical foundations are commonly interpreted within a deontological universalist frame-
work of parental rights (often contrasted with children’s rights and the “rights” of the state), a more
constructive reading focuses on the long-range consequences for human welfare of consequentialist
ethical rules protecting family integrity compared to rules permitting substantial intervention by
outside authorities. From this mixed rule-utilitarian perspective, children are far more likely to thrive
psychologically in families in which parents are permitted significant latitude in their childrearing
practices and goals compared to alternative forms of collective care, and society in general (at least a
society embracing democratic values) is also likely to be stronger when family privacy is safeguarded.
Such an analysis does not ensure that all outcomes arising from this ethical perspective will neces-
sarily be easy or satisfactory. The U.S. Supreme Court has, for example, struggled with the implica-
tions of its decisions concerning parental autonomy, affirming in one case (Wisconsin v. Yoder, 1972)
the rights of Amish families to deny secondary school education to their children based on the adults’
religious beliefs and community norms, despite a stirring dissent emphasizing the needs of the chil-
dren for secondary education. Nevertheless, we argue that an ethical rule protecting family integrity
and parental autonomy provides the greatest benefits, in the long run, to children, parents, and the
society in which they live.
Public and Private Ordering of “the Best Interests of the Child”

Earlier in this chapter, we compared philosophically protectionist, liberationist, and developmentalist
perspectives to determining children’s best interests in the exercise of parental authority. The state
must also make judgments concerning “the best interests of the child,” but for many reasons it is less
capable than parents of making the kinds of complex, individualized, multidimensional predictive
judgments entailed in assessing children’s interests. This is why deference to parental decisions in these
situations is also warranted.
The state’s judgment concerning a child’s best interests is required in many legal decisions. Most
commonly, these concern child custody when parents divorce, but grandparent visitation decisions
(Thompson, Scalora, Castrianno, and Limber, 1992; Thompson, Tinsley, Scalora, and Parke, 1989) and
other situations affecting children also require judgments of the child’s best interests. These judgments
19
differ significantly from the kinds of judgments that judges and other authorities are well trained to
provide. Most legal disputes, for example, focus on the documentation of facts. By contrast, judgments
concerning children’s best interests entail less explicit and more subjective determinations of the rela-
tive quality and significance of relationships, the nature of parental care, the impact of different living
circumstances, and related concerns. Statutory law, administrative policy, and judicial precedent usually
provide significant guidance for legal and policy problems, but none of these is helpful for the individu-
alized decisions required in determining a child’s best interests. The latter are person oriented rather
than act oriented, are based on knowledge of the individual child’s characteristics and the circumstances
of particular families, and require complex predictive rather than retrospective judgments involving
future well-being rather than past actions. Finally, but perhaps most important, state decision-making
in a democratic society typically involves the representation of all relevant parties and opportunities for
each to express their views. By contrast, judgments concerning a child’s best interests entail the inferred
but seldom directly expressed interests of the most important party to the case: the child.
In short, the judgments required in determining a child’s best interests are different from those
which administrative, judicial, or regulatory authorities of the state are well prepared to provide. Thus,
it is unsurprising that most judges report that child custody disputes—in which judgments of chil-
dren’s best interests most commonly occur—are among the most difficult cases to resolve (Whobrey,
Sales, and Lou, 1987).
As a consequence, when parents cannot agree on the postdivorce custody of their offspring and
turn to the court for a resolution, judges often rely on their own value preferences and intuitive judg-
ments of the determinants of a child’s future well-being (Mnookin, 1975, 2014). For example, some
judges simply adhere to the traditional maternal presumption that had previously guided custody
decisions—especially with younger children—despite the intended gender neutrality of the best-
interests standard (Lowery, 1981; Thompson and Wyatt, 1999). Others may use different criteria, such
as judgments of each parent’s disciplinary style, warmth, or personality characteristics, as well as their
relative earning power, residence, and future plans as the basis for their judgment, which means that
the same family circumstances evaluated by two different judges may result in different outcomes
(Chambers, 1984; Mnookin, 1975, 2014). This is contrary to justice principles, and in a society that
accords parents considerable latitude in their styles of care and discipline, these criteria may inappro-
priately penalize parents when child custody decisions are made. Moreover, Mnookin (1974, 1975)
and other scholars (Emery, Otto, and O’Donohue, 2005) have claimed that the expert testimony of
forensic psychologists or developmental scientists rarely adds clarity to child custody decisions, given
how difficult it is to make precise predictions of individual development. Perhaps this is why expert
witnesses can typically be found on both sides of a custody dispute.
Even when statutory language more explicitly defines the basis for determining a child’s best
interests, significant problems remain in the application of these standards. For example, a legal pre-
sumption long advocated by legal scholars and social scientists is to award custody to a fit parent who
is the child’s “primary caretaker” (Chambers, 1984; Maccoby, 1995, 1999). By ensuring the child’s
continuing contact with the parent who has assumed the predominant role in parenting, it is argued,
courts can reliably advance a child’s best interests. Although this approach has the appeal of providing
a straightforward, valid, and readily evaluated means of distinguishing parenting roles, it is neverthe-
less often difficult to define the varied responsibilities of parenting and their evolving relevance to
children’s changing developmental needs to determine who is the “primary caretaker” (Thompson,
1986, 1994). Physical care, play, instruction, gender socialization, academic encouragement, role mod-
eling, and other responsibilities of parenting vary in their significance as children mature. Further-
more, determining who is the child’s “primary caretaker” is a retrospective approach to a prospective
determination: The parent who assumed a predominant role in childrearing in the intact, predivorce
family when children were younger may or may not be the best caregiver as a single parent as children
mature (Thompson and Wyatt, 1999).
20
Indeed, because postdivorce family life changes over time, it is unclear how well a custody judg-
ment made by a court when parents divorce can ensure the future well-being of offspring. After
parents divorce, children often change residence as parental circumstances change (including changing
jobs and remarriage) and as children’s needs evolve, and these often provoke other changes in visitation
and child support arrangements (Maccoby and Mnookin, 1992). Increasingly families find that court-
room decisions made at the time of a divorce settlement do not accommodate the rapidly changing
life circumstances of all family members in postdivorce life.
Parents are, of course, accustomed to making judgments of their children’s best interests. They
know their children well and are experienced with the kinds of complex considerations involved in
planning for the child’s future. Perhaps, therefore, the best role for the state in child custody disputes
is to provide opportunities, incentives, and structure to foster parents’ own decisions about postdi-
vorce parenting responsibilities and their continued responsibility for children’s well-being (Emery
and Emery, 2014). Even if parents appeal to the state to decide a custody dispute that they have been
unable to resolve, the judicial system may nevertheless insist on the private ordering of a decision that
parents, not the state, are best capable of making. This judicial insistence can occur through manda-
tory mediation with a skilled counselor who can lead parents through the decision-making needed
to thoughtfully plan postdivorce life for themselves and their children (Emery, 2011). It can also
consist of the requirement that adults negotiate a parenting plan that identifies the responsibilities of
each parent for maintaining a meaningful relationship with children, providing financial support, and
renegotiating other aspects of postdivorce life with the former spouse as family circumstances change
(Warshak, 2014).
At the same time, the state can also create new ways to guide divorcing parents’ thinking about
custody issues to help parents more thoughtfully “bargain in the shadow of the law” as they jointly
plan postdivorce family life (Mnookin and Kornhauser, 1979). “Bargaining in the shadow of the law”
recognizes that legal regulations are important in defining the options and opportunities within which
family members negotiate, even if they never bring their dispute to a courtroom. Legal guidelines
provide parameters for parental negotiations because each parent can estimate his or her chances of
success if the dispute goes to court. The increase in joint legal custody and joint physical custody
awards by the courts in the United States, for example, has given parents more to consider besides the
“winner take all” orientation of past custody decisions in which one becomes the custodial parent and
the other enters into a visiting relationship with the child. Joint legal and/or physical custody provide
a better structure for both parents to anticipate meaningful roles in the child’s life (Thompson and
Wyatt, 1999), and provisions for joint custody are nearly universal in the United States. As a second
illustration, the American Law Institute (2002) proposed custody guidelines by which parents would
each have postdivorce custody of the child in rough approximation to the portion of time each parent
spent in caregiving activities with the child before separation (based on an earlier proposal by Scott,
1992), and this recommendation has also influenced custody decisions in many states (Bartlett, 2014).
This approach enables each parent to assume a custodial role, and advocates in psychology and law
have argued that it is clearer and more precise than the best-interests standard (Bartlett, 2014; Emery
et al., 2005), whereas others believe that it is likely to provide misleading guidance to judges and
parents (Riggs, 2005; Warshak, 2007). Finally, a third example of how changing legal standards alter
parents’ “bargaining in the shadow of the law” is the increase in child support enforcement, beginning
in the 1990s, that significantly improved many fathers’ postdivorce financial support of their children
(Meyer, 1999). These provisions collectively remind parents that although divorce may end a marriage,
it doesn’t end their responsibilities to children.
This discussion of the public and private ordering of “the best interests of the child” illustrates
the formal and informal ways that the state, through legal rules and regulations, can strive to enhance
ethical parenting, even when parents are stressed by the end of their marriage. Legislatures and courts
have introduced new provisions that explicitly encourage both parents to remain committed to their
21
children’s well-being after divorce through meaningful care, financial support, and other ordering of
postdivorce life with procedures that require them to negotiate and plan for the future. These changes
in family law also illustrate the need for periodic revision in legal rules and continued flexibility in
their application to accommodate changes in family life, particularly related to the changes that have
occurred in recent years in parental roles and parent–child relationships (Lansford, 2009). Finally,
this discussion also illustrates the influence of developmental science on the knowledge that legal
authorities use when creating new standards and their application. In view of how typical modes of
legal analysis are unhelpful to the individualized, complex, predictive judgments involved in a custody
decision, developmental science can help frame these judgments in ways that are empirical rather
than intuitive and take into account evidence of family processes and children’s development and the
consequences of alternative custody arrangements. We shall later return to this theme.
State Intervention into Family Life

Our discussion thus far has focused on ethical rules governing the relations between the state and
parents that best foster children’s well-being. Our conclusion underscores an irony in public policy.
The state has strong interests in ensuring the character development, competence, and well-being of
its youngest citizens, but in doing so it must respect the boundaries of family privacy and parental
autonomy that constitute the cornerstones of the child’s psychological development. Consequently,
the state’s coercive power over the family must be secondary to the support, incentives, and structure it
provides to enable parents to make wise choices on behalf of children while accepting the risk that, so
long as parental decisions do not exceed clear thresholds of child harm, those choices may not always
be optimal for the child’s interests. Nevertheless, in recognizing that family privacy and integrity
ultimately create the greatest benefits for children, parents, and society, the state’s efforts to promote
ethical parenting in family life are primarily a matter of enablement, not coercion.
Family privacy and parental autonomy are not, of course, ends in themselves. They are means to
the ultimate objective of advancing children’s well-being. As John Locke (1690/1965, Treatise 2, sec.
58) argued,
the Power . . . that Parents have over their Children, arises from that Duty which is incum-
bent on them, to take care of their Offspring, during the imperfect state of Childhood.
Because parental rights arise from the performance of parental duties to children, parental rights erode
when parents fail to fulfill their legitimate obligations toward offspring (see Blustein, 1982). No par-
ents who are manifestly abusive or neglectful, for example, can expect that the boundaries of family
privacy will remain respected by a community that is concerned about children’s well-being. The
same Supreme Court that has long deferred to parental preferences in childrearing decisions has also
declared that parents are not “free . . . to make martyrs of their children” (Prince v. Massachusetts, 1944,
p. 170). Although our discussion has focused on defining the boundaries beyond which the state can-
not normally intrude into family life, there are circumstances in which the state must intervene. This
section of our discussion is devoted to considering the nature of those conditions and their relevance
to ethical parenting.
There are several circumstances in which the state can legitimately intervene into family life (Wald,
1985). One is when the family itself is disrupted, such as by separation, divorce, or other circumstances
that make it impossible for preexisting family relationships to be maintained. In these situations, the
state must ensure that the renegotiation of family resources and relationships ensures fairness to all fam-
ily members, especially to children. Even when state authorities strongly encourage the private order-
ing of these arrangements, parental decisions are regulated in light of laws in whose shadow parents
conduct their negotiations, and in light of the judicial judgments required to ratify parents’ decisions.
22
Another circumstance warranting the state’s intervention into family life is when there are threats
to the health, safety, or well-being of children, which is the state’s most important commitment
to ensuring ethical parenting. This is both a negative obligation—ensuring that children are not
harmed—and a positive obligation—ensuring that children receive adequate care and training to
become productive members of society. The state may intervene in these circumstances to protect
children and remediate their harm, correct parental misconduct, and/or express the consensual value
preferences of the community through punitive action. Thus, the ethical obligations of the state’s
intervention into family life are both specific (e.g., ending a child’s physical abuse and preventing
its recurrence) and broad (e.g., prosecuting child sexual exploitation as inappropriate adult conduct,
regardless of its specific harms to children).
How should the state define the conditions warranting its coercive intervention into family life?
The tasks of defining in specific terms the ensurance that children are “not harmed” and that they
“receive adequate care and training” are challenging because of the varieties of harms that children
can experience, the varieties of care that they require, and the need to balance the risks and benefits
that children derive when state authorities intervene into family life to protect them. The latter is a
particularly important consideration from a utilitarian analysis. When authorities intervene into the
family because of a report of suspected child maltreatment, for example, there is an upheaval in the
child’s life that can have long-term consequences (Thompson, 1993). At the most extreme, children
who are rescued from physically or sexually abusive homes are placed in a temporary foster home for
an indefinite period, with periodic transitions to other temporary arrangements if a permanent place-
ment is unavailable or cannot be negotiated, or if family reunification cannot be achieved (Mnookin,
1974). Even if the child remains in the home as social services are provided to address family prob-
lems, the child has become the locus of family disruption that alters family relationships significantly.
Thus, the costs as well as the potential benefits to children of state intervention into family life are
important to consider. An additional consideration is research raising considerable doubt that foster
care, social services, or the other interventions typically provided by child protection agencies can
effectively alter the family problems that led to maltreatment or can ensure the child’s future well-
being, especially given the limited resources of social service agencies in the face of growing numbers
of reports of child abuse or neglect (Huntington, 2014; U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and
Neglect, 1990). Indeed, for children who are left for years in temporary foster care placements or
who remain in severely troubled families that receive inadequate services, the important question
is whether they are helped or hindered by the intervention of state authorities. The troubling ethi-
cal problem governing state intervention into family life for purposes of child protection, therefore,
is defining the forms of child harm that are sufficiently severe that, on balance, the actions of state
authorities are likely to yield greater benefit than harm to children.
Moreover, principles of justice require further that the standards for state intervention in family life
are sufficiently clear and explicit such that there is no doubt about the parental conduct warranting
intrusion into family life. This ensures that parents have fair warning of legally prohibited behavior
and guards against subjective, potentially arbitrary legal judgments about what conduct is abusive or
not. Consequently, a rule-utilitarian analysis favors narrowly conceived, explicit standards governing
state intervention into family life, with an emphasis on evidence of child harm resulting from parental
practices. Doing so ensures that a high threshold for intervention is maintained and, consistent with
the costs and benefits that must be considered in permitting state intervention into family life, focuses
on the consequences to the child. One such standard was proposed by Wald (1982, p. 11):
[C]oercive intervention should be permissible only when a child has suffered or is likely to
suffer serious physical injury as a result of abuse or inadequate care; when a child is suffering
from severe emotional damage and his or her parents are unwilling to deal with the prob-
lems without coercive intervention; when a child has been sexually abused; when a child is
23
suffering from a serious medical condition and his or her parents are unwilling to provide
him with suitable medical treatment; or when a child is committing delinquent acts at the
urging or with the help of his or her parents.
Although Wald’s standard may be unduly narrow in some respects (for example, it excludes neglect
due to inadequate nutrition, clothing, shelter, or supervision), it reflects the emphasis on narrowly
defined, clear, and child-centered standards that we believe are supported by the mixed rule-utilitarian
analysis of this discussion.
Are there other forms of parental misconduct warranting concern by state authorities? Parents may
be psychologically abusive to offspring, for example, by their threats, denigration, isolation, or exploi-
tation of their children. Some have argued that state authorities should intervene into such families to
protect children’s emotional well-being (Hart, Germain, and Brassard, 1987; McGee and Wolfe, 1991).
Consideration of the risks and benefits of doing so, however, reveals several difficulties (Melton and
Thompson, 1987; Thompson and Jacobs, 1991). The first concerns the lack of clarity of the standard
for intervention with terms like “exploiting” and “isolating” children. Can a parent who requires
children to help with farm chores expect to be accused of “exploiting” the child? Is homeschooling
an example of “isolating” a child? In these and other situations, there is insufficient clarity concerning
what constitutes psychological maltreatment to ensure that judges will be guided by well-defined legal
guidelines. Second, by contrast with other standards of child maltreatment that focus on child harms,
most standards of psychological maltreatment focus on parental behavior rather than child outcomes.
But doing so is the wrong focus because the complex effects of parental conduct on children are
moderated by the child’s temperament, the behavior of the other parent, and other family processes.
Finally, because the intervention of state authorities into family life is itself psychologically threaten-
ing to children, it is important to weigh these potential costs to children against the expected benefits
achieved by actions intended to combat psychological maltreatment. For many children, the costs of
intervention are unlikely to outweigh its benefits.
The troubling ethical dilemma for state intervention for child protection is defining the forms of
child harm that are sufficiently severe that the actions of state authorities are likely to yield greater
benefits than harm to children. Narrow definitions of child harm curb the risk of excessive or
arbitrary intrusions into family life, but they also reflect limitations in the state’s capacity to provide
benefits for children in difficulty so that interventions are focused on the children in greatest peril.
As we note in the following section, there are many ways that the state is capable of providing non-
coercive family assistance, even to the most troubled families (Baumrind, 1995), and intervention
science continues to generate a larger variety of evidence-based programs for parents who need help
(National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2016). But the resources of child pro-
tection agencies are typically so meager that effective interventions to provide family support cannot
readily be mobilized on behalf of children (Huntington, 2014). Viewed in this light, the capacity of
the state to support ethical parenting is contingent on the state devoting the resources and generating
the will to act ethically on behalf of the dependent children who are also its citizens by providing the
resources necessary to its parens patriae responsibilities. Adequate resources devoted to the maintenance
of an effective, child-focused foster care system, and the implementation of evidence-based programs
to improve the parenting skills of troubled adults, would seem to be at the core of the state’s ethical
responsibility. At present, those conditions do not exist in most jurisdictions of the United States.
Family Assistance
One conclusion arising from the preceding analysis is that although the state has a significant respon-
sibility to support ethical parenting, the authority of the state is a very blunt instrument for doing
so. There are, however, other ways the state influences family life apart from its coercive or punitive
24
power. The state orders relationships within the family (and assists when these relationships must be
reordered, such as in divorce), regulates the institutions affecting family members, provides enable-
ments that support parents in their caregiving functions, creates institutions (such as schools and pub-
lic health programs) that directly support children, and constructs out-of-home and in-home forms
of assistance when families are troubled. The state also has an expressive function by which, through
formal and informal avenues, it conveys beliefs and expectations about children and families that both
reflect and instantiate changing social values. In many respects, the most important ways the state
promotes ethical parenting is through these supportive, provisioning, enabling functions, even though
they are often the least recognized forms of state intervention.
Legal and regulatory authorities help to order family life, for example, by defining the roles and
responsibilities of family members, such as in statutes governing marriage, parenting, procreation,
adoption, child custody, and defining the obligations (including financial responsibilities) of spouses
and parents. These statutes help to ensure that the reciprocal obligations of adults are clearly under-
stood as they enter into family relationships and that their responsibilities to children are fulfilled. As
in the case of parental divorce, moreover, the state is mandated to intervene to help family members
reorder their relationships and responsibilities when the family is disrupted, especially to ensure that
children’s needs are safeguarded. In addition, state regulation of institutions affecting children, such as
pediatric practices and childcare programs, help to ensure the safety and health of those who attend.
Perhaps the most important indication of how the state benefits children and families is public edu-
cation. Indeed, mandatory education requirements are perhaps the most coercive state regulation on
family life because parents are compelled to attend to the education of their children—most often
to comply with compulsory school attendance—for a sustained period throughout childhood and
adolescence. Yet the inherent coerciveness of this regulation is not apparent to most families because
public education has become institutionalized in national culture and worldwide, and because of the
clear benefits of school attendance for most children.
There are other noncoercive avenues by which the state assists families. The state provides enable-
ments that make it easier for parents to fulfill their responsibilities to children. Many enablements in
the United States, for example, are direct financial subsidies, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit
(EITC), the Child Tax Credit, and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). Some are
nutritional supports, such as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and
Children (WIC), the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food
stamps), and the national school lunch program. The Affordable Care Act significantly expanded the
range of health care supports available to children and families, and was preceded by the Child Health
Insurance Program (CHIP). Housing programs also provide vouchers and other kinds of assistance.
Finally, a range of educational enablements, beginning with the family-based Early Head Start and
Head Start programs, are either targeted to the most needy children and families or (as in public
education programs) are universally available. This list only focuses on programs of the U.S. federal
government, and many states and localities in the United States supplement these with other forms of
family support. In addition, through the financial incentives it offers businesses, the state can encour-
age the development of workplace practices (such as family leave) that make it easier for adults to be
better parents, and it can provide economic assistance to childcare programs that are willing to invest
significantly in improved facilities, teacher training, and developmentally appropriate programs. In
these and many other ways, the state strengthens the support and resources that parents can enlist as
they provide nurturing environments for children.
This portrayal of a broad range of supportive forms of family assistance starkly contrasts with the
limited coercive latitude of the state for regulating family life. It suggests that although the state can
do little to compel parents to do good for their children, and the grounds for state intervention are
narrowly tailored to address only the most serious forms of child harm, there are many avenues by
which the state can enable and provision parents to do better for their children. These forms of state
25
“intervention” into family life are often overlooked because they are incorporated into the fabric of
family life and are noncoercive, so they are readily accepted. But these may be the most significant
avenues by which the state supports ethical parenting.
In the end, moreover, the hortatory power of the state should not be overlooked. The values that
are explicitly recognized in the formal and informal regulations influencing family life, and which
the state implements in its provisions for the family, speak volumes. This is because legal, administra-
tive, and regulatory reforms not only reflect the changes that occur in family life and help to express
and institutionalize those changes. The expressive function of laws affecting families (Bartlett, 1988)
is reflected, for example, in divorce and custody statutory reform that implicitly encourages parents to
recognize that although they may end a marriage, they can never end their responsibilities as parents.
The law’s expressive function is reflected in changes in child protection laws that are increasingly and
explicitly child-focused in their assessments of the harms of parental conduct and the remedies the state
can implement. The expressive function of the law is most broadly revealed in the extent to which the
state either regards children as a liability and a burden or as a social resource of shared responsibility.
Conclusions
The ethics of parenting begin, we have argued, with the assumption of responsibility for children by
parents. Although parents do not alone have responsibility for the welfare of children—the state, as we
have seen, also has important obligations to children—parental responsibilities are first and foremost.
Within our mixed rule-utilitarian, developmentalist framework, children and adults have complemen-
tary, not equal, rights that arise from their very different capabilities and the mutual obligations they
share within the family. A child’s right to self-determination is limited, for example, by the exercise
of parental authority that functions legitimately to promote the healthy development of offspring.
We have described the parental responsibilities that legitimize the exercise of parental authority, par-
ticularly the adult practices that shape the development of character and competence in children. As
children mature and acquire more mature capacities for reasoning, judgment, and self-control, their
autonomy increases and parenting responsibilities subside, consistent with a developmental orientation
to understanding children’s best interests. We argue that a developmental orientation is preferable to
either liberationist or protectionist approaches because it recognizes the changing mutual obligations
shared by parents and children with the growth of children’s competencies and judgment.
Our theory of ethical parenting underscores that responsible parenting is not solely a family obliga-
tion but a responsibility shared by the community. The community’s values, resources, and social sup-
ports make it easier (or more difficult) for parents to fulfill their responsibilities to offspring, and we
have focused on the role of the state, and of public policy, in fostering ethical parenting. Our analysis
has highlighted that the state has significant interests in the well-being of its youngest citizens, but that
in most cases it promotes children’s welfare best by respecting family privacy and parental autonomy
in childrearing decisions. From a consequentialist perspective, respect for parental autonomy protects
the features of family life that contribute to children’s well-being and minimizes unnecessary intru-
sions into family life that can undermine children, even when motivated to advance their best interests.
Consequently, we have advocated limited, clear standards warranting the state’s coercive intervention
into the family to protect children’s physical and emotional well-being and emphasized the value of
the support, resources, and structure the state can provide parents to make their own wise decisions on
behalf of offspring. This is because coercive public policy is a very blunt instrument for altering fam-
ily life, and thus the state can most effectively assist children through incentives rather than coercion.
Our analysis of the ethics of parenting has drawn on classic and modern ideas within moral
and political philosophy, ethical theory, and developmental science. We close with additional com-
ments about the latter, because we are each developmental scientists. The integration of developmen-
tal research into arguments drawn from ethics and moral philosophy shows that scientists, whether
26
applied or not, have an important contribution to offer in supporting ethical parenting. Fallible and
necessarily limited as our knowledge is, we believe that developmental scientists should and do con-
tribute to the resolution of ethically saturated disputes about what constitutes a child’s best interests
by providing relevant information about the probable psychological and social consequences of con-
trasting social policies. In doing so, however, the information provided must be unbiased and based on
firm empirical evidence. Scientists have a responsibility not only to contribute to public discourse in
their professional roles but also to base their recommendations on scientifically derived knowledge.
Scientific knowledge is distinguished from ordinary knowledge by the systematic use of proce-
dures that protect against bias due to personal values, conformity to received wisdom, or misleading
surplus meaning in the measurement of theoretical constructs. The scientific method is intended to
provide information that is systematic, public, and replicable. Critical thinking instilled by scientific
training consists of asking the right questions and asking them in the right way. Consensual rules
of objectivity, exemplified by the double-blind experiment, were formulated to protect against sub-
liminal as well as intentional confirmatory biases. Hypotheses make explicit investigators’ partiality
or research biases so that they may then attempt to probe, not prove, their hypotheses. When policy-
makers consult with social scientists in an effort to better inform their legislative or judicial efforts to
address social problems, they assume that the social scientists whom they consult are objective, impar-
tial reporters of their own and others’ findings rather than intentionally biased advocates, motivated
by self-interest or a political cause.
Robert Merton (1973) articulated four norms of science that are widely accepted by scientists
(Koehler, 1993) and laypersons. Merton’s norms require scientific information to be (1) publicly
shared; (2) judged by objective rather than personal criteria; (3) unbiased by personal values or inter-
ests; and (4) available to the scientific community to scrutinize through established procedures of peer
review, replication, and challenges by rival hypotheses. Unlike lawyers or politicians, research scientists
may not ethically suppress disconfirming data and must acknowledge the existence of alternative
hypotheses and explanations of their findings, as well as the degree of certainty that should be attached
to their findings. However well intentioned, biased interpretation of research results by social scientists
undermines public trust in our perceived objectivity and impartiality, and thus our capacity to con-
tribute to ethical parenting (MacCoun, 1998; Thompson and Nelson, 2001).
Public debates about the nature and consequences of parenting, and policymaking affecting families,
require the thoughtful and informed contributions of scientific experts. Because of their unique exper-
tise, developmental scientists are well qualified to transform scientific knowledge into “usable knowl-
edge” that is thoughtfully and responsibly relevant to the public questions under discussion, including
those discussed here related to ethical parenting (Lindblom and Cohen, 1979; Thompson, 1993).
Ethical parenting is the responsibility of parents and the state, and of developmental scientists who
seek to understand family life. By appreciating the unique roles and responsibilities of each partner for
advancing children’s well-being, adults offer children the best opportunities to develop the character
and competence that lead to successful adult life.
Note
1 Diana Baumrind’s passing as this chapter was being completed brought to an end a rich collaboration that
I valued, and in which many elements of Diana’s lifetime contributions were brought together: a generative
program of research on parenting, a deep commitment to the highest ethical values, especially in research and
its applications, and a view of families in cultural, community, and policy contexts. She will be missed.
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33
2
PARENTING AND CHILDREN’S
SELF-REGULATION
Wendy S. Grolnick, Alessandra J. Caruso, and Madeline R. Levitt
Introduction
There is a burgeoning area of research on the development of children’s self-regulation. Such research
focuses on a number of constructs, including children’s behavior regulation, effortful control, emo-
tion regulation, and executive functioning, to name just a few. One of the reasons for this intensifying
focus is acknowledgment of the crucial role of self-regulation in children’s motivation, learning, and
adjustment. The sequelae of children’s self-regulation are evident across multiple domains, including
their functioning at school, at home, and with peers. Given this understanding, it is crucial to identify
the determinants of children’s self-regulation. As children’s most important socializers, parents are key
contributors to the development of children’s self-regulation. Thus, this chapter explores what we
know about the contributions of parenting to children’s developing self-regulation.
In exploring this issue, we consider multiple forms of self-regulation. However, in doing so, we
recognize that the “self ” in the term self-regulation can be interpreted differently. In the most general
sense, self-regulation can refer to any behavior or emotion that the person emits in response to an
environmental demand. However, within a motivational framework, the self is more than just a loca-
tion from which behavior is initiated. In particular, such a theory of motivation considers the experi-
ence of the initiator, asking, for example, does the person engage in the behavior because of external
contingencies (e.g., rewards, deadlines) or pressure, or does she or he engage in the behavior willingly,
out of a sense of its importance or value? Thus, a motivational framework considers compliance
and obeying directives as different from internalized responses that are more volitional or endorsed.
Importantly, the quality and persistence of these different types of self-regulated behavior are likely to
be quite different.
In this chapter, we consider parenting in relation to self-regulation in the broader sense of exerting
self-control and using strategies that help individuals to meet environmental demands (Posner and
Rothbart, 2000), but also in the more limited motivational sense of autonomously or volitionally regu-
lating one’s behavior (Deci and Ryan, 1985). In doing so, we use Self-Determination Theory (Deci
and Ryan, 1985, 2000) as a framework for understanding how behaviors move from being motivated
by external contingencies (i.e., compliance) to being more autonomously regulated. We also use this
theory to organize our discussion of parenting into three dimensions that theoretically should con-
duce toward children’s self-regulation: involvement/warmth, autonomy support, and structure.
We begin the chapter by defining self-regulation and the key constructs that we will cover in
the chapter. We then turn to a discussion of the three dimensions of parenting as delineated by
34
Parenting and Children’s Self-Regulation
Self-Determination Theory: involvement, autonomy support, and structure. From there, we review
studies on parenting that have been found to facilitate and undermine children’s self-regulation in the
areas of behavior regulation, internalized self-regulation in younger and older children, and emotion
regulation. Finally, we conclude the chapter with ideas for some areas that need attention to further
our understanding of how parenting facilitates self-regulation, including specifying directionality in
our studies; delineating the contributions of mothers and fathers; and considering how culture, ethnic-
ity, and socioeconomic circumstances might shape the role of parents as facilitators of self-regulation.
First we begin with a definition of self-regulation and constructs that fall under this, including behav-
ior regulation, internalized self-regulation, and emotion regulation.
Self-Regulation Defined
Self-regulation, defined many ways, is a broad rubric covering multiple constructs. Perhaps most
comprehensive is Posner and Rothbart’s (2000) definition of self-regulation as the process of indi-
viduals modulating behavior and affect given contextual demands. With such a broad definition, self-
regulation can include behavior, emotion, and cognition. Within the area of self-regulation, several
constructs have been employed. Some theorists use the term behavior regulation. Behavior regulation
includes behaviors that comply with environmental demands such as following rules, paying attention,
resisting temptation, and inhibiting impulsive behaviors (Calkins, Smith, Gill, and Johnson, 1998). A
related construct is effortful control, which has been defined as attentional processes that enable indi-
viduals to shift and focus their attention to suppress inappropriate behavior and perform behaviors
that are required or appropriate in response to behavioral demands (Evans and Rothbart, 2007). The
concepts of behavior regulation and effortful control clearly overlap, but effortful control has often
been conceived as a temperamental dimension, although affected by the environment (Evans and
Rothbart, 2007). The related concept of executive functioning is often conceived as the cognitive
aspect of self-regulation, or higher-order attentional and cognitive processes that support a range of
competencies (Ursache, Blair, and Raver, 2012). The measurement of executive functions typically
includes three aspects: the ability to hold information in working memory; attentional control, or
the ability to resist distractions or temptations; and cognitive flexibility, or the ability to flexibly shift
attention. Finally, emotion regulation concerns the ability to manage one’s states of arousal and has
been defined as processes that initiate, inhibit, avoid, and maintain or modulate emotions to achieve
individual goals (Eisenberg and Spinrad, 2004). Emotion regulation is considered a goal-directed pro-
cess that includes cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components (Cole, Martin, and Dennis, 2004).
Self-regulation has been conceptualized as a developmental process. Kopp (1982), for example, dis-
cussed stages of the regulation of behavior. In the neurophysiological stage (2 to 3 months), behavior
is regulated largely by arousal states aided by the caregiver. In the sensorimotor stage (3 to 9 months),
the child is able to adjust behavior in accord with immediate environmental events and stimuli. The
child between 9 and 18 months exhibits control by showing awareness of social and task demands
and acting accordingly. However, it is not until the middle of the second year that the child can act in
accord with social expectations in the absence of external monitoring or, in other words, can display
self-control. Kopp postulated a final stage of self-regulation (36 months plus) in which a more flexible
and adaptive control of behavior is possible, largely because of increasing capacities for representation
and symbolic functioning. Several studies have supported the increasing capacity of children between
18 and 48 months to delay (Golden, Montare, and Bridger, 1977; Vaughn, Kopp, and Krakow, 1984)
and use adaptive strategies while waiting (Van Lieshout, 1975), supporting a developmental model of
behavioral self-regulation.
Although the development of self-regulatory skills begins within the first year, such skills and
abilities grow dramatically during the preschool years, becoming increasingly important beyond the
second year (Eisenberg et al., 2005) and becoming moderately stable into the preschool years (Carlson,
35
Wendy S. Grolnick et al.
Mandell, and Williams, 2004). Thus, it is not surprising that many developmental studies of parenting
in relation to behavior and emotion regulation focus on the toddler and preschool years.
Each of the self-regulation constructs described here has been found to be important to chil-
dren’s adaptive functioning. Behavioral and emotion regulation are critical to school functioning, as
children must follow rules, function in groups, and cooperate with others, requiring them to inhibit
disruptive and inappropriate behavior and modulate strong emotions (Graziano, Reavis, Keane, and
Calkins, 2007). They also need to use attentional control (e.g., ignoring distractions, sustaining focus
on challenging tasks) and cognitive mechanisms (e.g., keeping directions in working memory) to fol-
low directions, engage in learning activities, and complete tasks (Blair, 2002; McClelland et al., 2007).
Thus, it is not surprising that each of these self-regulatory processes has been associated with a range
of adaptive outcomes. Behavior regulation has been associated with school achievement across diverse
age groups (McClelland et al., 2007; Weis, Heikamp, and Trommsdorf, 2013). Similarly, executive
function skills predict math and literacy achievement in preschoolers and kindergarteners (Blair and
Razza, 2007; Bull and Scerif, 2001; McClelland et al., 2007). Emotion regulation has been associated
with higher levels of achievement in early elementary school (Howse, Calkins, Anastopoulos, Keane,
and Shelton, 2003) even after controlling for IQ (Graziano et al., 2007), as well as positive interactions
with peers and teachers (Hamre and Pianta, 2001).
Clearly, these aspects of self-regulation are intertwined. For example, children who are better able
to modulate their strong emotions will more likely be able to focus attention on tasks. Conversely,
children who are able to withdraw their attention from upsetting events will likely be able to self-
soothe more easily (Raver, 1996). Thus, the concomitants of one set of processes likely apply to the
others.
However, self-regulation from a motivational perspective involves more than merely complying
with rules and controlling one’s behavior or emotions. A motivational perspective considers the
initiation of the behavior. For example, a different level of self-regulation is in evidence when a
child adheres to a stated rule or guideline when it is demanded of her or him than one who does so
spontaneously (e.g., the child who cleans her or his room or helps another child after being yelled at
to do so compared with the child who cleans her or his room without being asked or helps another
child unprompted). A level of self-regulation beyond compliance is also in evidence in situations
when the caregiver or other authority is not present. For example, does a child alone in the kitchen
refrain from eating a cookie when she or he knows it is almost dinnertime? Third, in considering self-
regulation from a motivational perspective, it is important to consider not just the behavior itself but
also the person’s experience of the initiation of her or his behavior. Does the child experience herself
or himself as engaging in the behavior volitionally or autonomously, without a sense of pressure or
coercion, or is she or he having to push herself or himself, experiencing an inner conflict with the
behavior? The construct of locus of causality (deCharms, 1968) can be used to distinguish between
these different experiences. In particular, behaviors with an internal locus of causality are experienced
as volitional, whereas those with an external locus of causality are experienced as coerced, either from
without or within. Of course, determining how autonomous the child feels in engaging in a behavior
or emotion is difficult to ascertain from the behavior itself because, from an outward perspective, the
behavior may look similar. Creative ways to assess the type of regulation in younger (Kochanska and
Aksan, 1995) and older (Ryan and Connell, 1989) children have been developed and will be discussed
in the next sections.
Relatedly, emotion regulation is not just suppression of emotion. From a functionalist perspective,
emotion is adaptive and communicates important messages to others and the self about the state of
the organism (Campos, Campos, and Barrett, 1989). Thus, the ability to curtail strong emotions in the
service of one’s goals or of situational demands is critical for social development and learning, and it is
also important to be able to experience and express emotions. Emotion regulation can thus be differ-
entiated from emotion suppression and control, and the flexible management of both the experience
36
and expression of emotion is in line with a perspective valuing the experience of autonomy and inner
cohesion.
Clearly, the identification of parenting factors that facilitate compliance and display of desired
behavior and acceptable emotion in children is an important task. However, in considering the social-
ization of children, many of the goals parents have for them go beyond mere compliance. A major
goal of socialization is for children to take on themselves the regulation of their own behavior and
emotion—meaning to act without explicit directives or demands, to engage in socially prescribed
behaviors in the absence of adult supervision, and to do all of this in a flexible, nonconflictual manner
(Grolnick, Deci, and Ryan, 1997). Thus, explicating the socialization of more internalized or autono-
mous self-regulation is a key goal of parenting and will be discussed as a major section of this chapter.
In summary, the rubric of self-regulation includes a number of constructs, including executive
functions, effortful control, and emotion regulation. The concept of self-regulation goes beyond
children exhibiting self-control but also their internalizing the regulation of their own behavior and
emotion such that they engage in desired behaviors spontaneously and flexibly. The chapter addresses
the relations of parenting to both behavior regulation and more internalized self-regulation across a
range of child ages.
A Self-Determination Theory Perspective on Self-Regulation

From a Self-Determination Theory (SDT) perspective, individuals have three innate needs: those for
autonomy, or to feel volitional or the owner of one’s actions; competence, or to feel effective; and
relatedness, or to feel loved and valued (Deci and Ryan, 2000). These needs underlie development
more generally, as well as the persistence in exercising one’s capacities and building competence more
specifically. Thus, when these needs are satisfied, individuals will most likely persist in challenging
behaviors for the pure pleasure of exercising their competencies, which is termed intrinsic motivation.
The needs also underlie development toward more autonomous self-regulation for those activities that
are not inherently interesting. These extrinsically motivated behaviors (i.e., behaviors engaged in for
some goal or purpose other than pleasure and enjoyment) can be seen as lying along a continuum
of autonomy ranging from those that are more externally motivated to those that are more autono-
mously regulated. Self-Determination Theory posits multiple types of self-regulation lying along this
continuum. At the least autonomous end is external regulation, whereby individuals regulate behavior
around contingencies (i.e., rewards or punishments in the environment). For example, children might
do their homework because they would get in trouble if they did not. Further along the continuum
is introjected regulation. This type of regulation involves regulating behavior around a contingency,
yet the contingency is administered by the self rather than some outside agent. Thus, children might
behave because they would feel bad or guilty if they did not. With introjected regulation, the behavior
stems from within but the person does not experience a sense of choice or volition, and there is con-
flict between the individual’s natural tendencies and the regulation. Still further along the continuum
is identified regulation, which involves a sense of autonomy. At this point, the child identifies with or
takes on the value of the behavior or regulation and behaves in accord with it. No longer is there a
perceived conflict between the regulation and the self. Children who clean their rooms because they
like them neat so they can find their belongings are regulating through identification. At the final
point on the continuum, identifications have been integrated or assimilated with other aspects of the
self into a coherent system of values, goals, and motives, resulting in integrated regulation. Because this
form of self-regulation is developmentally advanced and therefore not characteristic of children and
adolescents, we do not focus on integrated regulation in this chapter.
How do children move along the continuum toward a greater sense of autonomy or self-regulation
for behaviors that are originally externally regulated? According to SDT, individuals move along the
autonomy continuum through the process of internalization. Internalization is the process through
37
which originally externally regulated action becomes increasingly taken in by the person and made
a part of the self (Deci and Ryan, 1985). The process of internalization is proposed to be a natural
one in which children actively engage. Thus, provided the environment does not interfere too much,
children naturally and spontaneously take on regulations, values, and behaviors around them as part
of their intrinsically motivated growth and development. A corollary of the theory is that, as an
intrinsically motivated process, internalization itself is energized by the same three needs as intrinsic
motivation: to feel autonomous, competent, and related to others. Furthermore, factors that facilitate
intrinsic motivation should also facilitate the active process of internalization.
Within the SDT tradition, the degree of autonomy in children’s self-regulation has often been
measured by asking children about the reasons they engage in various behaviors—for example, chil-
dren might be asked why they do their homework, clean their rooms, or keep a promise. These
reasons provide a window into the degree of autonomy in their behaviors. This type of measure has
also been used to assess the degree of autonomy in children’s use of emotion regulation strategies (e.g.,
suppressing emotions).
There is evidence that at what point along the autonomy continuum children’s regulation of
behavior falls makes a difference in terms of their adjustment and achievement. For example, more
identified regulation of school-related activities is associated with more positive affect and proactive
coping with school setbacks, whereas less autonomous styles (i.e., external, introjected) are associated
with negative affect and maladaptive coping (Ryan and Connell, 1989). Using a scale that examined
the regulation of prosocial behaviors, Ryan and Connell (1989) found that identified regulation was
associated with higher empathy and more mature moral reasoning. Researchers have extended the
investigation of regulatory styles in children across a number of areas, including sports and overall
well-being.
To assess type of self-regulation in young children, Kochanska, Aksan, and Koenig (1995) focused
on the quality of children’s behavior—differentiating between situational compliance and committed
compliance, with committed compliance being a precursor to internalization. In situational com-
pliance, the child is cooperative and complies but lacks a sincere commitment to the compliance
behavior. To sustain the compliance, the child requires reminders and parental control techniques. By
contrast, committed compliance is more self-regulated. Here, the child appears to embrace, endorse,
and accept the parent’s agendum as her or his own. The child does not require prompts or reminders
to maintain the behavior and does so enthusiastically. Committed compliance thus can be likened to
the more autonomous self-regulation discussed earlier.
Supporting the developmental nature of committed compliance, Kochanska and Aksan (1995)
found that committed compliance increases with age. Supporting the hypothesis that it is a precursor
to internalization, these authors found that committed compliance in the toddler years was associated
with indices of internalization in the preschool years, such as doing a requested activity in the absence
of the mother, and an unwillingness to succumb to enticements to cheat. Situational compliance was
not so related to internalization.
SDT thus outlines the processes through which individuals move from more external regulation of
their behavior toward more autonomous self-regulation. The internalization process is hypothesized
to be a natural one through which individuals progress as they meet innate needs for autonomy, com-
petence, and relatedness. We now turn to environments that facilitate or thwart the internalization
process.
Facilitating Environments—Parenting From an SDT Perspective

From an SDT perspective, environments that support the needs for autonomy, competence, and
relatedness, respectively, autonomy support, structure, and involvement, should facilitate greater
intrinsic motivation and movement along the internalization continuum toward more autonomous
38
self-regulation. We delineate these dimensions as well as their links to constructs in the parenting
literature.
Autonomy support is a broad construct that includes taking people’s perspectives, supporting their
initiations, and providing choice and input into decision-making and problem-solving. By contrast,
controlling environments, which pressure people toward specific outcomes, solve problems for them,
and prohibit input and dissension, should undermine individuals’ experience of autonomy. Within the
parenting literature, autonomy support versus control is linked to dimensions such as psychological
control (Barber, 1996), harsh parenting (Melby and Conger, 2001), and intrusive parenting (Egeland,
Pianta, and O’Brien, 1993), though in many cases researchers only focus on the controlling end of the
continuum rather than the autonomy supportive end.
A second dimension, structure, supports the need for competence. When environments are struc-
tured, they contain the information individuals need to effectively guide their behavior (Grolnick
and Pomerantz, 2009). Within parenting, structure includes providing clear rules, expectations, and
guidelines; consistent consequences for meeting or not meeting expectations; and feedback on how
the person is doing in following the guidelines (Farkas and Grolnick, 2010; Grolnick et al., 2014). The
dimension of structure is related to that of behavioral control, which has been defined as managing
children’s behavior (Barber, 1996).
Finally, meeting the need for relatedness is the dimension of involvement. Involved environments
provide resources that individuals need, such as time and attention. It also includes love and affec-
tion that make individuals feel valued and loved. The rubric of involvement can include acceptance
(Schaefer, 1965), warmth (Rohner, 1986), and overall support (Eisenberg et al., 2005).
The SDT conceptualization is closely related to Baumrind’s (1967, 1971) parenting typology,
which differentiates three types of parents. The authoritative parent encourages verbal give and take,
provides rationales for actions, and solicits input into decisions. This parent also firmly enforces rules
and demands mature behavior from children. The authoritarian parent, similar to the authoritative,
has rules and guidelines for action. However, in contrast, this parent discourages individuality and
independence. Finally, the permissive parent imposes few demands and accepts the child’s impulses.
Similar to the authoritative parent, the permissive parent encourages independence. Seen from a moti-
vational framework, the authoritative parent would be high on autonomy support and structure, the
authoritarian parent high on control and structure, and the permissive parent low on structure and
high on autonomy support.
Similar to theoretical arguments underlying Self-Determination Theory, Baumrind (1973) sug-
gested that both the authoritarian and the permissive styles would undermine children’s internal-
ization because both of these styles shield children from opportunities to struggle with and assume
responsibility for their own behavior. The authoritarian parent does so by preventing the child from
taking initiative. Thus, the child does not have the opportunity to be responsible for her or his own
behavior. Permissive parents shield children by not demanding that they confront the consequences of
their own actions. Children of each of these types of parents should, then, be lower in self-regulation
than those of authoritative parents. The SDT conceptualization looks at each parenting dimension
separately so that the contribution of different behaviors and strategies can be understood.
In addition to the theoretical value of explaining why certain aspects of parenting are beneficial
for children, we believe that using the three parenting dimensions of autonomy support, structure, and
involvement is a useful way to organize the literature to be reviewed on parenting in relation to self-
regulation. However, a number of parenting constructs receiving attention in this literature cross these
dimensions. For example, sensitive parenting, originally defined by Ainsworth as the parent’s ability to
notice the child’s signals, interpret them correctly, and respond to them promptly and appropriately
(Ainsworth, Bell, and Stayton, 1974), includes aspects of autonomy support, structure, and involve-
ment. Sensitivity will be discussed in the involvement section. Scaffolding, a construct emerging
from the sociocultural theoretical perspective (Vygotsky, 1978), involves parents gearing or tailoring
39
task-oriented interventions toward the child’s ability. As such, it includes aspects of both structure and
autonomy support. It will be discussed under the structure section.
In our review of the literature on parenting and the development of children’s self-regulation we
focus on three broad rubrics of self-regulation as discussed earlier: behavior regulation, internalized
self-regulation, and emotion regulation. We begin each section with research on young children and
move to that on older children. Within each section, we utilize the SDT parenting framework to
organize relevant research. In some cases research on one of these dimensions is not available. Where
studies focus on all three of the dimensions, we save their discussion until the end of the section.
Behavior Regulation
Involvement/Support
A number of studies with roots in an attachment perspective have examined maternal sensitivity
in relation to children’s behavior regulation. The reasoning for examining such a relation is that
when a caregiver is sensitive, children are most likely to develop a secure attachment (Cummings and
Warmuth, 2019). A secure attachment, then, would allow the child to explore her or his environ-
ment, developing competencies such as are evident in behavior regulation skills. A secure attachment
would also allow the child to focus her or his attention on tasks and skill development rather than the
whereabouts of caregivers. Furthermore, caregivers’ ability to support children’s behavior and serve as
regulators of their children’s behavior when needed allows them to gradually build regulatory capaci-
ties (Calkins, 2007).
Consistent with these ideas, several studies have utilized the National Institute of Child Health
and Human Development Study of Early Childcare and Youth Development (SECCYD) to examine
aspects of early caregiving associated with behavior regulation. This study included codings of mater-
nal sensitivity from play as well as ratings of the caregiving environment using the Home Observation
for Measurement of the Environment (HOME; Caldwell and Bradley, 1984), which measures the
quality of stimulation and support in the home environment, when children were 15 and 36 months
old. To assess children’s behavior regulation, they were administered a delay task to measure inhibition,
a continuous performance task to measure sustained attention, and a Stroop task to measure impulsiv-
ity when they were 54 months old.
Using the SECCYD data set, Birmingham, Bub, and Vaughn (2017) found that both maternal sen-
sitivity and home quality were related to children’s behavior regulation. Furthermore, consistent with
attachment theory and other studies of links between attachment and behavior regulation (Fearon and
Belsky, 2004; Gilliom, Shaw, Beck, Schonberg, and Lukon, 2002), quality of attachment mediated the
relations between both parenting measures and behavior regulation, such that higher sensitivity was
associated with more secure attachment, which then predicted better self-regulation. Similarly, Rus-
sell, Lee, Spieker, and Oxford (2016) showed that both higher maternal sensitivity and ratings on the
HOME predicted lower levels of children’s inattention. Using similar measures of behavior regulation
but a different sample, Zeytinoglu, Calkins, Swingler, and Leerkes (2017) showed that higher maternal
support during problem-solving interactions at 4 years predicted both children’s behavior regulation
and executive functions at 5 years. In a longitudinal study of children’s inhibitory control from ages
2 to 4, Moilanen, Shaw, Dishion, Gardner, and Wilson (2009) showed that higher levels of supportive
parenting were associated with faster growth in inhibitory control.
Thus, there is ample evidence that a supportive, sensitive environment is associated with children’s
better behavior regulation. Findings on maternal sensitivity and general support are important, but it
is difficult to know which aspects of these broad qualities are facilitative and just how they result in
greater self-regulation skills. Research on autonomy support and structure hone in further on some
parenting behaviors that may be active agents in facilitating behavior regulation.
40
Autonomy Supportive Versus Controlling Parenting

When parents are autonomy supportive, they provide children with the opportunity to solve prob-
lems on their own or with assistance rather than having the problems solved for them. There is
evidence that when parents are more autonomy supportive, children’s motivation for engaging in
tasks is enhanced. Therefore, children would be more motivated to sustain engagement on challeng-
ing tasks. These experiences of persistence would give children practice in building their emerging
self-regulatory skills. Thus, several researchers, working with both younger and older children, have
studied relations between autonomy support and children’s developing behavior regulation.
Bernier, Carlson, and Whipple (2010) coded maternal autonomy support, which was defined as
intervening according to the infant’s needs, adapting tasks to create challenge, encouraging the child
in pursuit of the task, taking the child’s perspective, following the child’s pace, and ensuring the child
takes a role in the task, during mother–child interaction. Autonomy support at 12 to 13 months
predicted children’s executive functioning using laboratory tasks at 26 months. This effect was in
evidence controlling for maternal sensitivity.
Using SECCYD data, Bindman, Pomerantz, and Roisman (2015) showed that ratings of mothers’
autonomy support coded during parent–child play at four time points (6 to 36 months) predicted
behavior regulation (EF) at 54 months. Furthermore, high levels of executive functioning predicted
higher achievement in elementary and high school.
Weis, Trommsdorff, and Munoz (2016), focusing on fourth-graders in Germany and Chile, used
mothers’ and teachers’ ratings of children’s hyperactivity to index behavior regulation. They used par-
ent report questionnaires to assess parents’ restrictive parenting, which was measured as punishment
and demands for compliance without the use of reasoning. Both samples showed negative relations
between restrictive parenting and behavior regulation.
Results across a broad age range support the importance of parental autonomy support for the
development of children’s behavioral self-regulation. When parents give children the opportunity
to be proactive and to exercise their emerging abilities in a supportive context, regulatory skills are
enhanced. The next section on structure focuses on the specific types of support parents can provide
to help build children’s regulatory skills.
Structure
Relative to the other dimensions of parenting, there has been less focus on structure as conceptualized
within the SDT framework and no studies that we know of specifically related to behavior regulation.
Related to structure, however, is the concept of scaffolding, a term first coined by Wood, Bruner, and
Ross (1976) to describe how more experienced individuals gear their interventions to the learner’s
competence in the “zone of proximal development,” which is just above the learner’s ability to com-
plete the task on her or his own. The concept involves the leader adjusting the level of intervention—
increasing their support when the child has trouble and decreasing the level of help when the child
succeeds. This tailoring to the learner denotes that scaffolding includes elements of autonomy support
as well as the organization and management entailed in the construct of structure.
Studies have examined parental scaffolding in relation to young children’s behavior regulation.
Landry, Miller-Loncar, Smith, and Swank (2002) coded verbal scaffolding as parents’ informational
content that provided hints or prompts to control their children’s attention, as well as verbalizations
that “provided conceptual links between objects, person, activities, and functions” (p. 21). Verbal
scaffolding at 3 years was associated with children’s executive functioning skills at 4 years. Ham-
mond, Müller, Carpendale, Bibok, and Liebermann-Finestone (2012) coded scaffolding on a 5-point
scale, taking into account a number of characteristics, including providing helpful structure, such
as suggestions when the child is frustrated and not interfering when the child is successful. They
41
showed that scaffolding at age 2 was associated with executive functioning at age 4 by facilitating
verbal ability at age 3.
In summary, there is evidence that structuring behaviors that support children’s emerging com-
petencies are associated with the development of behavioral self-regulation. Clearly more research is
needed on this construct, especially that which disentangles autonomy support and structure.
Internalized Self-Regulation
Internalized Behavioral Self-Regulation in Younger Children

The development of self-regulation in toddlerhood and the early precursors of more internal-
ized behavior in older children have been addressed by Kochanska, Coy, and Murray (2001), as
well as other researchers. These authors have conceptualized self-regulation as developmental in
nature, with behavior moving from more externally to internally regulated as children’s atten-
tion, control, and recognition of parental expectations mature (Karreman, van Tuijl, van Aken,
and Deković, 2006). Defining and measuring internalization in toddlers and young children pose
unique methodological challenges for empirical study. Because researchers are unable to directly
ask young children why they engage in or inhibit certain behaviors, researchers must extrapolate
from children’s actions. For instance, when a toddler complies with a parent’s request to clean up
toys or refrain from touching an attractive object, is she or he fulfilling this task willingly or due
to feeling coerced?
In their developmental conceptualization, Kochanska and her colleagues (Kochanska et al., 1995;
Kochanska, Tjebkes, and Fortnan, 1998; Kochanska et al., 2001) posit that compliance with caregivers’
requests serves as an early indicator of toddlers’ self-regulation, as compliance necessitates the child’s
initiation, suppression, or modification of behaviors in accordance with parental demands. Kochanska
et al. (1998) argued that compliance is heterogeneous, differentiating between situational compliance
and committed compliance. In situational compliance, a child will cooperate with parental demands, but
will do so “half-heartedly” and without genuine interest in the parent’s agendum; this child requires
reminders and parental intervention to maintain behavior. By contrast, in committed compliance, the
child enthusiastically embraces, endorses, and accepts the parent’s agendum as her or his own, proac-
tively engaging in tasks without need for prompts or control from the parent.
To measure a child’s committed versus situational compliance, Kochanska et al. (2001) videotaped
interactions between mothers and their children during various “do” and “don’t” tasks in the labora-
tory. In the “do” context, mothers were instructed to ask their children to withstand unpleasant or
boring behaviors, such as cleaning up toys and returning the items into a designated basket after a free
play session. In a “don’t” context, mothers asked their children to suppress a desired behavior, such as
refraining from playing with attractive toys. Committed compliance was denoted in the “do” con-
text if the child enthusiastically picked up toys and placed them in their appropriate baskets, moved
from one pile of toys to the next without maternal directives, and/or clapped her or his hands after
putting away the toys; in the “don’t” context, committed compliance was coded if the child looked
at but did not touch the attractive toys, muttering statements to the effect of “no-no toys” or “no
touch” (Kochanska et al., 2001, p. 1095). Situational compliance was coded in the “do” context if the
child cooperated reluctantly or due to maternal prompting, without which the child would become
distracted or disengaged from the task. In the “don’t” context, a child observed to be hovering closely
around the attractive toys or relying heavily on maternal control to refrain from touching the toys
would be coded as displaying situational compliance.
Kochanska and her colleagues also gauged young children’s internalization by observing toddlers’
initiation or suppression of behaviors without external surveillance by their caregiver, or the extent to
which toddlers complied with their caregivers’ requests when their parents left them unattended, for
42
example, to finish putting away toys on their own (do) or refrain from playing with attractive toys
(don’t) (Kochanska et al., 2001).
Finally, to further examine how young children internalize rules, values, and standards of behaviors,
Kochanska (2002) explored morality and conscience development, defining conscience as “a reliable
internal guidance system that regulates conduct without the need for external control” (p. 192). To
study this process, Kochanska and Aksan (2006) examined moral emotions (e.g., guilt, discomfort fol-
lowing wrongdoing) and moral conduct (e.g., adhering to rules and standards without surveillance), for
example, by examining children’s affect after being told they had damaged an important item belong-
ing to the experimenter (Kochanska, Gross, Lin, and Nichols, 2002), by whether children touched
toys deemed prohibited by their mothers, and by whether they cheated during a game to win a prize.
What parental qualities may facilitate the development of committed compliance and conscience
in children? Kochanska and colleagues developed the construct of mutually responsive orientation (MRO;
Kochanska, 1997, 2002), defined as a “positive, mutually binding, and mutually cooperative relation-
ship that evolves in some parent–child dyads” (Kochanska, Aksan, Prisco, and Adams, 2008, p. 30).
Based in attachment theory, MRO portrays a warmth and eagerness between parent and child to
cooperate and respond to one another’s cues. Aksan, Kochanska, and Ortmann (2006) developed the
Mutually Responsive Orientation Scale to identify four components of MRO in parent–child dyads:
(1) coordinated routines, in which the parent and child have mutually agreed-on expectations for the
organization of daily activities; (2) harmonious communication, in which the parent and child display
effective, warm, and back-and-forth flow of conversation; (3) mutual cooperation, in which the parent
and child display a vested interest in and cooperation with each other; and (4) emotional ambience,
in which the parent-child relationship is mutually characterized by positive affect, joy, and humor.
MRO is bidirectional and transactional, and includes parental involvement, with parents providing their
children with time, affection, support, and love, as well as parental autonomy support, with parents taking
children’s perspectives and being responsive to their initiations and wishes.
Kochanska and Aksan (1995) also examined parenting on dimensions of negative control and guid-
ance or gentle control. In negative control, a parent uses forceful discipline, such as threats, harsh physical
discipline, or negative commands to achieve compliance goals, whereas gentle guidance entails a par-
ent directing her or his child through reasoning, polite requests, positive feedback, and suggestions—a
construct very similar to that of autonomy support. Kochanska et al. (2008) further divided negative
control into categories of assertive control¸ in which the parent controls her or his child in a firm man-
ner with direct commands and prohibitions (e.g., “Do not play now” and “These are only to look
at”), and forceful control, in which a parent uses threats and anger to enact control (e.g., “We won’t go
to the pool until it’s all done” or “What did I tell you?”).
Kochanska and her colleagues investigated relations among MRO, parental power assertion, and
children’s self-regulatory capacities through measures of committed compliance. Kochanska and
Aksan (1995) proposed that the MRO established between a mother and her child may foster an
interactive environment in which a child’s eager enactment of her or his mother’s requests promotes
internalization. Observing mothers and their 26- to 41-month-old children, Kochanska and Aksan
(1995) found that the higher the MRO in the dyad, the more children demonstrated committed
compliance and self-regulation when alone with prohibited toys. In turn, the more likely mothers
were to use gentle guidance and the less they were to resort to negative control, the more children
displayed committed compliance. Conversely, mothers of children exhibiting situational compliance
were more likely to use any form of control to manage their children’s behavior, including negative
control. Kochanska and Aksan (1995) argued that the need for a mother to assert power diminishes
or becomes unnecessary when her child enthusiastically endorses her or his mother’s agendum. The
directionality of the relation between parental power assertion and children’s committed compliance,
however, cannot be established, as inherent in the concept of MRO is the parent–child dyad sharing
reciprocal qualities and evolving dynamics.
43
Findings of Kochanska et al. (2008) further support the importance of MRO for the development
of self-regulation. Mother–child and father–child MRO were measured at 7, 15, and 25 months, and
parental power assertion was observed in discipline contexts both in the home and laboratory at 38
months. Children’s self-regulation was observed at 52 months in tasks requiring the child to delay
gratification, slow motor activity, and lower her or his voice, among other contextual demands. Chil-
dren who had experienced a highly mutually responsive relationship with their mothers and fathers
during their first two years of life demonstrated greater self-regulation at 52 months. Mothers and
fathers who relied more heavily on power assertion at 38 months had children with less developed
self-regulation at 52 months. Furthermore, reduced maternal power assertion mediated the effects of
the mother–child dyad’s MRO on children’s internalized behavior, presumably as mothers need not
forcefully discipline their children who are already in tune with and responsive to their cues. However,
these associations were not significant in father–child dyads. Kochanska et al. (2008) present various
explanations for why the relations were in evidence in mothers but not fathers, suggesting differences
in mothers’ responsiveness, affective expression, and greater time spent with their children in compari-
son to fathers as potential explanations.
Researchers have since expanded on the work of Kochanska and her colleagues to explore how
relations between parenting and children’s committed compliance may relate longitudinally to adap-
tive outcomes for the child. Spinrad and colleagues (2012) examined maternal sensitivity, warmth,
and MRO through free play and teaching tasks in a sample of 30-, 42-, and 54-month-old toddlers.
These authors hypothesized that children whose parents were high on warmth and sensitivity would
be eager to adopt their parents’ goals and rules (i.e., committed compliance) in the “do” and “don’t”
paradigms previously developed by Kochanska and colleagues (1995, 2001). Effortful control (EC),
defined as the ability to quell a dominant response to activate a subdominant behavior, was also
assessed through the Early Childhood Behavioral Questionnaire (Putnam, Gartstein, and Rothbart,
2006) measuring children’s ability to focus and shift attention and control behaviors. Effortful control
has been found to mediate associations between parenting and child outcomes in previous research
(Spinrad et al., 2007), as parental warmth is thought to facilitate EC through providing a comfortable
environment in which the child learns how to navigate behaviors effectively with her or his parent
providing feedback (Feldman and Klein, 2003).
Through path modeling, Spinrad and colleagues (2012) provided evidence that maternal warmth
and sensitivity predict higher effortful control and that 30- and 42-month effortful control predict
higher committed compliance over one year, even when controlling for earlier outcomes. It appears as
though warm and sensitive parenting may facilitate children’s effortful control over time, as children’s
ability to control attention and behavior may in turn produce greater cooperation and willingness to
engage in their parents’ requests. The researchers also found that early sensitive parenting predicted
low impulsivity in children a year later. These results strengthened Spinrad and colleagues’ (2007)
previous findings in which effortful control was found to mediate the relation between maternal
observed sensitivity and warmth and children’s low levels of externalizing problems, separation dis-
tress, and social competence both at 18 and 30 months of age. However, it may be that these early
parent–child interactions and outcomes persist beyond childhood and continue throughout even the
early adolescent years. Eisenberg and colleagues (2005) have shown that children’s effortful control,
measured throughout a three-wave longitudinal study with children ages 9, 11, and 13 years, may serve
as the mediator between parental warmth and children’s lower externalizing problems in adolescence.
Examining parental facilitation of the conscience and moral development of young children is
also vital to understanding how children come to internalize rules as standards of moral conduct. As
previously described, guilt following a transgression is an important function of behavior regulation,
as children learn from the emotional repercussions of their behaviors to navigate future situations.
Kochanska, Forman, and Coy (1999, 2002) found that children of power-assertive mothers who use
negative control to force compliance are less likely to show guilt following transgressions in mishap
44
paradigms. Furthermore, observations of maternal responsiveness and high MRO among parent–child
dyads in the first two years of life predict greater guilt at preschool age.
High MRO between parents and children has also been associated with children’s internalized con-
duct (i.e., refraining from playing with prohibited toys when unsupervised and following the rules of
a game without cheating) concurrently and longitudinally from the toddler through preschool years
and measured through laboratory observations and parental report (Kochanska and Aksan, 2006).
According to Kochanska and colleagues, a history of high MRO instills in children a sense of excite-
ment for their future interactions with their parents, which in turn facilitates children’s cooperation
and internalization of their parents’ rules. This internalization of rules and standards of conduct, in
turn, is associated with positive child outcomes, as Kochanska, Koenig, Barry, Kim, and Yoon (2010)
found that toddlers’ and preschoolers’ out-of-sight compliance with parental requests was related to
the children’s competent, adaptive functioning and few antisocial problems at early school age. These
findings highlight the importance of positive parenting styles and features of the parent–child dyad in
promoting early moral development in young children.
In summary, studies of young children support the importance of involvement and autonomy
support in facilitating children’s self-regulation. The findings using the concept and measure of
MRO highlight the bidirectional and transactional nature of parenting and children’s developing
self-regulation. These studies go beyond children developing compliance and self-control to under-
standing how children begin to internalize the regulation of their own behavior, a process crucial to
both children’s competence and well-being.
Behavioral Self-Regulation in Older Children

Studies of behavior regulation in older children reviewed examine whether or not children engage in
various desired behaviors. However, they did not look further to determine why children did what they
did, which according to SDT is the core of self-regulation. From an SDT perspective, self-regulation
concerns more than compliance; it is in evidence when children engage in behavior according to their
own values or goals and without the prompting or coercion of adults.
As children grow older, there are increased opportunities to measure self-regulation because they
can be asked directly why they do what they do and can be observed in situations without their
parents. One key method to assess self-regulation is children’s reports of their reasons for engag-
ing in various behaviors, which, because they are not inherently fun or enjoyable, would need to
be internalized (Ryan and Connell, 1989). The reasons children endorse for engaging in behaviors,
such as homework or chores, are used to determine where their behavior falls on the internalization
continuum (i.e., how autonomous they feel while performing them). Another way to measure self-
regulation is to observe whether children engage in certain desired behaviors or show evidence that
they have internalized parental communications when their parents or other caregiving adults are not
present. Therefore, studies reviewed in this section focus on outcomes that address children’s more
versus less autonomous regulation of their behavior.
As described previously, some children comply or adhere to their parents’ directives immediately
or after a short delay—behaviors known as compliance (Whiting and Edwards, 1988). However, as
children develop, and particularly as they enter adolescence, the hope is that they move towards more
autonomous self-regulation, or that they behave appropriately not because they are explicitly asked
to but because they want to. Accordingly, an important question is: Do the same parenting factors
facilitate child compliance and self-regulation?
There is evidence in the literature that certain parenting styles are more or less conducive towards
children’s compliance. For example, both Baumrind (1967) and Steinberg and his colleagues (Stein-
berg, Elmen, and Mounts, 1989) have found that, whereas children of authoritarian (controlling) par-
ents may be competent on certain outcomes (e.g., academic achievement) and conforming (i.e., low
45
levels of deviant behavior), they also lack self-reliance and initiative, factors that are more related to
autonomous self-regulation. Addressing the issue of compliance, Chen, Soenens, Vansteenkiste, Van
Petegem, and Beyers (2016) had adolescents read vignettes depicting mothers requiring them to study
for a test using a generally controlling (demanding), psychologically controlling (guilt-inducing), or
autonomy supportive style. When asked how they would respond to the requests, adolescents reported
that in response to the two types of control they would display high levels of compulsive compliance
(i.e., complying due to pressure though the request is not meaningful) and defiance or rebellion.
Compulsive compliance has been shown to be negatively related to children’s well-being, leading to
feelings of guilt and resentment towards parents (Roth, Assor, Niemiec, Ryan, and Deci, 2009). By
contrast, when the mother’s request was autonomy supportive, adolescents reported that they would
try to negotiate with their mothers. Thus, when parents are controlling, children may comply, but
only because they feel pressured to do so, or they may defy their parents’ requests altogether.
Because children’s autonomous self-regulation goes beyond engaging in appropriate behaviors
or refraining from deviant behaviors purely because they must, most studies reviewed in this section
examine the relations between parenting and outcomes that go a step further than child compliance—
examining why children are engaging in various behaviors. According to SDT, children’s movement
along the internalization continuum towards autonomous self-regulation should be facilitated by
their parents’ tendencies to be involved, autonomy supportive, and provide structure. The next section
reviews studies of these parenting dimensions.
Autonomy Support Versus Control and Self-Regulation

Research from an SDT framework has examined relations between autonomy supportive parenting
and children’s self-regulation. In one study, Grolnick and Ryan (1989) examined relations between
autonomy supportive parenting and children’s autonomous regulation of school behaviors. Children
completed the Self-Regulation Questionnaire (Ryan and Connell, 1989), on which they endorse
reasons why they engage in homework, classwork, and other activities. Reasons represent the four
types of self-regulation: external (e.g., Because I don’t want the teacher to yell at me), introjected
(e.g., Because I’d feel guilty if I didn’t do my homework), identified (e.g., Because I want to learn the
material), and intrinsic (e.g., Because it’s fun). Subscale scores are weighted and combined to form a
Relative Autonomy Index, which represents the degree of autonomy in children’s self-regulation. The
authors interviewed mothers and fathers of third- through sixth-grade children (8- to 11-year-olds)
regarding the ways in which they motivate their children to engage in school-related activities like
homework. Interviews were rated for the degree of parental autonomy support to control. Greater
use of parental autonomy support was associated with children’s reports of more autonomous regu-
lation of their school-related activities, as well as with teacher ratings of students’ competence and
adjustment and children’s school grades. Furthermore, parents who were more autonomy supportive
had children who were less likely, by teacher report, to both act out in school and to exhibit learning
difficulties.
Soenens and Vansteenkiste (2005) examined the relations between parental autonomy support and
adolescents’ self-regulation in the school, friendship, and job search domains. The more adolescents
(ages 15 to 22) perceived their mothers to be autonomy supportive in the school and friendship
domains, the higher were their reports of autonomous motivation for doing schoolwork and engag-
ing with friends. Furthermore, in both domains, more autonomous motivation for these behaviors in
turn predicted increased school competence, grades, and social competence. In the job search domain,
adolescents’ perceptions of their fathers’ autonomy support were related to their more autonomous
motivation in searching for a job. Similarly, adolescents’ autonomous regulation mediated the relation
between father autonomy support and adaptive functioning in the job search. These results revealed
unique associations for mother autonomy support in the friendship and school domains and father
46
autonomy support in the job search domain, perhaps indicating the areas in which each parent is more
likely to be involved. These findings suggest that when parents are autonomy supportive, the adoles-
cent is able to approach these areas with more self-determined motives and take on the importance of
these behaviors on their own, which makes them more likely to thrive in the given area.
Whereas the previous two studies used children’s own reasons why they do things to measure self-
regulation, other studies observe how children behave when their parents are not present or exam-
ine whether they internalize newly learned information. Grolnick, Gurland, DeCourcey, and Jacob
(2002) asked mothers and their third-grade children to work on school-like tasks together. Mothers
were observed interacting with their child after being placed in either a high-pressure (“ensure your
child performs well enough”) or low-pressure (“there is no particular level at which [your child] needs
to perform”) condition. Videos were coded for how controlling versus autonomy supportive moth-
ers were towards their children during the task. Children were then asked to do similar tasks on their
own after their mothers left the room. Children performed more poorly on the task alone when their
mothers had been more controlling, and better when mothers had been more autonomy supportive.
According to SDT, when children are given the opportunity to master a task without interference,
they are more likely to internalize the information than when they feel pressured or controlled to
do it. This result is in line with the findings of an experimental study (Grolnick and Ryan, 1987)
demonstrating that in a more pressuring condition (learning for a grade), children showed less con-
ceptual understanding of information than in a less pressuring condition (learning for interest). Thus,
autonomy support can enhance children’s internalization of information and consequentially their
ability to apply their new knowledge when their parents are not present.
Employing a related method, Davidov and Grusec (2006) observed children’s behavior when left
alone to clean up toys. The authors assessed mothers’ willingness to cooperate with their child, a
construct similar to autonomy support that included mothers’ openness to being influenced by their
children and their willingness to cooperate with their children’s reasonable requests (e.g., “I allow my
child to give input into family rules”). Mothers were told to ask their 6- to 9-year-old child to clean
up a playroom and then left her or him alone to do so. The child’s response to the request to clean up
(whether or not she or he protested) and the mother’s reactions to the protest were coded for the level
of conflict and responsiveness. Results showed that mothers’ general willingness to cooperate with
their child predicted children’s compliance with their mother’s request to clean up, but only in the
absence of conflict. When the mother’s request resulted in more conflict (i.e., child protested, mother
was unresponsive to the complaint), the mother’s willing cooperation was not linked to child compli-
ance, likely because this conflict undermined the child’s motivation to comply. These findings indicate
that more autonomy supportive parenting practices in which mothers are open to their child’s input
can result in child compliance even when the mother is absent, a practice that indicates the child has
internalized the regulation of their behavior.
Involvement and Self-Regulation

The following studies examine relations between parental involvement and children’s self-regulation.
However, as SDT asserts, parental involvement should have the most positive effect on children’s self-
regulation when it is implemented in an autonomy supportive way (e.g., children are given a choice
in how they spend time with their parents, and parents communicate openly with their child and
acknowledge her or his feelings). Thus, we review studies that examine the unique relation between
parental involvement and children’s self-regulation and those that look at the relation between how
autonomy supportive parents are when they are involved and children’s self-regulation.
Xu, Kushner Benson, Murdey-Camino, and Steiner (2010) examined whether various parental
involvement practices around school, including their knowledge of children’s school-related activities
and active participation in homework and school-related events, were associated with fifth-graders’
47
self-regulated learning (SRL), in which students take a purposeful and eager role in the learning
process. The more parents helped with their children’s homework, the lower was children’s use of
SRL strategies. However, higher parental educational expectations (how far parents think their child
will go in school) and school involvement (attending school-related events) were associated with
greater use of SRL. SRL also mediated the relation between parental involvement and student reading
achievement, indicating that the positive relation between parental school involvement and academic
outcomes is a function of children’s increased SRL. Grolnick and Slowiaczek (1994) also found an
association between parental school involvement and 11- to 14-year-old children’s academic self-
regulation. Mothers’ and fathers’ personal involvement (knowledge about child’s school life) and
behavioral involvement (attending school-related events) predicted children’s more autonomous self-
regulation of school behaviors such as doing homework and classwork. These studies show that
parental involvement can take many forms. Through showing they are there for their child, having
confidence that they will succeed, and being present for important school events, parents can encour-
age children to take on the importance of working hard in school.
Two studies examined the effects of parent involvement and autonomy support on self-regulation
during school transitions. Stressful events such as school transitions, which can involve changes in
school, peers, and academic expectations, can undermine children’s academic motivation and compe-
tence. Thus, the availability and support of parents in these situations take on special importance for
children’s autonomous regulation. Ratelle, Guay, Larose, and Senécal (2004) examined how parental
autonomy support and involvement influenced adolescents’ motivation to pursue higher education
during the transition from high school to college. Adolescents completed questionnaires about their
parents’ autonomy support and affective involvement in the process of choosing a college program and
their own motivation for pursuing higher education, ranging from intrinsic motivation (e.g., “for the
pleasure and satisfaction of learning new things in the program”) to external motivation (e.g., “because
the program will allow me to get a lucrative job later”). The measure of affective involvement included
parents having open discussions with their children and acknowledging their feelings, an autonomy
supportive way to show involvement. Higher parental affective involvement and autonomy support
were related to adolescents’ more autonomous motivation around choosing a college program.
Niemiec et al. (2006) also examined relations between parents’ behaviors that support children’s
needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness and adolescents’ self-regulation in planning to attend
college. Parents’ need supportive behaviors were measured by combining reports of parents’ provision
of autonomy support and relational support. Adolescents’ perceptions of their parents as providing
more autonomy support and relational support (involvement) were associated with more autonomous
self-regulation for continuing their education in college. Autonomous regulation was, in turn, related
to adolescents’ greater well-being.
Taking this relation between autonomy support and involvement a step further, Katz, Kaplan, and
Buzukashvily (2011) examined parents’ own motivation to be involved in their children’s homework
process. In a sample of fourth-grade Israeli children and their parents, parents’ more autonomous
motivation for being involved in their child’s homework was associated with more need supportive
behavior, which was measured by combining parents’ and children’s reports of parents’ autonomy
supportive behavior and involvement in homework. Parents’ level of need supportive behavior was
then related to children’s more autonomous motivation for doing homework. Thus, when parents are
involved in their children’s homework process because they find it to be enjoyable and valuable, they
are likely to approach it with a more positive attitude and less stress. This positive approach likely
increases parents’ ability to behave in ways that support their child’s needs for relatedness, competence,
and autonomy, such as by showing empathy, giving choices, and taking their children’s perspectives, all
of which result in greater self-regulation.
In summary, stressful events, such as school transitions, can undermine adolescents’ academic moti-
vation and competence, and thus the availability and support of parents in these situations take on
48
increased importance for keeping students on course towards autonomous regulation of school behav-
iors, and ultimately better competence, psychological health, and life satisfaction. When parental
involvement is implemented in an autonomy supportive way and parents show a genuine interest in
wanting to help their children in this stressful process, adolescents’ motivational outcomes are more
autonomous.
Parental Conditional Regard and Self-Regulation

A form of psychological control often discussed in the literature is parental conditional regard, in
which parents alter their attention or affection towards their child according to the child’s good or
bad behavior. Positive conditional regard is when parents give more attention/affection when their
child exhibits desired behaviors, and negative conditional regard is when parents withdraw attention/
affection when their child does not (Roth et al., 2009). Rogers (1951) theorized that parents’ condi-
tional regard undermines children’s self-esteem and self-regulation, and object relations theorists such
as Miller and Ward (1981) suggested that when children learn they are not loved unconditionally,
they behave in ways they believe will bring about their parents’ love. Thus, children may perform the
desired behaviors of their parents, but the children are not behind or satisfied with the behaviors. The
following studies examine relations between parental conditional regard and self-regulation.
Roth et al. (2009) compared how parental conditional positive regard (PCPR), parental conditional
negative regard (PCNR), and autonomy support related to ninth-grade Israeli adolescents’ introjected
versus identified regulation of academic and emotion control behaviors. Greater use of PCPR was
associated with adolescents’ more introjected regulation, or feelings of internal compulsion or pressure
to perform behaviors, which in turn predicted their more constricted behaviors—pressured, grade-
focused studying and suppressed regulation of negative emotions. PCNR was associated with higher
resentment towards parents, which undermined adolescents’ capacity to regulate their emotions and
their school engagement. Adolescents’ introjected regulation mediated the relation between PCPR
and emotion dysregulation; thus, parents’ use of PCPR to encourage adolescents to suppress negative
emotions led to adolescents’ inability to regulate these emotions. In contrast, parental autonomy sup-
port predicted feelings of choice or autonomous motivation in adolescents, which in turn predicted
less constricted behaviors—integrated regulation of negative emotions and interest-focused academic
engagement. Thus, parental conditional regard is not an effective means of encouraging adolescents
towards willingly behaving and making choices in these domains.
Similarly, Assor, Roth, and Deci (2004) examined associations between college students’ percep-
tions of their parents’ use of conditional regard and the internalization of their behavior in the aca-
demic, sports, prosocial, and emotion control domains. In all four domains, students’ perception of
their parents’ conditional regard was associated with their introjected self-regulation, as indicated by
their feelings of internal compulsion to perform the target behavior. Feeling compelled led students
to behave only due to internal pressure, which was related to their negative well-being and poor
parent–child relationships. Even though parental conditional regard can encourage students to behave
in certain ways, there are sequelae in terms of negative emotional experience following the behavior.
Roth (2008) examined how college students’ perceptions of their parents’ use of conditional regard
and autonomy support related to the students’ self-oriented versus other-oriented prosocial behavior
and self-regulation. Autonomy supportive parenting was positively related to more other-oriented
forms of helping and identified and integrated regulation of helping behavior, whereas parental con-
ditional regard was related to more self-oriented helping (helping others to serve oneself ) and intro-
jected regulation of helping behavior. These studies reveal that, as with psychological control, parental
conditional regard undermines children’s autonomous self-regulation and encourages children to
engage in behaviors because they feel pressured or worry about losing their parents’ approval, rather
than engaging in them more volitionally or willingly.
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Structure and Self-Regulation

The relation between the final dimension of SDT, structure, and self-regulation is less explored. A
study by Griffith and Grolnick (2014) examining sixth-grade students in Barbados found that paren-
tal structure was related to students’ identified and intrinsic motivation in school. In another study,
Grolnick, Raftery-Helmer, Flamm, Marbell, and Cardemil (2015) focused on parental provision of
academic structure and children’s school motivation during the transition to middle school, a chal-
lenging transition that can often undermine students’ intrinsic motivation. The more parents provided
structure in an autonomy supportive manner (involving children in the process of setting up the rules
and regulations, allowing for input, opinion exchange, and choice), the more children showed autono-
mous motivation for school behaviors. However, when structure was provided in a more controlling
manner (e.g., using pressure or coercion to implement rules; not allowing children to express opinions
regarding the rules), children reported more introjected motivation, indicating they were pressuring
themselves to succeed. Parental provision of structure positively predicted students’ intrinsic motiva-
tion over this school transition, suggesting that provision of structure can buffer against decreases in
students’ intrinsic motivation that is common during this time. Thus, parents’ provision of structure
is similarly important to encouraging children’s autonomous regulation of their behaviors. More
research is needed to examine relations between structure and self-regulation in other domains.
Emotion Regulation
Self-regulation of emotion concerns the child’s active modulation of emotional processes. Just as
was argued for behavior regulation, emotion regulation requires the support of caregivers as children
develop nascent strategies that become increasingly autonomous. Children need to be exposed to
effective strategies through adult guidance and modeling for these strategies to be internalized, and
children must be able to practice these strategies, first with the support of their caregivers and later on
their own under conditions in which emotions are mildly or moderately strong. The modulation of
very strong affect without assistance is an excessively difficult task for young children. Children must
thus have the opportunity to autonomously modulate affect, and this can only take place when the
regulatory task is within the capacity of the child. In other words, an autonomy supportive, structured,
and involved environment should facilitate the internalization of the regulation of emotion.
Involvement/Sensitivity/Support
Consistent with the earlier argument, responsive, affectionate, and sensitive parenting should help
children to develop the capacity to modulate emotions by supporting them and “coregulating” emo-
tion until children can do so on their own (Tronick, 1989). The external soothing that parents pro-
vide while children are developing would help them to cope with distress within a range that they
can handle. One way of conceptualizing this responsiveness is that parents are available to help their
children when distress becomes unmanageable, resulting in maladaptive functioning. Keeping affect
within tolerable limits allows the child to take steps toward self-regulation. One way parents facilitate
their children’s emotion regulation is by acting as resources for their children. This is the assump-
tion of work on social referencing (Sorce and Emde, 1981). In this work, it is posited that regulation
involves an appraisal process in which primary emotional reactions are modulated by the meaning
ascribed to the situation. Caregivers’ facial and vocal expressions are important sources of meaning
in ambiguous situations. Several studies have found that when mothers are available for referencing
in fear-inducing situations, children show less distress and more engagement with the stimulus than
when she is unavailable (Diener, Mangelsdorf, Fosnot, and Kienstra, 1997; Sorce and Emde, 1981).
Kogan and Carter (1995) found that emotional availability, empathy, and contingent responsiveness to
50
a child’s emotion are associated with less avoidance and resistance upon maternal reengagement after
a still-face task, indicating good ability to regulate emotion. Raver (1996; Raver and Leadbetter, 1995)
conceptualized parental responsiveness as periods of social contingency or collaborative joint atten-
tion. More time in such bouts during free play is associated with more successful emotion regulation
strategies (less time seeking comfort from mothers and more time distracting themselves with other
objects) during a delay task (Raver, 1996).
Halligan et al. (2013) studied a sample of mothers beginning in pregnancy. These authors mea-
sured children’s emotion regulation at 10 days and 4 weeks and then at 12 and 18 months and 5
years. The 12- and 18-month measures were observer ratings during the Bayley assessment and a
laboratory task where an attractive toy was taken away and children’s affect and emotion regulation
strategies (e.g., self-soothing) were assessed. At 5 years, emotion regulation was assessed as children’s
affect and behavior during a challenging task. Maternal sensitivity (warm, responsive, and accepting
behavior) was coded during parent–child interaction, and behavior problems were measured at 12
and 18 months and 5 years. Higher maternal sensitivity was associated with higher concurrent and
subsequent emotion regulation from 12 weeks to 5 years. Emotion regulation mediated the relation
between sensitivity and behavior problems. The authors found stronger support for parent-to-child
than child-to parent relations.
The studies reviewed here show the importance of overall responsive and sensitive parenting to
children’s emotion regulation development. Next we delve into studies that address the parenting
processes that more specifically facilitate emotion regulation.
Autonomy Supportive Versus Controlling Parenting

Several studies have related parenting on dimensions similar to that of autonomy support to control
during interaction to the development of emotion regulation capacities in children. In two studies,
Calkins (1997; Calkins and Johnson, 1998) examined parents’ styles of interacting with their children
in play situations. From these interactions, parents’ behaviors were coded for the extent to which they
used positive guidance, which included praise, affection, and encouragement, and negative control,
which included scolding, restricting, and directing the child. Children’s use of three strategies in
situations requiring emotion regulation (e.g., delay), were coded: orienting to the task, distraction,
and aggression. In a study of 24-month-olds, mothers who engaged in more negative control had
children who spent more time orienting to the focal object, used less distraction, and had lower levels
of vagal suppression, a physiological index of emotion regulation. Maternal styles were not correlated
with children’s level of reactivity (i.e., distress) to the situations—only the strategies children used to
modulate emotion. Because reactivity likely has a strong temperamental component (Calkins and
Johnson, 1998), it is less likely to be subject to socialization styles. Rather, the modulation of emotion,
as indexed by emotion regulation strategies, is the component of emotion regulation that is more
amenable to and vulnerable to parental styles. In a study of 18-month-olds, positive guidance was
associated with greater use of distraction and constructive coping in emotion-inducing situations.
Furthermore, an additional maternal variable, preemptive interference, defined as mothers’ actions that
precluded the child from doing an activity herself or himself, was associated with more use of anger
as a regulatory strategy.
Mathis and Bierman (2015) coded mothers interacting with their prekindergarten children for
warmth/sensitivity and directive/critical behavior. Emotion regulation was rated by the teacher and
attentional control by both the teacher and through a number of laboratory tasks. Mothers’ more
directive and critical interacting was associated with children’s lower attention control and emotion
regulation. By contrast, there were no effects of mothers’ warmth/sensitivity. This study highlights the
specific role of autonomy support in helping to build children’s use of successful emotion regulation
strategies.
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Cui, Morris, Criss, Houltberg, and Silk (2014) had adolescents report on their parents’ psychologi-
cal control (i.e., their use of parenting that is emotionally manipulative and coercive through the use
of such tactics as love withdrawal and guilt induction). Adolescents also reported on their abilities to
regulate anger (e.g., “I can stop myself from losing my temper”) and sadness (e.g., “I stay calm and
don’t let sad things get to me”). Higher levels of psychological control were associated with lower
anger regulation, although there were no relations for regulation of sadness. In addition, anger regula-
tion mediated relations between psychological control and adolescents’ depressive symptoms.
Several studies have specifically examined parents’ autonomy supportive versus controlling behavior
in regard to the regulation of emotion per se. Grolnick, Kurowski, McMenamy, Rivkin, and Bridges
(1998) examined the ways mothers helped their children regulate mild distress. Twelve-, 18-, 24-, and
32-month-olds waited to obtain a present or eat some goldfish crackers. In one of these situations
(parent-active), the mother was allowed to be active in helping her child. In the other (parent-passive),
she was asked to refrain from initiating interaction with her child (although she could respond). Of
interest were relations between the ways mothers interacted with their children in the parent-active
situation and the children’s abilities to modulate distress on their own in the parent-passive situation.
Six strategies used by the mother were coded: active engagement, redirecting attention, reassurance,
following the child, physical comfort, and focus on the desired object. In addition, the authors coded
whether the strategy was mother-initiated, child-initiated, or ongoing from a previous episode. Moth-
ers who used more ongoing active engagement in the parent-active situation had children who were
more distressed in the parent-passive situation (controlling for distress in the parent-active situation).
This finding did not occur for mother-initiated active engagement, indicating that it is not mothers’
responses per se (which tend to be reactions to child distress), but the maintenance of activity despite
decreases in distress that appears to undermine children’s active self-regulation. Thus, mothers who
take responsibility for regulating children’s distress above and beyond what is called for by their distress
levels appear to undermine children’s abilities to regulate emotions on their own.
A similar result was found with fear as the emotion to be regulated. Nachmias, Gunnar, Mangels-
dorf, Parritz, and Buss (1996) examined the strategies that mothers used to help their wary children
deal with a mildly fear-inducing stimulus. Mothers who forced their children to focus on a novel
event had children with higher postsession cortisol levels, indicating less effective regulation and pos-
sible interference with the children’s own attempts to regulate proximity and contact with the arous-
ing stimulus.
With older children, Gottman, Katz, and Hooven (1996) showed that parents who dismiss nega-
tive emotions have children who have difficulty managing emotions on their own. Children of
parents who are aware of their children’s emotions and support their expression themselves show
more well-regulated physiological reactions. These authors also described parents’ beliefs and thoughts
about their own and their children’s emotions as their “meta-emotion philosophy” (Gottman, Katz,
and Hooven, 1997). Two philosophies have been identified. Parents who have an emotion-coaching
philosophy are aware of their own and their children’s emotions. They see emotional expressions as
opportunities for teaching and attempt to assist their children with emotions of anger and sadness,
much like an emotion coach. By contrast, parents who subscribe to an emotion-dismissing philoso-
phy deny and ignore emotions in themselves and their children. They try to get rid of emotions and
convey to their children that emotions are not important and will not last. They view their job as
trying to change and minimize emotions. Gottman et al. (1997) demonstrated that children from
homes with an emotion-coaching philosophy were better regulated physiologically and had a greater
ability to focus attention and better social skills than those from homes with an emotion-dismissing
philosophy.
Similarly, Eisenberg et al. (1999) examined parents’ reactions to children’s negative emotion. Parents
who were more punitive and minimizing of emotion had children who, in the short term, decreased
in emotion expression but in the long term showed more externalizing negative emotion (parent
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ratings of children overreacting when angry, being hostile, and irritable). In this study, Eisenberg was
also able to identify bidirectional patterns in which externalizing negative emotion predicted parental
reports of more punitive negative reactions. Roberts (1999) examined parents’ childrearing practices,
children’s competence in preschool, and parents’ emotional socialization practices. Parents’ comforting
and nonpunitive reactions to emotional distress were related to boys’ resourceful active engagement
in preschool and friendly, nonaggressive relationships with peers. There was evidence, however, that
emotion control, including pressure for control of emotion expression, was also positively associated
with friendly behavior with peers in the preschool. These findings held even controlling for general
parenting style (e.g., authoritarian versus authoritative). Tolerant and nonpunitive responses to emo-
tion at 4 years also predicted increases in friendliness and resourcefulness at age 7 (Roberts, 1999).
Parent practices that emphasized control of emotions were uncorrelated or correlated negatively with
resourcefulness at 7. These results suggest that, in the short run, there may be some positive effects
of pressuring children to suppress emotion. However, in the long term, tolerant responses that help
children work through their emotions facilitate adaptive self-regulated behavior.
In both Eisenberg’s and Roberts’s work, one strategy parents used was to ignore or dismiss emo-
tion. How can this strategy be categorized in terms of an autonomy support to control dimension?
Some might say that this strategy allows emotion to run its course and so is not controlling. Roberts
and Strayer (1987) provided another perspective. These authors suggested that parents who ignore
emotion make clear their demand for control because access to the caregiver is denied at a time when
approach tendencies are high. The indirect message to the child is that expression of emotions is not
acceptable. As such, this strategy would be categorized as controlling of emotion.
These studies show that both general parenting styles and parents’ specific responses to emotions
play a role in children’s developing self-regulation. When parents allow for and assist in supporting
children’s attempts to regulate their emotions without dismissing them or controlling their responses,
children are more likely to develop and use strategies for regulating their emotions.
Structure
As with behavior regulation, fewer studies address the role of parental structure in emotion regula-
tion. However, work on scaffolding has addressed this issue. Hoffman, Crnic, and Baker (2006) coded
3-year-olds’ emotion dysregulation during waiting and problem-solving tasks. In addition, they coded
three types of maternal scaffolding during laboratory tasks: technical scaffolding (the ability to struc-
ture tasks to children’s capabilities so they can complete them with support), motivational scaffolding
(the ability to help children initially become engaged and maintain their engagement), and emotional
scaffolding (the ability to make the task a positive experience). Higher levels of all three types of scaf-
folding when children were 3 years predicted lower levels of emotion dysregulation in children at 4
years. In addition, less effective maternal scaffolding at 3 years predicted higher levels of child behavior
problems at 4 years.
In summary, emotional self-regulation is facilitated by involved, responsive, and structuring parent-
ing and by styles that tolerate and support emotional expression and allow the child opportunities to
autonomously regulate emotions.
Facilitating Internalized Emotion Regulation

From an SDT perspective, successful emotion regulation involves more than suppressing emotions or
even being able to express them in a socially appropriate manner. Roth and his colleagues (2009) used
this theory to delineate the quality and depth of processing and the regulation of emotions. These
authors differentiated three emotion regulation styles: emotional integration, suppressive regulation,
and dysregulation. Emotional integration involves an openness whereby the individual takes interest
53
in her or his emotional experience and allows this experience to guide behavior. In emotional inte-
gration, the individual uses a variety of regulatory strategies with a sense of choice about whether to
express or withhold emotion. Suppressive regulation involves the avoidance or minimization of emo-
tional experience. Individuals typically feel pressure to downplay or dismiss their emotions. Finally,
with dysregulated emotion regulation, the individual is overwhelmed by emotions such that they
either express emotions unintentionally or experience intense emotions. Both suppressive and dys-
regulation of emotions are associated with maladaptive outcomes and ill-being (Gross, 2013).
SDT researchers have examined parenting in relation to these styles of emotion regulation. Roth
and Assor (2012) studied the relation between parents’ use of positive conditional regard (PCR) and
emotion regulation styles. These authors asked college students how much their parents used PCR
as well as autonomy support (i.e., acknowledging the child’s perspectives and feelings) in relation to
their expression and suppression of emotions when they were growing up. They also reported on their
integrated, suppressive, and dysregulated styles of emotion regulation. Higher autonomy support was
associated with more integrated regulation. By contrast, PCR for expression of emotions was associ-
ated with more dysregulation, whereas PCR for suppression was associated with more suppressive
regulation.
In a related study with 9- to 14-year-olds, Brenning, Soenens, Van Petegem, and Vansteenkiste
(2015) measured parents’ autonomy support around emotion, which they measured as parents taking
an interest in the child’s emotions, accepting them, and encouraging children to explore their emo-
tions. Autonomy support around emotion regulation was related to higher levels of integration and
lower levels of suppression. Cross-lagged analyses showed that autonomy support was associated with
increases in integration and decreases in suppression over a one-year period. Countering the hypoth-
esis that these relations represent parents reacting to emotion regulation styles, cross-lagged analyses
showed no evidence that emotion regulation styles predicted parenting over time.
In summary, autonomy support appears to facilitate more internalized regulation of emotion, as
well as the integrated experience of emotion such that it can be used to facilitate adaptive responses.
Challenges in the Study of Parenting and Children’s Self-Regulation

The research cited earlier provides a rather consistent picture of the parenting characteristics associ-
ated with self-regulation in children, but the study of parenting and self-regulation holds a number of
challenges. We discuss three of these next.
Specifying Directionality
A key challenge for work on parenting and self-regulation is that the directionality of parenting effects
cannot be definitively established. It is certainly the case that children who initiate their own behavior
and who take responsibility for themselves might elicit less control from their parents and make it less
likely that the parents feel the need to resort to power-assertive techniques. Furthermore, such chil-
dren increase the likelihood that interactions with parents will be pleasant and satisfying, potentially
increasing parents’ involvement.
There is strong evidence for the child-to-parent hypothesis. Clearly, temperament plays a role in
how controlling versus autonomy supportive parents are. Lee and Bates (1985), for example, found
that toddlers with difficult temperaments were more resistant to maternal attempts to exert author-
ity and their negative behavior was more likely to be met with coercive responses by their mothers.
Rutter and Quinton (1984), in their four-year longitudinal study of children of mentally ill parents,
showed that children who have difficult temperamental characteristics, including negative mood and
low malleability, were more likely to elicit parental criticism and hostility, and Scaramella and Leve
(2004) showed that children with difficult temperaments (poor self-control, high emotional reactivity)
54
elicited more harsh parenting than those with easier temperaments. Grolnick, Weiss, McKenzie, and
Wrightmen (1996) showed that mothers who saw their adolescents as more difficult were rated by
observers as more controlling with them than mothers who saw their adolescents as easier. This result
did not hold for fathers; fathers who perceived their adolescents as difficult tended to withdraw from
interactions with them rather than becoming controlling. It is likely that this differential response
is due to the greater latitude fathers have in becoming involved with their adolescents. Behavioral
genetics (Ge, Conger, and Stewart, 1996; Plomin, Reiss, Hetherington, and Howe, 1994) has suggested
that the level of control provided by parents is at least partially due to genetic factors.
Researchers have attempted to address the issue of directionality in a number of ways. First, the
concept of bidirectionality and transactional processes can be inherent in the concepts being explored.
For example, Kochanska’s concept of mutually responsive orientation is a relational concept that
involves the attitudes and behaviors of both parents and children.
Another strategy involves the use of longitudinal data. For example, several of the studies cited
in this chapter have shown longitudinal effects of parenting from infancy to toddlerhood (Bernier
et al., 2010), from toddlerhood to preschool (Halligan et al., 2013), and even from preschool to high
school (Bindman et al., 2015). Particularly compelling are studies that suggest that the short- and
long-term consequences of parental behaviors can be at odds. For example, Roberts and Strayer’s
(1987) data, reviewed in the section on emotion regulation, showed that pressure to control emotions
can have a short-term consequence of greater social success but a long-term consequence of lower
resourcefulness.
Additional methods of demonstrating that the development of children’s self-regulation is influ-
enced by parenting practices involves the use of statistical techniques to attempt to account for chil-
dren’s behavior in understanding parents’ actions and their repercussions. For example, Grolnick,
Kurowski, McMenamy, Rivkin, and Bridges (1998) controlled for children’s levels of distress in asking
about parent strategies that facilitate the development of children’s self-regulation. Several researchers
have used cross-lagged analyses with varying conclusions. Bridgett et al. (2009) showed that parents
whose infants increased rapidly in self-regulation from 4 to 12 months showed lower levels of negative
parenting at 18 months. In an older sample, Moilanen, Rasmussen, and Padilla-Walker (2014) exam-
ined 11- to 16-year-olds’ reports of parenting styles in relation to parents’ reports of children’s emotion
regulation over a one-year period. Neither authoritative nor permissive styles predicted changes in
self-regulation over time, but authoritarian parenting predicted decreases in emotion regulation. Fur-
thermore, low levels of emotion regulation predicted increases in both permissive and authoritarian
parenting over the year. The authors concluded that child-to-parent effects are stronger at this point
in development wherein parenting styles may have had effects much earlier. Finally, Brenning et al.
(2015) found that in a sample of young adolescents, maternal autonomy support predicted increases
in adaptive emotion regulation. In addition, increases in emotion dysregulation predicted decreases in
autonomy support.
These studies suggest the complexity of possible bidirectional relations between parenting and self-
regulation, which may vary as a function of child age and the parenting and self-regulation constructs
examined. No doubt, the study of parenting and children’s self-regulation will require creative and
tenacious approaches to address the issue of directionality.
Specifying the Roles of Mothers and Fathers

Although most research in child development has focused on mothers, there is increased emphasis
on the differential roles of mothers and fathers in facilitating children’s development. The researchers
whose work was reviewed earlier have taken different approaches to their studies of parenting effects
on children. Most studies of self-regulation included only mothers, some (e.g., Liew, Kwok, Chang,
Chang, and Yeh, 2014) average results for mothers and fathers, and some use reports of “parents.”
55
Because of the dearth of studies, conclusions on the differential roles of mothers and fathers in facili-
tating self-regulation cannot be made at this time.
Research in the area of children’s behavior problems more generally has included fathers and gives
reason to believe that it is crucial to include fathers in studies of children’s self-regulation. Research
supports focusing on both quantitative and qualitative measures of fathering. On the quantitative side,
children of more involved fathers have been found to display more positive affect and task orientation
during problem-solving (Goldberg and Easterbrooks, 1984) and less acting-out behavior (McCabe,
Clark, and Barnett, 1999). On the qualitative end, more sensitive father–child interactions have been
associated with positive task behavior and better socialization skills (Goldberg and Easterbrooks, 1984;
Kelley, Smith, Green, Berndt, and Rogers, 1998). More restrictive, harsh, and punitive styles in fathers
have been associated with low cognitive and social development and low academic performance
(Feldman and Wentzel, 1993; Kelley et al., 1998; Pettit, Bates, and Dodge, 1993).
The studies of self-regulation reviewed that included mothers and fathers support the earlier find-
ings. There are mean level differences in fathers’ levels of involvement as compared with mothers
(Grolnick and Ryan, 1989), but fathers’ styles appear to be associated with outcomes in similar ways to
those of mothers (Grolnick and Ryan, 1989; Pratt, Kerig, Cowan, and Cowan, 1988; Roth and Assor,
2012). Others show differences. For example, Moilanen et al. (2009) showed that there were relations
between mothers’ but not fathers’ authoritarian parenting and poor emotion regulation. Furthermore,
for both mothers and fathers, lower self-regulation was associated with more permissive parenting.
In contrast, poor emotion regulation was associated with increased authoritarianism only in mothers.
The authors concluded that because mothers tend to take on more responsibility for their children,
they have more opportunities to respond to their children’s dysregulated behavior. In addition, they
may be the primary disciplinarians of their children.
As we work toward inclusion of fathers in all studies, the questions we ask in our research will need
to become more complex. For example, do fathers make independent contributions to the develop-
ment of children’s self-regulation? Do mothers and fathers play different roles in the onset versus
stability of self-regulation difficulties? Does the role of fathers differ for sons and daughters? These
and other questions await answers in the field of self-regulation.
Conceptualizing the Role of Parents in Cultural/Ethnic

and Socioeconomic Contexts
Are the patterns we described supporting the importance of autonomy support, structure, and involve-
ment for the growth of self-regulation applicable to all cultural and socioeconomic groups? Work using
SDT and other theories has begun to address this issue. Perhaps the most controversial and well-studied
issue concerns the effects of the parenting dimension of autonomy support versus control. Some have
argued that in cultures that value interdependence rather than individualism and/or possess hierarchical
relations among individuals rather than egalitarian ones, autonomy support would be at odds with those
values and not associated with positive outcomes. In contrast to this view, when autonomy is defined as
being volitional rather than as independent, controlling parenting has been associated with maladjust-
ment in the United States as well as collectivistic-oriented cultures, including China (Vansteenkiste, Zhou,
Lens, and Soenens, 2005), Korea (Soenens, Park, Vansteenkiste, and Mouratidis, 2012), India, and Palestine
(Barber, Stolz, and Olsen, 2005). With regard to self-regulation per se, parental autonomy support is associ-
ated with more autonomous self-regulation in Russia (Chirkov and Ryan, 2001), Belgium (Soenens and
Vansteenkiste, 2005), Barbados (Griffith and Grolnick, 2014), and Ghana (Marbell and Grolnick, 2013).
Although these cross-culture similarities are evident, there is also evidence for differences in the
strengths of relations between autonomy support and self-regulation in various groups and cul-
tures, as well as in the behaviors children experience as supporting autonomy. Lamborn, Dornbusch,
and Steinberg (1996) found stronger relations between nondemocratic decision-making and poor
56
adjustment in European-American adolescents than in African-American adolescents, and Wang,

Pomerantz, and Chen (2007) found stronger relations between psychological control and motivation
in U.S. adolescents in comparison to Chinese adolescents.
With regard to the experience of specific parent behaviors, Marbell and Grolnick (2013, in press)
showed that although certain types of autonomy support, in particular, perspective taking and opinion
exchange, are associated with self-regulation in both the United States (an individualist culture valu-
ing independence) and Ghana (a collectivist culture valuing interdependence), other aspects, including
allowing children’s decision-making and choice, were associated with positive outcomes only in the
United States.
Similar questions can be asked regarding the influence of socioeconomic advantage and disad-
vantage on parenting and self-regulation. There is evidence that the stress associated with socioeco-
nomic disadvantage affects parents’ ability to promote adaptive regulatory strategies in their children
(Arnold, O’Leary, Wolff, and Acker, 1993). Further, children from low-socioeconomic status (SES)
environments have more self-regulatory difficulties (Raver, 2004). There is evidence that sensitive and
responsive parenting has similar effects on self-regulation in the context of disadvantage and high-risk
populations as in low-risk populations (Landry, Smith, Miller-Loncar, Swank, 1997). However, there
are some ways in which context may moderate the effects of parenting. There is some evidence that
in difficult contexts the effects of facilitative and undermining parenting are magnified (Raver, 2004).
For example, controlling parenting is more associated with child depression in dangerous as opposed
to safer neighborhoods (Levitt, Grolnick, and Raftery-Helmer, 2018).
Although complex, exploration of the ways in which parenting influences self-regulation will
clearly need to consider the nuanced ways in which culture and context shape parenting and its
effects. Clearly this is an area that merits future research.
Including Multimethod Assessments of Parenting and Self-Regulation

The studies on parenting and self-regulation reviewed have included a variety of methods, includ-
ing parent self-report, child self-report, observations of parents’ and children’s behavior, and reports
of others, such as teachers. However, these methods are often used more exclusively with some age
ranges than others. For example, most assessments of parenting in young children utilize observational
methods, whereas most measures of parenting in older children utilize parent or child report. Further,
behavior regulation (including executive functioning and emotion regulation) is often measured in
young children through lab measures but more often measured by self-report for older children. It
would be important for studies to cross these boundaries so that meaningful comparisons across devel-
opmental periods could be made.
Furthermore, there is often a fine boundary between self-regulation measures and the outcomes
that they are hypothesized to predict. For example, in some studies attention problems are measured as
an aspect of self-regulation (e.g., Weis et al., 2016) and in others an outcome of it (e.g., Halligan et al.,
2013). It would be important for researchers to explicate their rationales for such choices and to tease
apart these constructs where possible. Finally, inclusion of multiple measures of parenting is important
to elucidate the effects of particular parenting strategies. For example, Mathis and Bierman (2015)
found that warm, sensitive, and directive-critical parenting was associated with emotion regulation and
attention control, but only directive-critical parenting was uniquely associated with these outcomes.
Conclusions
With accumulating evidence of the importance of children being able to regulate their behavior,
whether indexed by their abilities to control their attention, suppress impulsive and inappropriate
behavior, or modulate strong emotion, it is imperative to identify the factors that promote such
57
capacities. However, the goals of socialization are more than simply having children comply with their
parents’ wishes. Growth toward maturity requires children to take an active role in initiating and regu-
lating their own behavior. Self-Determination Theory provides a framework for understanding how
children develop toward increasingly autonomous self-regulation. This theory suggests that internal-
ization of values, behaviors, and attitudes in the social surround is a natural and spontaneous process,
part of the organism’s innate propensity toward mastery. However, the process is also subject to the
facilitating or undermining effects of the social context. Three contextual dimensions—autonomy
support, structure, and involvement—have been identified as key facilitators of intrinsic motivation
and the internalization process.
In this chapter, this three-dimensional social contextual framework was used to organize data on
three issues relevant to self-regulation: behavior regulation, internalized self-regulation, and emotion
regulation. In each of these areas, parenting research that corresponded to this dimensional frame-
work was identified. Within different areas, the parenting dimensions have received different levels of
attention. Within work on behavior regulation, the importance of parental sensitivity, with its roots
in attachment theory, is emphasized, although other work supports the importance of both autonomy
support and structure. Work on internalized self-regulation in younger children employs the concept
of a mutually responsive orientation, which incorporates autonomy support and involvement within
a bidirectional framework, as well as autonomy support and overall general responsiveness. With
regard to internalized self-regulation in older children and adolescents, there is support for all three
dimensions. Several studies emphasize that the way involvement and structure are provided, whether
in an autonomy supportive or controlling manner, is crucial to its effects. Within the area of emotion
regulation, parental responsiveness has been stressed. In addition, particular types of parental control
that involve the manipulation of emotion, such as parental conditional regard and psychological con-
trol, have been emphasized. Clearly, the foci in these different areas are in part a function of the age
range of the children being included in the research. However, it is interesting to consider whether
the three dimensions have differential salience or centrality for different self-regulatory issues as well.
Despite emphasizing different dimensions, there is consensus across areas of self-regulation that all
three dimensions are important. In emotion regulation, the presence of a responsive parent who tailors
her or his interventions to the child and actively models regulatory strategies in a nonintrusive way
appears to facilitate self-regulation. Clearly, tolerating and working through, rather than dismissing,
emotions is key. Work in behavior regulation, although widely divergent in focus, supports the notion
that involved parents who provide rules and guidelines, who foster individuality by involving children
in decisions and helping them to solve problems, tend to be higher not just on measures of compliance
but also on self-regulation.
This chapter focused on parenting, but it is clear that parents are not the only individuals who
play a role in children’s development of self-regulation. Clearly, teachers vary in their involvement,
autonomy support, and structure and are likely to have a major influence on children. Peers, of course,
cannot be ignored. Piaget (1932/1977) originally hypothesized that peers, not parents, play the most
significant role in children’s moral development. Research, however, gives parents an important role in
helping children to deal with moral issues (Walker and Taylor, 1991). In the self-regulation literature,
it is assumed that parents play the major role. However, it is likely that peers determine opportuni-
ties for self-regulation and present some of the regulatory challenges children need to negotiate. The
individual and interacting roles of parents, teachers, and peers are clearly an area for future research.
What are the implications of this work for professionals working with parents? Working with
parents to help their children build regulatory skills through their support and conveyance of useful
strategies without controlling and pressuring children’s behavior is a difficult line to walk and requires
understanding the differences between involvement, autonomy support, and structure. In addition,
professionals need to understand that it is not enough to help parents learn to increase child compli-
ance. When socialization is successful, desired behaviors will not merely be undertaken in response to
58
direct demands, but autonomously, as a result of personal endorsement of an activity, value, or belief.
The development of self-regulation is a goal that necessitates different parenting strategies. Profession-
als in parenting and child development need to go beyond teaching about rewards and contingencies
to a broader curriculum of socialization efforts that affect children’s self-regulation. Our research team
has developed a preventive parenting intervention called the Parent Check-In, which teaches parents
the tenets of SDT. It also provides strategies that parents can practice to facilitate their children’s self-
regulation in the target areas of their choosing. A recent evaluation of a randomized controlled trial
(RCT) of the program supports its effectiveness (Allen, Grolnick, and Cordova, 2017). We hope that
more interventions to facilitate parenting that increases children’s self-regulation will be forthcoming.
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3
PARENTING AND CHILD
DISCIPLINE
Introduction
Parents are tasked with many responsibilities in rearing their children to be competent, well-
functioning members of society. These responsibilities include providing for children’s physical needs
and protecting them from harm, as well as providing for socioemotional and cognitive needs by offer-
ing love and stimulation. One of the most important ways that parents shape their children’s behavior
is through the use of proactive discipline to encourage desired behavior in the future and reactive
discipline to respond to misbehavior after it occurs. This chapter focuses on parents’ use of discipline
to socialize desired child behaviors.
The chapter begins by situating the study of parenting and child discipline in historical context
and then presents central issues in this area of research. The chapter next turns to major theories that
have guided our understanding of discipline. The bulk of the chapter then reviews research on pre-
dictors of different forms of discipline, child outcomes associated with different forms of discipline,
how discipline is situated within the overall climate of the parent–child relationship, and moderators
and mediators of links between parental discipline and child outcomes. Then the chapter reviews
practical information including interventions, laws, and policies that have attempted to alter parents’
discipline. Finally, the chapter offers suggestions for future theoretical and research directions as well
as concluding comments.
Historical Considerations in the Study of Parental Discipline

The study of parental discipline has a long history within the field of psychology. Early psychologi-
cal writings on parental discipline stemmed from the theoretical tenets of behaviorism. For example,
Watson, the father of behaviorism, provided childrearing advice that emphasized how parents should
structure their children’s daily routines in ways to prevent misbehavior and to minimize punishment
(Watson and Watson, 1928). Many ideas about parents’ use of rewards and punishments to shape chil-
dren’s behavior likewise stem from behaviorism (e.g., Skinner, 1938).
Parents’ use of different forms of discipline has been subject to scientific inquiry at least since the
publication of Sears, Maccoby, and Levin’s (1957) Patterns of Childrearing. This book detailed disci-
pline techniques used by European-American parents in the Boston area in the 1950s, including
why parents used particular discipline strategies and how discipline is related to children’s behavior.
Prior to this study, researchers generally hypothesized that more parental control would be associated
65
with better child behavior, but the Sears et al. study demonstrated the opposite. This early research
set the stage for subsequent research that has now tested relations between different types of parental
discipline and different aspects of child development, using increasingly complex conceptual models,
increasingly diverse samples, and increasingly sophisticated analyses that incorporate mediators and
moderators of links between discipline and child outcomes.
Central Issues in Understanding Parental Discipline

Distinguishing different forms of parental discipline and methodological approaches that have been
used to study parental discipline are central issues in the understanding of parental discipline.
Different Forms of Parental Discipline

Parental discipline can be broadly categorized as being either reactive, responding to misbehavior that
has occurred already, or proactive, focusing on preventing misbehavior from occurring in the future.
An overarching framework for understanding a wide range of specific forms of discipline includes
three main categories of discipline (Hoffman and Saltzstein, 1967): power assertion (which involves
parents’ exertion of power and authority over the child), love withdrawal (which involves parents’
manipulation of children’s negative emotions, often through expressing anger or disapproval), and
inductive reasoning (which involves discussing how other people are affected by children’s behaviors).
Of these three categories, inductive reasoning has been found to be the most optimal type of
discipline, predicting more positive child outcomes than either power assertion or love withdrawal
(Hoffman and Saltzstein, 1967). Inductive reasoning helps children to understand how their actions
affect other people and provides explanations about why certain behaviors are wrong or right. Thus,
inductive reasoning is proactive in trying to affect children’s future behavior rather than merely reac-
tive in punishing children’s past misbehavior; indeed, moral development, empathy, and perspective
taking are all enhanced by the use of inductive reasoning (Hoffman, 1977). Furthermore, mothers at
high risk for physically abusing their children use less inductive reasoning, more verbal and physical
power assertion, and evaluate power assertion as being more appropriate than do mothers at low risk
for physically abusing their children (Chilamkurti and Milner, 1993).
In contrast to the widely accepted benefits of discipline involving inductive reasoning, power-
assertive discipline has been more controversial and encompasses a range of specific forms of disci-
pline that may vary in effectiveness. Baumrind (2012) distinguishes between coercive and confrontive
forms of power assertion. Parents use coercive discipline in a domineering and arbitrary way to
establish their authority. By contrast, parents use confrontive discipline in a negotiable way to bring
about particular child behaviors rather than merely establishing parental authority. Although coercive
discipline is related to negative child outcomes, confrontive discipline might help children to regulate
their behavior constructively.
Within the overarching categories of power assertion, love withdrawal, and inductive reasoning,
parents use a number of specific forms of discipline, such as removing privileges, rewarding desired
behaviors, implementing time-outs, and spanking, to name a few. Monitoring children’s behavior,
talking with children, using distraction, and modeling desired behaviors were the most common dis-
cipline strategies in a longitudinal study of U.S. parents’ use of ten different forms of discipline with
preschoolers; corporal punishment was one of the three least common strategies with preschoolers
(Socolar, Savage, and Evans, 2007), who are more likely to be corporally punished than either younger
or older children (Straus and Stewart, 1999). In other countries, parents show similar patterns of use
of different forms of discipline. In a study of mothers’ reports of discipline experienced by their
2- to 4-year-old children in 24 low- and middle-income countries, the most common type of disci-
pline was explaining why something was wrong, with 80% of mothers reporting that someone had
66
Parenting and Child Discipline
explained to their child why something was wrong in the last month (Lansford and Deater-Deckard,
2012). Across the 24 countries, 63% of mothers reported that their child had experienced corporal
punishment in the last month (Lansford and Deater-Deckard, 2012). Thus, although it is reassuring
that the most commonly reported form of discipline is inductive reasoning, 20% of 2- to 4-year-olds
across the 24 countries did not receive explanations in the last month of why something was wrong.
Furthermore, although reasoning was more common than corporal punishment, the majority of chil-
dren, across countries, still experienced corporal punishment in the last month.
Some types of discipline appear to be common in particular cultural groups but not others. For
example, Chinese parents use a form of discipline Fung (1999) described as “shaming” to teach chil-
dren right from wrong. Parents of 2- to 4-year-olds in an ethnographic study used both verbal and
nonverbal interactions with their children to instill shame after misbehavior, with the goal of teaching
children moral behavior and socializing them to “confess and repent” after wrongdoing (Fung, 1999,
p. 201). However, in a sample of children ages 7 to 14 in China and Canada, although shaming was
perceived as being more common in China, with age, children in both countries increasingly per-
ceived shaming as being detrimental to children’s self-worth and psychological well-being (Helwig,
To, Wang, Liu, and Yang, 2014). Children in China and Canada evaluated inductive reasoning more
favorably than shaming or love withdrawal.
Parents do not use just a single form of discipline but instead vary their responses depending on
the child’s misbehavior and contextual features of the situation. In open-ended, in-depth responses to
hypothetical vignettes depicting common child behavior problems, mothers in Hong Kong and Tai-
wan were found to consider a wide range of disciplinary responses (Fung, Li, and Lam, 2017). Mothers
endorsed different forms of discipline depending on the setting in which the misbehavior occurred
(at home versus in public), who was present at the time (immediate family members versus strangers
versus an acquaintance), which rules or conventions were violated (safety, health, social-conventional,
or moral), possible outcomes (e.g., harm to self, inappropriate behavior), and how much conflict was
involved. Furthermore, depending on contextual features of the misbehavior and situation, moth-
ers endorsed a single disciplinary strategy, simultaneous strategies with multiple forms of discipline,
contingent strategies with a particular response dependent on factors related to the child or situation,
or ratcheting up when the mothers’ first strategy failed so mothers reported they would be more
encouraging or harsher in a subsequent attempt (Fung et al., 2017). Thus, parents use a number of
types of discipline, which may depend on families’ cultural context and features of situations in which
children misbehave.
To summarize, effective discipline is characterized by being proactive rather than reactive, using
reasoning to help children understand the effects of their actions on other people, and avoiding cor-
poral punishment. Particular forms of discipline are more common in some countries than others,
although reasoning is generally used more frequently than corporal punishment across countries.
Parents do not use just one form of discipline but rely on a number of different strategies used simul-
taneously or sequentially.
Methods of Study of Parental Discipline

Parental discipline is usually assessed via self-reports of the frequency with which parents have used
particular types of discipline in the last month, 6 months, or year. Commonly used measures include
the Parent–child Conflict Tactics Scale (Straus, Hamby, Finkelhor, Moore, and Runyan, 1998), the
Dimensions of Discipline Inventory (Straus and Fauchier, 2011), and the Discipline Interview (Huang
et al., 2012; Lansford et al., 2005). An advantage of self-report measures is that it is possible to ask
about a range of low-frequency behaviors that would be difficult to witness or that are unlikely
to occur during naturalistic or laboratory-based observations. A disadvantage, however, is that self-
reports are subject to imperfect recall and social desirability biases, with the potential for parents to
67
underreport behaviors they perceive as being socially undesirable or overreport behaviors they believe
would be self-enhancing (Morsbach and Prinz, 2006). To overcome these limitations, social desir-
ability biases are sometimes statistically controlled in analyses (Bornstein et al., 2015). In addition,
triangulating responses from multiple respondents (mother, father, and child) can provide different
perspectives on whether and how often parents have used particular kinds of discipline.
As a variation on self-report measures in which parents report on their actual behavior, propensity
to use particular kinds of discipline is also sometimes assessed using analog methods, such as presenting
parents with images, videos, or text depicting hypothetical vignettes involving a child’s misbehavior
and asking parents what they would do to respond to each situation (e.g., Russa and Rodriguez,
2010). Responses can involve either closed-ended options for parents to select or open-ended ques-
tions that are then coded into categories, such as corporal punishment, manipulation of privileges, or
inductive reasoning (Bombi, Di Norcia, Di Giunta, Pastorelli, and Lansford, 2015; Pettit, Bates, and
Dodge, 1997). An advantage of using hypothetical vignettes is that the type of misbehavior, setting,
and other situational factors can be manipulated to examine whether parents’ reported disciplinary
responses vary by these factors (Fung et al., 2017). A disadvantage of using hypothetical vignettes is
that parents are not being asked whether and how often they use particular forms of discipline with
their own child.
More rarely, parents are observed interacting with their children, and discipline encounters dur-
ing the interactions are recorded and coded. An advantage of observations is that they can be coded
by objective researchers to avoid social desirability biases that can be associated with self-reports.
Disadvantages of observations are that they are time consuming and expensive to conduct, and low-
frequency forms of discipline may not be observed, even if they are salient to the parent–child rela-
tionship when they do occur. In a study in which audio recorders were worn by mothers of 2- to
5-year-old children for up to six nights, instances of corporal punishment were heard in almost half
of the families (Holden, Williamson, and Holland, 2014). After 73% of the instances of corporal
punishment, children were misbehaving again within ten minutes. The audio-recorded instances and
self-reported instances of corporal punishment corresponded in 81% of the cases.
Discipline can also be studied in the context of experiments. For example, boys with conduct dis-
order were paired either with mothers of conduct-disordered sons or with mothers of sons without
conduct disorder. These boy–mother dyads were then observed engaging in three laboratory tasks;
each mother completed the tasks with her own son and with two other boys. Mothers who were
interacting with boys with conduct disorder were found to behave more negatively, whereas mothers
interacting with boys without conduct disorder were found to behave more positively (Anderson,
Lytton, and Romney, 1986). Boys with conduct disorder were found to be more noncompliant and
to elicit more negative responses from both their own and other mothers, providing evidence for the
importance of child effects in shaping the kinds of discipline they experience. Other experiments
demonstrate that changes in parenting predict changes in children’s aggression (Patterson, Dishion,
and Chamberlain, 1993) and that parents’ management strategies can be experimentally manipulated
(Webster-Stratton, 1990).
Finally, intervention studies offer an additional method for studying parental discipline. For exam-
ple, families who were randomized to an intervention that improved positive parenting practices
reduced young children’s behavior problems, whereas children’s behavior problems did not change
in the families randomized to a control group (Dishion et al., 2008). In a different intervention
designed to improve outcomes for children following their parents’ divorce, mothers who were
randomized to the intervention rather than control group were found to improve in their use of
positive discipline strategies, which, in turn, decreased children’s externalizing behavior problems
(Tein, Sandler, MacKinnon, and Wolchik, 2004). Because laboratory experiments and randomized
interventions manipulate exposure to different types of experiences, both methods offer the potential
for rigorous testing of links between different forms of discipline and children’s behavior.
68
Primary methods of studying parental discipline include self-reports, analog measures such as
asking parents how they would respond to hypothetical vignettes, parent–child observations, experi-
ments, and intervention studies. Each method has benefits and drawbacks that must be weighed when
determining which approach to use for any given study. Converging evidence from several methods
contributes to scientific rigor and increased confidence in findings, beyond what any method could
do alone.
Theory in Parental Discipline

Theories relevant to understanding parental discipline take a variety of forms, including distinguish-
ing between parenting practices and parenting styles, delineating the role of parents’ and children’s
emotions in discipline situations, and describing how observing and modeling others’ behavior affects
parents’ and children’s behavior. Theories related to parental discipline differentiate parenting prac-
tices and parenting styles, referring to what parents do and how they do it, respectively. Many classic
parenting theories describe parenting practices and styles in relation to dimensions that are broadly
construed in terms of what parents do to control children’s behavior (most relevant to discipline) and
the overall emotional climate of the parent–child relationship (which can affect how children receive
and respond to discipline; see Rudolph, Lansford, and Rodkin, 2017). These theories have character-
ized major dimensions of parenting in terms of dominance versus submission and rejection versus
acceptance (Symonds, 1939), hostility versus warmth and involvement versus detachment (Baldwin,
1955), strictness versus permissiveness and warmth (Sears et al., 1957), hostility versus love and control
versus autonomy (Schaefer, 1959), and hostility versus warmth and permissiveness versus restrictive-
ness (Becker, 1964). All of these theories emphasize that parenting involves both behavioral (e.g.,
control, restrictiveness, permissiveness) and emotional (e.g., warmth, acceptance, hostility, rejection)
dimensions (see Darling and Steinberg, 1993).
As characterized well in Baumrind’s (1967) framework, behavioral and emotional dimensions of
parenting may operate somewhat independently. Baumrind’s theoretical model described three types
of parents: authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive. Authoritarian parents are high on the control
dimension but low on the warmth dimension. Permissive parents are low on the control dimension
but high on the warmth dimension. Authoritative parents are high on both the control and warmth
dimensions. However, unlike authoritarian parents who expect children to follow their directives
without question, authoritative parents provide more explanations and opportunities for children to
voice their opinions. Children whose parents are authoritative have been found to be more socially
competent and higher achieving academically than children whose parents are authoritarian or per-
missive (Baumrind, 1971). Others have theorized that it is not high levels of control but rather chil-
dren’s freedom to negotiate rules and communicate openly with their parents in authoritative families
that contributes to children’s social and academic competence (Lewis, 1981).
Maccoby and Martin’s (1983) theory of parenting built on Baumrind’s theory by conceptualizing
parenting within a two-by-two matrix characterized by high versus low demandingness, control,
and supervision on one axis and responsiveness, warmth, and acceptance on the other. As in Baum-
rind’s theory, authoritative parents were high on both dimensions, whereas authoritarian parents
were high on demandingness but low on responsiveness. Whereas in Baumrind’s theory, permissive
parents were characterized just by being low on demandingness (regardless of their responsiveness),
in Maccoby and Martin’s theory, neglecting parents were low in both demandingness and respon-
siveness, but indulgent parents were low on demandingness but high on responsiveness. Baumrind
(1991) subsequently revised her theory to add a rejecting-neglecting parenting style characterized by
low demandingness and responsiveness and to differentiate demandingness of authoritarian parents
(which is highly restrictive) versus authoritative parents (which is not highly restrictive yet still exerts
firm control).
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Dix (1991) proposed a theoretical model of how emotions can either undermine parenting or
promote sensitive, responsive parenting depending on whether emotions are too strong, too weak, or
inappropriate for a given situation. This emotion-focused model of parenting describes three pro-
cesses: activation, engagement, and regulation. Activation refers to which emotion is experienced, as
well as when and how strongly the emotion is experienced. Engagement refers to how individuals
orient to events in ways that are consistent with their emotions and affects how they respond to events
cognitively, physiologically, and behaviorally. Regulation refers to how individuals express, understand,
and control their emotions. Emotions in parent–child interactions often depend on whether parents’
short-term (e.g., get the child’s teeth brushed) and long-term (e.g., promote the development of
morality) goals are being thwarted or advanced. Emotions in parent–child interactions are generally
more positive when parents’ and children’s goals and behaviors are aligned than when they are diver-
gent. When parents’ and children’s goals and behaviors diverge, parents can respond with cooperative
strategies (e.g., reasoning, negotiating), empathic strategies (e.g., going along with children’s wishes),
or forceful strategies (e.g., imposing the parent’s will through physical force). Children are more likely
to resist forceful strategies because they do not take children’s perspectives and desires into account, so
use of force may undermine parents’ future attempts to gain children’s compliance.
According to Dix’s model, parents’ perceptions of the stability, controllability, and importance of
events determine the strength of the emotion induced. If parents experience emotions too strongly,
they may react too harshly or intrusively, whereas if parents do not experience emotions strongly
enough, they may not engage or respond to children sufficiently. It is important for parents to be
able to regulate their emotions so that they appropriately match them to parenting situations and do
not display emotions that are counterproductive. Parents are most likely to respond empathically to
children when parents’ own concerns induce weaker emotions than children’s concerns. Understood
in this emotion-focused framework, one reason that corporal punishment and other forms of harsh
discipline may be ineffective is that harsh discipline induces negative emotions in children and parents,
which undermines parents’ socialization attempts. Children will be less open to parents’ socialization
attempts in the face of negative emotions, and such emotions can also shift attention and processing
away from the parents’ message. This focus on children’s willing compliance is also a hallmark of
Grusec, Danyliuk, Kil, and O’Neill’s (2017) conceptual model of discipline, which delineates how par-
ents can use consistency, autonomy support, perspective taking, and parental acceptance of the child
in discipline situations to facilitate children’s openness to parents’ socialization attempts. Together
these models suggest that parents are most successful at fostering children’s moral development when
they offer explanations and reason with children about the merits of particular behaviors and when
the affective context of the parent–child relationship facilitates children’s motivation to attend and
respond to parents (Smetana, 1999).
As in Dix’s model, emotion plays a central role in the emotional security hypothesis proposed by
Davies and Cummings (1994), which incorporates two clusters of parenting problems: poor child
behavior management and parental rejection. Poor child behavior management can be either because
parents’ supervision and discipline are too lax or because discipline is too harsh, both of which are
related to more child externalizing and internalizing problems. Parental rejection can encompass
negative emotions, intrusiveness, and withdrawal, all of which are related to children’s own anger,
dysphoria, withdrawal, and noncompliance. Poor child behavior management and parental rejection
can both compromise children’s emotional security and capacity to regulate their own emotions
and, in turn, problematic behaviors that might stem from negative emotions. Thus, in Davies and
Cummings’s model, the association between parenting and child outcomes is mediated by children’s
emotional security.
Parental rejection also plays a central role in Rohner’s (2004) interpersonal acceptance-rejection
theory, which argues that children’s adjustment is determined largely by whether children perceive
their parents as being accepting or rejecting of them. The theory has been supported empirically in
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a large number of studies in many countries (e.g., Khaleque and Rohner, 2002; Rohner and Lansford,
2017). Consistent with the theory, corporal punishment is related to child adjustment in part through
children’s perceptions of their parents’ rejection (Rohner, Kean, and Cournoyer, 1991). The link
between children’s perceptions of the justness and harshness of their parents’ use of corporal punish-
ment and children’s psychological adjustment was mediated by children’s perceptions of their parents’
rejection versus acceptance (Rohner, Bourque, and Elordi, 1996). Thus, interpersonal acceptance-
rejection theory emphasizes that parents’ specific discipline behaviors are related to child outcomes in
part because of the messages parents’ behaviors convey about love and acceptance of the child, on the
one hand, versus rejection and hostility, on the other.
Coercion theory is a useful framework that helps account for the development of externalizing
behavior problems (Patterson, Capaldi, and Bank, 1991). In bidirectional coercive cycles, children’s
aversive behaviors, such as whining, yelling, and hitting, are reinforced by parents’ withdrawal of
discipline, and parents’ ineffective discipline, such as yelling or hitting, is reinforced when children
temporarily stop behaving aversively. A prototypical example would be if a child asks for candy at the
store, the parent says no, the child repeats the request more forcefully, the parent says no more firmly,
the child throws a temper tantrum, and the parent gives in and buys the candy to avoid a scene or the
parent smacks the child so the child stops making the request. In either scenario, aversive behavior
has been reinforced (the child’s temper tantrum in the former or the parent’s use of corporal punish-
ment in the latter). Over time, these coercive cycles escalate and generalize to other contexts such as
peer relationships as children learn that they can get what they want through aggressive and antisocial
behaviors (Dishion, 2014).
Social learning theories also help account for links between parents’ use of corporal punishment
and the development of children’s aggressive behavior problems. That is, as children observe their
parents using aggression to handle interpersonal problems, they may imitate and model their own
behaviors on their parents’ behavior over time (Bandura, 2016). Likewise, children develop norma-
tive beliefs about aggression through their experiences in parent–child relationships (Huesmann and
Guerra, 1997). If parents use corporal punishment, children are more likely to perceive aggression as
a legitimate and acceptable way to treat others, and they are deprived of opportunities to learn non-
violent ways of dealing with interpersonal conflicts.
Normativeness theory has been proposed as a way of accounting for how and why child behaviors
associated with particular forms of discipline might differ depending on the broader cultural context
in which families live (Deater-Deckard and Dodge, 1997). A hypothesis derived from normative-
ness theory is that if parents use a form of discipline that is accepted and common in their cultural
context (i.e., normative), then it will be related to more positive (or less negative) child outcomes
than if parents use a form of discipline that is not normative in their cultural context (Lansford et al.,
2005). If children perceive that their parents are behaving in a way that is consistent with the way
other parents are behaving, then they may be more likely to regard their parents’ discipline as being
acceptable. Children’s perceptions of the fairness and reasonableness of discipline are associated with
its effectiveness (Grusec and Goodnow, 1994). Children are more likely to internalize parents’ social-
ization messages if they believe that their parents are behaving in an appropriate way. In addition, if
parents perceive that they are behaving in a normative way, they may use a given form of discipline in
a more planned and consistent rather than impulsive and unregulated way, which in turn would be less
likely to make children anxious and fearful (Holden, Miller, and Harris, 1999; Straus and Mouradian,
1998). However, a caveat exists suggesting that an extreme position on cultural relativism should not
be adopted. For example, in societies where corporal punishment is more normative, other forms of
violence and aggression are also more normative (Lansford and Dodge, 2008). This suggests that even
if at an individual level, corporal punishment is not as strongly related to worse child outcomes in
societies in which it is normative as in which it is non-normative, at a societal level, corporal punish-
ment is related to higher levels of aggression in the population as a whole (Lansford and Dodge, 2008).
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To summarize, theories relevant to understanding parental discipline often incorporate elements

of parenting practices (what parents do in discipline situations) as well as parenting styles (the overall
emotional climate of the parent–child relationship); parenting styles can affect how children interpret
parents’ behaviors. Parenting practices often correspond to the control dimension and parenting styles
to the warmth dimension of classic parenting theories. Many theoretical models give prominent
placement to the role of parents’ and children’s emotions. Social learning frameworks and normative-
ness theory emphasize how observing others’ behavior affects what one perceives as being acceptable
and desirable for one’s own behavior.
Classical and Modern Research in Parental Discipline

This section provides an overview of classical and modern research in parental discipline by reviewing
predictors of different forms of discipline, consequences of different forms of discipline, how disci-
pline is situated in the broader context of parent–child relationships, and moderators and mediators of
links between parental discipline and child outcomes.
Predictors of Discipline
Parents’ use of particular forms of discipline is predicted by a range of individual- and community-
level factors, such as family stress (Whipple and Webster-Stratton, 1991), poverty (Knutson, DeGarmo,
Koeppl, and Reid, 2005), and parents’ negative attributions regarding children’s behaviors (Berlin,
Dodge, and Reznick, 2013). In a longitudinal study of parents in nine countries, variance in parents’
use of corporal punishment was predicted by both individual-level (e.g., child externalizing behaviors)
and community-level (e.g., norms about corporal punishment) factors (Lansford et al., 2015). Like-
wise, other forms of parental discipline also are predicted by both individual- and community-level
factors.
Individual characteristics of both children and parents predict the forms of discipline that parents
use. Overall, parents are more likely to use a wide range of types of discipline as well as harsher forms
of discipline with children who have characteristics that make their behavior more difficult to control
(Larzelere, 2000). For instance, compared to children whose behaviors are easier to manage, children
who have problems with conduct (Lytton, 1990), attention (Alizadeh, Applequist, and Coolidge,
2007), and noncompliance (Patterson, 2002) are more likely to experience harsh discipline. Likewise,
children who have high levels of negative emotionality and irritable temperaments are less likely to
comply with parents’ socialization efforts and more likely to elicit parents’ hostile and inconsistent
discipline (Bates, Schermerhorn, and Petersen, 2014). Reciprocal, bidirectional, and transactional pro-
cesses unfold over time so that children with these difficult characteristics elicit harsher discipline,
such as corporal punishment, but harsher discipline also increases children’s risk for subsequent exter-
nalizing behavior problems (Lansford et al., 2011; Patterson, 1982). Specific types of child misbehavior
also have been found to elicit different types of discipline. For example, children’s antisocial behaviors
tend to elicit punishment, whereas failures to act prosocially tend to elicit other-oriented inductive
reasoning (Grusec and Kuczynski, 1980).
Other child characteristics in addition to behavior problems can increase the likelihood that par-
ents will use harsh discipline. One mechanism that can account for this pattern is that characteristics
of children that are challenging and salient evoke parental distress, which then leads to frustrated,
angry, reactive discipline (Deater-Deckard, 2004). Consistent with this perspective, parents use harsher
discipline with children who have disabilities than children without disabilities (for reviews, see Stalker
and McArthur, 2012; Westcott and Jones, 1999; but for caveats see Leeb, Bitsko, Merrick, and Armour,
2012). Parents of children with disabilities may experience high levels of stress because of additional
time and energy they must expend to manage the disability as well as stigma related to the disability
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(Deater-Deckard, 2004; Whittingham, Wee, Sanders, and Boyd, 2011). Parents of children with dis-
abilities also may be more likely to react impulsively with corporal punishment rather than more
deliberative forms of discipline if they are less confident in themselves as parents (Alizadeh et al.,
2007; Jones and Prinz, 2005). Particularly if children’s disabilities involve communication difficulties,
parents may be more likely to use corporal punishment if they do not feel able to communicate with
the child verbally using explanations and reasoning (Knutson, Johnson, and Sullivan, 2004). However,
children with all kinds of disabilities (not just those involving communication difficulties) have been
found to be at greater risk for corporal punishment and less likely to experience only nonviolent
discipline (Hendricks, Lansford, Deater-Deckard, and Bornstein, 2014). Focus group discussions with
parents of children with disabilities suggest that extra time related to taking children to medical and
therapy appointments, extra tasks related to managing the child’s disability, being in the spotlight when
the disability draws attention, trouble distinguishing between behaviors that the child can and cannot
control, and difficulty determining what behaviors are appropriate for their child given that standards
for typically developing children may not apply (see also Weisleder, 2011) all increased parents’ stress
and likelihood of using harsh discipline (Whittingham et al., 2011).
Parents’ stress increases their use of harsh and inconsistent discipline through physiological, emo-
tional, and cognitive mechanisms (Deater-Deckard, 2004). Physiologically, high levels of stress affect
brain structure and function in ways that impair psychological functioning (see Lupien, McEwen,
Gunnar, and Heim, 2009, for a review). High levels of stress also increase parents’ negative emotions
such as anxiety and anger, as well as decrease parents’ capacity for regulating their emotions (Deater-
Deckard, 2004). Cognitively, high levels of stress contribute to hostile attribution biases and other
deficits in processing social information (Pinderhughes, Dodge, Zelli, Bates, and Pettit, 2000). In turn,
physiological arousal, negative emotionality and dysregulation, and cognitive biases all decrease par-
ents’ ability to discipline consistently and effectively.
Unlike parents of children with externalizing problems or with disabilities, parents of children
with internalizing problems, such as anxiety and depression, are less likely to use corporal punish-
ment (Grogan-Kaylor and Otis, 2007), although parents’ use of corporal punishment predicts the
subsequent development of internalizing problems (Gershoff, 2002; Lansford et al., 2014). Parents are
likely responding in part to how they perceive their children as receiving different forms of discipline.
As corporal punishment and other forms of discipline high in power assertion have been found to
jeopardize the internalization of parents’ socialization attempts for children who are anxious and fear-
ful (Kochanska, Aksan, and Joy, 2007), parents may respond by reducing their use of harsh discipline
with such children.
Parents’ characteristics, in addition to child characteristics, also predict parents’ use of different
forms of discipline. For example, lower-SES parents are more likely to use corporal punishment and
less likely to use inductive reasoning than higher-SES parents (Ryan, Kalil, Ziol-Guest, and Padilla,
2016). Parents who themselves experienced corporal punishment as children are more likely to use
corporal punishment with their own children (Wang, Xing, and Zhao, 2014). Parents who hold
social-cognitive biases that favor aggression, including making hostile attributions in ambiguous situ-
ations and positively evaluating aggressive responses, are more likely to use corporal punishment than
are parents without these biases (Lansford et al., 2014; Milner, 2000). Parents who have an external
locus of control and believe their child is responsible for parent–child interactions are more likely to
have a harsh, angry disciplinary style compared to parents who believe they are responsible for parent–
child interactions (Rodriguez, 2010).
Some predictors of parental discipline are not related to individual child or parent characteristics
but rather community-level factors. One of the most important of these factors involves community
norms and expectations about advisable forms of discipline. In nationally representative samples of
parents of 2- to 4-year-old children in 24 low- and middle-income countries, country of residence
accounted for 27% to 38% of the variance in whether parents reported believing it was necessary
73
to use corporal punishment to rear a child properly, 11% to 18% of the variance in whether parents
reported using severe forms of corporal punishment (hitting on the head or beating with an imple-
ment), and 11% to 18% of the variance in parents’ reports of nonviolent forms of discipline, such as
offering explanations or giving the child something else to do (Lansford and Deater-Deckard, 2012).
To illustrate this range, 93% of parents in Syria reported believing it was necessary to use corporal
punishment to rear a child properly in contrast to only 4% of parents in Albania. Forty percent of
parents in Mongolia and Yemen reported that their child had experienced severe forms of corporal
punishment in the last month compared to only 1% in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. No par-
ents in Mongolia reported that their child experienced only nonviolent discipline in the last month,
whereas 49% of parents in Albania did so.
Country-wide differences in attitudes about and use of particular forms of discipline can be attrib-
uted in part to national laws and policies regarding childrearing. For example, as of October 2018,
54 countries had outlawed all forms of corporal punishment (Global Initiative to End All Corporal
Punishment of Children, 2018). In some countries, attitudes about the acceptability of corporal pun-
ishment began declining even before the legal ban and then continued to decline after the ban (e.g., in
Sweden, which was the first country to outlaw corporal punishment, see Durrant, 1999), but in other
countries, legal bans have been passed with the goal of changing parents’ attitudes as well as behaviors
(see Zolotor and Puzia, 2010). Some cultural groups are more tolerant or even encouraging of dif-
ferent forms of violence than others (e.g., Nisbett and Cohen, 1996). For example, cultural groups
with higher levels of warfare, aggression between adults, and socialization of aggression in children
are also characterized by harsher and more frequent corporal punishment than cultural groups with
less endorsement of violence at a societal level (Lansford and Dodge, 2008). Thus, community-level
factors can shape parental discipline.
To summarize, both individual-level and community-level factors predict parents’ use of different
types of discipline. At an individual level, harsher forms of discipline are predicted both by charac-
teristics of children, such as conduct problems or disabilities, that make them more difficult to parent
and by characteristics of parents, such as low levels of education or stressful life events, that leave them
with fewer material or psychological resources to cope with difficult child behavior. At a community
level, cultural norms regarding the appropriateness of particular forms of discipline as well as laws and
policies shape how individual parents respond to their children’s misbehavior.
Consequences of Discipline
Specific forms of discipline are generally related to a diverse set of child outcomes. For example,
reviews and meta-analyses have demonstrated that corporal punishment predicts more child external-
izing problems, internalizing problems, and academic difficulties as well as poorer relationships with
parents, internalization of values, and moral development (e.g., Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor, 2016).
Regardless of how corporal punishment was operationalized, a rigorous meta-analysis found that 94%
of effect sizes showed detrimental child outcomes associated with corporal punishment (Gershoff,
2002). Features of study designs did not moderate the links between corporal punishment and poorer
child outcomes (Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor, 2016). Likewise, the severity of corporal punishment
and parents’ perceptions of its justness have not been found to moderate links between parents’ use of
corporal punishment and children’s subsequent externalizing behaviors (Alampay et al., 2017). That
is, more child externalizing behaviors are longitudinally predicted by more frequent corporal punish-
ment, even if parents believe themselves to be justified in their use of corporal punishment and do not
perceive it as being too severe.
More research has focused on consequences of corporal punishment than other forms of disci-
pline. However, research suggests that other forms of discipline, such as inductive reasoning, are related
to positive child outcomes in many domains rather than a mixture of positive and negative outcomes.
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In a meta-analysis of how preschoolers’ self-regulation is related to different types of parenting, better

child self-regulation was related to positive control (which included features of inductive reasoning,
such as teaching, encouraging, and guiding the child) and to less negative control (which included
power assertion; Karreman, van Tuijl, van Aken, and Deković, 2006).
Other-oriented induction is especially important for promoting moral and prosocial behavior
(e.g., Krevans and Gibbs, 1996). Adolescents’ perceptions of their mothers’ love withdrawal and power
assertion are unrelated to adolescents’ moral identity (operationalized as adolescents’ ascribing moral
qualities, such as kindness and fairness to themselves, more than nonmoral qualities, such as athleticism
and intelligence), but mothers’ use of induction predicts higher moral identity (Patrick and Gibbs,
2012). Adolescents responded with more guilt as well as positive emotions to inductive discipline than
to love withdrawal or power assertion and also regarded induction, including focusing on harm caused
to other people and disappointment in expectations, as being a more appropriate form of discipline
(Patrick and Gibbs, 2012).
Across a number of outcomes, corporal punishment is related to more problematic child behaviors,
emotions, and relationships, whereas inductive reasoning is related to more adaptive child behav-
iors, emotions, and relationships. One explanation for these consistent patterns of findings across
several outcomes is that corporal punishment causes pain and models an aggressive response to an
interpersonal conflict. By contrast, inductive reasoning increases empathy and prosocial behavior by
focusing on how a child’s behavior affects other people.
Overall Parent–Child Relationship Climate

Consistent with the idea from theoretical models that parenting practices and parenting styles are dis-
tinct, parental discipline (as a parenting practice) is situated in the overall context of the parent–child
relationship, which may be shaped by a particular parenting style. The overall climate of the parent–
child relationship affects how receptive children are to parents’ attempts to socialize them through
particular forms of discipline (Grusec and Goodnow, 1994).
If the overall parent–child relationship is warm and loving rather than hostile or neglectful,
children will be more motivated to obey their parents, making discipline attempts easier and more
effective. The overall parent–child relationship context may therefore moderate links between
specific discipline attempts and child outcomes (e.g., Fletcher, Walls, Cook, Madison, and Bridges,
2008). For example, for children who were securely attached to their parents at 15 months, there
was no association between parents’ later power assertion and the development of children’s anti-
social behavior and resentful opposition between 25 and 67 months, links that were significant
only for children who were insecurely attached at 15 months (Kochanska, Barry, Stellern, and
O’Bleness, 2009).
The question of whether links between corporal punishment and negative child outcomes are
attenuated in the context of a generally positive parent–child relationship has been controversial and
yielded mixed research findings. Some studies have shown that corporal punishment is unrelated to
negative child outcomes if the parent–child relationship is generally warm and loving (McLoyd and
Smith, 2002). Others have shown that even if the parent–child relationship is generally warm and
loving, corporal punishment is still related to negative child outcomes (Stacks, Oshio, Gerard, and Roe,
2009). Still other studies have suggested that corporal punishment has even more negative effects in
the context of a generally warm parent–child relationship (Lansford et al., 2014), perhaps because
children have a difficult time resolving discrepancies in parents’ behaviors and feel uncertain from
moment to moment about how parents will treat them.
Parental discipline encompasses specific behaviors, but these behaviors are situated within the
overall climate of the parent–child relationship. There is evidence that parent–child relationships that
are loving and supportive are more conducive to the internalization of messages parents try to convey
75
in their discipline responses. However, corporal punishment may have detrimental effects even in the
context of generally warm parent–child relationships.
Main Effects and Moderators of Links Between Parental

Discipline and Child Behavior
Child gender, parent gender, child age, temperament, and culture or country have been examined both
as main effect predictors of different forms of parental discipline and as potential moderators of links
between parental discipline and children’s adjustment. Each will be considered in turn.
Child Gender
The most consistent main effect of child gender on parental discipline reported in the literature is
that sons are more likely to be disciplined with corporal punishment and harsh verbal responses than
are daughters, but the effects are generally small and often inconsistent, with many studies reporting
no gender differences (Jansen et al., 2012; Lytton and Romney, 1991; MacKenzie, Nicklas, Brooks-
Gunn, and Waldfogel, 2011). Using nationally representative samples of families with 2- to 4-year-
old children in 32 low- and middle-income countries, girls were found to experience less corporal
punishment than boys, but the effect sizes were so small as to be trivial (Deater-Deckard and Lansford,
2016). Taken together, there is more evidence for similarities than differences in sons’ and daughters’
discipline by parents.
Even if parents discipline sons and daughters in similar ways, gender might moderate links between
parental discipline and child outcomes. In a meta-analysis, links between parents’ use of corporal pun-
ishment and children’s externalizing behavior outcomes were stronger if the sample included more
boys than girls (Gershoff, 2002). One possibility is that boys who experience corporal punishment
develop aggressive and antisocial behaviors, whereas girls who are corporally punished are more likely
to develop internalizing problems, such as anxiety and depression (Gershoff, 2002). There is little evi-
dence in the literature regarding whether child gender moderates links between parents’ use of other
forms of discipline and children’s outcomes.
Parent Gender
Studies that have examined the main effects of parents’ gender on their use of different forms of dis-
cipline generally find no differences between discipline used by mothers and fathers (e.g., Feldman
and Klein, 2003) or that mothers use more of all types of discipline than do fathers (e.g., Hallers-
Haalboom et al., 2016). In a study of mothers and fathers of 8-year-olds in nine countries, mothers
reported using corporal punishment more frequently than fathers in seven of the countries (Lansford,
Alampay, et al., 2010). In the other two countries (Sweden, where corporal punishment has been
illegal since 1979, and Thailand), corporal punishment was used by very few mothers or fathers.
Mothers, compared to fathers in the same families, also have been found to manage their children’s
behaviors using more noncoercive verbal strategies (Volling, Blandon, and Gorvine, 2006). Compared
to fathers, mothers may more frequently witness children’s misbehaviors and therefore be in a better
position to respond to them because, on average, mothers spend more time with children than fathers
do (Huerta et al., 2013).
Child outcomes may depend not only on discipline they experience from each parent indepen-
dently but also on the combination of discipline they experience from both parents (and other caregiv-
ers) jointly. In a study of “dyadic concordance types,” operationalized as whether corporal punishment
was used by neither parent, just the mother, just the father, or both parents, adults reported engaging in
more antisocial behavior if they recalled experiencing corporal punishment from both parents when
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they were children than if they recalled experiencing corporal punishment from just one parent or
neither parent (Rebellon and Straus, 2017). These findings were consistent in Belgium, Canada, China,
Greece, Italy, Poland, Russia, Scotland, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States and after
controlling for retrospective reports of childhood misbehavior. Better emotional adjustment during
adolescence also has been linked with having at least one authoritative parent rather than two authori-
tarian parents (McKinney and Renk, 2008). Thus, there is some evidence that mothers and fathers can
buffer their children from adverse effects of some forms of discipline administered by the other parent
and that children are especially at risk if both parents use detrimental forms of discipline.
Child Age
Adaptive parenting requires tailoring discipline strategies to children’s age and developmental status.
For toddlers and preschoolers, appropriate discipline may involve simply distracting children or giving
them something different to do to redirect their attention away from misbehaviors, but as children
develop cognitively and can understand more complex reasoning and explanations, parents’ discipline
approaches will be more adaptive if they change to rely more on reasoning to manage children’s
behaviors (Collins, Madsen, and Susman-Stillman, 2002). As children develop, parents also change
their approach to discipline to appeal more to children’s sense of humor, guilt, and responsibility
because parents perceive that older children are better able to control their own behavior and that,
therefore, misbehaviors are more likely deliberate (Collins et al., 2002). Parents’ use of corporal pun-
ishment also declines as children grow older (Straus and Stewart, 1999).
As children develop, they also come to regard parents’ authority as being less tied to their capac-
ity to administer punishments and rewards and more tied to parents’ knowledge and skills, which
increases the importance of inductive reasoning (Braine, Pomerantz, Lorber, and Krantz, 1991; Mac-
coby, 1984). Compared to 4-year-olds, 6-year-olds were less likely to say that they would adhere to
social conventions because authority figures prohibited particular behaviors or to avoid punishments
and more likely to refer to reasons that involved the accepted nature of the social conventions (Yau
and Smetana, 2003). However, regardless of how authority figures responded, both ages thought moral
transgressions were more serious than violations of social conventions, suggesting that the nature of
the transgression is also important to understanding children’s perceptions of what parents’ disciplin-
ary response should be (Padilla-Walker, 2008). The ultimate goal of parental discipline is to teach
children how to behave in desired ways even in the absence of rewards and punishments, so having
children internalize their parents’ socialization messages is important so that as children develop, they
will behave because of an internalized set of values and standards rather than just in the presence of an
authority figure to obtain rewards or avoid punishments.
In a meta-analysis that tested age as a moderator of the association between parents’ use of corporal
punishment and children’s externalizing behaviors, the association was stronger when the sample was 10
to 12 years of age than when the sample was younger or older (Gershoff, 2002). In explaining this cur-
vilinear relation, Gershoff (2002) hypothesized that child effects may play a role because aggressive 10- to
12-year-olds elicit more corporal punishment than younger children do because parents believe that older
children should be able to control their behavior and react more harshly when these expectations are not
met. Furthermore, she hypothesized that the association may have been weaker for the adolescents older
than age 12 because corporal punishment is rarely used with this older age group and that aggressive and
antisocial behaviors for older adolescents may be more influenced by peers (Gershoff, 2002).
Temperament
Children with more difficult temperaments elicit harsher and more inconsistent discipline from their
parents, and harsh and inconsistent discipline increases children’s fearfulness, irritability, and negative
77
emotionality (Lengua and Kovacs, 2005). Not only does temperament have main effects on the types
of discipline parents use, temperament also moderates the way that particular forms of discipline are
related to child outcomes. For example, for temperamentally fearful and anxious toddlers, socialization
messages are internalized better when mothers deemphasize power and use gentle forms of discipline
(Kochanska, 1995). For more temperamentally fearless toddlers, however, minimizing anxiety is less
of a concern, but socialization messages were better internalized when toddlers are securely attached
and mothers use this cooperative relationship as the basis of their discipline (Kochanska, 1995). Tem-
peramental resistance to control also moderates the relation between parents’ restrictive control and
children’s later externalizing behaviors, with more restrictive control predicting fewer child external-
izing behaviors for children who are high but not low in resistance to control (Bates, Pettit, Dodge,
and Ridge, 1998). It is possible that restrictive control gives children at risk for externalizing problems
fewer opportunities to engage in such behaviors (Bates et al., 1998).
Culture or Country
Different cultural groups and countries demonstrate large differences in parents’ use of different
forms of discipline and beliefs in the appropriateness of different forms of discipline (Lansford and
Deater-Deckard, 2012). As described earlier, country of residence predicts a large proportion of
the variance in parents’ use of different forms of discipline (Lansford and Deater-Deckard, 2012),
in part because of differences in laws and policies (Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punish-
ment of Children, 2018). For example, corporal punishment in Finland was outlawed in 1983. Data
from a representative sample of Finnish 15- to 80-year-olds demonstrated that corporal punishment
was not decreasing in the 39 years prior to the legal ban, but children born after the legal ban were
significantly less likely to have been corporally punished than children born before the legal ban,
suggesting a turning point that could be attributed to the change in the law (Österman, Björkqvist,
and Wahlbeck, 2014). However, even in some countries that have legally banned corporal punish-
ment, large proportions of children continue to experience corporal punishment (Lansford et al.,
2017). For example, three years after Togo outlawed corporal punishment, 77% of mothers reported
that their child had experienced corporal punishment in the last month; eight years after Ukraine
outlawed corporal punishment, 32% of mothers still reported that their child had experienced cor-
poral punishment in the last month (Lansford et al., 2017). An analysis of five countries in Europe
(Austria, France, Germany, Spain, and Sweden) that have varied in terms of their implementation
of legal bans and parent education programs regarding the detriments of corporal punishment and
benefits of using alternative forms of discipline showed that countries with the lowest rates of cor-
poral punishment were those that had legally outlawed it as well as launched educational campaigns
(Bussmann, Erthal, and Schroth, 2011).
Most studies of whether cultural group moderates the link between corporal punishment and
child outcomes have been conducted with different ethnic groups in the United States, but these links
have now been tested in several countries as well. In a study of mother–child dyads in China, India,
Italy, Kenya, the Philippines, and Thailand, the association between corporal punishment and child
aggression and anxiety was weaker in countries in which corporal punishment was more normative,
but more frequent corporal punishment was related to more child aggression and anxiety in all six
countries (Lansford et al., 2005). In these same six countries, mothers’ expressions of disappointment
and yelling were also related to more child aggression, and expressions of disappointment, time-outs,
and shaming were related to more child anxiety; children’s perceptions of the normativeness of these
forms of discipline moderated some of the associations between that type of discipline and child
aggression and anxiety (Gershoff et al., 2010). A meta-analysis of links between corporal punishment
and 17 child outcomes revealed that effect sizes did not differ by the country in which the study was
conducted (Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor, 2016).
78
Cultural differences in discipline may arise not only in frequency of using particular strategies and
links between certain forms of discipline and child outcomes. Differences across cultures exist both in
parents’ perceptions of what are desired and undesired behaviors and in broader contexts that support
desired behaviors. For example, in some societies, children have the opportunity to engage in prosocial
behavior in the course of their everyday lives as they care for younger siblings or do chores that benefit
the whole family (de Guzman, Edwards, and Carlo, 2005). In these contexts, prosocial behavior is
often promoted implicitly as children take care of other family members’ needs rather than through
more abstract inductive reasoning. However, if children have few chances to behave prosocially by
directly contributing to the welfare of other people, parents may use inductive reasoning to try to
socialize children to behave prosocially (Hastings, Utendale, and Sullivan, 2007).
To summarize, a number of factors have been examined both in terms of main effects they may
have on parents’ use of different types of discipline and in terms of ways in which they might moder-
ate links between parents’ discipline and children’s adjustment. Child gender, parent gender, child age,
temperament, and culture or country are among these factors. When main effects are found, boys
generally experience more corporal punishment than girls, mothers use more of a variety of forms
of discipline than do fathers, use of reasoning increases and use of corporal punishment decreases
with child age, children with more difficult temperaments experience harsher forms of discipline
than children with easier temperaments, and use of corporal punishment is more frequent in coun-
tries without legal prohibitions and with cultural norms that are accepting of its use. A number of
moderation effects have been found, suggesting the importance of taking into account gender, age,
temperament, and cultural contexts in understanding links between different types of discipline and
children’s adjustment.
Mediators of Links Between Parental Discipline and Child Behavior

Links between parental discipline and child behavior are often indirect or mediated by cognitive and
emotional pathways involving the ways children perceive and respond to other people. For example,
corporal punishment is related to the development of children’s social information processing biases
and deficits, which in turn predict aggressive behavior (Weiss, Dodge, Bates, and Pettit, 1992). Corpo-
ral punishment increases the likelihood that children will believe that others acted with hostile intent,
even in benign or ambiguous social situations; children who make hostile attributions are then more
likely to respond aggressively (Dodge and Coie, 1987). Children who have experienced corporal pun-
ishment are also more likely to access aggression as a possible way to respond in a given social situation
and to evaluate aggression more positively (Weiss et al., 1992).
Links between different forms of discipline and child outcomes also are mediated by children’s per-
ceptions of their parents and the parent–child relationship. For example, in a low-income U.S. sample,
the link between corporal punishment and children’s psychological maladjustment was mediated by
children’s perceptions of their parents as rejecting them (Rohner et al., 1996). In a sample from China,
India, the Philippines, and Thailand, the links between corporal punishment and harsh verbal disci-
pline and children’s anxiety and aggression were mediated by children’s perceptions of their mothers’
hostility (Lansford, Malone, et al., 2010). Thus, it may not be simply that some forms of discipline have
direct effects on children’s behavioral and psychological adjustment, but that the way that discipline
affects children’s development operates through information that discipline conveys to children about
how their parents feel about them.
In contrast to corporal punishment, which is linked to hostile attributions, positive evaluations of
aggression, and perceptions of parents as being hostile and rejecting, inductive reasoning is linked to
empathy, as it promotes taking other people’s perspectives and trying to understand the effects of one’s
actions on others. The development of children’s empathy mediates the association between inductive
reasoning and children’s prosocial behavior (Krevans and Gibbs, 1996). Experiencing power-assertive
79
discipline during childhood, however, is related to less empathy in childhood as well as adulthood
(Lopez, Bonenberger, and Schneider, 2001).
The development of conscience also mediates the link between parents’ discipline and child out-
comes, particularly with respect to moral behavior (Kochanska, 1993). Parents’ discipline can shape
the extent to which children feel guilt and anxiety associated with misbehaving, as well as children’s
capacity to inhibit prohibited behavior and behave prosocially (Kochanska, 1993). The development
of children’s conscience is associated with their mothers’ references to emotions rather than rules or
consequences in conflict episodes (Laible and Thompson, 2002). When preschoolers are securely
attached to their mothers, discussions of situations in which children have misbehaved or behaved well
are more likely to refer to moral evaluations and emotions, which in turn predict conscience develop-
ment (Laible and Thompson, 2000).
Taken together, research on mechanisms through which parental discipline affects child outcomes
suggests the importance of cognitive and socioemotional pathways. Cognitively, experiencing cor-
poral punishment increases the likelihood of children’s social information processing biases, which in
turn increase future aggressive behavior. Socioemotional pathways involve children’s perceptions of
their parents’ rejection or hostility as well as the development of empathy and conscience.
Practical Information About Parental Discipline

Research on parental discipline has been used to inform policies related to child protection and in
interventions designed to enhance parenting, thereby improving child outcomes. The 1989 United
Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) asserts children’s right to protection from all
forms of abuse and exploitation and has been ratified by all countries except the United States. From
a human rights perspective, corporal punishment is not just an inadvisable discipline strategy because
it is related to worse child outcomes but is also unacceptable because using corporal punishment is
disrespectful and a violation of the right to protection that all people, regardless of age, have. Periodic
reviews of how well countries fare with respect to child protection have contributed to exponential
growth in the number of countries that have outlawed all forms of corporal punishment (Global
Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children, 2018). Child protection through preventing
all forms of violence against children continues to be prioritized in international circles, including
in Target 16.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals, which were adopted in 2015 by the United
Nations General Assembly to guide the international agenda through 2030 (United Nations, 2017).
Despite the legal bans against corporal punishment in 54 countries as of October 2018, many
countries still allow corporal punishment. For example, corporal punishment is legal in the United
States, where laws try to distinguish corporal punishment from physical abuse by references to factors
such as whether the act leaves bruises or marks that last more than 24 hours or results in pain but not
injuries. Milder forms of corporal punishment are a risk factor for more severe forms of corporal
punishment (Lansford, Wager, Bates, Pettit, and Dodge, 2012), suggesting a continuum of harsh treat-
ment rather than a qualitative difference between corporal punishment and physical abuse (Russa and
Rodriguez, 2010).
The majority of parents in some countries continue to use corporal punishment (Lansford and
Deater-Deckard, 2012), despite scientific evidence regarding its detrimental effects and international
decrees that it is a violation of children’s rights (Gershoff, 2013). Therefore, many international inter-
vention efforts have turned to ways to eliminate parents’ use of corporal punishment and promote
parents’ use of nonpunitive forms of discipline (Britto, Ponguta, Reyes, and Karnati, 2015), in addition
to legislation to outlaw corporal punishment (see Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment
of Children, 2018).
In many countries, legislation evolves over time. For example, in 1979 Sweden became the first
country to outlaw all forms of corporal punishment, but intermediary legal reforms occurred for
80
decades prior to the ban (Durrant and Janson, 2005). One notable intermediary reform was the
removal in 1957 of the section of the Penal Code that exempted parents from physical assault charges
in disciplinary cases. When the legal ban was passed, the news was widely publicized (e.g., with
announcements on milk cartons). Efforts at raising public awareness were successful, as one year after
the law was passed, more than 90% of the Swedish population was aware of the ban on corporal pun-
ishment (Ziegert, 1983). Since that time, legal refinements have continued to reaffirm and extend the
protection of children’s rights (Durrant and Janson, 2005).
Because corporal punishment is used more frequently in cultural groups where it is perceived as
being more normative and accepted, as well as by parents within a cultural group who perceive it
as being more normative and accepted (Lansford et al., 2014), some interventions have attempted to
reduce or eliminate parents’ use of corporal punishment by changing their beliefs about its accept-
ability and effectiveness (Chavis et al., 2013; Lansford and Bornstein, 2007). Changing parents’ beliefs
might be important, but it is likely not sufficient because in a diverse range of countries, more parents
use corporal punishment than believe that it is necessary to use corporal punishment to rear children
properly, suggesting that beliefs about discipline do not align perfectly with discipline behaviors (Lans-
ford and Deater-Deckard, 2012).
An example of an intervention that has attempted to change beliefs about the necessity and appro-
priateness of corporal punishment addresses the “spare the rod, spoil the child” barrier to eliminat-
ing corporal punishment among conservative Protestant religious groups (Perrin, Miller-Perrin, and
Song, 2017). Conservative Protestants have been found to use more corporal punishment than other
religious groups (Gershoff, Miller, and Holden, 1999). An intervention that randomly assigned stu-
dents at a conservative Christian university to a research-based intervention (which presented research
findings about the negative effects of corporal punishment), a biblical reinterpretation intervention
(which offered a progressive reinterpretation of the “spare the rod, spoil the child” biblical passages),
or a no-intervention control group found the greatest reduction in endorsement of corporal punish-
ment when students were exposed to the biblical reinterpretation plus research-based intervention
(Perrin et al., 2017). This research suggests that attempts to reduce corporal punishment will benefit
from attending to reasons motivating its use.
Ultimately, an important goal of parenting interventions focused on parental discipline is to
improve child outcomes. In describing coercive cycles in which children’s misbehavior leads to harsh
disciplinary responses that then lead to worse child behavior in a series of reciprocal transactions that
escalate over time, Patterson (1982) argued that training parents in how to discipline their children
more effectively held the greatest potential for reducing children’s antisocial behavior. Several inter-
ventions have shown promise in improving parental discipline and child outcomes (see www.blue-
printsprograms.com for a summary).
Parent Management Training is an example of a program that has been found to decrease both
coercive parenting and children’s antisocial behavior, using rigorous randomized controlled trials (e.g.,
Forgatch, Patterson, DeGarmo, and Beldavs, 2009). Parents of 3- to 16-year-olds learn about effec-
tive discipline and family management strategies, and the program can be modified to meet the
needs of individual families (Forgatch, DeGarmo, and Beldavs, 2005). Similarly, the Video feedback
Intervention to promote Positive Parenting and Sensitive Discipline (VIPP-SD) was demonstrated
in a randomized controlled trial to improve mothers’ attitudes about and use of sensitive discipline
(operationalized as using distraction, inductive reasoning, or trying to understand the child’s perspec-
tive as opposed to commands, expressions of disapproval, physical obstruction, or giving in) with
1- to 3-year-olds (Van Zeijl et al., 2006). The VIPP-SD is a fairly intensive intervention for families
of children with externalizing behavior problems, involving six in-home sessions of 1.5 hours each,
but less intensive interventions also have been found to be beneficial. A group of parents randomly
assigned to an intervention group that read summaries of scientific findings regarding the negative
effects of corporal punishment showed a decline in positive attitudes about corporal punishment; the
81
control group’s attitudes did not change over time (Holden, Brown, Baldwin, and Croft Caderao,
2014). Other interventions focus on promoting sensitive, responsive caregiving and positive forms of
discipline such as inductive reasoning (e.g., Durrant et al., 2017). For example, the Positive Discipline
in Everyday Parenting Program has been adapted for use in 13 countries, providing insights into ways
to decrease punitive parenting in a range of contexts: Australia, Canada, Gambia, Georgia, Guatemala,
Japan, Kosovo, Mongolia, Palestine, Paraguay, Philippines, the Solomon Islands, and Venezuela. Inter-
ventions attempting to alter parents’ discipline are most effective if they target not only beliefs and
attitudes but also behaviors and if they give parents opportunities for practicing what they learned
with their own child in the presence of a trained facilitator who can provide feedback on parent–child
interactions and offer suggestions for changes (UNICEF, 2017).
To summarize, international efforts to protect children from all forms of corporal punishment have accel-
erated following the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The number of countries that have outlawed
corporal punishment continues to grow. Ideally, legal bans are accompanied by educational campaigns to
make parents aware of the legal ban and advise them about alternate, effective forms of discipline. Even in
countries that have not outlawed corporal punishment, parenting interventions often attempt to help parents
use more proactive and inductive forms of discipline rather than resorting to corporal punishment.
Future Directions in Research on Parental Discipline

Despite the long history of theoretical models of parental discipline and empirical studies of predic-
tors and consequences of experiencing different types of discipline, future theory and research are
especially needed in three key areas: child effects, neuroscience, and gene × environment interactions.
First, additional research is needed to help understand child effects in relation to parental discipline.
Because children with behavior problems elicit harsher and less consistent discipline and more of all
kinds of discipline than do children who are well behaved, child effects should be well accounted for
in statistical analyses of relations between parental discipline and child adjustment (Larzelere, Kuhn,
and Johnson, 2004). Unless ways that children affect their parents are considered, models can be mis-
specified and counterintuitive. For example, if inductive reasoning appears to be related to more child
aggression, the likely causal direction is not from parents’ inductive reasoning to children’s aggres-
sion but rather that more aggressive children elicit more parental attempts to address the aggression
through inductive reasoning by explaining how aggression hurts other people (see Larzelere et al.,
2004). Future research is needed to understand transactional relations between diverse forms of paren-
tal discipline and children’s outcomes to understand what forms of discipline are most effective and
for whom, after taking into account children’s propensity for problem behaviors.
Second, neuroscience is a burgeoning area of research with the potential for advancing under-
standing of ways in which parental discipline affects child outcomes. Corporal punishment is related
to cortisol production and has been demonstrated to affect the brain through the hypothalamic–
pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis (Bugental, Martorell, and Barraza, 2003; Kohrt et al., 2014). Less gray
matter (structural elements of the brain that are important in processing emotions and higher-level
executive functions, such as making decisions) in the prefrontal cortex has been found for young
adults who reported that as children they experienced corporal punishment at least one time a month
and corporal punishment with an object at least one time a year compared to young adults who were
not chronically corporally punished when they were children (Tomoda et al., 2009). Post-traumatic
stress disorder (Bremner et al., 1997), depression (Fitzgerald, Laird, Maller, and Daskalakis, 2008), and
other mental health problems (Gershoff, 2016) are affected by the area of the prefrontal cortex that
also is affected by corporal punishment. Therefore, Gershoff (2016) has argued that corporal punish-
ment is a form of toxic stress with harmful effects on brain structure and function. Future work in
neuroscience offers the potential to understand other brain mechanisms that are implicated in links
between parental discipline and children’s development.
82
Third, future research on genetic factors and gene × environment interactions has the potential
to contribute to knowledge regarding additional moderators of links between parental discipline and
child outcomes. Studies using genetically sensitive twin designs have demonstrated that both genetic
and shared environmental effects contribute to links between children’s prosocial behavior and more
positive, noncoercive discipline as well as less punitive, coercive discipline (Knafo and Plomin, 2006).
Meta-analyses of studies with genetically informative designs have demonstrated that parenting is
shaped by parents’ genotype and environmental factors (Klahr and Burt, 2014), as well as by chil-
dren’s genetically influenced behaviors (Avinun and Knafo, 2014). Specific genotypes contribute to
children’s susceptibility to mothers’ positive discipline, which increases children’s compliance (Kok
et al., 2013). Future genetically informative research offers the potential to disentangle the extent
to which associations between parents’ impulsive, harsh discipline and children’s behavior problems
can be accounted for by factors that are transmitted genetically from parent to child (manifested as
parents’ aggression toward the child and children’s aggression toward peers in the two generations,
respectively), as well as the extent to which genes can moderate effects of environmental experiences
related to parental discipline on child outcomes.
To summarize, future theoretical approaches and empirical studies will benefit from fully incor-
porating child effects into transactional models describing how parental discipline and children’s
adjustment reciprocally influence one another over time. In addition, rapid advances in neuroimaging
technology will make it possible for future research to advance understanding of how different forms
of discipline are related to brain structure and function. Finally, future research on gene × environment
interactions will provide an important advance in understanding how genetic factors may moderate
links between the experience of particular types of discipline and children’s adjustment.
Conclusions
The idea that parents can use rewards and punishments to shape children’s behavior stems from his-
torical roots in behaviorism. Theories guiding the study of parental discipline often treat discipline
as part of the “control” dimension of parenting, which is orthogonal to the “warmth” dimension;
specific forms of discipline are parenting practices that are contextualized by parenting styles. The
most frequently studied forms of discipline include inductive reasoning, in which parents discuss with
children how their behavior affects other people, and power assertion, particularly corporal punish-
ment. A large body of empirical work demonstrates the benefits of inductive reasoning in promoting
prosocial behavior and the detriments of corporal punishment in predicting a range of problematic
child outcomes. Potential moderators of links between particular forms of discipline and child out-
comes include child gender, child age, temperament, and culture, but the general findings regarding
the benefits of inductive reasoning and detriments of corporal punishment are robust. Mediators of
links between parental discipline and child outcomes include cognitive biases and emotional insecuri-
ties that can stem from harsh discipline as well as empathy and the development of conscience that
are supported through inductive reasoning. Theory and research on parental discipline are timely and
important to advance scientific understanding as well as policies and practices to optimize parents’
use of nonpunitive, effective forms of discipline to protect children while socializing them to become
well-functioning members of their respective societies.
Acknowledgments
Lansford’s program of research on parental discipline has been funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant RO1-HD054805 and Fogarty
International Center grant RO3-TW008141.
83
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4
PROSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
Tracy L. Spinrad, Nancy Eisenberg, and Carlos Valiente
Introduction
The topic of this chapter is the relation of parental characteristics and behaviors to children’s prosocial
development and empathy-related responding. Because children’s motives for their morally relevant
behaviors determine whether their actions are truly moral, and prosocial moral reasoning can reflect
the range of motives used by children, socialization correlates of moral reasoning also are discussed.
The role of parents in the socialization process has been a topic of considerable debate for decades.
Various psychological theories emphasize different mechanisms of socialization and place differing
emphases on the role of the parent versus the child in development (Maccoby, 1992). Moreover,
because none of the major theories of development has adequately explained socialization, a number
of mini-theories (i.e., a theory designed to deal with one specific issue rather than many aspects of
development) have emerged to explain the socialization of morality.
In the first section of this chapter, theories related to the socialization of prosocial tendencies
(including prosocial behavior and empathy-related responding) and moral reasoning are briefly pre-
sented. Next, empirical findings regarding relations of parental practices and characteristics to pro-
social tendencies and moral reasoning are reviewed. In general, we focus on the pattern of findings
rather than the specifics of the many studies. Given the large amount of research on some of these
topics, this review is not exhaustive.
Theoretical Perspectives on Parenting and Prosocial Development

There are several major ways that developmental researchers have approached the study of prosocial
behavior. Two grand theories have been central in the literature on socialization: psychoanalytic the-
ory and behaviorism (from which social learning theory evolved) (Maccoby, 1992). In addition, two
theoretical perspectives have been very influential in research and conceptualizations of the socializa-
tion of morality; these are Kohlberg’s (1969, 1984) cognitive developmental theory and Hoffman’s
(1970, 1983, 2000) moral socialization theory. Each of these perspectives is briefly reviewed, with an
emphasis on mechanisms relevant to moral development.
Psychoanalytic Theory
Psychoanalytic theory was introduced early in the 20th century by Freud and has been critiqued and
modified in various ways ever since. In the classic versions of this theory, early childhood is a time of
91
Tracy L. Spinrad et al.
plasticity, and, consequently, parent–child interactions have profound effects on children’s later functioning
(see Cohler and Paul, 2019). According to Freud, children are driven by two major intrapsychic forces,
sexuality (libido) and aggression, and parents and other socializers must impose unwanted restrictions on
the child. In addition, children experience very intense conflict because they love their parents and need
parental nurturance while at the same time they feel anger toward their parents and desire them sexually.
If children express their anger and sexual feelings, they are likely to lose the parent’s love and support, and
may even engender intense parental anger and aggression; thus, children are emotionally engulfed by con-
flict. Although descriptions of this conflict vary considerably in the writings of Freud and his disciples, the
conflict generally is viewed as being resolved (at least to a fair degree) in childhood (e.g., at age 4 to 6 years,
according to Freud) through the mechanism of identification. As is described by Maccoby (1992, p. 1007):
Children “internalize” their parents and “introject” their values, forming a superego or con-
science that is an internal representation of the parents (primarily in their regulatory capac-
ity). Because the children’s incestuous wishes are directed primarily toward the opposite-sex
parent, there is greater risk of retaliation or rejection by the same-sex parent, and conflict
resolution therefore takes the form of identification primarily with the same-sex parent. This
identification carries with it an adoption of appropriately sex-typed behaviors and attitudes,
along with an adoption of a more general set of prosocial values.
As a consequence of identification, the child develops a conscience (i.e., superego) and guilt feelings,
which are feelings of resentment and hostility formerly directed toward the same-sex parent now
turned inward (see Freud, 1925, 1959).
Most traditional psychoanalytic theorists view parents as agents of control in the early years and
sources of moral values on identification. Thus, parents play a major role in shaping children’s morality,
albeit sometimes unintentionally. Although psychoanalytic conceptions play a minor role in current
theory in developmental psychology (but see Emde, Johnson, and Easterbrooks, 1987), the psycho-
analytic notion of identification has been modified by some less behavioral social learning theorists to
refer to children’s internalization of parents’ norms, values, and standards as a consequence of a positive
parent–child relationship (Mussen, Rutherford, Harris, and Keasey, 1970).
Behaviorism and Social Learning Theory

In psychoanalytic theory, the child is an emotionally driven, egocentric, irrational being driven to
morality only by emotions such as fear and anxiety, and later, guilt. In early behaviorism, the child also
was conceptualized in nonrational terms—as a passive being to be shaped by socializers. The child
learned through mechanisms such as classical and operant conditioning, particularly through paren-
tal contingencies. Behaviors that were reinforced (rewarded) continued; those that were punished
dropped out of the child’s repertoire.
There are numerous modern learning and social learning theories, all derived, at least in part,
from behaviorism. In probably all versions, mechanisms of reinforcement and punishment still are
important. For example, according to Gewirtz and Pelaez-Nogueras (1991, p. 162), “much of what
is termed moral behavior involves responses (including verbal ones) that have been shaped and main-
tained by positive consequences (e.g., approval, acceptance, praise) or responses that avoid or eliminate
aversive consequences (e.g., disapproval, rejection, punishment).” Moreover, the contingencies need
not actually occur; people learn through observation and verbal behavior the likely consequences of
a behavior. Of course, parents are likely to be among those who provide reinforcements and aversive
consequences to the child.
In modern social learning theory, imitation is central to the learning of new behaviors (Bandura,
1986). Indeed, some psychologists even reframed the psychoanalytic construct of identification into
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Prosocial Development
pervasive imitative, as a “selective process whereby a child acquires a range of the behavior repertory
of a parent (usually the parent of the same gender as the child), including behaviors connoting moral
values, attitudes, and standards” (Gewirtz and Pelaez-Nogueras, 1991, pp. 163–164). Viewed either
narrowly or broadly, the process of imitating others in the child’s environment, including parents, is
deemed an important source of morality.
In Bandura’s view (1986, 1991), the process is even more complex. Moral rules or standards of
behavior are fashioned from information from a variety of social sources, including tuition, others’
evaluative social reactions, and models. Based on experiences, people learn what factors are morally
relevant and how much value to attach to each. Moral decision-making is an intricate process, and
many factors must be weighed in each situation (Eisenberg, 1986; Staub, 1978). In addition, over time
people change their conceptions due to experience with the social consequences of their actions.
According to Bandura (1986, 1991), affect also plays a vital regulatory role in moral behavior.
Transgressions are controlled by two major types of sanctions: social sanctions (e.g., social disapproval)
and internalized self-sanctions. People frequently behave in moral ways to avoid social censure and
externally imposed punishments; they may fear the shame, loneliness, or other costs associated with
social sanctions. In regard to self-sanctions, people behave morally because to do so produces self-
satisfaction and self-respect, whereas immoral conduct results in self-reproof. Anticipation of these
self-administered consequences provides the motivational force by which standards regulate behavior.
Of course, people may possess self-regulatory capabilities but may not use them consistently or effec-
tively in all circumstances, particularly if they do not perceive themselves as able to effectively exercise
control over their own motivation, thoughts, and actions.
Thus, according to contemporary social learning theory, parents play a multifaceted role in their
child’s moral development. They provide information about behavioral alternatives, expectations,
and possible contingencies for various courses of action, model relevant behaviors, and reinforce and
punish the child for different actions. In addition, they may play a role in children’s development of
self-evaluative reactions (e.g., guilt) and in children’s perceptions of, and actual ability to control, their
own thoughts and actions.
Cognitive Developmental Theory

Children play a very active role in their own moral development in cognitive developmental theory.
According to Kohlberg (1969, 1984), the most influential proponent of a cognitive developmental
perspective on morality, children actively interpret their environment and construct their own under-
standing of morality.
In normal environments, children’s thinking about moral dilemmas proceeds through a predict-
able series of stages, although individuals may stop at different points in development. These stages
emerge on account of children’s increasing capacity to understand and interpret their social envi-
ronment; particularly important are changes with age in children’s ability to take the perspectives
of other individuals and, later, of the broader society. The stages progress from externally oriented
preconventional or heteronomous morality (based on avoidance of punishment and the superior
power of authorities and a concrete, self-interested perspective), to conventional morality (based on
considerations of mutual interpersonal expectations, relationships, and interpersonal conformity, or
concern with keeping the social system going and the imperatives of conscience), to postconven-
tional morality (based on concerns with social contracts, the greatest good, individual rights, and
self-chosen universal ethical principles; see Colby and Kohlberg, 1987). Each stage is considered to
represent an organized way of thinking, with movement to the next stage requiring a qualitative
reorganization of the individual’s pattern of thinking rather than merely the learning of new con-
tent. Each higher stage is viewed as more adequate and involves a broader perspective than achieved
at lower stages. At each stage, the child possesses a better understanding and can integrate more
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diverse points of view regarding moral conflicts (Colby and Kohlberg, 1987; see Lapsley, 2006).
Although many of Kohlberg’s specific assertions have been challenged and alternative schema for
conceptualizing moral reasoning have been proposed (Eisenberg, 1986; Gilligan, 1982), his theory
dominated the field of morality for decades.
In cognitive developmental theory, advances in cognition are necessary for advances in moral
judgment. Such advances are likely to occur when children are ready cognitively and when they
are exposed to morally relevant information that is more sophisticated than their current level and
at a level that is optimally higher than their current level of functioning (i.e., just a little above their
current level). In such circumstances, cognitive disequilibrium occurs, and the child seeks to better
understand the moral conflict. Experiences that broaden the individual’s perspective, such as negotia-
tion with others, participation in decision-making processes of groups or institutions, and role-taking
opportunities in which the child can learn about others’ perspectives are viewed as promoting devel-
opment (Mason and Gibbs, 1993; Walker and Hennig, 1999).
Given the general emphasis on cognition and the child’s active role in promoting her or his own
development, it is not surprising that socialization, particularly in the home, has been given rela-
tively little attention by cognitive developmentalists (Walker and Hennig, 1999). Generally, parents are
viewed as bystanders in the process of moral development; they are involved to the degree that they
provide opportunities for cognitive conflict, discussion of issues of fairness and morality, perspective
taking, participation in decision-making, and exposure to reasoning above their own stage (Walker
and Hennig, 1999). According to Kohlberg (1969, p. 399), “family participation is not unique or
critically necessary for moral development.”
Hoffman’s Theory of Moral Internalization

Hoffman (1983, 1988, 2000) tried to address the question of how societal norms or rules, which are
initially external (e.g., based on fear of sanctions), acquire an internal motivational force (i.e., acquire
an obligatory, compelling quality experienced as derived from oneself with little or no collection of
their origins). According to Hoffman (1983, 2000), although learning relevant to moral develop-
ment can occur outside the disciplinary context and in interactions with other people, disciplinary
encounters with parents are central to moral internalization. In disciplinary encounters, the child acts
or is tempted to act in a manner that will adversely affect another. The parent intervenes and tries to
change the child’s behavior in a manner that accords with the victim’s (or potential victim’s) needs.
Disciplinary situations are similar to a range of moral encounters in which the child is tempted to act
in a way that has negative consequences for others. Thus, what is learned in the disciplinary encounter
is likely to influence whether or not children internalize norms and act in a manner consistent with
these norms in subsequent moral encounters.
Hoffman (1970, 1983) identified several categories of discipline. Inductive techniques point out
the effect of the child’s behavior on others. They vary in complexity; early inductions are likely to be
very simple (e.g., “If you push him, he’ll fall and cry”), whereas with older children parents may refer
to subtler psychological effects or processes (e.g., “Don’t yell at him. He was only trying to help.”
or “He feels bad because he was proud of his tower and you knocked it down.”) (Hoffman, 1983, p.
247). In many inductions, reparative actions are suggested by the parent. Hoffman argued that a moral
orientation characterized by independence of external sanctions and by high levels of guilt is associ-
ated with frequent parental use of inductions.
In contrast to inductions, power-assertive discipline involves the use of physical force, deprivation
of possessions or privileges, direct commands, or threats. Hoffman (1970, 1983) asserted that consis-
tent and predominant use of power assertion is associated with a moral orientation in children based
on fear of external detection and punishment.
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In the third category of discipline discussed by Hoffman (1983, p. 247), love withdrawal techniques,
the parent simply gives direct, but nonphysical, expressions of anger or disapproval of the
child for engaging in some undesirable behavior (e.g., ignores the child, turns his or her back
on the child, refuses to speak or listen to the child, explicitly states a dislike for the child,
isolates or threatens to leave the child).
Hoffman argued that such techniques are not systematically related to moral internalization.
According to Hoffman (1970, 1983), inductions promote internalization for a variety of reasons.
First, they induce an optimal (i.e., moderate) level of arousal for learning. Inductions are arousing enough
to elicit the child’s attention but are unlikely to produce high levels of anxiety or anger. Thus, the child
is likely to attend to and process the information embedded in the parent’s inductive statement. In addi-
tion, because of the information provided in the explanation, the parent’s discipline efforts may seem less
arbitrary and, consequently, may be unlikely to induce reactance (i.e., the discipline may not be perceived
as a threat to the child’s freedom). Further, inductions focus children’s attention on consequences of their
behavior for others and capitalize on children’s capacity to feel another’s negative emotion (i.e., to empa-
thize) and guilt based on the awareness of causing harm to another. Feelings of empathy and concern
have been associated with altruistic motivation, and feelings of guilt motivate reparation.
In contrast, power-assertive and love withdrawal techniques may elicit too much arousal due to fear
of punishment or anxiety about loss of the parent’s love. In either case, the child’s attention is likely to
be directed to the consequences of the deviant act for the self rather than for other people; moreover,
these techniques heighten the child’s view that the relevant moral standard is external to the self.
Hoffman also tried to explain how, over time, inductive practices result in children’s experiencing
moral norms as originating from within themselves (i.e., as internalized). He hypothesized that the infor-
mational component of inductions is semantically organized, encoded in memory, and modified and
integrated with similar information extracted by inductions in other disciplinary encounters. Important
features of the process are (1) that the child plays an active role in processing the information and (2) that
inductions focus on the child’s action and its consequences rather than on the parent as the disciplinary
agent. Consequently, over time children are likely to remember the causal link between their actions and
consequences for others rather than the external pressure or the specific disciplinary context. Thus, the
inductive message, not the external source of the moral norm in the disciplinary context, is remembered
at a later time. Further, when the stored information is recalled at a later time in a similar situation, the
child is likely to experience the emotions of empathy and guilt associated with those memories. These
emotions may serve as motives for acting in accordance with moral norms at the later point in time. In
contrast, in situations involving strong power assertion or love withdrawal, the child is unlikely to store
or later recall reasons for avoiding the course of action in question; nor is the child likely to experience
empathy for a potential victim or anticipate guilt for transgressing against others.
Many researchers examining parents’ role in moral development have studied the types of disci-
pline discussed by Hoffman. However, Hoffman did not discuss in any detail how parents influence
children’s moral development outside of the disciplinary context. Impetus for studying other parental
practices, such as modeling and parental stimulation of children’s thinking about moral conflicts, has
come primarily from social learning and cognitive developmental theories.
Positive Psychology and Positive Youth Development

For much of the history of the study of children’s development, researchers utilized a deficit model—
focusing on preventing or reducing children’s risks and shortcomings (Lerner, 2017). Positive youth
development models have spurred increasing interest in the positive aspects of children’s development.
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Rather than focusing on negative aspects of development, such as children’s adjustment problems,
these models emphasize the assets that enable youth to grow and succeed throughout life (Park, 2004).
Although not theories per se, these movements take a strength-based approach rather than focusing
on youths’ deficits. The goals of the positive psychology movement have been to emphasize positive
qualities of individuals and to study how individuals flourish and thrive (see Seligman and Csikszent-
mihalyi, 2000). Similarly, a main focus for positive youth development researchers is to understand the
conditions that foster youth success and well-being (Lerner, 2017).
In addition to following a strength-based approach to studying development, there has been an
upsurge of interest in the specific constructs of prosocial behavior, compassion, empathy, and altruism
from researchers associated with the positive psychology movement and positive youth development.
For example, Lerner and colleagues (2005) identified five components of positive youth development,
with one of the components being caring (the others are competence, confidence, connection, and char-
acter). These models now focus on the components of positive development (such as prosocial behavior
and sympathy) and how such strengths contribute to their contexts and their future positive develop-
ment. It is expected that the trend to focus on assets of young people will continue in the coming years.
Ideas about the role of socialization in children’s prosocial development have been influenced
heavily by psychoanalytic theory, behaviorism and social learning theories, and cognitive develop-
mental theory. More recently, Hoffman’s theory (particularly his views on socialization of empathy)
and the positive psychology movement have made major contributions to the field. Each adds a
unique perspective, and it is often useful to draw from multiple theories to understand prosocial/
moral development.
Methodological Issues in Existing Research in Parenting and

Children’s Prosocial Development
Prior to reviewing the empirical literature, it is important to start with a discussion of some of the
methodological limitations of the existing empirical research. One important limitation in the exist-
ing research is the frequent dependence of researchers on parents for information about the child’s
moral proclivities and the parents’ own behavior (Holden and Smith, 2019). Ideally, measures of the
child’s prosocial behavior, empathy-related responding, or moral reasoning would be obtained from
observation of children’s behavior or from moral reasoning interviews, and measures of parental char-
acteristics and practices would be based on observations of the parents. However, it often is difficult
or impossible to observe parents or children, especially for extended periods of time or in a variety of
settings. Moreover, parents and older children may not act typically when they know they are being
observed (Zegiob, Arnold, and Forehand, 1975). Consequently, interviewers frequently have inter-
viewed parents about their childrearing practices, used questionnaire measures designed to assess vari-
ables such as parental warmth or discipline, and have questioned parents about their children’s moral
development or obtained one-time assessments of moral behavior in a laboratory setting.
Other complexities in studying prosocial behavior also should be considered. For example, research-
ers vary in the type of prosocial behavior studied (i.e., instrumental help, sharing, comforting), as well
as their costliness (e.g., sharing resources at an expense to oneself, comforting someone in distress).
Such nuances in measures of prosocial behavior are important because the various forms of prosocial
actions may be more or less intrinsically motivated (see Eisenberg, VanSchyndel, and Spinrad, 2016).
Such intricacies are often ignored in current research.
Thus, the data on which conclusions are drawn are far from ideal. Because methods vary consider-
ably across studies, if findings are similar across studies, they are not likely to be ascribable to any par-
ticular methodological shortfall. Moreover, sometimes data are available from more than one Western
nation or ethnic group. When this is the case, we can have greater confidence in the data and are safer
in generalizing from research findings in one group to other groups of people. In general, however, we
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must be cautious about assuming that the conclusions from research based on middle-class European
North Americans or Europeans apply to other groups of people.
Although the majority of studies has focused on maternal socialization of prosocial behavior,
research on the influence of fathers’ parenting practices on prosocial behavior is beginning to flour-
ish. As a whole, much of the existing evidence suggests that mothers’ parenting practices contribute
more strongly to children’s prosocial behavior than fathers’ socialization strategies (Carlo, Roesch,
and Melby, 1998; Daniel, Madigan, and Jenkins, 2016; Fortuna and Knafo, 2014; Hastings, McShane,
Parker, and Ladha, 2007). However, more research examining the unique roles of mothers’ and fathers’
parenting on children’s empathy-related outcomes and moral reasoning is needed, particularly in
understanding the role of fathers’ parenting on different types of prosocial behavior or at different ages
(Hastings et al., 2007; Laible and Carlo, 2004; Nickerson, Mele, and Princiotta, 2008; Padilla-Walker,
Nielson, and Day, 2016).
Another caveat concerns conclusions regarding cause-and-effect relations between parental vari-
ables and children’s prosocial development. Implicit in the notions of socialization and childrearing
practices is the assumption that it is the adult who is influencing the child. However, it is also likely
that children, on account of differences in their characteristics and behaviors, influence how adults
treat them (Bell and Harper, 1977). Much research on socialization of moral behavior and moral
reasoning is correlational in nature, and correlations tell one nothing about the direction of causality.
Indeed, there is evidence that children’s behaviors and temperament influence adults’ socialization
efforts (Keller and Bell, 1979; Kuczynski and Kochanska, 1990; Maccoby and Martin, 1983; Patterson,
1982; Pastorelli et al., 2016) and that relations between socialization and child prosocial tenden-
cies are bidirectional (Carlo, Mestre, Samper, Tur, and Armenta, 2011; Newton, Laible, Carlo, Steele,
and McGinley, 2014; Padilla-Walker, Carlo, Christensen, and Yorgason, 2012). Furthermore, there is
little doubt that heredity contributes to some of the associations found between parental characteris-
tics or behaviors and children’s behavior (Collins, Maccoby, Steinberg, Hetherington, and Bornstein,
2000). Parent and child behaviors are interwoven; partners regulate each other’s behavior, and coher-
ent expectations about each other’s behavior, joint goals, and shared meanings may emerge (Maccoby,
1992; Parke and Buriel, 1998). Thus, the processes underlying the socialization of children’s morality
are much more complex than the available research indicates.
Although all methods of measurement have limitations, it is important for researchers to examine
whether findings converge across methods. Further, researchers need to conduct research that is sensi-
tive to issues regarding the direction of effects. With such improvements in methodologies, our confi-
dence in the research considering the role of socializers on children’s prosocial reactions will improve.
The Relations of Parental Characteristics and Behaviors to

In this section of the chapter, we briefly summarize empirical findings on parental variables associated
with prosocial behavior and thinking.
Prosocial Behavior
Prosocial behavior frequently is defined as voluntary behavior intended to benefit another (Eisenberg
and Fabes, 1998; Eisenberg, Fabes, and Spinrad, 2006; Eisenberg, Spinrad, and Knafo-Noam, 2015).
Most parents who desire to foster prosocial behaviors really want to enhance one type of prosocial
responding—altruistic behavior. Altruistic behaviors are voluntary, intentional actions that benefit
another, and are not motivated by the desire to obtain external material or social rewards. In think-
ing about motives, we have found it useful to differentiate among children’s empathy (an affective
response that is the same, or similar, to what another is feeling), sympathy (an emotional response that
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involves feelings of concern for others), and personal distress (a self-focused reaction that involves
discomfort or anxiety when viewing another’s distress; see Eisenberg et al., 2015). Prosocial behaviors,
particularly altruistically motivated behaviors, are thought to be performed for internalized reasons
(e.g., empathy, sympathy), the desire to live up to internalized values, or processes such as guilt (Eisen-
berg et al., 2016). Unfortunately, when we observe a prosocial behavior, we often cannot ascertain the
actor’s motives. This makes it difficult to determine which socialization practices are related to the
development of altruistic behaviors versus nonaltruistically motivated prosocial behaviors.
Inductions
Hoffman (2000) proposed that parental inductions, a discipline strategy characterized by attempts
to provide explanations and reasons for behavior, should be related to higher empathy and prosocial
behavior because such practices generate an optimal level of arousal for learning. Indeed, inductive
discipline (particularly other-oriented reasoning) has been associated with higher empathy/sympathy
in children (Hoffman, 1975; Laible, Eye, and Carlo, 2008), which in turn has been related to children’s
prosocial behavior (Carlo, Knight, McGinley, and Hayes, 2011; Farrant, Devine, Maybery, and Fletcher,
2012; Janssens and Gerris, 1992; Krevans and Gibbs, 1996; Schuhmacher, Collard, and Kärtner, 2017;
Stewart and McBride-Chang, 2000; see Eisenberg and Fabes, 1998; Eisenberg et al., 2006; Eisenberg
et al., 2015). Eisenberg, VanSchyndel, and Hofer (2015) reported long-term longitudinal relations
between mothers’ reports of inductive discipline in both childhood and adolescence to relatively high
friend-reported sympathy in adulthood. The effectiveness of inductions has been demonstrated for
children as young as 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 years of age if inductions were administered with affective force
(i.e., emotion; Zahn-Waxler, Radke-Yarrow, and King, 1979). Moreover, mothers’ explanations to their
children for their own sadness in ongoing social interactions (which may or may not have involved
disciplinary issues) have been associated with children’s prosocial behavior at preschool (Denham and
Grout, 1992). Such verbalizations may help children to understand others’ emotions.
According to one study, inductions are associated with prosocial development only if verbalized by
socializers who typically do not use power-assertive (punitive) techniques (Hoffman, 1963) or if chil-
dren have had a history of inductive discipline (Dlugokinski and Firestone, 1974). When inductions
are part of a generally democratic parenting style, such parenting has been associated with teacher
and peer reports of prosocial behavior (Dekovic and Janssens, 1992; Janssens and Dekovic, 1997).
Similarly, researchers have shown a positive relation between authoritative parenting style (parent-
ing that provides reasonable demands and expectations balanced with responsiveness) and children’s
prosocial behavior (Hastings et al., 2007; Padilla-Walker et al., 2012) and sympathy (Taylor, Eisenberg,
and Spinrad, 2015).
Power-Assertive, Punitive Techniques of Discipline

In general, socializers’ use of power-assertive techniques of discipline, such as physical punishment
or deprivation of privileges, has been found to be negatively related to children’s prosocial behavior
(Asbury, Dunn, Pike, and Plomin, 2003; Brody and Shaffer, 1982; Ensor and Hughes, 2010; Hastings,
Zahn-Waxler, Robinson, Usher, and Bridges, 2000; Padilla-Walker et al., 2016; see Eisenberg et al.,
2015) and negatively related to empathy/sympathy (Cornell and Frick, 2007; Garner, 2012; Laible and
Carlo, 2004; Krevans and Gibbs, 1996; Spinrad et al., 1999). As suggested by Hoffman (1983), children
attribute helping induced by power-assertive techniques to external motives (Dix and Grusec, 1983;
Smith, Gelfand, Hartmann, and Partlow, 1979). Nonetheless, as noted by Hoffman (1983, 2000), there
is a difference between the occasional use of power-assertive techniques in the context of a positive
parent–child relationship and the use of punishment as the preferred, predominant mode of disci-
pline. When power-assertive techniques are used in a measured and rational manner by parents who
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generally are warm and supportive, set high standards, and usually use nonpower-assertive disciplinary
techniques such as reasoning, children tend to be socially responsible and positive in their behavior
(Baumrind, 1971, 1993). In contrast, it appears that the frequent use of power-assertive techniques,
especially by hostile, cold socializers, is negatively related to prosocial development and may hinder the
effectiveness of other socialization techniques that usually promote prosocial development (Hoffman,
1963, 1983, 2000). For example, Dutch parents who use power assertion as part of an authoritar-
ian pattern of discipline have elementary school children who were viewed as low in helpfulness by
their peers, although not by their teachers (Dekovic and Janssens, 1992). Similarly, positive parenting
practices interact with parents’ use of corporal punishment to predict prosocial behavior for girls, but
not boys. The positive relation between positive parenting and prosocial behavior was stronger when
parents did not use corporal punishment (Piché, Huỳćnh, Clemént, and Durrant, 2016).
Although punishment can induce immediate compliance with socializers’ expectations for pro-
social behavior if the socializer monitors the child’s behavior, there is as yet little evidence that pun-
ishment for selfishness has long-term, generalizable effects. It should be emphasized, however, that
most mothers infrequently use punishment (especially physical punishment) to induce helping or in
response to children’s failure to help (Grusec, 1982, 1991; Grusec, Dix, and Mills, 1982; Zahn-Waxler
et al., 1979).
Love Withdrawal
There appears to be no consistent relation between parents’ use of love withdrawal as discipline and
children’s prosocial behavior (Brody and Shaffer, 1982; Krevans and Gibbs, 1996). It is likely that the
effects of love withdrawal vary with the context and frequency in which it is administered.
Nurturance and Emotional Support

Parental warmth and supportiveness are thought to promote children’s prosocial tendencies and coop-
eration with others (Eisenberg, Eggum-Wilkens, and Spinrad, 2015; Grusec, 2006, 2011). Because
warmth and supportive practices are reciprocal and nurturing, these characteristics are thought to
foster positive parent–child relationships and children’s receptiveness to parents’ socialization efforts.
Further, intuitively, such parenting may be a model for sympathy and prosocial behavior (Eisenberg
et al., 2015; Eisenberg and Spinrad, 2014).
Consistent with this perspective, in general there seems to be a modest, positive relation between
parental warmth (particularly maternal warmth) and children’s and adolescents’ prosocial develop-
ment (Carlo, Mestre, et al., 2011; Daniel et al., 2016; Domitrovich and Bierman, 2001; Hastings et al.,
2007; Janssens and Gerris, 1992; Knafo and Plomin, 2006; Padilla-Walker et al., 2016; see Brody and
Shaffer, 1982). For example, mothers’ warmth has been positively associated with prosocial behavior
towards family members, and fathers’ warmth is related to prosocial behavior toward peers (Padilla-
Walker et al., 2016).
Maternal sensitivity and responsiveness, constructs similar to warmth, also have been associated
with prosocial responding (Bronstein, Fox, Kamon, and Knolls, 2007; Davidov and Grusec, 2006;
Laible, Carlo, Davis, and Karahuta, 2016). Similarly, there is some evidence that children with a
secure attachment to a parent are more prosocial than insecurely attached children (Carlo, McGinley,
Hayes, and Martinez, 2012; Gross, Stern, Brett, and Cassidy, 2017; Iannotti, Cummings, Pierrehumbert,
Milano, and Zahn-Waxler, 1992; Kestenbaum, Farber, and Sroufe, 1989; Ma, Cheung, and Shek, 2007;
Yoo, Feng, and Day, 2013).
Nonetheless, the relation between parental support and children’s prosocial behavior is fragile, and
the two frequently have been unrelated or inconsistently correlated (Iannotti et al., 1992; Krevans
and Gibbs, 1996; Wentzel and McNamara, 1999; see Eisenberg et al., 2006; Eisenberg, Spinrad, &
99
Knafo-Noam, 2015). However, in many studies, parental nurturance was not assessed directly; rather,
measures of parental behaviors were based on parental or child report of socializers’ warmth. When
socializers’ nurturance has been observed or controlled experimentally, the relation of socializers’
nurturance and support to children’s prosocial behavior has been found to be somewhat stronger and
clearer than in the literature involving parental self-report (see Bryant and Crockenberg, 1980; Yarrow,
Scott, and Waxler, 1973; Zahn-Waxler et al., 1979).
Parental warmth, support, and sympathy are also associated with their children’s affective sympathy
and empathy (Eisenberg, Fabes, et al.,1992; Fabes, Eisenberg, and Miller, 1990; Hastings et al., 2000;
Malti, Eisenberg, Kim, and Buchmann, 2013; Miklikowska, Duriez, and Soenens, 2011; Spinrad et al.,
1999; cf. Iannotti et al., 1992; Koestner, Franz, and Weinberger, 1990). In a long-term longitudinal
study, Eisenberg et al. (2015) showed that mothers’ reported warmth in childhood predicted sympa-
thy in early adulthood. Maternal sensitivity/responsiveness also has been related to higher sympathy/
empathy (Kiang, Moreno, and Robinson, 2004; Moreno, Klute, and Robinson, 2008; Spinrad and
Stifter, 2006; Tong et al., 2012). Feldman (2007a, 2007b) showed that mother–infant synchrony in
the first year of life predicted empathy in Israeli adolescents. Attachment security has been linked
with empathy (Diamond, Fagundes, and Butterworth, 2012; Nickerson et al., 2008; van der Mark,
van IJzendoorn, and Bakermans-Kranenburg, 2002). Despite such evidence, some investigators have
shown no (or mixed) relations (Davidov and Grusec, 2006; Soenens, Duriez, Vansteenkiste, and Goos-
sens, 2007).
It is logical to hypothesize that warm, empathic parenting promotes children’s prosocial behavior
through its effects on children’s perspective taking, empathy, and sympathy. However, Janssens and
Gerris (1992) found that Dutch children’s empathy did not mediate the effects of parental support for
either mothers or fathers on prosocial behavior; for mothers, support had a direct (unmediated) effect
on 9- to 12-year-olds’ prosocial behavior.
Modeling
Much research on modeling of prosocial behavior has taken place in laboratory work where chil-
dren’s imitation of an unfamiliar adult’s prosocial behavior or selfishness has been assessed. In general,
people (including children) who have viewed a prosocial model are more prosocial themselves than
are people who have not viewed a prosocial model or who have viewed a stingy or unhelpful model
(see Eisenberg et al., 2006; Eisenberg et al., 2015; Radke-Yarrow, Zahn-Waxler, and Chapman, 1983,
for reviews). Even in the laboratory, the effects of observing a prosocial model have been found to
persist over time (for days or even months; Grusec, Saas-Kortsaak, and Simutis, 1978; Rice and Gru-
sec, 1975; Rushton, 1975) and to generalize to somewhat new and different situations (see Eisenberg
et al., 2015).
Despite the preponderance of evidence indicating that children imitate prosocial others, it also is
clear that some models are imitated more than others. For example, nurturance by the model is related
to children’s imitation of prosocial behavior, albeit in a complex manner. It appears that noncontin-
gent nurturance (unconditional constant nurturance) is interpreted by children as indicating permis-
siveness and, consequently, children do not assist if there is a material cost to doing so (Grusec, 1971;
Grusec and Skubiski, 1970; Weissbrod, 1980). However, when adult nurturance is part of an ongoing
relationship and is not unconditional (which generally is true in real life), nurturance increases the
effectiveness of a model (Yarrow et al., 1973).
Some of the most compelling evidence of the role of modeling in the family in real-life situa-
tions comes from studies of people in Europe who saved Jews from the Nazis during World War II.
Rescuing activities were often highly dangerous and could result in death if discovered. Two groups
of researchers found that rescuers tended to come from families in which parents modeled generos-
ity, helpfulness, and similar behaviors (London, 1970; Oliner and Oliner, 1988). Similar findings were
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obtained in a study of the “freedom riders” in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a group of young adults
(many European-American) who engaged in activities designed to increase equal rights and opportu-
nities for African-Americans in the southern parts of the United States. Those who were highly com-
mitted and involved in the civil rights effort reported that their parents had been excellent models of
prosocial behavior and concern for others, working for worthy causes, protesting injustices, and discuss-
ing their activities with their children (Rosenhan, 1970). Along the same lines, Hart and Fegley (1995)
found that minority youth who were exemplars of caring were more likely than their peers to incor-
porate aspects of parentally related representations (e.g., what their mothers were like or expected of
them) in their self-representations. Moreover, there is evidence that parental volunteerism is positively
related to volunteerism in adolescent offspring (Bekkers, 2007; McGinley, Lipperman-Kreda, Byrnes,
and Carlo, 2010; McLellan and Youniss, 2003) and grown children years later (Janoski and Wilson,
1995). Thus, there is evidence suggesting that parental modeling of prosocial behavior, which no doubt
is often combined with a variety of other parental behaviors that are likely to foster children’s prosocial
behavior, is associated with adult children’s willingness to assist others at a cost to themselves. Of course,
hereditary factors also could contribute to similarities in the behavior of parents and children.
Children may also learn to express sympathy through modeling their parents’ empathy-related
responding (Eisenberg, Fabes, et al., 1992; Eisenberg, Fabes, Schaller, Carlo, and Miller, 1991; Fabes
et al., 1990). For example, Eisenberg et al. (1991) showed that parents’ sympathy was related to lower
personal distress reactions in same-sex children and, for both parents, sympathy was positively associ-
ated with sons’ dispositional sympathy. In another study, Farrant and colleagues (2012) showed that
maternal empathy was positively associated with children’s empathy and prosocial behavior. Such rela-
tions could certainly be due to other processes (i.e., genetic transmission), but it is likely that modeling
may be one mechanism for children’s learning prosocial behavior and empathy-related responding
(Farrant et al., 2012).
Moral Preachings
In an attempt to modify or influence children’s behaviors, socializers sometimes symbolically model
prosocial behavior (say that they are going to act in a prosocial manner) or discuss the merits or con-
sequences of prosocial actions. Such verbalizations frequently have been labeled preachings or exhor-
tations and represent attempts to influence an individual’s future behavior, not a disciplinary response
to prior behavior.
Researchers have found that the effectiveness of preachings varies as a function of their content.
Children’s sharing is enhanced by appeals that provide symbolic modeling, that is they include a
description of what the model intends to do (Grusec and Skubiski, 1970; Rice and Grusec, 1975) or
include reasons for assisting that are likely to evoke empathy and sympathy (Burleson and Fennelly,
1981; Eisenberg-Berg and Geisheker, 1979; Perry, Bussey, and Freiberg, 1981). In contrast, preach-
ings that are power-assertive in content (involve threats of disapproval; Perry et al., 1981) or refer to
the norm of sharing (Bryan and Walbek, 1970) or self-oriented reasons for sharing (Burleson and
Fennelly, 1981) are relatively ineffective. The effects of preaching with compelling content can be
relatively durable; in experimental studies they have lasted over a three-week (Grusec et al., 1978) or
even eight-week (Rushton, 1975) period.
It is possible that preachings, even those providing reasons, can backfire if they are viewed by the
child as putting pressure on the child to assist. Consistent with findings that children react negatively
to attempts to limit their freedom (Brehm, 1981), children may respond negatively and feel unwill-
ing to assist if they feel pressured to comply with an adult’s reasoning (see McGrath and Power, 1990;
McGrath, Wilson, and Frassetto, 1995). In addition, if preachings are perceived as applying pressure,
children may attribute their helping to external causes and, consequently, be less willing to assist at a
later time (Lepper, 1983).
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Nearly all the studies on preachings have been conducted in laboratory settings. However, it is clear
from research on parental use of inductions, verbal demandingness, and other types of verbalizations
that parents’ verbalizations can influence children’s prosocial behavior (Dekovic and Janssens, 1992).
Thus, it is likely that parents’ statements about the importance, consequences, or reasons for prosocial
action in nondisciplinary settings promote children’s tendencies to perform prosocial behaviors.
Assignment of Responsibility
Practice performing prosocial behaviors seems to be useful for promoting prosocial tendencies (Bar-
ton, 1981; Staub, 1979). Children who were assigned responsibility to teach others or who were
induced to participate in prosocial activities subsequently displayed more prosocial behavior (Staub,
1979). Similarly, children who were induced to donate to needy others in one context were more
likely to help other people one or two days later (this was true for children in second grade or older,
but not kindergartners; Eisenberg, Cialdini, McCreath, and Shell, 1987). Furthermore, assigning a
specific child responsibility for others seems to enhance prosocial behavior (Maruyama, Fraser, and
Miller, 1982; Peterson, 1983). In cross-cultural research, Whiting and Whiting (1975) found that
children from non-Western cultures, in which youngsters are routinely assigned responsibilities for
assisting others (e.g., caregiving activities), were more prosocial than children from other cultures.
Even young toddlers whose mothers encouraged them to assist in household chores and routines tend
to behave more prosocially with others (Hammond and Carpendale, 2015; Köster, Cavalcante, Vera
Cruz, Dôgo Resende, and Kärtner, 2016). Grusec, Goodnow, and Cohen (1996) showed that routine
(but not requested) participation in household chores was related to youth prosocial behavior in the
family. Finally, participation in voluntary community service sometimes has been linked to greater
commitment to helping others in the future (Yates and Youniss, 1996). Even mandatory voluntary
service appears to sometimes increase prosocial behavior (Hart, Donnelly, Youniss, and Atkins, 2007;
see Eisenberg et al., 2006).
Reinforcement
Although both material (Warren, Warren-Rogers, and Baer, 1976) and social reinforcement (Gelfand,
Hartmann, Cromer, Smith, and Page, 1975; Grusec and Redler, 1980) in the laboratory have been
found to increase the frequency of prosocial behavior immediately subsequent to the reinforcement,
it is not clear whether the effects of material reinforcement are enduring and generalize to new situ-
ations. In most research in which reinforced prosocial behaviors have generalized to new settings or
have been enduring, reinforcement was used in combination with modeling and other techniques
(Barton, 1981; Rushton, 1975; see Eisenberg et al., 2015). It is likely that the receipt of concrete
rewards for a prosocial action leads to the child perceiving that the performance of the prosocial
behavior reflected external, and not internal, motivational factors (Lepper, 1983; Szynal-Brown and
Morgan, 1983). If this is true, the child would be expected to repeat the prosocial behavior only in
settings in which she or he believes that rewards might be forthcoming.
Evidence of the negative effects of rewards on the development of altruism has been established
(Carlo, McGinley, Hayes, Batenhorst, and Wilkinson, 2007). For example, Fabes, Fultz, Eisenberg,
May-Plumlee, and Christopher (1989) found that second- to fifth-graders who believed that there
would be a reward for helping assisted more in that context than did other children. However, the
promise of a reward led to less helping when the children were given a second opportunity to assist
in a context in which rewards were not mentioned and the children were alone. Warneken and
Tomasello (2008) showed that 20-month-olds who received a reward for prosocial behavior were
less likely to engage in prosocial behavior than were those who received verbal praise or no reward
for prosocial action. Ulber, Hamann, and Tomasello (2016) obtained similar results with 3-year-olds’
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costly prosocial behaviors. In other experimental work, 24-month-olds tended to pick up dropped
objects (instrumental helping) at high rates, regardless of whether or not a parent was present to wit-
ness or guide young children’s helping, indicating intrinsic motivation for helping (Warneken and
Tomasello, 2013). Thus, children do not seem to need encouragement for helping and those offered
rewards for prosocial actions seemed to be less intrinsically motivated to help when there were no
rewards for doing so.
It is also possible that parental reinforcement of children’s prosocial behavior varies as a function of
characteristics of the child. Eisenberg, Wolchik, Goldberg, and Engel (1992) found that mothers and
fathers used more social reinforcement (i.e., positive affect) after children engaged in prosocial acts
requested by the parent if their children were low in the tendency to perform such prosocial behav-
iors. It is likely that these parents administered more reinforcement to relatively noncompliant chil-
dren in an attempt to increase the frequency of their prosocial behavior. Consistent with this notion,
Grusec (1991) found that preschoolers who were prosocial were somewhat less likely to receive a
response from their mother when they were helpful than were less prosocial children.
Emotion Socialization
Fewer investigators have examined relations of parents’ emotion-related socialization practices to chil-
dren’s prosocial behavior. Children’s sympathy and prosocial behavior seem to be related to how
parents respond to children’s expression of emotion in the home. If parents work to reduce their
children’s negative emotions and to help them find appropriate ways to deal with negative emo-
tions, children might learn how to regulate their negative emotions, including personal distress, and
to be prosocial and sympathetic to others’ negative emotions. For example, parents of elementary
school children who emphasized the need for their sons to control their negative emotions that are
not harmful to others tended to experience self-focused distressed responses rather than sympathy
when confronted with another’s distress. In contrast, same-sex parental restrictiveness in regard to the
expression of emotion that might hurt another’s feelings was associated with sympathy (Eisenberg
et al., 1991). However, such restrictiveness may backfire with younger children if it is not age-
appropriate (Eisenberg, Fabes, Carlo, Troyer, et al., 1992).
Parents who encourage their sons to try to take action to deal with stressful situations tend to
have sons who are prosocial and sympathetic (Eisenberg, Fabes, and Murphy, 1996; Eisenberg et al.,
1991; Scrimgeour, Davis, and Buss, 2016). Similarly, mothers who encouraged their toddlers to
express their emotions at 18 months of age have children relatively high in empathy 6 months later
(Taylor, Eisenberg, Spinrad, Eggum, and Sulik, 2013). The combination of mothers’ encouragement
to use instrumental coping and mothers’ reports of tendencies to comfort their 30-month-olds when
distressed predict children’s sympathy at 42 months, but not vice versa (Eisenberg, Spinrad, Taylor,
and Liew, in press). Mothers’ knowledge of what their child would want for comfort (i.e., accuracy
regarding what their children said would comfort them when distressed) is positively related to pro-
social behavior for children who were prone to distress (and not for children who were not; Vinik,
Almas, and Grusec, 2011)
Moreover, mothers’ discussion of their own and their children’s emotions with their children
sometimes has been associated with empathy-related responding and prosocial behavior (Brownell,
Svetlova, Anderson, Nichols, and Drummond, 2013; Garner, Dunsmore, and Southam-Gerrow, 2008;
Denham and Grout, 1992; Eisenberg et al., 1992). However, focusing too much on children’s distress
in stressful situations sometimes has been associated with children experiencing less empathy or sym-
pathy, perhaps because some parents talk more about emotion with children who are prone to over-
arousal or too much empathy (so they experience self-focused personal distress; Trommsdorff, 1995).
Alternatively, parents who focus on emotions with children who cannot cope with the emotion may
overarouse their children, with the consequence that their children do not learn to regulate their own
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distress. Indeed, mothers of younger children often try to buffer their children from experiencing too
much negative emotion when dealing with empathy-inducing information, and doing so is associated
with more sympathy and helpfulness (Fabes et al., 1994).
There also appears to be some relation between emotion expressed in the home and children’s
prosocial tendencies, although this relation is quite complex (see Eisenberg et al., 2015). Sometimes,
but not always, parental expression of positive emotion has been linked to children’s prosocial behavior
(Denham and Grout, 1992; Eisenberg, Liew, and Pidada, 2001; Eisenberg et al., 2015; Eisenberg, Fabes,
Schaller, Miller, et al., 1991; Garner, Jones, and Miner, 1994; Michalik et al., 2007; Valiente et al., 2004;
Spinrad et al., 1999; Zhou et al., 2002). Conversely, the expression of negative hostile emotion in the
home generally has been linked to low levels of sympathy (Batanova and Loukas, 2012; Crockenberg,
1985; Denham and Grout, 1992; Eisenberg, Fabes, Carlo, Troyer, et al., 1992), at least outside of the
conflict situation (see Eisenberg et al., 2006; Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Knafo-Noam, 2015, for further
review and discussion). The relations between parents’ expression of emotion and children’s sympathy
and prosocial behavior may change with age. For example, parents’ negative dominant expressivity
(e.g., anger) was related to low levels of boys’, but not girls’, sympathy in childhood (Michalik et al.,
2007). However, in adolescence, parents’ negative emotionality is related to higher sympathy in girls
and boys and girls’ lower prosocial behavior, but not in childhood (Michalik et al., 2007). What is
probably most important is whether the emotion is expressed in a manner in which the child does not
feel threatened or overwhelmed and can learn about emotions and how to regulate them.
Children’s Characteristics as Moderators and Mediators of the Relations

of Parenting to Children’s Prosocial Behavior
Although prior research focused primarily on the ways in which parenting practices are directly asso-
ciated with children’s prosocial behavior and empathy-related responding, some children may be more
receptive to socialization efforts than others. For example, Kochanska (1995) theorized that children
who are temperamentally fearful would be more receptive to socialization efforts (and more likely
to internalize parental norms) than fearless children. Indeed, Kochanska showed that gentle maternal
control, a parenting strategy thought to elicit an optimal level of arousal, predicted higher internaliza-
tion of values (i.e., guilt) for children who were temperamentally fearful, but not for children who
were low in fearfulness (Kochanska, 1991; Kochanska, Aksan, and Joy, 2007). Cornell and Frick
(2007) similarly showed that the interaction between behavioral inhibition and parenting predicted
children’s guilt and empathy. Negative relations between inconsistent parenting and guilt or empathy
are significant for uninhibited, but not inhibited, children. In terms of prosocial outcomes, harsh par-
enting predicts low prosocial behaviors for children high in negative emotionality, whereas the rela-
tion is not significant for children low in negative emotionality (Slagt, Semon Dubas, and Aken, 2016).
Relations between parenting practices and children’s prosocial tendencies vary based on differences
in children’s genetic markers. Specifically, parenting (or attachment) predicts prosocial behavior or
empathy only among children carrying the DRD4-III 7-repeat allele (Bakermans-Kranenburg and
van Ijzendoorn, 2011; Knafo, Israel, and Ebstein, 2011; Knafo and Uzefovsky, 2013; see Fortuna and
Knafo, 2014, for further discussion of related issues). Thus, parental socialization practices likely do
not operate in isolation. Undoubtedly, relations between parenting practices and children’s prosocial
outcomes may be moderated by factors such as children’s sex, age, genetic makeup, temperamental
characteristics, and culture. Clearly, there is much more work to be done in this area.
In addition to the role of children’s characteristics as moderators of relations between parenting
and prosociality, researchers have been investigating potential mediating processes involved in these
relations. For example, children’s ability to regulate their emotions and behavior (i.e., effortful control)
is expected to predict children’s prosocial behavior and other-oriented responding because such self-
regulation abilities are likely involved in children’s tendencies to experience optimal levels of arousal
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when faced with others’ distress, rather than becoming overly aroused and experiencing personal dis-
tress reactions. Self-regulation abilities mediate the relations between parenting and prosocial behavior
(Davidov and Grusec, 2006; Laible et al., 2017; Padilla-Walker and Christensen, 2011; Williams and
Berthelsen, 2017) and between parenting and sympathy or empathy (Eisenberg et al., 2001; Panfile
and Laible, 2012; Taylor et al., 2015).
Other aspects of children’s characteristics have been shown to mediate relations between parent-
ing and prosocial tendencies. For example, children’s cognitive and language development and social
engagement of the mother mediated the relation between mothers’ emotional availability and chil-
dren’s empathy (Moreno et al., 2008). Further evidence indicates that children’s emotion knowledge
(Ensor, Spencer, and Hughes, 2011) and emotional expressiveness (Laible, 2007) mediate the rela-
tions between parent–child attachment/mother–child reciprocity and children’s prosocial behavior
in preschool.
Cultural Determinants of Prosocial Behavior

Research on cultural and subcultural differences in prosocial behavior also provides insight into the
role of the social environment. People in different cultures vary in their socialization goals (e.g., rela-
tional verses individualistic) and in their valuing of prosocial behaviors and cooperation (De Guzman,
Brown, Carlo, and Knight, 2012; Knight and Carlo, 2012; Suizzo, 2007; see Eisenberg et al., 2015).
Studies comparing prosocial behavior across cultures generally have focused on children’s coopera-
tion and distribution of resources. For example, House and colleagues (2013) compared 3- to 14-year-
old children from Los Angeles and from more traditional cultures (including hunter-gathering and
horticulture/pastoralism societies) and found no differences in low-cost prosocial behavior. However,
differences were found between cultures in costly prosocial behaviors. Specifically, when there was
a cost, children from Los Angeles and the Aka (a hunter-gathering culture) from Africa showed
the most dramatic increases in prosocial behavior in early adolescence and made the most prosocial
choices at the older ages compared to other groups. Researchers also have demonstrated that children
from traditional cultures/subcultures (e.g., Mexican-American children) are more cooperative than
their European-American peers (de Guzman and Carlo, 2004; Knight, Kagan, and Buriel, 1981; see
Knight and Carlo, 2012).
In studies that do not use allocation tasks, few differences have been found among Western, indus-
trialized countries (Russell, Hart, Robinson, and Olsen, 2003; Yagmurlu and Sanson, 2009). When
comparing prosocial action between Asian and Western cultures, differences favoring Asian children
have sometimes been found, perhaps due to the increased value for cooperation with group members
in Asian cultures (Stevenson, 1991; Stewart and McBride-Chang, 2000). Thus, differences across cul-
tures likely depend on the kind of prosocial behavior studied (i.e., distribution of resources, sharing,
helping), characteristics of the context (i.e., high versus low cost), and the countries or cultures being
compared (e.g., traditional, Western).
Furthermore, in understanding subcultural differences in the United States, researchers have shown
that individual differences in Mexican-American youths’ acculturation patterns are associated with
lower prosocial behavior (de Guzman and Carlo, 2004; Knight and Carlo, 2012). Further, youths’ valu-
ing of familism (i.e., an emphasis on family support, loyalty, and interdependence among family mem-
bers) embedded within the Mexican-American culture has been shown to predict a broad range of
prosocial tendencies (Armenta, Knight, Carlo, and Jacobson, 2011; Knight, Carlo, Mahrer, and Davis,
2016). Advancement of this line of research would likely benefit from the consideration of potential
mediators and moderators of the relations between parenting and prosocial behavior.
The strength or direction of the relation between parenting strategies and children’s prosocial
behavior may differ across cultures and societies. For example, Eisenberg et al. (2001) showed that
parental expression of positive emotions was unrelated to sympathy in Indonesian children (although
105
it tends to be positively related in the United States), whereas negative relations of parental expression
of negative emotion were found in both groups. The findings may be due to a general discourage-
ment of intense emotional expression (either positive or negative) in Indonesia and highlights the
potential moderating role of culture in the relations of parenting to children’s prosocial development.
Summary
A variety of parenting dimensions has been examined in relation to children’s prosocial behavior.
However, the configuration of a number of parenting behaviors, not any single behavior, appears to
have the greatest impact on children’s prosocial behavior. Authoritative parents who are generally
warm and supportive but who also encourage and respect the child’s autonomy, use constructive dis-
ciplinary techniques such as inductions, and set and enforce high standards of behavior (Baumrind,
1971, 1993) are likely to rear prosocial children. Moreover, the effects of authoritative parenting are
likely to be augmented if parents also model prosocial actions, discuss the effects of helping on others,
and involve children in helping activities without coercing their participation. Complexities in the
relations also have been shown, such that children’s characteristics and parental practices may interact
in their effects. Furthermore, researchers are increasingly focusing on the processes underlying the
socialization of children’s prosocial tendencies. Additionally, researchers are beginning to pay atten-
tion to the mechanisms by which children’s prosocial actions vary for children in different cultures,
although more work in this area is needed.
Moral Judgment
Socializers typically have been assigned a circumscribed role in moral development by cognitive
developmental theorists. Thus, it is not surprising that the contributions of parenting to the develop-
ment of moral reasoning have received relatively little attention. Those that do typically pertain to
aspects of the environment that Kohlberg deemed important: opportunities for perspective taking and
for engendering cognitive conflict.
Provision of Role-Taking Opportunities and Promotion of Autonomous Thinking

The research provides some support for Kohlberg’s assertion that provision of role-taking opportuni-
ties for the autonomous construction of moral ideas fosters children’s moral reasoning. For example,
Holstein (1972) found that parents who encouraged their children’s participation in discussion and
decision-making are more likely to have children who reason at relatively high levels (see, how-
ever, Speicher, 1992). Leahy (1981) found that adolescent males’ level of moral judgment was corre-
lated with low maternal punitiveness and control, low maternal emphasis on maintaining boundaries
between the child and others, and paternal acceptance and incorporation of the son into the family.
Findings for daughters were less consistent. Daughters’ higher-level reasoning was correlated with low
paternal ambivalence about autonomy, low paternal protectiveness, and low maternal intrusiveness,
as well as paternal emphasis on control and supervision (see Eisenberg, 1977, for somewhat similar
results). Similarly, Pratt, Skoe, and Arnold (2004) showed that parental autonomy encouragement dur-
ing adolescence was related to higher moral reasoning in young adulthood. However, more work in
this area is needed—especially with regard to the role that children’s moral judgment has on parenting
practices. That is, perhaps parents provide more autonomy when their teens exhibit higher levels of
moral reasoning.
Studies on actual or observed styles of parent–child interactions have produced a mixed pattern
of findings. In an early study of mothers’ and sons’ discussions of moral dilemmas, mothers of higher
reasoning boys, in comparison with mothers whose sons exhibited lower moral reasoning, were more
106
dominant and hostile and less warm and encouraging (Jurkovic and Prentice, 1974). Buck, Walsh,
and Rothman (1981) examined the relation of parental practices during a discussion of how to handle
sons’ aggression with 10- to 13-year-old boys’ moral reasoning. Boys with higher moral reasoning
had parents who considered their son’s view, used reasoning themselves, and tended to encourage the
expression of the son’s view.
Language during parent–child interactions also has been examined. In a study of elementary school
girls, Kruger (1992) coded transactive (reasoning about reasoning) statements, questions, and responses
in mother–child discussions of moral dilemmas. High use by mother and daughter of transactive state-
ments (spontaneously produced critiques, refinements, extensions, or significant paraphrases of ideas),
particularly those that focused on the partner’s ideas, was associated with daughters’ higher-level moral
reasoning immediately after the interaction session. Thus, daughters’ moral reasoning was associated
with egalitarian interactions with their mothers in which both partners were highly involved in a
discussion of the moral dilemmas. Similar findings were obtained for fathers’ (but not mothers’) use of
transactive statements with their adolescents (Pratt, Arnold, Pratt, and Diessner, 1999).
Walker and colleagues (Walker and Hennig, 1999; Walker and Taylor, 1991; Walker, Hennig, and
Krettenauer, 2000) investigated the role of parental emphasis on autonomous thinking and provision
of opportunities for critical thinking. Parents’ interaction style during a discussion of moral issues
with their first-, fourth-, seventh-, or tenth-grade child was used to predict elementary and high
school children’s reasoning two or four years later. During interaction sessions, parents and their child
discussed hypothetical and real-life moral dilemmas (one in the child’s life) and attempted to reach a
consensus. Parents generally used lower levels of moral reasoning when discussing issues with their
children than was evidenced in an individual assessment of the parents’ reasoning level, and they used
lower-level reasoning more with children reasoning at low levels. Children’s moral reasoning years
later was best predicted by discussions of the real-life rather than hypothetical moral dilemma. Parental
behaviors that best predicted children’s moral growth were characterized by a Socratic questioning
style, supportive interactions, and the presentation of higher-level reasoning. A large discrepancy
between parents and child (about one stage) was predictive of children’s development. Moral growth
was associated with parental behaviors, such as eliciting the child’s opinion, drawing out the child’s
reasoning with appropriate probing questions, paraphrasing, and checking for understanding, all in
the context of emotional support and attentiveness. Parent behaviors, such as critiquing and directly
challenging the child (especially in a hostile manner), presenting of counterconsiderations, and sim-
ply providing information, were not associated with children’s moral growth. Direct challenges to
the child’s reasoning may have been viewed as hostile by the child and, consequently, may have been
counterproductive, whereas simple provision of information may have been viewed as lecturing.
Overall, Walker and his colleagues’ findings suggest that parental practices that promote consideration
of higher-level moral ideas but do so in a supportive rather than heavy-handed manner are associated
with children’s moral growth. Recchia, Wainryb, Bourne, and Pasupathi (2014) observed mothers and
their children or adolescents discussing past moral actions and found that mothers and their offspring
discussed positive consequences for helping others, and mothers often emphasized children’s positive
moral behaviors and characteristics (“You are such a compassionate person”) in these conversations.
Thus, conversations about moral behaviors provide important opportunities for moral socialization.
Disciplinary Practices
Comprehensive reviews of relations of various modes of discipline to children’s moral development
were published by Hoffman in 1970(b) and Brody and Shaffer in 1982. Thus, in this review their
findings are cited and updated with discussion of subsequent work.
Consistent with Hoffman’s theorizing, both Hoffman (1970) and Brody and Shaffer (1982) found
predominantly negative relations between parental power-assertive practices and children’s moral
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reasoning, particularly for mothers. Punitive discipline has been negatively related to moral reasoning
in European-American and Mexican-American, but not Taiwanese, youth (Shen, Carlo, and Knight,
2013). Love withdrawal procedures were for the most part unrelated to children’s moral reasoning,
although both positive and negative associations were found. Furthermore, the preponderance of
studies supports the proposed positive relation between mothers’ use of inductions and children’s
moral reasoning; findings for fathers are rare and less consistent, although more positive than negative
relations are apparent (Janssens and Dekovic, 1997; Janssen, Janssens, and Gerris, 1992).
The results of empirical studies since the 1980s tend to be similar. In general, inductive parental
practices have been associated with higher-level moral reasoning in offspring (but not always, see
Carlo, Knight, et al., 2011). In a study of Dutch children aged 9 to 13, both mothers’ and fathers’ use
of inductions rather than power assertion was significantly positively related to the level of children’s
moral reasoning (Janssen et al.,1992), although in a similar sample, maternal, but not paternal, induc-
tions related to Dutch children’s moral reasoning about prosocial moral conflicts (Janssens and Gerris,
1992). In another study with elementary-school-aged Dutch children, mothers’ but not fathers’ use of
victim-oriented inductions was associated with children’s internalized moral judgments (de Veer and
Janssens, 1992). Thus, the strength of the roles of mothers versus fathers is somewhat unclear. Fur-
ther complexities in research show that the positive relation frequently holds for only some children
and not others: for upper-middle-class girls and older boys in India but not other sex, age, and social
class groups (Saraswathi and Sundaresan, 1980); for older (15 to 16 years) but not younger upper-
middle class boys and girls in India (Parikh, 1980); and for Israeli fathers’ and adolescents’ reports of
parental induction, but not mothers’ reports of their own use of induction (Eisikovits and Sagi, 1982).
Although inductive discipline is not related to all measures of moral reasoning for all samples, induc-
tive discipline seems, in general, to be associated with higher levels of children’s moral reasoning.
Furthermore, the literature also indicates that inductive discipline predicts offsprings’ moral reasoning
through its impact on children’s sympathy and/or perspective taking (Eisenberg, Zhou, and Koller,
2001; Lopez, Bonenberger, and Schneider, 2001; Shen et al., 2013).
The style of parenting, more than any one disciplinary practice, may be associated with children’s
moral reasoning. Consistent with this notion, Janssens and Dekovic (1997) found that children were
higher in moral reasoning about helping dilemmas if their parents were supportive, authoritative (e.g.,
gave explanations or suggestions, asked the child stimulating questions to help find solutions), and used
less restrictive practices (e.g., commands or orders such as “don’t do that”) with their children. Other
investigators have noted relations between authoritative parenting and higher-level moral reasoning
among adolescents (Boyes and Allen, 1993; Pratt et al., 1999; Pratt et al., 2004). Similarly, Laible and
colleagues (2008) showed that persistent discipline was related to adolescents’ higher level of moral
cognition (internalization and moral reasoning).
Affective Environment
Hoffman (1970) argued that parental warmth provides an optimal environment for socialization
because children are more likely to attend to parents and care about pleasing their parents when the
relationship generally is supportive. There is some support for the role of parental warmth in fostering
children’s moral reasoning (Powers, 1988; Palmer and Hollin, 1996). Walker and Taylor (1991) found
that children’s moral growth was linked to a supportive, positive environment during family discussion
of moral issues. Similarly, Malti et al. (2013) showed that high levels of parental emotional support were
related to consistently high levels of moral reasoning throughout middle childhood (see also Buck et al.,
1981, Speicher, 1992, for similar findings). In other studies, researchers have found relations between
parental nurturance and moral reasoning for one parent but not the other, one sex but not the other,
one age but not others, or for children from middle-class but not lower-income families (Hart, 1988;
Hoffman and Saltzstein, 1967; Eisenberg, Lennon, and Roth, 1983; Smart and Smart, 1976).
108
Perhaps parental warmth does not exert a direct effect on children’s moral reasoning; it may sim-
ply influence the effectiveness of other parental practices in fostering the growth of moral reasoning
(i.e., it may be a moderator variable). As suggested by Baumrind’s work (1971, 1993), when parental
warmth is not combined with appropriate parental disciplinary practices, it may result in a permissive
parenting style, one that is not associated with positive child outcomes. This research may explain
why associations between parental warmth and moral reasoning are mixed in the research literature
and why authoritative parenting (which includes support, control, and practices such as induction)
has been linked to higher-level moral judgment (Boyes and Allen, 1993; Janssens and Dekovic, 1997;
Pratt et al., 1999). Carlo, Mestre, et al. (2011) showed that both mothers’ and fathers’ high warmth
and low strict control each related to higher adolescent moral reasoning.
Relation Between Parents’ and Children’s Moral Reasoning

A number of investigators have examined the correlation between parents’ and children’s levels of
moral reasoning. A positive relation could reflect a number of factors, including similarity between
parents’ and children’s cognitive abilities or parents with higher-level moral reasoning promoting
their children’s moral reasoning by stimulating cognitive conflict or using optimal childrearing
practices. Findings have been inconsistent. Some researchers have found significant correlations
between parents’ and children’s moral reasoning (Buck et al., 1981; Janssen et al., 1992); others have
not (Walker and Taylor, 1991). In one longitudinal sample, mothers’ and fathers’ levels of moral
judgment were positively related to those of sons and daughters in adolescence and early adulthood;
in another sample, only fathers’ and sons’ reasoning were consistently positively related (Speicher,
1994). Moreover, in some research, the size of the relation varies with the age of the child (Parikh,
1980; compare with Speicher, 1994). Furthermore, adolescents who reported closer agreement
with their parents about the importance of moral values had parents who were more authoritative,
suggesting that adolescents may be more receptive to socialization efforts when parents are warmer
and appropriately demanding (Pratt, Hunsberger, Pancer, and Alisat, 2003). In general, there appears
to be a weak positive relation between children’s and parents’ moral reasoning, but one that varies
across samples, gender of parent or child, and sometimes age of child, and may depend on general
parenting style.
An important question is whether parents at different levels of reasoning evidence different styles
of interaction in moral discussions. Walker and Taylor (1991) found no evidence of a relation between
parents’ moral reasoning and their interaction style. In contrast, Buck et al. (1981) found that parents
who reason at higher levels had sons who participated and reasoned more and who communicated
more fully in family discussions. These findings indirectly support the notion that parents at high
levels of moral reasoning create a different family environment than those at lower levels. In fact, Jans-
sen et al. (1992) found that parents’ moral reasoning and their use of inductive versus power-assertive
discipline were correlated. Thus, the relation between parent and child moral reasoning probably
arises at least partly because parents who use higher-level reasoning also use more inductive and less
power-assertive practices. However, children reasoning at higher levels also may elicit different paren-
tal reactions.
Cultural Determinants of Prosocial Moral Reasoning

As with prosocial behavior, cultural environments undoubtedly influence children’s prosocial moral
reasoning. Although research on cultural differences in prosocial moral reasoning is limited, most of
the findings have noted more similarities than differences across cultures (Carlo, Mestre, et al., 2011;
Mahtani Stewart and McBride-Chang, 2000; see Eisenberg et al., 2006). Chadha and Misra (2004)
studied Indian children and showed similar structure of prosocial moral reasoning, with only a few
109
distinctive lines of reasoning that seem to be indicative of the Indian culture (such as shame orienta-
tion or community brotherhood).
When cultural differences have been found, however, the pattern of differences is not very consis-
tent. For example, Carlo, Koller, Eisenberg, Da Silva, and Frohlich (1996) found that U.S. adolescents
scored higher on internalized prosocial moral reasoning than Brazilian adolescents, and Spanish ado-
lescents scored higher than Turkish adolescents in another study (Kumru, Carlo, Mestre, and Samper,
2012). More subtle differences were found in the prosocial moral reasoning of children from the
United States compared to those in Israel and Germany (Boehnke, Silbereisen, Eisenberg, Reykowski,
and Palmonari, 1989; Eisenberg, Hertz-Lazarowitz, and Fuchs, 1990).
Beyond cultural and subcultural group differences, it is important to understand how socializa-
tion practices might promote prosocial moral reasoning deemed particularly salient to specific cul-
tures. Few researchers have examined such questions; as an exception, Shen et al. (2013) showed that
punitive parenting was negatively related to prosocial moral reasoning in Mexican-American and
European-American adolescents but was unrelated to prosocial moral reasoning for Taiwanese youth.
These findings indicate that culture may moderate the effects of particular parenting practices on
prosocial moral reasoning.
Further, a focus on cultural values provides evidence of the processes that may account for cul-
tural differences. For example, the importance of family cohesion, familism, is central to Mexican-
American culture. Indeed, the cultural value of familism has been shown to predict higher prosocial
moral reasoning in Mexican-American youth (Knight, Carlo, Basilio, and Jacobson, 2015). Further
research studying a wider array of cultures and subcultures, with a focus on such mediational pro-
cesses is needed.
Summary
Although there is relatively little research on the socialization of moral reasoning, particularly by par-
ents, some tentative conclusions can be drawn. Children with higher-level moral reasoning tend to
have parents who are supportive and encourage autonomous thinking, who stimulate their children’s
moral thinking by means of their conversational style and by involving their children in moral discus-
sions, and who use inductive rather than power-assertive modes of reasoning. In addition, there may
be a weak relation between parents’ and children’s moral reasoning, one that is partially mediated by
the nature of the parent–child interaction. However, it is unclear if these findings generalize to non-
Western countries, as there is little work on relations of parenting to moral judgment in those coun-
tries. Because it is unclear that systems for coding moral judgment developed in the United States by
Kohlberg and others appropriately represent the development of moral judgment in non-Western,
nonindustrialized countries, the task of determining what aspects of parenting relate to level of and
moral judgment in those countries is especially challenging.
Parent Training Programs for Improving Prosocial Development

A number of prevention and intervention programs have been designed and implemented with
the goal of improving prosocial environments. Consistent with Kazdin’s (1987) recommendations,
interventions are increasingly multidimensional and delivered from a developmental perspective. In a
meta-analysis, Malti, Chaparro, Zuffianò, and Colasante (2016) examined 19 school-based interven-
tion programs that emphasized the promotion of empathy or related constructs (e.g., perspective tak-
ing, prosocial behavior). Program effects were stronger when programs were implemented at younger
ages and incorporated skills such as emotion understanding and perspective taking. Three such pro-
grams will be briefly reviewed (also see McCord and Tremblay, 1992).
110
The Fast Track Program utilizes a multicomponent longitudinal design to assess the effects of the
program’s seven components, including parent training and parent–child relationship enhancement
(Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group or CPPRG, 1992). The Fast Track program offers a
universal intervention, beginning at grade 1 and continuing through grade 6. The 10% of children
displaying the highest level of conduct problems were selected to participate in an additional series
of interventions. Parents in the intervention group reported more warmth, more consistent disci-
pline, and less harsh discipline (CPPRG, 1999a). Children in classrooms where the intervention was
delivered showed decreased levels of aggression (CPPRG, 1999b) and improved interpersonal skills/
prosocial behavior (Bierman et al., 2010; Sorensen, Dodge, and CPPRG, 2016). Furthermore, parents
and teachers credit children in the intervention group with making positive changes in their behaviors
(CPPRG, 1999a).
The Metropolitan Area Child Study is a longitudinal study of a prevention field trial meant to
evaluate the impact of a school-wide, peer, and family intervention designed to prevent antisocial
behavior in urban children (second- to fifth-graders) living in poor neighborhoods. The program
was designed to address how much intervention is necessary and how the process of the intervention
affects children’s behaviors (Guerra, Eron, Huesmann, Tolan, and Van Acker, 1997). The alteration
of parenting practices was associated with decreases in children’s aggressive behavior (Tolan, Hanish,
McKay, and Dickey, 2002).
The Oregon Social Learning Center tested a universal prevention program for conduct disorder
for first-graders and fifth-graders. The multicomponent program is delivered in the home and school
(Reid, Eddy, Fetrow, and Stoolmiller, 1999). Teachers were exposed to new ways of managing off-task
students, and parents complete a parent training program. The most aggressive children experienced
the most improvement (Stoolmiller, Eddy, and Reid, 2000). Additionally, mothers in the intervention
group who used the most aversive behaviors initially experienced the most change (Reid et al., 1999).
The three programs reviewed show promise that socializers can reduce children’s aggressive behav-
iors. As more data emerge, it will be important to examine the cost-effectiveness of delivering large-
scale interventions.
Future Directions in Understanding Parenting Influences on

Our understanding of the role of parents in the prosocial development of children is more complete in
regard to some aspects of functioning than others. We know quite a bit about parental contributions
to the development of children’s prosocial and aggressive behavior, and much less about their role
in the development of guilt, dishonesty and lying, and moral reasoning. Furthermore, mothers have
been studied much more frequently than fathers, with the consequence that we know much more
about mothers’ than fathers’ roles in moral socialization. In addition, much of the available informa-
tion comes from studies of middle-class European-American children; it is quite possible that parental
practices and characteristics have different meanings and consequences in different socioeconomic
and cultural groups (Bornstein, 1995).
Although research has provided us with some information regarding the correlates of children’s
morality, there is much to learn about the processes involved in the socialization of children’s moral
behavior and reasoning. It is one thing to know that a given parental characteristic or practice is
associated with children’s moral functioning; it is another to know why this is so. There is a need for
research examining how parents and children jointly influence children’s moral development. In addi-
tion, there is much to learn about the variables that moderate the relation of quality and type of par-
enting to moral outcomes, including gender of the child, cultural and socioeconomic status, children’s
temperament, and the presence of factors that buffer the negative effects of poor-quality parenting.
111
Conclusions
It is possible to draw some tentative conclusions regarding the role of parents’ behaviors and character-
istics in children’s moral development. In general, moral children tend to have parents who are warm
and supportive rather than use inductive discipline, provide opportunities for children to learn about
others’ perspectives and feelings, and involve children in family decision-making and in the process
of thinking about moral decisions. Parents of moral children also are likely to model moral behaviors
and thinking themselves and provide opportunities for their children to do so. Parents who exhibit
this configuration of behaviors appear to foster the development of concern and caring about others
and create a positive parent–child relationship that the child is invested in maintaining. In addition,
these parents provide information about what behaviors are expected of the child and why and foster
an internal rather than external sense of morality. Children who develop internal motives for acting
in moral ways based on moral principles and caring for others are likely to act in a moral manner in
diverse settings, particularly if their level of moral reasoning is relatively mature.
Both theory and the empirical data support the conclusion that parents play an important role in
their children’s prosocial and moral development. This is not surprising because children learn much
about relationships and ways of treating other people in the familial context. However, children are
not simply passive recipients of moral values and behaviors; they appear to be active participants in the
process of moral socialization. Children’s cognitive abilities influence what they understand, and their
temperament and style of interaction affect how parents react to them and discipline them. Styles of
parent–child interaction evolve as a consequence of characteristics and behaviors of both participants.
Acknowledgments
Work on this chapter was supported by funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of
Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (R01HD068522).
The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official
views of the NIH.
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5
PARENTING AND MORAL
DEVELOPMENT
Judith G. Smetana, Courtney L. Ball, and Ha Na Yoo
Introduction
The role of parents has been a central but somewhat vexing issue in the psychological study of moral
development. Although scholars typically consider parents essential to the socialization of children’s
moral norms and values, researchers vary as to whether they believe that morality is directly transmit-
ted—and thus differ in how central they view parents to these developmental processes. Socialization
is typically defined as “the processes whereby naïve individuals are taught the skills, behavior patterns,
values, and motivations needed for competent functioning in the[ir] culture” (Maccoby, 2007, p. 13).
According to this view, adult members of society, and parents in particular, are responsible for trans-
mitting societal norms and values to children. Other scholars, especially those from earlier structural-
developmental perspectives (e.g., Kohlberg, 1969; Piaget, 1932/1965), are more agnostic about whether
parents directly inculcate moral norms. Instead, these researchers view morality as constructed from
social experiences broadly considered, and with a greater emphasis on peer interactions. Indeed, some
scholars (e.g., Piaget, 1932/1965) even view parents as inhibiting moral growth. This chapter describes
how these wide variations in views are connected to ongoing debates about the nature and definition
of morality as well as the processes theorized to account for its development. Researchers mostly agree,
however, that morality pertains to individuals’ treatment of others and how individuals ought to behave.
In the present chapter, we review theoretical approaches and related empirical research on moral
development. Our primary focus is on how different theories and corresponding research inform
our understanding of parents’ contributions to young persons’ moral development. We focus mostly
on the prescriptive, obligatory aspects of morality, which typically pertain to inhibitory acts—the
“don’ts” of morality (like not stealing money for food) rather than the more positive or prosocial
acts (like giving money for food to a poor person; Kahn, 1992), as these discretionary behaviors
are covered elsewhere (Spinrad, Eisenberg, and Valiente, 2019). In the first section of our chapter,
we provide an overview of three foundational psychological theories central to research on moral
development: psychoanalytic theory, behaviorism and its more recent instantiation in social learning
theory, and structural-developmental theory. We consider each theory’s perspective on parents’ role in
moral development. These foundational theories have evolved into newer forms, and these contem-
porary theories are discussed in the section that follows. Next, we draw on these various theoretical
approaches to consider different strands of contemporary research on parenting and moral develop-
ment. This is followed by some reflection on the limitations of our knowledge and future directions
for research. In the final section, we briefly consider implications for practice.
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Parenting and Moral Development
Foundational Theories of Moral Development

Three “grand theories” of development guided the early psychological research on moral devel-
opment: psychoanalytic theory (Freud, 1930/1961), behaviorism—as initially described by Watson
(1930), later expanded by Skinner (1971), and elaborated by social learning theorists—and structural-
developmental theory, which originated with Piaget (1932/1965) and was further developed by Kohl-
berg (1969). More complete descriptions of these foundational theories’ contributions to the study
of moral development can be found in Killen and Smetana (2015), but here we briefly outline their
views and their contributions to our understanding of parenting and moral development.
Psychoanalytic Theory
Early parent–child relationships were central to Freud’s (1930/1961) theory of psychosexual devel-
opment. Development during the first few years of life was described as occurring through a series
of developmental stages that posed conflicts between satisfying bodily urges and the need to comply
with societal expectations. According to Freud, progress through the stages was biologically based but
was also influenced by the environment, as instantiated in parent–child relationships. Freud’s develop-
mental progression culminated at around 5 or 6 years of age in the Oedipal conflict, with its resolu-
tion leading to the development of the superego, the moral “organ” that contains the conscience and
the ego ideal. Prior to the development of the superego, children’s morality was considered entirely
governed by external processes and dependent on parental enforcement. With the emergence of the
superego, parental values were internalized in the ego ideal and enforced by the conscience in the
form of guilt for misbehavior. In Freud’s view, guilt was a punitive force reflecting the child’s aggres-
sion towards the father, which is turned inward towards the self as the Oedipal conflict is resolved. The
process of moral development was seen as universal, but the content—the particular moral values that
children internalized in their ego ideal—was contingent on the particular values parents endorsed.
Freud developed his theory from clinical insights rather than empirical research. Researchers
quickly realized that Freud’s theoretical propositions regarding how children come to internalize
parental values (referred to as the child’s identification with the parent) produced internally inconsis-
tent and contradictory hypotheses, making them difficult to test empirically. However, in the 1940s
and 1950s, researchers melded Freudian theory—particularly his notion of drives—with behavior-
ist stimulus-response theory (see Grusec, 1992, 2006, for a more detailed discussion). The resulting
research focused on children’s internalization of parental values. Sears, Maccoby, and Levin (1957) was
one of the first studies to examine the effects of parental discipline on children’s conscience develop-
ment and moral behavior. Their study was ultimately unsuccessful, however, particularly in articulating
and testing the Freudian drive aspects of this theoretical synthesis. Although many of Freud’s theoreti-
cal notions (and particularly his formulation of biologically based drives) were ultimately abandoned,
other aspects of Freud’s writings have had a lasting impact on moral developmental research, albeit
transformed in significant ways. Thus, Freud’s influence is felt in the emphasis on early childhood as a
critical period for moral development, the description of the conscience as an internalized agency that
enforces moral values, and the focus on the role of guilt in maintaining moral behavior.
Behaviorism and Social Learning Theory
Behaviorism
As elaborated in Watson’s (1930) theory of classical conditioning and Skinner’s (1971) subsequent the-
ory of operant conditioning, behaviorism asserted that psychological theorists should focus on study-
ing observable behavior. Although much of the empirical support for these theories was obtained
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Judith G. Smetana et al.
from experiments on animal conditioning, Watson’s and Skinner’s research had a major impact on
theories of morality (and American psychology, more generally). In Beyond Freedom and Dignity,
Skinner (1971) devoted a chapter to the assertion that moral values possess no special status—that is,
they do not differ from other learned behaviors—and like them, are acquired through reinforcement.
Thus, environmental contingencies were thought to account for moral behavior. Skinner and his fol-
lowers were not concerned with child development and accordingly did not emphasize the role of
parents, as behaviorists believed that the same reinforcement processes were operative across the life
span and relevant to all learned behavior.
Social Learning Theory

Bandura and Mischel drew on Skinnerian theory to understand children’s socialization. Their influ-
ential finding that reinforcement could not account for all of children’s learning led to the formu-
lation of social learning theory (Bandura and McDonald, 1963). They proposed that, in addition
to reinforcement, children acquire novel behavior through processes of imitation and observation.
Indeed, observational learning was seen as the most central and efficient source of children’s learning.
Several influential laboratory experimental paradigms were developed to test these notions and
are still in use in moral development research today. For instance, in Bandura and McDonald’s (1963)
“forbidden toy” paradigm (also referred to as a resistance to temptation task), children were given pairs
of toys to play with and told to refrain from touching the more attractive one when the experimenter
left the room; the measure of internalized morality was the amount of time the child desisted from
touching the toy. In the cheating paradigm, children were left alone to play a game or correct a test;
morality was measured in terms of how quickly and how much they cheated. Two central assump-
tions of these approaches were that these experimental situations simulated the types of interactions
parents had with children and that the findings of these studies generalize beyond the laboratory.
These accounts stressed the role of adult status and power, as children were found to be more likely
to model and learn correct behavior from more powerful (but also more nurturant) models. Cogni-
tive components were eventually incorporated into their approach, as reflected in the name change to
social-cognitive learning theory. This perspective led to extensive research on the conditions that lead
children to emulate and comply with adult standards (cf. Bandura and Walters, 1977). Grusec (2006)
noted that Bandura did not conceptualize internalization as a strictly passive (“social mold”) process.
Rather, he proposed that children attend to conflicting information and choose which behavior or
norm to adopt based on a number of factors, including the characteristics of the socialization agent
and the value placed on the norm. But because the primary focus of this research was on compliance
with parental directives, the early socialization theorists did not attend to the content of the values
parents wanted children to acquire.
Structural-Developmental Theory
Although Piaget (1932/1965) was primarily concerned with the origins of knowledge, The Moral
Judgment of the Child extended his constructivist theory to consider the development of moral judg-
ment and behavior. In keeping with the tenets of constructivism, Piaget asserted that children’s moral
understanding emerges from the continual interaction of adaptive, biological mechanisms and envi-
ronmental influences (mainly peer interactions). Piaget asserted that the hierarchical nature of parent–
child relationships imposes constraints on children’s moral understanding. Specifically, he argued that
children develop a heteronomous stage of moral reasoning in middle childhood, where morality is
viewed in terms of unilateral respect for parental rules and authority. Peer interactions were seen as
more equal and reciprocal than parent–child interactions and as characterized by mutual respect and
cooperation. Thus, Piaget proposed that children’s participation in such interactions beyond the family
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transformed children’s heteronomous reasoning into a second stage of autonomous moral reasoning,
where rules were evaluated based on individuals’ intentions and needs. Piaget’s theory offered a radical
departure from both psychoanalytic and behaviorist theories in that parent–child relationships were
seen as inhibiting moral growth, whereas, by providing opportunities for children to work through
moral conflicts, peer interactions were characterized as promoting more mature moral understanding.
Kohlberg (1969; Colby and Kohlberg, 1987) was one of the first U.S. advocates of Piaget’s con-
structivist approach, but he believed that Piaget’s tasks led Piaget to underestimate the nature of moral
reasoning. These concerns, along with more general criticisms of behaviorist approaches prominent
at that time, led Kohlberg to study moral reasoning in older children, adolescents, and emerging adults
using hypothetical dilemmas that presented conflicts between issues involving law, life, interpersonal
obligations, trust, and authority. Based on responses to these complex dilemmas and informed by phi-
losopher Rawls’s (1971) theory of justice, Kohlberg proposed that moral judgments develop through a
series of six universal, sequential, and hierarchical stages of progressively more differentiated and inte-
grated concepts of justice. In this view, individuals are unable to distinguish between moral principles
and more arbitrary conventional norms until early adulthood, when (and if ) they develop principled
moral reasoning. Although the theory was substantially revised during the 1970s and 1980s based
on extensive research, key aspects of his theory were not empirically supported (see Lapsley, 2006;
Turiel, 2015).
Kohlberg’s focus was on the underlying structure of moral reasoning rather than on the content
of particular judgments. Kohlberg was interested in identifying the specific mechanisms that facilitate
higher stages of moral reasoning; he sought these processes in interactions with peers, not parents.
Indeed, echoing Piaget, he stated, “family participation is not unique or critically necessary for moral
development” (1976, p. 399). Accordingly, Kohlberg’s colleagues (Berkowitz and Gibbs, 1983) ana-
lyzed college students’ discussions of hypothetical moral dilemmas and found that discussions that
involve cognitive challenges to another’s moral reasoning (termed transactive dialogues) were most
effective in predicting stage change (although the changes that resulted were modest, at best). These
findings informed the development of moral education programs in schools that promoted the use of
peer discussions of hypothetical dilemmas to foster moral growth. Research discussed later, however,
also examined the role of parents in facilitating higher-level moral reasoning.
Although not following directly from Piaget or Kohlberg’s work, Hoffman’s research on parental
discipline is structural-developmental in its theoretical roots. Hoffman (1970) conducted an extensive
analysis and critique of Bandura’s research on imitation as the central mechanism of moral internaliza-
tion and concluded that the effects of modeling found in this body of research reflected an external—
not an internalized—moral orientation. For instance, he argued that children imitated deviant models
(such as an aggressive actor), suggesting that such models had a disinhibiting effect on behavior.
However, conclusive evidence for the role of modeling was not obtained in situations where models
inhibited negative behaviors (for instance, when models refrained from hitting).
Hoffman (1963, 1970) also analyzed prior research on parental discipline techniques and refor-
mulated them into three types of discipline practices hypothesized to have different effects on moral
internalization. Reflecting structural-developmental tenets, Hoffman asserted that internalization of
values is fostered by inductive discipline, where parental demands are accompanied by reasoning and
explanations and children participate in decision-making. These practices were thought to facilitate
an internalized moral orientation by helping the child to understand (and feel guilt for) the negative
consequences of misbehavior for others. Guilt was seen as a positive force in internalization because
it draws on children’s empathic abilities and makes it more likely that children would be concerned
about others in the future. In contrast, Hoffman proposed that both parental love withdrawal (with-
holding affection and attention) and power assertion (the use of force, restraint, or physical punishment)
were punitive strategies that would foster an external moral orientation. These practices were thought
to control the child’s behavior by instilling anxiety and a more negative sense of guilt focused on fear
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of punishment or loss of affection. Hoffman’s theorizing and research (Hoffman and Saltzstein, 1967)
remains influential both in research on parental discipline and in conceptualizations of the role of
empathy and guilt in moral development.
Summary
Classic psychoanalytic theory emphasized early childhood as a critical developmental period and
focused on conscience as the central moral agency and guilt as facilitating moral behavior. Behavior-
ism and social learning theory highlighted the role of environmental contingencies, particularly pat-
terns of reinforcement and processes of imitation and observation, in the acquisition and maintenance
of moral behavior. Accordingly, these accounts stressed the importance of adult status and power and
generated extensive research investigating the conditions that facilitate children’s internalization of and
compliance with parental standards. In turn, Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s structural-developmental theories
focused on children and adolescents’ active role (in interaction with environmental influences) in their
own moral development and prioritized the significance of peer over adult/parent interactions. These
theories continue to influence current theoretical approaches to moral development.
Current Theories of Moral Development

Reflecting their different meta-theoretical commitments, the foundational theories just reviewed vary
as to whether they define morality as pertaining primarily to emotions, behaviors, or cognitions. They
also differ in how they define mature morality and the processes thought to account for its devel-
opment, including the centrality of parents to children’s moral development. But as developmental
science has moved towards a more integrated, relational meta-theory (Overton, 2015), these broad
“conceptual splits” (in Overton’s terms) have been mostly resolved, and there has been much more
integration and recognition of common ground. For instance, rather than viewing emotions, cogni-
tions, and behaviors as distinct or as dualities (e.g., emotions versus judgments or judgments versus
behavior), most current theories recognize their interrelations.
More germane to the concerns of the present chapter, major changes have occurred in views
regarding the role of parents in moral development. As we describe later, Freudian notions of con-
science have been reconceptualized, with parental interactions now playing a more direct and cen-
tral role. Socialization theories continue to focus on parental contributions but have increasingly
acknowledged the child’s agency or active construction of morality. Social domain theory, a construc-
tivist approach that emerged in response to critiques of Kohlbergian theory, has considered parents’
contributions to children’s moral understanding and emotions.
Freudian Theory Revisited

Although interest in the conscience as a central mechanism in moral development lost favor for many
decades, it has been revived and reinvigorated. Kochanska and her colleagues have acknowledged their
debt to Freudian and neo-psychoanalytic theories (Kochanska and Kim, 2014), although their broader
program of research also draws heavily on social learning theory and incorporates attachment theory
(Ainsworth, Bell, and Stayton, 1974; Bowlby, 1969/1982). Kochanska and her colleagues view the
conscience, understood as internalized values and standards of behavior (Kochanska, Koenig, Barry,
Kim, and Yoon, 2010), as emerging at much younger ages (i.e., among older infants and toddlers) than
Freudian theory proposed. Indeed, toddlerhood and early childhood are considered critical periods
for moral development, particularly for the processes seen as foundational for conscience develop-
ment (Kochanska and Thompson, 1997). Furthermore, their formulation regarding the structure of
conscience has been derived empirically rather than theoretically. Consistent with Freudian notions,
126
however, the focus has been on how children internalize adult norms by developing internal mecha-
nisms for inhibiting negative and promoting positive behaviors. The theoretical emphasis on guilt
relative to other moral emotions also is consistent with Freudian theory, although its conceptualiza-
tion is more akin to Hoffman’s positive view than to Freud’s more punitive characterization of guilt.
Kochanska and her colleagues define conscience as an autonomous inner guidance system that is
free of external control and leads to self-regulated, rule-compatible conduct (internalization of paren-
tal prohibitions and requests; Kochanska and Aksan, 2006; Kochanska et al., 2010). More specifically,
they have examined conscience as an integration of moral emotions and behavior, self-regulatory
and motivational processes, and moral cognition (Kochanska and Thompson, 1997). Kochanska and
colleagues’ results suggest that moral emotions and moral behavior (typically assessed as compliance
without surveillance to parental rules, as assessed in nonsocial contexts) are related yet (statistically)
separable constructs that become more stable and coherent over time (Kochanska and Thompson,
1997)—a finding that is more consistent with social learning theory than with the Freudian notion of
conscience as a unified internal agency. Moreover, although Kochanska included moral cognition in
her notion of conscience, it occupies a lesser role in her empirical work, perhaps because conscience
is typically measured in early childhood.
According to Kochanska, the development of the conscience leads to autonomous behavior, where
children are genuinely motivated to comply with parental wishes and values, broadly considered.
Thus, she has drawn distinctions between committed compliance, which is associated with conscience
development and involves children’s willing and eager desire to follow parental directives, and situ-
ational compliance, where compliance is externally maintained (Kochanska and Aksan, 1995; Kochan-
ska, Aksan, and Koenig, 1995). Young children’s cumulative experiences involving (non)compliance
with parental rules and consequent moral emotions are seen as gradually incorporated into views
about their moral self (representation of oneself as good and moral). For instance, a longitudinal study
found that individual differences in parental prohibitions in early childhood (from 25 to 52 months
of age) were positively associated with the moral self at 67 months (Kochanska et al., 2010). Similar
to theories of moral identity and character discussed later, the moral self links conscience with moral
motivation and conduct. By adolescence, the internalization of values also involves greater integration
of moral values into the self-concept (Krettenauer, Campbell, and Hertz, 2013).
Social Learning Theory Revisited

Grusec can be credited with important transformations in the social learning theory/socialization
view of parenting and moral development. Prior to her research and theorizing, these approaches
did not pay much attention to the content of the values children internalized. Starting in the 1980s,
however, Grusec and her colleagues (Grusec, Dix, and Mills, 1982; Grusec and Kuczynski, 1980;
Kuczynski, 1984) examined parental disciplinary responses when parents had different (short- versus
long-term) socialization goals or the child committed different types of transgressions (e.g., harm to
self or objects, or physical or psychological harm to others). Mothers’ use of reasoning versus more
power-assertive strategies varied according to both the type of transgression children committed and
mothers’ childrearing goals (Hastings and Grusec, 1998). Thus, rather than viewing parents as having
a unitary, consistent approach to discipline, Grusec and her colleagues proposed that parents vary their
disciplinary practices according to children’s involvement in different types of events or transgressions.
In later papers, Grusec and others (Grusec and Goodnow, 1994; Grusec, Goodnow, and Kuczynski,
2000) more explicitly acknowledged children’s agency in the socialization process. Their argument
was that, consistent with their prior research as well as social domain theory (discussed in the follow-
ing section), children would be more likely to accept parental reasons and explanations that match
the type of misdeed committed. Therefore, they posited that parental disciplinary practices will be
effective only if applied in ways that are appropriate to the type of situation that elicited a parental
127
response. More generally, they proposed that disciplinary processes positively affect the internalization
of parental values and standards only when children accurately perceive parental messages, as this is
necessary for their acceptance. Grusec and her colleagues delineated a number of factors related to
the parental message (for instance, whether messages are clearly, consistently, and redundantly stated
and whether their importance to the parent is made clear), as well as characteristics of the child (such
as temperament, mood, and developmental status) that influence this process. Further, Grusec and
her colleagues described the process of internalization as proceeding in a series of steps, using an
information processing framework that emphasizes intergenerational agreement about values. They
also articulated other features of parental discipline that may enhance the likelihood of child inter-
nalization. For instance, parents should be autonomy supportive (providing rationales for their rules
and allowing children choices within limits) and consider the child’s perspective, as giving the child
choices may enhance the likelihood that they will comply with parental directives (Grusec, Danyliuk,
Kil, and O’Neill, 2017).
Grusec and Davidov (2010) have proposed a domain-specific socialization model. Drawing on
the insight that children and their caregivers interact in different ways depending on the particular
goals, motivations, values, and skills parents want their children to acquire, these researchers described
five domains of socialization: control, protection, guided learning, group participation, and mutual
reciprocity. Grusec and Davidov (2010) asserted that these domains are characterized by different
socialization goals, social relationships, and social interactions and that effective parenting differs
accordingly. Parent–child interactions in each of the hypothesized domains are seen as guiding chil-
dren’s behavior and, eventually, successful adaptation to society, with different socialization outcomes
associated with each domain.
The control domain appears to be most central to moral development. This domain focuses on chil-
dren’s acceptance and obedience to cultural rules, leading to children’s moral and principled behavior
(as well as self-control). Appropriate parenting in the control domain is characterized by parents’
use of authority that, both in type and degree, successfully modifies children’s behavior to fit the
caregiver’s goals. Moral values also may be facilitated through interactions in other domains. For
instance, although the protection domain pertains to providing comfort and protection, Vinik, John-
ston, Grusec, and Farrell (2013) hypothesized that securely attached children would be better able to
understand others’ distress and respond more sympathetically and with less antisocial behavior than
would children who are more insecurely attached. Children are also thought to learn moral values
through interactions in the guided learning domain (e.g., through conversations that occur outside of
the context of transgressions or conflicts). Such discussions, which allow for parental scaffolding of
conversations, are seen as particularly effective for moral internalization (Grusec and Davidov, 2010).
Structural-Developmental Theory Revisited

Kohlberg’s theory has led to newer theoretical perspectives, including theories focused on the moral
self and social domain theory, which distinguishes morality from other types of social knowledge.
These are described in turn next.
Moral Self and Identity

Kohlberg’s theory left little room for constructs like self, identity, and personality (Lapsley and Narvaez,
2004), which some researchers believe are crucial for explaining links between moral judgment and
action. Indeed, concepts of the moral self (i.e., how children represent their moral behavioral prefer-
ences) and moral identity (i.e., older children and adolescents’ commitment to moral values and their
centrality to their self-concept; Sengsavang and Krettenauer, 2015) pertain primarily to motivational
processes thought to account for the distinction between knowing versus doing the morally right thing
128
(Hardy and Carlo, 2011). Although most developmental research has focused on moral identity in
adolescents, some studies have been conducted on the moral self in early childhood (e.g., Kochan-
ska et al., 2007, 2010) and more recently in middle childhood (Krettenauer et al., 2013; Sengsavang
and Krettenauer, 2015). For instance, Krettenauer and colleagues (2013) demonstrated the presence
of a moral self in children as young as 5 years of age. They used a puppet interview adapted from
Kochanska (2002), although their conceptualization differs from Kochanska’s in defining the moral
self in terms of children’s preferences for fair and just acts (e.g., consistent with social domain theory
definitions of morality). Children watched puppet pairs alternately stating preferences either in favor
of or against prosocial (helping, sharing, caring) and antisocial behaviors (verbal and physical aggres-
sion, stealing). For each (im)moral behavior, children were asked which puppet was more like them
and how similar they are to their chosen puppet (with higher scores indicating a stronger moral self,
understood as behavioral preferences for prosocial and against antisocial behaviors).
Theorists interested in the moral self assert that moral principles become increasingly integrated
into the self-concept through development (Blasi, 2004; Krettenauer, 2011) and that individuals
vary in how integrated moral principles and values are in their self-understanding and self-concepts
(Aquino and Reed, 2002; Hardy and Carlo, 2011). Moral motivations and principles are thought
to be more central to some individuals than others (Blasi, 2004; Colby and Damon, 1994), among
those who emphasize these characteristics, moral schemas are described as continually available, read-
ily primed, and easily activated for processing social information (Hardy, Bhattacharjee, Reed, and
Aquino, 2010; Lapsley and Hill, 2008). Thus, some individuals appear more motivated to translate
their moral beliefs into moral behavior. Indeed, research indicates that the integration of moral val-
ues into one’s sense of self and identity is associated with less antisocial and more prosocial behavior
(Johnston and Krettenauer, 2011; Kochanska et al., 2010), moral emotions (Krettenauer, 2011), con-
cerns for out-group members (Hardy et al., 2010), and sustained moral commitment, as obtained in
retrospective accounts of moral “exemplars” (Colby and Damon, 1994).
Although more consistent with social learning theory than structural-developmental theory, Ban-
dura’s (1999) social-cognitive theory of the moral self likewise asserts that moral reasoning is linked to
moral action through affective, self-regulatory mechanisms. According to Bandura, children develop
a moral self by constructing standards of right and wrong that serve as guides and deterrents for (im)
moral conduct. These standards may be directly socialized or may develop from evaluative reac-
tions to one’s conduct and exposure to the self-evaluative standards modeled by others. Moral agency
involves capacities embedded in broader developmental and self-regulatory systems that are required
to inhibit acting immorally and, inversely, to engage in moral and prosocial conduct (Bandura, 2002).
Self-regulatory processes are used to monitor conduct, judge it in relation to one’s internalized moral
standards and circumstances, and regulate actions, for instance, by activating negative self-sanctions
(e.g., through feelings of guilt or remorse in response to perceived violations; Bandura, 2002). These
mechanisms are considered central for regulating and motivating moral reasoning and behavior (Ban-
dura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, and Pastorelli, 1996).
The construct of moral disengagement describes the process by which individuals reconcile their
involvement in immoral behavior. According to Bandura, self-reactive influences are activated only
when confronting moral issues; moral disengagement occurs after deciding on one’s course of action
and then cognitively restructuring one’s immoral position or conduct into benign or worthy ones. It is
assumed that moral disengagement occurs post-hoc—that is, after selecting a course of action, and that
the moral choices are straightforward rather than involving a complex web of competing concerns
(see Dahl and Waltzer, 2018, for an elaboration of these arguments). Bandura and colleagues assert
that self-sanctions can be disengaged from perceived moral conflict or immoral conduct through
numerous processes, including invoking moral justifications (i.e., reconstruing immoral conduct as
personally and socially acceptable by portraying it as in service of valued moral principles) or disavow-
ing one’s role by using diffusion and displacement of responsibility, disregarding or misrepresenting
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(e.g., euphemistic labeling) the action’s harmful consequences for others, and vilifying and dehuman-
izing the victim with unjustified blame (Bandura, 1999, 2002, 2016; Bandura et al., 1996). Although
much research has examined processes of moral disengagement, the role of parenting has received little
attention in the development of these mechanisms.
Social Domain Theory

In contrast to Kohlberg’s differentiation model, Turiel (1979, 1983) proposed that even young children
distinguish between moral issues, defined as individuals’ prescriptive understanding of others’ welfare,
fairness, and rights, and social conventions, or the arbitrary, agreed-on social norms and uniformities
that structure social interactions and provide guides for appropriate behavior. Thus, from early ages
on, children are thought to view moral transgressions (such as hitting, teasing, excluding, or stealing)
as wrong across contexts and situations, because they have negative consequences for others’ rights
or welfare. In contrast, the more arbitrary and context-specific social conventions (such as etiquette
or forms of address) are considered wrong only when deemed so by rules and/or authorities. These
propositions have been extensively supported in research with preschool and older children (reviewed
in Smetana, 2011, 2013; Smetana, Jambon, and Ball, 2014). Moreover, empirical methods for identify-
ing prototypical moral issues have been developed and successfully used to investigate more complex,
multifaceted issues that involve conflicts or coordinations between different domains of thought.
These include children’s understanding of rights, which may conflict with societal laws (Helwig, Ruck,
and Peterson-Badali, 2014), peer exclusion and intergroup relationships (Killen and Rutland, 2011),
controversial social issues such as beliefs and attitudes about homosexuality and behaviors towards
LGBT youth (Heinze and Horn, 2009; Horn, 2006; Horn, Szalacha, and Drill, 2008), and many other
complex issues.
Different domains of social knowledge are proposed to develop from qualitatively distinct social
interactions. Evidence for this claim comes primarily from observational studies of teacher and child
responses to transgressions in schools and on playgrounds (Nucci and Nucci, 1982a, 1982b; Nucci
and Turiel, 1978; Smetana, 1984; Tisak, Nucci, and Jankowski, 1996), and from studies of parent–
child interactions discussed later. Parents are considered important for the construction of moral and
social knowledge due to the emotional bonds between parents and children, the intense emotions that
their interactions elicit, and because parents are emotionally invested in, care deeply about—and are
charged by society with—teaching children right from wrong (Smetana, 1997, 1999; Wainryb and Rec-
chia, 2017). Children construct social knowledge from various interactions, conversations, and conflicts
with parents and others, including siblings, peers, and other adults. Both their direct experiences and
observations of others’ interactions contribute to the development of social knowledge (Smetana, 1997;
Smetana & Jambon, 2018), and as described later in the chapter, social experiences and interactions vary
by domain. Thus, research has focused on the domain specificity of parents’ affective and behavioral
responses to transgressions as well as parent–child conversations and interactions around moral events.
Because social domain theory emphasizes children’s active construction of moral and social knowl-
edge, children’s evaluations of the appropriateness or fairness of parental interventions are considered
important. As they grow older, children have more agency to accept or reject parental values and
expectations. Children and adolescents generally view moral, social-conventional, and prudential
issues (e.g., pertaining to comfort, health, and harm to the self ) as legitimately regulated by adults.
Indeed, children studied from the preschool years to late childhood have been shown to strongly
endorse compliance with parental moral rules and report feeling good about doing so (Lagattuta,
Nucci, and Bosacki, 2010; Smetana, Wong, Ball, and Yau, 2014). However, adults’ moral authority
is limited. It does not extend to causing harm, prescribing immoral acts, or being unjust or unfair.
Under such conditions, children are less likely to comply with parental expectations or internalize
parental messages.
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Children and adolescents (as well as adults) also draw boundaries between issues that are seen as
appropriately regulated by adults and those that are personal and up to the child to decide (e.g., issues
regarding privacy; control over one’s body; and choices regarding leisure activities, personal tastes, and
friendships). Parents and children generally concur that parents do not have authority over children’s
personal domain choices, although they may disagree about what falls within that domain. Thus,
both in the United States (Lagattuta et al., 2010) and in Hong Kong (Smetana, Wong, et al., 2014),
the same children who endorsed compliance for moral issues also believed that actors would (and to
some extent should) disobey rules intruding on their personal domains and viewed noncompliance
as eliciting positive feelings when hypothetical actors disobeyed. Furthermore, parents and children
in different cultures typically disagree about where the boundaries of parental authority should be
drawn, especially during adolescence, which is characterized by the rapid growth of autonomy. Dis-
agreements about parental authority legitimacy lead to increases in parent–adolescent conflicts, par-
ticularly in early and middle adolescence, as well as greater nondisclosure, secrecy, and concealment
about activities in middle adolescence (Smetana, 2011).
Summary
Theoretical descriptions of moral development differ widely. Kochanska and her colleagues focus on
the development of conscience, or an autonomous inner guidance system that results in rule-abiding
conduct. Socialization theories emphasize how parents’ different socialization goals lead them to employ
different disciplinary practices, resulting in divergent developmental outcomes. Theories of the moral
self have arisen to explain moral as well as immoral behavior (e.g., through processes of moral disengage-
ment). Social domain theory describes morality as a distinct domain of social knowledge constructed
from social interactions and pertaining to judgments regarding others’ welfare, fairness, and rights.
Current Research on Moral Development

In this section, we review contemporary empirical research on parenting and moral development.
First, we consider research on parenting styles and the role of authoritative parenting in fostering
mature morality. We then consider how the quality of children’s relationships with their parents,
assessed in terms of attachment security and parental responsiveness, influences moral development.
Next, we discuss associations between different parental disciplinary practices and various aspects
of moral development, as well as research on children’s evaluations of the appropriateness and fair-
ness of different practices. Although there is some overlap, as several of the studies compare different
disciplinary practices, these sections are organized in terms of research on parental power assertion;
induction; and psychological control, guilt, and shame. Finally, we go beyond the discipline context to
consider other types of parent–child interactions that are important for moral development, including
parent–child conversations, reminisces, and management of conflicts.
Parenting Styles and Authoritative Parenting

Research on global parenting styles (Baumrind, 1971) generally demonstrates that authoritative parent-
ing, defined in terms of parents’ high levels of responsiveness to and consideration of the child’s needs,
along with high levels of demandingness (e.g., having clear, strong expectations for mature conduct),
is optimal for social and emotional development. Several studies confirm that this is also the case for
morality, although the majority of studies focus on late childhood and adolescence. An exception is
Taylor, Eisenberg, and Spinrad (2015). They found that authoritative parenting, observed when chil-
dren were 42 months of age, was related to 72- and 84-month-olds’ feelings of sympathy or concern
for others who are distressed or in need, as mediated by effortful control.
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Leman (2005) found that British early adolescents (12-year-olds) of authoritative parents were
more likely to justify hypothetical moral misbehavior with justifications pertaining to reciprocity
and equality than were youth with authoritarian parents (who are highly strict and demanding but
low in responsiveness to their child). In a sample of middle adolescents, Hardy et al. (2010) found
that several dimensions associated with authoritative parenting, including autonomy support, respon-
siveness, and demandingness, were linked with public and private aspects of moral identity. Pratt,
Hunsberger, Pancer, and Alisat (2003) found that, in more authoritative families, late adolescents
and their parents were more congruent in their values (both moral and nonmoral) than were other
families. Finally, Smetana (1995) found that parenting styles differentiated 12- through 17-year-olds’
perceptions of parental authority legitimacy. Authoritarian parents “moralized” conventional issues
and treated them as obligatory, much like prototypical moral issues. In contrast, permissive parents
overextended the boundaries of the personal domain and treated conventional issues as up to chil-
dren to decide. Only authoritative parents maintained clear boundaries among moral, conventional,
and personal issues in their judgments and justifications of hypothetical, prototypical issues.
Attachment to Caregivers and Parental Responsiveness
Attachment Relationships
Researchers across the theoretical spectrum hypothesize that the quality of children’s attachment
relationships with their caregivers, which develops during the first year of life, provides an important
building block for successful moral development (Berkowitz and Grych, 1998; Grusec and Good-
now, 1994; Kochanska and Kim, 2012; Smetana, 1997; Thompson, 2012). Securely attached children
are more confident and more trusting that caregivers will be available and responsive in situations
of threat or distress (Laible and Thompson, 2000). Therefore, they may be more cooperative and
receptive to parents’ socialization expectations and view parental control as benevolent rather than ill
intended. Furthermore, parental influence may be more effective in warm, mutual relationships that
foster more secure attachment than in relationships that are less warm, mutual, and secure (Hoffman,
1970, 2000; Kochanska and Thompson, 1997).
Evidence supporting these claims has focused primarily—but not exclusively—on conscience
development in early childhood (Kochanska and Kim, 2012; Laible, 2004a; Laible and Thompson,
2000). Consistent with theorizing, parenting practices appear to operate differently according to
child attachment quality. Longitudinal research indicates that for securely but not insecurely attached
infants, mothers’ positive parenting (i.e., sensitive, responsive, and inductive discipline) in the first
three and a half years of life predicts children’s honesty in games, views of the moral self, and moral
cognition at 52 and 56 months (Kochanska et al., 2007, 2010). Kochanska and Kim (2012) found that
although main effects of attachment quality generally are not found in longitudinal analyses spanning
infancy to middle childhood, variations in attachment relationships set the stage for different devel-
opmental trajectories. These researchers demonstrated that in insecure dyads, and particularly among
children who were anger-prone, a pattern of coercion emerged leading to more power-assertive par-
enting and, hence, a pathway towards conduct disorders (see the later section for greater elaboration)
that include some morally relevant mediators. These links were not observed in secure dyads.
Several longitudinal studies suggest that early insecurity may amplify detrimental cascades, whereas
infant and toddler security appears to defuse these developmental risks (Boldt, Kochanska, and Jonas,
2017; Nordling, Boldt, O’Bleness, and Kochanska, 2016). Examining both mother–child and father–
child attachment—and utilizing a range of attachment measures completed by mothers, fathers, and
trained observers—children’s cumulative history of attachment security from infancy to late child-
hood facilitated children’s later self-regulation and socialization, whereas insecurity was associated
with poorer adjustment. For instance, in relationships with both mothers and fathers, children’s higher
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negativity (i.e., rejection of parental rules and modeling attempts) at 25, 38, 52, and 67 months was
associated with more detrimental outcomes (i.e., higher child externalizing problems and lower parent–
child relationship quality) at ages 10 and 12 years, but only in formerly insecure infant dyads (Boldt
et al., 2017) (broadly conceived). Thus, attachment security predicted their orientations towards rules
and, in turn, later adjustment. Given the dearth of research focusing on fathers, it is notable that attach-
ment relationships with mothers versus fathers lead to different moral outcomes. For instance, Nordling
et al. (2016) found that children’s security to mothers but not fathers predicted their effortful control,
which in turn led directly to greater regard for rules. In other studies, however, children’s attachment
security with mothers versus fathers was not associated with different outcomes (Boldt et al., 2017).
Research has also shown that greater attachment security is linked with toddlers’ more sympa-
thetic responses to mothers’ simulated displays of anger and sadness (Denham, 1994) and 4-year-olds’
greater committed compliance and evaluative statements (e.g., references to good and bad behavior;
Laible, 2004a; Laible and Thompson, 2000). Furthermore, in a female sample, 22-month-olds who
were more securely attached demonstrated more empathic concern to an experimenter (but not to
a mother) who simulated distress, as well as more committed compliance in a laboratory task (van
der Mark, Bakermans-Kranenburg, and van IJzendoorn, 2002; van der Mark, van IJzendoorn, and
Bakermans-Kranenburg, 2002). Similarly, a paper reporting on two longitudinal studies of commu-
nity families, including mothers, fathers, and children from 14 to 80 months and mothers and children
from 15 to 45 months, as well as a study of low-income, diverse mothers and their 30-month-old
toddlers, found that attachment security with mothers was related to higher levels of empathy (Kim
and Kochanska, 2017). Consistent with research on adolescents (Carlo, Knight, McGinley, and Hayes,
2011; Carlo, McGinley, Hayes, Batenhorst, and Wilkinson, 2007), variations in children’s empathy
moderated associations between parental relationships and prosocial behavior, with individual differ-
ences in empathy linked to prosociality, but only in insecure children (Kim and Kochanska, 2017).
Secure attachments, measured either retrospectively or concurrently by the Adult Attachment
Interview (AAI), also are associated with morality in adolescence and adulthood. Thus, adolescents
who evidenced more secure-autonomous attachment representations on the AAI also endorsed more
mature moral reasoning on a paper-and-pencil version of Kohlberg’s moral judgment measure (van
IJzendoorn and Zwart-Woudstra, 1995). Furthermore, adult moral exemplars (recipients of Canadian
awards for exceptional bravery or caring) reported more secure childhood attachments (measured
retrospectively and across many different interpersonal relationships) than did a matched comparison
group of adults (Walker and Frimer, 2007). Caring exemplars reported more secure relationships
than did those nominated as being exceptionally brave. These studies suggest that across childhood
and adolescence, children who have more secure attachment relationships with their caregivers may
develop more mature morality.
Responsive Parenting
Similarly, there is consensus across different theoretical approaches that responsive, reciprocal, and
cooperative parent–child relationships foster moral development, broadly considered. As with attach-
ment, the claim is that parental warmth, affection, and responsiveness enhance the likelihood that
children will be receptive to parental discipline and that they will like and respect the parent; thus,
they will be more open to consider parental messages and others’ needs (Grusec and Goodnow, 1994;
Hoffman, 1979; Kochanska, Aksan, Prisco, and Adams, 2008; Maccoby, 2007; Maccoby and Martin,
1983). Kochanska referred to this as a mutually responsive orientation (MRO) and described it as
the responsiveness and shared positivity characteristic of the parent–child dyad (Kochanska, Forman,
Aksan, and Dunbar, 2005).
The centrality of a mutually responsive orientation in promoting different positive moral devel-
opmental outcomes has been supported in numerous longitudinal studies of both mother–child and
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father–child relationships (Kochanska et al., 2008). For instance, in a longitudinal study of associa-
tions between early mother–child MRO and conscience development, Kochanska et al. (2005) found
that mother–child MRO when children were 9, 14, and 22 months old had a direct positive effect
on 45-month-olds’ guilt following a perceived transgression. Furthermore, MRO influenced moral
cognition (selfish/antisocial versus prosocial/moral internalized moral judgments) by promoting chil-
dren’s enjoyment of interactions with their mothers. They examined whether maternal power asser-
tion also mediated the relation between MRO and conscience but found that it did not.
Research also generally supports the importance of the interplay between parent–child MRO
and child temperament for moral development. For instance, for relatively fearless children, positive
mother–child relationships predicted greater endorsement of moral characteristics as like the moral
self three years later, but for relatively fearful children, the opposite was found (Kochanska, Aksan,
and Joy, 2007). Moreover, maternal power assertion had detrimental effects on their future moral
self. Furthermore, as demonstrated in two longitudinal studies, Kochanska and Kim (2014) showed
that when parent–child relationships (both mother–child and father–child) are mutually responsive,
reciprocal, and close (i.e., high in MRO), young children respond to gentle discipline, develop com-
mitted compliance, and accept parents’ socialization messages, even when the child displayed low
levels of effortful control. However, when both MRO and children’s effortful control were low, chil-
dren’s internalization of parental standards and moral conduct (ability to resist temptation and engage
in rule-compatible behavior) was compromised.
Moreover, variations in positivity, warmth, or responsiveness in parent–child relationships are par-
ticularly consequential for temperamentally difficult or developmentally vulnerable children, such as
those with callous-unemotional (CU) traits, a well-established risk factor for antisocial behavior (Van
der Graaff, Branje, De Wied, and Meeus, 2012; Waller et al., 2014). Kochanska, Kim, Boldt, and Yoon
(2013) investigated whether children’s CU traits moderate links between mother–child and father–
child MRO and shared positive affect (observed in extended and diverse naturalistic contexts when
children were 38 and 52 months old) and their externalizing problems at 67, 80, and 100 months.
For children with elevated CU traits, higher mother–child MRO and greater father–child shared posi-
tive affect predicted decreases in child behavior problems, but not for children relatively low in CU.
The studies discussed thus far have primarily investigated responsive parenting as assessed in early
childhood, although they have documented its long-term effects. Several other researchers, how-
ever, have focused on the importance of responsive parenting in middle childhood and beyond. For
instance, Malti, Eisenberg, Kim, and Buchmann (2013) examined the longitudinal role of parental
support on developmental trajectories of moral emotion attributions, moral reasoning, and sympathy
across three years. The different measures of moral functioning showed low-stable, increasing, and
high-stable trajectories of growth (with moral emotion attributions also decreasing over time). Both
child- and parent-reported supportive parenting were associated with membership in the high-stable
group across the different measures. These findings suggest that greater parental support may help
maintain high levels of moral functioning and perhaps facilitate the integration of affective and cogni-
tive moral components.
In one of the very few studies to examine the moral self in childhood, Sengsavang and Krettenauer
(2015) found that parental support (5- to 8-year-old children’s perceived support from parents, aver-
aged across mothers and fathers) was related to children’s more moral self (measured by the moral
puppet interview described in an earlier section). In turn, high levels of negative parent–child interac-
tion (children’s perceived antagonism and conflict with parents averaged across mothers and fathers)
exacerbated the negative association found between children’s moral self and aggressive behavior.
Using a large, representative, longitudinal survey of Swiss 15- and 21-year-olds, Malti and Buch-
mann (2010) also examined the role of parental support in moral motivation. They examined the
strength of responses to hypothetical stories prioritizing moral concerns over nonmoral desires. Their
cross-sectional analyses confirmed the importance of parental support in moral motivation for middle
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adolescents, but not for older youth. That is, they found that 15-year-olds who were higher in parental
support and social justice values reported greater moral motivation. Among 21-year-olds, however,
social justice values as well as better friendship quality predicted greater moral motivation. These
findings suggest that friendship support may replace parental support in facilitating moral motivation
as youth grow older.
Several studies have distinguished different components of responsiveness. For instance, one longi-
tudinal investigation found that parents’ positive emotion expressivity mediated the over-time effects
of parental warmth on elementary school-age children’s empathic responding, as measured behavior-
ally (e.g., in terms of facial expressivity) and in terms of self-report (Zhou et al., 2002). In contrast,
Davidov and Grusec (2006) distinguished parental responsiveness to children’s distress from parental
warmth and found differential associations with child outcomes. Only mothers’ self-reported and
observed responsiveness to distress (but not warmth) was associated with 6- to 8-year-olds’ empathy
and prosocial responding; similar but marginal findings were found for fathers. In contrast, parental
warmth (but not responsiveness to distress) was associated with nonmoral outcomes (for instance,
regulation of positive affect).
Vinik, Almas, and Grusec (2011) examined maternal responsiveness in terms of mothers’ knowledge
of their children’s thoughts and feelings (rather than their observed or reported levels of responsive-
ness). They found that mothers who were better able to identify events that distress and comfort their
child had 10- to 12-year-olds who responded more empathically to both videotaped and experimen-
tal simulations of distress. Furthermore, children whose mothers more accurately understood how to
comfort them were more prosocial, but only when children were high in distress proneness.
Walker and Taylor (1991) demonstrated the importance of responsive parenting in the develop-
ment of more mature moral reasoning during adolescence. These researchers examined whether the
type of challenging, critiquing parent–adolescent interactions (labeled operational here but called trans-
active in prior research) found to facilitate Kohlbergian moral stage change in Berkowitz and Gibbs’s
(1983) study of unacquainted college students also applied to parents’ interactions with their middle
adolescents. Their longitudinal study yielded two unanticipated findings. First, growth in adolescents’
moral reasoning was fostered only in the context of discussion of real-life dilemmas, not hypothetical
ones. Second, stage change occurred only through parents’ supportive (representational) interactions,
where parents paraphrased or restated their teen’s point of view, rather than through operational state-
ments. Subsequent research comparing the influence of peer versus parent–adolescent interactions on
moral reasoning development (Walker, Hennig, and Krettenauer, 2000) also found that only support-
ive interactions predicted moral growth in both contexts. The researchers speculated that differences
between their findings and past research may be because they studied friends rather than unacquainted
peers, who may have been more reluctant to critique their partner’s opinions. They concluded that
a more gentle, “Socratic” interaction style, where individuals solicit others’ opinions and check their
understanding, may be optimal for moral reasoning development.
Other research suggests that the effectiveness of different kinds of interactions may differ for
mothers and fathers. Pratt, Arnold, Pratt, and Diessner (1999) found that fathers’ use of operational
statements in family discussions of moral dilemmas contributed to growth over time in middle ado-
lescents’ moral reasoning maturity, whereas mothers influenced their adolescents’ moral reasoning
through their responsiveness to teens’ perspectives (as evidenced in socialization narratives). Kohl-
berg’s approach emphasizes justice reasoning, but supportive family interactions also contributed to
increases in care-based moral reasoning from late adolescence to early adulthood (Pratt, Skoe, and
Arnold, 2004).
Most of the research just discussed includes Western, middle-class samples, but To, Helwig, and
Yang (2017) examined associations among rural and urban Chinese adolescents’ perceptions of
parent and teacher responsiveness, autonomy support, and adolescents’ evaluations of rights. They
distinguished between nurturance rights, which pertain to parents’ and others’ obligation to provide
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and protect children’s welfare, and self-determination rights, which are roughly equivalent to personal
issues (e.g., right to privacy, control over personal issues). Greater maternal responsiveness (as well
as teacher autonomy support) was associated only with greater endorsement of nurturance rights.
In contrast, and consistent with the notion that exercising personal choices facilitates autonomy
development (Smetana, 2011), maternal autonomy support was associated with teens’ endorsement
of self-determination rights.
Summary
Research strongly supports the notion that the nature of the parent–child relationship, whether
measured in terms of children’s attachment to their caregiver, parents’ responsiveness to their child,
or dyadic MRO, is associated with various measures of children’s moral development. Positivity in
the parent–child bond is seen as enhancing the likelihood that children are motivated to listen to
parents, comply with their requests, and internalize their values. It is worth noting that compliance
or rule-following behavior covers a wide range of behaviors, not all of which can be considered
to be morally relevant. Furthermore, responsiveness is a broad term, and there is a need for greater
specificity in defining the different components of responsiveness and in identifying the particular
forms that are linked to specific aspects of moral development. What is interpreted as responsive
parenting also may vary at different ages, highlighting the necessity of having more developmentally
informed accounts.
In addition, more cross-cultural research is needed, as several scholars have noted that connected-
ness is more likely to be expressed in terms of dyadic warmth and responsiveness in Western families
and in terms of family obligations in Eastern (e.g., Chinese) families (Chao and Tseng, 2002; Hardway
and Fuligni, 2006). Thus, the implications of these cultural variations for moral development need to
be determined.
Power Assertion and Harsh Discipline

As with responsive parenting, researchers have noted that power assertion is a broad category (Grusec
and Goodnow, 1994; Smetana, 1997) that has been defined in different ways. It may include verbal
and physical pressure, harsh and punitive parenting (yelling, scolding), rejecting parenting, and physical
punishment. These practices are considered separately next.
Power Assertion
Kochanska and her colleagues’ research provides support for the notion that parental power assertion,
defined in terms of physical and verbal pressure by a relatively angry parent, undermines morally
relevant functioning. For instance, Kochanska (1991) found that mothers of toddlers who deempha-
sized their use of power had children with a more internalized conscience six years later, as assessed in
terms of affective and cognitive reactions to narratives produced in response to semi-projective stories.
However, significant findings were obtained only for children who were relatively prone to fearful
arousal. Mothers who employed more power assertion with their 33-month-olds had children with
less developed moral selves three years later (Kochanska et al., 2007).
Although power assertion generally has negative effects, research also has shown some variations
in findings depending on whether power assertion is examined in tasks where parents assert power to
obtain help or assistance (such as in clean-up tasks) or deter misbehavior. Findings also vary depend-
ing on the particular moral outcome variables assessed. For instance, in studying young children and
their mothers, Kochanska, Aksan, and Nichols (2003) found that power assertion when children were
14- to 45-months-old showed no associations with later (56- and 73-month-olds’) moral cognition
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or compliant behavior in a helping context, negative associations at these ages with resistance to temp-
tation when mothers were asked to prevent misbehavior in lab tasks, and positive associations with
56-month-old children’s moral cognition in a lab-based mother–child discourse task. Kochanska,
Padavich, and Koenig (1996) found that greater maternal power assertion, observed naturalistically in
the home, was associated concurrently with lower levels of toddler compliance and mother-reported
conscience development and also over time with assessments of antisocial and good behavior themes
in preschoolers’ narratives.
More recently, Kim and Kochanska (2015; Kochanska and Kim, 2012) sought to identify the
specific developmental mechanisms that account for the detrimental effects of power assertion across
childhood and adolescence. A maladaptive developmental cascade links maternal power assertion in
early childhood to the development of an angry, adversarial, and resentful stance where the child feels
alienated and disconnected from the parent. In turn, this resentful stance is connected to later rule-
breaking behavior and difficulty in delaying in laboratory tasks (Kochanska and Kim, 2012), reduced
guilt, empathy, and sensitivity to violations of standards (Kim and Kochanska, 2015; Kochanska, Barry,
Stellern, and O’Bleness, 2009; Kochanska, Brock, and Boldt, 2016), and later externalizing and inter-
nalizing behaviors. Parental responsiveness also moderates the link between parental power assertion
and a resentful, angry orientation toward the parent.
Results of two studies by Dahl (2016; Dahl and Chan, 2017) remind us that parental power asser-
tion may be an effective strategy in inhibiting misbehavior during infancy and very early childhood,
when children lack the communicative abilities to regulate and control their behavior. The researchers
observed mother–child interactions at home during the infants’ second year of life. Using Kochanska’s
definition of power assertion as physical interventions (e.g., restraining the child) and maternal con-
trol, both studies found that mothers used power assertion more in response to moral than prudential
and pragmatic transgressions. Dahl and Chan (2017) further found that mothers engaged in more
power assertion when there was greater physical danger to their child and others (e.g., for pruden-
tial and moral transgressions) and that mothers’ power-assertive responses to moral transgressions
increased when dyads were observed five months later. As these results suggest, power assertion may
be developmentally appropriate for maintaining young children’s safety and well-being.
Harsh Discipline
Corporal punishment, physical discipline, and yelling or scolding also can be considered power-
assertive disciplinary practices. Little research has directly examined the influence of physical dis-
cipline and corporal punishment on moral developmental outcomes; rather, research has focused
mostly on their effects on children’s externalizing behaviors, including aggression. Inasmuch as
aggression entails intentional harm to others, however, it can be seen as (im)moral behavior (see
Jambon and Smetana, 2018, for an elaboration of this argument). Several large-scale international
studies have shown that physical and corporal punishment have adverse effects on children and that
they generally lead to greater externalizing behavior. However, the effects are moderated somewhat
by the cultural normativeness of the practices (Gershoff et al., 2010; Lansford et al., 2005).
One study examined associations among neighborhood risk, maternal harsh punishment, and
3½ -year-olds’ moral judgments (Ball, Smetana, Sturge-Apple, Suor, and Skibo, 2017). Children whose
mothers engaged in more harsh discipline, as observed during a mother–child clean-up task, rated
moral transgressions as more serious and deserving of punishment, and this effect was amplified
among mothers who were more inconsistent in their use of harsh discipline. However, young children
who were both consistently and harshly disciplined had a less sophisticated understanding of morality,
as assessed by criterion judgments, than children who were less consistently or less harshly disciplined.
That is, children who were consistently and harshly disciplined were less likely than others to under-
stand that moral transgressions are wrong in the absence of rules and authority prohibitions and that
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moral rules are inalterable. Grusec and Goodnow (1994) asserted that parental consistency in disci-
plining children helps make parental messages clearer, thereby facilitating moral development. How-
ever, Ball et al.’s (2017) findings suggest that harsh discipline consistently applied may communicate
the wrong message. Children may learn that moral transgressions should be condemned and warrant
punishment, but not why. Thus, these findings are consistent with previous research (Kochanska et al.,
2003; Laible and Thompson, 2002) in showing that coercive discipline undermines the internalization
of parents’ moral messages.
Rejecting Parenting
Hyde, Shaw, and Moilanen (2010) defined rejecting parenting in terms of mothers’ critical statements
and verbal and physical (dis)approval, as well as global ratings of hostility, lack of warmth, and puni-
tiveness. They assessed rejecting parenting in home and laboratory contexts across different tasks in a
sample of ethnically diverse, low-income families with 1½ - and 2-year-old boys. Rejecting parenting
in infancy predicted moral disengagement at age 15, although parent- and child-reported empathy at
age 12 more robustly predicted moral disengagement than earlier rejecting parenting. Furthermore,
an exploratory path analysis showed that antisocial behavior at age 16 and 17 was predicted by two
different paths—one from rejecting parenting in infancy to children’s lower levels of empathy, and in
turn, moral disengagement, and one through poor social information processing.
Summary
The studies reviewed in this section demonstrate that, much as Hoffman (1970) hypothesized, differ-
ent forms of harsh, rejecting, or power-assertive parenting undermine behavioral, social-cognitive, and
affective dimensions of morality. Early research (Kuczynski, 1984) indicated that power assertion may
be effective in stopping harmful behavior and inducing short-term compliance, but it does not lead
to moral internalization (defined as rule-following behavior or resistance to temptation) or an under-
standing of why moral transgressions are wrong (Ball et al., 2017). Dahl’s research (2016; Dahl and
Chan, 2017) shows that most mothers employ power assertion with their toddlers to stop misbehavior
that is particularly harmful or unsafe. Nevertheless, as Grusec and Goodnow (1994) noted, extremely
angry, negative, coercive, or punitive responses may scare the child, threaten their sense of security, and
promote aversive emotional reactions, all of which threaten moral development.
Inductive Discipline
Comparisons of Effectiveness
Similar to research on power assertion, and typically drawing on Hoffman’s (1970) theorizing, research-
ers have compared parental induction with other disciplinary practices in terms of their influence on
moral development. Although these studies are meant to demonstrate the effectiveness of induction
over other practices, most studies have been cross-sectional, limiting conclusions that can be drawn
about the direction of effects.
Jagers, Bingham, and Hans (1996) examined associations between poor, inner-city, African-
American mothers’ reports of their parenting practices and kindergarteners’ ability to differentiate
moral and conventional transgressions, as assessed in terms of judgments of rule independence and
generalizability across contexts. Supporting the role of induction, mothers who talked more with
their children and denied privileges and ignored transgressions less had children who were better able
to distinguish moral from conventional transgressions. Mothers’ yelling and corporal punishment
were not linked with their ability to distinguish the domains.
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Krevans and Gibbs (1996) developed a questionnaire based on Hoffman and Saltzstein (1967) that
asks children and parents to rate how typical it would be for the parent to use different disciplinary
practices, including inductive discipline, power assertion, and love withdrawal in response to hypo-
thetical scenarios. Studying early adolescents and their mothers, these researchers found that only
mothers’ use of inductive discipline showed significant (and positive) associations with children’s
empathic responsiveness and maturity. Moreover, these links were found for both mothers’ and chil-
dren’s reports of parenting. The results also showed that, at least cross-sectionally, empathy mediated
the link between parental induction and prosocial behavior.
In an extension of this work, Patrick and Gibbs (2012) examined associations between inductive
and other forms of parental discipline (assessed by the aforementioned questionnaire) and 10- and
16-year-olds’ moral identity. They hypothesized that, compared to other-oriented inductions, those
that include parents’ disappointed expectations may be particularly salient for moral self-development
because they indicate to youth that they are capable of better behavior. Overall, induction was used
more than other forms of parental discipline, and 16-year-olds (but not younger teens) who received
both types of parental inductions ascribed more moral attributes to the self. When types of inductions
were examined separately, however, other-oriented inductions had positive effects on moral identity,
but parental expressions of disappointed expectations did not. Thus, these results did not support the
distinctive role of parents’ disappointed expectations in moral self-ratings.
As expected, however, power assertion and love withdrawal were not associated with ratings of
the moral self, although increased power assertion was linked with decreases in teenagers’ positive
and guilt-related emotional responses. [Recall that in the Sengsavang and Krettenauer (2015) study
discussed earlier, however, perceived antagonistic and conflictive interactions with parents—which are
certainly negative if not directly power assertive—had negative effects on the moral self.] In a further
extension, Patrick and Gibbs (2016) demonstrated that 10- to 16-year-olds who viewed their mothers
as more warm and accepting also saw their mothers as employing more inductive, as compared to love
withdrawal and coercive (e.g., power-assertive), discipline. Among mothers primarily using induction,
more maternal acceptance was linked with a stronger moral identity.
Finally, Laible, Eye, and Carlo (2008) studied the effects of middle adolescents’ perceptions of
parental discipline consistency, induction, and power assertion on affective and cognitive measures
of conscience. As expected, lower levels of parental power assertion and higher levels of inductive
reasoning were correlated with more other-oriented moral emotions. However, adolescents’ reactiv-
ity appeared to account for the findings, as effects for the different disciplinary strategies disappeared
when negative reactivity was included in the analyses. Only maternal discipline consistency, not
parental practices per se, was associated with their measures of moral cognition (internalized values
and prosocial moral reasoning).
Evaluations of Induction
Researchers have proposed that children will be more accepting of parents’ messages (and therefore
internalize parental values more) when they see those messages as appropriate and fair (Grusec and
Goodnow, 1994; Smetana, 1997, 2011). Accordingly, another line of research has examined whether
youth view parental induction as more fair or appropriate than other discipline practices. In their
aforementioned study of 10- and 16-year-olds, Patrick and Gibbs (2012) found that power asser-
tion was rated as less appropriate and more unfair and that parental inductions (e.g., other-oriented
and disappointed parental inductions combined) were seen as more appropriate and fair relative to
other discipline practices. In addition, adolescents endorsed morally relevant self characteristics more
when parental inductions, particularly those expressing parental disappointment, were seen as more
appropriate or fair. Thus, when appropriateness ratings were added to their analyses, the importance
of parents’ disappointed expectations became evident. Furthermore, children who felt more accepted
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were more likely to view both power assertion and induction (but not love withdrawal) as more fair
(Patrick and Gibbs, 2016).
Several studies have extended this research to consider whether evaluations of parental induction
vary according to whether parents are responding to prosocial versus antisocial acts. For instance,
Padilla-Walker and Carlo (2004) distinguished between middle adolescents’ evaluations of the appro-
priateness of parental power assertion (yelling and lecturing) and induction (talking), as well as praise
and control, in reaction to antisocial versus prosocial behavior. Adolescents viewed yelling and lectur-
ing as inappropriate across contexts, whereas parental induction was seen as highly appropriate only in
antisocial situations. Praise is not often studied as a discipline practice, perhaps because moral develop-
ment research typically focuses on responses to misbehavior. However, these researchers found that
praise was rated as highly appropriate in prosocial contexts. (Research with young children has shown
that unlike rewards, which may be perceived as extrinsically motivating, praise does not undermine
very young children’s altruistic tendencies; Warneken and Tomasello, 2008). Padilla-Walker and Carlo
(2004) further found that, except for guilt, adolescents who reported having more negative emotional
responses to parental discipline also rated the discipline practice as less appropriate. Consistent with
Hoffman’s (2000) claim that parental induction promotes moral development by inducing empathic
guilt, adolescents who reported higher levels of guilt in response to antisocial situations viewed parents
as using more induction, and they rated it as more appropriate (Padilla-Walker and Carlo, 2004).
Researchers also have considered whether parents’ use of different discipline strategies and ratings
of their appropriateness vary according to the transgression domain (e.g., moral, conventional, pru-
dential, personal). In one study (Padilla-Walker, 2008), middle adolescents reported that their mothers
punished more for prudential and moral than other transgressions, whereas, in keeping with the nature
of the personal domain, they yelled less, talked more, and were less likely to take action for personal
as compared to other types of violations. In each domain, more talking (reasoning) was associated
with greater appropriateness ratings. Thus, reasoning is more effective than other parental practices in
promoting moral development and is perceived as such by teenagers. Middle adolescents also viewed
maternal inaction as less appropriate for moral acts, suggesting that teens believed that mothers should
respond to (and not ignore) moral transgressions. Teens considered yelling and punishment as less
appropriate for conventional and personal transgressions. Furthermore, children’s endorsement of
personal values of honesty, kindness, and fairness were modestly and positively correlated with ratings
of the appropriateness of maternal discipline.
Chilamkurti and Milner (1993) studied maternal use of different disciplinary strategies and evalu-
ation of those practices in a sample of 6- to 10-year-olds and their mothers, who were selected to
be at either high or low risk for child abuse. The researchers found that both use and evaluations of
disciplinary strategies varied by domain (moral, conventional, and personal) and informant. Moth-
ers reported employing more reasoning and explanations (e.g., inductive discipline) for moral than
other transgressions, more verbal force for conventional than other transgressions, and more simple
statements and requests for personal transgressions. Particularly for moral transgressions, however,
children’s and mothers’ reports were not congruent. Children viewed their mothers as using more
physical than verbal force and in turn, more simple requests for moral transgressions than mothers
reported using. Not surprisingly, high-risk mothers reported using verbal force more—and when
assessing others’ disciplinary strategies, viewed power-assertive discipline as more appropriate—than
did low-risk mothers. The latter viewed their discipline practices as more appropriate than did high-
risk mothers.
Domain Specificity in Parental Reasoning and Responses

Several researchers (Grusec and Goodnow, 1994; Maccoby, 2007; Smetana, 1997) have asserted that
greater precision is needed in defining parental induction and that researchers should consider the
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types of explanations or reasons that parents give for different types of events or transgressions.
Research indicates that children evaluate domain-appropriate explanations more positively than either
domain-inappropriate or undifferentiated explanations, at least as examined in school contexts (Kil-
len, Breton, Ferguson, and Handler, 1994; Nucci, 1984). This suggests that to be effective, parents’
explanations and reasoning should be clearly connected to the domain of the event. Several studies
have focused on parent–child interactions in early childhood to better understand the types of reasons
parents offer for different types of events.
For instance, using naturalistic observations in the home, research has compared mother and child
responses to moral as compared to other types of transgressions. An early study (Smetana, 1989b)
examined responses to infants and toddlers’ (1- to 3-year-olds’) moral and conventional transgressions
with naturalistic home observations occurring in sessions with mothers, either alone or with a familiar
peer. Toddlers rarely responded to conventional transgressions; rather, mothers commanded children to
stop the offending behavior, stated the rules, or, less frequently, highlighted the disorder their behavior
caused. In contrast, moral infractions occurred almost entirely with peers and were only rarely directed
towards mothers. Sequential analyses revealed two patterns of responses. In one, mothers intervened
in moral transgressions by commanding the child to stop misbehaving or by physically restraining the
child. In the other, the child victim first responded with emotional reactions and/or statements of
injury or loss, followed by mothers’ elaborating the behavior’s negative consequences for others (“Look
what you did, you hurt him”), asking the transgressor to take the victim’s perspective, or delineating
whose rights took priority. The latter sequence was considered optimal for developing moral under-
standing, as it amplifies the child victim’s responses and provides both affective and cognitive messages
about why moral transgressions are wrong (Smetana, 1989b, 1997; Smetana & Jambon, 2018).
Similar results were obtained in mothers’ reports of their interventions in their 2-year-olds’ moral,
prudential, and pragmatic (e.g., pertaining to practical issues) transgressions (Dahl and Campos, 2013).
Consistent with Smetana’s (1989b) sequential analyses, initial interventions involved reasoning and
physical restraint more for moral than for pragmatic or prudential transgressions, with mothers of
older versus younger toddlers employing more reasoning. Moreover, both reasons and emotional
responses were domain-specific: Mothers reported being more angry and referenced harm to others
more for moral transgressions, they were more afraid and reasoned about child well-being more for
prudential violations, and they reasoned about disorder or object damage more for pragmatic than for
other events. Nucci and Weber’s (1995) observational study corroborated these responses for pruden-
tial events, as they found that mothers’ reasoning in response to prudential violations typically focused
on safety or prudence.
Building on the findings regarding emotional reactions, Dahl, Sherlock, Campos, and Theunis-
sen (2014) examined whether mothers of 14-month-olds used different vocal tones in response to
children’s moral, pragmatic, and prudential transgressions. Responses differed both when mothers
responded to their own children’s transgressions as observed in the home and when mothers were
asked to respond verbally to video clips depicting another child’s misbehavior. Mothers used an intense,
angry (firm-stern) voice more in response to moral than other transgressions, a worried and scared
voice in response to prudential transgressions, and a warm and comforting voice when responding to
pragmatic (and prudential) transgressions. In a follow-up, Dahl and Tran (2016) used mothers’ vocal
tones, as elicited by these video clips, to determine whether 3- and 4-year-olds could guess the type
of transgression in which hypothetical protagonists were involved. Preschoolers interpreted mothers’
firm-stern vocalizations as reflecting responses to a moral transgression and their warm, comforting
voices as responses to a pragmatic transgression. Furthermore, 18- to 25-month-olds (but not younger
toddlers) complied more with mothers’ request not to touch a prohibited object after hearing their
mother’s videotaped prerecorded prohibition regarding a moral than a pragmatic violation. These
studies provide evidence that both the content of mothers’ reasoning and their emotional tone may
facilitate children’s understanding of morality versus other domains of rules. A fruitful direction for
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future research would be to directly link variations in mothers’ responses to differences in children’s
moral understanding.
Summary
Many of the aforementioned studies directly compared adolescents’ evaluations of parents’ use of
induction with power assertion and love withdrawal. These studies add to the research discussed
earlier, where individual differences in mothers’ discipline practices, including their use of induction,
have been observed with young children in laboratory and home settings. The results thus far indicate
that inductive discipline following moral transgressions is used more frequently and evaluated more
positively than other parental disciplinary practices. In addition, induction is used more for moral than
other types of transgressions and is positively associated with different indices of moral development,
including greater empathic responding and a greater self-endorsement of moral traits (e.g., moral self ).
However, relatively little research on the moral self and moral motivation has considered the role of
parenting, and more research is needed on the emergence of and changes in the moral self in child-
hood and the parenting beliefs and practices that promote its development.
Research on parental reasoning following transgressions has moved towards greater specificity in defin-
ing the contexts and specific types of explanations that parents give in response to different types of trans-
gressions. This research suggests that parents often provide morally salient explanations (e.g., focusing on
others’ welfare or the unfairness caused by the act). However, parents also intervene without explanation
to stop moral misbehavior and prevent prudential and moral harm, particularly with young children.
Guilt, Shame, and Psychological Control

In the moral development literature, parental guilt induction has been distinguished from love with-
drawal and is seen as facilitating the development of empathy for others, greater regret or reparation
for causing distress, and, as a consequence, greater prosocial behavior (Hoffman, 1970, 2000). In the
parenting literature, however, guilt induction is considered an aspect of psychologically controlling
parenting (Barber, 1996) and thus as having negative consequences for children’s social, emotional,
and moral development. Rote and Smetana (2017) examined several features of parental guilt induc-
tion to determine the conditions in which parental guilt induction is viewed as a positive, effective,
and well-intended disciplinary practice. Upper middle-class, mostly European-American 8-, 12-, and
16-year-olds evaluated maternal guilt induction in response to hypothetical moral, personal, or mixed-
domain transgressions. Overall, children rated guilt induction as most acceptable, most effective, least
disrespectful to the child, and more well-intended (e.g., in teaching children why misbehaviors are
wrong, preventing future misbehavior, and making children feel bad about their behavior) when it
was applied to moral as compared to other types of transgressions. In turn, maternal guilt induction
was rated as least acceptable, least effective, most disrespectful to the child, and as more intended to
make children feel bad about themselves when it was used in reference to personal issues. Thus, even
though children may experience guilt induction as unpleasant in the short term, children appear to
understand its positive role in moral development. Moreover, parental guilt induction in response to
moral as compared to the other transgressions also resulted in children’s increased guilt and shame,
suggesting that such inductions have their intended effect (e.g., in promoting guilt, and thus, pre-
sumably, moral internalization). Notably, however, children’s evaluations of guilt induction became
increasingly negative and perceived as less benignly intentioned with age, perhaps because of the
importance of autonomy as children move into adolescence.
Whereas guilt is generally defined in terms of negative evaluations of one’s behavior, shame involves
negative evaluations of one’s self, leading to an inward focus and feelings of worthlessness (Tang-
ney, 1998). In addition to manipulating the domain of the transgression, Rote and Smetana (2017)
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varied whether the hypothetical criticism focused on the actors’ behavior or the actor as a person.
As expected, they found that the latter produced higher levels of shame, as well as increases in shame
(but not guilt) from immediately before the induction. However, for the most part, youth were not
more disapproving of inductions that focused on the person versus their behavior. This was surpris-
ing, given that other research shows that children demonstrate rudimentary distinctions between
guilt and shame as young as the toddler years (Drummond, Hammond, Satlof-Bedrick, Waugh, and
Brownell, 2017).
Cross-cultural studies of shame are necessary, as the meaning and normativity of parental shaming
varies by culture. Fung (1999) described shame as an important mechanism of moral internaliza-
tion in Chinese culture that stems from Confucian teaching. Chinese parents socialize children to
be acutely aware of others’ opinions and to avoid their disapproval; thus, shaming is a way not only
to correct the child’s misbehavior but also to connect the child’s behavior to group norms. Shaming
is part of the description of Chinese parenting as strict and harsh (see Chao and Tseng, 2002, for
an elaboration), and in interviews with Taiwanese parents, Fung (1999) found that parents strongly
endorsed shaming as a way of teaching the child right from wrong.
Although shaming is frequently used in Chinese families, children do not always view it as a
positive parenting practice. Helwig, To, Wang, Liu, and Yang (2014) compared Canadian and rural
and urban Chinese 7- to 14-year-olds’ perceptions of parental induction with three psychologically
controlling parenting practices: love withdrawal, social comparison shame (e.g., comparing the child
to better-behaved peers), and shared shame (how the child’s behavior reflects on the family), each
described in response to a hypothetical moral transgression. Consistent with research reviewed pre-
viously, children across settings and ages rated parental induction more positively and saw it as pro-
moting a more internalized moral orientation than any of the psychologically controlling practices.
Moreover, with age, they increasingly reasoned about induction as focusing the child on the harmful
or unfair consequences of moral transgressions. In contrast, older children viewed psychologically
controlling parenting as having more negative consequences for their well-being (e.g., in producing
negative feelings) than did younger children. Across cultural contexts, the youngest children in the
study, as well as the rural Chinese children, also viewed psychologically controlling parenting as more
likely to induce behavioral compliance, although more so for both forms of shaming than for love
withdrawal. As found for physical and corporal punishment (Gershoff et al., 2010; Lansford et al.,
2005), however, the negative effects of psychologically controlling parenting were moderated some-
what by cultural factors. Chinese children, particularly rural ones, viewed shaming as more culturally
normative, and the more normative it was seen, the less its negative effects.
Whereas these studies focused on parental guilt and shame induction, other studies, particularly
by Kochanska and her colleagues, have focused on guilt as a moral developmental outcome. Their
research shows that temperamental fearfulness contributes to children’s feelings of guilt (Kochanska,
Gross, Lin, and Nichols, 2002) and that guilt associated with transgressions moderates the effects of
temperamental variables (e.g., effortful control) on disruptive behavior (including harmful behavior
as well as disobedience). That is, among children who are less guilt-prone, individual differences in
effortful control predict less disruptive behavior, but among those who are more guilt-prone, no asso-
ciations with effortful control are found (Kochanska, Barry, Jimenez, Hollatz, and Woodard, 2009).
Furthermore, as noted earlier, fearful arousal was found to moderate links between maternal power
assertion and conscience, and these measures included the intensity of guilt feelings and extent of
reparation described in children’s narratives (Kochanska, 1991).
Summary
Much as hypothesized (Hoffman, 2000), parental guilt induction is perceived as a relatively positive
and effective parenting practice when directed towards moral transgressions but less so when used
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with older adolescents and when directed towards personal behaviors. Parental shaming, which is seen
as an important tool for moral socialization among Chinese parents, may be evaluated negatively by
Chinese youth, particularly with age and as compared to parental induction. Researchers also have
studied the development of guilt, as moderated by temperamental variables.
Parental Discourse, Conflict Management, and Conversations

Although there has been extensive research on parents’ disciplinary practices as they bear on chil-
dren’s moral development, parents and children frequently have morally laden interactions outside of
discipline context. Conversations, conflicts, discussions, and reminiscences, discussed in the following
sections, all provide children with a wealth of information about parents’ moral expectations, values,
and norms. Parental talk rich in explanations, reasoning, and guilt induction also may facilitate the
internalization of parental values. Dunn, who has extensively examined family discourse about differ-
ent moral and social norms, found that morally laden conversations start as early as the second year of
life and influence various aspects of children’s understanding (Dunn, 2014; Dunn and Hughes, 2014).
Conflicts and Conflict Management

Mothers vary in how constructively they deal with conflicts, and individual differences in several fea-
tures of mothers’ conflictive interactions with young children appear to facilitate moral development.
For instance, Dunn and Munn (1987) examined mothers’ and 2- and 3-year-olds’ conversations about
different kinds of family disputes. They found that, more than other types of conflicts, moral disputes
elicited mothers’ explanations focusing on the consequences of children’s misbehavior—a finding that
was replicated by Dahl and his colleagues (Dahl and Campos, 2013; Dahl, 2016), as discussed earlier.
Moreover, moral disputes among 18-month-olds were more likely than other disputes to elicit anger
and distress, and these maternal reactions were associated with 36-month-olds’ greater use of justifica-
tions for their behavior. Mothers’ perspective taking also appears to be important in facilitating moral
development. Mothers who were more able to take young children’s point of view in conflicts, as
coded from parents’ conversations with their 33-month-olds, had children who had stronger moral
orientations at 6 to 7 years of age, as measured by greater moral and conventional reasoning and greater
empathy in their reasoning about hypothetical transgressions (Dunn, Brown, and Maguire, 1995). In a
prospective study, Laible and Thompson (2002) identified conflict episodes occurring in the context of
home and laboratory observations with mothers and their 30-month-olds. They found that mothers
who used more justifications and referred more to emotions in the context of conflicts observed in the
laboratory had 3-year-olds who were better able to resist temptation to touch forbidden toys, perhaps
because the experimental context was unfamiliar and children did not understand the need to follow
arbitrary rules. Similar effects were not found when conflicts were observed in the home, however.
Interviews with U.S. middle-class, European-American (Smetana, 1989a) and African-American
(Smetana and Gaines, 1999) 10- to 18-year-olds and their parents about their everyday disagreements
revealed that conflicts over moral issues were relatively infrequent and occurred primarily over interper-
sonal or sibling issues. Moral reasoning about conflicts declined with age in both samples. Unlike other
conflicts, which typically arose directly between parents and teens, moral conflicts with parents about
siblings only arose when parents were asked to adjudicate disagreements or when teens complained
about parents’ unequal treatment. A similar study in Hong Kong (Yau and Smetana, 1996) found even
less moral reasoning about conflicts than in the United States, although more so among Chinese adoles-
cents in Hong Kong than in Shenzhen, Mainland China (Yau and Smetana, 2003). As moral reasoning
often focused on sibling interactions, this finding may be due to the one-child policy, which, at the
time, was enforced in Mainland China but not in Hong Kong. Moreover, as in the United States, the
latter study showed that the frequency of moral reasoning declined with age, with more moral reason-
ing in pre than in early, middle, and late adolescence. In all of these studies, adolescent–parent conflicts
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were primarily over how much autonomy and personal freedom adolescents should have rather
than over moral issues of fairness or rights. Likewise, sibling conflicts were more frequently
about invasions of the personal domains than about equality and fairness ( Campione-Barr and
Smetana, 2010).
Conversations and Reminiscing

Because the intense emotional arousal elicited in disciplinary encounters may inhibit moral internal-
ization or the construction of moral concepts, family conversations about past experiences, including
conflicts and transgressions, may be particularly effective in facilitating moral development (Wainryb
and Recchia, 2014). Indeed, revisiting moral interactions at a later time may provide children an
opportunity to reflect, interpret, process, and co-construct past experiences absent the emotional
heat of the original situation. Such reminiscences about the child’s (or others’) behavior can facilitate
children’s understanding of motivations, emotions, and behavior (in the past as well as the present),
thereby scaffolding children’s adaptive moral functioning.
Consistent with this view, Laible and Thompson (2000) examined the content of parents’ discourse
and found that mothers who made more frequent reference to emotions and evaluative statements in
discussing past misbehavior with their 4-year-olds had children with a more internalized conscience,
as indicated by greater mother-reported guilt and more resistance to temptation in a laboratory task.
Similar to Dunn and Munn (1987), these researchers also found that mothers who offered more
reasons for rules and statements regarding the consequences of children’s behavior in their conversa-
tions had children who did more of the same. Laible (2004b) further found that when mothers con-
versed more about emotions when discussing their 30-month-olds’ past misbehavior, their children
expressed more concern over others’ wrongdoing and demonstrated more internalized behavior on
a resistance to temptation task six months later. These studies echo findings discussed earlier (e.g.,
Smetana, 1989b) that indicate parental discourse that references emotions and provides morally salient
explanations (e.g., regarding the consequences of moral misbehavior for others’ welfare) promotes
young children’s morality.
Adding a cross-cultural dimension, Miller and her colleagues (Miller, Wiley, Fung, and Liang, 1997)
used ethnographic methods in a sample of 12 middle-class families, 6 each from the United States and
6 from Taipei, Taiwan, to examine parents’ personal storytelling about their 2½ -year-olds’ transgres-
sions. The researchers extracted narrations from videotaped home observations where a family mem-
ber recounted a past event in which the child committed a moral or social transgression, as identified
by the storyteller’s evaluative statements and tone of voice. Chinese families were much more likely
than U.S. families to narrate a story immediately after a transgression and to use the event didacti-
cally to draw out the transgression’s implications for the present or the future. The lower frequency
of moral rule violations in the U.S. sample was seen as part of a deliberate strategy to downplay such
events and protect the child’s self-esteem.
Further evidence for this conclusion was found in Miller, Fung, Lin, Chen, and Boldt (2012), who
conducted home observations with these same families when children were 3, 3½ , and 4 years of age.
As expected, personal storytelling persisted as children grew older, and families continued to enact
the different interpretive frameworks observed during the children’s toddlerhood: Chinese parents
continued to use storytelling as a medium for instilling moral norms and promoting children’s self-
improvement, whereas U.S. parents mitigated transgressions or downplayed their significance as a way
of protecting children’s self-esteem.
Reminiscing about the past (rather than the present) is considered particularly important in scaf-
folding moral development. Therefore, Reese, Bird, and Tripp (2007) tested whether similar types of
maternal utterances, such as positive or negative talk in conversations about past events, as compared
to discussions about current conflicts, uniquely predicted New Zealander 5- and 6-year-olds’ moral
self-development. As expected, they found significant links between emotion talk and the moral self,
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particularly when conversations focused on negative past events. Reminiscing about the past, however,
was not uniquely predictive of the moral self when controlling for children’s language abilities and
gender.
These studies focused primarily on early childhood, but other researchers have focused on parent–
child conversations in middle childhood and adolescence. For instance, analyses of mothers’ conversa-
tions with their 7-, 11-, and 16-year-olds about situations where children reported either harming
or helping a friend demonstrated how mothers attempted to scaffold children’s moral agency, par-
ticularly in the harm contexts (Recchia, Wainryb, Bourne, and Pasupathi, 2014). Conversations with
the 7-year-olds emphasized acts and reasons, whereas conversations with 11- and 16-year-olds were
equally focused on the facts as well as evaluations, insights, and strategies. Discussions of harmful
situations were more complex than those focused on helping; mothers did not condone children’s
harmful behavior but rather used various strategies, such as discussing provocation or extenuating
circumstances, to help children reconcile their harmful behavior with a positive moral conception
of themselves. These findings are compatible with (and extend) Miller et al.’s (2012) conclusion that
North American mothers’ moral discourse aims to promote children’s autonomy and self-esteem.
Summary
Beyond the discipline context, many types of interactions with parents, including conflicts, con-
versations, and reminiscences, provide opportunities for moral growth. Moral development can be
facilitated when parents manage young children’s conflicts by referencing emotions and providing
morally salient explanations. Childhood may be a particularly important period for parental inter-
ventions in moral conflicts to have an impact, as everyday conflicts with parents over moral issues
arise much less frequently during adolescence. Reminiscences, particularly about situations involv-
ing harm (as compared to helping) are thought to be important to moral development because such
situations can scaffold children’s understanding of motivations, emotions, and behavior. Cultural
differences have been found, however, in what mothers emphasize in their stories about children’s
past misbehavior.
Future Directions in Research on Moral Development

Despite the abundance of research and the many theoretical refinements discussed in the previous
sections, significant gaps in the research on parenting and moral development remain. First, it should
be apparent that research focuses primarily on mothering than on parenting more broadly considered.
Very few studies include fathers or compare interactions with or effects of mothers versus fathers.
Therefore, robust conclusions about the role of parenting in moral development await more research
with fathers.
In addition, and except when studies are designed to explicitly address cultural, ethnic, or socioeco-
nomic variations, the samples used in research have been rather homogeneously white, middle-class,
and North American. This is surprising, given the increased attention to contextual influences in
developmental research, the variations in the types of parenting practices considered normative in dif-
ferent groups and cultures, and evidence that evaluations of normativeness often moderate the effects
of parenting on moral development. Thus, findings need to be replicated in more socioeconomically,
ethnically, and culturally diverse samples, as well as in samples varying in terms of parents’ parenting
experiences. More research explicitly including judgments of the normativity of different parenting
practices (as well as children’s judgments regarding their fairness or appropriateness) also would greatly
expand our knowledge.
Additionally, we have devoted very little attention in this chapter to the issue of gender differences.
Some of the studies reviewed here did find gender differences that were not discussed in our review.
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However, the issue of gender differences (at least in moral reasoning), which was once highly debated
(Gilligan, 1982), is now a largely settled issue (Walker, 2006), with few consistent differences evident.
Likewise, the evidence for gender differences in the links between parenting and moral development
are neither strong nor consistent. It is possible that as more research includes fathers, evidence of inter-
actions between parents’ and children’s gender will emerge, but that issue awaits further investigation.
The broader family context also needs to be considered. Research demonstrates the importance
of sibling interactions in moral development (Dunn and Hughes, 2014); in addition, research on ado-
lescent–parent relationships has shown that parents parent differently according to children’s ordinal
position in the family (Wray-Lake, Crouter, and McHale, 2010). Research on parenting and moral
development has paid very little attention to birth order, but doing so may reveal important within-
family variations.
With some notable exceptions (such as Kochanska’s and Dunn’s programmatic research), much of
the research examining parenting and different facets of moral development has been cross-sectional.
Nevertheless, research implicitly assumes that parenting facilitates moral development. This may be
the case, but it is more likely that these are reciprocal, transactional processes, and these need to be
examined and explicated in future longitudinal studies. Small variations in early development may
be magnified as development proceeds and lead to different developmental pathways. Thus, more
research examining such variations and developmental cascades over time would make an important
contribution to the literature. Additionally, as we have documented, research increasingly is moving
beyond the discipline contexts to consider how conversations and other types of interactions influence
children’s moral development. More research of this type is particularly warranted.
Furthermore, fundamental theoretical issues remain unresolved: What is it that parents should be
trying to foster? Stemming from their different theoretical commitments, programs of research have
answered this question in various ways while leaving different questions to be addressed. Studies
examining behavioral measures of moral development often have focused on children’s willing com-
pliance with parental directives, as assessed in resistance to temptation tasks where children are asked
to avoid touching a desirable toy (for no apparent reason other than that the parent or experimenter
says so). Learning to follow parental directives is undeniably important, particularly in early child-
hood, but compliance with arbitrary, primarily social-conventional norms in these experimental situ-
ations does not (at least in our view) offer a sufficient account of moral development. Compliance in
and of itself is not a moral “good,” especially without considering the acts compliance dictates. Many
of the studies examine compliance regarding behaviors that are primarily nonsocial (e.g., “don’t touch
the forbidden object!”), but morality is typically seen as fundamentally interpersonal and involving
obligations to treat others equitably and with respect and compassion rather than harmfully. Further-
more, what if parents demand compliance with injunctions to harm or exclude others, act unfairly,
or deny others their rights? We doubt that most parents (or scholars) would view compliance, even
committed compliance to such requests, as evidence of more mature or internalized morality. Thus,
we encourage researchers to expand the types of behavioral situations used to assess children’s moral
development to include a range of morally relevant situations. Comparisons of the types of parenting
that are effective in different types of behavioral situations could greatly expand our understanding
of moral development.
Moreover, studies that focus on individual differences, even those examining associations among
differences longitudinally, often do not clearly illuminate the developmental emergence of moral
capacities and the normative age-related changes in children’s moral reasoning and emotion attribu-
tions. On the other hand, other research has excelled at describing normative patterns of moral and
social interactions with parents and peers (Turiel, 1983; Smetana, Jambon et al., 2014). Future research
could usefully combine these two approaches to identify and illuminate variations around normative
pathways, as some studies have done (Ball et al., 2017; Dunn et al., 1995; Jambon and Smetana, 2018;
Malti et al., 2013).
147
In addition, research from the social domain perspective has focused increasingly on how children
identify and coordinate moral versus nonmoral concerns in reasoning about complex issues, such
as peer exclusion and intergroup relationships (Killen and Rutland, 2011). Our understanding of
complex issues may be enhanced by considering how parenting and parental beliefs (among other
factors), are associated with the different ways children come to coordinate moral and nonmoral con-
cerns in their judgments. Also, much research has focused on children’s and adolescents’ evaluations
of the legitimacy of parental authority, but the bulk of this research has focused on variations in and
consequences of judgments of illegitimacy (e.g., over the boundaries of the personal domain). More
attention to the antecedents and correlates of legitimacy judgments for moral versus other issues also
could prove to be informative.
This chapter has considered only a thin slice of contemporary research on moral development
(see Killen and Smetana, 2015, for a broader review). Although a great deal of research continues to
focus on moral socialization, the current trend in moral development research is towards laboratory
experimental studies, particularly on topics such as children’s decisions about resource allocation,
the contextual features that influence fair versus unfair allocations, and the role of intentionality and
other theory-of-mind abilities in moral evaluations. In addition, neuroscience, behavioral economics,
and comparative approaches to moral decision-making have become quite prevalent, and increasingly,
these studies have relied on laboratory experiments that are largely decontextualized and involve
children interacting around clever but unusual tasks with experimenters. The important insights
gained from this research would be enhanced by a greater consideration of moral development “on
the ground” (Miller et al., 2012)—for example, as studied in the interpersonal contexts where devel-
opment actually occurs. Research needs to more fully embrace the complexity of the social world
and children’s interactions with parents, other adults, friends, and foes as they co-construct children’s
moral development.
Conclusions
The research reviewed in this chapter provides a highly consistent and coherent set of recommenda-
tions about the types of parenting that promote moral development: Whenever possible, parents ought
to provide justifications for their rules and expectations and avoid coercively withdrawing their love
or asserting their power (except when absolutely necessary to stop their child from harming self or
others). Parents should match their responses to the type (domain) of the transgression, elaborate on
their reasons for different types of rules and expectations, and consider the child’s developmental level
to select a disciplinary approach that will be most comprehensible to the child and the parent’s goal
in childrearing. Parents ought to be responsive and consider the child’s perspective. They also should
carefully calibrate their use of force versus gentleness to best fit the child’s temperament, but parents
should not be afraid to express their emotional reactions (within reason), as this helps to convey their
concern about the child’s behavior. Parents who discuss moral issues, past and present, in everyday
conversations will help their children understand and interpret their own behavior and emotions.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Audun Dahl and Marc Jambon for their insightful comments on this chapter.
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6
PARENTING TO PROMOTE
RESILIENCE IN CHILDREN
Introduction
Parenting has played a central role in resilience science and its applications from the earliest days of
research concerned with risk and protective processes for human development (Luthar, Crossman, and
Small, 2015; Masten, 2014b; Masten and Cicchetti, 2016). Neglectful, inept, and abusive parenting
styles have been studied as sources of risk, trauma, and threats to positive child development, and mul-
tiple aspects of parenting, including sensitivity, warmth, monitoring, and consistent discipline, have been
examined as influences on positive adaptation to adversity. In addition, intervention research has targeted
diverse parenting processes, ranging from responsive caregiving and cognitive stimulation to family rou-
tines and school involvement, as a means of mitigating risk and promoting or protecting healthy devel-
opment for children endangered by a wide range of adverse experiences (Masten and Cicchetti, 2016).
In this chapter, we examine the evidence pertaining to parenting in resilience science and its
implications for practice and policy to promote and protect human development. First, we define
resilience from a developmental systems perspective to provide a conceptual framework for sections
that follow. Second, we briefly summarize the historical significance of parenting in the origins of
resilience science, drawing on findings from classic studies. Third, we examine the evidence on how
parenting functions to protect human development in the context of risk or adversity, organized by
salient roles and processes, including nurturing behaviors, attachment relationships, socialization, stress
management, and the transmission of protective cultural knowledge and practices. The fourth section
examines intervention research that targets parenting as a strategy for promoting resilience, offering
compelling evidence to support causal models of parenting roles in resilience, as well as the impor-
tance of developmental timing and targeting. The fifth section focuses on contemporary evidence,
reviewing key areas of emerging resilience science related to parenting, the neurobiology of parenting
roles in resilience, intergenerational transmission processes, and efforts to integrate interventions across
systems. The sixth section summarizes practical implications of the science reviewed in this chapter
for practice and policy aiming to promote resilience. To conclude, we reflect on progress to date on
what we know about parenting in resilience and what we can learn in the future that will advance
resilience science and its applications for practice or policy.
Resilience From a Relational Developmental System Perspective

Contemporary definitions of resilience in developmental science are grounded in a relational devel-
opmental systems framework (Overton, 2013, 2015). Resilience is defined as the capacity of a system
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Promoting Resilience in Children
to adapt successfully to challenges that threaten that system in significant ways, posing dangers to sur-
vival, development, or well-being (Masten, 2007b, 2011, 2014a, 2014b; Masten and Cicchetti, 2016).
The capacity of a person to adapt depends on many interacting systems, including their own neuro-
biological systems (e.g., immune function, central nervous system), as well as their relationships with
other people, how well the family system is functioning, and many other systems in the environment,
such as health care, education, and so forth. Interactions across systems and levels shape the course
of development and also change the interacting systems in a myriad of ways. As a result, resilience is
dynamic—always changing—and the resilience of an individual depends on interactions with many
other systems. Additionally, resilience can vary in relation to the nature of the challenges being con-
fronted at a given point in time and in relation to different domains of adaptation.
Children are living systems that develop over the life course, and their interactions with other
systems will be influenced by developmental timing with respect to their individual development and
the development of other important systems in their lives, including their parents. The threats posed
by adversity and the capacity for adapting to these challenges also will be affected by developmental
timing (Masten, 2015; Masten, Fiat, Labella, and Strack, 2015). Loss of a parent, for example, would
pose far greater potential harm to an infant than an adult. Research is surging on the role of develop-
mental timing in risk and resilience research in the animal and human literature, including attention
to periods of plasticity in brain development when exposures to positive or negative experiences may
have greater or more lasting consequences (Karatsoreos and McEwen, 2013; Masten, 2015; McEwen,
2016; Meaney, 2010).
Family systems also develop and change over time in ways that influence the capacity of individual
children or parents to adapt to challenges (Goldenberg and Goldenberg, 2013; Henry, Morris, and
Harrist, 2015; Kerig, 2019; Masten and Monn, 2015; Walsh, 2016). The capabilities of a family to
protect a child or a parent within the family will vary as a function of changing family membership
and relationships, the development and health of individual members, the resources and experiences
of the family, the supports the family can garner from the environment, and other circumstances that
affect the whole family, such as economic capital.
Dynamic developmental systems models of resilience in children emphasize the interdependence
of resilience across systems, levels, and time (Masten, 2015; Masten and Cicchetti, 2016). The resilience
of a child at a given time will depend on adaptive systems within the child, their relationships, family
resilience, and other systems connected to the child and family. In addition, this perspective suggests
that positive adaptation at one point in time can cascade forward in time in a child or family, as current
capabilities build human, social, and economic capital for future challenges (Masten and Cicchetti,
2010; Masten and Monn, 2015). At the same time, disturbances in function in one aspect or level of
adaptive function may cascade across systems and time through interactions. Family dysfunction can
spill over to dysregulate the biological stress-regulation systems in children, which then could affect
future learning or well-being (Shonkoff et al., 2012).
Parenting plays a vitally important role in human resilience because parenting serves many func-
tions, both in nurturing and protecting children as they develop and in fostering the development
of fundamental adaptive systems that individuals utilize over the life course. Parents nurture human
capital, broker social capital, monitor dangers, protect young children from harm, model and teach
adaptive strategies, transmit protective cultural knowledge and practices, and in many other ways build
the capacity of their children to adapt to challenges and flourish in society (Bornstein, 2015; Masten,
2014b; Masten and Monn, 2015; Walsh, 2016). Research has surged on the role of caregiving in alter-
ing brain development, gene expression, and various biological systems of stress regulation or immune
function in human as well as nonhuman animal models (Hostinar, Sullivan, and Gunnar, 2014; Karat-
soreos and McEwen, 2013; Meaney, 2010; Nelson, Fox, and Zeanah, 2014).
General models of parenting and related family processes also delineate multiple roles, including
direct effects on children (as a negative or positive influence on a specific outcome), mediating effects
157
where parents function as conduits of negative or positive experiences, and moderating effects, where
parents mitigate or exacerbate threats to a child (Becvar, 2013; Collins, Maccoby, Steinberg, Heth-
erington, and Bornstein, 2000; Conger et al., 1992; Cummings, 2006; Masten, 2014b; Masten and
Shaffer, 2006; Walsh, 2016). Parents, for example, can promote school success by encouraging children
to do their homework, mediate the impact of economic hardship on family life through its effects on
their parenting behaviors, or buffer the impact of a frightening situation by providing comfort. At the
same time, developmental models also recognize that parenting is influenced by myriad interactions
with a particular child and the parent’s own context (Belsky and DeHaan, 2011; Bornstein, 2015,
2016; Elder, 1974/1999; Elder, Nguyen, and Caspi, 1985).
In a developmental systems model, the function of one system can influence another and the effects
of an intervention at one level—such as a family—can cascade to benefit (or harm) other embedded
or connected systems, including children. The processes involved in cascading effects across levels
in connected systems have been described by developmental systems theorists over the years (Got-
tlieb, 2007). In the literature on developmental psychopathology and resilience, these processes are
described as “multilevel dynamics” (Masten, 2007a, 2007b; Masten and Cicchetti, 2010).
Doty, Davis, and Arditti (2017) described a model of cascading resilience that focuses on parent-
ing as a leverage point for changing children and other family members. Given the importance and
multifaceted roles ascribed to parenting in resilience theory and research on child development, the
resilience of parents and families becomes a key topic for research, intervention, and policy (Masten,
2016a; Masten and Monn, 2015). Similarly, there is growing recognition that communities or govern-
ments can support the resilience of families to benefit children, parents, and society (Britto, Engle, and
Super, 2013; Huebner et al., 2016; Petersen, Koller, Motti-Stefanidi, and Verma, 2016).
Classic Research on Parenting in Resilience Science

Parenting emerged early in the history of resilience science as a topic of central focus, both as a source
of risk and as a key protective influence (Masten, 2014b). Parents were implicated in clinical and case
studies, as well as early research on children affected by traumatic experiences.
World War II had devastating effects on families, with millions of children exposed to danger, sepa-
ration from parents, loss, and all the challenges that traumatized parents can bring home to families
(Masten, Narayan, Silverman, and Osofsky, 2015). During and following the war, numerous clinicians
and researchers recognized and began to study and try to mitigate the effects of war trauma on the
well-being of children. They consistently observed the risk posed to development by loss of effective
parenting, particularly when it persisted without meaningful care from stable caregivers. They also
recognized the crucial role of parenting and close relationships in buffering stress and facilitating the
recovery of children traumatized by war.
A. Freud and her colleague Burlingham opened the Hampstead War Nurseries to help children
and their families affected by the war. Freud realized that the setting provided an ideal situation for
observational studies of children (Midgley, 2007). Many of the children were separated from families
for protection during the bombing known as the Blitz, along with many other British children dur-
ing the war. Freud realized that these separations, while physically protective, often took an emotional
toll on children and their relationships with parents. In their book on War and Children, based on their
work in the War Nurseries, Freud and Burlingham (1943) noted that “London children . . . were on
the whole much less upset by bombing than by evacuation to the country as a protection against it”
(p. 37). They also noted that young children in the care of their own mothers “or a familiar mother
substitute” were not particularly affected by exposure to bombing. After the war ended, Freud also
treated some of the child survivors of the Terezin concentration camp and published detailed observa-
tions about their adjustment (Freud and Dann, 1951). Generally, they showed marked improvements
but also lingering effects that were attributed to sensitization or “scarring” by trauma.
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Bowlby would later analyze these and similar phenomena in his trilogy on attachment and loss
(Bowlby, 1969, 1973, 1980). Shortly after the war, Bowlby was commissioned by the World Health
Organization (WHO) to write a report on the mental health of children who were left homeless by
the conflict, an assignment that resulted in a report translated into 14 languages (Bowlby, 1951/1966;
Bretherton, 1992). To prepare the report, he interviewed a number of clinician-scholars concerned
with the impact of separations on child development, including Spitz (1946). This work influenced
his ideas about parenting, attachment, and loss and the role of societies in supporting parents. In
the WHO report, Bowlby wrote: “If a community values its children, it must cherish their parents”
(Bowlby, 1966, p. 84).
Three of the individuals who later became leading pioneers in resilience science also were touched
by WWII in distinctly different ways: Garmezy was an infantry soldier in Europe; Werner, as a young
survivor of the bombing in Europe, was one of many children assisted by humanitarian aid after the
war; and Rutter was evacuated across the ocean with his sister to America to stay safe from the bomb-
ings in England (Masten, Narayan, et al., 2015). These three were instrumental in shaping the first
wave of resilience research in the 1970s, which highlighted the role of good parenting as a compensa-
tory or protective influence against diverse hazards and risks (Masten, 2007b).
Garmezy and Rutter met in 1972 at a conference in Bled, Slovenia, and subsequently spent sabbati-
cal time together in London (1975–76) as well as the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral
Sciences in Palo Alto (1979–80). At the Center, they gathered a group to work on the seminar theme
of stress and coping, resulting in a highly influential book, Stress, Coping, and Development in Children
(Garmezy and Rutter, 1983). Werner visited this group at the Center and subsequently published,
Vulnerable But Invincible: A Study of Resilient Children (Werner and Smith, 1982), presenting major find-
ings on resilience from their longitudinal study of a cohort of children born in 1955 on the Hawaiian
island of Kauai. Garmezy wrote the foreword to this volume, noting how well the findings aligned
with the conclusions emerging from the seminar.
Many early resilience studies underscored risks to child development associated with marital dis-
cord and deprivation, while at the same time they highlighted the importance of high-quality care-
giving, emotional support, and positive relationships with extended family, mentors, or teachers as
predictors of good adjustment despite high levels of adverse life experiences or sociodemographic risk
(Masten and Coatsworth, 1998). Garmezy (1983, 1985) and Rutter (1979, 1987) both observed in
early reviews of the emerging evidence that the quality of parenting and emotional support from the
family was associated with better outcomes among children in diverse situations of risk (Masten, Best,
and Garmezy, 1990). Werner (Werner, 1993; Werner and Smith, 1982) emphasized the importance
of social bonds with an extended network of “kith and kin” in the Kauai study, in a culture where
households and caregiving often included multiple generations. Results of the Project Competence
Longitudinal Study initiated by Garmezy in the late 1970s supported the hypothesis that parenting
quality is a salient protective factor for children at risk due to high levels of cumulative adversity
(Masten and Tellegen, 2012).
Subsequent reviews of the literature on resilience have corroborated the importance of effective
parenting in childhood for promoting competence in risky environments and its central role in
buffering the consequences of stressful life experiences and socioeconomic disadvantage (Luthar,
2006; Luthar et al., 2015; Masten, 2014b; Masten and Cicchetti, 2016). Research on children
exposed to war, terror, and disasters has confirmed the early-observed importance of protecting and
restoring effective care and parenting during and following exposure to acute and chronic trauma
(Masten, Narayan, et al., 2015). Concomitantly, there is a growing body of evidence from preven-
tion science and intervention studies that efforts to improve or strengthen parenting skills lead to
improvements in the adjustment or function of their children, just as one would expect if parenting
plays a vital role as a promoter or protector of human development (Sandler, Schoenfelder, Wolchik,
and MacKinnon, 2011).
159
The study of parenting and resilience has expanded and improved in many ways over the decades
that followed the initial clinical observations and empirical studies, revealing a mixture of consistency,
complexities, and controversies. Advances in technology and statistics have opened new possibilities
and avenues of study, yielding notable progress along with some enduring controversies in resilience
science (Masten, 2014b, 2015; Masten and Cicchetti, 2016). In the sections that follow, we summarize
major findings on parenting in relation to resilience in children and youth, highlighting the roles and
processes involved in parenting with respect to resilience based on studies of naturally occurring resil-
ience and interventions to promote resilience.
Roles of Parenting in Resilience Science

Parenting is a complex undertaking that requires parents, as Bornstein (2015) noted, to “multitask”
(p. 56). Moreover, stakeholders in childrearing, including societies, cultures, communities, children,
and parents themselves, expect parents to execute a multifaceted set of roles with little or no training
for a long period. The many functions involved in parenting children may not be fully appreciated
until such time as parents are lost, children are removed from dangerous families, or child welfare
agencies attempt to replace, restore, or improve the parenting available to a particular child.
Given the many functions parents have in child development, it is not surprising to observe that
numerous studies on resilience have implicated the quality of parenting available to children, both gen-
erally and with respect to specific roles. In this section, we highlight evidence from resilience research
on major ways that parents promote positive outcomes in their children and nurture lifelong resilience.
Nourishing Body and Mind

At the most fundamental level of caregiving, parents are expected to nurture the bodies and minds of
children, to keep them alive and well in the face of threats, and to support the early developmental
tasks of acquiring universal physical and cognitive skills. Broader socialization goals typically assigned
to parents by cultures are discussed later, but first a child must survive, grow, and acquire basic human
tools of interacting with other people and the environment. Human infants are so helpless that their
survival depends on active care for a prolonged period.
Caregivers are expected to provide nutrition and basic protection from physical harm to infants
and young children in all cultures. Concomitantly, families and cultures or societies are expected to
support caregivers in their task of nurturing and protecting children. These roles, observed across
human history, were elevated to human rights when they were codified in the Convention on the
Rights of the Child. The Millennium Development Goals (for 2000 to 2015) of the United Nations
(UN) included the goal of lowering child mortality (under the age of 5) by two-thirds. Remarkable
progress has been made in child survival in recent decades worldwide, motivating a shift to broader
goals to realize developmental potential (Huebner et al., 2016). The new Sustainable Development
Goals for 2030 of the UN reflect this shift.
Recognizing the importance of caregivers in fostering many other aspects of human development
through their interactions with young children is a more recent global phenomenon. As child survival
improved, the goals of many international organizations expanded to raise the bar from surviving to
positive development and thriving (Black et al., 2017; Britto et al., 2017; Huebner et al., 2016; Mas-
ten, 2014a, 2014c). For children in environments adverse to child development, including millions
of children worldwide living in subsistence economies, conflict zones, or other hazardous situations,
this broadening of international priorities beyond survival represents a profound shift toward a focus
on resilience.
In a discussion paper for the National Academy of Medicine Perspectives series, a multidisciplinary
group of leading scholars in child development articulated the case for investing in young children
160
globally to promote peace, justice, and prosperity and to build the human capital of children and
societies (Huebner et al., 2016). They argued for a holistic approach to integrate services for young
children and their caregivers, coordinating actions to improve the health and nutrition of parents
(especially prenatal and maternal health) as well as children, and the quality of parent–child interac-
tions. Protection from violence and support to caregivers are high priorities, along with efforts to
improve the capacities of vulnerable families to address the needs of children in contexts of stress and
deprivation.
There is growing evidence that investing in early childhood serves broad goals for lifelong health
and well-being in human development, particularly for disadvantaged and endangered children (Black
et al., 2017; Huebner et al., 2016). Successful efforts often combine prenatal care, nutrition, vaccina-
tions, other medical and dental care, and education about the needs of young children for stimulation
(Britto et al., 2013, 2017). Evidence supports integrating nutrition and health programs with efforts
to support parenting skills of sensitivity and stimulation in their interactions with their young chil-
dren (Black and Dewey, 2014; Britto et al., 2017). A growing number of humanitarian programs now
provide education for parents about the importance of talking with your child, opportunities to play,
and the importance of early childhood education, along with teaching about nutrition, sanitation,
and health care. They also advocate with governments to provide more parental leave as well as early
childhood education for parents and their children.
Emotional Security and Physical Safety: Attachment Processes

Virtually every theoretical and empirical study concerned with resilience has suggested that close rela-
tionships play a crucial role in resilience over the life span (Luthar et al., 2015; Masten, 2014b; Masten
and Cicchetti, 2016). For children, the primary relationships that protect and promote development
are parent–child relationships and the family system of caregiving.
One of the great 20th-century contributions of developmental science to understanding human
behavior and development was the articulation of attachment theory by Bowlby, Ainsworth, Sroufe,
and their colleagues (Ainsworth, 1989; Ainsworth, Blehar, Walters, and Wall, 1978; Bowlby, 1969, 2008;
Sroufe, 1979, 2005; Sroufe and Waters, 1977). This theory posited that a powerful adaptive system,
rooted in mammalian evolution, emerges early in life as children interact with their caregivers. They
proposed that infants form a special bond with their primary caregivers as an organized relational
system forms in the latter part of the first year of life. This system operates to protect the young child,
both physically and emotionally. Once the attachment system organizes in caregiver–infant dyads,
then perceived threats by either party in an attachment relationship can trigger attachment behaviors.
Infants seek proximity and comfort of attachment figures, and caregivers in an attachment relationship
seek proximity and attempt to protect or comfort the child. Yet attachment relationships also promote
learning and exploration in this theory. When children feel secure and safe, they will venture to explore
the world. Thus, the presence of an attachment relationship functions as a “secure base” for learning.
Attachment theorists also argued that responsive and sensitive caregiving led to what they described
as “internal working models” of relationships that are carried forward into future relationships with
other people (Sroufe, 2005; Thompson, 2013, 2015). Secure attachments in early development were
posited to provide a foundation for later relationships, in effect potentiating later supportive relation-
ships with friends, romantic partners, and other people.
This theory also suggested that children would not flourish in the absence of a reliable and sensitive
caregiver. Although there is extensive debate about what constitutes effective caregiving, there is little
debate that neglectful or abusive care or care by continually changing caregivers (as often found in
institutional care) is harmful to development (Cicchetti, 2013; Nelson et al., 2014).
Studies of caregiving in the resilience literature support basic tenets of attachment theory and
more generally the protective effects of a close relationship for children exposed to adversity.
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Moreover, the buffering effects of interactions with an attachment figure can be observed at both
the behavioral and biological level. Laboratory studies of stress demonstrate that the presence of a
caregiver can buffer behavioral and physiological stress reactions to frightening stimuli (Carter and
Porges, 2014; Gunnar, Hostinar, Sanchez, Tottenham, and Sullivan, 2015). Proximity to caregivers
and even the sound of their voices can elicit a biological response. When children hear or touch
their caregivers in stress-eliciting situations, there is an increase in oxytocin (a neuropeptide that
plays a role in mammalian pair bonding) and a reduction in cortisol (a stress hormone released by
the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis) compared to controls (Seltzer, Ziegler, and Pollak, 2010).
Multivariate studies have shown promotive and protective effects of parenting for children at risk of
academic and social problems at school due to cumulative risk or adversity (Alink, Cicchetti, Kim,
and Rogosch, 2009; Houston and Grych, 2016; Kim-Cohen, Moffitt, Caspi, and Taylor, 2004). Even
in the situation of chronic maltreatment, positive relationships with a caring parent or other commit-
ted adult are associated with manifested resilience (Alink et al., 2009; Collishaw et al., 2007; Egeland,
Carlson, and Sroufe, 1993; McGloin and Widom, 2001).
In families experiencing homelessness, children are more successful in school when they have
parents observed to be engaged, warm, sensitive, and encouraging to their children (Masten et al.,
2014). In an observational study of parenting in the context of structured parent–child interaction
tasks administered while families were residing in emergency shelters, Herbers and colleagues found
that sensitive co-regulation by parents was associated with children showing on-task behavior and
forecasted children’s subsequent function at school as reported by teachers (Herbers, Cutuli, Sup-
koff, Narayan, and Masten, 2014). This predictive effect appeared to be mediated by the child’s self-
regulation skills, which also were associated with parenting quality.
In their studies of Iowa farm families affected by economic hardship, Elder and Conger (2000)
observed that warm and supportive parenting fostered resilience in young people during the eco-
nomic crisis confronting many farm families in the 1980s. Moreover, successful youth typically were
embedded in a network of social connections with intergenerational family members and people
in their communities, facilitated by their parents, who often were engaged in educational, civic, and
religious organizations.
Research on children in war and disaster corroborates the protective influences of both physical
proximity to attachment figures and close relationships with parents, although there are some interest-
ing nuances in the findings (Masten, Narayan, et al., 2015). Research continues to corroborate the
findings of classic studies that separation from caregivers is associated with worse reactions to mass
trauma experiences than observed when families are not separated; consequently, restoring proxim-
ity to primary caregivers is now considered a top priority in disaster response (Federal Emergency
Management Agency, 2013).
Moderating effects of parenting beyond the issue of separation also have been documented in the
literature on children in war and disaster (Masten, Narayan, et al., 2015). The function of caregivers
can be undermined by trauma, with parents developing symptoms of depression or post-traumatic
stress. Mental health problems in parents exposed to war and conflict predict worse adjustment in
their children. Yet caregivers can maintain effective parenting, and evidence also suggests that when
they do, children are buffered to some degree from the devastating effects of mass trauma experiences.
For example, in a study of Israeli and Palestinian youth exposed to political conflict, the quality of
parenting (including praise and discipline) moderated the outcome of post-traumatic stress symptoms
(Dubow et al., 2012).
Studies of natural and technological disasters also illustrate the key role of parents in mediating
or moderating child adaptation (Masten, Narayan, et al., 2015). Positive relationships of parent and
child showed protective effects for young children exposed to an earthquake (Proctor et al., 2007) and
adolescents who experienced a tsunami in Sri Lanka (Wickrama and Kaspar, 2007). In their review of
parenting roles related to children’s mental health in the aftermath of disaster, Cobham, McDermott,
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Haslam, and Sanders (2016) concluded that positive psychological adaptation in children was facili-
tated by supportive parent–child relationships, encouragement of emotional expression, and positive
reframing (Cobham et al., 2016).
However, as noted earlier, there are hints of complexity in the disaster literature. For example, in the
study by Proctor and colleagues (2007), at very high levels of child exposure, the protective effects of
parenting were not as strong. Moreover, in a study of children’s post-disaster functioning after a flood
in Poland, investigators found that maternal overprotectiveness was related to worse post-traumatic
symptoms in the children (Bokszczanin, 2008). These results suggest that there may be nonlinear pat-
terns of association among parenting behavior, adversity, and child outcomes. Curvilinear patterns
would be congruent with other findings in the parenting literature indicating that “more” of a par-
ticular parenting behavior does not always correspond to “better” parenting or outcomes for children
(Bornstein and Manian, 2013).
Intervention experiments in the war recovery literature also confirm the role of caregivers.
Dybdahl (2001), in a rare experimental study of parenting, implemented an intervention with
Bosnian families exposed to war. The intervention aimed to boost maternal warmth and sup-
port to young children ages 5 and 6 years along with providing medical care; the control group
received only the medical care. The treatment group showed better maternal mental health and
child physical health.
Randomized controlled trials to test interventions that target parenting and parent–child relation-
ships provide the most compelling evidence that parenting matters in resilience. Many of the most
successful prevention trials in the developmental literature have targeted parenting among children
exposed to risky environments, deprivation, or adverse life experiences. These are discussed in the
section on intervention.
Stress Management and Inoculation

Parents are expected to protect their children from danger, but this does not mean preventing all
exposures to adversity and stress. Adaptive systems, including the systems that protect children as they
navigate through life, require experience to develop.
The immune system requires exposure to challenges, including vaccinations, to develop protec-
tive antibodies and adaptive functionality (Abbas, Lichtman, and Pillai, 2016). Although parents must
protect children from dangerous pathogens, children need some exposure to dirt and biological chal-
lenges for their immune systems to optimize for a particular environment. Children are vaccinated
to stimulate the immune system with a milder form of a dangerous pathogen so the immune system
acquires adaptive antibodies to a specific danger. Timing also matters, in that exposures early in devel-
opment can have markedly different effects than later exposures. Growing up on a farm exposed to
microorganisms connected to animals and dirt is protective for asthma and some allergies, whereas
adult exposures could cause serious allergic reactions (Guerra and Martinez, 2008; Okada, Kuhn, Feil-
let, and Bach, 2010; von Mutius and Radon, 2008).
Similarly, children need experience managing adversity to develop effective adaptive skills at mul-
tiple levels, neurobiological to social (Masten and Cicchetti, 2016). Parents can and often deliberately
do provide children with exposures to manageable challenges that help them learn conscious skills for
managing the expectable challenges of life, including situations that produce stress, fear, anxiety, anger,
disappointment, frustration, and other unpleasant reactions to threats and challenges. At the same time,
at an unconscious level, the neurobiological systems that regulate these reactions to threats are also
changing in adaptive ways, most particularly the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal system that regu-
lates stress (Blair and Raver, 2016; Hostinar et al., 2014; Lupien, McEwen, Gunnar, and Heim, 2009).
Animal models of this system indicate that repeated exposures to moderately stressful experiences can
have salutary effects on future adaptation to stressors (Parker and Maestripieri, 2011).
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Clearly, overwhelming stress is harmful to development in multiple ways, including healthy brain
development (Blair and Raver, 2016; Lupien et al., 2009). However, preventing any exposure to mild
or moderate stressors would also compromise development, just in different ways. There is grow-
ing recognition that parents can be overprotective, so that the capacity of their children to manage
psychosocial as well as physical adversities is compromised. An important function of parenting may
be to provide developmentally, contextually, and child-personalized “doses” of exposure to stress to
facilitate coping skill development (Skinner and Zimmer-Gembeck, 2007, 2016; Zimmer-Gembeck
and Skinner, 2016). Contemporary concerns in the media about “helicopter parents” express the idea
of risk in overdoing protection as a parent.
The resilience literature suggests that parents often strive to prepare their children for the adversi-
ties expected in their environment. For example, parents of children who will likely face discrimina-
tion on the basis of ethnicity attempt to prepare their children through teaching them how to handle
specific situations and also by instilling ethnic pride, discussed further later. Parents of children who
live in chronic conflict zones as well as disaster-prone areas also train their children for safety, prepar-
ing family emergency plans, for example, or “go bags” (Masten, Narayan, et al., 2015).
Socialization
Parents are expected to socialize their young children for life in society and the contexts in which they
will grow up (Bornstein, 2015). Many processes are involved in socialization, including direct teach-
ing; modeling desired behavior; discipline; maintaining family rules, roles, and routines; monitoring;
and social regulation. Socializing children in the context of adversity, particularly the enduring hard-
ships associated with poverty, discrimination, family or neighborhood violence, and political conflict,
poses enormous challenges for parents. Yet many parents in these difficult situations manage to rear
their children effectively for success in school, work, community life, and rearing their own children
later in life.
In the context of family life, parents establish and maintain rules and routines that serve to support
well-being and socialization in the family system as a whole and facilitate family adaptation to adver-
sities (Fiese, 2006; Masten, 2014b; Pratt, 1976; Walsh, 2013). Routines around the daily-life mainte-
nance functions of eating, sleeping, health care, home management, and so forth, as well as routines of
religious and other cultural practices, are posited to maintain the cohesion and stability of the family as
a system and support individual child development. Fiese (2006) studied the complex rules and roles
embedded in family mealtime routines, and evidence supports the importance of regular mealtimes
for both child competence and marital happiness. Ferretti and Bub (2014) explored the role of fam-
ily routines in a Head Start population of preschoolers where children from families with consistent
routines had improved self-regulation and increased cognitive abilities.
Acute and chronic disruptions of families by divorce, illness, death, homelessness, war, disaster, or
other adversities take a toll on these routines. Restoring routines of family life, or establishing new
routines when that is not feasible, is viewed as a critically important recovery process in disparate
literatures, ranging from family therapy (Masten, 2016b; Walsh, 2016) to war recovery (Masten,
Narayan, et al., 2015). In refugee camps for survivors of war and disaster, humanitarian activities
often are directed at restoring family routines as well as opportunities to engage in other childhood
routines, such as play or school (Masten, Narayan, et al., 2015). Another striking example is provided
by the work of Boss (2006) to elucidate strategies for promoting resilience in situations of what she
termed “ambiguous loss.” Ambiguous loss refers to situations where a loved person is gone without
the closure provided by certainty about what happened. Examples include disappearances of planes
or ships, disasters where bodies cannot be recovered (such as 9/11), and missing-in-action soldiers.
One of the resilience factors Boss delineated in these situations is the reconstruction of family rituals
and routines.
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In addition to their roles in maintaining family systems, parents serve as external regulators of
arousal, affect, and behavior in individual children until such time as children can regulate themselves
(Beeghly and Tronick, 2011; Masten, 2014b; Thompson, 2015; Tronick and Beeghly, 2011). Parents
soothe upset children, stimulate laughter, set limits on aggression, and help children to verbalize
frustration instead of throwing a tantrum. Sensitive co-regulation helps children modulate affect and
stress. Over time, many such interactions between parent and child are believed to scaffold the devel-
opment of a child’s capacity for self-regulation.
Tronick and Beeghly (2011) described how infants learn from many brief interactions involving
an emotional disturbance and then the reestablishment of equilibrium via parentally scaffolded affect
regulation and problem-solving. This process subsequently shapes the dyadic parent–child relation-
ship. Dyadic synchrony in which children and caregivers are affectively and behaviorally in tune with
each other facilitates the development of social skills and emotion regulation, particularly for those at
risk. Parent–child relationships that are more “rigid” in their interactions can compromise the devel-
opment of self-regulation and may contribute to the development of psychopathology (MacPhee,
Lunkenheimer, and Riggs, 2015).
Morris and colleagues (Morris, Silk, Steinberg, Myers, and Robinson, 2007) proposed that three
additional processes are also involved in parental influence on child regulation: observational learning
from parents, parent coaching and reactions, and the emotional climate in the family. Evidence has
accumulated to support and expand their model (Morris, Criss, Silk, and Houltberg, 2017). Parents
play a role in socializing children around the experience of particular emotions and their appropri-
ate expression. Positive parenting practices and positive emotional environments support resilient
outcomes, including more positive child affect, more prosocial skills, fewer externalizing issues, and
higher social-emotional competence overall (Brophy-Herb et al., 2011; Labella, Narayan, and Mas-
ten, 2016; McCoy and Raver, 2011; Perlman, Cowan, Gewirtz, Haskett, and Stokes, 2012). Positive
and supportive environments may be particularly important for families facing adversity due to the
stress-engendered risks for higher negative affect, lower positive emotion socialization, reductions in
self-regulation, and mental health problems, such as depression (Brophy-Herb et al., 2011; England
and Sim, 2009; Zalewski et al., 2012).
Patterns of parenting related to warmth and structure have been examined for decades in the con-
cept of parenting styles, inspired by Baumrind on patterns of interaction between parents and their
children (Baumrind, 1966, 1971; Maccoby and Martin, 1983; Steinberg, 2001). Authoritative parent-
ing styles, characterized by a combination of high warmth, structure, and expectations for children,
often have been associated with competence and resilience of children in families facing adversity
(Masten and Coatsworth, 1998). However, work on parenting styles highlights the importance of
context for defining “authoritative parenting” and the differential significance of parenting style (e.g.,
firmness versus warmth) for different aspects of child functioning. Parents may shift their behavior in
reaction to situations of life-threatening danger. In such circumstances, parents may exhibit high levels
of strictness, monitoring, or control usually associated with authoritarian rather than authoritative
style (DuMont, Ehrhard-Dietzel, and Kirkland, 2012). Yet their warmth and sensitivity remain, along
with high expectations for the success of their children.
Numerous studies suggest that parents can mitigate risks for antisocial and drug-related problems
through monitoring their children and knowing their whereabouts and friends, especially when par-
ents have a positive relationship with their children (Dishion and McMahon, 1998; Hardaway, Sterrett-
Hong, Larkby, and Cornelius, 2016; Stattin and Kerr, 2000). A study of African-American girls and
their mothers provided evidence that a strong mother–daughter relationship can moderate the influ-
ence of negative peer norms and reduce risky sexual activity in adolescents (Emerson, Donenberg, and
Wilson, 2012). Additionally, strong parent–child relationships can protect children from the negative
outcomes associated with exposure to community violence (Gorman-Smith, Henry, and Tolan, 2004;
Hardaway, McLoyd, and Wood, 2012; Labella and Masten, 2017). Interventions, such as The Strong
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African-American Families Program (SAAF; Brody et al., 2006), have successfully targeted monitor-
ing as a strategy to reduce risky behaviors and promote resilience among youth, in this case combined
with clear communication of expectations and ethnic socialization.
In the successful SAAF prevention trial, ethnic socialization was included as a target because evi-
dence indicated that racism could contribute to substance use (Brody et al., 2006) and also because
research on naturally occurring resilience among disadvantaged African-American children suggested
that their parents prepared them to handle the challenges of racism in American society (Hill and
Tyson, 2008; McLoyd, 1998).
Parents also can promote positive ethnic identity, which is associated broadly with competence in
development and shows protective effects in some studies (Rivas-Drake et al., 2014). Positive ethnic
identity shows protective effects for urban adolescent males of African-American or Latino heritage
(Williams, Aiyer, Durkee, and Tolan, 2014). Research on acculturation processes among immigrant
youth also indicates that positive ethnic identity has protective effects on psychological well-being
and adjustment (Motti-Stefanidi, 2015; Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014). Burt, Simons, and Gibbons (2012)
suggested that parents can promote resilience for children who know they will face ethnic discrimina-
tion by reinforcing a positive identity and teaching their children about bias, what to expect, and how
to respond. It is important to note, however, that although parental socialization around ethnic pride
is promotive, it is possible that attuning children to biases could have negative consequences (Dunbar,
Leerkes, Coard, Supple, and Calkins, 2017).
Transmitting Cultural Beliefs and Practices That Enhance Resilience

Parents transmit many ideas, rituals, and practices to their children from their cultural heritages that
could contribute to resilience, including values, family routines, and religious or spiritual traditions
(Bornstein, 2012; Harkness and Super, 2012; Legare and Harris, 2016; Masten, 2014b). The influences
of culture on resilience were neglected for a long period in the early history of resilience science
(Luthar, 2006; Masten, 2014b). However, that neglect is giving way as scholars begin to focus on the
ways that culture can influence resilience (Masten and Cicchetti, 2016; Ungar, Ghazinour, and Richter,
2013; Wachs and Rahman, 2013).
Parents model and also actively teach their children about the cultural beliefs and practices of their
ethnic or religious heritage (Harkness and Super, 2012; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering,
and Medicine, 2016). These ideas and practices include concepts of spirituality, family, and commu-
nity; ways of celebrating, mourning, and childrearing; and self-regulation practices such as prayer or
meditation. Cultural beliefs and practices can provide a sense of continuity, coherence, connectedness,
hope, positive identity, cultural identity, and meaning in life (Cabrera and the SRCD Ethnic and Racial
Issues Committee, 2013; Crawford, Wright, and Masten, 2006; Kağitçibaşi, 2012; Motti-Stefanidi,
2014, 2015).
The roles of cultural beliefs and practices for resilience have gained increasing attention in research
on children and families in difficult situations of political conflict, poverty, and migration. Panter-
Brick and colleagues studied resilience in Afghanistan, observing the importance of Afghan values
of faith, family unity, service, effort, morals, and honor for surviving the prolonged years of turmoil
and danger in that country (Eggerman and Panter-Brick, 2010; Panter-Brick, Goodman, Tol, and
Eggerman, 2011). Investigators affiliated with the Resilience Research Center in Halifax elucidated
diverse cultural beliefs and practices associated with resilience in countries around the world (Ungar,
2012). For example, parents in Yoruba and Nigeria—an area where food availability often fluctu-
ates—promote the ability to delay gratification, creativity, and proper etiquette by teaching specific
culturally appropriate interactions around food (Cabrera and Leyendecker, 2017). A number of studies
have implicated a sense of family orientation or obligation, or “familism,” as a protective influence
against risky behavior (Cabrera and Leyendecker, 2017; Cabrera et al., 2013).
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Some studies of adaptation and development of immigrant youth have revealed an “immigrant
paradox” where the first generation appears to be healthier or more successful than later generations
(García Coll and Marks, 2012). Although this phenomenon does not occur consistently (Motti-
Stefanidi, 2014), one of the suggested explanations for the resilience of the first generation is that
protective cultural traditions and practices carried into a new country and cultural context may be
“lost” over time as successive generations acculturate (García Coll and Marks, 2012; Marks, Ejesi, and
García Coll, 2014).
The idea that cultural beliefs and practices can serve promotive and protective roles does not mean
that all cultural practices are promotive and protective (Crawford et al., 2006; Masten, 2014b). In some
cultures, parents may transmit practices that promote risk or interfere with resilience of individuals,
families, or communities. Some cultural practices can hinder cognitive development (e.g. never talk-
ing to children), favor one gender over another (e.g., forbidding girls to go to school), engender vio-
lence, (e.g., condoning rape or domestic violence), or impair health (e.g., genital mutilation or sexual
practices that spread HIV).
Nonetheless, many cultural traditions, particularly the ceremonies and rituals for coping with loss,
tragedy, and other vicissitudes of life, have endured because they provide comfort, guidance, or hope,
facilitating coping with adversity. Moreover, even when cultural practices or beliefs do not support
adaption or recovery from trauma, interventions designed to promote resilience must take cultural
perspectives and differences into account.
Intervention Research on Parenting for Resilience

Interventions to promote resilience often have focused on parenting. This is not surprising, given the
centrality of parenting in resilience theory and research. Experimental intervention studies provide a
powerful test of the causal models central to resilience theory (Masten, 2007b, 2014b). Multiple aspects
of parenting have been targeted directly or indirectly by interventions intended to help children by
protecting or improving the parenting available to them (Doty et al., 2017; Sandler et al., 2011; Toth,
Gravener-Davis, Guild, and Cicchetti, 2013). Some of these interventions are designed to promote or
protect parenting in families at risk from particular adversities, such as maltreatment, bereavement, or
divorce. Some focus on parenting in situations known to pose general risks for children, such as foster
care, migration, or natural disasters. Still others target specific outcomes in the children or youth, such
as reducing antisocial behavior, substance abuse, or promoting school readiness.
Resilience frameworks for intervention suggest that there are three basic strategies to improve
adaptation of individuals whose development is threatened by adversity or disadvantage, focusing on
risk, resources, or adaptive systems (Masten, 2011, 2014b). Parenting interventions can be consid-
ered from this perspective as well, depending on the target for change. Parent-focused interventions
could attempt to prevent risks or reduce stress experienced by parents that can undermine parenting,
boost resources that can support or enhance parenting, bolster or mobilize adaptive systems involv-
ing parents, or some combination of the three basic approaches. In this section, we highlight research
on interventions that illustrate one or more these approaches to promoting resilience in children by
influencing the parenting they receive.
Risk-Focused Strategies to Address Conditions that Harm

or Interfere with Parenting
Parents who are overwhelmed by current adversity (e.g., substance abuse, illness, a mental health
crisis, violence in the home, violence in the community) may not be able to fulfill the duties and
expectations of parents in their family or culture. Extended family, friends, religious communities,
and neighbors may step in informally to assist. However, parents in these situations can be isolated,
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particularly in low-income families headed by a single parent. Communities in the United States and
other countries have developed interventions to support parents struggling to care for their children.
These include services that provide caregiving respite to parents, such as crisis nurseries, and emer-
gency social services for parent mental health care.
Although there are many examples of efforts to address risks to parenting, one of the best studied
is the threat of parental depression. The threat of maternal depression, and postpartum depression in
particular, to parenting and consequently to children has been recognized for years. Maternal depres-
sion is viewed as an indicator of multiple risks because it is correlated with many other risk factors
(Wachs and Rahman, 2013). Threats related to maternal depression include reduced breastfeeding,
impaired responsiveness, lower maternal warmth, harsher and less positive parenting, neglect, and child
maltreatment.
As evidence mounted on depression as a risk factor for parenting and child development, it
received increasing attention (England and Sim, 2009; Goodman and Gotlib, 1999; Goodman et al.,
2011). Younger children are particularly vulnerable to the effects of maternal depression (Weinberg
and Tronick, 1998), which is alarming given that the Centers for Disease Control estimates that one
in nine mothers is at risk for postpartum depression (Ko, Rockhill, Tong, Morrow, and Farr, 2017).
Interventions to treat parental depression lower the risk of harm to their children (Compas et al.,
2011; Cuijpers, Weitz, Karyotaki, Garber, and Andersson, 2015). There also is evidence that maternal
depression can be effectively treated in low- and middle-income countries with low-cost interven-
tions (Wachs and Rahman, 2013). This is particularly noteworthy, given that mothers in poverty and
social disadvantage experience high rates of depression.
With mounting evidence on maternal depression as a threat to child development in addition to its
risks for mothers, there is an increasing effort to screen for and treat depression among pregnant and
postpartum women (O’Connor, Rossom, Henninger, Groom, and Burda, 2016). A consensus study
under the auspices of the U.S. National Academies (England and Sim, 2009) recommended that the
problem of depression in parents be viewed as a priority for the nation and that research be expanded to
improve the evidence on the effects of depression in parents and strategies for effective screening, treat-
ment, and prevention. The report called for more integrated intervention and treatment approaches
that focus not just on depressive symptoms but also parenting skills, comorbid issues such as trauma or
substance use, and current experiences of risk and adversity. These integrative interventions are recom-
mended because evidence indicates that treating maternal depression, even with a successful reduction
or remission of symptoms, does not necessarily translate to better parenting outcomes.
Interventions to Boost Resources and Skills for Parenting

Efforts to improve the resources and skills of parents to enhance their parenting have taken many
forms. These often include parent education efforts, for example, aiming to teach parents how to
discipline or monitor their children more effectively, or the importance of reading and talking to chil-
dren for their development. Humanitarian efforts in low- and middle-income countries often provide
parents with information and training on methods to stimulate the development of their children
as well as methods to keep them healthy (Engle et al., 2011; Yousafzai, Yakoob, and Bhutta, 2013).
Landmark intervention studies to promote child development through nutritional supplementation
and stimulation have shown that nutrition and stimulation have enduring independent and comple-
mentary effects (Walker, Chang, Powell, and Grantham-McGregor, 2005).
Similar federally funded programs exist in the United States in an attempt to bolster resources for
at-risk families, and ultimately improve parenting as well as child functioning. There are food supple-
ment programs (e.g., SNAP, WIC, the National School Breakfast and Lunch Program) and hous-
ing supports (e.g., Tenant-Based Rental Assistance, Project-Based Rental Assistance, Housing Choice
Voucher Program) that help families find and maintain homes. Temporary Assistance for Needy
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Families (TANF) also provides a variety of family services, such as giving monetary supplements, pro-
viding free childcare, educating parents, providing job training, and supplying transportation assistance
(National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2016).
In addition to providing for families’ basic needs, national public health initiatives have historically
played a substantial role in boosting parent knowledge—and thus parenting and child outcomes—
through public education campaigns and programs. Public education campaigns, for example, to
encourage child passenger safety, safe sleeping positions for infants (“Back to Sleep”), and eliminating
smoking or drinking during pregnancy, historically have been successful. Their success is attributed
to messages that target straightforward behavioral change, consistently reinforced and presented to the
public through multiple media outlets and other trusted sources.
Other private and public organizations (e.g., ZERO TO THREE, Centers for Disease Control)
have attempted this same educational approach with success in increasing positive parenting behaviors.
For example, the “Period of Purple Crying Program” educated parents about normal developmen-
tal crying periods and observed subsequent reductions in shaken baby syndrome and maltreatment
(National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2016).
In addition to national public service campaigns, numerous efforts have been made to improve
supports to parents to facilitate successful child outcomes. For example, school engagement by par-
ents is consistently related to school readiness and functioning of children. Parent involvement in
homework, their facilitations of learning opportunities, and how often they have conversations with
children about school are related to higher academic achievement (Fantuzzo et al., 2013). Many inter-
ventions target these outcomes by providing parents with learning activities and games to participate
in at home. Other interventions aim to foster parent–teacher relationships through regular meetings,
conversations about behavioral management methods, and education about learning opportunities at
home and at school (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2016).
Interventions to Improve or Mobilize Adaptive Systems

That Involve Parenting
Interventions also target the quality of parent–child interactions, attachment relationships, and family
systems in an effort to change the most salient protective processes related to parenting that are impli-
cated in the resilience literature. These interventions implicitly or explicitly represent tests of theory
or hypotheses on the protective influence of the change target.
One of the most fundamental interventions to boost parenting available to children is restoring
or replacing a family for a child who has lost effective caregiving due to death, illness, incarceration,
institutionalization, or separation. Foster care, adoption, and many other child welfare systems were
developed to address these needs. International adoption of institutionalized children has shown suc-
cess as an intervention to restore family-based care to children, particularly when children are adopted
at young ages (Rutter, Sonuga-Barke, and Castle, 2010; van IJzendoorn et al., 2011). Clinical case
studies also illustrate the power of adoption by a loving and well-matched family to facilitate resilience
(Masten and O’Connor, 1989).
Research also supports the advantage of foster care over institutional care. In a compelling demon-
stration of the relative benefits of foster care compared to the institutional care in Romania at the time,
the Bucharest Early Intervention Project showed that children placed in foster homes with trained
caregivers had better development in multiple domains, including cognitive function, brain develop-
ment, and biological stress response systems (Nelson et al., 2014; McLaughlin et al., 2015). Some
effects were dependent on age, suggesting sensitive periods in early development where responsive
caregiving is particularly impactful.
Research also has demonstrated that the quality of foster parenting matters. Experiments to
improve the quality of parenting by foster parents have successfully tested models of change where the
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intervention improves parenting with beneficial effects on children. Fisher, Van Ryzin, and Gunnar
(2011) showed that training foster parents resulted in better parenting and also normalized biological
stress-regulation patterns in foster children. Dozier and colleagues developed and tested the Attach-
ment and Biobehavioral Catch-Up (ABC) Intervention, demonstrating that foster parents benefitted
from training on ways to nurture and regulate their children (Dozier et al., 2006; Dozier, Peloso, Lewis,
Laurenceau, and Levine, 2008).
The ABC intervention developed by Dozier is grounded in attachment theory, with the goal
of improving the relationship of vulnerable infants and toddlers with their caregivers (Dozier and
Bernard, 2017). This intervention focuses on improving parenting sensitivity as a strategy for improv-
ing the quality of parent–child attachment and child regulatory capabilities associated with sensitive
caregiving at both a biological and behavioral level. Typically, the intervention involves ten sessions of
home visiting designed to provide in vivo sensitivity training for parents. Results from multiple studies
support the ABC model of change and its efficacy, which supports attachment theory suggesting that
sensitive parenting and secure attachment are protective factors for resilience.
Other relational interventions designed to enhance attachment relationships and the quality of
parent–child interactions for families at risk include Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP, including
variations for infants and toddler-age children; Lieberman and Van Horn, 2011) and Parent–Child
Interaction Therapy (PCIT; Funderburk and Eyberg, 2011). CPP and PCIT have shown efficacy in
randomized controlled trials in families at risk for child maltreatment (Chaffin et al., 2004; Thomas
and Zimmer-Gembeck, 2011; Toth and Gravener, 2012). These interventions focus on improving sen-
sitivity and other aspects of parenting theoretically related to the development of attachment security
in young children.
Many parenting interventions designed to prevent behavior problems in children have focused
on improving parent management skills, based on behavioral theories of change and social learning
theory. Patterson, Forgatch, and their colleagues developed the Oregon Model of Parent Management
Training (PMTO) intervention which has shown efficacy in randomized controlled trials (RCTs)
designed to change parenting behavior to improve outcomes among children at risk for behavior
problems, particularly in the externalizing domain (Forgatch and Gewirtz, 2017; Patterson, Forgatch,
and DeGarmo, 2010). This method of intervention, focused on parenting skills (increasing problem-
solving abilities, positive involvement, and skill encouragement while decreasing inept/coercive dis-
cipline), has shown impressive growing and spreading effects over time, with benefits observed in
multiple members of the family and multiple domains of outcomes (Patterson et al., 2010). These
results align with a cascading resilience model described earlier (Doty et al., 2017).
The Incredible Years program was designed to improve parenting among younger children, based
on models and methods similar to PMTO (Leijten, Raaijmakers, Orobio de Castro, van den Ban,
and Matthys, 2017; Webster-Stratton, 1987). This program has shown effectiveness for changing
parenting and reducing child behavior problems in clinical treatment studies as well as prevention
research (Leijten et al., 2017; Sandler et al., 2011). In a prevention study of families with children
enrolled in Head Start, parents randomly assigned to the Incredible Years program (8 to 12 group
sessions) showed significant effects on parenting and child behavior after one year compared to a
no-intervention control group (Reid, Webster-Stratton, and Beauchaine, 2001). Meta-analysis of
this program in Europe concluded that the program improves parent use of praise and reduces some
negative parenting behaviors, with beneficial effects on conduct and attentional problems in children
(Leijten et al., 2017).
Interventions have also focused on changing processes in the family system as a strategy for pro-
moting resilience in children (Sandler, Ingram, Wolchik, Tein, and Winslow, 2015; Walsh, 2016). There
is a long history of family-focused intervention in the family therapy field, although there are few
randomized controlled trials testing their specific effects on family function or parenting to enhance
resilience of children and youth (Goldenberg and Goldenberg, 2013; Masten and Monn, 2015). These
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programs often target family communication, emotional climate, control, identity, cohesion, and rou-
tines, as well as specific parenting skills (Henry et al., 2015; Walsh, 2016).
Fiese (2006), as noted earlier, emphasized the importance of family routines and rituals for child
development. She observed that a number of family interventions, such as the Nurse-Family Partner-
ship (discussed later) include a focus on restoring or establishing family routines. Maintenance and
restoration of family routines also have been implicated in theory, research, and practice on families
adapting well to the adversities that disrupt family life, including war and disaster (Masten, Narayan,
et al., 2015).
Interventions That Combine Strategies to Alter Risk, Resources,

and Protective Processes
Many interventions involving parents that are designed to promote child resilience incorporate mul-
tiple strategies and targets for change. These include many of the interventions noted earlier: humani-
tarian programs in low-income countries that target stimulation along with health, home visiting
programs for high-risk or vulnerable families, programs for families experiencing death or bereave-
ment, and interventions to prevent conduct disorders and substance abuse.
Home visiting programs are popular and effective (Howard and Brooks-Gunn, 2009; Sandler et al.,
2011). The best-known of well-validated programs is the Nurse-Family Partnership (Olds, 2006). In
this program, trained nurses visit first-time mothers during pregnancy through the first two years of
the child’s life to provide support and education. This intervention not only focuses on physical health
but also provides parent skill training and information, as well as access to a variety of community
resources including parent social support.
Another example is provided by the New Beginnings program, which has shown efficacy over
long-term follow-ups of the families that participated in this intervention for divorce (Sandler et al.,
2015; Sigal, Wolchik, Tein, and Sandler, 2012; Wolchik et al., 2002). It was designed to help fami-
lies with 9- to 12-year-old children where the parents were divorcing. The randomized preventive
intervention compared parent-only group intervention, a parent group combined with a child group
intervention, and a control group limited to education on divorce. Results show lasting effects of the
parent group, which focused on improving parent–child relationships, discipline strategies, engaging
fathers, and reducing interparent conflict. Positive effects of the parent and parent-plus-child condi-
tions were sustained over time and presented clear evidence that the effects of the intervention were
mediated by improvements in parent–child relationships and discipline in the families.
A final example illustrates a combined approach and a resilience perspective informed by cultural
sensitivity. Familias Unidas is a multilevel family-centered intervention designed to prevent problems
and promote resilience of youth in Hispanic families (Coatsworth, Pantin, and Szapocznik, 2002; Pan-
tin et al., 2003). The goal of the program is to enhance parenting skills and knowledge, reduce risks,
and boost protective systems in the families of young people at risk for substance abuse and other risky
behavior problems. The intervention was grounded in a socioecological model of development that
was guided by a multiple-level and multiple-domain approach, as well as efforts to change interac-
tions in multiple systems of family, school, and peer interactions. The intervention also was informed
by research on acculturation in these families. Research by the original group and other investigators
support this program’s efficacy (Molleda et al., 2016; Perrino et al., 2014; Sandler et al., 2011).
The growing body of intervention research focused on parenting to enhance resilience of chil-
dren in high-risk families or situations offers compelling support for the mediating and moderating
roles of parenting for child resilience. These studies also underscore the importance of develop-
mental timing and targeting. Results of these successful interventions, particularly in randomized
controlled trials that show change in the targeted process, have translational implications for prac-
tice and policy.
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Emerging Research on Parenting in Resilience

Research on resilience in human development continues to expand rapidly (Masten and Cicchetti,
2016). Many advances in resilience science broadly are affecting research more specifically focused
on parenting. In this section, we highlight exciting areas of emerging research that promise to
advance theory and understanding about the potential roles of parenting in resilience and fur-
ther inform applications of this knowledge to efforts to promote positive development in children
threated by adversity.
The Neurobiology of Resilience

Research on the neuroscience and biology of resilience has expanded dramatically along with advances
in technologies for studying neurobiological processes (Karatsoreos and McEwen, 2013; Kim-Cohen
and Turkewitz, 2012; Masten and Cicchetti, 2016). These advances include research on the neu-
robiological processes underlying adaptive systems, such as caregiving; how processes experienced
prenatally or postnatally interact with individual contexts to alter neurobiological functions; and the
moderating role of individual differences measured at a biological level, such as genes or neuroendo-
crine function. The effects of parenting often are central in this work.
Meaney and his colleagues demonstrated the power of parenting behaviors in an animal model to
alter development and gene expression (Meaney, 2010). Similarly, research with primates by Suomi
(2006, 2011) demonstrated at behavioral and biological levels how good caregiving could buffer stress
responses in developing monkeys. Cross-fostering studies are particularly compelling demonstra-
tions of gene–experience interactions, showing how “foster” mothers could alter the development of
genetically sensitive mammalian pups or monkey infants.
Research also expanded on the biological processes underlying the observed buffering of stress
by a caregiver that was initially observed at a behavioral level. Increasing evidence in animal models
and humans has delineated the moderating effect of a caregiver on stress and immune function at a
biological level (Hostinar et al., 2014). Concomitantly, research on the “biochemistry of love” has
shown how oxytocin and vasopressin influence social affiliation and attachment behavior in animals
and humans (Carter and Porges, 2014; Feldman, 2019).
Work on gene–environment interaction and on epigenetics has illuminated some of the potential
processes by which the mediating and moderating influences of parents on children observed at a
behavioral level may occur (Masten and Cicchetti, 2016). This body of research is burgeoning but
still in its early stages, with many inconsistencies in methods and findings. Nonetheless, it is clear that
genetic variation and changes in gene expression are implicated in risk and resilience of parents and
their children as individuals and in the consequences of their interactions. Brody and colleagues have
shown, for example, moderating effects of their preventive interventions for African-American fami-
lies on genetic risk for problem behaviors in adolescents (Brody, Beach, Philibert, Chen, and Murry,
2009; Brody, Chen, and Beach, 2013).
Variations in sensitivity to experience indexed at the genetic level hold keen interest in research
on risk and resilience (Belsky and van IJzendoorn, 2015; Karatsoreos and McEwen, 2013). Epigenetic
research is particularly exciting because gene expression, including measurable short or long-lasting
changes in methylation and RNA, could be targets for intervention. Such changes are also intrigu-
ing because they hold the possibility for intergenerational transmission (Roth, 2013; Szyf and Bick,
2013). Altering gene expression theoretically could account for moderating effects of parenting on
development, which could have cascading consequences on near-term and lifelong adaptation of their
children and future generations.
Another growing area of resilience research combines observations of parent–child behavioral
interactions with simultaneous assessments of biological functioning. The goal is to elucidate the
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processes in which parental biological and behavioral co-regulation influences the development of
child self-regulation. For example, in a group of low-income parents and their children, Morris and
collogues (Cui, Morris, Harrist, Larzelere, and Criss, 2015) found that within-dyad and between-dyad
positive affect was associated with more adaptive adolescent physiological regulation. Parasympathetic
physiological regulation is best understood in the context of social interactions, and is theorized to
be essential for the development of adaptive social engagement and emotion regulation. Better physi-
ological regulation is often related to more positive child outcomes and emotion regulation abilities.
More consistent positive behavioral synchrony between parents and children has also been related to
adaptive parental parasympathetic physiological regulation and ultimately more adaptive parenting
behaviors in at-risk groups (Giuliano, Skowron, and Berkman, 2015; Skowron, Cipriano-Essel, Ben-
jamin, Pincus, and Van Ryzin, 2013).
These examples provide just a small sample of the expanding research on biobehavioral processes
involved in parenting and resilience. We anticipate rapid growth in studies linking biological changes
and processes to the elucidation of how parenting matters for child development.
Cultural and Societal Contributions to Parenting Resilience

Research on resilience also is rapidly expanding to consider how the resilience of children is influ-
enced by culture, community, and society (Masten, 2014a, Ungar, 2012; Ungar et al., 2013; Vinde-
vogel, 2017; Wachs and Rahman, 2013). Many of these processes are mediated by parenting because
parents are conduits of culture and make choices that influence the exposure of children to diverse
people, religion, or media, as well as the contexts in which children grow up.
The Resilience Research Center in Halifax has played a leading role in expanding research on
resilience to more diverse cultural contexts (Theron, Liebenberg, and Ungar, 2015; Ungar, 2012;
Ungar et al., 2013). Until recently, there were relatively few studies of resilience in low- and
middle-income countries, other than studies of disasters and war. This group sponsored inter-
national research networks and conferences on resilience that served to diversify research and
also developed the resilience research “workforce” focused on studying the range of resilience
processes in very different cultures and situations. Similar efforts by humanitarian organizations,
including UNICEF and the World Bank, have added to the growing body of research on “what
works” to promote resilience in different cultures and regions (Britto et al. 2013; Huebner et al.,
2016; Lundberg and Wuermli, 2012).
A new pattern of research is emerging in which scientists collaborate with humanitarian agen-
cies on the ground to implement important research on resilience that would not be feasible
without the trust and frontline experience of these agencies in communities. An example is pro-
vided by recent work of Dajani, Panter-Brick, and colleagues (Dajani, Hadfield, van Uum, Greff, &
Panter-Brick, 2018) to study Syrian refugees in Jordan, where the researchers teamed with Mercy
Corps. In her studies of former child soldiers, Betancourt also collaborated with humanitarian
nongovernmental agencies, both local and international (Betancourt, McBain, Newnham, and
Brennan, 2013).
Research on positive development of ethnic minority and immigrant youth is also growing
rapidly, bringing greater attention to resilience in the context of ethnic and cultural diversity
(Cabrera and Leyendecker, 2017; Masten, 2014b; Masten, Liebkind, and Hernandez, 2012). The
Society for Research in Child Development sponsored an international conference in Prague on
this theme, resulting in a volume published in 2017, edited by Cabrera and Leyendecker, with a
multiple-chapter section focused on parenting. We anticipate that studies of resilience in diverse
cultures and minority children and families will continue to expand, enriching and refining the
methods, knowledge, and applications concerned with the roles of parents in promoting positive
development.
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Integrating and Coordinating Evidence and Interventions Across Systems

Another growing edge of resilience models and applications is focused on integrating theory, research,
knowledge, and actions across system levels and sectors that influence development and resilience (Mas-
ten, 2014a; Masten and Monn, 2015). This direction of theory and practice is an expectable outgrowth
of conceptualizing development and intervention from a systems perspective, recognizing the interde-
pendence of individuals, families, communities, and societies, and the many systems operating within and
across socioecological contexts. This trend is evident in humanitarian efforts to promote child survival
and well-being (Britto et al., 2013; Huebner et al., 2016) as well as a resurgence of interventions that
adopt a two-generation approach (Chase-Lansale and Brooks-Gunn, 2014; Shonkoff and Fisher, 2013).
The concept of resilience is surging in multiple disciplines, yet central disciplines reflecting systems
closely linked to children and their parents are not well integrated, either conceptually or empiri-
cally. The lack of and need for integration in theory and research on individual child resilience and
family resilience was highlighted in a special issue of the journal, Family Relations (Henry et al., 2015;
Masten and Monn, 2015). Similarly, the need to integrate ideas and findings on community resilience
and family or individual resilience has been noted, particularly in the literature focused on disaster
response (Aldrich and Meyer, 2014; Masten, Narayan, et al., 2015; Walsh, 2016). The cascading resil-
ience model articulated by Doty and colleagues (2017) calls for integrated theory and research to
delineate processes that connect individual, family, and community systems, focusing on changes in
parent–child relationships and parenting as key levers for generating positive cascades.
Implications of Resilience Research for Practice and Policy

The overview in this chapter describing theory and evidence on parenting with respect to resilience
underscores the salience of parents in promotive and protective processes for child development
consistently found in this literature. The literature also corroborates early observations by pioneers
in resilience science that multiple aspects of parenting are central to child resilience in multiple ways.
Those pioneers were well aware that children and parents cannot wait for all of the evidence to be
gathered and distilled for applications to help children and their caregivers (Masten, 2014b). Parents,
clinicians, and policymakers often are called on to act in the best interests of children and their future
with incomplete evidence, particularly in the context of ongoing or expected threats. Thus, it is
important to discuss the implications of the reviewed evidence by addressing the following question:
What are the implications of these findings for stakeholders in child resilience, particularly parents,
families, communities, and societies?
Given the extraordinary diversity and range of developmental resilience science, discussing all the
implications for particular constituents and situations would be impossible. Thus, we highlight take-
home messages with broad applicability across diverse children, families, cultures, and societies.
A list of ten conclusions based on evidence we have summarized in this chapter about parent-
ing and resilience is presented in Table 6.1, with corresponding recommendations and illustrative
examples. These recommendations align with many other efforts to summarize the implications of
resilience science for practice and policy (Bernard, 2004; Cicchetti, Rappaport, Sandler, and Weissberg,
2000; Fernandez, Schwartz, Chun, and Dickson, 2013; Hawley, 2013; Luthar et al., 2015; Masten, 2011,
2014b; Masten and Powell, 2003; National Academies, 2016; Newman, 2004; Peters, Leadbeater, and
McMahon, 2005; Sanders, Kirby, Tellegen, and Day, 2014; Yates and Masten, 2004). Given that resil-
ience science is always changing, our conclusions and recommendations will undoubtedly need to be
updated and improved on the basis of ongoing and future research. These broad recommendations
also do not delineate developmentally strategic timing and targeting, which are important for the
implementation of any of these recommendations and, indeed, any interventions intended to alter the
course of development.
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Table 6.1 Broad Take-Home Messages on Parenting to Promote Resilience in Child Development
Conclusion Recommendation Practical examples
Child resilience depends on Support resilience of parents Parental leave; emergency services for
parents and families, who depend and families families in crisis; earned income tax credits
on other ecological systems for families with children; health care for
families; family advocates; community
groups that support families
Attachment bonds with stable Foster secure attachment Restore a primary caregiver when parents
and responsive caregivers provide relationships; ensure that every are lost; invest in evidence-based programs
emotional security essential for child has a secure bond with to improve and sustain the quality of
learning, socialization, and stress at least one consistent, caring, attachment in challenging times, including
regulation in child development and responsive parent figure foster and adoptive parents; support positive
parent–child interactions for parents
in special situations (e.g., incarcerated,
deployed, or divorcing)
Children with parents who Educate parents about Public health messages for mass and social
stimulate and nurture brain supporting brain development, media, mobile devices, pediatrician offices,
development and learning later language, cognition, and and schools; professional development
have more tools to overcome learning programs on brain development (e.g.,
adversity for educators, health care providers, first
responders); museum exhibits and library
programs; give books to families
Skilled parents foster children’s Educate parents on modeling, Easy access to early childhood and family
self-regulation and coping skills co-regulation, and how education programs and efficacious
in multiple ways to scaffold self-regulation parenting programs to promote parent skills
and coping skills in child and prevent problems
development
Family stability and routines Foster family stability and Expand affordable housing; end
foster child resilience knowledge about routines homelessness in families; educate parents,
teachers, health care providers, and first
responders about supporting/restoring
family routines
Engaged parents can foster the Support bidirectional View and treat parents as partners in
synergy of systems that support engagement of parents school and community programs designed
family and child resilience in education, health, and to enhance the positive development of
community systems children; tailor services and treatments
to family needs and culture; enhance
workforce training in trauma, culture, and
parent engagement
Many cultural belief systems, Support transmission and Provide opportunities for learning,
rituals, and practices transmitted practice of protective cultural celebrating, and sharing cultural traditions
by parents and families support practices; restore cultural that convey emotional security, hope,
resilience in their children traditions harmed by trauma meaning, coherence, identity, comfort, and
social support to parents and children
Child maltreatment and family Prevent or mitigate exposure Provide respite care and evidence-based
violence pose grave risks and of children to maltreatment treatments for families at risk for violence;
undermine adaptive systems for and family violence train teachers and first responders to
child development recognize and refer families at risk
Illness, depression, and stress of Support the health and well- Provide access to free or low-cost screening
pregnant mothers and caregivers being of pregnant mothers and treatment for prenatal and postpartum
undermine family and child and caregivers depression and crisis intervention for
resilience parents; provide routine “well caregiver” as
well as “well baby” health care visits
(Continued)
Table 6.1 (Continued)
Conclusion Recommendation Practical examples
Parents can prepare their Educate parents on Train parents as first responders; post family
children to weather expected emergency response, ways emergency planning templates and supply
storms and adapt to the to promote resilience in lists for “go bags;” prepare families for
unexpected challenges of life particular contexts, and how normative child transitions (e.g., starting
to provide their children with school, leaving home); disseminate findings
diverse, manageable challenges on effective, developmentally strategic
to hone their flexibility, ways for parents to foster resilience in
adaptability, confidence, and young people facing marginalization,
coping skills discrimination, divorce, bereavement,
natural disasters, and other common life
adversities; provide opportunities for
families to challenge children in safe spaces
Developmental Timing and Targeting

Resilience research and frameworks for action that flowed from this research emphasize the impor-
tance of developmental perspectives for efforts to promote resilience (Cicchetti, 2010, 2013a; Masten,
1994; 2011, 2014b). Clearly, interventions and policy focused on processes to promote resilience
through parents must be mindful of developmental variation in processes that shape parenting and
child development. Parenting an infant and a teenager are very different tasks. The roles and responsi-
bilities of parents change dramatically as children develop and also as the family develops. The nature
of “effective parenting” will vary across the course of development, as will individual differences in
children, parents, and contexts.
Resilience theory and research also suggest that there are windows of opportunity when condi-
tions converge for change in developing systems (Masten, 2014a, 2014b). These windows may reflect
periods of high normative plasticity in systems of human development (such as periods of high brain
plasticity discussed earlier) or periods of system instability triggered by normative transitions or dis-
ruptive adversities (e.g., death or illness of a parent). Several windows of opportunity with leverage for
change through parenting have been suggested in this chapter: infancy, when it is crucial to provide
sensitive and consistent caregiving; early childhood, when children rapidly acquire self-regulation
skills crucial for school success and transition into primary school; early adolescence, when pubertal
change and social transitions are altering patterns of interaction in youth, their families, schools, and
peer system; and late adolescence, when many youth begin to function more independently and live
away from parents. Each of these transitional windows is characterized by multiple changes at mul-
tiple levels, including biological, neural, relational, and contextual. Because unstable systems are more
“vulnerable” or amenable to change or transformation, these windows of flux pose both challenges
and opportunities for growth (Dahl and Spear, 2004; Masten, 2014b).
Cascade models from the literature on competence and resilience underscore the crucial relevance
of timing, particularly when cascading changes are linked to periods of high plasticity (Doty et al.,
2017; Masten and Cicchetti, 2010, 2016; Masten et al., 2005). Some cascades, both in conceptual and
empirical literature, are likely to occur in particular windows of development. For example, Patter-
son and colleagues (Patterson, Reid, and Dishion, 1992; Patterson et al., 2010) hypothesized that the
interplay of parenting issues and child noncompliance in early childhood at home would spill over
to school as children went to school, subsequently disrupting learning and relationships with teachers
and peers. As a result, early behavior problems would spread to school and other domains of behavior,
engendering dual failures in academic and social adjustment. Their longitudinal empirical studies of
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families corroborated these ideas, and their intervention studies aimed at increasing parenting skills
(described earlier) verified cascading effects of interrupting these processes to promote better out-
comes in children by intervening to improve parenting (Patterson et al., 2010). The evidence on high
returns of early investments in quality parenting and childcare for disadvantaged children documented
by economists and other studies of longitudinal prevention can be viewed as support for well-timed
and targeted interventions, cascading effects, and the importance of caregiving for resilience (Huebner
et al., 2016; Masten, 2014b).
The cascading resilience model of Doty and colleagues (2017) extends cascade models from the
literature to integrate pathways linking biology, behavior, family, and community processes of resil-
ience. They discuss leverage points that can be targeted in parenting interventions to initiate positive
cascades in development.
Resilience research additionally indicates that strategies for promoting resilience that involve
parents would vary by period of development because the nature of threats, resources, and devel-
opmental tasks varies by development, for both children and their parents. For an unborn or very
young child, parents, and the family system represent the central developmental context. Thus,
efforts to promote resilience during pregnancy and early childhood focus on the parent and fam-
ily system. Risk reduction strategies during early development include prenatal care, education
on the dangers to children of prenatal smoking or drinking, crisis nurseries for parental respite
to prevent child maltreatment, and services to reduce maternal stress from domestic violence.
Asset-focused strategies include public programs to support maternal and infant health care
and nutrition, provide income supports (e.g., tax credits) or material supplies (e.g., diapers, toys,
books) for infants, and access to free or low-cost childcare or housing. Asset-oriented efforts also
include provision of an advocate and “navigator” to help parents connect to resources, schools,
or supports for their children. Interventions directed at promotive or protective parenting and
family processes often focus on supporting communication, family routines, age-appropriate
monitoring, and cultural traditions. Process-focused strategies aim to bolster the quality of par-
enting and the attachment bond of parent and child, helping parents to provide stimulating and
sensitive care, as well as age-appropriate monitoring, engagement, and discipline. As indicated
earlier, early childhood programs often include multiple strategies. Home visiting programs, for
example, typically combine efforts to reduce risk, boost resources, and facilitate the quality of
parent–child interactions.
Programs for parents and families of older children include some of these early childhood strate-
gies, but they also shift to reflect changing development tasks of childhood and adolescence. Parent
education provided by communities, schools, and health care settings often focus on school readiness
and then school success; consistent discipline; monitoring of child activities outside the home; and
reducing the risk of substance use, victimization by bullying, gang involvement, truancy, and other
problems that often emerge in the transition to adolescence among children exposed to high cumula-
tive risk. Risk reduction strategies include parent education and awareness campaigns about identify-
ing risks and preventing antisocial peer pressure or gang involvement.
There remains much to learn about promoting resilience in human development, particularly
from randomized controlled trials to test models of change. By understanding the model of change,
communities will be able to promote child resilience, intervention efforts, and studies of system
dynamics and leverage points for triggering change. Nonetheless, there is a considerable body of
literature to guide practice and policy aiming to support the capacity of children and their families
for resilience. There is good reason to believe that resilience can be promoted in many different ways,
including multiple strategies focused on parenting. Optimizing strategies will depend on tailoring
with respect to goals, developmental timing, the nature of threats and resources, individual and cul-
tural variations affecting children and families, and the function of many systems interconnected to
children through parents.
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Conclusions
This chapter highlights advances in resilience science pertaining to parenting and the implications of
that knowledge for applications. Parenting has played a central role in research on resilience in chil-
dren from its inception. There is progress and also much work ahead to understand the complex roles
of parenting in the development and manifestation of human resilience.
Over the decades, the meaning of resilience in research shifted in concert with the emergence of
developmental systems theory as the prevailing theoretical framework for the study of human devel-
opment (Masten, 2014a). In early reviews on resilience, effective parenting or a close relationship with
a caring parent was described as a protective factor associated with better outcomes among children at
risk for diverse reasons. Contemporary views on resilience emphasize the dynamic nature of human
development emerging from many interactions over time across many levels of embedded systems.
From this perspective, a child’s resilience is dynamic, developing and changing over time as a result of
the ongoing interplay of the context with the organism at many levels.
The capacity for adaptation to adversity develops and changes. Relationships and a host of indi-
vidual adaptive skills, including language, problem-solving, and social skills, emerge in a child from
these interactions. Parents play critical roles in the formation and change of these relationships and
skills through their roles in caregiving and family functions, interactions that shape individual adap-
tive competencies of children, exposure of children to challenges, and many other aspects of child–
environment interactions that build resilience.
The resilience of a child at any given time will depend on the development and current function
of complex adaptive systems in the child, interactions of the child with parent and family and other
aspects of the environment, and the nature of challenges impinging on these systems. Thus, the resil-
ience of a child will be distributed across interacting systems that involve parents in many ways, as well
as the systems interacting with parents.
Although the role of parenting in child resilience is viewed from a more dynamic, systems perspec-
tive, many of the roles identified early in resilience theory and research continue to be corroborated
by contemporary studies. These include sensitive and consistent caregiving, emotional security, and
socialization for competence in the family culture and society. Nonetheless, knowledge about these
roles has increased with the expanding literature. Moreover, there are many more studies of resilience
in low- and middle-income countries, including intervention studies. Evidence also has increased on
parenting in the context of poverty, racism, war, disaster, migration, and many other challenging situ-
ations, particularly in regard to studies outside of North America and Western Europe.
Research also suggests that there are windows of opportunity for intervening to promote resilience
related to developmental plasticity, transitions, and adversity itself. In some of these windows, particu-
larly during childhood and adolescence, it appears that change can be leveraged effectively through
parents with developmentally and culturally attuned strategies. There is increasing attention to strate-
gies for triggering positive cascades and integrating strategies for change across system levels. Clearly,
more knowledge is needed on tailoring and timing interventions strategically. In addition, however, it
is now possible to study resilience processes in ways that were impossible in the past.
Resilience research has benefitted from advances in research methods for studying genetics, brain
function, biological stress systems, social interaction, and culture, as well as statistical techniques for
studying growth and change over time and multiple levels of analysis. These advances spurred research
on how adverse experiences “get under the skin” and, concomitantly, how parents may prevent, miti-
gate, compensate for, or counteract these processes. Strategies for studying parent–child interaction
have improved at multiple levels of analysis, leading to advances in understanding how parental co-
regulation contributes to resilience among high-risk children. Methods for studying developmental
cascades and intraindividual growth in longitudinal research also contribute to advances in resilience
and roles of parenting in these processes. Prevention science matured, providing powerful tests of
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hypotheses about the causal role of parenting in mitigating risks and promoting or protecting positive
child development.
As a result of expanding research and more sophisticated designs, knowledge on parenting for
resilience has grown and matured. Research continues, but there is a body of consistent knowledge
to inform practice and policy aiming to promote resilience in children and families. As a working
guide, we distilled the evidence on parenting in resilience into a set of ten general conclusions with
recommendations and examples for practitioners and policymakers to consider. They are intention-
ally broad because any intervention will need to be tailored for goals, context, culture, and, of course,
development.
In the future, research on resilience promises to provide a deeper understanding of processes link-
ing parents to resilience of children. Exciting research is underway on many fronts, including the
biology of resilience and how it may be transmitted across generations through parenting as well as
genetic transmission; cultural processes that support the resilience of parents, family, and children; the
nonlinear relation of stress to resilience and how parents regulate exposure to foster resilience; and
many other intriguing lines of research with implications for parents, practice, and policy.
Parents and children will face many challenges in the years ahead due to global threats of natural
disaster, terror, and political conflict, along with enduring adversities of poverty, inequality, and family
violence (Masten, 2014a). Parents will play a central role in preparing families for these challenges and
helping their children to navigate through and recover from the inevitable adversities of life. They
need knowledge and support to enhance their own resilience as parents and foster resilience in their
families because the future of children and societies depends on their success.
Acknowledgments
Preparation of this chapter was supported by the Irving B. Harris Professorship (ASM) and a graduate
fellowship award from the University of Minnesota (ARP).
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7
LANGUAGE AND PLAY
IN PARENT–CHILD
INTERACTIONS
Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda, Yana A. Kuchirko,
Kelly Escobar, and Marc H. Bornstein
Introduction
Parents are children’s first teachers, and the home environment is children’s first classroom. Before
children begin formal schooling, they spend most of their waking hours at home, in unstructured
interactions with parents. A substantial portion of children’s “everyday lessons” revolves around learn-
ing how to use language to communicate with other people and learning what can be done with the
objects around them. Children’s everyday practice with words and objects makes the first years of life
a time of astounding growth in language and play skills—two major hallmarks of early development.
It is thus fitting to consider the role of parents in the foundational domains of language and
play. Parents are the primary source of young children’s language experiences. They talk about what
they and others are doing, ask questions to encourage children to talk about what is happening, and
respond to children’s actions and vocalizations with timely, topic-relevant statements. Parents modify
their language and actions when communicating with their young children by using a special regis-
ter of speech that is accompanied by exaggerated actions and gestures to make topics of talk salient
(Tamis-LeMonda and Bornstein, 1991;1993). Parents also shape children’s play experiences, some-
times intentionally and oftentimes serendipitously. They structure children’s environments to make
playtime safe. They provide children with materials for play, including toys and common household
items (consider the fun toddlers have playing with remote controls and cell phones). They demon-
strate how things work through their own engagement with objects and help children manipulate and
play with objects through hands-on assistance and verbal guidance. These play interactions provide an
ideal setting for children to learn words and develop conversational skills.
Beyond the role of parents, there exist important theoretical reasons to examine language and
play together. Historically, developmental scholars have considered the two domains to be meaning-
fully related, although debates on the precise nature of those associations abound. Piaget (2013) and
Vygotsky (1962, 1978) noted that language and play similarly depend on a capacity for symbolic
representation: Both forms of expression require children to use symbols to represent objects, actions,
and events. Language and play also share important communicative functions. As children vocalize
and play, they elicit meaningful feedback from parents and other adults (Bates, Benigni, Camaioni, and
Volterra, 1979; Werner and Kaplan, 1963).
Empirically, two lines of evidence highlight developmental connections between language and
play. First, there are striking parallels in the timing of language and play skills: Both progress from
basic to more advanced forms in lock-step unison (Gillespie and Zittoun, 2010; McCune, 1995). For
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Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda et al.
instance, children transition from using single words in language and single acts in pretense (around
the start of the second year) to combining words and stringing actions (toward the end of the second
year) (Bornstein and Hendricks, 2012; McCune, 2008; Shore, O’Connell, and Bates, 1984). Second, at
an individual level, children’s skills in symbolic play relate to their skills in language. A meta-analysis of
language–play associations—across 31 correlational studies comprising over 6,000 children—revealed
medium effect sizes regardless of study design (concurrent, longitudinal) or measures of language
(receptive or expressive) (Quinn, 2016). Associations were most pronounced prior to 3 years of age,
which aligns with Piaget’s claim that language–play relations are confined to the early period of transi-
tion to symbolic functioning. Finally, symbolic play is an important context for language exchanges
and learning, which supports later academic and socioemotional outcomes (Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff,
Singer, and Berk, 2009).
In light of the developmental importance of children’s language and play, and their interconnections
in the first years of life, we consider parenting in these two critical domains. We begin by reviewing
parents’ role in children’s early language development and the features of child-directed speech that
promote language learning. We then turn to parenting in play. We examine how parent–child play
interactions support children’s exploratory, nonsymbolic, and symbolic play skills through children’s
second year of life, and review evidence for cross-domain associations between parent–child play and
children’s language development. We focus specifically on object play, which provides children with
opportunities to engage in joint attention with parents, learn language, and use their imaginations in
pretense. Finally, we examine how cultural contexts shape parent–child language and play interactions
and end with pedagogical implications and future research directions.
Parenting in Language
Most children acquire language primarily through interactions with their parents (Golinkoff, Can,
Soderstrom, and Hirsh-Pasek, 2015; Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2015). As children process the speech directed
to them by their parents, they extract phonological, semantic, and grammatical rules about word
sounds, word meanings, and how words combine into sentences (that you “wash your hair,” but don’t
“hair your wash”).
Several properties of child-directed speech and action are especially conducive to infant language
learning: (1) parental contingent responsiveness—the temporal alignment of language inputs with chil-
dren’s vocalizations and actions—facilitates infants’ connection of words to objects and events; (2) the
didactic content of parental speech promotes infant word growth; and (3) the physical cues parents use to
mark the referents of speech. In the sections that follow, we describe these features of parent language
input and how parents developmentally scaffold word learning in children by modifying their speech
to accommodate children’s changing skills.
Child-Directed Speech and Action

Parent speech to infants and toddlers is special. Mothers, fathers, and other adults across many cultures
intuitively modify the prosody, content, and form of their language when addressing infants (Fernald,
2000; Golinkoff et al., 2015; Kitamura, Thanavishuth, Burnham, and Luksaneeyanawin, 2001; Thies-
sen, Hill, and Saffran, 2005). Child-directed speech is characterized by higher and more variable pitch
and intonation, shorter utterances, longer pauses, limited vocabulary, vowel alterations, and frequent
repetitions compared to adult-directed speech (e.g., Fernald et al., 1989; Ma, Golinkoff, Houston,
and Hirsh-Pasek, 2011). Additionally, when adults talk with infants and young children, they almost
always refer to concrete objects and people in the here-and-now (e.g., Phillips, 1973; Snow et al.,
1976) and tend to use phrases that contain many simple labels, descriptors, and questions (Tamis-
LeMonda, Baumwell, and Cristofaro, 2012).
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Language and Play
Parents adjust the prosody and content of child-directed speech to be developmentally appropriate
for their children’s developmental level. When speaking to infants and toddlers, parents modify the
amplitude of their speech to highlight specific words in a sentence, such as the names of objects. For
example, labels are likely to be the loudest word in the sentence compared to nonlabels (Messer, 1981)
and are perceptually prominent in the speech stream—that is, they are likely to be positioned in utter-
ance-initial or utterance-final position (Golinkoff and Alioto, 1995; Seidl and Johnson, 2006). Parent
speech to infants and toddlers contains shorter and simpler sentences, fewer subordinate clauses, and
higher repetition and redundancy (Longhurst and Stepanich, 1975; Phillips, 1973), thereby simplifying
the language learning task. Repetition in child-directed speech supports early vocabulary develop-
ment by providing multiple instances of novel words for processing word meaning, and is shown to be
a key ingredient to the language experiences of even preverbal infants. Repetitions in maternal speech
to 7-month-old infants uniquely contributes to children’s vocabulary at age 2 years above children’s
own speech segmentation skills (Newman, Rowe, and Ratner, 2016).
As children grow in vocabulary and grammar, parents increase the quantity (total number of words,
or word “tokens”) and diversity (number of different words, or word “types”) of their language.
Amount and diversity of parent language to children relate to children’s vocabulary in both middle-
class and lower-socioeconomic status (SES) families (Bornstein, Haynes, and Painter, 1998; Hoff-
Ginsberg, 1991; Hoff and Naigles, 2002; Rowe, 2012; Shimpi, Fedewa, and Hans, 2012).
Both mothers and fathers engage in child-directed speech. Mothers and fathers were videorecorded
on separate occasions while playing with their 2-year-olds, and both parents modified their speech
in line with the complexity of their toddlers’ language. The number of words, diversity of words,
and grammatical complexity of parent utterances matched the level of their toddlers’ language skills
(Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2012). Fathers likewise modify the prosodic features of their speech when
speaking to their infants. A study of fathers and their infants ranging from 10 days to 14 months of
age found that across six different languages (French, Italian, German, Japanese, British English, and
American English), fathers used a simplified speech register, higher pitch, and adjusted their language
in direct response to their infants’ communicative skills (Fernald et al., 1989).
Mothers in bilingual families display the same speech modifications as do monolingual mothers.
For example, mothers living in Belgium (where both Dutch and French are spoken) modified their
speech to infants in each of their two languages across infancy to toddlerhood—that is, when talking
to preverbal 5-month-olds and verbal 20-month-olds (De Houwer and Bornstein, 2016). Mothers
generally used a single language (either Dutch or French) at 5 months, although two mothers used
both languages at this age, presumably in response to language developments in their children. By
20 months, the mothers who spoke with two languages reported switching to one language. By 53
months, a quarter of mothers added a second language, and another quarter switched languages com-
pletely (e.g., spoke only French at 5 months, but only Dutch by 53 months). Thus, mothers changed
their distribution of language use across two languages as children grew first in one and then in two
languages. Even deaf mothers modify their sign language to their infants in very much the way hear-
ing mothers use child-directed speech (Erting, Thumann-Prezioso, and Benedict, 2000). Children as
young as 4 years of age also systematically adjust their speech when speaking to infants (Weppelman,
Bostow, Schiffer, Elbert-Perez, and Newman, 2003).
Cross-cultural research has confirmed that child-directed speech may be intuitive and pres-
ent in communities across the globe (Broesch and Bryant, 2015, 2017; Kitamura et al., 2001).
Adults from WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic; Henrich, Heine,
and Norenzayan, 2010; Marklund, Marklund, Lacerda, and Schwarz, 2015) cultures (such as the
United States and countries in Europe and Asia) and adults from traditional, nonindustrialized
communities (such as Fijians, Kenyans, the Marathi in India, Native American Comanche, and the
Nivkh) produce similar features of speech when talking to young children (e.g., Blount and Pad-
gug, 1976; Broesch and Bryant, 2015, 2017; Ferguson, 1964; Grieser and Kuhl, 1988; Kelkar, 1964).
191
For example, Swedish-speaking adults tend to use longer pauses with children and respond more
quickly when speaking to children than when speaking to adults, regardless of children’s vocabulary
size (Marklund et al., 2015). Mothers in Fiji and Kenya use higher and more variable pitch frequen-
cies when speaking to children than when speaking to adults, similar to the child-directed speech of
North American mothers (even when controlling for education; Broesch and Bryant, 2015). How-
ever, the prevalence and specific features of child-directed speech vary across cultural communities
and are more pronounced in some cultures than in others. Some communities lack child-directed
speech, and adults show little accommodation to the communicative needs of infants and young
toddlers (e.g., Ochs, 1982; Ochs and Schieffelin, 1984; Schieffelin and Ochs, 1979; Pye, 1986).
Adults also modify their actions when interacting with infants, by producing exaggerated, repeated
movements referred to as “motionese” or infant-directed action (Brand, Baldwin, and Ashburn, 2002;
Brand, Shallcross, Sabatos, and Massie, 2007; Koterba and Iverson, 2009). Middle-class, European-
American mothers interact with their infants in ways that are qualitatively distinct from their interac-
tions with familiar adults. When asked to demonstrate how to play with an unfamiliar object (e.g.,
a neon green “twisty” that could form shapes and be taken apart and put back together), moth-
ers’ infant-directed action was more enthusiastic, repetitive, simpler, and included a greater range
of motions than did adult-directed action (Brand et al., 2002). Additionally, mothers exhibit lon-
ger pauses between child-directed actions compared to adult-directed actions, and they coordinate
their exaggerated actions with their modified speech during demonstrations (Meyer, Hard, Brand,
McGarvey, and Baldwin, 2011). The signing of caregivers to infants likewise involves slow and highly
repetitive and exaggerated movements (Masataka, 1992), suggesting that child-directed actions are not
restricted to the hearing population.
Why might child-directed speech facilitate word learning? First, the prosodic contours of child-
directed speech function to elicit infant attention. From birth, infants prefer and respond more to
child-directed speech than to adult-directed speech by mothers and even strangers (Fernald, 2000).
Regardless of speaker, babies prefer adults who use infant-directed speech and attend more to those
adults than those using adult-directed speech (Schachner and Hannon, 2011). Thus, child-directed
speech serves as a cue for selection of social partners. Child-directed speech also provides cues about
the emotional signals of adult speakers, thereby creating rich, informative contexts for babies to bind
speech to emotional states and learn new words (Saint-Georges et al., 2013).
Second, the exaggerated prosody of child-directed speech provides acoustic cues to the grammati-
cal and syntactical boundaries of language input, thereby aiding infants’ segmentation of the speech
stream (Fernald, 2004; Soderstrom, 2007; Soderstrom, Blossom, Foygel, and Morgan, 2008). For example,
infants discriminate speech sounds embedded in multisyllabic sequences better in streams of child-
directed speech than in streams of adult-directed speech (D’Odorico and Jacob, 2006). Within the first
few months of life, infants neurologically process child-directed speech differently than other auditory
stimuli. Electroencephalogram (EEG) activity resulting from hearing child-directed speech is greatest in
the temporal regions (Naoi et al., 2012) and frontal lobes (Saito et al., 2007), and child-directed speech
elicits increased neural activity in brain regions involved in attention (Zangl and Mills, 2007). Infants’
heightened attention to child-directed speech relative to adult-directed speech, coupled with the cues
provided by prosody features, increases the likelihood that babies will learn the words directed to them.
Similarly, motionese maintains infant attention and highlights the structure and meaning of actions.
Infants looked longer when their primary caregivers moved a novel object with either high amplitude
or high repetition or both—the two parameters on which infant-directed action differs from adult-
directed action (Brand et al., 2002)—than when caregivers moved the object with low amplitude and
low repetition (Koterba and Iverson, 2009). Beyond eliciting attention, motionese may make actions
easier for infants to parse by stressing subactions within the motion (Brand et al., 2009; Brand, Hol-
lenbeck, and Kominsky, 2013). Infants learn to imitate adults more quickly when taught new actions
characterized by motionese than when exposed to adult-directed action (Williamson and Brand, 2014).
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Responsiveness
Infants’ interest in the objects and people of everyday life is expressed through their spontaneous
actions—looks, vocalizations, facial expressions, manual actions, and body movements. Parents and
other adults often respond to these infant behaviors with prompt, contingent, and appropriate in-kind
behaviors, such as by looking at and pointing to a cat while naming it. Indeed, “contingent respon-
siveness” is an essential characteristic of infant–parent social interactions and is observed across con-
texts and cultures (Bornstein, Tamis-LeMonda, Hahn, and Haynes, 2008; Lohaus, Keller, Ball, Elben,
and Voelker, 2001; Tamis-LeMonda, Kuchirko, and Tafuro, 2013).
Parental contingent responsiveness fosters language development throughout the first years of life
(Tamis-LeMonda, Kuchirko, and Song, 2014). Before infants produce conventional words, they ben-
efit from parental responses to their vocalizations. For instance, mothers who are responsive to their
infants’ babbles have babies whose babbles mirror the phonological structure of their mothers’ verbal
input (Goldstein and Schwade, 2008). By the time infants are 2 years old, they increasingly understand
and produce words and simple phrases and benefit from verbal input that is temporally and con-
ceptually connected to their actions (Tamis-LeMonda, Cristofaro, Rodriguez, and Bornstein, 2006).
Mothers’ contingent responsiveness to infants’ and toddlers’ vocalizations, social bids, object explora-
tion and play, and emotional expressions predicts infant vocabulary size (Tamis-LeMonda, Bornstein,
Kahana-Kalman, Baumwell, and Cyphers, 1998), the pragmatic diversity of toddlers’ communications
(Beckwith and Cohen, 1989), and the timing of language milestones (Nicely, Tamis-LeMonda, and
Bornstein, 1999; Tamis-LeMonda et al., 1998; Tamis-LeMonda, Bornstein, and Baumwell, 2001).
Moreover, the effects of responsiveness on language development are consistent across samples and
large in magnitude. In one study, infants of high-responsive mothers (90th percentile) at 9 and 13
months achieved language milestones, such as first words, vocabulary spurt, and combinatorial speech,
four to six months earlier than did infants of low-responsive mothers (10th percentile) (Tamis-
LeMonda et al., 1998, 2001). Although much research in this area is correlational and prevents causal
inferences, associations between parent responsiveness and children’s language development is not
merely explained by genetic heritability or unobserved characteristics of parents and infants. Paren-
tal responsiveness predicts language skills of adopted children (Stams, Juffer, and van IJzendoorn,
2002), predicts infant learning in experimental laboratory manipulations (Goldstein, King, and West,
2003), and promotes children’s language and cognitive skills in interventions that target responsiveness
(e.g., Mendelsohn et al., 2005, 2011).
Further, parental responsiveness to infants’ vocalizations helps infants learn about conversational
turn-taking—the timely back and forth that characterizes social interactions. Turn-taking is fun-
damental to the structure of conversations and an important first lesson in pragmatics (namely, the
understanding that “a person expects a reply when they pause in their talk”). Mothers promote
turn-taking by responding to infants’ vocalizations with language within two or three seconds and
pausing their speech when infants are off-task (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2013). Infants adjust the tim-
ing of their vocalizations to follow their mothers’ language inputs as early as 5 months (Bornstein,
Putnick, Cote, Haynes, and Suwalsky, 2015), and toddlers grow in their responsiveness to mothers’
language and gestures across the second year of life (Kuchirko, Tafuro, and Tamis-LeMonda, in press).
Infants ages 14 and 24 months who are high on responsiveness to their mothers’ communications
also have mothers who are high on responsiveness to their infants (Kuchirko et al., in press).
The Informational Content of Social Input

Beyond temporal features of infant-directed speech, the “content” of input matters. Specifically, the
didactic (information laden) and embodied (multimodal) features of infant-directed speech support
word learning (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2013).
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Didactic language is child-directed speech that is “referential”—statements that contain informa-

tion about referents through descriptions, labels, and questions (“That’s a spoon” and “What color
is the spoon?,” “The rabbit’s hopping” and “Where is he going?”). When parents respond to their
infants’ exploratory or communicative actions, the likelihood of didactic (or referential) language is
high, and this type of speech contains a diversity of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. The lexically
rich nature of referential language can be contrasted with regulatory commands—language that directs
or prohibits infant actions, typically with many pronouns (e.g., “Do it,” “Sit there,” “Stop that”).
During play and booksharing with infants, mothers’ increase referential language following infant
vocalizations and/or object exploration but decrease regulatory language in the presence of these
actions (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2013). Thus, infants’ actions serendipitously evoke language from
mothers that is responsive and rich. As might be expected, mothers’ referential, but not regulatory, lan-
guage predicts infants’ productive vocabulary (Tamis-LeMonda, Song, Leavell, Kahana-Kalman, and
Yoshikawa, 2012). The diversity of parental language to infants (i.e., the use of different word types and
different communicative functions) relates to children’s vocabulary size, rate of vocabulary growth,
and communicative diversity in early language development (e.g., Hart and Risley, 1995; Hoff, 2003,
2006; Huttenlocher, Haight, Bryk, Seltzer, and Lyons, 1991; Tamis-LeMonda, et al., 2012a). Further,
lexically diverse language input supports efficient processing of new information in monolingual and
bilingual infants alike, regardless of language. For instance, a composite measure of infant vocabulary
relates to infant processing speed in both Spanish and English (Marchman, Fernald, and Hurtado,
2010; Weisleder and Fernald, 2013).
Embodied input refers to the multimodal coordination of parents’ language with physical cues to
meaning, as seen, for example, when a mother simultaneously labels, looks at, and touches or points
to objects (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2013; Yu, Smith, and Pereira, 2008). Infant language learning is
enhanced through the constellation of nonverbal behaviors parents produce during social interactions,
with one key action being gestures (Goldin-Meadow, 2006, 2009). When mothers label a novel toy,
they often point to the toy or move the toy in synchrony with their verbal label, which helps infants
connect the word to its referent (Gogate, Bahrick, and Watson, 2000). For example, a mother might
point to a toy and ask, “What is that?,” “A teddy bear?,” which signals clearly to the infant the topic
of her talk.
Embodied verbal input supports infant word learning (e.g., Matatyaho and Gogate, 2008; Rowe
and Goldin-Meadow, 2009; Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2012) through effects on infant attention. Mul-
timodal information eases infants’ task at mapping words to the world because infants attend to and
exploit contextual and other cues to decipher the meaning of unfamiliar words (Yu, Ballard, and
Aslin, 2005). Infants perceive the synchronization of actions and words to be a unitary experience
that “belong together” (Rader and Zukow-Goldring, 2010). Additionally, mothers are more likely to
coordinate their gestural and manual actions with didactic language than with regulatory language
as they respond to infants’ exploratory or communicative actions, (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2013). As
indicated, didactic language is high in lexical diversity (i.e., the number of different words mothers
produce) and fosters infants’ vocabulary growth more than other lexically sparse language inputs
(Song, Spier, and Tamis-Lemonda, 2014).
Developmental Scaffolding
Parent–child interactions change across developmental time (Bornstein, 2013). Parents continually
modify what they respond to and how they respond as their infants and toddlers gain new skills. Parents
also adjust how quickly they respond to children depending on infant vocabulary size. For instance,
mothers of 18-month-olds with relatively large vocabularies on the MacArthur Communicative
Development Inventory (MCDI) display shorter pauses and quicker responses than do mothers of
toddlers who have average or small vocabularies (Marklund et al., 2015). Moreover, mothers respond
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to their 1-year-olds with simple labels and descriptions but include more questions in their verbal
exchanges a year later as infants grow in their language skills (Bornstein et al., 2008). Mothers are
also more likely to respond when their 2-year-olds use new words than when their toddlers produce
words they had been saying for some time (Masur, 1997). Mothers increase their referential responses
to infant vocalizations and decrease their responses to infant gestures between the infant ages of 14 and
24 months (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2013). Finally, mothers of crawling infants respond differently to
the social bids of their 13-month-olds than do mothers of walking infants, largely because crawling
infants bid from stationary positions, whereas walking infants are able to carry objects to mothers
for sharing (Karasik, Tamis-LeMonda, and Adolph, 2011, 2014). Infants who carry objects to their
mother for play provide salient cues about what they want, and mothers attune to these social bids
accordingly. Collectively, these studies indicate that parents respond in developmentally appropriate
ways as infants gain new skills.
Why might parents’ attunement to child developmental level matter for language learning? Most
centrally, as infants acquire new language skills, they attend to and require different cues for learn-
ing new words (Hollich, Hirsh Pasek, and Golinkoff, 2000). Child-directed speech is therefore likely
to operate nonlinearly across development; the features of language that benefit learning change as
children’s learning progresses (Bohannon and Hirsh-Pasek, 1984). During the earliest period of word
learning, infants primarily learn words that align with objects that are salient and coincide with their
perspective, whereas more advanced word learners are able to consider another person’s perspective
(for example, where the person is looking) to infer word meaning. Therefore, novice infants require
more frequent word repetitions and multiple cues to learn words than do infants who are more
advanced in their lexicons and understanding of social cues to reference (Hollich et al., 2000).
In line with the changing nature of language learning, the quantity and quality of parent language
input changes in its importance across the first three years. For novice word learners (i.e., in the first
two years of life), the amount of caregiver language input is very important for language development,
as infants require repetition and lots of input to build a lexicon and discern the phonological, semantic,
and morphosyntactic features of language. As toddlers develop language skills, the lexical diversity
of parent language input becomes increasingly critical for propelling vocabulary gains (Rowe, 2012).
For example, repeatedly labeling the word “cup” will support word learning in an infant who does
not yet know the word “cup,” but may not be necessary to an infant who is quite familiar with the
word “cup.” In contrast, infants with more advanced lexical skills are able to participate in simple
conversations and will benefit from being asked simple questions (e.g., “What is that?”) and hearing
new words tagged to those they already know (e.g., “shiny cup”). As such, parents scaffold children’s
language development by providing developmentally appropriate language inputs that help children
understand communicative intentions (Bornstein, 2013).
Summary
Parent speech to children contains several features that facilitate language learning. Child-directed speech
and action are characterized by redundancy, simplicity, and exaggerated forms that promote infant
word learning by eliciting infant attention and helping babies parse actions and sounds into mean-
ingful units. Parental responsiveness aids referent mapping by presenting language that is temporally
and conceptually connected to the objects and events that are most salient and of greatest interest to
infants. The didactic content of parental input promotes growth in vocabulary because of its rich lexical
content. The embodied multimodal feature of parent input elicits infant attention and establishes the
referents of talk by accompanying language with physical cues, such as gestures and touch. Finally,
developmental attunement in child-directed speech and action provides infants and young children with
the specific supports needed to learn new words and grammatical structures as children grow in their
language competencies.
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Parenting in Play
Parent–child play is a primary context for learning. In particular, children’s play with objects has
received much attention. Children’s object play shows notable developmental changes, and parents
attune to those changes by modifying their play behaviors, just as they do for language. Further, social
interactions around object play provide children with rich opportunities to learn language. As chil-
dren play with objects, parents often describe the features of objects and ongoing or possible actions,
which facilitate children’s vocabulary growth. Next, we describe developmental changes in children’s
object play, how parents adjust their own play behaviors in line with those changes, and the ways that
social interactions during object play promote language learning in children.
Developments in Children’s Object Play

Play with objects provides a valuable window on development. Over the course of the first two years,
children show notable changes in their interactions with objects. Early on, infants explore and dis-
cover the unique features of single objects; with age, they combine objects in logical ways (such as by
placing a shape in a shape sorter); and they eventually use objects in elaborate pretend scenarios. These
progressions in object play are categorized into three general types: exploratory play, nonsymbolic
play, and symbolic play, with symbolic play considered the most advanced due to its representational
demands (Piaget, Inhelder, and Häfliger, 1977; Tamis-LeMonda and Bornstein, 1991).
Exploration
The earliest forms of object play appear toward the middle of the first year as infants gain control over
their manual actions. From around 4 to 5 months of age to approximately 9 months of age, children’s
play is predominantly characterized by sensorimotor manipulation. Infants’ mouth, finger, manipu-
late, rub, bang, and rotate objects to discover their features. These exploratory actions produce rich
perceptual information about the size, texture, shape, and forms of objects that feed into learning. For
instance, infants’ object exploration relates to their understanding that objects are three-dimensional
and have backsides (Soska, Adolph, and Johnson, 2010).
As infants develop fine motor skills, they explore objects in new ways to discover what can be done
with those objects. Infants adjust their manual actions to accommodate the specific features of objects,
such as object texture and shape (Fontenelle, Kahrs, Neal, Newton, and Lockman, 2007). Infants are
skilled at detecting objects’ overt affordances: They finger textured surfaces more than smooth ones
and bang hard objects more than soft ones (Bushnell and Boudreau, 1993; Gibson and Walker, 1984;
Lockman and McHale, 1989; Palmer, 1989; Ruff, 1984). Between the ages of 6 and 12 months, infants
decrease in their mouthing of objects and increase in their fingering and other fine motor actions
(Ruff, 1984).
Nonsymbolic Play
Toward the end of the first year, children engage in nonsymbolic play (Ruff, 1984). Infants’ actions
are aimed at extracting the unique functions of objects, such as pressing buttons or turning dials on
busy-boxes. Infants’ first direct nonsymbolic activities to single objects (e.g., squeezing a foam ball)
but shortly incorporate object combinations. Initially random juxtapositions of objects develop into
appropriate and logical combinations. For instance, a triangle might be placed on top of a nesting
block but later be inserted into its appropriate spot on a shape sorter (Bornstein and Tamis-LeMonda,
2006; Damast, Tamis-LeMonda, and Bornstein, 1996).
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Symbolic Play
Around the start of the second year, children produce brief bouts of symbolic play, in which they
project “a supposed situation onto an actual one, in the spirit of fun rather than for survival”
(Lillard, 1993, p. 349). Over the course of the next few months, bouts of symbolic play grow in
complexity and length. Children string actions together to tell a story (such as feeding a doll and
then putting the doll to sleep) and creatively substitute certain objects for others (such as using a
stick rather than a spoon to pretend to stir in a teacup). These symbolic bouts are important to
the development of creativity and divergent thinking (Bruner, 1978). According to Bruner, chil-
dren’s abilities to pretend in play and combine actions and objects in novel ways are fundamental
to tool use.
Parents’ Role in Children’s Object Play

Parent–child play is seen in animals and humans. Observations of young animals at play with parents
point to the evolutionary significance of play (e.g., Fossey, 1983; Goodall, 1986). In humans, parent–
child play is a common, important context for learning and development. Parent–infant play might
be especially important early in development when babies are insufficiently mature to engage in and
benefit from play with peers (MacDonald, 1993; Power, 2000). This is a reason that most studies of
parent–child play interactions focus on infancy or toddlerhood. In the sections that follow, we exam-
ine parent support of children’s exploratory, nonsymbolic, and symbolic play and the functions that
these types of play might serve.
Parents’ Exploratory, Nonsymbolic, and Symbolic Play

Parent play closely tracks developmental changes in children’s play, and therefore encourages children
to practice and extend skills in their repertoire. Prior to independent locomotion, infants depend on
adults to access objects. Parents create opportunities for learning by introducing new toys and objects
and repositioning infants so that they might more readily reach and manipulate them (Bornstein and
Tamis-LeMonda, 1990).
As infants progress to nonsymbolic play, parents demonstrate how objects work and might be
combined, by pressing buttons, nesting blocks, and the like, and then offering objects to their infants
to encourage similar actions. In doing so, parents engage in “infant-directed action,” as was seen for
language, by exaggerating their actions as they play with their infants (Brand et al., 2002). In essence,
parents make obvious to infants the affordances that objects offer.
As children advance in their symbolic play skills, parents increasingly support children’s engage-
ment in and embellishment of pretend scenarios (Bretherton, 1984; Damast et al., 1996). Mothers
also use pretend play to model a “right” way to do things, for example, by demonstrating how to
pour tea with a pretend teapot. Mothers of 2-year-olds initiate and sustain pretend play by modeling
behaviors and then prompt child play, for example, by pretending to talk on a toy telephone and then
handing the phone to her child. If the child accepts the bid, coaching follows: “Daddy wants to talk.
Say hello,” (Dale, 1989). Conversely, parents correct pretend actions when infants violate would-be
reality, for example, protesting (seriously or playfully) when children drink tea from a teapot instead
of a cup (Howes, 1992). Finally, mothers’ symbolic play behaviors become more prevalent with child
age: Mothers are more likely to initiate symbolic play than nonsymbolic play with their 21-month-
olds than compared to 13-month-olds (Dunn and Wooding, 1977; Haight and Miller, 1993; Tamis-
LeMonda and Bornstein, 1991).
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Relations Between Parent Play and Children’s Play

Do mothers’ exploratory, nonsymbolic, and symbolic play behaviors facilitate advanced play in chil-
dren? To investigate this possibility, researchers compare children’s behaviors during solitary play to
their behaviors during play with parents, and sometimes investigate changes in parent and child play
across age.
Comparisons of children’s solitary and interactive play indicate that play with mother is more
sophisticated, complex, diverse, frequent, and sustained than is solitary play (e.g., Bornstein et al., 1998;
Dunn and Wooding, 1977; Fiese, 1990; Haight and Miller, 1992; O’Connell and Bretherton, 1984;
Slade, 1987). Children engage in more symbolic play of greater complexity after witnessing a social
partner perform those actions (Bretherton, O’Connell, Shore, and Bates, 1984). For instance, mothers’
play with their 13-month-old children relates to children’s level of play during solitary play based on
codes of children’s exploratory, nonsymbolic, and symbolic play (Vibbert and Bornstein, 1989).
Moreover, there is high specificity in child–mother play sophistication at an individual level. At
child ages of 13 and 20 months, mothers’ nonsymbolic play relates positively to toddlers’ nonsymbolic
play, but not symbolic play, and mothers’ symbolic play relates positively to toddlers’ symbolic play,
but not nonsymbolic play (Tamis-LeMonda and Bornstein, 1991). Over age, the play of individual
mothers and toddlers changes in parallel: Between 13 and 20 months, mothers who increase play at
particular levels have toddlers who also increase at those levels. Age-related alignment in mother and
child play is also seen in the real-time unfolding of play: Mothers prompt nonsymbolic play following
instances of infant nonsymbolic play and prompt symbolic play following instances of infant symbolic
play (Damast et al., 1996).
Parent–Child Play and Children’s Language Development

Play interactions between children and parents provide a valuable platform for learning language, thus
extending benefits beyond child play per se. Most centrally, object play represents the quintessential
example of a “triadic” or “triangular” social interaction, in which parent and child jointly attend to an
activity through mutual gaze to the object and to one another (Tomasello, 1999; Tomasello, Carpenter,
Call, Behne, and Moll, 2005). Children’s object play and visual attention to objects during play elicit
verbally contingent information and feedback from mothers about the events and activities of chil-
dren’s actions, such as declarative information about what objects are and their characteristics (“blue
truck”; “soft bunny”). As noted previously, child-directed speech in response to toddler object play is
lexically diverse, providing infants with opportunities to expand their vocabularies (Tamis-LeMonda
et al., 2013).
Furthermore, language quality during symbolic play in particular may support language learn-
ing. Symbolic play is characterized by more language, more diverse language, and unique forms of
reciprocal interaction and language (such as mental state terms on the part of parents) to negotiate
symbolic transformations (“Let’s pretend we’re cooking breakfast. What yummy eggs!”) (Fekonja,
Umek, and Kranjc, 2005; McCune-Nicolich, 1981; Pellegrini, 2009). During symbolic play, parents
use language and gestures to share familiar routines and mutually negotiate play situations, which
facilitates children’s learning of new words (Adamson, Bakeman, Deckner, and Nelson, 2014; Hirsh-
Pasek et al., 2015). For instance, during doll play (which tends to elicit high symbolic play), parents
produced the most and longest utterances, labeled objects more, used a greater variety of words, and
asked more questions compared to play with vehicles and shape sorters (which pull for nonsymbolic
play) (O’Brien and Nagle, 1987). Similarly, experimental comparisons of different types of object
play show that during symbolic play (compared to nonsymbolic play) mothers produce more child-
directed speech to establish a shared understanding about what objects stand for and more frequently
use questions to engage infants in conversations (Quinn, 2016). Symbolic play also results in more
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frequent and longer joint attention episodes and greater gesture use by parents and infants. Conse-
quently, mothers’ language during symbolic play predicts children’s language development between 18
and 24 months (Quinn, 2016), and the quality of interactions between parents and 2-year-olds during
free play predicts child language growth better than the quantity of language input to 3-year-olds
(Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2015).
Notably, the specific objects or content of play interactions does not explain the rich language
seen during symbolic play. When mothers and their 18-month-olds were randomly assigned to two
conditions—a pretend snack and a reality condition in which they ate real food—mothers spoke
more to, looked at, and smiled at infants more frequently during the pretend episode (Lillard and
Witherington, 2004). The same patterns were seen for pretend play around grooming relative to real
grooming in 15- to 24-month-olds (Nishida and Lillard, 2007).
The high-quality language inputs children experience during object play interactions in turn
promote children’s language development. In a series of longitudinal studies, relations between par-
ent–child play and language development were examined (Bornstein, Vibbert, Tal, and O’Donnell,
1992; Tamis-LeMonda and Bornstein, 1991, 1993; Tamis-LeMonda et al., 1998, 2001). Mothers and
infants were visited in their homes when the children were 9, 13, and 20 months old and provided
with toys for play. Mothers’ who contingently responded to their infants’ play and communicative
initiatives had infants who achieved language milestones, such as first words, vocabulary spurt, and
combinatorial speech, sooner in development. Some longitudinal relations between language use dur-
ing mother–child play and children’s language development also emerged.
As children enter preschool, play continues to be a central activity of children, and teachers can
help guide children’s play to facilitate learning. Preschool children from low-income backgrounds
who experienced guided play improved their vocabularies more so than did children who learned
through traditional teaching practices (Han, Moore, Vukelich, and Buell, 2010). Specifically, children
assigned to a group in which guided play was incorporated into book reading learned significantly
more words than did those who engaged in book reading only.
Summary
Children’s engagement with objects changes over the first three years of life. Early on, infants explore
objects by mouthing, fingering, and rotating them to discover object features. Closer to the end of
their first year, children engage in nonsymbolic play in which they use objects in concrete, functional
ways—pressing buttons on toy phones or sorting and aligning cups. In the second year of life, children
advance to symbolic play in which they pretend to feed a dolly as if she were a real child, or talk into
a block as if it were a phone. Parents attune to children’s changes in play by introducing new objects
for play, demonstrating actions that can be performed on toys, and co-constructing stories in children’s
pretend play. Parents’ adjust their language to children in line with children’s development: they pro-
vide contingent, lexically rich language as infants explore objects in the first year, and increase their
grammatical complexity, questions, and use of mental state words as infants engage in symbolic play
in the second and third years of life.
Cultural Considerations in Language and Play

Parents everywhere are key participants in children’s learning. Regardless of the cultural beliefs and
practices of one’s community or where one lives, parent’s speech to children is the “raw data” from
which children learn language and build knowledge about the world. Similarly, parents everywhere
structure children’s physical environments and engage in behaviors that facilitate children’s playful
discovery and learning—ranging from providing children with access to objects for play to plopping
down on the floor to participate in a “pretend birthday party.” Nonetheless, parents from different
199
cultural communities vary in their beliefs about the meaning and value of language and play in devel-
opment and their encouragement and participation in language and play interactions with children.
Consideration of cultural context is therefore vital to understanding parents’ role in these two critical
developmental domains.
Cultural Considerations: Language

Which features of parent–child language interactions does sociocultural context influence? Parents’
views, socialization goals, passed-on traditions and practices, and larger socioeconomic and political
contexts influence how much and how parents talk and respond to their infants, what they talk about
and respond to, and why they talk (Bornstein, 2013; Bornstein and Lansford, 2012; Tamis-LeMonda
and Song, 2012). These cultural variations reflect the extent to which parents accommodate to their
children’s language skills and needs. High accommodation indicates a child-centered orientation to
communication, and relatively low accommodation indicates a situation-centered orientation (Ochs
and Schieffelin, 1984).
Cultural Differences in Child-Directed Speech and Parent Responsiveness

Parents from different cultural communities vary in their views and practices around infants’ par-
ticipation in everyday social interactions and the extent to which they adjust their communicative
behaviors when interacting with infants. In many communities, parents bend over backwards, so to
speak, to engage infants in everyday conversations. In the United States and across many WEIRD
countries, infants are treated as conversational “equals.” Parents simplify their speech in response to
infants’ limited cognitive and language skills to inculcate infants into reciprocal turn-taking in social
interactions (Solomon, 2011). In other communities, parents do not deem it necessary or appropriate
to talk to infants. For instance, Kaluli (Papua New Guinea) and Samoan caregivers rarely engage in
child-directed speech because they believe that infants do not yet understand language. Instead, when
interacting with infants and other members of the community, mothers become “ventriloquists” for
babies, talking on behalf of infants when interacting with interlocutors, using high-pitched voice but
refraining from modifying their grammar and lexicon. In Western Samoa, infants are raised commu-
nally by parents and extended family members and are “talked about” but rarely “talked to.” Although
caregivers occasionally vocalized to infants, they rarely engaged them in the types of reciprocal, dyadic
interactions typical of European-American families (Ochs, 1982; Schieffelin and Ochs, 1986).
Variation among parents in child-directed speech might also stem from broader cultural values
about desired child behaviors. European-American and Canadian families commonly encourage
their prelinguistic infants to vocalize, suggesting that they place high value on infants’ expressions
(Tamis-LeMonda and Song, 2012). In contrast, Gusii people of Kenya do not encourage their babies to
vocalize because they believe that doing so might socialize infants to grow up selfish and disobedient
(LeVine et al., 1994). Japanese mothers likewise discourage their infants from vocalizing frequently,
considering it to be impolite and undesirable. Instead, Japanese mothers believe that infants should
blend into the environment and not call attention to themselves (Minami and McCabe, 1995; Markus
and Kitayama, 2003).
Parents from different cultural communities also diverge in their patterns of contingent responsive-
ness, perhaps due to the infant behaviors they consider to be important and salient. Cross-cultural
comparisons show that mothers from Berlin and Los Angeles respond to infant nondistress vocaliza-
tions and gaze more often than do mothers from Beijing, Delhi, and the Nso of Cameroon (Kärtner
et al., 2008). In contrast, Nso mothers respond more often to infant touch than do mothers from
other cultures. In a study of New York City mothers, Mexican immigrant mothers were most likely
to respond to their 14-month-olds’ gestures than were Dominican and African-American mothers,
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Language and Play
indicating Mexican mothers’ strong emphasis on nonverbal actions (including gestures) as a mode of
communication (Tamis-Lemonda et al., 2012, 2013).
Cultural Differences in the Content of Parental Speech

Across cultural communities, parents also differ in what they talk about with their infants and tod-
dlers, suggesting that language may serve different purposes for different groups. Broadly speaking,
parent speech to children can be categorized along two primary functions: (1) to teach infants
“about the world” (a referential function) and (2) to teach infants “how to act in the world” (a regu-
latory function) (Tamis-LeMonda and Song, 2012). Parents across communities differ substantially
in their relative emphases on these two language functions. For example, middle-income European-
American parents frequently use referential language with their infants and toddlers as a way to instill
knowledge in children and expand vocabularies, thereby teaching children about the world. Dur-
ing everyday interactions, parents label and describe objects infants are interested in (Bornstein and
Tamis-LeMonda, 1990), repeat novel words, expand on infants’ babbles (Masur, Flynn, and Eichorst,
2005), and encourage their infants to produce words or phrases (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2012). In
contrast, parents in other communities emphasize regulatory speech over referential speech when
interacting with their young children. For instance, parents in Botswana often use regulatory lan-
guage in the form of short commands to keep their infants and children safe (e.g., “Stop that” and
“Don’t touch the dog”) (Geiger and Alant, 2005). Similarly, U.S. Mexican and Dominican immi-
grant mothers are more likely to rely on regulatory language when communicating with infants
compared to third-generation U.S. African-American mothers. The emphasis on regulatory lan-
guage aligns with the Latino emphasis on regulating infants’ behavior to promote respeto, a cultural
value of obedience and proper demeanor.
Cultural Considerations: Play

Cultures differ with respect to parents’ views around child play, which can affect the frequency of their
play engagements with children and the nature of those engagements (Bornstein, 2007).
Parent Participation in Play

In many WEIRD cultures, parents actively encourage children’s play through modeling and scaf-
folding and believe that play provides educational benefits to children (Farver and Howes, 1993; Teti,
Bond, and Gibbs, 1988; Turkheimer, Bakeman, and Adamson, 1989; Zukow, 1986). Within European
and U.S. communities, it is common for parents to actively participate in play, especially with young
children (e.g., Haight and Miller, 1992). Parents’ participation in play may be due to parents’ sense of
responsibility for their children’s learning and their related belief that play is a valuable context for
teaching children new skills (Rogoff et al., 1993). A comparison of parenting across 12 cultures found
that middle-class mothers in the United States engaged in play with their children most frequently
(Whiting and Edwards, 1988).
However, parent direct participation in play with children is far from universal. In many “tradi-
tional cultures,” including Mexico, Guatemala, and Indonesia, parents consider the purpose of play to
be amusement and do not believe that it is important for them to play with their children (Farver and
Howes, 1993; Farver and Wimbarti, 1995; Power, 2000; Rogoff, Mosier, Mistry, and Goncu, 1993).
Rather, play is viewed solely as a child’s activity, and children engage in play primarily with peers and
siblings. In hunting-and-gathering and agricultural village cultures, children are the principal play-
mates of one another, even in early development (Edwards and Whiting, 1993; Goncu, Mistry, and
Mosier, 1991).
201
The Nature of Play

Cultural forces also guide how parents play with their children. For instance, the common “Western”
model of triadic object play (as reviewed previously) is one in which the parent and infant or tod-
dler attend jointly to an object of play while alternating gaze between the object and one another’s
faces. However, this form of interaction does not reflect the triadic interactions of traditional cultures.
One study compared interactions between mothers and toddlers in U.S. middle-income families and
Ni-Van caregivers from Vanuatu, a non-Western indigenous community. Caregivers were equally
responsive to their children’s object play across the two cultural communities. However, U.S. caregiv-
ers showed higher levels of visual triadic engagement, whereas Ni-Van caregivers showed higher levels
of physical triadic engagement—in which they shared touch of an object with toddlers in the absence
of visual attention to one another’s faces (Little, Carver, and Legare, 2016). Findings such as these illus-
trate how cultural practices around sharing attention can differ from the dominant view represented
in the developmental science literature.
Cultural ideologies pertaining to individualism and collectivism may also inform the nature of
parent–child object play. U.S. and Japanese mothers differ in the types of object play activities they
encourage in their toddlers. U.S. mothers encourage independent play with objects, whereas Japanese
mothers emphasize the importance of interpersonal connectedness in toddler play. For example, Japa-
nese mothers are more likely to engage their children in symbolic play that incorporates important
“others” (e.g., such as feeding a doll a bottle or serving mother tea), whereas U.S. mothers are more
likely to engage children in nonsymbolic, functionally oriented play with toys (e.g., such as nesting
shapes in shape sorters), perhaps reflecting the value they placed on “independent discovery” in learn-
ing. These differences are seen even though both groups of mothers and toddlers were presented with
identical toys (Tamis-LeMonda, Bornstein, Cyphers, Toda, and Ogino, 1992).
Finally, cultural views about the importance of academics can affect how parents play with chil-
dren. In cultures where academic success is a high priority, such as China, parent–child play is infused
with child-centered teaching opportunities (Pang and Wong, 2002). Asian-American parents place
high emphasis on the importance of children getting an academic head start and tend to buy more
typically educational toys and engage in more preacademic activities than European-American par-
ents. In turn, European-American children have been reported to spend more time in free play than
their Asian counterparts, who spend more time at home preparing for academics (Parmar, Harkness,
and Super, 2004, 2008).
Caveats on Cultural Differences

Although cultural differences in parent–child language and play interactions were highlighted, chil-
dren from all cultures become competent users of language in their local communities, and children
everywhere spend much of their waking hours in play during the early years. And, as noted previously,
parents everywhere provide their children with learning opportunities in domains of language and
play, even if they simply allow children to be nearby to overhear conversations or ensure that their
children are safe as they play with siblings and peers. For the most part, although cultural differences
exist in many core features of parenting, cross-cultural similarities abound. As one example, mothers
from all communities display contiguity, contingency, and embodiment in their responses to infant
behaviors, even if they differentially attune to different behaviors in their infants.
Notably, differences in average levels of parental behaviors do not imply differences in associations
between parenting and infant learning and development. The benefits of parents’ lexical diversity,
responsiveness, multimodal input, and so forth have been documented across families from different
cultural communities and socioeconomic strata (e.g., Bornstein and Tamis-LeMonda, 1989, 1997;
Bornstein, Tamis-LeMonda, and Haynes, 1999; Hsu and Lavelli, 2005; Rodriguez and Tamis-LeMonda,
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2011; Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2001; Weisleder and Fernald, 2013). And parents’ engagement in play
with children scaffolds children in play, regardless of cultural setting, supporting Vygotsky’s (1978)
writings on ways that adults can promote learning within children’s zone of proximal development.
Finally, within-cultural variation often surpasses between-cultural variation, and general statements
about cultural tendencies mask the huge individual differences that exist within a given community.
For instance, low-income African-American mothers in the United States vary in how much they
consider play to be a context for learning. Some mothers consider play to offer a range of develop-
mental benefits, whereas others consider play to be less important than academic-focused activities
such as reading (Fogle and Mendez, 2006). Variation among parents in their views around play might
influence how often they encourage play at home and whether and how often they participate in play
with their young children (LaForett and Mendez, 2016).
Pedagogical Applications
In the United States, psychological research on the importance of language and play in learning and
development, and the role of parents in supporting their young children, has been put to practical use
through educational initiatives, parenting programs, and various interventions with young infants and
children from low-income households.
Language Programs and Interventions

Children’s early language environments are core to learning and development and springboards to
academic success. By the time children say their first words, significant disparities exist between
children growing up in poverty and their middle-class peers in the quality and quantity of language
input they hear from their parents. In their seminal study, Hart and Risley (1995) estimated that by
the time they reached 3 years of age, children from high-SES homes would hear 30 million more
words than children from low-SES homes. It is well known that intervening early can be valuable to
children from disadvantaged families (e.g., Heckman, and Masterov, 2007), and interest continues to
grow among researchers and practitioners on ways to best promote language development and school
readiness starting in the early years.
Parent-directed approaches to intervention are the most logical format for intervening early,
because parental language input most often lies at the heart of the word gap (Leffel and Suskind,
2013). A meta-analysis of 18 parent-directed language interventions found positive effects on chil-
dren’s expressive and receptive language skills (Roberts and Kaiser, 2011). Notably, these interventions
were effective even with relatively moderate training, underscoring the cost-effectiveness of relatively
straightforward interventions, as long as they occur early.
Interventions have likewise been designed to promote parent responsiveness. When caregivers inter-
act with their children in warm and responsive ways and actively engage in a back-and-forth commu-
nicative style, children are highly likely to learn new words. One intervention that capitalizes on this
parenting style is the Play and Learning Strategies (PALS) program (Landry, Smith, Swank, and Gutten-
tag, 2008). PALS uses a video training strategy in which parents are visited in their homes and shown
videos that illustrate responsive strategies for promoting language, social, and cognitive development.
Parents are videorecorded interacting with their infants and toddlers while a coach watches and provides
live feedback. At the end of such sessions, coaches review the footage with parents and discuss which
PALS strategies worked in parents’ interactions. The PALS implementation study, with a targeted sample
of parents from low-income neighborhoods in Texas, produced gains in parents’ responsive language
stimulation skills, and consequently children improved on their vocabulary and language complexity.
Although results from home visitation programs are promising, the strategies are often too costly
to serve larger numbers of low-income families. For this reason, interventions implemented through
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regular pediatric visits might be cost-effective in reaching a large portion of low-income families.
Nearly all families visit the pediatrician frequently for regular well-care visits throughout their infant’s
first year of life, creating frequent opportunities for interventions at no additional time-cost to families.
The Video Interaction Project (VIP; Mendelsohn et al., 2005, 2011) exemplifies a program that uses
the pediatric visit platform for early intervention. This program takes place from birth through age 3
and consists of fifteen 30- to 45-minute sessions with child development specialists on days of primary
care visits. Specialists sit down with families and deliver a curriculum that is specifically focused on
enhancing and infusing language interactions during daily activities, such as reading and play. Much
like PALS, mothers are videorecorded interacting with their infants during brief five- to ten-minute
segments, and then videos are reviewed with the specialist, who reinforces positive interactions and
points to times when opportunities for interaction might have been missed. Mothers can then take
home their video and are also sent home with developmentally appropriate learning materials to use
during their everyday interactions with infants. Last, messages are reinforced through pamphlets writ-
ten in plain language specific to each visit, with the specialist’s notes about what each mother can do
to enhance language. The VIP intervention has had remarkable success. One study showed that when
VIP begins in infancy, parent–infant interactions were already enhanced by 6 months. Moreover,
higher dosage of VIP was associated with greater effects on parents’ language interactions, including
shared reading, teaching, and responsiveness (Mendelsohn et al., 2011).
The lessons learned from language interventions with disadvantaged populations are applicable to
families of all socioeconomic statuses or nationalities. One program developed for low-income fami-
lies in Wales, the Incredible Years Parent-Toddler Programme (IYPTP; Webster-Stratton, 2008), taught
parents strategies to scaffold children’s early language development. A randomized control study of
the program found that six months after parent participation in group discussion and role play around
key parenting principles, parents more actively initiated conversations with their toddlers than control
families (Gridley, Hutchings, and Baker-Henningham, 2015).
Finally, interventions using the LENA (i.e., Language Environment Analysis) technology are also
on the rise. LENA is a small device that can be worn by children to record how much speech is
directed to them at home over extended periods. The device produces home language environment
reports (including number of words adults used and number of conversational turns between adult
and child) that are easy to interpret. A study with low-income families in south Chicago found that
parents who received detailed feedback about their language inputs to their children based on LENA
recordings became more aware of the effects of their language use for children’s school readiness and
increased the number of interactions and diversity of their language input to children (Suskind et al.,
2015). Similarly, an intervention in Korea used LENA recordings to provide middle-to-upper-income
parents with feedback about their verbal interactions with their infants and toddlers (Pae et al., 2016).
Notably, even in this more advantaged sample, there were still parents who engaged in fewer than
average (compared to U.S. norms) language interactions with their children, and these parents ben-
efited the most from detailed feedback. That is, parents in the treatment group who received LENA
feedback reports, compared to control parents who did not, increased their use of words and conversa-
tional turns (a measure of responsiveness) when categorized as having below-average language use, but
not when categorized as average or above-average language use. Thus, the effects of promoting rich
and plentiful language interactions among high-SES families can also be effective for subsamples of
parents who engage in low child-directed speech, highlighting the universal importance of supporting
language-rich interactions between parents and infants.
Play Programs and Interventions

Several intervention programs geared toward enhancing children’s cognitive and academic potential
have included play as an important element. During the 1960s, concerns that children from lower
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Language and Play
socioeconomic backgrounds were at risk for poor academic achievement spurred the establish-
ment of programs such as Head Start, and some years later led to the establishment of home-based
intervention programs that included play (e.g., Andrews et al., 1982). Parent–child play interven-
tion programs have also been encouraged for high-risk infants (Field, 1983; Scarr-Salapatek and
Williams, 1973), including in the treatment of children who exhibit problematic or disruptive
behavior (Guerney, 1991). One of the earliest success stories was seen in the Verbal Interaction
Project’s Mother-Child Home Program, which was designed around mother–child joint play and
began when children were 2 years of age (Levenstein, 1970). A caseworker, known as a “Toy Dem-
onstrator,” visited participants’ homes twice a week for two years, brought toys and books for the
child, and modeled activities meant to foster maternal verbal play with children. The IQ scores
of participant children were higher than those of nonparticipants at follow-up assessments, and
the advantage persisted through eighth grade (Levenstein and O’Hara, 1993). Moreover, mothers’
interaction styles with their young adolescents continued to reflect the techniques encouraged by
the Toy Demonstrators.
Today, several play interventions and programs have been developed to foster children’s develop-
ment in areas such as language. For instance, one invention designed to promote playful language
between parents and toddlers (Christakis, Zimmerman, and Garrison, 2007) had positive benefits
for vocabulary. In the treatment condition, parents were given a set of toy blocks along with explicit
encouragement of how to use playful language during play at home. The control group did not
receive block sets or instructions on how to play and were assumed to carry on with their daily rou-
tines. Toddlers in the intervention group displayed greater vocabulary growth than children in the
control group.
Play has also been used to foster preschool children’s learning in the classroom. In Tools of the
Mind, a Vygostkian-based curriculum, researchers incorporated play in a randomized trial with
3- and 4-year-olds to foster cognitive, emotional, and social outcomes. Teachers and students were
randomly assigned to either a control or treatment condition: the control group received a pre-
established literacy curriculum, whereas the treatment group received the Tools of the Mind interven-
tion. Children who received the intervention had better social and language skills, suggesting that a
curriculum with a strong emphasis on play can enhance learning and development in pre-K children
(Barnett et al., 2008).
The abundance of evidence on the benefits of play for children’s learning counteracts the false
dichotomy between “learning versus play” that often pervades education circles. Developmental
scientists recognize that it is through play that children learn, and they seek to spread this mes-
sage to parents and educators. In fact, there is growing emphasis on “guided play” as a promising
approach for teaching children foundational skills in early childhood curricula (Weisberg, Hirsh-
Pasek, Golinkoff, Kittredge, and Klahr, 2016). In guided play, children are encouraged to express
their autonomy and curiosity through initiation of playful activities, and adults then respond by
scaffolding children’s play and learning. In this guided play approach, children’s spontaneous atten-
tion and engagement with objects and activities is met with structured feedback from parents
or teachers, thereby creating an optimal context for learning. Evaluations of guided play curri-
cula indicate impressive benefits for children’s learning (Alfieri, Brooks, Aldrich, and Tenenbaum,
2011; Fisher, Hirsh-Pasek, Newcombe, and Golinkoff, 2013) and indicate that guided play can be
effectively incorporated into ongoing curricula. Teachers can present the guided play materials in
a game-like fashion (Morris, Croker, Zimmerman, Gill, and Romig, 2013) or offer children the
opportunity to express self-direction in a structured setting (Neuman and Roskos, 1992). Curricula
that build on the strong knowledge base on the role of play in development will continue to yield
many success stories, as seen in the Tools of the Mind (Bodrova and Leong, 2015), Montessori (Lil-
lard, 2013), and guided play (Weisberg et al., 2016). Children have a lot to learn, without sacrificing
their time to play.
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Conclusions
Language and play interactions are vital to learning and development and are critical springboards
for children’s school readiness and lifelong success. Across the first years of life, infants and toddlers
show rapid gains in these interconnected domains, and parents are key participants in these devel-
opments. Parents support children’s language and play through child-directed speech and action,
responsiveness to children’s communications and play initiations, scaffolding of children to higher
play levels, and incorporation of rich language into everyday play interactions. As children advance
in their language and play skills, parents respond with a wider variety of words, increasingly complex
grammatical structures, more sophisticated forms of play, and greater encouragement of children’s
language and play. Notably, variations among parents in language inputs and play with children are
substantial and reliably predict individual differences in children’s learning within and across devel-
opmental domains.
Although parents’ interactions with children differ substantially across cultural communities, par-
ents everywhere shape children’s language and play experiences through what they do and how they
structure their children’s everyday activities. Consequently, a growing number of intervention and
educational programs aim to arm parents with the tools necessary to support their children’s learn-
ing and development in these key developmental domains. Some interventions focus exclusively on
language, others exclusively on play, and some incorporate elements of both, for instance, by teaching
parents how to recognize play as a context for rich social interactions. As developmental science con-
tinues to break new ground on parents’ role in children’s language and play, we will make enormous
strides toward ensuring that all children become skilled members of their communities while having
some fun along the way.
Acknowledgments
We thank the children and parents who have participated in our studies over the years and helped
us discover the ways that children learn through the rich play and language interactions they share
with parents. We acknowledge support from the LEGO Foundation, which continues to advance our
research on the science of everyday play.
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8
HOW PARENTS CAN
MAXIMIZE CHILDREN’S
COGNITIVE ABILITIES
Karin Sternberg, Wendy M. Williams, and Robert J. Sternberg
Introduction
I took a good deal o’ pains with his eddication, sir; let him run in the streets when he was very young,
and shift for hisself. It’s the only way to make a boy sharp, sir.
—Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1836
If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.
—Goethe
Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.
—Roger Lewin
When I was a kid my parents moved a lot . . . but I always found them.
—Rodney Dangerfield
When asked, most parents state that they seek to maximize their children’s abilities, whether cogni-
tive, social, emotional, or physical. But how, precisely, can parents accomplish this goal? What actions
should be a part of their daily routine? The information parents receive about exactly how to maxi-
mize their children’s abilities takes many forms and comes from many sources: pediatricians and other
medical experts; family members and friends; television shows, books, and magazines; and teachers
and other parents. The quality of this information varies widely, and in fact some or even much of
what parents hear (and do) may work against the best interests of their children, as the quote from a
Dickens classic well illustrates.
In this chapter we present 12 lessons for parents who wish to maximize their children’s cognitive
potential. These lessons are based on rigorous empirical evidence from a range of disciplines and are
designed to be placed into immediate practical use. The science behind the lessons is intriguing, but it
is not necessary to become mired in facts and figures to benefit from the lessons we present: each one
can be put into use today to help children make the most of their abilities. Our goal is to cut through
the misinformation and disinformation and to equip parents with meaningful tools useful in rearing
competent and successful children.
We argue in this chapter that there are, in fact, many things parents can do to foster cogni-
tive competence in their children. Consider one example. It is well known that achievement test
scores in the United States lag behind those in other countries. However, our educational failings
are not due to lack of cognitive competence or underlying genetic deficit. If our children are not
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Maximizing Children’s Cognitive Abilities
Table 8.1 Twelve Lessons for Parents for Maximizing Their Children’s Cognitive Abilities
Lesson 1: Recognize what can and cannot be changed in your children.

Lesson 2: Aim to meaningfully challenge your children, not bore them and not overwhelm them.
Lesson 3: Teach children that the main limitation on what they can do is what they tell themselves they cannot do.
Lesson 4: It is more important that children learn what questions to ask, and how to ask them, than they learn
what the answers to questions are.
Lesson 5: Help children find what really excites them, remembering that it may not be what really excites
you, or what you wish would really excite them.
Lesson 6: Encourage children to take sensible intellectual risks.
Lesson 7: Teach children to take responsibility for themselves—both for their successes and for their failures.
Lesson 8: Teach children how to delay gratification—to be able to wait for rewards.
Lesson 9: Teach children to put themselves in another’s place.
Lesson 10: It is not the amount of money you spend on your child that matters, but rather the quality of your
interactions with your child and the nature of your child’s experiences.
Lesson 11: Help children understand themselves and others.
Lesson 12: Integrate digital devices into your child’s life in a reasonable way.
performing, it is because we are not teaching them adequately. Indeed, much of what students get in
school is review, and review of review. There has been a “dumbing down” of American textbooks at
all levels (Hayes, 1996): the typical texts for a third-grader in the early 1950s would today be used for
sixth-graders. (These findings lend credence to the statements many parents make to their children
regarding how much more difficult school was when the parents were young.) The books students
read in 12th grade are on average only at a 5.2 grade level, and summer readings for college freshmen
are on average written at a 7.3 grade level (Renaissance Learning, 2015). Small wonder our children
are lagging behind.
As parents, we may or may not have the power to effect changes in schools. Without question,
however, we have the power to effect changes in the home. This chapter describes how we can effect
meaningful change to encourage and enhance the cognitive development of our children. Our goal
is that, after reading this chapter, the reader will have mastered a number of strategies and can start
implementing immediately to improve the cognitive competence of children. Each lesson makes just
one point, illustrated through examples. It is easy to be overwhelmed by a book of strategies, or to
understand the strategies but not how to implement them. This is why we present our strategies along
with clear take-home messages. First, we describe what not to do, and, second, we describe what to
do and how to do it. To provide an overview of all the strategies at the outset, the 12 lessons are sum-
marized in Table 8.1.
Lesson 1: Can You Change Your Children?

Recognize what can and cannot be changed in your children.
What not to do: View your child as if composed of modeling clay that you can shape into anything
you wish. Decide what your child will become and accomplish and expect your child to fulfill your
vision.
What to do: Watch carefully as your child attempts to acquire new skills and meets new experi-
ences. Be alert for signs of interest and/or talent in a given area or pursuit, and then encourage your
child to pursue these skills and explore these areas. Ensure that your child is broadly exposed to many
skill areas so that you can identify the full range of her or his interests and natural gifts (even if they
do not overlap with yours!).
How much of what children become can parents influence? The nature versus nurture question
is a subject of heated and timely debate, particularly as it relates to childrearing. Adding fuel to this
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Karin Sternberg et al.
already-rich fire was Harris’s (1996) book, The Nurture Assumption, which chronicled the evidence
for the omnipresent role of genes and peers—as opposed to parents—as the most critical forces in
shaping children’s development. Harris’s book set off a media frenzy, leading to cover stories in major
weeklies and top stories on television news magazine shows. The cover of Newsweek even asked, “Do
Parents Matter?”
Thus, today’s parents have seen a phase transition from an emphasis by leading scholars primarily
on the role of environmentalism to an emphasis increasingly on the role of genetics. It is an old ques-
tion, and much of the debate is, in fact, an old recipe served on a new platter. Consider that, in 1930,
John Watson made the extraordinary claim that, with control over the environment, he could make
any infant into anything he wished:
Give me a dozen infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in
and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist
I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even into beggar-man and
thief, regardless of his penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.
(Watson, 1930, p. 104)
Today, most people, psychologists included, would tend to dismiss his claim. Any of us who has
tried to shape our children—even down to the level of trying to get them to practice music for a
few more minutes per day or to spend just a few minutes more on homework—has seen how hard it
can be to effect even small changes, much less large ones. It is understandable that from the practical
perspective of daily parenthood we scoff at Watson’s claim of the unlimited malleability of human
potential.
The emphasis today tends to be on the importance of the genetic control of behavior. Studies
reviewed by Plomin (1988) and Plomin et al. (1997) for example, suggest that at least half and prob-
ably more of the variance in general cognitive ability as measured by IQ is due to genetic factors,
with the importance of such factors increasing (rather, than, as one might expect, decreasing) with
age. Bouchard (1997; Bouchard and McGue, 1981) estimated heritability as somewhat higher. The
heritability of more specific abilities, such as verbal and spatial abilities, appears to be somewhat lower
than that of general intelligence as measured by conventional tests. So much, it would appear, for John
Watson.
But then again, maybe not. First of all, Watson himself, despite his strong environmentalism, sub-
scribed to the importance of biology; he believed that innate biological tendencies made some things
considerably more difficult to effect than others. Watson was surely sophisticated about the impor-
tance of biology in the origins of learned behavior; he himself did not believe that “all behavior is
learned.” In fact, Watson believed that all behavior is based initially on congenitally given, uncondi-
tioned responses, consisting of fear, rage, and love. He regarded these as “emotional reactions” (Watson,
1919, pp. 198–202). In the same volume, Chapters 3 and 4, respectively, are titled “The receptors
and their stimuli,” and “Neuro-physiological basis of action.” There is much here about the power
of biology in shaping outcomes—Watson was actually well trained in the physiology of the day. He
wrote: “Human action as a whole can be divided into hereditary modes of response (emotional and
instinctive) and acquired modes of response (habit)” and “instinctive positive reaction tendencies
displayed by the child soon become overlaid with the organized habits of the adult” (p. 194). Thus,
it is clear that Watson himself, often cited as the ultimate environmentalist, was a firm believer in the
balance between the forces of biology and environment in shaping behavior and child development.
The relative importance of biology and genetics, however, is often misunderstood; people confuse
what are actually genetic influences with the ultimate control of genetics over human destiny. It is a
myth that, just because a phenomenon is partially genetically based, it is not amenable to environmen-
tal interventions. Consider height. The heritability of height (that is, the extent to which individual
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differences among people are due to genetic factors) is well over 90%. Yet average heights in Japan
have risen close to four inches in one generation. The seeming contradiction, as Ceci (1991, 1996)
noted, is due to the fact that heritability is based on variance (the relative positions of individuals when
ranked on an attribute), whereas the impact of the rearing environment is documented not by changes
in variation but by changes in the mean or average. Thus, everyone can become taller in a second
generation (due to better nutrition, for example), but their heights relative to one another can still be
the same as were their mothers’, thus retaining the high heritability of height: taller mothers (relative
to their peers) still have taller children (relative to their peers).
To take a more extreme example, consider phenylketonuria (PKU), a hereditary disease that results
in an inability of the body to metabolize an amino acid, phenylalanine. Susceptibility to this disease
is 100% heritable. In the past, sufferers of this disease always became severely mentally retarded and
suffered other ghastly symptoms as well. Today, because we understand the nature of the disease,
symptoms can be almost wholly eradicated if phenylalanine is eliminated from the diet of the child
immediately at birth. Thus, a disease that is wholly hereditary can be controlled environmentally,
although it has been shown that some cognitive deficits linger throughout the lives of PKU individu-
als despite dietary intervention (see, for example, Christ, Huijbregts, de Sonneville, and White, 2010).
The point is that the existence of a genetic contribution to intelligence does not prevent par-
ents from intervening in their children’s cognitive growth or environmental forces in general from
having powerful effects (Grigorenko, 2000; Grigorenko and Sternberg, 2001; Sternberg and Gri-
gorenko, 2001). Children can be helped to achieve cognitive competence, regardless of the role of
genetics. However, genetic influences are real. Thus, parents should not view their children as lumps
of clay that parents can form into any shape they wish. Rather, parents should work with and not
against children’s natural gifts, interests, and tendencies to discover children’s ultimate potential.
Any child can learn and practice and become more proficient in virtually any endeavor, but the
room for real and meaningful achievement is greatest when this practice is built on underlying
genetic potential. Sampling broadly across a range of interests will help parents determine where
their children’s talents lie.
Lesson 2: Meaningfully Challenge Your Children

Aim to meaningfully challenge your children, not bore them and not overwhelm them.
What not to do: (1) Keep your children working to learn new and complex things, even if they
seem not to understand them. Assume that your children will rise to the occasion and master tough
material with enough sustained practice. (2) Be careful not to challenge your children too much—stay
within the limits of their understanding so they do not become frustrated.
What to do: Strike a balance by challenging your children meaningfully with tasks that are just
beyond their reach and on which they succeed some but not all of the time.
Psychologists who study the development of children’s thinking and reasoning have long been
fascinated by the question of how to maximize this development. One concept that has proved
useful is the zone of proximal development, described by Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1978).
The zone of proximal development refers to the gap between what children can accomplish inde-
pendently and what they can accomplish when they are interacting with others who are more
competent. The word proximal means that the assistance provided is just beyond the child’s current
level of competence. This assistance complements and builds on the child’s existing abilities rather
than directly teaching the child new behaviors. The idea is that the child must learn by stretching
herself or himself with the guidance of an adult. The medieval and modern European practices of
apprenticeship—in which a child learns a trade working closely under the guidance and supervision
of a skilled adult—show how old and enduring is the notion of the zone of proximal development,
even if it was not always labeled as such.
217
When challenging children within their zone of proximal development, you will need to give
them some assistance to accomplish the task at hand. This assistance is called scaffolding. It is important
not to give them too much assistance so that they are not challenged enough; it is equally important
not to give them too little assistance so that they feel as though they are set up for failure.
Imagine that you are going to the pool with your young child with the goal of trying to teach her
or him to swim. What activities you do with your child in the water and how much assistance you
give depend on your child’s temperament, knowledge, and skill level. No two children are alike. That
is, the scaffolds you provide need to be adjusted. If you have a child who is very uncomfortable in the
water, you first may wish to hold the child in your arms and spend time with the child in the water
so that the child becomes more comfortable in the new environment. If you have a child who is more
daring, you may already give the child a pool noodle so that the child can become familiar with the
water and also practice some leg movements in the water.
Because learning is a social activity, do not forget that not only adults, but also older and more
experienced children, can provide necessary assistance. Children can learn much from their older
siblings and friends. They naturally look at what others do and observe older peers. In groups of
mixed-aged children, you often can see the younger children looking at their older peers and imitat-
ing whatever they do—how they sit on the side waiting until it is their turn on the trampoline or how
they line up for the school bus.
The lesson for parents to remember is that inundating children with challenges not coupled with
meaningful assistance, and overwhelming them in the process, does little to aid cognitive development.
In fact, the repeated frustration and ongoing lack of understanding created by such a situation may do
more harm than good. Nor is avoiding opportunities to challenge children and making things easy
for them the answer or solving problems for them while they watch passively.
Feuerstein (1980; Feuerstein, Klein, and Tannenbaum, 1991) used the term mediated learning expe-
rience to contrast with the term direct learning experience. Direct learning experience, the teaching of
facts, may be important, but it is less important than mediated learning experience, in which adults
interpret the environment alongside the child. Thus, a child viewing an exhibit at a planetarium alone
or alongside an adult who quietly views the same exhibit is not learning in the same way as a child
who has the exhibit actively interpreted and explained by an adult.
Effective parents challenge their children, but within limits. They do not overly inundate and frus-
trate their children with tough tasks that are well beyond the children’s grasp. Effective parents also do
not protect their children from all frustration by keeping tasks simple and perfectly achievable—they
understand that children need challenges and the meaningful assistance of parents in meeting these
challenges.
Lesson 3: Do Not Let Children Give Up Too Easily

Teach children that the main limitation on what they can do is what they tell themselves
they can’t do.
What not to do: Tell your children they do not have the ability to do certain kinds of things, or the
personality to do other kinds of things, or the motivation to complete something they might start.
What to do: Tell your children they have the ability to meet pretty much any challenge life might
offer. What they need to decide is how hard they are willing to work to meet these challenges.
Much—arguably, most—of what we cannot do in life, we cannot do because we tell ourselves we
cannot (often because others have told us in the past that we cannot and because we believed them).
One of the best-known studies in psychology was conducted by Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968).
The investigators told teachers that psychological testing revealed that some of the students in their
classes were going to bloom during the next year and others were not. In fact, the children identi-
fied as potential “bloomers” were chosen at random. At the end of the year, the children identified
218
as having exceptional prospects for blooming that year did, in fact, perform better than the rest. This
effect is sometimes called the “Pygmalion” effect, after Eliza Doolittle (of My Fair Lady fame), who
discovered that she could do pretty much what she set her mind to do. The author of the play on
which this musical was based, George Bernard Shaw, named his work after the ancient mythological
king Pygmalion who was able to bring statues to life.
Some investigators have argued over details of the methodology of the Rosenthal and Jacobson
experiments (see Snow, 1969 for a partial refutation of original findings), but few would argue with
Rosenthal and Jacobson’s conclusion that just setting up an expectation is often enough to make it
come true. Children can do pretty much what they make up their minds to do, within natural limita-
tions. However, there are natural limitations, rendering some things easier to achieve than others, and,
in fact, rendering some things impossible to achieve for some children. Very few 12-year-olds have
the capacity to bench-press 300 pounds with a set of weights, regardless of motivation and practice
(skeletal limitations are real). Similarly, people do not have the capacity to swim from New York to
London, nor the capacity to multiply two 30-digit numbers in their heads without using paper (save
the rare savant or mental calculator who has devised a trick method for doing such calculations). But
within the limitations of a given child’s capacity, the main thing holding that child back is her or his
set of beliefs regarding the limitations on what she or he can do.
As an example of the role of perceptions of ability in subsequent achievement, consider girls’ and
boys’ SAT math scores as a function of the students’ attitudes about their competence in math. Girls
and boys tend to have different perceptions about their abilities, with girls believing they are less
capable and boys believing they are more capable. Research has shown that students who believe they
are quite capable do better than predicted by their ability level, but students who believe they are not
capable do less well than predicted by their ability level. In general, children with negative thoughts
about their ability become distracted from learning, lose track of the details of their tasks, and some-
times become immobilized from further learning (Brown, Bransford, Ferrara, and Campione, 1983).
These children then wind up getting less and less practice in the areas in which they need practice
the most.
A program of research by Steele and Aronson (1995) also looked at the issue of students’ beliefs
about their own competence. Before giving a tough math test to a group of girls and boys, he had
the test-taker tell one-half of the students that girls and boys perform equivalently on the test. The
other half of the test-takers were given no information related to gender. Steele showed that girls’
performance was substantially higher on the same test when they were told beforehand that girls
perform the same as boys, compared to when girls were given no information about gender-related
performance.
Steele explains the jump in girls’ performance by saying that girls hold negative stereotypes about
their mathematical ability. These stereotypes depress girls’ performance on difficult math tests (only
performance on difficult tests was assessed). But when girls are told that past research has shown that
on the particular test they are taking, girls perform the same as boys, then girls do not suffer from their
negative stereotype, and their performance shoots up (Steele and Aronson, 1995). In this situation,
Steele and Aronson believe that because the girls are told that girls do as well as boys, they are not
hindered by their negative stereotypes.
Researchers have also looked at the role of perceived competence and control in students’ prefer-
ence for taking on a challenge (Boggiano, Main, and Katz, 1988). They investigated whether students’
perceptions of their academic competence and their beliefs in their level of personal control over
school-related performance affected the students’ intrinsic interest and preference for challenge in an
evaluative setting. Students with higher perceptions of their academic competence and personal con-
trol had more intrinsic interest in schoolwork and more preference for challenging school activities.
When given an evaluative, controlling directive (such as “your last three answers are not correct—try
another sample problem and let me check your work before you go on to chapter three”), students
219
who had high perceptions of their own academic competence and control preferred a greater chal-
lenge than did students who had lower perceptions of their academic competence and control. No
difference between the groups of students in terms of preference for challenge was evident when no
controlling directive was presented. Thus, students’ belief in their academic competence is important,
as is their belief in their ability to control their school performance.
Consider a personal example that serves to illustrate the effects of perceptions of competence in
one’s daily life. One of the authors of this chapter, like some of the children in the Rosenthal and
Jacobson research, was labeled an ordinary learner in elementary school due to low scores on stan-
dardized tests of intelligence. The result was that his teachers had low expectations for him during
the first three grades of school. Being the type of student who wished to please his teachers, he
performed at the roughly average level they expected. They were happy because their expectations
were confirmed, and the student was happy because the teachers were happy. In sum, everyone was
happy.
Things might have gone on this way indefinitely were it not for the child’s fourth-grade teacher.
For whatever reason, she believed that he could perform at a higher level than the level at which he
was currently performing, and at a level higher than the tests predicted he could achieve. In response
to the higher expectations of the teacher, he performed at a higher level, and to his own surprise, he
became an “A” student, and remained so thereafter. But he could only become an “A” student when
he told himself he could, as a result of a teacher who expected nothing less. Had it not been for that
teacher, his whole life would almost certainly have been very different.
There is a fascinating footnote to this lesson, one related by the psychologist, Seymour Sarason (as
told in Sternberg, Wagner, Williams, and Horvath, 1995). Early in his career, Sarason regularly visited
institutions for the so-called feeble-minded. On one of his visits, he learned that the “feeble-minded”
residents had eluded an elaborate security system and had broken out of the building. Once the resi-
dents were rounded up, Sarason proceeded with his task, which among other things involved admin-
istering the Porteus Maze to test these individuals. Their scores were predictably quite low, which is
not surprising when one remembers that low scores on tests of intelligence and reasoning were in part
responsible for these people being housed in such institutions in the first place. But when it came to
eluding the security system and gaining freedom, the residents displayed capabilities no one thought
they possessed. Thus, once again, experience shows that people often are capable of far more than they
themselves, or others, would predict.
Lesson 4: Teach How to Ask Questions

It is more important that children learn what questions to ask, and how to ask them, than
that they learn what the answers to questions are.
Schools, and most parents as well, tend to make what we believe is a serious pedagogical mistake:
they emphasize the answering of questions, rather than the asking of them. The good student is per-
ceived as the one who usually furnishes the right answers, preferably rapidly. The expert in a field
thus becomes the extension of the expert student—the one who knows a lot of information and can
recite it from memory at will.
Many cognitive and educational psychologists are returning to the thinking of John Dewey (1933),
who realized that how we think is often more important than what we think. We need to stress more
the teaching of how to ask questions, and how to ask the right questions (good, thought-provoking, and
interesting ones), and to stress less the simple retrieval of the correct answers to whatever questions
we might pose.
What not to do: Encourage children to view you or their teacher as the one who should ask the
questions and the child as the one to answer them. Perpetuate the belief that the roles of parent and
of teacher are ones of teaching children the “facts.”
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What to do: Realize—and make sure children realize—that what matters most is not the “facts” a
child knows, but rather the child’s ability to find and use those facts. Help children learn not only how
to answer questions but also how to ask them and how to formulate the right questions.
Children are natural question-askers. They have to be, to learn to adapt to a complex and chang-
ing environment. But whether children continue to ask questions—and, especially, to ask good
questions—depends in large part on how we, as adults, respond to their questions (Sternberg, 1994).
Those who have read Dickens’s Oliver Twist may remember that in Victorian England, children’s ques-
tions were not tolerated—in fact, children were supposed to be “seen and not heard.” The rare child
with the gall to ask “Please Sir, may I have some more?” at the dinner table was viewed as insolent
and in need of strict discipline. Today, many parents share another view of children’s question-asking.
They recognize that the ability to ask good questions and to know how to ask them is an essential
part of intelligence, and arguably, the most important part (Arlin, 1990; Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi,
1976; Sternberg, 1985a, 1997, 1999). It is an ability we as parents can either foster or stifle. (It is worth-
while to remember, however, that in our era, as always, different religions and cultures have varying
tolerances toward children’s question-asking.)
Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1978) proposed that a primary means by which we develop
our intelligence is through internalization. We incorporate into ourselves what we absorb as a result
of the process of being exposed to and learning from the environment. The parent as teacher helps
the child make sense of the environment by providing guidance to the child in how to interpret it.
As discussed earlier, Feuerstein (1980; Feuerstein et al., 1991) called this guidance mediated learning
experience and contrasted this kind of learning with direct learning experience. Direct learning expe-
rience is what happens when a parent or teacher teaches us a fact. It is important in learning, but less
important than mediated learning experience, which is the learning children do through adult inter-
pretation of what goes on around the child. Feuerstein suggested that children who show deficient
intellectual skills are often those who have been exposed to insufficient mediation of their learning
experiences. On this view, it is not enough just to take the child to a museum or to see interesting
sights. What is important is the mediation of the experience for the child by the parent or teacher.
When children seek such mediation through asking questions, we as parents and teachers have several
different characteristic ways of responding. We believe that how teachers respond to children’s questions is
important because various types of responses are differentially helpful to children in developing their intel-
ligence. We proposed a seven-level model of parent–child interaction in the questioning process (Stern-
berg, 1994). The basic idea is that parents (and other mediators) who respond at higher levels better foster
their children’s intellectual development. We briefly review this model to show how the way you handle
a child’s question can either place the child on the road to intellectual fulfillment or derail the child.
Consider an example of a question a child might pose while visiting Holland (see Sternberg, 1994),
or after seeing a documentary about Holland on television, or after reading a book about Holland.
The question is one that occurred to one of us during a trip to Holland: Why are people in Holland
so tall? Now consider various ways you, as a parent, might respond to this question, or any question
your child might ask you. Children will ask you many thousands of questions as they grow up, and
you should ask yourself which of these levels best characterizes your typical way of responding. The
higher the level, the more you are doing to enhance your child’s intellectual development. Notice that
it is easily in your power to raise the level at which you respond. It requires no special abilities on your
part, just an affirming attitude toward your child and her or his questions.
Level 1: Rejection of Questions

Typical responses of this kind are “Don’t ask so many questions!,” “Don’t bother me!,” “Don’t ask
stupid questions!,” and “Be quiet!” When parents respond at this level, the basic message to the child
is to shut up. Questions are seen as inappropriate or as irritations. Children should learn to “be seen
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and not heard” and to keep their place. The result of consistent punishment for question-asking, of
course, is that children learn not to ask questions, and hence, not to learn.
All of us probably would like to believe that only other people respond to children’s questions at
such a low and even offensive level. Perhaps we’ve heard parents on the bus or subway treat children
like this, but we never would. Yet it would be the unusual parent indeed who does not occasionally
lapse into Level-1 behavior, if only from exhaustion from answering questions or from doing other
things. Our children then pay a price for our exhaustion.
Level 2: Restatement of Questions as Responses

Typical responses at this level would be “Because they are Dutch, and Dutch people are very tall.” or
“Because they grow a lot.” At this level, we answer our children’s questions, but in a wholly empty
way. Our response is nothing more than a restatement of the original question. We state redundantly
that people from Holland are tall because they are Dutch, or because the Dutch grow a lot. Or we say
that a person acts the way he does “because he’s human,” or acts crazy “because he is insane,” or that
some people come up with good solutions “because they are high in intelligence.” Often we are not
even aware we are restating a question because we have a high-falutin’ but empty word that hides our
ignorance. How many neurotic people do you know? And just what does it explain about a person
when we label her or him as “neurotic”?
Level 3: Admission of Ignorance or Providing Direct Responses

Typical responses at this level are “I don’t know” or “Because . . .” followed by a reasonable answer (say,
about nutrition or genetics). At this level, we either say we do not know or give a response based on
what we do know. Children are given the opportunity to learn something new, or to realize that their
parents do not know everything. Such answers are quite reasonable in certain situations, but do not
represent the maximum we can do for our children. (By the way, answering as though you know the
answer when you do not is not a response on any of these levels. It is extremely unwise, because it gives
children the wrong information and teaches them to pretend to knowledge they don’t really have.)
When parents answer at this level, they can do so either with or without “reinforcement.” This
means that we either can reward kids for asking the question or not reward them. Examples of rewards
would be “That’s a good question” or “I’m glad you asked that” or “That’s a really interesting ques-
tion.” Such a response rewards question-asking and thereby is likely to increase its frequency. And by
increasing its frequency, we foster further opportunities for children to learn.
Level 4: Encouragement to Seek Response Through Authority

Typical responses at this level are “I’ll look it up in the encyclopedia when we get home” or “Why
don’t you look it up in the encyclopedia when we get home?” At Level 4, the question-answering
process does not just end with an answer or admission of ignorance. Children are taught that informa-
tion not possessed can and often should be sought out.
Notice, though, the difference in these two responses. In the first, the parent takes responsibility for
seeking the information. Children thereby learn that information can be sought, but also that there
is someone else to do it for them. Thus, the learning that will ultimately be accomplished is passive
learning. In the second response, children are given the responsibility. In this way, children are asked to
take responsibility for learning and, hence, to learn as well as to learn how to learn. This is called active
learning. As you can probably guess, active learning is better than passive learning. Through active
learning, children develop their own information-seeking skills rather than becoming dependent on
others.
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Level 5: Consideration of Alternative Explanations

Here, the parent says she or he does not know, but suggests that the child explore some possibilities.
Ideally, the child and parent generate possibilities together, such as: people in Holland might be tall
because of the food, the weather, genetics, hormone injections, killing of short children, wearing of
elevator shoes, and so on. The child thereby comes to realize that even seemingly simple questions can
invite hypothesis formulation and testing.
Level 6: Consideration of Explanations Plus

Means of Evaluating the Explanations
Here, parents not only encourage alternative explanations, as in Level 5, but also discuss ways of
evaluating the validity of the alternative explanations. A typical response at this level would be “How
might we go about deciding which of these explanations is correct?” For example, if genetics were
responsible for the high average height of the Dutch, what might we expect to observe? How might
we discern whether food or weather is responsible? How can we quickly rule out the possibility that
the Dutch kill short children? Children can learn via the responses of their mediators not only how
to generate alternative hypotheses, as in Level 5, but also how to test them.
Level 7: Consideration of Explanations, Plus Means of

Evaluating Them, Plus Follow-Through in Evaluations
In Level 7, a typical response might be: “Let’s try getting some of the information we need to decide
among these explanations.” Here, the mediator actually encourages the child to perform the experi-
ments by gathering information that could distinguish among the alternative explanations. The child
learns not only how to think but also how to act on her or his thoughts. Although it may not be pos-
sible to test every explanation of a phenomenon, it will often be possible to test several of them. For
example, the child can observe whether taller Dutch parents also tend to have taller children, whether
there are reports of missing short children, and so forth.
Note how, as we move up the levels, we go from rejecting children’s questions, at one extreme,
to encouraging hypothesis formation and testing, at the other. We go from no learning, to passive
rote learning, to analytic and creative learning. The higher our level of response, the more we com-
municate an interest in children’s questions. We probably do not have the time or resources always to
respond to children’s questions in a Level-7 way. Nor are higher levels of response equally appropriate
for children of all ages—responses need to be developmentally appropriate to be maximally useful.
But in general and as children grow up, the more we use the higher levels, the more we encourage our
children to develop their cognitive skills.
Note that we are not advocating rearing children who are little more than “empty-headed” ques-
tioners who have acquired the socially acceptable veneer of smartness by asking smart-sounding
questions but who do not possess the reservoir of basic knowledge needed to survive in today’s world.
Children need to learn how to ask questions, and they need also to learn basic facts and information
and how to reason effectively with them. Good question-asking skills are an essential foundation of
this developmental equation.
Lesson 5: Help Children Find Their Interests

Help children find what really excites them, remembering that it may not be what really
excites you or what you wish would really excite them.
People who truly excel in a pursuit in life, whether vocational or avocational, are almost always peo-
ple who genuinely love what they do. Certainly, the most creative people are intrinsically motivated in
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their work, meaning that they do their work for internal reasons rather than external ones—because
they like it, for self-expression, and for relaxation, and not because they have to do it (Amabile, 1983,
1996; Collins and Amabile, 1999). How many people have you met who followed a career path for
the money or prestige, and who, whether or not they attained these goals, loathe what they do? How
many do not hate it but are bored silly? For sure, they are not the people doing the work that makes
a difference in their field. Likewise, when students are intrinsically motivated, not only do they learn
more but they are also happier (Froiland, Oros, Smith, and Hirchert, 2012).
What not to do: Work with your children to find things you always hoped they would love to do.
What to do: Work with your children to find things they really love to do.
Helping children find what they really love to do is not always easy. On the contrary, it is often hard
and frustrating work, for both parents and children. Yet unless we are willing to face the frustration
now, our children will have to face it later, perhaps for the rest of their lives.
Historically, children often did not have the luxury of choosing how they wished to spend their
lives and of doing tasks they enjoyed in pursuit of making a living. The greater economic opportuni-
ties of the modern era have allowed us all more choices regarding how we spend our lives. Children
today may decide to join a family business or pursue another vocation. The fact that one’s parent is a
physician does not mean that this is one’s only alternative. Our colleges and graduate and professional
schools are open to a broader segment of the population today than they were in the pre–World War
II era, when wealth and family connections were more salient determiners of who had access to such
institutions and who did not (Calvin, 2000). With the growth of the middle class in North America
came the growth of leisure time and the increasing access to the luxury of how to spend our lives
(Flynn, 2007). Our children are deeply fortunate to have the benefit of such choices; it is up to every
parent to help her or his children make the most of this opportunity.
We have met any number of college students who, when asked why they are doing what they are
doing, reply that they are doing it because it is what their parents want them to do. For example, they
might be pre-medical because their father is a doctor, or because their father always wanted to have a
doctor in the family. And after all, who’s paying? Children who go into a field because their parents
want them to may become good at what they do, but they almost certainly will not become great.
Even those of us who preach this message need to remember it when it comes to our own families.
For example, the son of one of the authors decided at one point that he wished to play the piano.
His father was delighted, because he himself was a piano player. His son, therefore, was following in
his own footsteps. The son ended up practicing less than regularly and eventually quit. The father
was disappointed, to say the least. A few months later, the son indicated he would like to play the
trumpet. The father, disgusted after the son had quit the piano, said he would not even consider the
possibility. After all, he had seen what had happened with the piano lessons. But later, he realized that
his reluctance had less to do with the fact that the son had quit piano than it had to do with the fact
that the father could not imagine a child of his playing the trumpet. It just did not fit his image of
his child. Fortunately, the father also realized that his feelings had a lot to do with his image of the
son, but nothing to do with what was best for the son. The son started trumpet lessons and enjoyed
them for several years.
The point of this story, and many others like it, is simple. We need to find what is right for our
children, not for our image of what we had hoped they would be. There will be frustrations as we try
things that do not work, but the ultimate reward will be their finding the right things that do work.
Although we have emphasized the importance of finding the right activities to do, it is equally
important to find the right place to do them. For example, the large majority of people who come to
Cornell or Yale are happy to be there. But we cannot even count the number of students and faculty
we have met at these schools who would have been happier elsewhere. For example, Yale and Cornell
are excellent places for students who are independent, who seek high levels of intellectual challenge,
and who can cope with an environment where they will probably not be the biggest fish in what
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might be viewed as a very large pond. A student who needs to be a big fish in a small pond, or who
is not up to the intellectual challenge, or who cannot work independently would probably be much
happier elsewhere. Similarly, Cornell and Yale are great places for faculty who want to balance teach-
ing and research. But faculty who prefer to teach most of the time and who are not into publishing
research definitely would be happier elsewhere.
Some years ago, one of us had an outstanding graduate student who received two very good job
offers. One offer was from an extremely prestigious institution, and the other from a prestigious insti-
tution but one that could not match the first institution for level of prestige. But there was a problem:
the kind of work the student did was a better match to the kind of work done in the somewhat
less prestigious place than to the kind of work done in the more prestigious one. Unfortunately, the
student took the job at the more prestigious institution. He did well, but did not become the great
success all had hoped for. His environment just did not encourage what he had to offer or the kind
of work he liked to do.
The lesson to us is clear: what is most important is to find an environment that is compatible with
you. For a child, it may not be the most prestigious private school or college (or then again, it may
be). For the adult, it may not be the most prestigious job or community (or then again, it may be).
The overriding consideration should be to find for your children (and yourself ) an environment in
which to thrive as individuals. This environment is not necessarily the same one that will be best for
someone else. You need to know your own child. It is not enough just to go with the name—the
honors course, the honors school, or the most popular and prestigious alternative. Know your child,
and help your child find the environment that is the best fit to her or his abilities, interests, and values.
Lesson 6: Teach Sensible Risk-Taking

Encourage children to take sensible intellectual risks.
Research on creativity shows that creative children and adults are intellectual risk takers (see Stern-
berg, 2018; Sternberg and Lubart, 1991, 1995, 1999). They are not the people who always play it safe.
Think of it like investing money. If you put all your money in a government-insured passbook savings
account, chances are you will not lose it. But you will not make much either, and inflation will chip
away at the little interest you gain in any case. To earn more substantial interest or dividends on your
money, you have to take some risks with it. This is not to say that all your money should be invested
in a risky way. But if you are not willing to take any risks at all, your wealth will scarcely increase.
Similarly, not every intellectual activity a child engages in should represent a risk, but if none does, the
child will probably not end up doing much, if anything, that is creative and that potentially makes a
difference—either to the child or to anyone else.
What not to do: Always encourage your children to play it safe—with courses, with activities, with
teachers, with intellectual challenges.
What to do: Teach children sometimes to take intellectual risks and to develop a sense of when to
take risks and when not to.
Most creative work goes at least slightly against the established way of doing things, with the result
that when children take the risk and do something creative, the reaction to their work is not always
positive. Consider an example of what happened to the daughter of one of the authors. She was in
third grade, and her teacher had a worthwhile idea. The children were studying the planets, and the
idea was that the children should pretend to be astronauts about to land on Mars. Such an exercise is
called a simulation.
One of the best ways for children (or adults, for that matter) to learn is through simulation. The
basic idea of a simulation is that you can often learn more by putting yourself in someone else’s place
than by simply reading about what the someone else would have done in a given set of circumstances.
Thus, children will probably learn more about what it is like for an astronaut to land on another planet
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if they have to put themselves in the shoes of the astronaut than if they simply read about an astronaut
about to land on the Moon (or Mars, for that matter, although obviously most descriptions focus on
the Moon because humans have never landed on Mars). Obviously, reading and simulation are not
mutually exclusive. After the simulation, children can supplement what they have learned by reading
about how their reactions differed from those of, say, professional astronauts.
As the teacher started the lesson, the daughter, a mere 8 years old at the time, suggested she might
pretend to be a Martian and meet the astronauts as they arrived on Mars. The teacher responded
that the idea was unacceptable, because we know from space probes and other means that there are
no Martians. Hence, including a Martian in the lesson would make it unrealistic and not a science
lesson. Well, from one point of view, the teacher was right: probably there are no Martians, unless
they live in the interior of the planet, hidden from the view of space probes and protected from
the harsh outer atmosphere of the planet. But from another point of view, the teacher probably
did some damage: the lesson the child learned was that the next time she has a creative idea, she
should shut up.
As for ourselves, we have had risky articles and grant proposals turned down. We have tried teach-
ing in innovative ways to our students, and the lessons have not always worked. Just recently, one of us
tried presenting a paper to Montrealers in French, and the result was just short of catastrophic. When
you take a risk, you have to be willing to fall flat on your face sometimes.
Then why even encourage children to take risks? Consider the benefits. Practically every major
discovery or invention has entailed some amount of risk, but the risks taken by the discoverers and
inventors are often forgotten today. Would anyone really want a ballpoint pen when people had foun-
tain pens? Would anyone want to see videos at home on a small television screen when they could go
to a movie theater instead? Would anyone find enough use for a home computer to want to spend the
money on one? How could the earth revolve around the sun when one only has to look up in the sky
to see the sun revolving around the earth? The list is endless. But at all levels, big and small, the people
who have contributed most to our world are people who have been willing to take intellectual risks
and to see and do things in ways others have not.
One of our favorite examples is that of an engineer at the 3M company who worked in the adhe-
sives division of the company. Work on adhesives is certainly important (especially given that so many
things in the world are falling apart). The job of engineers in such a division is to try to invent ever-
stronger adhesives. One engineer came up with a weaker adhesive than those we had at the time. The
reaction of the engineer’s superiors was that the invention was useless—what we need are stronger,
not weaker, adhesives. Indeed, most people in the company reacted in kind. But eventually secretaries
(not the high-placed scientists, engineers, and executives!) saw a use for the idea, and today we have
the yellow Post-it stickers that enable us to leave notes on a piece of paper and then to remove the
notes without leaving a mark. The interesting part of the story, of course, is that this very useful and
profitable invention came about only because someone was willing to take a risk and actually do the
opposite of what he was supposed to do.
One kind of risk for children is the risk of making a mistake, especially in public. Children are
often reluctant to make mistakes that might expose them to the ridicule of their teacher, or even
worse, their peers. So they start playing it safe in the classroom, responding only when they know
they have the correct answer. They may start playing it safe in other situations as well, so as not to
look stupid. The only problem with this strategy is that the very best way to learn is from our own
mistakes. The lessons learned by watching others are not as powerful as the lessons learned by doing.
Smart people are not ones who never make mistakes—on the contrary, smart people always make
mistakes, because that is how they learn.
Clifford (1988) studied how students’ willingness to take academic risks affected their development
and performance. In this research, tolerance for failure at school, which measured how constructively
a person responds to failure in school, was highly associated with choosing more difficult and chal-
lenging test problems when a choice of problems was offered. Students who tolerated failure well
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took greater risks and chose harder problems. Tolerance for failure was also associated with higher
standardized achievement test scores. However, tolerance for failure decreased with age—it seems that
the older children get, the more we teach them to play it safe.
Given the learning opportunities that derive from taking risks and the achievement this learning
makes possible, we must ask why so few children are willing to take risks in school. In the school
environment, perfect test scores and papers receive praise, and academic failure means extra makeup
work. Academic failure is viewed as a result of low ability and motivation, rather than a desire to
grow. Playing it safe is advocated, particularly as children reach middle school age. Students are not
given choices on assignments, so opportunities to take risks are minimal, and students never develop
tolerance for risk-taking. Unfortunately, however, risk-averse students (and adults) lose out in the end
because many successes can only be achieved by taking a risk.
We have noted that, often, people’s views on intellectual risks are linked to their views on the
nature of intelligence. Dweck (1999, Dweck and Bempechat, 1983; Blackwell, Trzesniewski, and
Dweck, 2007) distinguished between two types of conceptions of intelligence in children. One type
of conception is that intelligence is a more or less fixed entity with which we are born. On this view,
there’s not much we can do to increase our intelligence. Children with this point of view often try
to minimize and hide their mistakes and tend to experience debilitation in the face of setbacks. The
other type of conception is an incremental one. With this view, we can improve our intelligence as
we learn and experience the world. The more we learn, the smarter we become, and setbacks become
cues either to increase effort or to vary strategy. Clearly, the conception of intelligence we want to
reinforce in our children is the second one. It is also the correct conception of intelligence, because
intelligence can be increased (Bransford and Stein, 1993; Grotzer and Perkins, 2000; Nickerson, in
press; Sternberg, 1986, 1997, 1998; Sternberg and Smith, 1985). To the extent that children believe in
this conception, they will be more willing to do what they need to do to increase their intelligence.
Lesson 7: Teach Responsibility

Teach children to take responsibility for themselves—both for their successes and for their
failures.
Something sounds a bit trite when we say that we should teach children to take responsibility for
themselves: of course everyone knows this. But sometimes there is a gap between what we know and
how we translate what we know into action. In practice, people differ widely in the extent to which
they take responsibility for the causes and consequences of their actions.
What not to do: Always look for—or allow children to look for—the outside enemy who is
responsible for children’s failures (teachers, other students, illnesses, and so on). Always push children
because they cannot do it for themselves.
What to do: Teach children to take responsibility for themselves. Help children develop their own
internal push, so you do not have to push them: enable them to do it for themselves.
Rotter (1966, 1990) distinguished between two personality patterns, which he referred to as
“internal” and “external.” Internals are people who tend to take responsibility for their lives. When
things go well for them, they take credit for their efforts; but when things do not go well, they tend to
take responsibility and try to make things go better. Externals, in contrast, tend to place responsibility
outside themselves, especially when things do not go well. They are quick to blame circumstances
for their failures (and often to attribute their successes to external circumstances as well). Of course,
almost no one is purely internal or external. Moreover, all of us know people who accept credit for
their successes but who blame others for their failures, or who never credit themselves for their suc-
cesses but do blame themselves for their failures. The most realistic people recognize that both success
and failure come about as an interaction between our own contributions and those of others.
From our standpoint as parents and as researchers studying how to maximize intellectual potential,
we have found, as has Rotter, that people who tend toward the internal side of the continuum are
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better adapted to intellectual success. Because externals are reluctant or even refuse to accept blame,
they do not take responsibility for making the most of their lives. They somehow expect others to do
for them what they need to do for themselves. We teach at selective universities and have observed for
a number of years which of the young women and men who attend these universities tend to succeed
and which do not. We have found that one of the best predictors of success is the student’s willing-
ness to take responsibility for herself or himself. Many of the students who attend these universities
are used to success—and wait for something to happen. Usually, little does. The opportunities do
not simply come to the students, as they may have in high school. The students who succeed are the
ones who make their own opportunities—who take responsibility for their lives. This pattern extends
throughout the rest of children’s lives as well. One study found that freshman students with an internal
locus of control received significantly higher GPAs after their first year of college than their classmates
who had a more external locus of control (Gifford, Briceno-Perriott, and Mianzo, 2006).
One way to develop this inner sense of responsibility in children is to serve as a role model for it.
Children learn more through imitating modeled behaviors than they do through practically any other
means: if you want children to behave a certain way, act that way yourself. Don’t expect children to
take responsibility for themselves if you are always trying to find someone to blame for your own
problems—whether it is a boss, a spouse, an ex-spouse, the government, or whomever. That is not
to say that these entities may not be in part responsible for whatever problems you face. But it is in
your hands to improve your life, not in theirs, just as it is in your hands to set a take-charge example
for children.
Recently one of us observed a friend teaching her child precisely how not to develop an inner sense
of responsibility. The woman was having an in-depth conversation with one of us in her living room
on a topic of much significance to her. Meanwhile, her 3–1/2 year old became jealous that his mother
was paying more attention to someone else than to him. He shot the adults with a toy gun, hit them
with toys, and wailed at the top of his lungs. Finally, he actually hurt his mother with a toy he threw.
She leaned over and said, “Oh, honey, you accidentally hurt mommy. I know you didn’t mean
it. Mommy’s been ignoring you, I know, and I’m sorry,” and so on (you get the picture). The boy
answered, “Yes, you’ve been hurting me, mommy, but I forgive you!” It was comical, but there was
a sobering message being delivered to the child. Later he kicked one of the authors and pulled the
family cat’s tail, but he was never held accountable for his actions.
This family was headed for a real problem. The mother should have acted as an appropriate role
model by taking only the responsibility she deserved and by expecting her son to do the same. He
may have been young, but he was not too young to learn to shift blame to others and manipulate the
situation to serve his goals. By repeatedly letting him off the hook, his mother was establishing a bad
precedent for his later life.
Another way to develop the inner sense of responsibility is to know when to push children, but also
when not to. Unfortunately, many young women and men who enroll at Cornell or Yale have been
pushed throughout their childhoods. They face a tough problem when they arrive at college: their
parents are no longer there to push them, and they have never learned how to do it for themselves.
The children who are most successful are those who were nudged when circumstances required, but
who were not constantly pushed. The ones who were constantly pushed are often at a loss when, for
the first time in their lives, they have to find the resources to push themselves from within. Because
they were always pushed from without, they have never developed these resources.
Nothing is more boring to a teacher than students who always have an excuse for what they should
have done that they did not do. They usually run through several dead grandmothers, family crises,
and severe illnesses whose symptoms they do their best to fake. The students do not seem to realize
that the teachers have heard it all before. Teachers recognize procrastinators and excuse-invention
artists from a mile away! The time and place to teach children not to be procrastinators and excuse-
makers are when they are young and in the home. When you give children chores or other tasks to
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do, expect the children to do them. Moreover, expect them to meet your expectations for the tasks you
assign them, not just to get by with the minimum.
Intellectually successful people are never those who just do the minimum needed to get by. As
teachers, we see many students pass through our classrooms who do what they think is just the mini-
mum they need to get an A, a B, or whatever grade they set as their goal. They may or may not get
the grade, but the person they are fooling is not the teacher, but themselves—these students are not
taking responsibility for their lives. Teachers know who these students are and treat them befittingly.
Ask yourself: If you have a special opportunity for someone at work, or in a club where you are an
officer, or whatever, to whom will you give that opportunity—the person who does just the mini-
mum to get by, or the person who always tries to meet and even exceed your expectations? Clearly,
you will give the choice opportunities to the latter, and so will practically anyone else. People who
learn just to get by when they are children behave the same way as adults and find that it is almost
always someone else who gets the choice opportunities in life. When the promotion comes up, or the
big salary raise, or the chance to work on a particularly good project, they find that someone else gets
the opportunity. Sadly, they rarely understand why. They still think they are fooling people in their
attitude of doing the least possible to get by.
At the beginning of this lesson, we mentioned how important it is that parents translate thought
into action with regard to teaching their children to take responsibility. But children also need to be
taught to translate thought into action in general. In every line of adult work-life, there is potential
gap between what we know how to do and what we actually do. As scholars, we see other scholars
who have good ideas but who never get around to publishing them. We have seen inventors who have
creative ideas but by the time they get around to trying to put them into practice, someone else has
beaten them to it. We have seen managers who know what they need to do in their businesses but for
one reason or another, hesitate to do it until they have driven the company into bankruptcy. And for
that matter, we have all seen people in personal relationships who know that changes need to be made
but who procrastinate indefinitely. By the time they get around to taking responsibility for making
the changes, it is often too late—they’ve lost the relationship. The point is that to make the most of
your children’s abilities, it is not enough that they learn what they can do—they have to learn to do it.
Lesson 8: Delay Gratification

Teach children how to delay gratification—to be able to wait for rewards.
In a series of studies extending over many years, Mischel found that children who are better able
to delay gratification are more successful in various aspects of their lives, including their academic
performance (e.g., Herndon, Bembenutty, and Gill, 2015; Mischel, Shoda, and Rodriguez, 1989). In a
typical study, Mischel will place young children in a room and give them a choice between an imme-
diate but smaller reward and a later but larger reward. He will put various temptations in their paths.
For example, it is harder to resist temptation if the immediate reward (e.g., a chocolate bar) is visible
than if it is hidden. Children’s ability to delay gratification even predicts their scores on the Scholastic
Assessment Test (SAT) when they are much older (Goleman, 1995). Rewards for delaying gratification
can sometimes surface far down the road.
What not to do: Always reward children immediately. Allow children to expect immediate rewards,
to get what they want right away. Emphasize the here and now at the expense of the long term.
What to do: Teach children to wait for rewards. Teach them that the greater rewards are often those
that come down the line. Show them examples in your own life and how these examples may apply
to them. Emphasize the long term, and not just the here-and-now.
Working hard often does not bring immediate rewards. Children do not become expert baseball
players, dancers, musicians, or sculptors right away. And the reward of becoming expert at anything
often seems very far away. Often, children succumb to the temptations of the moment—watching
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mindless programs on television, or endlessly playing repetitive videogames, or even falling into
antisocial groups that seek immediate delights. But the people who make the most of their abili-
ties have to be those who are willing to wait, because there are few challenges that can be met in
a moment.
Gruber (1986; Gruber and Wallace, 1999) studied the careers of great contributors to the world.
His findings belie the notion that the great insights in history correspond to the “Eureka!” experi-
ence, whereby someone goes from not understanding something to understanding it in a flash. On
the contrary, Gruber found that even the greatest minds had to work hard and long to achieve their
major insights and their major works. Of course, there are exceptions. But for the most part, the great
accomplishments come after much hard work. Not only do significant accomplishments require hard
work, they are often not recognized as significant right away. Creative people have to learn to delay
gratification, because their greatest works may be ignored for some period of time before their value
is recognized.
One of our children has a tendency to quit on things when they become hard. He is afraid to fail,
and thereby look inadequate in his own eyes and those of others. But in many pursuits, the hard-
est part is the “middle.” For example, it is not hard to learn to play tennis or baseball or soccer well
enough to get by in gym class. But to become good enough to be on the varsity team often requires
a great deal of work and commitment of time. Similarly, to become a really good cellist or pianist or
saxophonist requires many, many hours of work and effort.
Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Römer (1993; see also Kuhlmann and Ardichvili, 2015) suggested
that probably the most important factor in becoming an expert in anything is sheer hard work and
practice. Comparisons of distinguished performers in a number of fields with those who are not so
distinguished revealed that the distinguished performers, quite simply, worked much harder than the
nondistinguished ones. For the child or adult, such hard work on one pursuit represents a risk. After
all, there is no guarantee that all the hard work will yield results. The child may practice for hours and
hours and never become a great hockey player, artist, or violinist. But again, the work of Ericsson and
his colleagues suggests that nothing pays off better than sheer persistence and determination.
The findings of Ericsson and his colleagues even more strongly show the importance of finding the
right pursuits for your children. If they are really going to work to excel at something, it should be
something they really like. All of us know how three hours doing something we hate can seem like a
day, whereas three hours spent on something we love can seem like a matter of minutes. So let us help
our children find what is right for them and then encourage them really to excel.
Your children may or may not make great contributions to the world, but the chances are their
accomplishments will be better if they learn to delay gratification. It is often hard to see into the
distant future and what may lie ahead. But those who do have foresight have the edge in almost all
aspects of life. A child may not see in grade 9, for example, how working hard will benefit him or her
later on, but by grade 12, when the child is ready to apply to colleges, the advantages of hard work
and solid academic performance will be obvious.
One of us has a younger brother who suffered significantly because he could not delay gratifica-
tion. As a child, the boy was indulged with toys and rewarded instantly for any positive effort. He
never learned patience and perseverance because he just did not have to. He was naturally gifted
academically and never had to work hard and apply himself to do well in school. He always received
better-than-average grades for minimal effort, and he never experienced the rewards of working on
long-term projects.
This pattern worked for the boy until college. There he found his once-successful approach no
longer brought the instant gratification he was accustomed to. Commitments to long-term projects
were expected, as were long hours spent studying in the library. Despite his intelligence, the boy did
poorly his first semester at college—and so poorly his second semester that he left school. He tried
two other colleges for one semester each with the same results.
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Finally, he got his act together and learned a tough lesson: life is work, and rewards often come
only with time. He enrolled in a fourth college and applied himself to the difficult tasks entailed in
earning a degree. He graduated three years later. The moral of this story is clear: you do your children
no favor by providing immediate rewards, because the real world will not follow your example. The
older a child gets, the more she or he must be able to accept the delay between performing behaviors
and achieving rewards.
When we started working together, we had only short-term funding for our joint projects and
knew we would need to seek some longer-term support. Although we would be fine for three years,
we knew that after three years, we would be out of funds. Looking toward the long term, therefore,
we started applying for additional funding almost immediately. There is almost nothing we like to do
less than write grant proposals. Each of us could have generated endless lists of activities on which we
would have rather spent our time. But we did what we needed to do, saving the activities we would
have rather done for after we did what we felt we had to do. Actually, we didn’t absolutely have to
write proposals at the time—after all, we had three full years of support. But we knew that, down the
road, we would be sorry if we waited to seek further support. So we took the long view.
Our initial efforts all met with failure. At this point, we really began to ask why we were spending
our time on something we did not like doing, when there were other activities that were guaranteed
to make us feel better in the short run. Only masochists like to be turned down. But we persevered,
and after a losing streak, our fortune changed, and we started winning—we had several proposals
accepted. We got more gratification than we had ever imagined possible, but we had to wait for it.
That is the way life often is, and children need to know it.
Lesson 9: Teach Perspective Taking

Teach children to put themselves in another’s place.
Many very bright children never achieve the success in life that could be theirs because they never
develop practical intelligence (Sternberg, 1985a, 1988, 1997, 2016; Sternberg et al., 2000). They may do
well in school and on tests, but they never learn how to get along with others—and, especially, to see
things (and themselves) as others see them.
What not to do: Teach children to form a point of view, but not to try to understand the points of
view of others.
What to do: Teach children the importance of understanding, respecting, and responding to the
points of view of others.
Some years back, we observed a student at Yale who was academically a great success. He did
extremely well in his courses and in all aspects of academic life. His teachers thought that his prospects
for success were excellent. We disagreed. Although this student displayed exceptional academic intel-
ligence, he displayed a genuine lack of practical intelligence. He acted arrogantly toward others—as
though he knew everything and they knew nothing. He even acted this way toward his teachers, but
the fellow was so damn smart, they were willing to overlook it. After all, they were his teachers and
felt a familial concern for him.
The result was that no one ever put the guy in his place. They were doing him no favor. When the
fellow went out on the job market, he did not receive a ringing endorsement from his interviewers; in
fact, he was a total flop. This individual did not even have the practical intelligence to realize that on
the day of the job interview, he would have to hide his arrogance. He acted toward the people he met
in his interview like he knew it all and they knew nothing. But they knew at least one thing—that this
was one person they were not going to hire! Eventually, he received a job, but he later lost it. People
without the warm and friendly feelings of family members were not willing to put up with him.
As parents, we are sometimes willing to overlook the faults of our children that to others are obvi-
ous. But in overlooking these faults, we hurt rather than help our children. Others will not have the
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indulgence for faults that we have in our own kin. Indeed, one of us just had a conversation with
his son on this issue. When several teachers make the same comment about a student, one has got
to start listening carefully to it, whether one agrees with it or not. Of course, the child may feel like
he is getting a bum rap. What child does not feel this way from time to time? But children need to
understand that if people are seeing them in a certain way, whether they are this way or not, they have
to take responsibility for changing others’ perceptions.
One of us was once told by a subordinate that he had been acting grouchy lately. He then asked
others if they had the same perception. He was stunned to find that they did. Were they right? Who
knows? But whether or not he was “objectively” grouchy, the perception was there, and the percep-
tion was causing problems. He vowed to change the perception, and therefore the behavior that was
causing the perception.
For many possible reasons, girls on the average tend to be better able to put themselves in the
position of another than do boys. In general, girls tend to be more sensitive to and understanding of
feelings than are boys (Hall, 1984); thus, we need to pay special attention to these issues with boys. Of
course, we may take the tack of forgiving them because they are boys, adopting the old saying that
“boys will be boys.” But again, our forgiveness will only hurt them in later life. The better able a child
is to understand the point of view of others, the better that child will adapt not only to the demands
of school but also to the demands of life after school.
The lack of ability to see things from another point of view seems almost to be a national weakness
in the United States. When traveling abroad, many citizens of the United States find that the percep-
tion of the United States and its people is much more negative in many parts of the world than it is
at home. For whatever reason, we have become used to having our way, and of justifying it in one
way or another. For example, we have our “Monroe Doctrine,” which has been used as an excuse to
justify our intervention in Latin America numerous times. But when other countries have intervened
outside their borders, we have often been the first to criticize them. Small wonder that people in other
countries find our behavior puzzling, at best. We often do not see things from their point of view.
It is not enough just to understand other viewpoints. Children need to learn to act in a way that
reflects this understanding, and often, to adopt another point of view when it is superior to their
own. Probably few things more impede intellectual development in children (and in adults) than
does defensiveness against other points of view. Some people just cannot accept criticism. They do
not want to hear anyone else’s point of view, and when they do, they immediately assume it is wrong.
Sometimes it is, but it pays to listen.
As scholars, we frequently submit work for publication. When authors submit their work for
publication, they receive back evaluations of the work, sometimes favorable, but more often than not
unfavorable. Indeed, sometimes the reviews are scathing. The first reaction to such reviews is natu-
ral—it is to assume that the reviewer is an idiot who doesn’t know the first thing she or he is talking
about. But we have learned to read the reviews, put them away for a few days, and then read them
again. Their quality sometimes improves with age. That is, sometimes when we read the reviews for
the second time, we are able to see value in the suggestions that we did not see at first.
When teachers criticize children, the children’s first reaction is often that the teachers must be out
of their minds. And even we, as teachers, are the first to admit that teachers can be, and frequently
are, wrong. But children need to learn to do the same thing we do—think about the criticisms for a
while, consider whether they are coming from other places as well, and only then decide whether to
reject them categorically. The chances are that they will contain something the child can use to her
or his advantage.
Sometimes people are willing to hear other points of view, and even process them. But they refuse
to consider the possibility that there might be value in adopting the other point of view themselves.
A few years ago, we were teaching a class of teachers in a summer course on how to develop thinking
skills in one’s students. We decided to do a workshop exercise with the teachers. Each teacher was
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instructed to write on a sheet of paper some view that she or he held especially dear—something
that she or he was almost sure was true. The kinds of things the teachers wrote down varied widely.
Some dealt with educational practices, others with religion, others with abortion, and still others with
social issues. After the teacher had written down the view, she or he was asked to write a defense—of
the opposite point of view. The teachers were given about 20 minutes to do so and were then asked to
present the opposite point of view from the one they had written down.
The results were as interesting as they were surprising. The expectation had been that people
would be weak in defending the opposing position—that they only would have thought about the
arguments on their own side, and hence would barely be able to reconstruct the arguments of the
opposition. To our surprise, the students generally did excellent work in reproducing the arguments
of their opposition. Oftentimes, they knew them cold. In fact, they were so good at repeating the lines
of their opponents that the course instructors asked them to defend their own position. And here is
where the surprise emerged: almost everyone was better at defending the opposite point of view than
they were at defending their own! Why?
The exercise suggests that oftentimes people do not hold their own point of view for rational
reasons, nor have they even carefully thought through this point of view. However, they are familiar
with the arguments of the opposing point of view, to which they have no particular attachment. As
you might expect, despite the fact that people were often better at arguing for the opposite point of
view than for arguing their own, no one has yet changed their point of view as a result of the exercise.
In school, children learn through essays, discussions, and debates to defend their point of view. We
believe, however, that children (and adults) need at least as much to learn how to falsify their point of
view. In other words, they need to learn how to seek evidence that might show them to be wrong.
Without learning how to falsify their point of view, they will never grow beyond where they are.
Lesson 10: Spend Quality Time With Your Child

It is not the money you spend on your child that matters, but rather the quality of your
interactions with your child and the nature of your child’s experiences.
What not to do: Worry about the economic resources you are providing your child and spend as
much money as possible on toys, camps, special schools, tutors, special lessons, travel, sports, clothes,
computers, and so on. Spend all your time earning money to spend on your children.
What to do: Focus on the quality of your interactions with your child, on how you spend your
time together, and on the types of experiences your child is having both with and away from you.
Remember that material possessions do not in themselves create children’s cognitive competence.
It is well known that middle-class children have better educational outcomes than working-class
children (Bumgarner and Brooks-Gunn, 2013; Coleman, 1966; Grissmer, Nataraj, Berends, and Wil-
liamson, 1994; Galindo and Sonnenschein, 2015; Herrnstein and Murray, 1996). Misinterpreting this
fact, many parents often act as though there is a perfect causal relation between the money that is
spent on children and the children’s performance in school and in life. They buy every “smart” toy
in the store; birthdays and holidays become an excuse to flood children with expensive and elaborate
gifts. They send their children to several specialty camps every summer and enroll them in expensive
private schools, hire tutors to work independently with their children, and sign them up for lesson
after lesson and sport after sport. These parents believe that the more they spend, the more their chil-
dren will learn.
The omnipresent link between higher social class and children’s enhanced performance causes
many parents who lack economic resources to feel as though their children do not stand a chance.
These parents may focus on the economic resources other children have that their own children do
not have. In fact, they may blame their children’s failures on a lack of economic resources. These par-
ents are missing an important point: it is not how much money is spent on children that matters, but
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rather, the quality of their experiences both with and apart from their parents. Giving a child every
smart toy and computer game in the store and sending the child to a ritzy summer camp will not
automatically create a budding genius.
Although there is undeniably a relation between reasonable environmental enrichment and cogni-
tive performance, the relation is complex. Research by Bronfenbrenner and Ceci (1994) showed that
the children of wealthier parents tend to perform better cognitively not due to anything inherent in
the wealth or education associated with middle-class living, but rather with the greater frequency
of what those authors termed “proximal processes.” Proximal processes are reciprocal, progressively
more complex interactions between a parent and child. For example, initially, a 14-month-old child
may say the word “Mommy” and thus gain her mother’s attention. Her mother will act excited that
the child said the word Mommy. The child will thus be reinforced for saying the word. Over time,
however, the child simply saying the word Mommy will bring about less and less of a response from
the mother—sometimes, if she is busy, she may not even respond right away to the child. At this
point the child will elaborate the statement and say, “Mommy look!” At this new pronouncement
the mother will again become excited. Thus, the proximal process taking place is one in which the
child’s language development is proceeding and the parent is causing the child to grow and elaborate
on prior learning. Proximal processes are in evidence when parents are responsive to their child’s state
and level of functioning. As previously discussed, when parents are randomly assigned to behave either
in a proximal process manner or in a nonresponsive manner, the former’s children emerge as more
cognitively competent, even though both groups of parents may spend similar amounts of time with
their children (Riksen-Walraven, 1978).
Thus, wealth may be associated with better cognitive outcomes for children because of the greater
frequency of higher-quality behavior rich in proximal processes. In general, social class (and its associ-
ated wealth) is a complex variable when it comes to understanding parents and their behavior. For
one thing, social class differences predict parents’ perceptions of their efficacy as influencers of their
children (Luster, Rhoades, and Haas, 1989). Socioeconomic status (SES) also correlates with patterns of
parental behavior and particularly discipline—although these patterns and their relation to social class
have changed from the time of the Second World War to the present, with middle-class mothers mov-
ing from a more rigid and controlling disciplinary style to a more relaxed style over this time period,
and lower-class mothers displaying the reverse trend (Bronfenbrenner, 1985). Any discussion of the
importance of proximal processes in rearing cognitively complex children must take into account the
fact that parents of different cultural and economic groups have different amounts of time to engage
in proximal processes, and differential access to resources with which to enrich their children’s cogni-
tive environments. Despite these factors and their consequences, any parent, regardless of social class
and economic resources, has the power to engage in interactions that enhance her or his children’s
cognitive development. When parents use supportive parenting practices like praising their children
instead of threatening them with negative consequences, they actively support brain development,
which can lead to a higher volume of the hippocampus in the brain (Luby et al., 2013). Reading and
speaking with one’s children is also very important: By age 2, children’s vocabulary may already differ
by 300 words depending on the number of words their parents use to talk to them (Huttenlocher,
Haight, Bryk, Seltzer, and Lyons, 1991). Perhaps not surprisingly, it is important for parents just to
make time to play with their children. One-on-one time creates an emotional bond between parents
and children, no matter whether expensive toys are involved or not. Play also contributes to brain
development and supports the physical health of the child (Milteer, Ginsburg, and Mulligan, 2012).
The lesson for all parents is clear—children are not doomed because their parents cannot afford
to shower them with elaborate gifts and toys. Parents should not fixate on economic resources. They
must remember that it is the nature of a child’s experiences and the quality of the child’s interactions
with parents or other adults that matter most. Many eminent leaders and people who have changed
their world as adults have come from humble beginnings. These individuals often mention the role
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of mentors in their young lives, adults who got and kept them on track and who excited them about
their potential. Major achievements are possible for children, regardless of the wealth of their parents
and the quality of their homes and possessions. What matters is what children experience and what
they do with these experiences, not simply what things they possess.
Lesson 11: Understanding Oneself

Help children understand themselves and others.
Understanding our own and others’ thought processes and emotions enables humans to under-
stand things from others’ points of view and not only their own. When children learn what others
think and that they have certain beliefs about their environment, children can better understand the
people around them and what the reasons for their actions are. To understand one’s own thinking and
how others think is not an easy task to accomplish, for children or for adults. However, that knowl-
edge tremendously helps us to live our lives smoothly and to successfully interact with others in ways
that more often than not ensure the outcome we set out to accomplish with an interaction.
Theory of mind is about our ability to understand thought processes—our own as well as those of
others. A theory of mind helps us take the perspective of other people and understand that they, just
like us, have desires, motivations, and dreams. Being able to predict what others will do and why they
likely will do it helps us navigate our surroundings and interactions.
What not to do: Tell children how to behave and what to do in situations they are faced with,
without explaining the background of your requests. Also, do not blame or punish children for their
emotions without helping them understand what they feel and giving them ways to cope with their
feelings.
What to do: Help children understand and interpret their own emotions, and help them learn how
others feel when they interact with those others. Explain the background of why we behave in certain
ways in particular situations.
One of the authors had one of her little girls get very angry at her. Her daughter was looking for
a favorite pullover (she actually has many favorite pullovers) and requested assistance in searching for
it. When the mother asked for a more detailed description of the pullover, the girl became angry,
expecting her mother to know which pullover she was talking about even without giving the mother
any details. Her theory of mind still needed further development!
The more we know about others’ thoughts and motivations, the less confusing our interactions
with them are because we can form correct expectations about their behavior. Theory-of-mind stud-
ies have expanded to include not only others’ thoughts and knowledge but also their feelings (Westby
and Robinson, 2014). It takes children a long time to develop an understanding of the thought pro-
cesses and emotions of other people.
Gopnik and Aslington (1988) showed young children a candy box and asked them what was
inside. Given the exterior of the box, they mostly suggested that the box contained candy. When the
experimenter opened the box, they found it filled with crayons instead. Then, the experimenter asked
what a friend would believe is in the box. Three-year-olds mostly believed that their friend would
know the candy box was filled with crayons, even when the friend had not opened the box. In fact,
the children might even begin to believe that they knew from the very beginning that the box was
filled with crayons. Five-year olds, however, were more likely to assume that their friend would not
know that the unopened box was filled with crayons. It is only around the age of 4 or 5 that children
develop an understanding that others do not always know what they know and that there are different
degrees of certainty.
It is also difficult for children to learn that reality and appearance are not always the same. One
experiment presented children with a glass of milk (Flavell, Green, Flavell, Watson, and Campione,
1986). Obviously, the milk’s color was white. Then the experimenter gave the children a special pair
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of green-tinted glasses to wear. When wearing the glasses, 3-year-olds tended to believe that the milk
had changed its color from white to green. Only by the age of 5 or 6 can children begin successfully
to differentiate between what is and what seems to be. Children also start to be able to apply their
knowledge to emotions and understand that a happy-looking person may feel very sad despite the
person’s looks.
As parents, we can do many things to help our children develop a more elaborated theory of
mind. In role playing and pretend play, children can playfully take others’ perspectives and learn to
understand how others think. There is almost no limit to the roles children can play. The parent can
pretend to be a patient while the child plays a doctor, for example, or the child can play a cashier at the
supermarket with a parent or sibling shopping at the child’s market. Role playing gives children better
insight into how they are expected to behave in certain situations and how others likely will behave.
It is also very helpful verbally to explain situations children encounter so that the children under-
stand why things happened in a particular way. Anytime you are with your child, put your thoughts
into words and explain how the people around her think and act: someone might be smiling because
she just received a gift, while another child might be looking sad because she is struggling to finish
a puzzle.
Reading and discussing books expands children’s perspective as well. Why do the people in the
book act in a certain way, and how do they feel? Although people generally have a reason that leads
them to act in a certain way, it is sometimes difficult for children (as well as adults!) to understand
these reasons.
Lesson 12: Use Digital Devices Wisely

Integrate digital devices into your child’s life in a reasonable way.
Children growing up today face a very different environment and more varied modes of com-
munication and interaction from what their parents faced when they grew up. These changes pres-
ent children with both opportunities and challenges that parents can mediate in a way to positively
influence and further their children’s development. In 2014, more than two-thirds of American adults
owned a smartphone, and almost half owned a tablet computer (Pew Research Center, 2015). Most
parents allowed their offspring to use their phone or tablet. Maybe not surprisingly, then, more than
a third of children 23 months and younger have already used a mobile device, and around 50% of
children aged 7 and below have used apps on a mobile phone or tablet. These days, the question is
not so much whether children use digital media, but rather how and how much they use those media.
In July 2015, approximately 1.5 million apps were available in Apple’s App Store (Statista, 2016).
The Preschool/Toddler category was the most popular category in the store (Shuler, 2012), with
more than 70% of the most popular paid apps bought in this category. In fact, entire companies have
devoted themselves to developing digital learning systems. No matter where you stand on the ques-
tion of what impact digital devices have on children nowadays, the fact is that sooner or later your
children will be faced with a cell phone, tablet, gaming console, or other devices. Once old enough,
they likely will communicate with their peers in a digital form as well, be it on social media platforms
like Facebook or via text messages.
What not to do: Go to any extremes and not let children use any digital devices at all or let them
use digital devices without constraint.
What to do: Ensure responsible media use in your household. Choose the apps your children are
using wisely (see our tips later), know (or help them choose) what they are watching on TV and how
they interact with others on social media. Limit the time your children spend in front of screens.
Apps and digital devices certainly can have positive effects on young children and increase critical
thinking (Sternberg, 1985b, 1985c). Children often become familiar with technology at an early age
and thus become tech-savvy. Apps can be used anytime, whenever a child is ready to play. A good
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app or learning system presents educational materials in a fun and interactive way that can effec-
tively support learning. Apps also allow learning in a variety of modes—text-based learning, videos,
multiple-choice, games, audio-narration, and more. Children can explore any topics of interest to
them independently of adults when using apps and digital devices.
Hardesty (2016) investigated the impact of tablets with literacy apps on young children. After
four months, U.S. 4-year-olds knew six times as many letter sounds as they had known before. In
South Africa, second-graders could read four times as many words as those who did not use the apps
(Hardesty, 2016).
It goes without saying, however, that digital devices must be used in a responsible way. The Ameri-
can Academy of Pediatrics (2016) suggests that children younger than age 2 should not watch TV
or use digital devices at all. The Academy further suggests that children over age 2 should not spend
more than two hours on any screens (this refers to all screens, including TVs, computers, and mobile
devices). Children’s bedrooms should be screen-free.
What are the reasons for these recommendations? Excessive use of digital media puts children at
increased risk for developing attention problems, sleep disorders, or obesity. If parents give children
devices to calm them down or keep them quiet, their children may not be able to learn how to calm
themselves. Children generally learn with all their senses—they interact with others, move their body,
feel, smell, and manipulate with their hands. Screens offer a very limited sensory environment that
does not engage many senses.
These are some general recommendations, but the age at which you start having your children
interact with and use devices still depends on your judgment. Two of the authors constrained TV
watching in their young children to long car rides until they were 4 years of age and did not let them
use digital devices until they were in kindergarten and started using iPads there.
Here are some guidelines for choosing apps (Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2015):
Choose Apps That

• Require mental effort
• Keep your child focused for a significant period of time
• Teach material that is relevant to children’s lives and that help children connect what they already
know to new material
• Encourage social interaction like discussion and conversation
• Help the child explore new knowledge on his or her own terms
Do Not Choose Apps

• In which the child is passive (for example, apps that require repetitive swiping)
• That have many distracting elements like sounds or visual effects
• That teach knowledge in a vacuum
• That tell the child what to know
Conclusions
In this chapter we have presented 12 lessons that parents can use to foster the intellectual develop-
ment of their children. They are not the only lessons we might have proposed, but we chose these 12
because of their significant impact on children’s development and potential for success. They are all
things parents can do right away, and they are all things that will make a big difference.
Heath (1983) conducted a study comparing the development of children in three communities.
She found that one of the major differences in children’s intellectual development stemmed from the
involvement of parents in the intellectual upbringing of the children, not only before the children
237
started school but after as well. The children of parents who quit involving themselves in their chil-
dren’s intellectual development after the children started school—figuring that this had become the
teachers’ responsibility—fared worse than the children of parents who remained involved.
This study suggests that much of what we can do to foster the intellectual development of our chil-
dren does not devolve simply from a specific set of behaviors, but rather from an attitude. The attitude
is one of seeking activities that promote our children’s intellectual development and then participat-
ing with children to help them grow. A good model might be that of the athletic coach. The coach
watches and helps, but he does not do the activities for the child. Similarly, the parent should watch
and guide, remain involved, but not do for the child what the child needs to do for herself or himself.
Importantly, the effective coach and parent engineers an environment for which mastery is within the
child’s potential grasp, and yet poses a meaningful developmental challenge.
Unfortunately, some parents believe they are helping their children when they do their children’s
homework, or their science projects, or otherwise take on their children’s responsibilities as their own.
These parents may be meeting some inner need of their own, but they are not meeting any need of
their child. The coach does not play for the team members; she or he helps each team member be the
best she or he can be. This is what we try to do for our own children, and what we hope you will
try to do for yours.
Acknowledgments
This chapter is a revision of an earlier chapter: Williams, W. M., and Sternberg, R. J. (2002). How
parents can maximize children’s cognitive abilities. In M. Borstein (Ed.), Handbook of Parenting:Vol. 5.
Practical Issues in Parenting. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. It therefore draws on that chapter and
of course on our related work.
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9
PARENTING OF CHILDREN’S
ACADEMIC MOTIVATION
Introduction
The present chapter focuses on the role of parenting in the development of children’s academic
motivation, including theory and research, longitudinal outcomes, and implications of parenting for
children’s academic success. As research on the development of children’s academic motivation has
expanded over the course of the 20th century and into the 21st, there has been an increasing emphasis
on the role and importance of parenting with regard to children’s academic motivational development
and educational success. Findings have indicated the specific, unique, and significant role of parenting
from early childhood throughout the school years and into adulthood for academic motivation and
competence across differing populations, academic domains, and career interests. Throughout the
literature, parenting is recognized as being of importance for the development of children’s academic
motivation and competence (Gottfried, 2009, 2016, 2018, in press; Pomerantz and Grolnick, 2017;
Wigfield, Eccles, Fredricks, Simpkins, Roeser, and Schiefele, 2015).
Academic motivation is conceptualized herein as motivation that concerns learning and achieve-
ment in the academic realm. Many theories of academic motivation have been advanced, all pertaining
to the overarching issue of how such motivation supports individuals’ academic competence. What
differs across theories are the processes accounting for the development of such motivation. Whereas
parenting has been shown to play a role in fostering children’s academic motivation across various
theories, the nature of parental involvement differs according to the specific theoretical underpinning.
Hence, the impact of parental involvement on children’s academic motivation differs depending on
the theory examined. Several key theories that have emerged are addressed herein.
In addition to different theories, research methodologies and statistical analyses have become
increasingly complex and sophisticated, with contemporary emphasis on multivariate and latent sta-
tistical longitudinal models (Gottfried, Schlackman, Gottfried, and Boutin-Martinez, 2015; Simpkins,
Fredricks, and Eccles, 2015). Such models seek to delineate specific pathways to determine directional
relations between parenting and academic motivation and to examine mediating and/or moderating
factors that operate between parenting and academic motivation. In this regard, longitudinal research
has become the preferred method to determine trajectories between parenting and children’s aca-
demic motivation (Gottfried et al., 2016; Nurmi and Silinskas, 2014).
In the present chapter, the role of parenting with regard to children’s academic motivation is pre-
sented in three sections. In the first part, an overview of early research, contemporary perspectives
and theories, and major findings within those theories is presented. Each theory provides a different
242
Parenting Children’s Academic Motivation
lens with which to examine the manner in which parenting relates to children’s academic motivation.
In the second part, focus is on a long-term, longitudinal research program in the ongoing Fullerton
Longitudinal Study (FLS) regarding parenting as it relates to children’s academic intrinsic motivation
and academic competence from childhood into adulthood. Issues examined include the durability of
parental influences across long-term trajectories, direct and indirect relations between parenting and
academic intrinsic motivation and academic competence, and implications for parenting.
The last section presents conclusions and addresses generalities and specificities of parenting and
academic motivation that emerge from integrating findings across the perspectives. Gottfried (2009)
has previously noted the importance of deriving both replicable and generalizable findings regarding
the development of academic motivation that emerge across different research studies and theories
and to identify the specificities that emerge due to differing theories and contextual factors.
Determining how parenting relates to children’s academic motivation is critical for theory and
research, understanding the development of competence across the academic life span, and implica-
tions for parents’ stimulation and encouragement of academic motivation. Of particular importance is
the need to determine longitudinal influences of parenting across children’s academic school years and
into adulthood to determine its durability throughout (Gottfried et al., 2015). Such will be addressed
in this chapter.
Central Issues, Theories, Historical Considerations,

and Classical and Modern Research
This section focuses on specific aspects of parenting behaviors as they related to children’s academic
motivation and competence from the perspectives of prominent theories. Early foundations, contem-
porary findings, pathways from parenting to academic motivation and competence, and contextual
factors are presented.
Foundations of Research on Parenting

of Children’s Academic Motivation
Early and contemporary research on parenting and children’s academic motivation has been shaped
by several trends. One pertains to the role of parental socialization, such as providing specific envi-
ronmental experiences that facilitate children’s school achievement, and parents’ educational involve-
ment both in schools and at home. Epstein and Sanders (2002) identified several aspects of parental
involvement, including home provision of educational experiences for children, as well as supporting
school activities in the home. Differentiation of parental home involvement has been found across the
literature in studies of parental school involvement for children’s academic motivation and compe-
tence (Grolnick and Slowiaczek, 1994; Sy, Gottfried, and Gottfried, 2013). Because parental involve-
ment significantly relates to children’s achievement and academic competence (Epstein and Sanders,
2002; Jeynes, 2005, 2007; Sy et al., 2013), it is plausible that it does so through academic motiva-
tion. Accordingly, an issue examined across the literature, and addressed later, concerns determining
pathways from parenting to children’s academic motivation, which in turn, relates to their academic
competence. Children’s academic motivation often serves as a mediating variable between parenting
and academic competence. Determining longitudinal relations between these variables is a focus
across the literature. Parental involvement also exhibits considerable stability across childhood and
adolescence (Sy et al., 2013), suggesting the importance of parental stimulation as early as possible.
Another foundational trend in research on parenting of children’s academic motivation pertains to
the distinction between distal and proximal aspects of environment (Bradley, 2002; Gottfried, 1984;
Gottfried, 2009). The former (also called macroenvironmental) refers to background or demographic
factors, such as socioeconomic status (SES), gender, or ethnicity, whereas the latter refers to stimulation
243
or specific experiences that directly impinge on the child (Gottfried, 2009). Whereas distal and proxi-
mal aspects of the environment may be related to each other, the proximal environment delineates the
specific variables or processes to which children are exposed, which explains what children experi-
ence. This distinction is relevant to parenting and academic motivation, as it is the proximal moti-
vationally relevant experiences parents provide, and that children experience, that play key roles for
the development of children’s academic motivation. Distal variables such as SES, culture, ethnicity,
and gender are important to determine how they relate to the provision of motivationally relevant
proximal stimulation that relates to the development of academic motivation. Contemporary studies
focus on parental provision of proximal experiences as they relate to children’s academic motivation
and how distal variables provide a context for the provision of parental motivational experiences to
which children are exposed (Bempechat and Shernoff, 2013).
A third foundation for parenting of children’s academic motivation concerns early research inves-
tigating parental involvement as it relates to children’s achievement motivation. An early study was
conducted by Winterbottom (1958). In a sample of twenty-eight 8-year-old middle-class boys and
their mothers, the relation between mothers’ reports of early and current experiences of independence
and mastery training were examined as they related to boys’ need for achievement assessed using the
Atkinson methodology entailing projective tests. Mothers whose sons evidenced higher achievement
motivation made more independence and mastery demands before age 8 years, evaluated their sons’
accomplishments more positively, and were more rewarding than mothers whose sons had lower
achievement motivation scores. These findings provided a beginning point for research on parenting
and children’s academic motivation by showing a relation between early parenting experiences and
children’s academic motivation. Other early research on parenting as it related to children’s academic
motivation includes work by Katkovsky, Crandall, and Good (1967) and Rosen and d’Andrade (1959).
Additionally, Baumrind’s (1966) typology of parental control styles, particularly authoritative, has been
incorporated into early and contemporary research (Aunola, Stattin, and Nurmi, 2000) indicating the
continuing importance of these parenting processes for children’s academic motivation.
Central Issues in Research on Parenting

of Children’s Academic Motivation
The literature on parenting and children’s academic motivation is continuously evolving through
the distinction of parental involvement and provision of experiences into increasingly finer sub-
components generated from theories differing as to their explanatory principles and mechanisms
(Gottfried, 2009). The central issue across studies pertains to how and to what extent parenting plays
a role in children’s academic motivation and, consequently, their academic competence. Despite
varied conceptualizations, in common to all is that parents engage in specific behaviors that have
an impact on children’s academic motivation and hence their academic competence. Discerning
these specific parental behaviors related to children’s academic motivation comprises the main issue
addressed in this chapter, with a particular focus on longitudinal research because of its importance
in assessing long-term relations between parenting and children’s academic motivation, mediating,
and moderating variables, as well as directional influences between parenting and children’s academic
motivation. Developmental, contextual, and demographic variables are examined as pertinent to
particular studies.
Contemporary Theories of Academic Motivation and Parenting

An overview of the most current theories on parenting related to academic motivation is presented
next. Theories chosen for inclusion have played key roles in the literature, and specific studies within
these theories have been selected to illustrate pertinent parenting processes.
244
As with the parent involvement literature (Kim and Hill, 2015), research on parenting and chil-
dren’s academic motivation primarily involves mothers because they have traditionally been primarily
the caregiver with greater availability to participate in research. Some studies included mothers and
fathers but have combined data across both parents (Affuso, Bacchini, and Miranda, 2017), and others
have reported that mother and father participants may be drawn from overlapping but not equivalent
samples (Simpkins et al., 2015). Given the current nature of the extant research, a comparative analysis
of mothers and fathers is not possible. Further, theories refer to parents. Hence, the term parent is used
throughout this chapter.
Self-Determination Theory
A major tenet of self-determination theory is that individuals have tendencies to develop motivation
on behalf of their own agentic strivings (Ryan and Deci, 2000, 2017). It is an organismic theory exam-
ining psychological growth and wellness, as well as the biological, social, and cultural conditions that
foster psychological engagement (Ryan and Deci, 2017). In the self-determination conceptualization,
regulation of motivation ranges on a continuum from the lack or absence of motivation (i.e., amotiva-
tion) to motivation that is totally internalized and intrinsic, developing from interest and enjoyment
(Ryan and Deci, 2000, 2017). Between these two extremes of the continuum are intermediary points
ranging from less to more internalized regulation, including external introjected, somewhat external
introjected, identified (somewhat internal), and integrated (internal) (Ryan and Deci, 2000, 2017,
p. 193). A major dimension of social regulation concerns autonomy and control, or most to least
self-determined.
Based on self-determination theory, studies of parenting have been oriented to determining the
processes that parents utilize to provide environmental and family conditions that enhance children’s
self-determination motivation, or those that either facilitate or thwart the development of self-
determination and well-being. Studies have examined parenting that develops children’s autonomy,
relatedness, and competence, which contribute to their self-determination motivation (Grolnick,
Friendly, and Bellas, 2009; Ryan and Deci, 2017). Autonomy refers to self-initiation of activities and
perceptions that one is the cause of one’s effectiveness in the environment (Grolnick et al., 2009).
Relatedness refers to the need to be connected with others, and competence concerns effective-
ness and success in one’s environment (Grolnick et al. 2009). In the context of academics, parental
provision of educationally oriented experiences, such as allowing for choice of academic activities
as opposed to parental control; positive involvement, including time, support, and warmth; and con-
sistency of structure in the home, should promote children’s autonomy, relatedness, and competence
that are central to their self-determination (Grolnick et al., 2009).
Support for parenting pertaining to self-determination motivation has been obtained. In their
review of studies including elementary and high school students, Ryan and Deci (2017) reported
that across different respondents, including teachers, children, and parents, children whose parents are
perceived as more autonomy supportive are higher in their own autonomous regulation for school
and homework as well as pursuing future education. Children whose parents are more autonomy sup-
portive tend to be more intrinsically motivated in school, perceive themselves as more competent, have
higher achievement, and have more positive academic adjustment (Bronstein, Ginsburg, and Herrera,
2005; Ginsburg and Bronstein, 1993; Raftery, Grolnick, and Flamm, 2013; Ratelle, Duchesne, and Guay,
2017; Rowe, Ramani, and Pomerantz, 2016). Providing clear expectations in an autonomy supportive
context also relates to more positive academic competence (Raftery et al., 2013).
Pomerantz, Moorman, and Litwack (2007) conceptualized parental involvement relevant to self-
determination theory constructs to include autonomy support versus control, process versus person
orientation, positive versus negative affect, and positive versus negative beliefs about children’s abilities.
They suggested that autonomy support facilitates children’s intrinsic motivation and their initiative
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to take on challenges, whereas controlling parenting denies children an agentic sense of self. For
process versus person orientation, which refers to parental emphasis on learning as opposed to ability
or performance, respectively, Pomerantz et al. (2007) suggested that learning or process involvement
facilitates the development of mastery orientation. Pertaining to a focus on positive rather than nega-
tive affect, positive affect may convey to children that learning is enjoyable despite possible irritations,
which would foster a more intrinsic orientation in children and help develop skills. Lastly, positive
perceptions of children’s abilities may encourage parents to engage children in more challenging
activities and view themselves as more capable. Conversely, parents who are more controlling, empha-
size a person orientation, emphasize more negative affect, and have more negative views of children’s
abilities are likely to have children engaging in fewer challenges, have lower intrinsic and mastery
motivation, and have lower views of their capabilities (Pomerantz et al., 2007).
Research has revealed nuances concerning the role of parenting for children’s self-determination
motivation. For example, mastery-oriented parental practices have more positive outcomes for
children with more negative perceptions of their academic competence and mastery orientation
(Pomerantz, Ng, and Wang, 2006). Studies have also examined parental involvement a propos the
self-determination perspective across countries and cultures. Korean middle schoolers’ perceptions of
their parents’ autonomy supportive and controlling motivational styles, as well as their perceptions of
parents’ mastery goals, were related to student perceptions of personal goal orientations as mediated by
their own self-regulated motivation (Kim, Schallert, and Kim, 2010). Moreover, students’ perceptions
of their parents as controlling did not interfere with mastery through identified regulation. This lat-
ter finding differs from research conducted with samples in Western countries in which controlling
parental styles are typically adverse for more internalized aspects of self-determination motivation
(Grolnick et al., 2009). Perhaps control is more normative and expected in Korean culture, and hence
would not be expected to have an adverse relation to self-determination motivation (Kim et al., 2010).
Directionality cannot be determined in this study because it was correlational and not longitudinal.
However, it provides interesting suggestions pertaining to culture, parenting, and motivation. In a
meta-analysis, Vasquez, Patall, Fong, Corrigan, and Pine (2016), reported that parents’ autonomy sup-
port had positive relations with children’s autonomous and intrinsic motivation, and was also found
to relate to extrinsic motivation in some studies, suggesting that parental involvement per se facilitates
a broad range of motivation.
In a longitudinal study of young Italian adolescents, Affuso et al. (2017) found that parental
monitoring of children’s academic activities (e.g., knowledge of children’s schoolwork and home-
work) positively related to their self-determined motivation and academic self-efficacy contempo-
raneously and over a one-year period, which in turn related to children’s academic achievement
across subject areas, controlling for parent education and child gender and intelligence. Hence,
parental monitoring was indirectly related to achievement through children’s motivation, a finding
supporting the mediational role of academic motivation between parental monitoring and aca-
demic achievement. This study also used multiple sources of data and was not limited to children’s
or parents’ perceptions alone.
Additional studies have indicated cultural differences concerning parental inputs to the develop-
ment of autonomy motivation. Chinese parents’ collectivistic orientations were indirectly related
to eighth-graders’ autonomous motivation through autonomy granting (positively) and psychologi-
cal control (negatively; Pan, Gauvain, and Schwartz, 2013). In a study of Ghanaian sixth-graders,
autonomy was often interpreted differently than expected. Items tapping autonomy were sometimes
interpreted as independence and viewed negatively, not positively, in this collectivistic culture (Mar-
bell and Grolnick, 2013). Whereas parental encouragement of children’s autonomy, competence, and
relatedness have been shown to be important to the development of children’s self-determination
motivation, cultural beliefs need to be considered because interpretations of autonomy support may
be positive or negative depending on the views of a particular culture.
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Expectancy-Value Theory
The expectancy-value theory of achievement motivation has its foundations in early motivational
theories of Lewin on valence; Tolman on expectancies for success; and Atkinson, who developed a
mathematical formulation of the relation between expectancies and values to explain achievement-
related behaviors, such as strivings, choice, and persistence (Wigfield, Tonks, and Klauda, 2016). Based
on this groundwork, Eccles, Wigfield, and colleagues elaborated expectancy-value theory in develop-
mental and educational psychology contexts to examine relations to children’s achievement behaviors,
choice, and persistence (Wigfield et al., 2015, 2016). This modern expectancy-value theory, as it has
been called (Wigfield et al., 2015), expanded in perspective to include the socialization context rang-
ing from the more exogenous aspects of environment, such as family demographics, through more
specific parenting processes, including achievement-related expectations, values, and beliefs about
children’s abilities, future success, and achievement goals as well as person characteristics. Child con-
structs include, for example, expectations of success, perceptions of socializers’ beliefs and behaviors,
interpretation of experience, self-concepts and beliefs about competence and ability, achievement-
related choices and performance, goals, and subjective task values (attainment, intrinsic, utility, and
cost; Wigfield et al., 2016). A conceptual model and review of literature of this conceptualization has
been presented (Wigfield et al., 2015, 2016), examining relations between parents’ expectations, beliefs,
values, and experiences to children’s achievement-related beliefs, expectancies, goals, and values, and
ultimately their academic and career choices, persistence, and performance (Wigfield et al., 2016,
p. 56). Evidence across studies supports the role of parents for children’s academic motivation within
the expectancy-value framework.
An area that has been emphasized in expectancy-value theory concerns gender and how parents’
beliefs and expectations about boys’ and girls’ entry into science, technology, engineering, mathemat-
ics (STEM) courses of study relate to children’s achievement-related behaviors, expectations, and task
values (Wigfield et al., 2015). If parents are more encouraging of boys and have a higher evaluation
of boys’ abilities and potential in math and/or science, resulting in higher expectations and value
achievement in STEM more for boys, then the courses of study and career choices of boys and girls are
affected accordingly, with greater entry into STEM for boys (Wigfield et al., 2015). Gender differences
are more pronounced in cultures that emphasize more traditional gender role beliefs (Wigfield et al.,
2015). Hence, the culture in which the family is embedded plays a role in shaping the expectations
and values of parents and children from the demographic context, to the parental general and child-
specific beliefs, to the children’s own beliefs and values, and ultimately to children’s achievement-
related behavior, performance, and choices.
Similarly, advancement from general to specific aspects of parenting and children’s academic out-
come was supported in a longitudinal, cascade model (Bornstein, Putnick, and Suwalsky, 2017). A cas-
cade approach examines how processes in one domain spread, or cascade, to processes across domains
and over time (Masten and Cicchetti, 2010). Bornstein et al. (2017) found that general cognitions
about parenting success during toddlerhood predicted parents’ supportive behaviors during preschool,
which in turn, predicted children’s classroom externalizing behaviors in middle childhood.
Longitudinal studies have been conducted examining parenting within the expectancy-value
framework. Simpkins et al. (2015) examined a socialization model of parenting regarding children’s
achievement-related motivation using the expectancy-value theory framework. In a longitudinal
study from elementary through high school, a cascade approach examined pathways from parents’
beliefs to children’s achievement-related choices in sports, music, math, and reading. These areas
were chosen to tap gender differences within academic and leisure domains. Parental beliefs and
values (e.g., perception of children’s ability, value of domain for their child, encouragement of child)
and children’s beliefs and values (e.g., self-concept of ability, task value), as well as choice behaviors
(participation in activities, elective courses), were included. Of the various pathways examined, it was
within the leisure domains of music and sports, rather than the academic areas of reading and math,
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that results were most consistent for the relation from parents’ perceptions of children’s abilities to
increases in their children’s beliefs over the course of a year. Children were more apt to increase their
own beliefs and participation when their parents believed they had ability (Huston, 2015). Gender
differences in parental beliefs pertained primarily to sports and instrumental music, with parents of
males being more positive and encouraging for sports, and females for music. Gender differences were
not obtained for reading and math. The authors attributed these gender differences across domains to
schooling influences inasmuch as reading and math are required areas in school, but extracurricular
activities would be more influenced by family experiences or adolescent identity (Simpkins et al.,
2015).
In a short-term, longitudinal study from grades 6 to 7, parents’ perceptions of children’s ability
and effort in English and math predicted children’s self-concept of ability and perceptions of task dif-
ficulty in these areas, which, in turn, related to children’s expectations for success (Frome and Eccles,
1998). Parents’ perceptions mediated between children’s grades and their perceptions of ability and
task difficulty and were somewhat more strongly related to children’s perceptions than were grades
themselves. Overall, this study supports the role of parental beliefs in relating to children’s perceptions.
In other longitudinal research, Bleeker and Jacobs (2004) found that at grade 7, parents’ predictions
of their children’s success in a math-related career were indirectly related to their child’s math/science
career self-efficacy two years after high school, through adolescents’ self-perception of math ability
at grade 10. In a study of German high school students from 11th to 12th grades, Lazarides, Rubach,
and Ittel (2017) found that students’ perceptions of parents’ mathematics value beliefs in grade 11
positively predicted their utility value at grade 12, but not their intrinsic value or career plans. The
authors suggested that parents’ utility value is more extrinsic and not related to student intrinsic
value. In Australian secondary students across grades 7 through 11, Gniewozc and Watt (2017) found
positive effects for student-perceived parental overestimation of their own perceived math ability, for
their math intrinsic and utility task values. Overestimation predicted positive changes in intrinsic
task values more consistently than for utility task values over time. The authors interpreted findings
as providing evidence that parental overestimation may foster the development of intrinsic and util-
ity task values if perceived as encouragement. In another longitudinal study of Australian secondary
students, grades 9 to 11, Lazarides and Watt (2017) found that girls’ perceptions of mothers’ ability
beliefs were lower than boys’, predicting lower intrinsic task values and mathematics-related career
plans for girls. Overall, across these studies, support is provided for the importance of parental beliefs
and values as they related to children’s self-perceptions, values, and choices. In addition to the general
findings reported, specificity was obtained with regard to gender that varied with the specific aspect
of the construct investigated, family context, and nationality of the sample.
Expectancy-value theory has provided the basis for an experimental intervention study. To increase
high school students’ involvement in STEM courses, and consequently their possible involvement in
STEM careers, a utility value intervention study was implemented with high school students and
their parents (Harackiewicz, Rozek, Hulleman, and Hyde, 2012). The intervention occurred over a
15-month period when students were in grades 10 and 11. Parents in the experimental group were
provided with brochures and a website focusing on the importance and usefulness of STEM as well
as communicating about it with their children. The control group did not receive these resources.
Students whose parents were in the intervention group reported having more conversations with
them about the value of STEM courses and also took more STEM courses in the last two years of
high school, regardless of parents’ educational level. Students’ conversations with parents and mothers’
perceived utility value, in turn, predicted students’ own perception of STEM utility value after high
school graduation. In a follow-up to the initial study (Rozek, Hyde, Svoboda, Hulleman, and Harack-
iewicz, 2015), analyses indicated differential success of the intervention depending on a combination
of gender and achievement level of the students. The intervention was beneficial in increasing STEM
course-taking for higher-achieving daughters and lower-achieving sons as mediated through changes
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in parents’ (mothers’) STEM utility value. Differences in the effectiveness of the intervention for
boys and girls were viewed by the authors as possibly related to gender composition of STEM-related
careers. Because of specificity of results across gender and achievement level, blanket interventions
would likely not be universally effective.
Self-Theories: Entity Versus Incremental, Goals, and Self-Efficacy

Due to the interrelatedness of these three aspects of self-theories, they are all presented in this section.
Individuals’ beliefs about whether intelligence is fixed or malleable (i.e., termed entity versus incre-
mental theories of intelligence, respectively; Dweck, 2017) have implications for the types of goals
pursued (e.g., performance or mastery) (Dweck and Master, 2009; Dweck and Molden, 2005, 2017)
and also for views that one is able to meet a challenge (e.g., self-efficacy) or live up to the demands of
a task (Dweck and Master, 2009). Whereas these are interrelated constructs, each has also garnered its
own research in support of their view.
Entity Versus Incremental Theory of Intelligence

The theory of entity versus incremental conceptions of intelligence, known as fixed and growth
mind-set, respectively (Dweck, 2017; Dweck and Molden, 2017), emerged from social psychology
dimensions of attributions regarding learned helplessness as a response to failure not being under
one’s control versus mastery for which effort is viewed as an orientation to meet a challenge (Dweck,
2017). Helpless and mastery orientations relate to differences in types of achievement goals that stu-
dents pursue.
These earlier theoretical foundations provided a basis for the development of mind-set theory
comprising the individual’s theory of intelligence, in which ability is viewed either as an entity that is
fixed and not changeable or as malleable and subject to change with effort, referred to as incremental
or growth mind-set (Dweck, 2017; Dweck and Molden, 2017). When one views intelligence as fixed
or malleable, successes or failures are interpreted within this framework. For the former, performance
is viewed as a result of fixed ability, and performance goals would pertain to demonstrations of com-
petence or avoidance of incompetence within this framework. Helpless orientations follow from not
seeing intelligence as subject to change through effort. For the latter, if one views intelligence as sub-
ject to change through effort (i.e., incremental), then mastery approaches pertain to adapting, improv-
ing, or changing one’s intelligence through applying growth-producing learning strategies. Given this
distinction between fixed (entity) versus growth (incremental) mind-sets of intelligence, the issue for
parents is the use of strategies that derive from either fixed or malleable views of their children’s intel-
ligence and whether parental behaviors have a relation with children’s intelligence mind-sets.
In a longitudinal study, Gunderson et al. (2013) examined parents’ use of praise pertaining to
children’s fixed or incremental views of ability (i.e., their motivational frameworks). Parents’ use of
person-oriented (ability) versus process-oriented (effort, learning) praise was naturalistically observed
in the home environment when children were 14 to 38 months. Subsequently, children’s fixed or
incremental motivational frameworks were assessed when they were between ages 7 and 8 years.
Parents’ provision of process praise at 14 to 38 months predicted children’s incremental motivational
frameworks at ages 7 to 8, and person-oriented praise was not associated with fixed-ability frame-
works. Based on experimental literature, the authors suggested that parents’ process praise may be a
causal mechanism in relation to children’s mind-sets (Gunderson et al., 2013). However, because this
study was correlational, such an interpretation cannot itself be supported based on these findings.
About the absence of a relation between person praise and fixed motivational views, the authors
suggested that this was due to the decline in parents’ use of person praise over time. Boys received
more process praise and had more incremental mind-set frameworks than girls. Whereas this study
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used a construct from the experimental literature and applied it in the home, these findings are limited
in that parents’ praise was assessed only prior to school entry, but not thereafter, nor were children’s
motivational frameworks assessed over time. Thus, in this study it was not known whether continu-
ity in provision of praise could have related to the incremental mind-set reported, nor whether child
trajectories of mind-set would have related to parents’ use of praise. Also, children varied in age, so
it is not known how age differences may relate to the outcomes. In a follow-up study, Gunderson
et al. (2018), using the same sample, found that parental process praise to the children when toddlers
predicted their reading comprehension and math achievement in fourth grade through earlier incre-
mental frameworks, showing long-term relations.
Pomerantz and Kempner (2013) found evidence contrary to Gunderson et al. (2013). Whereas
Gunderson et al. (2013) found that parents’ use of process praise was related to children’s incremen-
tal motivational frameworks and that person praise was unrelated to fixed motivational frameworks,
Pomerantz and Kempner (2013) found the opposite pattern. In their study of children ranging in age
from 8 to 12 years, parents’ praise was assessed daily via telephone interview over a 10-day period.
Children’s entity and incremental beliefs were assessed prior to and 6 months after parents’ praise was
assessed. The more that praise was reported being used, the more likely was the child to have a fixed
motivational orientation. Process praise was unrelated to children’s incremental conceptions. Although
both Gunderson et al. (2013) and Pomerantz and Kempner (2013) found that parents’ praise related to
children’s incremental or fixed mind-sets, the results were the reverse of each other. Children in Pomer-
antz and Kempner (2013) had a four-year age range and were older than the children in Gunderson
et al. (2013), raising the possibility of developmental differences in the salience of different types of
praise for younger and older children, an issue that has not been studied in this literature. Both studies
provide evidence that parents’ praise is related to children’s mind-set motivational beliefs. Replication
is needed to reconcile different outcomes across studies and distinguish between specificity versus pos-
sible unreliability of findings.
Examining a different aspect of parental behavior and children’s motivational patterns, Hokoda and
Fincham (1995) conducted a laboratory study of 8-year-old helpless and mastery-oriented children in
interaction with their mothers conducting problem-solving tasks. Aspects of parental behaviors assessed
included attributions, affect statements to the children, and task-focused and control-oriented teach-
ing. Parents of helpless and mastery children used different behaviors in interaction with their children,
with the latter more supportive of mastery as evidenced by their use of task-focused teaching behaviors
and positive affect. They also appeared to be more sensitive to their children’s ability perceptions and
requests for help. Given the small sample size, these results need confirmation in larger samples.
Haimovitz and Dweck (2016) assessed the relation of parents’ and children’s intelligence and failure
mind-sets. The latter concerned the effect of failure (i.e., whether failure is debilitating as in fixed or
entity mind-set or failure is enhancing as in incremental mind-set). Parents’ failure beliefs (i.e., failure
as debilitating versus failure as enhancing) were related to children’s intelligence mind-sets, with the
former being related to entity mind-set. Parents’ performance or learning orientation mediated the
relation between parental views of failure and children’s fixed mind-set. The authors proposed that
parents’ failure mind-sets are visible to children and thereby predictive of their children’s mind-sets.
Children were found to accurately perceive parents’ failure, but not intelligence, mind-sets. Viewing
parents’ failure mind-set as debilitating would be related to children’s viewing intelligence as fixed, as
it is not viewed as changeable, and hence likely to affect children’s belief.
Achievement Goals
Achievement goals, entailing the purpose or meaning of achievement-related activity (Maehr and
Zusho, 2009), pertain to individuals’ beliefs and feelings regarding success, incorporating aspects of
achievement motivation comprising conceptions of success, ability, effort, and evaluation (Elliot, 2005;
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Elliot and Hulleman, 2017). Achievement goals have been distinguished into two broad types: mastery
and performance (Maehr and Zusho, 2009). Achievement goals began with approach orientations
(mastery approach, performance approach), and avoidance orientations were subsequently added, pro-
ducing two aspects of mastery and performance goals each. Mastery approach goals have been aligned
with engaging in learning for the sake of developing self-set standards of competence through effort,
and performance approach goals are oriented toward external confirmation of competence, or dem-
onstration of competence in comparison to others, such as comparison of grades with others (Maehr
and Zusho, 2009). Mastery avoidance goals focus on preventing loss of one’s abilities; performance
avoidance goals focus on preventing perceptions of lack of competence. Additional goal models,
including self-referenced goals, have been described by Elliot and Hulleman (2017).
Achievement goals are related to academic learning and competence, with mastery goals being
associated with more positive learning and performance outcomes, including self-efficacy and per-
sistence when confronted with challenge (Bempechat and Shernoff, 2013; Maehr and Zusho, 2009).
However, the relation of achievement goals to academic competence is complex, with performance
approach goals often having positive relations as well (Elliot, 2005; Elliot and Hulleman, 2017). A
multiple-goal perspective is often examined to determine if achievement has more than one type of
goal determinant (Elliot, 2005).
Parental warmth, authoritative interactions, and participation with children are more likely to be
related to mastery goals (Bempechat and Shernoff, 2013), and greater use of external control relates to
performance goals, suggesting that parents’ provision of the social-emotional home context is impor-
tant to the development of children’s achievement goals. Furthermore, studies reported earlier with
regard to self-determination theory have also shown that parental encouragement of autonomy relates
to children’s mastery, findings in alignment with those for achievement goal theories (Kim et al., 2010;
Pomerantz et al., 2006).
In a short-term longitudinal study of children’s perceptions of parental involvement (investment
and participation in children’s lives), control styles (parents’ pressuring children by using threats and
giving orders), and children’s mastery and performance goals from the end of elementary through the
beginning of middle school, Duchesne and Ratelle (2010) found that parental involvement was posi-
tively related to mastery goals, and parental control was related to performance goals, over this time
period. The latter path between control and performance goals was mediated by student anxiety, but
not so for the mastery goals. The authors suggested that parental involvement may provide emotional
closeness to children, which allows for the development of autonomy as it relates to mastery goals.
Parental control may pressure children, raising anxiety, which in turn positively relates to performance
goals of expected behavior. In addition to having implications for parental behavior, these results sug-
gest that parenting has implications over time for children’s academic goals that may ultimately relate
to their academic success.
In a two-year longitudinal study of Korean middle school, early adolescent students (grades 7 to
9), Song, Bong, Lee, and Kim (2014) examined parents’ academic and emotional support in relation
to students’ mastery and performance and approach and avoidance goals. Parents’ emotional support
(encouraging students, caring about feelings) had the most benefit, by positively predicting children’s
mastery goals and negatively predicting performance avoidance goals, which was positively related
to academic achievement. Parental academic support (e.g., monitoring grades, checking schoolwork,
supervising daily life, and overseeing schedule) related to performance goals in addition to mastery
goals and to student anxiety, suggesting that this type of academic support in which parents play a
supervisory role was perceived as pressuring. When compared to teacher and peer support, parental
support was found to be the strongest predictor. The authors suggested that in the Korean Confucian
culture, parental academic support is perceived as pressure to perform and live up to expectations in
the family. These results for parental support as it relates to achievement goals and achievement were
controlled for initial student anxiety and achievement, showing that they played a role beyond those
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variables. This study indicates that parental support has different interpretations within different cul-
tural groups.
In a cross-sectional study of parents’ homework support of Greek fifth- and ninth-grade students,
Gonida and Cortina (2014) found that parents’ autonomy support of student homework (promoting
self-regulation and reflection to find answers) and parental control (e.g., checking mistakes, ensuring
homework completed) were related to parents’ own mastery and performance goals. Students’ mastery
goals were positively predicted by parent autonomy support and negatively by parents’ interference
(solving homework for them); children’s performance goals were positively predicted by parental con-
trol. Student achievement was positively predicted by their mastery but not their performance goals.
Pathways from parents’ own mastery goals related to their support behaviors, and ultimately to children’s
achievement goals and achievement. Origins of parental involvement may have roots in their own goal
beliefs. Given that this is a cross-sectional study, however, causal interpretations cannot be made.
Across studies, research on parenting and children’s achievement goals tends to show positive rela-
tions between parental provision of mastery and autonomy supports with children’s own mastery
goals and achievement (Bempechat and Shernoff, 2013; Friedel, Cortina, Turner, and Midgley, 2007;
Koul, Lerdpornkulrat, and Poondej, 2016; Madjar, Shklar, and Moshe, 2016). As noted, many studies
have found generalizable results across different countries with varying cultural beliefs. Even in stud-
ies finding cultural differences in children’s interpretations of parents’ autonomy and control parental
behaviors, the evidence tends to support a positive role for parents’ encouragement of autonomy and
mastery as they relate to children’s own achievement goals and achievement outcomes.
Self-Efficacy
Self-efficacy in education derives from Bandura’s theory in which individuals perceive their abil-
ity to engage in learning activities at particular levels (Schunk and DiBenedetto, 2016). Those with
high self-efficacy are more apt to achieve selected goals and evidence greater engagement, learning,
participation, persistence, interest, and achievement (Schunk and DiBenedetto, 2016). Drawing on
Bandura’s concepts, individuals’ self-efficacy involves triadic interactions among person and environ-
mental variables and behaviors.
A multiplicity of persons and sources may provide feedback to the individual regarding learning
effectiveness, and these contribute to the development of an individual’s self-efficacy. These include
one’s own performance; vicarious experiences, such as observing the effectiveness of others; infor-
mation provided by others about one’s performance, including social persuasion; and physiological
feedback, such as excitement or anxiety in the pursuit of a task (Schunk and DiBenedetto, 2016).
Self-efficacy has been differentiated into various types, such as self-efficacy for learning, performance,
collective or group, and self-regulation (Schunk and DiBenedetto, 2016). Choices of concurrent and
future educational activities are likely to be related to self-efficacy concerning specific learning activi-
ties in the academic realm. Based on this theory (Schunk and DiBenedetto, 2016), higher self-efficacy
for specific learning domains is likely to result in greater involvement in those areas and increase
choices to pursue these realms in school or careers. Lower perceptions of self-efficacy are likely to
result in avoidance of challenging tasks in those areas.
Given the role that parents play in providing feedback to children about their academic com-
petence, they are likely to affect their children’s self-efficacy. Research on the role of parents in
self-efficacy theory has included general and specific aspects of the family. In this research frame, the
former includes provision of family capital, such as financial resources; opportunities for learning,
including activities and materials; parental educational level; and provision of warm and responsive
environments that provide opportunities to experience curiosity and mastery (Schunk and DiBene-
detto, 2016). Specific parental behaviors include support, monitoring, and demandingness (Affuso
et al., 2017; Carlo, White, Streit, Knight, and Zeiders, 2018; Fan, Williams, and Wolters, 2012). Such
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home factors play a role in children’s self-efficacy because they allow for the experience of perceiving
self-capability with regard to education.
In a longitudinal study, academic self-efficacy was shown to mediate parenting and academic
achievement. As in their results for self-determination, Affuso et al. (2017) also found that greater
parental monitoring of adolescents (knowing more about their child’s schoolwork and homework)
positively related to children’s academic self-efficacy, which in turn related to academic achievement.
An indirect relation of parental monitoring and children’s achievement was obtained through both
self-efficacy and self-determination. When more involved in their children’s schooling, parents convey
a message that the child is capable of success, which is pertinent to self-efficacy (Affuso et al., 2017).
In a cross-sectional study of tenth-graders’ English and mathematics self-efficacy (confidence
in achieving in the respective subject area), Fan et al. (2012) found that across four ethnic groups
(European-American, African-American, Asian-American, and Latin American), parental aspirations
for postsecondary education were positively related to students’ English self-efficacy, and to math
self-efficacy for European-American, African-American, and Latin American students. Where sig-
nificant, children’s confidence in achieving in the specific subject area positively related to their
parents’ aspirations for their children to pursue higher education. Higher parental aspirations may
convey parents’ confidence in children’s achievement, thereby stimulating self-efficacy. When par-
ents increased parent–school communication concerning student problems, negative relations were
obtained between this involvement and English and math self-efficacy across ethnic groups (Fan et al.,
2012), indicating that it is not parental involvement per se that is important with regard to self-efficacy,
but the type and reasons for involvement that play a role. Because of the cross-sectional nature of this
investigation, causal interpretations were not possible (Fan et al., 2012). The authors explained differ-
ences in findings as related to cultural and ethnic backgrounds of families.
In a longitudinal study of U.S. Mexican students from grades 5 through 12, Carlo et al. (2018)
examined the relations between parenting style and student self-efficacy as mediated by prosocial
behaviors. Based on fifth-graders’ perceptions of parenting, four parenting styles were identified
based on latent profile analysis, including authoritative (high acceptance, low harshness), less involved
authoritative, moderately demanding, and no-nonsense (warm but harsh) parent involvement styles.
Students’ academic self-efficacy (belief they could master the schoolwork) was measured at grade 12.
Across grades 5 through 12, parental involvement indirectly related to students’ academic self-efficacy
(belief they could master schoolwork) through its relation with prosocial behavior, and self-efficacy
in turn related to students’ self- and teacher-reported math and English grades, also at grade 12. Per-
ceptions of authoritative parenting had the most consistent and positive relation to student prosocial
behavior and evidenced indirect relations to self-efficacy and ultimately grades, compared to parents
who were perceived as moderately demanding or less involved. The authors suggested that prosocial
behaviors contribute to children’s confidence, which may be associated with a sense of competence
and thus self-efficacy. Whereas longitudinal evidence was provided regarding parenting as it related
to academic self-efficacy in a U.S. Mexican sample, causal interpretations are not possible due to the
absence of a fully prospective study design (Carlo et al., 2018).
In a sample of multiethnic students (Latin American, European-American, Asian-American, African-
American, other) attending a state university, Weiser and Riggio (2010) investigated relations between
students’ perceptions of their parents’ involvement in academic and school-related activities (e.g.,
inquiring about school, help with homework, communication with school) and general and academic
self-efficacy, GPA, and expectations of academic career success. Academic, as well as general, self-
efficacy mediated the relation between parental involvement and students’ expectations of academic
success. Greater parental involvement related to students’ higher academic and general self-efficacy,
which related to more positive perceptions of academic outcomes. Although this study was cross-
sectional based on self-report, it demonstrated that in multiethnic, college-age students, parenting
played a significant role in student career expectations through its relation to student self-efficacy.
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Further, their research with college students extends findings by indicating that such relations are not
restricted to children and adolescents.
Academic Intrinsic Motivation

Academic intrinsic motivation, pleasure inherent in school learning, has significant and pervasive rela-
tions to students’ academic achievement and competence across the school years and into adulthood.
Parenting is significant for the development of academic intrinsic motivation and its relation to aca-
demic competence. Gottfried and colleagues have been engaged in longitudinal research on parenting
as it relates to the development of academic intrinsic motivation across the academic life span from
infancy through adulthood. The following section presents this research program.
Summary
Across theories, in common to all is that parents’ use of motivationally relevant behaviors affects
children’s academic motivation and academic competence. Specific parenting behaviors derived from
the specific theory examined, and, as reviewed earlier, provided differing implications for children’s
motivational and competence outcomes. Developmental, contextual, and demographic variables were
also examined as pertinent to particular studies.
Longitudinal Research on Parenting and Academic Intrinsic

Motivation in the Fullerton Longitudinal Study
In this section, focus is on the long-term, longitudinal research conducted in the ongoing Fullerton
Longitudinal Study (FLS) regarding parenting specifically oriented toward the development of aca-
demic intrinsic motivation and academic competence from childhood into adulthood. Issues exam-
ined include parental behaviors and practices engaged in derived from academic intrinsic motivation
theory; parental effects across long-term trajectories; direct and indirect relations between parenting,
academic intrinsic motivation, and academic competence; and implications for parenting.
Academic Intrinsic Motivation, Parenting,

and the Fullerton Longitudinal Study
Academic intrinsic motivation is a major area of inquiry in the long-term, longitudinal investigation,
the FLS. This research has provided findings elucidating parents’ role in fostering children’s academic
intrinsic motivation as it relates to academic competence across the academic life span from child-
hood through adulthood. The FLS is a contemporary, ongoing, long-term, prospective longitudinal
investigation in which 130 children were followed from infancy through adulthood (ages 1 through
38 years). Prior to school entry, the children were assessed semiannually and then annually throughout
the formal school years through age 17. At the 29- and 38-year assessments, the participants com-
pleted questionnaires via the Internet. Across study waves, research comprised multiple sources of data
and informants, contributing to validity and generalizability of the findings. In the course of investiga-
tion, standardized assessments were conducted in the university laboratory, and various questionnaires
were completed by parents, teachers, and the participants themselves.
The socioeconomic status (SES) of families was determined by the Hollingshead Four-Factor
Index of Social Status (see Hollingshead, 1975; Gottfried, Gottfried, Bathurst, Guerin, and Parramore,
2003) based on mothers’ and fathers’ level of education and occupational ranking. SES ranged from
semiskilled workers with no high school degree through professionals. The gender distribution of
the children at the outset was approximately equal (52% males) and remained so throughout the
254
course of the investigation. Ethnicities included 117 European-American, 7 Latin, 1 Asian, 1 East
Indian, 1 Hawaiian, 1 Iranian, and 2 interracial children, which reflected the demographics of the
area at the outset of the investigation. Throughout the study, participant retention was high, with at
least 80% returning for any assessment with no evidence of attrition bias (Guerin, Gottfried, Oliver,
and Thomas, 2003). When the investigation was launched, the families resided in proximity to the
research site. Geographic mobility has long been known to be common and expected in extensive
longitudinal projects (Harway, Mednick, and Mednick, 1984). As anticipated, the study sample gradu-
ally resided throughout the United States. Thus, the findings are not restricted to a specific region.
For additional details concerning the demographics, study sample, and design, see Gottfried (1984);
Guerin et al. (2003); and Gottfried, Marcoulides, Gottfried, and Oliver (2013).
Within the FLS, the study of academic intrinsic motivation has been continuously investigated,
including measurement across time; developmental trajectories; specificity and generality of academic
intrinsic motivation (specific subject areas and school in general); and relation to academic compe-
tence from childhood through adulthood across a variety of indices, including achievement, percep-
tion of competence, academic anxiety, course selection in high school, STEM career interests, and
educational attainment in adulthood (Gottfried, 1985, 1990, 2009, 2016, 2018, in press; Gottfried,
Fleming, and Gottfried, 2001; Gottfried, Nylund-Gibson, Gottfried, Morovati, and Gonzalez, 2017).
Specific methodology is discussed within the context of particular studies.
The role of parenting in the development of academic intrinsic motivation and competence is a
focus and ongoing area of investigation in the FLS. Within the home context, parents provided proxi-
mal environmental stimulation essential to the development of academic intrinsic motivation and its
relation to academic competence across the educational life span. As conceptualized by Gottfried
(1985), academic intrinsic motivation and its measurement focus specifically on school learning and
are differentiated into specific school subject areas (reading, math, social studies, and science), as well as
for school in general. Because of the differentiation of academic intrinsic motivation into specific sub-
ject areas in the FLS, it was possible to examine parenting with regard to particular academic domains,
noted as important for research by Rowe et al. (2016), as well as for school in general.
Parenting is examined specifically with regard to developing academic intrinsic motivation. Other
theories and research have included aspects of intrinsic motivation in the context of a particular perspec-
tive (e.g., expectancy-value, self-determination, goal theory), not with regard to academic intrinsic moti-
vation as defined and conceptualized herein. In the FLS, academic intrinsic motivation is recognized as a
construct in its own right (Gottfried, 2016; Gottfried, Marcoulides, Gottfried, and Oliver, 2009, 2013), and
intrinsic motivation has also been identified as a theory in its own right, both historically and in contem-
porary research (Csikszentmihalyi, Abuhamedeh, and Nakamura, 2005; Day, Berlyne, and Hunt, 1971).
The FLS allows for the examination of cross-time pathways and mediation between variables, from
parenting to children’s academic motivation and competence, across childhood through adulthood.
The methodology permitted addressing the longevity and durability of relations between parenting
and academic intrinsic motivation and competence over a long-term period, which is rare in studies
of parenting and motivation, as well as determining cross-time direction of pathways across age (Gott-
fried et al., 2015; Gottfried et al., 2016). Analyses have been conducted with latent variables and latent
variable methodologies. Other studies of parenting and children’s intrinsic motivation have been
primarily either cross-sectional or short-term longitudinal (Gonzalez-DeHass, Willems, and Holbein,
2005), limiting the ability to examine the potential impact of parenting across time.
Academic Intrinsic Motivation Theory

Academic intrinsic motivation concerns the performance of activities for their own sake in which
pleasure is inherent in the activity itself (Berlyne, 1965; Deci, 1975). It is defined as “the enjoyment of
school learning characterized by an orientation toward mastery; curiosity; persistence, task-endogeny;
255
and the learning of challenging, difficult, and novel tasks” based on theory and research (Gottfried,
1985, p. 632). This definition provided the foundation for the development of the Children’s Aca-
demic Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (CAIMI; Gottfried, 1985, 1986a), which provides the assess-
ment of academic intrinsic motivation in the FLS research. Based on the perspective that individual
students’ academic intrinsic motivation would be expected to vary with their experiences and suc-
cesses across different subjects, the CAIMI was developed to measure academic intrinsic motivation
(Gottfried, 1985).
Three theoretical orientations (Gottfried, 1983, 1986b) provided the basis for the research program
on the development of academic intrinsic motivation: cognitive discrepancy (e.g., curiosity), mastery
and competence, and attribution (intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation) (Gottfried, 1983, 1986b). The
processes that account for the development of intrinsic motivation according to these orientations
provided the foundation for conceptualizing the role of the proximal environment and the basis of
the hypotheses for studying the role of parenting.
Regarding cognitive discrepancy, academic intrinsic motivation is viewed as the result of chil-
dren encountering stimuli that are discrepant from, or do not match, existing cognitive structures
(Gottfried, 1983, 1986b). Children are motivated to reduce such discrepancies and manifest curios-
ity, exploration, play, and the desire to learn more about the new and the unknown. Providing the
opportunity to encounter cognitive discrepancies would be expected to enhance children’s academic
intrinsic motivation, including such features as novelty, incongruity, complexity, surprise, and variety
of stimulation (Gottfried, 1983, 1986b, 1990, 2018, in press; Gottfried and Gottfried, 1984; Gottfried
et al., 2009). Parents who provide materials and experiences that facilitate their children’s cognitive
discrepancies would be expected to have children with greater academic intrinsic motivation.
Competence and mastery aspects of academic intrinsic motivation concern children’s effectiveness
in interaction with the environment resulting in their experience of and development of mastery
(Gottfried, 1983, 1986b, 1990;2018 Gottfried et al., 2009; White, 1959). Central to competence
and mastery is building the sense of autonomy and control, in which the child experiences being a
causal agent of outcomes in the environment (Ryan and Deci, 2017; Gottfried, 1986b; Hunt, 1981;
Piaget, 1962; White, 1959). When children perceive themselves as producing successful and notice-
able outcomes in the environment, academic intrinsic motivation develops. Activities that encourage
competence and mastery motivation include the responsiveness of learning materials, toys, and play
opportunities, as well as positive interactions with significant individuals, including parents (Gottfried,
1986b). Parents’ provision of mastery experiences and responsiveness to their children, as well as chal-
lenging learning materials, should promote children’s experience of competence and mastering their
environment and enhance their academic intrinsic motivation.
The attribution conceptualization of academic intrinsic motivation concerns the impact of extrin-
sic consequences for learning on intrinsic motivation (Gottfried, 1983, 1986b). Rewards may under-
mine children’s intrinsic motivation due to the attribution that one is engaged in an activity to receive
the extrinsic task-contingent reward, rather than to engage in the activity for the inherent pleasure per
se, referred to as the overjustification effect (Lepper, Greene, and Nisbett, 1973). The relation between
intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and performance, is an ongoing area of investigation (e.g., Cerasoli,
Nicklin, and Ford, 2014; Ryan and Deci, 2017). Because extrinsic consequences are external to, rather
than inherent in, learning, they may deter children from the enjoyment of learning per se, resulting in
lower intrinsic motivation. If children believe they are engaged in an activity to receive an extrinsic
consequence (e.g., money, toys), their focus (i.e., attribution) of motivation is likely to shift from the
process of learning and its enjoyment to the receipt of the reward (Gottfried, 1986b). Rewards may
also have complex relations to intrinsic motivation to the extent that they relate to children's percep-
tion of competence or self-determination (Gottfried, 1986b). As to parenting, the issue addressed in
the FLS is whether parents’ provision of extrinsic rewards contingent on children’s learning is related
to children’s academic intrinsic motivation and competence, compared to provision of intrinsically
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motivational experiences. Because external rewards continue to be pervasive in society and schools,
their role in academic motivation and competence remains an enduring question for research.
Measuring Academic Intrinsic Motivation:

Children’s Academic Intrinsic Motivation Inventory
Academic intrinsic motivation is assessed in the FLS with the CAIMI, the only published scale mea-
suring academic intrinsic motivation across subject areas (reading, math, social studies, science), as well
as a general orientation toward school learning. It is based on the foregoing definition and concep-
tualization of academic intrinsic motivation. The CAIMI is a highly reliable and valid instrument,
with strong continuity, stability, and construct validity over time (Gottfried, 1985, 1986a; Gottfried
et al., 2001; Gottfried et al., 2017). Initially developed for elementary through middle school chil-
dren (Gottfried, 1985, 1986a), to extend the grade range across which academic intrinsic motivation
is assessed, downward and upward extensions were subsequently developed for primary- and high
school level–students, called the Y-CAIMI and CAIMI-HS, respectively (Gottfried, 1990; Gottfried
et al., 2001). The CAIMI has been used in the United States as well as internationally, and has been
translated by other researchers into several languages, such as Chinese, Dutch, Hebrew, Japanese, Slo-
vene, and Spanish (Gottfried, 2009). Items were included to measure enjoyment of learning, with an
orientation toward mastery, curiosity, persistence, and learning challenging, difficult, and novel tasks;
and intrinsic-extrinsic orientation (Gottfried, 1985, 1986a). For complete details pertaining to inven-
tory development, and examples of items, see Gottfried (1985; 1986a).
Research on Academic Intrinsic Motivation

and Academic Competence
A brief overview of the relations between academic intrinsic motivation and competence illustrates
the need for parenting to encourage academic intrinsic motivation. Academic intrinsic motivation is
positively related to a host of achievement measures, including standardized achievement test scores,
parents’ and teachers’ ratings of achievement, high school grade point average (Gottfried, 1985, 1990;
Gottfried, Gottfried, Cook, and Morris, 2005; Gottfried, Marcoulides, Gottfried, Oliver, and Guerin,
2007), math and science course taking in high school (Gottfried et al., 2013; Gottfried et al., 2016),
and educational attainment in adulthood (Gottfried et al., 2013; Gottfried et al., 2017). These rela-
tions hold with IQ and SES controlled (Gottfried, 1985, 1990; Gottfried et al., 2017; Gottfried et al.,
2016). Relations between academic intrinsic motivation and achievement are differentiated into sub-
ject areas as the magnitudes tend to be higher within corresponding (e.g., reading motivation and
reading achievement) rather than across noncorresponding subject areas, showing the importance of
differentiating academic intrinsic motivation into subject areas.
Academic intrinsic motivation also has relations to noncognitive aspects of academic competence,
positively to perception of competence and inversely to academic anxiety (Gottfried, 1982, 1985,
1990). Students with higher general academic intrinsic motivation have temperaments characterized
by greater propensity to approach new situations, flexibility, and task orientation (Guerin et al., 2003).
Students with greater academic intrinsic motivation in high school are more likely to assume leader-
ship positions in extracurricular activities in and out of school (Gottfried and Gottfried, 2011) and
have higher motivation to lead in early adulthood (Gottfried et al., 2011). Students higher in academic
intrinsic motivation across childhood through adolescence exhibited higher need for cognition in
early adulthood (Gottfried et al., 2017).
Academic intrinsic motivation declines from childhood through adulthood (Gottfried et al., 2001,
2013, 2017), a pervasive trend across many measures of academic motivation. Children’s inherent
enjoyment of school learning tends to start higher in childhood and diminish over time. The steepest
257
normative decline is in the STEM areas, greatest for math followed by science. Reading and school in
general also decline, with no decline in social studies (Gottfried et al., 2001).
Concomitant with that decline, academic intrinsic motivation becomes increasingly stable
from childhood through adolescence (Gottfried et al., 2001; Marcoulides, Gottfried, Gottfried, and
Oliver, 2008). Therefore, individuals tend to remain in their relative rank order from childhood
through adolescence and into adulthood (Gottfried et al., 2001; Gottfried et al., 2017; Marcoulides
et al., 2008).
With these trends in mind, children who in the early school years evidence lower levels of aca-
demic intrinsic motivation are at a disadvantage, and at greater risk, for less academic intrinsic motiva-
tion and competence, compared to those beginning with higher motivation (Gottfried et al., 2001;
Gottfried, Gottfried, Morris, and Cook, 2008). This adverse outcome may be attributable to the
stability of interindividual differences across time, as those beginning lower in childhood are likely to
continue to evidence lower motivation into adolescence as well as declining amount of motivation
as the group decreases across the school years (Gottfried et al., 2001, 2015, 2017; Marcoulides et al.,
2008). To prevent these dual risks, parental stimulation and encouragement of academic intrinsic
motivation may be essential for enhancing and maximizing children’s academic intrinsic motivation
to enter adolescence at a greater advantage and propel adolescents to higher levels of success prevent-
ing progressive motivational declines. Those entering adolescence at a higher level continue to have
higher academic intrinsic motivation and greater motivation and educational attainment throughout
adolescence into adulthood (Gottfried et al., 2001, 2017; Marcoulides et al., 2008). Finally, children
who evidence exceptional continuously high academic intrinsic motivation, termed gifted motivation
(Gottfried and Gottfried, 2004; Gottfried et al., 2005), and those who evidence exceptional continu-
ously low academic intrinsic motivation, termed at-risk motivation (Gottfried et al., 2008), evidence
different outcomes across the life span. The former show greater, and the latter show diminished,
academic competence (Gottfried and Gottfried, 2011; Gottfried et al., 2008).
Research on Parenting and Academic

Intrinsic Motivation in the FLS
Because academic intrinsic motivation has significant relations to academic competence, parenting
takes on a fundamental role to start children on a positive trajectory as early as possible. Parents as
children’s first educators have an ongoing opportunity to stimulate their children’s academic intrinsic
motivation throughout the school years. Based on the conceptualization of academic intrinsic moti-
vation presented herein, a program of research ascertains the longitudinal role of parental stimulation
of academic intrinsic motivation and its relationship to academic competence.
Parental Motivational Practices, Academic

Intrinsic Motivation, and Achievement
In an initial investigation (Gottfried, Fleming, and Gottfried, 1994), the role of parental intrinsic and
extrinsic motivational practices as they relate to children’s academic intrinsic motivation and achieve-
ment was examined. When children were 9 years old, parental motivational practices were assessed
with the Parental Motivational Practices Scale (PMPS, Gottfried et al., 1994), developed to measure
task-intrinsic (task-endogenous) and task-extrinsic parental practices. For the former, items were cre-
ated to tap parents’ use of cognitive discrepancy and competence/mastery aspects of academic intrin-
sic motivation, such as encouraging children’s persistence, enjoyment of, independence, and mastery
of schoolwork and exposing children to new experiences and activities. For the latter, items comprised
parents’ task-extrinsic practices such as rewarding children with toys, money, or privileges (Gottfried
et al., 1994). The CAIMI was administered at ages 9 and 10 years. Children’s achievement was assessed
258
at age 10 years with the Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Battery (Woodcock and Johnson,
1977) providing standardized measures of children’s reading and math achievement.
Based on theory, two hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling (SEM): (1) parental
task-intrinsic motivational practices are positively related to children’s academic intrinsic motivation
and achievement, and (2) parental task-extrinsic motivational practices are inversely related to aca-
demic intrinsic motivation and achievement. Further, parental motivational practices were expected to
be indirectly related to academic intrinsic motivation and achievement at age 10 years through their
relations with 9-year academic intrinsic motivation.
Across CAIMI scales the predictions were supported with no gender differences. Parental task-
intrinsic practices evidenced positive paths, whereas task-extrinsic practices evidenced negative paths,
to academic intrinsic motivation at 9 years. In turn, the 9-year CAIMI had positive paths to sub-
sequent academic intrinsic motivation and achievement at age 10 years, indicating that academic
intrinsic motivation continues to relate to children’s academic intrinsic motivation and achievement
a year later. Children whose parents used more task-intrinsic motivational practices evidenced higher
motivation, whereas when parents used more task-extrinsic motivational practices children had sig-
nificantly lower motivation at 9 years and subsequently to age 10 years. Significant cross-time indirect
relations revealed that parental motivational practices continued to affect children’s subsequent moti-
vation a year later at age 10 years. This effect generalized to achievement as well because the CAIMI
at 9 years was also related to achievement at 10 years.
These results provided ecological support regarding the facilitative role of parents’ task-intrinsic
and the adverse role of parents’ task-extrinsic motivational practices, supporting the cognitive dis-
crepancy, competence/mastery, and attribution aspects of academic intrinsic motivation. The signifi-
cant enduring role of parental motivational practices over a one-year period was demonstrated. This
study revealed the longitudinal role of parental motivational practices on children’s academic intrinsic
motivation at age 9 years, which continued to affect subsequent academic intrinsic motivation and
achievement a year later at age 10 years, as well as mediation of parenting across time. Implications for
practice concern facilitating parental knowledge of using task-intrinsic as opposed to task-extrinsic
practices.
Parental Motivational Practices and Developmental

Decline in Math and Science Academic Intrinsic Motivation
In a further study, the role of parental motivational practices was investigated pertaining to develop-
mental trajectories of academic intrinsic motivation from ages 9 through 17 years (Gottfried et al.,
2009). Math and science were chosen as the subject areas in this research because of their steep devel-
opmental declines and the critical need to enhance students’ motivation and involvement in STEM so
as to develop scientific talent and enter STEM-related fields. Parental task-intrinsic and task-extrinsic
motivational practices were measured when children were age 9 years as described earlier, and chil-
dren’s math and science academic intrinsic motivation were assessed from ages 9 through 17 years.
Latent curve models for math and science tested predictions that task-intrinsic and task-extrinsic
motivational practices are differentially related to both initial status at age 9 and developmental change
trajectories of math and science academic intrinsic motivation across ages 9 through 17, with task-
intrinsic practices advantageous and task-extrinsic practices adverse. The proposed model that was
tested for math and science intrinsic motivation separately is presented in Figure 9.1 (Gottfried et al.,
2009, p. 733).
Parental task-intrinsic and task-extrinsic motivational practices evidenced different relations to
both initial status and change over time in math and science motivation. Both predicted children’s
initial status in math and science but with different directions. At age 9 years, children whose parents
reported providing greater task-intrinsic practices had higher math and science academic intrinsic
259
Y1 Y2 Y3 Y4 Y5
Motivation Motivation Motivation Motivation Motivation
Age 9 Age 10 Age 13 Age 16 Age 17
F1 F2
Level Shape
(Initial Status) (Growth Rate)
Parental Parental
Intrinsic Extrinsic
Practices Practices
Figure 9.1 Proposed model for the longitudinal role of parental motivational practices on children’s academic
intrinsic motivation across ages 9 to 17, applicable for math and science. For Y1 = Math motivation at age 9
and Science motivation at age 9, the loading on the second factor is set to 0—also indicated by the dotted line.
F = Factor.
See Gottfried et al., 2009, p. 733.
motivation, whereas children whose parents used more task-extrinsic practices had lower math and
science academic intrinsic motivation.
As for developmental decline, the change (shape) factor in Figure 9.1, task-intrinsic practices
predicted developmental change, whereas task-extrinsic practices did not. These different outcomes
indicated that greater use of task-intrinsic practices were associated with less developmental decline
in children’s rate of change for math and science. However, task-extrinsic practices did not relate to
math and science motivation change, indicating that parental use of extrinsic practices did not reduce
children’s developmental decline, as did task-intrinsic practices. Children’s initial levels of academic
intrinsic motivation did not relate to their parents’ task-intrinsic and task-extrinsic scores, indicating
that parents’ motivational practices were not a reciprocal response to their children’s initial motiva-
tional status. Model invariance statistical tests revealed no gender differences.
This research shows the robust and long-term role of early provision of parental motivational
practices across an eight-year interval with findings generalizing across the critical areas of math and
science intrinsic motivation. This study and Gottfried et al. (1994) together reveal that task-intrinsic
parental practices emphasizing cognitive discrepancy and competence/mastery are of vital importance
for parental stimulation of academic intrinsic motivation and that task-extrinsic parenting practices
are adverse, as predicted by theory and supported by research.
Because parents are likely to use extrinsic practices with the expectation that these will enhance
children’s motivation and achievement, the present research showed that using such motivational prac-
tices does not provide the intended beneficial effect for either initial motivational status or reducing
260
developmental decline. Parents’ use of task-intrinsic practices had beneficial effects for both initial
status and preventing motivational decline and set children on a more positive trajectory of math and
science academic intrinsic motivation across childhood through adolescence.
Cognitive Stimulation and Children’s Academic Intrinsic Motivation

To determine the role of parents’ provision of a cognitively stimulating home environment with
respect to children’s academic intrinsic motivation across childhood through early adolescence, a lon-
gitudinal study was conducted from middle childhood through early adolescence (Gottfried, Fleming,
and Gottfried, 1998). Provision of a cognitively stimulating home environment is consistent with the
cognitive discrepancy aspect of academic intrinsic motivation, and children’s curiosity, knowledge
seeking, and inquisitiveness should be enhanced through exposure to cognitively stimulating experi-
ences. Home environment in this research comprised provision of a wide range of stimuli and experi-
ences, including novelty, complexity, and variety of stimulation (Gottfried, 1983, 1986b). Parenting
oriented toward cognitive stimulation should also facilitate the mastery aspect of academic intrinsic
motivation through exposure to optimal levels of challenging learning experiences, materials, and toys,
which should promote children’s persistence, competence, and mastering their environment.
Using SEM, this study tested directional predictive paths between parental provision of a cogni-
tively stimulating home environment and their children’s academic intrinsic motivation across child-
hood through early adolescence. The prediction tested was that children whose parents provide more
cognitive stimulation in the home environment would have higher academic intrinsic motivation. To
distinguish distal and proximal environments, SES was included as a control to determine if proximal
cognitive stimulation related to academic intrinsic motivation above and beyond distal family status.
The cognitively stimulating home environment as conceptualized earlier was assessed when chil-
dren were age 8 years. A latent factor measuring cognitive stimulation was created from major scales
in the field of home environment: the Active Stimulation subscale of the Home Observation of the
Measurement of the Environment (HOME), Elementary version (Bradley, Caldwell, Rock, Hamrick,
and Harris, 1988); the Learning Opportunities Scale of the Home Environment Survey (Gottfried,
Gottfried, Bathurst, and Guerin, 1994); and the Intellectual-Cultural Orientation Subscale of the
Family Environment Scale (Moos and Moos, 1994). The HOME scale involves direct observation of
the home environment, and the other two scales measured home environment via parental report.
Academic intrinsic motivation was assessed with the CAIMI at ages 9, 10, and 13 years.
The hypothesis was supported across all CAIMI scales. Controlling for SES, provision of a cognitively
stimulating home environment at age 8 years positively and independently predicted academic intrinsic
motivation at age 9 years, which positively predicted motivation at age 10 years. Motivation at age 10
positively predicted motivation at age 13. A cognitively stimulating home environment also bore indi-
rect effects to later academic intrinsic motivation through its relation to earlier academic intrinsic moti-
vation, indicating that early environment predicts later motivation through earlier motivation. Hence,
it was the proximal environment of cognitive stimulation that was most potent in relating to academic
intrinsic motivation. SES bore no direct or independent relation with academic intrinsic motivation and
only related indirectly to academic intrinsic motivation through the proximal environment.
The parentally provided proximal environment children directly experience is important for
development of their academic intrinsic motivation. Children whose homes were higher on cogni-
tive stimulation had higher academic intrinsic motivation across a five-year period, indicating the
longevity of effects from parental provision of cognitive stimulation to academic intrinsic motivation
across childhood through adolescence. This result further highlights the importance of early parental
provision of an environment that enhances children’s academic intrinsic motivation. These results
recommend practices for parents as to their stimulation of children’s academic intrinsic motivation
and academic competency.
261
Pathways From Stimulation of Children’s Curiosity to Their High School

Science Course Accomplishments and Career Interests
That students enter science courses of study, and ultimately science careers, continue to be areas of
national and global need (Gottfried et al., 2016). Because science intrinsic motivation wanes across
childhood through adolescence (Gottfried et al., 2001, 2009), and because early cognitive stimulation
is important for the initial development of academic intrinsic motivation and its continuation across
the school years (Gottfried et al., 1998), it is critical to determine parenting factors that stimulate
students’ science intrinsic motivation and competence (Gottfried et al., 2016). Given the research
described earlier regarding the role of parental provision of cognitive stimulation for the development
of academic intrinsic motivation, we sought to determine the specific role of parental stimulation of
children’s curiosity for their science intrinsic motivation and competence from elementary through
high school (Gottfried et al., 2016). Curiosity was selected, as it is a driving factor in the pursuit of
and involvement in scientific careers (Gottfried et al., 2016; Shonstrom, 2016; Turner, 2014), as well
as being a motivator and characteristic of scientific thinking (Klahr, Matlen, and Jirout, 2013; Markey
and Loewenstein, 2014).
Because of children’s early manifestation of curiosity, parents play an important role in its facili-
tation. Beginning in infancy, curiosity is evident in behaviors such as novelty seeking, exploration,
persistence, and question-asking (Klahr et al., 2013; Markey and Loewenstein, 2014; Moch, 1987; Voss
and Keller, 1983), all of which signify inquisitiveness. Investigating curiosity falls within the cognitive
discrepancy aspect of academic intrinsic motivation, and parental stimulation of children’s curiosity
is essential to developing motivational pathways, which may be enduring from childhood to high
school.
The issue addressed was whether parental stimulation of children’s curiosity in childhood has
long-term pathways to science acquisition in high school via earlier science intrinsic motivation and
achievement. Using a developmental progression model, the role of parental stimulation of children’s
curiosity in facilitating their entry into science was investigated. The progression advanced from
parental stimulation of curiosity at age 8 to the pathways of science intrinsic motivation and achieve-
ment across ages 9 through 13 (critical years for determining science career proclivities), which in
turn were related to a new construct called “science acquisition,” created specifically within this
research comprising high school science course accomplishments and science career interests and
skills. Figure 9.2 shows this developmental progression model (Gottfried et al., 2016, p. 1984).
At age 8 years, parental stimulation of children’s curiosity was assessed with the following items,
which comprised a latent curiosity factor in the SEM model: expose child to new experiences, expose
child to curiosity-producing experiences, encourage child to ask questions, and take the child to
museums. Children’s science academic intrinsic motivation was assessed with the science scale of
the CAIMI at ages 9, 10, and 13 years. Children’s science achievement was rated by teachers on the
Teacher Report Form of the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach and Rescorla, 2001) at ages 9,
10, and 11 years. Concerning science acquisition, science high school course accomplishments were
recorded directly from the participants’ high school transcripts and composed a latent variable, includ-
ing the number of science courses taken; number of Advanced Placement (AP), International Bac-
calaureate (IB), and Honors courses taken; and the highest level of high school science courses taken.
Science career interest and skill were assessed with the Campbell Interest and Skill Survey (Campbell,
Hyne, and Nilsen, 1992). SES was included as an antecedent latent variable, comprising assessment via
parents at ages 5, 6, and 7 years. Data were derived from multiple sources, including parents, children,
teachers, and high school transcripts, thereby providing ecological validity. Results of the SEM model
are presented in Figure 9.2.
Children whose parents provided higher levels of curiosity stimulation were more likely to be
involved in science in a number of ways. They were more intrinsically motivated in science and
262
Age 9 Age 10 Age 13
.69* .73* .68*
Number of
Science Intrinsic Courses
.79*
Motivation
Science High Number of
.71*
Expose to New Promote Encourage Take to School Course AP / IB / Honors
Experiences Curiosity Questions Museum Accomplishments .89*
Courses
.50* Highest Level of

.25* .45* Science Courses
.87* .91* .72* .33*
Science .99* Science Career

Acquisition Interest
Parental
Stimulation of
Curiosity Age 8 .27* .36* .75*
Age 5
.87* .27* Science
Achievement Science Career
Age 6 .95* Skill
SES
.99*
.79* .66* .62*
Age 7
Teachers’ Teachers’ Teachers’
Ratings Age 9 Ratings Age 10 Ratings Age 11
Figure 9.2 Longitudinal progression model from parental stimulation of children’s curiosity to high school science acquisition with standardized parameter estimates.
See Gottfried et al., 2016, p. 1984. * p < .05.
achieved at a higher level as reported by their teachers. In turn, science intrinsic motivation and
achievement were related to science acquisition in high school. Students with greater science intrin-
sic motivation and higher achievement were more likely to take advanced and challenging science
high school courses, were more likely to aspire to a science career, and viewed themselves as more
skilled in science such as using laboratory equipment. An indirect effect showed that parental stimu-
lation of curiosity was related to science acquisition through paths with science intrinsic motivation
and achievement, further supporting the developmental progression model. SES, being positively
related to stimulation of curiosity, served as a covariate, and all paths in the model were significant
independent of SES. Gender did not contribute to the model. Finally, a direct path that was tested
from parental stimulation of curiosity to science acquisition proved not to be significant, indicating
that parental stimulation of curiosity is mediated by science intrinsic motivation and achievement
to science acquisition.
Long-term longitudinal pathways show that parental stimulation of children’s curiosity as early as
age 8 is significant with regard to their long-term development of science acquisition, as mediated
through the dual pathways of science intrinsic motivation and achievement. These findings further
support the proximal environment children experience as critical for development of their academic
intrinsic motivation and ultimately academic competence in science.
This research has implications for parental stimulation of children’s curiosity. Because children’s
science career interests are largely formed by age 14 (Gottfried et al., 2016; Tytler, 2014), it is essential
to stimulate curiosity as early as possible to foster their scientific motivation, which may then affect
subsequent science career entry. Parents who provide a higher level of curiosity-enhancing experi-
ences launch their children on mediated trajectories toward science involvement in courses and sci-
ence career interests and skills. In light of the fact that teachers rarely consider curiosity as a priority
to encourage in their students (Engel, 2011, 2015), and based on the findings of this research, there is
even more reason for schools to involve parents as partners to enhancing students’ proclivities to enter
science. It is critical to ascertain how best to dovetail and integrate parents in the schools to support
their children’s science intrinsic motivation and teachers’ efforts toward cultivating students’ science
advancement.
Parental Provision of Early Literacy Environment as It Relates to

Reading and Educational Outcomes Across the Academic Life Span
Literacy is a fundamental component of children’s academic achievement. National and international
assessments of children’s literacy and reading achievement have provided a bleak picture for U.S.
children in that approximately only one-third of children from fourth through twelfth grade read
at proficiency level (National Center for Education Statistics, 2010, 2011, 2013). In the Progress in
International Literacy Study, it was reported that 18% of children never read for fun outside of school,
and the United States ranked 33rd out of 35 countries with respect to reading for pleasure and appre-
ciation of books (Mullis, Martin, Gonzalez, and Kennedy, 2003). Given the fundamental significance
of reading motivation and achievement for children’s success in school across a wide range of domains,
the role of parental provision of a competence-enhancing literacy environment and experiences is
critical to ascertain, especially because, as previously noted, parents are children’s first educators. Such
knowledge can provide information on how parents may launch children on a trajectory toward
academic competence via their reading motivation and achievement across their academic life span
(Gottfried et al., 2015).
Within the FLS, in a study spanning from infancy through adulthood at age 29 years, the overarch-
ing issue investigated was the role of parental provision of children’s home literacy environment dur-
ing infancy and early childhood for long-term relations with reading achievement, motivation, and
educational attainment across childhood through adulthood (Gottfried et al., 2015). This investigation
264
addressed the long-term durability of parental provision of early experiences over three decades of
development, an issue with historic significance in the developmental science literature (Bornstein,
2015; Gottfried et al., 2015). Within this overarching issue, several specific issues were examined,
including (1) whether early literacy experiences pertain only to reading achievement or also to chil-
dren’s reading academic intrinsic motivation; (2) whether there is a differential effect of parents’ time
spent reading to children as compared to provision of reading materials pertaining to reading achieve-
ment and motivation; (3) are there long-term effects over the course of three decades of life, resulting
from parental provision of early literacy environment to educational attainment in adulthood; and
(4) how do reading achievement and reading academic intrinsic motivation mediate pathways from
parental provision of literacy environment to their educational attainment in adulthood?
To investigate these issues, a conceptual longitudinal progression model using data across ages
1.5 through 29 years was tested (see Figure 9.3). To assess the home literacy environment, from
ages 1.5 to 5 years, two latent factors were included comprising variables drawn from the HOME
(Caldwell and Bradley, 1979) and Purdue Home Stimulation Inventories (Wachs, 1976), widely used
scales of home stimulation. These factors were Reading Time, comprising the amount of time spent
reading to children per day and over the course of a week, and Reading Materials, comprising the
presence of reading materials in the home (children’s books, newspapers, magazines, adult books, and
the like). Children’s reading achievement and intrinsic motivation were assessed at ages 9 through 17,
the former with the total reading scale of the Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Battery (Wood-
cock and Johnson, 1989), and the latter using the reading intrinsic motivation scale of the CAIMI
(Gottfried, 1985; Gottfried et al., 2001). Separate latent factors for reading achievement and motiva-
tion were included for childhood (ages 9 and 10 years) and adolescence (ages 13, 16, and 17 years).
Children’s educational attainment at age 29 years was measured via participants’ reports.
A unique aspect of this research is the availability of both mothers’ and children’s adulthood educa-
tional attainment measured at approximately the same ages (29 years). The former was included in the
model as an initial condition to determine the role of mothers’ education in the provision of literacy
environment. We controlled for mothers’ educational attainment as well as uniquely for the relation
.36* Childhood .94* Adolescent

Reading
Reading Reading
.35* Time .34*
Achievement Achievement
Mothers’ Children’s
Educational .29* Educational
Attainment Attainment
.54*
.33* .22*
Childhood Adolescent
Reading Reading .50* Reading
Materials Intrinsic Intrinsic
Motivation Motivation
Figure 9.3 Longitudinal progression model from parental reading to young children, to reading achievement
and intrinsic motivation, to educational attainment during adulthood. Abstract model presented. For full model,
see Gottfried et al. (2015, p. 30).
Standardized solution, * p < .05. See Gottfried et al. (2015), p. 30.
265
between mothers’ and children’s adult educational attainment when both were at comparable ages.
These controls provided an intergenerational component of parents’ and children’s educational attain-
ment to determine the independent contribution of the literacy environment for achievement, moti-
vation, and educational attainment and to distinguish between SES and the proximal environment.
Results are presented in Figure 9.3 (abstracted model presented; for the full model, see p. 30 of
Gottfried et al., 2015). Using SEM, the model appraised the longitudinal progression of Reading Time
and Reading Materials on reading achievement and intrinsic motivation across childhood and adoles-
cence, and the subsequent relation of these factors to children’s educational attainment in adulthood.
Succinctly, the amount of time parents spent reading to children during infancy and early childhood,
and not the provision of reading materials, related to children’s reading achievement and intrinsic
motivation, which then related to adolescent reading achievement and motivation, respectively. The
latter, in turn, predicted children’s educational attainment in adulthood. With mothers’ educational
attainment and the relation between mothers’ and children’s educational attainment controlled, time
spent reading to children independently and positively related to children’s reading achievement and
intrinsic motivation through childhood and adolescence and to children’s adulthood educational
attainment via childhood and adolescent reading achievement and motivation. Hence, the proximal
experience parents provided, and not SES, was significant for children’s reading achievement, motiva-
tion, and educational success in adulthood.
This research elucidates the developmental pathways that exist from parental provision of reading
to children in infancy and early childhood through to their children’s adulthood educational attain-
ment. A long-term study such as this has been noted to be uncommon and important in determin-
ing the role of early experiences across the life span (Bornstein, 2014). It is also the first investigation
to show that reading to children in the opening years of their life has long-term educational and
motivational benefits across the academic life span (Gottfried et al., 2015). Early parental provision
of literacy experience has effects that persist through the confluent pathways of reading achievement
and intrinsic motivation. Reading exposure per se provides a foundation for subsequent long-term
educational success through the mediated pathways of reading achievement and intrinsic motivation.
Further, this research demonstrates that reading to children, not the provision of reading materials, is
significant for their achievement and intrinsic motivation. Whereas the presence of reading materials
may provide the potential opportunity to stimulate children’s reading, actual engagement in reading
is critical. Therefore, it is important to teach parents the value and process of reading to children
in infancy. Parents who read to their infants and young children provide the foundation for them
to enter a trajectory of continuous cultivating experiences that foster reading achievement, reading
intrinsic motivation, and postsecondary educational attainment.
This investigation encompasses the largest age range with regard to this issue of parenting and its
relation to the development of academic motivation in the FLS, beginning in infancy and extending
into adulthood. Overall, the studies on parenting and academic motivation conducted in the FLS
are the only ones in the literature that can address the issue of how early parents should begin to
stimulate their children’s academic motivation. The answer is, as early in infancy as possible, given the
significant, long-term longitudinal outcomes for academic intrinsic motivation across the academic
life span. The implications for intervention are discussed next.
Integration and Summary Across FLS Studies on

Parenting and Academic Intrinsic Motivation
Across the studies of the FLS, parents’ stimulation of children’s cognitive discrepancy, competence/
mastery, and attribution (task-intrinsic versus task-extrinsic) promoted children’s academic intrinsic
motivation. Children’s academic intrinsic motivation and competence through the school years, as
well as their educational attainment as adults, are enhanced if parents provide novel, challenging, and
266
varied experiences; encourage children’s curiosity and exploration; provide opportunities that encour-
age mastery and competence; facilitate children’s enjoyment of, persistence in, and independence in
accomplishment of schoolwork; and limit the provision of task-extrinsic rewards. Parents should
begin stimulating children’s academic intrinsic motivation as soon as possible due to the findings that
parental provision of experience as early as infancy has long-term effects through adulthood. Because
of the increasing stability of academic intrinsic motivation across childhood through adolescence and
into adulthood, both early and continuous parental encouragement of academic intrinsic motivation
are desirable. Children need to enter adolescence with as high a level of academic intrinsic motiva-
tion as possible to protect them from being motivationally at risk during adolescence and thereafter.
Because parents are children’s first educators and are in a position to stimulate their children’s motiva-
tion from infancy on, teachers and schools need to become partners with parents to promote students’
academic intrinsic motivation.
Implications for Parenting and Future Directions

Integration and conclusions across issues, theories, research findings, directions for future research and
methodology, and implications for parenting and educational practice appear herein.
Parenting and Backfire

Whereas the theories and research presented elucidate many positive outcomes of parenting for chil-
dren’s academic motivation, adverse outcomes of parenting may occur as well. “Backfire” is a risk
with regard to educational policy and academic success (Gottfried and Conchas, 2016). In the policy
arena, backfire refers to programs that are implemented to promote positive educational outcomes
but unexpectedly result in detrimental outcomes as a result of implementing the policy. Such was
illustrated for a case of school choice (Sattin-Bajaj, 2016).
The concept of backfire has also been applied in the arena of parenting and children’s academic
motivation. For example, a review of parental praise by Brummelman, Crocker, and Bushman (2016)
showed that certain types of praise backfire for certain children (i.e., praise has unintended adverse
instead of positive outcomes that were expected). When children with low self-esteem are provided
with person oriented (e.g., you’re smart) and inflated praise (e.g., that’s incredibly beautiful), they
may become focused on enhancing their self-worth and engage in self-validation of their self-worth,
rather than on their intrinsic motivation, and consequently avoid tasks and challenges at which they
perceive they will fail. Praise intended to enhance children’s self-esteem and motivation could have
unintended negative consequences exacerbating these problems. Brummelman et al. (2016) suggest
a transactional analysis in which adults respond to children’s low self-esteem by providing person-
oriented and inflated praise, which is then responded to by children to self-validate their sense of
worth and help produce additional low self-esteem. Similarly, in their review and synthesis of praise,
Henderlong and Lepper (2002) discussed several instances in which praise undermined children’s
intrinsic motivation, especially when it focuses on control rather than autonomy, external reasons for
task engagement, and ability.
Another aspect of parental backfire pertains to the use of task-extrinsic parental motivational prac-
tices (Gottfried et al., 1994; Gottfried et al., 2009). As discussed earlier, parents’ use of task-extrinsic
consequences had unintended negative relations to academic intrinsic motivation across childhood
through adolescence. Parents undoubtedly used task-extrinsic consequences with the expectation that
these have positive outcomes for their children’s academic success, yet the opposite was obtained, indi-
cating that use of extrinsic incentives backfired. Therefore, in using motivation practices, it is advisable
for parents to be cognizant of potential adverse outcomes of applying task-extrinsic consequences
before implementing such practices.
267
Other researchers have examined well-intended parenting behaviors emphasizing control rather
than autonomy that backfired (Grolnick, 2003). For example, Gurland and Grolnick (2005) found
that for third-graders’ mothers’ worrying about environmental threats was associated with their use
of more controlling, rather than autonomy-supporting, behaviors with their children. Control, in
turn, was associated with children’s endorsement of performance rather than learning goals, whereas
autonomy showed reverse relations to performance and learning goals. Gurland and Grolnick (2005)
suggested that parents’ use of controlling behaviors may have been well meant but backfired by under-
mining children’s active attempts at mastery.
Research also shows that overinvolved parenting may be related to adverse motivational conse-
quences. For example, in a study of college students, Schiffrin and Liss (2017) found that when stu-
dents perceived their mothers as overcontrolling and engaged in greater “helicopter” parenting, they
evidenced less advantageous motivation, including mastery avoidance, performance approach and
avoidance, and perfectionism. Mothers’ reports were related to a greater sense of entitlement in their
students. In another study of college students, Kriegbaum, Villarreal, Wu, and Heckhausen (2016)
found that parents’ use of directing was related to students’ amotivation, which in turn related to
decreased GPA. Parents may perceive their involvement as facilitative, but when it is overinvolvement
or directing, it could result in adverse consequences.
Overall, it can be concluded that what happens in the policy arena with respect to educational
programs (Gottfried and Conchas, 2016) also applies to parenting practices that produce adverse out-
comes unintentionally with regard to children’s academic motivation. It is important to disseminate
such findings to parents and educators, as well as the positive practices that have been identified in
research, to optimize students’ academic motivation.
Conclusions Across Theories

Research has provided a plethora of findings supporting the importance and significance of parenting
for the development of children’s academic motivation. The representation of theories is indeed rich.
All those included herein have contributed to the field, and each adds to understanding the role of
parenting in children’s academic motivation. Additionally, there are many questions that remain to be
addressed in the research.
Consideration of generalities and specificities in the literature on parenting and children’s aca-
demic motivation is important for theory development, determining future research directions, and
implications for practice. As for generalities, across a wide array of theories, perspectives, methods,
populations, and children’s ages, parenting bears significant, and in most instances positive, relations to
children’s academic motivation. Further, studies detailed earlier and across theories reveal that parent-
ing relates to children’s academic competence through its relation with academic motivation. There-
fore, the effects of motivationally relevant parenting radiate through academic motivation to children’s
academic competence. As for the role of environment, studies consistently demonstrate that across
differing theoretical orientations, it is the proximal environment (i.e., the environmental processes that
children directly experience) that stimulates their academic motivation. For example, parenting was
shown to uniquely relate to children’s academic motivation above and beyond SES (i.e., with SES vari-
ables controlled, parenting per se was independently related to children’s academic motivation; Affuso
et al., 2017; Gottfried et al., 1998, 2015, 2016). Overall, results across theories and studies lead to the
conclusion that parents play an important role and need to be educated about the most effective ways
to stimulate their children’s academic motivation. These broad conclusions may be important to form
policy that will positively affect children’s academic motivation and competence.
As for specificities, there are multiple theories of academic motivation, each with its own prin-
ciples regarding which aspects of parenting facilitate development of academic motivation. More
positive academic motivational outcomes are predicted to occur when parents use processes derived
268
from principles in accord with each specific theory as delineated herein (e.g., autonomy as it relates
to self-determination theory, parent beliefs as they relate to expectancy-value theory, task-intrinsic
practices and cognitive stimulation as they relate to academic intrinsic motivation theory, and so
forth). Depending on, and in accord with, the specific theory guiding practice, the principles of those
theories provide direction in applications for parenting.
Specificities also pertain to contextual differences of family environments. Culture and gender are
two variables that create contextual specificities for parenting and academic motivation. For example,
research reviewed earlier indicates that individuals from different cultures have distinctive percep-
tions of the role of autonomy, not all of them positive (Marbell and Grolnick, 2013). Individuals in
non-Western cultures do not necessarily view autonomy as favorable, albeit this view is prevalent in
Western societies. In another vein, in their review, Brummelman et al. (2016) noted that Chinese
parents use praise less and criticize more than American parents. In the United States, praise is viewed
as a positive aspect of socialization, but not necessarily so in Chinese families. In Korean Confucian
culture, parental academic support is perceived as pressuring children to perform (Song et al., 2014).
Hence, parenting cannot be viewed as having the same meaning or impact on academic motivation
across different cultural groups.
An area for future research regarding cultural differences is the establishment of measurement
invariance. Without developing assessments that have equivalence of measurement across cultures, one
cannot be sure that scales measure the same construct (Lambert, Ferguson, and Rowan, 2016; Preston
et al., 2016). In recent research, a scale measuring Positive Family Relations (PFR) was developed in
the FLS establishing measurement equivalence across informants and time using the nominal response
model from Item Response Theory and parameter linking (Preston et al., 2016; Preston et al., 2017;
Preston et al., 2015). Such methodology should be utilized to develop scales with invariance across
cultural groups.
Whereas many studies have found no gender differences for parenting and academic motivation,
even in STEM areas (Gottfried et al., 2001, 2009, 2016), others have obtained gender differences,
particularly in math (Lazarides and Watt, 2017; Simpkins et al., 2015). These differences could be due
to cultural, population, and sample differences as well as different aspects of motivation, competence,
and choice behaviors measured by theories. Differences in academic motivation might occur if par-
ents use different motivational practices with sons and daughters. For example, Crowley, Callanan,
Tenenbaum, and Allen (2001) found that when visiting a science museum, parents were more likely
to explain scientific principles to boys than girls. Although they engaged in interactive behavior at the
museum equivalently with girls and boys, boys received discussions of scientific principles regarding
the exhibit. It is possible that specific parental behaviors could be pertinent to academic motivation
theories, and such behavioral differences responsible for gender differences.
As to subject area specificity, in the FLS aspects of parenting were examined in relation to subject
areas. For example, amount of time spent reading to children (Gottfried et al., 2015) was examined
as it relates to children’s reading motivation. For science motivation, parental encouragement of chil-
dren’s curiosity was investigated (Gottfried et al., 2016). These two aspects of parenting are highly
relevant to the respective subject area for which they were studied. Therefore, parenting can be linked
to the nature of a given subject area domain and particular stimulation specific to that domain. Rowe
et al., (2016) recognized the need to examine parental influences in academic subject domains for
achievement and motivation.
Future Research
Other than a few studies (Gottfried et al., 2015; Gottfried et al., 2016; Simpkins et al., 2015), little is
known about long-term effects of parenting on children’s motivation through high school and adult-
hood, nor the mediators through which they operate. Indeed, existing studies show that parenting has
269
enduring relations to long-term outcomes across the academic life span. Therefore, there is a continu-
ing need for investigation of long-term relations between parenting of children’s academic motivation
from infancy and early childhood through adulthood. The importance of this issue for academic
competence and life success is apparent. A prime question to address is: Does parenting as early as
infancy continue to influence individuals through their middle adulthood years and later in academic
and other life domains? In the FLS, a new wave of data collection of the participants who are nearing
middle adulthood (age 38 years) has just been completed. We intend to examine the long-term role
of parenting with regard to adult intrinsic motivation, competence such as motivation in the context
of employment, aspects of leadership, and personal success. The role of distal and proximal variables
will be examined in relation to the persistence of parenting effects and life span motivation.
A major issue that cuts across theories and research, and requires additional elucidation, concerns
determining causal relations between parenting, academic motivation, and competence across the
life span. Long-term longitudinal research provides insights as to potential causal relations (Gottfried
et al., 2015, 2016; Simpkins et al., 2015). Nurmi and Silinskas (2014) likewise supported the need for
longitudinal research to elucidate developmental mechanisms with regard to parenting and motiva-
tion. Sophisticated statistical methods, pathways, and mediators are honing our knowledge of causality
by establishing temporal precedence and disentangling complex relations. Short-term longitudinal
studies are limited because they do not allow for determining durable effects of parenting for chil-
dren’s motivation that would elucidate processes across conceptually related life span variables. Cross-
sectional studies preclude determining directional, causal, or mediated relations (Jose, 2016).
Many studies include measures of parenting as perceived by the child/adolescent but not as
reported by the parents themselves (Carlo et al., 2018). The rationale for this approach is that percep-
tions are valid indicators of parenting in and of themselves, but the weakness is that perceptions of
parenting and motivational outcomes suffer from method bias—that is, the same person is reporting
on the parent as well as their own motivation, and this shortcoming has been recognized in such
research (Gniewozc and Watt, 2017). Researchers should include multiple sources of data in addition
to children’s reports, including parents’ own reports, as they do not necessarily duplicate each other
and often add distinctively and incrementally to outcome variables (Ratelle et al., 2017).
A number of other research directions provide opportunities. One avenue includes how chil-
dren themselves may elicit parents’ motivational practices (e.g., child effects or transactions). Because
parental provision of cognitive enrichment has been shown to be stable and transact with academic
achievement (Sy et al., 2013), it is plausible that parents who provide early stimulation likely provide
ongoing motivationally enhancing activities throughout their children’s development that are respon-
sive to children’s requests. These responsive activities may continue to fuel the transaction between
parenting and children’s academic motivation. Additionally, child characteristics as precursors to par-
ents’ motivational practices should be investigated, as suggested by such findings that parental beliefs
of children’s abilities relate to their academic motivation (Frome and Eccles, 1998). Finally, groups of
children and parents might be identified, such as through latent profile or growth mixture modeling,
to determine whether there are classes of the population that would respond differentially to parent
motivational practices. This notion could pertain to intraindividual change as well (Grimm, Ram, and
Estabrook, 2017).
Implications and Practical Considerations

Given the persistence of achievement gaps (Engel, Claessens, Watts, and Stone, 2016), the failure of
a large proportion of the U.S. population to reach proficiency standards in reading and math on
national assessments (Gottfried et al., 2015, 2013), students’ mediocre reading and STEM performance
in international comparative assessments (Gottfried et al., 2015, 2016), and the progressive decline in
STEM performance, even for advanced students, in the United States and internationally (Mervis,
270
2016), more supports for stimulating children’s academic motivation are needed from sources other
than schools themselves. Therefore, harnessing the power of parents to be partners with the schools
and being involved with their children is critical to provide motivationally relevant parenting prac-
tices that enhance their child’s own academic motivation and competence (Gottfried et al., 2016).
Few intervention studies educate parents to utilize motivational practices to enhance their children’s
academic motivation and competence (Lazowski and Hulleman, 2016; Pomerantz and Grolnick, 2017;
Su and Reeve, 2011). We must translate what we have learned from the research into practical applica-
tions for parents to implement. Parents could be a valuable resource, requiring the willingness of edu-
cators and parents to work together to stimulate children’s academic motivation and competence. All
of the theories reviewed provide fruitful avenues for practical applications in schools, such as devel-
oping parents’ knowledge of the role of cognitive stimulation, task-intrinsic practices, achievement
beliefs and expectations, mastery, autonomy, support, self-efficacy, and incremental intelligence views.
The adverse role of rewards and control should be included as well. It may be said that achievement
gaps do not begin at the inception of school, but rather earlier in the home environment (Gottfried
et al., 2015), which serves to stimulate children’s curiosity, investigation, and provide competence and
mastery experiences so crucial to the development of intrinsic motivation and competence. If such
is embraced in early childhood and beyond, then we can truly hope that children’s positive academic
motivation and competence begin in the crib (Gottfried et al., 2015), with parents playing a funda-
mental role.
Conclusions
The power of parental stimulation of children’s academic motivation cannot be emphasized enough.
This is evident with respect to the Wright brothers, known for their pioneering, historical contribu-
tions to flight and successful development of the first powered airplane. When Orville Wright was
asked about having any special advantages in the brothers’ upbringing, he responded emphatically
“the greatest thing in our favor was growing up in a family where there was always much encour-
agement to intellectual curiosity” (McCullough, 2015, p. 18). All children should be afforded the
Wrights’ opportunity.
Acknowledgments
Various phases of the Fullerton Longitudinal Study have been supported by grants from the Thrasher
Research Fund; Spencer Foundation; California State University, Fullerton; California State University,
Northridge; Kravis Leadership Institute; W. K. Kellogg Foundation; BLAIS Foundation; and Army
Research Institute. My deepest appreciation is extended to the FLS participants and their parents for
their continuous dedication and involvement in this long-term investigation. Permission to use figures
in Gottfried et al. (2015) and Gottfried et al. (2016) provided by Taylor & Francis. Figure in Gottfried
et al. (2009) permitted by APA publication policy.
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10
PARENTS AND CHILDREN’S
PEER RELATIONSHIPS
Introduction
Beginning in the 1980s, researchers began to search for the origins of children’s peer competence
within the family (Ladd, 2005) and embraced tenets from ecological theory, which hold that the family
and the peer culture operate as interconnected contexts within larger social systems (Bronfenbrenner,
1986). As researchers refined their conceptions of the relationships that children form with parents and
peers, they began to develop and investigate hypotheses about how these relationships might be linked
and, specifically, how parenting processes might contribute to children’s social development.
Eventually, inquiry shifted toward a more complex agenda, such as understanding the processes
of relationship learning, the transfer of such learning across contexts, and the conditional nature of
parent–child connections and their effects on child outcomes (Collins, Maccoby, Steinberg, Heth-
erington, and Bornstein, 2000). The introduction of more complex explanatory paradigms altered
research agenda and challenged assumptions about the mechanisms underlying the links between the
family and peer systems.
One such emergent paradigm was founded on the principles of behavior genetics and raised
doubts about parenting as a formative influence on children’s social skills and relational competence.
Researchers who embraced this perspective argued that the parents’ and child’s shared gene pool, and
its interaction with rearing experiences (e.g., shared/nonshared family environments), were respon-
sible for children’s sociability and peer competence (Reiss, Neiderhiser, Hetherington, and Plomin,
2000). This hypothesis, and its implications, is considered in a later section of this chapter.
The other long-standing and dominant paradigm was advanced by researchers who focused social
learning, attachment, and other environmental/organismic perspectives, and it emphasized relation-
ship learning in the family as the means through which children acquire skills and form peer relation-
ships. Although this paradigm and its underlying premises have evolved to incorporate theoretical
revisions and changing conceptions of causality, a basic tenet has been that parents influence children’s
social development. For this reason, researchers who work from this tradition have been interested in
explicating parenting processes as causes of children’s social competence and peer relationships.
Although developmental scientists adopt various definitions of childhood social competence,
the term is used here to refer to children’s abilities to (1) initiate/sustain positive interactions with
peers (e.g., utilize specific socioemotional skills), (2) form affiliative ties (i.e., friendships, peer-group
acceptance) and high-quality relationships with peers (e.g., stability, support, security), and (3) avoid
negative social roles and behaviors (e.g., aggressor, victim, peer rejection, social withdrawal) and psy-
choemotional consequences (e.g., loneliness, anxiety).
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Children’s Peer Relationships
The framework used to organize the evidence reviewed in this chapter is built on the assumption
that two types of family processes may have important implications for the socialization of children’s
social competence: (1) those that occur as part of family life, and most likely derive from relationships
and dynamics that are internal to the family system (rather than external to it, such as within the
child’s peer environment) and (2) those that transpire in the family context or with family members
but are predicated on children’s actual or anticipated experiences in the peer milieu, or parents’ per-
ceptions of the child’s needs within the social context. Thus, for organizational and heuristic purposes,
the mechanisms included in the former category are termed indirect because they refer to aspects of
family life that may affect children’s social competence, but they represent modes of influence that do
not provide the child with any explicit connection to the world of peers. In contrast, direct modes of
influence encompass parents’ efforts to socialize or “manage” children’s social development, especially
as parenting behaviors and strategies pertain to the peer context. Also considered are mediating vari-
ables, such as learning experiences that children acquire in the family that transfer or generalize to the
peer context. Of course, our attempt to distinguish between indirect and direct family influences does
not preclude the possibility that both forms of socialization operate simultaneously within children’s
rearing environments and have combined effects on children’s competence with peers.
In the sections that follow, evidence pertaining to indirect influences is reviewed first and is parsed
into six domains, including studies of (1) attachment, (2) childrearing styles and parent–child interac-
tions, (3) parental disciplinary styles, (4) parental stress, (5) divorce and marital discord, and (6) fam-
ily pathology. Next, findings pertaining to direct parental influences are organized around four key
constructs: parent as (1) designer, (2) mediator, (3) supervisor, and (4) advisor and consultant. In the
final sections, we critique the current status of the discipline, including issues such as hypothesized
“mechanisms of transmission” and the specificity, generality, and causal priority of family socialization
“inputs.”
Indirect Parental Influences

Indirect parental influences occur when children transfer the behavioral and relationship patterns they
have learned in the family to the peer domain. Many of the constructs classified as indirect parental
influences come from distinct research domains that have evolved from differing theoretical perspec-
tives. Our goal is to evaluate evidence from each of these literatures as it pertains to the premise that
parenting processes affect the quality of children’s social competence and peer relationships.
Attachment
Research on this construct has been guided by the proposition that attachment relationships cre-
ate differences in children’s emotional security and “internal working models” (see Bowlby, 1980;
Bretherton and Munholland, 2008) and structure their approach and expectations about nonparental
relationships (Bowlby, 1980; Bretherton, 1990). Children whose caregivers are available and respon-
sive, as compared to those who are not, are expected to develop positive expectations about others and
be better equipped to apply relationship principles such as reciprocity (Elicker, Englund, and Sroufe,
1992/2016).
Attachment as a Precursor of Peer Competence

A key tenet of attachment theory is that security in the parent–child relationship shapes the form and
quality of children’s later relationships. It also has been argued that these consequences are expressed
most powerfully in children’s relationships with peers (Groh et al., 2014, Groh, Fearon, van IJzen-
doorn, Bakermans-Kranenburg, and Roisman, 2017).
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Initial support for this proposition was reported by investigators who examined the peer relation-
ships of both younger and older children (Ladd and Pettit, 2002). Investigators have evaluated this
proposition via meta-analyses of evidence from numerous studies conducted over substantial time
periods (Groh et al., 2014, 2017; Schneider, Atkinson, and Tardif, 2001). In one of the first such meta-
analyses, Schneider et al. (2001) examined 63 studies and concluded that a modest association existed
between parent–child attachment status and children’s peer relationships. The average estimated effect
size (ES) was 0.20, although a stronger overall effect was found for children’s relationships with friends
as opposed to nonfriends. These researchers concluded that attachment was only one of many factors
that may influence children’s peer relationships and that researchers should evaluate the relative and
combined contributions of multiple family factors (e.g., parenting styles, disciplinary strategies, family
stressors) to children’s peer relationships.
In other meta-analyses, Groh and colleagues (2014, 2017) examined data from 80 samples and drew
finer distinctions among both attachment predictors and the criteria used to evaluate potential attach-
ment outcomes. Groh and colleagues examined specific attachment status subtypes (e.g., avoidant,
resistant, disorganized) as predictors and, for criteria, differentiated between children’s functioning with
peers (e.g., social competence) and indicators of child psychopathology (e.g., internalizing and exter-
nalizing problems). Parent–child attachment security was more closely linked with positive features of
children’s peer relationships than with early indicators of psychopathology. Attachment insecurity, in
contrast, was associated with lesser peer competence, and this result was found to be invariant across
attachment insecurity subtypes. The direction and strength of these links, moreover, were relatively
constant across age, suggesting that attachment may have enduring effects on children’s ties with peers.
Working Models and Relationship Representations

The premise that attachment influences children’s working models of relationships has been investi-
gated largely by examining links between attachment status and the development of children’s relation-
ship representations, including those formed about peers. Some investigators have examined whether
children’s representations of their parent–child relationships generalize to peers (Rudolph, Hammen,
and Burge, 1995). Cassidy, Kirsh, Scolton, and Parke (1996), for example, found that children who
tended to see their parents as rejecting were more likely to ascribe hostile intentions to familiar and
unfamiliar peers. Others have argued that the children’s attachment histories should be manifested in
the beliefs they form about their competence at joining and maintaining peer relationships. Consistent
with this premise, Thompson and colleagues found that securely attached children possessed better
social problem-solving skills (Raikes and Thompson, 2008), greater emotional understanding (Raikes
and Thompson, 2006), and more advanced levels of conscience (Thompson, Laible, and Ontai, 2003).
Conversely, insecure attachment has been linked with less adaptive peer beliefs and representations.
Young children who had resistant and avoidant attachment histories, for example, make more negative
attributions about peers and peers’ motives (Cassidy et al., 1996; Raikes and Thompson, 2008).
Attachment to Mothers, Fathers, or Both Parents

The Schneider et al. (2001) meta-analysis supported the conclusion that linkages between father–
child attachment and children’s competence with peers were not substantially different in magnitude
from associations found for mother–child attachment. However, few studies included in the meta-
analysis included both mothers and fathers. Nonetheless, subsequent evidence has tended to support
and extend this contention. Diener, Isabella, Behunin and Wong (2008), for example, found that a
secure attachment with either parent correlated positively with elementary aged children’s perceptions
of their social competence, and children who had secure ties with both parents were more competent
with peers than those who had only one secure tie.
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Child Gender and Other Moderators

It has been theorized that parent–child attachment is of greater consequence for boys’ social develop-
ment (e.g., Cohn, 1990), and some investigators have found that boys with insecure attachments devel-
oped externalizing problems (Fearon, Bakermans-Kranenburg, van IJzendoorn, Lapsley, and Roisman,
2010). However, findings from the Schneider et al. (2001) meta-analysis failed to support a gender
difference hypotheses, and in Groh et al.’s (2014) analysis of 80 samples, child gender did not emerge
as a significant moderator of the relation between attachment security and children’s peer competence.
In other moderators, it has been proposed that certain risks have the potential to strengthen or weaken
the effects of early attachment security on children’s social development (see Belsky and Fearon, 2002;
DeKlyen and Greenberg, 2008). Investigated risk factors include poverty or low socioeconomic status
(SES), fetal exposure to teratogens, and child psychopathology. Few, however, have found that these risk
factors—when examined singly—consistently moderate the relation between children’s attachment
security and their functioning among peers. In the Groh et al. meta-analyses (2014, 2017), for example,
tests of moderated relations involving these factors were found to be nonsignificant. However, there
is some evidence to suggest that combinations of these risk factors (multiple risks) disrupt the linkage
between attachment and peer competence. Belsky and Fearon (2002) found that insecure-avoidant
infants became less socially competent when they had been exposed to multiple contextual risks.
In sum, evidence from meta-analyses supports two of attachment theory’s main premises: attach-
ment security fosters children’s peer competence, and insecure ties cause social difficulties. Further,
these findings, along with longitudinal studies linking infant attachment security to adult attachment
styles (Fraley, Roisman, Booth-LaForce, Owen, and Holland, 2013) and security with romantic part-
ners in adulthood (Roisman, Collins, Sroufe, and Egeland, 2005), suggest that the benefits of early
attachment security persist across the life span (Bornstein, 2014). Progress has also provided better
answers to the question of whether child characteristics, such as temperament, underlie and account
for relations observed between attachment and children’s social functioning among peers. Groh and
colleagues (2014, 2017), in an analysis of 80 samples gathered across five decades, found only weak
associations between children’s attachment security and their temperament.
The premise that such outcomes are mediated by the child’s internal working model of relation-
ships (Bretherton and Munholland, 2008) continues to receive support (Groh et al., 2017), but is in
need of further substantiation. Although more attention has been devoted to father–child attachment,
the number of studies in which investigators have examined this relation as a predictor of children’s
functioning among peers remains small. Other potential mediators of the attachment–peer compe-
tence relation warrant investigation as well, including neurological mechanisms and children’s emo-
tion regulation (Groh et al., 2017). Aspects of the child’s social context might also serve as mediators,
including caregiving continuity, children’s involvement in social networks, or the emotional support
children receive in peer contexts (e.g., Bost, Vaughn, Washington, Cielinski, and Bradbard, 1998;
Booth, Rubin, and Rose-Krasnor, 1998; Groh et al., 2017).
Childrearing Styles, Parenting Behavior,

and Parent–Child Interaction
Childrearing Styles
Early research on childrearing styles was guided by efforts to delineate the role of parental warmth and
control on children’s social development (Baumrind, 1973; Maccoby, 2015). Constructs such as paren-
tal warmth (e.g., parental responsiveness) and parental control (e.g., parental demandingness) were used
to describe types of childrearing styles: authoritarian (i.e., low warmth; high control), authoritative (i.e.,
warm and responsive; age-appropriate demands), permissive (i.e., highly responsive; low control), and
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indifferent-uninvolved (i.e., low in warmth and control). Results from this body of research revealed that
children with authoritarian parents tended to exhibit poor social competencies in their peer interac-
tions (e.g., difficulty initiating positive interactions, hostility, and decreased empathy; Fagot, 1997). In
contrast, those whose parents used a more authoritative style evidenced greater social competence
(e.g., more mature, assertive, confident; Baumrind, 1973).
Researchers have since expanded descriptions of parenting styles beyond the relative interac-
tions of warmth and control. For example, authoritarian parenting styles include characteristics such
as hostility, coerciveness, and dominance (e.g., strict rules reinforced with little warmth), whereas
authoritative styles encompass supportiveness and involvement in addition to warmth, closeness, and
age-appropriate demands and control (e.g., Robinson, Mandleco, Olsen, and Hart, 2001). Further,
permissive parenting may include excessive attention to children’s requests (irrespective of the reason-
ableness of the request), along with allowing a high degree of self-regulation and conflict avoidance
(e.g., Xu, Farver, and Zhang, 2009).
In support of these conceptualizations, Robinson et al. (2001) developed and evaluated a 62-item
Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ) and found that the items reliably fac-
tored into three dimensions of parenting consistent with Baumrind’s typology. Specifically, items
reflecting warmth, involvement, reasoning/induction, democratic participation, and good nature/
easy-going loaded on a factor consistent with authoritative parenting, whereas items reflecting
verbal hostility, corporal punishment, directiveness, and nonreasoning/punitive strategies loaded
onto an authoritarian factor. Last, permissiveness included parenting behaviors such as lack of
follow-through and ignoring misbehavior. The factor structure of the PSDQ has been replicated
in many studies, including those conducted in Turkey (Altay and Güre, 2012) and Spain (Pascual-
Sagastizabal et al., 2014).
Studies using the PSDQ have found that authoritative parenting behaviors are associated posi-
tively with social competence, whereas authoritarian behaviors—and to a lesser extent permissive
parenting—are linked to more aggressive or disruptive behaviors with peers. For example, in their
study of 300 mothers and their preschoolers, Altay and Güre (2012) found that children of authorita-
tive mothers showed more prosocial behaviors than those whose mothers had a more permissive style.
In addition, Pascual-Sagastizabal and colleagues (2014) found that both mothers’ and fathers’ authori-
tarian parenting styles were positively correlated with their 8-year-old children’s physical aggression.
In addition, maternal permissiveness was associated with girls’ use of physical and relational aggression.
Girls with more authoritarian fathers also evidenced greater relational aggression. Children who have
more authoritarian parents also tend to be more disruptive in their play with peers and less active than
agemates whose parents were less authoritarian (Gagnon et al., 2014).
It has been posited that parenting styles influence the development of aggression via modeling neg-
ative social behavior and poor emotional control as well as conveying behavioral rules that condone
aggression (Lorber and Egeland, 2011). Moreover, coercive and controlling authoritarian parenting
not only provides a model for such behavior, but it likely provokes children’s hostility while simul-
taneously establishing a rigid structure that hinders their ability to exercise self-control and resolve
conflicts using positive social skills (Casas et al., 2006).
Despite continuing efforts to categorize parents as authoritarian, authoritative, or permissive,
research suggests that parenting typologies are not as robust as originally conceptualized (Maccoby,
2015). Moreover, investigators argue that trait conceptualizations of parenting diminish the com-
plexity of childrearing by assuming that parents utilize the same set of behaviors with each of their
children and across all interactions and contexts (e.g., whether in public or private, or in play or quiet
time). Further, this dimensional approach seems to ignore the bidirectional influence between par-
ents and their children, such that parents adjust their childrearing strategies to meet the demands of
the specific situation, including the child’s age and maturity level, temperament, emotional state or
behavior (e.g., nature of the infraction), and their present parenting goals (Bornstein, 2015; Grusec and
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Goodnow, 1994). Thus, researchers have called for a more nuanced conceptualization of parenting and
parenting behaviors (Bornstein, 2015).
Some researchers have addressed the limitations of studying global parenting styles by exploring
distinct aspects of parenting behaviors that may promote or hinder the development of children’s
social competencies. The identification of specific parenting behaviors, they argue, is necessary for
developing programs (e.g., social-emotional learning, bullying prevention/intervention) to improve
children’s social competences outside the school context (Lereya, Samara, and Wolke, 2013). Some
investigators also shy away from global typologies because they have found that specific features of
parenting may have different interpretations cross-culturally. For example, in their sample of Korean
families, Rohner and Pettegill (1985) found that, rather than being an indicator of an authoritarian
style, parental control was positively associated with warmth and negatively with feelings of rejection
or neglect. Thus, there is a general movement away from studying global typologies to examining the
role of specific parenting behaviors in the development of social competence.
Parenting Behaviors
The movement to studying specific parenting behaviors has led to the “unpacking” of global par-
enting styles. For example, investigators examining specific features of authoritative parenting have
focused on parental behaviors, such as warmth and supportiveness (Davidov and Grusec, 2006; Clark
and Ladd, 2000; Swanson, Valiente, Lemery-Chalfant, and O’Brien, 2011), emotional and linguistic
responsiveness (Black and Logan, 1995), mutually responsive parenting (e.g., coordinated routines,
harmonious communication, mutual cooperation), and limit setting (Chae and Lee, 2011; Kochanska,
Boldt, Kim, Yoon, and Philibert, 2015; Lengua, Honorado, and Bush, 2007). Findings from this body
of research have shown that parental positive engagement, warmth and responsiveness are associated
with positive peer relationships (Castro-Schilo et al., 2013; Clark and Ladd, 2000; Lengua et al., 2007;
Rispoli, McGoey, Koziol, and Schreiber, 2013) and appropriate emotional expressiveness and regula-
tion (Davidov and Grusec, 2006). Similarly, Lengua and colleagues (2007) found that maternal limit
setting (e.g., clear and consistent follow-through with directives, such as modulating child affect or
behavior) and scaffolding during play interactions predicted increases in children’s effortful control.
Moreover, longitudinal research shows that responsive and supportive parenting is associated with the
development of social competencies from infancy into early childhood (Rispoli et al., 2013), as well as
into early and late adolescence (Valiente, Lemery-Chalfant, and Swanson, 2009). For example, in their
study of over 10,700 mothers and their 9-month-old infants, Rispoli et al. (2013) found that parental
responsiveness at 9 months and parental emotional supportiveness in preschool predicted social com-
petence in kindergarten.
Specific positive parenting behaviors may also protect children from being bullied in school (Lereya
et al., 2013). For example, in their meta-analyses of almost 300 studies conducted between 1970 and
2012, Lereya et al. (2013) concluded that children and youth who experienced positive parenting,
including authoritative parenting; good parent–child communication; parental warmth and affection;
and parental involvement, support, and supervision, were less likely to be either a victim or a bully/
victim. Moreover, in general, victims and bully/victims tend to experience more maladaptive parent-
ing practices, such as abuse and neglect. Although it was noted that the effects of poor or negative
parenting tended to be stronger for bully(aggressive)/victims than nonaggressive victims, findings
support the contention that victimized children do not receive the same level of positive (e.g., warm,
involved, supportive) parenting that nonvictims experience.
Further, parental supportiveness continues to be important well through adolescence (Swanson
et al., 2011) and into young adulthood (Moilanen and Manuel, 2017). In a study of 240 predomi-
nantly Mexican-American 10- to 14-year-old youth, Swanson et al. (2011) found that adolescents
whose parents endorsed supportive strategies, such as comforting them and trying to understand them
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when they are scared or upset, evidenced greater ego resilience and engagement coping. In other
words, such adolescents recovered more quickly (“bounced back”) from stressful or bad experiences
and were more likely to cope adaptively with social stressors. In contrast, youth with controlling par-
ents (who do not allow their children to get angry with them; believe criticism helps their offspring
improve) exhibited lower levels of ego resilience.
In addition, Moilanen and Manuel (2017) studied the effects of parental acceptance, psychological
control, and firm (behavioral) control on young adults’ (18- to 24-year-olds) interpersonal compe-
tence (e.g., initiation, disclosure, emotional support, conflict resolution). They found that perceived
parental acceptance was positively correlated with competence with both same-sex friends and
romantic partners. Differential effects were found for psychological and behavioral control, such that
psychological control was negatively associated with same-sex peer competence, whereas behavioral
control was negatively related to romantic partner competence. However, neither forms of control
were predictive of competence after controlling for acceptance, suggesting that young adults who feel
accepted and supported by their parents are more likely to feel efficacious in their adult peer relation-
ships. Together these findings offer evidence that parental warmth and supportiveness are important
for the development of social competence from preschool through early adulthood, whether by mod-
eling appropriate behaviors and social skills or providing the maturing offspring with age-appropriate
expectations and autonomy as well as an accepting, safe, engaging, and supportive environment.
Researchers investigating specific behaviors associated with authoritarian parenting have found
that harsh control, coerciveness, directiveness, hostility/rejection, and intrusiveness (domineering) have
shown robust links with poor social competence (Rispoli et al., 2013), including aggressive tenden-
cies (Hart, Nelson, Robinson, Olsen, and McNeilly-Choque, 1998) and risk for bullying and peer
victimization (Lereya et al., 2013). For example, Shin and Kim (2008) reported that parental neglect/
rejection increased Korean preschoolers’ (4- and 5-year-olds) risk for being victimized by peers. In
addition, Rispoli et al. (2013) found that observed parental negativity when interacting with their
children at 2 years was directly related to poorer socioemotional skills and behavioral functioning
when their children entered kindergarten. Further, this link was mediated by increases in children’s
negativity.
In a study examining the relative contributions of parental hostility and psychological control (e.g.,
behavioral and emotional intrusiveness) on adolescents’ friendship competence, Cook and Fletcher
(2012) reported that only parental psychological control was associated with later friendship difficul-
ties. They speculated that adolescents may be especially susceptible to the negative effects of psycho-
logical control because it disrupts their increasing need for autonomy and independence.
In sum, studies that examine specific parenting behaviors have revealed more nuanced links
between parenting and children’s social competence than when considering global typologies. For
example, researchers have found that specific negative parenting behaviors differentially predict boys’
and girls’ risk for peer victimization such that, coercive emotional control (intrusiveness) and lack of
responsiveness are correlated with peer victimization in girls, but maternal overprotectiveness is asso-
ciated with peer victimization among boys (Finnegan, Hodges, and Perry, 1998; Ladd and Ladd, 1998;
Olweus, 1993). Moreover, when mothers’ and fathers’ negative parenting have been compared, results
suggest that fathers’ harshness has a stronger influence on children’s aggressiveness toward peers than
does mothers’ harshness (Casas et al., 2006; Chang, Schwartz, Dodge, and McBride-Chang, 2003).
Parent–Child Interactions
It has been argued that both the quantity (e.g., “shared time”; Lam, McHale, and Crouter, 2012) and
quality of the parent–child relationship influence the development of social competence, presum-
ably by providing opportunities for parental coaching and modeling as well as by setting the stage
for mutual responsiveness and receptivity (Bugental and Grusec, 2006; Laible and Thompson, 2007).
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For example, in terms of mere quantity of time spent together, father–child shared time appears to
be influential on youth social competence—even more so than time spent with mothers. Specifically,
Lam and colleagues (2012) found that youth who spent more time with fathers self-reported higher
levels of social competence (e.g., found it easy to make friends); however, no such relation was found
for shared time with mothers. It was speculated that when fathers spend time with their offspring,
it is more likely to involve leisure or playful (e.g., joking, roughhousing) activities. Thus, peer-like
egalitarian interactions with fathers may be particularly conducive to modeling social behaviors, and
thus predictive of youth social development. However, the quality of the interactions with fathers was
not assessed in their study; thus, such speculations remain to be empirically tested.
Studies focusing on the quality of parent–child interactions have found that parent–child dyads
characterized by connectedness (Clark and Ladd, 2000), synchrony (Skuban, Shaw, Gardner, Sup-
plee, and Nichols, 2006), and mutual responsiveness (Kochanska, Aksan, Prisco, and Adams, 2008)
are associated with children’s greater peer competence. Moreover, in a study comparing the effects
of maternal behavior to qualities of the parent–child interaction, researchers found that synchrony is
a stronger predictor of social competence than maternal warmth (Mize and Pettit, 1997). It appears
that synchrony in the form of shared positive affect is especially important to adolescents’ prosocial
behavior (Lindsey, Colwell, Frabutt, Chambers, and MacKinon-Lewis, 2008).
Although studies of the overall quality of the parent–child interaction have been productive, they
nevertheless fall short of explicating how each participant contributes to the nature of the relation-
ship. In other words, parent–child interactions are bidirectional and dynamic, such that both parent
and child mutually influence one another and the social environment (Kucznksi, 2003; Russell, 2011;
Sameroff, 2009). For example, studies have shown that parents of shy children tend to respond to their
shyness with overprotectiveness or overly controlling behaviors to manage situations they perceive
may be distressing to the shy child (Coplan, Arbeau, and Armer, 2008; Miller, Tserakhava, and Miller,
2011). Consequently, children may learn they are not able to handle socially challenging situations
on their own and may further withdraw. Miller et al. (2011) found that for girls, but not for boys,
psychologically controlling parenting exacerbated the link between shyness and exclusion. Additional
support for bidirectional influences can be culled from studies indicating that harsh or coercive par-
enting predicts children’s aggressive behavior (Pascual-Sagastizabal et al., 2014) and that temperamen-
tally based child behaviors, such as irritability, hyperactivity, or negative emotional reactivity, tend to
elicit harsh parenting (Kent and Pepler, 2003).
Investigators contend that some parenting behaviors (e.g., responsiveness) may have differential
effects on children’s social behavior depending on their temperament (“differential susceptibility
hypothesis”; Kochanska et al., 2015; Stright, Gallagher, and Kelley, 2008). For example, Spinrad and
Stifter (2006) found that maternal responsiveness was more predictive of prosocial behavior for infants
who were prone to anger than for those who were not. Specifically, whereas maternal unresponsive-
ness predicted less prosocial behavior for highly anger-prone infants, high responsiveness was associ-
ated with greater prosocial behavior for such infants. Kim and Kochanska (2012) reported similar
findings. Specifically, they found that highly emotionally negative infants are more affected by differ-
ences in positive mutually responsive parenting than their non-negative counterparts, such that when
exposed to optimal mutually positive parenting, highly emotional negative infants had better develop-
mental outcomes than did infants not prone to negative emotionality. Stright and colleagues (2008)
also reported that high-quality parenting (i.e., maternal sensitivity, positive regard, low intrusiveness)
had a stronger influence on first-grade social competence for children who had been identified as
temperamentally difficult as infants than those who had not been identified as difficult as infants.
Moreover, recent studies reveal a bidirectional influence such that sensitive parenting not only
promotes children’s prosocial competence (Davidov and Grusec, 2006), but kind, compassionate, and
helpful children tend to evoke more sensitive and warm parenting (adolescence: Carlo, Mestre, Sam-
per, Tur, and Armenta, 2011; middle childhood: Newton, Laible, Carlo, and Steele, 2014). Conversely,
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antisocial behaviors tend to develop within the context of difficult parent–child interactions, such that
harsh parenting is linked to children’s externalizing behaviors, which in turn may elicit even harsher
parenting (Patterson, 2002). Similar bidirectional links have been found between maternal depression
and children’s externalizing problems (Gross, Shaw, and Moilanen, 2008).
Contexts are especially important to consider when investigating the role of parenting in children’s
social development. Three contexts in particular seem to be particularly relevant: (1) parent–child
conflict or disputes, (2) parent–child play, and (3) expressions and discussions of emotions. For exam-
ple, evidence suggests that children’s conflict resolution skills may develop within the context of dis-
putes with parents. Herrera and Dunn (1997) found individual differences in the way mothers argue
with children when minor disputes occur, such that children of mothers who use other-oriented
reasoning during arguments were more likely to develop constructive ways to manage conflicts with
a friend than were children whose mothers tended to focus on their own needs during such disputes.
As play skills have long been recognized as important competencies in children’s social repertoires
(Jack et al., 1934; Ladd, 2005; Page, 1936), it is not surprising that parent–child play would have spe-
cial significance as a context for the development of social competence (Attili, Vermigli, and Roazzi,
2010; Gagnon et al., 2014; Tamis-LeMonda, Užgiris, and Bornstein, 2002). That is, parent–child play
is a highly relevant context for acquiring critical social skills, including cooperation, sharing, turn-
taking, good sportsmanship, and the like. For example, researchers have shown that parental success
at eliciting their offspring’s positive affect during play increased children’s ability to understand and
interpret peers’ emotional expressions during play (MacDonald, 1987). In turn, children’s ability to
read and display emotional cues are associated with greater social competence in peer interactions and
acceptance by peers (MacDonald, 1987; Parke et al., 1989). In the context of play, parents can adopt an
interactional role that is more “horizontal” and offers an amenable environment for practicing skills
needed to be successful in the peer domain.
Parental engagement and affect during parent–child play is linked with children’s peer compe-
tence. Attili et al. (2010) observed 34 children twice during ten-minute free play sessions—once
with mothers and then with fathers. The absolute frequency of six behaviors—neutral conversation,
positive (approving, encouraging), negative (threatening, criticizing), controlling (forbidding, com-
manding), correcting, and disconfirming (ignoring, noncontingent response)—were recorded for each
participant (mother to child, father to child, child to mother, and child to father). Preliminary support
for the hypothesis that interaction patterns are learned at home and transfer to school were found.
Specifically, maternal negative overtures and parental (both maternal and paternal) disconfirming
behavior were negatively correlated with their children’s prosociality. Moreover, parental disconfirm-
ing was positively correlated with children’s aggression. Comparing sociometrically derived (i.e., liked
most/liked least nominations) popular, rejected, and average groups, popular children had less con-
trolling parents and more positive mothers than rejected and average children, and positive behaviors
were observed more frequently for mothers of popular and average children than rejected classmates.
Popular children were also themselves less negative and controlling toward their mothers than rejected
or average children, whereas rejected children displayed more disconfirming interactions with their
mothers. In sum, more socially successful children (e.g., prosocial, well-liked, less aggressive) experi-
ence more positive maternal behaviors and fewer negative and disconfirming parental ones.
Others have also found that the quality of parent–child play is associated with children’s compe-
tence with peers. For example, Lindsey, Mize, and Pettit (1997) found that parent–child mutuality in
play (i.e., a relative balance in parents’ and children’s rates of initiating play) was associated with peer
acceptance and teacher-rated social skills. Moreover, sex-differentiated patterns have been found such
that mothers’ play behaviors are more strongly linked with their daughters’ competence, whereas
fathers’ play behaviors were linked more strongly with their sons’ competence (Lindsey and Mize,
2000), suggesting that children are attending more to their same-gender parent for models of gender
normative social behavior.
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Parent–child interactions within the context of emotion socialization also offer an avenue for
examining the development of social competence. Emotions are an inherent part of social interactions
and challenge even the most socially competent; that is, children must be aware of their own emotions
and how to manage and express them, and they must be able to discern, navigate, and respond to those
of others. Thus, how parents handle their own emotions provides children with models of behavior
(for better or worse). Moreover, how parents respond to their children’s emotions can serve as oppor-
tunities for coaching or discussion of relevant social skills. For example, the emotional climate of the
home, such as mothers’ emotional regulation and expression, plays a critical role in how children learn
to understand and control their own emotions. Specifically, maternal expressions of positive affect
have been found to associate positively with children’s social competence (Eisenberg et al., 2003),
whereas children whose mothers have difficulty regulating negative affect tend to be less socially
competent (e.g., they exhibit deficits in their abilities to identify negative emotions and use emotion
word labels; Raver and Spagnola, 2003). Green and Baker (2011) found that parental expressions of
positive affect were differentially associated with social skills depending on characteristics of the child,
such that they were positively associated among typically developing children, but not for children
with intellectual disabilities (ID). They speculated that children with ID may not be able to discern
subtle forms of positive emotions and instead may need to be exposed to more obvious expressions of
positive affect to benefit from it.
In addition, mothers’ responsiveness to children’s emotional expressions has been linked to chil-
dren’s social competence (Root and Rubin, 2010). In general, parents tend to reinforce and encourage
positive emotion displays while discouraging and regulating negative ones. Moreover, when parents
respond to children’s emotions in supportive and comforting ways, children tend to exhibit more
socially and emotionally mature skills. However, children of parents who dismiss, discredit, minimize,
or punish their emotions tend to lack the ability to express and regulate their emotions in a socially
competent manner (Root and Rubin, 2010). It is argued that mothers’ responsiveness to children’s
distress provides behavioral models as well as opportunities for children to practice managing their
own and others’ distress (Brophy-Herb et al., 2010; Davidov and Grusec, 2006). Such findings are not
just limited to mothers; rather, it appears that the affective tone of father–child interactions may be
important too. Children exhibiting more reciprocated negative affect during play with fathers elicit
higher levels of negative reciprocity in peer interactions (Fagot, 1997) and tend to be avoidant, aggres-
sive, and less prosocial toward peers (Carson and Parke, 1996).
Researchers are increasingly applying dynamic systems frameworks to the study of children’s social
development (Barnett, Gustafsson, Deng, Mills-Koonce, and Cox, 2012). Investigators adopting this
approach consider the complex interplay among multiple domains that influence children’s social
competence that are both internal (e.g., language, socioemotional skills) and external (e.g., parenting)
to the child. For example, children’s social competence is closely tied with their emotional under-
standing as well as their receptive and expressive language skills—both of which are positively linked
to sensitive and responsive parenting (Barnett et al., 2012; Lengua et al., 2007; Pungello, Iruka, Dot-
terer, Mills-Koonce, and Reznick, 2009).
There is some support for the dynamic systems perspective such that sensitive parenting not only
encourages and promotes more advanced language and social skills, but children who are more socially
and linguistically competent elicit positive parenting—presumably because these children are easy to
get along with, cooperative, and engage in more positive verbal exchanges (Barnett et al., 2012). For
example, Bornstein, Hendricks, Haynes, and Painter (2007) found that 20-month-old children who
have larger expressive categories were more attentive (sensitive) to their mothers. Moreover, their moth-
ers were rated as more sensitive than the mothers of toddlers with smaller vocabularies. Further, as their
children’s expressive vocabularies increased, these mothers became even more sensitive toward them.
Barnett and colleagues (2012) directly tested a dynamic systems model of the interrelations among
sensitive parenting, expressive and receptive language development, and social competence in a sample
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of socioeconomically and ethnically diverse mother–child pairs. Data were collected during ten-
minute free play sessions when children were 12, 24, and 36 months. Sensitive parenting including
sensitivity toward child as well as positive regard, animation, stimulation of cognitive development,
and (reverse scored) detachment/disengaged. Although findings failed to reveal cross-domain (i.e.,
language and social competence) interactions over time, support was found for a transactional model
of parent–child influence. Specifically, sensitive parenting at 12 months was positively associated with
language and social competence at 24 months, and children’s social competence at 24 months pre-
dicted increases in sensitive parenting at 36 months. Better receptive language skills at 24 months also
predicted increases in mothers’ sensitive parenting—but only for boys and not for expressive language.
This link may be due to more variability in boys’ language development during this period; further
research is still needed to disentangle the dynamic relation among parenting, language development,
and social competence.
In sum, among the trends that have characterized advances in research on childrearing styles, par-
enting behavior, and parent–child interaction are moving away from frameworks in which parent-
ing is construed in terms of broad, trait-like typologies (e.g., stable parenting styles) toward models
that emphasized specific parenting features, behaviors, and interaction patterns. Included in this
progression is a propensity to replace unidimensional, unidirectional conceptions of socialization
in the family (e.g., parent or parenting effects) with perspectives that broaden the unit of analysis
to include more of the family context (e.g., the parent–child dyad, family as a social system) and
potential modes of influence (e.g., reciprocal, bidirectional, transactional patterns of influence). Not
surprisingly, these trends have expanded the purview of research on family socialization beyond the
study of parents (e.g., the study of mothers and mothering, in particular) to incorporate constructs
such as parent–child interaction patterns and mother–child, father–child, and mother–father–child
relationships.
Parental Discipline
Over the years, those who have studied parents’ disciplinary styles have focused on both assertion and
induction as strategies for reducing undesirable behaviors and promoting desirable ones (Altschul, Lee,
and Gershoff, 2016; Ferguson, 2013; Gershoff, 2013). Assertive discipline involves actions such as the
use of verbal commands and physical power to discourage unwanted behavior and includes behaviors
such as spanking a child on the bottom with an open hand (Gershoff, 2013) and corporal punishment
(e.g., striking the face, hitting with an object, shaking, pushing; Ferguson, 2013). In contrast, inductive
discipline emphasizes verbal instructions or reasoning for why behavior should be changed (Altschul
et al., 2016) and is aimed at encouraging prosocial and moral actions.
Assertive Discipline
Despite society’s enduring beliefs that assertive discipline, such as spanking and corporal punishment,
is effective at promoting children’s positive behavior (Taylor, Hamvas, Rice, Newman, and DeJong,
2011; Vittrup and Holden, 2010), researchers tend to agree that there is ample evidence showing
that neither spanking nor corporal punishment promotes positive social behavior or moral character
(Baumrind and Thompson, 2002; Gershoff, 2013). Rather, any existing debate among researchers
is not about whether such strategies are effective at promoting children’s social development, but
whether such strategies are actually harmful (Baumrind, Larzelere, and Cowan, 2002; Gershoff, 2013).
That is, not only is assertive discipline ineffective at reducing undesirable behavior but most research
consistently links assertive discipline to adverse outcomes, such as increases in aggression and antisocial
behavior (Gromoske and Maguire-Jack, 2012; Gershoff, Lansford, Sexton, Davis-Kean, and Sameroff,
2012).
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Further, restrictive and harsh disciplinary styles are linked with children’s peer problems. For
instance, Pettit and colleagues showed that maternal restrictiveness is correlated with lower levels of
peer acceptance and social skill and higher levels of aggressive behavior (Pettit, Dodge, and Brown,
1988). Similarly, McFadyen-Ketchum, Bates, Dodge, and Pettit (1996) found that, among boys, the
combination of maternal coercion and nonaffection predicted gains in aggressiveness over the early
grade school years. Among girls, however, only coercion predicted changes in aggressiveness over time,
and the direction of this trajectory was negative (declining) suggesting that these parenting processes
differentially affected girls’ and boys’ behavior. However, other than these sex differences, linkages
between harsh discipline and antisocial behavior appear to be independent of confounds such as
family SES and child temperament (Weiss, Dodge, Bates, and Pettit, 1992). It is argued that discipline
that includes aggression (e.g., hitting/spanking, yelling) increases antisocial behavior because it models
aggression, interferes with internalization of appropriate behavior, and fails to convey why particular
behaviors are wrong (Gershoff, 2013).
Moreover, it is contended that harsh parenting is linked to the development of maladaptive pro-
cessing patterns that transfer from the home environment to peer contexts (Pettit et al., 1988). For
example, research has shown that the antisocial behaviors (e.g., aggression, fighting, noncompliance)
children learn from coercive parent–child interactions generalize to interactions with peers (Patterson,
Reid, and Dishion, 1992), including the use of power-assertive tactics (Dishion, 1990; Hart, DeWolf,
Wozniak, and Hurts, 1992). Additionally, harsh and unpredictable discipline may result in social with-
drawal, such that children may learn to disengage from situations that they perceive as uncontrollable.
Likewise, intrusive, psychologically controlling forms of parental discipline may also put children at
risk for poor peer relationships. Barber (1996), for example, found that parental controlling behav-
iors that are thought to undermine children’s autonomy and confidence, such as denigration, guilt
induction, and shaming, predict higher levels of delinquent behavior as well as higher levels of anxiety,
depression, and associated internalizing problems.
Inductive Discipline
Hart and colleagues (Hart et al., 1992) have worked from a model in which the effects of parental
disciplinary styles are seen as affecting the child’s outcome expectations for peer interactions, includ-
ing those involving conflicts. According to this perspective, parents who employ inductive discipline
strategies teach children about interpersonal outcomes, whereas parents who rely on power-assertive
techniques draw children’s attention to control and compliance themes and thereby encourage them
to develop outcome expectations that are more instrumental in nature (i.e., focused on achieving or
satisfying one’s own needs). Hart, Ladd, and Burleson (1990) reported findings consistent with this
contention in that children whose parents relied on power-assertive disciplinary strategies exhibited a
higher incidence of instrumental rather than relational interaction strategies and are less accepted by
their peers. However, it remains to be shown that inductive discipline increases children’s prosocial
behavior or peer relationships.
In one of the few studies undertaken to examine the relative effects of spanking and parental
warmth on changes in children’s aggression and social competence, Altschul et al. (2016) followed
children from age 3 to age 5 and observed their interactions with mothers. Results revealed that
spanking at age 3 predicted increases in child aggression but was not associated with changes in social
competence. In contrast, maternal warmth predicted increases in social competence over the same
time period, but no relation was found for aggression. Moreover, findings were not due to lower levels
of warmth among mothers who spanked their children; that is, mothers who reported higher levels of
spanking were not rated by observers as any less warm in their parent–child interactions. This finding
replicated other studies showing that children who are spanked evidence higher levels of aggression
even when mothers are high in warmth (Lee, Altschul, and Gershoff, 2013). Whereas parental warmth
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models positive interactions that promote social competence, spanking models aggression as an appro-
priate way of interacting socially and handling interpersonal problems.
In sum, findings are consistent with the hypothesis that inductive disciplinary styles focus children
on the interpersonal consequences of their misdeeds and thereby encourage them to learn social prin-
ciples that guide expectations and beliefs about how their behaviors might affect peer interactions and
relationships. In addition, research supports the tenet that when parents engage in coercive disciplinary
interactions, children tend to escalate oppositional behaviors (e.g., aggressiveness) and become skilled
at perpetuating “coercive” cycles of interaction. Such patterns may then generalize to the peer group,
such that children who initially learn coercive behavior patterns in disciplinary encounters with par-
ents re-create them in their peer culture as a means of resolving conflicts with peers, or as a means
through which to obtain desired outcomes.
Parental Stress, Marital Discord, and Divorce

Parental stress, discord, and disruption have been singled out by researchers as family processes that are
particularly likely to diminish children’s social competence and impair their peer relationships. Key
assumptions in this area of investigation are that these processes create stress in the rearing environ-
ment and degrade parenting quality, both of which negatively affect children’s social development.
Parental Stress
Parents’ exposure to stressors, whether located outside or inside the family, has been linked with a
variety of negative child outcomes (Ladd and Pettit, 2002). There is a large body of evidence that links
a broad range of parental stressors with diverse aspects of children’s social behavior and peer relation-
ships, including social withdrawal, acting out, aggression, social incompetence, antisocial behavior,
and peer rejection (e.g., Garmezy, Masten, and Tellegen, 1984). Consideration here is limited to those
forms of parental stress that can be conceptualized as occurring within the family environment and
that stem from the demands or difficulties of being a parent (Anthony et al., 2005). For example, daily
hassles (i.e., everyday irritants and problems; see Crnic and Low, 2002) can be considered one such
type of parenting stress. Patterson (1983) found that daily hassles predict maternal irritable behavior
during parent–child interactions, which in turn, predict children’s use of aggression. Similarly, data
gathered by Crnic and Greenberg (1990) revealed that hassles associated with parenting correlate with
more frequent child behavior problems and lower levels of social competence.
Other studies have been guided by the premise that parenting stress arises when there is a less-than-
optimal fit between the parent’s and child’s characteristics and when childrearing imposes restrictions
on parents’ activities and social supports. In one such study, conducted with preschoolers, Anthony
et al. (2005) found that stressors of this type were negatively correlated with young children’s social
competence. In another study, Neece and Baker (2008) gathered data on parenting stress, followed
two types of children longitudinally (i.e., those with and without intellectual disabilities), and assessed
children’s social skills at ages 6 and 8. Stress levels were found to be higher in parents whose children
had poorer social skills, and these findings were stronger at age 8, when the complexity of children’s
peer relationships increased. Results were not specific to children with intellectual disabilities, but
moderation effects suggested that parents of such children were more stressed, perhaps because they
faced greater childrearing demands.
Divorce and Marital Discord

Evidence suggests that both divorce and marital discord harm children’s overall psychological health
and social functioning (Cummings, Iannotti, and Zahn-Waxler, 1985; Grych and Fincham, 1990;
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Long, Forehand, Fauber, and Brody, 1987). In one of the earliest studies of its kind, Hetherington,
Cox, and Cox (1979) followed children for two years after their parents were divorced and found
that, compared to boys from stable households, those from divorced families were more hostile and
aggressive in peer interactions and more disliked by peers. Girls from divorced families, in contrast,
did not differ from their stable-family counterparts in peer competence or liking. Long et al. (1987)
found that adolescent boys and girls from divorced households reported significantly lower perceived
social competence.
An analogous but growing collection of findings has emerged from research on marital discord.
Results from a longitudinal study in which grade-schoolers were followed into preadolescence (Kou-
ros, Cummings, and Davies, 2010) showed that children who were exposed to interparental conflict
tended to develop externalizing problems which, in turn, led to lower levels of prosocial behavior and
social difficulties with peers. Similar findings were obtained in a longitudinal study of marital aggres-
sion (Finger, Eiden, Edwards, Leonard, and Kachadourian, 2010) where investigators examined both
mothers’ and fathers’ aggression as predictors of children’s social competence during early childhood.
Children whose parents fought more aggressively evidenced lower levels of peer competence by the
time they entered kindergarten.
Evidence from other investigations substantiates these longitudinal findings and links aspects of
marital discord to a range of peer behavioral and relationship problems. Children who were exposed
to parental conflict, marital discord, or marital violence have been found to have lower levels of empa-
thy (Margolin, Gordis, and Oliver, 2004), trouble getting along with friends (Katz and Gottman, 1993),
higher levels of aggressiveness toward peers (Jouriles, Barling, and O’Leary, 1987), and poorer peer
relationships overall (Katz and Gottman, 1993; McCloskey and Stuewig, 2001; Stocker and Young-
blade, 1999). Even marital dissatisfaction, rather than overt conflict, has been linked with poor peer
relationships in younger children (Cookston, Harrist, and Ainslie, 2003).
In contrast, higher marital quality has been linked with children’s social competence. Gallagher,
Huth-Bocks, and Schmitt (2015) found that school-age children whose mothers reported higher lev-
els of martial quality were more likely to be prosocial toward peers and refrain from negative behav-
iors. Likewise, in a study conducted with adolescents, investigators found that youth who perceived
their parents’ marriage positively evidenced higher levels of prosocial behavior (Markiewicz, Doyle,
and Brendgen, 2001).
Potential mediating and moderating pathways between marital discord and children’s social devel-
opment have been proposed and, increasingly, investigated. Gottman and Katz (1989) hypothesized
that children exposed to marital discord would exhibit higher levels of negative affect and less mature
play styles with peers and that these relations would be mediated, in part, by parenting styles. It was
proposed that couples who were maritally distressed would tend to utilize unresponsive and permis-
sive parenting styles and that children would respond with noncompliant behavior, less mature play,
and negative interactions with peers. Although these mediated pathways have not been fully explored,
investigators have found that children who are exposed to conflictual marital relationships tend to be
more oppositional in their peer interactions and less successful at forming friendships (Buehler and
Gerard, 2002; Katz and Gottman, 1993; Katz and Woodin, 2002; Parker and Herrera, 1996).
Another mediated model was advanced by Cummings and colleagues (Cummings and Davies, 2002;
Davies and Woitach, 2008). These researchers proposed that the form of emotional security that exists
in the parent–child relationship, or attachment style, mediates the impact of the marital relationship on
children’s social competence and functioning. Support for this mediational hypothesis has begun to
accrue. For example, Lindsey, Caldera and Tankersley (2009) found that although preschoolers exposed
to marital conflict played less positively and more negatively with peers, these relations were mediated
by parent–child attachment relationship and varied with the sex of the parent. Whereas mother–child
attachment security partially mediated the link between marital conflict and children’s positive peer
play, father–child attachment fully mediated the association between conflict and negative peer play.
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Findings also point to other aspects of parenting and the parent–child relationship that might
function as potential mediators of the effects of marital discord. Gallagher et al. (2015) reported that
mothers’ positive caregiving mediated the relation between martial quality and children’s social com-
petence with peers. Suggestive also are findings from studies that point to other aspects of parenting
that vary as a function of marital discord. In one such study, Sturge-Apple, Davies, and Cummings
(2006) found that mothers were less available emotionally to children when they were experiencing
marital withdrawal. In another study, Cummings, Keller, and Davies, P. T. (2005) determined that par-
ent discipline and parenting practices suffered when they were exposed to marital conflict. Although
neither of these disruptions in parenting was examined as mediators, it may be productive to explore
these and other alterations in parenting within future studies of children’s social relationships.
Moderating hypotheses have been advanced as well (Frosch and Manglesdorf, 2001; Kaczynski,
Lindahl, Malik, and Laurenceau, 2006), the most prominent of which is that secure parent–child
attachment can offset the negative effect that marital conflict is likely to have on children’s peer rela-
tionships. This hypothesis remains underinvestigated, and preliminary evidence has been mixed. One
team reported evidence of mediation plus partial moderation (El-Sheikh and Elmore-Staton, 2004),
and another found evidence of mediation but not moderation (Lucas-Thompson and Clarke-Stewart,
2007).
Inquiry into these aspects of parenting remains active, and findings largely have been consistent
with the premise that parental stress, discord, and disruption reduce children’s social competence, pro-
mote maladaptive behaviors, and interfere with the formation of healthy peer relationships. Efforts to
study processes responsible for the observed linkages have begun to shed light on important media-
tors and moderators, including features of the child’s relationship with parents (e.g., attachment status,
positive caregiving) and changes in parenting styles and quality.
Family Pathology
In this section, the potential effects of parental disorders on children’s peer competence are consid-
ered. Disorders such as depression and child abuse (for reviews see Cicchetti, Lynch, Shonk, and
Manly, 2016; Downey and Coyne, 1990; Zahn-Waxler, Denham, Iannotti, and Cummings, 2016) have
received the most empirical attention and thus serve as focal points for our review.
Parental Depression
Maternal depression has been studied more extensively than paternal depression, and this disorder has
been linked to various social difficulties in children (see Zahn-Waxler, Duggal, and Gruber, 2002).
Data from several longitudinal studies indicate that maternal depression, measured early in children’s
lives, predicts children’s antisocial and aggressive behavior during the early school years (Ashman,
Dawson, and Panagiotides, 2008; Hippwell, Murray, Ducournau, and Stein, 2005; Kim-Cohen, Mof-
fitt, Taylor, Pawlby, and Caspi, 2005). Although less well substantiated, maternal depression also has
been linked with children’s shyness and withdrawn behavior (Weintraub, Prinz, and Neale, 1978).
Zahn-Waxler, Cummings, McKnew, and Radke-Yarrow (1984), for example, showed that children of
manic-depressive parents had more difficulty maintaining peer interactions and controlling aggressive
behavior and exhibited lower levels of prosocial behavior.
Support has also been found for the premise that maternal depression interferes with children’s peer
relationships and social competence. Ashman et al. (2008) found that mothers who were depressed
early in children’s lives tended to have children who were less socially competent around the time they
entered formal schooling. Other longitudinal findings show that early-occurring maternal depression
correlates negatively with children’s later peer acceptance (at age 5; Maughan, Cicchetti, Toth, and
Rogosch, 2007).
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In one of the rare cases where investigators studied both maternal and paternal depression (Cum-
mings, Keller, and Davies, 2005), important gender differences were found in that maternal depression
was linked with peer exclusion for girls but not boys. Paternal depression, in contrast, was negatively
associated with boys’ but not girls’ prosocial behavior.
Child Abuse
In the peer context, investigators have found that abused children display a variety of social deficits,
many of which are known to predict relationship difficulties with peers. In research conducted with
grade-schoolers in summer camp settings, Alink, Cicchetti, Kim, and Rogosch (2012) found that
maltreated children exhibited an array of deficits, including lower prosocial behavior, higher aggres-
sive behavior, and elevated withdrawn behavior. Particularly problematic may be maltreated children’s
propensity to respond to peers’ overtures or initiations with aggressive or withdrawn behavior. Evi-
dence suggests that, compared to nonabused children, those who have experienced abuse are more
likely to aggress against peers (Howes and Eldredge, 1985; Howes and Espinosa, 1985; Main and
George, 1985) or withdraw from peers’ friendly overtures (George and Main, 1979). Abused children
seem particularly likely to use instrumental aggression (i.e., aggression performed as a means toward
and end; George and Main, 1979; Haskett and Kistner, 1991) or verbal aggression (Troy and Sroufe,
1987) with peers.
Children’s competence with agemates has been shown to vary with the timing, form, and severity
of parental maltreatment. Bolger, Patterson, and Kupersmidt (1998) found that children who were
emotionally maltreated, especially early in development, appeared to have difficulty forming friend-
ships. In families where children were physically abused, especially chronically so, children appeared
to form close friendships but had difficulty maintaining them over time. In contrast, parental neglect
was associated with children’s social isolation, or infrequent contact with peers. Even more important,
however, was the duration of maltreatment. The chronicity of maltreatment was found to predict peer
dysfunction independent of the type of abuse.
Other studies suggest that abusive family conditions are linked with another form of child abuse—
victimization at the hands of peers (Mohr, 2006; Shin and Kim, 2008). Schwartz, Dodge, Pettit, and
Bates (1997), for example, found that aggressive male victims had family histories that included physi-
cal harm by family members, harsh disciplinary styles, and exposure to violence between adults in
the home.
A number of propositions have been advanced to explain how parental abuse affects the quality of
children’s peer relationships. One is that maltreated children develop forms of behavioral and emo-
tional dysregulation that impair their relationships with peers. In a longitudinal study conducted with
maltreated school-age children, Kim and Cicchetti (2010) found that poorer emotion regulation was
associated with externalizing problems that, in turn, predicted eventual rejection by peers. This pat-
tern of relations was especially evident for children who had experienced neglect as well as physical
or sexual abuse.
Other, less well investigated contentions are that physical abuse lowers children’s self-esteem,
which, in turn, motivates compensatory reactions, such as seeking enmeshed ties with friends who
are expected to affirm their worth (Bolger et al., 1998), and abusive parental relationships cause chil-
dren to develop aberrant “working models” (e.g., dysfunctional relationship schemes, self-perceptions;
Belsky and Vondra, 1989) that cause children to mistrust peers and degrade their social competence
(Cicchetti et al., 2016).
More recently, investigators have begun to consider biologic, including genetic and endocrine-
related agents, such as cortisol, as either causes or moderators of maltreated children’s social difficul-
ties and eventual risk for psychopathology. It has been established that dysregulated cortisol levels (a
stress-related hormone) are associated not only with maltreatment (Gunnar and Quevedo, 2007) but
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also with peer rejection (Gunnar, Sebanc, Tout, Donzella, and van Dulmen, 2003). Alink et al. (2012)
have proposed that maltreated children’s dysregulated cortisol may, in part, be attributable to the types
of social difficulties these children experience, including problematic peer relationships. Longitudinal
data gathered by these investigators provided some support for this hypothesis, in that children’s social
difficulties emerged as a partial mediator of maltreatment’s association with later cortisol regulation.
In sum, parental depression and, particularly child maltreatment, represent aspects of family pathol-
ogy that remain at the forefront of scientific inquiry. A growing body of evidence indicates that paren-
tal depression is inversely related to children’s social competence, but the mechanisms that account for
this relation still are not well understood. Several causal pathways have been proposed (Zahn-Waxler
et al., 1984, 2016), and all warrant further empirical scrutiny, including the possibilities that (1) chil-
dren adopt the depressed parent’s negative emotions; (2) depressed parents withdraw, creating insecure
attachments; (3) children’s interactions with depressed parents cause them to develop learned helpless-
ness; (4) depression is biologically transmitted; and (5) depression impairs parents’ childrearing styles.
Greater progress has been achieved at documenting maltreatment’s likely consequences for chil-
dren’s social development and at examining both transmission processes (i.e., mediators) and condi-
tions that are likely exacerbate versus buffer the effects of abuse (e.g., moderators). Novel avenues of
investigation include investigators’ efforts to specify and document the role of biologic agents (e.g.,
genetics, endocrine processes) as mediators or moderators of maltreatment.
Direct Parental Influences

It has been proposed that parents “manage” various aspects of their children’s social lives whether they
intend to or not and, as a heuristic tool, parents’ management behaviors have been classified into four
“roles”: parent as designer, as mediator, as supervisor, and as advisor or consultant (Ladd and Pettit,
2002). Each of these roles is considered here, as is the possibility that parents engage in multiple forms
of management simultaneously or contingently.
Parent as Designer
Parents act as designers when they seek to control or influence the settings in which children meet and
interact with peers. As designers, parents may influence children’s access to peers through their choice
of neighborhoods, schools, childcare or after-school care arrangements, and community activities.
Choice of Neighborhood
Neighborhoods, unless dangerous or bereft of families, provide places (e.g., yards, playgrounds) for
children to meet and interact with peers (Bradley, 2002). Children have more peer contacts and larger
peer networks in densely populated as opposed to as rural neighborhoods (Medrich, Roizen, Rubin,
and Buckley, 1982; van Vliet, 1981) and in safer as compared to dangerous neighborhoods (Cochran
and Riley, 1988).
Neighborhood features also have been linked with adolescents’ social competence and peer rela-
tionships. Caughy et al.(2012) found that neighborhood physical disorder (e.g., presence of graffiti,
litter, abandoned vehicles) correlated negatively with adolescents’ social competence, and neighbor-
hood economic disadvantage (i.e., poverty) was linked with adolescents’ social aggression. In contrast,
adolescents were less socially aggressive when their neighborhoods exhibited greater social capital
(e.g., positive ties among residents; care and protection of youth and property). These associations
were partly mediated by family process or structural variables. The association between neighborhood
economic disadvantage and adolescents’ social aggression, for example, was entirely mediated by lower
levels of family cohesion. Mothers’ nurturance, in part, accounted for the link between neighborhood
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physical disorder and adolescents’ social competence. These results imply that the neighborhood’s role
in creating social advantages or disadvantages for adolescents may, in part, stem from the impact it has
on their families.
Choice of Childcare and Early Schooling

Higher-quality preschool environments have been linked with gains in peer sociability (Finkelstein,
Dent, Gallagher, and Ramey, 1978) and the development of stable friendships (Howes, 1988) more so
than have lower-quality programs (Vandell, Henderson, and Wilson, 1988). The benefits of preschool
experience also appear to vary with the stability of children’s enrollment and the consistency of their
playmates. Mueller and Brenner (1977) found that boys who became familiar with their playmates
developed more sophisticated play skills than boys who did not. Similarly, Howes (1988) found that
children who entered preschool at earlier ages and remained in stable contexts developed more sophis-
ticated play skills and had less difficulty with peers.
The potential benefits of preschool are also illustrated in studies of children’s adjustment to grade
school. Ladd and Price (1987) found that preschoolers’ prosocial skills predicted their peer acceptance in
kindergarten. Further, Ladd (1990) discovered that children who maintained friendships across the tran-
sition from preschool to kindergarten tended to develop more favorable attitudes toward grade school.
After-School Care Arrangements

When investigating nonparental care, researchers have tended to focus on children’s level of involve-
ment in differing arrangements, or on program quality and time use within particular arrangements.
Pettit, Laird, Bates, and Dodge (1997) found that higher self-care (i.e., without adult supervision) in
grades 1 and 3 was associated with lower teacher-rated peer competence with peers in grade 6. These
relationships were significant after controlling for kindergarten peer competence and SES, and were
consistent with prior findings (e.g., Steinberg, 1986).
How children spend their after-school hours also has implications for their peer relationships and
competence. Pierce, Hamm, and Vandell (1999) found that the flexibility of after-school programs was
positively related to boys’ social skills, and Posner and Vandell (1994) reported that school-age chil-
dren’s antisocial behavior increased in self-care arrangements but decreased in formal, adult-supervised
arrangements. Similarly, Pettit, Laird, Bates, Dodge, and Criss (2001) found that adolescents’ unsu-
pervised peer contact was associated with externalizing behavior problems, but only when parental
monitoring was low and preexisting behavior problems were high. These findings suggest that devel-
opmentally appropriate, adult-supervised after-school experiences foster children’s social competence.
Participation in Community and After-School Activities

Evidence indicates that children’s use of peer-oriented community settings (e.g., parks, libraries, pools)
and community activities (e.g., clubs, scouting, sports) is associated with their social competence
(Bryant, 1985; Ladd and Price, 1987). Similarly, school-age children’s participation in extracurricular
activities (e.g., scouts, music lessons, organized sports) has been linked with social and school adjust-
ment (Eccles and Barber, 1999). McDowell and Parke (2009) examined the number of children’s
after-school activities and the frequency of their peer interactions in their neighborhoods and found
that a composite of these measures positively predicted children’s social competence one year later.
Thus, available evidence concurs with the premise that parents who “design” children’s physical
and social surroundings are creating opportunities for children to meet and engage in constructive
activities with agemates. Such activities may become an important staging area for the development
of social skills, peer relationships, and interpersonal competence.
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Parent as Mediator
Parents function as mediators (Ladd and Pettit, 2002) when they create opportunities for children to
meet, interact, and form relationships with peers. Often the mediator role takes the form of helping
children meet peers, arrange “play dates,” and build a social network.
Initiating Informal Peer Contacts

Ladd and Golter (1988) found that children whose parents initiated peer contacts, as compared to
those who did not, had a larger number of playmates and more consistent play companions in their
preschool peer networks. After the transition to kindergarten, boys from these same families tended to
become better liked by their classmates, suggesting that boys benefited more than girls from this form
of parental management. In another study, Ladd and Hart (1992) found that parents who performed
more initiations had children who displayed more prosocial behavior and less nonsocial behavior at
school. Similarly, Krappman (1986) found that grade-schoolers whose parents took an active role in
arranging and organizing their peer relationships developed more harmonious ties with peers.
By late preschool, it appears that parents share the responsibility for arranging informal peer con-
tacts with their children. Bhavnagri and Parke (1991) and Ladd and Hart (1992) found that older as
compared to younger preschoolers initiated more of their own play dates, and Bhavnagri and Parke
(1991) found that older preschoolers also received a larger number of play overtures from peers. Fur-
ther, parents who involved children in the process of arranging informal play activities tended to have
children who initiated more of their own play dates (Ladd and Hart, 1992). Some parents, it would
appear, do more than simply arrange play activities—they also scaffold the interpersonal skills children
need to manage their own peer activities.
Sponsoring or Involving Children in Informal Play Groups

There is some evidence to suggest that parents’ sponsorship of informal play groups improves chil-
dren’s social competence. Lieberman (1977) assessed preschoolers’ experience in informal peer groups
and found that this experience correlated positively with their social competence in laboratory play
sessions. Other findings (Ladd, Hart, Wadsworth, and Golter, 1988) suggest that the relation between
children’s play group experience and their social competence was more closely linked for preschoolers
than for toddlers.
In sum, more is known about some aspects of parental mediation (e.g., parental initiation of infor-
mal peer contacts) than others. Further research is needed to clarify when children profit from this
type of parental assistance and how parental mediation affects specific forms of child competence (e.g.,
prosocial skills, friendship formation).
Parent as Supervisor
Supervision is defined as parents’ efforts to oversee and regulate children’s interactions, activities, and
relationships with peers. Thus far, researchers have drawn distinctions between the parent’s involve-
ment and participation in children’s peer interactions as a means of identifying three basic types of
supervision: interactive intervention, directive intervention, and monitoring.
Interactive Intervention
Lollis, Ross, and Tate (2016) defined interactive intervention as the parent’s attempts to proactively
supervise children’s peer interactions from within the play context (e.g., as active play participants) and
argued that this style of supervision benefits the social novice. Bhavnagri and Parke (1991) compared
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toddlers’ social skills when mothers were present to facilitate peer play and when children played alone
with a peer. They found that toddlers’ skills were more advanced when mothers were present to guide
them and that mothers’ skillfulness as supervisors correlated positively with toddlers’ competence.
Similarly, Lollis (1990) observed child–peer interactions during brief separations from their moth-
ers after they had first participated in a play group where mothers were discouraged from providing
interactive supervision, or in a group in which mothers were encouraged to interact with children.
After their mother’s departure, children in the interactive intervention condition were less distressed
and spent more time playing with peers. Bhavnagri and Parke (1991) extended these findings by
showing that fathers and mothers were equally effective as supervisors and that toddlers benefited
more from parents’ interventions than did preschoolers.
In summary, parents’ interactive interventions appear to facilitate children’s competence at initiat-
ing and maintaining peer interactions. As participants in children’s play, parents are in a position to
“scaffold” even the most basic aspects of social interaction, such as maintaining children’s interest
in peers, shaping overtures toward peers, or preventing conflicts. Younger more than older children
appear to derive greater benefit from this form of supervision.
Directive Intervention
Parents who utilize this form of supervision typically operate from outside the context of children’s
play (e.g., as observers, not participants) and intervene only sporadically in children’s interactions. Lol-
lis and colleagues (2016) conceptualized directive interventions as reactive rather than proactive forms
of supervision that parents use to address children’s social difficulties.
Levitt, Weber, Clark, and McDonnell (1985) examined mothers’ directive interventions and tod-
dlers’ sharing behavior in situations where toddlers could monopolize or share toys with an unfamiliar
peer. Mothers were told not to intervene until their child had played with the toys for several min-
utes, and then only if the child had not spontaneously shared with the peer. Children did not share
toys prior to maternal intervention, but those who did in response to their mothers’ prompts were
more likely to receive similar bids from peers. Ross, Tesla, Kenyon, and Lollis (1991) observed pairs
of unfamiliar toddlers during play sessions in which mothers were encouraged to supervise but not
participate in children’s play. Mothers’ intervened primarily to deflect conflicts and directed overtures
more to their child than the playmate.
Research on directive intervention has also been conducted with older preschool samples. Finnie
and Russell (1988) paired children with differing peer reputations (e.g., popular, unpopular, average)
with average-status partners for play sessions and asked mothers to supervise (intervene) the children’s
play. Mothers of low-status children were more likely to avoid the supervisory role and, compared to
mothers of high-status children, less likely to implement interventions that might improve the quality
of children’s play. Using a telephone-log methodology, Ladd and Golter (1988) found that children
whose parents typically used directive interventions tended to develop higher levels of peer acceptance
in kindergarten than those whose parents tended to rely on interactive interventions. Based on these
findings, Mize and Ladd (1990) speculated that, whereas interactive supervision may benefit toddlers,
it might interfere with preschoolers’ ability to develop autonomous and self-regulated play skills.
Monitoring
Monitoring refers to parents’ knowledge or awareness of children’s whereabouts or activities. In stud-
ies conducted with children, researchers have assumed that parents are close enough to children’s social
lives to assess their peer activities directly (e.g., through observation; talks with teachers, siblings, etc.).
Those who study adolescents, in contrast, see parents as having less access to their offspring’s peer
activities because those activities typically occur outside the parents’ purview. With this age group,
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therefore, monitoring tends to be construed as a process in which parents gather information about
peer activities from the adolescent (see Kerr and Stattin, 2000).
In studies with children, researchers have found that lesser maternal monitoring correlates nega-
tively with peer acceptance (e.g., Baker, Barthelemy, and Kurdek, 1993; Dishion and McMahon, 1998)
and that higher maternal monitoring correlates positively with the quality of children’s friendships.
Simpkins and Parke (2002), for example, found that monitoring correlated negatively with friend-
ship conflict and, for girls, correlated positively with favorable friendship qualities. Lesser monitoring
has also been linked with conduct problems, particularly in boys (Crouter, MacDermid, McHale, and
Perry-Jenkins, 1990).
Other evidence suggests that the relation between parental monitoring and children’s competence
is moderated by contextual factors, such as neighborhood safety (Coley and Hoffman, 1996). In
high-crime neighborhoods, children with lower social skills tend to be monitored more closely than
children who exhibit higher levels of competence.
In studies with adolescents, parental monitoring has been differentially construed and measured
(see Brown and Bakken, 2011; Fletcher, Steinberg, and Williams-Wheeler, 2004; Stattin and Kerr,
2000), and indices include “knowledge” (e.g., information parents obtain from adolescents) and
“monitoring” (e.g., adolescents’ estimates of parents’ monitoring). Whether these measures tap similar
dimensions remains a matter of debate because a number of factors (e.g., parents’ parenting styles, sex
of parent, sex of adolescent, lying by adolescents; see Brown and Bakken, 2011) have been linked with
the quality and accuracy of adolescent monitoring data.
In studies where monitoring has been defined as parental information seeking and knowledge,
evidence shows that fluctuations in monitoring are linked with changes in adolescents’ deviant
behaviors (e.g., Laird, Criss, Pettit, Bates, and Dodge, 2009; Reitz, Prinzie, Dekovic, and Buist, 2007;
Tilton-Weaver and Galambos, 2003). However, there has been some variability in the consistency
and direction of the reported relations. Tilton-Weaver and Galambos (2003), for example, found that
parents were more likely to seek information about adolescents’ peer activities when adolescents had
problematic friendships or engaged in deviant behaviors. These investigators concluded that parents
tended to react to adolescents’ deviant behaviors by increasing their monitoring of youth social
activities. In contrast, Dishion, Nelson, and Bullock (2004) found that when adolescents engaged in
deviant friendships, their parents were less likely to monitor their activities. In this study, however, a
single item was used to index parental monitoring, and this measure was combined with measures
of other, related parental behaviors.
Kerr and Stattin (2000) collected questionnaire data from Swedish 14-year-olds and their parents
and obtained information about parents’ solicitation of information, parents’ implementation of con-
trols and restrictions, and teens’ disclosure of information. The latter was most strongly associated with
parents’ “knowledge” and the teens’ adjustment. Of particular interest was the finding that only child
disclosure was associated with teens’ reports of deviant friendships (i.e., teens with deviant friends
were less disclosing).
Additional findings reported by Stattin and Kerr (2000) showed that active parental solicitation
of information—a strategy expected to underpin parental awareness and knowledge—was associated
with adolescent maladjustment once child disclosure had been controlled. This finding suggests that
parents’ efforts to extract information from teens about their activities and companions may have
the unintended result of encouraging their involvement in antisocial activities. It also is possible, of
course, that parents who engaged in high levels of solicitation did so, at least in part, because their teens
exhibited adjustment problems.
As was found for children, parents’ monitoring of adolescents has been linked with peer accep-
tance. Dishion (1990) assessed several aspects of parental monitoring, including whether the adoles-
cents’ activities were supervised by parents, the adolescents’ perceptions of parents’ supervisory rules,
and time parents and adolescents spent together on a daily basis. Analyses of a composite formed
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from these measures revealed that in two separate cohorts monitoring correlated positively with peer
acceptance.
Rules
Parents typically use rules to guide or control youth behavior in contexts where adults are absent.
Thus, rules can be construed as an indirect form of supervision. Simpkins and Parke (2002) examined
three rule types (i.e., peer behavior, supervision, and restriction rules) and found that differences in
mothers’ rule use were associated with preadolescents’ social competence. Mothers who reported
more supervision rules (i.e., rules about play permission and whereabouts) had sons who tended to be
more prosocial. Peer rules (i.e., rules either prohibiting negative or encouraging positive play behav-
iors), in contrast, were reported more often by mothers of shy boys and aggressive girls.
Although available evidence points to age-related differences in parents’ supervisory behaviors,
additional longitudinal investigations are needed to clarify this relation. As in research on monitoring,
the question of whether the impetus for parents’ supervisory behaviors lies in the parent or the child
(or both) deserves further empirical scrutiny.
Parent as Advisor and Consultant

Parents act as advisors (Ladd and Pettit, 2002) or guides (Mounts, 2011) when they provide children
with guidance about peers or peer relationships. Advising can occur when peers are present, but for
older children, it often occurs in the absence of peers (e.g., after school, in the car, etc.). Lollis et al.
(2016) referred to this type of management as “decontextualized discussion.” Such conversations may
be proactive or reactive in nature—that is, aimed at preparing children for future challenges or focused
on past or present peer experiences.
Consulting, in contrast, refers to problem-solving discussions (Ladd and Pettit, 2002) and tends
to be more instructional in nature (Mounts, 2011). Parents may be relatively didactic, such as giving
“expert” advice or solutions to peer problems, or they may serve as a “sounding board” by listening to
children’s concerns or solutions (Kucznksi, 1984). Consulting may be parent- or child-initiated, but
often occurs in response to a problem that the child is experiencing.
Advisor or Guide
Cohen (1989) found that parental advice correlated positively with adaptive interpersonal outcomes
for third- through sixth-grade children, especially when it was administered by supportive, nonin-
terfering mothers. In contrast, advice given by either intrusive or disengaged mothers was associated
with children’s interpersonal difficulties, such as social withdrawal. In a subsequent study, Russell and
Finnie (1990) first asked mothers to advise their child before she or he played with unfamiliar peers,
and after mothers observed the session, they asked how else mothers might have advised their child.
Mothers’ advice varied with children’s status in their preschool peer groups. Post-play data showed
that mothers of popular and neglected children, as compared to mothers of peer-rejected children,
were more likely to give advice that was contingent on their child’s actual play behavior.
Using telephone logs, Laird, Pettit, Mize, Brown, and Lindsey (1994) found that half of sampled
mothers reported discussing peer relationships with their child on an every-other-day basis and indi-
cated that these conversations tended to be initiated by the child and were more common between
mothers and daughters than between mothers and sons. A subsample of the participating mothers
and children was also observed in a laboratory play situation, and in this context, conversations about
children’s emotions and problem-solving were the most common forms of guidance, and these discus-
sions often centered on relationship issues. Children’s peer competence correlated positively with the
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frequency of mothers’ advice, even after controlling for other features of the parent–child relationship
(e.g., maternal involvement, support).
Contrary to these findings, however, McDowell, Parke, and Wang (2003) found that two features of
parents’ advice giving—higher quantity and quality—correlated negatively with third-graders’ social
competence. The investigators noted that advice can be administered both proactively and reactively
and concluded that their findings fit the latter direction of effect. In a second study conducted with both
mothers and fathers McDowell and Parke (2009) obtained similar results with fourth-grade children.
With adolescents, researchers have tended to rely on youth perceptions of their parent’s advice giv-
ing and study the role of guidance in the selection and maintenance of peer associates. Although some
have studied this role to determine whether parents’ advisory activities are meant to discourage ado-
lescents’ contacts with risky or deviant peers (see Youniss, DeSantis, and Henderson, 1992), others have
sought to determine whether this aspect of parental mediation is related to adolescents’ social skills
and peer relationships. Mounts (2004), for example, found that parental guidance was associated with
positive qualities of adolescents’ friendships, and in a subsequent study (Mounts, 2011) reported that
this form of parental guidance was associated with adolescents’ assertiveness within peer relationships.
Consultant
Mize and Pettit (Mize and Pettit, 1997; Pettit and Mize, 1993) examined mothers’ social “coaching”
in relation to preschool-aged children’s social competence and peer relationships. Mothers and their
children watched videotaped vignettes depicting standard peer relationship conflicts and challenges,
and mothers’ coaching was scored in terms of mothers’ framing of the social events (e.g., suggesting
the child adopt a resilient, bounce-back attitude), the quality of the strategies mothers endorsed, and
the extent to which mothers helped the child to attend to relevant social cues. Mothers’ social coach-
ing predicted children’s peer acceptance and social skills independently of either nonsocial coaching
or mother–child interactional style.
Consulting, as a parental role, has also been examined with adolescents. Vernberg, Berry, Ewell, and
Abwender (1993) examined parents’ consultations with adolescents about forming new friendships
after a change in the family’s residence. Whereas parents saw themselves as “consulting,” adolescents
perceived parents as using direct forms of facilitation (i.e., “mediating” or trying to arrange friend-
ships). Estimates of the frequency of parents’ friendship-facilitation strategies predicted adolescents’
successes at making new friends and attaining certain friendship features (e.g., intimacy). Mounts
(2004) also found that parent consulting was related to the quality of adolescents’ friendships.
Tilton-Weaver and Galambos (2003) investigated three aspects of parents’ peer-related communi-
cations with adolescents (i.e., communicating preferences, disapproval, supporting friendships). Par-
ents were more likely to gather information and express disapproval about peer activities when they
saw their adolescents as engaging in deviant friendships or pursuing deviant activities.
Unfortunately, of all the processes that fall within the category of direct parental influences, the
linkages between parental advising and consulting and children’s peer competence have received the
least attention. Further investigation is needed to clarify how, when, and why parents act as interper-
sonal advisors with their children and to explicate how the frequency, form, and content of parental
consultation is related to youth social development.
Confluence of Direct Parental Influences

Especially during middle childhood or adolescence, it would appear that parents use a range of direct
parenting processes to facilitate children’s peer relationships (Vernberg et al., 1993). Yet even when
considered in this broader context, it may be the case that some forms of direct facilitation are better
for achieving certain socialization goals than are others (e.g., fostering friendships vs. mitigating peer
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influence). Illustrative of this point are the procedures used by Mounts (2000, 2011) to gather infor-
mation about three different types of parental management practices. In one study of ninth-graders
(Mounts, 2000), data were gathered on three types of peer management strategies, which were con-
ceptualized as guiding, monitoring, and prohibition. Concurrently, guiding was associated with lower
friend delinquency and drug use and higher GPAs and school attitudes, with prohibiting showing the
opposite pattern. Monitoring was essentially unrelated to these friend characteristics. Only guiding
predicted these same friend characteristics one year later, controlling for earlier friend characteristics.
In another study with seventh-graders, Mounts (2011) examined two forms of parental management:
guiding and consulting. In this case, higher levels of parental guidance were associated with specific
social skills, such as adolescents’ assertiveness within peer relationships.
McDowell and Parke (2009) also investigated multiple forms of direct social facilitation by gather-
ing data concurrently on parents’ advice giving and provision of opportunities for peer interaction.
The study was conducted with fourth-graders, and the findings showed that both forms of peer
management were independently related to children’s social competence. These findings implied that
parents engaged in two forms of peer management simultaneously and that each type of management
was positively and distinctly associated with children’s social competence.
Overall, research on direct parental influences indicates that sizable differences exist across families
in the extent and quality of parents’ management of children’s peer relationships. Much remains to
be learned about direct parental influences as possible antecedents and consequences of children’s
peer competence, the relative importance of differing direct influences for children’ social develop-
ment, and the extent to which direct influences co-occur or are contingent on other family processes
(e.g., indirect influences) and sociodemographic factors. In the sections that follow, we consider how
research on both direct and indirect parental influences might be elaborated and extended so as to
achieve a better understanding of the mechanisms that link the family and peer systems.
Family–Peer Relationships: Advances and Agendas

Although the parenting processes reviewed here were partitioned into indirect and direct linkages, it
is unlikely that these processes operate independently in real-world contexts. Yet with a few notable
exceptions, it would appear that researchers’ efforts to conceptualize and investigate these influences
have proceeded exactly along these lines; that is, researchers tend to examine indirect and direct link-
ages independently. The need to consider both indirect and direct linkages within the same study
provides a focal point for considering the discipline’s progress and future directions.
Indirect Parenting and Family Processes

The available evidence suggests that most, if not all, of the broader indirect parenting constructs
considered here, including aspects of parenting relationships, interactions, dynamics, disruptions, and
dysfunctions, are associated with children’s peer competence or relationships. However, within each of
these broader constructs, a range of mechanisms has been proposed to account for influences exerted
on children’s social competence and peer relationships. Multiple processes, for example, have been
proposed to explain how parent–child attachment affects children’s social development, including
attachment status (subtypes), the child’s emergent autonomy, and the child’s internal working model.
All of these processes are thought to have some bearing on child’s interpersonal actions and reactions
in the children’s peer relationships or friendships.
Although substantial progress has been made toward specifying mediating processes that corre-
spond to the broader indirect parenting dimensions, considerable work remains to explicate the nature
of these processes, their interrelations, and the conditions under which they are likely to transmit their
effects. Among the potential mediators that appear to deserve further attention are children’s internal
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working models and interpersonal schema, emotional and regulatory processes, self and peer percep-
tions, and biological underpinnings.
Moderators of indirect parenting processes also have also been studied, but we still know little
about the conditions that may strengthen or weaken the impact of indirect parenting processes. In
particular, investigative attention should be focused on factors such as differing parent or child charac-
teristics (e.g., age, gender, ethnicity, personality) and variations in rearing environments or conditions
(e.g., social class, cohort or generation, single-or two-parent, extended families, differences in parent’s
socialization objectives, ages, educational levels, etc.).
Direct Parenting Processes

Like the indirect constructs reviewed here, extant findings imply that most, if not all, of the direct
parenting constructs, including parents’ roles as designers, mediators, supervisors, and consultants,
are significantly related to children’s competence or relationships in the peer domain. Unlike their
indirect counterparts, however, it not as clear whether parents’ managerial roles are best conceptual-
ized as singular or unitary constructs and their effects understood as transmitted through mediators
or varying as a function of moderators. For some of the managerial roles (e.g., “designer”), it seems
unnecessary to posit underlying processes or intervening psychological constructs. For others, how-
ever, it might be quite reasonable to posit mediating or moderating factors. For example, when in the
mediator role, some parents not only enlist the child’s assistance when arranging play dates, but they
also encourage the child to act as host during home-play sessions (Ladd and Hart, 1992). In such cases,
it may be less the parent’s managerial role (i.e., sponsor of play dates) and more the processes they
invoke when enacting this role (e.g., asking children to initiate play dates, make necessary arrange-
ments, care for peers’ needs and preferences, etc.) that fosters children’s peer competencies. It may be
just as important to consider mediating or moderating variables for managerial roles in which parents
serve as relationship model, coach children, monitor their peer relationships, and so on.
Although some have speculated about processes that might underlie specific managerial functions,
much theoretical and empirical work remains. Potential candidates include parents’ peer histories (e.g.,
Putallaz, Costanzo, and Smith, 1991) and a host of other biopsychosocial factors that might underlie
parents’ motives, skills, and performance of peer management activities.
Confluence of Indirect and Direct Parental Influences

Another investigative task, given the scope and diversity of parenting processes that have been linked
with children’s social development, will be to (1) map the assortment of indirect and direct parenting
processes that regularly co-occur in the context of family life and (2) evaluate the relative importance
of co-occurring parenting processes in relation to specific dimensions of children’s social develop-
ment. Unfortunately, few models exist to guide researchers’ efforts to investigate these objectives, and
fewer still have been evaluated.
Multiple Indirect Parenting Processes

Conceptual models incorporating multiple indirect processes are noteworthy because they have pro-
duced discoveries. One is Gottman et al.’s (Gottman and Katz, 1989; Katz and Gottman, 1993) propo-
sition that martial discord’s effects are mediated through unresponsive and permissive parenting styles.
Another is Cummings and colleagues’ (Cummings and Davies, 2002; Davies and Woitach, 2008) pro-
posal that marital discord’s effects are mediated through attachment and the alternate hypothesis that
secure parent–child attachment offsets marital conflict’s adverse effects on children’s peer relationships
(Frosch and Manglesdorf, 2001; Kaczynski et al., 2006). In the future, a more complete exposition of
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the potentially complex relations among multiple indirect parenting processes might be achieved if
researchers investigated them within additive, mediated, or moderated explanatory models.
Multiple Direct Parenting Processes

Just as it is possible that many indirect family processes operate simultaneously or contingently, it is
likely that parents engage in multiple forms of direct social facilitation to influence their children’s
peer competence and relationships. Attempts to explore this possibility remain sparse, although some
progress has been achieved.
Here, illustrative paradigms include those developed by Mounts (2000, 2011) to simultaneously
investigate multiple types of parental management practices and by McDowell and Parke (2009), who
gathered data concurrently on parents’ advice giving and provision of peer interaction opportunities.
Results based on both of these paradigms revealed that parents simultaneously engaged in more than
one form of management, and each was distinctly associated with children’s social competence.
Multiple Indirect and Direct Parenting Processes

Efforts to examine both indirect and direct parenting processes in the same investigation are extremely
rare. A likely reason for this lacuna is that few models have been developed to guide researchers’
hypotheses about how constructs or constituent processes from each domain might operate jointly
or contingently.
McDowell and Parke’s (2009) strategy and findings represent an important step in this direction.
These investigators found that each of three forms of parenting (one indirect, two direct processes)
were independently (additively) related to children’s social competence, suggesting that not one, but
many, parenting processes contribute to children’s social competence. Clearly, it will be important for
researchers to study the confluence of multiple parenting processes if they wish to achieve a richer
understanding of how complex parenting environments contribute to children’s social development.
Direction of Effect
In an earlier appraisal of this area of investigation, Ladd and Pettit (2002) acknowledged the need to
consider the changing roles that parents and children play in each other’s lives and recommended that
researchers examine cyclical, transactional patterns of influence. The authors argued that shifts in the
direction of family–peer influences are likely and concluded that even though scientists had begun to
recognize more multifaceted and complex effect patterns, they had seldom investigated the transac-
tional nature of family–peer influence.
It would appear that this criticism is nearly as true today as it was more than a decade ago. Particu-
larly in the realm of model development, there is now greater consideration of complex causal path-
ways. However, these hypotheses have not always migrated into investigators’ research objectives and
designs. This is unfortunate because researchers have never been better equipped, methodologically
and analytically, to address these questions. Advances in longitudinal research design and data analyses
have made it possible to examine time-varying linkages between variables, alternate across-time vari-
able relations (e.g., cross-lagged contrasts), reciprocation, interdependence among growth trajectories,
and other data patterns that may help researchers corroborate or falsify premises about causal relations.
Conclusions
Evidence from several decades of investigation reveals that the qualities of the relationships that par-
ents develop with children are associated with the ties that children form with peers. Among other
features, secure, responsive, nonintrusive, playful parent–child relationships have been linked with
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children’s relational competence, whereas asynchronous, harsh, stressful, and disordered parent–child
and parent–parent interactions have been associated with children’s peer difficulties. These findings
are consistent with the conclusion that the parent–child relationships are, for children, the proving
ground for “learning what relationships are about” (e.g., relationship templates, expectations, etc.)
and for “learning how to do relationships” (e.g., acquire the relationship formation and maintenance
skills).
Also consistent with this premise are data indicating that conflictual, dysfunctional, and disrupted
parent–child relationships do not encourage children to develop healthy or adaptive relationship mod-
els and skills. Parental stress, marital discord, and divorce appear to impair children’s competence and
disrupt their peer relationships. Likewise, marital discord is linked with a range of maladaptive child
behaviors, including aggression and externalizing problems that can damage children’s peer relation-
ships. Even minor stressors (e.g., daily parenting hassles) appear to exact a toll on the parent–child
relationship and children’s relationships with peers.
The proposition that parents directly socialize children’s peer competence has also received con-
siderable support. Research on children’s social ecologies buttresses the argument that parents’ choice
of residence, neighborhood, and after-school activities shapes children’s opportunities to interact
with peers and develop peer competence and relationships. Further, it would appear that parents’
mediational, supervisory, and consulting activities promote several forms of peer competence and
relationships.
Still, much remains to be learned about the role that families play in the development of children’s
social competence. A large number of premises about how families influence children’s social devel-
opment has been proposed, and a host of family factors and associated mediating and moderating
variables has been implicated in the development of children’s social skills and peer relationships.
Many researchers are still engaged in model development, but few have expanded their paradigms to
incorporate multiple parenting constructs, mediators or moderators of parenting–peer linkages, and
opposing, transactional, or cyclical patterns.
Finally, determining biology’s role in children’s social development and understanding its contribu-
tions relative to socialization, and parenting processes in particular, remains an important objective.
This review, and much of parenting research in general, has been framed from the perspective that
families influence children’s social behavior and relationships. Accordingly, much of the accumulated
evidence has been interpreted from a socialization perspective and has perpetuated the view that (1)
the antecedents of peer competence can be found largely within the family and (2) that the parent-
ing processes that occur within this context are primarily responsible for their successes or difficulties
within the peer culture.
Such conclusions, however, must be tempered in light of theory and evidence about the biological
underpinnings of children’s behavior—the most basic of which is the child’s genotype. Although still
at an early stage, the study of gene–environment relations as it pertains to parenting and children’s
social development has produced some provocative findings. Caspi, McClay, Moffitt, Mill, Martin,
Craig, Taylor, and Poulton (2002) proposed that the effects of parental maltreatment on children
might be influenced by the child’s genetic susceptibility to that particular stressor. The investigators
chose to focus on the MAOA gene, which, as part of its function, breaks down various neurotrans-
mitters that have been implicated in the transmission and impact of stress. Their specific hypothesis
was that the activity level of the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene would moderate the effects of
maltreatment on children’s antisocial behavior, such that children with low-activity MAOA would
develop higher levels of antisocial behavior than those with high-activity MAOA. Findings showed
that the MAOA genotype moderated the link between child maltreatment and each of four forms
of antisocial behavior (i.e., conduct disorder, convictions for violent crimes, self-reported disposi-
tion toward violence, symptoms of antisocial personality disorder), all of which were measured in
adulthood.
304
Child rather than adult outcomes were examined in a subsequent study that was predicated on the
same hypothesis (Kim-Cohen, Caspi, Taylor, Williams, Newcombe, Craig, and Moffitt, 2006). This
investigation was conducted on 7-year-old boys, some of whom were maltreated. Four mental health
indices, including parent- and teacher-reported antisocial behavior, attention deficit hyperactivity,
and emotional problems, were assessed during childhood rather than in adulthood (i.e., proximate
to children’s maltreatment). As an overall measure of adjustment, the investigators created a mental
health composite by averaging scores from the four indices. Results paralleled the findings of Caspi
et al. (2002) in that abused boys with low-activity MAOA scored significantly lower on the mental
health composite than abused boys with high-activity MAOA. However, analyses of the individual
mental health variates showed that these differences were statistically significant on only one of the
four measures—the attention deficit hyperactivity criterion.
Although several other investigators have replicated these findings (see meta-analyses in Kim-
Cohen et al., 2006), principally by examining MAOA as a moderator of maltreatment’s link with
adult adjustment, some have not. Nikulina, Widom, and Brustowicz (2012), for example, did not
find that MAOA activity differences moderated the link between childhood abuse and three types of
adult mental health problems (i.e., dysthymia, major depressive disorder, and alcohol abuse). They did,
however, find evidence of this particular gene by environment interaction when they analyzed their
data by gender and ethnicity. These contrasts revealed that for females only, high-activity MAOA was
associated with greater risk for adult dysfunction (i.e., dysthymia only). Further, when analyzed by
ethnicity (i.e., whites vs. nonwhites), low-activity MAOA emerged as a protective factor for whites,
whereas high-activity MAOA was found to a protective factor for nonwhites. These findings dif-
fer from those reported by Caspi et al. (2002) and others by implying that the patterns of gene by
environment interactions, at least for MAOA’s role in buffering or exacerbating the effects of early
maltreatment, might vary depending on the participants’ gender, ethnicity, and type of dysfunction
examined.
Collectively, these findings represent important first steps toward understanding the roles that genes
play in the expression of human behavior, and the modulation of social experience in particular.
Along with the findings, the investigative strategies and methodologies attest to the complexity of
genetic research and underscore the challenges associated with explicating gene functions (singular
or in combinations), documenting gene variations (e.g., differences in activity levels), and detecting
and interpreting the effects of a specific gene across a spectrum of participant characteristics and ages.
As promising as these findings are, the database from which they have been gathered is not large,
and the scientific enterprise that has produced them is still young. At present, the observed genetic
effects do not appear large or consistent across variations in gender, ethnicity, or adjustment criteria.
Further, although this research begins to illuminate one pathway by which genes may influence the
outcomes of children’s socializing experiences (i.e., genetic susceptibility to an environmental stressor),
it does not speak to other pathways (i.e., genotype-environment correlations; rGE) that potentially
account for effects that have been attributed to parenting processes, including passive rGE, evocative
rGE, and niche seeking.
Further, the extant findings have not taught us much about the genetic underpinnings of children’s
social competence or peer relationships. Rather, the principal explanatory focus of genetic research has
been antisocial behavior and, to a lesser extent, children’s mental health problems. It might be argued
that antisocial behavior is a form of social incompetence, but those who have probed its genetic
contributions largely have measured adult forms of antisocial behavior, such as conduct problems,
violence, and criminality. In one of the few studies (Whelan, Kretschmer, and Barker, 2014) where
MAOA was examined as a moderator of maltreatment’s effects on a conceptually similar aspect of
children’s peer relationships (i.e., bullying behavior), the results proved to be nonsignificant (although
a marginal effect was found for victimization). Perhaps as human genomics research matures, stronger
and more pertinent findings will emerge.
305
There is much to be done to extend our understanding of parenting processes that are linked with
children’s peer competence and relationships and the mechanisms and effect patterns (i.e., media-
tion, moderation, causal priorities) responsible for them. As of yet, the discipline has not achieved a
stage where some frameworks or paradigms achieve prominence over others because they provide
the best fit with extant data patterns. Continued investigation, especially systematic evaluation of
competing perspectives, may show us that some of the parenting processes researchers have targeted
are more powerful explanatory variables than others, allowing us to narrow the search and concen-
trate our efforts on a few key linkages. These developments may also allow researchers to devise more
encompassing frameworks that represent variation in the conditions under which family processes are
most likely to affect children’s social competence and peer relationships. As researchers pursue these
conceptual and empirical refinements, they likely will spawn many new areas of investigation and,
undoubtedly, make a number of important empirical discoveries.
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PART II
Parents and Social Institutions

11
CHOOSING CHILDCARE
FOR YOUNG CHILDREN
Introduction
On the first day of her new part-time job, the 22-year-old mother woke up early, leav-
ing her three children, 4, 2, and 2 months, with her boyfriend of six months, who was
unemployed. Soon after the woman left, the infant awoke, fussy. She rejected a bottle and
could not be soothed with holding or music. When the 2-year-old knocked over a pan,
the boyfriend screamed at her and the baby cried louder. Enraged, the man shook the baby
and threw her on a bed. When the mother returned four hours later, the infant was bluish
and her breathing erratic. The baby was rushed to the hospital, but died within hours. The
emergency-room doctors said the baby showed signs of shaken-baby syndrome: Massive
hemorrhaging in the eyes and brain, causing severe brain damage.
(Baurac, 1993, p. 8)
This scenario represents an extreme, tragic, and mostly rare outcome of the struggle many families
experience as they choose childcare with little time or knowledge for making satisfactory choices. The
supply of public pre-K programs and private childcare venues and the availability of those that accept
children with disabilities varies dramatically in some communities. Several million U.S. children are
abused or neglected annually. Helping families to choose high-quality care might well decrease the
extent of this social trauma. In addition, for children under 6, 40% (11.5 million) live within 200% of
the federal poverty level and 25% (6 million) live at or below that level (National Center for Children
in Poverty, 2013). Children living in poverty are more vulnerable to a variety of mental, emotional,
and physical difficulties and threats to their well-being and are particularly in need of high-quality
childcare. This chapter will look at a variety of aspects related to childcare choice, including structural
as well as process variables and their intersections as these affect parent choices and affect researcher
attempts to analyze and assess effects of childcare. Specific illustrations of parent choices and child
responses in this chapter reflect the author’s personal experiences and observations.
How Urgent Is Parental Need for Quality Childcare?

Children are a family’s most precious treasure. U.S. Census figures indicate that 12.5 million children
under the age of 5 need some form of childcare arrangement each week (New York State Council
on Children and Families, 2011). Yet parents face many problems in finding, affording, and keep-
ing quality care (Honig, 1992). This can be particularly acute for parents of infants and toddlers for
whom, despite increased vulnerability, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
(NICHD) observed quality of care is often lower than that for preschoolers (Sosinsky et al., 2016).
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Economists are among those increasing their focus on childcare. Nobel Economist James
Heckman has asserted that the annual rate of return on investments in high-quality preschool
programs for disadvantaged children can deliver a 13% return on investment. Specifically, he cites
better outcomes in education, health, sociability, economic productivity, and a work force bet-
ter prepared to deal with the challenges of rapid technological changes (Early Care and Learn-
ing Council, January 27,2017). The 2017 Federal Reserve System Community Development
Research Conference focused on the economic future of young children in communities and
policy considerations for subpopulations. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s keynote address
highlighted how promoting child development and education strengthens communities and the
economy.
Federal Efforts to Enhance Childcare Quality

May Broaden Parent Choices
In 2015, only about 10% of federal spending benefited children’s programs and services. Despite fami-
lies’ often desperate needs for childcare (and the need for caregiver training and services to families),
total federal spending reflected only 2.6% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2015, and this was
an almost 3% decline from the previous two years (Zaslow, Barton, Klein, and Nemeroff, 2016).
Among children under 3, 60% are in nonparental care (Adams, Tout, and Zaslow, 2006). For over
50 years, the U.S. federal government has funded Head Start, providing free care for more than 1
million low-income infants and preschoolers in 50 states. Revised Head Start Performance Stan-
dards strongly support an academic curriculum (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
2016).
An elaborate study of Early Head Start (EHS) outcomes surveyed low-income mothers and chil-
dren in three groups: European Americans, African-Americans, and Mexican Americans. The study
featured videotaped parent–child interactions with toys, as well as detailed histories of childcare expe-
riences over time from birth (Fuligni, 2016).
A pattern of high and stable maternal supportiveness was associated with child higher vocab-
ulary and lower problem behavior at age 5. Benefits of high-stable supportiveness were 2–5
times stronger than the effect of socioeconomic status within this low-SES sample. EHS
intervention had a positive effect on supportive parenting behaviors especially among Afri-
can American families.
(p. 235)
In 2014, President Obama signed the Childcare and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) into law,
reauthorizing federal childcare. However, the regulations do not apply to church-run centers nor to
family childcare serving fewer than three children.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families
(ACF) new quality and safety federal standards aim to ensure higher-quality care for children. For the
70,000 childcare settings that participate in the federal childcare program, the new rules:
• require all staff have mandatory criminal background checks

• enhance health and safety by requiring ongoing staff training in key topics including administra-
tion of medication and first aid
• provide information for parents to help them choose child care, through an accessible website, and
• mandate center monitoring at least annually to ensure children’s health and safety.
(Early Childhood Advisory Council, 2016)
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Choosing Childcare for Young Children
Effects of Childcare Programs

Longitudinal research has shown the benefits of quality early childhood education (ECE) pro-
grams. Controlling for family background, a prospective longitudinal study of 214 children found
that more preschool experience in center care was related, at age 18, at the end of high school, to
higher class rank, admission to more selective colleges, and, for females, less risk-taking and more
impulse control. Higher-quality care predicted higher later academic grades (Vandell, Burchinal,
and Pierce, 2016). CARE, a collaborative project with Utrecht University, provides an extensive
review of hundreds of international research studies on the effects of ECE on child development
(Melhuish et al., 2015). Among their entries, the Program for International Student Assessment
(PISA) study noted that ECE attendees gained about a year more of school achievement in com-
parison with children who had not attended pre-primary programs. These reports from many
countries emphasize the strong effects of quality ECE programs. They also emphasize that low
level of ECE quality results in negligible effects, lowering the achievement gap between poor and
nonpoor children by only 5% (Pianta, Barnett, Burchinal, and Thornbug, 2009).
A plethora of structural and process variables enter the operational definition of “quality care”
(Phillips and Howes, 1989). Parents can access standards and best practices specified by the National
Childcare Information Center (Mitchell, 2005). Some programs focus on helping children achieve
executive skills defined as working memory, inhibitory control, and ability to shift attention for goal
completion (Troller-Renfree et al., 2017). Self-control and attentiveness to tasks predict better school
outcomes (Child Care and Early Education Research Connections, 2017).
There is an enormous gap between quality programs—characterized by a buzz of purpose-
ful activities, with children choosing from a rich variety of choices and with plentiful positive
teacher encouragement, suggestions, and supports—and much less optimal settings. In poor-
quality programs, even with certifications and/or licenses, routines and commands are more
frequent than creative choice and encouragements (Krip, 2017). Providers compromise quality
when attention to chores predominates over loving, personalized interactions. In one infant class-
room well supplied with toys, one teacher was busy washing items at a sink. She called out to her
assistant, while nodding in the direction of each baby: “Has that one had a bottle? Was this one
changed?” During that half-hour, no adult engaged with or caressed the little ones quietly sitting
on the floor. The philosopher Martin Buber might have called this an “I-It” relationship rather
than an “I-Thou” relationship! A parent seeking care, but with little time to stay and observe,
may only notice the supply of toys and good carpet and low child–caregiver ratios available. How
are parents to choose?
Research is scarce on the basis on which parents make decisions (Sonnenstein, 1991). Unclear is
“whether it is handed down from their parents, whether choice is made at a ‘gut’ level, or whether
there is an informed choice” (Long, Wilson, Kutnick, and Telford, 1996, p. 51). National Childcare
Survey researchers asked what type of childcare parents first considered and why it was not selected
(Hofferth and Phillips, 1991). They also asked why the last arrangement ended, whether through
parent initiation, perhaps to find more age-appropriate care, or provider-initiated, as when a family
day care worker closes a home facility. “The childcare search and selection process is a dynamic one,
consisting of identifying a ‘preferred’ type of care, searching for it, encountering one or more barriers
(price, availability, accessibility, etc.), and modifying preferences to accommodate what is available”
(Prosser and McGroder, 1992, p. 50), rather than what they would prefer.
Controlling for income and education level, when parents consulted Resource and Referral (R&R)
agencies, 91.1% visited two or more providers. Only 56.8% of parents who did not use such services
made two or more visits to choose a care provider. A majority (55.4%) of the R&R group spent about
seven hours looking for childcare compared with 41.2% of parents who had not used the service
(Fuqua and Shiek, 1989).
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Research Evidence Could Help Guide Parental Choice

Longitudinal examination of different aspects of care for 733 children (ages 4 to 8 years) reported
that quality indices in classrooms predicted children’s cognitive and language scores, and teacher–child
closeness had the strongest effects on children’s social skills. Quality indicators were strongest for
children most at risk (Peisner, Burchinal, Clifford, Culkin, Howes, Kagan, and Yazejian, 2001). Qual-
ity indicators enhance peer play interactions as well as child learning (Bulotsky-Shearer, Bell, Carter,
and Dietrich, 2014). Extensive reviews of hundreds of childcare research reports are available and
constantly updated online (Research Connections, 2016; Research Reports, 2016).
However, working families may have neither time nor knowledge to scroll through thousands of
research articles on differential effects of care practices (Galinsky and Bond, 1998). They may only
look for one criterion: licensure. One family, who had lost their toddler in a family day care fire, con-
fided in sorrow that they had simply asked whether the home was licensed (it was). Busy professionals,
the parents had never inquired whether the provider smoked (yes), took heavy medications (yes), or
had had any child development training (no). The provider had given her used-up cigarette lighters
as toys for the little ones. One child, pushing a lighter across a rug, sparked a fire that then took the
lives of half of the toddlers.
Subtle factors influence care outcomes and have interacting effects (NICHD, 2002). Longitudinal
findings from research-based intervention childcare projects serving low-income children provide
examples of high-quality childcare programs (Price, Cowen, Lorion, and Ramos-McKay, 1988). The
Abecedarian program focused on cognitive skills, beginning with infancy care (Ramey and Ramey,
1999), and decades later reported gains in school grades and decreases in delinquency (Campbell,
Ramey, Pungello, Sparling, and Miller-Johnson, 2002). Weikart’s High/Scope project carefully fol-
lowed low-income African-American program preschoolers and their controls for 40 years. Program
graduates reported earnings greater than controls; significantly fewer lifetime arrests; and fewer drugs,
property, or violent crimes. More of the program group were employed (76% vs. 62 %), had higher
median incomes, and paid more taxes. More of the program males reared their own children (57% vs.
30% for controls) (High/Scope Resource: A Magazine for Educators, 2005).
The Syracuse Family Development Research Program (FDRP), following youth ten years after
program children graduated to elementary school, found reductions in criminal justice costs. Juvenile
delinquency rates for FDRP youth were 7.7% vs. 48.1% for carefully matched controls. Delinquency
recidivism rates were 1.5% among FDRP youth and 11.1% among control youth (Honig, 2004b; Lally,
Mangione, and Honig, 1988).
A pragmatic concern is that some excellent research-based childcare programs may not be easily
“scalable” across communities with few resources for ongoing teacher training or program quality
monitoring. The High/Scope program hired only teachers who had bachelor degrees and certifica-
tion in education. The FDRP program annually provided days of intensive training and weekly sup-
port for home visitors.
Different Children May Flourish With Different Program Emphases

In Portugal, data analyses from the Infant Toddler Environment Rating Scale (ITERS-R) and other
interaction scales indicated that space and material use and smaller classroom groups were positive
predictors, but teacher training showed the most robust relationship to process quality (Barros et al.,
2016).
Convincing families that professional expertise relates strongly to specific child development train-
ing may be a challenging task for social agency and support personnel offering advice on childcare
choices to families. Helping parents to monitor ongoing program quality may also pose a challenge,
although it is crucial, considering the numbers of facilities that offer low-quality programs.
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Omnibus research-based programs, like FDRP, include more than childcare and are based on
principles—of Piaget, Erikson, and other developmental theorists (Honig, 2000). The FDRP included
a toy lending library and weekly home visits over the years by a cadre of highly trained paraprofes-
sionals who began home visits prior to the baby’s birth (Lally et.al., 1988). Pinpointing the proportion
of each factor responsible for child outcomes presents challenges.
Home Visitation
Some families prefer home visitation rather than group care. Home visitors carry out an impressive
and lengthy array of activities to gain family trust (Honig, 1979). Home visitors replenish parental
energy so parents can be more responsively present, patient, and nurturing with their children. Highly
trained home visitors contribute to the quality of parental childcare (National Survey of Early Care
and Education Project Team, 2015).
Home visitation services for high-risk, high school dropout adolescents with infants computed
savings in county foster care costs following from parental abuse and neglect six years later (Honig and
Morin, 2001). Program costs were $3.83 per family per day; foster care costs were $23.75 per child per
day. This program also found surprising effects depending on when the program began. Home visita-
tion started either several months prior to childbirth or a few months after birth (randomly, depend-
ing on staff availability). Program dropout rates as well as later county-confirmed abuse/neglect rates
were significantly lower when home visitation had begun prior to the infant’s birth. The result was
significant for county savings in foster care costs.
At several sites in the United States, Olds carried out randomized controlled trials of home visita-
tions by skilled nurses starting prior to birth for high-risk mothers and continuing for several years.
Decades later, enduring program effects included decreases in maternal smoking during and after
pregnancy, child abuse and neglect, and children’s criminal and antisocial behaviors (Olds et al., 2010).
With adolescent parents, a home visitor provided information plus interpersonal supports by using
“reflective listening.” Adolescent parents come to reflect more on their own childhoods and months
later have significantly more nurturing relationships with their babies (Brophy-Heb and Honig, 1995).
Home visitors help families by providing books for preschoolers. The newsletter motto of the
home visitation Parent–Child Home Program (founded by Levenstein) is “Soaring to success through
books and play” (www.parent-child.org). One program finding was that parents completed more
home visits and reported greater library use when home visitors themselves had been in the program
or had many years of experience in their work. For the nearly 6 million children who live immigrant
families, home visitors who speak the family’s native language provide links to childcare services
that families might otherwise not know how to access. Early reading at home contributes to school
readiness (Forget-Dubois, Lemelin, Perasse, Tremblay, and Boivin, 2009). Home visitors teach family
members how to support emergent literacy. FDR home visitors helped young mothers obtain library
cards so they could take out books to read with their little ones. This was not always easy. One young
mother confided that she was fearful because her brother had taken out a library book many years
ago and never returned it; she believed she could be arrested if she ever went to the library with her
toddler.
Research Studies: Helpful for Childcare Choice?

Findings from studies are not always the most useful guides for families. External validity may be
questionable when research focuses on only one special group, such as children living in isolated rural
areas or only on children in high-quality centers; findings may not be applicable to other care situ-
ations. Additionally, researchers need to consider many aspects that potentially affect both parental
choice and care quality; interactions among variables affect outcome findings (NICHD, 2002, 2005).
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Choosing outcome variables to assess seems straightforward. Yet for programs serving children with
certain difficulties, such as autism, focus on enhancement of specific interpersonal skills may deserve
paramount emphasis.
Information Sources for Parents Searching for Childcare

Parents seeking childcare are consumers needing help to choose (Cryer and Burchinal, 1997). Local
librarians can help parents access materials that inform their search for care. In addition, they help par-
ents find books to further young children’s emergent literacy skills and “kindness quotient” (Honig,
2004a), for example, with Dr. Seuss books about Horton the Elephant who is faithful 100% of the
time.
Easy-to-read, inexpensive print materials include checklists (Honig, 2014) with explanations
describing specific positive caregiver–child interactions that can guide choices (Honig, 1982, 1996,
2002; Honig and Brophy, 1996). Book companies serving the ECE field provide free catalogs
with descriptions of excellent books for ECE teachers; parents can browse these catalogs to learn
more about quality aspects of care. National Association for the Education of Young Children
(NAEYC), the premier organization for childcare teachers, offers college educators free copies
of their magazines for providers. To request 100 copies or more, contact the editorial group at
NAEYC.
Many preschools print email or snail-mail newsletters for parents. These outreach strategies
increase school partnership with parents. Early fall mailings, school–parent compacts, home visits, and
open-house events increase parent involvement in the quality of their children’s education and care
(Office of Educational Research and Improvement, 2000).
Computer Help for Choosing Care

Increasingly, parents access computer information and support sites about aspects of childcare. Librar-
ies offer online services for families that cannot afford computers. Parent consumers need to be care-
ful, because some sites promote commercial care chains rather than offering quality information to
inform choices.
A variety of sites provides information for parents and providers. “Baby Talk,” a monthly list-
serv hosted by the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North
Carolina, gives suggestions for optimal infant/toddler care. Community Playthings’ site provides
practical ideas: one suggests teaching 4-year-olds to finger knit—and explains how this activity
builds small muscle hand dexterity and strength, encourages eye–hand coordination, and promotes
large muscle relaxation so that even highly active youngsters can enjoy finger knitting as they chat
with peers. Exchange Magazine for childcare directors provides frequent emails to promote quality
care, and the Bright Horizons’ site offers specific tips such as “Fostering a sense of wonder and joy
in your children.”
Free webinars address specific topics such as positive discipline for toddlers. One NAEYC Webi-
nar (March 2017) offered “Books Matter: Getting Children to Love Reading.” Early Childhood
Investigations provides a webinar site, and The Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute
offers webinars on a wide variety of childcare issues. Topics include support for positive develop-
ment for young children with challenging behaviors and the positive effect of participation in inclusive
settings for children with and without disabilities (Child Care and Early Education Research Con-
nections, 2017). Their online available research includes trends in classroom quality and selected
teacher characteristics between 2006 and 2014 based on data from the Head Start Family and Child
Experiences Survey (FACES), as well as research on the impact on children of variations in teacher
instructional book reading style and emotional quality while reading.
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Multiple Variables Affect Childcare Choices and Outcomes

The number of structural and process variables involved in parental choice and in elucidating the
effects of childcare choice is daunting. Families need “flexibility solutions” to find the best care for
their situation (Emlen, 2010). Variables to consider cluster in four domains: family, care providers,
children, and public agencies.
Family Variables
Family choices for childcare depend on dozens of factors, many of which are inextricably interwoven.
Some factors are more salient for families; some are more specific. A nursing mother may focus her
search for a center that provides a comfortable rocking chair in a quiet corner where a mother can
visit over her lunch hour and nurse her baby. Following are some of the factors families must grapple
with in their search for childcare.
Cost of quality care is paramount for some parents and, grotesquely, may even be higher than fam-
ily annual income (Shulman and Adams, 1998). This is in sharp contrast to some European countries
where parental paid leave and governmental supports for early care are substantial. For families with
higher incomes, cost may not be a problem; choice of a nanny (chosen after dozens of careful inter-
views) may be that family’s primary preference. “My Nanny Circle” is a grassroots group that aims to
increase knowledge and morale among nannies. The National Domestic Workers Alliance estimates
that in New York State alone there are 17,000 nannies caring for young children (Satow, 2017).
Social Class, Culture, Language, and Care Preferences

Many minority families express a preference for parental rather than group care in infancy (Rose and
Elliker, 2010). In some non-Western cultures, families prefer children, mostly between 5 and 10 years
old, as caregivers for infants and toddlers (Zukow-Goldring, 2012).
In low-income families, culture and dominant language both affect parental preferences (Howes,
2010). When compared with Latino families where English was the dominant language, low-income
Latino language minority children under 3 were less likely to be in any nonparent care, had fewer
transitions in care, and had fewer different caregivers. Despite these positives, these children may lag
behind peers in experiences to prepare them for school readiness (Fuligni, Wishard Guerra, and Nel-
son, 2013).
The LA ExCELS program illustrates how complex intertwining variables can be. In each low-
income Los Angeles program (including Head Start, public school–based preschools, prekindergarten
programs, and licensed family childcare), up to four children per classroom, who would be eligible
for kindergarten in two years, were randomly chosen and compared with carefully selected nonpro-
gram children. Extensive classroom observations revealed two different types of settings. In “High
Free Choice” settings, children spent 60% of the day engaged in free-choice activities. In “Struc-
tured/Balanced classrooms,” children spent 32% of the day in adult-directed small- and large-group
activities. In the former classrooms, children spent more time outdoors and in gross motor activities
and fantasy play. In the latter classrooms, teachers read more and scaffolded their interactions more
with the children. “Children in the Structured/Balanced classrooms showed higher vocabulary
scores than those in the High Free Choice classrooms, but no difference in math or self-regulation
outcomes at the end of the school year” (Fuligni, 2016, p. 241).
Attention to multiple variables in this study permitted the researchers to determine carefully the
extent to which degrees of poverty and child ESL (English as Second Language) conditions affected
outcomes. The poorest families could not afford play materials or children’s books. Verbal supports
at home were more important for dual-language children than availability of toys and books. Higher
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PPVT scores (a preschool language test) for children from monolingual families correlated with the
presence of material supports. When three levels of poverty were determined, then
families’ provision of material supports for learning was more predictive of PPVT scores than
children’s attendance in preschool, but applied problems scores were predicted by both the provi-
sion of material supports in the home and children’s attendance in preschool programs at age 4.
(p. 243)
Attendance in a pre-K program, as well as maternal verbal inputs, were more predictive of school
readiness for ESL children at age 4. In contrast, for monolingual children, poverty level plus home
material supports were somewhat more likely to predict PPVT scores.
Complex analyses of childcare variables seem crucial for determining how best to customize pro-
gram choices. Research findings pinpoint more specifically the kinds of supports families may need.
Home visitors working with extremely poor families that cannot afford toys or children’s books may
emphasize, model, and support rich verbal interactions between parents and young children. They may
organize events to spur community donations of toys and books for young children in poor families.
Family Crowding and Housing Problems

Families in crowded quarters with several young children needing care experience fewer options.
When families require care for more than one child, then fees may be prohibitive, even with subsidies.
Urban and Rural Families

Geography limits parental choice. In rural areas, pre-K or center programs may not be available, but
providing supports for families is crucial. One mother was told her child would be dropped from the
program if she arrived late one more time. Yet traffic glitches on the long ride to the center were not
under that parent’s control.
Some urban areas are fortunate to have “Resource and Referral” (R&R) agencies that provide mul-
tiple services. In Syracuse, New York, an R&R agency, “Child Care Solutions,” offers parents specific
information on locations of center and family care. Staff help providers start a childcare business, pro-
vide low-cost training for Child Development Associate (CDA) credentials, and help family childcare
providers get paid for meals (www.childcaresolutionscny.org).
Family Values and Beliefs Affect Choice

Values influence choice (Hollingsworth and Winter, 2013) as well as beliefs about many childcare
issues, such as co-sleeping with infants or when to initiate solid foods or toilet learning. Some families
favor grandparent care as a special way to nurture family closeness and to keep costs negligible (Fuligni
et al., 2013). Some parents prefer faith-based care. Although girls in faith-based compared with secu-
lar centers were more prosocial, boys showed no differences in frequency of observed peer prosocial
or aggressive behaviors (Honig, Douthit, Lee, and Dingler, 1992).
Parental implicit beliefs and theories about child development, what tasks young children need to
master, and what children need to grow well are embedded in cultural values that guide their care
choice (Bornstein, 1991; Klysz, 1995; Okagaki and Sternberg, 1993). Parents who chose less academic
preschools for their children believe their children need to learn more independence and initiative
rather than academics; parental beliefs are congruent with choice of care facility (Stipek, Milburn,
Clements, and Daniels, 1992).
Highly desirable is the situation of compatibility between parent and provider philosophy. How-
ever, this is not always the case. Sometimes parent demands are not congruent with state standards or
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caregiver comfort. A parent advised: “Switch her on the legs if she has a toileting accident.” Providers
explained gently that teachers were forbidden to hurt children in any way. When this toddler did have
a peeing accident, she cried out, fearing physical punishment.
A parent informed a home care provider that if she enrolled her toddler and that child was not
toilet trained in a few weeks, then the parent would remove that child. The family childcare was the
provider’s sole source of income. She knew that helping a child get used to a new setting and to learn
toileting skills often take more time.
Ethnicity
Ethnicity is sometimes the predominant factor in care choice. Latino parents are more likely to select
informal childcare rather than center based or preschool arrangements and less likely to choose any
form of out-of-home care. Compared with 75% of African-American families and 69% of Euro-
pean-American families, only 59% of Latin American families with children age 3 to 5 years chose
some form of nonparental care (West, Hausken, and Collins, 1993). African-American parents are
more supportive of formal centers than other ethnic groups in accessing subsidized preschools, includ-
ing Head Start Centers (Fuller, Holloway, and Liang, 1996).
Low-income Mexican-American, Chinese-American, and European-American mothers all pre-
ferred to have their 3-year-old children cared for in their own homes by spouses, relatives, neigh-
bors, or friends. However, when long-term arrangements were necessary, then European-American
and Chinese-American parents preferred formal care, whereas Mexican-American families preferred
informal care (Becerra, 1992).
Preferences of urban Zimbabwe mothers in choosing preschools differed by income level. Low-
income mothers most frequently reported looking for good food (or a balanced diet), caring teachers,
facility (good physical structure and adequate space), and preparing the child for school. Moderate-
income mothers mentioned the facility and its convenience of location and child school preparation.
The highest-income mothers cited hygiene, good food, qualified and loving teachers, and facility.
Regardless of whether their child attended a preschool, 63% of the women felt that a female servant
would be their primary choice, but the other respondents preferred sisters, grandmothers, and aunts as
a childcare option (Johnson, Dyanda-Marina and Davimbo, 1997).
Russian mothers, when questioned about childrearing goals most important in influencing their
choices, cited conformity to rules, concern with “spoiling” children, and belief in adult control.
These beliefs were stronger for less educated mothers. Mothers with more education were more
likely to believe in the importance of talking to infants. Ispa (1995) suggested that it takes time for
more democratic goals for childrearing to emerge after a culture has lived for a long period under a
totalitarian regime.
Locally, the philosophy of an available facility may differ markedly from maternal care. Some
French day care center time schedules were far more rigid than at home. It was frequent “to see
a quiet and submissive child in the day care center become very demanding as soon as the mother
arrives” (Balleyguier, 1990, p. 55). Parents aware of such strict demands in childcare can be alert to
possible acting out in emotional release once the child is back at home.
Parent Education and In-Home Practices: Congruent or Not?

In the National Household Education Survey (which controlled for parental education and household
income) of 4,380 parents of 3- and 4-year-olds, parents who chose nonparental care engaged in more
academic types of activities, such as reading to children. Their children watched less television than
did children whose parents who did not choose any outside care (Kimmerly, 1998). How the home
functions as a learning environment relates to parental childcare choice.
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Family Stress and Childcare Choice

Family stresses include frequent change of residence, parental job loss, spousal/partner abuse, few social
supports, divorce/separation battles, multiple romantic partners coming into the home, and intergen-
erational squabbles. When stressed, parents may hastily choose a neighbor or friend for care rather than
center-based care. A teen mother, still in school, was unable to tell the full name of the neighbor who
watched her toddler. Low-income, single-custodial fathers and mothers, as well as custodial grandpar-
ents struggle with daily tasks with little time or energy to learn about or access quality childcare.
Mental Health Issues

Overwhelmed, some families suffer with mental health issues, including violence, opioid and other
drug abuse, alcoholism, and personality disorders. Perry (2002) trains clinicians in his Neurosequential
Model in Caregiving to provide trauma-focused interventions in community-based service provi-
sion settings. Maternal depression inflicts worrisome child delays in cognitive and language develop-
ment (Sohr-Preston and Scaramella, 2006; Tronick and Reck, 2009). Maternal postpartum depression
has long-term effects on children when depression begins prior to birth, is long-lasting, or requires
maternal hospitalization (Gold, 2017). Other maternal factors influence the emotional well-being
of children in childcare. Mothers who have lost a fetus during a previous pregnancy sometimes feel
hidden terror that the current, healthy-born child may not live. Then the mother may not be able
to provide nurturing closeness for the new baby (Gold, 2017), and the quality of care that nurturing
other adults can provide is crucial.
Child Abuse and Neglect Affect Child Adjustment

Social workers supporting families with such issues may try hard to locate childcare spaces so par-
ents are able to attend to their own special medical and mental health needs as well as increase child
chances for well-being.
Homelessness
Homelessness and shelter living affect availability of childcare. In Boston, Bright Horizons, a for-profit
childcare company with hundreds of centers across the United States and Europe, donates a nurturing
childcare facility for infants of homeless parents.
Parents Serving in Military Combat Zones

When a parent is serving in the armed forces and stationed abroad in a war zone, then family worries
and child tensions escalate. Special training helps staff to cope empathically with child nightmares,
somatic symptoms, and worries. The Military Child Education Coalition has expressed concern with
child relocations and victimizations at school. Anxiety, stress, and behavior disorders increased 9% for
3- to 8-year-olds when parents were deployed (Wadsworth, Bailey, and Coppola, 2017).
Caregiver and Facility Factors
Facility Availability
High-quality university programs may be half-day and have long waiting lists. A family home pro-
vider may suddenly close in an emergency when her own grandchildren in another city need care.
Parents are forced to re-choose care. A director, who generously kept a slot open for a family who
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had gone to visit relatives, experienced worrisome financial loss when the family never made contact
again.
Directors Set the Tone of a Center

Parents need to ask about directors’ knowledge and skills. At a resort center with a large childcare
program, the director had strong accounting and computer skills but no child development or ECE
courses or experience. The facility was bright and clean, yet babies were left in infant swings for
hours.
Personalized Care
Parents should inquire about whether each child is assigned to a specific caregiver, rather than staff
rotating among groups or stationed at different learning centers. Special assignment fosters closer
caregiver–child relationships. This practice anchors the work of West-Ed’s Program for Infant/Tod-
dler Care (PITC): “In a primary care system, each child is assigned to one special caregiver who is
principally responsible for that child’s care” (Lally, 2013, p. 113). Parents notice when caregivers greet
each special little person intimately each morning. On arrival, babies need to be nestled from one set
of loving arms to another. Rituals help. A parent gratefully told how comforted she felt when the
caregiver each day lifted her baby up to the window to wave “bye-bye” to mommy as the parent went
outside to her car.
Provider Reflectivity: A Priceless Resource

Parents need to notice whether providers show sensitive reflectivity. Do teacher actions reveal
that they reflect on the possible reasons for a child’s problematic behaviors? It is not enough that
some state laws forbid shaming or physical punishment of children. Families described as “restric-
tive and stressed” chose less adequate care than families described as “nurturing and supportive”
(Howes and Steward, 1987). Reflectivity enhances adult ability to figure out what is the meaning
of that behavior for this child (Gold, 2017). What is the meaning of compulsive behavior, inability
to relax into sleep at center naptime, throwing a tantrum prior to leaving for care, or having a
“meltdown” at parent pick-up time? Insightful caregivers can give parents the gift of reflectivity!
A child’s unique needs may increase stress, yet young children rarely have words to let adults know
of their distress. Instead, their bodily responses show their feelings and worries. Parents need sup-
portive help from caregivers to gain insights into how distressed infants and toddlers can become
when parents make “casual and unfeeling plans for baby-sitting” as we learned superbly from
Selma Fraiberg (1988):
When she took part-time work at one point, Mrs. March made hasty and ill-thought-out
sitting arrangements for Mary and then was surprised, as was Mr. March, to find that Mary
was sometimes “cranky” and “spoiled” and “mean.” [The therapist] tried in all tactful ways
to help the Marches think about the meaning to Mary of her love for mother and her
temporary loss of mother during the day. She met a blank wall. Both parents had known
shifting and casual relationships with parents and parent substitutes from their earliest years.
The meaning of separation and loss was buried in memory. . . . One morning . . . Mary had
just lost one sitter and started with another. Mrs. Adelson [the therapist] wondered aloud
what this might mean to Mary. Yesterday she had been left, unexpectedly, in a very new
place with a strange woman. She felt alone and frightened without her mother, and did not
know what was going to happen. . . . She was only a baby, with no words to express her
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serious problem. Somehow, we would have a find a way to understand and to help her with
her fears and worries.
(p. 112–113)
One mother complained bitterly that her twin toddlers behaved so well in childcare and were so
“naughty” at home. I explained how much they missed her and felt such a relief that they trusted her
that they could act out all their feelings when they were with her. This insight as to how precious she,
a single working mother, was to her children helped her to act far more gently with her twins despite
her tiredness at the end of a workday.
Howes (2016) emphasized the importance of caregiver attunement to children’s dispositions and
communicative ability. Quality caregivers regulate their own emotions and remain calm and reassur-
ing when children are distressed. Professional development programs need to emphasize the impor-
tance of responsive caregiving in addition to practical logistics. Informed choices are more likely
when parents observe teachers model reassuring attunement rather than exasperation or withdrawal
when children act out.
Child–Teacher Ratio and Group Size

NAEYC has set clear standards for optimal ratios of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers per caregiver
(Copple and Bredekamp, 2009). Group size affects how much individual attention a child receives.
Yet at day’s end, some little ones “wilt.” They need holding and soothing. When there are too few
providers per group, this nurturing may not be available.
Size of facility affects child behaviors. In a large center, one preschooler bit peers daily, despite teach-
ers’ creative attempts: they used perioral massages, pinned an easily accessible rubber “biter” for his use
safely to the child’s outer clothing, and gave attention to that child every five minutes. An irate parent
of a bitten child even threatened to sue the center’s board of advisors (a good reason for center boards
to have insurance). Resettled in a small home care facility, the child’s biting decreased substantially.
Facility Hours of Operation and Transition Plans

Hours when care is available in facilities may not meet parental employment needs if a parent begins
work during early morning hours. In a western state, a large gambling facility provides nighttime
childcare for casino workers. Patching together care venues is a challenge. After hours, a designated
center employee waited outside with a child for her taxi to a “babysitter.” The parent worked until
evening hours. Looking worried, the child said anxiously that she had to go pee, although she had
gone to the bathroom just before center closing. Transitions worry young children. When they
graduate to a new group, young children thrive better when moved with familiar peers.
Staff Access to Professional Help

Parents feel reassured when staff create avenues for cooperation with other professionals. One pre-
schooler had worrisome green nasal mucus for days. The parent could not take time off to go to a doc-
tor. A kind pediatric resident volunteered to examine the child, who amazingly had stuck some stuffing
material that he had somehow managed to pluck from underneath a couch way up in his nostril.
Teacher Responses to Parent Separation Problems

A parent of a 4-year-old quit his job and stayed in the center every day for weeks. The child would not
eat lunch with peers or participate in activities, but stayed close to that parent. The director resolved
this problem by amending the parent handbook specifically to exclude all-day parental presence after
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the first week in care. Providers then could engage the child in activities. Clear guidelines and empa-
thy are both needed for a parent who has strong separation anxiety.
Staff Stability
In their search for quality care, parents need to ask about staff turnover rates, which are often quite
high (Wells, 2015). The Maryland Committee for Children (2006) reported that in one year, one-
third of caregivers had left their jobs. Staff stability increases chances for positive child attachment to
caregivers (Honig, 2002). Stability is critical when centers provide wrap-around care (“continuity of
care”) for infants and toddlers from early months until 3 years of age. Continuity allows teachers to
get to know more deeply the infants and toddlers they serve (McMullen, Yun, Mihal, and Kim, 2016).
Some center directors serving infants were asked about initiating wrap-around care; they seemed
unaware of it. No attempt to follow up on their possible implementation was possible, because
phone calls a few months later revealed that many directors had left for other jobs. Director turn-
over has worrisome implications for caregiver well-being, which can affect children’s comfort in
care and worry parents too. Research on reasons for staff leaving a facility reveal four personal
factors—marital status, age, experience, and education—that have a significant impact on caregivers’
decisions to remain in the field. Educators cite availability of benefits as more significant than salary
in a decision to leave the field (Holochwast, 2009). Head Start teachers who resigned during their
first year cited working conditions as important reasons for leaving (Wells, 2015). Optimal working
conditions for providers include a rest area for “breaks.” Staff need stress-busters in their lives too
(Honig, 2010). A written “staff handbook” increases caregiver clarity as to their working conditions
and responsibilities.
Staff Qualifications
Rating systems allow frequent monitoring of staff quality. A 17-state interview study of childcare
administrators and Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) directors reported that environ-
ment improvement was most frequent. In contrast, attention to language, emergent literacy, and early
math was less frequent (Smith, 2010).
Teacher Training
Teacher training encompasses many domains (Honig and Lally, 1981). Teachers need to know and
carry out strict health requirements for handwashing, diapering, and playground safety. Cleanliness,
health care, and nutrition provisions are priorities in state standards. An outbreak of hair or body lice
or some diarrheas can shut down an entire facility for many days—a difficult situation for parents
(Aronson, 1991).
Knowledgeable parents seeking care inquire about how many providers have attained their CDA
and how many have taken ECE and child development coursework. In infant classrooms, researchers
administered the Infant Toddler Environment Rating Scale (ITERS-R) and the Classroom Assessment
Scoring System-Infant (CLASS-Infant). The most robust relations to child thriving were process
qualities identified as teacher sensitivity with babies and use of space and materials (Barros et al.,
2016). In a hospital care setting, specific training in ECE and child development was more associated
with positive staff–child interactions than number of provider years of education or work experience
(Honig and Hırallal, 1998).
Ongoing mentoring enhances teacher skills and insights and decreases possible burnout. The Bos-
ton pre-K program included educational coaches for teachers. Children achieved significant gains in
literacy, math, and language (Weiland and Yoshikawa, 2013). Teacher training can include learning to
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use screening tools to identify learning readiness in high-risk preschoolers (Abenvoli, Greenberg, and
Bierman, 2017).
Teachers need knowledge of specific developmental milestones. This knowledge promotes care-
giver insights about when to worry, whether to wonder, or whether to provide additional learning
opportunities. A kindergarten teacher asked for a parent conference when a 5-year old could not use
a pair of scissors to cut paper. Her parents explained that they had been too afraid to let her ever use
scissors. Soon after the teacher provided a pair of safe scissors, the child quickly developed dexterity
in cutting paper pieces to paste for a collage.
For each developmental milestone, a teacher needs to find out from the family what the experience
of the child has been. One 15-month-old infant could not pick up Cheerios from his highchair table
with just thumb and forefinger (superior pincer pretension) despite frequent opportunities provided
at snack time. This was worrisome for the teacher, because babies usually achieve this milestone
before 12 months. This skill acquisition has a “narrow window.” Another skill, such as toileting, has
a “wide window” for learning (some males may not finish toilet learning until preschool age). Thus,
wide variability for this skill timetable may not cause a teacher to worry. One 4-year-old who was
alternating living with each parent after a contentious divorce was still in diapers. Quite articulate, he
explained that his daddy liked to change his diaper and so he was not eager to comply with urging
toward toilet learning. One family, frustrated by total lack of success in toilet training their toddler at
home, complained to the care provider they were about to employ. The parent was surprised when
the caregiver asked whether this child could tell when he felt that pee or poop was about come. The
parents had not realized how important proprioceptive body cues are (as well as patience to sit on a
potty and words for “pee” and “poop”) before a child can learn toileting skills (Honig, 1993). Qual-
ity providers treat each child as a unique little person and learner and are aware of prerequisites and
different timetables for the acquisition of different skills.
Embedding Child Learning in Daily Routines

Creative adult skills are required to embed socioemotional learning and cognitive curricular goals into
ordinary daily care routines. While snacking on Cheerios, preschoolers can learn to count as they
munch their snacks. The diapering table is a one-on-one language lesson locale par excellence!
Fostering Emotional Maturity

Some programs focus strictly on academics. Others put a strong emphasis on assisting youngsters
with impulse control, patience, and the ability to think about responses before lashing out or
melting down. These skills have strong implications for emotional maturity and for preschooler
academic achievements. For one summer, between preschool and kindergarten, children were
assigned to different school readiness programs. At post-intervention and six months later, only
the children in the program that included self-regulation and socioemotional training modules
improved in academics, emotional knowledge, regulation, and executive functions (Graziano and
Hart, 2016).
For preschoolers from chaotic home situations, caregiver effectiveness in modulating hyperactivity,
impulsivity, and inattention is especially urgent.
Poor executive control (EC) in childhood relates to, and in some cases, precedes, a variety of
difficulties with behavior regulation, including problems with hyperactivity, impulsivity, and
inattention . . . and [poor] EC has been implicated as one of the core neuropsychological
deficits that precede the onset of ADHD.
(Nelson, James, and Espy, 2016, p. 96)
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Intervention has helped traumatized children in foster care (Troller-Renfree et al., 2017). Focused,
innovative play therapy activities decrease troubles for stressed or traumatized children (Schaefer,
2010).
Infant Massage: A Stress-Relieving Tool

Young infants respond well to relaxing massages. Care providers learn from workshops and from
videos how to massage while playing soothing lullaby music. Teaching parents how to provide infant
massage has proved a valuable way to improve early infant growth and development (Field et al.,
2004).
Staff Well-Being and Career Development Ladders

“On average childcare workers . . . earn . . . less than amusement park attendants, car washers, and
pest control workers” (Hall, 2008, p. 70). NAEYC’s admirable Worthy Wages campaign has unfor-
tunately not yet led to higher childcare salaries nationally (Whitebook, Phillips, and Howes, 2014).
Teacher career development ladders, based on key dimensions of professionalism, including high levels
of competency, knowledgeability, and professional practice, improve staff morale and salaries (Willer
and Bredekamp, 1993). Staff can look forward to a “menu of professional benefits” while working up
the career ladder (Bloom, 1993, p. 70).
A Written Curriculum With Varied Activities

Is Available and Displayed for Parents
Families feel more knowledgeable when staff posts a written curriculum that allows parents to feel
more included in a child’s daily experiences. Parents note that a facility provides a wide variety of
choices for children—small muscle activities, including pegboards and puzzles; sensory experiences,
including water and sand table play; literacy/writing opportunities; art/music activities; and safe play
spaces available indoors and outdoors for large muscle play (Lally et.al., 1988).
Teachers Limit Television Time

Quality care implies a strict limitation on television hours per day for children, particularly for infants
and toddlers, because the American Pediatric Association has recommended no TV for children under
2 years. Some families with the TV on perpetually at home may be surprised to learn that too much
television can be detrimental to physical and mental development of the very young.
Staff Is Proactive in Creating Positive Partnerships With Parents

Teachers in some programs make home visits before a child is enrolled. Others phone parents or send
a note when a child delights with a positive new skill or behavior. Sometimes there are disagreements
between parents and providers (Lurie and Newman, 1980). When parents disapprove of “child play”
and insist that more time be spent in learning activities, then educators need to explain how important
rich pretend play is for children’s learning. Discipline techniques differ. After many gentle dialogues,
one parent finally agreed that center staff should not physically punish her child, because she, the par-
ent, was primary and that was right for her only.
Rather than centers expelling young children from a program, collaboration with parents about
challenging behaviors may ease the situation and create thoughtful plans for ameliorating child stress/
distress. One 4-year-old frequently hit peers in center play. The director then would call the foster
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mother to come and take the preschooler home—difficult for a working parent. One time, the child
asked her foster mother why she did not live with her mommy if she had “grown in my mommy’s
tummy” as the child explained. Once this perceptive and gentle foster parent explained how the
mother, because of addiction troubles, could not keep the child safe as she was now with her foster
mother then hitting others in childcare decreased dramatically.
Staff Supports for Language Enrichment

A director responsible for several community-wide urban pre-K programs animatedly asserted that
enhancing teacher language was her most difficult challenge in furthering an optimal classroom
climate. By 30 months of age, the velocity and trajectory at which a child gains new words predict
their later literacy skills (Rowe, Raudenbush, and Goldin-Meadow, 2012). Early language skills predict
success in elementary school! Children struggling with reading skills by third grade are more likely
have troubles learning curricular materials and are more likely to drop out of high school. Emergent
literacy and pre-reading skills nurtured by care providers are crucial for later school success in learning
to read (Christopher et al., 2015).
Vocabulary patterns differ remarkably by social class (Hart and Risley, 1995). In-home observers
over a 2½ year period recorded a gap between the number of words parents used per hour if on public
assistance (600), working class (1,300), or professional (2,100). Care providers need to be on the front
lines of providing rich and varied language experiences for those children with fewer opportunities at
home to gain language prowess. In one study, teachers rarely read with infants and spent barely over
one minute reading with toddlers (Honig and Shin, 2001).
Staff Can Prioritize Rich Language Interactions

Cooks and other staff in the FDRP program had training to support language. The center bus driver
emphasized outdoor words on field trips to parks where grass, flowers, tree bark, insects, birds, and
other nature experiences provided a treasure trove of new words. Nature experiences impel new lan-
guage learning, while giving kids freedom to run, jump, climb, build with twigs and sticks, or joyously
discover grasshoppers, acorns, and earthworms (Honig, 2015).
Strong environmental influences (in contrast to lesser genetic influence) affect four of five major
preschool aspects of language competence: print knowledge and conventions (knowing the difference
between print and words and that written letters correspond to oral phonemes and that in English
words are read from right to left), phonological awareness, vocabulary (naming pictures, providing
definitions for words, and using words correctly), and verbal memory (repeating sentences accurately;
repeating nonsense words from two to five syllables). These aspects of competence accounted for
children’s later language skills post-first grade and post-fourth grade (Christopher et al., 2015). Code-
focused and dialogic reading with at-risk preschoolers promotes emergent literacy skills (Lonigan,
Purpura, Wilson, Walker, and Menchetti, 2013).
Provider Ideas About Parent Choice

Interviews with care providers reveal their theories about parental choices. Family day care provid-
ers surveyed with open-ended questions as to why they thought parents had chosen their facility
responded with the following characteristics: family-like setting and personal relationships (94% had
children of their own), fewer children served than in a center (from two to six children), lower cost
of childcare, greater flexibility of hours, personal characteristics of the provider, and quality of care
offered. The providers rated themselves highest in meeting parents’ needs by the reliability and stabil-
ity of care they provided, their openness for parents to visit, and the longer hours and greater number
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of days their facility was available to parents. Providers served children from early infancy through
third grade, although toddlers comprised the largest age grouping. This wide age range better suits
some families’ needs for care for several siblings (Atkinson, 1991).
Family day care providers identified themselves as professionals, small business owners, teach-
ers, and substitute parents and babysitters. They felt their experience and liking children were more
important than formal training. Mothers said they wanted personal relationships in a small group with
a family atmosphere and in a convenient, low-cost setting. Parents did not consider family day care
choice important as an opportunity for parents to meet other parents, to receive help in parenting,
or to participate in family day care activities. Parents considered informal training for caregivers as
appropriate. Thus, support for professional caregiver training will have to consider parent and pro-
vider satisfaction with informal training and devise ways to accommodate such perceptions. “Babysit-
ting” as a caregiver role seemed acceptable to many families. Some parents overestimate the quality of
their children’s programs and are “unaware that they are not obtaining high quality with respect to
those aspects of quality that they value most highly” (Cryer and Burchinal, 1997, p. 54). Contrasting
parent ratings of quality of care with those of trained observers, these researchers commented, “[T]he
concept of parents as consumers who can make informed choices about childcare is controversial”
(p. 35). A challenge remains on how to inform families about high-quality care.
Child Variables in Choosing Childcare

What variables affect whether a child blossoms and flourishes or fares less well in a childcare?
Child Age
Early researchers on infant care reported negative outcomes for infants in long hours of nonmaternal
care (Belsky and Rovine, 1988). Later studies showed this was more likely when infant care was poor
quality and mothers were not sensitive (NICHD, 2002, 2005). Other studies showed mixed findings:
children with more aggression and higher cognitive scores (Park and Honig, 1991). The CARE
summary of European and U.S. findings reported low-quality care was a risk factor for cognitive,
language, and social development for children under 3 in low-income families (Melhuish et al., 2015).
Length of Time in Childcare Each Day

Child age at entry into group care and length of day care hours are intertwined in affecting outcomes.
The consensus from hundreds of multinational CARE research studies was that for preschool children
2 to 3 years and older, ECE was beneficial for educational and social development but that care for
infants was more problematic based on care quality and daily length of time in care.
Child Gender
Care quality affects children differently. Boys are more vulnerable to caregiver attentiveness (Born-
stein, Hahn, Gist, and Haynes, 2006). By age 5, some girls are already overly concerned about being
“fat.” Caregivers need to address any body image issues gently. By 6 years, little girls are less likely to
believe that girls are smart; they begin to avoid activities they consider are for children who are “really
smart” (Bian, Leslie, and Cimipian, 2017). These beliefs affect how some little girls might respond to
teacher attempts to engage them in preschool science/math activities. Some caregivers, and indeed
some parents, may not feel at ease with children who are more boisterous. Other caregivers relish and
cherish children with high motoric needs who remind the adults of how energetic they themselves
once were in early childhood.
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Gender-typed behaviors detected in preschoolers 3.5 and 4.75 years predict adolescent sexual
orientation at age 15 years (Gu, Kung, and Hınes, 2017). Thus, child gender factors may have to be
considered. These could be problematic for peer acceptance if a male preschooler insists on wearing
dresses or pink clothing in the group. Perceptive parents may have early clues that their child prefers
to dress like or identify with another gender. Parents need to be careful in selecting a childcare setting
that is accepting and nurturing of all children—including those whose preferences indicate discom-
fort with their biological gender.
Child Temperament Styles

Clinicians cluster child temperament styles as flexible, fearful, or feisty. Temperament affects how
teachers interact with children in childcare. High-activity children attract teacher attention. One
quiet 10-month-old sat rocking compulsively back and forth in the room. Skillful providers know
how to interact with children who might be quite shy or quite feisty and help them into enjoyable
participation in appropriate activities (Goh, Pasco Fearon, van IJzendoorn, Bakerman-Kranenburg,
and Roisman, 2017). One child needs an adult to hold hands and accompany him to engage in a new
activity. In contrast, a highly active toddler knows just where to find and vigorously ride that bouncy
horse his thoughtful teacher has judiciously placed in a corner of the room. Temperament is not
destiny (Honig, 2016/2017).
Caregivers puzzle whether to label a high-energy child as “ADHD.” Gold (2017) explains that
some children do have a gene variant associated with low serotonin. But the expression of this gene
depends strongly on how adults respond. A child living with stress, conflict, and criticism has a higher
risk for an ADHD diagnosis: “There is no ADHD gene” (p. 138). As providers teach the child self-
calming skills to decrease stress, that child is not likely to be diagnosed with ADHD.
Children with ADHD or on the autism spectrum present challenges for teachers (Baker, 1993;
Nelson et al., 2016). A cheerful preschooler with ADHD gave his teacher a vigorous “high-five” hand
slap that knocked her off balance. Ever on the move, that child caromed from one side of the class-
room to another. A creative caregiver, during singing time, gently took the child’s wildly drumming
fingers and cheerfully helped the child move his hand in rhythm with the music.
Some children exhibit differential vulnerability. This “differential susceptibility” increases a child’s
chances of problematic behaviors if care is inconsistent or of low quality. Happily, in high-quality care,
children with difficult temperaments scored low on problem behaviors and teacher–child conflict and
higher on reading scores (Pluess and Belsky, 2011).
Attachment Security
Decades of child development research on intergenerational effects of secure versus insecure attach-
ment in infancy reveal the impact of attachment quality on later social development. A massive meta-
analysis of quantitative studies specified that early attachment security “has enduring significance for
children’s socioemotional (mal) adjustment” (Goh et al., 2017, p. 73).
Attachments with parent(s) affect relationships with teachers (Sroufe and Fleeson, 1998).
Infant–mother attachments at 12 months predict later teacher–child and peer preschool social
patterns. Preschoolers who had been rated Avoidant/Insecure as infants now bullied peers who
had been rated Ambivalent/Insecure in infancy. “Highly trained preschool teachers who knew
nothing of the children’s early attachment scores showed the least attention and highest expec-
tations toward those children who had been securely attached in infancy. Teachers treated the
formerly ambivalent insecure children more indulgently. Teachers were sharpest and showed
anger only toward those preschoolers who had been rated Avoidant/ Insecure in infancy” (Honig,
2016/2017, p. 5).
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Optimally, when infants have insecure attachment relationships due to parental vulnerabilities and
emotional troubles, then nurturing teacher–child relationships buffer a baby who forms a secure
attachment with a loving caregiver (Honig, 2002; Sabol and Pianta, 2002). When maternal sensitiv-
ity is low but childcare provider sensitivity is high, children show higher levels of social-emotional
competence than when both are low (Vesely, Brown, and Mahatinya, 2013).
Multiple placements affect young children. Children who have already experienced multiple care-
giver changes since infancy and have not had a chance to develop a secure attachment to any caregiver
require extra observation and nurturance. Families can help by letting providers know about previous
multiple care experiences.
Immigrant Children
Immigrant status affects children in care. Children of immigrant families who have fled war and tor-
ture require extra caregiver sensitivity and insights. Their welfare also may depend on “experiential
diversity” available in their neighborhoods (Sanders and Wishard Guerra, 2016, p. 267). Childcare
problems are more acute for immigrant families, because nearly 70% of children living in ESL homes
live in poverty; 44% of ESL children’s mothers have not graduated from high school and are less
likely to read daily with their young children. Thus, ESL children are likely to flourish with providers
who offer rich daily reading experiences (Cannon, Jacknowitz, and Karoly, 2012). One baby, reared
in Mandarin by his parents, cried for weeks. Center staff phoned with great concern. A nurturing
Mandarin-speaking graduate student volunteered his time for some days to cuddle that child and talk
in soothing tones in Mandarin until the baby adjusted to his new care environment.
Child Stress
Stress affects child adjustment to care, has many causes, and takes many forms (Honig, 2010). How
caregivers respond to children with higher levels of difficult behaviors affects children’s stress levels.
Nurturing caregivers, generous with bodily affection and warm reassuring voice tones, ease chil-
dren’s stress. Among 60 teachers and their preschool children assigned randomly to different groups,
some teachers received training in dyadic interventions to enhance close emotional relationships,
whereas teachers in other classrooms served as controls. As the end of the school year, there was a
significant decline in children’s stress levels, measured by salivary cortisol—an index of stress in the
hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis—but only in children whose teachers had learned more sensi-
tive ways to decrease children’s stressed behaviors (Hatfield and Williford, 2016).
Child Learning Difficulties

Children with special learning needs need special teacher compassion, patience, and skills. Peers may
avoid a child who cannot play games with “their” rules. A provider confided that one child could not
pronounce initial consonants; peers avoided her. The teacher lovingly made extra efforts to under-
stand and support this child.
Sensory Integration Issues

Children with severe sensory sensibilities cannot bear certain food tastes, smells, or clothing textures.
Even a tag on a cotton T-shirt aggravates some children. Loud, cheerful child screams during gym
playtime were so aversive that one preschooler climbed high up on mats to escape; worried teachers
could not reach him to get him down! The director reserved a quiet space in her office during gym
time rather than force the child to participate.
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Health Problems
Health issues affect frequency of attendance and peer relations in care. Loneliness may ensue if chil-
dren are frequently absent due to physical health problems, including asthma, otitis media, and heart
murmur limiting rough and tumble play, or mobility restrictions. In one center, teachers encouraged
the children to try using a new peer’s wheelchair and see how it worked. After that, they were more
likely to approach and play with the new child (Keller and Honig, 1993). Quality care helps. Children
at risk for disabilities enrolled in Early Head Start were less likely to have cognitive delays (Peterson,
2010). Families can use special help in choosing childcare that will nurture their children’s special
needs (Bernstein, Wonderlick, and Madden, 1997).
Emotional Issues
Children with frequent nightmares, strong aggressions toward peers, and other worrisome emotional
troubles increase parent concerns in choosing care. Teachers need a varied and flexible tool kit of
techniques to use. With some preschoolers, they need to consider children’s feelings of shame (attrib-
uting a “bad” behavior as an aspect of the self ) or guilt (feelings when one has hurt another). Shame
issues predict far more serious later life difficulties (Muris, 2015). Teachers handle some conflicts more
readily with ICPS (interpersonal cognitive problem-solving skills) (Shure, 2015). When children’s
emotional troubles affect adult well-being, teachers themselves need to try new ways: learning a new
skill, mindfulness exercises, yoga, journaling, and other creative ways to renew their dedication and
energy to serve children and families (Honig, 2010).
Child Jealousy of a New Baby

A new baby in the family sometimes creates a crisis in a slightly older sibling. Older toddlers may
regress to bedwetting, soiling, sleep disturbances, and demands for a bottle. Such behaviors exacerbate
angers in sleep-deprived parents—anger that may be reflected in worrisome child behaviors in the
care setting. Together parents and providers need to nurture the older sibling to weather these negative
emotions. Bibliotherapy helps when adults read stories about how special older siblings are.
Child Bereavement
Death of a beloved family member can cause problematic behaviors in childcare. At the Syracuse Chil-
dren’s Center, one preschooler took a child into a closet and “humped” over that child. Teachers were
perturbed and puzzled. They found out later that the child’s grandfather had died recently. No one had
told either the home visitor or the teachers. That grandfather had been a significant figure and source
of nurturance in the child’s life. Parent communication with providers helps ease such a situation.
Sibling of a Severely Ill Child

When a very sick child requires long parental hospital visits, then the sibling in childcare may act out
feelings of being neglected by preoccupied, overburdened parents. Parent/staff communication can
promote a more intensive focus on solace for both child and family.
Bullying by Peers
Bullying can be subtle and is already a problem for some preschoolers (Abenvoli, Greenberg, and
Berman, 2017). Negative consequences last for decades (deLara, 2016). Teachers called one child a
“crybaby”; peers pushed him off a teeter-totter or took away his toys. Alert adults will notice and
338
address bullying aggravating a young child (Honig, 2016; Honig and Zdunowski-Sjoblom, 2014).
Swiss kindergarten teachers tackled bullying successfully through a classroom-wide approach (Alasker
and Gutsviller-Helfenfinger, 2010).
Political, Business, Community, and Agency Supports

How well do political, business, and community efforts support parental choice of childcare? The
Federal Interagency Day Care Requirements were discarded in 1982 after much bitterness and dis-
agreement nationally. Regulation of childcare services is now reserved to the states, which vary dra-
matically in regulations, funding, and support for quality childcare. Licensure laws vary widely by
state (Hayes, Palmer, and Zaslow, 1990). States also differ in allowing corporal punishment. Caregivers
may be required to (1) be above 18 years of age, (2) take tuberculosis (TB) tests or measles shots prior
to employment, (3) have an annual chest x-ray, and (4) undergo a fingerprint test for possible prior
conviction for child abuse. Other state specifications include the minimum number of square feet per
child a center provides and required purchase of liability insurance.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management established work-site parenting support groups.
Employee surveys assess the extent to which employees have parenting responsibilities or concerns
and would like help in addressing them. The U.S. Department of Labor (1998) created collaborations
between business, unions, community groups, and nonprofit organizations to improve care quality and
availability. Thus, at participating health care facilities in New York State, the AFL-CIO, the National
Health and Human Service Employees Union, and 17 health care employers assess union member
childcare needs, run an R&R service, select childcare offerings from a menu, and contribute to parent
fees through a childcare fund.
Partnerships increase chances for quality care. The goal of Early Head Start—Child Care Partner-
ships (EHS-CCP) grants through the federal Office of Head Start and the Office of Childcare in the
Administration for Children and Families is to “partner on activities such as training and techni-
cal assistance, professional development, management, and the delivery of comprehensive services”
(Sosinsky et al., 2016, p. 15). Private-sector initiatives have arisen inspired by employee surveys (as
at GM) that “almost half the workers cited childcare as a reason they could not work overtime,
and more than one-third missed 2 to 4 days of work over a 3-month period because of child care
problems” (U.S. Department of the Treasury, 1998, p. 20). The American Business Collaboration
for Quality Dependent Care (ABC), headed by 22 major corporations, “is the largest and most
comprehensive private sector initiative specifically designed to improve the quality and expand the
supply of dependent care” (U.S. Department of the Treasury, 1998, p. 19). Bright Horizons (Mason,
2000) builds centers to serve family needs and works toward accreditation of every childcare facility
built. The Family and Work Institute documents the prevalence of work–life support in nationally
representative samples of leading companies (Freedman and Galinsky, 2000). Other corporations
have search-and-find contracts with community agencies that find care for skilled employees relocat-
ing into a community (Kagan, 1994). However, such services are of little help to families living in
poverty and searching for childcare.
Many states do not regulate (1) the number of years of formal education required of caregivers,
(2) availability of support for staff advancement on a career ladder, (3) provision of staff health insur-
ance or paid holidays, and (4) the number of annual parent–staff conferences. These are among quality
indicators identified by Head Start, NAEYC, and the Child Welfare League of America (Meadows,
1991). Some states require 15 to 18 annual training hours (Azer and Elliott, 1998), which may include
workshops unrelated to specific child development knowledge. Quality is neither high nor uniform.
However, if elaborate licensure requirements were implemented, more totally nonregulated care might
flourish in an “underground” market, and some high-quality facilities might not be able to afford the
additional fees and bureaucratic paperwork required.
339
Conclusions
Finding professionals to care for young children when parents are employed can prove even more dif-
ficult and frustrating than the search for a reliable car repair person. No single governmental agency
or community resource can help improve the supply of high-quality childcare, nor be responsible
for increasing the effectiveness of family choices. The National Research Council of the National
Academy of Science (Hayes et al., 1990) after an in-depth and extensive investigation of childcare in
the United States urged that “responsibility for meeting the nation’s childcare needs should be widely
shared among individuals, families, voluntary organizations, employers, communities, and government
at all levels” (p. 291).
Public education institutions, particularly high schools, need to be proactive in offering courses on
child development and early education that include practica in high-quality centers. Such experiences
can increase adolescent awareness of optimal care. Positive communication techniques offered in such
courses boost young families’ ability to cope with the stress of a new baby and other interpersonal
stresses in their lives.
Media specialists in radio, newspapers, and television play an important role. Public television con-
tinues to offer shows with endearing prosocial characters, like Clifford the Big Red Dog. and Mr. Rogers’
Neighborhood, for preschoolers.
Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) programs and prenatal clinic personnel can alert families,
discuss quality care options, and distribute pamphlets. Pediatricians can display materials in waiting
rooms. Florida State University (2003) offers a one-page list of ten high qualities based on NAEYC
standards. Barbershops and beauty parlors can post fliers with R&R agency information.
Parental childcare decision-making may improve if more ECE researchers begin to write in appeal-
ing ways to “give away” their knowledge to low-literacy families. Attention to parent literacy level
could enhance quality care choice (Honig, 1982; Kagan and Cohen, 1997).
Employers can help by allowing flexible work hours for families with young children. Large com-
panies can consider building childcare spaces on site so that parents can visit their children during
lunch hours and have less travel time to work.
System reforms in funding early childhood services can increase “collaboration and empower-
ment” (Kagan, 1994, p. 17) and widen choices to include emergency care and 24-hour care. More
funds are necessary to increase Child Development Associate (CDA) training in states. Federal funds
support CDA credentialing. Since its founding in 1975, this competency-based model has graduated
over 125,000 caregivers in 25 years (Council News and Views, 2000).
Accreditation efforts need wider support (Herr, Johnson, and Zimmerman, 1993). By 2001, there
were nearly 8,000 NAEYC-accredited centers. The National Childcare Staffing Study (Whitebook,
Phillips, and Howes, 1993) described the overwhelmingly (95%) positive response of directors seek-
ing NAEYC reaccreditation. They felt accreditation was a “seal of quality,” and staff became more
sensitive to the importance of high-quality interactions. “Evaluation processes improved in some
programs, communications between staff and parents improved, and parents increased their under-
standing of what constitutes high-quality childhood programs” (Herr et al., 1993, p. 34). Directors
believed that the accreditation process reflected professionalism, positively affected staff and parent
morale, and increased parental pride in having a child attend an accredited center. However, in 2000
only 7% of centers in the United States were NAEYC accredited, and currently only 6.5% % are
accredited (NAEYC, 2017).
In summary, empowering parents to make wise choices and to demand options for quality care
takes the concerted, multifaceted and multipronged efforts of many societal groups. There is much
more work to be done—educationally, politically, in research programs, in the business world, and in
media channels to enhance the quality of childcare and to clarify and customize family options and
choices for finding care that will ensure that young children flourish as caring persons and passionate
young learners.
340
Additional Resources
Baby Talk: subscribe-babytalk@listserv.unc.edu
Bright Horizons: efamily@emfamilynews.brighthorizons.info
Early Care and Learning Council: rhoagland@earlycareandlearning.org
Early Childhood Advisory Council: ecac@ccf.ny.gov
Early Childhood Investigations webinar site: webinars=earlychildhoodwebinars.com@mail126.atl111.rsgsv.net
Exchange magazine: pamb@childcareexchange.com
The Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute: fpg@unc.edu
National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC): editorial@naeyc.org.
Neurosequential Model in Caregiving: cta@childtrauma.org
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12
ORGANIZED ACTIVITIES
Deborah Lowe Vandell, Sandra D. Simpkins,
and Christopher M. Wegemer
Introduction
Although less studied than schooling and families, participation in organized activities during the
after-school hours is common for children and adolescents in many parts of the world (Larson and
Verma, 1999; Vandell, Larson, Mahoney, and Watts, 2015). These activities include participating in
sports teams, performing arts groups, and service clubs, as well as attending after-school programs
housed in schools and at community centers. These activities share some common features: (1) they
are typically led by adult staff who are responsible for organizing the activities and ensuring children’s
safety, (2) they provide opportunities for young people to interact with peers in supervised settings,
and (3) they meet on a regular basis (daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal).
In the last 20 years, there has been a growing recognition that these various organized activities are
an important context for young people because they offer developmental affordances that differ from
home, school, and free time (Eccles and Gootman, 2002; Mahoney, Vandell, Simpkins, and Zarrett,
2009). Like school, organized activities occur in institutional settings that are supervised by adults, but
they differ from schools in that participation is traditionally voluntary and youth have much greater
voice in the activities (Larson, 2000). Organized activities also are more likely to focus on the develop-
ment of physical skills (dance, sports, exercise), arts (music, theater, visual arts), and/or social-emotional
learning (community service and civic engagement) than the typical school day. Some programs,
especially those serving adolescents, emphasize the importance of youth autonomy, choice, and leader-
ship within the context of the organized activity (Larson and Angus, 2011). Although some organized
activities provide academic enrichment in areas such as math, science, and literacy that are central to
the mission of schools, the approach to those topics differs. Organized activities tend to emphasize
hands-on projects and value high levels of youth engagement.
The focus of this chapter is on the ways in which parents and parenting are an important part of
their children’s organized activities. In the first section, we examine the theoretical frameworks that
have guided much of the research investigating the role of parenting in relation to their children’s
organized activities. In the second section, we describe the various methodological strategies that
researchers have used in their studies of parenting and organized activities. In the third section, we
place the research within a sociocultural frame that underscores the roles of gender, social class, eth-
nicity, immigration status, neighborhoods, and schools in shaping children’s out-of-school time in the
United States and other countries. In the fourth section, we consider the role of parental beliefs in
relation to children’s participation in different types of activities. We then turn to research that has
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Deborah Lowe Vandell et al.
investigated parental behaviors that support or undermine youth participation in organized activities,
followed by consideration of a special case of parental involvement in which parents serve as leaders or
coaches of their children’s activities. In the seventh section, we examine the research evidence about
the effects of organized activities on child developmental outcomes to address two questions: Are par-
ents’ beliefs about the benefits (and costs) of organized activities consistent with the research evidence,
and are effects of organized activities on child developmental outcomes moderated by family circum-
stances, parenting beliefs, and/or parenting behaviors? In the final section, we highlight directions for
future research. In the conclusion, we summarize central themes identified in the previous sections.
Theoretical Frameworks for Studying Parenting

and Children’s Organized Activities
Research investigating connections between parenting and children’s organized activities has been
guided by several theoretical frameworks: (1) ecological systems and bioecological theories, (2) rela-
tional developmental systems (RDS) paradigm, (3) expectancy value theory, and (4) social and cultural
capital theories and conceptualizations of concerted cultivation.
Ecological Systems Theory and Bioecological Theory

Ecological systems and bioecological theory, developed by Bronfenbrenner (1979; Bronfenbrenner
and Morris 1998, 2006), provides the grounding for much of the research in this area (see reviews by
Simpkins, Fredricks, and Lin, in press; Vandell et al., 2015). Central to this work is the conceptualiza-
tion of organized activities within a system of nested relationships. At its core is the microsystem, which
Bronfenbrenner (1979, p. 22) defined as a “pattern of activities, roles, and interpersonal relations
experienced by the developing person in a given face-to-face setting with particular physical and
material features.” Drawing on this definition, researchers have described the patterns of activities that
occur in after-school programs and extracurricular activities (Pierce, Bolt, and Vandell, 2010; Vandell
and Posner, 1999). This research also has described the roles and identities that young people assume
in organized activities, as well as the quality of their interactions with adult staff and peers (Kataoka
and Vandell, 2013).
Particularly relevant for relations between organized activities and parenting, ecological systems
theory highlights the role of mesosystems, or “the linkages and processes taking place between two or
more settings containing the developing person. . . . In other words, the mesosystem is a system of
microsystems” (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. 227). The focus in this current chapter is on the mesosys-
tem (or linkages) between children’s organized activities microsystem and their home microsystem.
Informed by ecological systems theory, researchers have studied how children’s participation in an
organized activities microsystem is affected by their home microsystem, including their parents’ beliefs
about the value of the activities for their children, the parents’ financial and social resources, and the
parents’ perceptions of their child’s needs and competencies. In addition, ecological systems theory
predicts that organized activity microsystems likely influence what happens in the home microsystem,
including parent–child interactions, family activities, and family routines. As will be described in later
sections of this chapter, there is considerable evidence of a bidirectional mesosystem linking children’s
organized activities and home microsystems.
According to ecological systems theory, other linkages occur in exosystems, which refer to rela-
tions between microsystems in which one of the microsystems does not include the developing child
(Bronfenbrenner, 1979). An example of an exosystem is linkages between organized activities and
parents’ workplace: families often use organized after-school activities for childcare while parents are
at work (Kleiner, Nolin, and Chapman, 2004; Smith, 2002). Similarly, the amount of time spent at the
activity is affected by parents’ work schedules. In some cases, young people are not able to participate
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Children’s Organized Activities
in activities because they need to care for younger siblings while parents are at work (Hultsman, 1992;
Telzer and Fuligni, 2009). Ecological system theory, and recognition of the role of exosystems, has
helped to bring these types of cross-setting linkages into focus.
Finally, Bronfenbrenner (1979) highlighted the importance of the macrosystem, or “the overarching
beliefs and value of the society as reflected in culture, religion, and the socioeconomic organization.”
A crucial point is that the macrosystem is not separate from young people’s immediate environments.
Rather, it influences what happens in the micro-, meso-, and exosystems. Later in this chapter, we
describe how aspects of the macrosystem reflected in parental beliefs and behaviors have profound
effects on children’s organized activities.
Relational Developmental Systems

The study of children’s organized activities also has been influenced by a relational developmental systems
paradigm in which individual by context transactions are emphasized. Within this theoretical per-
spective, the focus is on ongoing transactions or processes between the individual and the contexts in
which he or she lives (Overton, 2015). Here, the young person is an active agent engaged in activities
that include “observing, manipulating, exploring, symbolizing, languaging, . . . and feeling.” (Overton,
2015, p. 54). Activities are not something that happen to the child, but rather something that the child
is doing.
An application of RDS is evident in a longitudinal study of 4-H clubs, a youth-serving organiza-
tion funded as part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (Lerner, Lerner, Bowers, and Geldhof,
2015). Although the 4-H program was initially established to support the development and educa-
tion of rural youth, the contemporary program has a broader mission that “recognizes, utilizes, and
enhances youth’s strengths; and promotes positive outcomes for young people by providing opportu-
nities, fostering positive relationships and furnishing the support needed to build on youth’s leadership
strengths” (United States Department of Agriculture, 2017). Over eight waves of data collection that
involved more than 7,000 youth and 3,500 parents, Richard and Jacqueline Lerner and their col-
leagues have examined five aspects of positive youth development (competence, confidence, character,
connection, and caring) within the context of youth participation in 4-H programs (Gestdottir and
Lerner, 2007; Jelicic, Bobek, Phelps, Lerner, and Lerner, 2007; Lerner et al., 2015). Consistent with
the relational developmental systems paradigm, these researchers assessed the social, cognitive, and
behavioral skills (strengths) that youth exhibited within the 4-H context that contributed actively
to their positive development. These competencies also influenced parental expectations, beliefs, and
support for their children’s engagement in organized activities. Their findings reflected individual by
context transactions that involved the active engagement of the youth, as well as ongoing co-actions
with parents, peers, and program staff.
Research conducted by Urban, Lewin-Bizan, and Lerner (2009) also utilized a RDS approach to
study relations between adolescents’ strengths, their organized activities, and community contexts.
Youth with the greater capacities to self-regulate benefitted more from involvement in extracurricular
activities, compared to their peers with less capacity to self-regulate. In addition, consistent with a
RDS perspective, within the context of lower-asset neighborhoods, children with greater capacity to
self-regulate benefited the most from extracurricular activity involvement. This study did not include
parenting within their transactional model, but this would be a valuable extension of the work.
Expectancy Value Theory

A third theoretical framework guiding the study of organized activities is expectancy value theory
(Eccles and Wigfield, 2002). This theory focuses on the interplay between youth motivational beliefs
and achievement-related choices. The theory posits that parents’ beliefs and expectations influence
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parents’ behaviors and the kinds of support (role modeling, encouragement, activity-related materi-
als, and activities) that they provide their children. These behaviors, in turn, communicate to young
people the value that parents attach to particular endeavors, which then play a role in shaping youth’s
skills, self-concepts, values, and activity participation. According to expectancy value theory, parental
beliefs about the importance of a particular activity for their child and their perceptions of their child’s
ability in a particular activity influence their children’s activity choices and the children’s subsequent
persistence in those activities, which in turn strengthen the likelihood of youth being in settings in
which their skills and competencies are strengthened.
Expectancy value theory has been used in studies that investigated youth’s participation in specific
types of activities such as sports and music (Eccles and Harold, 1991; Fredricks and Eccles, 2005;
Simpkins, Fredricks, and Eccles, 2012). In other work, Simpkins, Delgado, Price, Quach, and Starbuck
(2013) used the theory to guide research examining the organized activities of Latino youth.
Social Capital, Cultural Capital, and Concerted Cultivation

Sociologists who study organized activities have often framed their research using social capital theory
(Coleman, 1988). This work emphasizes the role of organized activities in expanding children’s access
to knowledgeable and caring adults (Jarrett, Sullivan, and Watkins, 2005) and to positive peer groups
who are actively engaged in school and extracurricular activities (Crosnoe, 2011), as opposed to peers
and peer groups who endorse risk-taking and deviant behaviors (Gottfredson, 2010; Osgood, Wilson,
Bachman, O’Malley, and Johnston, 1996). Parents are viewed as critical agents in their children’s
development of social capital by their efforts to expose their children to experiences and people that
foster skills to succeed in life (Dunn, Kinney, and Hofferth, 2003; Friedman, 2013; Parcel and Bixby,
2015).
Other sociologists who have studied organized activities are influenced by Bourdieu’s (1986) con-
ceptualizations of cultural capital, or accumulations of knowledge, skills, and behaviors that provide
social status or standing. Lareau (2003, 2011), for example, drew on Bourdieu’s theory in her intensive
observations and interviews of twelve 10-year-olds and their families. In Lareau’s analysis, parents in
the low-income families emphasized their children’s natural growth by providing children with free-
dom to go outside and play with relatives or friends. In contrast, parents in the middle-class families
emphasized concerted cultivation, and parents devoted much effort to providing their children with “a
steady diet of adult organized activities” (Lareau, 2011, p. 3), in the belief that these would advance
their children’s development and future life chances.
Other scholars have argued that social class differences in youth’s activities do not reflect distinct
underlying cultural preferences and beliefs, and that low-income and working-class parents also
aspire to develop their children’s talents and skills (Bennett, Lutz, and Jayaram, 2012; Chin and Phil-
lips, 2004; Duffet, Johnson, Farkas, Kung, and Ott, 2004; Simpkins et al., 2013). These researchers
argue that limited financial resources and logistical hurdles are barriers restricting the out-of-school
opportunities of working-class and low-income youth. These hurdles include parents’ inflexible
work schedules, limited knowledge about available program offerings, and program fees, as well as
more limited program options and concerns about neighborhood safety (Bennett et al., 2012; Duf-
fet et al., 2004; McGee, Williams, Howden-Chapman, Martin, and Kawachi, 2006; McNeal, 1999;
Outley and Floyd, 2002; Simpkins et al., 2013). Further work is needed to determine the extent
to which financial resources and cultural beliefs are linked to youth’s engagement in organized
activities.
In later sections, we examine in more detail the growing body of research that investigates link-
ages between parenting and organized activities. Much of this research reflects issues and approaches
identified by ecological systems theory, relational dynamic systems paradigm, expectancy value theory,
and sociological conceptualizations of social capital and cultural capital.
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Methodological Approaches Used to Study

Parenting and Organized Activities
Researchers have drawn on multiple strategies to investigate linkages between parenting and children’s
organized activities, including (1) nationally representative surveys, (2) questionnaires completed by
convenience samples, (3) event sample and time diaries, and (4) various qualitative methods such as
in-depth interviews and observations.
Surveys of Nationally Representative Samples

Several nationally representative surveys conducted in the United States include items related to youth
participation in after-school programs and extracurricular activities. One useful survey is the Before-
and After-School Programs and Activities Interview conducted by the U.S. Department of Education (see
http://nces.ed.gov/nhes/questionnaires.asp) as part of the National Household Education Survey
(NHES). This phone survey was administered in 1999, 2001, and 2005 to parents of children in grades
kindergarten through eighth grade (roughly ages 5 to 13). Parents report amount of time (hours,
weeks, months) that children in the targeted age group spend each week in the regular before- and
after-school activities, the locations of these activities (e.g., school, church, etc.), the number of par-
ticipants in the group, number of staff, costs, language spoken, transportation to and from the activity,
and the specific kinds of programming that occurred. Parents also report their children’s informal
after-school care arrangements by relatives and by nonrelatives, as well as how often the child typically
cares for himself or herself.
These NHES data can be used to create a picture of the prevalence, hours, and duration of orga-
nized activities in the United States. Because the survey includes information about family ethnicity
and country of origin, as well as child grade level, receipt of special educational or social services, and
the academic and behavioral functioning of the focal child, it is a rich resource for secondary data
analyses on a wide range of questions about the bioecology of organized activities. It is limited in
two respects: the survey is cross-sectional, so only concurrent associations can be studied, and all data
were obtained from a single data source—parental reports. Drawing on this resource, researchers have
determined that in the U.S. context children are more likely to attend after-school programs when
their mothers are employed, when their mothers work more hours, when mothers work traditional
“9-to-5” schedules, and when children reside in single-parent households rather than two-parent
households (Capizzano, Tout, and Adams, 2000; Kleiner et al., 2004; Smith, 2002).
A second nationally representative data set, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K)
is publicly available at http://nces.ed.gov/ecls. Begun in 1999, the study utilizes multiple research
methods and collects information from multiple respondents. The first round of data collection began
when children were in kindergarten (1998–1999) and continued with the same participants when
children were in first, third, fifth, and eighth grades. Parents answered questions about their children’s
out-of-school activities in third, fifth, and eighth grades, including participation in specific types of
activities (sports, clubs, dance, music, performing arts, and art). Trained research staff administered
reading and math achievement assessments. Social and behavioral outcomes, such as approaches to
learning, were reported by parents and by classroom teachers. In 2011, data collection for a new Early
Childhood Longitudinal Study cohort was initiated. Restricted use and public-use files containing
data for this new cohort are now available for analyses. A notable strength of the ECLS-K data sets is
that investigators can employ numerous controls for family and school characteristics, in addition to
controls for children’s earlier functioning.
Investigators (Covay and Carbonaro, 2010; Dumais, 2006) used the 1998–1999 data set to study
social class and ethnicity differences in extracurricular activity participation and to examine concur-
rent associations between activities, as well as cognitive and noncognitive outcomes in grade 3. Other
351
aspects of this data set (e.g., studies of effects associated with cumulative participation in organized
activities over time) have not been studied.
The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Harris and Udry, 2008) is a third nation-
ally representative study that includes questions about organized activities. It is an interesting comple-
ment to the ECLS-K because it follows a nationally representative sample of adolescents in grades
7 to 12 (roughly 13 to 18 years). Begun in 1994–1995, adolescents answered questions about their
extracurricular activities. The sample was assessed again in 1996, 2001–2002, and 2007–2008, and
data collection was expanded to include interviews with parents, teachers, peers, and romantic part-
ners as well as the adolescents themselves. Some of the data from this survey are publicly available,
and other parts of the data set are available under restricted use to preserve confidentiality. Feldman
and Matjasko (2007) used the Add Health data set to identify profiles of students who participate in
extracurricular activities, and Daniels and Leaper (2006) investigated connections between activity
participation, self-esteem, and peer acceptance. Simpkins, O’Donnell, Delgado, and Becnel (2011)
used Add Health to study Latino youth’s selection into organized activities.
Other nationally representative surveys also support secondary data analyses of the antecedents
and consequences of organized activities. The Survey of Income and Program Participation (www.
census.gov/sipp/top_mod/2004/topmod04rev.html) collected by the U.S. Census Bureau, focuses
on organized activities within the broader context of the childcare needs of working families. The
National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) assesses extracurricular activities among adolescents.
Lipscomb (2007) used the NELS to study extracurricular involvement and later academic achieve-
ment, and Dumais (2008) used the NELS to relate extracurricular involvement to math achievement
and college expectations.
Some large-scale, representative surveys have been collected in other countries. For example,
McCoy, Byrne, and Banks (2012) utilized Growing Up in Ireland, a longitudinal study of 8,448 children,
to examine out-of-school activities, social class, and gender in relation to children’s school engage-
ment and academic achievement.
Questionnaires
In other research, questionnaires designed by investigators to study specific issues have been used to
study out-of-school time. An example of this approach is the Childhood and Beyond Study conducted
by Eccles and colleagues to test Eccles’s expectancy value model (Fredricks and Eccles, 2005; Simp-
kins, Vest, Delgado, and Price). In this primarily European-American sample (n = 400), parental
beliefs and adolescent extracurricular activities were measured longitudinally. Mothers’ beliefs about
the importance of sports, music, and math positively predicted their behaviors in these areas one year
later, which predicted youths’ self-concepts of ability and values in these domains over time (Simpkins
et al., 2012).
Another example of an investigator-developed questionnaire is the research by Anderssen and Wold
(1992). In that study conducted in Norway, adolescents (n = 904) completed questionnaires about
their parents’ and peers’ involvement in leisure-time physical activities. Adolescents also reported their
perceptions of support received from parents and friends for physical activity. Adolescents’ reports
of their parents’ and friends’ activities predicted higher levels of adolescent physical activity, as did
parental and peer support of the adolescents’ physical activity, suggesting both parents and friends
influenced adolescent physical activity.
Questionnaires have examined other aspects of parenting and out-of-school activities. In one study
conducted in Sweden, a representative sample of 539 adolescents and their parents reported the ado-
lescents’ participation in after-school activities, parent–adolescent relationship quality, and adolescent
depressed mood (Mahoney, Schweder, and Stattin, 2002). Adolescents who participated in after-school
activities reported lower levels of depressed mood when they perceived high levels of support from
352
their activity leaders compared to adolescents not participating in such activities. Support from after-
school activity leaders was particularly important for the subgroup of youth characterized by highly
detached relations to their parents.
Experience Sampling Method (ESM) and Time-Use Diaries

Researchers also have used experience sampling methods (ESM) and time-use diaries to study how
young people’s experiences at organized activities compare to experiences in other settings (Larson,
2000; Vandell et al., 2005). In the ESM studies, adolescents report their location, activity, social part-
ners, and subjective states at the moment they are signaled, and the adolescents typically provide mul-
tiple reports over several days. This method has the advantage of providing ecologically valid data in
the moment, which reduces memory selectivity and retrospective bias. When collected longitudinally,
ESM enable analyses of within-person patterns and processes over time, using statistically controlled
multivariate analyses.
Using this method, Vandell and colleagues (2005) collected 35 reports a week of after-school expe-
riences during the fall and spring from a sample (n = 191) of ethnically diverse middle school youth.
A total of more than 12,000 reports of after-school experiences were obtained. While at organized
activities, the youth reported higher levels of engagement and more positive affect than the same
youth reported when at home.
Time-use diaries also have been used to study children’s out-of-school time, including their orga-
nized activities. Time-use diaries are typically collected at the end of the day or in the early evening,
using a guided recall format. Posner and Vandell (1999), for example, used a standard set of questions
to ascertain (1) the primary activity for each 15-minute interval during the after-school hours; (2)
who else was present in the location; and (3) who, if anyone, was doing the activity with the child. In
this study, the after-school activities of 194 low-income African-American and European-American
children were studied longitudinally to determine relations between child, family, and contextual
variables and children’s adjustment over time.
Drawing on the time-use diaries, Posner and Vandell found that girls spent more time in academic
activities and socializing after school, whereas boys spent more time in coached sports. Children (boys
and girls) who attended after-school programs spent more time on academic and enrichment activities,
whereas children in informal care settings spent more time watching TV and hanging out. Evidence
of transactional relations between after-school activities and child adjustment was found. Time spent
in organized activities between third and fifth grades was related positively to children’s academic
and social adjustment in fifth grade. At the same time, consistent with the relational dynamic systems
paradigm, children who had better academic grades as third-graders were more likely to engage in
extracurricular activities as fifth-graders and were less likely to spend time in outside unstructured
activities, controlling for third-grade activities, child gender, and family structure.
Qualitative Interviews and Ethnographies

Qualitative methods also have contributed to understanding relations between parenting and chil-
dren’s organized activities. These open-ended methods support discovery and allow researchers to
identify pertinent language, concepts, frameworks, and questions that can then inform future research.
Two general qualitative approaches, qualitative interviews and ethnographies, have proven to be par-
ticularly informative.
Larson and colleagues have used in-depth interviews to understand the reasons that youth stay
in or drop out of after-school programs (Larson and Walker, 2010) and to understand the role of
after-school programs in adolescent–parent negotiations of adolescent autonomy and connections
(Larson, Pearce, Sullivan, and Jarrett, 2007). In the study of parent–youth relationships, a total of 113
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high school–aged youth were interviewed 661 times, either face-to-face or by phone over a two- to
nine-month period. These youth participated in 12 arts, technology, and leadership/service programs.
The investigators’ interest in how programs affected adolescent–parent relationships emerged partway
through the study, and they then added interviews with 43 parents to the study design. Initially inter-
views focused on why youth joined particular programs. Later interviews asked youth about how
programs affected family relationships and household routines. In the final interviews, youth were
asked about changes in parent–child relationships as a result of the program. For the majority of youth,
parents supported the adolescents’ participation in programs as an arena for the youth to exercise
autonomy and for granting youth new freedoms. For other families, the adolescents’ participation was
a source of tension or conflict. In some cases, parents were opposed to the youth attending the pro-
gram. In other cases, parents had forced youth to join the program, or the parents were overinvolved
in the program.
Ethnographies that combine intensive observations and interviews also have been used to study
parenting and organized activities. Perhaps the best-known and widely cited ethnographic description
of children’s out-of-school time is Lareau’s careful study (2003) of 12 families. Each child was observed
about 20 times for a least three hours as they took part in various activities. Children growing up in
working-class families spent much of their time after school and on weekends in unstructured leisure
and play with relatives and friends, whereas the middle-class children in both European-American
and African-American families participated in a complex array of organized activities—sports, choir,
church groups, music lessons—that called for balancing time demands and performing before groups.
Other ethnographies include Kremer-Sadlik and Kim’s study (2007) of 32 middle-class U.S. fami-
lies during formal participation in organized sports (e.g., Little League), informal participation (e.g.,
backyard pick-up games), and passive participation in sports (e.g., watching televised athletic events).
Their detailed analysis of parent–child interactions and conversations revealed sports activities as an
arena in which parents sought to socialize their children to values and skills that went beyond the
benefits of participation in athletic activities. The ethnographic data helped illuminate the function
that sports have in family daily life as a socializing tool for culturally cherished skills and values.
In a third example, interviews and fieldwork contrast extracurricular activities from the perspec-
tive of middle-class parents in Rome, Italy, and Los Angeles, California (Kremer-Sadlik, Izquierdo, and
Fatigante, 2010). Both sets of parents perceived activities as important for children’s success, but the
Italian parents considered activities part of the “children’s world,” downplaying intense involvement
and performance, whereas the Los Angeles parents viewed activities as preparing children for adult life,
emphasizing competition and accomplishment.
Taken together, understanding of children’s organized activities and the linkages between those
activities and family circumstances have been informed by multiple research methods that span quan-
titative and qualitative approaches.
Sociocultural Contexts of Children’s Organized Activities

Organized activities are situated within broader sociocultural contexts. In this section, we consider
ways in which organized activities are influenced by child gender, social class, ethnicity, and immigra-
tion status. We also examine ways in which organized activities vary within and across schools and
neighborhoods.
Gender
Child gender influences organized activities in a variety of ways. For example, boys rate their abilities
higher in sports, place higher value on sports, and participate more often in sports compared to girls
(Barnett and Weber, 2008; Fredricks and Eccles, 2006; Jacobs, Vernon, and Eccles, 2005; Kahn et al.,
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2008). Girls, in contrast, rate their abilities higher in art/music, place higher value on art/music, and
participate more frequently in art/music activities compared to male youth (Simpkins, Fredricks, and
Eccles, 2015). These differences are present as early as kindergarten and persist at least through high
school (Fredricks and Eccles, 2006; Jacobs et al., 2005; Simpkins et al., 2015).
Gender differences also are evident in parents’ beliefs and behavioral support for different types of
activities. In general, mothers and fathers place higher value on sports for their sons, and they provide
more support for their sons’ sports activities compared to parents of daughters (Fredricks and Eccles,
2005; Simpkins et al., 2015; Welk, Wood, and Morss, 2003). The opposite pattern is found for music,
with parents expressing stronger support for their daughters’ participation in music activities (Simp-
kins et al., 2015).
These overall differences fail to address whether parenting has a similar effect on boys’ and girls’
development. For that, researchers need to test whether the relations between parenting and youth
development vary by child gender. The existing work suggests that parents’ support has similar asso-
ciations with boys’ and girls’ motivational beliefs and participation in sports and music (Fredricks,
Simpkins, and Eccles, 2005; Simpkins, Davis-Kean, and Eccles, 2005; Simpkins et al., 2012; Simpkins,
Vest, and Becnel, 2010; Simpkins et al., 2015; Simpkins, Vest, Dawes, and Neuman, 2010). In other
words, parents’ support likely has a similar payoff for both boys and girls.
Social Class
Substantial disparities in organized activities are linked to social class in the United States and Asia
(Duncan and Murnane, 2016; Vandell et al., 2015). In the United States, the average price of a general
after-school program was $113.50 a week in 2014, which reflected a $75 increase from 2009—a cost
many low-income families need assistance to pay (Afterschool Alliance, 2014). In addition to costs,
low-income families face further challenges, including fewer available options in their communities,
safety concerns getting to and from the activity, inconvenient locations, and questionable program
quality (Afterschool Alliance, 2014). Families with higher disposable incomes have more flexibility to
find activity options outside of the school and take advantage of those options, whereas working-class
and low-income families have more restricted options.
Given the financial and logistic barriers, it is not surprising that participation in activities is lower
for low-income and working-class families compared to middle-class families. For example, 10% of
eighth-graders in working-class families did not participate in a single organized activity, whereas
every eighth-grader in middle-class families participated in at least one activity (Bennett et al., 2012).
In another study, youth in low-income or working-class families participated in 2.4 different activities
per year, on average, whereas the average was double that among middle-class families (5 different
activities per year). Youth from working-class and poor families also have less structured summers than
youth from middle-class families (Chin and Phillips, 2004). Similar differences have been reported in
Taiwan and China (Chu, 2017; Shih and Yi, 2014), where children in middle-class families are more
likely than children in less prosperous families to participate in organized activities.
Based on analyses of more than 1,200 participants in the nationally representative Panel Study
of Income Dynamics (PSID), Weininger, Lareau, and Conley (2015) argue that limited financial
resources explain only some of the social class disparities in youth participation in organized activities.
Maternal education, which Weininger et al. viewed as a proxy for mothers’ cultural beliefs, also was
related to higher levels of youth participation in organized activities.
Ethnicity
According to the integrative model for the study of developmental competencies, ethnicity also
influences families, the contexts in which families reside, and concerns about child health and
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safety (Garcia-Coll et al., 1996). The available work examining organized activities among African-
American youth has highlighted how parents utilize organized activities to support and protect
their children (Burton and Jarrett, 2000; Furstenberg, Cook, Eccles, Elder, and Sameroff, 1999;
Jarrett, Bahar, and Taylro, 2011). Jarrett and colleagues (2011), for example, found that parents’
“resilient management strategies” were particularly important in supporting youth participation
in organized activities when families lived in communities that were considered dangerous and in
which only limited activities were available.
Other researchers have studied organized activities in Latino youth. As noted by Simpkins and
colleagues (Lin et al., 2016; Simpkins et al., 2013; Simpkins, Vest, and Price, 2011), Latino families
are diverse in terms of social class, cultural orientations, and immigration histories, as well as parents’
experiences with organized activities when they were growing up. Each of these factors is linked to
Latino parents’ beliefs about the benefits of organized activities and their support of their children’s
participation in activities. For example, Mexican-origin parents were more likely to think that orga-
nized activities helped youth learn Mexican cultural values if parents had a lower level of education,
were oriented toward Mexican culture, and were first-generation immigrants compared to other
Mexican-origin parents (Lin, Simpkins, Gaskin, and Menjívar, 2018). In contrast, whether Mexican-
origin parents participated in organized activities when they were young was not consistently associ-
ated with the benefits parents believe activities afford.
Research with Asian-Americans also underscores how organized activities reflect parental beliefs
and cultural values. Asian-American youth are less likely to participate in sports and more likely to
participate in school clubs and music compared to their European-American peers (Chao, 2000;
Chua, 2011; Darling, Caldwell, and Smith, 2005; Yao, 1985). These participation patterns align with
Chinese parents’ goals for their youth to focus on academic and individual activities where they can
perform and demonstrate their achievements (Chao, 2000; Chua, 2011; Yao, 1985).
Among Chinese immigrants in the United States, many parents control how youth spend their
time after school (Chao, 2000). It is common for Chinese parents to enroll their sons and daughters
in language or music lessons (Chao, 2000; Chua, 2011; Yao, 1985), which align with Confucian
ideals to focus more on a strong mind than a strong body (Yao, 1985). Future work is needed to
examine children’s organized activities among diverse Asian ethnic groups. As highlighted by Born-
stein (2017), there are likely differences associated with the culture of origin and their reasons for
immigrating.
Research also is needed to provide insight into the organized activities of other ethnic groups, such
as Native Americans and Muslim-Americans, who have received little attention. A fertile area for
future research is work that distinguishes between processes specific to ethnicity and processes con-
founded with ethnicity such as family income (Garcia-Coll et al., 1996). Much of the existing research
of organized activities in underrepresented minorities is limited in that it focuses on poor or working-
class families so that ethnicity and social class are confounded. Moving forward, researchers need to be
thoughtful about the families they recruit, their analyses, and the conclusions they draw to inform our
understanding of the interplay between ethnicity and the organized activities that youth experience.
Immigration
Research involving immigrants in the United States has found children’s organized activities
to be affected by immigration status. Immigrant parents vary broadly in terms of their overall
human capital (e.g., level of education, income), which helps to elucidate the mixed findings
concerning participation in organized activities by first-, second-, and third-generation adoles-
cents (Camacho and Fuligni, 2015; Okamoto, Herda, and Hartzog, 2013; Peguero, 2010; Simpkins
et al., 2011). Some scholars find first-generation adolescents are more likely to participate in
extracurricular activities than second- and third-generation adolescents (Simpkins, O’Donnell,
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et al., 2011), whereas the opposite pattern is reported in other studies (Camacho and Fuligni, 2015).
One important difference among these studies is that they included different immigrant groups.
Simpkins and colleagues focused on Mexican-American immigrants, whereas Camacho and Fuligni
included Latino, Asian, and European immigrants. The variability among immigrant families in terms
of resources (e.g., parent education, social networks) and understanding of the U.S. culture and school
system (e.g., English language skills; Hernandez, Denton, and McCartney, 2007) helps explain these
mixed findings. As noted by Bornstein (2017), the effects associated with immigration are complex,
reflecting (1) reasons for migrating (voluntary or involuntary; temporary or permanent), (2) place
(varies by country of origin and by country of destination and the relations between these countries),
(3) specific experiences, and (4) relative status.
For some families in the United States, parents’ perceptions of the risks of organized activities for
the child and the family can be life altering. Simpkins and colleagues interviewed Latino families in
Arizona when an immigration law was adopted. Some Latino adolescents in mixed-status families,
where some family members are U.S. citizens but other members do not have documentation, wor-
ried that their participation could put family members at risk for deportation and splinter the family
unit (Simpkins et al., 2013). Even when adolescents were U.S. citizens or had documentation, parents
expressed concerns about ethnic profiling, specifically that their child will get stopped walking to and
from the activity (Lin et al., 2016).
In addition, within immigrant groups, there are differences in parents’ views about the value of
organized activities depending on where they grew up and their experiences in their country of
origin. Some Mexican-origin parents, for example, were highly involved in a variety of organized
activities as youth, whereas other Mexican-origin parents lived in communities that did not have
organized after-school or extracurricular activities (Simpkins et al., 2013; Simpkins, Vest and Price,
2011). Parents who grew up in communities without organized activities often first learned about
these new opportunities for the children in the United States. Over time, parents gained more infor-
mation and exposure to activities by their children bringing home the information or schools sending
home information—an understudied form of cultural brokering (Simpkins et al., 2013; Simpkins, Vest
and Price, 2011). Among these Mexican immigrant families, older children in the family helped to
teach parents about activities and their benefits, not only enabling their participation but also paving
the way for younger children in the family to participate in activities (Simpkins, Vest and Price, 2011).
Neighborhoods and Schools

Neighborhoods and schools play a central role in youth’s after-school activities because they are
the two primary settings in which activities are situated. These settings also are important because
families’ willingness to utilize activities is influenced by the school and neighborhood location. For
example, youth living in low-resource neighborhoods, as defined by lower neighborhood income,
education, community resources, and higher crime rates, spend less time in organized activities com-
pared to youth in high-resource neighborhoods defined by higher neighborhood incomes, education,
and lower crime rates (Weininger et al., 2015; Wimer et al., 2008).
Two central mechanisms for neighborhood effects have been suggested (Simpkins et al., 2013).
First, not only do low-resource neighborhoods have fewer activities available, but parents are more
likely to believe that the activities are unsatisfactory in terms of hours, program quality, and afford-
ability (Duffet et al., 2004). Second, families in low-resource neighborhoods are concerned about
children’s safety (Coulton and Irwin, 2009; Duffet et al., 2004; Outley and Floyd, 2002). Even when
families find an affordable high-quality activity, there are concerns about children’s safety walking
through the neighborhood to and from the activity (Larson et al., 2006; Simpkins et al., 2013). Neigh-
borhood safety is a stronger predictor of participation compared to neighborhood poverty and ethnic
composition (Coulton and Irwin, 2009). In fact, living in safe neighborhoods increased participation
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by 40% (Coulton and Irwin, 2009). When parents perceive neighborhoods to be dangerous or to lack
activities, parents’ protective and promotive strategies become central to children’s participation (Jar-
rett et al., 2011). In some cases, parents need to locate resources in neighboring communities to enable
their child’s participation (Jarrett et al., 2011).
After-school and summer activities offered at school, especially if they are available free of charge,
can “play an important equalizing role between [social] classes by offering activities,” though they
sometimes do not function that way (Bennett et al., 2012, p. 132; Weininger et al., 2015). Adolescents’
participation is lower in larger schools (McNeal, 1999). High school academic requirements such as
“no Fs and a C average or better” also limit participation by youth who are at risk of dropping out
of school. Among adolescents, research also suggests different patterns of ethnic participation rates
in high- versus low-SES schools (Okamoto et al., 2013). Evidence from the National Longitudinal
Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) indicates that ethnic disparities in participation are more
evident at high-SES schools than at low-SES schools. In high-SES schools, having a higher percentage
of ethnic minority and immigrant students diminished these participation disparities. Although the
disparities are smaller at low-SES schools, these schools often provide fewer activities and had lower
participation. Moreover, school risk, which is often elevated within low-SES schools (e.g., high pov-
erty or disorder), was associated with lower extracurricular participation (Wimer et al., 2008). Some
Latino middle school students, particularly those who were the clear numerical minority among a
predominately European-American student body, anticipated and endured ethnic discrimination and
stereotypes in organized activities (Lin et al., in press).
More attention is needed to the effects of school climate and school demographics on students’
participation in organized activities.
Organized Activities Outside of North America

Although much of the research examining youth’s organized activities has focused on North America,
there is a growing body of research in Europe, Australia, and Asia (Bae and Jeon, 2013; Blomfield
and Barber, 2011; Lee, 2003; Mahoney and Stattin, 2000). Across these cultures and locales, there are
variations in the specific types of organized activities that are available and valued (Larson and Verma,
1999; Kremer-Sadlik et al., 2010). For example, sports activities are more common among North
American and European countries, whereas music and academic activities are more common among
Asian nations (Larson and Verma, 1999).
These activities are reflective of specific cultural norms and expectations. Over the last three
decades, many Asian countries have experienced tremendous growth in the number and type of
activities offered (Bae and Jeon, 2013; Kanefuji, 2015; Lee, 2003; Shih and Yi, 2014). For example,
rates of organized activity participation in South Korea rose dramatically from 49.8% to 65.2% from
2007 to 2010 (Bae and Jeon, 2013). In Japan, the number of schools that offered organized activities
rose 67% between 2007 and 2013 (Kanefuji, 2015).
In South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and China, youth have highly competitive university entrance
exams. Youth experience a great deal of pressure from families and communities to do well on these
exams (Bae and Jeon, 2013; Kanefuji, 2015; Lee, 2003; Nishino and Larson, 2003; Shih and Yi, 2014).
Given the importance of these exams in these countries, it is not surprising that academic tutoring,
cram schools, and other preparation programs (known as hakwon in South Korea, juku in Japan, and
Bu-shi-bans in Taiwan) account for a good portion of youth’s after-school hours (Bae and Jeon, 2013;
Kanefuji, 2015; Lee, 2003; Nishino and Larson, 2003; Shih and Yi, 2014). South Korean parents are
willing to sacrifice a great deal, such as paying the high costs of private tutoring, given the “incalcu-
lable” value they place on a strong education (Bae and Jeon, 2013, p. 54).
Other types of organized activity pursuits in South Korea are not seen as important compared to
academics, and in some cases are seen as a “waste of time” (Lee, 2003, p. 17). In contrast, Japanese
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culture emphasizes the importance of both academic study and bettering one’s physical health.
As a result, many Japanese youth also participate in sport (30% to 75% participate) and cultural
extracurricular activities (17% to 22% participate), known as bukatsu (Nishino and Larson, 2003).
Estimates from Taiwan show a similar balance as Japan, where approximately 73% of youth par-
ticipate in academic programs and 79% participate in nonacademic enrichment programs (Chen
and Lu, 2009).
International work, which is cited throughout the chapter, highlights the cultural variability in the
extent to which participating in organized activities is a typical childhood activity, as well as the level
of parent involvement in these activities (Kremer-Sadlik et al., 2010; Mahoney et al., 2002; Persson,
Kerr, and Stattin, 2007). Scholars have argued that the competitive and individualistic nature of main-
stream U.S. American culture encourages the importance of children’s engagement, specialization, and
success in activities at an early age (Friedman, 2013; Grolnick and Seal, 2008). Trophies and individual
performance are valued in U.S. American and Chinese cultures but are less evident in other countries
such as Italy (Chao, 2000; Chua, 2011; Kremer-Sadlik et al., 2010).
The existing work on parents and youth’s organized activities also reveals some consistencies
between U.S. and international samples. Lack of access and affordability are common barriers and
may be more pronounced in countries where activities have not been part of their cultural fabric
until recently, such as South Korea (Lee, 2003). Parents’ educational and financial resources are criti-
cal determinants in several countries, including England, Canada, South Korea, and Taiwan (Bae and
Jeon, 2013; Bean, Fortier, Post, and Chima, 2014; Shih and Yi, 2014; Kay, 2009). Parents’ beliefs and
behaviors explain relations between parental resources and youth’s participation in the United States
and internationally (Shih and Yi, 2014). Across several countries, general parent–child relationship
quality, as well as specific parenting behaviors, are linked to youth participation in specific activities
(Mahoney et al., 2002; Mahoney and Stattin, 2000; Persson et al., 2007). In countries such as Italy,
England, and Norway where sports are a central cultural pastime, parental support in the form of
verbal encouragement, instrumental support, and volunteering are vital to youth’s sport participation
(Bean et al., 2014; Kremer-Sadlik et al., 2010; Vincent and Maxwell, 2016).
In summary, parental involvement, support, and encouragement of their children’s organized activ-
ities is embedded within the broader sociocultural contexts that children live. Parental encourage-
ment and facilitation of activities vary for boys and girls, by social class, and by ethnicity, as well as by
countries of origin and immigration status.
Parental Beliefs and Children’s Organized Activities

Parental beliefs about the role of organized activities reflect their perceptions and views about the
kinds of experiences that children generally need to succeed at school and in life, as well as their assess-
ments of their children’s specific needs and skills. Parental beliefs about the “benefits” of organized
activities are often balanced against parental concerns about the “costs” of these activities for family
life and for parents’ work and personal needs.
Parents’ General Perceptions About Activities

Youth activity schedules reflect parental beliefs about what is needed to raise “balanced, well-rounded,
competitive, healthy children who will be prepared for the demands of adulthood” (Gutiérrez, Izqui-
erdo, and Kremer-Sadlik, 2010, p. 643). Some parents have gone on to say that activities are a fun-
damental part of childhood and view their children’s participation as an indicator of “being a ‘good’
parent” (Trussell and Shaw, 2012; Vincent and Maxwell, 2016, p. 271).
In one interview study, parents identified 99 distinct benefits of activities, including child safety,
following the child’s own interests, personal development, academic benefits, and socializing (Barnett
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and Weber, 2008). These perceived benefits fell into five broad categories. First, parents viewed activi-
ties as a better alternative for children than hanging out unsupervised with peers or doing sedentary
activities such as watching TV. Second, activities were seen as enabling children to spend time doing
something they enjoy and honing skills at something the children are good at. Third, activities were
seen as exposing youth to opportunities to develop general life skills that parents believe contribute
to becoming a successful adult, including self-worth, discipline, making a commitment, respect for
others, and teamwork. Fourth, parents believed activities helped the family and parent–child relation-
ships by providing a forum that they can share, talk about, and do together. Fifth, parents’ views were
aligned with cultural values. Among Latino families, this included respeto, familism, and bringing honor
to the family. Among European-American families, perceived benefits reflected values of competition
and effort. Among Asian families, perceived benefits included support for the family.
These perceived benefits of organized activities were not mutually exclusive. Rather, the interviews
indicated that parents believe youth derive multiple benefits from each activity and that benefits
accrue across various activities. At the same time, parents believe that some benefits are linked to par-
ticular activities. Parents, for example, have highlighted scouting activities as an activity for learning
the value of community service (Barnett and Weber, 2008; Dunn et al., 2003; Lin et al., 2016). Parents
from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds report some similar benefits of activities for their children,
although working-class parents placed greater emphasis on safety and social mobility than did high-
income parents (Bennett et al., 2012; Duffet et al., 2004; Outley and Floyd, 2002).
Parents’ decisions about activities are not based solely on the perceived benefits of participation.
Parents typically weigh the benefits against what they view are the costs of these activities for the
child and the family as they make decisions about various activities. For the youth who participate,
the benefits typically outweigh the costs, or parents believe that the long-term payoff is worthwhile
(Gutiérrez et al., 2010). On the costs side, parents express concerns about the loss of family time,
complicated logistics, and negative impacts on parent work commitments or the parents’ own leisure
time (Bean et al., 2014; Bennett et al., 2012; Dunn et al., 2003; Friedman, 2013; Gutiérrez et al., 2010;
Kremer-Sadlik et al., 2010; Simpkins et al., 2013; Trussell and Shaw, 2012). Working-class parents have
expressed concerns about whether activities would interfere with youth’s current grades and academic
success (Bennett et al., 2012; Dunn et al., 2003).
Additional concerns have emerged in countries that do not have strong cultural expectations
for individual success and competition or an expectation that organized activities are what children
“should do” after school (Friedman, 2013; Gutiérrez et al., 2010; Vincent and Maxwell, 2016). In Italy,
for example, parents were concerned that activity expectations were too high and that youth need
more time after school to relax (Kremer-Sadlik et al., 2010).
Although it has not been studied, we expect that parents’ beliefs about activities are reflected
in youth’s participation patterns. On the one hand, if parents view a primary benefit of organized
activities is to provide a safe environment, it may not matter which activity a child participates in or
whether she or he switches activities so long as the activity is safe. On the other hand, if parents believe
the primary benefit of organized activities is skill mastery and life-skill development, their youth may
participate in the same activity for multiple years. Indeed, middle-class parents are more likely to
customize activities based on child interest or talent, whereas working-class parents are less focused
on customizing, but rather on finding a safe activity for their child (Bennett et al., 2012; Duffet et al.,
2004; Friedman, 2013).
Parental Values and Perceptions of Children’s Abilities in Specific Areas

Parents’ beliefs are linked to the instrumental support they provide that enables their children to par-
ticipate in activities that are valued by the parents or that they believe their child is good at. Parents
who believe a particular organized activity, like soccer or piano, is a valuable experience are more
360
likely to seek out that activity, enroll their child, pay the fees, and encourage the child’s participation.
In retrospective reports, Canadian parents said their high value of sports prompted them to pay for
sport activities for their child rather than setting that money aside for college (Bean et al., 2014). Pre-
liminary work suggests that these types of parental support mediate relations between parents’ beliefs
and youth’s competence beliefs and values in music and sports (Jodl, Michael, Malanchuk, Eccles, and
Sameroff, 2001; Simpkins et al., 2012).
Research examining parenting and children’s motivation has often focused on the importance that
parents attach to particular domains that they believe their children have skills in. Within academic
subject areas as well as music, sports, and other activities, parents’ perceptions of their children’s abili-
ties are strong predictors of parent support, youth motivational beliefs, and youth participation (Jacobs
et al., 2005; for a review, see Simpkins et al., 2015). For example, mothers’ and fathers’ perceptions of
their youth’s ability in sports predict slower declines in youth’s sport competence beliefs from 1st to
12th grade (Fredricks and Eccles, 2002).
In summary, parental beliefs about the benefits (and costs) of organized activities are linked
to children’s participation in activities in both middle childhood and adolescence. These beliefs
are influenced by what parents view as their children’s skills and interests, but they also are
influenced by parents’ views of what children in their community need for healthy, successful
development.
Parenting Behaviors in Relation to Children’s Activities

Parenting behaviors, including general aspects of parenting style, emotional support, and engagement,
are related to children’s participation in and enjoyment of activities. Research also has examined the
role of parents’ logistical support of children’s activities.
Parenting Styles in Relation to Organized Activities

Studies have considered how parental styles such as authoritative parenting are associated with activ-
ity participation. In one study involving more than 1,000 Finnish ice hockey players (Juntumaa,
Keskivaara, and Punamaki, 2005), authoritative parenting was associated with higher satisfaction, less
task-irrelevant behavior, and less norm-breaking behavior among the athletes. In other research, other
components of parenting styles—warmth and behavioral accountability—were related to adolescents’
organized activities. Positive, warm parent–child relationships predicted higher levels of participa-
tion in organized activities and more sustained participation over time in both the United States and
Sweden (Fletcher, Elder, and Mekos, 2000; Persson et al., 2007). Parental monitoring and trust also are
linked to activity participation (Mahoney and Stattin, 2000). Affording youth autonomy and mini-
mizing controlling parenting are linked positively to youth’s motivation and engagement in activities
(Grolnick and Seal, 2008).
In contrast, negative parent–child interactions are related to less participation in organized activi-
ties. Among Swedish families, high levels of parent–child conflict predicted lower participation and
a higher likelihood of quitting or spending some time hanging out with peers compared to youth
who had more positive relations with their parents (Mahoney et al., 2002; Persson et al., 2007). In
the U.S. context, broad indicators of family risk, such as low emotional support and low cognitive
stimulation, are associated with lower overall participation in activities, as well as lower participation in
sports and service clubs specifically (Wimer et al., 2008). Although the specific mechanisms by which
these overarching qualities of parent–child relationships affect youth’s activities have largely gone
untested, scholars have identified adolescents’ self-worth and attributional styles as potential mediators
of relations between positive family relationships and adolescents’ participation in organized activities
(Bohnert, Martin, and Garber, 2007).
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Specific Parental Behaviors That Support Youth

Participation in Organized Activities
Parents actively promote their children’s participation in organized activities through specific behav-
iors that provide instrumental support and modeling of those activities (Simpkins et al., 2015). Instru-
mental support takes several forms. Parents play a key role in locating activities and determining their
appropriateness (Dorsch, Smith, and McDonough, 2015; Friedman, 2013; Jarrett et al., 2011; Outley
and Floyd, 2002; Turman, 2007). Some parents actively seek opportunities for their children that they
did not have when they were young (Gutiérrez et al., 2010; Simpkins, Vest, and Price, 2011). Others
seek out activities for their children that they did when they were young. Once an activity is located,
parents complete permission forms, schedule necessary health exams, pay activity fees, purchase nec-
essary equipment, and provide transportation (Bhalla and Weiss, 2010; Davidson, Howe, Moore, and
Sloboda, 1996; Friedman, 2013). These types of instrumental support predict higher levels of youth’s
participation in and motivational beliefs about activities (Camacho and Simpkins, 2018; Pugliese and
Tinsley, 2007).
Although instrumental support is often defined in terms of what parents do for their children,
research on parent–child planning and decision-making highlights other ways that parents provide
support within ongoing interactions with their children. Decision-making about activities is often
shared by children and parents during elementary school, and decision-making shifts to a largely
youth-driven process during middle school and high school (Brown, Nobiling, Teufel, and Birch,
2011; Duffet et al., 2004; Gauvain and Perez, 2005). This shift is influenced by adolescents’ increased
voice and autonomy and by other parent, youth, and program characteristics. Parents continue to
engage in the decision-making process even when it is largely driven by adolescents, by giving
encouragement, by helping youth find a good program, and by gathering information (Kang, Raf-
faelli, Bowers, Munoz, and Simpkins, 2017). Adolescents viewed their parents’ most important role
as providing emotional support and secondarily managerial support (locating programs, ascertaining
registration dates, arranging transportation), whereas parents viewed managerial support as primary
and emotional support as secondary (Kang et al., 2017).
The ages at which children are given more voice in determining their activities have been found to
vary. In one study, U.S. Latino parents felt children were not ready to have a voice in their organized
activities until age 9 compared to age 7 reported by European-American parents (Gauvain and Perez,
2005). Simpkins, Vest, and Price (2011) found that actual decisions about joining activities were more
likely to be driven by bicultural adolescents when parents were more oriented toward Mexican cul-
ture. Almost 50% of Mexican-origin seventh-graders reported that enrollment decisions were largely
adolescent-driven.
Parents continue to be actively involved after their children enrolled in an activity. Parents actively
seek information, teachable moments, and opportunities to promote positive development (Simpkins
et al., 2015). They talk to the coach to get feedback on progress and areas for improvement, talk to
their child about the activity, and make sure their child practices outside of the activity/lesson (David-
son et al., 1996; Dorsch et al., 2015; Friedman, 2013; Turman, 2007). Through conversations, parents
can help children see the value of an activity, handle positive and negative emotional experiences,
interpret situations that did not go as they had hoped, and reinforce life lessons learned through the
activity (Bhalla and Weiss, 2010; Dorsch et al., 2015; Friedman, 2013; Turman, 2007).
Within the context of specific activities, parents teach children skills and work on areas for
improvement. Such behaviors help keep youth motivated and push them to the next level (Kremer-
Sadlik et al., 2010; Simpkins et al., 2015). Indeed, meta-analytic results suggest co-activity and encour-
agement are associated with increases in children’s physical activity (Pugliese and Tinsley, 2007).
Youth with more supportive parents (e.g., verbal encouragement, teaching skills, making sure children
practice) have an increased chance to get into specialized music schools or continue their sport and
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musical interests into high school (Davidson et al., 1996; Simpkins et al., 2015). Parents’ reports of how
frequently they engage in a variety of supportive behaviors, including encouragement, logistic sup-
port, and going to community events associated with the activity, predicts youths’ long-term activity
participation (Simpkins et al., 2015). Moreover, youth’s motivational beliefs mediate relations between
parent support with the time youth spend in activities and their psychological engagement in activi-
ties (Camacho and Simpkins, 2018; Simpkins et al., 2015).
Last, parents’ own leisure pursuits and behavior influence youth through processes associated with
modeling. For example, youth whose parents are more involved in the community are more likely to
participate in a greater number of activities and show more consistent participation over time in these
activities than their classmates (Fletcher et al., 2000; McGee et al., 2006). Similarly, parents’ music and
athletic leisure pursuits are associated with youth’s participation in music and athletics, respectively
(Simpkins et al., 2015).
Parents model behaviors, such as sportsmanship, which predicts children’s positive and negative
behavior. Among adolescent Finnish ice hockey players, parents’ attitudes about norm-breaking
behavior in sports (e.g., it’s okay to cheat or hurt another player to win) predict youth’s actual
norm-breaking behavior in sports (Juntumaa et al., 2005). In addition, researchers observed specta-
tors’ sportsmanship and unsportsman-like conduct, including cheering on opponents and yelling at
referees, at third- through sixth-graders’ sport games. The behaviors of spectators, most of whom are
parents, predicted athletes’ sportsmanship behaviors (Arthur-Banning, Wells, Baker, and Hegreness,
2009). Parents’ interests and specific behaviors provide messages to youth about what is valued and
appropriate (e.g., norm-breaking behavior in sports).
In the United States, there are strong expectations that parents support their children’s activities
by attending events and being attentive (Kremer-Sadlik et al., 2010). Many of these parent behav-
iors occur in public spaces, and parents are vulnerable to criticism if they do not live up to expecta-
tions and norms (Friedman, 2013; Trussell and Shaw, 2012). That is not the case in all countries.
Indicators of children’s success and performance, such as trophies and medals, were prominent in
U.S. homes but not in Italian homes (Kremer-Sadlik et al., 2010). The press for individual success
and competition in U.S. culture may prompt U.S. parents to push for success more than Italian
parents. U.S. parents go to lengths to switch activities and pay for additional professional coaching
to advance their child’s skills and give them a competitive edge (Friedman, 2013).
Others have studied parental support in the context of youth involvement in music. In one study
(Davidson et al., 1996), interviews were conducted with the 257 parents and children who had studied
a musical instrument but who differed in the extent of their mastery. The most successful children
had parents who were highly involved in lessons and practice when the children first began their les-
sons. Children who failed to continue with lessons had parents who were, on average, less interested
in music and who did not change their involvement with music over their child’s learning period.
Parents’ Activity-Specific Pressure and Negative Behavior

Although many parents engage in supportive behaviors, athletic coaches estimate about 36% of par-
ents engaged in behaviors that hurt their child’s development in the activity (Gould, Lauer, Rolo,
Jannes, and Pennisi, 2006). Over 100 U.S. junior tennis coaches with an average of 17 years of coach-
ing experience noted in questionnaires the range of negative behaviors they had seen from parents.
Some cases of parents’ inappropriate and physically violent behavior at youth sporting events have
become infamous in the popular press (Omli, LaVoi, and Wiese-Bjornstal, 2008; Shields, Bredemeier,
LaVoi, and Power, 2005). Although the incidence of physical violence among spectators at youth
sporting events is low (2% to 8%), these incidents are serious and set a poor example for youth’s
sportsmanship (Shields et al., 2005).
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Within youth athletics, parents have yelled; told youth to break the rules to win; complained
or swore; said mean things about the other team; argued with other parents, coaches, or officials;
and gotten angry with their child for mistakes (Omli et al., 2008). Although 13% of parents said
they have angrily criticized their child’s performance or yelled at an official during a competition,
many more youth, parents, and coaches (35% to 75%) report having witnessed fans angrily yell
at a player, coach, official, or other fan during a competition (Shields et al., 2005). Nearly half of
fifth- to eighth-grade youth (43%) have been teased or yelled at by a fan (Shields et al., 2005). In
response to these types of behaviors, some sporting leagues have developed agreements for parents
to sign or policies, such as Silent Sundays, to help keep parents’ behavior positive at competitions
(Omli et al., 2008).
Although most youth want their parents to attend games (Omli et al., 2008), approximately 8% to
13% of youth do not enjoy their parents watching competitions (Shields et al., 2005). Youth report
that they want their parents to provide unconditional support—to tell them that they did a good job,
clap if their team did something well, say “good try” if they mess up, be empathic, and control their
emotions (Omli et al., 2008; Omli and Wiese-Bjornstal, 2011). Some children worry their parents will
be a “demanding coach” or “crazed fan” by arguing, criticizing, coaching from the sidelines, overem-
phasizing winning, blaming, disrupting, yelling, and fanatically cheering—all of which are upsetting
and counterproductive for youth (Gould et al., 2006; Omli and Wiese-Bjornstal, 2011). Because some
parents become emotionally invested or base their self-worth on youth’s activity outcomes, they need
to learn how to handle their child’s mistakes and loses in a constructive manner (Dorsch et al., 2015;
Grolnick and Seal, 2008). Youth are unsure their parents will be proud and worry about getting yelled
at due to poor performance (Dworkin and Larson, 2006). Such parent behavior can lead to youth’s
diminished enjoyment of sports, feeling discouraged, and sometimes quitting (Anderson, Funk, Elliott,
and Smith, 2003; Grolnick and Seal, 2008; Gutiérrez et al., 2010).
The majority of the studies of parents’ negative behavior has been studied within athletics, but
negative behaviors also have been examined in other types of organized activities, such as performing
arts and competitive chess (Dworkin and Larson, 2006; Friedman, 2013; Grolnick and Seal, 2008). In a
qualitative study of 55 adolescents who participated in a variety of activities, adolescents reported that
their parents would yell and pressure them to join/quit or to perform better (Dworkin and Larson,
2006). For example, one adolescent male noted that “if I ever quit something, my dad would probably
scream my head off ” (p 10). Although 90% of youth agree that they need a push from parents now
and again (Duffet et al., 2004), sometimes the pressure can be too intense, the focus on winning is too
strong, or parents do not display good sportsmanship (Grolnick and Seal, 2008).
Complementarity of Maternal and Paternal Behaviors

Although mothers’ and fathers’ support of their children’s activities are positively correlated, there
are differences in the types of support they provide (Davison, Cutting, and Birch, 2003). Mothers
typically carry the heavier burden when it comes to logistic support—activity enrollment, schedule
organization, providing transportation, and purchasing equipment (Bean et al., 2014; Davison et al.,
2003; Trussell and Shaw, 2012; Vincent and Maxwell, 2016). Fathers are more likely to model partici-
pation in sports activities and to coach youth sports, which aligns with the masculine gender stereo-
types for sports (Bean et al., 2014; Davison et al., 2003). Those specific behaviors, namely mothers’
instrumental support (in the form of provision of equipment) and fathers’ modeling (in the form of
coaching), were the strongest predictors of youth’s subsequent sport motivational beliefs among a
variety of behaviors (Fredricks and Eccles, 2005).
If mothers and fathers provide complementary supports, having support from both parents should
be advantageous. Indeed, girls’ engagement in physical activities increased from 30% with no sup-
port from either parent to 70% with high support of both parents (Davison et al., 2003). This pattern
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suggests that although parent support is not a necessary condition, support from mothers and fathers
is additive within the sports context.
Other research examining the cumulative effect of maternal and paternal supports of organized
athletic and music activities finds a similar pattern—essentially more support is associated with
higher youth motivation and participation (Fredricks and Eccles, 2005; Fredricks et al., 2005). An
important factor to consider is how researchers have analyzed parental support. When multiple indi-
cators (e.g., modeling, encouragement, purchase of equipment) of parent support are simultaneously
entered into an analysis to estimate their unique contribution, almost none is statistically significant
in part because of collinearity. When researchers combined parent support into an overall promotive
score, strong positive, linear relations emerged for both sports and instrumental music (Fredricks and
Eccles, 2005; Fredricks et al., 2005). These findings corroborate the additive nature of parenting sup-
port of youth activities, and they underscore that no single parent behavior is the primary motivator
for all youth.
Changes in Parenting Across Stages of Participation

Parents’ beliefs and expectations about their children’s activities change as their children develop.
They are more likely to select and guide the choice of organized activities in early childhood. During
middle childhood, especially the upper elementary grades, children begin to exert a greater voice in
which activities they want to do. During adolescence, activities are guided much more by adolescents’
interests and skills.
In addition to changes associated with children’s ages, there is evidence that parental support is
associated with youth’s and parents’ skill levels. Research conducted in music and sports suggests that
parenting varies based on (1) youth’s stage of participation, (2) youth’s skill level, and (3) parents’
expertise in and value of the activity (Côté, 1999; Davidson et al., 1996; Dorsch et al., 2015; Harwood
and Knight, 2009; Simpkins et al., 2015). Côté (1999), for example, detailed how parental behaviors
changed across three stages of athletic participation: the sampling years, the specializing years, and the
investment years. During the sampling years, parents take the lead in exposing their child to sports
by selecting and enrolling in activities with the goal of sparking initial interest and with an emphasis
on the child having fun. During the specializing years, youth focus their effort on a single or limited
number of specific activities. The parents’ role shifts from “leading and directing” to “following and
facilitating” (Côté, 1999, p. 406). It is during this stage that parents often have a growing interest in
the activity and, as a result, their investments increase. During the investment years, adolescents move
into elite, competitive athletic teams. Parents provide heavy investments during these years, but their
role focuses on logistic support and providing advice to help youth deal with setbacks, such as injuries,
fatigue, and loss of interest, as well as dealing with stress, balance, and anxiety. Coaches rather than
parents provide advice on athletic skills.
The substantial investments on the part of parents have emerged in other studies of elite athletes
and musicians (Bean et al., 2014; Davidson et al., 1996; Dorsch et al., 2015). As youth participa-
tion advances, parents also acquire increased expertise in the activity that boosts their confidence
and enables them to better support their child (Harwood and Knight, 2009). Although Cote’s work
focused on athletic participation, it would be useful for researchers to examine the stages of support
in other activity domains, including the visual and performing arts, chess, debate, and other youth
activities.
In summary, general aspects of parenting such as authoritative and emotional supportive parenting
are related to children’s greater participation in organized activities. Parental instrumental support and
modeling of specific activities such as athletics and music also are related to their children’s participa-
tion in specific activities. The quality of children’s experiences in these activities are shaped by their
parents’ behaviors—for better and for worse.
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Parents as Activity Leaders

In addition to providing logistical and emotional support for organized activities, parents serve as the
leaders of youth activities, especially during middle childhood. These experiences have the potential
of promoting positive parent–child relationships, but also have been linked to conflictual, negative
relationships.
One area in which parent-leaders are common is youth sports. In a national survey of almost
2,000 parents (Pew Research Center, 2015), three-quarters reported that their children, ages 6 to
17 years, had participated in organized sports during the previous year, and almost one-third of the
parents indicated that they helped coach their child within the same period. Parent-coaches are more
common for parents whose children are under the age of 13 compared to parents of adolescents, and
fathers are more likely to serve as coaches (Pew Research Center, 2015). Others have found over 80%
of parents reported that they had, at some point, served as a coach for their child’s team (Weiss and
Sisley, 1984).
Several qualitative studies have examined the dynamics of the interactions between the parent-
coaches and their children and other team members. In one study, Weiss and Fretwell (2005) explored
the nuances of these relationships. Six father-coaches who had been coaching their 11- and 12-year-
old sons in soccer for at least one year were interviewed, along with their sons and two teammates.
Both positive and negative aspects of the father-coach and player-son interactions were identified. The
sons appreciated special attention, being involved in decision-making, and spending time with their
father, but the boys also reported additional pressure, conflict, and unfair treatment. The responses
suggested that conflict in sport settings between young adolescents and their fathers is exacerbated by
developmental changes in the adolescent father–son relationship. Father-coaches expressed difficulty
in separating roles as parent and coach. Other boys on the teams reported that the father-coaches
showed differential treatment (usually favoritism, but also more criticism) toward their player-sons. In
a second study of 89 young adolescent boys, the sons of parent-coaches did not differ in competition
anxiety or participation motivation compared to their teammates who were not coached by their
fathers (Baber, Suhki, and White, 1999). Other qualitative studies of parent-coach/child-athlete dyads
examined individual sports. Teenage swimmers and their parent-coaches described their experiences
as more positive when both the parent and child reported high levels of mutual dependence and low
levels of perceived controlling behavior and conflicting interests (Jowett, Timson-Katchis, and Adams,
2007).
Other investigators have noted gender differences in parent-coaches’ relationships with their chil-
dren, with a particular focus on the challenges of father–daughter dyads. In a study of female tennis
players and their father-coaches, Schmid, Shannon, Bernstein, Rishell, and Griffith (2015) found that
participants emphasized negative aspects of the parent-coach relationship over the benefits. Chal-
lenges included difficulties in managing blurred boundaries, pressure to gain paternal approval, and
enduring frequent conflicts. In other research, what father-coaches saw as encouragement was per-
ceived by their adolescent daughters as indications that the daughters lacked competence (McCann,
2005). Girls also perceived higher levels of conflicts than their fathers did (Jowett, 2008). Daugh-
ters preferred democratic leadership and authoritative parenting approaches of their father-coaches
(McCann, 2005).
In addition to serving as their children’s coaches, parents serve as activity leaders in the youth
organizations such as Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts (Pearlman, 2007; Rogoff, Topping, Baker-Sennett,
and Lacasa, 2002). The majority of mothers of Girl Scouts donate time in some capacity, and mothers
are largely responsible for overseeing and arranging the organization’s major fundraiser, the selling of
Girl Scout cookies (Girl Scout Research Institute, 2012; Meijs and Karr, 2004). There has been little
systematic research examining the processes and outcomes associated with parent-leaders on the qual-
ity of the scouting experiences for program participants—either for the parents or for the children.
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One notable exception is Rogoff ’s analysis of the shared planning and execution of cookie sales by
two troops of Girl Scouts, their mothers, and members of the community. This observation (Rogoff
et al., 2002) illustrates the potential value of examining parent-led organized activities as a promising
developmental context.
A fertile area for future multimethod and multirespondent research is a systematic examination of
parenting in the context of parent-leaders’ interactions with their own children and other children.
Parent Characteristics as “Selection Factors”

Participation in organized activities is influenced by multiple factors, including children’s interests
and skills, neighborhood, and school resources, as well as parents’ beliefs, income, and work schedules.
Identifying these factors is part of the general research agendum that uses quantitative analyses to
determine factors that predict children’s participation in organized activities. Researchers have typi-
cally studied “selection effects” using quantitative analyses in which multiple factors are included in
statistical models that predict the intensity, frequency, and breadth of children’s organized activities.
The goal of these analyses is to identify the combined and unique effects of particular familial charac-
teristics, such as parental education, income, and work hours, on children’s participation in organized
activities. In this section, we focus on family circumstances and parent characteristics as selection
factors.
Reasons for Studying Family Selection Factors

Studies of selection factors are motivated by several research questions. The first is a substantive inter-
est in understanding the impact of various family characteristics on the type, frequency, intensity,
and duration of children’s organized activities. Several researchers such as Simpkins and colleagues
(Simpkins, O’Donnell et al., 2011) have examined this substantive issue. The results of this body of
research are noteworthy because they document sources of inequities in children’s access to organized
activities.
Others have studied family selection to identify family covariates to include in analyses that test
links between organized activities and child developmental outcomes. Because factors such as parental
education and family income are associated with both organized activities and child developmental
outcomes, these family characteristics (and not organized activities) may account for obtained links
between organized activities and child outcomes. Controlling for family selection lessens the likeli-
hood that obtained program effects are the result of selection bias. Several research teams (Covay and
Carbonaro, 2010; Dumais, 2006; Posner and Vandell, 1999) have studied family selection effects and
organized activities in this way.
A third group of researchers has focused on issues of family selection in an effort to identify why
some activities are more successful than others in attracting and sustaining youth engagement in their
offerings (see Pearson, Russell, and Reisner, 2007 for an example). This information is used to align
program offerings to families and children they serve. Understanding these beliefs and preferences
enables programs to identify factors that “pull” families to enroll their youth in some programs and
to continue those activities over time, as well as to illuminate factors that “push” children and families
out of activities. Collectively, these studies of family selection have uncovered several family charac-
teristics that consistently relate to young people joining, persisting in, and dropping out of activities.
Maternal Education and Family Income

Studies of family selection effects have considered a number of factors in relations to children’s orga-
nized activities. Several of these factors—maternal education, family income, household structure,
367
and maternal employment—are consistent predictors of organized activities, even after controlling
for other factors. Maternal education, for example, is associated with dramatic differences in par-
ticipation in organized activities. Roughly three times as many children (ages 5 to 12 years) whose
mothers have four-year college degrees are involved in sports, clubs, and lessons after school com-
pared to their peers whose mothers did not graduate from high school (U.S. Census Bureau, 2009).
Similar differences are evident for adolescents (ages 12 to 17 years). These differences mirror find-
ings from earlier nationally representative surveys in the United States (Kleiner et al., 2004; Smith,
2002). In multivariate analyses that include maternal education and other family factors, mothers’
educational background continues to be a significant predictor of their children’s activities (Covay
and Carbonaro, 2010).
Family income predicts large differences in participation rates. Drawing on data from the
Census Bureau, Duncan and Murnane (2016) found substantial differences in expenditures on
enrichment activities for children in the lowest and highest income quintiles, differences that
have dramatically increased over a 25-year period. In the 1972–1973 survey, high-income families
spent about $2,850 more per year, per child on child enrichment than low-income families did.
However, by the 2005–2006 school year, this gap had nearly tripled, to $8,000. These spending
differences have been largest for enrichment activities such as music lessons, travel, and summer
camps (Kaushal, Magnuson, and Waldfogel, 2011). Based on their analyses of the Early Childhood
Longitudinal Study, a nationally representative data set, Covay and Carbonaro (2010) determined
that both parental education and family income predicted extracurricular activity participation
during middle childhood, findings that have been replicated in other longitudinal research focused
on adolescents (Feldman and Matjasko, 2007). Duncan and Murnane (2016) argued that differen-
tial access to such activities may help to explain the gaps in academic achievement and vocabulary
between children from high-income families and those from low-income families, an area that we
will examine in a later section.
Maternal Employment
Other reports have focused on the effects of maternal employment on children’s participation in
organized programs. Here, consistent findings are reported in several nationally representative surveys
(Capizzano et al., 2000; Kleiner et al., 2004; Smith, 2002). Children are more likely to attend after-
school programs when their mothers are employed, when mothers work more hours, when mothers
work traditional “9 to 5” schedules, and when children reside in single-parent households rather than
two-parent households. For many working parents, organized activities in the form of both after-
school programs and extracurricular activities serve as childcare (Laughlin, 2013).
In summary, studies of selection factors have underscored the roles of parental education, family
income, and maternal employment as significant predictors of children’s participation in organized
activities. Much of this research has occurred in the U.S. context. Further study of family selection
effects in other countries is needed.
Effects of Organized Activities on Children and Parents

Parental support of their children’s organized activities is influenced by their belief that these activities
promote children’s psychosocial and academic competencies and limit children’s exposure to unsafe or
risky environments. Are these beliefs consistent with empirical evidence? In this section, we consider
the research that examined links between organized activities and youth developmental outcomes.
We then consider studies that asked if relations between organized activities and child developmental
outcomes are moderated by parenting. We conclude the section by examining effects of organized
activities on parents and families.
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Linking Organized Activities to Child Developmental Outcomes

There is a substantial body of research that has investigated associations between organized activities and
the academic, socioemotional, and behavioral functioning of young people in middle childhood
and adolescence. This research has been summarized in a number of reviews and meta-analyses (Farb
and Matjasko, 2012; Mahoney et al., 2009; Roth, Malone, and Brooks-Gunn, 2010; Vandell et al., 2015).
In this section, we highlight findings related to self-perceptions, attachment to school, positive social
behaviors, academic achievement and performance, and reductions in problem behaviors.
In a meta-analysis of 68 experimental and quasi-experimental studies of after-school programs
serving children and adolescents, Durlak, Weissberg, and Pachan (2010) reported significant pro-
gram effects on children’s (1) self-perceptions, (2) bonding to school, (3) positive social behaviors,
(4) achievement test scores, (5) school grades, and (6) reductions in problem behaviors. In follow-up
meta-analyses, Durlak and colleagues found substantially larger effects in higher-quality programs
whose offerings were SAFE: that is, Sequenced—activities were connected and coordinated for skill
development, Active—activities utilized “active” forms of learning, Focused—at least one component
of the program was explicitly devoted to developing personal or social skills, and Explicit—the pro-
gram explicitly targeted specific personal or social skills. Self-perceptions, positive social behaviors,
school bonding, achievement test scores, school grades, and (reduced) problem behaviors were greater
for youth who attended SAFE programs relative to youth who did not attend a SAFE program.
A second meta-analysis (Lauer et al., 2006) focused on the effects of after-school programs on
academic functioning. This analysis was restricted to experimental designs that examined program
impacts on the academic functioning of low-income youth. Here, significant program impacts are
found for both reading and math achievement. Follow-up analyses determined that positive program
impacts on reading and math achievement were evident only when program attendance exceeded 44
hours in reading and 45 hours in math.
Other research syntheses have examined links between participation in extracurricular activities
and child developmental outcomes. Much of this research draws on nationally representative longi-
tudinal surveys, not evaluations of particular after-school programs. Feldman and Matjasko (2005)
summarized findings from 36 publications published between 1981 and 2004, and Farb and Mat-
jasko (2012) summarized findings from an additional 52 papers published between 2005 and 2009.
These reviews concluded that extracurricular activities are consistently related to higher grades, school
bonding, self-esteem, psychosocial adjustment, positive peer networks, college plans, college comple-
tion, and adult employment. Participation in extracurricular activities also is linked to reductions in
negative outcomes, such as tobacco, alcohol, and drug use; antisocial behavior; and truancy.
Over time, these studies of extracurricular activities have become more analytically rigorous. They
routinely incorporate controls for selection, including youth behavior at baseline. Fixed-effects analy-
ses and replication across different data sets lend further credence to the findings. Collectively these
findings are consistent with parents’ beliefs and expectations that organized activities are often “ben-
eficial” and “supportive” of their children’s development, although these effects are conditioned by the
quality of the activities, the children’s interest, and engagement in the activities.
Are Effects of Organized Activities Moderated by Parenting?

Particularly relevant for the focus of this Handbook is the question of whether associations between
organized activities and child developmental outcomes are moderated by parenting. Conceptually
this moderation might take three forms: (1) a compensatory model in which organized activities are
particularly beneficial for youth who receive low support at home, or (2) an accumulated advantaged
model in which organized activities are particularly beneficial for youth who are advantaged because
of family income or supportive parenting, or (3) a minimal threshold model in which parenting quality
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or organized activities need to reach particular thresholds before positive effects of organized activi-
ties are evident. These three models are not mutually exclusive. All three forms of moderation may
occur, depending on children’s developmental status, the aspect of parenting being studied, and the
developmental outcome being considered.
Several studies have found evidence of parenting moderating the effects of organized activities
during middle childhood. Covay and Carbonaro (2010) examined parenting as a moderator of
organized activities in analyses of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten Cohort
(ECLS-K). Consistent with the compensatory hypothesis, low-income children showed greater gains
in noncognitive skills than higher-income children when they participated in extracurricular activi-
ties between kindergarten and third grade. In longitudinal analyses of the NICHD Study of Early
Childcare and Youth Development, Auger, Pierce, and Vandell (2013) found evidence that pointed to
low-income children deriving greater cognitive benefits of after-school activities. In that study, con-
sistent with a compensatory role, organized activities appeared to be particularly beneficial for the
math achievement of low-income children in both grade 3 and grade 5, relative to middle-income
and high-income children. Similar differential effects associated with family income are reported
in an Australian longitudinal study (Blomfield and Barber, 2011). Relations between extracurricular
activities and self-concept and feelings of self-worth were larger for low-income students than for
high-income students.
There also is evidence that relations between out-of-school time and adolescent development
are moderated by quality of parenting. In a longitudinal study of Swedish adolescents, positive and
supportive parenting served a protective role when youth changed from spending time in struc-
tured activities to hanging out with unsupervised peers. When parenting was positive and supportive,
unsupervised time was less likely to be linked to increased delinquency (Persson et al., 2007). These
findings are similar to Steinberg’s (1986) U.S. findings in which adolescents whose parents knew their
whereabouts or in which parents combined warmth and control were less susceptible to negative peer
influences when unsupervised.
Effects of Organized Activities on Parents

Parents face ongoing challenges balancing work and family demands, which are further complicated
by the demands (and expectations) associated with organized activities. In households with more than
one child, families report how children’s activities need to be coordinated in terms of transportation
and cost to support the needs of all of the children in the family (Price, Simpkins, and Menjívar, 2017;
Vandell et al., 2015). Parents utilize a variety of strategies for balancing these demands. In some cases,
families limit their children to only one activity at a time to reduce scheduling conflicts and preserve
some “family time” (Gutiérrez et al., 2010). And sometimes children participate in the after-school
activities at their school or in the neighborhood so that parents are not needed to provide transporta-
tion (Parsad and Lewis, 2009). Families also turn to organized activities as a form of reliable childcare
that enable parents to work (Kleiner et al., 2004; Vandell et al., 2015). Relatively little is known about
such parenting decisions and the implications of those decisions for individuals’ adjustment and sys-
tems within families, including sibling relationships, parent–child relationships, and overall family
functioning (Bean et al., 2014; Côté, 1999; Kay, 2009).
Parents’ support of youth’s activities also needs to be balanced with other family needs. Families
have finite resources in terms of time, energy, and monetary resources. Parents have to decide the
extent to which those resources are invested in their children’s organized activities versus other family
and individual pursuits, such as shared family dinners, family vacations, time devoted to schoolwork,
or parent leisure-time (Gutiérrez et al., 2010; Trussell and Shaw, 2012). Parents are also trying to strike
a balance between children’s unstructured free time at home when children may watch TV or hang
out with friends and children’s time spent in organized activities.
370
An issue that has received considerable attention is whether children (and parents) are exhausted
and stressed from being overscheduled (Gutiérrez et al., 2010; Mahoney, Harris, and Eccles, 2006).
Although support for the overscheduled hypothesis has not been found for the majority of youth
in the United States (Mahoney et al., 2006), it is possible that it is parents, not youth, who feel
overscheduled and stressed. In an era of high work expectations and high home expectations, many
parents may be challenged to achieve a work–life balance (Voydanoff, 2002). Youth’s activities can
add to this challenge. In order to accommodate these competing demands, some parents limit each
child’s participation to one sport per season or a particular number of activities (Gutiérrez et al.,
2010).
Although a somewhat special case, parents whose families include elite athletes and talented musi-
cians face particular challenges (Feldman and Andrews, 2019). Sibling jealousy is reported even when
parents actively strive to treat and invest in each child equally (Kay, 2009). Jealousy is exacerbated by
parents’ decisions to devote disproportionate family resources (time and money) to one child at the
expense of their other children (Feinberg, McHale, and Whiteman, 2019).
In summary, organized activities are linked to a wide range of outcomes that include effects on
children’s academic, social, and behavioral well-being. Some of these effects are intensified by parental
warmth and support and lessened by parental criticism and hostility. Although less investigated, there
is some evidence of effects of organized activities on parents and families, as well as on the children
themselves.
Directions for Future Research in Parent-Organized Activities

Several promising directions for future research can build off the current research that has studied
linkages between parenting and children’s organized activities. The first is a need for additional lon-
gitudinal study that examines the interplay between parenting and organized activities from middle
childhood through adolescence, especially in diverse contexts. Large-scale surveys have described age
changes in patterns of youth participation in organized activities (both after-school programs and
extracurricular activities), but we know little about how these changes are negotiated between parents
and youth in different ethnic groups and income levels. A relational dynamic systems perspective
predicts reciprocal processes in which parents’ beliefs and behavior are influenced by their children’s
interests, feelings, experiences, and skills, but these processes have not been studied in any detail, espe-
cially in different sociocultural contexts. Studies of these reciprocal processes can inform our growing
understanding of parenting in this context.
A second promising area of research is further consideration of the ways in which the effects of
organized activities on child developmental outcomes are moderated by parenting and family cir-
cumstances. There is considerable evidence that organized activities are linked to academic, social, and
behavioral development during middle childhood and adolescence, but additional research is needed
to elucidate the conditions under which parental behaviors (warmth and support versus harshness and
criticism) and family circumstances such as poverty may moderate these relations.
A third area that warrants additional attention is research identifying the effects of children’s
organized activities on parents and families. Qualitative research suggests that activities influence
families in a myriad of ways, including parents’ work schedules, family meals, and vacations, but
many of these potential influences have not been studied quantitatively. In addition, less attention
has been given to how children’s organized activities influence how parents think about themselves
or their children.
Finally, although international research that examines organized activities is growing, much of this
work has focused on the effects of programs and activities on child developmental outcomes. Rela-
tively little research has considered the interplay between parenting beliefs, parenting behaviors, and
youth-organized activities in these broader international contexts.
371
Conclusions
Although children’s organized activities are influenced by their own interests and skills, they also are
influenced by parents—by the parents’ beliefs and behaviors, and by the families’ financial and social
resources. In this chapter, we sought to bring together and integrate a growing body of research
examining these processes in the United States and internationally. This research is part of a body of
work that reflects a recognition of the importance of children’s organized activities as a developmental
context and the central role that parents play in this aspect of their children’s lives even though parents
are not physically present for much of the time.
Advances in understanding the links between organized activities and parenting have been guided
by several theoretical frameworks. Ecological systems theory highlighted the need to study the pro-
cesses and social interactions within the organized activities microsystem and the family microsys-
tem—and the links between these microsystems. The theory’s delineation of the mesosystem and the
exosystem has informed research that examined the interplay between home and organized activities
and between parents’ work situations and children’s activities. The relational developmental systems
paradigm has yielded a complementary body of research that highlights the role of youth as active
agents within the context of their activities. Expectancy value theory has been useful in guiding
research that examines parents’ expectations about the perceived benefits versus perceived costs of
organized activities and the effects of these expectations on parental behaviors, child motivation, and
child achievement. Sociological theories highlighted the roles of social and cultural capital and con-
certed cultivation in describing the influence of social class and cultural beliefs on children’s organized
activities.
Research conducted in the United States and elsewhere in the world has demonstrated that orga-
nized activities are embedded in the sociocultural contexts in which children live. Social class, gender,
ethnicity, and immigration status have pervasive impacts on children’s access and ongoing participa-
tion in organized activities. Although some after-school programs are specifically funded to provide
activities for low-income children, most programs and activities are funded by fees paid by parents.
Not surprisingly, given the financial pressures faced by low-and moderate-income families, children
of high-income families are much more likely to participate in organized activities. Activities also are
organized along gendered lines, with boys being more likely to participate in sports and girls more
likely to participate in arts and music activities, differences that are aligned with parental beliefs and
expectations about differences in their children’s interests and skills. In the United States, African-
American, European-American, and Asian-American youth are more likely than Latin American
youth to participate in organized extracurricular activities, although the specific types of activities
(sports, music, academic enrichment) tend to vary in different ethnic groups.
Given the demands that organized activities place on family resources (time and money) and nos-
talgia for an era in which young people had more free time to play on their own to explore, studies
of the links between organized activities and child developmental outcomes are relevant. Evidence
from meta-analyses and research syntheses indicates that attending after-school programs (especially
those that are of high quality) and extracurricular activities (of sufficient dosage) are associated with
better academic outcomes (grades and test scores), reduced problem behaviors and misconduct, and
more positive social outcomes (school boding and social competencies). There also is evidence that
program effects are moderated by family income, with programs effects on cognitive and noncogni-
tive functioning being larger for low-income children.
Acknowledgments
Work on this project was supported by grants to Deborah Lowe Vandell from the Charles Stewart
Mott Foundation, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Devel-
opment (P01HD065704, G. Duncan, PI), and the National Science Foundation (1519686, Gershoff
372
and Crosnoe, PIs). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily
reflect the official views of the funding agencies.
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13
PARENTING IN THE DIGITAL AGE
Rachel Barr
Introduction
Parenting young children in the digital age provides a number of challenges and opportunities.
Introduction to the digital world begins early (Barr and Linebarger, 2017; Barr, Danziger, Hilliard,
Andolina, and Ruskis, 2010), and parents must navigate the introduction of media content, and a
multitude of devices. They must gauge their children’s cognitive, social, and physical capability to
operate, comprehend, and learn from multiple forms of media. They must also adapt to the child’s
increasing knowledge and autonomy with media. At the same time, parents are navigating their
own rapidly changing digital worlds. Not surprisingly, the consequences of parental media use and
involvement are far reaching. At present, however, the long-term effects of early media exposure on
social and cognitive development are largely unknown. The present chapter outlines current levels
of exposure by both children and their parents, the role that parents play in supporting learning, and
media factors that might interfere with the trajectory of typical development. Although most research
has been conducted with television, the extant literature from newer media is also reviewed. The
chapter highlights the convergence and divergence of effects between different media types. Finally,
the opportunity for the development of effective parenting interventions capitalizing on technology
is discussed. The chapter ends with a section on future directions.
Media Exposure During Early Childhood
Television and Prerecorded Video

During the 1970s, children were first exposed to television on a regular basis at approximately
2.5 years of age. By the 1990s, however, television programs and videos/DVDs started being
produced specifically for infants. This new media content shifted the age of regular exposure
downward. Using data collected during the early 1990s, Certain and Kahn (2002) reported
that 17% of 0- to 1-year-olds and 48% of 1- to 2-year-olds watched television. A decade later,
researchers reported that 40% of 3-month-old infants and 90% of 24-month-olds regularly
watched television and DVDs (Zimmerman, Christakis, and Meltzoff, 2007a). Those 6- to
24-month-olds exposed to television regularly spent one to two hours per day “watching TV”
(Mendelsohn et al., 2008; Rideout and Hamel, 2006), which accounted for approximately 10%
to 15% of their awake time.
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Parenting in the Digital Age
In the late 1990s, a shift in the target audience of TV programming and DVDs resulted in new
concerns regarding media and child development (Lauricella, Blackwell, and Wartella, 2017; Wartella
and Robb, 2007). Infant-directed content (e.g., Baby Einstein) proliferated. The American Academy
of Pediatrics (1999) recommended that parents refrain from allowing children under 2 years to watch
screen media out of fear that parents would rely on these products too heavily, which would then
displace important caregiver–child interactions. Despite this recommendation, 83% of young children
used screen media in a typical day, and 74% of those under 2 had watched TV (Rideout, Vandewater,
and Wartella, 2003). By 2005, children under 6 were spending nearly two hours per day with screen
media (Rideout and Hamel, 2006).
Parents consistently report that their children 8 years and under view an average of approximately
two hours of media exposure per day (Barr, Danziger et al., 2010; Cingel and Krcmar, 2013; Goh et al.,
2016; Lauricella, Wartella, and Rideout, 2015; Nikken and Schols, 2015; Przybylski and Weinstein, 2017b;
Rideout, 2017). Common Sense Media conducted a census of media exposure using a U.S. nationally
representative study of approximately 1,400 parents of children aged 8 and younger (Rideout, 2017).
Although the amount of television content has remained constant, the way in which it has been
viewed has not. There are multiple forms of content delivery (streaming video, DVDs, cable, broadcast
television, DVR, YouTube) and multiple devices on which to present video content (television set,
laptop, tablet, smartphone). Rideout (2017) defined television exposure as follows:
Total TV/video time includes time spent watching TV or movies on a television set, watch-
ing DVDs or videotapes, or watching any type of online or streaming video, such as You-
Tube-type videos or TV shows or movies watched through a website or internet-based
subscription service, whether on a computer or mobile device.
(p. 10)
By this definition, parents report that children under 8 are exposed to 1 hour, 40 minutes of tele-
vised content per day, which accounts for 72% of all screen time. Most families (75%) subscribe to a
streaming service. Children under 8 years frequently stream video content (21% of viewing time) or
view from sites like YouTube (17% of viewing time) either on family television sets or mobile devices
(Rideout, 2017). Patterns of exposure are similar in Singapore (Goh et al., 2016) and Hong Kong (Fu
et al., 2017). Although estimates of exposure in different countries have been reported, additional
cross-cultural comparisons across content and context are needed.
In early research, parents reported very low levels of television exposure, particularly during early
childhood. Anderson and Pempek (2005) cautioned that parents may have misinterpreted questions
such as, “How much time would you say your child spends watching television on a typical week-
day?” (Certain and Kahn, 2002) by misconstruing the definition of an infant watching television. In
particular, parents may have failed to report exposure to background television (i.e., television that the
parents were viewing and was on in the room but that was not directed towards children), resulting in
underreporting both the earliest age of exposure and of total media exposure (see the section on the
effects of background television).
Mendelsohn and colleagues (2008) confirmed this suspicion when they measured exposure to tele-
vision, defined as when the baby was in the room and awake. They reported that 6- to 9-month-old
infants from low-income Latin American families were exposed to approximately 50% child-directed
and 50% adult-directed programs, but their average television exposure was twice as high as that of
European-American children. They also reported that parents were most likely to interact with their
6- to 9-month-old children during educational programs and least frequently during background
adult-directed television. Similarly, Barr, Danziger, and colleagues (2010), using the same definition of
media exposure, examined parents with infants from 6 to 18 months of age. They found that during
the first year of life, infants were exposed to higher levels of background television than during the
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second year of life. Parents reported that during the second year of life higher-quality programming
was available for young audiences (Barr, Danziger, et al., 2010). That is, parents may perceive that their
children attend to infant-directed and child-directed programming but ignore and are unaffected by
background programming.
Patterns of media usage change rapidly across development. In a study of approximately 2,600
8- to 18-year-olds, Rideout (2015) reported that tweens (8- to 12-year-olds) average 4 hours, 36
minutes of screen media per day and teens (13- to 18-year-olds) average 6 hours, 40 minutes per
day. The majority of teens report using multiple devices simultaneously or multitasking (texting or
viewing television or listening to music and completing homework). When adding together the time
spent multitasking, media exposure rates are even higher. Furthermore, teens and tweens report that
multitasking while completing homework does not change the quality of their work (Lauricella et al.,
2015).
Listening to music and viewing video content dominates screen time. Tweens and teens also
develop different media-use profiles. Some spend most of their screen time reading or viewing video
content, others spend the majority of their time on social networks or playing videogames. These
preferences differ by gender, with boys generally preferring videogame consoles and girls preferring
social media networks (Lauricella et al., 2015). Teens are more likely to have social media accounts
(80%) than tweens (23%), and accounts were opened later in higher-income homes than in lower-
income homes (Lauricella et al., 2016). A small proportion of time (3%) is spent creating new media
content (Lauricella et al., 2015). A study of ~120,000 15-year-olds from the United Kingdom’s
Department for Education National Pupil Database showed similarly high rates of teen exposure to
digital media and similar media profiles. Boys spent more time with videogames and girls more time
with smartphones and social media (Przybylski and Weinstein, 2017a). Unlike other reports, however,
size of the data set allowed the authors to examine nonlinear statistical models. Both the lowest and
highest rates of exposure were linked to small, but more negative, mental health outcomes. Moder-
ate rates of exposure were not. Przybylski and Weinstein (2017a) suggested a “Goldilocks effect” but
argued that additional population-based data are needed to test more sophisticated statistical models.
Tablets and Smartphones

The first iPhone was released in 2007, followed by the iPad in 2010. Since the introduction of the
iPad, the cost of tablets has rapidly decreased, thereby increasing access. Since that time the biggest
change in media usage patterns is in the widespread adoption of mobile technology. In the United
States, virtually all homes (98%) have a tablet or smartphone (Rideout, 2017). Children’s exposure to
mobile technology has increased dramatically; in 2013 parents reported that 38% of children under 8
years were exposed to mobile technology, and by 2017 parents reported that 84% of children under
8 have used mobile technology. The amount of mobile usage parents report differs as a function of
the child’s age; parents of children under 2 years report an average of 5 minutes per day compared to
parents of 5-year-olds, who report an average of 21 minutes per day. In another study parents reported
that time spent using tablets or smartphones during early childhood does not typically exceed 30
minutes per day (Lauricella et al., 2015).
These estimates vary by demographics and by device ownership. Pempek and McDaniel (2016)
reported that ownership increased access. When parents owned a tablet, 50% of children 1 to 4 years
of age had daily access to the tablet, suggesting that prior reports of relatively low average tablet usage
may have underestimated higher usage by some children. In a questionnaire study with low-income,
minority families, Kabali et al. (2015) found that of children currently under age 1, 92% had used
a mobile device (e.g., smartphone, tablet), whereas only 40% of current 4-year-olds used a mobile
device before 1 year of age. They also found nearly 77% of children used mobile devices on a daily
basis by the age of 2. Young children’s widespread use of touchscreens also extends beyond the United
382
States (Ahearne, Dilworth, Rollings, Livingstone, and Murray, 2016; Cristia and Seidl, 2015; Neumann,
2014). In a survey of parents of children aged 5 to 40 months in France, 75% of families used touch-
screen technology such as tablets to view videos or photos, and 50% reported using tablet applications
marketed as appropriate for babies (Cristia and Seidl, 2015).
Smartphones are available in almost every home (Rideout, 2017). It is important to note, however,
that although there is no longer a digital divide in access to mobile technology, low-income families
still experience a digital divide in access to stable and high-speed Internet (Rideout, 2017). Lower-
income homes are less likely to have high-speed Internet (74%) relative to high-income homes (96%)
and computers. Mobile technology may be an avenue for an opportunity to enhance learning but also
a potential risk depending on the content and context of early media exposure.
E-Books
Families with young children are increasing their use of e-books. A survey conducted by the Joan
Ganz Cooney Center (Chiong, Ree, Takeuchi, and Erickson, 2012) found that 90% of parent respon-
dents reported that print books remained their preferred co-reading medium, but surveyed parents
noted that e-books were used in specific situations—such as when parents were unavailable to read
to their children or when families were outside the home. The parents identified that the significant
potential advantage of e-books is that they can be delivered directly onto mobile devices, including
phones and computers, and are cheaper than paper books. This means that e-books could potentially
expand the available literacy resources for many families. Daily combined levels of print book and
e-book reading average approximately 21 minutes per day for children 2 years and younger, but par-
ents report that only 1 minute is read via e-books (Rideout, 2017). The amount of parent-reported
reading time per day increases to 30 minutes per day by 5 years, but e-book usage comprises 2% of
that time (Rideout, 2017).
Video Chat
Video chat, like Skype or FaceTime, allows people to both see and hear one another via a screen, and
it is becoming an increasingly common experience in the lives of young children. Because video chat
allows for both verbal and nonverbal (e.g., using gesture or facial expression) communication, it is a
medium that is well suited to the developmental capabilities of young children. Researchers in the
United States and Australia reported that about one-third of young children under the age of 6 use
video chat at least once per week (McClure, Chentsova-Dutton, Barr, Holochwost, and Parrott, 2015;
Tarasuik and Kaufman, 2017). The authors acknowledge that these samples were not representative
and that video chat may be a high-frequency event for a relatively small number of families. Rideout
(2017) reported in a representative U.S. sample that 6% of families reported frequently video chatting
with relatives but that these families spent on average 21 minutes per day on this activity.
Many parents view video chat as an exception to screen time/media rules, perhaps because video
chat is often used to maintain and strengthen familial relationships, including those with remote
grandparents (McClure et al., 2015). Parents of children 2 years and under were asked about their
general media-use practices with their infants and also about video chat usage. Based on the answers
from the general media usage questions, families were classified into two groups using a latent class
analysis: one group was families whose babies were frequently exposed to media (52%), and the other
group was of families whose babies were not frequently exposed to media (48%). Although a smaller
proportion of parents in the low-media-usage group said that their children had used video chat than
those in the high-device-usage group (92%), in families where the babies are exposed to very little
media generally, 78% had used video chat with their infants. These parents who are typically restric-
tive about media use allowed video chat as an exception.
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How Parents Influence Children’s Media Exposure

A number of factors are associated with the amount, content, and context of media exposure during
early childhood (Barr and Linebarger, 2017).
Parental Screen Use

Parents’ media usage on all devices (television, computers, smartphones, and tablets) is strongly associ-
ated with children’s screen usage from infancy to 8 years of age (Anderson and Hanson, 2017; Bleak-
ley, Jordan, and Hennessy, 2013; Connell, Lauricella, and Wartella, 2015; Goh et al., 2016; Lauricella
et al., 2015; Nikken and Schols, 2015; Pempek and McDaniel, 2016). Television is left on all the
time in 42% of U.S. homes, and in those homes children spend more time watching on a family TV
set (1 hour, 24 minutes) than do those who live in homes where the TV is hardly ever or never left
on (26 minutes; Rideout, 2017). Higher overall media exposure in the household is associated with
increased time co-using media with young children (Anderson and Hanson, 2017; Connell et al.,
2015), as well as greater relative exposure to adult programming rather than children’s programming
(St. Peters, Fitch, Huston, Wright, and Eakins, 1991). Parents of 8- to 18-year-olds spend 8 to 10
hours per day with screen media, including work time usage (Lauricella et al., 2015). Parents with
higher incomes and education were exposed to less screen media, and African-American parents to
more screen media. Parents of teens and tweens also reported high levels of multitasking listening to
music or texting while at work (Lauricella et al., 2016). These patterns matched exposure patterns in
children (Rideout, 2015, 2017). Despite high parental media usage, 78% of parents reported that they
were good role models for the children (Lauricella et al., 2016). Lerner (2017) proposed guidelines
for using media mindfully, arguing that parent’s own media use is a powerful model for how children
come to use and engage with media.
Family Demographics, Structure, and Routine

Patterns of television use differ across ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Low-income minority
children are exposed to more television than are children from higher-income households (Anand
and Krosnick, 2005; Calvert, Rideout, Woolard, Barr, and Strouse, 2005; Goh et al., 2016; Przybylski
and Weinstein, 2017b; Wartella, Rideout, Lauricella, and Connell, 2014) Higher parental education
and family wealth are associated with lower media usage, amounting to a difference of 30 minutes
per day in children 0 to 8 years (Rideout, 2017) and ~2 hours per day for 8- to 18-year-olds (Ride-
out, 2015). The gap in exposure rates as a function of household income and parental education has
widened since 2011 (Rideout, 2017). Overall, African-American children and youth have the highest
rates of exposure (Anand and Krosnick, 2005; Rideout, 2015). Similarly, in a population-based study
in the United Kingdom of almost 20,000 parents of children between 2 and 5 years of age, lower
screen use was also associated with higher parental education and income (Przybylski and Weinstein,
2017b). Minorities and boys in the UK are also exposed to higher levels of digital media (Przybylski
and Weinstein, 2017b). Although exposure rates may differ, media practices also differ by ethnicity.
African-American and Latin American parents are more likely to discuss media content than are
European-American parents (Lauricella et al., 2016). Latin American parents are more concerned
about the risks of media exposure and more likely to set rules about media usage than European-
American or African-American parents (Lauricella et al., 2016; Rideout, 2015).
Children between infancy and age 5 in single-parent households watch more educational and
entertainment-based television (Cingel and Krcmar, 2013). Having older or younger siblings increases
the rate of media usage in preschoolers for both educational and entertainment media (Cingel and
Krcmar, 2013). Siblings also influence patterns of media usage. During infancy, children with older
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siblings are exposed to higher proportions of child-directed programming relative to overall televi-
sion exposure (Barr et al., 2010). These factors also overlap. For example, in families that experience
a high number of risk factors, more exposure to educational programming and parental support is
associated with better cognitive outcomes (Anderson, Huston, Schmitt, Linebarger, and Wright, 2001;
Linebarger, Barr, Lapierre, and Piotrowski, 2014; Wright et al., 2001). In low-resourced families, it
is important to consider that educational media (e.g., television, apps, e-books) may be providing an
additional resource to parents, which may not correspond for higher-resourced families.
Decreases in the cost of television sets led to increases in the number of sets in the home, including
in the bedroom. A television in the child’s bedroom increases overall exposure times, decreases active
mediation practices, and has been associated with poorer child sleep quality (Fu et al., 2017; Nikken
and Schols 2015; Rideout and Hamel, 2006; Vaala and Hornik 2014). Frequency of televisions in chil-
dren’s bedrooms differs across countries. For example, Rideout (2017) reported that 29% of children
under age 8 in the United States had a television in their bedroom and 16% have a mobile device or
laptop in their bedroom most nights. Fu and colleagues (2017) in Hong Kong reported that parents
placed electronic devices (television, computer, gaming console) in 30% of preschoolers’ bedrooms,
whereas Nikken and Schols (2015) noted that rates in a Dutch sample with children 0 to 7 years were
much lower, at 12% with a television in their bedroom. Fu and colleagues (2017) reported that fami-
lies with lower incomes were more likely to place a television in the child’s bedroom. Rideout (2017)
reported that 49% of parents of children 0 to 8 years sometimes or often use media in the hour before
bedtime. Media usage before bedtime increases steadily with age, with 24% of 0- to 2-year-olds, 49%
of 2- to 4-year-olds, and 61% of 5- to 8-year-olds sometimes or often viewing media content in the
hour before sleep.
Early media diet may set the stage for subsequent use. In a study of parents of children ranging in
age from 6 months to 5 years, parents most frequently reported that age of first exposure was between
6 and 12 months and that viewing had become part of the daily routine by 18 months of age (Cingel
and Krcmar, 2013). Television usage in this study was correlated with parents’ need to get chores done.
The authors reported that the earlier television became a daily routine, the higher the television use
was at later ages. In one study, 44% of parents reported using mobile devices “sometimes” or “often”
to occupy their children while running errands (Rideout, 2013). Some parents are concerned that it
is difficult to get their child to stop using media, and this concern changes as a function of the child’s
age; 20% in under 2s report it is difficult, 49% in 2- to 4-year-olds, and 40% in 5- to 8-year-olds
(Rideout, 2017). The introduction of mobile devices introduces a measurement problem, as well as a
general change in the ecology of the home. Parents are generally highly reliable at reporting educa-
tional media usage on a static family television set (Anderson, Field, Collins, Lorch & Nathan, 1985).
Due to the intermittent usage patterns and lack of scheduled structure of usage, it is difficult for
parents to track smartphone and tablet usage. In the mobile media environment, it will be important
to consider how families utilize and mediate different media resources, how routines with multiple
devices develop, and how mobile media-use trajectories develop across time.
Parental Mediation Strategies

Parental mediation strategies have been studied quite extensively with three general categories emerg-
ing: (1) restrictive time and content limits, (2) active parental discussion of content, and (3) co-viewing
for education and entertainment (Nikken and Schols, 2015; Piotrowski 2017; Uhls and Robb, 2018;
Valkenburg, Krcmar, Peeters, and Marseille., 1999). Parental mediation guides how children learn
the function of media, hardware device operation, and interpretation of the content (Nikken and
Schols, 2015). Parents use restrictive media practices to limit inappropriate content and co-use and/or
actively mediate educational content (Nikken and Schols, 2015). Nikken and Schols (2015) noted that
new mediation practices have emerged with mobile technology. For example, parents may monitor
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online activities of older children by examining browser history, placing parental controls on elec-
tronic devices, and restricting forms of media content (e.g., use of the v-chip controls on television
or Netflix parental controls on streaming media as well as parental controls on smartphones). Parental
attitudes about media also influence mediation practices; negative attitudes are associated with restric-
tive mediation, and positive attitudes are associated with active mediation and co-use (Nikken and
Schols, 2015; Piotrowski, 2017; Valkenburg et al., 1999).
Parents of preschoolers and school-aged children tend to enforce rules regarding television use
(Rideout et al., 2003; Stanger 1997; Vandewater, Park, Huang, and Wartella, 2005). Two-thirds of
parents with children aged 0 to 17 years implemented rules regarding television use aiming to restrict
both the content and amount of television exposure (Stanger, 1997; Vandewater et al., 2005). Parents
who reported that they strongly enforced time rules regarding television use also reported lower levels
of television viewing for children aged 0 to 6 years (Goh et al., 2016; Rideout et al., 2003; Vandewa-
ter et al., 2005). Fu and colleagues (2017) reported that parental time use restrictions moderated the
negative association between television in the bedroom and poorer school readiness in preschoolers
in Hong Kong.
Parents with program content rules have more positive attitudes about television and co-view
more with their children (Vandewater et al., 2005). In general, positive parental attitudes to media are
also associated with higher screen usage in preschoolers and early elementary school-aged children
(Lauricella et al., 2015). Connell and colleagues (2015) conducted a large nationally representa-
tive study of mothers and fathers who had children under 8 years of age to examine predictors of
media co-use. Parents who used more media themselves were more likely to co-use media with their
children. Co-use was higher both when parents spent more time at home with the child and when
children were younger. Fathers tended to co-use computers and smartphones slightly more than
mothers, and mothers favored co-using books more than fathers. Piotrowski (2017) examined paren-
tal mediation in parents with 3- to 8-year olds in the Netherlands. Active parental encouragement
of specific media content was associated with the highest levels of educational content viewing. The
authors concluded that an active mediation strategy may be most effective for developing a positive
media diet early in development.
To examine parental mediation practices with tweens and teenagers, Lauricella and colleagues
(2016) conducted a nationally representative survey of 1,786 parents of children age 8 to 18 living in
the United States. Parents’ attitudes toward media usage by their 8- to 18-year-olds was mixed; 56%
were concerned about addiction to technology and 34% about media usage interfering with sleep,
but 44% reported that social media mostly helps teens to build relationships, and 94% believed that
technology could support education. They were also concerned about exposure to sexual or violent
content, cyberbullying, and sexting.
Most families (77%) have rules about content, with 88% having rules for tweens but only 67% for
teens (Lauricella et al., 2016). For example, most parents (78%) report that teens and tweens cannot use
devices during family meals, 63% report a rule of no devices when going to sleep, and most enforce
these rules (Lauricella et al., 2016). Parents of tweens are more likely to check content (e.g., send texts
via their phones) or enforce media practices (e.g., require that devices are stored in a central location
overnight) than parents of teens (Lauricella et al., 2016). About half of parents also report discussing
television content, videogames, and app content with their tweens and teens (Lauricella et al., 2016).
The success of rule enforcement differs across age. Sanders, Parent, Forehand, Sullivan, and Jones
(2016) examined parental rule use (time and content rules) and rule enforcement across three age
groups: young children (3 to 7 years), tweens (8 to 12 years), and teenagers (13 to 17 years). Parental
efficacy with technology was associated with higher implementation of parenting rules and enforce-
ment and with lower media usage by young children and tweens. The model did not hold during
adolescence, suggesting that adolescents develop increasing independence around media. In a five-year
longitudinal study of 10- to 15-year-olds, Padilla-Walker, Coyne, Fraser, Dyer, and Yorgason (2012)
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found that parental mediation strategies changed from preadolescence to adolescence from more
active to more deferent strategies.
Family rules and discussion may not be salient to tweens and teens (Uhls and Robb, 2018). Only 52%
of teens and tweens reported that their parents had conversations with them about amount of exposure,
but 86% reported that they had conversations with their parents about online safety practices, such as
online privacy or cyberbullying (Rideout, 2015). Tweens reported that their parents generally knew
about their media usage patterns, but teenagers reported that their parents knew much less; one-third
of teens reported that their parents did not know what they did on social media. Teens and tweens liv-
ing in higher-income households and/or with more educated parents reported that their parents were
less aware of their online media usage than tweens and teens living in lower-income households and/
or with less educated parents (Rideout, 2015). Although 85% of parents reported that they monitored
media usage by their tweens and teens, especially traditional television and movie content, fewer (60%)
were aware of Internet usage, and only 40% were aware of social media usage (Lauricella et al., 2016).
Like other decisions that teenagers face, decisions about media usage require supported practice
and eventually autonomy. During adolescence when parental mediation is restrictive, adolescents may
rebel against such restrictions, resulting in increased media conflict and sometimes counterintuitively
higher rates of media usage (Uhls and Robb, 2018). Almost 40% of parents also reported that nego-
tiating media usage with their teens and tweens resulted in conflict (Lauricella et al., 2016). That is,
like other areas of growing autonomy, there is tension between parental mediation and monitoring
of digital media during adolescence. Unlike other behaviors, digital behaviors cannot be constantly
monitored, which could augment parent–adolescent conflict in the digital age (Uhls and Robb, 2018).
Effective parenting practices, such as having mutually agreed on rules, such as putting away the phone
during mealtimes, were followed and considered to be important by both parents and teenagers (Uhls
and Robb, 2018). In a context of high parental media usage for both work and personal use, parents
engage in fewer direct mediation strategies and they are less effective as children get older. As with
other activities, parents give more autonomy over media choice and usage to teens than to tweens.
Parents are less aware of media usage patterns on social media platforms and the Internet than more
traditional forms of media, despite high levels of concern and some conflict surrounding imple-
menting media usage rules. Effective parenting strategies that recognize increasing autonomy and
decision-making capabilities of adolescents are associated with more moderate media use and better
psychosocial outcomes.
Media Selection
Parents are generally quite successful at navigating television content for preschool children. There is
still a relatively delineated set of broadcast television programs that are categorized and rated as educa-
tional programming and loosely regulated by the Children’s Television Act (Jordan, 2008). For infant-
directed programming and “educational apps,” however, media selection is much more challenging.
There are currently 80,000 apps in the app store tagged as “educational” (Zosh, Roseberry Lytle,
Golinkoff, and Hirsh-Pasek, 2017). Both infant-directed programming and educational apps are not
regulated and are often accompanied by strong claims that, in most cases, have not been empirically
evaluated (Fenstermacher et al., 2010; Guernsey and Levine, 2015; Zosh et al., 2017). Parents often rely
on marketing or parent testimonials to influence their decision-making (Guernsey and Levine, 2015;
Zosh et al., 2017). Both types of programming also market content to wide age ranges (e.g., birth to
3 years; Fenstermacher et al., 2010). Recently, media curators, such as Common Sense Media, have
developed web platforms to provide content and age-appropriateness ratings for a number of different
types of media content across childhood and adolescence.
Overall, families may develop a technology environment built around a complex set of factors.
These factors include parents’ own screen usage and attitudes about media, child factors (age and
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media competence), and family demographics (access to resources, family routines) (Barr and Line-
barger 2017; Lauricella et al., 2015; Nikken and Schols 2015; Uhls and Robb, 2018).
Negative Implications of Parental Media Usage: Technoference

Early childhood may be a particularly vulnerable time for exposure to background media sources, a
time when children have little input regarding their own media exposure. They choose neither the
amount nor the content of exposure, both of which are chosen by parents, siblings, and other family
members. “Technoference” is defined as everyday interruptions to interpersonal interactions or time
spent together that occur due to digital and mobile technology devices (McDaniel, 2015; McDaniel
and Coyne, 2016; McDaniel and Radesky, 2017). For example, if a parent is checking Facebook at
repeated intervals on a smartphone, the parent may not realize that she or he is disconnecting from
the child multiple times at unpredictable intervals during the day. Furthermore, when checking cell
phones, parents’ faces typically have no expression, which may be perceived by young children as a
“still face,” to which children respond aversively (Adamson and Frick, 2003; Goldstein, Schwade and
Bornstein, 2009).
Background Television
Adult-directed programming such as sitcoms or game shows are often on in the background while
young children play. In the United States the average daily background television exposure for tod-
dlers is 5.5 hours (Lapierre, Piotrowski, and Linebarger, 2012). During this programming, infants and
toddlers typically attend to the television only 5% of the time (Anderson and Pempek, 2005). Parents
may believe that, because their infants are not “watching” background television, their infants are
not being affected by it (Anderson and Pempek, 2005). Such background media usage decreases
parent–child interactional quality as well as child play quality and language learning (Kirkorian,
Pempek, Murphy, Schmidt, and Anderson, 2009; Reed, Hirsh-Pasek, and Golinkoff, 2017; Schmidt,
Pempek, Kirkorian, Lund, and Anderson, 2008).
Schmidt and colleagues (2008) examined looking time and infant play behavior during an adult-
directed game show. In this study, children aged 12, 24, or 36 months were allowed to play with toys
while a television showed a parent-selected, adult-directed TV program. Parents were free to interact
with their children in this study. Infants’ quality and quantity of play with toys was significantly worse
when adult-directed television was on compared to when the television was off. Although children
only attended to the game show 5% of the time, their play episodes were shorter, less complex, and
included less focused attention when the television was on than when it was off. Furthermore, adult-
directed television also reduced the quality and quantity of parent–child interactions. Parents actively
engaged with their children 68% of the time when the TV was off, compared to only 54% of the time
when the TV was on. Parents also were slower to respond to bids for attention and responded in a more
passive manner (Kirkorian, et al., 2009). However, the children did not follow parent look onsets, and
there was no relation between parent and child looking patterns (Anderson and Hanson, 2017). The
quality of language produced was assessed both when the television was on and when the television
was off. Child-directed speech decreased (12% fewer words and 20% fewer new words were spoken to
the child) when an adult-selected program was playing than when it was not. Furthermore, regardless
of program content (child or adult directed), when the TV was on, parents interacted less with their
children than when the TV was off (Courage, Murphy, Goulding, and Setliff, 2010; Kirkorian et al.,
2009). Anderson and Hanson (2017) calculated the cumulative effect of weekly background televi-
sion exposure using the average daily estimate of 5.5 hours of background television per day (Lapierre
et al., 2012). Even if toddlers were only exposed to half as much background television, children would
hear approximately 13,400 fewer child-directed words per week (Anderson and Hanson, 2017; see also
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Christakis et al., 2009 for a similar finding using in-home LENA (Language ENvironment Analysis)
audio recording devices). Anderson and Hanson (2017) emphasized, however, that the changes in lan-
guage usage when the television was on versus when it was off also varied by household usage patterns.
When television was more frequently on in the household, language patterns were similar whether the
television was off or on (Anderson and Hanson, 2017). When the television was used less frequently
in the house, the number of words produced when the television was on was significantly lower than
when the television was off (Anderson and Hanson, 2017). That is, the typical family media ecology
also influenced the language patterns in the household when the television was in use.
Smartphones
Parental smartphone usage may be as disruptive as background television to child outcomes. The
release of the new devices such as the smartphone has been met with both moral panic about
potential peril associated with the new technology and unrealistic expectations that these devices
would revolutionize early education (Lauricella, Blackwell, et al., 2017). These unlikely expecta-
tions arose from the fact that the mobile, touchscreen-enabled interactive devices were much easier
to operate than prior computer interfaces. The usability of these devices initially suggested that
they might be more developmentally appropriate for very young users and require less parental
scaffolding to guide their use (Moser et al., 2015).
Because these devices were easier to operate, parents quickly became engaged in what Chiong and
Shuler (2010) termed the “pass-back effect,” that parents passed back the mobile device to the child
sitting in the backseat of the car. Although electronic babysitting is not a new phenomenon (Rideout
and Hamel, 2006; Zimmerman et al., 2007a), the mobility of the new devices meant that electronic
babysitting could be used to keep a child occupied, regardless of location. Parents of children aged 0
to 6 years in a nationally representative survey reported using a device while preparing meals, traveling,
and going out for meals, as well as to calm a child when transitioning from another activity (Wartella
et al., 2014).
Somewhat counterintuitively, higher child tablet usage is associated with lower maternal well-
being (Pempek and McDaniel, 2016). Parents reported that children predominantly played apps mar-
keted as educational, such as drawing or preliteracy apps, or view streaming video content (Pempek
and McDaniel, 2016). A similar association had been reported between higher educational television
exposure during infancy and concurrent maternal depression (Bank et al., 2012). Under conditions
of higher parental stress, parents use more educational content. Parents may have used educational
media to provide cognitive stimulation when they were unable to do so themselves (Bank et al., 2012;
Pempek and McDaniel, 2016). Interpretation of media usage patterns should include considerations
of the instrumental and psychological functions of parental media usage.
Parents are also likely to use cell phones to calm their babies. Parents of 15- to 36-month-old
children at the Women Infants and Children (WIC) nutrition clinics were asked about their chil-
dren’s socioemotional development and their use of mobile devices during family routines, such as
at bedtime or while doing chores, and if they used mobile devices to calm their babies (Radesky,
Peacock-Chambers, Zuckerman, and Silverstein, 2016). Parental report of socioemotional difficul-
ties was associated with parental use of mobile technology as a calming device but not with other
uses. The authors noted that due to the correlational nature of the study, it is not possible to know
if parents with more difficult babies used mobile devices more for calming, if parents who felt more
overwhelmed used mobile devices, or if mobile devices were likely to result in more socioemotional
difficulties. Frequent use of mobile devices for self-regulation may mean, however, that parents and
children are less likely to develop other regulatory strategies.
Similar to background television, smartphones create technoference. A qualitative observational
study conducted in a fast-food restaurant of families eating meals showed that higher parental cell
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phone usage was associated with increased bids for parental attention from children, and parents
sometimes responded in a hostile way, resulting in a negative circle of interactions (Radesky et al.,
2014). The authors reported that about 30% of the parents were completely absorbed with their
mobile device at the expense of interacting with their children. Radesky et al. (2015) followed up
this finding with a laboratory-based study that examined spontaneous cell phone use during a struc-
tured parent–child interaction. During the parent–child interaction, low-income mothers asked their
6-year-old children to try different types of food. Observers coded how frequently mothers prompted
children to try the foods and whether they spontaneously checked their mobile devices during the
interaction. They found that the 23.1% of mothers who spontaneously checked their phones, were
less likely to talk to their children, and displayed fewer positive nonverbal interactions particularly
when they were introducing unfamiliar food. These findings of poorer-quality language and parent–
child interactions mirror those reported for background television. Parents who report higher levels
of personal mobile device usage also report more coparenting problems (McDaniel and Coyne, 2016)
and more child behavioral problems (McDaniel and Radesky, 2017).
In an experimental study, Reed and colleagues (2017) tested whether cell phone calls interrupted
language learning by 2-year-olds. Using a within-subjects design, 38 mothers taught their 2-year-olds
two novel words. Mothers received a call that interrupted them while teaching one of the words, but
for the other word the call occurred prior to teaching. Children were significantly more likely to learn
the uninterrupted word than the interrupted word. This finding remained despite the child hearing
the novel word the same number of times in both conditions.
The “still face” presented to the infant during smartphone usage may disrupt communication
from the infant to the parent as well. Goldstein and colleagues (2009) reported that parents respond to
infant vocalizations 30% to 50% of the time. When parents present a “still face” response, 5-month-
olds increase their negative vocalizations, presumably to regain the adult’s attention. When the inter-
action resumes, the infant decreases negative vocalizations and re-engages in turn-taking with the
parent. The greater the increase in vocalizations in response to a “still face,” the better language
outcomes are at 1 year of age. It is not yet known if parental responsiveness will change as a function
of frequent smartphone usage. If the parent is less responsive, the infant may be less likely to attempt
to reengage the parent. Language development would therefore likely be disrupted by frequent, inter-
mittent parental smartphone usage. It is also possible that infants will persist in their attempts to reen-
gage or learn to do so only when parents are not using smartphones. Research in this area will need to
consider bidirectional communication patterns between parents and infants to understand the impact
of technology on language development and other developmental outcomes.
Few studies have included assessments of mobile and interactive media use, particularly among
families of young children. Because mobile device use occurs in brief, intermittent bursts (Oulasvirta,
Tamminen, Roto, and Kuorelahti, 2005), self-report or recall of mobile device use is often inaccurate
(Goedhart, Kromhout, Wiart, and Vermeulen, 2015). Passive sensing applications that track cell phone
pick-ups have shown that parents check their cell phones up to 100 times per day and that these media
checks occur at unpredictable intervals. Because it is difficult for parents to assess how frequently
they are using their cell phones, similar to background television, they are likely to underestimate the
effect on their young children. It is likely that such frequent interruptions will have negative effects
on child outcomes.
Implications of Technoference
Researchers have associated heavy exposure to television during early childhood with poor school
performance, increased bullying, attention problems, and sleep problems during childhood and adoles-
cence (Christakis, Zimmerman, DiGiuseppe, and McCarty 2004; Lanhuis, Poulton, Welch, and Hoan-
cox, 2007; Thakkar, Garrison and Christakis, 2006; Thompson and Christakis, 2005; Zimmerman,
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Glew, Christakis, and Katon, 2005; Zimmerman, Christakis, and Meltzoff, 2007b; Zimmerman and
Christakis, 2005, 2007). Negative associations endure even when demographic factors (e.g., socioeco-
nomic status, ethnicity, maternal risk factors, and prematurity) are controlled in the statistical models
(but see Foster and Watkins, 2010). Researchers compared infant exposure to child-directed and adult-
directed programming and reported that exposure to adult-directed or violent programming during
infancy was associated with parental reports of poorer executive functioning, but exposure to similar
levels of child-directed programming was not (Barr, Lauricella, Zack and Calvert, 2010; Zimmerman
and Christakis, 2007). Similarly, high levels of television exposure during the first year of life, is likely
to include background television, was negatively associated with vocabulary development, but not
during the second year of life (Zimmerman, et al., 2007b). Exposure to child-directed programming
during the second year of life was not associated with poorer vocabulary (Taylor, Monaghan, and Wes-
termann, 2017). A small but growing body of evidence therefore suggests that technoference, rather
than direct exposure to media during early childhood, may cumulatively have more negative effects
on early development. Background television and technoference are probably consistent negative
influences on development during early childhood (Anderson and Hanson, 2017).
Potential Benefits Associated With Parental Scaffolding

Guernsey and Levine (2015) argued that:
We cannot afford to ignore the affordances of technology, especially for disadvantaged chil-
dren and families of many different backgrounds and circumstances who may not otherwise
have access to information and learning opportunities. And yet to leave the fate of these
children to technology alone would be a big mistake.
(p. 129)
Although there are likely to be some negative implications of early media exposure, infants and young
children can learn from television, tablets, and computers (Barr, 2010, 2013) beginning as early as
6 months of age (Barr, Muentener, and Garcia, 2007). Learning to apply knowledge from a screen
is complex, however, because it involves transfer of learning. Infants show a “transfer deficit” (Barr,
2010, 2013; Hipp et al., 2017), that is, they learn less from screens than from face-to-face interactions
because they have difficulty transferring learning from the image on the screens to real-world, 3D
objects (Anderson and Pempek, 2005; Barr and Hayne, 1999; Zack, Barr, Gerhardstein, Dickerson, and
Meltzoff, 2009). Due to cognitive constraints on learning and memory from media that are exacer-
bated during early childhood where the memory system is less flexible and the knowledge base of the
child is sparse (Barr, 2010, 2013), there are parallels across media devices making scaffolding useful
across traditional and mobile media devices. As technology created specifically for young children
proliferates, researchers have more closely examined parent–child interactions during television view-
ing, e-book reading, and app use (Fidler, Zack, and Barr, 2010; Lauricella, Barr, and Calvert, 2009;
Neumann, 2017; Segal-Drori, Korat, Shamir, and Klein, 2010; Zack and Barr, 2016).
Parental scaffolding or joint media engagement contributes to how much a child can potentially
benefit from media exposure. A number of factors predict whether parents will engage in scaffolding
or not. Connell and colleagues (2015) investigated differences in parents’ joint media engagement
with children age 8 and under by family demographic characteristics and technology type. They
reported that more parents co-engaged with television and books compared to smartphones and tablet
computers. Younger parents and fathers were more likely to co-engage with videogames and mobile
technology, and Latin American parents were more likely to co-engage with tablet computers com-
pared to European-American parents, even when controlling for parent age and education, child age
and gender, and parent’s time with the device and time with the child (Connell et al., 2015).
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The question is why would the likelihood of using scaffolding with different types of media
arise? Perhaps because parents process audio-visual content so easily themselves, they may have the
misperception that scaffolding is not needed, especially with newer media where an e-book auto-
narrates, and an app is interactive and responsive to the child (Barr and Linebarger, 2017; Guernsey
and Levine, 2015). Fathers may be more likely to co-use videogames and mobile technology because
these devices offer more opportunities for playful interactions than other types of media (Connell
et al., 2015). When parents scaffold media in a developmentally sensitive way (Nikken and Schols,
2015), this scaffolding is likely to enhance learning (Barr, Zack, Garcia, and Muentener, 2008; Fidler
et al., 2010; Segal-Drori et al., 2010; Zack and Barr, 2016) and psychosocial outcomes (Padilla-Walker,
Coyne and Collier, 2016).
Definitions of scaffolding are derived from parenting research conducted when measur-
ing parent–child interactions during play and picture book reading and include measures such as
warmth, structuring of the play to enhance child autonomy, and labeling objects and expanding
on play themes to connect the content to the child’s real-world experiences (Brito, Ryan, and Barr,
2014). The types of strategies that parents typically use when reading picture books to their children
are the same strategies that are effective for scaffolding learning from television, tablets, and e-books
(Fidler et al., 2010). Parental scaffolding is associated with a reduction in the transfer deficit (Zack
and Barr, 2016). Zosh and colleagues (2017) argued that the science of learning principles are key to
the effectiveness of parental scaffolding of media. In particular, they provided evidence that children
learn best when they are active and engaged and not distracted, when they are learning material
that is meaningful to them, and when learning occurs within a supportive social context. Overall,
parental scaffolding plus high-quality content and technology provide the best opportunities for
maximizing the promise of digital media during early childhood (Barr and Linebarger, 2017). For
older children scaffolding may be in the form of active mediation and discussion of media content
rather than active mediation during media use.
Television and Support

Toddlers’ and preschoolers’ comprehension of educational television is enhanced when parents co-
view with their children compared to when children view alone, but comprehension varies by how
actively involved parents are during co-viewing. In a study on toddler word learning from video,
Strouse and Troseth (2014) found that 24-month-olds transferred a word they learned from watching
a video to a real 3D object only when a parent provided verbal scaffolding. Strouse, O’Doherty, and
Troseth (2013) randomly assigned 3-year-olds and their parents to two different conditions. In the
control condition, the dyad viewed a video, and comprehension questions were asked at the video’s
conclusion. In the dialogic strategies condition, parents were taught dialogic reading techniques, such
as pausing and asking questions, and were told that they could pause the video while viewing to ask
comprehension questions throughout. Comprehension of story content increased in the dialogic
strategies condition compared to the control group. Simply pausing the video overcame a common
fear that parents have that they are interrupting the child if they talk while the video is playing. In a
third condition, an onscreen adult asked comprehension questions. Comprehension in this condition
was better than the control but not as good as the parent scaffold condition. This finding raises the
possibility that onscreen tutors could provide support to children in the absence of an adult.
In other studies, parents and their young children are observed during co-viewing of child-directed
content (Barr, Zack, Garcia, and Muentener, 2008; Fender, Richert, Robb, and Wartella, 2010; Fidler
et al., 2010; Lemish and Rice 1986). Lemish and Rice (1986) found that parent–child interactions dur-
ing TV viewing were linguistically rich, and parents adopted a number of strategies that are typically
deployed during book reading, such as use of labeling and narrating the content. There is variation
in interactional quality provided to infants and young children. Higher-quality parental scaffolding
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was associated with more infant vocalizations (Fender et al., 2010) and greater infant attentiveness and
responsiveness (Barr et al., 2008; Fidler et al., 2010).
Infants also learn viewing patterns from their parents. Demers, Hanson, Kirkorian, Pempek, and
Anderson (2013) found that the mothers’ and infants’ gaze patterns were highly correlated such that
the more the parent looked at the screen, the more the infant looked. Nonparent and infant gaze
patterns were also correlated, showing that the way the video content was designed simultaneously
influenced both adult and infant looking. However, patterns overlapped more when the parent and
infant viewed together. Specifically, infants followed parental gaze and were more likely to look back
at the screen just after the parent began looking at the screen. The same pattern was not true when
parents were viewing adult-directed content. The authors concluded that during child-directed pro-
grams, infant looking can be guided by parents who view with them.
There are, however, tradeoffs to parental scaffolding. Lavigne, Hanson, and Anderson (2015) found
that parents talked less (approximately one-third fewer words) to their 1-year-olds when the television
was on than when it was off. Furthermore, parents who paid more attention to the show talked less.
A silver lining, however, was that parents included more new words per utterance during co-viewing,
and this carried over after the television program ended, resulting in richer parental language during
the subsequent free play episode. The authors speculated that high-quality educational content could
provide the parents with topics that might be of interest to young children or have modeled language
that parents could use with their young children.
Anderson and Hanson (2017) compared language use during book reading and television view-
ing. The amount of language during television viewing was only 25% of that during book reading.
Again during television viewing, parents used more new words. Book reading was clearly a more
linguistically based interaction, but different types of media may facilitate different types of learning.
For example, toddlers learn about action-based events as well or even better from TV compared to
reading (Brito, Barr, McIntyre, and Simcock, 2012; Simcock, Garrity, and Barr, 2011). This type of
action-based learning is likely to be strengthened by parental scaffolding.
The potential benefits of parental scaffolding depend on the combination of the quality of pro-
gram content and the quality of parent–child interactions during that viewing experience. For exam-
ple, in a study of low-income Latin American families and their children, Mendelsohn, Brockmeyer,
Dreyer, and colleagues (2010) found that language outcomes at 14 months could be predicted by how
much the parents reported actively discussing educational media content when their children were
6 months old. Specifically, verbal interactions during educational content at 6 months were associ-
ated with better language outcomes at 14 months. Rasmussen and colleagues (2016) asked parents to
show preschoolers an animated PBS show for two weeks. The show, based on Fred Rogers, focused
on increasing self-regulation. Parents completed Valkeburg’s mediation scale, and children completed
pre-post measures of empathy, self-regulation, and emotion recognition. Parental active mediation
practices were associated with a pre- to post-increase in empathy. For children in lower-income
households there were also changes in self-efficacy and emotion regulation. The effectiveness of a
prosocial program aimed at 2- to 4-year-olds was maximized by use of consistent active mediation
practices in the home.
Poor-quality content combined with low parental engagement is likely to be associated with long-
term negative outcomes, and the converse is also likely to be true (Anderson and Hanson, 2017).
For older children, the scaffolds may be provided outside media usage. Padilla-Walker and col-
leagues (2016) found that active mediation of 11-year-olds was associated with more prosocial behav-
ior and less aggression two years later and that this association was mediated by adolescents’ own level
of self-regulation and sympathy. Restrictive mediation, however, was a less effective strategy and was
associated with lower teen sympathy and self-regulation and less prosocial behavior two years later.
Active mediation may provide an opportunity for parents and adolescents to discuss challenging con-
tent areas portrayed in the media.
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Tablets and Support

Other studies have demonstrated that the quality of interactions between child and parent plays an
important role in making tablets an effective means of early learning. In an observational study of
parents with their children aged 4 to 6 years old, both mothers and fathers frequently scaffolded
play with an app on a tablet by using verbal descriptions, providing physical support, and offering
emotional encouragement to their children (Wood et al., 2016). Neumann (2017) observed parents
and their 3-year-olds using an iPad application. She found that parents frequently provided cognitive
scaffolds to describe the content of game, and parents also used “tech talk” to orient the youngest
children to the game.
In a study conducted by Zack and Barr (2016), 15-month-old infants and their mothers partici-
pated in this semi-naturalistic teaching task. Mothers taught their infants that a button on the real toy
worked in the same way as a virtual button on the touchscreen (or vice versa). Overall, 64% of infants
learned how to make the button work, transferring learning from the touchscreen to the 3D object or
vice versa. The level of interactional quality (diverse verbal input, emotional responsiveness, structure)
predicted infant transfer. Infants were 19 times more likely to succeed and transfer learning between
the touchscreen and real object if they were in a dyad high in interactional quality. Conversely,
experimental studies have demonstrated that removing social scaffolds decreases transfer of learning
by 2-year-olds (Zimmermann, Moser, Lee, Gerhardstein, and Barr, 2016).
As children gain more experience with devices and their representational flexibility increases, the
transfer deficit has been shown to decrease, showing that over time parental scaffolding can be reduced
(Huber et al., 2016). Huber and colleagues (2016) demonstrated that 4- to 6-year-olds transferred
learning about a challenging puzzle task from a touchscreen tablet to the real world. But in a follow-
up study Tarasuik, Demaria and Kaufman (2017) found that children under 4 years could not transfer
learning on this task, suggesting that parents need to monitor when scaffolding may be needed. As
children age and become more fluent in the use of technological tools, they may be more skilled at
transferring information from screens to the real world. Similarly, as children learn the content, reduc-
ing scaffolding is feasible (Guernsey, 2017).
E-Book Design and Support

Like other media, the design of the content and the context in which e-books are used are critical to
child comprehension (Bus, Takacs, and Kegel, 2015; Takacs, Swart, and Bus, 2015). For parents using
e-books with young children, there are two major points to consider: how to manage the interactivity
and how to provide support while reading an e-book. Recent meta-analysis has indicated that tar-
geted interactive functions, such as animation as opposed to static images and music or sound effects
matched to narrative content, can enhance comprehension of the narrative and aid vocabulary acqui-
sition (Takacs et al., 2015). Conversely, hot-spotting (e.g., when clicking on the screen within the
story takes you out of the story to other information) and unrelated games (e.g., collect items on the
screen, click to play a song) can distract and interfere with comprehension (Piotrowski and Krcmar,
2017; Takacs et al., 2015). Interference occurs largely because unrelated games and hot-spotting draw
both the parent’s and child’s attention away from the storyline (Parish-Morris, Mahajan, Hirsh-Pasek,
Golinkoff, and Collins, 2013).
Like studies conducted with other media, due to both variability within e-book content and
individual differences, scaffolding e-book reading can be vital to effective learning (Chiong et al.,
2012; Krcmar and Cingel, 2014; Lauricella, Barr, and Calvert, 2014; Strouse and Ganea, 2016, 2017).
In some cases, reading an e-book with adult scaffolding provides larger benefits than independent
e-book reading (Korat, Levin, Atishkin, and Turgeman, 2014; Korat, Segal-Drori, and Klein, 2009;
Segal-Drori et al., 2010). For example, Korat et al. (2009) found a larger increase in kindergarteners’
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phonological awareness and word reading ability after reading the e-book with an adult’s support
compared to reading it independently. In another study, Segal-Drori and colleagues (2010) compared
a well-designed book in e-book and paper formats. Half of the children received parental scaffolding
and half did not. Comprehension was highest for children in the e-book plus scaffolding condition
(Segal-Drori et al. 2010).
When researchers have compared engagement and comprehension during e-book and picture book
reading during early childhood, findings have been mixed. Under some conditions, story engagement
is higher with e-books than picture books (Lauricella et al., 2014; Richter, and Courage, 2017, Strouse
and Ganea, 2017). Some studies demonstrate no differences in story comprehension (Lauricella et al.,
2014; Richter and Courage, 2017), others higher comprehension with e-books than picture books
(Strouse and Ganea 2017), and yet others poorer comprehension with e-books than picture books
(Krcmar and Cingel, 2014; Parish et al., 2013). For example, Strouse and Ganea (2017) randomly
assigned parent–toddler dyads to read commercially available e-books or picture books matched for
content. After reading the books with their parents, experimenters asked toddlers to choose a picture
of an animal labeled in the book and then to extend that knowledge to choose the same animal using
replica objects. Engagement during e-book reading was higher, as was identification of the animal in
both pictures and replica objects than for picture books. There was no difference in topics discussed
during e-books or picture books in this study. In contrast, when there are multiple hotspots and unre-
lated games embedded in the story, comprehension suffers (Krcmar and Cingel, 2014; Parish-Morris,
et al., 2013). Additional games and hotspots may increase the cognitive load needed to process the
content (both the story narrative and unrelated pieces of information), leading to poorer comprehen-
sion (Krcmar and Cingel, 2014; Piotrowski and Krcmar, 2017; Takacs et al., 2015).
Individual differences play a role in determining when parental scaffolding is needed. Strouse
and Ganea (2016) randomly assigned 4-year-olds to three e-book reading conditions: the e-book
auto-reads story prediction prompts, an adult reads the same scripted prompts, or an adult scaffolds
the prompts. The book was about camouflage. Given that these prompts were well designed and the
content was age appropriate, there were no significant differences between conditions. Children with
lower vocabulary and executive functioning scores, however, did best in the condition where adults
scaffolded the prompts tailoring them to children, suggesting that adults need to adjust the level of
support to meet the needs of the individual child. A long-term mission of educational television, such
as Sesame Street, has been to engage parents by designing programs with two audiences in mind: the
target child and the adult. James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader in the Star Wars franchise, was
the first celebrity guest to appear on Sesame Street (in 1969); he recited the alphabet. The inclusion of
guest celebrities encouraged parents to watch the show and to engage with their children. Investiga-
tors have examined the interaction between the quality of the content and the quality of parent–child
interaction. For example, Korat and Or (2010) compared a well-designed educational e-book that
included embedded definitions and complex language with a commercially available e-book that did
not include literacy-promoting strategies. The design of the book was an important predictor of the
quality of parent–child interaction. The quality of parent–child interaction was higher when reading
the well-designed educational text than it was when reading the commercially available text. Korat
and Or (2010) argued that e-books may support parents in their interactions with their children rather
than the e-book simply containing educational content.
The e-book can also provide direct prompts and modeling for parents to follow via onscreen
tutors. Onscreen tutors effectively support direct learning during adolescence (Richards and Calvert,
2017). Troseth and colleagues modified an e-book based on a popular PBS children’s program to
include an onscreen tutor that was a familiar character from the program. The tutor modeled dialogic
reading strategies while the parent and child read the e-book together. There were two levels of the
e-book. In the easier version, the onscreen tutor modeled dialogic questions that were directly related
to the content. In the more difficult version, the onscreen tutor asked more abstract dialogic questions
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and did not provide a model during the final five pages. The parents in the onscreen tutor group
asked more dialogic questions than parents in the print book and the no onscreen tutor control groups
(Strouse, Flores, Stuckelman, Russo Johnson, and Troseth, 2017). Parents living in both high-income
and lower-income households adopted the dialogic reading techniques (Strouse et al., 2017; Troseth,
Strouse, Russo Johnson, Stuckelman, and Flores, 2018). The finding is significant because typically it
is difficult to teach dialogic reading practice. These findings suggest that onscreen modeling may be
an effective method of enhancing parental scaffolding techniques during shared book reading.
There is a tradeoff between content learning and skill learning to master a tool. During e-book
reading, parents often discuss technical aspects of the device, such as how to operate the device, often
called “tech talk” (Chiong et al., 2012; Krcmar and Cingel, 2014; Lauricella et al., 2009; Lauricella
et al., 2014; Parish-Morris et al., 2013; Richter and Courage, 2017). For example, during a computer
book reading task between caregivers and preschoolers, Lauricella et al. (2009) found that when
the child was learning to operate the computer mouse, caregivers concentrated on scaffolding the
mechanics of the task. Conversely, when parents reported that their children did not know how to
use a mouse, they spent more time scaffolding children’s vocabulary and comprehension of the story,
developmental tasks more typical of picture book reading. During picture book reading, there is
more discussion of the story narrative. However, during picture book reading young children learn
to use this tool as well, including learning to hold the book so that the picture is correctly oriented
(DeLoache, Uttal, and Pierroutsakos, 2000). Parents also engage in “tech talk,” encouraging their
children to turn the page or to hold the book in the correct orientation. During video chat, similar
patterns have been observed with parents narrating through periods of poor Internet connection or
dropped calls and often persisting through such technical issues (McClure and Barr, 2017). No studies
have examined whether excessive use of “tech talk” persists once parents and children understand the
mechanics of e-books or other technology (picture books or video chat). Given that very young chil-
dren tend to read the same books repeatedly, parents may at first focus on the form of technology, but
then after the first few times begin to focus on the content. Longitudinal studies examining repeated
interactions are needed to answer questions regarding the balance between learning about technology
and learning content from technology.
Video Chat and Support

Several research studies have also explored how and in what ways young children can learn via video
chat technology. Previous research has shown that children under 3 may have difficulty processing
information on screens. For example, when children are told via a prerecorded video where to find
an attractive hidden toy, they are typically unable to actually locate the toy, even though children are
perfectly capable of doing so when given the same information in person (Troseth, Saylor, and Archer,
2006). In contrast, children who engaged in a five-minute video chat interaction with an adult partner
prior to the hidden toy task were able to successfully use the information given to them onscreen to
find the toy (Troseth et al., 2006).
Although learning may be easier from video chat than from noninteractive televised presenta-
tions, other developmental challenges arise during video chat (McClure and Barr, 2017). For example,
there may be audio or video delays, and, of course, there is no physical contact with their social
partner. Despite these hurdles, social partners on both sides of the screen can help children overcome
these video chat–associated challenges by scaffolding a young child’s participation in and use of the
medium. For example, the parent holding the toddler while he speaks to a grandparent may act as
physical proxy for the video chat partner, kissing or tickling the child at the end of a shared rhyme.
Parents can also explain Internet delays and help mediate confusion caused by camera misalignment
(McClure and Barr, 2017). Toddlers engage in joint visual attention across the screen attending to
information that is on the screen (McClure, Chetsnova-Dutton, Holochwost, Parrott, and Barr, 2017).
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This joint attention is supported by the parent in the room and the grandparent on the other side
of the video chat. Perspective taking may be influenced by the quality of interactions conducted via
video chat. This is an empirical question.
In summary, learning from media is challenging for young children. Strategies that parents typi-
cally use when reading picture books to their children are the same strategies that are effective in
helping children to learn from television, tablets, and video chat. Research on the effects of scaffold-
ing across media types suggests that young children require input from an engaged, responsive social
partner if they are going to understand the functional relation between media and the real world in
which they live. Parents should be encouraged to co-use media and to share and enjoy the experience
with their children, rather than rely on the media as stand-alone educational devices. As children need
to learn about the device, features, and affordances that are unique to each medium, this knowledge
is best acquired in the context of parent–child interaction. This shared experience provides a basis
for further discussion using enriched vocabulary to extend the learning beyond the screen. With the
introduction of each new device, or when the complexity of content increases, scaffolding will again
be necessary to allow the child to master the new technology or to learn a new concept. Children are
also differentially susceptible to the effects of media based on their individual differences in learning
(Valkenburg and Peter, 2013). For parents to determine how to scaffold media, they need to consider
individual differences in the child’s cognitive and social skills, the content of the media, and the child’s
experiences with different types of technology. Guernsey (2012) dubbed this the 3C’s: the child, the
content, and the context.
Parental Guidelines for Media Usage

Beginning in 1999 the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP, 1999) began to publish policy guide-
lines about media exposure. In this initial set of recommendations and for the next decade (AAP, 1999,
2011, 2013) the Academy based its recommendations almost solely on the recommended amount
of exposure to television. Specifically for children under 2 years, the Academy recommended no
television at all and for toddlers that television be limited to two hours or less per day. Based on the
exposure rates described earlier in this chapter, these recommendations were not followed by parents.
Either they did not know them or they were disregarded. At the time that the first set of recommen-
dations was released, only three published empirical articles (Barr and Hayne, 1999; McCall, Parke, and
Kavanaugh, 1977; Meltzoff, 1988) had examined learning from television during infancy. Although
each study demonstrated learning from television was possible, two showed the transfer deficit. Over
the next decade a small but growing body of literature emerged examining early media exposure and
learning (Barr and Linebarger 2017). The most recent Academy recommendations (AAP, 2013, 2016)
reflect the growing empirical database, and there has been a shift in focus that includes recommenda-
tions not only about exposure but also the content and context of viewing. For example, the latest
two statements encourage media co-use , particularly during early childhood (AAP, 2013, 2016). Spe-
cifically, the AAP (2016) now recommends exposure only to educational content and accompanied
by parental support where possible beginning around 18 months. The recommendation also noted
the potential benefits of such parent-supported exposure to high-quality educational content, such as
Sesame Street, for children’s learning and development (Wright et al., 2001). The policy differentiates
between video chat and other screen media, with no age limit applied to video chat. The bidirec-
tional nature of video chat differs from other screen media and scaffolding, as it can be provided on
both sides of the screen (McClure and Barr, 2017), and parents often see video chat as an exception
(McClure et al., 2015). The Academy policy statement was accompanied by a family media planning
tool.
Parents report little knowledge of the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation, with
only 20% citing the AAP as guiding their media choices for their young children (Rideout, 2017).
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Furthermore, the 20% of parents who reported following the AAP guidelines were largely educated
and wealthy (Rideout, 2017). Recommendations regarding amount of exposure per day are unlikely
to be the best predictors of outcomes. Przybylski and Weinstein (2017b), in a large population-based
study of almost 20,000 parents, reported that the amount of time (one hour or two hours per day or
above the recommendation) 2- to 5-year-old children were exposed was not associated with child
well-being measures. A shift to focus parents on the importance of the content and context of media
exposure is necessary.
The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and the Fred Rogers
Center (2012) released a position statement supporting developmentally appropriate and intentional
use of technology in early childhood education. This statement was directed primarily to early child-
care providers but was of relevance to parents as well. It emphasized the need to better integrate
technology into ongoing classroom practices and to extend learning rather than using technology as a
stand-alone educational device. The AAP emphasis on quality social interactions to support learning
from media during early childhood was repeated in this statement.
Finally, Zero to Three released a set of guidelines called Screen Sense (Lerner and Barr, 2015) spe-
cifically developed for parents of children under 3 years. The authors recommend mindful media use,
encouraging parents to (1) develop healthy media habits, (2) choose media content carefully, (3) share
the experience with the child, and (4) be mindful of the impact that their own media use might have
on their children. They also recommend that parents engage in activities to facilitate transfer of learn-
ing from the screen to the real world with their children. These guidelines also considered the highly
saturated parental media environment and the likely greater negative impact of forms of background
media via background television or interruptions from constant access to mobile devices. Media pol-
icy statements continue to be updated as new research is released and as new forms of media evolve.
Media-Based Interventions
The decline in the cost of different devices has led to a proliferation of media devices across socio-
economic status, leading to an opportunity to provide cost-effective resources to many families. This
digital promise—although not yet achieved—has made great strides in the past decade. A number
of studies have examined whether texting can enhance parent engagement with educators (Hurwitz,
Lauricella, Hanson, Raden, and Wartella, 2015; York and Loeb, 2014). Hurwitz and colleagues (2015)
found that Head Start parents participating in a daily text-messaging program that provided edu-
cational activities and parenting tips reported that they engaged in more types of learning activities
with their children compared to parents who did not receive text messages. This intervention was
very effective for fathers, who are frequently not directly contacted and are often more difficult to
engage.
As described by Guernsey and Levine, there are a number of pitfalls to text-based interventions.
First, texts are unidirectional. Second, it is unclear whether behavioral change is maintained after texts
end. Finally, there are potential financial barriers as well as potential tech failures to these types of
interventions. Guernsey and Levine (2015) reported that barriers to entry for text-based interventions
are decreasing due to increased availability of Wi-Fi that decreases reliance on data plans and reduced
cost of technology, particularly tablets and smartphones. Rather than unidirectional texts, newer apps
allow for bidirectional communication between parents and childcare and health providers utilizing
video chat (for review, see Guernsey and Levine, 2015; Lauricella et al. 2017). More individualized
messages could be developed by integrating information across multiple sources (e.g., education and
health care). Guernsey and Levine (2015) suggested that the adoption of such tailored and integrated
messages would reduce the possibility that families would be presented with either too much infor-
mation or conflicting information and would also increase the likelihood that parents would continue
to read and act on the information over time.
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Service-based interventions have taken advantage of video modeling to enhance parent–child

interactions. Interventions that include educational video components had been effective for adoles-
cent parents and parents from low-income backgrounds (Coren, Barlow, and Stewart-Brown, 2003).
Interventions were most effective when the video modeling was combined with active interaction
and feedback with facilitators (Barr et al., 2014; Huebner and Meltzoff, 2005; Sharry, Guerin, Griffin,
and Drumm, 2005). For example, the Just Beginning program is a relationship-based intervention
for incarcerated teen fathers and their infants that utilizes media modeling (Barr et al., 2014). Inte-
grating media takes a strengths-based approach for incarcerated teen parents, who typically have low
literacy rates (Krezmein and Mulcahy, 2008) but a high affinity for and proficiency with digital media
(Rideout, Foehr, and Roberts, 2010; Rideout, 2015). The videos were produced by Sesame Street’s
Early Childhood Education Department. Like many Sesame Street videos, these were designed with a
two-generational approach: the videos were interesting to infants but also modeled strategies to foster
positive parent–child interactions for the parents. The videos had been tested in a study with middle-
income parents and their toddlers. Parents who more frequently co-viewed the Sesame Beginnings
video with their toddlers across a two-week period exhibited higher-quality parent–child interactions
during a free play interaction than parents who had viewed videos that did not include a two-generation
design (Pempek, Demers, Hanson, Kirkorian, and Anderson, 2011). The Sesame Street videos are
able to clearly depict positive, warm parent–child interactions, which can otherwise be difficult to
describe. The depiction of positive parent–child interactions is particularly important for incarcerated
parents who do not have daily opportunities to interact with their children and often do not have a
positive model of interactional quality. High-quality play was the target of the intervention because
such play is central to developing a lasting positive and warm relationship. The Just Beginning inter-
vention included the following components: video modeling, an opportunity for fathers to interact
with their babies to practice the parenting skills, and trained facilitators who provided direct feedback.
The evaluation measured changes in the interactional quality between fathers and their infants. There
was a significant increase in father–child interactional quality as measured by a growth linear model
of parent support and infant engagement across sessions (Barr et al., 2014).
Another effective strategy for parenting interventions is video feedback. The PALS program (Play
and Learning Strategies) in Texas (Landry, Smith, Swank, and Guttentag, 2008) and VIP (Video Inter-
action Project) in New York (Weisleder et al., 2016) have both taken advantage of video feedback.
Play sessions are videorecorded either at the home (PALS) or at the pediatric clinic during the typical
waiting time (VIP) while parents are playing with their young children. Trained facilitators then play
the video back to the parent, and the pair discuss strategies that worked well. Researchers find that this
feedback strengthens positive parenting strategies (Landry et al., 2008; Weisleder et al., 2016).
Future Directions in Parenting in the Digital Age
Measurement Challenges
A major challenge in this field involves the measurement of media exposure. Different laboratories use
widely varying methods to measure media, even for more traditional forms like TV (e.g., recall based
on a “typical” day versus diary methods; Vandewater and Lee, 2009), making it difficult to compare
across studies. Most methods for estimating amount of exposure rely on one or several questions
asking parents to “estimate the amount of TV viewed in a ‘typical’ day,” calling into question the
strong conclusions drawn from such weak methods. The vast majority of research in this area focuses
more on global estimates of time spent (Vandewater and Lee, 2009), ignoring content despite robust
evidence that content is a critical moderator of media effects (Anderson et al., 2001). Researchers
typically focus on the child while ignoring the media habits of other family members. This disre-
gard is particularly problematic because each family member is likely to have his or her own device.
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Researchers are developing reliable methods for measuring use of newer media, especially for mobile
devices where exposure often occurs in small bursts. Use of more precise measurement of media
usage, including passive sensing apps, wearables, and time-use data that consider entire family activities
including the content and context of media usage within the family, will systematize and standardize
how media exposure is measured in the context of children’s everyday experiences.
The measurement challenge is now greater not only because of the number of devices that need
to be tracked but also because the family media ecology needs to be considered. Although a great
deal is now known about parent mediation strategies with children 12 years and under, there are still
large gaps in our understanding of the family ecology of media use. Researchers have only begun
to investigate how parents mediate adolescent usage (Piotrowski, 2017; Uhls and Robb, 2018). Fur-
thermore, many of the next cohort of parents will have grown up as digital natives. Parents who are
digital natives themselves may use and mediate the use of media in the household in dramatically
different ways than non–digital-native parents (Jennings, 2017). The effect of sibling–sibling inter-
actions during media usage has been almost entirely ignored and requires urgent research attention
(Jennings, 2017). Open questions include whether older siblings are mentoring younger siblings in
the use of newer devices and under which contexts do older siblings view content meant for younger
audiences and vice versa when younger siblings view content intended for older audiences (Jennings,
2017). The question of how parents manage rules and exposure to content types as well as access and
“sharing” of devices between siblings has not been examined. The problem of capturing and inte-
grating information about the family media ecology presents a measurement challenge that will need
to be addressed. It will not be enough to collect a survey from one parent in the household. Rather,
converging methodologies that take advantage of passive technology tracking on cellphones, digital
capture of language and environments, physiological measurement of sleep and activity, and ecological
sampling methods to track in-the-moment emotional responses are all needed.
Examination of Individual Trajectories

Researchers should continue to incorporate multiple developmental processes and contextual fea-
tures into their models. One example is the Differential Susceptibility to Media Model (Valkenburg
and Peter, 2013), which recognizes that different children and adolescents in diverse contexts may
have varying reactions to a range of media experiences. Susceptibility is not a single quality; rather, a
variety of child and family factors may make children more or less susceptible to positive or negative
outcomes. For example, Linebarger and colleagues (2014) evaluated susceptibility to media effects as
a function of parenting skills and sociodemographic risk. To better understand the complex interac-
tion of media exposure in the context of development, longitudinal studies to examine how family
media diets are established, how trajectories develop, and how these patterns are related to long-term
outcomes are needed. In this field, there has been only a handful of small-scale longitudinal studies
to follow children over time with the specific goal of delineating the effects of media over childhood
(Anderson et al., 2001; Barr, Lauricella, Zack, and Calvert, 2010; Linebarger and Walker, 2005; Wright
et al., 2001). Unfortunately, ongoing large-scale longitudinal studies have not considered the role that
digital media may play, despite the fact that media now comprise a large chunk of daily experiences.
New studies of any type of development need to consider the entire family media environment,
including family members and multiple devices, in order to thoroughly predict outcomes of various
media diets on individual children living in various contexts.
New Waves of Technology

Each wave of new technology has incorporated more sensory data. Currently advances in virtual real-
ity and haptic sensors are new ways to increase interactivity and the reality of the media experience.
400
Virtual reality provides 3D-like visual representations, and haptic cues provide tactile vibration feed-
back. Multisensory experiences may integrate more easily into children’s perceptions and representa-
tions gained from real-world experiences. Conversely, these experiences may provide interference
with ongoing learning. Both haptic cues and virtual reality require additional empirical study with
very young children accompanied by ongoing research examining how parents can support their
children’s engagement in these new multisensory experiences.
Video chat, a newer technology, lacks empirical evidence on how it can most effectively be
deployed. Fisch (2017) argued that video chat provides unique opportunities to connect across mul-
tiple generations and often across geographical distances through a screen. It is still not yet clear how
closely such interactions match face-to-face interactions. McClure and Barr (2017) examined how
parents and grandparents facilitated interactions during video chat, but their analyses do not provide
a complete picture of these interaction patterns or what children may learn from these experiences.
Undoubtedly new media will eventually appear and be accompanied by its own set of affordances and
constraints that will likely mirror some of the same affordances and constraints of prior research, and
researchers should be careful to reexamine overlapping principles from parenting science that have
persisted across multiple platforms.
Cross-Cultural Perspectives Are Needed

Research on parenting and media usage has largely been conducted in the United States and the Neth-
erlands, meaning that there is a dearth of knowledge about parenting media practices across cultures.
This is despite the fact that mobile technology has penetrated the families of many children around
the globe. For example, Lumbre-Visto (personal communication August, 2017) conducted a survey
in a low-cost subdivision in the city of Tacloban, the Philippines, with 299 parents with children aged
between 6 months and 5 years. Families had an average household income of 30,000 Php (~US$600).
Most households owned either a television or a smartphone/tablet, and most children (96%) had used
the device before 2 years. Very few households had Internet access (27%) or a television set placed in
the child’s bedroom (15%). Households with Internet access frequently used video chat (80%) to keep
in touch with relatives or to stay in contact due to parental work schedules. These findings suggest
that media usage patterns are prevalent, but additional information is needed to understand patterns
of usage and how they differ and overlap across different communities and cultures.
Effective Interventions
The basic research on the measurement and long-term impact of media exposure can be leveraged to
develop effective interventions to increase positive benefits of technology and reduce negative possible
impacts. It will be necessary to design interventions to meet the needs of diverse and vulnerable fami-
lies, including incarcerated parents, families living in poverty or who are experiencing homelessness,
deployed military personnel, and children and families coping with divorce. Technology provides an
opportunity for health care providers to meet families remotely to strengthen their parenting skills
and child outcomes.
For example, Jennings (2017) highlighted the importance of including larger, more diverse pop-
ulations, including more work on populations with intellectual disabilities. This is an area where
research on the effectiveness of interventions and technology-assisted learning is burgeoning, but how
parents are empowered or included in such intervention approaches is often ignored. For example,
Golan and colleagues (2010) developed a show to increase emotion recognition for children on the
autism spectrum called The Transporters. The show took advantage of the parental observation that
children with autism really enjoyed “Thomas the Tank” engine, possibly because the nonbiological
movement of the trains was highly predictable. The show Transporters places a human face on a train.
401
Rachel Barr
Recognition of facial emotions increased after viewing this show. Additional research focusing on
parental use of such tools and extension of content beyond the media-based intervention is necessary
to maximize the effectiveness of such interventions.
Conclusions
Parenting in the digital age provides a number of unique opportunities and challenges to parents. The
research demonstrates, however, that general parenting principles apply to media forms, particularly in
the area of scaffolding experiences for very young children. Positive parenting practices around media
are essential despite the sophistication and interactivity inherent in new forms of media. Because
media are tools that require children to learn new affordances that often do not equally apply in the
3D world, they will need support to learn affordances and overcome constraints. Constraints and
affordances differ even for new tools like virtual reality or intelligent agents. Because the content is
a symbolic representation of information existing in the real world, children need guidance to learn
the relation between images and the real objects. Children rapidly master these skills under responsive
and supportive conditions, and such mastery will likely be increasingly important for school readiness
and academic achievement.
However, media is a double-edged sword, providing opportunities to extend learning within the par-
ent–child context but also to interfere with that relationship. But the interference stems from the parent’s
own media usage. Increasing parental awareness of the potential role that their own media use could play
in interfering with the parent–child relationship is a first step to reducing long-term negative impacts on
language and cognitive outcomes. Given our knowledge of both the pros and cons of parenting in the digital
age, this is a time of promise for increasing access to resources for a large portion of parents around the globe.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Olivia Blanchfield and Madeline Lui for their help in the preparation of the manu-
script. Thank you also to a grant from Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child
Development.
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14
PARENTING THE
CHILD IN SCHOOL
Introduction
This chapter most directly links to the large interdisciplinary literature on parental involvement in
education (with parental engagement and family–school partnerships being more contemporary
alternative conceptualizations). Parental involvement encompasses a wide variety of behaviors that
take place in multiple settings, such as the home (e.g., engaging in cognitively stimulating activities
with children, such as shared reading), preschools and schools setting (e.g., meeting with teachers
about children’s progress, volunteering at school), and in the community (e.g., finding positive extra-
curricular activities for children, exposing children to cultural resources, such as museums). Such
behaviors also vary across developmental time, declining in many ways but also evolving into different
forms as children’s needs change with age. For example, playing stimulating games with children is
more important during early childhood than in adolescence, with helping children choose curricu-
lar options in school more common during adolescence than early childhood. Finally, both levels
of engagement in and the meanings attached to parental involvement behaviors are highly context
specific, differing across diverse segments of the population with diverse cultural settings for child
development. For example, affluent European-American parents tend to emphasize the value of being
visibly active in their children’s schools, whereas Asian-American immigrant parents are more likely
to emphasize involvement at home and in the community as crucial (Christenson and Sheridan, 2001;
Epstein, 2011; Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler, 1997).
Across all this diversity and change, the common theme is that parents view creating, supporting,
and managing children’s opportunities to learn as key components of their parenting role. Notably,
research has consistently supported these parents’ views, showing that the various forms of parental
involvement are positively associated with children’s and adolescents’ academic and behavioral out-
comes. This evidence, in turn, has fueled a massive degree of federal, state, and local policy investment
in efforts to increase parental involvement in education, efforts that have substantial public backing
(Epstein, 2005; Pomerantz, Moorman, and Litwack, 2007).
Yet others contest this research in many ways, generating substantial debate about socioeconomic
and ethnic biases on the part of both schools and the researchers who study schools. Such biases
pertain to the privileging of parenting behaviors and values of more affluent, European-American,
and U.S.-born parents, which then causes professionals and the public to view involvement behaviors
as a parenting ideal through which to evaluate all parents. Parents from other social strata and back-
grounds then experience their efforts to support children’s school success as lacking, and educators or
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Parenting the Child in School
policymakers may judge them accordingly to the detriment of their children’s treatment in schools.
Research emphasizing narrow, and especially school-based, aspects of involvement over a full range of
parental views, values, and behaviors helps to reinforce this problem. In addition to these accusations
of bias, the push for increased parental involvement as a remedy for the woes of the U.S. educational
system has been criticized as placing too much responsibility for schools’ successes and failures on the
shoulders of parents (Crosnoe, 2015; Domina, 2005; Lareau, 2003; Robinson and Harris, 2014; Tobin,
Adair, and Arzubiaga, 2013).
This chapter wades into this complex literature of translational social and behavioral science
research on parental involvement in education and the many policies and programs it enforces. The
primary focus is the United States—the developed country with arguably the greatest degree of
emphasis on parental school involvement within its public educational system and the most scientific
research emphasis on the subject—with attention to other developed countries as comparison and
contrast (Avvisati, Besbas, and Guyon, 2010; Willms and Somer, 2001). To place some limits on the
scope of this discussion, this chapter also focuses on parenting that is consciously linked to promot-
ing children’s academic progress and future educational attainment, even though many of the most
important parenting foundations for such educational trajectories—such as providing a secure and
healthy environment for children to grow and thrive—are not necessarily education specific (Pomer-
antz et al., 2007; see also Hill and Chao, 2009). Tracing the historical roots of parental involvement
and associated research and delving into contemporary questions about the promise and peril of using
parental involvement as a policy lever can help reconcile the documented benefits of parental involve-
ment for children and the ways that these benefits can obscure more problematic aspects of societal
inequality. The goal is to reconsider parental involvement in education in the evolving contexts of its
past, present, and future.
Historical Considerations in the Parent/School Relationship

The history of parental involvement in education in the United States has been a story of an evolving—and
inconsistent—sense of the role of parents within schools, with norms moving from active connec-
tion between home and school early on to a later separation of the two and then the modern vision
of parents as having the responsibility to be “partners” with schools (see Figure 14.1). This modern
vision grew out of multiple social, economic, and cultural trends, and lack of critical reflection on
these converging trends is one reason why parental involvement in education is both a common point
of public discussions of how to improve U.S. education and a source of conflict.
Three Stages of Parental Involvement in Education

First, at the dawn of formal schooling in the United States in the late 18th and early 19th centuries,
schools and families were closely connected, and parents were highly involved in the daily function-
ing and “big picture” design of schools. In the context of a decentralized government, isolated towns
and communities in a largely rural society, and economic vulnerability, parents had to do much of the
work to create schools and keep them going. For example, parents had more responsibility for hiring
and firing teachers, and they exerted a great deal of influence on the curriculum and how teachers
taught it. Thus, the role of parents was not just about their everyday interactions with their own chil-
dren but also about guiding the ways that the community and teachers ran the schools their children
attended (Cremin, 1957; Epstein, 2011; Prentice and Houston, 1975). During this era, the view of the
relation between families and schools was one of interdependence.
Second, moving from the 19th century through the 20th century, the educational system became
much more institutionalized, professionalized, and formalized over the course of many years. As the
system grew, government control of schools increased, and a common curriculum emerged, with the
411
Perceptions of Role of Parents in Schools
18th through 19th Late 19th through Early Late 20th through Early 21st
Century (Connection) 20th Century (Separation) Century (Re-Emergence)
Figure 14.1 Three stages in the history of parental involvement in education in the United States
dominant perception developing that education was the domain of professionals, not parents. As a
result, the strong influence of parents on schools declined, and parents and schools kept at a distance
from each other. The role of parents changed, with parents now expected to prepare their children
for school with the behaviors and attitudes necessary for academic success and then leave the actual
instruction to the “experts” at school. More recently, increased demand for accountability in schools
has once again highlighted the importance of parents who are informed and involved in their chil-
dren’s educational experiences (Epstein, 2011; Labaree, 1988). In this era, the view of families and
schools was one of support.
Third, from the final decades of the 20th century into the 21st century, major changes within the
educational system once again shifted the role of parents in schools and their educational involvement
more generally. Although not the only cause, one of the first notable occurrences of the reinvestment
of parents into the educational system arose because of laws and educational policies surrounding
desegregation. For better or worse, parents once again felt compelled to take a more active role in their
children’s education and the schools that their children attended (Clotfelter, 2004).
Following on the heels of major demographic shifts in U.S. public schools, the diversification of
schools through “school choice” movements also emphasized the importance of parents in obtaining
and maintaining educational opportunities for their children (Berends, 2015). These factors, coupled
with the underperformance of U.S. schools relative to other developed nations, the increased pressure
to hold schools accountable for the academic performance of students, and a renewed emphasis on
local control, led to the re-emergence of parents as powerful actors in schools. Today, in the United
States more than in other developed countries, parents consider themselves as having a rightful say
in school practices, educational policies, and pedagogical processes—as fundamental to the success of
their children in schools through direct interactional parenting practices but also core to the successful
functioning of schools through their interactions with school personnel and other parents. Large-scale
school reforms in the United States—including federal policies such as No Child Left Behind and
Race to the Top—have mirrored this perspective, repeatedly incentivizing schools to facilitate parental
412
involvement, especially among parents from historically disadvantaged and marginalized segments of
the population (Domina, 2005; Epstein, 2005; Lareau, 2003; Tobin et al., 2013). In this most recent era,
the view of families and schools is one of partnership.
Three Contemporary Trends Fueling

Emphasis on Parental Involvement
As just noted, many social, economic, and cultural changes have converged to create the modern
vision—among researchers and policymakers but also in the public—of families and schools as part-
ners. Yet three in particular are important to highlight here because they speak to the ways in which
the very idea of parental involvement in education is a social construction—reformulating and evolv-
ing as the context changes.
First, the importance of educational attainment for both the individual and society has increased
tremendously since the 1970s, both in the United States and in the rest of the developed world
during a period of increasing global economic restructuring. Indeed, the returns to investments in
educational attainment—typically measured by the greater earnings associated with receiving a col-
lege degree compared to a high school diploma—reached historic highs (see Figure 14.2), and these
returns go beyond income to include such life course outcomes as better health, longer life expec-
tancy, and more stable family lives. Such rising returns are a result of modern economic restructuring
in the United States and other developed countries, in which the larger manufacturing sector of the
economy has been replaced with an information/service sector with a higher demand for highly
skilled professional workers (Fischer and Hout, 2006; Goldin and Katz, 2008).
With these increasing stakes of high levels of progress and achievement in the educational sys-
tem, competition among students for valued academic credentials and opportunities has increased.
That increased competition, in turn, has led to competition among parents and an escalating race for
investment in children’s education. In this environment, parental involvement—in the form of secur-
ing opportunities for children through supplemental activities, sought-after schools, and advocacy at
school—has become a form of investment, one in which socioeconomically advantaged parents have
the upper hand (Foster, 2002; Kornrich and Furstenberg, 2013).
2
Men Women
Graduate/High School Graduate
1.8
Median Earnings for College
1.6
1.4
1.2
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
1972 1982 1992 2002 2012
Figure 14.2 Contemporary trends in returns to higher education in the United States
Note: For full-time workers, aged 25–34
Source: U.S. Census (Baum, 2014)
413
Second, the norm of “intensive mothering” has expanded and strengthened in the United States
and Europe (Faircloth, 2013; Hays, 1998). According to Hays (1998, p. 8), intensive mothering refers
to the modern idea that children require a great deal of focused care, nurturance, and stimulation, so
that rearing a child should be “child-centered, expert-driven, emotionally absorbing, labor-intensive,
and financially expensive.” Either explicitly or implicitly, this idea assumes that such parenting is best
done by mothers, who are not supposed to leave anything about their children’s futures to chance. It is
a form of parenting defined by maximum focus on children and selfless sacrifice by mothers that took
hold among the increasingly large share of college-educated (primarily European-American) mothers
at the end of the 20th century and achieved great power in the media and popular culture. As a result,
all mothers are judged according to how much they live up to the standards of intensive motherhood,
and those who realistically cannot do so or who reject this characterization are disadvantaged (Artis,
2009; Elliott, Powell, and Brenton, 2015; Hays, 1998).
Within the context of increasingly high stakes of educational attainment in the life course and in
society, intensive mothering manifests in a specific forum of parental involvement often labeled con-
certed cultivation, or the idea that navigating children through the educational system requires vigi-
lant attention, constant management, significant advocacy, and great personal sacrifice (Lareau, 2003).
Like intensive mothering, concerted cultivation is a product of a primarily European-American afflu-
ent culture that has used its power in society to have this idea engrained in school practices and
policies (Cheadle, 2008; Lareau, 2003). This shift towards concerted cultivation occurs even though
there appears to be no intrinsic value in this kind of parental involvement; rather, it is just the kind
of parental involvement that is currently most valued by societal elites (Lareau 2003). Indeed, such
an emphasis on concerted cultivation may decrease a family’s quality of life or put undue pressure on
already overworked mothers (Meyers and Jordan, 2006; Stone 2007).
Third, the push for “privatization” of many public services in the United States and other liberal
welfare regimes has extended into the educational system. In this perspective, schools are not merely
public institutions overseen by the government and out of the touch of the people that they serve.
Instead, the dominant view became that policies needed to hold schools accountable to the students,
families, and communities that they served; that accountability was promoted by an open-market
approach; and that applying insights from private enterprise to this public venture would improve
overall functioning and productivity (Ravitch, 2016). Two clear dimensions of this trend are the grow-
ing emphasis on “school choice” and the rapid increase in the number and size of education-focused
nonprofits attempting to bolster the success of traditional public schools and diverting resources away
from direct investments in schools (Pettijohn, 2013; Renzulli and Roscigno, 2005).
Another dimension more relevant to this chapter is that parents have increasingly taken the view
that schools must answer to them and that they have a right and obligation to involve themselves in
the management and leadership of schools. The spread of this view includes the construction of state
and federal policies that require schools to develop shared governance plans with parents and com-
munity stakeholders (Domina, 2005; Epstein, 2005). The complex social and cultural tensions among
parents, communities, and schools such as stereotyping, differing values, or even scheduling conflicts
challenge the success of such policies (Tobin et al., 2013).
Three Contemporary Trends Complicating

Emphasis on Parental Involvement
Just as some social, economic, and cultural changes in the United States have led to the growing sense
that parents have a crucial role not just in their children’s education but also in their children’s schools,
simultaneous contemporary changes suggest that this role is far from straightforward or easy to enact.
First, the population of U.S. schools—much like the U.S. population as a whole—is substantially
more ethnically diverse today than it was in the not-so-distant past, but the ethnic composition of
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the nation’s teachers and school administrators has not kept pace. For example, the proportion of the
K–12 student population that is non-Hispanic European-American in the United States has dropped
to 46%, whereas the corresponding proportion for teachers is over 80% (National Center for Educa-
tion Statistics, 2016). Such incongruence between teachers and students is also an issue in other devel-
oped (albeit less diverse) nations. As a result, many parents have diverse backgrounds and different
ideas of parenting than the personnel at their children’s current or future schools.
Although teachers, parents, and students can and do form meaningful and effective relationships
across ethnic lines, cross-ethnic relationships in schools are somewhat more vulnerable due to a lack
of communication and coordination and have heightened risks of antagonism. Indeed, ample research
has shown that many non–European-American parents, especially African-American parents, feel
alienated from and dismissed by European-American teachers and that European-American teachers
often have stereotypical and negative views of non–European-American parents. In such cases, efforts
by parents to become more involved in schools can lead to tensions, and they might not receive equal
credit for their home- and community-based involvement efforts (Lareau and Horvat, 1999; Robinson
and Harris, 2014).
In addition, the persistent connection between ethnic and socioeconomic stratification in the United
States and other affluent countries muddles relying on parental involvement for the educational success
of children. Current socioeconomic circumstances mean that the aspects of parental involvement that
are not incorporated into the public education system but require financial investment (e.g., purchasing
reading materials, enrolling children in extracurricular activities, paying private school tuition) are more
likely to be out of reach for ethnic minority parents than European-American parents.
Second, the substantial increase in immigration in the United States after the major federal immigra-
tion reforms in 1965 has complicated contemporary expectations of parental involvement above and
beyond the growing ethnic diversity of the country. Almost a quarter of children in U.S. schools are the
children of immigrants, and that proportion is much higher in traditional immigrant destination states
like California and Texas (Hernandez, 2004). Many other developed countries—from Australia to
Iceland—also have experienced increased immigration and its effects on student populations, meaning
that the relevance of immigration to parental involvement in schools extends beyond the United States
(Runarsdottir and Vilhjalmsson, 2015; Washbrook, Waldfogel, Bradbury, Corak, and Ghanghro, 2012).
As a result, many parents of children in U.S. schools have less understanding of the expectations
that school personnel and other parents have of them—in addition to often having low levels of edu-
cational attainment in their home countries, facing language barriers with schools, and working in
jobs that grant little control over their time. Immigrant parents from Latin America and Asia are also
more likely than U.S.-born parents to view their educational role as parents as encouraging positive
behavior and academic motivation at home and in the community, rather than directly interacting or
coordinating with schools. Such parents see themselves as highly involved, but school personnel who
are looking for more visible (and demanding) displays of involvement may not recognize them as
such. When teachers and other school personnel do not see immigrant parents as involved, they may
think that they do not care and possibly adjust their attention to the parents’ children accordingly. In
such scenarios, schools view immigrant parents as problems to be fixed rather than resources on which
to be capitalized. Although not immigrants, Native American parents have similar experiences in
their children’s schools (Crosnoe and Ansari, 2015; Deyhle, 1991; McWayne, Melzi, Schick, Kennedy,
and Mundt, 2013; Poza, Brooks, and Valdés, 2014; Tobin et al., 2013; Yoshikawa, 2011; Zhou, 2009).
Further complicating this contemporary trend of increased immigration is any crossover—either
perceived or real—between the institutions of public education and other governmental agencies
and authorities that are tasked with the enforcement or regulation of the nation’s immigration laws.
Undocumented immigrants, families of undocumented individuals, or even U.S. citizens who may
be mistaken for undocumented immigrants may be more hesitant to involve themselves in any gov-
ernmental institution, whether that institution itself has policies regarding an individual’s immigrant
415
status (Brayne, 2014). This phenomenon—often called system avoidance—has clear implications in a
modern environment that expects parents to be visible, present, and intensively involved in the day-
to-day functioning of a government service such as public schools.
Third, the family structures of U.S. students have become increasingly complicated and unstable
(see Brown, Stykes, and Manning, 2016), leading to questions about who in the family is and can
be involved in children’s education on a regular basis, especially in the most visible forms of parental
involvement at school. The kinds of parental involvement emphasized by schools takes substantial
time and effort, so much so that they are greatly facilitated by having a partner to share the burden.
Consequently, single parents will have more trouble than partnered parents consistently engaging in
many valued parental involvement behaviors. At the same time, because biological parents tend to be
more consistently invested in children’s educational careers than stepparent figures, parents who are
not partnered with their children’s other parent (or at least coparenting with that other parent) will
also be at a disadvantage when it comes to active and intensive parental involvement. Policymakers,
however, infrequently tailor school policies and programs aiming to increase parental involvement to
meet the needs of parents in a diverse array of living arrangements (Crosnoe and Benner, 2012; Ressler,
Smith, Cavanagh, and Crosnoe, 2017).
Where Things Stand Now

Given historical changes in families, schools, and the connections between them, as well as contem-
porary changes that place pressure on these connections, we can conclude that parental involvement
in education is a modern parenting practice that is potentially valuable for children and schools but
also potentially contentious. Understanding how to realize the value of parental involvement while
avoiding conflict requires a deeper dive into what parental involvement is and how it operates, with
special attention to issues of socioeconomic, ethnic, and immigration-related diversity and inequality.
Much of the research in this area is based on the often-unique U.S. case, where the interplay between
families and schools is particularly complicated because of the decentralized educational system and
the diverse population, but research on other countries (as well as comparative research) is also illumi-
nating in many ways, both because of the similarities and differences it can reveal.
Central Issues in Parental Involvement

Having laid out the historical and contemporary context of parental involvement in education in
the United States and why it stands out from the rest of the developed world, this section elucidates
various dimensions of parental involvement and how families and schools are (and are not) oriented
towards each other. As the preceding discussion showed, parental involvement means different things
to different parents, and even parents who have the same vision of parental involvement may face
different constraints in acting on their motivations. At the same time, schools tend to view parental
involvement and encourage involvement among parents in ways that may or may not correspond to
what parents are thinking and doing. Moreover, these perspectives often reflect the persistent effects
of ethnic and socioeconomic stratification, and reinforce a Western view of “good” parenting in a
diverse population of students and families influenced by many other cultural traditions. Even when
families and schools think that they are on the same page, therefore, they may not be adequately living
up to their intentions to serve the best interests of children.
Different Conceptualizations of Parental Involvement

Social and behavioral scientists tend to categorize various parental involvement in education behav-
iors according to what these behaviors entail and where and when they take place. In reviewing the
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literature, this chapter presents a five-part categorization to describe the basic behaviors within each
category, how they are often contested culturally within the United States (and differ across countries),
and efforts to address such problems to better serve the needs of developing children and youth.
Direct Development of Children’s Skills, Talents, and Interests

The first category of parental involvement in education encompasses teaching, stimulation, and
enrichment. This type of direct involvement in education mostly takes place in the home, especially
when children are young. It generally involves face-to-face interactions in which parents share with,
engage, and guide children in learning activities, both academic (e.g., learning numbers and letters)
and cultural (e.g., telling stories about one’s people; Crosnoe and Cooper, 2010; Raver, Gershoff, and
Aber, 2007; Tobin et al., 2013).
One of the most commonly studied examples of direct development is parental language use with
children. Ample evidence attests to the importance of extensive and rich language use on the part
of parents in children’s cognitive development. One famous line of research documented the large
socioeconomic disparities in parental language use with young children (Hart and Risley, 2003). The
implication taken from this research is that these disparities help to explain the large socioeconomic
gaps in school readiness and early achievement, although more recent research has argued that socio-
economic disparities in quality of parental language use are smaller than corresponding disparities
in quantity (Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2015). Another example involves parents’ attempt to stimulate and
cultivate children’s interests and capacities in math, with Chinese parents taking a more explicit skill-
building approach compared to U.S. parents’ use of games and other “fun” activities (Pan, Gauvain,
Liu, and Cheng, 2006; Siegler and Ramani, 2008). The argument is that involvement behaviors require
significant investments of time, energy, and often money and are vulnerable to language or cultural
differences between families and children’s preschools and schools (McWayne et al., 2013; Raver et al.,
2007). Several innovative interventions to help parents of low socioeconomic means or facing other
challenges to engage more easily and knowledgeably in shared learning activities with children, such
as dialogic reading, reflect the emphasis on this type of involvement (Hargrave and Sénéchal, 2000).
Active Management of Schooling

The second category of parental involvement in education encompasses assisting children with
schoolwork (e.g., helping with homework), communicating with teachers (e.g., voicing concerns, ask-
ing advice), supervising course enrollments and activities (e.g., advising on which math class to take),
accessing educational opportunities (e.g., choosing and securing a school or a program), preparing
for future educational trajectories (e.g., counseling on college options), and advocating for children
in school (e.g., protecting them from discipline, arguing for their selection into special programs;
Catsambis, 2001; Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2001; Muller, 1995). This category of parental involvement
in education is highly child specific, as it evolves over time as children mature and their needs and
activities change. For example, helping with homework becomes increasingly difficult for parents
as children move into and through secondary school and the curriculum becomes more advanced
(Crosnoe, 2001; Eccles and Harold, 1993).
More socioeconomically advantaged parents tend to have more resources to make this kind of
parental involvement in education count. They may have more intimate knowledge of the ways that
schools work, how to get ahead, and what is needed now to ensure success in the future, and they
often have more power to get what they want and force more bidirectional exchanges (versus uni-
directional) with schools (Crosnoe and Ansari, 2015; Crosnoe and Muller, 2014; Lareau and Horvat,
1999). As a result, many intervention programs targeting underprivileged students explicitly employ
mentors to help with this management of schooling (Gandara, 2002). One criticism of this form of
417
involvement is that it can become too controlling and reduce youth ownership of their schooling, and,
indeed, studies of Chinese parents have shown that their involvement behaviors are more geared to
cultivating youth autonomy (Cheung and Pomerantz, 2012; Pomerantz et al., 2007).
Effecting Change in School

The third category of parental involvement in education includes explicit school-based activities and
interactions like volunteering, participation in parent–teacher associations, fundraising, and leading
school programs and school reform movements. Essentially, parents take on an active role within
schools as a means of improving their children’s schools and both directly and indirectly helping their
children through such improvements (Muller, 1995; Ressler et al., 2017; Simon, 2004). Because this
kind of parental involvement in education is so visible, it tends to gain parents the most credit for being
involved parents among teachers, school administrators, and other parents in the school community.
Because these school-based involvement behaviors are so linked with holding schools accountable to
students and families and increasing community control of schools, they are also typically the primary
targets of policy and programmatic efforts to increase parental involvement in the United States. Yet
comparative studies in other regions of the world (e.g., Latin America) have shown that elevated levels
of school participation by parents is often a sign—either cause or effect—of schools effectively serving
students (Epstein, 2005; Willms and Somer, 2001).
One reason why this policy emphasis on this type of school-based parental involvement in edu-
cation is often criticized as misguided or problematic is that such behaviors require substantial time
but also power (and English language skills) and, therefore, advantage already advantaged parents and
their children. Moreover, the truth is that any one parent can only have so much impact, and a strong
coalition of involved and interconnected parents who know each other and care about each other’s
children will have a bigger impact (Carbonaro, 1998; Gamoran, Turley, Turner, and Fish, 2012). One
intervention targeting poor Latino/a schools in the Southwest of the United States, therefore, aimed to
build stronger social networks among parents as a means of improving schools’ treatment of their chil-
dren, and experimental evaluations suggested that it had its intended effects (Gamoran et al., 2012).
Creating Educational Opportunities Outside of School

The fourth category of parental involvement in education incorporates the many ways that parents
access formal activities and programs for their children that supplement and complement their aca-
demic studies in the K–12 system. Disparities in this kind of parental involvement begin early in
children’s lives, as evidenced by the differential enrollment of children in early childhood education
programs prior to school entry. Such patterns reflect socioeconomic stratification (as high-quality
programs are often expensive and difficult to identify) but also differences in needs (e.g., variable
rates of maternal employment) and cultural patterns (e.g., preferences for keeping young children at
home or with family; Duncan and Magnuson, 2013; Fuller, 2007). Another example of this kind of
parental involvement is enrollment of children in lessons (e.g., music), extracurricular activities (e.g.,
sports), camps (e.g., arts), and cultural activities (e.g., museum visits) aiming to cultivate children’s
skills and talents. Such activities are hallmarks of concerted cultivation among U.S. parents, but they
are common in other affluent countries in Europe and elsewhere (Cheadle, 2008; De Graaf, De Graaf,
and Kraaykamp, 2000; Lareau, 2003). Many Asian immigrant parents engage in a different form of
creating educational opportunities by sending their children to after-school and weekend educational
programs to supplement their schooling (Zhou and Kim, 2006). Other examples include helping
adolescents secure internships or summer jobs that might promote their college prospects.
Much of the reason that the increased focus among parents (and schools) on creating educational
opportunities for young people outside of school has generated significant debate in the United States
418
(and many European countries) relates to access to these opportunities. The fact is that this parenting
behavior is only sustainable for parents who have considerable economic means and can manage their
own time (or buy other’s time, such as sitters; Kornrich and Furstenberg, 2013). Yet concerns that this
form of parental involvement in education has “gotten out of hand” go beyond the socioeconomic
circumstances of parents (The Economist, 2014). As so vividly illustrated by Lareau’s ethnographic work
in Unequal Childhoods: Race, Class, and Family Life (2003), the perception among parents that they must
maintain such active out-of-school schedules for their children is a burden on them and pressure on
their families, including the children whom they are trying to support. Although most children and
youth—even those with affluent professional parents—do not maintain such intense activity portfo-
lios, concerns about “the overscheduled child” are real and suggest uneasiness with an increasingly
visible parenting behavior (Mahoney, Harris, and Eccles, 2006).
Social Psychological Support for Learning and Schooling

The fifth and final category of parental involvement in education here represents, in many ways, the
cheapest and more important way that parents can help their children get the most out of school
and realize the most of their talents, abilities, and opportunities (Hill and Tyson, 2009; Pomerantz
et al., 2007). Some good examples of such support include encouraging young people to meet and
overcome academic challenges; sharing and modeling values about the importance of education,
setting, and reinforcing educational aspirations and expectations; talking through problems and
stressors; and praising effort and accomplishment (Catsambis, 1998; Singh, Bickley, Trivette, and
Keith, 1995). Such parenting behaviors matter to young people because they serve their needs to
feel secure, safe, appreciated, cared for, and validated. Notably, however, parents should calibrate
their support to best help their children. Sometimes, youth require more imposed structure, so
unwavering acceptance of their behaviors can be counterproductive. At the same time, evidence
from the growth (vs. fixed) mind-set literature in psychology indicates unqualified and uncritical
praise for youth academic effort may undermine their academic pursuits (Dweck, 2008; Steinberg,
Brown, and Dornbusch, 1996).
Because social psychological support for learning and schooling generally does not require signifi-
cant outlays of money, extensive time commitments, or familiarity with the educational system, it is
less prone to socioeconomic and ethnic disparities than the other categories of parental involvement
discussed here. Yet parents give social psychological support in ways that differ across diverse cultures,
and those differences can lead to cultural misunderstandings and misinterpretations. For example, the
United States and other Western countries, tend to view such support through the prism of warmth
and affection. Consequently, teachers and other parents in these countries often view many par-
ents in other countries and immigrant parents in their own countries—especially Asian parents—as
unsupportive of their children when they are. Such parents may not be overtly affectionate, but their
engagement in children’s educational pathways is often meant by them and—importantly—inter-
preted by their children as support (Chao, 2001; Cheung and Pomerantz, 2012; Zhou, 2009).
The Observed Benefits of Parental Involvement

Other than the fact that they think that they are supposed to, parents engage in various involvement
behaviors because they believe that doing so is good for their children, especially for their children’s
short-term and long-term educational prospects. They are trying to find ways to support their chil-
dren and get them ahead. Similarly, other than being pressured to or following the lead of others,
schools engage in outreach with parents because they believe that doing so is good for their students
and, therefore, good for them. These widespread beliefs beg the question: Does parental involvement
boost the learning, achievement, engagement, and adjustment of children and adolescents?
419
The short answer to this question is “it depends.” The existence and magnitude of the observed
benefits of parental involvement in education vary across the type of behavior of interest, the aca-
demic outcome in question, the group of parents being studied, and the developmental stage of the
child being parented (Crosnoe, 2015; Desimone, 1999; Pomerantz et al., 2007). Various dimensions
of social psychological support for learning and achievement—including aspirations and socialization
into academic values—tend to have more positive effects on young people than many other forms of
involvement (Hill and Tyson, 2009; Ho and Willms, 1996; Robinson and Harris, 2014; Singh et al.,
1995). Direct interactions with children to develop skills and the active management of educational
opportunities in school seem to matter more in the long run than creating opportunities outside of
school (De Graaf et al., 2000; Fan and Chen, 2001), although the benefits of after-school activities
are just beginning to be qualitatively understood and may be most beneficial for those students most
at risk (Nelson, 2017). Parental involvement in education may be more consistently associated with
children’s behavioral outcomes (e.g., prosocial behavior in schools) than their academic outcomes
(e.g., grades, test scores; Domina, 2005; Raver et al., 2007). Another complicating factor is that paren-
tal involvement may also appear to be negatively associated with children’s academic and behavioral
adjustment and functioning (or not associated at all) when involvement behaviors are a reaction to
children having problems in school rather than a proactive parenting strategy (Crosnoe, 2001; Desim-
one, 1999; Fan, 2001; Ho and Willms, 1996).
Furthermore, the benefits of parental involvement in education for children and youth are more
easily realized when parents have substantial financial, human, and cultural capital backing for their
involvement behaviors; when they are facilitated, encouraged, and welcomed by schools and educa-
tors; and when they are well tailored to the needs of children (e.g., giving an academically successful
student more freedom and autonomy but paying closer attention to one struggling; Ansari and Cros-
noe, 2015; Bouffard and Weiss, 2008; Crosnoe, 2001; Lareau and Horvat, 1999; Stevenson and Baker,
1987; Useem, 1992). Notably, despite many cultural differences in the forms that parental involvement
takes and in the degree to which it is emphasized by the educational system, the links between paren-
tal involvement and student outcomes appear to be more similar than different (Avvisati et al., 2010;
Cheung and Pomerantz, 2012; Willms and Somer, 2001).
Overall, the literature suggests that the benefits of parental involvement in education for chil-
dren and adolescents (and their schools) are often oversold, that the degree to which they are
causal warrants more skepticism than is usually given, and that the difference between parental
involvement in education and engaged and positive parenting more generally is quite difficult to
discern. Parental involvement in education, therefore, is not the linchpin of “good” parenting,
nor the panacea for the challenges facing public education that schools, policies, or even parents
sometimes make it out to be. At the same time, parental involvement does seem to matter and
cannot be easily dismissed (Domina, 2005; Fan and Chen, 2001; Hill and Tyson, 2009; Robinson
and Harris, 2014).
The Reconceptualization of Parental Involvement Into Partnership

Historically, parents, practitioners, and policymakers have conceptualized, discussed, and studied
parental involvement in education as a parenting behavior, but that conceptualization has increasingly
come under fire in recent years. The concern is that it places inordinate responsibility for children’s
academic successes—and schools’ productivity and effectiveness—on the shoulders of parents and
shifts attention away from schools. Consequently, individuals can sometimes blame parents for chil-
dren’s academic or behavioral problems in the educational system and lack of productivity on the part
of schools. The ups and downs of education, therefore, can be laid at the feet of parents—especially
parents from historically marginalized and disenfranchised groups—who are not doing their part
(Adair, 2012; Lareau, 2003; Souto-Manning, 2010).
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This conceptualization of parental involvement in education as a singular and decontextualized

parenting behavior, however, is completely at odds with contemporary theoretical models of child
development that consistently emphasize how children grow up within a complex system of transac-
tions among their ecological settings and developmental processes (Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 2006;
Lerner, 2006). In such theoretical models, one cannot easily separate families from the other settings
and processes influencing the child. Family influences, therefore, are dependent on, magnified by, and
undercut by what else is going on in the child’s life. The specific field of research on parental involve-
ment in education has incorporated these general ecological and systems models of development, with
greater theoretical attention to the transactions between families and schools (Hoover-Dempsey and
Sandler, 1997; Pianta and Walsh, 1996). Drawing on the work of Epstein (2011), Figure 14.3 com-
pares the older model of parental involvement as parallel with school and community influences to
a transactional model in which the influences of parents, schools, and communities on children and
adolescents overlap. Parental involvement, therefore, arises from this overlap.
Current understandings refer to this new transactional reconceptualization of parental involve-
ment in education as family–school partnerships. This reconceptualization has gained a great deal of
prominence in both research and policy. It emphasizes the contextualization of how educationally
relevant parenting behaviors are more of a two-way exchange with their children’s schools. All the
parental involvement in the world will likely not have its full effect if not welcomed, respected, and
reciprocated by schools, and all the efforts of schools to educate children would not be successful if
parents are not bought in or engaged (Sheridan and Moorman, 2015).
One general way of thinking about family–school partnerships is to consider direct and indirect
relations between these two ecological settings of child development (Crosnoe, 2015), as depicted in
Figure 14.4. Direct partnerships encompass purposeful, ongoing, mutually engaged, and respectful
interactions between parents and school personnel. Regular parent–teacher contact initiated by both
sides that involves sharing perspectives represents one example. School outreach to parents of a variety
Family School
Family School
Child
Child
Old: Parallel New: Transaconal
Figure 14.3 Parallel versus overlapping influences of families and schools on students
• Interaction
Direct • Sharing
Partnership • Dialogue
Indirect • Supplementation
• Mutual Reinforcement
Partnership • Coordination
Figure 14.4 Direct and indirect family–school partnerships
421
of backgrounds matched with parents’ engagement in activities designed to help support the needs of
schools represents another. Parents connecting with each other around school activities and engaging
with the school as groups represents a third.
As for indirect partnerships, these are examples of seemingly parallel behaviors that reinforce learning
and achievement across ecological settings, such as when parents construct learning activities at home
that supplement what educators teach in the classroom or schools reinforce family values about class-
room learning and behavior. The key, though, is that such parallel behaviors are coordinated—and coor-
dinated consistently and regularly—rather than left to chance or initially discussed and then neglected.
In both cases, parents learn from schools and schools learn from parents. The chances that families and
schools are on the same page increase, and children’s learning and positive development benefit.
To truly work for the good of children and adolescents and not simply pay lip service to the
increasingly popular slogan of partnership, such family–school connections need to be characterized
by a few things (Adair, 2012; Christenson and Sheridan, 2001; Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler, 1997):
1. A sense of shared responsibility

2. Parental motivation and efficacy
3. School outreach and an atmosphere of welcome
4. Openness to each other and valuing of dialogue
5. A common sense that ongoing and purposeful action is required to do best by children and
adolescents
Many examples of true and effective family–school partnerships for the good of children and ado-
lescents come from the growing literature on immigrant parents of students in the U.S. educational
system, a situation that has long been ripe for cultural misunderstanding and even conflict but that
also has shown promise when conscious actions are taken. Consider the early childhood education
program targeting Latino/a communities, Lee y Seras, which involves workshops to demystify the U.S.
educational system for immigrant parents, as well as workshops for educators to better understand the
families and communities that they are serving (Goldenberg and Light, 2009).
Another example involves schools serving communities with large numbers of Latino/as, many of
whom are migrant workers or involved in other work with nonstandard hours. Rather than seeing a
lack of parental involvement in school activities as a sign that parents do not care or are not invested
in their children’s schooling, such schools can recognize the severe constraints on those parents’ time.
Doing so may motivate schools to tinker with the flexibility of scheduling such activities to help par-
ents get and stay involved (Poza et al., 2014).
Other studies including research mixing quantitative and qualitative approaches (Crosnoe et al.,
2015; Geller et al., 2015) have demonstrated the value of trusted cultural brokers, such as a parent
support liaison, in family–school partnerships. Such individuals bring immigrant parents and school
personnel together, forge trust on both sides, and translate for each other (both literally, in the case of
Spanish-speaking parents and English-speaking educators, and figuratively, in the case of parents and
teachers who have different lenses for thinking about schooling and parenting).
This extensive theoretical, empirical, and policy activity demonstrates that family–school partner-
ships do not emerge organically on their own. Instead, such partnerships take time, effort, and main-
tenance. Both parties should be involved, motivated, and willing to give and take (Christenson and
Sheridan, 2001; Epstein, 2011).
Practical Issues and Future Directions in Parental Involvement

The preceding discussion of trends in parental involvement in education speaks to the complex-
ity of this dimension of the parent role, gives insight into the ways that “good” parenting can be a
422
context-specific phenomenon, emphasizes the value of ecological and systems perspectives on parent-
ing, and elucidates the importance of using research to inform and support policy intervention serving
the best interests of children. Moving forward, how can research continue to advance our understand-
ing of this connection between the family and children’s larger developmental ecologies, and how can
policy intervention continue to build on this research base?
Expanding Ideas of Ecological Consistency and Coordination

If the insights of ecological and systems perspectives have led to the valuable reconceptualization of
parental involvement in education as situated within the overlap of and exchange between family and
school domains, then expanding this conceptualization beyond this basic dyad is likely to add value
(Pianta and Walsh, 1996). One expansion is to recognize that both families and schools reside within
a shared community context that powerfully influences both, while also acting as a key proximate
mechanism for the influence of broad cultural values and traditions on people. Indeed, Epstein’s
(2011) original model of family–school partnerships expanded into a model of family–school–com-
munity partnerships. In this model, community buy-in for family–school partnerships is key, where
families represent community interests in the school and schools are charged with serving communi-
ties by educating children.
Even as researchers are doing a much better job capturing exchanges between families and schools
(versus focusing solely on parental behavior), they have made far less progress incorporating exchanges
of both families and schools with communities into such research. Many of the insights in the growing
field of research on neighborhood contexts of child development and parenting (e.g., social networks,
local groups, residential composition, and mobility; see Browning, Leventhal, and Brooks-Gunn, 2004;
Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn, 2000) can be leveraged to identify communities in which family–school
partnerships might be most (or least) effective.
Another expansion is to correct the long tendency in this line of research to ignore the children
being parented or to only bring them in as “outcomes” of parenting behavior. The growing recogni-
tion of the importance of “child effects” in observed influences of parents, teachers, and other adults
on children has largely been absent in the parental involvement (and family–school partnership) lit-
erature. We know, however, that the traits, behaviors, and experiences of children and adolescents play
roles in eliciting the parenting and mentoring that they receive (Belsky, 1984; Stattin and Kerr, 2000).
Parents respond to the perceived needs of young children (Does this child need my help? Is this child
okay on their own?). As those young children grow and mature into older children and adolescents
and take on more control of their lives, they often invite parents and other adults into their lives or
shut them out (I need your help. Stay out of my business.)
That active and passive elicitation (or discouragement) of parenting by children and adolescents
themselves is likely to play a significant role in parental involvement in education and family–school
partnerships needs to be better understood. As already alluded to, some observed negative associations
between parental involvement behaviors and child and adolescent outcomes are likely a function of
child effects, and past research backs up this conclusion. In both early childhood education and high
school, parents—including and especially parents from historically disadvantaged groups—often get
more involved (or buck normative declines in involvement over time) in response to their perception
that their children need them—they need help or they need more opportunities (Ansari and Crosnoe,
2015; Crosnoe, 2001).
In terms of translating such expanded ideas about family–school partnerships into policy and
practice, Epstein (2011) and colleagues formulated specific action plans aimed at better connecting
families and schools within their communities. Efforts to create school-like families—or families
that reflect school culture and values—encourage parents to take on many of the same approaches
used by teachers at school when they interact with their children at home (e.g., following similar
423
time-scheduling patterns for learning activities or using similar reward strategies at home). Corre-
sponding efforts to create family-like schools encourage schools to take concrete steps to meet with
their students’ parents and learn from their own experiences parenting those students and then use
that information to better individualize instruction for students. The added layer of community con-
text emphasizes that community groups and leaders can serve as liaisons between parents and schools
and that community inputs into school policies and procedures will foster more relationships that are
positive with parents over time.
Much of the contemporary policy action injecting communities into family–school partnerships
involves the growing nonprofit sector. Strikingly, Americans have been creating more nonprofit orga-
nizations every year since 1989, when the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) began collecting and mak-
ing available data on tax-exempt entities (Arnsberger, Ludlum, Riley, and Stanton 2008). Importantly,
a good portion of the services provided by the nonprofit sector takes place in the realm of education,
with fully 15% of total estimated contributions to the nonprofit sector in 2013 going towards educa-
tion, representing more than $260 billion (Pettijohn 2013).
This nonprofit community context is critical for parental involvement in education because eco-
logical perspectives suggest that community organizations can create the very “family-like settings,
services, and events” and “community schools” required by successful partnerships among families,
schools, and communities. What’s more, acknowledgement of the importance of this community
context is fundamental to the success of school–family partnerships (Bernal, Bonilla, and Bellido,
1995).
Either through facilitating direct contact between school personnel and the parents of the students
attending those schools, acting as a cultural bridge between families and schools, or supporting less
advantaged parents as they navigate children through the educational system, these nonprofit orga-
nizations may be an important pathway through which parents can find support for their children’s
educational experiences and opportunities (Hong, 2011; Meyers and Jordan, 2006; Ressler et al., 2017;
Stefanski, Valli, and Jacobson, 2016). In an era when increased parental investment in children’s educa-
tion at home and at school is becoming the norm, parental involvement at the community level may
also be the next context in which inequality is either expanded or reduced.
Improving Research Conclusions

Although the interdisciplinary literature on parental involvement in education (and more recently on
family–school partnerships) is both broad and rich, it has some significant limitations. Those limita-
tions need to be addressed moving forward if the promise of using research on this topic to inform
policy and practice is to be fully (and accurately) realized. We offer two such limitations—and how
to correct them in the future—here.
First, the degree of confidence in causal inference associated with most observed associations
between parental involvement behaviors and the academic and behavioral outcomes of children and
adolescents in quantitative research is lower than it should be, especially if this evidence is to be used
to inform policy and practice. These associations are rife with threats to such causal inference, includ-
ing the bidirectionality between parents’ and children’s behaviors but also the many confounds likely
to simultaneously influence both. Fortunately, longitudinal frameworks have helped to tease out
the directionality of such associations and isolate the portion representing “child effects” (Domina,
2005; Englund, Luckner, Whaley, and Egeland, 2004). Some confounds can be easily observed and
controlled for, such as parents’ socioeconomic circumstances or language barriers between home
and school. Yet other confounds are known but not easily observed (e.g., genetic effects, cultural
traditions), and still other confounds are likely unknown. Experimental designs are somewhat dif-
ficult to employ in the study of parenting and child outcomes, but some quasi-experimental statisti-
cal techniques, such as instrumental variable analyses and post-hoc robustness tests for unobserved
424
confounds, have promise and need to be put to better use (Avvisati et al., 2010; Frank et al., 2008;
Ressler et al., 2017).
Second, with some notable exceptions (e.g., Lareau, 2003), quantitative research has typically domi-
nated the literature on parental involvement in education, which has limited our ability to understand
the mechanisms through which parenting behavior has effects on children and adolescents and to elu-
cidate the many ways that parental involvement can be enacted. More extensive qualitative inquiry can
move the field beyond hypothesis testing towards unpacking patterns of parental involvement, as well
as its origins and effects. Consider that quantitative research typically counts involvement behaviors—
often measured in grossly simple ways—but provides little insight into the substance of those parenting
behaviors. As a result, we might know that parents talk to their children’s teachers X times per year
without knowing what they are actually talking about (Crosnoe and Muller, 2014). Consider also that
quantitative research typically identifies the predictors of some parental involvement behavior but not
the motivations for that behavior. As a result, we might know that immigration status or lower levels of
English proficiency predict less school-based involvement behavior without understanding how parents
are thinking about their children’s schools and themselves (Adair, 2012; McWayne et al., 2013; Poza
et al., 2014).
Empowering Parents vis-a-vis Schools

One of the reasons that parental involvement in education is a frequently contested idea in both
research and policy is because of its complex relation with inequality and power. For many families
in lower positions in socioeconomic and ethnic stratification systems, the family–school relationship
is decidedly power laden, and they do not have the upper hand. As such, they often feel told what
to do, directed, minimized, and even shamed by school personnel (Adair, 2012; Lareau and Horvat,
1999). Consequently, they have trouble engaging in the parental involvement behaviors that they are
motivated to do and/or making these behaviors count for their children. Many of the strategies for
building family–school partnerships are centered on getting school personnel to listen to and familiar-
ize themselves with parents (and other community members) and their values and perspectives. Those
strategies can have an impact by lessening the unidirectional nature of many family–school relations
but leave the underlying power imbalance intact.
A longer-term and bolder strategy would do more to reduce this power imbalance between
families and schools by investing in parents themselves. This strategy is in line with a long history
in international aid and development of investing in parents as a means of ultimately boosting the
prospects of their children. The idea is that offering parents opportunities to increase their human
capital will lead to changes in their parenting behaviors and the resources that they have to help
their children in the educational system. Such two-generation (or dual-generation) approaches have
increasingly gained attention in the United States and in other developed countries, based on evi-
dence that low-income mothers from a range of backgrounds who return to school themselves—to
earn their high school diplomas, to learn English, to develop specific vocational skills—often take
on more agentic roles in managing their children’s educational trajectories. The mechanisms are
assumed to be their greater sense of efficacy, better understanding of schools, synergy in mothers’
and children’s educational activities, and elevated status in schools (Crosnoe and Kalil, 2010; Mag-
nuson, 2007).
Recent programs have been attempting to put these two-generation ideas to the test by linking
educational and job training opportunities for low-income (ethnic minority) mothers with high-
quality early childhood education for their children. These new programs actually harken back to the
original formulation of Head Start emphasizing the need to promote positive parenting in addition
to providing children with early educational enrichment (Chase-Lansdale and Brooks-Gunn, 2014;
Sommer et al., 2017).
425
Conclusions
Ever since the decline of child labor and the rise of compulsory schooling increased the importance
of education in children’s lives and for their futures, parenting children through school has been a
key dimension of the parent role in the United States and other developed countries. That role has
intensified as the returns to educational attainment have reached historic levels in the contemporary
context. The ways that parents have enacted this role have evolved considerably over time, in part
because of changes in schools, and that evolution has provided a window into broader patterns of
stratification and their influence on families and schools.
On face value, parent involvement in education seems straightforwardly positive. Parents are
attending to and investing in children as a means of promoting their long-term health and well-being
in a society structured by links among family contexts, educational attainment, and socioeconomic
mobility, in part by staking ownership in the schools serving their children. Yet this trend has also
increased the burden on parents, who already engage in labor-intensive behaviors to help, protect, and
socialize their children, and shifted some portion of the responsibility for educating young people
from public institutions to the private family sphere. At the same time, the nexus of parenting and
schooling has helped to shed light on the ways that powerful groups in society can impose their views
of good parenting on others and infuse societal institutions within their views. In general, research on
parental involvement—especially within developmental science—has tended to emphasize the posi-
tive benefits of parental involvement without interrogating its potential problems, and the extraordi-
nary policy activity surrounding parental involvement in the United States has often striven to realize
these benefits without attending to the associated risks.
Acknowledgments
Funding for the two authors came from the Institute for Education Sciences (R305A150027; PI:
Robert Crosnoe) and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development (R24 HD42849, PI: Mark Hayward; T32 HD007081–35, PI: Kelly Raley).
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15
HEALTH CARE
Carolyn Brockmeyer Cates, Victoria Chen,
Caitlin F. Canfield, and Alan L. Mendelsohn
Introduction
As any new parents might attest, the day they take home their baby for the first time is a day over-
come with emotion. They may feel an overwhelming sense of love, gratitude, and joy potentially
alongside a healthy mix of fear and bewilderment. All of a sudden, the parts of everyday life that are
often taken for granted or little noticed, like eating, sleeping, and digesting, take on a new monu-
mental importance—and new parents may realize quickly (perhaps even before leaving the hospital)
that helping their baby to thrive and develop may take much effort and guidance. It may come as no
surprise, then, that the words parents hear prior to leaving the hospital with their newborn, “Make
sure to make an appointment with your child’s pediatrician within the next few days,” are typically
welcome (aside from the dread of figuring out the early logistics of actually leaving their home with
a newborn).
What begins from this very first pediatric visit for many is a relationship between parents and pedi-
atric health care providers that can be critical for shaping parenting and the early home environment
from the earliest days, with important implications for child developmental outcomes (Brazelton,
1994; Dinkevich and Ozuah, 2002). It is significant that this relationship begins early in a child’s life,
as the time between birth and the preschool years is critical. During this period, children experi-
ence rapid brain growth and development, setting the stage for ongoing trajectories of development.
Furthermore, interactions between pediatric health care providers and families do not only occur
early in a child’s life but also occur relatively frequently, with about 13 to 15 standard pediatric visits
recommended from birth to age 5 (Hagan, Shaw, and Duncan, 2017). During these repeated points
of contact, pediatric health care providers simultaneously directly monitor children’s developmental
progress and provide parents with preventive counseling (“anticipatory guidance”) related to parent-
ing practices (Brazelton, 1975). Over time, a relationship is often formed between parents and provid-
ers in which parents come to expect, and even seek, knowledge about how their parenting practices
are tied to their children’s future outcomes. This close relationship, and the fact that parents come to
see their children’s doctors poised to learn about their children’s development and behavior, are only
some of the reasons why the pediatric primary care platform may be particularly well suited for the
implementation of programs aiming to enhance developmental outcomes for young children.
Leveraging the pediatric primary care setting to promote developmental outcomes may be espe-
cially important for children of families with low socioeconomic status (SES), who often experi-
ence disparities in development relative to middle-SES counterparts and constitute up to 40% to
431
Carolyn Brockmeyer Cates et al.
50% of the population served by pediatric health care providers (Radesky, Carta, and Bair-Merritt,
2016). Disparities in developmental outcomes for children in low-SES households have been docu-
mented as early as the time children begin to say their first words, with marked differences in
both early vocabulary and language processing skills (Fernald, Marchman, and Weisleder, 2013).
Critically, these differences appear to persist and worsen over time (Hart and Risley, 1995), with
cascading influences on other domains of development, as well as outcomes in later school achieve-
ment and ultimate career success (Duncan et al., 2007). As such, it is important to think critically
about public health solutions to help children from low-SES households overcome early disparities
(“secondary/tertiary prevention”) and to prevent them from emerging in the first place (“primary
prevention”).
In thinking about strategies by which intervention is possible to prevent SES-related dispari-
ties in child development, parenting represents an important target. Although the source of these
disparities is likely multifaceted and related to a number of risk factors that occur with poverty,
including factors related to food insecurity, lack of prenatal care, reduced access to resources, and
toxic stress (Garner and Shonkoff, 2012), differences in parenting also play a significant role in shap-
ing developmental outcomes (Brooks-Gunn and Markman, 2005). For example, Hart and Risley
(1995), showed that children from households of different SES backgrounds were exposed to a
dramatically different amount of language, so much so that by the age of 4, children from low-SES
homes were estimated to hear 30 million fewer words, on average, from parents and caregivers than
peers from higher-SES households—this difference is often referred to as “the 30-million-word
gap” in the current literature (Radesky et al., 2016). This one difference in parenting alone may
critically affect developmental outcomes, as the amount of child-directed speech, even early in
infancy, has been shown to relate to vocabulary and language processing outcomes, with implica-
tions for further learning and development (Weisleder and Fernald, 2013). Further differences
exist in the quality of parent–child language interactions in lower-SES versus higher-SES homes,
with parents from low-SES households engaging in conversations with less complex sentences, less
elaborative speech, and fewer vocabulary words; these differences are also related to substandard
school readiness outcomes. Given the critical and potentially modifiable nature of the early home
language environment, growing attention has been given over the past few years to address the
word gap and corresponding disparities in school readiness by enriching parent–child interactions
in the earliest years of life. The pediatric health care setting is also being increasingly recognized as
an effective and potentially cost-effective platform for enhancing early parent–child interactions.
Due to many of the unique attributes of this setting, and to initiatives over the past several decades
to transform preventive pediatric health care through the framework of the medical home model
(described later), the pediatric primary care platform presents a significant opportunity to enhance
parenting by addressing both family interactions directly and psychosocial factors that may also
affect the quality of these interactions.
This chapter reviews some of the important ways that pediatric health care providers work together
with parents to shape parenting behaviors in the context of the well-child visit, including critical
roles in developmental surveillance, screening, anticipatory guidance, and referral. It then discusses
the critical role that the pediatric health care platform may play in secondary/tertiary prevention of
specific identified issues related to child development and parent–child interactions, as well as primary
prevention of developmental disparities—in particular those resulting from factors associated with
low SES—through the promotion of parenting in the early years. In doing so, it reviews the extant
literature on pediatric preventive interventions, highlighting key advantages of health care interven-
tions and evidence of effectiveness. It then discusses parent engagement as a key challenge to parenting
interventions and potential mechanisms for the enhancement of parent engagement in intervention
programs. Finally, this chapter addresses issues related to maximization of impact, as well as scaling of
pediatric health care interventions, with implications for policy.
432
Parenting and Children’s Health Care
Prevention During the Well-Child Visit: Developmental

Surveillance and Screening
Developmental and behavioral concerns/delays are prevalent in the general population. One study
estimated that up to 15% to 17% of children have a developmental disorder (Boyle et al., 2011) and
up to 25% to 40% of children have at least one mental health or behavioral diagnosis in the United
States (Costello, Mustillo, Erkanli, Keeler, and Angold, 2003; Merikangas et al., 2010; Weitzman and
Wegner, 2015). These issues are often underidentified, with only 2% to 3% of children enrolled in
Early Intervention under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Part C, and 5% to
6% of children receiving early childhood special education services under IDEA Part B, Section 619
(Macy, Marks, and Towle, 2014). This gap between known prevalence rates of developmental and
behavioral disorders and current prevalence of children receiving IDEA Part B or C services remains
a missed opportunity for intervention, with studies showing that a 2- to 4-year gap may exist between
when issues begin to arise and when those problems are severe enough to meet criteria for a disorder
(O’Connell, Boat, and Warner, 2009).
Early identification of children with developmental delays is essential so that children with delays
can benefit from early child development programs. The link between early brain development and
child development is at the foundation of understanding the impact of early identification of develop-
mental delay and subsequent intervention (Garner and Shonkoff, 2012; Garner and Shonkoff, 2012).
This connection is encapsulated in a paradigm of health and disease across the life span known as the
ecobiodevelopmental framework (Garner and Shonkoff, 2012). Brains are physiologically built over
the course of a lifetime with early childhood experiences shaping the foundation of social, emotional,
and learning skills that are used through adulthood. A combination of genes and environmental expe-
riences affects the architecture of the brain. In line with the ecobiodevelopmental framework, efforts
of pediatric health care providers to promote developmental outcomes must be concerned simultane-
ously with indicators of a child’s healthy development in multiple domains, psychosocial factors that
may shape the contexts in which the child is developing, and the health of the relationships within
which the child’s most critical interactions occur.
Pediatric health care providers are increasingly able to achieve this multifaceted approach to moni-
toring and promotion of child development due to the expansion of the medical home model. A
medical home is a primary care setting that is accessible, continuous, comprehensive, family centered,
coordinated, compassionate, and culturally effective (Medical Home Initiatives for Children With
Special Needs Project Advisory Committee. American Academy of Pediatrics, 2002). In a medical
home, a pediatric health care provider works in partnership with the family and patient to ensure
that all needs of the patient are met. Through this partnership pediatric health care providers help
the family and patient access/coordinate specialty care, educational services, out-of-home care, family
support, and other public and private community services that are important to the overall health of
the child and family (Hagan et al., 2017; Medical Home Initiatives for Children With Special Needs
Project Advisory Committee. American Academy of Pediatrics, 2002). In the context of a medical
home, primary care providers can holistically consider health factors, family factors (American Acad-
emy of Pediatrics Committee on Hospital Care, 2003; American Academy of Pediatrics Task Force on
the Family, 2003), community factors (Garg, Sandel, Dworkin, Kahn, and Zuckerman, 2012; Rushton
and American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Community Health Services, 2005), and other
psychosocial factors that may affect child outcomes; importantly, they can consider these factors
together in deciding how to best promote child development and behavior (Bitsko et al., 2016).
As recommended in Bright Futures, a collaboration between the American Academy of Pediatrics
and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Maternal Child Health Bureau (Hagan et al.,
2017), a core component of pediatric well-child visits is monitoring and promotion of parenting and
child health and development, including routine surveillance of development (informal monitoring)
433
and periodic formal monitoring using validated screening instruments and protocols. As such, pediat-
ric health care providers have been trained to provide both developmental and behavioral promotion;
to evaluate health issues (e.g., vision, hearing, and other health problems) that may affect child mental
health, behavior, and development; and to develop a unique rapport with families through which they
can have meaningful discussions and follow-up about developmental delays.
Pediatric health care providers are uniquely able to monitor, detect, and track child mental, behav-
ioral, and developmental delays. One reason for this is that pediatric health care providers encounter
all families of children under 5 years of age at a frequency and with continuity that is unique in the
community. As previously mentioned, guidelines recommend between 13 and 15 well-child visits in
the first five years of life, with at least 6 visits within the first year alone (Hagan et al., 2017). Although
recommendations are frequently not followed perfectly, most children attend well-child visits, with
almost 92% of children seen for a well-child visit in 2013 (Child Trends, 2014). Although adher-
ence to visits varies with SES, families living at <100% the federal poverty line attend over 50% of
recommended visits on average (Abdus and Selden, 2013). In contrast, only 23.5% of children under
5 years old are in any type of organized care facility (e.g., day care, preschool, Head Start, or other
early childhood program; Laughlin, 2013). During the birth to 3-year period, provision of services
in such programs is especially low. For example, Early Head Start only reaches about 3% of eligible
families (Head Start Program Information Report for the 2004–2005 Program Year, Early Head Start
Programs Only and U.S. Census Bureau as cited in “Zero to Three: Early Head Start Works,” n.d.).
Developmental Surveillance
Pediatric health care providers monitor development through developmental surveillance and/or
screening at every well-child visit. Developmental surveillance is the flexible, longitudinal, continu-
ous, and cumulative process in which knowledgeable health care professionals explore parental con-
cerns about and potential causes/predictors of developmental delays at every well-child visit (AAP
Council on Children with Disabilities, AAP Section on Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics, Bright
Futures Steering Committee, and Medical Home Initiatives for Children With Special Needs Project
Advisory Committee, 2006). Surveillance consists of the following:
1. Eliciting and attending to parental concerns about their child’s development—Parental concerns about the
development of their children predict developmental delays in children (Glascoe, 2000, 2013), with
parents in low-income families being more likely to report concerns on written forms rather than
verbally with clinical staff (Eremita, Semancik, Lerer, and Dworkin, 2017).
2. Obtaining, documenting, and maintaining a developmental history.
3. Making accurate and informed observations of the child.
4. Identifying risks and protective factors—Identifying and addressing psychosocial factors, such as mater-
nal depression or adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), is critical to promoting optimal child
development outcomes. Pediatric health care providers also identify children at high risk for devel-
opmental delays due to chronic health conditions or environmental factors.
5. Maintaining an accurate record of the process and findings—Pediatric health care providers keep track of
developmental surveillance/screening referrals, follow-up, and ongoing related health/family issues
in the medical record.
6. Sharing and obtaining information/findings with other professionals (including child care providers, pre-
school teachers, and therapeutic providers). As more community providers interact with young
children through Early Intervention, home visiting programs, day care, and early education settings,
it is important that community providers communicate with primary care pediatricians. Coor-
dination of care with two-way communication between the medical home and the community
needs to be consistent and systematic (AAP Council on Children with Disabilities and Medical
434
Home Implementation Project Advisory Committee, 2014). In studies of developmental screening

in primary care, families often do not reach community programs where they are referred (King
et al., 2010), especially in low-income neighborhoods (Windham et al., 2014), making direct com-
munication with community programs essential.
These components of surveillance give pediatric health care providers a multifactorial lens on a
child’s health and development across all well-child visits. When children have multiple risk factors
and/or are suspected to have developmental delays due to concerns reported through elicitation of
the child’s developmental history, direct referral may be given for an evaluation, even without formal
screening.
Screening for Developmental Delay and Associated Risk

One of the main components of developmental surveillance is to identify children at high risk for
developmental delays, such as children with chronic health problems (Marino et al., 2012) or chil-
dren of families with low SES (Hillemeier, Morgan, Farkas, and Maczuga, 2011). Identification of
delays is important, as it may prompt additional surveillance/screening and facilitate early access to
programs aiming to enhance development. Families of children with identified developmental delays
(or significant associated risks) may be referred to programs in multiple settings aiming to enhance
development, including Heathy Steps in primary care (Minkovitz et al., 2007), Early Intervention or
other early childcare and education/special education programs in the community (Reynolds, Temple,
Ou, Arteaga, and White, 2011; US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for
Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research, 2002), or other evidence-based programs in the
context of the home (Sama-Miller et al., 2016).
Despite ongoing developmental surveillance at every well-child visit, pediatric health care provid-
ers underidentify children at risk for developmental delay without the use of validated screening tools
(Palfrey, Singer, Walker, and Butler, 1987; Thomas, Cotton, Pan, and Ratliff-Schaub, 2012; Werner,
Honzik, and Smith, 1968). Routine developmental screening is recommended at the 9-, 18-, and
30-month well-child visits, with autism-specific screening recommended at the 18- and 24-month
well-child visits (AAP Council on Children with Disabilities et al., 2006; Johnson, Myers, and AAP
Council on Children With Disabilities, 2007).
Screening for Developmental Delay

Pediatricians are advised to perform careful surveillance and to consider screening for developmental
delays in preschool-aged children, given that children younger than 2 years old may pass develop-
mental evaluations but still have school readiness problems at older ages, especially in families with
psychosocial risk factors (Nelson et al., 2016). Specific screening guidelines and follow-up of social-
emotional or behavioral delays/disorders (Weitzman and Wegner, 2015) are recommended in primary
care in addition to ongoing surveillance. Guidelines also exist about the surveillance and screening for
identification of motor delays/disorders and neurodevelopmental problems in primary care, although
the specific tools and evaluations for these domains are beyond the scope of this chapter (Noritz and
Murphy, 2013).
Screening tools must meet specific criteria to effectively screen for developmental delays in primary
care. First, they must be standardized and validated in a large, nationally representative, general popula-
tion. They must also have a sensitivity (i.e., proportion of those with delays who are correctly identified/
categorized as such by the screen) and specificity (i.e., proportion of those with normal development
correctly categorized as such by the screen) of at least 70% to 80% to ensure that significant numbers
of children are not missed or overreferred. Additionally, tools used to screen must have consistent and
435
reliable results, with test-retest and inter-rater reliability. It is essential that screening tools have been
validated using a diverse population and translated into multiple languages to accommodate primary
care practices serving ethnically diverse families, as well as families with limited English proficiency.
The more commonly used screening tools for assessment of child development in primary care
often rely on parental report of concerns or milestones (King et al., 2010). The use of parent report
tools requires parents to spend time outside of the physician encounter completing these screening
tools; visit time is then used for pediatric health care providers to review and discuss screening results
with families. Parents reliably report information about their child’s development, regardless of edu-
cational level or previous parenting experience (Glascoe, 1997; Harris, 1994). Screening tools that rely
on parental report are often cited as more feasible in primary care because they take minimal time to
score and evaluate after parents have completed them (Schonwald, Horan, and Huntington, 2009).
Table 15.1 lists commonly used screening tools for mental, behavioral, and developmental disorders
(MBDDs), including descriptive and psychometric information. The table is divided into broadband
and narrowband screening tools. Broadband tools are those that screen for developmental issues across
numerous domains. An example of a broadband screening tool is the PEDS (Parents’ Evaluation of
Developmental Status, Glascoe and Robertshaw (2009)), which assesses whether parents have any
concerns about their children’s development in domains of language, cognition, behavior, and self-
help skills. Narrowband screening tools are those that are domain or disease specific; for example,
the MChat is a screening tool that specifically looks to flag children who have symptoms commonly
associated with autism spectrum disorders.
Screening for Social Determinants of Health

In recent years, there has been increasing recognition that a full assessment of children’s risk for del-
eterious developmental outcomes must also include consideration of social determinants of health
and related adverse experiences of childhood (ACES). Social determinants of health refer to social
factors or conditions in which people live that may systemically affect one’s health status, including
food insecurity, level of education, unemployment, social support, and housing instability (Marmot,
2005); this term also refers to psychosocial risk factors that can specifically affect relational health
(described later). Screening for social determinants of health in primary care can be a first step to
effectively mitigating the negative impacts of poverty-related factors on child health (AAP Council
on Community Pediatrics, 2016). Screening for and addressing social determinants of health in a
family-centered manner is essential to successfully referring families to needed resources, as in the
WE-CARE model (Garg, Boynton-Jarrett, and Dworkin, 2016; Garg, Toy, Tripodis, Silverstein, and
Freeman, 2015). Other universal screening tools that have been developed in primary care to identify
social determinants of health include the Survey of Well-Being of Young Children (SWYC)—Family
Questions (Perrin, Sheldrick, Visco, and Mattern, 2016), the Medical-Legal Advocacy Screening
Questionnaire (MASQ; Keller, Jones, Savageau, and Cashman, 2008), the IHELLP (Income, Housing,
Education, Legal status, Literacy, Personal safety) survey (Kenyon, Sandel, Silverstein, Shakir, and Zuck-
erman, 2007), the Health Leads intake form (Fierman et al., 2016), and the Bright Futures Pediatric
Intake Form (“Bright Futures Pediatric intake form,” n.d.; Hagan et al., 2017). These different ways
of screening for social determinants of health in primary care are often embedded within a system
of care coordination and/or referral within primary care to link families with referral agencies or
resources (AAP Council on Community Pediatrics, 2016; Fierman et al., 2016).
Due to the known impact of adverse childhood experiences on long-term adult health outcomes
(Felitti et al., 1998), there is emerging realization of the importance of identifying ACES in the context
of pediatric primary care (Burke, Hellman, Scott, Weems, and Carrion, 2011). Examples of ACES that
may be detrimental to child health and development include physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional
abuse/neglect, domestic violence between parents, substance abuse in the household, or caregivers
436
Table 15.1 General Developmental Screens for Primary Care
Name of Screen Age Range Description Scoring and Accuracy References

and Website
Ages and Stages 1 to 66 months The ASQ is a 30-question, milestone-based, parent-completed developmental Categorizes domain scores Squires, Twombly,
Questionnaire-3 screening questionnaire. Parents indicate whether their child has mastered or by risk level. Bricker, and Potter
(ASQ-3) has emerging developmental skills based on five domains: Communication, Sensitivity: 82%–98% (2009)
www.agesandstages. Fine Motor, Gross Motor, Personal-Social, and Problem-Solving. The ASQ has Specificity: 78%–86%
com 21 different forms corresponding to different age ranges that can be used for
children from 1 month to 66 months old. Questions are written at a fourth- to
sixth-grade reading level. The ASQ-3 is available in English, Spanish, Arabic,
French, or Vietnamese, with other translations in process.
Parents’ Evaluations Birth to 8 years The PEDS is a ten-question, parent-completed developmental screening Categorizes concerns by Glascoe (2013)
of Developmental questionnaire based on parental and provider concerns about child risk level based on age with
Status (PEDS) development. Parents indicate whether they have concerns about their child’s decision support based on
www.pedstest.com development in ten areas (expressive language, receptive language, fine motor, risk level. Forms can be used
gross motor, school skills, behavior, social-emotional skills, self-help skills, to track screening results and
global or cognitive learning skills, and other concerns). Providers’ concerns can decision-making over time.
also be incorporated into scoring. One form is used for children of all ages, Sensitivity: 74%–79%
but scoring varies by age. Questions are written at a second- to fourth-grade Specificity: 70%–80%
reading level. The PEDS is available in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese,
Somali, and 36 other languages. Useful for surveillance and can be used in
conjunction with PEDS:DM (see next) for screening.
PEDS: Developmental Birth to 8 years PEDS-DM is a six- to eight-question, milestone-based, parent-completed Categorizes risk based Glascoe, Robertshaw,
Milestones (PEDS: screening questionnaire. Can also elicit skills from children through direct on milestones above and and Woods (2016)
DM) administration. Each question targets a different domain: fine motor, gross below the 16th percentile
www.pedstest.com motor, self-help, academics, expressive language, receptive language, social- for each item/domain.
emotional domains. Questions vary at each age level. Questions are written Provides screening, triage,
at a second- to third-grade reading level. PEDS: DM is available in English, and surveillance through
Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese, Arabic, Serbian, and Swahili, with other a longitudinal score form
translations in process. for tracking developmental
progress.
Sensitivity: 83%
Specificity: 84%
(Continued )
Table 15.1 (Continued)

and Website
The Survey of Development The SWYC is a parent-completed screening questionnaire with questions Categorizes risk based on Sheldrick and
Well-being of screen: 1 to about development, behavior, and family context. There are 12 age-specific cutoff score indicating Perrin (2013)
Young Children 65 months forms that correspond to the pediatric well-visit schedule. the need for further
(SWYC)** Autism Development portion has ten milestone-based screening questions evaluation. Cutoff scores Smith, Sheldrick,
www.theswyc.org Screen: 16 to on language, motor, cognitive, and social development. The Parent’s vary by screen and age. and Perrin (2013)
35 months Observations of Social Interactions is an autism-specific screen with seven Development Screen**:
**Initial validation
studies for this questions about a child’s behavior with others and play. There are also 12 Sensitivity: 57%–100%
screen have been to 18 questions about social-emotional development and behavior that is Specificity: 59%–88%
completed, and administered based on age: Baby Pediatric Symptom Checklist or Pediatric Autism Screen**:
larger validation Symptom Checklist. There are two questions eliciting parental concerns Sensitivity: 83%–93%
work is in process. about development, learning, and behavior. There are also five to ten Specificity: 42%–75%
See website questions about family factors, including parental tobacco use, parental
for updated alcohol use, household food insecurity, parental depressive symptoms,
publications list domestic violence screening, and parent–child reading practices.
and manual. Questions have been translated into Spanish, Burmese, Nepali, and
Portuguese.
Autism-or Language Specific Screens for Primary Care
Modified 16 to 48 MCHAT-R/F is a 20 yes-no question, milestone-based, parent-completed Categorizes risk based on Robins et al.
Checklist months screening questionnaire. Questions are written at a fourth- to sixth-grade number of failed items, (2014)
of Autism reading level. Screening is autism specific and should not be used in place of with standardized follow-
in Toddlers general developmental screening in primary care. Translations are available up interview advised for
(M-CHAT-R/F) in more than 15 languages, including English, Spanish, Turkish, Chinese, and children with moderate
www.mchatscreen. Japanese. risk for autism spectrum
com disorder. Children with
high-risk scores can be
referred directly without
interview.
For autism spectrum
disorder—
Sensitivity: 91%
Specificity: 95%
and Website
Communication 6 to 24 The CSBS-DP: ITC evaluates communication and symbolic abilities in Categorizes risk in Social, Wetherby and
and Symbolic months children up to 24 months old. The ITC consists of 24 multiple-choice, Speech, and Symbolic Prizant (2002)
Behavior Scales- parent-completed questions. CSBS-DP also includes a brief observation domains.
Developmental (or behavior sample) by examiner and Caregiver Questionnaire. Questions Sensitivity: 76%–88%
Profile (CSBS- written at approximately a fifth-grade reading level. Questions are translated Specificity: 82%–87%
DP): Infant/ into English, Spanish, Slovenian, Chinese, Swedish, and German.
Toddler Checklist
(ITC)
firstwords.
fsu.edu www.
brookespublishing.
com
Social More than The SCQ is a 40 yes-no question, parent-completed questionnaire to Categorizes risk into pass/ Rutter, M., Bailey,
Communication 4 years old identify children at risk for autism spectrum disorder. It is based on the fail. A., and Lord, C.
Questionnaire (with mental Autism Diagnostic Interview, Revised (ADI-R). Children identified must For autism spectrum (2003). The Social
(SCQ) age at least 2 be referred for further evaluation to confirm a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder—Sensitivity: 85% Communication
www.wpspublish. years old) disorder. Translations are available in English, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Questionnaire
German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Specificity: 75% (SCQ) Manual.
com
Romanian, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. Los Angeles,
CA: Western
Psychological
Services.
with a mental illness in the household. Most pediatric health care providers do not routinely screen
for ACES at well-child visits, but screen for social-emotional and behavioral problems, which may be
rooted in ACES (Kerker et al., 2016); formal screening of ACES directly may also be useful in helping
to find ways to minimize risks that lead to disparities in child development.
Screening for Healthy Parent–Child Relationship/Relational Health

Another critical component of the social determinants of heath to which pediatric health care provid-
ers need attend is the health of the parent–child relationship. There is strong conceptual and empirical
support demonstrating that parent responsivity is crucial for the development of secure and healthy
relationships (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall, 2015; Bolwby, 1988). Responsive parenting is criti-
cal for the achievement of language and cognitive milestones (Bornstein and Tamis-Lemonda, 1989;
Tamis-LeMonda, Bornstein, and Baumwell, 2001) and is related to later relationship health and overall
well-being. Additionally, responsive interactions with children prior to school entry have implications
for later academic achievement (Lefevre et al., 2014; Sénéchal, 2006; Sénéchal and Lefevre, 2014).
Whereas a healthy parent–child relationship, or “relational health” (Condon, 2017), is a fundamen-
tal component of healthy development for all children, it may be an especially compensatory factor
for children who are affected by stressors related to poverty. When stress is strong, prolonged, and/or
frequently coupled with the lack of or inadequate positive adult relationships, it can transform into
toxic stress, which is known to negatively affect health outcomes from childhood into adulthood
(Garner and Shonkoff, 2012). However, positive relationships between children and their caregivers
can promote resilience in children faced with stressful experiences. Creating early childhood expe-
riences that promote positive adult relationships and limit toxic stress are more effective than treat-
ing negative health outcomes that arise from toxic stress and the lack of positive adult relationships
(Shonkoff, Garner, Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health, Committee on
Early Childhood, Adoption, and Section on Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 2012). Bright
Futures Guidelines (Hagan et al., 2017) therefore embrace a strengths-based approach to pediatric
care, recommending the identification of child and family strengths as an essential component for
promoting child development. Although assessing relational health is explicitly recommended by
these guidelines, it is not yet systematically and formally screened for at well-child visits. Additional
work is needed to develop strategies and formalize guidelines for assessing the health of parent–child
relationships in the context of well-child visits (Shah, Muzik, and Rosenblum, 2011).
In addition to the role that pediatric health care providers can play in highlighting interactional
strengths between caregivers and children, they play an important role in screening for psychosocial
factors that have been documented to affect interactions and the parent–child relationship such as
depression (Field, 2010). Maternal depression is known to negatively affect multiple areas of parent–
child interactions, as well as child health and development, including child behavior (Trapolini,
McMahon, and Ungerer, 2007), receipt of health care (Minkovitz et al., 2005), and breastfeeding
(Ip et al., 2007). Furthermore, the incidence of maternal depression is known to be as high as 25%,
with rates increased to 40% to 60% in low-income families or families with teenage mothers (Earls
and AAP Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health, 2010). Therefore, it
is recommended that pediatric health care providers screen for maternal depression during the
postpartum period at the 1-, 2-, 4- and 6-month well-child visits (Earls and AAP Committee on
Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health, 2010).
Challenges to Screening in Pediatric Well-Child Care

Although screening for developmental delay and social determinants of health in the context of the
well-child visit may be highly beneficial for early identification of developmental issues and associated
440
risks, there are also many challenges to screening in primary care that remain to be addressed. Pedi-
atric health care providers may use informal milestone checklists that are neither standardized nor
validated. These lead to pediatricians asking about milestones that are often too easy for the devel-
opmental level of the child, which results in children being missed on developmental surveillance
(Thomas et al., 2012). Parents with low health literacy may have missing answers on developmental
screening questionnaires or take longer to complete questionnaires and would benefit from reviewing
screening questions through interviews with clinical staff (Chen et al., 2015). Immigrant parents may
face cultural barriers to understanding development when answering developmental screening ques-
tions. Bornstein and Cote (2004), for instance, found that when compared with European-American
mothers in the United States, immigrant mothers of 2-year-olds from Japan and South America
displayed significantly less parenting knowledge on the Knowledge of Infant Development Inventory,
with greatest difficulty shown with questions relating to normative child development. Immigrant
families may benefit then from in-person translation of screening questions to address cultural barriers
to understanding questions that may arise (Kroening, Moore, Welch, Halterman, and Hyman, 2016).
Mothers with psychosocial issues, like depressive symptoms, may express concerns about their chil-
dren’s development on developmental screening tools, even when their children have typical develop-
mental abilities (Chen et al., 2018).
Developmental screening in primary care is best implemented through utilizing the entire clinical
office staff (front desk staff, nurses, medical assistants) to help families complete screening question-
naires, score screening tools, help with making/transmitting referrals, and following up with families
to address barriers to referral agencies (King et al., 2010). When pediatric health care providers are
not well supported to do screening and follow-up by office staff, screening may not consistently occur,
or families are not successfully connected with community resources (Windham et al., 2014). Nev-
ertheless, universal screening for developmental delay and social determinants of health coupled with
a family-centered approach to referrals to community resources is an effective model in primary care
to increase successful family linkages to community programs (Garg et al., 2015).
Summary
Pediatric health care providers play a unique and central role in partnering with parents and the
community to foster the care of young children. In the context of frequent well-child visits in
the early years, they routinely engage in surveillance and screening of developmental and behav-
ioral problems in young children, as well as social determinants of health, including the health
of parent–child relationships and psychosocial factors that can affect the quality of interactions,
the early home environment, and ongoing healthy development. In turn, in addition to the early
identification of developmental issues or associated risks, pediatric health care providers play a
critical role in the provision of timely care and/or support through appropriate referral to pro-
grams that can address individual needs.
Pediatric Health Care and Prevention of Disparities

The role that pediatric health care providers play in monitoring issues related to developmental con-
cerns and to parent–child interactions, as well as to psychosocial risk factors associated with each, is
critical due to its corresponding role in helping families to find appropriate treatment. When pedi-
atric health care providers identify children at high risk for developmental problems through surveil-
lance or identify children with developmental concerns/delays through screening, they must then
discuss the next steps in evaluation and care with families. Pediatric health care providers often refer
families to local parenting programs in the health system or community, depending on the families’
needs. They may also refer families to community programs (e.g., the special supplemental nutrition
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program—Women, Infants, and Children or WIC) to address unmet social needs like food insecurity
or to other community-based interventions, such as early child development programs and home
visitation interventions.
Community-Based Interventions
In the community, early child development programs play a critical role in primary prevention of
health and developmental disparities. Quality early child development programs have been found to
affect health/quality of life across the life span for children from disadvantaged backgrounds—includ-
ing decreasing rates of school failure, incarceration, teen pregnancy/fatherhood, behavioral disrup-
tions in public schools, unemployment or underemployment, and health-related costs (Anderson
et al., 2003; Conti, Heckman, and Pinto, 2016; Heckman, 2013; Muennig, Schweinhart, Montie, and
Neidell, 2009; Reynolds, Temple, White, Ou, and Robertson, 2011; Schweinhart et al., 2005; Tom,
Mangione-Smith, Grossman, Solomon, and Tseng, 2013). Head Start programs that serve children
from birth to 5 years old are often available in communities for low-income families and have to meet
national standards in the promotion of learning, child health, and family wellness in the early educa-
tion setting and have been found to improve child behavioral and academic outcomes (Zhai, Brooks-
Gunn, and Waldfogel, 2011). National initiatives, such as the Quality Rating and Improvement System
(NCECQA, n.d.), promote state and local quality standards for early education and childcare, while
also helping families learn how to determine quality in these settings (Stephens, Kreader, Smith, and
McCabe, 2011). In addition to direct impacts on child health and development, early child develop-
ment and preschool programs offer economic benefits, with a return of approximately $13.00 for
every $1.00 invested in a community (Anderson et al., 2003; Conti et al., 2016; Heckman, 2013;
Muennig et al., 2009; Reynolds, Temple, White, et al., 2011; Schweinhart et al., 2005; Tom et al., 2013).
Due to the Maternal, Infant, and Early Child Home Visiting Program (MIECHV), which was cre-
ated as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, 2010)
to help fund federal, state, and local governments to implement home visiting programs for at-risk
children, an increasing number of home visitation programs operate in the community to enhance
parenting and child developmental outcomes. The specific goals of this program include improving
maternal and newborn health; preventing child injuries, abuse, neglect, or maltreatment; reducing
emergency department visits; improving school readiness and achievement; reducing crime or domes-
tic violence; improving family economic self-sufficiency; and improving coordination and referrals
for other community resources and supports (AAP Council on Community Pediatrics, 2016). In
2017, there were 18 home visitation programs deemed to have sufficient evidence of effectiveness by
the Department of Health and Human Services (Sama-Miller et al., 2016) that were eligible under
the MIECHV. Examples of effectiveness of MIECHV home visitation programs include demonstrated
positive impacts on child health and development, including improved language and emotional devel-
opment, fewer injuries/ingestions that may be associated with child abuse/neglect, improved maternal
life course (decreased subsequent pregnancies, increased workforce participation, decreased depen-
dency on public service programs), and improved pregnancy outcomes (Olds, 2006).
Secondary/Tertiary Prevention Programs in Pediatric Health Care

A critical function of pediatric health care providers is to link patients with appropriate resources in
the community, so many programs have been designed for secondary/tertiary prevention of child
development issues—that is, those addressing needs of children with already identified delays or disor-
ders—within the pediatric primary care setting (Peacock-Chambers, Ivy, and Bair-Merritt, 2018). An
example is the Incredible Years program (IY), which provides parenting training for parents of young
children with identified behavioral problems. As part of IY, parents participate in group training
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sessions (two hours/week for ten weeks) led by health care providers; they entail discussion, modeling
of positive parent behaviors through video, and role play of responsive parenting and positive disci-
pline techniques (Perrin, Sheldrick, McMenamy, Henson, and Carter, 2014).
Promoting collaboration among providers in different settings is important to decrease barriers that
families face when referred for further support. Models of secondary prevention include co-location
of services or integrated multidisciplinary and consultation models. An example of co-located behav-
ioral services in primary care is the Enhance Care Clinics in Connecticut where pediatric practices
were given funds to have co-located behavioral health specialists and to implement additional screen-
ing and follow-up infrastructure (Honigfield and Nickel, 2010; Pidano, Marcaly, Ihde, Kurowski, and
Whitcomb, 2011). An example of a consultation model for coordination of care is the Massachusetts
Child Psychiatry Access Project, where primary care physicians have rapid access to child psychiatry
expertise, education, and referral support (Sarvet et al., 2010). This model has been used by pediatric
health care providers to seek answers for diagnostic questions, to identify community resources, and to
consult about medications. Use of this model has led to an increase in the number of pediatric health
care providers able to manage patients’ mental health needs in primary care.
Referrals to community programs are most effective when they are embedded in larger care-
coordination systems that promote two-way communication with primary care practices and other
early childhood agencies/programs (e.g., Head Start, Early Intervention, library programs, childcare
programs, early childhood education programs). Coordination across multiple stakeholders in a given
community is critical for the efficacy of such care-coordination programs.
HelpMeGrow is a comprehensive, statewide, coordinated system of early identification and refer-
ral for children at risk for developmental or behavioral problems. It is a single point of access for all
developmental programs and services for children from birth to 5 years old through a Child Devel-
opment Infoline (i.e., toll-free telephone number). Families can reach a trained care coordinator and
will get help identifying and connecting with programs for their family. HelpMeGrow consists of
four components: (1) a detection, triage, and referral system to link at-risk families with the appropri-
ate program/service; (2) a resource inventory of community-based programs that address family and
child developmental needs; (3) training childcare providers on developmental surveillance; and (4) data
collection and analyses of children’s developmental status and statewide resources to identify gaps in
service and capacity problems in the community. HelpMeGrow often helps connect families to com-
munity programs when their children do not qualify for IDEA Part B and C services (Bogin, 2006).
Assuring Better Child Health and Development (ABCD) is a community-based model for care
coordination across state and community agencies. It has led to improved bidirectional communica-
tion between groups (e.g., when primary care doctors refer children to Early Intervention, feedback is
given to doctors as to whether children are evaluated). In North Carolina, the ABCD model has led
to an increase in developmental screening rates across all primary care practices with enrollment in
programs like Early Intervention following suit and increasing as well (Earls and Hay, 2006).
One of the most widely replicated models in pediatric health care incorporating secondary preven-
tion is Healthy Steps for Young Children (HS). HS aims to ameliorate adverse child developmental
and behavioral outcomes by creatively integrating direct attempts to enhance parent–child interac-
tions and child development at the time of well-child visits as specified by Bright Futures Guidelines
and recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics (primary prevention), while also play-
ing a significant role in linking families with identified risk to appropriate community resources and
support groups. HS involves a developmental specialist who attends well-child visits from birth to
age 3 years and provides guidance to families; additionally, these specialists work with families outside
of the immediate health care setting in home visits and through phone calls to address identified
concerns and to connect families with other appropriate resources. HS is associated with enhanced
adherence to doctor visits and recommendations, reduced harsh discipline, and greater monitoring of
issues related to child behavior by the parent (Minkovitz et al., 2007; Minkovitz, Strobino, Hughart,
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Scharfstein, and Guyer, 2001). Participation in HS has also been linked with improved child behavior
(Caughy, Huang, Miller, and Genevro, 2004).
Pediatrics and Primary Prevention of Disparities

Although the pediatric primary care platform has long been identified as a natural setting for the
detection of developmental delays and disorders, the role of pediatrics in the prevention of such
deleterious developmental outcomes has been increasingly highlighted. The primary care setting
has many unique advantages that may make it particularly apt for preventive interventions (Cates,
Weisleder, and Mendelsohn, 2016; Mendelsohn, Cates, Weisleder, Berkule, and Dreyer, 2013).
First, and of great importance for developing a comprehensive public health strategy to address
poverty-related disparities in child development, the pediatric primary care platform offers the poten-
tial for population-wide dissemination. Due to requirements for screening and immunizations prior to
school entry (Recommended Immunization Schedule for Children and Adolescents Aged 18 Years or
Younger, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Centers for Disease Control and Preven-
tion, 2018), as well as the expansion of child health insurance (Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and
the Uninsured, 2010), it is possible to deliver interventions universally to families, even those typically
hardest to reach, all over the United States. Initiatives to transform preventive pediatric health care
through the framework of the medical home model have significantly enhanced the opportunity to
effectively work with families, including those most vulnerable to the effects of poverty, through a mul-
tidisciplinary emphasis on family and psychosocial factors (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2002).
Second, there is a high number of standard pediatric visits from birth to age 5 (Hagan et al., 2017),
with additional preventive visits for low-SES populations to treat medical issues such as asthma and
obesity. This number of visits provides an opportunity for delivery of intervention dose comparable
to programs delivered in other platforms shown to be effective such as Family Check Up (Dishion
et al., 2008) and Play and Learning Strategies (Landry et al., 2012).
Importantly, pediatric health care also presents the opportunity to intervene early with families.
Preventive intervention when children are young is important because early differences in parenting,
even in the first six months of life, have implications for long-term developmental trajectories (Cates
et al., 2012); furthermore, the economic argument has been made that intervention in the early years
has the greatest impact per dollar spent on successful outcomes (Knudsen, Heckman, Cameron, and
Shonkoff, 2006), underscoring the importance of finding ways to reach families early on.
Finally, preventive intervention provides potential for low cost, as it allows for leveraging several
components of the existing heath care infrastructure. New preventive parenting counseling can align
seamlessly with anticipatory guidance already delivered by pediatric health care providers in the context
of long-standing relationships. Also, preventive programs in this setting do not require the need for staff
travel as do programs in many other settings like home visitation. The potential for the cost-effectiveness
of this platform may be best exemplified by Reach Out and Read, a program targeting shared book read-
ing during well-child visits, which merely costs about $25/child/year (ROR National Center, n.d.). This
cost stands in stark contrast to those of intervention models in more traditional intervention platforms
such as home visitation, which cost about $2,000 to $6,000/child/year (“Implementing Maternal Early
Childhood Sustained Home-Visiting Program (MECSH): Estimated Costs of Implementation,” n.d.),
and center-based programs costing about $15,000 to $20,000/child/year (Isaacs and Roessel, 2008).
Primary Prevention of Disparities in Pediatric Health Care:

The Reach Out and Read Model
Reach Out and Read (ROR) is not only an important example of the low-cost potential of interven-
tion in the primary care platform but also was a pioneer in using the pediatric health care setting
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to prevent the emergence of poverty-related disparities in school readiness by targeting parent–child

interactions. ROR is an intervention program that aims to enhance responsive parenting through the
promotion of shared reading at the time of well-child care visits from early infancy to 5 years of age
(Klass, 2002; Needlman, Toker, Dreyer, Klass, and Mendelsohn, 2005; Zuckerman, 2009). ROR entails
three major components: (1) first, it incorporates volunteers into the waiting room at pediatric well-
child check-ups who model shared reading activities; (2) it consists of anticipatory guidance given by
health care providers in the context of the well-child visit itself about the importance of shared read-
ing interactions in the promotion of literacy development; and (3) it involves the distribution of age-
appropriate children’s books at every well-child visit. To date, ROR has been widely studied in families
from different cultures and language backgrounds (Silverstein, Iverson, and Lozano, 2002; Weitzman,
Roy, Walls, and Tomlin, 2004) and has one of the strongest evidence bases for any primary care pri-
mary prevention program. Evidence from more than 15 studies points to increased parent–child
shared reading (Golova, Alario, Vivier, Rodriguez, and High, 1999; Needlman, Fried, Morley, Taylor,
and Zuckerman, 1991; Needlman et al., 2005) and enhanced child language skills (High, Lagasse,
Becker, Ahlgren, and Gardner, 2000; Mendelsohn et al., 2001; Sharif, Reiber, and Ozuah, 2002). One
of the most impressive accomplishments of ROR is the extent to which it has been able to reach at-
risk populations. ROR has established a network of over 5,000 sites nationally and internationally, and
serves approximately 20% to 25% of 0- to 5-year-old children in the United States today who are
living in households <200% of the federal poverty level (Mendelsohn, 2012).
ROR has also served as an exemplar model for primary prevention of poverty-related disparities
in the pediatric health care setting, with many adaptations and extensions. Examples of literacy pro-
motion programs modeled based on ROR in the primary care setting are Bookstart in the United
Kingdom and Let’s Read in Australia. Like ROR, Bookstart literacy materials (including a child’s book,
information about library resources, and information about the value of shared reading) are distrib-
uted to inner-city families at health clinics (as well as through health care professionals making visits
to homes) in early infancy between the ages of 6 to 9 months (Wade and Moore, 2012). This low-
intensity program has been shown to be associated with some changes in parent–child book reading
interactions as well as in child language and numeracy outcomes. Let’s Read (Goldfeld et al., 2011),
a program in which nursing staff provide all families, regardless of SES, modeling and guidance for
shared book reading techniques, as well as literacy materials including a book and written suggestions
for interactive book reading at four primary care visits between the ages of 4 months and 3.5 years,
has not documented measurable effects on parent literacy behaviors or child outcomes. Evidence
from Let’s Read therefore suggests the feasibility of intervening in primary care but cannot speak
to the potential for effectiveness; it is difficult, however, to generalize these findings to primary care
intervention with low-SES populations in other settings, where risk experienced by families may be
significantly greater than that of the population included in their studies, 80% of whom were not low
income (Mendelsohn, 2012).
Preventing Disparities With Greater Intensity: The Video Interaction Project

One of the most well-studied pediatric primary care interventions based on the ROR model is the
Video Interaction Project (VIP). VIP is a relationship-based intervention designed to build on the
ROR model to begin delivering parenting intervention following immediately after birth and to target
responsive parenting with greater intensity. As part of VIP, a facilitator meets with parents and chil-
dren individually for about 25 to 30 minutes at the time of well-child visits and follows a curriculum
aimed to foster parent–child interactions in the contexts of play, shared reading, and everyday routines.
At each VIP visit, facilitators engage in a conversation with parents about their child’s development
that serves to encourage parents to reflect on both their children’s developmental progress and their
interactions with their children. These conversations are guided by pamphlets with developmental
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information aligned with the age of the child at the time of the well-child visit, including elements
about “what to look for” with regard to ongoing developmental and behavioral changes, as well as
general tips for positive parenting practices in the domains of reading, play, and everyday routines. VIP
also provides learning materials such as toys and books at each visit that families take home. Providing
learning materials may help to facilitate interactions between parents and children, and provision of
materials may be especially important for families with limited resources (Tomopoulos et al., 2006).
VIP facilitators also model specific, concrete strategies that the parents may consider using while inter-
acting with their child using the materials.
The core component of VIP is the creation of a videorecording (lasting approximately three to five
minutes) of the parent and child dyads interacting together using provided learning materials paired
with a subsequent review of the video with the parent, child, and VIP facilitator all together. During
the review of the videorecorded interaction, the parent is able to observe and reflect on his or her
parenting behaviors. As VIP facilitators review the video with the parent, they highlight interactional
strengths by reinforcing positive parenting behaviors and providing ideas for additional strategies
the parents may use to engage the child in play and shared reading. The types of behaviors that are
reinforced and promoted by the VIP facilitator are cognitively stimulating and affectively responsive
behaviors evidenced to link language, cognitive, and behavioral development, such as using rich lan-
guage input, responding to and expanding on child vocalizations, talking about objects in the child’s
focus of attention, engaging in imaginative play, and actively engaging children in book reading inter-
actions. At the end of each session, parents take home a copy of this videorecorded interaction to help
reinforce intervention messages and to share with other caregivers in the home.
VIP Research
The effectiveness of the Video Interaction Project has been studied in the context of two random-
ized controlled trials (RCTs), with enrollment at birth and assessment of parent–child interactions
at multiple time points from early infancy through kindergarten entry. In the first RCT, VIP was
found to promote parenting and cognitive stimulation in the home through age 33 months, includ-
ing enhanced parent verbal responsivity, reading and teaching behaviors, and availability of learning
materials as assessed using the StimQ (Mendelsohn et al., 2005, 2007). The StimQ is a parent report
measure that assesses parental cognitive stimulation and has been shown to be reliable and valid
in low-SES English- and Spanish-speaking populations (Dreyer, Mendelsohn, and Tamis-LeMonda,
1996; Mendelsohn, Cates, et al., 2011). Participation in VIP was also associated with enhancements
in child cognitive and language development, with evidence of associations with increased IQ and
trends for enhanced early reading ability in first grade (Mendelsohn et al., 2013). In a subsequent RCT,
these findings were replicated and extended, with evidence demonstrating effects on parenting, fam-
ily psychosocial risk factors associated with parenting, and child developmental outcomes. Impacts of
VIP on parenting, including increased reading, teaching, verbal responsivity, and provision of learning
materials, were found as early as 6 months, with greatest impacts for those families without very low
levels of maternal literacy/education (Mendelsohn, Huberman, et al., 2011). Ongoing evaluation of
VIP’s effects on responsive parenting has shown continuing impacts, with enhanced trajectories of
overall cognitive stimulation, reading behaviors, teaching behaviors, provision of learning materials,
and verbal responsivity for VIP relative to a control group through age 3 (at the conclusion of the
VIP) and through age 4.5 years, 1.5 years post-intervention prior to the time of school entry (Cates
et al., 2018). Parent report of enhanced interactions with their children was also supported by analyses
of videorecorded and transcribed interactions in the context of sharing a wordless picture book in
which VIP families were found to use greater verbal input, including a greater number of total utter-
ances, and increased total number of words and number of different words used (Cates et al., 2018).
VIP also influences affective components of parent–child interaction, such as reductions in harsh
446
discipline (Canfield et al., 2015), and has been associated with reductions in children’s exposure to
electronic media (Mendelsohn, Dreyer, et al., 2011).
In addition to direct impacts on parent–child interactions, VIP has been associated with enhance-
ments of a number of psychosocial factors known to affect the quality of parent–child interactions.
For example, VIP families have lower maternal depressive symptoms than mothers in a control group
by age 6 months; this difference in maternal depressive symptoms was shown to be mediated by
enhancements in cognitive stimulation in the home (Berkule et al., 2014). By age 6 months, parents
who participated in VIP were shown to have lower levels of parenting stress related to interactions
with their children; this difference not only emerged in early infancy but persisted in trajectories of
parenting stress through age 36 months (Cates, Weisleder, Dreyer, et al., 2016).
Finally, VIP participation has led to enhanced child development, with impacts documented on
child socioemotional outcomes, including trajectories of imitation/play abilities, separation distress,
and attention in toddlerhood and reduced hyperactivity and aggression in the preschool period
(Weisleder et al., 2016); long-term analyses have revealed that VIP impacts on reduced externalizing
behaviors and enhanced attentional capacities extend to age 4.5 years, 1.5 years post-intervention
conclusion (Mendelsohn et al., 2018).
VIP 3–5
VIP was originally developed solely as a birth through age 3 years intervention (VIP 0–3). However,
given evidence demonstrating that interventions that target responsive parenting during both the
infant/toddler and preschool periods can have measurable impacts on child development (Landry,
Smith, and Swank, 2006; Landry, Smith, Swank, Assel, and Vellet, 2001), a preschool component of
the intervention (VIP 3–5) was created. A unique factorial RCT research study design was imple-
mented to enable the investigation of VIP 3–5 effectiveness, as well as to determine whether the
timing (birth to age 3 years versus 3 to 5 years) and dose (no VIP, VIP 0–3 only, VIP 3–5 only, or VIP
0–3 + VIP 3–5) affected degree of intervention impact. This factorial RCT built off of the larger
RCT of VIP 0–3 in which mother–child dyads were enrolled at birth and assigned to participate in
either VIP 0–3 or control group; then at age 3, participants in these two groups were re-randomized
to participate either in VIP 3–5 or control 3–5 group. Although the frequency of recommended
primary care visits during the 3 to 5 period significantly lessens, many low-SES children continue to
have visits throughout the 3 to 5 period due to chronic medical conditions such as asthma and obe-
sity; thus, intervention dose was expected to be substantial (Mendelsohn et al., 2013). Furthermore,
continued opportunity exists throughout this age range to leverage the integration into the health
care setting and deliver a population-wide intervention at low cost. Thus far, evidence demonstrates
that VIP strategies remain effective in prevention of school readiness disparities for low-SES families
throughout the preschool period, with analyses yielding independent and additive impacts of VIP
0–3 and VIP 3–5 on child social-emotional development prior to school entry (Mendelsohn et al.,
2018).
Summary
Primary care is an innovative, low-cost intervention platform for enhancing parent–child interac-
tions and thereby promoting child development outcomes. It represents an important platform for
reducing income-related disparities. Although there are many apparent strengths, there are important
barriers/challenges to consider when intervening using this platform with regard to generating and
maintaining parent engagement in preventive programs, maximizing intervention impact, potentially
by developing linkages with other platforms, and scaling or widespread dissemination of evidenced-
based programs.
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Engaging Parents in Pediatric Preventive Interventions

An important consideration specifically related to maximizing the impact of pediatric primary preven-
tive programs pertains to level of parental engagement and how this level of engagement in programs
may be maintained and/or enhanced for families from a variety of social and cultural backgrounds.
Parenting Engagement in Interventions

Parent engagement in interventions and parenting programs involves several components often con-
ceptualized as falling within three domains: facilitative, behavioral, and attitudinal (Staudt, 2007). Facil-
itative engagement relates to whether families are able to find available interventions and resources,
have the ability and decide to enroll in such programs, and whether they have the ability to attend
such intervention services. Interventions and organizations themselves play a large role in parent
engagement. For example, signage, staff availability, and location of services are important factors in
parents’ facilitative engagement (McKay, Stoewe, McCadam, and Gonzales, 1998). Behavioral compo-
nents of parental engagement include families’ actual attendance at intervention programs, completion
of work given to parents within sessions, and completion of work related to the program in between
intervention sessions. Behavioral components of parental engagement could also include actively
contributing to discussions with the interventionist or group, completing homework assignments,
or using strategies at home that were taught during intervention sessions. Finally, attitudinal factors
related to parental engagement include parents’ level of motivation, commitment to, and interest in
program goals. Attitudinal engagement is difficult to separate from behavioral engagement, as percep-
tions of motivation and commitment—including parents’ level of enthusiasm, cognitive preparedness,
and satisfaction—are often formed from their contributions to the intervention and completion of
homework. Nevertheless, aspects of behavioral engagement are important to consider in their own
right, as they are critical for program success (Staudt, 2007).
Unfortunately, parenting engagement in intervention programs both within and outside of pediat-
ric primary care is often low due to a multitude of factors that affect one or more of these domains.
Rates of enrollment for parenting programs are commonly in the range of about 30% to 35% of fami-
lies offered participation (Heinrichs, Bertram, Kuschel, and Hahlweg, 2005). Even programs enjoying
relatively high enrollment rates compared with other pediatric programs, such as the Incredible Years,
have only 50% of invited families attend at least one session (Baker, Arnold, and Meagher, 2011). An
additional challenge is urging parents to adopt learned intervention strategies into their everyday
practices. Even parents who attend intervention visits often still maintain low levels of commitment;
for example, a study of the Triple P Program revealed that only 59% of parents who attended at least
one Triple P session reported using more than half of the targeted strategies (Prinz, Sanders, Shapiro,
Whitaker, and Lutzker, 2009).
Understanding the mechanisms by which parental engagement in intervention programs can be
enhanced and maintained is critical, as research clearly demonstrates level of parental engagement
in parenting programs, as measured by parental attendance, to be directly related to program impact
(Charlebois, Brendgen, Vitaro, Normandeau, and Boudreau, 2004; Snell-Johns, Mendez, and Smith,
2004). For example, attendance in a modified, clinic-based version of the Systematic Training for
Effective Parenting (STEP) program that was aimed at preventing child maltreatment was associated
with more positive parenting and better scores on the HOME inventory (Huebner, 2002). Addi-
tionally, attendance in community- and workplace-based substance abuse prevention programs, like
Preparing for the Drug (Free) Years, has been linked to improvements in both parenting behaviors
and attitudes, as well as the parent–child relationship (Felner et al., 1994; Spoth and Redmond, 1996).
Workplace parent education programs have been effective in improving child and parent behavior
and parental attitudes towards substance use. However, subsequent analyses have indicated that these
448
effects were only significant for those parents who attended at least 80% of program classes (Felner
et al., 1994). Prior study of VIP has also demonstrated that increased dose of intervention within the
first year is directly related to the magnitude of impact on parent use of cognitive stimulation in the
context of parent–child interactions (Mendelsohn, Huberman, et al., 2011).
When parental engagement is operationalized more broadly to include both behaviors (e.g., atten-
dance) and attitudes, additional impacts on program outcomes have been documented. For instance,
greater engagement on the part of parents in the Incredible Years (IY) program, including attendance
at sessions, completion of homework assignments, and the IY group leader’s assessment of the par-
ent’s participation in group discussion, was linked to improvements in observer-rated child conduct
problems and prosocial behavior (Reid, Webster-Stratton, and Baydar, 2004). A one standard deviation
increase in program engagement predicted a 17% standard deviation decline in conduct problems.
Program engagement also significantly reduced harsh and inconsistent parenting practices, while sig-
nificantly increasing supportive parenting (Baydar, Reid, and Webster-Stratton, 2003).
Predictors of Parent Engagement in Programs Aiming

to Reduce Poverty-Related Disparities
Research has highlighted many potential factors related to level of parent engagement in preventive
programs, including barriers to enrollment and attendance, family characteristics, parenting knowl-
edge, and perceived need of intervention program.
Barriers to Enrollment and Attendance

Although parental engagement is likely to be an important factor for effectively using programs in
health care to enhance the parent–child interactions in families from all SES backgrounds, it is likely
to be more critical for those preventive programs aiming to affect parenting and child development
outcomes for families living in poverty. A number of stressors associated with poverty have been
shown to be associated with reduced levels of engagement in child mental health programs; such
stressors include mental health problems (depression), marginalization (single parenthood, discrimina-
tion based on ethnic minority status), and material hardship (low-resource community, low human
capital [education/literacy]; Ingoldsby, 2011). One mechanism by which these poverty-related stress-
ors are thought to affect parental engagement is by creating barriers to program access. Access is
closely related to facilitative engagement, which is a necessary component for measuring behavioral
and attitudinal engagement. However, low-income parents face multiple barriers in accessing pro-
grams (Kazdin, Holland, and Crowley, 1997; McKay et al., 1998). Such barriers include situational
constraints such as limited transportation, lack of childcare, or speaking a language other than the
language of the intervention. These factors, among others, may prevent low-SES families from par-
ticipating in interventions, even in cases when attitudinal engagement is high (Kazdin et al., 1997).
Family Characteristics
Poverty-related stressors may also affect parental engagement in programs due to a number of parent
and family characteristics affecting both their ability to attend and actively participate in program vis-
its, as well as their ability and willingness to adopt intervention goals and messages. However, previous
research on how characteristics of low-income families affect their engagement in intervention has
been mixed. For example, in some studies, but not others, mothers who have less education or lower
income have been found to be less engaged than their better-off peers (Cunningham et al., 2000;
Dumka, Garza, Roosa, and Stoerzinger, 1997; Gross, Julion, and Fogg, 2001). Similarly, younger care-
givers and those who are single have sometimes, but not always, been found to be less engaged than
449
older, married/cohabiting caregivers (Cohen and Linton, 1995; Danoff, Kemper, and Sherry, 1994;
Orrell-Valente et al., 1999). Even within more consistent findings, there is variation. Although Latin
American families tend to show higher engagement than other minority groups (Cohen and Linton,
1995; Orrell-Valente et al., 1999; Toomey et al., 1996), researchers have seen differences between
Cuban and non-Cuban families, and between Spanish- and English-speaking families (Dumka et al.,
1997; Santisteban et al., 1996). Cultural beliefs also shape parenting behaviors in terms of what skills
are deemed necessary for children’s future success and how parents can aid in the development of
those skills, but also engagement in preventive interventions, as potential stigma surrounding enroll-
ment, receptivity to program messaging, and mistrust in institutions are also influenced by a family’s
cultural heritage and experience (Forehand and Kotchick, 2016). Families living in poverty are also
at risk of experiencing greater levels of chaos and time pressure, which may affect a parent’s decision
to enroll and remain in an intervention program. In fact, limited time availability and time conflicts
with work and family responsibilities are consistently reported as factors that undermine enrollment
and attendance in interventions (Cunningham et al., 2000; Dumas, Nissley-Tsiopinis, and Moreland,
2007; Harachi, Catalano, and Hawkins, 1997). The experience of poverty-related stressors may also
negatively affect parental self-efficacy, which can further serve to reduce attendance and adoption
of parenting behaviors targeted by the intervention. For instance, program attendance and parental
self-efficacy predict differences in parenting behaviors targeted by the Preparing for the Drug (Free)
Years intervention (Spoth and Redmond, 1996), and general self-efficacy predicts behavior change in
other health-related behavior interventions (i.e., seatbelt use; Kelly, Zyzanski, and Alemagno, 1991).
Unfortunately, families experiencing greater poverty-related stressors are also more likely to include
children at risk for adverse developmental outcomes; thus, the families whose attendance at interven-
tion programs is likely to be hampered by these poverty-related stressors are the same families who
could benefit most.
Parenting Knowledge
An additional reason why parents living in poverty may experience lower parental engagement in
intervention programs relates to parental knowledge about parenting. Parent knowledge about chil-
drearing and normative child development is an important factor influencing parent attitudes, beliefs,
and childrearing practices, and thus may have important consequences for child health and well-
being. Bornstein and colleagues (2010) investigated sources of parenting knowledge for a sample of
European-American mothers of 2-year-olds among factors such as social supports, formal classes, and
parenting supports and found that factors such as maternal age, education, and access to books and
other written materials each contributed to mothers’ parenting knowledge. Low-income parents, who
may be at increased risk for lower levels of education and literacy, may then also have more limited
parenting knowledge. These factors along with their experience of poverty-related stressors may
be important for shaping their parenting beliefs (Coleman and Kaplan, 1990; Spoth and Redmond,
2000). Several studies have indicated that parents’ knowledge about child development and education
are associated with engagement in interventions. One study even suggested that education supersedes
income in effects on engagement (Spoth, Goldberg, and Redmond, 1999).
Perceived Need
Finally, parental engagement in parenting intervention programs, including attendance and continued
participation, depends on the parents’ assessment of whether what is learned through a parenting pro-
gram could be useful, given their specific family circumstances, cultural beliefs, and understanding of
their own and their child’s needs. Because preventive programs aim to address potential future issues,
rather than current ones, families may not recognize the need for such intervention, and thus may not
450
be motivated to enroll or attend (Garvey, Julion, Fogg, Kratovil, and Gross, 2006). Kazdin and Wassell
(2000) found that parents and interventionists often differ in their understanding of the purpose and
goals of parenting interventions and that such differences can cause parents to feel that an intervention
is not useful for their situation. Parents’ perceptions of the relevance and demands of participating in
a program—including intensity and frequency of intervention sessions and whether it meets parents’
expectations—may be a key factor in its efficacy (Kazdin and Wassell, 2000).
Improving Parent Engagement

Although it is evident that a number of factors may operate individually and/or together to dampen
parent engagement in preventive programs, many programs have led efforts to better understand the
contexts under which their interventions have been most successful and, in turn, have devised and
assessed novel strategies to overcome hindrances related to access, knowledge, family characteristics,
and attitudes.
Alleviating Barriers
Several studies have examined the incorporation of strategies to improve access to interventions for
patients. Such strategies have often been successful in increasing treatment attendance. For exam-
ple, providing transportation or childcare or scheduling appointment reminders have helped parents
enrolled in programs to attend a greater number of sessions (Fleischman, 1979; McKay et al., 1998;
Watt and Dadds, 2007). Other studies have enhanced engagement by flexibly providing services in a
setting and at a time most convenient for families; solutions have included provision of home visits or
co-located services in pediatric primary care or community service settings, such as Special Supple-
mental Nutrition Program for WIC offices (Blok, Fukkink, Gebhardt, and Leseman, 2005). Although
these strategies can be important for promoting access for vulnerable populations, much more may
still need to be done to heighten parental engagement in interventions for parents living in poverty.
For example, studies have indicated that when childcare, transportation, or even financial incentives
are provided to promote access, enrollment may increase but engagement is not significantly affected
(Garvey et al., 2006; Heinrichs et al., 2005). This is a staggering reminder that although access promo-
tion may be necessary for low-income families, it is not sufficient to optimize engagement.
Addressing Family Characteristics

Although previous research on the effects of family characteristics on parent engagement in preventive
interventions has been mixed, studies have been done to address those factors that have consistently
been shown to affect enrollment and retention. Acknowledgement of cultural beliefs and provision
of culturally sensitive materials may improve parent engagement by reducing stigma and allowing
parents to see the interventionist as someone who understands their background and experience (Lau,
2006). In addition, a study examining different methods for inviting families into a program found
that inviting families to participate in a brief assessment first, with the opportunity to participate in
the full session afterward, overcame time conflict barriers in initially engaging families (Spoth and
Redmond, 1994).
Enhancing Parenting Knowledge

Several studies have assessed strategies to improve parents’ knowledge, both about treatment itself and
about the skills they have learned. Both provision of information about treatment and the mental
health system, as well as homework assignments to practice and reinforce learning that occurred
451
within the session, improve both behavioral (completing the task) and attitudinal (commitment treat-
ment) components of engagement (Chacko et al., 2009; Coleman and Kaplan, 1990). Encouraging
parents to reflect on their parenting beliefs through the introduction of mindfulness training has also
been effective in therapeutic interventions and a small number of preventive interventions (L. G.
Duncan, Coatsworth, and Greenberg, 2009; Lee, Semple, Rosa, and Miller, 2008).
Addressing Perceptions of Relevance

Motivational and/or qualitative interviewing to explore parents’ values and perspectives, and to work
with parents to develop intervention goals, has proved successful in improving parent engagement by
addressing perceptions of relevance (Swartz et al., 2007). Furthermore, engaging parents in an initial
brief assessment has also been suggested to explain the relevance and potential benefits of interven-
tions (Spoth and Redmond, 1994). Pre-intervention strategies, such as “joining,” have also been used
to understand and address each family member’s concerns and values, which has been successful in
encouraging families to attend initial visits and in improving long-term retention (Coatsworth, San-
tisteban, McBride, and Szapocznik, 2001; Szapocznik, Kurtines, Foote, Perez-Vidal, and Hervis, 1986).
Some studies have also indicated that strengths-based approaches, in which the interventionist uses
reinforcement to build rapport and affirm the parent’s role as an expert on their child, can ensure
continued engagement from families (Gopalan et al., 2010).
Summary
Ample evidence suggests that development of strategies to generate and maintain parent engagement
is of paramount importance for maximizing utilization of existing services, establishing fidelity of
interventions, optimizing internalization of intervention messages, and achieving maximum impact
on parenting and child development. Many factors are related to situational constraints, perceived
need, family characteristics, and knowledge that may intersect to hamper optimal program utilization
and adoption of intervention messages. Many programs have developed and successfully implemented
strategies for overcoming some of these barriers. More research is needed to better understand the
conditions under which greatest effectiveness may be achieved for specific populations (Shonkoff,
2018). Additional work is also needed to understand issues of parent engagement in the pediatric
primary setting, as the majority of work in this area has been conducted in other platforms.
Maximizing Impact and Scaling Preventive Health Care Interventions

Although the development and implementation of evidence-based programs to enhance parenting
and early child development are necessary to addressing poverty-related disparities in child develop-
ment and promoting early development for children more broadly, it is critical to understand how to
maximize the impact of such programs and to bring them to scale—serving all who have the needs
these programs are designed to meet. Understanding how to bring programs to scale is a complex and
not yet sufficiently understood process. Certainly, one main concern in trying to scale programs with
fidelity is better understanding factors that affect parent engagement among populations with diverse
needs as detailed earlier (Schindler, Fisher, and Shonkoff, 2017; Shonkoff, 2018). Key challenges to
bringing evidenced-based programs to scale also include developing new systems to support services
that have not previously existed, in addition to generating widespread behavior change within systems
that do exist (Yoshikawa, Wuermli, Raikes, Kim, and Kabay, 2018). In recent years, implementation
science frameworks have been developed which provide guidance to programs as they work to under-
stand barriers, replicate program infrastructure in new systems, and optimize programs with regard to
dosage and quality of services (Domitrovich et al., 2008; Neta et al., 2015). Although the pediatric
452
primary care setting may be unique in the potential it offers for potentially near-universal access to
intervention at low cost, there are also challenges to scaling intervention in this setting.
Scaling Pediatric Preventive Programs

Given the significant opportunity provided by pediatric primary care as a platform to provide both
primary and secondary/tertiary preventive interventions, there has been an increase in initiatives to
scale such programs during the past few decades. The most successful example of scaling comes from
Reach Out and Read, which has been implemented at more than 5,000 clinics and practices across
the United States and internationally. This implementation reaches more than 4 million children each
year, who include more than 25% of children living in low-income families in the United States today.
This scaling has been facilitated by (1) a centralized national center (the Reach Out and Read National
Center, based in Boston, Massachusetts; “Reach Out and Read National Center,” n.d.), which has
provided guidance and support for developing new sites while helping to maintain fidelity of the
model within ongoing sites; (2) the development of regional ROR networks, which have provided
similar supports at the local level; (3) a concentrated and diffuse effort to obtain funding through
federal, state, and local sources together with philanthropic foundations; (4) significant efforts to work
with governmental agencies to include ROR funding within health care financing more broadly; (5)
recognition by the American Academy of Pediatrics of preventive efforts, including literacy support,
as a central component of routine health maintenance (AAP Council on Community Pediatrics,
2016; AAP Council on Early Childhood and AAP Council on School Health, 2016; AAP Council
on Early Childhood, High, and Klass, 2014); and (6) educational efforts that have raised awareness of
the importance of relational health, parenting activities such as reading aloud, talking, teaching, and
play, resulting in significant buy-in by large proportions of health care providers, including recently
trained graduates of pediatric residency programs.
Furthermore, there have been significant efforts to scale Healthy Steps. Initially led by the Com-
monwealth Foundation, Healthy Steps (HS) has developed a national center based within Zero to
Three. Through this center, significant efforts are being made to scale the model, including, where
possible, innovations such as those developed by Children’s Hospital at Montefiore. HS is currently
being implemented in over 120 pediatric and family practice sites in 15 states (“Healthy Steps: Become
a Site,” n.d.). HS is especially important given its capacity to build on and support the family-centered
pediatric medical home, provide support for pediatricians as they work with families, provide support
for screening efforts in clinical settings, provide direct services to support parenting and behavioral
health, and identification and referral of families with social determinants of health and ACEs for
services spanning multiple domains (e.g., mental health, social services).
Other programs have engaged more recently in scaling efforts. VIP has begun to be scaled in New
York City through efforts of the New York City Council (City’s First Readers; see earlier) and the
New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Implementation is also in progress in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Flint, Michigan.
Although significant progress has been made even at the population level (e.g., ROR), funding
represents a significant barrier to scaling of these programs and efforts. For each program, funding
sources have been uneven and inconsistent over time, periodically placing even well-established pro-
grams in jeopardy. As such, the most important efforts in long term population scaling are related to
identification of stable sources of funding. In particular, funding such programs will require recogni-
tion of the potential lifelong benefits of such programs related to education, economic productivity,
and health. Policies at the federal, state, and local levels that recognize the likely long-term benefits
and cost-effectiveness of health care–based preventive programs and provide funding for preventive
programs within the health care system have the potential to result in substantial impacts for popula-
tions in greatest need.
453
Addressing Heterogeneity in Risk Through Linkages Among Platforms

Ongoing work is being conducted to determine how pediatric health care interventions may best
be tailored to meet the needs of populations with qualitatively different risk profiles. An important
approach taken in recent years to address populations with heterogeneity in risk is to build linkages
among intervention platforms, enabling the possibility of providing varying levels of intervention for
families who need different degrees of intervention. The Healthy Steps/Behavioral Health Integra-
tion Program at Montefiore Medical Group represents one initiative providing different levels of
intervention for families of differing levels of risk. Through this initiative, all families, regardless of
family risk, receive the baseline HS program, involving parenting guidance and monitoring of child
development and behavioral issues, and families for whom greater risk is detected receive additional
counseling/therapy as needs are identified (“The Children’s Hospital at Montefiore: Healthy Steps
Program,” n.d.).
Another example of a program taking a multilevel intervention approach is the NICHD-funded
Smart Beginnings program (“Smart Beginnings,” n.d.). This initiative uses innovative strategies to link
universal primary prevention through VIP (building on ROR) with the addition of a home visitation
program called the Family Check Up (FCU; Dishion et al., 2008; Shaw, Dishion, Supplee, Gardner,
and Arnds, 2006) for families identified to be at increased social risk. In particular, families participate
in annual comprehensive screening for psychosocial risks and ACEs, as well as other indicators of fam-
ily capacity and risk. An FCU interventionist (typically a clinician such as a social worker) then devel-
ops additional videorecordings of the parent and child interacting together and uses those recordings
to identify strengths and challenges in the interaction. The interventionist then works together with
the family to set goals based on family priorities and preferences and either delivers services in the
home or provides linkages to services in the health care system or community.
An additional example of a program that also represents the potential for synergy among interven-
tion platforms in meeting varying levels of needs is Durham Connects (Dodge et al., 2014; Dodge
and Goodman, 2012). Durham Connects is a postnatal-nursing home visitation program designed
to be delivered universally (to all families with newborns, regardless of risk). During an initial home
visitation for each family, which takes place when babies are between 3 and 12 weeks of age, nurses
follow a scripted intervention curriculum, which entails giving parents guidance about how to meet
the needs of their child as well as conducting a detailed needs assessment of risk in domains of health
and psychosocial well-being. As any families are identified though this needs assessment to have risks
associated with parenting and childcare, safety, parental mental health, or health care, the level of risk
is then objectively determined and families are triaged to either receive further lower-intensity inter-
vention delivered through Durham Connects nursing professionals tailored to the families’ specific
needs or are referred to other, higher-intensity community services or immediate acute intervention
in severe cases. Importantly, the role of Durham Connects interventionists does not end with a refer-
ral; rather, they continue to follow up with the other linking community services and the family to
ensure that the family has received the help necessary and that any identified problems are being
remedied. In a randomized controlled trial, Durham Connects was found to be associated with lower
incidence of emergency care needs, enhanced parent–child interaction, and greater community con-
nections (Dodge et al., 2014).
Building linkages among intervention platforms may be important for addressing needs of popu-
lations with differing levels of risk and for increasing utilization of services across complementary
programs. Although a number of programs exist in the community and health care with the shared
goal of promoting parenting and reducing poverty-related disparities in child development, several
barriers (reviewed earlier) may detract from family access and even obstruct family knowledge about
the existence of such programs designed to serve them. By linking programs across settings with
complementary goals, such programs may help families to overcome expressed barriers to utilization.
454
An innovative initiative called City’s First Readers (CFR; “City’s First Readers: An initiative of
the New York City Council,” n.d.) was developed in 2014 by the New York City Council with the
goal of creating linkages among programs offered in different platforms across New York City that
have the shared goal of enhancing the early home language and literacy environment and subsequent
school readiness of children from low-SES households. This initiative is directed by Literacy, Inc.
(LINC), a program that provides literacy support and parent education programs in communities and
schools (“LINC: Literacy Inc,” n.d.). As part of this initiative, partnerships have been developed among
programs delivered in school settings such as JumpStart (“Jumpstart Children First,” n.d.); home
visitation programs such as the Parent Child Home Program (“Parent Child Home Program,” n.d.);
public libraries including the Brooklyn Public Library, Queens Public Library, and New York Public
Library; and community-based programs including LINC, United Way (“United Way NYC,” n.d.),
Committee for Hispanic Children and Families (“Committee for Hispanic Children and Families,”
n.d.), and the JCCA (“JCCA New York,” n.d.). In the context of these partnerships, participating
programs explicitly aim to reinforce intervention messages across platforms through methods such
as sharing of literacy materials, devise cohesive messaging strategies to reach targeted families, and
engage in cross-referrals for service with the goal of expanding access to and utilization of services.
Summary
Despite evidence of success with scaling pediatric health care interventions, more work is needed to
fully understand and address barriers to widespread delivery. One key strategy that may be important
for maximization of access/utilization and impact may be to build links between pediatric health care
intervention programs and intervention programs with similar goals in other settings. Some evidence
from programs building and assessing such links establishes feasibility and suggests effectiveness of
this strategy. Continued work is needed to develop, pilot, and research the impact of novel strategies
that integrate efforts across disciplines and approach families’ needs as diverse potentially requiring
varying levels of intervention dose and intensity. Research networks, such as the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services (DHHS) Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)–funded
Bridging the Word Gap Research Network (“Bridging the Word Gap National Research Network,”
n.d.), are valuable in enhancing communication and cross-fertilization of ideas among researchers and
represent a step toward achieving this goal.
Conclusions
Pediatric health care providers may play a critical role in promoting child development and reducing
poverty-related disparities. From the very first days of a child’s life, pediatric providers forge relation-
ships with parents; in the context of these relationships, providers (1) critically monitor any issues
related to child development through the use of developmental surveillance and screening, (2) provide
anticipatory guidance about best parenting practices, and (3) help families to connect with relevant
programs inside and outside of the health care setting to meet any identified developmental needs.
In addition to connecting families with services to address needs that have already been identified,
pediatric health care providers may play a substantial role in the primary prevention of developmental
disparities through preventive parenting programs designed to leverage unique opportunities pre-
sented by the pediatric health care platform for low cost and potential for widespread dissemination.
Future work needs to consider how access and utilization of pediatric health care interventions may
be optimized and impact maximized, with attention to barriers, consideration of parent engagement,
identification of mechanisms for funding for scaling and expansion, and strategies for building syner-
gies with child development programs delivered in other platforms.
455
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the funders of the research and intervention work presently performed by
the authors of this chapter, including the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Child
Health and Human Development (“Promoting Early School Readiness in Primary Health Care”
[R01 HD047740 01–09], and “Integrated model for promoting parenting and early school readiness
in pediatrics” [R01 HD076390 01–02]), the Tiger Foundation, the Marks Family Foundation, Chil-
dren of Bellevue, Inc., KiDS of NYU Foundation, Inc., and City’s First Readers. We are also grateful
to many individuals whose work has contributed to our understanding of parenting and pediatrics,
including Adriana Weisleder, Benard Dreyer, Anne Seery, Virginia Flynn, Gilbert Foley, Linda van
Schaick, Jenny Arevalo, Caroline Raak, Jennifer Ledesma, Lisa White, Kristina Vlahovicova, Nina
Burtchen, Angelica Alonso, Andrea Paloian, Diego Catalan Molina, Aida Custode, Yuliya Gurevich,
and Maya Matalon. We would especially like to thank the parents and children who participated in
our research projects and pediatric programs.
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16
PARENTING AND THE LAW
Introduction
Legal issues related to parenting address the rights and responsibilities of parents as they perform their
parental functions, such as caring for their children, managing their education, making health care
decisions on their behalf, monitoring their behavior, providing appropriate discipline, and guiding
their development into the autonomy of adulthood. In particular, there are legal standards defining
the extent of parental control over these various domains, and there are also standards for defining the
conditions under which the state can override a parent’s standing as the primary party responsible for
making such decisions on behalf of a child. In addition, there are legal considerations when a parent
must interact with either the adult or juvenile court system on behalf of their child, such as in cases
when a child is arrested or accused of a crime, or when a parent may have legal responsibility for their
child’s behavior (or misbehavior) or medical treatment.
This chapter provides a broad overview of the various domains in which legal considerations can affect
the rights and responsibilities of parenting. Specifically, we discuss “parenthood” as it is defined by the law,
including the legal shift from a focus on biological parentage to a focus on the psychological or functional
role that a parent plays in a child’s life. Then, we cover the legal responsibilities of parenthood: providing
for one’s children and exercising authority over one’s children. We also examine the legal limits of parent-
hood, as initiated by the courts (i.e., termination of parental rights), by the child (i.e., emancipation), and
by another parent (i.e., custody and child support decisions). Next, we discuss contemporary research on
legal contexts for parenting. In this section, we focus on the balance between the interests of the state, the
child, and the parent with respect to the way that parents monitor their children’s activities, direct their
children’s education, authorize their children’s medical treatment, and interact with child-serving systems
(e.g., child protective services, the juvenile justice system). Finally, we examine emerging challenges in
parenting and the law, including parenting in the digital age and parenting trans youth.
Before exploring these domains, however, we first review how norms of parental responsibility
have evolved during the past two centuries and how, in the modern era, the legal definition of parent-
hood has grown increasingly complex in response to scientific advances and evolving social norms.
A Brief History of U.S. Parenting

Current social norms and legal precedents grant parents broad decision-making authority regarding
virtually all aspects of their children’s care. It is generally presumed that parents can be relied on to act
in their children’s best interests. Cases in which parental rights are restricted typically involve scenarios
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in which the parent is neglecting or harming the child or is not acting in the child’s best interests.
“The best interests of the child” is the guiding principle behind what we expect of parents, and behind
the conditions under which courts can overrule the otherwise sacrosanct authority of parents, with
regard to the treatment of their children.
The legal system’s emphasis on protecting the best interests of the child, however, is a fairly recent
development. Given modern culture’s emphasis on the primary importance of protecting and nur-
turing children, it is difficult to comprehend that prior to the early 1800s, children were legally
considered chattel (Hart, 1991), having economic value, but without any inherent legal rights of their
own. Children may typically have been loved by their parents, but legally speaking, their status was
essentially equivalent to that of livestock, so there was no protective legal framework to intercede on
a child’s behalf in cases where parents were abusive or neglectful (Pappas, 1983). Parental impunity in
the treatment of children was codified into early state law, even to the extent of expressly allowing for
capital punishment of disobedient children (Horowitz, 1984).
Social norms by the early 1800s had already evolved to the point that parents were “almost begin-
ning to consider their children as of the same flesh and blood as themselves” (Bayne-Powell, 1939, p.
1), but it took additional time for legal precedent to reflect this growing respect for the human rights
of children. The first parens patriae court action (in which the state intervened for protection of a child
against an abusive or neglectful parent) occurred in 1838, a precursor to the eventual establishment, in
the first half of the 1900s, of a juvenile court system established to operate as a paternalistic, authori-
tarian protector of children’s welfare. More recently, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
(Article 3) has adopted “the best interests of the child” as a fundamental principle, referring to “such
protection and care as is necessary for his or her well-being” (UN General Assembly, 1989, p. 7). The
United States signed the convention in 1995, but as of 2017 has not ratified it.
The gradual recognition by the U.S. legal system that children have rights to be protected, and that
they sometimes need someone other than their parents to step in to protect those rights, was a major
step forward, which led to the development of policies and precedents for dealing with abuse, neglect,
juvenile offending, and custody disputes. When children were legally equivalent to livestock, their legal
status was simple: children were the property of their fathers, and remained so, regardless of divorce or
abuse. As children’s welfare grew in importance, however, legal policy evolved to allow mothers to be
granted custody and to allow the state to revoke parental rights for the protection of a child. A foster
care system and a juvenile justice system were established to protect the best interests of the child when
parents failed to do so. As the quality of one’s parenting became subject to scrutiny by the legal system,
there grew a new set of responsibilities and expectations incumbent on parents. Parents are still granted
very wide latitude, but poor parenting can have consequences. Abuse or neglect can lead to criminal
charges, removal of the child from the home, and termination of parental rights. Failure to participate
in childrearing can also lead to loss of parental rights. These responsibilities are fairly straightforward,
but, unlike 200 years ago, there are significant legal consequences for abdicating them.
Legal Definitions of Parenthood

Over the past several decades, rapid advances in reproductive technology, as well as changing social
norms, have led to changes in the legal standards for defining parenthood. Families that do not con-
form to the traditional “nuclear” model, comprising a married, heterosexual couple and their biologi-
cal children, have become more common (Golombok, 2019). Medical advances mean that women
can give birth to children who do not share their DNA. Family structures increasingly include adults
who may or may not be married to each other, and may or may not be biologically related to their
children (Ganong et al., 2019). In practical terms, a parent may be an extended family member, an
adoptive parent, an individual who used a surrogate to conceive and/or carry a pregnancy to term,
a member of a same-sex couple, or an unmarried romantic partner of a parent (Bryant, 2016). As a
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Parenting and the Law
consequence, the legal standards for determining whether an adult caregiver (or would-be caregiver)
has the authority to assert parental rights can be more difficult to operationalize.
At the broadest level, parenthood is a relationship (with particular defining characteristics) between
an adult and a child. This relationship might be biological, in cases where parent and child share
genetic material, or nonbiological, in cases where no genetic material is shared, such as adoption, sur-
rogacy, or stepparenthood. The parent–child relationship may also be psychological, in cases where
an emotional relationship exists and an adult has assumed a de facto parental role, despite no formally
established connection.
Parenthood can also be defined operationally, through the way that parents provide for their chil-
dren. This may include providing economic resources to their children (e.g., paying for groceries
or for lodgings), providing instrumental support for their children (e.g., facilitating their education,
providing transportation, obtaining health care), and providing emotional support for their children
(e.g., shaping their children’s beliefs and attitudes, forming high-quality emotional bonds with their
children, interacting in a playful or loving way with their children). Importantly, parents’ role as pro-
viders for the financial, instrumental, and emotional needs of their children are generally considered
in legal determinations of parenthood. The paragraphs that follow explore various legal criteria that
are used to establish parental rights and responsibilities.
The Biological Parent

The most obvious definition of parenthood is that of a biological parent. When two individuals pro-
create, the resulting offspring share their genetic material, creating a biological relationship between
the offspring and the parents. Both legal and social tradition have emphasized the preeminence of
biological parenthood (Meyer, 2006), although this standard has changed in recent decades (DiFonzo
and Stern, 2013). This shift is likely for the best: when children are socialized to conceptualize parent-
hood as a strictly biological phenomenon (as has traditionally been true in the United States), they
are more likely to conceptualize adoption as a loss. However, cross-cultural research suggests that a
broader, emotions-based definition of parentage is adaptive for adopted children (Leon, 2002).
The legal application of a biological definition of parenthood is best illustrated through the “mari-
tal presumption,” which posits that a husband is the legal father of his wife’s children. In essence, the
martial presumption confers biological “fatherhood” via marriage to a biological mother, absent
proof to the contrary (see Unif. Parentage Act §§ 201–204; Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 19–4–105). The
marital presumption has been codified in all U.S. states (Ruffini, 2017), although its application and
meaning differ from state to state (Carbone and Cahn, 2015). The martial presumption is not gender
neutral: although a husband is presumed to be the father of his wife’s biological children, a wife is
not presumed to be the mother of her husband’s biological children (Appleton, 2006). In the past the
marital presumption has emphasized the traditional notion of one biological mother and father to
confer the benefit of two parents’ financial support for children.
Because the martial presumption defines fatherhood based on a martial relationship with a biologi-
cal mother, unwed fathers have traditionally held few rights regarding their biological offspring (Pur-
vis, 2013). Before Stanley v. Illinois (1972), an unwed biological father did not have the right to block
the termination of his parental rights during adoption proceedings initiated by the biological mother.
In Stanley, however, the U.S. Supreme Court held that unwed biological fathers who had participated
in their children’s care were afforded the right to a hearing before parental rights could be terminated
under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. However, a
biological relationship to a child alone is not sufficient to maintain an unwed father’s paternal rights;
additional proof of a psychological, emotional, or caregiving role is required (the “biology plus” stan-
dard, e.g., Quilloin v. Walcott, 1978; Caban v. Mohammed, 1979; Lehr v. Robertson, 1983). For example, in
the case of Lehr v. Robertson (1983), the Supreme Court held that unwed biological fathers do not have
467
parental rights unless they have taken on parental labor and forged a significant relationship with their
biological child. States are therefore free to enact laws that do not recognize unwed biological fathers
as legal parents, absent a psychological or caregiving role—even if they are prevented from actively
engaging in parenting by another party, such as the biological mother.
Most jurisdictions provide a mechanism for unwed biological fathers to assert their paternity.
However, to do so, biological fathers must satisfy specific procedural requirements, whereas biologi-
cal mothers are seen as legal parents by the state without such requirements (Purvis, 2013). Thus, an
unwed biological father has fewer parental rights—and responsibilities—than the biological mother
or her husband (Mayeri, 2016).
Today, approximately 40% of all children in the United States are born out of wedlock (Martin,
Hamilton, Osterman, Driscoll, and Mathews, 2017). As marriage between a child’s biological parents
becomes less common, new legal challenges arise. Indeed, many jurisdictions are moving away from
the “biology plus” standard (Meyer, 1999; In re Raquel Marie X). Furthermore, as improvements
in technology make options like artificial insemination, surrogate motherhood, and egg freezing or
sperm banking more common, the law must keep pace with these advancements in defining the role
of biology in parenthood.
Implications for Same-Sex Parents

In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court legally recognized same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015).
The majority opinion was framed in part as a parenting issue: children ought to be reared by married
parents; therefore, it is to the benefit of children of same-sex parents that their parents’ marriage be
legally recognized (Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015). Following this decision, the implications of the marital
presumption for legally defining parenthood have been altered.
Prior to Obergefell, the marital presumption applied to same-sex couples only if they were married
in a state in which same-sex marriage was legally recognized (Rosato, 2006), and then only to female
same-sex couples (Appleton, 2006). Following Obergefell, the courts rely on social, rather than biological,
relationships between parents and their children when recognizing nonbiological parents in a same-sex
partnership as legal parents (Cahill, 2015). As a result, the marital presumption is necessarily being recon-
ceptualized to consider marital unity, functional parenthood, and psychological bonds in additional to
biology (Carbone and Cahn, 2015). Although the shift in the marital presumption to include functional
parenthood has yet to be codified, broadly written statutes in favor of a functional or psychological
interpretation of the martial presumption have been written that cover same-sex parents (Ruffini, 2017).
The Psychological Parent

Parenting extends beyond sharing DNA with a child. Parents typically form close emotional bonds
with their children. A “psychological parent,” as recognized by the courts, is an adult whom the child
perceives to be his or her parent emotionally, as a result of quotidian attention to the child’s physi-
cal and psychological needs (Oliver, 2013). Thus, a psychological parent may—or may not—be the
child’s biological parent.
It is the duty of the courts to protect a child’s psychological welfare, just as they protect a child’s
physical welfare (Bryant, 2016). During the past century, a paradigm shift took place in the resolution
of custody disputes, transferring legal emphasis from the unequivocal rights of the biological parent
to a new emphasis on the best interests of the child. Part and parcel of the “best interests of the child”
model included maintaining the continuity of positive relationships with adults in the child’s life—
whether or not those adults were biologically related to the child (Bryant, 2016). Some researchers
argue that depriving the child of the bond with the psychological parent would cause (psychological)
harm to the child (Goldstein, Freud, and Solnit, 1973; Warshak, 2007). A child’s separation from a
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psychological parent may reduce academic performance, hamper adjustment to new situations, lower
self-esteem, and increase antisocial behavior (Onorato, 2004). Other researchers have argued that the
concept of “best interests of the child” is vague and lacks the empirical guidance necessary to be used
to make legal decisions (Emery, Otto, and O’Donohue, 2005).
In 2002, the American Law Institute (ALI) developed a de facto parent standard in recognition of
the importance of psychological parents to a child’s well-being (American Law Institute, 2002). The
ALI standard required that a person seeking de-facto-parent status must have resided with the child
for more than two years to assure that a strong psychological bond had formed between parent and
child. Most states have some degree of “de facto parentage” statutes, which provide a legal path to
preserving psychological parent–child relationships in the absence of a biological relationship. In these
states, courts view the psychological parent as a legal equal to the child’s biological or adoptive parent
when determining parental status (Spiezia, 2013). Other state courts have declined to recognize de
facto parents (Utah: Jones v. Barlow, 2007) or have referred the issue to the legislature (Michigan: Van
v. Zahorik, 1997; Vermont: Titchenal v. Dexter, 1997). To date, the issue of psychological or de facto
parentage has not been addressed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Legal Responsibilities of Parenthood

Parents have a legal responsibility to care for their children. Responsibilities of parenthood can be
roughly divided into the somewhat overlapping duties of providing for one’s children (i.e., providing
the conditions under which they can grow safely into healthy adults) and exercising authority (i.e.,
making decisions on their behalf in various contexts).
The Parent as a Provider

Parents provide financial support and necessities (e.g., food, clothing, education, medical attention,
shelter) for their children. Because children are presumed to be inherently unable to care for them-
selves, parents have a legal and moral duty to provide for their children, so that the financial onus does
not fall to the collective community (Harris, Waldrop, and Waldrop, 1990; Mnookin and Weisberg,
1989). However, the parameters under which parents are obligated to provide for their children are
subject to legal interpretation.
The legal obligation to support a child financially typically continues until the child has reached
the age of majority (age 18 in most states). However, there are two types of exceptions to this rule.
First, when a child has been legally emancipated, the child has satisfied the burden of proof that she
or he can provide for himself or herself without the aid of a parent (DeJardin, 2007). Second, parents
may choose to continue to provide financial assistance for their children after the child reaches legal
adulthood (Fingerman, Miller, Birditt, and Zarit, 2009). An adult child might continue to need finan-
cial support from his or her parents in the case of a mental or physical disability (Reichman, Corman,
and Noonan, 2008). In cases in which the child is unable to provide for himself or herself on reach-
ing adulthood, a parent may be held legally responsible to provide continued support—however, the
support requirement for adult children varies drastically from state to state. Most states have explicit
provisions that the court may order parents to continue to financially support their children past the
age of majority if the child is mentally or physically disabled in a way that renders the child unable
to financially support herself or himself (Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §25–320(E); Mo. Rev. Stat. §452.340;
Okla. St. Ann. tit. 43, §112.1A; Pa. Cons. Stat. tit. 23, §4321(3); Wyo. Stat. §14–2–204(a)(i)). Other
states allow for greater discretion on the part of the parents regarding continued support of disabled
children into adulthood (Mich. Comp. Laws §722.52; Kan. Stat. Ann. §23–3001).
Parents are legally responsible for supporting their children financially, but it is rare that the courts
would impose a specific amount of support on a family, except in cases of divorce or neglect. In the
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case of a divorce, courts determine who will provide financial support for a child and how much is to
be provided. Child support is decided on a case-by-case basis, allowing the courts substantial discre-
tion. Following the Federal Child Support Act of 1984 and the Family Support Act of 1988, states are
required to consider “all earnings of and income of the noncustodial parent” and “economic data on
the cost of raising children” when deciding child support cases. The proportion of this responsibility
may be shared equally between parents or may depend on each parent’s financial holdings, age, and
health (Baker, 2012; Johnson, 1987). In cases of neglect, the courts will intervene when parents fail
to provide for their children, despite having the means to do so. Neglecting a child typically involves
failure to provide food, clothing, shelter, medical care, or education (World Health Organization,
1999). It is a criminal offense to fail to provide basic necessities for one’s children in every U.S. state.
The Parent as an Authority

U.S. law recognizes parents as having authority over their children, granting parents the right to rear
their children as they see fit with little interference from the state (see review by Klicka, 2003; Troxel
v. Granville, 2000). Children also recognize the authority of their parents, although this authority is
viewed as less legitimate and more compartmentalized as children age through adolescence (Kuhn and
Laird, 2011). Parental authority includes the way that parents monitor their children’s behavior and
how parents educate and discipline their children to prepare them for adulthood. Parental authority
includes broad latitude in directing both the informal and formal education of their children and
significant control over the medical care of their children (with limits in cases where parental con-
trol could be deemed harmful). Legal considerations and applicable research findings about parental
responsibilities in these domains are discussed in the relevant sections later.
Termination of Parental Rights

A parent’s authority is not absolute. The state, under its parens patriae authority, can sever the legal
relationship between parents and children. The termination of parental rights is a weighty decision
for the courts, as parental rights are considered fundamental, and their termination is both final and
irreversible (Santosky v. Kramer, 1982).
The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA, 1997) outlines the circumstances under which the
state can terminate parental rights. States are generally required to file for termination of parental
rights when a child has been in foster care for 15 of the previous 22 months, or in other outstand-
ing circumstances (Wayne and Smith, 2016). For example, courts will terminate parental rights when
provided evidence that a continued parent–child relationship is more detrimental to the child than
the consequences of legally ending that relationship (Stein, 2000). The courts have a great deal of
discretion in defining adequate parenting for the purpose of terminating parental rights (Meyer and
Moore, 2015).
Research suggests that termination of parental rights is relatively more common in situations
involving single-parent households, young mothers, child maltreatment, a comorbidity of mental
health and substance use diagnoses, and extensive stressors on the parents (e.g., domestic violence,
homelessness, incarceration, poverty; see Meyer and Moore, 2015; Wattenberg, Kelley, and Kim, 2001).
Cumulative risk, as opposed to any one specific risk factor, is a stronger predictor of the termination
of parental rights than any single given predictor (Larrieu, Heller, Smyke, and Zeanah, 2008).
Emancipation
Children can sever their legal relationship with their parents through emancipation. Although parents are
typically legally responsible for a child until the child reaches the age of majority, an emancipated minor is
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one whose parents no longer hold a legal responsibility to the child. Instead, emancipated minors provide
for themselves, make their own decisions, and function as legal adults. For example, emancipated minors
can enter into binding contracts and can sue or be sued in a court (see Cal. Fam. Code § 7050).
The criteria for emancipation vary by U.S. state. In most states, children ages 14 to 17 may seek
emancipation without parental consent (Gray, 2005). Marriage and enlistment in the military also
result in emancipation, the minimum age for which vary by U.S. state but are typically 17 with
parental consent (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2015). Most U.S. states also have statutes
allowing for judicial emancipation. Because emancipation is rare and hearings are decided on a case-
by-case basis, precedent is often contradictory (Gray, 2005). Generally, courts have granted emancipa-
tion for children who can demonstrate that they are economically self-sufficient, that they are mature
enough to make their own decisions, and that emancipation is in their best interests (Polifka, 1995).
Custody Decisions
Even in the absence of total termination of parental rights, parents may lose some of their rights via
custody decisions. When parents are no longer living together, the courts may be called on to define
parameters regarding the contact that each parent has with their children.
Traditionally, prior to the mid-1900s, the rights of the biological parent to custody superseded
those of nonbiological parents in custody decisions (see Rohlf, 2008; Troxel v. Granville, 2000). Biologi-
cal parents were typically given custody unless found to be “unfit” or to have abandoned the child
previously (Atkinson, 2013). Today, psychological parentage is weighed in custody decisions when
faced with a conflict between a nonbiological and a biological parent. U.S. states differ in the extent to
which the presumption in favor of the biological parents remains. Generally, the interests of the bio-
logical parent are considered secondary to the best interests of the child (Elrod and Dale, 2008). The
value of continuity in a psychological attachment with a caregiver may take precedent over biological
parentage. For example, a stepparent may gain custody over a “fit” biological parent if the stepparent
and the child have a close relationship and if awarding custody to the stepparent would maximize
stability in the child’s life (Cebrzynski v. Cebrzynski, 1978; Parness, 2015).
Child Support
Custodial decisions in cases of divorce often involve determining who will support the child finan-
cially. Generally, custodial parents assume the majority of the burden of financially supporting children
(Grall, 2013). Although the state does not impose parameters on the amount of financial support that a
custodial parent must provide, the state will intervene with noncustodial parents inasmuch as they may
be ordered to pay child support in accordance with their financial standing and the needs of the child
(Harris, 2009). Determining the amount of child support to be paid may include a consideration of the
noncustodial parent’s other debts (Kost v. Kost, 1994), although scholars have argued that formal child
support standards imposed on impoverished noncustodial parents are unattainable and ignore infor-
mal contributions to childrearing (Harris, 2011; Maldonado, 2005). In some U.S. states, child support
requirements may extend into the college years, with noncustodial parents being required to contribute
to a child’s postsecondary education (López Turley and Desmond, 2011). The fact that noncustodial
parents may be required to support their children financially, despite no longer having parental author-
ity, deviates from the traditional association of parental control with parental duty (Harris et al., 1990).
Research on Legal Contexts for Parenting

Legal considerations affect parenting rights and responsibilities in a number of contexts that sometimes
involve unique domain-specific considerations. The key issues in these various domains frequently
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involve the conditions under which the state may overrule a parent’s authority, either to protect the
child’s interest or to protect the interests of society. Here, we examine parenting in the domains of
monitoring and knowledge of children’s activities, direction of children’s education, authorization of
children’s medical treatment, and interactions with other formal systems serving parents and children,
such as child protective services and the juvenile justice system.
Parental Monitoring and Children’s Right to Privacy

Parental monitoring, or the degree to which parents track their children’s activities and locations
(Dishion and McMahon, 1998), is a key dimension of parenting. Inadequate parental monitoring
contributes to antisocial behavior among youth (see reviews by Patterson and Stouthamer-Loeber,
1984, and Racz and McMahon, 2011). It is well established that parental monitoring exhibits norma-
tive decreases across the adolescent period as youth gain autonomy (Keijsers, Frijns, Branje, and Meeus,
2009; Smetana, Crean, and Daddis, 2002).
Parental monitoring is different than parental knowledge: parental monitoring describes efforts to
keep track of children’s activities and whereabouts, and parental knowledge reflects the accuracy of the
information (Stattin and Kerr, 2000). Research suggests that parental knowledge is more effectively
increased by youth disclosure, rather than by active monitoring efforts on the part of the parent (Kerr
and Stattin, 2000; Kerr, Stattin, and Burk, 2010; see also the review by Racz and McMahon, 2011).
Like parental monitoring, however, parental knowledge decreases normatively across adolescence
(Laird, Criss, Pettit, Bates, and Dodge, 2009) as parents spend less time with their children (Racz and
McMahon, 2011).
Parental knowledge is enhanced when the relationship is trusting and responsive (Darling, Cum-
sille, Caldwell, and Dowdy, 2006; Smetana, Metzger, Gettman, and Campione-Barr, 2006; Soenens,
Vansteenkiste, Luyckx, and Goossens, 2006). However, children also play a role in parental knowledge
by actively and strategically deciding what information to disclose and how and when to disclose it
(Tilton-Weaver, Kerr, Pakalniskeine, Tokic, Salihovic, and Stattin, 2010). In other words, both children
and parents play dynamic roles in managing information that is sought and shared (Laird, Pettit, Bates,
and Dodge, 2003).
From a legal perspective, courts have been split with regard to children’s right to informational
privacy from their parents (see Cullitan, 2011). Some courts have taken a balanced approach toward
children’s informational privacy, applying the standard used in adult informational privacy (Nguon v.
Wolf, 2007), whereas other courts have stopped short of extending full privacy rights to children, par-
ticularly from their parents. Some jurisdictions, for example, allow parents to monitor their children
through means of wiretapping without children’s consent (McCabe, 2015).
Parental Authority in Children’s Education

Parents have a great deal of authority over their children’s education. Because children spend much
of their time in school, a parent’s decision about their child’s schooling is consequential to the child’s
development as a productive citizen. Thus, it is no surprise that school attendance is legally mandated,
even though parents retain control over what, where, and how long their children must learn in school
(Wisconsin v. Yoder, 1972).
In the United States, children are required to partake in some form of schooling in every state,
and most state constitutions protect a child’s right to education (Cover, 2001). States regulate broad,
structural matters (e.g., age of mandatory attendance, teacher certification requirements, disciplinary
procedures, course content; Manna, 2010). However, parents have the right to manage how their chil-
dren are reared, which may include placing parameters around their children’s schooling. For example,
in the case of Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), the Supreme Court upheld a ruling allowing Amish parents
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to exempt their children from a law requiring that the adolescent children attend high school. The
Court held that the First Amendment protected the parents’ rights to exercise their religion, which,
in this case, included withdrawing their children from school. The Yoder exception to the state’s legal
mandate of school attendance is limited to high school–aged children.
Parents also have the right to oversee the content of their children’s education, including subject
matter (Meyer v. Nebraska, 1923). Course content may sometimes conflict with parents’ religious
beliefs. For example, Cornwell v. State Board of Education (1969) found that providing sex education
in a public school was necessary as a public health issue and not impermissible even if it conflicted
with parents’ religious beliefs, although parents in most states retain the right to opt their child out
of sexual education (Zinth, 2007). Conversely, prayer at a high school sporting event was found to
violate the separation of church and state (Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, 2000). Parents also
have a right to choose the setting of their children’s schooling to control the subject matter to which
children are exposed. Nearly a century ago, Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) found that parents may
choose to educate their children in private schools rather than public schools. The choice to teach
children at home (i.e., homeschooling) is also legal in all U.S. states (Karinen, 2016), although the legal
requirements for homeschooling differ by state, ranging from parent education minima to mandatory
quarterly progress reports (Home School Legal Defense Association, 2017).
Special education represents another set of legal considerations for parents. The Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) creates a regulatory structure for parents of children with disabili-
ties to be involved in forming individual educational plans (IEPs) for their children. Under IDEA, par-
ents are also permitted to appeal the content of IEPs if there is a disagreement with school authorities.
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) gives parents the right to review their
children’s educational records and request that records be amended if they are deemed to be inac-
curate. Additionally, FERPA ensures that schools must obtain a parent’s permission to release their
children’s records (20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99).
Schools have the authority to act in loco parentis (in the place of the parent), allowing schools to
assume an authority that parents would have in other contexts. This includes the use of disciplinary
practices, in accordance with state law, to maintain control over the educational environment, even if
parents themselves disapprove of or would not use such practices (see Goss v. Lopez, 1975; Ingraham v.
Wright, 1977).
Parental Authority in Children’s Medical Treatment

In the United States, patients must give informed consent to medical treatment (Union Pacific Rail-
way Company v. Botsford, 1891). In recent decades, the physician–patient relationship has increasingly
approximated a participatory partnership in which communication is emphasized, a key component
of which is informed consent (Kuther, 2003). However, with a few exceptions, minors are presumed
to lack the decisional capacity to provide informed consent for their own medical treatment. Instead,
a parent or guardian is required to provide informed consent on the child’s behalf. It is assumed that
parents will make medical decisions in the best interests of their child. For this reason, parents are
granted legal authority to make decisions about their children’s medical treatment.
Parental Consent to Treatment

Traditionally, minors are not considered capable of consenting to medical procedures; instead, parents
provide legal consent to treatment for their children (Kuther, 2003). Although there are some excep-
tions, parental consent to medical treatment is generally considered both necessary and sufficient
(Diekema, 2004). The presumption that parents provide consent to children’s medical treatment is
enshrined in the Constitution through the doctrine of family privacy, which protects families from
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government intrusion, including in matters related to health care. The logic behind this doctrine is
that parents uphold their children’s best interests, including in matters related to the children’s health.
However, it is often difficult to define or agree on what the “best interests” of the child are as they
relate to medical treatment, particularly in complex medical cases (Kuther, 2003).
The law views children and adolescents as qualitatively different from adults in their reasoning and
judgment (Scott, Bonnie, and Steinberg, 2016). Because they lack competence in legal terms, children
are not considered competent to make medical decisions, so the state has to identify a competent
decision-maker to act on the child’s behalf. As a result, parental consent is required in almost all situ-
ations for medical treatment, excluding emergency lifesaving measures.
Children’s Consent to Treatment

As noted, the general legal standard is that parents, not minors, are capable of consenting to medical
treatment. However, there are a few exceptions to this standard. First, emancipated minors are able
to make their own medical decisions. Just as emancipated minors are deemed capable of living inde-
pendently of their parents in other domains, they are deemed capable of making medical decisions for
themselves (Kuther, 2003). Second, the “mature minor” doctrine has increased children’s autonomy
over consent to their own medical treatment, even when they are not emancipated. In special circum-
stances, children aged 13 to 18 may be allowed to consent to their own medical treatment without
parental consent. This depends on the child demonstrating an understanding of the procedure and
its consequences, the perceived level of child’s maturity, the necessity of the treatment, and the risks
associated with forgoing treatment (Brody and Waldron, 2000). Most U.S. states have some version of
the “mature minor” rule to give discretion to medical providers in emergency or life-threatening situ-
ations, thereby allowing medical treatment providers to treat minors without parental consent when
parents cannot be located, or in cases of apparent abuse or neglect (see Hecker, 2010). A great deal of
discretion is granted to medical professionals in deciding whether a child is a “mature minor,” and
there are no firm legal guidelines to assess maturity in this regard (Kuther, 2003).
The legal justifications for allowing children to consent to treatment apply primarily in medical
emergencies—in such cases, minors can consent to treatment without their parents’ consent because
it is reasonable to assume that it is in the child’s interests to be treated. There are also important non-
emergency instances in which children may be allowed to seek medical care confidentially, without
parental knowledge or approval, when obtaining parental consent could act as a barrier deterring
children from seeking necessary treatment (Kuther, 2003). Many states allow youth aged 13 to 18
years old to consent to limited medical care for issues related to substance abuse, sexually transmitted
diseases, and pregnancy. For example, minors requiring treatment for substance abuse are able to do so
without parental consent in some states (Va. Code Ann. § 54.1–2969(E)). Issues of sexual autonomy
are especially relevant, as minors may not seek out necessary treatment for fear of punishment. Some
states allow for treatment of sexually transmitted diseases without parental consent. The U.S. Supreme
Court found that minors have a right to access to contraception (Carey v. Population Services Interna-
tional, 1977) and abortion (City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, Inc., 1983; Ohio v. Akron
Center for Reproductive Health, 1990), although this right is not absolute. For example, the Supreme
Court has also upheld state laws requiring parental notification or consent for abortion (Ayotte v.
Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, 2006; Hodgson v. Minnesota, 1990; Planned Parenthood of
Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 1992).
In general, children’s conception of illness follows a developmental progression (Bibace and Walsh,
1980) parallel to the development of cognitive capacities in other areas (Toplak, West, and Stanovich,
2014). Specifically, empirical research suggests that adolescents may be equipped to make their own
medical decisions. Children aged 15 and above do not appear to differ from adults in their ability to
competently provide informed consent for treatment (Ambuel and Rappaport, 1992; Forehand and
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Ciccone, 2004). In one study, children ages 11.2 years and above were competent to make decisions
regarding medical treatment, but children of 9.6 years and younger were not (Hein et al., 2015). These
researchers concluded that a dual-consent model (rather than a parental consent/child assent model) is
more appropriate for children ages 12 and older (Hein et al., 2015). Indeed, rapid advances in devel-
opmental neuroscience provide clear evidence that changes in structure and functioning of the brain
during adolescence are associated with changes in cognition that make adolescents capable of making
medical decisions (Steinberg, 2013). Although science provides some support for the notion that chil-
dren can make medical decisions, to date the law has only extended such rights in cases where there is
a compelling argument that excluding parents from the process would be in the child’s best interests.
State-Ordered Treatment
In situations where parents are failing to provide necessary medical attention to their children, the state
may intervene to authorize treatment (Diekema, 2004). In fact, children may be removed from the home
in cases of medical neglect (Varness, Allen, Carrel, and Fost, 2009). In life-threatening medical situations,
the “best interests” of the child are generally clear. However, this is harder to define in instances that are
not medical emergencies. Indeed, the “best interests” standard often relies in part on a parent’s values
and religious beliefs (Lederman, 1994). Importantly, the state may, in some situations, order treatment for
a minor even when such treatment is in violation of the parents’ religious beliefs (Diekema, 2004). In
general, however, the burden is on the state to establish that a child’s medical condition is potentially life
threatening and that treatment is necessary before a parent’s express wishes to the contrary can be super-
seded (see Diekema, 2004). In non–life-threatening situations, parents are given much greater discretion,
even when those decisions are in conflict with professional medical opinions.
An example of a scenario in which a parent’s wishes can be overruled is the refusal to consent to
a blood transfusion, due to belief that it violates a religious prohibition on ingesting blood. Medi-
cal professionals (American Academy of Pediatrics, 1997) and legal precedent (Sagy, Jotkowitz, and
Barski, 2017) agree that state intervention is justified and necessary if such a blood transfusion is
lifesaving.
A second example involves vaccination of children. Although there is no federal law requiring vac-
cination, all states require vaccination as a condition of attending public school. The required vaccines
and dosing schedules vary. In addition, all states allow exemptions for medical reasons, and most states
allow exemptions for personal or religious reasons (Diekema, 2014). Medical professionals are in near-
total agreement on the importance of vaccination, but parents in most states are free to exempt their
children from vaccination if they believe it is in their child’s best interests (Diekema, 2004). Recent
outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases have prompted tightening of the conditions for exemptions
in some states (Ca. SB-277, 2015).
Conflicting Medical Opinions

The “best interests” of the child from a medical standpoint can be difficult to define, particularly in
cases where the medical issues are complex, and the outcomes unknown, and the monetary costs sub-
stantial. Are parents obligated to bankrupt themselves on long-shot medical treatments for their chil-
dren? What happens when all parties do not agree on the best course of action, goals of treatment, or
choice of treatment providers to treat a child’s medical needs? Some states have addressed instances of
minors refusing medical treatment that parents wish for, but most states have not (Kuther, 2003). Pres-
ently, no legal guidelines exist for situations when parents disagree with one another (Shumaker and
Medoff, 2013), or when minors disagree with their parents (Kuther, 2003). This is especially problem-
atic given empirical evidence that parents and adolescents focus on different treatment-related factors
when making medical decisions (Lipstein, Dodds, Lovell, Denson, and Britto, 2016).
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Interactions With the Child Protective Services

The law generally grants parents broad discretion in the way that they exercise control over their
children. The law will intervene, however, when parents treat their children in a way that threatens a
child’s safety. Child protective services intervene to investigate and protect the best interests of chil-
dren in cases of suspected abuse or neglect.
Abuse and Neglect

Child abuse refers to maltreatment of a minor perpetrated by a parent, caregiver, or another person
in a custodial role that harms—or has the potential to harm—a child (Leeb, Paulozzi, Melanson,
Simon, and Arias, 2008). The four commonly delineated types of abuse are physical abuse (the use
of physical force against a child), sexual abuse (engaging in sexual acts with a child or causing a child
to participate in such acts), emotional abuse (harming a child’s emotional well-being), and neglect (a
failure to meet the physical and emotional needs of a child; see Fortson, Klevens, Merrick, Gilbert, and
Alexander, 2016).
Between 2013 and 2014, as many as one in seven children report having experienced child abuse
or neglect (Finkelhor, Turner, Shattuck, and Hamby, 2015), although this is likely an underestimation
(Fortson et al., 2016). Risk factors correlated with child abuse are complicated, interactive, and non-
causal. Correlates associated with increased risk include single parenthood, young parental age, the
presence of many dependent children, parental mental and behavioral health issues, parental history
of maltreatment, intimate partner violence, social isolation, family disorganization, parenting stress,
negative parent–child relationships, and concentrated neighborhood disadvantage (CDC, 2015). Rates
of victimization appear to be higher among low-SES families than among high-SES families (Sedlak
et al., 2010), and higher among African-American children than among European-American chil-
dren, due to structural factors such as poverty and differences in investigation (DHHS, 2015).
Child abuse and neglect have grave short- and long-term consequences. Children who are mal-
treated may experience immediate physical injury (e.g., bruises, broken bones) and psychological
problems (e.g., depression, anxiety; Leeb, Lewis, and Zolotor, 2011). In the long term, child abuse and
neglect are associated with delayed cognitive development; reproductive health problems; and higher
rates of sexually transmitted infections, cardiovascular disease, asthma, and diabetes (Gilbert et al.,
2015). Compared to children who have never been maltreated, children with a history of maltreat-
ment are less accurate in identifying emotional cues in others (Young and Widom, 2014). The results
of a meta-analysis suggest that children who have experienced abuse are twice as likely as those who
have not to report chronic depressive episodes in adulthood (Nanni, Uher, and Danese, 2012).
The Child Welfare System

Advancements in social science have made strides toward preventing child abuse and neglect (see
the review in Fortson et al., 2016). Prevention efforts require the coordination of social services, the
criminal justice system, and the public health sector (Richmond-Crum, Joyner, Fogerty, Ellis, and
Saul, 2013). The child welfare system leads the effort to protect children from maltreatment through
prevention and intervention. Thus, it is a system that regularly interacts with parents in matters that
have profound legal consequences.
The child welfare system has been in place for over a century. Originally developed to support
children whose parents are unable to care for them, the child welfare system has evolved to include
interventions on the behalf of children for whom it is suspected that adequate care is not being pro-
vided (McGowan, 2005). Suspicions of child maltreatment are reported to the child welfare system for
investigation. Such investigations can lead to several possible outcomes (McCarthy et al., 2003). The
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case may be dismissed, with no further contact required. Alternatively, the child welfare system may
intervene on the child’s behalf temporarily (i.e., until a potentially harmful situation is resolved) and
may provide services to the family to expedite the stabilization of the situation (e.g., therapy, parent-
ing classes, rehabilitation). In the most extreme situations, cases of child maltreatment are referred to
dependency court, after which services are offered both to the family and to the youth, who may be
removed from the abusive environment and placed in a group home, kinship or foster care, or another
type of alternative residence (Office of The Public Advocate, 2014). Child welfare cases are consid-
ered resolved when a long-term solution is found that is in the best interests of the child, be this reuni-
fication with the parents or the termination of parental rights (Office of The Public Advocate, 2014).
Interactions With the Juvenile and Criminal Justice Systems

When a child breaks the law, the state has the right to intervene under the doctrine of parens patriae.
The juvenile justice system was established in the early 20th century with the central objective of
rehabilitation, in contrast to the adult criminal justice system, in which the central objectives are
retribution and incapacitation. The juvenile justice system was intended to function paternalistically,
considering the best interests of the child, rather than adversarially, as in adult courts. There are several
other key functional and structural differences between the adult and juvenile court systems, includ-
ing some that apply directly to parents. The seminal court case In re Gault (1967) requires parental
involvement in each of several rights to which juveniles are entitled. For example, both the accused
youth and the youth’s parents are entitled to a notice of charges. The youth has the right to an attor-
ney, and an attorney will be provided for the youth if she or he or his or her parents cannot afford
one. Juveniles have the right to remain silent, but this right can be waived in the presence of parents.
No one can waive a juvenile’s constitutional rights to silence or to an attorney on the youth’s behalf.
Notably, although some states have encouraged that a parent be present during an interrogation, this is
not a legal requirement, and empirical evidence suggests that youth frequently submit to questioning
without a parent present (Cleary, 2014).
Children’s Legal Competence

Despite recent court cases where judges have suggested that 3- to 4-year-olds could represent themselves
(www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/can-a-3-year-old-represent-herself-in-immi-
gration-court-this-judge-thinks-so/2016/03/03/5be59a32-db25–11e5–925f-1d10062cc82d_story.
html?utm_term=.98b15207bd4a), the psychological literature is clear that children lack the necessary
understanding of their rights, responsibilities, and courtroom procedure to independently navigate the
justice system. For example, Grisso and colleagues found that youth aged 15 years and younger dem-
onstrated significantly less understanding of courtroom procedures and rights relative adults, to the
extent that they might be considered incompetent to stand trial (Grisso et al., 2003). Other empirical
evidence suggests that a majority of youthful offenders do not understand their rights (Goodwin-
DeFaria and Marinos, 2012) or the potential legal consequences of their actions (Miner-Romanoff,
2014; Redding and Fuller, 2004), even if they had previous experience with the juvenile justice system
via arrest or incarceration (Barnes and Wilson, 2008; Rajack-Talley, Talley, and Tewksbury, 2005). Such
research supports the position that parents should be involved in their children’s interactions with the
justice system to advocate for their rights and protect their interests.
Children’s Diminished Responsibility

Several Supreme Court decisions have recognized that fundamental differences between juvenile and
adult decision-making arguably make youth less legally responsible for their crimes (Roper v. Simmons,
477
2005; Graham v. Florida, 2010; Miller v. Alabama, 2012; Montgomery v. Louisiana, 2016). These decisions
have reflected advancements in our understanding of the neurological and psychosocial development
that takes place from childhood to young adulthood and their impact on decision-making in real-
world situations (see Steinberg, 2013, for a review).
Parents’ Involvement in the Juvenile Justice System

Children may be unable to independently manage navigating the juvenile justice system, due not
only to limited understanding of procedures and responsibilities, as noted earlier, but also due to
logistical constraints (e.g., transportation to court, understanding the court system, finances to
pay for court fees). For all of these reasons, parental involvement in youth interactions with
the juvenile justice system is important (Bradt, 2007; Henning, 2005). Children are more likely
to complete their probationary terms successfully and desist from crime when their parents are
involved in the legal process (Burke, Mulvey, Schubert, and Garbin, 2014; Cavanagh and Cauff-
man, 2017; Vidal and Woolard, 2016). As a result, an expectation of the juvenile justice system
is that parents participate in their children’s legal proceedings and represent their children’s best
interests (Rozzell, 2013).
Despite the expectation that parents partner with the juvenile justice system, not all parents are
able to do so. Life stressors (Davies and Davidson, 2001) and lack of legal knowledge (Cavanagh and
Cauffman, 2017), but not poor parenting, are associated with limited parental involvement in juvenile
court processes. Furthermore, tensions and inconsistencies plague the role that parents are expected
to play in their children’s legal proceedings (Burke et al., 2014; Henning, 2005). For example, parents
are generally expected to protect their children’s legal best interests (e.g., monitoring and enforcing
probation terms, providing practical assistance such as transportation and financial assistance; Davies
and Davidson, 2001). Parents may have to decide whether to overlook probation infractions or to
report such infractions to a child’s probation officer, leading to a subsequent arrest (Henning, 2005).
They may have to choose between encouraging a child’s honesty and encouraging a child to remain
silent. In some cases, parents may be positioned as adversaries to their children in the juvenile court
system. For example, parents may be complainants (e.g., when parents are victims of violence at the
hands of their children; see the review by Holt, 2016).
Matters are further complicated when considering parents’ role as decision-makers for their chil-
dren. As discussed, parents make important choices for their children in many legal contexts (e.g.,
decisions about medical care, education, and standard of living). However, parents do not have a legal
right to decide how their child will plead (In re Gault, 1967), a point that many parents misunderstand
(Henning, 2005). Nor are children required to waive their right to remain silent, even if a parent
wishes them to do so. Moreover, the right to an attorney means that the youth has the right to a
client-centered attorney who acts on the child’s behalf and not on the parents’ behalf. Children are not
obligated to follow their parents’ advice in legal matters (Marrus, 2003).
Parents themselves are not always well versed in legal issues, so their capacity to participate in
their children’s legal proceedings may vary significantly, based on their knowledge of the structure
and function of the court system and their understanding of their responsibilities as a parent of
a child who has been accused of breaking the law. Unfortunately, few resources are available to
educate parents about the juvenile justice process or their rights and duties (Davies and Davidson,
2001; Feierman, Keller, Glickman, and Stanton, 2011). Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the lack of
resources, nearly one in four parents displays a problematic misunderstanding of police interroga-
tion procedures (Woolard, Clearly, Harvell, and Chen, 2008). A study of mothers of first-time
juvenile offenders found that mothers scored, on average, only 66% correct on a test of basic legal
knowledge needed to navigate the juvenile justice system and of their rights within it (Cavanagh
and Cauffman, 2017).
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Parental Responsibility for Juvenile Crime

There is firm evidence that normative patterns of psychosocial development limit adolescents’ deci-
sion-making in ways that make them prone to risky, impulsive, peer-driven behavior (Duell, Icenogle,
and Steinberg, 2016). Such evidence has been used to argue that adolescents are, in these respects, less
culpable for antisocial behavior. (This is essentially the argument behind the formation of a separate
juvenile justice system to handle youthful offenders.) Yet the same evidence would seem also to argue
against the practice of holding parents directly accountable for the behavior of their children, unless
the parents specifically encouraged or enabled such behavior.
There is a variety of precedents for holding parents responsible for the behavior of their children.
Consequences can range from legally mandated parenting programs or mandatory family therapy to
restitution or criminal responsibility for a child’s behavior (Brank and Scott, 2014). Every U.S. state
has some form of parental responsibility or accountability law holding parents legally responsible for
crimes committed by their children. Parental responsibility laws are based on the premise that it is a
parent’s legal responsibility to ensure that their child obeys the law and that holding parents account-
able for their children’s lawbreaking will effectively reduce juvenile crime (Brank and Scott, 2014).
These laws have been criticized for being unrealistic and vague (Parsley, 1991), for lacking empirical
support (Brank and Scott, 2014), and for violating parents’ right to due process (Weinstein, 1991).
Based on our understanding of decision-making and the body of evidence that, in many cases, ado-
lescents lack the capacity to prevent themselves from acting impulsively, it seems even less appropriate
to blame parents for such impulsivity, unless the parent acted in a way that directly led to a specific
delinquent behavior (such as serving them alcohol or failing to prevent access to firearms, which
are both examples for which parents can be found criminally liable; e.g., Dimitris, 1997; Huston v.
Konieczny, 1990; La. Rev. Stat. Ann., 1997).
Parents may also be held civilly liable for their children’s lawbreaking to place the burden for
financial losses on parents (DiFonzo, 2001). For example, parents can be found civilly liable when
their children engage in sexting, particularly in instances where the parents own the device and the
messages were sent maliciously (Day, 2010). The civil consequences for parents can include fines; res-
titution to victims; payment of costs associated with the detention, treatment, and supervision of their
child; and participation in community service with their child (DiFonzo, 2001).
Emerging Challenges in Parenting and the Law

The explosion of rapid digital communication, including the transmission of text, voice, images, and
video using computers, tablets, and cell phones, has caused massive changes in nearly every aspect of
everyday life. The impact of technology on parenting, in particular, has been substantial (Barr, 2019),
and in many cases laws regarding digital communication have failed to anticipate the realities of child-
hood and adolescence in the modern digital age.
A survey of children ages 12 to 17 indicates that 95% have access to the Internet and 74% have
a mobile device with Internet access (Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2014). Adolescents
report using technology for more than 7.5 hours a day, on average (Rideout, Foehr, and Roberts,
2010), often using multiple forms of technology at the same time (Brown and Bobkowski, 2011). The
changing nature and increased use of mobile digital technologies creates legal challenges for children
and their parents. Instant access to the internet is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, children
can easily access education, news, and other social services and are able to exercise their freedom of
expression to a potentially vast audience. On the other hand, children ought to be protected from
dangers intensified by digital platforms, and they have privacy rights (Coppock and Gillett-Swan,
2016; Livingstone, 2016), which they may not fully understand the implications of waiving.
479
Risky Behavior Online

New technologies provide platforms on which children are exposed to, and can engage in, risks.
Mobile technologies and the Internet allow children instant access to people and content in ways that
their parents are less able to supervise and control (Erickson et al., 2016; Goldstein, 2015).
Cyberbullying, a form of online victimization, involves harming others via repeated hostile mes-
sages spread through digital media (Tokunaga, 2010). According to a meta-analysis, between 10%
and 40% of youth report having been cyberbullied themselves, and 50% know of someone who has
been cyberbullied (see Kowalski, Giumetti, Schroeder, and Lattanner, 2014). Less parental monitoring
of children’s online activity is associated with a greater likelihood of both perpetrating cyberbullying
(Ybarra and Mitchell, 2004) and being a victim of cyberbullying (Aoyama, Utsumi, and Hasegawa,
2012). Furthermore, youth who abstain from perpetrating cyberbullying cite the potential for parental
discipline as a reason not to engage in cyberbullying (Hinduja and Patchin, 2013).
It is natural that adolescents are using readily available technology to explore their burgeoning
sexuality. This includes “sexting,” or using digital devices to exchange messages and images of
a sexual nature (Cooper, Quayle, Jonsson, and Svedin, 2016). Studies of sexting behavior report
inconsistent findings regarding the prevalence of sexting among adolescents, with reported rates
ranging from 2.5% to 24% in nationally representative samples (Kosenko, Luurs, and Binder,
2017). Sending or receiving sexually explicit messages poses several risks—it is a privacy risk
because images could be intercepted or forwarded, leading to public embarrassment and emo-
tional trauma. Beyond that, however, the sending, receiving, or possession of such images runs
afoul of child pornography laws, placing those involved in legal jeopardy. Existing legal responses
to sexting are mainly composed of prosecuting minors under existing child pornography laws,
even when the sexts are sent and received consensually (Johnston, 2016). Should parents limit and
monitor their children’s use of media to avoid risky (and potentially unlawful) behavior such as
cyberbullying and sexting? Do children have an expectation of privacy in their digital commu-
nications? There are yet-unresolved legal questions, as children have both a right to privacy and
a right to free speech (Coppock and Gillett-Swan, 2016), despite lacking the full autonomy or
mature judgment of adulthood.
Parental Use of Media

The explosive growth in Internet and social media use is not limited to children. Most parents also use
social media (Duggan, Lenhart, Lampe, and Ellison, 2015). Research suggests that 98% of mothers and
89% of fathers use social media specifically to share pictures of their children (Bartholomew, Schoppe-
Sullivan, Glassman, Kamp Dush, and Sullivan, 2012) and that photos and videos of children are the
most frequent type of content that parents share (Marasli, Suhendan, Yilmazturk, and Cok, 2016). As
a result, some children have an online presence starting at conception, as their proud parents share
sonogram photos. What are the legal ramifications for children who grow up with a digital footprint
created for them by their parents?
Parents may not recognize the potential harms in sharing photos and anecdotes of their children’s
lives online, but doing so could result in revealing embarrassing information without the child’s
knowledge or consent. This information, once transmitted, could be subject to data mining, facial
recognition, identity theft, or resharing on predatory websites (Keith and Steinberg, 2017). Further-
more, by creating a narrative about the child outside the child’s control, parents could compromise
their children’s right to define their own public identity. Parents’ control over their children’s online
identity is especially concerning for the children of parent bloggers and vloggers, whose lives are pub-
licized and showcased in near real time, critiqued by strangers, and marketed for profit (Blum-Ross
and Livingstone, 2017).
480
Although the law recognizes children’s right to privacy online (Children’s Online Privacy Protec-
tion Act, 1998), this right is not unconditional and does little to protect children against their own
parents’ online sharing habits (Shmueli and Blecher-Prigat, 2011). There are legal challenges to come
in balancing a parent’s right to free expression and a child’s right to privacy (see discussion in Stein-
berg, 2016).
Parenting Trans Youth

The way that gender is conceptualized has changed dramatically over time. In the United States, gender-
variant and non-cisgender (hereinafter, trans) individuals have been depathologized (see DSM-5,
American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Issues related to trans individuals have entered the main-
stream conversation, particularly as they relate to the law and public policy (Steinmetz, 2014). As trans
youth become increasingly visible and accepted, tensions between parents, children, and the law arise.
Relative to parenting gay and lesbian children (a matter of sexual orientation), far less empirical
research has been devoted to parenting a trans child (a matter of gender identity; Field and Mattson,
2016). When a child comes out as trans, parents may experience a sense of loss, grief, or confusion
regarding their child’s new identity, name, pronoun, and changing role within the family, or may reject
the child altogether (see the review by Wahlig, 2015; Cooper, 1999). Although familial acceptance is
an important buffer against mental health issues among trans youth (Simons, Schrager, Clark, Belzer,
and Olson, 2013), not all parents are accepting when their children come out as trans, and some may
feel ashamed or culpable (McCann, Keogh, Doyle, and Coyne, 2017; Wallace and Russell, 2013).
Parental rejection is particularly problematic, given that trans youth are at increased risk for behavioral
and mental health problems, suicide, and victimization (United States Institute of Medicine, 2011, and
the review by McCann et al., 2017). Furthermore, without the support of their parents, trans minors
may lack access to appropriate medical treatments.
Trans youth may wish to transition physically so that their external presentation matches their
internal gender identity (e.g., hormone replacement therapy, voice therapy, surgeries to modify geni-
tals). In the past, gender transitions were not initiated until adulthood. Today, physical transition is
encouraged when it is clear that a child is suffering in their assigned gender (Brill, 2008). For example,
puberty suppression is a relatively new (and controversial) treatment for trans minors, who are being
referred to clinics in greater numbers and at younger ages (see the review in Mahfouda, Moore, Sia-
farikas, Zepf, and Lin, 2017). Gender transitions during childhood and adolescence are becoming
more common (Cohen-Kettenis, Delemarre-van de Waal, and Gooren, 2008), a shift that seems to
have favorable psychological outcomes for youth (Smith, van Goozen, Kuiper, and Cohen-Kettenis,
2005). However, the empirical literature has yet to establish consensus on the optimal age to initiate a
medical transition (Mahfouda et al., 2017).
The shift in timing of gender-affirming procedures from adulthood to childhood or adolescence
means that parents must be more directly involved in a child’s decision to transition medically. As
discussed earlier, minors are typically not considered capable to consent to medical treatment on their
own behalf. Trans youth require parental consent to begin medical transition treatments, unless the
youth is determined to be a “mature minor” (Carroll, 2009). However, even when parents are actively
involved in such decision-making, many have a limited understanding of the long-term costs and
benefits of various treatments, and there is little guidance available to them (Nahata, Chelvakumar,
and Leibowitz, 2017). Some parents of trans children describe both a sense of urgency to complete the
physical transition quickly (before or during puberty) and a fear that permanent medical interventions
may reflect an ephemeral “phase” in their child’s life (Field and Mattson, 2016). Lack of parental sup-
port for a medical transition is associated with increased suicide attempts among trans youth (Grant
et al., 2011; Mallon and DeCrescenzo, 2006) and may preclude youth from seeking a medical transi-
tion independently (Edwards-Leeper and Spack, 2012).
481
Unlike statutes relating to minors seeking access to treatment for sensitive matters such as substance
use, sexually transmitted diseases, and contraception, no such statute exists for trans youth seeking to
medically transition without their parents’ consent (Ikuta, 2016). Some legal scholars have argued for
a presumption in favor of allowing trans children to undergo medical treatment without parental
consent as a means of mitigating the systemic prejudice against trans youth (Carroll, 2009).
Legal cases regarding rights of trans youth to medical treatment are scant. In Smith v. Smith (2007),
the father of a trans child petitioned for custody in response to the child’s mother enrolling the child
in school under the child’s gender-preferred name. The father also objected to the mother’s intention
to allow the child to medically alter the child’s gender. Although the child expressed a desire both
to continue living with the mother and to undergo the medical treatment, the court gave custody to
the father (Smith v. Smith, 2007). Some have argued that this decision diverges from the typical “best
interests of the child” standard used in deciding custody cases (Ikuta, 2016).
Conclusions
Prevailing social norms regarding family structure, parental rights and duties, and the extent to which
various protections and freedoms apply to children have evolved considerably over the past several
generations. Legal precedent has gradually evolved as well, with “the best interests of the child”
becoming the standard by which the treatment of children is judged. Consequently, it is now well
established that constitutional protections apply to children. But with very few exceptions, minors
are not considered legally competent to protect themselves. Rather, the state limits children’s self-
determination in various ways and places the burden of responsibility for such decisions on children’s
parents. Parents are expected to act in their children’s best interests in a broad array of domains, rang-
ing from basic care and feeding, to educational decisions, to overseeing medical treatment, to navigat-
ing the juvenile justice system with their children, if necessary. When parents are fulfilling these duties,
the state gives them broad latitude. Parental decisions are subject to overrule by state authorities only
in cases where a parent is unavailable, has abused or neglected the child, or is subjecting the child to
harm (for example, by rejecting lifesaving medical care). Technological advances have introduced new
challenges for parents attempting to protect their children and foster their healthy development. The
ubiquity of social media, for example, has vastly expanded children’s communication horizons in ways
that make it difficult for parents to safeguard their children while also respecting their right to privacy.
The challenge of balancing children’s safety and right to privacy is particularly vexing because inap-
propriate sharing of intimate photos by minors can expose them not only to embarrassment but also
to charges of possession and distribution of child pornography.
Aside from affecting the challenges and expectations of parenting itself, changing social norms
and medical technologies have also affected how the legal system defines parenthood and how the
law resolves conflicts regarding which adults in a child’s life have parental rights and responsibilities.
There remains a general presumption that a biological mother and her spouse are, by default, assumed
to be a child’s rightful parents. When parents are not married, the legal system considers their dem-
onstrated involvement in fulfilling parental responsibilities and their emotional relationship with the
child—factors that are generally given more weight than biological relationship in the absence of a
marital relationship. As with issues of parental abuse or neglect, these custody and support decisions
have evolved to place the importance of the child’s best interests (including the stability of established
relationships with adult caregivers) above that of a biological relationship.
In some areas, the law is slow to catch up with relevant science, but by emphasizing the best inter-
ests of the child, there is flexibility to allow deviations from the usual policies of parental oversight.
There are a number of scenarios in which parental control of their children is legally limited, even in
the absence of abuse or neglect. In cases where parental consent for medical treatment might endanger
the child’s health, such consent requirements can (in some states) be waived. Similarly, minors who
482
function as adults can petition for emancipated minor status to formalize their independence. In some
cases, a child’s preference can be taken into consideration in custody decisions. Minors interacting
with the legal system have the right to have a parent present during questioning (in addition to the
right to an attorney), but are not obligated to abide by their parents’ recommended legal strategies
(e.g., regarding decisions to accept plea deals or waive the right to remain silent). Most U.S. juris-
dictions have yet to develop appropriate legal frameworks for responding to digital media shared by
children. Applying child pornography laws to children who impulsively send pictures of themselves is
decidedly not in the child’s best interests, so more suitable responses need to be formulated. Further-
more, there is little precedent for the appropriate handling of cases where adults overshare about their
children and violate children’s right to privacy in the process. Do minors have recourse when parents
share personal information and photos that cause later embarrassment? More generally, will the ever-
increasing focus on “the best interests” cause the threshold between “bad parenting” and “abuse/
neglect” to continue to shift? In the era of “helicopter parenting,” when children are rarely left unsu-
pervised, parents feel less comfortable sending children to play at the park by themselves compared
to previous generations (Bhosale, Duncan, Schofield, Page, and Cooper, 2015). Is such “free-range”
parenting neglectful or abusive? Are parents obligated to monitor their children at all times? Courts
have generally refrained from differentiating between degrees of “good enough” parenting, interven-
ing only in cases of extreme abuse or neglect. As social standards change, however, the distinction
between acceptable and unacceptable parenting may become more difficult to maintain.
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17
PARENTING AND
PUBLIC POLICY
James Garbarino, Amy Governale,
and Kathleen Kostelny
Introduction
Just as the ability to meet the needs of children is constrained by the social contexts in which par-
ents live, so are their general feelings and behaviors regarding childrearing. Public policies are one
feature of the social context that influences parenting, in spite of the vast symbolic distance between
the creation of public policy by state or federal legislatures and individual family life. Thus, policies
both reflect the cultural values of a society and shape family life in a multitude of ways. To explore
effectively the interactions between human psychology and social and cultural systems, this chapter
utilizes an ecological framework and assesses how current political systems influence parenting and
children’s outcomes, with an emphasis on the United States). In all, the public policies that in some
way affect parenting ability are too great to consider in any detail here. Instead, this chapter highlights
broad policy issues that enhance or undermine parenting ability through improving the immediate
social contexts of families (“microsystems”) and the more distal contexts that influence families but
in which children and their parents do not interact directly (“exosystems”). Within the microsys-
tems section we explore the lack of paid parental leave in the United States and the efficacy of home
visitation programs, and within the exosystems section we discuss welfare and antipoverty programs,
the role of neighborhoods on child development, and the economic and social costs of childrearing.
Multiple factors influence parent–child relationships and the social, behavioral, and psychological
outcomes that result from childrearing. This list includes parents’ own biological makeup, children’s
biological makeup and abilities, physical environments, economic conditions, cultural and traditional
practices, and social policies. Still, in ecological studies of human development, the influence of bio-
logical factors often is overlooked in favor of focusing on interactions between levels of the physical
environment. Epigenetic studies of gene–environment correlations and gene–environment interac-
tions have clearly demonstrated the bidirectional and dynamic relation between the “nature” of DNA
and the “nurture” of environmental conditions (Neiderhiser and Broderick, 2019). Quite simply,
genetic inheritance both shapes the physical makeup of children and influences the types of envi-
ronments to which children are exposed (e.g., when children with genetically based mental health
problems have access to developmentally appropriate psychiatric services). Furthermore, exposure to
specific social environments shapes the expressions of genes and physical makeup of the individual
(e.g., enrollment of high-risk children in “trauma-informed” schools). The social origins of biologi-
cal phenomena, including the effect of deprivation on brain growth and physical development, are
beginning to be better understood within the scientific community, but this knowledge is rarely
incorporated into policies (Shonkoff, 2010).
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James Garbarino et al.
Effective policies that promote parenting ability will therefore integrate epigenetic and ecological
risk factors to target multiple levels of children’s environment. For example, risks created by adversity
or institutional disadvantage operate at a cultural level and can be targeted through the removal of
broad sociocultural risks (i.e., reducing prenatal malnutrition through food stamp programs for many
low-income groups), whereas risks at the familial level require a much more targeted approach (e.g.,
enrollment in a “home health visiting program” as part of the standard social experience of par-
ents). Family-level policies could also work to promote protective factors already available to families
without removing the broad cultural risk factors (i.e., interventions that promote positive parenting
techniques and social networks for families at risk of child maltreatment).
These types of risk and resiliency models are popular in developmental psychology (Li-Grining
and Durlak, 2014), but few policies are designed to address multiple levels of risk across settings,
while simultaneously enhancing existing supports. Unfortunately, these risks rarely occur in isolation
and can compound each other. Research dealing with “accumulated risks” and adverse outcomes
demonstrates that factors such as poverty, parental substance use, and maltreatment are often highly
correlated. For the majority of children, negative outcomes start to appear when three or more risk
factors are present (Sameroff, Seifer, Barocas, Zax, and Greenspan, 1987; Vorrasi and Garbarino, 2000),
but can be offset by the introduction of opportunity factors (Dunst and Trivetter, 1992).
Thus, policies can promote relatively low-cost protective or opportunity factors for parents to
overcome seemingly impervious risk factors, including multigenerational cycles of poverty or abuse.
These policies provide material, emotional, and social encouragements compatible with parents’ needs
and capacities as they exist at a specific point in their parenting career. For each parent (as for individ-
ual children), the best fit must be worked out through experience, within some very broad guidelines
of basic human needs, and then renegotiated as development proceeds and situations change.
These windows of opportunity appear repeatedly across the life course, and what may be devel-
opmentally enhancing at one point may be risky or completely ineffectual at others. For example,
evaluations of various welfare and antipoverty programs have shown mixed results dependent on
children’s ages (Morris, Duncan, and Clark-Kauffman, 2005). For example, in an evaluation of 13
different welfare programs in the United States and Canada, results indicated small gains in academic
achievement in welfare families with 4- and 5-year-old children, whereas families with children over
10 years reported decreases in achievement (Morris et al., 2005). Additionally, programs that relocate
low-income families to alleviate the risk of dangerous or disorganized neighborhoods have shown
mixed results depending on children’s ages at the time of the move (Sanbonmatsu, Kling, Duncan, and
Brooks-Gunn, 2006). The largest and best-known example was the U.S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development’s Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing (MTO), a ten-year federal housing
program administered across five cities. In MTO, families were randomly selected to (1) receive hous-
ing vouchers that could only be used in neighborhoods with less than 10% poverty, (2) use traditional
rental assistance vouchers for Section 8 housing with no restrictions on neighborhood, or (3) a control
group that received no vouchers (Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn, 2003; Orr et al., 2003).
The extent to which the MTO program was an effective or a weak intervention is still debated
(Clampet-Lundquist and Massey, 2008; Ludwig et al., 2008), in part because MTO did not achieve
its goal of increasing the economic status of target families (Kling, Liebman, and Katz, 2007). How-
ever, children who moved before the age of 13 into a high-income neighborhood were more likely
to graduate college, live in better neighborhoods, have higher incomes as adults, and have reduced
rates of single parenthood (Chetty, Hendren, and Katz, 2016). Children who moved after the age of
13 had either no or worse social-economic outcomes compared to their peers who remained in the
lower-income neighborhood (Chetty et al., 2016). The authors of the MTO report speculated that
the disruption of social environments for adolescents, as well as the accumulated early developmental
effects of their neighborhood, contributed to these findings. Other studies of MTO program effec-
tiveness found differing effects, not based on age of participants, but by gender. In the experimental
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groups, adolescent girls in the Section 8 group had reduced rates of delinquency, whereas boys whose
families received any voucher reported increases in behavior problems and arrests (Kling et al., 2007;
Orr et al., 2003).
One important theme in current and future research examining the impact of public policy is to
improve understanding of the circumstances and conditions that constitute challenges and adversity
that are growth inducing in contrast to those that are debilitating. This is not to say that public policies
cannot be created that fit the needs of most children and families, but rather that the impact of policy
is much more complex than initially thought and that constant monitoring and evaluation of public
policies is necessary to determine who is benefitting and who is suffering as a result. A second impor-
tant theme is to recognize that the “interests” of parents and children are not necessarily synonymous.
The United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC; United Nations Commit-
tee on the Rights of the Child, 1989) is one example of a legal document that separates the interests
of children from the interests of their parents. The overall language and theme of the document are
unique in their emphasis on the state’s obligation to protect individual rights of the children and not
to protect children’s rights indirectly through the rights of the family (Cohen and Naimark, 1991).
The desire for parental autonomy that Americans dearly value (above the moral necessity to protect
the human rights of children) stands in sharp contrast to the goals set forth by the UNCRC. Con-
servative and parental rights groups fear that ratifying the UNCRC would lead to an encroachment
of U.S. parental rights by external or international agencies. This fear has put the United States in
the unique position of being only one of two countries (along with South Sudan) who have not
ratified the original document. The issue of parental autonomy and public policy is discussed later
in this chapter when exploring to what extent a parent or general society is responsible for ensuring
children’s well-being. Although the “human rights” of children (i.e., that parents and governments
must respect their child as individuals, with inalienable human rights, and not as physical property or
objects) were gradually accepted during the 20th century, new perspectives on the rights of children
and adolescents, including reform in juvenile justice sentencing and protection from digital exploita-
tion, create new challenges for the 21st century (Ruck, Keating, Saewyc, Earls, and Ben-Arieh, 2014).
New policies regarding and affecting parenting have been proposed, expanded, and toppled.
Despite changes to some areas of the political landscape and stability of others, an ecological perspec-
tive remains a useful way to interpret policies as effective instruments in improving the lives of parents
and their children. This perspective allows for a deeper understanding of the interaction between
large-scale national policies and their impact within individual families. We outline the ecological
perspective in greater detail next.
An Ecological Perspective on Parenting and Public Policy

Utilizing an ecological perspective when conceptualizing and evaluating public policies overcomes
challenges that have been summarized earlier, including understanding the additive effects of mul-
tiple risk factors and enhancing windows of opportunity, explaining why the effectiveness of policies
depends on individual child factors such as age and gender, and describing how policies developed
by international agencies may clash with local cultural beliefs regarding parental rights. An ecologi-
cal systems approach includes individual characteristics and four levels of environments of influence
arranged like Russian nesting dolls (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1986). At the center is a person’s mental
and physical makeup with immediate social environments directly influencing development. How-
ever, viewing parents only in terms of personal and interpersonal dynamics precludes an under-
standing of the many other avenues of influence. At the most distal level are macrosystems—broad
ideological, demographic, and historic patterns that shape culture or subcultures. In Bronfenbrenner’s
model, these distal factors affect the environments that parents and children directly experience—such
as home, schools, or neighborhoods—both through setting the terms of the institutional life of a
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society and by infusing the consciousness of individuals acting within those institutions. This message
provides a crucial guide to research on intervention and program evaluation, and reflects the operation
of systems of personality, family, community, economy, culture, and ideology. The starting point for
this analysis is the microsystem.
Microsystems
Microsystems are the immediate settings in which individuals develop (e.g., family, school, and
workplace). The shared experiences that occur in each setting provide a record of the microsystem
and offer some clues to its future. Microsystems evolve and develop much as do individuals them-
selves—from forces generated both within and without. The quality of a microsystem depends on
its ability to sustain and enhance development and to provide a context that is emotionally validat-
ing and developmentally challenging. The capacity to provide both support and opportunities for
learning, in turn, depends on its capacity to operate in what Vygotsky (1986) called “the zone of
proximal development,” the distance between what the child can accomplish alone—the level of
actual development—and what the child can do when helped—the level of potential development.
Children can handle (and need) more than infants. Adolescents can handle (and need) more than
children. We measure the social richness of an individual’s life by the availability of enduring, recipro-
cal, multifaceted relationships that emphasize playing, working, and loving. And we do that measur-
ing over time, because microsystems, like individuals, change over time. The “same” day care center
is very different in June from what it was in September for the “same” infants who, of course, are
themselves not the same as they were at the start. The setting of the family, as the firstborn child expe-
riences it, is different from that experienced by subsequent offspring. Naturally, children themselves
change and develop, as do others in the setting. It is also important to remember that our definition
speaks of the microsystem as a pattern experienced by the developing person. Individuals influence
their microsystems, and those microsystems influence them in turn.
Mesosystems
Mesosystems are connections between microsystems. These links themselves form a system. We mea-
sure richness of a mesosystem in the number and quality of its connections. One example is the con-
nection between an infant’s childcare group and her or his home. Do staff visit children at home?
Do the child’s parents know her or his friends at childcare? Do parents of children at the center
know each other? A second example concerns the connection between the hospital and the home
for chronically ill children. What role do the parents play in the hospital regime? Do the same health
care professionals who see the child in the hospital visit the home? Is the child the only one to par-
ticipate in both? If she or he is the only “linkage,” the mesosystem is weak, and that weakness may
place the child at risk. The strength of the mesosystem linking the setting in which an intervention is
implemented with the settings in which the individual spends the most significant time is crucial to
the long-term effectiveness of the intervention and to the maintenance of its effects (Whittaker and
Garbarino, 1983).
Exosystems
Exosystems are settings that have a bearing on the development of children but in which those
children do not play a direct role. For most children, key exosystems include the workplace of their
parents and those centers of power, such as school boards, church councils, and planning commissions,
that make decisions affecting children’s day-to-day life. The concept of a exosystem illustrates the
projective nature of the ecological perspective, for the same setting that is an exosystem for children
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may be a microsystem for the parent, and vice versa. Thus, one form of intervention may aim at trans-
forming exosystems into microsystems by initiating greater participation in important institutions for
isolated, disenfranchised, and powerless clients—for example, by getting parents to visit the family
childcare facility or by creating on-site childcare at the workplace.
In exosystem terms, both risk and opportunity come about in two ways. The first is when parents
or other significant adults in a child’s life are treated in a way that impoverishes (risk) or enhances
(opportunity) their behavior in the microsystems they share with children. Examples include elements
of the parents’ work experience that impoverish or enhance family life—such as unemployment, low
pay, long or inflexible hours, traveling, or stress, on the one hand, and an adequate income, flexible
scheduling, an understanding employer, or subsidies for childcare, on the other (Bronfenbrenner and
Crouter, 1983).
The second way risk and opportunity flow from the exosystem lies in the orientation and con-
tent of decisions made in those settings that affect the day-to-day experience of children and their
families. For example, when the state legislature suspends funding for early intervention programs, it
jeopardizes children’s development. When public officials expand prenatal health services or initiate
specialized childcare in high-risk communities, they increase developmental opportunities for chil-
dren and reduce risk.
Macrosystems
Micro-, meso- and exosystems are set within broad ideological, demographic, and institutional pat-
terns of a particular culture or subculture. These are the macrosystems that serve as the master “blue-
prints” for the ecology of human development. These blueprints reflect a people’s shared assumptions
about how things should be done, as well as the institutions that represent those assumptions. Macro-
systems are ideology incarnate. Thus, we contrast societal blueprints that rest on fundamental institu-
tional expressions, such as a “collective versus individual orientation,” with the physical environments
that are set up in reflection of these values and customs (i.e., environments that encourage broad or
narrow levels of socialization across groups). Religion provides a classic example of the macrosystem
concept, because it involves both a definition of the world and a set of institutions reflecting that
definition—both a theology and a set of roles, rules, buildings, and programs.
Both culture and national policies exist within a child’s macrosystem. As does policy, culture dic-
tates the norms around acceptable parenting practices. Culture, however, extends further than policies
in that it determines what behaviors parents will reinforce within their child and which they discour-
age. Cross-cultural studies have demonstrated significant between-culture variations in the types of
behaviors emphasized by parents. For example, Japanese parents report valuing emotional regulation
and interdependence in their toddlers, whereas European-American parents value independence and
self-actualization (Bornstein, 2012). Additionally, the parenting techniques favored by caregivers have
been found to differ across cultural groups with the same political entity. For example, in the United
States, Puerto Rican parents use direct commands and physical restrictions to enforce behavior with
their children, whereas European-American parents tend to use more suggestive statements (Har-
wood, Schoelmerich, Schulze, and Gonzalez, 1999). Despite the variation across groups, however,
similarities between cultures have been reported. For example, it seems that no matter what the cul-
ture, parents alter their style of communication when speaking to their children to reflect a simpler
comprehension and more melodic style.
It is important to note no one culture appears to be dominant in all domains of caregiving. Born-
stein and colleagues (2012) conducted a cross-national analysis of mother–child interactions from
five countries on multiple parenting domains (i.e., nurturance, physical, social, didactic, material, and
language) and related child outcomes (physical, social, exploration, vocalization, and distress com-
munication). They found that although children showed advantages in the respective domain that
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their culture practiced (i.e., children from highly communicative mothers showed greatest vocabulary
growth), no one culture outperformed the others in every single domain. Of course, our ecologi-
cal perspective would caution against generalizing universally from a sample of only five countries
without a clear rationale that the countries included actually represented the range of countries in
the world.
Thus, despite the comprehensiveness and variety in recruited cultures, the authors note some
weaknesses of the study. Namely, that all the participants in their samples resembled each other in
terms of modernity, politics, urbanity, ecology, and economy and living standards. This weakness is
common in many cross-national studies and policy analyses, which rely heavily on self-report data,
cannot randomly assign participants to different cultures, and overly focus on mothers’ interaction
with children rather than fathers or other types of caregivers. Additionally, separating the unique
impacts of policy and culture, and how these interact, has yet to be disentangled. In best-case sce-
narios, understanding cultural implications of parenting can be used to design policy programs
and interventions to increase child well-being. For example, UNICEF’s analysis of 28 low- and
middle-income countries found only 25% of mothers reported exclusively breastfeeding with their
children under the age of 6 months (Britto and Ulkuer, 2012). Further, they found low rates of
books within homes and low rates of reading to children. Due to high rates of infant mortality in
these countries, the documented benefits of breastfeeding, and the high rates of illiteracy, the authors
recommend implementing national policies aimed at increasing breastfeeding awareness and home
literacy programs.
An ecological perspective has much to contribute to the process of formulating, evaluating, and
understanding social policy. It gives us a kind of social map for navigating a path through the com-
plexities of programming. It helps us see the relations—potential and actual—among programs: how,
for example, some programs are complementary, whereas others may be competitive. It aids us in
seeing the full range of alternative conceptualizations of problems affecting children and points us in
the direction of multiple strategies for intervention. It provides a framework to use in thinking about
what is happening and what to do when faced with developmental problems and social pathologies
that afflict children. It does so by asking us always to consider the micro-, meso-, exo-, and macrosys-
tem dimensions of developmental phenomena and interventions. It constantly suggests the possibility
that context shapes causal relations. It always tells us “it depends” and stimulates an attempt to find
out “on what.”
One way policies intervene in the family environment is by directly introducing new microsystems
for children and parents. Often, risks to parenting come from a lack of social support and the absence
of normal, expectable experiences. For example, family risk models demonstrate sudden or prolonged
economic strain as a result of job loss, which increases levels of parental stress. This emotional strain,
in combination with a new lack of resources for educational or stimulating materials for children,
can result in worse academic and behavioral outcomes (Conger, Ge, Elder, Lorenz, and Simons, 1994;
Gutman, McLoyd, and Tokoyawa, 2005; Lempers, Clark-Lempers, and Simons, 1989). As such, public
policies in the United States that are related to child well-being are most often directed to the most
vulnerable groups of children, such as creating or sustaining educational programs aimed at low-
income children (Yoshikawa and Hsueh, 2001).
Other programs, such as welfare reform, still target low-income families but are not directly aimed
at enhancing the lives of children. Instead, these policies alleviate parental stress and financial burden
by providing supplementary income or job training (Coley, Leventhal, Lynch, and Kull, 2013), which
theoretically enhances parenting strategies. These programs exist within children’s exosystems. Exo-
systems directly affect parents and the resources they have to support their children, such as flexible
workplace hours, higher wages, or subsidies for childcare. Thus, children may not directly benefit
from such programs (or may not ever experience welfare offices), but the result is enhanced develop-
mental opportunities.
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As Bronfenbrenner put it in his 1986 testimony before Congress, “The family is the most power-
ful, the most humane, and, by far, the most economical system known for building competence and
character.” The ecological systems perspective allows researchers to critically examine how social
policies affect the micro-, meso-, and exosystems of children, and the possible interventions that are
needed to address issues of the day. The remainder of this chapter focuses on general topics broken
into direct and indirect influences, how well public policies address the needs of the family, and how
research on this area can improve current policies.
Policies Aimed at Improving Children’s Microsystems

Certain policies, such as policies related to public education and child health care, aim to enhance
physical, social, and cognitive development without directly interfering with parenting practices.
Other policies do open the windows of opportunity for families and parents by positively affect-
ing the home environment and modeling sensitive and positive parenting techniques. Policies that
directly improve children’s microsystems through assistance to the home environment and their par-
ents provide economic relief and enhance social support and linkages to the community. As outlined
next with regard to parental leave laws and home visitation programs, policies may be directed at the
majority of parents in the United States or target underserved, low-income, or teenage parents.
Paid Maternity and Paternity Leave

The previous edition of this chapter focused on the impact of family planning policies (Garbarino,
Vorrasi, and Kostelny, 2002); here we focus on what happens in the prenatal and immediate postpar-
tum social environment. Compared to other wealthy countries, and despite its global leadership and
economic stability, the United States has a very high infant mortality rate, at 6.1 deaths per 1,000
births (MacDorman, Matthews, Mohangoo, and Zeitlin, 2014). Why does the United States have a
higher rate of infant death during the first year of life than places like Japan, Finland, and Canada? Or,
put another way, what are the countries with the lowest infant mortality rates doing right? One distin-
guishing factor may be the failure of the United States to provide paid parental leave to new parents.
Out of the 188 countries examined by Heymann and McNeil (2013), the United States remained the
only high-income country, and only one of eight worldwide, that does not mandate paid parental leave
when a new child is introduced to a family.
The value of paid parental leave is clear. The first three to six months after birth are a time when
parents should focus on forming crucial attachments with newborns. Paid time off after childbirth
is related to crucial indices of health and well-being of infants and caregivers, including lower rates
of postpartum depression and illness, increased initiation and length of breastfeeding, more engaged
parenting from mothers and fathers, and better health and lower mortality and morbidity for infants
(Gault, Hartmann, Hegewisch, Milli, and Reichlin, 2014). Because improving parental sensitivity and
support is predictive of later socioemotional development and healthy attachments, parental leave
policy should incentivize, rather than discourage, time off (Bakermans-Kranenburg, van IJzendoorn,
and Juffer, 2003). In its current form, parental leave in the United States may only be a viable option
for more affluent families. Despite the allowed 12 weeks of leave, eligible low-income families will
have more pressure to return to work after bringing a new child into their home to resume receiving
a steady income.
That is not to say the United States is not slowly improving, despite the stalling of more progres-
sive policies regarding maternity and paternity leave by conservative and reactionary political forces.
The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (PDA) was the first legislation to protect applicants and
employees from discrimination due to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions. The PDA
required that employers provide the same affordances to pregnant women and new mothers as they
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would provide to other employees with medical conditions or temporary disability (Gault et al.,
2014). The PDA evolved into the current federal policy, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA),
passed in 1993 under President Bill Clinton, which guarantees 12 weeks (which can be taken simulta-
neously or cumulatively) of unpaid leave with continued health benefits for multiple caregiving pur-
poses. However, due to restrictions (an employee must have worked for the company for 12 months
for a total of 1,250 hours a year, and the employer must have over 50 employees), only about 40% of
Americans in the private sector meet the eligibility requirements for the FMLA, and employees who
do take leave are more likely to be highly educated or married (Han, Ruhm, and Waldfogel, 2009).
Without comprehensive paid leave, the most vulnerable families are at risk for early return to the
workforce during the crucial first months of an infant’s life. This period is a time that is vital for early
attachment and the health of mother and child. Parental leave varies from state to state, but the major-
ity of workers who do not qualify for FMLA protections are those who could benefit most—single
parents or those who live in poverty—whereas those who can afford to take unpaid leave are covered
(Han et al., 2009). What can be done to help parents who are already less likely to access resources
related to the health and development of their children? Supportive home visiting can help.
Home Visitation Programs

Beyond comprehensive paid parental leave reform, other programs target infant health and attach-
ments for low-income, unmarried, or otherwise “at-risk” mothers. Home visitation programs are one
of the most commonly used models to boost the childcare capabilities for families who typically face
barriers to services, such as prenatal doctor visits or parenting classes (Astuto and Allen, 2009; Gomby,
2005). In home visitation programs, nurses, paraprofessionals, or volunteers visit expectant or new
mothers on a consistent schedule to teach a combination of parental education about child health and
care, enhance women’s informal support, and promote linkages to community services. Theoretically,
home visitations serve to enhance mothers’ connections to social systems and increase maternal self-
efficacy and parent–child relationships in order to provide more effective parenting (Bilukha et al.,
2005). Decades of research have supported the effectiveness of home visitation programs, which dem-
onstrate better prenatal involvement, significantly predicting higher child engagement up to 3 years
after birth (Cabrera, Fagan, and Farrie, 2008).
The Home Visiting Evidence of Effectiveness (HomVEE) conducted through the Office of Plan-
ning, Research, and Evaluation Administration for Children and Families identified 20 variations of
models of home visitation programs with sufficient evidence to be called evidence based (Sama-Miller
et al., 2016). These models have similar components in that they all have a minimum number of
meeting requirements, national program offices that provide training and support to local programs,
specified content and activities for home visits, and set minimal education and training requirements
for staff (Sama-Miller et al., 2016).
Some of the strongest evidence for prenatal and postpartum nurse home visitation comes from
Olds’ (2002) evaluations of the Nurse-Family Partnership. In his randomized sample of unwed, teen-
ager, or low-income mothers, pregnant women were randomly assigned to one of the following
conditions: (1) transportation to doctor’s appointments, (2) transportation and nurse visitations during
pregnancy only, (3) transportation and prenatal and postnatal nurse visitations, or (4) served as a con-
trol. Results of the evaluation indicated multiple benefits of the treatment conditions when the child
was 12 months. Women visited by nurses were more aware of community services; attended child-
birth classes more frequently; made more extensive use of nutritional supplementation programs; had
better personal health; reported that their babies’ fathers became more interested in their pregnancy;
were accompanied to the hospital by a support person during labor more frequently; and reported
talking more frequently to family members, friends, and service providers about their pregnancies and
personal problems (Olds, 2002).
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The positive impact of the prenatal training had even longer effects, such that by 24 months nurse-
visited mothers had significantly lower likelihood of abusing or neglecting their children compared
to control groups (Olds, Henderson, Chamberlin, and Tatelbaum, 1986). The intervention group
overcame the accumulation of risk factors, such that even for the most vulnerable at-risk mothers, the
incidence of abuse or neglect remained low. Furthermore, mothers reported their infants had more
positive moods and reported better parenting techniques, including less punishment or restriction of
their children. Some of these impacts were evident even at the 15-year follow-up. Nurse-visited chil-
dren had fewer instances of running away, fewer arrests, fewer convictions and violations of probation,
fewer lifetime sex partners, and lower levels of smoking and substance use (Olds et al., 1998).
Longitudinal reviews of home visitation still show positive impact. For example, a randomized
birth cohort in Durham, North Carolina, received four- to seven-session programs to assess family
needs and connect parents with community resources to improve infant health and well-being. After
controlling for demographic factors (i.e., birth risk, Medicaid status, ethnicity, and single parenthood),
families assigned to the intervention had 50% less emergency medical care use across the first 12
months of life compared to control families (Dodge, Goodman, Murphy, O’Donnell, and Sato, 2013).
Furthermore, intervention-group mothers reported more community connections, more positive par-
enting behaviors, participation in higher-quality out-of-home childcare, and lower rates of anxiety
than control mothers (Dodge et al., 2014).
A second evaluation of a home visitation program, the “My Baby and Me” intervention for high-
risk mothers, demonstrated more maternal warmth at 24 months, better responsiveness, and more
verbal scaffolding at 30 months compared to parents who only received phone calls from a support
coach, printed materials, and referrals to community resources (Guttentag et al., 2014). Finally, a sys-
tematic review of the impact of early childhood home visitations on violence reduction concluded
strong empirical evidence exists that children who are part of home visitation programs are less likely
to be abused or neglected, but found more research is needed to determine whether home visitation
programs reduce violence perpetrated by children themselves and if they reduce intimate partner vio-
lence or violence directed at others beyond children in programs (Bilukha et al., 2005).
Although differences and challenges exist in the execution, home visitation programs create and
maintain networks of social supports across different developmental stages and outcomes for young
children and their families (Astuto and Allen, 2009). In 2008, Congress approved $10 million for a
home visiting program called “Evidence Based Home Visiting” (EBHV). The Affordable Care Act
included the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program (MIECHV) to fund
state, territory, and tribal entities to develop home visitation programs to “improve maternal and child
health, prevent child abuse and neglect, encourage positive parenting, and promote child development
and school readiness” (Health Resources and Services Administration, 2017, p. 1). During its first year,
the MIECHV served 3% of eligible children receiving home visits, with additional funding secured
every year (Pew Research Center, 2011; Rodrigue and Reeves, 2015). Since 2010, the number of chil-
dren and parents served by MIECHV programs quadrupled, and the number of home visits provided
has increased fivefold, totaling more than 2.3 million home visits.
One major benefit of home visitation policies is to offset later financial costs due to hospitaliza-
tions, foster care placement, and reductions in later welfare dependence. Olds reported that even the
most expensive home visitation programs more than paid for themselves by the time children reached
4 years of age (Olds, Henderson, Phelps, Kitzman, and Hanks, 1993). With this clear evidence of both
government savings and program benefit to children, why is there not a greater push to enroll all eli-
gible families in these programs? It is the pervasive individualistic cultural view that caregivers should
be entirely responsible for rearing their own children without taxpayer support.
At the heart of the debate over public responsibility for children is the matter of how and when
families are private and how and when they are public (Garbarino, 1996). The recurring debate
around who should bear the ultimate responsibility for children’s well-being became especially true as
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U.S. ideology embraced individualism and prioritized the rights and needs of individual family mem-
bers (Chase-Lansdale and Vinovskis, 1995). Benson, Leffert, Scales, and Blyth (2012) identified three
conditions—all of which are influenced by public policy—that contribute to the privatization and
isolation of the U.S. family. The first condition pertains to changes in the workforce that undermine
the availability of neighborhood adults during the workday. The second includes patterns of social
mobility that cause parents and families to enter communities without known or easily accessible sup-
port systems. The third and final condition is the national tendency toward civic disengagement. That
is, adults are withdrawing from traditional affiliations and memberships that once provided strong
networks of support. In the battle between collectivism and individualism, individualism is winning,
and economic policies reflect this trend.
In summary, according to rigorous scientific evaluation, including assessments that used the gold
standard of random assignment, policies that intervene early in children’s microsystems are the most
effective at improving outcomes. Policies that begin during prenatal development (as in the home
visitation programs) and immediately after birth (as in paid parental leave legislation) improve the
quality of parenting, leading to long-term benefits, and appear to be a financially responsible invest-
ment of federal and local money.
Policies That Affect Children’s Exosystems

Compared to policies that affect child directly, other programs affect children’s social safety nets
through improving economic conditions of their parents or extended family. Policies such as Medic-
aid or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) offset medical and food costs for families,
thereby freeing up resources for childrearing. Other policies may have an even broader and more
indirect scope, such as programs aimed at reducing community violence and levels of environmental
deprivation. Even broader are the financial institutions and criminal justice systems that favor and
maintain the wealth of the most privileged families while more harshly punishing the underserved.
Thus, the remaining sections will evaluate how socioeconomic conditions at a variety of environmen-
tal levels affect parenting ability and later child outcomes.
Welfare and Antipoverty Programs

Economic policies play an important role in shaping the parental landscape. Across ethnicities, pov-
erty has negative causal influences on mental, emotional, and behavioral development of children
and policies that directly reduce multiple components of poverty during early childhood have the
greatest impacts (Yoshikawa, Aber, and Beardslee, 2012). Early childhood poverty is strongly predic-
tive of adulthood achievement in terms of completed schooling, earnings, work hours, and likelihood
of receiving food stamps by age 25 (Duncan, Ziol-Guest, and Kalil, 2010). Simultaneous increases in
cognitive skills in children are also found as parental income increases (Gershoff, Aber, Raver, and Len-
non, 2007). Research has shown that every $1,000 increase in household income raises children’s math
and reading test scores by a fraction of a standard deviation of achievement (Dahl and Lochner, 2012;
Duncan et al., 2010). Similar studies of increased parental income show higher levels of later income
by children, although true upward mobility may depend on community factors, such as residential
segregation and better institutional supports (Chetty, Hendren, Kline, and Saez, 2014).
A primary goal of the welfare reform initiative of 1996 was to move parents “from welfare to work”
with the expectation that the economic productivity and ensuing increases in parental self-efficacy,
work ethic, and self-esteem would translate into better prospects for their children. This theorizing
suggests an indirect effect of economic policy—in this case, welfare reform—on child outcomes by
way of a direct effect on parental well-being. That is, any positive effect of welfare reform on children
is possible if and only if parents are first affected positively by welfare reform. Unfortunately, some
500
initial evidence suggests that the expected positive effects on parents may not have been as strong as
anticipated, especially because many jobs parents are able to take are still low paying, increase parental
stress, have little flexibility in terms of hours or time off, and few to no health benefits (Heinrich, 2014;
Heymann and Earle, 1999). Furthermore, welfare programs, despite providing relief to low-income
parents, do not ensure children are enrolled in high-quality preschool programs and possibly disrupt
quality time parents spend supervising or strengthening relationships with their children.
Citing strict work requirements of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and
limitations of cash assistance, many low-income parents also rely on other welfare programs to sup-
port their families. Following the Great Recession, by 2011, a stronger economy and increased work
supports led many U.S. low-income families to utilize other safety-net social programs, such as the
Earned Income Tax Credits (EITC) and childcare subsidies (Gassman-Pines and Hill, 2013; Moffitt,
2015). EITC provide refundable tax credits for low- and moderate-income working people, includ-
ing those whose income is below the threshold to file income taxes. During its creation, President
Clinton stated the ultimate goal of the EITC (when used in combination with food stamps) was to
lift parents who work 40 hours a week at minimum wage above the poverty line (Hotz, Mullin, and
Scholz, 2003). Initial evidence showed the EITC increases economic circumstances, increases partici-
pation in the labor force, and raises families out of poverty (Gassman-Pines and Hill, 2013), but the
benefits were often ambiguous in terms of the psychological well-being and functioning of family
members (Hotz et al., 2003). Specifically, critics of the program worry that the EITC discourages mar-
riage between biological parents and encourages low-income parents to have more children to receive
greater benefits, although the linkages among welfare participation, reduced likelihood of marriage,
and increased fertility have yet to be proven (Moffitt, 2015).
Childcare subsidies serve the dual purpose of directly relieving the financial burden of parents and
promoting well-being among children. Access to high-quality preschool and childcare programs is
linked to better child outcomes in the immediate and long-term future (NICHD Early Child Care
Research Network, 2004; Sroufe, Egeland, Carlson, and Collins, 2005, Vandell et al., 2010). Preschool
attendance has been associated with improved parenting skills and educational attainments of parents
(Sabol and Chase-Lansdale, 2015). Thus, the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, which covers
up to 35% of reported childcare expenses, can combat early disadvantages for low-income children
and help parents. High-quality preschools enhance language competencies and preacademic skills
(Brooks-Gunn, 2003; Camilli, Vargas, Ryan, and Barnett, 2010; Lee, Zhai, Brooks-Gunn, Han, and
Waldfogel, 2014; Love et al., 2005), although an increase in problem behaviors is sometimes found,
especially for children in low-quality care or those who spend more time in childcare before 24
months (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2003). Despite proven benefits in promoting
school readiness for low- and middle-income students (Duncan and Magnuson, 2013; Heckman and
Masterov, 2007; Weiland and Yoshikawa, 2013; Yoshikawa et al., 2013), 59% of 4-year-old children
are not enrolled in publicly funded preschool programs (U.S. Department of Education, 2015). In
summary, this research illustrates that it is not income supplements that improve parenting skills, but
instead resources and training help parents advance their careers and provide for their children.
Similar conclusions can also be drawn from studies regarding maternal employment. With a
greater percentage of women joining the workforce, concerns regarding the impact of timing and
maternal employment during early infancy have created much debate. Despite early findings of risk,
later research found little to no association with school readiness or social skills (Goldberg, Prause,
Lucas-Thompson, and Himsel, 2008; Lombardi and Coley, 2014). However, on further examination,
maternal employment may hold different effects for low-and high-income families and depend on
whether parents utilize childcare, preschool, or nonmaternal adult care for their children while they
are at work. That is, maternal employment has been associated with increased cognitive skills for low-
income parents (who now have increased resources to invest in their children) and lower cognitive
skills for upper-income families (Brooks-Gunn, Han, and Waldfogel, 2002).
501
Beyond total hours worked, the schedule of maternal parents may be a factor in children’s achieve-
ment. Parents working nonstandard hours with variable-shift schedules are associated with children’s
worse school performance and higher behavior problems, whereas nonstandard hours on a fixed-
shift schedule are associated with worse parent report of school performance over time (Hsueh and
Yoshikawa, 2007). Parents who work during the evening not only miss opportunities to supervise
and support homework but also have fewer opportunities to correct problem behavior. Children
whose mothers were employed part-time between 9 and 24 months had slightly higher conduct
problems as reported by teachers compared to children whose mothers worked prior or did not work
at all. In a representative sample of children born in 2001, part-time employment prior to 9 months
predicted fewer prosocial behaviors in kindergarten, whereas part-time employment between 9 and
24 months predicted more conduct problems (Lombardi and Coley, 2014). In a diary study of low-
income mothers of preschoolers, working nighttime hours related to more negative moods, more
negative mother–child interactions, and less positive child behaviors, whereas weekend work was not
(Gassman-Pines, 2011). Additionally, variability in workload affected “spillover effects”—parents who
worked lower-than-average and higher-than average workload days reported more negative and tired
moods and increased harsh mother–child interactions (Gassman-Pines, 2013).
The New Hope program, enacted in Milwaukee during the mid-1990s, is one example of a
successful employment-training program for low-income parents and youth. The multiyear pro-
gram provided earning supplements, job search assistance, and childcare and health care subsidies for
adults who worked full time. Within a sample of single mothers, New Hope increased income and
wage growth, decreased symptoms of depression, and led to higher rates of marriage five years later
(Gassman-Pines and Yoshikawa, 2006). Parents also reported that their adolescents had higher levels of
reading performance and improved educational expectations (Epps, Huston, and Bobbit, 2013; Pur-
tell and McLoyd, 2013). New Hope participants increased their involvement in organized activities
as children moved from middle childhood until it reached its peak during early adolescence (Epps
et al., 2013), which is associated with higher school achievement in low-income families (Crosnoe,
Smith, and Leventhal, 2015). Finally, the New Hope program seemed to have long-term effects, such
that adolescent male participants reported increased job preparations and more overall employment,
improved future orientation, and more positive feelings about work five years after the program ended
(McLoyd, Kaplan, Purtell, and Huston, 2011).
The Role of Neighborhoods

The transition into adolescence may be a critical period for policies that affect broad sociocultural
factors (i.e., overall neighborhood poverty) and have a significant impact. Nationally representative
surveys reveal close to one-half of male adolescents and one-third of females report having witnessed
at least one act of violence, with prevalence increasing for African-American and Latin American
adolescents (Kilpatrick, Saunders, and Smith, 2003). These data bear a greater resemblance to the
experience of children in the war zones around the world than they do to what we expect for our
own children living in “peace” (Garbarino, Kostelny, and Dubrow, 1991a, 1991b). However, outright
community violence is not the whole, or even the primary, issue facing parents and with which public
policy must contend. More broadly, there is the problem of geographic concentration of risk factors
and the challenges these risk factors present to parents. Antipoverty programs also vary in effect by
neighborhood poverty levels, such that programs have larger impact in areas with higher levels of
concentrated poverty compared to children who live in neighborhoods with lower levels of poverty
(Snell et al., 2013).
What is more, the deterioration of the physical environment contributes to the problem of com-
munity crime and violence. The symbolic value of a deteriorating physical community is that it
sends negative signals to residents, particularly to marginal members who may be prone to antisocial
502
behaviors. The cycle is recognized: graffiti proliferates, trash accumulates, painting and other needed
maintenance delayed or foregone, vacant housing units increase, illicit drug sales and use escalate, and
violence surges. Those responsible for the physical quality and security of the community’s housing
can play an important role in preventing or exacerbating this cycle. Poverty is also associated with liv-
ing in poor conditions, which in turn is related to worse developmental outcomes over time. Neigh-
borhood characteristics related to poverty, such as poor-quality housing and neighborhood disorder,
are associated with depressive and somatic symptoms in girls and depressive symptoms in boys (Elliott,
Leventhal, Shuey, Lynch, and Coley, 2016). Children in these environments also have lower-than-
average reading and math skills, and this relation compounds over time such that neighborhood effects
become more pronounced during adolescence (Coley et al., 2013). Environmental toxins within the
home, such as lead paint or safety hazards, and pests, such as mice or cockroaches, disrupt family func-
tioning as well as cause serious health problems.
We can derive the role of neighborhood factors in parenting from an understanding of the link
between low income and child maltreatment (Molnar et al., 2016). National data reveal that the
nation’s poorest, most socially isolated, and most economically frustrated parents are most likely to
use family violence as a coping strategy (Sedlak et al., 2010). From this observation flows a twofold
conception of risk as applied to neighborhoods and families (Garbarino and Crouter, 1978). The first
refers to areas with a high absolute rate of child maltreatment (based on cases per unit of popula-
tion). In this sense, concentrations of socioeconomically distressed families are most likely to be at
high risk for child maltreatment. For example, in Omaha, Nebraska, socioeconomic status accounted
for approximately 40% of the variation across neighborhoods in reported rates of child maltreatment
(Garbarino and Crouter, 1978). The magnitude of this correlation may reflect a social policy effect. It
seems reasonable to hypothesize that in a society in which low income is not correlated with access to
basic human services (e.g., maternal and infant health care), the correlation would be smaller because
the equality of services across social classes would promote universal health. In a society devoid of
policies to ameliorate the impact of family-level differences in social class, it might be even larger.
Cultures that view physical punishment as appropriate seem to buffer against anxiety and aggres-
sion associated with the use of physical assault as childhood discipline, or “corporal punishment,” as
it is called euphemistically (Lansford et al., 2005). The utility of corporal punishment is still widely
debated in the United States, despite clear evidence of its detrimental effects (Gershoff and Grogan-
Taylor, 2016). Studies support social learning theories, which posit that children who are spanked
more will show subsequent levels of aggression, even when controlling for mothers’ characteristics
(Lee, Altschul, and Gershoff, 2013). Spanking also has reciprocal effects, such that spanking in kinder-
garten is associated with externalizing behaviors in kindergarten and at third grade, but early external-
izing behaviors also predict increased reliance on spanking (Gershoff, Lansford, Sexton, Davis-Kean,
and Sameroff, 2012).
Individual and cultural factors predict the appropriateness and impact of corporal punishment.
Although it does not specifically define what acts are and are not considered physical abuse, the U.S.
government has attempted to provide guidelines as to when corporal punishment crosses into child
abuse (Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, 42, 2010). Kempe (1978), recognizing inherent
the rights of the child, called for standard, culturally relevant interviews by professionals beginning
in the prenatal period to assess which children are more at risk and what steps professionals should
take when encountering evidence of child maltreatment. Although some of discussed policies and
programs hold specific goals of reducing child maltreatment, such as home visiting programs, (Chaiya-
chati and Leventhal, 2015), other programs that reduce parental stress and decrease neighborhood lev-
els of disorganization, such as antipoverty programs, can indirectly reduce rates of child maltreatment.
Even still, estimates of child maltreatment are consistently unreliable. For example, Child Protective
Services annually confirm cases of maltreatment for about 1 in 8 children (Wildeman, Emanuel, and
Leventhal, 2014), while surveys have found prevalence of maltreatment ranged from one-third to over
503
half of all children prior to reaching adulthood (Finkelhor, Turner, Shattuck and Hamby, 2015; Hussey,
Chang, and Kotch, 2006).
Because estimates of who is being maltreated fall below the true number, policies must take a
broad cultural approach. Effective interventions to reduce physical punishment include preventions
that encompass all adults and children, not just parents, expectant parents, and professionals who work
with children (i.e., Safe Environment for Every Kid, Nurse-Family Partnerships, Healthy Families), or
targeted interventions of parents who had maltreated children in the past (i.e., parent–child interac-
tion therapy, Incredible Years; Gershoff, Lee, and Durrant, 2017). Policies additionally can target at-risk
neighborhoods to increase community efficacy, actions, and resources as effective ways to decrease
child maltreatment (Kempe, 1978; McLeigh, McDonell, and Melton, 2015). For example, analyses of
hospital and child protective services data revealed low-resource and high-resource communities that
participated in the “Strong Communities for Children” initiative demonstrated decreases in rates
of child maltreatment for children under 5 (McLeigh et al., 2015). However, differences emerged
across communities, with low-resource communities reporting increases in social support, helping,
and observations and beliefs regarding neighbors’ ability to provide safe environments in their home.
High-resource communities increased positive parenting practices and declined in verbal/physical
assaults, whereas low-income communities reported more assaults (McLeigh et al., 2015).
Underserviced communities are particularly relevant to a discussion of public policy issues affect-
ing parenting, because these settings do not arise “naturally.” Rather, they result from public policy
decisions. They are deliberate social creations—even if their consequences and dynamics were neither
intentional nor anticipated. As a case example, one of the authors was involved as an expert witness in
a case in California in which residents of a low-income housing project (owned by a group of private
investors) sued the owners for liability because of deteriorating security conditions that produced
an increase in violence resulting in traumatic stress for child residents. Thus, public policy played a
major role in creating the social climate necessary for the neighborhood to become a traumatic set-
ting (Garbarino, 1992).
The “Cost” of Childrearing

All this underscores the association between economic factors and parenting and provides evidence
that welfare reform may actually restrict parental performance rather than enhance it. Correlations
between measures of income or socioeconomic status and basic child outcomes are higher in some
societies than others (Bronfenbrenner, 1986). Why? In some societies parental income is the princi-
pal determinant of access to resources, whereas in other societies policies are designed to minimize
this correlation. For example, low income has historically been a better predictor of developmental
deficits in the United States than in virtually all other “modern” societies, in part because U.S. social
policies tend to exaggerate rather than minimize the impact of family income on access to preventive
and rehabilitative services (Bronfenbrenner, 1986). Thus, one important aspect of policy is providing
income transfers and child allowances to guarantee parents a predetermined minimum income level
that allows for universal access to services (Plotnick, 1997). Another important aspect of policy is the
extent to which crucial supportive services such as home health visitors and childcare are available
to everyone (perhaps with a sliding fee schedule) as opposed to on the basis of availability of special
grants in response to an assessment of risk.
Thus, children are increasingly an economic burden, directly because of what it costs to rear them
and indirectly because of what they cost in lost parental income. Conventional economists tell us to
assume that “market forces” will produce a positive adaptation on the part of parents because it is
in their self-interest to make whatever investment is needed to produce healthy, successful, and pro-
ductive children. Sustainable economics challenge this glib assumption that the “invisible hand” of
capitalism will take care of business, arguing that “business as usual” can lead to social and economic
504
as well as environmental disasters. We must study this hypothesis in detail across a variety of cultural
and political contexts to fully appreciate the economics of parenthood.
For example, in the case of single- versus two-parent families, single-parent families are significantly
more likely to be poor (DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, and Smith, 2011). It has long been thought that chil-
dren who have traditionally “intact” families—two biological, cohabitating parents or caregivers—
fare better than children born into other family types (McLanahan and Sandefur, 1994), although this
result can vary by ethnicity (Gibson-Davis and Gassman-Pines, 2010). The term “fragile families” has
been used by researchers to describe children born to unwed mothers at time of birth and who spend
a significant portion of the first few years of life with a mother who is single or cohabitating with a
partner to whom she is not wed. The percentage of fragile families is growing in the United States,
such that by 2014, 40.2% of children were born to unmarried women (Center for Disease Control,
2014). The Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study, which included a cohort of 3,700 children
born to unwed mothers, found that married parents have children who have better early literacy and
vocabulary scores and better health outcomes (Waldfogel, Craigie, and Brooks-Gunn, 2010). Across
multiple studies, the relation between parental stability and child outcomes was in part explained by
two key mechanisms: more access to resources through a dual income and more father involvement
(Waldfogel et al., 2010).
Promoting father involvement in childrearing has also received growing political support. In the
first decade of the 20th century, President George W. Bush proposed $320 million for programs that
increased fatherhood involvement and prevented unplanned or unwanted pregnancies for teens and
unwed mothers. However, these programs suffered similar pitfalls as antipoverty programs. Theoreti-
cally, increased father involvement should support child development, but results of individual pro-
grams are mixed (Bronte-Tinkew, Bowie, and Moore, 2007). Effective programs that increase social
support for teenage fathers have been proven to decrease parenting stress and subsequent negative care
(Fagan, Bernd, and Whiteman, 2007).
Like all relations in the ecological framework, fatherhood is best conceptualized as reciprocal in
nature despite even most comprehensive transactional, systemic, and dynamic models lacking integra-
tion of policies that affect a father’s human or social capital (Cabrera, Fitzgerald, Bradley, and Rogg-
man, 2014). Policies that affect fatherhood include expansion of paid paternity leave, expansions of
safety net programs, reductions of penalties to noncustodial fathers who pay child support, changes in
laws that harshly punish incarcerated fathers, and increased policies that promote and maintain social
bonds between fathers and their families (Bronte-Tinkew et al., 2007).
Fathers who do not live in the same household as their children have received even less attention.
Resilience factors that promote father–child relationships include positive attitudes about fatherhood,
completed education or job training, and family support and stability, which are related to better
engagement and more involvement and correspondence with children over time and better rela-
tionships with the mother (Fagan, Palkovitz, Roy, and Farrie, 2009). However, many current policies
related to fatherhood are actually disadvantageous for nonresidential or noncustodial fathers, who are
more likely to be in poor health, the criminal justice system, and low-income employment (Bronte-
Tinkew et al., 2007).
In 1998, the Child Support Performance and Incentive Act, in part with components of the
PWORA of 1996, that mandated all states monitor child support payments and add penalty proce-
dures to make child support payments obligatory and automatic (Huang and Han, 2012). Stronger
child support enforcement is linked to higher maternal income, decreases in nonmarital childbearing,
less risky sexual behaviors, fewer unwanted pregnancies, reduced welfare participation, and higher
father involvement (Huang and Han, 2012). However, strict child support laws can be counterintui-
tive to the actual needs of mothers who are involved in the legal system in their family life, and thus
are less likely to claim paternity for their children at hospitals (Bronte-Tinkew et al., 2007). Indeed,
fathers report avoidance or reluctance to pay child support, not because they find it unnecessary, but
505
instead prefer informal arrangements, provide emotional support, or find the cost prohibitive (Threl-
fall, Seay, and Kohl, 2013). Low-income parents, beyond a desire that fathers voluntarily support their
children and to circumvent state involvement, recognize that child support payments do not account
for nonmonetary supports, such as groceries, housing, or toys for their children.
We cannot advocate for comprehensive parenting policy in the United States without recognizing
the rights of the 1.1 million parents who are currently incarcerated and the many more who were
formerly incarcerated (Dallaire, 2019). Fathers who have been incarcerated face barriers in education,
vocation, housing, and custody cases, meaning they are likely to be separated from their children even
if they are released from prison (Bronte-Tinkew et al., 2007). An increase in more punitive criminal
justice policy and rising economic hardship in urban areas with little opportunity have led to the mass
imprisonment of more than 2 million Americans, disproportionately African-American and Latin
American men (Wildeman and Western, 2010). Using data from the Fragile Families study, fathers
who had been incarcerated were less likely to be working by their child’s third birthday, worked
fewer hours, and earned less compared to fathers who had never been incarcerated (Geller, Garfinkel,
Cooper, and Mincy, 2009). Furthermore, children who had parents who had been incarcerated are
significantly less likely to live with both parents and are more likely to receive public assistances and
experience more instability and increased risk of aggressive behaviors among boys (Geller et al., 2009).
Within the United States, current and formerly incarcerated parents are among the least protected
group with few federal policies to promote well-being within their families. Incarceration not only
creates potentially traumatic separations of children from their mothers and fathers, but often rein-
forces aggression within offenders. After leaving prison, inmates are ill equipped to handle stresses
associated with parenthood within limited income environments, which increases the likelihood of
child maltreatment or maladjustment. Therefore, sentencing reforms that reduce incarceration time
and promote rehabilitation programs, especially for nonviolent offenders, constitute an important
policy direction. Additionally, steps that reduce the stress of visits to prison, such as maintaining rooms
that are warm, stimulating, and welcoming, promote bonding or attachment with incarcerated parents
(Shlafer, Gerrity, Ruhland, and Wheeler, 2013; Wildeman and Western, 2010). Finally, programs that
enhance education attainment and reentry to society through transitional job training and placement
are needed.
President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty in the 1960s expanded government services to reduce
national poverty rates. Since that time, many more policies have targeted the country’s impoverished
individuals and families. These policies include the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, Earned
Income Tax Credits, childcare subsidies, and job training programs for parents. At more distal levels,
policies that affect neighborhoods may “trickle down” to improve the lives of families, especially
in reducing rates of child maltreatment. In all, these policies highlight the relation between socio-
economic conditions and the opportunities for childrearing. Fragile families, such as single-parent
families and formerly incarcerated parents, require extra legal and social protections to overcome the
perpetual risks of poverty.
Conclusions
The risks related to poverty articulated in this chapter thus far should not preclude protective factors
found within individual children. Convergent findings from several studies of life course responses
to stressful early experiences suggest a series of ameliorating factors that lead to prosocial and healthy
adaptability (Losel and Bliesener, 1990): (1) actively trying to cope with stress (rather than just react-
ing); (2) cognitive competence (at least an average level of intelligence); (3) experiences of self-efficacy
and corresponding self-confidence and positive self-esteem; (4) temperamental characteristics that
favor active coping attempts and positive relationships with others (e.g., activity, goal orientation,
sociability), rather than passive withdrawal; (5) a stable emotional relationship with at least one parent
506
or other reference person; (6) an open, supportive educational climate and parental model of behavior
that encourages constructive coping with problems; and (7) social support from persons outside the
family. These factors have been identified as important when the stressors involved are in the “nor-
mal” range found in the mainstream of modern industrial societies: poverty, family conflict, childhood
physical disability, and parental involvement in substance abuse. They thus provide a starting point for
efforts to understand the impact of policy on parenting—and ultimately on children.
Of the seven factors identified in the research on resilience and coping, several are particularly rel-
evant to policy and parenting (and some others are indirectly relevant). We are particularly interested
in three of the factors, and embedded within them is the beginning of an agendum for policy initia-
tives to enhance parenting—particularly under conditions of high stress and threat.
1. Social support from persons outside the family: This factor exemplifies the roles of meso- and
exosystems within an ecological perspective. We see this as a generic affirmation of the validity of
policies designed to promote parental receipt of support efforts. The saying “it takes a village” tells
us that the importance of social support increases inversely with the inner resources of the parent:
the poorer need more help. Moreover, it is frequently the case that the more troubled and impov-
erished a parent, the less effective he or she will be in identifying, soliciting, and making effective
use of resources outside the family. For example, neglecting mothers are less ready, willing, and able
to see and make use of social support in their neighborhoods and more in need of such support
than other mothers (Gaudin and Polansky, 1986).
2. Open, supportive educational climates and parental models of behavior that encourage construc-
tive coping with problems: This resilience factor explicitly targets the community’s institutions.
Schools, religious institutions, civic organizations, and other social entities operationalize the con-
cept of “an open, supportive educational climate.” Programs and role models that teach and reward
the reflective “processing” of experience are an essential feature of social support at the neighbor-
hood and community level.
3. A stable emotional relationship with at least one parent or other reference person: The significance
that this factor of resilience has for policies affecting parenting is demonstrated by the recurrent
finding that depth—as opposed to mere breadth—is an important feature of social support (Got-
tlieb, 1981). In addition to having social support effectively available through friends, neighbors,
co-workers, and professionals, parents need social support in its most intensive form: you need
someone who is irrationally crazy about you (Brendto, 2006). It is clear from research on parenting
that children must have someone in this role, but it is also important in the healthy development
of youth and adults, including those in parenting roles.
It is vital to examine how public policy affects the lives of children and the community, and it is the
responsibility of researchers to identify the specific steps to be taken to create and implement public
policy (McCall and Groark, 2000; Scott, Mason, and Chapman, 1999). Furthermore, programs that
only target one risk factor may fail to overcome the multiple accumulated risks associated with poverty
and maltreatment. Early interventions for children coping with extreme poverty, despite benefits, only
have modest effect sizes, in part due to a lack of a science-based approach from what neuroscience
informs us regarding the impact of trauma, toxic stress, and deprivation on brain development and
learning (Shonkoff, 2010). Additionally, programs that target community or sociocultural risk are only
effective to the extent that parents are aware of, utilize, and direct resources from programs to care for
their children. Two-generation programs, which build human capital across generations by combining
education or job training for adults with early childhood education for children, could hold promise
(Chase-Lansdale and Brooks-Gunn, 2014). The most impactful two-generation programs have three
common components: high-quality preschool programs, programs that strengthen parents’ education
and vocational training, and comprehensive programs that enhance support networks (Heinrich, 2014).
507
Despite an increasing emphasis on evidence-based policy across the last two decades, an enduring
gap exists between psychology research and policies enacted by Congress and the executive branch
(Huston, 2008; Tseng, 2012). Weiss (1983, 1995) translated scientific findings to policy and proposed
four factors that influence policymakers’ decisions: ideology, interests, information, and institutional
contexts. Science provides information and frameworks for describing and solving diverse and com-
plicated problems, yet limited attention has been paid to effective ways for psychologists to engage in
communicating their results to the public (Kaslow, 2015). Public policies are rarely included as a pre-
dictor in studies of parenting, and instead are relegated to a brief paragraph in the discussion section
for implications or future directions. Instead, researchers could focus research synthesis on information
about implementability of research into scalable and feasible policy (Supplee and Metz, 2014) and
write for diverse audiences who may have differing education and motivations to interpret research
(Huston, 2008; McCall and Groark, 2000; Shonkoff, 2000).
In all, intermediaries who bring findings from policy evaluations to policymakers or translational
research that implements effective interventions on wider scales are a growing profession (Guerra,
Graham, and Tolan, 2011). For example, beginning in 2002, academics involved in public policy
research joined to create the University-Based Child and Family Consortium (http://university
consortium.srcd.org/). In total 36 child policy centers and departments operate on the founding
principles regarding the intersection of research and social policy that optimizes child and family
well-being.
Directly and indirectly, policy plays an important role in setting the parameters of parenting,
whether it be through social or economic initiatives. The bottom line in our effort to enhance parent-
ing through social policy lies in the degree to which society is able to replace risk with opportunity in
the lives of children (or at least compensate for risk by providing compensatory opportunities). The
foundations for success in these efforts lie in an ecological perspective and in appreciation of the role
of social context in mediating relations between individuals and the larger society. Recognition that
there are multiple systems between the individual and the society is fundamental to the ecological
perspective. It focuses attention on the crucial role of policy in stimulating, guiding, and enhancing
these intermediary systems (the meso- and exosystems) on behalf of more effective parenting. Social
policy decisions influence child development through their effects on parenting. The need for under-
standing is great, and the stakes are high.
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18
PARENTING, RELIGION,
AND SPIRITUALITY
Introduction
Parenting feels holy to me, something that’s not part of this world. It feels really “above
normal.” I know God exists. But other than my baby, I never really saw or felt God.
—Married father and mother in Mahoney, Pargament, and DeMaris (2018)
I ask God for help a lot. I don’t know the right way to parent. I know the wrong way. I’ve
seen the wrong way, so it’s hard for me sometimes. I second guess myself a lot. I’m very
insecure sometimes about it, but I just do what’s right in my heart, and I just think that
God is guiding me so that I can give this child what he needs. I want to have the strength
to give him the support, and love to nurture him. I ask God for a lot of help in the way
I discipline him; like the amount of time we spend together, and the things we do when
we’re together. I have depression and sometimes it’s hard for me to get out of bed. I ask
God to help me get up, get dressed, take him to the zoo or somewhere.
—Single mother in Sullivan (2008)
Every part of our parenting is guided by our faith and spiritual beliefs. We believe our
child deserves an affirming Christian education in a gay-friendly zone.
—Cohabiting father in Rostosky, Abreu, Mahoney, and Riggle (2017)
Parenting can be saturated with spiritual significance and meaning for married, single, and cohabit-
ing parents. Statistically speaking, 79% of U.S. married mothers, 77% of single mothers, and 68%
of cohabiting mothers say religion is “somewhat” or “very important” to their daily life based on
2011–2013 national surveys (National Center for Family and Marriage Research, 2017). According
to recent cross-cultural surveys, mothers and fathers from nine countries strongly agree, on average,
that religion influences their parenting and is important in their lives (Bornstein et al., 2017). In short,
many millions of those rearing children and youth across the globe likely view parenting as a sacred
calling and turn to divine Being(s) or religious tradition(s) to help them navigate the longest, perhaps
most arduous developmental journey of adulthood—becoming and being a parent. Yet the scientific
community has been mysteriously quiet about the many ways that faith presents resources or risks for
parenting. For instance, comprehensive reviews suggest that less than 1% of the peer-reviewed stud-
ies on parenting or family life published between 1980 and 2009 in social science journals targeted
hypotheses about how religious or spiritual factors may shape parenting across the life span (Mahoney,
2010; 2019). We hope that this chapter will entice family scientists to delve into and extend scientific
inquiry on this topic.
515
Our chapter begins with a historical sketch of empirical research on parental religiousness (R) and
spirituality (S). We then discuss the conceptual and methodological challenges that scholars face to
expand rigorous investigation of the bright and dark side of R/S for parenting, also elaborating in
this section on our rationale to use the abbreviation R/S throughout this chapter. Next, we introduce
Mahoney’s (2010, 2013) Relational Spirituality Framework (RSF) to organize empirical findings and
illuminate theoretical possibilities about specific ways that R/S could shape childbearing and rearing.
The bulk of the chapter delineates theory and empirical findings on the possible roles R/S could play
across diverse families in becoming and being a parent. Within each of these two major sections, we
first review findings derived from indices of parents’ general involvement in organized religion (e.g.,
frequency of attendance or overall importance of religion) and then highlight specific R/S cognitions
and behaviors that could function as resources or risks for parents in national or community-based
studies. We then summarize the scarce research on how R/S may function within subsamples of
parents facing serious parenting challenges. We close by outlining the largely untapped potential for
social scientists to engage in translational research that integrates R/S into education and prevention
programs in communities, as well as clinical interventions with distressed parents. Our emphasis in
this chapter is on extensive empirical evidence of direct links between parents’ self-report of their own
R/S functioning and their parenting cognitions or practices, supplemented by impressive longitudinal
studies of indirect pathways of influence of parental R/S on youth psychosocial and R/S adjustment
via parenting. We refer readers elsewhere to extensive discussions of how parents may directly influ-
ence their offspring’s R/S development (Boyatzis, 2013; Boyatzis, Dollahite, and Marks, 2006; King
and Boyatzis, 2015) and how children’s and adolescents’ self-reports about their own R/S adjustment
are tied to their psychosocial well-being (Holden and Vittrup, 2010; Yonker, Schnabelrauch, and
DeHaan, 2012).
Historical Considerations in Social Science on R/S and Parenting

Jenkins (1991) published a comprehensive review of research on religion and families from 1930 to
1990. During that era, social scientists focused on generating evidence that married heterosexuals’
religious affiliation (e.g., Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Other, or None) and frequency of religious
attendance, as well as interreligious marriage, were tied to childbirth and divorce rates, marital sat-
isfaction, and general attitudes about marriage or parenting in Western countries. Family scientists’
interest in these linkages appears to have waned by the end of this 60-year period. For example, unlike
prior decades, the Journal of Marriage and Family (JMF) did not cover R/S in JMF’s 1990 “Decade-
in-Review” volume. R/S factors tied to parenting likewise had little visibility in mainstream psychol-
ogy throughout the 20th century. For example, 1999 marks the first year to our knowledge that any
journal sponsored by the American Psychological Association published a peer-reviewed study on
parents’ R/S predicting parenting practices (Gershoff, Miller, and Holden, 1999). In 2001, APA’s Jour-
nal of Family Psychology then published the first special section on R/S and marriage/family life that
included a meta-analysis of 97 peer-reviewed studies published in social science journals from 1980
to 1999 that explicitly examined ways that R/S factors were tied to marital and family functioning
(Mahoney, Pargament, Swank, and Tarakeshwar, 2001). In 2010, JMF published a similar review on
184 peer-reviewed studies published from 2000 to 2009 (Mahoney, 2013). Other encouraging signs
of family scholars’ growing interest in parental R/S as a persistent cross-cultural reality include books
(Marks and Dollahite, 2016; Wilcox and Wolfinger, 2016), special issues in the Journal of Family Psy-
chology (Mahoney and Cano, 2014) and the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion (Boyatzis,
2006), and the integration of R/S factors into multidimensional models of parenting (Bornstein, 2016;
Holden and Vittrup, 2010).
The scholars who have published peer-reviewed studies that target parental R/S factors as predic-
tors of parenting have come from many disciplinary backgrounds, ranging from university-based
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Parenting, Religion, and Spirituality
Psychology, Sociology, Social Work, and Marriage and Family Studies departments, as well as Obstet-
rics and Gynecology, Pediatric, and Nursing departments in medical centers (Mahoney, 2019). Thus,
diverse research methods have been used in this literature. Family sociologists have tended to con-
duct secondary data analyses on broad-based surveys conducted with large community or nationally
representative samples. By contrast, developmental and family psychologists have tended to target
community samples using in-depth surveys, experimental designs, and/or observational techniques.
Others, particularly within Marriage and Family Studies departments, have obtained rich qualitative
data on married heterosexual parents who are highly involved in Christian, Muslim, or Jewish reli-
gious groups.
Distinctive Characteristics of Social Science on R/S and Parenting
Scope
To provide additional historical perspective, we highlight two distinctive characteristics of literature
on R/S and parenting. First, consistent with the fact that world religions have historically offered
teachings on virtually every aspect of childbearing and rearing, the scope of topics that social scientists
have touched on has been broad. Yet any one topic has garnered relatively little scientific attention.
For example, in Mahoney’s 2010 review of peer-reviewed studies published during the 2000–2009
decade, 80 addressed marriage or divorce and 104 dealt with parenting or family-related topics.
Within the latter set of studies, 72 focused on becoming or being a parent and examined women’s
fertility (n = 11), fathers’ involvement in infants and children’s lives (n = 9), pregnancy and infant
care (n = 10), corporal punishment (n = 8), risk of child physical abuse, (n = 4), parental warmth and
monitoring of children (n =5), parenting children in stressful contexts (n = 4), and monitoring and
relational quality with adolescents (n = 16). Hopefully this chapter will spur more scientific investiga-
tions on the roles that parents’ R/S may play on the approximately 100 facets of parenting covered
across this five-volume Handbook of Parenting.
Measurement
A second distinctive feature of research in this niche is a tendency to rely on conceptual models and
measures that confound specific R/S resources and risks. During the 2000–2009 decade, for instance,
around 75% of all studies on partners’ or parents’ R/S and marriage and family life involved quantita-
tive data, but about 75% of those studies relied on one or two general questions on religiosity, such as
how often participants reported they attended worship services or viewed religion as important to their
daily life. Such general items cannot disentangle the potentially helpful and harmful manifestations of
R/S, recognizing both types of processes could be shaped by parents’ own upbringing and their pres-
ent or prior participation in an organized religious group(s). The central theme woven throughout
this chapter is that theory-driven assessment tools need to be developed that differentiate specific R/S
resources and risks for parenting; we delineate numerous quantitative studies where the measures used
pinpointed specific R/S processes, for better or worse. Qualitative studies could also be a valuable means
to develop additional measures. To date, however, qualitative studies on faith and family life have nearly
exclusively involved interviews with highly devout and married heterosexuals with children—that is,
parents who may be especially likely to experience and thus report R/S beliefs and behaviors that are
helpful. Factor analyses of multi-item measures derived from such samples are likely to yield highly
intercorrelated subscales of R/S resources, with very low base rates of R/S risk factors. Supplemental
strategies to advance theory and measurement would be to recruit samples of parents where some R/S
resources, such as participation in religious groups, may be less salient and/or less tightly correlated
with other R/S resources, such as a felt connection to higher powers or R/S cognitions about parenting
517
per se. In addition, studies are needed that involve families seeking professional help to address parental
struggles (e.g., infertility) or family problems (e.g., child maltreatment) where maladaptive R/S beliefs
or behaviors may be more frequent and likely to intensify parental or child distress.
Commonplace Constraints of Social Science on R/S and Parenting

Not surprisingly, the body of research on R/S and parenting has been constrained by the same meth-
odological limitations that have plagued social science research historically. Studies have been pre-
dominantly published in English and primarily involved samples drawn from Western societies. For
instance, from 2000 to 2009, most quantitative studies on marriage and parenting used national (52%)
or community (34%) samples of Americans. Thus, consistent with U.S. religious norms, most partici-
pants self-identified as being affiliated with a Christian group, with wide variation in the frequency
of religious attendance or salience. More work, such as a study by Bornstein and colleagues (2017),
is needed on non-Western and Western societies with large subsamples of parents who identify with
various R/S traditions. Most quantitative studies have also relied on cross-sectional designs rather
than longitudinal or experimental designs. Cross-sectional designs obviously make causal inferences
about the influence of R/S on parents difficult to defend because critics can easily argue that reverse
causality and many third-variable confounds, such as socioeconomic status, education, and personality
variables, account for linkages. Two other common methodological limitations involve mono-method
assessment. Specifically, studies on faith and family life (1) have relied heavily on the self-report of
only one family member to assess both R/S predictors and relationship outcomes and (2) have rarely
used direct observation of family interactions (e.g., eight studies on parent–youth dyads between 2000
and 2009). Moving forward, researchers will ideally employ multiple reporters (e.g., two parents; a
parent and child) and assessment tools (e.g., self-report and observational data) as well as sophisticated
longitudinal analyses to advance the scientific credibility of findings on R/S parenting, while remind-
ing themselves and journal editors, that the use of cross-sectional data and solo reporters from Western
samples are commonplace constraints in social science research.
In summary, the study of R/S and parenting has not historically been a mainstream concern of
family scientists. However, conceptual and measurement advances are evident in numerous empirical
studies that target links between parental R/S and some features of parenting. We selectively empha-
size these studies and past comprehensive reviews (Mahoney et al., 2001; Mahoney, 2010) to illustrate
key points in the rest of this chapter.
Central Issues in Science on Religion/Spirituality and Parenting
Defining Religion and Spirituality

In this section, we discuss four potentially polarizing issues in scientific research on R/S and parenting.
The first centers on debates about overarching definitions of the complex, multifaceted, and over-
lapping domains of Religion/Religiousness (R) versus Spirituality (S), discussions at risk of becom-
ing increasingly divisive in scientific literature dominated by researchers from Western societies. In
general, R has been portrayed within the psychology of religion and spirituality literature as public
engagement in a given organized socio-cultural-historical religious tradition; adherence to theologi-
cally orthodox beliefs, dogmas, or rituals; and external pressure to conform to social norms promoted
by a religious group (Pargament, Mahoney, Exline, Jones, and Shafranske, 2013). One widely used
definition of religion, for instance, has been:
an organized system of beliefs, practices, rituals, and symbols that serve (a) to facilitate indi-
viduals’ closeness to the sacred or transcendent other (i.e., God, higher power, ultimate truth)
518
and (b) to bring about an understanding of an individual’s relationship and responsibility to

others living together in community.
(Koenig, McCullough, and Larson, 2001, p. 18)
Along these lines, in family research, attendance at worship services and endorsement of conservative
Christian beliefs, such as a literalistic interpretation of the Bible, has typically been labeled as “religious-
ness” or “religiosity.” By contrast, S has tended to be framed in social science literature as personal belief in
supernatural entities or phenomena, a private quest for enlightenment or virtues, and internal motivation to
seek out a sense of purpose and transcendence within or outside of organized religion groups. Koenig et al.
(2001), for example, defined spirituality as “a personal quest for understanding answers to ultimate ques-
tions about life, about meaning, and about relationship to the sacred or transcendent, which may (or may
not) lead to or arise from the development of religious rituals and the formation of community” (p. 18).
Consistent with the integrative approach recommended by Pargament et al. (2013) and used within
the RFS (Mahoney, 2010, 2013), we suggest that scholars focused on parenting resist polarizing R against S
for at least four reasons (Mahoney and Cano, 2014). First, R remains the primary social institution world-
wide that encourages parents to integrate S into their daily lives, and in many societies mothers and fathers
are likely to seek out spiritual resources for their journey as a parent from one or more well-established
religious groups’ traditions, such as enhancing their sense of connection to God/divine Being(s) or fellow
believers. Second, religious groups encompass progressive to conservative theological positions on social,
political, and existential issues, and wide variation exists within and between religious denominations on
controversial moral and ethical issues pertinent to parenting (Onedera, 2008; Starks and Robinson, 2007).
Parents can, in turn, selectively seek out support from leaders or members within a religious subgroup(s)
that reinforces their family values. For example, parents can find religious groups that affirm the spiritual
significance of becoming a parent in a family system labeled “traditional” (e.g., first-time heterosexual
marriage) or “nontraditional” (e.g., single, remarried, foster, or multigenerational parent; Edgell, 2005;
Konieczny, 2013; Rostosky et al., 2017; Sullivan, 2008). Although more research is needed, the goodness of
fit between parents and their religious group of choice most likely determines whether parents gain access
to R/S resources or encounter R/S struggles in their parental roles (Mahoney, 2010, 2013). Third, parents
can turn to secular groups to support their values and reject the notion that possessing a stable sense of
identity or morality inherently involves “being spiritual,” finding the phrase perhaps superfluous at best
and insulting at worst. Fourth, U.S. and cross-cultural data suggest that self-identifying as embracing
spiritual beliefs and practices promoted by many religious groups persists as a prominent cultural reality
for many parents. In 2014, for example, a majority of Americans reported believing in God (78%), praying
(74%), attending religious services (74%), being religious (80%), and being spiritual (89%) to some degree
(Twenge, Sherman, Exline, and Grubbs, 2016). Thus, although frequent participation in religious institu-
tions, like other major social institutions, has declined over recent decades in the United States and Europe,
the notion that R and S are mutually exclusive domains may apply primarily to a relatively narrow slice of
the global demographic pie: more highly educated, younger, unmarried, childless, male, and/or Caucasian
persons from individualistically oriented Western societies. In short, organized religion represents a pri-
mary means by which parents cross-culturally are exposed to messages about the role that divine Beings
could play for parenting and how to infuse parenting with spiritual meaning. Thus, consistent with the
RSF, we suggest Western scientists respect, yet move well beyond, Americans’ global self-identification as
“being religious and/or spiritual” or their nominal religious affiliation by uncovering specific R/S mecha-
nisms that may shape parenting, for better and worse, across multiple societies.
Traditional Versus Nontraditional Families

A second potentially polarizing issue at the intersection of faith and family life is that Western social
scientists have largely focused conceptually on one type of family—namely married heterosexuals
519
with biological children—as the primary, if not only, domestic context where R/S matters for parent-
hood. This scientific preoccupation is consistent with the fact that highly vocal religious subcultures
in the United States, particularly socially and theologically conservative Christian groups, have por-
trayed such family units as the morally ideal context to conceive and rear children. In turn, social
scientists have leaned heavily on a theoretical orientation within sociology called “religious familism”
that emphasizes ties between religion and nuclear families (Edgell, 2005; Marks and Dollahite, 2016;
Wilcox, 2006). Consequently, many unasked questions remain about whether R/S is relevant for the
rising number of families headed by single, cohabiting, step, adoptive, foster, LBGTQ, and/or multi-
generational parents (Mahoney and Krumrei, 2012). In the United States, for example, approximately
41% of children are currently born outside of marriage, up from just 5% in 1960 (Pew, 2008). Less
than half (46%) of U.S. youth live with two married heterosexual parents in their first marriage, com-
pared to 73% of children in 1960. Furthermore, across cultures, multiple family members often func-
tion as a primary parent figure in addition to or other than birth parents. Thus, in our view, the scope
of scientific inquiry on R/S and parenting needs to be broadened to avoid R/S being prematurely
presumed as irrelevant to contemporary families in Western or non-Western societies and potentially
pushed further to the edges of mainstream social science literature.
Family scholars who research the roles that R/S plays across diverse families need to be alert to
two central issues. First, higher base rates of R/S factors are very likely to persist within families that
conform to heterosexual marital norms promoted by most religious traditions. Nevertheless, it is hard
to think of another social institution across the world that continues to voluntarily attract unmarried
parents. For example, as of 2011–2013, 39% of single and 32% of cohabiting mothers attended reli-
gious services at least two to three times per month compared to 49% of American married mothers
(2011–2013 NSFG; National Center for Family and Marriage Research, 2017). Likewise, the abso-
lute number of European-American mothers who attended services two to three times per month
outnumber African-American and Latina American mothers, even though European-Americans’
base rate attendance was lower than the other two groups (39% versus 57% and 48%, respectively;
2011–2013 NSFG; National Center for Family and Marriage Research, 2017). Second and far more
importantly, R/S factors may function similarly for diverse parents, regardless of statistically significant
differences in the average rates of religious attendance by subgroups of parents based on their ethnic-
ity, nationality, or family structure. For instance, in a recent national U.S. survey, religious attendance
appeared to be similarly helpful to married and single mothers (Henderson, Uecker, and Stroope,
2016), reinforcing findings where greater R/S has been correlated with better parenting by single
mothers living in adverse socioeconomic circumstances (Mahoney, 2010; Petts, 2012).
In summary, many and diverse families participate in religious groups in the United States and
other countries (Bornstein et al., 2017). The more that family scholars expand their conceptual
models beyond religious familism, the more they can avoid inadvertently perpetuating unfounded
stereotypes that R/S is exclusively helpful and/or harmful to married heterosexuals with biological
offspring.
Socially Conservative Versus Progressive Theological Values

A third polarizing issue undergirded by the religious familism lens is a potential loss of perspective by
narrowly focusing on ways that conservative Protestant/Christian (CPC) values can shape parenting
cognitions and practices. One topic that illustrates this issue is corporal punishment. Social scientists
have established that Americans who self-identify as a conservative Protestant (e.g., Southern Baptist,
evangelical, or nondenominational Christian) and/or interpret the Bible literally are more likely to
believe in and use corporal punishment compared to nonbelievers and parents from other Christian
or non-Christian groups (Ellison and Bradshaw, 2009; Ellison, Bartkowski, and Segal, 1996; Ellison,
Musick, and Holden, 2011; Ellison and Sherkat, 1993). Such findings have generated heated debate
520
about the adverse impact, or not, of spanking on children within evangelical Christian families who
value this disciplinary strategy (Dyslin and Thomsen, 2005; Ellison and Sherkat, 1993; Perrin, Miller-
Perrin, and Song, 2017). To our knowledge, however, only two peer-reviewed studies have examined
the effect of corporal punishment on children within CPC families. We unpack these two studies
next to illustrate the need for family scientists to maintain a patient, nuanced, and clear-headed per-
spective about R/S and conservative to progressive values about corporal punishment and any parent-
ing strategy.
Using longitudinal data gathered between 1987 and 1994, Ellison et al. (2011) examined the asser-
tion that slapping or spanking young children is helpful, not harmful, within CPC families. They
found that American 2- to 4-year-olds of CPC mothers exhibited minimal negative effects of cor-
poral punishment five years later, and less antisocial behavior if CPC mothers had initially used but
discontinued spanking. Updating and extending this study with longitudinal data collected between
2001 and 2005 on two-parent families, Petts and Kysar-Moon (2012) found U.S. preschoolers to
be less likely to display misbehavior over time with very specific family dynamics: if only the father
spanked and spanked infrequently, and only if both parents were conservative Protestants. In the
bulk of the two-parent American families who did not conform to these strict parameters, spanking
predicted greater negative child outcomes, as has been documented more generally (Gershoff and
Grogan-Kaylor, 2016). Our main point here is to offer a demographic perspective on these findings.
Specifically, it is important to recognize that only around 11% of contemporary U.S. families involve
married CPC mothers and fathers, only a subportion of whom have young children. For example, in
2013, 23% of U.S. mothers self-identified as evangelical Protestant; of this group, 65% were married,
22% were single parents, and 13% cohabited with a partner (National Center for Family and Mar-
riage Research, 2017). Thus, only about 15% of American families included a married and evangeli-
cal Protestant mother, but only 75% of these women were married to an evangelical Protestant man
according to a 2014 Pew survey on interfaith marriage (hence the 11% estimation earlier). In short, a
small minority of U.S. households fits the family context where corporal punishment may co-occur
in a broader set of CPC parenting values and actions that may assuage its typically adverse effects on
young children. Moving forward, social scientists will hopefully replicate and broaden investigations
of R/S factors tied to spanking and other parenting practices or values across theologically conserva-
tive to progressive parents of youth of all ages.
Conceptual Frameworks Explaining Versus Explaining Away R/S

Fourth, scholars may differ about what they ultimately believe can or should be achieved in scientific
investigations of faith and family life. For some, the goal may be to uncover the most parsimonious
set of factors that prospectively predict parenting cognitions or practices over time, assuming that
scientific evidence will eventually “explain away” R/S factors by more basic biopsychosocial factors
(Mahoney, 2013; Pargament, 2013; Pargament, Exline, and Jones, 2013). For others, the goal may be
to uncover key constructs embedded in R/S systems of meaning, identifying concepts that center on
supernatural beings, symbols, and rituals that have no obvious conceptual parallels in secular world-
views as a means to build in-depth theoretical models about and address substantive R/S constructs
in public policy and clinical practice (Mahoney, 2013; Pargament, 2013; Pargament et al., 2013).
An attitude of humility is perhaps needed in reconciling these objectives, recognizing that scientific
worldviews and methods are ill equipped to adjudicate the ultimate ontological reality of the cast of
divine and demonic characters and existential plots embedded in R/S narratives that people draw on
to guide their journey through parenthood. Nevertheless, scientific evidence that facilitates respect-
ful dialogue in basic and applied research could help open parents’ access to soothing R/S resources
and resolve painful R/S struggles that intensify personal or familial distress. Thus, in our view, scien-
tists and practitioners need to be curious about R/S factors that may shape parents’ responses to the
521
dilemmas they face in conceiving and caring for their children. Both science and practice could be
richer and better prepared to respond to parents with scientific information on psychospiritual con-
structs that make a difference conceptually and practically. To achieve this end and navigate the four
central concerns we have delineated in this section, scholars need theoretical models that help identify
specific, malleable R/S constructs that could generalize to many parents from diverse family structures
and religious traditions. We now turn to one such conceptual framework.
Theoretical Considerations for Science on R/S and Parenting
Relational Spirituality Framework
Overview
To organize and illuminate potential linkages between R/S variables and couple and family outcomes,
Mahoney (2010, 2013) developed the RSF as is illustrated in Table 18.1. We use the RSF to summarize
theory and findings on parents' overall involvement in religious groups being tied to parenting and
then highlight findings about specific RS resources or risks that could shape parenting cognitions and
practices.
In the RSF, spirituality refers to “the search for the sacred” (Pargament, 2007; Pargament and
Mahoney, 2017), and the two elements of this definition merit brief review. Here the core of “the
sacred” refers to human perceptions of immanent or transcendent supernatural realities. For those
following monotheistic religious traditions (e.g., Christianity, Judaism, Islam), this core typically cen-
ters on a deity who has a personal relationship with followers and is immanent within humans’ lives,
although perceived presence and characteristics of a monotheistic God (and demonic forces) can vary
widely across individuals and religious groups. For those affiliated with Buddhism or polytheistic or
pantheistic traditions (e.g., Hinduism, nature oriented, New Age groups), the core of the sacred may
refer to multiple deities or to transpersonal and/or impersonal ultimate realities thought to underlie
existence. In either case, the broad sphere of “the sacred” can extend beyond this core and encompass
any aspect(s) of life that people experience as embodying spiritual properties, which for many include
family and social relationships (Mahoney, Pargament, Murray-Swank, and Murray-Swank, 2003). The
“search” component, which is elaborated later, involves the formation, maintenance, and transforma-
tion of the sacred across the life span (Pargament, 2007; Pargament and Mahoney, 2017). “Relational
spirituality” refers to R/S cognitions, behaviors, and emotions that people may have as they strive to
form, maintain, and transform relationships within or outside of organized religious contexts. Or,
more elegantly stated, “relational spirituality” refers to when the search for the sacred is united, for
better or worse, with the search for relationships.
Relational Stages
The columns in Table 18.1 across the top of the RSF sort family research literature into three recursive
stages analogous to Pargament’s (1997) conception of religion as a search for significance involving
the discovery, conservation, and transformation of the sacred. In the RSF, Mahoney translated these
stages to relationships as follows: (1) formation—creating and structuring a particular relationship,
(2) maintenance—preserving and protecting an established relationship, and (3) transformation—
coping with the reformation or termination of a distressed relationship. As noted earlier, controversies
exist between and within religious groups about the morally ideal or permissible family context to
form a parent–child bond and the circumstances under which coparents should transition to get-
ting married, divorced, or remarried. Furthermore, although religious communities tend to promote
similar messages on the importance of parents investing tremendous resources into the parental role,
522
Table 18.1 Relational Spirituality Framework Within the Context of Parenting
Relational Spirituality Stages of Parent–Child Relationships
Formation: Becoming a parent Maintain: Being a parent Transform: Addressing parenting

problems
Global R/S Factors: Overall importance . . . increases likelihood of women wanting and having . . . increases parental satisfaction and parental No studies focus on subsamples of clinic-
1–2 items about the of religion and/or children when married investment by married parents and single referred families or parents.
reporter attendance . . . mothers, and lowers corporal punishment and
risk of child physical abuse
Specific Factors: Tier 1: Relationship Resource ? Does Support from God with increase the ? Does Divine Support motivate diverse ? Does Divine Support enhance
Multiple items with God/Higher desire and intentional decision-making to parents to engage in effective parenting effectively confronting and
assess the Power become a parent across diverse families? and coparenting? resolving parenting or coparenting
reporter’s religious problems?
(R)/ spiritual Risk ? Do Struggles with God over becoming ? Do Divine or Demonic Struggles motivate ? Do Divine or demonic struggles
(S) emotions, a parent increase ambivalence and poor diverse parents to engage ineffective intensify parental denial and
cognitions, and planning in becoming a parent across parenting and coparenting? dysfunction?
behaviors tied to diverse families?
the relationship.
Content of items Tier 2: Resource ? Does Sanctification of Parenting increase √ Sanctification of Parenting is tied to more ? Does Sanctification of Parenting
and context Family Relationship intentional parenthood and good prenatal parental satisfaction and strengthens increase distressed parents’
of relationship possesses spiritual care of diverse parents? commitment to preferred parenting motivation to change their
determine properties practices by married heterosexuals. parenting? (Or increase rigidity?)
whether the √ Spiritual Intimacy/Disclosure is tied to
specific factor better parent-young adult relationships
helps or harms functioning.
the relationship or Risk ? Does viewing infertility as a Desecration/ ? Does Spiritual One-upmanship foster ? Does viewing parenting problems
family member(s) Sacred Loss predict greater relational and greater negativity on part of parents with a Desecration/Sacred Loss escalate
personal distress? children or coparents? parental distress?
Tier 3: Relationship Resource ? Does Support from a Religious Group ? Does Support from a Religious Group Does Support from a Religious Group
with religious reinforce intentional decisions about increase positive parenting by parents increase confronting and resolving
community parenthood and prenatal care? and coparents? parenting problems?
Risk ? Do Struggles with a Religious Group over ? Does Support from/Struggles with a ? Do Struggles with a Religious Group
parenthood increase ambivalence and Religious Group increase ineffective escalate parental negativity?
poor planning? parenting by parents and coparents?
√ = Emerging findings ? = Illustrative future research questions

differences of opinion exist within and across religious groups on optimal childrearing goals and strat-
egies, as well as division of parental roles between men and women (Onedera, 2008).
Psychospiritual Processes
Moving down the rows of Table 18.1, Mahoney divided the couples, parenting, and family litera-
ture into whether researchers assessed global versus specific R/S factors in connection with relation-
ship structure and processes. Studies on global factors usually measure a particular family member’s
involvement in organized religion, often with only one or two items. Salient examples include how
often a parent attends religious services or overall importance of religion in his or her life. Occasion-
ally, researchers combine two reporters’ responses on global factors to assess their degree of (dis)simi-
larity, such as the overlap in how often coparents attend religious services. Findings based on studies
of parents that use global R/S factors are summarized across the top row in Table 18.1.
Studies on specific R/S factors involve an assessment of a particular family member’s R/S beliefs
and behaviors about a given relationship, usually with multiple items. The RSF further divides specific
factors into three relational tiers that can reciprocally influence each other. These include Tier 1: the
respondent’s perceived relationship with supernatural beings; Tier 2: the respondent’s close interper-
sonal relationship under investigation (e.g., parent–child relationship); and Tier 3: the respondent’s
relationship with a religious community. Tier 1 in the RSF allows for the possibility that parents
draw on a felt connection to supernatural beings to shape their search for human relationships or
vice versa, with or without displaying or disclosing these spiritual processes to others, including
coparents or children. Examples include prayer, meditation, and turning to perceived deities, angels,
saints, or immortal ancestors to cope with relational stressors. Tier 2 in RSF allows for the possibilities
that individuals may (1) privately invest a given human relationship itself with spiritual properties,
such as viewing parenting as a sacred calling, and/or (2) engage in observable behaviors with another
person that integrate spirituality into their relationship, such as engaging in R/S activities, rituals, or
conversations with a partner or child. Notably, the constructs in Tier 2 may or may not involve belief
in one or more supernatural beings. Tier 3 allows for the possibility that individuals form connec-
tions to religious groups that reciprocally impact the processes within the first two tiers. Within each
tier, specific constructs can be identified that could theoretically be expected to be R/S resources or
risks for a relationship or individual, depending on the content of the factor and the context of the
relationship. For example, married and unmarried individuals in generally happy unions who pray for
the well-being of their partner are more likely to act in prosocial ways that maintain the relationship,
such as being more forgiving (Fincham and Beach, 2013). However, in a context where individuals
are embroiled in dysfunctional dynamics, prayer could intensify problems if praying causes a parent to
externalize or internalize parenting or coparenting problems excessively.
It is important to recognize that the RFS's three tiers of mechanisms may or may not overlap for a
given individual. For some parents, all three tiers may be tightly integrated. Such parents may have a
close felt relationship with one or more divine Beings and religious groups that reinforce their spiri-
tual beliefs and behaviors focused on parenting. For others, only one or two tiers may be relevant. For
example, parents who identify as atheist are unlikely to experience spiritual struggles with, or support
from, God when coping with parenting, but they may still experience parenting as being spiritually
salient and/or participate in religious/spiritual groups to foster family life. Others may not turn to
religious/spiritual groups because of a lack of history, familiarity, or access to supportive fellow believ-
ers. For example, single or same-sex parents may find it difficult to find a hospitable faith community
but still view God as a source of strength and support. Others may attend religious services and/or
believe in God but not view parenting itself as possessing a spiritual dimension, such as being a sacred
calling.
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Parental R/S as a Dependent Variable

Although this chapter emphasizes various ways that parental R/S factors may predict parenting
outcomes, bidirectionality is embedded within the RSF, which is consistent with relational develop-
mental systems (RDS) meta-theories (Lerner et al., 2019; Lerner, Johnson, and Buckingham, 2015;
Overton, 2013). Just as RDS theorists argue that there are mutually influential relations between
individuals’ life span development and the many levels of their surrounding bioecology, parents’ R/S
thoughts, feelings, and actions are likely rooted in their own developmental histories as children
and adolescents. Furthermore, the etiology and maintenance of adults’ R/S beliefs or behaviors,
including about parenting, are presumed to be reciprocally influenced by multiple systems longi-
tudinally—biological, psychological, social, cultural, and so on—consistent with bioecological the-
ory (Bronfenbrenner, 1974), sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978), and social transaction models
(Kuczynski, 2003), including parents' interactions with their own children. Indeed, enormous and
complex bodies of theory and research exist on causal factors that contribute to the development of
individuals’ personal R/S beliefs and behaviors (see Pargament et al., 2013). In particular, extensive
research on the intergenerational transmission of R/S shows that people to a large extent “inherit”
their R/S development (or lack thereof ) orienting systems from their own families, with religious
(dis)affiliation and worship (non)attendance rates being remarkably consistent across generations,
particularly in families with close parent–youth relationships (Boyatzis, 2013; King and Boyatzis,
2015). For example, warm and supportive relationships with religious parents appear to enhance the
religious and spiritual development of U.S. adolescents (Hardy, White, Zhang, and Ruchty, 2011)
and Indonesian Muslim youth (French et al., 2013). Abara, Carter, and Winsler (2009) examined
the link between African-American parents’ religiosity and parenting style and the religious beliefs
and practices of their late adolescents and college students; although there was no main effect of
parenting style or parent religiosity, a significant interaction emerged as higher authoritative parent-
ing combined with higher parental religiosity predicted unique variance in youth religiosity. Thus,
the extent to which parents arrive at parenthood carrying R/S as a resource or burden is likely
to depend on how their own parents contributed to their R/S development as a child and teen.
Furthermore, according to longitudinal data, both married and single U.S. parents who attended
religious services weekly as adolescents but disengaged during early adulthood are much more
likely than their childless counterparts to return to a religious institution after they have children
(Uecker, Mayrl, and Stroope, 2016). This finding suggests that, unlike for child-free adults, the trials
and high stakes of parenting may lead parents to reach out to religious communities for support.
Another implication of Uecker et al. (2016) is that religious stigmatization does not interfere with
religious return among previously religiously engaged single parents. Adults who were minimally
involved in religious groups as adolescents, however, do not appear to join religious groups after
marriage or having children (Schleifer and Chaves, 2017), and for couples, it is becoming a par-
ent rather than tying the marital knot that appears to facilitate reintegration into religious groups
(Gurrentz, 2017). Ideally, future research will further identify factors that predict parental R/S as a
dependent variable over the life course.
We now turn our attention to studies where parental R/S factors are framed as the predictors,
not outcomes, of their own parenting processes, which, in turn, may affect the well-being of their
children. More specifically, we unpack theory and empirical findings on parental R/S and the stages
of becoming a parent and being a parent of typically developing youth from infancy to emerging
adulthood. Within these major sections, we summarize findings based on global markers of parents’
involvement in organized religion, especially attendance or overall importance of religion. We then
highlight theory and studies that have begun to identify specific, malleable R/S beliefs or behaviors
that could function as resources or risks for parenting.
525
Relational Spirituality and Becoming a Parent

Perhaps the most profound and permanent interpersonal decision an individual will make in his or
her lifetime, intentional or not, is to become a parent. Consistent with RDS meta-theories, answers
to the questions of whether, when, with whom, and in what life context to make this transition
inevitably shape the journey of parenthood for any of the adults involved. Married or partnered
biological coparents effectively merge their genetic predispositions, psychosocial characteristics, and
extended family and cultural contexts in conceiving a child together. The stability and quality of their
union prior to and after the birth of a child carries long-term implications for parental and offspring
developmental trajectories. Biological coparents who dissolve their marriage or union may introduce
other parent figures into a child’s life via remarriage, cohabitation, “living apart together,” or dating.
Alternatively, some may decide to give birth as a solo woman and later introduce one or more copart-
ners into their child’s life, along with siblings from the new union or prior unions (Weinraub and
Kaufman, 2019). Also, individuals or couples or may adopt children born from other unions or use
surrogate birth parents (Pinderhughes and Brodzinsky, 2019). Any of these scenarios, of course, raises
complex questions about the desirable ways to form parent–child relationships, and world religions
have historically had much to say about the optimal moral parameters of becoming a parent.
Parents’ Global Participation in Religious

Groups and Becoming a Parent
One overarching message that most religious traditions promote is that adults should bear biologi-
cal children but delay sexual intercourse, and thus pregnancy, until after entering into a heterosex-
ual marriage (Mahoney and Krumrei, 2012; Regnerus, 2009; Wilcox and Wolfinger, 2016). Within
evangelical Christian circles, for example, marriage is taught to be an explicit expression of lifelong
commitment of one man and one woman that provides the only sanctioned structure for sexual inter-
course and childbearing, resulting in nonmarital sex, cohabitation, same-sex marriage, single parent-
hood, divorce, and stepfamilies being morally undesirable. Theological positions on adoption being
as morally legitimate as bearing children within marriage have varied over the centuries, particularly
within Catholicism. Socially conservative teachings in Islam and Judaism also uphold the nuclear
family as the ideal context to become a parent. For example, within conservative and orthodox Juda-
ism, procreation within heterosexual marriage mirrors the very nature of God. Because heterosexual
marriage is considered the only sanctioned way for men and women to be alone together within
Islam, alternative family forms, such as cohabitation and same-sex unions, are ruled out as viable
options to achieve pregnancy.
In summary, three major monotheistic world religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) have tradi-
tionally argued that a family headed by a married heterosexual pair is the ideal context to become
a parent. Consistent with these themes, ample empirical research reflects the prominent “religious
familism” premise that greater overall religious involvement will increase the likelihood of becoming
a biological parent within heterosexual marriage.
Global R/S Factors and Becoming a Biological Mother

Collectively, studies published prior to 2010 on maternal fertility using data collected in the 1980s
or earlier established that greater importance of religion was tied to women’s fertility. This global
indicator was tied to women reporting greater intentions to bear children, being more likely to have
a child rather than remain childless into middle age and being less likely to have children before
age 24 and have unplanned births, especially during adolescence (Mahoney, 2010). Religious service
attendance continues to be tied American women’s higher intentions to have a child, with this effect
526
fully mediated by greater perceived importance of motherhood (McQuillan, Greil, Shreffler, and Bed-
rous, 2015). Even in more secularized Europe, greater overall religiousness is also indirectly tied to
higher rates of first births by facilitating women’s favorable evaluations of children (Becker and Lois,
2017). Finally, to illustrate using NLSY97 surveys from 1997 to 2013, 34% of American women who
attended religious services at least twice a month at age 17–18 had a marital birth by age 27–28 com-
pared to 26% for those with less attendance (Petts, 2018).
Global R/S Factors and Becoming a “Nontraditional” Parent

Intriguing findings exist on how religious participation relates to attitudes and behaviors associ-
ated with nonmarital parentage by contemporary parents. On one hand, drawing on U.S. surveys
conducted up through 2012, Wilcox and Wolfinger (2016) found that many unmarried adults who
attended religious services several times a month said they engaged in sexual actions contrary to
orthodox religious teachings, such as having nonmarital sex in the past year (65%–69% Nonwhites;
48%–49% Caucasians) and using contraception (53%–62% Nonwhites; around 70% Caucasians).
Many also believed a single mother could rear a child as well as two parents (around 60% men and
80% women), with a sizable minority agreeing a woman should be able to get an abortion for any
reason (16%–22% men; 20%–27% women). On the other hand, over time, frequent worship attenders
were less likely than infrequent attenders to bear children outside of marriage (Wilcox and Wolfin-
ger, 2016). To illustrate concretely using NLSY97 surveys from 1997 to 2013, 41% of women who
reported no or low religious attendance at age 17–18 had a nonmarital birth by age 27–28 compared
to 29% for those who attended services at least twice a month (Petts, 2018). Yet although the latter
figure is significantly lower than the former, 29% is noticeably higher than zero—that is, reserving
biological motherhood only for marriage.
Only three peer-reviewed studies appear to have focused on the role R/S plays for women (all
teens) who were unmarried and directly faced the dilemma of whether to end an unplanned preg-
nancy (Adamczyk, 2008, 2009; Adamczyk and Felson, 2008). Adamczyk’s findings indicate that U.S.
adolescents who were more highly involved in religious groups in the 1980s more often became single
mothers rather than terminate the pregnancy. In another study of unmarried U.S. teen mothers, those
who prenatally attended religious services more often experienced greater prenatal and postnatal
depression, perhaps due to internalizing or experiencing more religious guilt or rejection for becom-
ing a single parent (Sorenson, Grindstaff, and Turner, 1995). Updating findings on abortion rates
based on 2006–2010 U.S. surveys, Wilcox and Wolfinger (2016) estimated that 20% of unmarried
European-American, 19% of African-American, and 13% of Latina American women who attended
religious services several times per month aborted a pregnancy, with these figures again being mark-
edly higher than zero, but still significantly lower than rates reported by women who did not attend
frequently (32%, 31%, and 22%, respectively).
There are scarce findings on links between involvement in organized religion and becoming a
nontraditional parent intentionally. In one study focused on adoption, greater importance of religion
emerged as a strong factor tied to adoption by European-American women out of a host of other
motivations and fertility issues (Hollingsworth, 2000). We were unable to locate peer-reviewed studies
on how greater religious involvement relates to purposefully becoming a single, step, divorced, remar-
ried, or foster parent; taking on primary caregiver responsibility for grandchildren or other relatives;
or using assisted reproductive technology.
Overall, given that “save sex for marriage” persists as the primary message preached from most
pulpits about pregnancy (Regnerus, 2009; Wilcox and Wolfinger, 2016), the greater normalcy of
nontraditional families, as well as the delay of first-time marriage and high rates of unmarried sex,
cohabitation, and remarriage by adults of all ages in modern societies may be raising difficult R/S dis-
sonance for many more religious teens and adults about when and how to become a parent. We look
527
forward to research efforts to illuminate ways that people navigate R/S teachings that conflict with
contemporary patterns of heterosexual intercourse and marital or nonmarital pathways to parenthood
and potentially draw on R/S resources that facilitate becoming a parent or coparent.
Global R/S Factors and Prenatal Care

Once pregnant, a biological mother’s higher participation in religious groups has been correlated with
better prenatal care. In a U.S. national survey, for instance, higher religious attendance has been tied to
less alcohol use, smoking, marijuana, on the part of pregnant and post-partum women (Page, Ellison,
& Lee, 2009) and to less prenatal maternal smoking, depression and pregnancy anxiety in small scale
studies of disproportionally low income and/or minority pregnant women (see Mahoney, 2010).
These links persist after controlling for demographics and social support, raising questions regarding
what it is about religious involvement that may encourage better pregnancy adjustment. To address
such questions, we next offer some speculative theorizing and review of related available studies.
Specific R/S Resources and Risks

Although greater involvement in organized religion is tied to women becoming biological mothers,
studies are needed to identify specific R/S factors that function as resources or risks when men and
women engage in decision-making about fertility and prenatal health care. Otherwise, skeptics can
argue that worship attendance merely reflects social coercion that parents experience from being
embedded in any social network (religious or not) that encourages childbearing, not because of
unique R/S beliefs. Conversely, critics could argue higher engagement in organized religion promotes
unique R/S beliefs that are detrimental to the intentionality, timing, or social context of becoming a
parent. For example, adults affiliated with conservative Protestant denominations may less often use
birth control and more often bear children outside of marriage due to internalizing conservative Bib-
lical teachings that induce sexual guilt and inhibit premeditated intercourse and contraception (Bur-
dette, Haynes, Hill, and Bartkowski, 2014). To advance a balanced, in-depth understanding about why
participation across diverse religious groups may matter, researchers could assess specific R/S beliefs
or behaviors that do not have direct parallels in nonreligious worldviews. For instance, might people
draw on R/S beliefs to reinforce their decisions about when and with whom to become a parent?
Could partnered and single individuals invest more effort in pursuing parenthood, whether via het-
erosexual intercourse, assisted reproductive technology, and/or adoption, if they believe parenthood
is a sacred calling? Might people turn to God or their religious community in their quest to become
parents? Could R/S resources or struggles lower or increase distress in coping with unintended preg-
nancy, infertility, divorce and remarriage, and other challenges in becoming a parent or coparents?
Specific R/S Factors Tied to Pregnancy and Prenatal Care

Although scarce research has attempted to untangle R/S resources and risks that may shape pregnancy
and prenatal adjustment, a cross-sectional study of 178 married heterosexuals pregnant with both
spouses’ first biological child found that positive R/S coping, such as feeling supported by God and
an R/S community, was associated with greater self-reported stress-related growth attributed to the
pregnancy (Lucero, Pargament, Mahoney, and DeMaris, 2013). However, greater R/S struggles, such
as experiencing R/S conflicts internally or with God or a religious community, were linked to greater
depression and anxiety and lower marital commitment for both spouses. Also, being unable to access
a sense of affirmation from God or fellow believers to manage pregnancy stressors correlated with less
maternal satisfaction with the pregnancy and greater paternal anxiety and labor fears (Lucero et al.,
2013). In a study of the R/S beliefs of mothers who reported pregnancy ambivalence or prior fertility
528
problems, women who held attributions of God as loving and knowable and residing within the self,
as opposed to a supreme being who was judging, had better scores on anxiety, depression, perceived
stress, and social support (Athan, Chung, and Sawyer-Cohen, 2015).
Summary
Overall, initial findings on R/S and becoming a parent suggest that greater worship attendance, as well
as supportive forms of R/S coping with potentially distressing pregnancies, may spark higher mater-
nal fertility rates and better prenatal care by married and unmarried mothers, whereas R/S struggles
experienced in getting or being pregnant may intensify prenatal distress. Far more research is needed,
however, to uncover specific R/S resources or risks that may shape men and women’s decision-making
about becoming a parent in or outside a first-time heterosexual marriage, given rapid changes in
attitudes and behavior patterns toward becoming a parent or coparent in modern societies marked by
high rates of unmarried sexual intercourse, cohabitation, and remarriage with children.
Relational Spirituality and Being a Parent
Parents’ General Participation in Religious

Groups and Being a Parent
Regardless of the route by which one becomes a parent, diverse faith traditions emphasize that parents
should be highly invested in the youth placed in their care and exhibit desirable parenting practices,
such as being attentive, affectionate, and consistent and fair in disciplinary practices (Onedera, 2008).
In turn, greater involvement in organized religion could be tied to higher satisfaction and lower stress
in being a parent due to fulfilling a spiritually idealized role and deriving support from a religious
community that affirms parenting choices. From a religious familism lens, such linkages might be
expected to be especially robust for married and CPC parents due to the strong value these groups
place on “traditional” families (Henderson et al., 2016; Wilcox, 2006). Available empirical literature
tells a far more incomplete and complex story on the role of CPC. By contrast, compelling empirical
evidence suggests that greater parental involvement in any place of worship is tied to more positive
parenting of children and adolescents. Before delving into such findings, however, we review mixed
results from efforts to link greater parental R/S to parenting during infancy and early childhood.
Global R/S Factors and Parenting Infants and Toddlers

In a short-term longitudinal study of urban and disproportionally unmarried mothers, those who
attended religious services a few times per month or more shortly after birth were more likely than
mothers who never attended services to initiate breastfeeding, with no difference in rates of continu-
ing through 6 months (Burdette and Pilkauskas, 2012). In a cross-sectional study, first-time mothers
ages 20 to 34 who partially or regularly attended religious services engaged in lower (not higher)
rates of positive, playful interactions with 0- to 23-month-olds, whereas this factor was unrelated
to playtime for teen or older mothers (Kim, Connolly, Rotondi, and Tamim, 2018). For urban and
disproportionally unmarried fathers, greater religious attendance at the time of their child’s birth
predicted more future playtime, but postpartum declines in attendance predicted less playtime (Petts,
2007). Higher attendance at birth also decreased the odds that unmarried fathers later resided with
their children (Carlson, McLanahan, and Brooks-Gunn, 2008).
When it comes to coparenting by married heterosexuals across the transition to parenthood,
greater religious attendance by first-time mothers has been tied to greater maternal gatekeeping
of fathers’ involvement in infant care, suggesting that mothers who are more engaged in religious
529
groups are also more controlling of the division of coparental labor (Schoppe-Sullivan, Altenburger,
Lee, Bower, Kamp Dush, 2015). Greater religious attendance and Biblical conservatism has also been
longitudinally associated with a traditional division of childcare where new mothers take a dominant
position over new fathers, but neither factor increased fathers’ behavioral contributions to daily infant
care (DeMaris, Mahoney, and Pargament, 2011). In addition, for more religiously involved moth-
ers, greater daily infant care by fathers more strongly predicted lower maternal aggravation toward
their infants, suggesting that these first-time mothers may be especially emotionally soothed when
husbands contribute to childcare; this is in contrast to less religiously engaged mothers who may
have more egalitarian expectations about coparenting that husbands more routinely fulfill (DeMaris,
Mahoney, and Pargament, 2013). Overall, current evidence as to whether greater R/S is tied to desir-
able coparenting arrangements is debatable, given that dividing childrearing labor in complementary
versus egalitarian roles is a value-laden issue. More research is merited on R/S factors that predict
coparenting processes, such as perceived support and solidarity, that appear to optimize children’s
development (Schoppe-Sullivan et al., 2015).
Finally, scientific efforts to verify that married fathers affiliated with CPC churches invest more
time than other men in forming a relationship with their offspring after they are born, rather than
being distant or absent fathers, have yielded inconclusive results (Mahoney, 2010). For example, at
least five large, rigorous studies failed to find evidence that married CPC fathers devoted more time
to childcare, one-on-one activities, or supportive dialogue than other fathers (Mahoney, 2010) and did
not replicate a prior finding (Wilcox, 2002) that CPC fathers engaged in more recreational activities
with their children than unaffiliated or mainline Protestant fathers. Also, Wildeman (2008) found that
new, unmarried CPC fathers from urban areas spent far less time than other unmarried fathers play-
ing with their infants and toddlers, perhaps because their unmarried family structure violated family
norms promoted within their religious subculture.
Taken together, the inconsistent body of research on parental R/S across the transition to parent-
hood illustrates that being affiliated (or not) with a CPC group compared to another religious group
or “none” is a poor predictor of parenting processes during infancy (like other stages of family life),
most likely due to the wide heterogeneity of parental R/S beliefs and behaviors within this and all
(non)religious subgroups. More studies are clearly needed on whether active participation by parents
across diverse religious groups facilitates parenting at this early stage of children’s development, as well
as pinpointing specific R/S beliefs that facilitate optimal parenting across the transition to parenthood.
Global R/S Factors Tied to Corporal Punishment

and Risk of Child Physical Abuse
Families with preschool and school-aged children constitute the largest concentration of the empirical
findings on parents’ involvement in organized religion. In particular, researchers have focused heavily
on the topic of corporal punishment cognitions and practices as well as the risk of child physical abuse,
with a handful of studies also focused on parental subjective satisfaction and stress, as well as desirable
parenting practices. Here we extract key findings from studies within this niche of the literature.
As mentioned earlier, consistent evidence from peer-reviewed studies indicates that Americans
affiliated with CPC groups and/or who more strongly endorse theologically conservative views
of the Bible place a higher priority on child conformity and obedience, and more often endorse
attitudes in favor of corporal punishment than do non-CPC parents (Hoffmann, Ellison, and Bart-
kowski, 2017; Mahoney, 2010; Mahoney et al., 2001). An analysis of repeated cross-sectional data
from U.S. General Social Surveys (GSS) 1986 to 2014 finds that attitudes in support of corporal
punishment have remained most robust over time among less educated CPC, with some erosion
among more highly educated CPCs (Hoffmann et al., 2017). CPC factors are also tied to parents’
self-reports of actual use of corporal punishment in the United States (Ellison et al., 2011, Mahoney
530
et al., 2001, 2010; Petts, 2012) and Canada (Frechette and Romano, 2015), but some nuance may
apply. For instance, in a study of parents in the Southwestern United States, parents affiliated with
CPC denominations were no more likely to spank preschoolers when stressed than non-CPC
parents (or no affiliation) and equally likely to use nonpunitive, disciplinary techniques (Gershoff
et al., 1999). Nevertheless, CPC parents more strongly believed that spanking was necessary to
gain obedience and reported fewer negative side effects of this method for themselves (guilt) or
their children (fear, anger). Such beliefs mediated the links between CPC affiliation and spanking
(Gershoff et al., 1999).
The persistent link between a CPC orientation and pro-spanking attitudes and practices has
prompted innovative efforts to develop and test the effectiveness of a Biblical education intervention
to decrease support for spanking by CPCs. A randomized experimental design found that undergrad-
uates enrolled in a conservative Christian university who had been exposed to both empirical research
on adverse effects of spanking and progressive Christian interpretations of Biblical verses reported a
greater decrease over time in favorable attitudes toward spanking compared to those who were only
exposed to the research findings (Perrin et al. 2017). These decreases were especially strong among
undergraduates who initially endorsed strong fundamentalistic views of the Bible (Miller-Perrin and
Perrin, 2017a); another study with American-Korean parents attending a CPC church replicated this
moderator effect (Miller-Perrin and Perrin, 2017b).
Given theoretical and empirical linkages between CPC and corporal punishment, social scientists
have long raised concerns that devout evangelical Christians in the United States may also be more
physically abusive of their children than other parents. In a study of 313 counties drawn from seven
geographically diverse U.S. states, however, documented rates of child physical abuse were lower, not
higher, in counties that had higher levels of Christian conservativism (Breyer and MacPhee, 2015).
Two in-depth studies have further pinpointed the use of R/S for instrumental purposes (i.e., extrinsic
religiousness) as a key predictor of greater risk of child physical abuse, not religious affiliation per se,
orthodox religious beliefs, or the centrality of religion to one’s identity (i.e., intrinsic religiousness;
Dyslin and Thomsen, 2005; Rodriguez and Henderson, 2010).
Moving beyond CPC affiliation as a potential risk factor, greater frequency of religious attendance
by parents, regardless of place of worship, has been empirically tied to lower, not higher, reported
occurrence or potential risk of child physical abuse. Higher religious attendance emerged as a protec-
tive factor against child physical abuse in three early rigorous longitudinal studies (Mahoney et al.,
2001). To illustrate, based on official U.S. state records and youth self-reports of maltreatment across
a 17-year period, children whose parents rarely attended services were more than twice as likely
to be physically abused over time than children whose parents attended religious services regularly
(Brown, Cohen, Johnson, and Salzinger, 1998). Additionally, in studies of low-income or minority
U.S. mothers, higher importance of R/S in their lives has been repeatedly tied to a lower risk of child
maltreatment or harsh parenting (Mahoney, 2010; Mahoney et al., 2001). Furthermore, greater reli-
gious participation by parents has been tied to less, not more, use of corporal punishment. For instance,
in a longitudinal study of unmarried U.S. mothers, multiple trajectories of higher maternal religious
attendance (i.e., consistent frequent, moderate, or monthly attenders and high-increasing attenders)
predicted lower corporal punishment over time compared to nonattending mothers (Petts, 2012).
Higher worship attendance was also tied to lower corporal punishment in separate cross-sectional
analyses of Canadian parents (mostly married and female) of children ages 2 to 5 years, 6 to 9 years,
and 10 to 11 years (Frechette and Romano, 2015). Similarly, a more in-depth 12-item measure of
R/S experiences (e.g., I feel God’s love for me directly; I find strength in my religion or spirituality)
correlated with lower rates of spanking and slapping children by Ukrainian mothers (71% married/
partnered; Grogan-Kaylora, Burlakab, Mac, Leea, Castilloa, and Churakovab, 2018). Taken together,
available evidence suggests that greater parental participation in religious groups is tied to lower, not
higher, rates of corporal punishment and risk of child physical abuse. These findings highlight the
531
need for social scientists to untangle specific R/S factors that predict lower versus higher rates of par-
ents’ physical aggression toward children across diverse faith communities.
Global R/S Factors Tied to Parental Satisfaction and Stress

Based on a 2007–2008 U.S. national survey of parents ages 24 to 34, greater religious attendance,
prayer, and importance of religion were each associated with greater overall satisfaction with parent-
ing by U.S. mothers and fathers, even when controlling for marital status (Henderson et al., 2016). In
follow-up subgroup regression analyses, higher religious attendance was tied to higher parental satis-
faction for single or cohabiting mothers, but not married mothers for whom only frequency of prayer
mattered. Perhaps also unexpectedly, single or cohabiting mothers (thus, those who were violating
conservative religious norms about the optimal family context) who were more religiously engaged
did not report more parenting stress, even if affiliated with CPC groups (Henderson et al., 2016). In
a longitudinal study, Petts (2012) also found that single U.S. mothers who consistently attended reli-
gious services at least monthly reported lower parenting stress (Petts, 2012). Petts’s longitudinal study
reinforces cross-sectional links found between greater R/S salience and less parental stress focused on
predominantly unmarried, urban, and poor mothers (Lamis, Wilson, Tarantino, Lansford, and Kaslow,
2014; Mahoney, 2010). Thus, participation in R/S groups represents a potentially important resource
across diverse families that may enhance parents’ perceived satisfaction and mitigate subjective stress
tied to parenting, despite lower base rates of religious attendance by unmarried parents, many of
whom may turn to a felt connection to God/divine Beings for strength and comfort in parenting
rather than faith communities (Sullivan, 2008).
Global R/S Factors Tied to Desirable Parenting Cognitions and Practices

In addition to parental well-being, a range of cross-sectional findings suggests that greater religious
salience and attendance are tied to parenting cognitions or practices that benefit children. To illustrate,
in national U.S. surveys, greater worship attendance has been tied to greater parental communication
and shared meals with children (Perry and Snawder, 2017), parental affection (Wilcox, 1998), fathers’
positive self-evaluations of their supervision, mental investment and quality of father–child bonds
(Bartkowski and Xu, 2000; King, 2003), and grandparents’ involvement and satisfaction as primary
caregivers (King, 2010). Likewise, in a study focused on married coparents, couples who more often
participated in public or private religious practices and tried to rely on faith to guide their lives said
they spent more time on the weekends and in one-on-one (e.g., homework), family, recreational, and
cultural activities with their tweens (ages 10 to 14; Jorgensen, Mancini, Yorgason, and Day, 2016),
echoing earlier evidence of greater parental consistency and positivity in community samples of
traditional families (Brody, Stoneman, and Flor, 1996; Schottenbauer, Spernak, and Hellstrom, 2007).
Across several studies of economically disadvantaged, single mother families, greater religious atten-
dance and personal salience of God or spirituality have been associated with more maternal authori-
tativeness, efficacy, and consistency (Mahoney, 2010). Overall, greater participation in R/S groups is
linked to more positive parenting for diverse families.
Global R/S Factors Tied to Parenting Adolescents and Emerging Adults

Greater parental involvement in organized religion has also been repeatedly cross-sectionally linked to
parents being more involved in their teenagers’ lives (Mahoney, 2010). In one U.S. survey, for example,
higher parental religious attendance correlated with parents imposing higher moral expectations and
supervision on adolescents and being more aware of and influential in their offspring’s social networks
(Kim and Wilcox, 2014). In two-parent U.S. households, a combined index of parental reports of
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both parents’ religious attendance and familial religious activities with early adolescents was tied to
youth reports of more parental monitoring, positive reinforcement and affection, and less interpa-
rental conflict; preliminary analyses found parallel results with single-parent households (Li, 2013).
A 15-item measure of parental R/S was tied to more self-reported authoritative parenting with early
adolescents in African-American families (Landor, Simons, Simons, Brody, and Gibbons, 2011), as well
as direct observations in the home of more effective parenting by European-American and African-
American parents (Simons, Simons, and Conger, 2004). In another earlier observational study focused
on European-American two-parent families, higher general parental religiousness predicted more
authoritative strategies with their adolescents during videotaped problem-solving discussions (i.e.,
blending demands with negotiation and mothers being less authoritarian (Gunnoe, Hetherington,
and Reiss, 1999). Overall, parents’ self-reports of greater R/S engagement have been repeatedly tied to
more authoritative and engaged parenting of adolescents.
Whereas the salutary findings highlighted above rely on parents’ self-reports, other studies have
focused on emerging adults’ perceptions of their parents’ R/S and parent–child dynamics. Drawing on
two universities the southeastern United States, for example, college students’ recall of parents’ public
and private religious activities during the prior two years was correlated with their reports of bet-
ter parenting, including communication, closeness, support, monitoring, and peer acceptance (Snider,
Clements, and Vazsonyi, 2004). In other studies, however, young adults’ perceptions of parental R/S
devotion have only been indirectly (not directly) tied to their perceptions of more positive parenting
practices in the United States (Power and McKinney, 2013) and Muslim Indonesian families (French
et al., 2013) by increasing youth’s own R/S commitments which, in turn, predicted better youth–parent
relational processes. Also, according to longitudinal surveys, U.S. adolescents who initially said religion
was personally important, or became more important during the teen years, later reported feeling more
satisfied and closer to their parents as young adults, even controlling for their degree of rebellious-
ness (Regnerus and Burdette, 2006); but no such links emerged for changes in religious attendance
or affiliation. Overall these results imply that parents’ sharing and/or transmitting an internalized and
meaningful sense of faith among adolescents is key for facilitating close parent–offspring bonds across
adolescence and into early adulthood.
Family Members’ (Dis)Similarity on Global R/S Factors

An important emerging stream of research focuses on whether (dis)similarity between family mem-
bers on global markers of religious salience is tied to the quality of dyadic relationships. High
similarity between mothers and adolescents in the perceived importance of religion during the teen
years has been longitudinally tied to offspring feeling more satisfied with their relationship with
their mother as adults; but if religion is markedly more important to mothers, then adult offspring
later report more relational discord and distance (Stokes and Regnerus, 2009). Likewise, in a complex
cross-sectional study using latent class analyses, when mother–adolescent pairs overlapped a great
deal on higher ratings of multiple indices of religiousness (importance, attendance, and/or prayer),
teens reported better relational well-being, such as more shared activities, better communication pat-
terns, and greater closeness, which was not the case if mothers were markedly more religious than
the teens (Noonan, Tracy, and Grossman, 2012). The reverse pattern of adolescents self-reporting
higher religiousness than mothers has been tied to teens’ greater satisfaction with their parent–child
relationship, perhaps partly because these teens draw on R/S resources outside the home to bolster
their personal and relational functioning (Stokes and Regnerus, 2009). Yet marked discrepancies
where parents rated religion as more important than adolescents longitudinally predicted youth
having more internalizing and externalizing problems, with these effects being mediated by adoles-
cents’ poorer view of the quality of their relationships with their parents (Kim-Spoon, Longo, and
McCullough, 2012). As a parallel, major disagreements between married parents about religious
533
beliefs or attendance have been found to increase the risk of children’s adjustment problems, presum-
ably partly due to religiously based conflicts over parental goals or methods that undermine copar-
enting (Bartkowski, Xu, and Levin, 2008; van der Jagt-Jelsma et al., 2011). To maintain perspective
about these findings, it is worth emphasizing that major dissimilarity between parents and offspring
on global R/S variables is fairly rare. For example, Stokes and Regnerus (2009) found that only 11%
of parents rated religion as much more important than their teens. Overall, greater relational distress
and youth maladjustment is more likely in the minority of families where family members experi-
ence conflicts over matters of faith, but most families experience relative R/S harmony, which is
typically tied to relational well-being.
Pathways of Parents’ R/S to Parenting to Youth Psychosocial Well-Being

We have thus far highlighted direct links between parents’ greater overall participation in religious
groups and desirable parenting outcomes for diverse families during childhood and adolescence.
We now turn to longitudinal studies that replicate these direct linkages and also test indirect path-
ways of influence between parents’ self-reported R/S to their offspring’s later psychosocial and/or
RS adjustment by way of better parenting. Such mediational modeling reinforces parental R/S as a
salient factor to include in multidimensional models of parenting and child well-being (Bornstein,
2016). Because these longitudinal studies reduce (though do not completely eliminate) concerns that
selection effects or third variables fully account for cross-sectional evidence tying greater R/S par-
ticipation to desirable parenting practices, we offer in-depth descriptions of their rigorous methods
and compelling results.
Starting in 1989, Spilman, Neppl, Donnellan, Schofield, and Conger (2013) conducted a 20-year
study across three generations of 451 two-parent families with children from rural Iowa. Couples
with higher R/S initially demonstrated more positive parenting (and marital) functioning during
their adolescent’s high school years, which, in turn, was tied to their offspring later exhibiting
more positive parenting with their grandchildren. Specifically, latent measures of R/S for the first-
generation (G1) combined couples’ religious attendance and importance being religious and R/S
in daily life in 1991. Parallel latent R/S measures were created for the next generation (G2) by
combining their adolescents’ R/S ratings across the high school years. The quality of parenting by
G1 was assessed by directly observing the parents and adolescents engaging in discussions at three
annual home visits across high school. After the G2 reached adulthood and had a child, their quality
of parenting was assessed by one direct observation of G2 parents supervising a clean-up task with
their young child. The quality of G1 and G2 marital and romantic relationships was also assessed by
directly observing the G1 and G2 couples’ communication skills over time. Higher reports of R/S
by the G1 couples had a positive, indirect effect across generations, with G1’s initial R/S predicting
higher-quality G1 marital interactions and parenting behaviors, which, in turn, were associated with
better G2 parenting practices and couples’ communication skills. These pathways emerged after
controlling for personality traits, gender, income, education, and religious affiliation (60% of G1 were
mainline Protestants and 18% Catholic).
In a national survey of two-parent U.S. households (Li, 2013), a combined index of parents’ reli-
gious attendance and familial religious activities with 12- to 14-year-olds was directly tied to youth
being less likely to be involved in delinquent behavior two years later, as well as indirectly tied to
less delinquency by increasing teens’ reports of better parenting. That is, much of the relationship
between familial R/S and conduct problems was mediated by the mechanisms of teens’ percep-
tions of less interparental conflict, better parenting practices, and stronger affection for parents;
preliminary analyses found similar results with single-parent households. In another longitudinal
study of 612 African-American families, greater parental R/S as captured by a 15-item measure
when an adolescent was 15 to 16 years old predicted less risky sexual behavior (early sexual debut,
534
multiple sexual partners, and inconsistent condom use) two years later by the teen (Landor et al.,
2011). Parental religiosity was tied to later adolescent sexual behavior by increasing authorita-
tive parenting, adolescent religiosity, and the adolescents’ association with less sexually permissive
peers. Finally, Bornstein et al. (2017) assessed ways parents’ self-reports of the overall importance of
religion and religious beliefs shaped parenting in a three-year longitudinal investigation of 1,198
families from nine countries, spanning four religions (Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, and
Islam) plus unaffiliated parents. On a positive note, greater parental R/S at child age 8 was associated
with higher parental efficacy and warmth at child age 9; both of these parenting factors, in turn,
increased children’s social competence and school performance at age 10. On a less desirable note,
greater parental R/S at child age 8 was associated with stronger parent behavioral control of youth
with little opportunity for autonomy, at child age 9, which in turn was associated with more child
internalizing and externalizing problems at age 10, although the children’s difficulties fell below
clinical levels of distress. Greater parental religiousness was also tied to children’s, but not parents’,
reports of parental rejection, which in turn was associated with increases in children’s adjustment
difficulties at age 10. Notably, none of these effects were moderated by religious group affiliation
or nationality.
In summary, rigorous longitudinal evidence has begun to tie greater parents’ R/S to desirable
parenting processes that, in turn, predict various indices of better youth psychosocial adjustment
(Landor et al., 2011; Li, 2013; Spilman et al., 2013). Whereas greater parent R/S increased parents’ self-
appraised confidence and warmth, and thus children’s social and academic achievements over time in
Bornstein et al.’s cross-cultural study (2017), it also fostered more parental rigidity and elicited more
strain from the children’s point of view. Such mixed findings highlight the need to untangle specific
R/S factors that may trigger positive and negative parenting cognitions and practices. We now turn
to a fuller discussion of such efforts.
Specific R/S Resources and Risks for Being a Parent

Overall, evidence suggests that greater involvement in organized religion may intensify parents’
commitment to their parenting goals and socialization strategies of choice. Perhaps the most
straightforward implication is that many parents may benefit from being more engaged in R/S
religious communities of their choice. Of course, it is unlikely social scientists would make this
blanket recommendation because global R/S indices confound theological teachings that could
motivate adaptive or maladaptive parenting. Furthermore, global R/S measures tap into nonspecific
psychological or social benefits that religious and nonreligious organizations can offer, such as pro-
viding families a sense of social solidarity or support and encouraging parent and child prosocial
conduct. But historically, diverse religious groups have offered people a myriad of unique beliefs
and rituals that envelop being a parent with R/S significance (Onedera, 2008). Religious baby nam-
ing ceremonies vividly exemplify occasions where the role of being a parent is wrapped in a rich
web of R/S cognitions and behaviors. In turn, viewing parenting through a sacred lens and engag-
ing in R/S dialogues or rituals with offspring may help prompt parents to make sacrifices for the
sake of their children. In addition, parents may often turn to God/divine Beings as allies to cope
mindfully and gracefully with the stresses of parenting. When parents encounter childrearing chal-
lenges, they may also encounter painful R/S struggles as they attempt to conserve or transform their
understanding of being a good parent as a R/S end and means. Our next section offers evidence
on various specific R/S beliefs and behaviors that could function as resources or risks for parent-
ing. Consistent with the RSF, Figure 18.1 provides a graphic illustration of hypothetical direct and
indirect pathways from parental R/S relational resources to youth outcomes via parenting that may
account for positive linkages between R/S resources, adaptive parenting, and better youth R/S and
psychosocial adjustment.
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Parental R/S
Relational Resources
Parent’s Relationship to
Divine Being(s):
E.g., Secure Attachment
R/S Properties
of Parent–Child Adaptive Parenting
Relationships: Attitudes & Practices
E.g., Sanctification
Parent’s Relationship to
R/S Group(s): Better Youth R/S
E.g., Spiritual Support and Psychosocial
via Attending Services Adjustment
Figure 18.1 Direct and indirect pathways from religious/spiritual (R/S) relational resources to youth outcomes
via parenting
Possible Resource: Sanctification

“Sanctification” falls within Tier 2 of the RSF and is a construct broadly conceptualized for psycho-
logical research as “perceiving an aspect of life as having divine significance and meaning” (Mahoney
et al., 2003; Mahoney, Pargament, and Hernandez, 2013; Pargament and Mahoney, 2005). Thus far,
sanctification has been operationalized in two ways. Theistic sanctification refers to perceiving an
aspect of life to be a manifestation of God. For example, most married spouses from the Midwestern
United States who were pregnant with their first child agreed to some degree that “God played a role
in our getting pregnant” (83% mothers, 76% fathers); “Our pregnancy is a reflection of God’s will”
(84%, 78%); and “I sense God’s presence in this pregnancy” (79%; 73%; Mahoney, Pargament, and
DeMaris, 2009). Nontheistic sanctification involves viewing an element of daily life as being imbued
with sacred qualities typically associated with perceived deities or transcendent realities. Examples
regarding pregnancy include “makes me very aware of a creative power beyond us” (83% mothers,
76% fathers), “is sacred to me” (76%, 68%), and “feels like part of a larger spiritual plan” (88%, 73%;
Mahoney et al., 2009). Notably, these couples attended religious services on par with other married
U.S. couples with children, implying that many Americans may view parenting as having divine
significance. Substantiating this assertion, in a 2014 national survey of U.S. parents of 5- to 12-year-
old children (60% married, 37% single, 3% cohabiting; 38% male), the average rating of the nonthe-
istic sanctification item “My role as a parent is holy and sacred” was 3.0 on a Likert scale where 1
equaled “strongly disagree” to 4 equaled “strongly agree” (Nelson and Uecker, 2017). Parenthetically,
although theistic sanctification was not assessed in this study, the two sanctification subscales tended
to be moderately highly correlated (Mahoney et al., 2013). We now turn evidence on how viewing
parenting as a sacred calling is linked to parenting cognitions or practices.
When it comes to parenting satisfaction, a one-unit increase in nontheistic sanctification of parent-
ing increases the odds of Americans’ parental satisfaction during childhood by 77% after controlling
for the following three indicators of R/S salience: overall importance of religion and the frequency of
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religious attendance and prayer, marital status, and other demographics (Nelson and Uecker, 2017).
Furthermore, sanctity of parenting fully mediated the significant direct linkages of parental satisfaction
with religious attendance and importance of religion. In subanalyses of two-parent families, couples’
combined sanctification of parenting increased the odds of dyadic parental satisfaction by 57% and
fully mediated significant associations between interfaith marriages and lower parental satisfaction,
as well as couples’ higher worship attendance and higher parental satisfaction. In a different study of
families of college students, greater nontheistic, but not theistic, sanctification, was tied to students’ and
both mothers’ and fathers’ satisfaction with the parent–child relationship (Brelsford, 2013). In sum-
mary, viewing parenting through a sacred lens appears to be tied to being a more satisfied American
parent.
Sanctification of parenting may translate into differing patterns of parenting practices, depend-
ing on how people construe effective approaches to childrearing. During the transition to parent-
hood, for instance, greater perceived sanctity of the parent–infant bond increased the traditional
gender divisions of infant care between 164 married heterosexuals from the Midwest United States
(81% European-American) and was unrelated to parental overprotectiveness or irritability toward
their infant (DeMaris et al., 2011). In a study of 134 married Midwestern European-American
mothers of elementary-aged children, greater sanctification of parenting was tied to more corpo-
ral punishment and positive parent–child interactions when mothers interpreted the Bible literally
(Murray-Swank, Mahoney, and Pargament, 2006). In contrast, greater sanctification was tied to less
corporal punishment and did not alter relatively high levels of positive mother–child interactions
for mothers with more liberal views of the Bible. For all mothers, sanctification related to less verbal
hostility and more consistency in parenting. In another study of 139 Midwestern U.S. parents who
were predominantly mothers (86%) and European-American (91%), higher levels of sanctification
buffered parents against feeling stressed as their reports of children’s behavior problems, suggesting
they felt more confident in their parenting practices in the face of child noncompliance (Weyand,
O’Laughlin, and Bennett, 2013). In a Midwestern U.S. sample of 58 married heterosexual (96%
European-American) couples, higher maternal and paternal reports of the sanctification of parent-
ing were related to more positive socialization (e.g., contingent praise) and the use of induction
(e.g., teaching reparation), but not punitive techniques (e.g., shaming or spanking), to elicit young
children’s moral conduct in disciplinary situations (Volling, Mahoney, and Rauer, 2009). Parents’ use
of non-punitive strategies combined with a belief in the sanctity of parenting also translated into
children’s greater conscience development, suggesting these parents were more determined to instill
their ethical values in their offspring. In a study focused on 174 fathers (68% European-American;
26% African-American) from the upper U.S. Midwest, those who more strongly viewed parenting as
a sanctified role said they were more involved in their children’s lives, even after accounting for their
personality and marital quality, but their children did not report feeling closer or more attached to
their fathers (Lynn, Grych, and Fosco, 2016). In a fairly ethnically diverse sample of 149 parents (96%
mothers; 44% African-American, 44% European-American, 11% Latin American or other) from
a low-income, urban setting, those who reported greater sanctification of parenting also reported
greater investment of effort to care for their children, but not parental efficacy (Dumas and Nissley-
Tsiopinis, 2006). Overall, viewing parenting as a sacred endeavor may intensify parental involvement
and convictions about their preferred childrearing methods and coparenting processes. Studies using
larger and diverse samples are needed to confirm this conclusion, as well as identify for whom and
when greater belief in the sanctity of parenting is tied to desirable versus undesirable childrearing
practices. In the meantime, it may be valuable for family professionals to begin to respectfully but
explicitly explore parents’ perceptions about the sanctity of their childrearing goals and methods
in education or intervention programs, rather than ignore this apparently prevalent R/S cognition
about parenting that may often undergird parenting values and practices (Mahoney, LeRoy, Kusner,
Padgett, and Grimes, 2013).
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Possible Risk: Sacred Loss and Desecration

The RSF highlights that family events can be viewed through a distressing R/S lens that may adversely
affect parents. Sacred loss or desecration exemplify two such Tier 2 processes (Mahoney, 2013). For
example, divorce and romantic break-ups are often viewed as the loss or violation of a union that
partners had previously viewed as having sacred qualities or being a manifestation of God, and such
perceptions have been tied to longitudinally greater anxiety and depressive symptoms as well hostil-
ity between ex-spouses (Krumrei, Mahoney, and Pargament, 2011a). Although parallel studies are
needed that focus on parenting, significant obstacles in tied to being a parent, such as experiencing
major chronic conflicts with or estrangement from offspring or coparents, or an unwanted divorce, or
ex-spouse’s remarriage, could likewise often be perceived as a sacred loss or desecration, which could
heighten the risk of parents, coparents, and their children experiencing relational or personal distress.
Possible Resource: Supportive R/S Disclosure and Dialogue

In addition to R/S beliefs that individuals may internalize about interpersonal relationship(s), Tier
2 of the RSF highlights that people in close relationships can engage in overt R/S behaviors that
infuse a given relationship(s) with R/S significance in helpful ways. Emerging research along these
lines has examined ways that dyadic conversations about R/S are reciprocally tied to relational qual-
ity. For example, Brelsford and Mahoney (2008) assessed the degree to which college students and
parents candidly told each other about their R/S views, resources, and struggles, a process labeled
spiritual disclosure. Notably, spiritual disclosure does not require two parties to strongly endorse or
share a particular R/S worldview. Based on reports from both college students and parents, greater
spiritual disclosure was tied to greater satisfaction within the mother–child and father–child relation-
ship (Brelsford, 2010, 2013; Brelsford and Mahoney, 2008) and lower verbal hostility (Brelsford and
Mahoney, 2008), even after controlling for the extent to which the dyads discussed other sensitive
topics, such as sexuality or alcohol or drug use. Because R/S convictions or doubts can easily be
disputed and difficult to defend, many people, perhaps especially adolescents, may avoid revealing
such information to parents (or vice versa) for fear of being dismissed, criticized, or misunderstood.
Kusner, Mahoney, Pargament, and DeMaris (2014) therefore created a measure to assess both spiritual
disclosure and the ability to respond to another’s spiritual disclosures in an empathic, nonjudgmental
manner (i.e., spiritual support), labeling the two combined processes “spiritual intimacy.” In a study of
couples, greater spiritual intimacy by both husbands and wives robustly predicted less observed nega-
tivity and more positivity exhibited by both spouses when couples discussed their top three marital
conflicts, even after using fixed effects modeling to control for stable characteristics of the spouses.
Although such findings need to be extended to parent–youth dyads, family members who openly
discuss and affirm their respective R/S journeys may enjoy more harmonious relationships.
Other empirical evidence suggests that mutually respectful R/S dialogues may foster parental and
youth personal R/S development. For instance, Boyatzis and Janicki (2003) collected survey and
qualitative data from Christian families with children aged 3 to 12. Mothers recorded in a diary every
conversation they had with their children about religion over a two-week span, documenting the
topics, frequency, setting, and processes involved in such conversations. The diaries showed that moth-
ers and children discussed R/S issues close to three times per week, with the most common topics
being God, Jesus, and prayer. Analyses of diaries found that children initiated and terminated about
half the conversations, spoke as much as parents did, and frequently asked questions and offered their
own views. In short, parent–child communication about religion was bidirectional, not unilateral,
and deepened parents’ reflections about their own R/S identities. In a study of highly religious Jew-
ish, Christian, and Muslim two-parent families, Dollahite and Thatcher (2008) found both parents
and adolescents cited conversations about faith as the most positive type of shared R/S experience
538
compared to other joint R/S activities, such as family devotions or prayer or attending religious ser-
vices together. “Youth-centered” conversations that focused on adolescents’ spiritual needs and issues
were described by both teens and parents as more positive and meaningful than “parent-centered”
conversations in which parents lectured rather than listened. Similarly, in a qualitative study of fami-
lies headed by same-sex couples who valued R/S, parents reported intentionally engaging in child-
centered dialogues about R/S as a means to facilitate their children’s access to R/S resources (Rostosky
et al., 2017). Indeed, King, Furrow, and Roth (2002) found that Protestant parents’ conversations with
adolescents about religious issues predicted adolescents’ experience of God and their report of the
importance of religion. In two-parent families headed by heterosexuals, however, gender differences
may exist in the influence of parent–youth R/S dialogues. In an initial study of a large ethnically and
religiously diverse U.S. sample, for instance, mothers’ supportive spiritual dialogue (but not general
care and concern) predicted adolescents’ R/S development, whereas fathers’ general care and concern
(but not supportive spiritual dialogue) predicted their teens’ R/S outcomes (Desrosiers, Kelly, and
Miller, 2011).
We look forward to more in-depth research on the content and processes adults intentionally
use to help their children access R/S knowledge and resources as a parental goal. To illustrate, Bras-
well, Rosengren, and Berenbaum (2011) examined the extent to which Midwestern Protestant and
Catholic parents encouraged their children’s beliefs about religion and science. Parents viewed both
religion and science as being highly important for their children to learn (4.4 and 4.6, respectively on
a 1 to 5 scale), although they wanted their children to learn about religion at younger age (4.9 years)
than about science (5.4 years). The strength of parents’ R/S beliefs very strongly correlated with the
value they placed on children learning about science and religion. Parents’ desire to educate children
about R/S appears to extend to atheist and agnostic scientists at elite U.S. universities (Ecklund and
Lee, 2011). Although the scientists revealed a striking personal disinterest in any form of R/S during
qualitative interviews, many emphasized that exposing their children to religion was important and
consistent with their value of free thinking; they viewed involving their children in religion “was a
way to expose them to diverse religious ideas so that they (the parents) do not inadvertently indoctri-
nate them with atheism” (p. 736).
For full discussion of how parents typically influence youth R/S development and, reciprocally,
ways that children shape parents’ R/S identities, see Boyatzis (2013); Boyatzis et al. (2006); and King
and Boyatzis (2015). Although it is also beyond the scope of this chapter to review the enormous
literature linking personal R/S adjustment to adults’ or adolescents’ mental health outcomes across
the life span (Holden and Vittrup, 2010; Pargament et al., 2013; Yonker et al., 2012), we suggest that
open-ended and mutually respective parent–child dialogues about R/S may be an important pathway
that facilitates close parent–child bonds, as well as each party’s access to personal R/S resources, which,
in turn, bodes well for each party’s individual psychosocial well-being.
Possible Risk: Spiritual One-Upmanship

As a counterpoint to the preceding discussion, within Tier 2 of the RSF, parents and youth may some-
times engage in destructive R/S dialogues. As a case in point, Brelsford and Mahoney (2009) surveyed
Midwestern U.S. college students and their parents about 20 ways each party might triangulate R/S
into their conflicts using both theistic (i.e., God-centered) and nontheistic strategies; hence, we label
this risk factor in this chapter as “spiritual one-upmanship” rather than “theistic triangulation” as
originally coined. Examples include arguing that the other party’s opinions oppose important R/S
principles, believing one is spiritually obliged to hold firm to a position, or saying God would be
disappointed in the other’s point of view, with these three sample items endorsed as “often” or “some-
times” occurring in 12% to 18% of cases, depending on the reporter and item. More importantly,
the more frequently one or both parties relied on such strategies, the more each engaged in verbal
539
aggression and stonewalling to handle disagreements. In another older study, 27% of school-aged
children from a Midwestern region of the U.S. reported that at least one of their parents told them
God would punish them if they were bad (Nelsen and Kroliczak, 1984). These initial studies show
that some parents may draw on R/S as a maladaptive means to back up their authority with offspring
or to reinforce their position in disputes with coparents, perhaps especially after a divorce or remar-
riage, with far more research needed to uncover spiritual one-upmanship given its potential power to
undermine the well-being of individual family members and their relationships.
Possible Resource: Divine Support

We now illustrate specific R/S factors that fall within Tier 1 of the RSF. Extensive research exists
on R/S methods to cope with nonfamilial stressors (e.g., natural disasters, illness), often relying
on Pargament’s theoretical model of R/S coping, as well as Pargament and colleagues’ 110-item
R-COPE measure or 14-item brief R-COPE to assess ways that people rely on R/S strategies to
appraise and respond to stressful life events (Pargament, 1997, 2007). Both the long and short
R-COPE measures yield two overarching dimensions of “positive” and “negative” R/S coping
(Pargament, Smith, Koenig, and Perez, 1998). Measures of positive R/S coping largely tap into the
extent to which people draw on a benevolent and secure relationship with God (i.e., divine cop-
ing), along with a sense of spiritual support from co-believers, to cope with stressful events. Such
measures have been tied to better individual health and psychological adjustment (Lucero et al.,
2013; Pargament, 2007).
Although scarce research has examined positive R/S coping in the context of family functioning,
social learning, attachment, and family systems models of parenting can be extended into the realm of
divine entities using a relational spirituality perspective. That is, some parents may experience divine
beings as supportive allies and attachment figures who reinforce their confidence, encourage them
to make sacrifices to satisfy their children’s needs, and help them be more engaged and efficacious in
parenting practices (Mahoney, 2010, 2013). Along these lines, in a community sample, positive R/S
coping by parents was related to higher self-appraisals of competence, particularly when parenting
children with significant behavior problems (Weyand et al., 2013). However, such salutary links did
not emerge in two cross-sectional studies where parents were asked about turning to God to cope
with parenting at-risk preschoolers (Dumas and Nissley-Tsiopinis, 2006) or children with autism
(Tarakeshwar and Pargament, 2001). Such null findings may reflect stress-mobilization coping pro-
cesses where parents may more often call on God at times they feel taxed or overwhelmed, with the
benefits of seeking divine support only becoming evident later. A unique longitudinal study, however,
yielded complex interactive effects over time between indices of the adolescents’ and mothers’ perceived
closeness with God in predicting each party’s well-being (Goeke-Morey, Taylor, Merrilees, Shirlow, &
Cummings, 2014). In 667 Christian and predominantly single-parent families from Northern Belfast,
youth who reported a closer relationship with a God figure were less likely to suffer from internal-
izing adjustment problems one year later, but only if their mothers more often turned to God to cope
with their own difficulties. Thus, in families where youth are relatively emotionally stable, mothers
may model for teens how to access an image of a loving, loyal deity figure to help cope with stressors,
which may help prevent youth from developing internalizing problems over time. Yet teens who ini-
tially reported higher internalizing problems later reported having a weaker relationship with God, and
mothers’ positive R/S coping did not buffer them from increased difficulties with God over the year.
Thus, in families where youth are already struggling with emotional problems, both teens and moth-
ers may need help in revising their attributions of God’s role in why the youth had been experiencing
problems and help accessing R/S resources to resolve difficulties. We look forward to more research
along these lines, noting an apparent absence of research focused on whether links between a parent’s
felt secure attachment to divine Beings is tied to better parenting processes, despite a growing literature
540
on links between family-of-origin dynamics and developing a secure versus anxious/ambivalent sense
attachment to God (Granqvist and Kirkpatrick, 2013).
Possible Risk: Divine and Demonic Struggles

Within the subfield of the psychology of R/S, “negative” R/S coping refers to ways that stressors trig-
ger distressing R/S thoughts and feelings about supernatural figures (e.g., anger toward God, feeling
punished by the devil), religious groups (e.g., conflicts with co-believers), or the self (e.g., feeling mor-
ally conflicted). Such processes appear to be increasingly referred to as “spiritual struggles,” especially
since Exline, Pargament, Grubbs, and Yali (2014) created new subscales that differentiate divine (i.e.,
God-focused) and demonic struggles from interpersonal, moral, and intrapsychic spiritual struggles
that do not involve supernatural figures. Cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence suggests that R/S
struggles generally lead to declines in physical, psychological, and R/S well-being, particularly if left
unresolved, but occasionally greater personal growth is attributed to R/S struggles, particularly when
they are resolved (Exline et al., 2014; Pargament, 2007).
Given that children and adolescents from more religiously engaged families tend to exhibit fewer
psychosocial difficulties than other families (Holden and Vittrup, 2010; Yonker et al., 2012), parents
may be especially prone to divine struggles if they have difficulties eliciting and maintaining positive
child behavior. Such struggles could range from feelings of shame, guilt, or punishment to parental
ineffectiveness in God’s eyes, to doubts and anger at God about their children’s problems, to despair
about God’s failure to intervene. At least four studies have examined negative religious coping by
parents facing difficulties, with measures that predominantly assessed strain in a parent’s relationship
with God, such as feeling abandoned or angry at God. In a study of parents of preterm (25 to 35
weeks’ gestation) infants, negative R/S coping was related to poorer family cohesion and greater use
of maladaptive denial (Brelsford, Ramirez, Veneman, and Doheny, 2016). For parents of both at-risk
preschoolers (Dumas and Nissley-Tsiopinis, 2006) and children with autism (Tarakeshwar and Parga-
ment, 2001), greater R/S struggles were correlated with parental distress and depression. Consistent
with other literature, these studies suggest divine struggles intensify poor adjustment when parents
face significant parenting challenges. Weyand et al. (2013), however, did not find moderator effects
in a nondistressed community sample. Thus, R/S struggles may only emerge in families facing suf-
ficiently high base rates of child difficulties. Clearly, more research is needed on ways that a conflicted
or insecure relationship with God could exacerbate poor parental and coparental adjustment, par-
ticularly when youth exhibit maladjustment. Finally, studies are needed on demonic struggles tied to
parenting, given that nearly half (48%) of adults from the U.S. Midwest in one unique study viewed
their divorce to be the work of the devil, and such beliefs were tied to postdivorce maladjustment
(Krumrei, Mahoney, and Pargament, 2011b).
Summary
Numerous studies have accumulated wherein greater general involvement in diverse R/S groups
by parents of children or teens is tied to more parental satisfaction and less subjective stress, greater
investment in parenting, more positive parenting practices or cognitions, lower risk of child physical
maltreatment and corporal punishment, and more satisfying parent–adolescent relationships. These
salutary findings have emerged in studies of non-distressed families headed by married heterosexuals
and single mothers. Inconsistent findings exist for the role of R/S when parenting infants. With the
exception of greater belief in and use of corporal punishment, endorsing conservative Protestant/
Christian attitudes or affiliation has also not been consistently tied to parenting during infancy, child-
hood, or adolescence. Studies have begun to differentiate helpful and harmful manifestations of R/S
for parenting. R/S resources that may facilitate being a more engaged and effective parent include the
541
sanctification of parenting, supportive spiritual dialogues between family members, and experiencing
a sense of divine support from God and others. Less attention has thus far been paid to specific R/S
risk factors that may foster maladaptive parenting, but possible examples include perceiving family
problems as a sacred loss or desecration, destructive R/S dialogues between family members, and expe-
riencing divine or demonic struggles in parenting. Yet to paraphrase a famous quote within treatment
outcome research, researchers need to go beyond binary categories of R/S resources versus risks and
also begin to uncover “what specific R/S factors promoted by which R/S traditions are most and least
effective for this parent with that specific problem and under which set of circumstances?” Thus, we
next explore when and for whom R/S may be especially likely to not work well.
Relational Spirituality and Reforming Parenting

to Address Major Problems
Paradoxically, from a relational spiritual perspective, R/S may be especially likely to go awry when
parents face major obstacles in becoming and being a parent. Theoretically, when people find that
their most cherished family goals conflict with their own or others’ wishes for whether and how to
create and sustain parent–child bonds, they may encounter painful spiritual problems, especially with
other people or supernatural beings, that undermine their family relationships or personal well-being
(Mahoney, 2010, 2013). Salient situations where specific R/S factors may function as an added strain
in forming a family include infertility, unwanted single parenthood, unplanned pregnancy, an uncom-
mitted coparent, remarriage, or parents or youth violating traditional social norms (e.g., unmarried
or same-sex parenthood). Salient situations where faith may function as a stumbling block in being
a parent include dysfunctional parenting or coparenting dynamics; child maltreatment; domestic
violence; parenting a child with severe developmental, mental health, and/or physical problems; or
coparenting after a divorce or remarriage. However, many single, partnered, married, divorced, and
remarried parents may draw on R/S resources in the midst of their darkest hours as a unique source of
resilience to facilitate their own and their children’s well-being (Marks and Dollahite, 2016; Mahoney,
2013; Sullivan, 2008).
Basic Research With Distressed Parents or Families

Lechner, Tomasik, Silbereisen, and Wasilewski (2014) investigated the role of R/S in dealing with
family-related uncertainties about the stability of one’s partnership, relationship to parents, or having
a child, on the part of 2,571 Polish adolescents and adults 20 to 46 years. Not surprisingly, greater
identification with a religious tradition or group was tied to lower family-related uncertainties. More
interestingly, greater overall religious identification exacerbated the association of family uncertain-
ties with psychological distress. This moderator effect suggests that experiencing uncertainties or
ambivalence about family circumstances that conflict with religiously cherished family-related values
and norms may trigger more distress for stronger believers. Similarly, greater R/S (a 15-item measure)
was associated with greater depressive symptoms in parents caring for children with developmental
disabilities; in follow-up qualitative interviews, these parents reported struggling to turn to God as a
last resort to cope (Gallagher, Phillips, Lee, and Carroll, 2015). Likewise, Strawbridge, Shema, Cohen,
Roberts, and Kaplan (1998) found that although markers of greater R/S buffered the impact of sev-
eral nonfamily life events on depression, greater R/S exacerbated depressive symptoms on the part of
older adults’ who reported dealing with relational abuse, marital problems, or trouble with children.
Such results converge with basic research we discussed earlier on R/S struggles with parenting chal-
lenges potentially intensifying parental distress (Brelsford et al., 2016; Dumas and Nissley-Tsiopinis,
2006; Tarakeshwar and Pargament, 2001). Yet in some qualitative studies, highly religious parents say
they view their child’s developmental disabilities through a positive spiritual lens that reduces their
542
psychological distress (Marks and Dollahite, 2016; Mahoney et al., 2001). Clearly, more basic research
is merited that focuses on distressed families where parents may be especially likely to be alienated
from R/S resources and vulnerable to R/S struggles that heighten despair.
Applied Research With Distressed Parents or Families

Creative edited books have been written on integrating R/S into family therapy (Walker and Hatha-
way, 2013; Walsh, 2009) that draw on scholarship about diverse teachings about family life across reli-
gious denominations, broad psychological and sociological theories about R/S, inferences drawn from
basic research on R/S for nondistressed families, and clinical wisdom bolstered by case examples. We
were unable, however, to locate randomized experimental studies with a control group that examined
the utility of addressing R/S issues when intervening with parents dealing with significant parental,
marital, or family problems. Thus, in using such resources, practitioners need to carefully assess how
R/S may be part of the problem or solution in addressing dysfunctional parenting or child adjustment
(Mahoney et al., 2013). Hopefully more extensive applied research will be forthcoming where basic
findings are translated into applied work in religious or nonreligious settings. We next discuss some
recommendations along these lines.
Translational Work to Facilitate Parenting

In 2007, the American Psychological Association’s Council of Representatives adopted a resolution
that ended with that statement that the APA “encourages collaborative activities in pursuit of shared
prosocial goals between psychologists and religious communities when such collaboration can be
done in a mutually respectful manner that is consistent with psychologists’ professional and scientific
roles” (p. 4). One such collaboration involves turning to religious leaders as experts to help mental
health professional address R/S issues when providing clinical interventions to distressed parents.
Notably, the treatment outcome literature is rapidly expanding to respond to recent calls for mental
health professionals to develop competencies to acknowledge, not ignore, the fact that R/S beliefs and
practices reflect a persistent and important dimension of cultures across the globe. At a minimum,
mental health professionals are being encouraged to proactively assess the ways that R/S may be part
of the problem or solution when clients seek counseling services (Mahoney et al., 2013; Pargament,
2007; Saunders, Miller, and Bright, 2010). Practitioners are also encouraged to seek out collegial rela-
tionships with religious leaders who can provide consultation about R/S issues, as well as be referral
sources for clients who may benefit from ministerial and spiritual care that counselors feel unquali-
fied to provide. Conversely, mental health providers can be a resource to religious leaders who feel ill
equipped to provide intensive clinical care.
A markedly different partnership that family educators, researchers, and mental health professionals
could pursue is to work with religious leaders to enhance psychoeducational prevention programs
delivered in religious contexts and/or aimed at community groups composed of people who, by and
large, are not clinically distressed. Examples include parenting enrichment programs. As we have
shown, higher religious attendance at any place of worship has been tied to family processes tied to
the well-being of diverse parents. Applied researchers could work productively with religious organi-
zations of their choice to identify specific spiritual beliefs and practices promoted by many religious
groups that could be incorporated into evidence-based parenting programs delivered in religious
settings.
The demarcation of educational prevention versus intervention collaborations helps underscore
the potentially contrasting and implicit assumptions about R/S that mental health professionals and
religious leaders may hold due to their different vocational contexts. Religious leaders may tend to
witness R/S functioning as a wellspring of strength that helps parents in their communities cope
543
with the ups and downs of daily life. Such perceptions would reflect empirical findings with non–
clinic-referred samples where high engagement in religious groups tends to be tied to better parental
functioning. Paradoxically, however, distressed parents may avoid disclosing serious family or personal
problems to religious leaders, especially if they fear being judged or that religious authorities will
align with friends or family members against them. Thus, psychotherapists may be disproportionally
exposed to anecdotes, case studies, or direct experience with clients where a religious leader or com-
munity are unsupportive or even exacerbate parental and family-related distress.
In summary, mental health professionals may be especially conscious of R/S risks, whereas clergy
may be especially attuned to R/S strengths. Hopefully, our chapter has effectively illustrated malleable
and specific R/S facts that could function in both ways and be integrated into evidence-based pre-
vention and intervention programs, with the goal of enhancing outcomes in both community and
clinical contexts.
In moving forward on translational research, it is important to recognize that specific R/S mecha-
nisms that appear to operate as strengths within community samples may not translate easily or
directly into interventions in clinical practice. For example, although praying for a partner appears
to enhance kindness and love between generally happy couples in community samples (Fincham and
Beach, 2013), this does not mean this strategy functions the same way for highly distressed partners or
parents. Rather, clinicians need to carefully assess whether the content of prayers has the unintended
consequence of escalating maladaptive dynamics, such as reinforcing a partner’s or parent’s excessive
dominance or denial. Indeed, it is important to avoid naively generalizing that any R/S processes
that seem beneficial in routine daily life work well for distressed clients. Clients embroiled in rela-
tionship dysfunction when becoming and being a parent may face complex, excruciating dilemmas
that deserve in-depth and sensitive efforts to help them untangle R/S beliefs or behaviors that could
facilitate or undermine effective problem-solving and resolution of emotional or spiritual turmoil
within families.
Conclusions
A growing and exciting body of scientific research exists on the roles that R/S may play, for better
or worse, in becoming and being a parent. In this chapter, we summarized available empirical find-
ings using the Relational Spirituality Framework in hopes of encouraging more research. Scientific
evidence conducted primarily with U.S. samples suggests that greater religious attendance is tied to
parental satisfaction and desirable parenting cognitions or practices for married heterosexual parents
and single mothers. However, many unexamined issues exist across this fragmented literature. Much
work remains to identify malleable R/S factors that could function as added unique resources or risks
during routine daily life and times of family distress. We offer the five recommendations to encour-
age rigorous research on global and specific R/S processes relevant to parents from diverse family
structures and societies.
First, scholars need to appreciate that higher base rates of engagement in organized religious groups
are very likely to persist for married mothers and fathers with biological children, particularly those
involved in religious groups that promote socially conservative norms regarding childbearing and
family life. Nevertheless, many adaptive R/S processes may predict parenting cognitions and practices
in a similar fashion for parents from diverse families. Available findings, for example, suggest that
higher religious attendance is tied to more positive parenting by married heterosexual parents and
single mothers despite the fact that the latter tend to attend religious services less frequently and be
socioeconomically disadvantaged. The R/S factors that may drive such associations need more inves-
tigation. Both groups, for example, may similarly view parenting as a sacred calling and draw on a felt
supportive relationship with God in ways that strengthen their dedication to their children. Scarce
research is available on general or specific R/S factors tied to better parenting by divorced, remarried,
544
or cohabiting coparents or families headed by grandparents, LBGTQ, adoptive, or foster parents. We

encourage scholars to maintain an open mind about the possibility that R/S resources may be helpful
in becoming or being a parent within traditional and nontraditional family contexts.
Second, the RSF conceptually discriminates three sets of R/S resources and risks. Within the
former category, we highlighted sanctification, spiritually intimate dialogues, and drawing on divine
beings for support as three promising specific R/S resources. Far less research is available on R/S risk
factors for parents. However, drawing on research focused on marriage or divorce, we outlined pos-
sible maladaptive processes, such as viewing obstacles in becoming or being a parent or coparent as
a sacred loss and desecration, or experiencing divine or demonic struggles when family or parenting
problems arise. Notably, both R/S resources processes may often overlap, especially for parents who
do not experience major clashes between what their religious tradition teaches about childbearing
and rearing and their own R/S beliefs or behaviors tied to parenting and coparenting. Subsamples of
parents, however, may face challenges accessing some R/S resources. For example, single, LBGTQ, or
other nontraditional parents may have difficulties finding a supportive R/S community. Other sub-
samples of parents may be especially prone to experiencing R/S struggles that undermine parenting
wherein their R/S upbringing or beliefs create havoc in a felt relationship with God or with other
family members due to value conflicts over parenting goals or methods. Thus, although specific R/S
mechanisms within the RSF (i.e., Tiers 1, 2, and 3) may tend to be intercorrelated, we see conceptual
and practical value to differentiating malleable R/S processes in basic research studies so that these
processes could potentially be identified and integrated into evidence-based prevention and interven-
tion programs to facilitate better parenting across diverse settings and families.
Third, available evidence suggests that R/S resources are more prevalent than R/S risk factors and
tend to be helpful for parents in samples drawn from the general population or communities samples.
R/S risk factors may be more common and especially potent for parents who encounter major
problems in parenting. Especially if a major goal of basic science is to translate findings into practi-
cal applications, we encourage more in-depth studies on both nondistressed and distressed families to
illuminate both the bright and dark side of relational spirituality for all kinds of parents.
Fourth, many parents may draw on R/S to inform their preferred childrearing tactics. For example,
ties to CPC subgroups or beliefs translate into greater beliefs in and use of corporal punishment with
young children but not, to date, higher risk of child physical abuse. More research is needed on such
links, and we have suggested that social scientists expand their scope of inquiry into the many R/S
factors that could shape the broad array of childrearing strategies that many parents may use to reach
their goals. We suggest that readers recognize that, according to a 2014 Pew survey, U.S. parents’ top
five child socialization goals did not vary according to parents’ religious affiliations or political ide-
ologies, including conservative Christian subgroups. Specifically, teaching children to be responsible
emerged as the top goal of American parents, with 94% saying this childrearing value was “especially
important.” Instilling the ability to work hard was the second most endorsed value (92%), followed by
rearing children to be helpful (86%), well mannered (86%), and independent (79%). Many married
and unmarried parents across the theologically progressive to conservative spectrum may view reach-
ing such parenting goals as a profound R/S responsibility and be more committed to their parenting
methods of choice to achieve their ends, especially if their R/S community reinforces their efforts.
Family science policymakers, researchers, educators, and counselors who can convey an appreciation
of the many R/S facets of parenthood may build better rapport with parents from diverse religious
traditions and thus be better able to pass along empirically based education about the optimal means
for diverse parents to reach their most cherished ends.
Fifth, as is the case with many areas of family science, we hope that more research is conducted
cross-culturally, using in-depth qualitative methods that unpack parents’ R/S thoughts and feelings
about parenting across religious traditions as well as quantitative research designs to verify the scope
and strength of relational R/S processes in predicting parenting cognitions and practices. Consistent
545
with the rigorous methodological standards within family science, studies would ideally rely on two
or more informants from a family and employ self-report and observational assessment tools. Finally,
given the surprising gaps in the literature, cross-sectional studies represent a valuable starting point for
many unexamined hypotheses for samples drawn from diverse countries, but more rigorous longitu-
dinal studies will hopefully follow to help clarify direction of effects.
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INDEX
Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures and in bold indicate table on the corresponding pages.
Abara, B. 525 methodologies of research on 242; overview 242–243,

Abecedarian program 322 271; parental socialization and 243; parenting
abuse of child 293–294, 328, 476, 530–532 style and academic intrinsic motivation and
Abwender, D. A. 300 254–255, 258–261, 260; practical considerations
academic competence 257–258 and research on 270–271; Self-Determination
academic failure 227 Theory and 245–246; self-efficacy and 252–254;
academic intrinsic motivation: academic competence socioeconomic status and 243–244; theories of,
and 257–258; Children’s Academic Intrinsic contemporary 244–254; see also academic intrinsic
Motivation Inventory and 256–259, 261; cognitive motivation; school-age child
stimulation and 261; competence aspects of 256; accumulated advantage model 369–370
extrinsic consequences and 256–257; Fullerton achievement goals 250–252
Longitudinal Study and 243, 254–255, 264–267; activation 70
gender and 264; integration studies on 266–267; active learning 222
literacy environment and, parental provision activities of child see organized youth activities
of early 264–266, 265; mastery aspects of 257; act-utilitarian perspective 7
measuring 257; parental motivational practices and Adamczyk, A. 527
258–261, 260; Parental Motivational Practices Scale Add Health data set 352, 358
and 258; parenting style and 254–255, 258–261, ADHD children 336
260; pathways from stimulation of curiosity to high Administration for Children and Families (ACF)
school science course accomplishments and 262, 320, 339
263, 264; rewards and 256–257; socioeconomic Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) 470
status and 261, 264; theory 255–257 Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) 133
academic motivation of child: academic competence adverse experiences of childhood (ACES) 436, 440
and 257–258; academic failure and 227; adversity experiences 163–164
achievement goals and 250–252; backfire affective environment 108–109
and 267–268; Children’s Academic Intrinsic affective sympathy 100
Motivation Inventory and 256–259, 261; Affordable Care Act 25, 442, 499
conclusions across theories and 268–269; culture Affuso, G. 246, 253
and 269; defining 242; entity versus incremental after-school activities 295, 358; see also organized
theory of intelligence and 249–250; expectancy- youth activities
value theory and 247–249; foundations of research after-school care arrangements 295
on 243–244; future directions of research on 269–270; age of child 77, 335
gender and 264, 269; implications of research on aggression 71, 79, 92
267–271; involved/supportive parenting style Ainsworth, M. D. S. 39, 161
and 244–245; issues in research on, central 244; Aksan, N. 38, 43, 136–137
measuring academic intrinsic motivation and 257; Alink, L. R. A. 293
553
Index
Alisat, S. 132 background television 388–389

Allen, E. 269 Baker, B. 287, 290
Almas, A. 135 Baker, J. K. 53
Altay, R. B. 282 Ball, C. L. 138
altruistic behavior 97–98; see also prosocial Bandura, A. 93, 124–125, 129, 252
development of child Banks, J. 352
Altschul, I. 289 Barnett, M. A. 287–288
ambiguous loss 164 Barr, R. 381–382, 394, 401
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) 237, 381, Barry, R. A. 45
397–398, 433, 443, 453 Bates, J. E. 54, 289, 293, 295
American Business Collaboration for Quality Baumrind, D. 9, 39, 45–46, 66, 69, 109, 165, 244
Dependent Care (ABC) 339 Bayley assessment 51
American Law Institute (ALI) 469 Becnel, J. N. 352
American Psychological Association 516, 543 Beeghly, M. 165
Anderson, D. R. 381, 388–389, 393 Before- and After-School Programs and Activities
Anderssen, N. 352 Interview 351
answering versus asking questions 220 behaviorism 92–93, 123–124
Anthony, L. 290 behavior regulation of child 34–36, 40–42
anti-poverty programs 500–502, 506 behaviors of parents 283–284, 361–365
apps for electronic devices 236–237, 387–388 Behunin, M. G. 280
Arditti, J. A. 158 Belsky, J. 281
Aristotelian tradition 8 beneficent paternalism 17
Arnold, M. L. 106, 135 Benson, P. L. 500
Aronson, J. 219 bereavement, child’s 338
Ashman, S. B. 292 Berenbaum, H. 539
asking questions, learning skill of 215, 220–223 Berkowitz, M. W. 135
Aslington, J. W. 235 Bernier, A. 41
assertive discipline see corporal punishment; power Bernstein, M. 366
assertive techniques Berry, S. H. 300
Assor, A. 49, 54 best interests of the child 9–11, 19–22, 466, 468, 475
Assuring Better Child Health and Development Beyers, W. 46
(ABCD) 443 Bhavnagri, N. 296–297
attachment: childcare issues and 336–337; gender Bibok, M. B. 41–42
and 281; models 280; moral development of child Bierman, K. L. 51, 57
and 132–133; parent-child relationship and 100, Bindman, S. W. 41
132–133, 280–281, 291–292; to parents, one or Bingham, K. 138
both 280; peer competence and 279–280; peer bioecological theory 348–349
relationships of child and 279–281; relationship biological parents 467–468, 526–527
representations and 280; security 100, 133, 280, Bird, A. 145–146
336–337; socioeconomic status and 281; theory 161 Birmingham, R. S. 40
Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch Up (ABC) Blue, J. 3
Intervention 170 Blustein, J. 19
Attili, G. 286 Blyth, D. A. 500
Auger, A. 370 Boldt, B. R. 145
authoritative parenting style 15, 39, 69, 106, Boldt, L. J. 134
131–132, 281 Bolger, K. E. 293
autistic children 401–402 Bong, M. 251
autonomous parenting style: in behavior regulation Bornstein, M. H. 160, 287, 357, 441, 450, 495–496,
41, 46–47; in emotion regulation 51–53; 518, 535
environment and, facilitating 38–39; in internalized Boss, P. 164
self-regulation 43; in self-regulation of child 39, Bouchard, T. J., Jr. 216
41, 46–47 Bourdieu, P. 350
autonomous thinking, promoting 106–107 Bourne, S. 107–108
autonomy of child 11, 245–246; defining 245; in Self- Bowlby, J. 159, 161
Determination Theory 245 Boyatzis, C. J. 538–539
Braswell, G. S. 539
Baby Talk listserv 324 Brelsford, G. M. 538–539
backfire and academic motivation 267–268 Brenner, J. 295
554
Index
Brenning, K. 54–55 Cassidy, J. 280

Bridges, L. 52, 55 Caughy, M. O. 294
Bridgett, D. J. 55 Chadha, N. 109–110
Bright Futures 433–434, 436, 440 challenging child in meaningful way 215, 217–218
Bright Horizons website 324 changing child, recognizing what can and cannot be
Brockmeyer, C. A. 393 changed and 215–217, 215
Brody, G. H. 107–108 Chan, S. S. I. 137
Bronfebrenner, U. 348–349, 497 Chaparro, M. P. 110
Brown, E. G. 299 character of child, developing 11–14
Brummelman, E. 267, 269 Chen, B. 46
Bruner, J. S. 41, 197 Chen, E. C.-H. 145
Bruner, J. S. 41 Chilamkurti, C. 140
Buber, M. 321 child abuse 293–294, 328, 476, 530–532
Bub, K. L. 40, 164 Childcare and Development Block Grant
Buchmann, M. 134–135 (CCDBG) 320
Buck, L. Z. 107 childcare issues: age of child 335; attachment
Bugental, D. 3 336–337; availability of facility 328–329; business
Bullock, B. M. 298 support and 339; caregiver facilities’ ideas about
bullying, peer 338–339 childcare 334–335; child-teacher ratio 330;
Burleson, B. R. 289 child variables in 335–339; community support
Burlingham, D. T. 158 339; culture 325–326; curriculum, written 333;
Burt, C. H. 166 directors of facility 329; education of parent 327;
Bush, G. W. 505 effects of childcare programs 321–323; emotional
Bushman, B. J. 267 issues of child 338–339; emotional maturity,
Buss, K. 52 fostering 332–333; ethnicity 327; family 325–328;
Buzukashvily, T. 48 federal efforts to enhance quality of childcare 320;
Byrne, D. 352 gender of child 335–336; group size at facility
330; health problems of child 338; High Free
Caldera, Y. M. 291 Choice settings 325; homelessness 328; home
Calkins, S. D. 40, 51 visitation 323; hours of operations of facility 330;
Callanan, M. A. 269 immigrant children 337; information sources
callous-unemotional (CU) traits 134 324; in-home practices 327; language 325–326;
Campos, J. J. 141 language enrichment, fostering 334; learning of
Carbonaro, W. 370 children in daily routines of facility 332; learning
Cardemil, E. V. 50 difficulties of child 337; length of time in childcare,
CARE 321 daily 335; military parents 328; need for quality
caregiver facilities: availability of 328–329; career childcare, question of urgency of 319–320; neglect
development ladders at 333–334; childcare ideas of child 328; overview 319, 340; parent choice,
of 334–335; child-teacher ratio at 330; curriculum provider ideas about 334–335; parent separation
and, written 333; directors of 329; emotional problems, teacher responses to 330–331; parent
maturity and, fostering 332–333; group size at variables in 325–335; peer relationships of child
330; infant massage at 333; language enrichment 295; personalized care 329; preferences of care
at 334; learning by child in daily routines at 332; 325–326; “quality care” 321; reflectivity of
operation hours of 330; parent separation problems childcare providers 329–330; research 323–324;
and, teacher responses to 330–331; personalized sensory sensibilities 337; social class 325–326; staff
care at 329; positive partners with parents and, at facility 330–334; state support 320, 339; stress
creating 333–334; professional help and, staff access of child 337; stress of family 328; Structured/
to 330; qualifications of staff at 331; reflectivity of Balanced settings 325; teacher training 331–332;
329–330; stability of staff at 331; teacher training television time 333; temperament of child 336;
at 331–332; television time at 333; transition plans transition plans of facility 330
at 330; well-being of staff at 333–334; see also childcare programs, effects of 321–323; see also specific
childcare issues name
Carlo, G. 109–110, 139–140 Child Care Solutions 326
Carlson, S. M. 41 Child and Dependent Tax Credit 501
Carpendale, J. I. 41–42 Child Development Associate (CDA) training 340
Carter, A. 50–51 child-directed speech/action 190–192, 200–201; see
Carter, K. L. 525 also language; play
Caspi, A. 304 Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP) 25
555
Index
Childhood and Beyond Study 352 communities and organized youth activities 357–358;
Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) 170 see also neighborhoods
child protective services 476–477, 503–504 community participation 295
childrearing styles 281–283; see also specific Community Playthings website 324
parenting style compensatory model 369–370
Children’s Academic Intrinsic Motivation Inventory competence aspect of academic intrinsic
(CAIMI) 256–259, 261 motivation 256
Children’s Hospital at Montefiore 453–454 competence of child: academic 257–258; defining
children’s rights movement 6 245; legal 477; parents’ responsibility to develop
Children’s Television Act 387 11–12, 14–15; peer 279–280, 299–300; in Self-
child support decisions 471 Determination Theory 245; social 278
Child Support Performance and Incentive Act competence parenting style 38–39
(1998) 505 complementarity 3–5
Child Tax Credit 25 compliance of child 14, 42, 70
Child Welfare League of America 339 conceptual splits 126
child welfare system 476–477, 500–502 concerted cultivation 350
Chiong, C. 389 conditional regard, parental 49
Christopher, F. S. 102 conflict management 144–145
Cicchetti, D. 293 conflicts 144–145
City’s First Readers (CFR) 455 confrontive power 9
Clark, M. C. 297 Conger, R. D. 162, 534
Classroom Assessment Scoring System-Infant Conley, D. 355–356
(CLASS-Infant) 331 Connell, J. 38
Clifford, M. M. 226–227 Connell, S. L. 386
Clinton, Bill 498 conscience of child, developing 80, 126–127
Cobham, V. E. 162–163 conservative perspective on rights of children 4
coercion theory 71 constructive noncompliance strategies 12
coercive power 9 contingent responsiveness 190
cognitions of parents 532 control domain 128
cognitive abilities of child, maximizing: challenging controlling parenting style 41, 46–47, 51–53
child in meaningful ways (Lesson 2) 215, 217–218; control, parental 281
changing child, recognizing what can and cannot Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (UN)
(Lesson 1) 215–217, 215; delaying gratification 4, 80, 82, 160, 466, 493
(Lesson 8) 215, 229–231; helping child find own conversations, parental 145–146
interests (Lesson 5) 215, 223–225; helping child Cook, E. C. 284
understand own self (Lesson 11) 215, 235–236; coregulating emotion 50
overview of lessons for 214–215, 215, 237–238; Cornwell v. State Board of Education (1969) 473
spending quality time with child (Lesson 10) 215, corporal punishment: aggression and 71, 79;
233–235; teaching child how to ask questions consequences of 74–75; Conservative Protestant
(Lesson 4) 215, 220–223; teaching child to not give religious groups and 81; cortisol production and
up too easily (Lesson 3) 215, 218–220; teaching 82; culture and 503; externalized problems and
perspective taking (Lesson 9) 215, 231–233; 73; incidence of 67–68; internalized problems and
teaching responsibility (Lesson 7) 215, 227–229; 73; interventions in 81; legal issues and 80–81;
teaching sensible risk-taking (Lesson 6) 215, moral development of child and 137–138; parental
225–227; using digital devices wisely (Lesson 12) variances in using 72–74; problematic child
215, 236–237 behaviors and 75, 83; psychological maladjustment
cognitive development theory 93–94 and 79; relational spirituality and 530–532;
cognitive stimulation and academic intrinsic socioeconomic status and 73
motivation 261 Corrigan, A. S. 246
Cohen, J. S. 299 Cortina, K. S. 252
Cohen, L. 102 cost of childrearing 504–506
Cohen, R. D. 542 Côté, J. 365
Colasante, T. 110 Cote, L. R. 441
collective parenting style 18 Covay, E. 370
collective perspective 6 Cox, M. 291
committed compliance 38, 42, 127 Cox, R. 291
Committee on the Rights of the Child 4 Coy, K. C. 42, 44–45
Common Sense Media 381 Coyne, S. M. 386–387
556
Index
Craig, I. W. 304 Diener, M. L. 280

Crandall, V. C. 244 Diessner, R. 135
crime, parental responsibility for juvenile 479 differential susceptibility hypothesis 285
criminal justice system 477–479 digital age issues: apps for electronic devices 236–237,
Criss, M. M. 52, 295 387–388; background television 388–389;
Crnic, K. A. 53, 290 cross-cultural perspectives and 401; e-books 383,
Crocker, J. 267 394–396; family and 384–385; future direction
Crowley, K. 269 of parenting in digital age 399–402; guidelines
Cruzcosa, M. 3 for media usage, parental 397–398; individual
Cui, L. 52 trajectories of susceptibility 400; interventions
cultural capital 350 for media usage 398–399, 401–402; legal issues
culture: academic motivation of child and 269; 479–481; measurement challenges 399–400; media
childcare issues and 325–326; corporal punishment exposure and, during early childhood 380–383;
and 503; discipline of child and 67, 71, 74, 78–79; mediation strategies of parent 385–387; negative
disparities in health care of child and 450; ethical implications of parental media usage 388–391; new
issues and 13, 15–16; integrity and 13; language waves of technology 400–401; overview 380, 402;
and 199–201, 203; moral reasoning and 109–110; parental influences on exposure to media 384–388;
organized youth activities and 358–359; play and parental use of media 384, 480–481; risky online
199, 201–203; prosocial development of child behavior of child 480; routine of family 384–385;
and 105–106; resilience of child and, promoting scaffolding by parents 391–397; screen use by
166–167, 173; socialization of child and 15–16 parent 384, 480–481; selection of media 387–388;
Cummings, E. M. 70, 292, 302 sexting 480; smartphones 382–383, 389–390;
curiosity of child, stimulating 262, 263, 264, 271 tablets 382–383, 394; technoference 388–391; tech
custody of child 21, 471 talk 396; television 380–382, 388–389, 392–393;
using electronic devices wisely 215, 236–237;
Dahl, A. 137, 141 video chats 383, 396–397; videos, prerecorded
Dajani, R. 173 380–382; virtual reality 401
d’Andrade, R. 244 Dimension of Discipline Inventory 67
Daniels, E. 352 diminished responsibility of child 477–478
Danyliuk, T. 70 directive intervention in peer relationships of
Danziger, C. 381–382 child 297
Da Silva, M. S. 110 direct learning experience 218
Davidov, M. 47, 128 direct partnerships between parent and school
Davies, P. T. 70, 292 421–422–, 421
Davis, L. 158 discipline of child: age of child and 77; character of
Deci, E. L. 49, 245 child and, developing 13; child effects and 82;
DeCourcey, W. 47 children’s perceptions of 71; community-level
de facto parentage 469 factors and 73–74; conflictual interactions between
Dekoic, M. 108 child and parents and 9; consequences of 74–75;
Delgado, M. V. 352 culture and 67, 71, 74, 78–79; forms or, various
Demaria, A. 394 66–67; future directions in research on 82–83;
DeMaris, A. 538 gender of child and 76; gender of parent and
Demers, L. B. 393 76–77; gene x environment interactions and 2–83;
Department for Education National Pupil Database harsh 137–138; historical perspective 65–66, 83;
(United Kingdom) 382 individual-level factors and 72–74; links between
depression, parental 292–293, 328 child behavior and 76–79, 83; love withdrawal 66,
developmental delay, screening for 435–436 75, 93, 99, 125–126; mediators of links between
developmental health care surveillance 434–435 child behavior and 79–80, 83; methodologies in
developmental perspective 9–11, 176–177 studying 67–69; neuroscience and 82; overview
developmental responsibilities see socialization 65, 83; parent-child climate and, overall 75–76;
developmental scaffolding 194–195 peer relationships of child and 288–290; practical
developmental science 26–27 information about 80–82; predictors of 72–74,
developmental screening: challenges to 440–441; for 76–79; proactive 66; prosocial development of
developmental delay 435–436; for healthy parent- child and 107–108; reactive 66; research in, classical
child relationship 440; overview 435; for social and modern 72–80; shaming 67; socialization of
determinants of health 436, 440–441 child and 9; temperament of child and 77–78;
Dewey, J. 220 theories in 69–72; training programs for parents
didactic language 190, 193–194 81–82; understanding, central issues in 66–69;
557
Index
see also corporal punishment; inductive reasoning/ effortful control 35, 44

techniques; power assertive techniques Eisenberg, N. 44, 52–53, 100–103, 105–106, 110,
discourse, parental 144–146 131, 134
Dishion, T. J. 40, 298–299 Elder, G. H., Jr. 162
disparities in health care of child: community-based electronic devices see digital age issues; specific type
interventions and 442; culture and 450; enrollment Elliot, A. J. 251
and attendance barriers and 449, 451; family and Ellison, C. G. 521
449–451; knowledge of parent and 450–452; emancipation 470–471
need and, perceived 450–451; poverty-related embodied language 193
stressors and 449–450; prevention of 441–447; emotional issues of child 338
primary prevention of 443–447; Reach Out and emotional security 70, 161–163
Read model and 444–445, 453; secondary/tertiary emotional support 99–100
prevention programs and 442–443; socioeconomic emotion-coaching philosophy 52
status and 431–432; Video Interaction Project and emotion-dismissing philosophy 52
445–447 emotion-focused model of 70
divorce 20–21, 290–292, 471 emotion regulation of child 34–37, 50–54
Dix, T. 70 emotion socialization 103–104
Dodge, K. A. 289, 293, 295 empathy 95, 100
Dollahite, D. C. 538–539 engagement 70
domain specificity in parental reasoning/responses Engel, I. 103
140–142 Enhance Care Clinics 443
Donnellan, M. B. 534 enrichment programs for parents 543
Dornbusch, S. 56–57 entity versus incremental theory of intelligence
Doty, J. L. 158, 174 249–250
Dozier, M. 170 environment: affective 108–109; autonomous
Dreyer, B. P. 393 parenting style and, facilitating 38–40; literacy,
drives in psychoanalytic theory 123 parental provision of early 264–266, 265, 295
Duchesne, S. 251 Epstein, J. L. 243, 421, 423
Dumais, S. A. 352 Ericcson, K. A. 230
Duncan, G. J. 368 ESL (English as a Second Language) 325, 337
Dunn, J. 144–145, 286 ethical issues: best interests of the child and 9–11;
Durham Connects program 454 children’s character and competence and, parents’
Durlak, J. A. 369 responsibility in developing 11–16; collective
Dweck, C. S. 227, 250 perspective and 6; community and 16, 26;
Dybdahl, R. 163 complementarity and 3–5; culture and 13, 15–16;
Dyer, W. J. 386–387 developmental perspective and 9–11; developmental
science and 26–27; equal rights for children,
Early Childhood Behavioral Questionnaire 44 moral case for and against 6–8; family assistance
Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K) 351, 24–26; individual perspective and 6; involved/
368, 370 supportive parenting style and 15; just treatment
Early Head Start (EHS) 320, 338–339, 434 ethical principle and 6; liberationist perspective
Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships and 9–10; mixed rule-utilitarian theory and 7–16;
(EHS-CCP) 339 obligations of parents 4–8; “original position” and
early schooling, parental provision of 264–266, 6–7; overview 3–4, 26–27; plurality of paths and 18;
265, 295 protectionist perspective and 9–10; reciprocity and
Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) 25, 501 3–5, 15; responsibility for children and 3–4; rights
e-books 383, 394–396 of children and 4; socialization of child and 11–16;
Eccles expectancy value model 352 state and 16–24; “veil of ignorance” and 6–7;
Eccles, J. S. 247 see also moral development of child
ECE field 324, 331 ethnicity 327, 355–356
ecological consistency and coordination 423–424 ethnographies and organized youth activities 353–354
ecological systems theory: exosystems 348–349, Evidence Based Home Visiting (EBHV) 499
494–495, 500–502; macrosystems 349, 495–497; Ewell, K. K. 300
mesosytems 348–349, 494; microsystems 494, Exchange Magazine 324
497–498; overview 493–494; public policy and executive functioning 35
parenting and 493–506 Exline, J. T. 541
educational apps 387–388 exosystems 348–349, 494–495, 500–502; see also
educational attainment, importance of 413 ecological systems
558
Index
expectancy-value theory 247–249, 349–350 Forchand, R. 386

experience sampling method (ESM) 353 Forman, D. R. 44–45
exploration play 196–197 foster parenting 169
external people 227–228 Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study 505
Eye, J. 139 Fraiberg, S. 329
Frankena, W. K. 7
Fabes, R. A. 102 Frank Porter Graham Child Development
FaceTime 383 Institute 324
Familias Unidas 171 Fraser, A. M. 386–387
familism 166, 360 Fred Rogers Center 398
family: assistance 24–26; childcare issues and 325–328; Freud, A. 158
demographics of 384–385; digital age issues and Freudian theory 91–92, 123, 126–127
384–385; direct parental influences on 302–303; Freud, S. 91–92, 123
disparities in health care of child and 449–451; friendships of child see peer relationships of child
distressed 542–543; divorce and 20–21; fragile Frohlich, C. B. 110
505; indirect parental influences and 301–303; Fu, K. 385–386
intact 505; Marxism and 18; mother education Fullerton Longitudinal Study (FLS) 243, 254–255,
and income of 367–368; organized youth activities 264–267
selections and 367–368; pathology 292–294; peer Fultz, J. 102
relationships and 301–303; relational spirituality Fung, H. 67, 143, 145
framework and 533–534; religious/spiritual issues
and 519–520; routine of 384–385; single-parent Galambos, N. L. 297, 300
505; state and 17–22; state intervention and Gallagher, E. 291–292
22–24; structure of 384–385; traditional versus Ganea, P. A. 395
nontraditional 519–520; two-parent 505 Gardner, F. 40
Family Check Up 444 Garmezy, N. 159
Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) 324 gender: of child 76, 264, 269, 281, 335–336, 354–355;
Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of parent 76–77
(FERPA) 473 gene x environment interactions 82–83
Family Environment Scale 261 Gerris, J. R. M. 100
Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) (2014) 498 Gershoff, E. T. 77, 82
Family Support Act (1988) 470 gestures, infant 195
Fan, W. 253 Gewirtz, J. L. 92
Farb, A. F. 369 Gibbons, F. X. 166
Farrant, B. M. 101–102 Gibbs, J. C. 135, 139
Farrell, R. 128 Glascoe, F. P. 436
Fast Track Program 111 global parenting styles 131
father’s role 55–56, 505; see also parent-child Gniewozc, B. 248
relationship; parents Golan, O. 401
FDRP 334 Goldberg, L. 103
Fearon, R. M. P. 281 Goldberg, W. 3
Federal Child Support Act (1984) 470 Goldstein, M. H. 390
Federal Reserve System Community Development Golter, B. 296–297
Research Conference (2017) 320 Gonida, E. N. 252
Fegley, S. 101 Goodnow, J. J. 102, 138
Feldman, A. F. 369 Good, S. 244
Feldman, R. 100 Gopnik, A. 235
Ferretti, L. K. 164 Gottfried, A. 243
Feuerstein, R. 218, 221 Gottfried, A. E. 255, 260
Fiese, B. H. 164, 171 Gottman, J. M. 52, 291, 302
Fincham, F. D. 250 government see specific agency; state
Finnie, V. 299 gratification, delaying 215, 229–231
Fisch, S. M. 401 Greenberger, E. 3
Fisher, P. A. 170 Greenberg, M. T. 290
Flamm, E. S. 50 Green, S. 287
Fletcher, A. C. 284 Griffith, C. 366
Florida State University 340 Groh, A. M. 280–281
Fong, C. J. 246 Grolnick, W. S. 47–48, 50, 52, 55, 57, 268
559
Index
Grubbs, J. B. 541 health problems of child 338; see also health care
Gruber, H. E. 230 of child
Grusec, J. E. 47, 70, 102, 124, 127–128, 135, 138 Healthy Steps (HS) for Young Children 443, 453–454
Guay, F. 48 Heckhausen, J. 268
Guernsey, L. 391, 397–398 Heckman, James 320
guidance or gentle control parenting style 43 Hegel, G. 8, 17
guided learning domain 128 “helicopter” parents 164, 268
guided play 205 helplessness-oriented child 249
guilt 125, 142–144 HelpMeGrow system 443
Gunderson, E. A. 249–250 Helwig, C. C. 135–136, 143
Gunnar, M. 52 Hendricks, C. 287
Gunnar, M. R. 170 Herbers, J. E. 162
Güre, A. 282 Herrera, C. 286
Gurland, S. T. 47, 268 Hetherington, E. M. 291
High Free Choice childcare settings 325
Haimovitz, K. 250 Hoffman, C. 53
Halligan, S. L. 51 Hoffman, M. L. 94–96, 98, 107–108, 125–126, 138–139
Hamann, K. 102–103 Hokoda, A. 250
Hamm, J. V. 295 Hollingshead Four-Factor Index of Social Status 254
Hammond, S. I. 41–42 Holstein, C. 106
Hampstead War Nurseries 158 homelessness and childcare issues 328
Hanson, K. G. 388–389, 393 Home Observation for Measurement of the
Hans, S. 138 Environment (HOME) 40, 261, 265, 448
Hardesty, L. 237 home visitation childcare 323
Hardy, S. A. 132 Home Visiting Evidence of Effectiveness
harsh discipline 137–138; see also corporal punishment (HomVEE) 498
Hart, B. 203 home visiting health programs 171, 442, 498–500
Hart, C. H. 289, 296 honesty 13
Hart, D. 101 Hooven, C. 52
Haslam, D. 162–163 Houltberg, B. J. 52
Haynes, O. 287 House, B. R. 105
Hays, S. 414 Howes, C. 330
Head Start 25, 170, 205, 324, 339 Huber, B. 394
health care of child: adverse experiences of Hulleman, C. S. 251
childhood and 436, 440; authority of parent Hunsberger, B. 132
and 473–475; community-based interventions Hurwitz, L. 398
and 442; conflicting medical opinions and 475; Huth-Bocks, A. C. 291
developmental screening and 433, 435–436, Hyde, L. W. 138
437–439, 440–441; developmental surveillance
and screening 433–435; family and 449–450; ICPS (Interpersonal Problem-Solving skills) 338
health problems and, effects of 338; heterogeneity identification in psychoanalytic theory 92, 123
in risk and, addressing 454–455; home visiting IHELLP (Income, Housing, Education, Legal status,
health programs and 171, 442, 498–500; Literacy, Personal safety) survey 436
improving parent engagement and 451–452; I-It relationship 321
knowledge of parent and 450; need and, perceived immigrant children 337, 356–357
450–451; overview 431–432, 455; parent-child “immigrant paradox” 167
relationship and 440; parent engagement and Incredible Years (IY) program 170, 442–443
448–452; predictors of parent engagement Incredible Years Parent-Toddler Programme
and 449–451; prenatal 528–529; preventative, (IYPTP) 204
maximizing 452–455; Reach Out and Read indifferent-uninvolved parenting style 282
model and 444–445; scaling pediatric preventive indirect partnerships between parent and school
programs and 453; secondary/tertiary prevention 421–422–, 421
programs and 442–443; socioeconomic status individual education plans (IEPs) 473
and 449; state-ordered medical treatment and individual perspective 6
475; Video Interaction Project and 445–447; Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
well-child visit and 433–436, 437–439, 440–441; 433, 473
see also disparities in health care of child inductive reasoning/techniques: consequences
Health Leads 436 of 75; discipline of child and 66, 83, 94–95,
560
Index
125, 289–290; domain specificity in parental Kabali, H. K. 382–383

reasoning/responses and 140–142; effectiveness Kaplan, A. 48
and, comparison of 138–139; evaluation of Kaplan, G. A. 542
139–140; function of 66; moral development of Katkosky, W. 244
child and 125, 138–142; prosocial development Katz, I. 48
of child and 83, 94–95, 98; self-regulation of Katz, L. F. 52, 291
child and 66, 75 Kaufman, J. 394
infant-directed action 192 Kazdin, A. E. 110
In Re Gault (1967) 477 Keller, P. S. 292
integrating theory 174 Kempe, C. H. 503
integrity 13 Kempner, S. G. 250
intellectual disabilities (ID) 287 Kenyon, B. 297
intelligence 231, 249–250 Kerr, M. 298
intensive mothering 414 kibbutzim 18
interactive intervention in peer relationships of child Kil, H. 70
296–297 Killen, M. 123
interests of child, helping discovery of 215, 223–225 Kim, H. 134
internalization 14–15, 38, 221 Kim, H. Y. 284
internalized self-regulation: behavior 42–50; emotion Kim, J. 293
53–54; in older children 45–50; in younger Kim, J. L. 354
children 42–45 Kim, S. 132, 134, 285
Internal people 227 Kim, S.-i 251
interpersonal acceptance-rejection theory 70–71 King, P. E. 539
interviews on organized youth activities, qualitative Kirorian, H. L. 393
353–354 Kirsh, S. J. 280
involved/supportive parenting style: academic Kochanska, G. 38, 42–45, 104, 126–127, 129, 132,
motivation and 244–245; in behavior regulation 134, 136–137, 143, 285
39; in emotion regulation 50–51; ethical issues Koenig, A. L. 38, 137
and 15; in internalized self-regulation 43, 47–49; Koenig, J. L. 45
in older children’s self-regulation 47–49; in self- Kogan, N. 50–51
regulation of child 39, 43, 47–51; self-regulation of Kohlberg, L. 91, 93–94, 106, 125, 128–131,
child and 39, 43, 47–51; see also school-age child 133, 135
iPhone 382–383 Koller, S. H. 110
Isabella, R. A. 280 Kopp, C. B. 35
Item Response Theory 269 Korat, O. 394–395
Ittel, A. 248 Krampe, R. T. 230
Krappman, L. 296
Jacob, K. 47 Kremer-Sadlik, T. 354
Jacobson, L. 218–220 Krettenauer, T. 129, 134, 139
Jagers, R. 138 Krevans, J. 139
Janicki, D. 538 Kriegbaum, K. 268
Janssen, A. W. H. 109 Kruger, A. C. 107
Janssens, J. M. A. M. 100, 108 Kupersmidt, J. B. 293
Jarrett, R. L. 356 Kurowski, C. O. 52, 55
jealousy of new baby/sibling 338, 371 Kushner Benson, S. N. 47–48
Jen (Chinese virtue) 13 Kusner, K. 538
Jenkins, K. W. 516 Kysar-Moon, A. E. 521
Jennings, N. 401
Joan Ganz Cooney Center 383 Ladd, G. W. 289, 295–297, 303
Johnson, L. 506 LA ExCELS program 325
Johnston, M. 128 Laible, D. J. 108, 139, 144–145
Jones, D. J. 386 Laird, R. D. 295, 299
Journal of Marriage and Family (JMF) 516 Lamborn, S. 56–57
JumpStart 455 Lam, C. B. 285
justice, theory of 125 Landry, S. H. 41
just treatment ethical principle 6 language: childcare issues and 325–326; child-directed
juvenile crime, parental responsibility for 479 speech/action and 190–192, 200–201; contingent
juvenile justice system 478–479 responsiveness and 190; culture and 199–201, 203;
561
Index
developmental scaffolding and 194–195; didactic as provider 469–470; privacy of child, right to
190, 193–194; embodied 193–194; enrichment and 472; psychological parent 468–469; research
childcare issues 334; ESL 325, 337; importance of on parenting contexts 471–479; responsibilities
206; interventions 203–204; language-play relations of parenthood 469–470; same-sex parents 468;
and 190–195; parenting in language and 190–195; termination of parental rights 470–471; trans
physical cues and 190; play and development youth 481–482; see also specific law
of 198–199; programs 203–204; referential Leman, P. J. 132
statements and 194; regulatory commands and 194; LENA (Language Environment Analysis) technology
responsiveness to 193, 200–201; social input and, 204, 389
informational content of 193–194; socioeconomic Lengua, L. J. 283
status and 191, 203; tokens and 191; types and 191 Lereya, S. T. 283
language-play relations: background information Lerner, C. 384
189–190; child-directed speech and action and Lerner, J. 349
190–192; child’s language development and Lerner, R. M. 96, 349
198–199; culture and 199–203; developmental Let’s Read program 445
scaffolding and 194–195; language and 190–195; Leve, L. D. 54–55
object play and 190, 196–198; overview 190, 206; Levine, M. H. 391, 398
pedagogical applications and 203–205; plan and Levin, H. 65, 123
196–199; responsiveness and 193; social input Levitt, M. J. 297
and, informational content of 193–194; see also Lewin, R. 247
language; play Lewin-Bizan, S. 349
Lareau, A. 350, 354–355 liberal perspective on rights of children 4
Larose, S. 48 liberationist perspective 9–10
Larson, R. W. 353 Lieberman, A. F. 296
Larzelere, R. E. 9 Liebermann-Finestone, D. P. 41–42
Lauricella, A. R. 386, 396 limitations, helping child recognize 215, 218–220
Lavigne, H. J. 393 Lindsey, E. W. 286, 291, 299
Lazarides, R. 248 Linebarger, D. L. 400
Leahy, R. L. 106 Lin, S. 145
Leaper, C. 352 Lipscomb, S. 352
learning: active 222; to ask questions 215, 220–223; Liss, M. 268
difficulties of child 337; direct experience of 218; literacy environment, parental provision of early
experiences of child 217–218, 221; passive 222; 264–266, 265, 295
social psychological support for 419 Literacy, Inc. (LINC) 455
learning difficulties of child 337 Litwack, S. D. 245–246
Learning Opportunities Scale of the Home Liu, C. 143
Environment Survey 261 Locke, J. 22
Lechner, C. M. 542 loco parentis 473
Lee, C. L. 54 Lollis, S. P. 296–297
Lee, J. O. 40 loneliness of child 338
Lee, K. 251 love withdrawal 66, 75, 93, 99, 125–126
Leerkes, E. M. 40
Leffert, N. 500 MacArthur Communicative Development inventory
legal issues: best interests of the child and 466, 468, (MCDI) 194
475; biological parent 467–468; challenges in, macrosystems 349, 495–497; see also ecological
emerging 479–482; child abuse/neglect 476; child systems
protective services and 476–477; child support Mahoney, A. 517, 522, 524, 538–539
decisions 471; child welfare system 476–477; Malti, T. 110, 134–135
competence of child 477; corporal punishment Mangelsdorf, S. 52
80–81; custody decisions 471; defining parenthood Manuel, M. L. 284
466–469; digital age issues 479–481; diminished MAOA gene 304–305
responsibility of child 477–478; education, Marbell, K. N. 50, 57
parental authority in 472–473; emancipation marital discord 290–292
470–471; historical perspectives 465–466; Martin, J. 304
juvenile and criminal justice system 477–479; Martin, J. A. 69
medical treatment of child, parental authority Marxism and family 18
in 473–475; overview 465, 482–483; parens Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Project 443
patriae and 17; parent as authority 470; parent massage, infant 333
562
Index
mastery approach goals 251 moral agency 129

mastery avoidance goals 251 moral conduct 43
mastery-oriented child 249–250 moral development of child: attachment and 132–133;
Maternal Child Health Bureau 433–434 authoritarian parenting style and 131–132;
Maternal, Infant, and Early Child Home Visiting behaviorism and 123–124; conflict management
Program (MIECHV) 442, 499 and 144–145; conflicts and 144–145; corporal
maternity leave, paid 497–498 punishment and 137–138; current theories of
Mathis, E. T. B. 51, 57 126–131; discipline of child and, harsh 137–138;
Matjasko, J. L. 369 foundational theories of 123–126; future
May-Plumlee, T. 102 directions in research on 146–148; guilt and
McClay, J. 304 142–144; inductive reasoning/technique and 125,
McClure, E. R. 401 138–142; love withdrawal and 125–126; moral
Maccoby, E. E. 65, 69, 92, 123 self and 128–130; overview 122, 148; parental
McCoy, S. 352 conversations and 145–146; parenting styles and
McDermott, B. 162–163 131–136, 138; power assertive techniques 125,
McDonald, F. J. 124 136–137; psychoanalytic theory and 123, 126–127;
McDonnell, P. 297 psychological control and 142–144; rejecting
McDowell, D. J. 295, 300–301, 303 parenting style and 138; reminiscing and 145–146;
McFadyen-Ketchum, S. A. 289 research on 131–146; responsive parenting style
McKenzie, L. 55 and 133–136; shame and 142–144; social domain
McKnew, D. H. 292 theory and 130–131; social learning theory and
McMenamy, J. M. 52, 55 124, 127–128; structural-development theory and
Meaney, M. J. 172 124–126, 128–131; see also ethical issues
media exposure see digital age issues; specific media type moral disengagement 129
mediated learning experience 218, 221 moral emotions 43
Medicaid 500 moral internalization theory 94–95
Medical-Legal Advocacy Screening Questionnaire moral issues 130
(MASQ) 436 moral judgment 106–110, 133
medical treatment of child 473–475 moral preachings 101–102
Mendelsohn, A. L. 381, 393 moral reasoning 107, 109–110, 125, 144
Merton, R. 27 moral rules 93
mesosystems 348–349, 494; see also ecological systems moral self 127–30
Mestre, M. V. 109 Morris, A. S. 52, 165
meta-emotion philosophy 52 mother’s role 55–56; see also parent-child relationship;
Metropolitan Area Child Study 111 parents
microsystems 494, 497–498; see also ecological systems motionese 192
Middaugh, E. 9 Mounts, N. S. 300–301, 303
Millennium Development Goals 160 mourning, child’s 338
Miller, A. 49 Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing (MTO) 492
Miller-Loncar, C. L. 41 Mueller, E. 295
Miller, P. J. 145 Müller, U. 41–42
Miller, S. R. 285 Munn, P. 144–145
Mill, J. 304 Munoz, L. 41
Mill, J. S. 8, 13, 18 Murdey-Cammo, R. 47–48
Milner, J. S. 140 Murname, R. J. 368
minimal threshold model 369–370 Murray, K. T. 42
minimum sufficiency principle 15 mutually responsive orientation (MRO) 43–45,
Mischel, W. 124 133–134
Misra, G. 109–110 Mutually Responsive Orientation Scale 43
mixed rule-utilitarian theory 7–16 My Baby and Me intervention 499
Mize, J. 286, 299–300 My Nanny’s Circle grassroots group 325
Mnookin, R. H. 20
mobile devices see specific type Nachmias, M. 52
modeling behavior 100–101, 363 National Academy of Medicine Perspectives series
Moffitt, T. E. 304 160–161
Moilanen, K. L. 40, 55–56, 138, 284 National Academy of Science 340
monitoring child, parental 15, 297–299, 472 National Association for the Education of Young
Moorman, E. A. 245–246 Children (NAEYC) 324, 339–340, 398
563
Index
National Childcare Information Center 321 organized youth activities: after-school 295, 358;
National Childcare Staffing Study 340 behaviors of parents and 361–365; beliefs of
National Domestic Workers Alliance 325 parents about 359–360; bioecological theory
National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) 352 and 348–349; changes in parenting across stages
National Household Education Survey (NHES) of 365; child development outcomes and 369;
327, 351 communities and 357–358; concerted cultivation
National Institute of Child Health and Human and 350; cultural capital and 350; culture and
Development Study of Early Childcare and Youth 358–359; directions for future research on 371;
Development (SECCYD) 40–41 ecological systems theory and 348–349; education
National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health of mother and 367–368; effects of, on parents
352, 358 and child 368–371; employment of mother
National Research Council 340 and 368; ethnicity and 355–356; ethnographies
natural growth 350 and 353–354; expectancy-value theory and
Neece, C. 290 349–350; experience sampling method and 353;
negative conditional regard 49 family characteristics and selecting 367–368;
negative control parenting style 43 gender and 354–355; immigrant child and
neglect of child 328, 470, 476 356–357; importance of 347; income of family
negotiation 12 and 367–368; maternal and paternal behaviors and,
neighborhoods: choices of 294–295; organized complementarity of 364–365; methodologies in
youth activities and 357–358; public policy and studying 351–354; negative behavior of parents
502–504 and 363–364; neighborhoods and 357–358; outside
Nelson, S. E. 298 of North America 358–359; overview 347–348,
Neppl, T. K. 534 372; parent characteristics and selecting 367–368;
Neumann, M. 394 parent-child relationship and 361; parent-coach
neurobiology and resilience of child 172–173 and 366–367; parenting styles and 361; positive
neuroscience and discipline of child 82 behavior of parents and 362–363; pressure by
New Beginning program 171 parents and 363–364; qualitative interviews and
New Hope program 502 353–354; questionnaires on 352–353; relational
Nichols, K. E. 136–137 developmental systems and 349; schools and
Niemiec, C. P. 48 357–358; social capital and 350; social class and
Nikken, P. 385 355; sociocultural contexts of 354–359; summer
NLSY97 surveys 527 358; surveys of nationally representative samples
nonsymbolic play 196–197; see also play of 351–352; theoretical frameworks for studying
nontraditional parents 527–528 348–350; time-use diaries and 353; values of
Nordling, J. K. 133 parents and 360–361
normativeness theory 71 “original position” 6–7
norms of science 27 Or, T. 394
Nucci, L. P. 141 Ortann, M. R. 43
Nurmi, J. E. 270 Owens, E. B. 9
Nurse-Family Partnership 171, 498 Oxford, M. L. 40
nurturance 99–100
nutrition 160–161 Pachan, M. 369
Padavich, D. L. 137
Obama, B. 320 Padilla-Walker, L. M. 55, 140, 386–387, 393
Obegefell v. Hodge 468 paid parental leave 497–498
object play 190, 196–198; see also play Painter, K. M. 287
O’Doherty, K. 392 Pancer, S. M. 132
O’Donnell, M. 352 Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) 355
Office of Childcare 339 Panter-Brick, C. 173
Okin, S. M. 13 parens patriae doctrine 17, 24
Olds, D. L. 323, 498–499 parental conditional negative regard (PCNR) 49
O’Neill, D. 70 parental conditional positive regard (PCPR) 49
one-upmanship, spiritual 539–540 parental leave, paid 497–498
operational statements 135 parental motivational practices 258–261, 260
optimum competence 14 Parental Motivation Practices Scale (PMPS) 258
Oregon Model of Parent Management Training parental rights, termination of 470–471
(PMTO) 170 Parent-Child Home Program 323, 455
Oregon Social Learning Center 111 Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) 170
564
Index
parent-child relationship: attachment and 100, 132–133, Patall, E. A. 246

280–281, 291–292; conflictual interactions and paternalism 7, 17
9; developmental screening for healthy 440; paternity leave, paid 497–498
discipline of child and overall 75–76; health care Patrick, R. B. 139
of child and 440; moral reasoning and 107, 109; Patterson, C. J. 293
operational 135; organized youth activities and Patterson, G. R. 81, 176
361; peer relationships of child versus 124–125, PBS children’s programs 395–396
284–288; risks for antisocial behavior of child and, PEDS (Parents’ Evaluation of Developmental
mitigating 165–166; social learning theory and Status) 436
128; transactive 135; see also language-play relations peer competence 279–280, 299–300
parent-coach 366–367 peer relationships of child: abuse of child and
parenthood: cost of 504–506; defining legally 293–294; after-school activities and 295; after-
466–469; research on legal contexts for 471–479; school care arrangements and 295; assertive power
responsibilities of, legal 469–470; termination of techniques and 288–289; attachment and 279–281;
parental rights and 470–471 bullying and 338–339; childcare choices and 295;
parenting styles: academic intrinsic motivation and community participation and 295; confluence of
254–255, 258–261, 260; moral development of direct parental influences and 300–301; depression
child and 131–136, 138; organized youth activities of parent and 292–293; directive intervention 297;
and 361; peer relationships and 281–283; see also direct parental influences on 294–303; discipline of
specific type child and 288–290; divorce and 290–292; family
Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire and 301–303; family pathology and 292–294;
(PSDQ) 282 indirect parental influences on 279–294, 301–303;
Parent, J. 386 informal peer contacts and 296; interactive
Parent Management Training program 81 intervention and 296–297; MAOA gene and
parents: as advisors/consultants 299–300; as 304–305; marital discord and 290–292; monitoring
authority 470–475; as designers 294–295; 297–299; neighborhood choices and 294–295;
enrichment programs for 543; as mediators overview 278–279, 303–306; parent as advisor/
296; as primary caretakers 20; as providers consultant 299–300; parent-child relationship
469–470; as supervisors 296–297; see also parent- and 124–125, 284–288; parent as designer and
child relationship; parenthood; parent-school 294–295; parenting behaviors and 283–284;
relationship; specific parenting issue and style parenting styles and 281–283; parent as mediator
Parents Check-In 59 and 296; parent as supervisor and 296–299; peer
parent-school relationship: active management of competence and 279–280, 299–300; play groups
schooling and 417–418; benefits of parental and, informal 296; rules for 299; scaffolding 297;
involvement and 419–420; change in school schooling and, early 295; stress of parent and 290
and, effecting 418; conceptualizations of Pelaez-Nogueras, M. 92
parental involvement and, different 416–419; Pempek, T. A. 381, 393
direct development of children’s skills, talents, permissive parenting style 39, 69, 281–282
and interests and 417; direct partnerships and Perry, B. D. 328
421–422, 421; educational opportunities outside persistence of child and not giving up too easily 215,
of school and, creating 418–419; empowering 218–220
parents vis-a-vis schools and 425; Epstein’s personality of child, developing 11–14
model of 423; historical perspective 411–416; person-centered persuasion 15
indirect partnerships and 421–422, 421; nonprofit perspective taking of child, teaching 215, 231–233
context and 424; reconceptualization of Pettit, G. S. 286, 289, 293, 295, 299–300, 303
parental involvement and 420–422, 421; social Petts, R. J. 521, 532
psychological support for learning and 419; stages phenylketonuria (PKU) 217
of parental involvement in education and 411–413, physical cues 190
412; trends complicating emphasis on parental physical safety 161–163
involvement and 414–416; trends fueling emphasis Piaget, J. 58, 123–125, 189–190
on parental involvement and 413–414, 413 Pierce, K. M. 295, 370
Pargament, K. I. 519, 522, 538, 540–541 Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) 473
Parke, R. D. 280, 295–301, 303 Pine, L. 246
Parritz, R. H. 52 Piotrowski, J. T. 386
Pascual-Sagastizabal, E. 282 PISA study 321
pass-back effect 389 Plato 18
passive learning 222 play: culture and 199, 201–203; exploration 196–197;
Pasupathi, M. 107–108 guided 205; importance of 206; infant-directed
565
Index
action and 192; interventions 204–205; language 96–97; moral internalization theory 94–95; moral
development and 198–199; motionese and 192; judgment and 106–110; moral preachings and
nature of 202; nonsymbolic 196–197; object 190, 101–102; nurturance and 99–100; overview 91,
196–198; parents’ role in 197–198; programs 112; parent characteristics and 98–106; positive
204–205; relations between parents’ and children’s psychology and 95–96; positive youth development
198; symbolic 197; see also language-play relations models and 95–96; power assertion and 94–95,
play groups, informal 296 98–99; psychoanalytic theory and 91–92;
Play and Learning Strategies (PAL) program reinforcement and 102–103; responsibility and,
203–204, 399 assigning 102; role modeling and 100–101; role-
Play and Learn Strategies 444 taking opportunities and 106–107; social learning
Plomin, R. 216 theory and 92–93; theories in 91–96; training
plurality of paths 18 programs for parents 110–111
policy see public policy; specific policy name protection of child, basic 160–161
Pomerantz, E. M. 41, 245–246, 250 protection domain 128
positive conditional regard 49 protectionist perspective 9–10
Positive Family Relations (PFR) 269 Protestant/Christian (CPC) values 520–521,
positive psychology 95–96 529–532, 545
positive youth development models 95–96 Przybylski, A. K. 382, 398
Posner, J. K. 295, 353 psychoanalytic theory 91–92, 123, 126–127
Posner, M. I. 35 psychological control and moral development
Poulton, R. 304 142–144
poverty 319, 449–450, 505 psychological parents 468–469
power assertive techniques: discipline of child and psychospiritual processes 524
66–67, 79–80, 94–95, 98–99; function of 66; moral public policy and parenting: anti-poverty programs
development of child and 125, 136–137; peer 500–502; cost of childrearing and 504–506;
relationships and 288–289; prosocial development ecological systems theory and 493–506; effective
of child and 94–95, 98–99; self-regulation of child 492; home visitation programs 498–500;
and 66–67, 75 macrosystems and 495–497; maternity leave, paid
PPVT scores 326 497–498; mesoystems and 494; microsystems and
practical intelligence 231 494, 497–500; neighborhoods’ role and 502–504;
Pratt, A. T. 135 overview 491–493, 506–508; paternity leave,
Pratt, M. W. 106, 132, 135 paid 497–498; welfare programs 500–502; see also
Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) (1978) specific name
497–498 punishment 9; see also corporal punishment; discipline
pregnancy and relational spirituality framework Purdue Home Stimulation Inventories 265
528–529 “Pygmalion” effect 219
prenatal care and relational spirituality framework
528–529 qualitative interviews on organized youth activities
Preparing for the Drug (Free) Years 448 353–354
Price, C. D. 362 “quality care,” concept of 321
Price, J. 295 Quality Rating and Improvement System 442
primary caretakers 20 quality time with child, spending 215, 232–235
privacy, child’s right to 472 questionnaires on organized youth activities 352–353
privatization of public services 414 questions: alternative explanations and, considering
proactive discipline 66 223; answering versus asking 220; asking, learning
Proctor, L. J. 163 skill of 215, 220–223; direct responses to 222;
Program for Infant/Toddler Care (PITC) 329 evaluating explanations and 223; following through
prosocial development of child: affective environment on evaluations of 223; ignorance and, admitting to
and 108–109; autonomous thinking and 106–107; 222; rejection of, parental 221–222; restatements
behaviorism and 92–93; characteristics of parents of as responses to 222; seeking response through
and 97–110; child characteristics and 104–105; authority and 222
cognitive development theory and 93–94; culture Quinton, D. 54
and 105–106; defining prosocial behavior and 97;
discipline of child and 107–108; emotional support Radesky, J. S. 390
and 99–100; emotion socialization and 103–104; Radke-Yarrow, M. 292
future directions in research on 111; inductive Raftery-Helmer, J. N. 50
reasoning/techniques and 83, 94–95, 98; love Rasmussen, E. E. 393
withdrawal and 93, 99; methodologies in studying Rasmussen, K. E. 55
566
Index
Ratelle, C. E. 48, 251 and, defining 518–519; science and 518–522; social
Raver, C. C. 51 science and 517–518; spirituality and, defining
Rawls, J. A. 6–7, 125 518–519; theoretical considerations for science on
R-COPE measure 540 522, 523, 524–525; translational work to facilitate
Reach Out and Read (ROR) model 444–445, 453 parenting and 543–544; values and, socially
reactive discipline 66 conservative versus progressive 520–521; world
Recchia, H. E. 107–108 religions and 526; see also relational spirituality
reciprocity 3–5, 15 framework (RSF)
Reed, J. 390 reminiscing and moral development 145–146
Reese, E. 145–146 repetition in child-directed speech 191
referential statements 194 representational parental actions 135
reflectivity 329–330 resilience of child, promoting: adaptive systems
reforming parenting style 542–543 involving parenting and 169–171; adversity
Regnerus, M. D. 534 experiences and 163–164; classic research on
regulation 70; see also self-regulation of child 158–160; conditions that harm or interfere with
regulatory commands 194 parenting and, strategies for addressing 167–168;
reinforcement 102–103 culture and 166–167, 173; developmental
rejecting parenting style 70–71, 138 perspectives and 176–177; emerging research
relatedness 38–39, 245 172–174; emotional security and 161–163;
relational developmental system (RDS) perspective historical perspective 156; implications of research
156–158, 349, 525 on 174, 175–176, 176–177; integrating theory
relational health 440 and 174; intervention research on 167–171;
relational spirituality framework (RSF): adolescents neurobiology and 172–173; nourishing body
and, parenting 532–533; becoming parent and and mind and 160–161; overview 156, 178–179;
526–529; being parent and 529–542; biological parenting roles in 157, 160–167; physical safety
mother and 526–527; child abuse and, risk of and 161–163; relational developmental system
530–532; cognitions and practices of parents perspective and 156–158; resources and skills
and 532; corporal punishment and 530–532; for parents, boosting 168–169; socialization of
desecration and 538; distressed parents/family child and 164–166; society and 173; strategies
and 542–543; divine support and 540–541; to alter risk, resources and protective processes,
family and 533–534; infants and toddlers and, combining 171; stress management and 163–164;
parenting 529–530; nontraditional parents and targeting and 176–177
527–528; one-upmanship and 539–540; overview Resilience Research Center (Halifax) 173
522, 544–546; participation in religious groups Resource and Referral (R&R) agencies 326
by parents and 526–535; pregnancy and 528–529; responsibility: of child 102, 215, 227–229; of parents
prenatal care and 528–529; psychosocial well- 3–4, 469–470
being of child and 534–535; psychospiritual responsiveness to language 193, 200–201
processes and 524; R-COPE measure and 540; responsive parenting style 133–136
reforming parenting and 542–543; resources rewards 9, 256–257
and risks for parents and 535–542, 536; sacred Rideout, V. J. 381–383, 385
loss and 538; sanctification and 536–537, 536; Riggio, H. R. 253
satisfaction of parents and 532; stages 522, 523, rights of children: Committee on the Rights
524; stress of parents and 532; struggles and, of the Child and 4; complementarity and 3;
divine and demonic 541; supportive disclosure conservative perspective 4; equality, moral
and dialogue and 538–539; tiers of 523, 524; case for and against 6–8; liberal perspective 4;
translational research to facilitate parenting and reciprocity and 3; self-determination 4, 26, 136;
543–544 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and
Relative Autonomy Index 46 4; Wald’s categories of 10
religious/spiritual issues: conceptual frameworks, Rishell, C. 366
explaining versus explaining away 521–522; risk-taking, teaching sensible 215, 225–227
distressed parents or families and, applied risky online behavior of child 480
research on 543; family and, traditional versus Risley, J. r. 203
nontraditional 519–520; historical perspectives Rispoli, K. M. 283–284
516–518; issues in science on, central 518–522; rituals 329
overview 515–516, 544–546; parents’ religion/ Rivkin, I. 52, 55
spirituality as dependent variable and 525; Robertshaw, N. 436
Protestant/Christian values 520–521, 529–532, Roberts, R. E. 542
545; psychospiritual processes and 524; religion Roberts, W. 53, 55
567
Index
Robinson, C. C. 282 parental involvement and, different 416–419;

Rogers, C. R. 49 conclusions of research and, improving 424–425;
Rogoff, B. 366–367 current trends in parental involvement and 416;
Rogosch, F. A. 293 ecological consistency and coordination and
Rohner, R. P. 70–71 423–424; educational attainment and, importance
Roisman, G. I. 41 of 413; empowering parents vis-a-is schools and
role modeling of parents 100–101, 363 425; Family Educational Rights and Privacy
role-taking opportunities 106–107 Act and 473; future directions in research on
Rosen, B. C. 244 422–425; historical perspective 411–416; individual
Rosengren, K. S. 539 education plans and 473; intensive mothering and
Rosenthal, R. R. 218–220 414; involved/supportive parent style and 411–416;
Ross, G. 41 issues in parental involvement, central 416–422;
Ross, H. S. 296–297 overview 410–411, 426; practical issues and
Rote, W. 142–143 422–425; privatization of public services and 414;
Rothbart, M. K. 35 reconceptualization of parental involvement and
Roth, G. 49, 53–54 420–422, 421; school choice and 412, 414; stages
Roth, J. L. 569 of parental involvement in education and 411–413,
Rothman, G. 107 412; trends complicating emphasis on parental
Rotter, J. B. 227 involvement and 414–416; trends fueling emphasis
Rousseau, J. J. 5, 8 on parental involvement and 413–414, 413; see also
Rowe, M. L. 255, 269 academic motivation of child
Rubach, C. 248 school choice 412, 414
rule-utilitarian perspective 7, 13 schools and organized youth activities 357–358
Russell, A. 297 Schwartz, D. 293
Russell, B. S. 50 science norms 27
Rutter, M. 54, 159 science and religious/spiritual issues 518–522
Ryan, R. M. 38, 245 Scolton, K. L. 280
screening see developmental screening; specific test
SAFE 369 Screen Sense 398
safety, physical 161–163 Sears, R. R. 65, 123
Saltzstein, H. D. 139 SECCYD 40–41
same-sex parents 468 secure attachment 100, 133, 280, 336–337
sanctification 536–537, 536 security, emotional and physical 161–163
Sanders, M. G. 243 Segal-Drori, O. 395
Sanders, M. R. 162–163 Seissberg, R. P. 369
Sanders, W. 386 self-determination 4, 8, 26, 136
satisfaction, parental 532, 536–537 Self-Determination Theory (SDT) 35, 37–40, 53, 58,
scaffolding: competence of child and 15; 245–246
developmental 194–195; digital age and parental self-efficacy 252–254
391–397; peer relationships of child 297; of shared self-reactive influences 129
activity 13–14; structured parenting style and 41; self-regulated learning (SRL) 47–48
task-oriented interventions toward child’s ability self-regulation of child: autonomous parenting style
39–40 and 39, 41, 46–47; behavioral 34–36, 40–42;
Scales, P. C. 500 challenges in studying 54–57; conditional regard
scaling pediatric preventive programs 453 and, parental 49; controlling parenting style and
Scaramella, L. V. 54–55 41, 46–47, 51–53; defining 34–35; developing
“scarring” by trauma 158 35–37; as developmental process 35–36; emotional
Schiffrin, H. H. 268 34–37, 50–54; inductive reasoning/techniques and
Schmid, O. N. 366 66, 75; internalized 42–50; involved/supportive
Schmidt, M. E. 388 parenting style and 39, 43, 47–51; love withdrawal
Schmitts, T. 291 and 66, 75; moral agency and 129; motivational
Schneider, B. H. 280–281 perspective of 36; in older years 45–50; overview
Schofield, T. J. 534 34–35, 57–59; parental conditional regard and
Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) 229 49; power assertive techniques and 66–67, 75;
Schols, M. 385 Self-Determination Theory and 35, 37–40, 53, 58;
school-age child: authority of parent in education socioeconomic status and 57; structured parenting
and 472–473; benefits of parental involvement style and 39, 41–42, 50, 53–54; in younger years
and, observed 419–420; conceptualizations of 42–45
568
Index
Self-Regulation Questionnaire 46 socioeconomic status (SES): academic intrinsic

self-theories 249–254 motivation and 261, 264; academic motivation of
self-understanding 215, 235–236 child and 243–244; attachment and 281; corporal
Senécal, C. 48 punishment and 73; disparities in health care of
Sengsavang, S. 134, 139 child and 431–432; health care of child and 449;
sensitivity 39, 50–51 Hollingshead Four-Factor Index of Social Status
sensory sensibilities 337 and 254; language and 191, 203; quality time with
Sesame Street 395, 397 child and 234; self-regulation and 57
sexting 480 Soenens, B. 46, 54
sexuality (libido) 92 Song, J. 251
Shaffer, D. R. 107–108 Sorkhabi, N. 9
shame 142–144 Special Needs Project Advisory Committee 433
shaming 67 Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women,
Shannon, V. R. 366 Infants, and Children (WIC) 25, 451
Shaw, D. S. 40, 138 Spieker, S. 40
Shema, S. J. 542 Spilman, J. K. 534
Sherlock, B. R. 141 Spinrad, T. L. 44, 131, 285
Shin, Y. 284 spirituality, defining 518–519; see also religious/
Shuler, C. 389 spiritual issues
sibling rivalry 338, 371 Spitz, R. A. 159
sibling of severely ill child 338 Sroufe, L. A. 161
Silbereisen, R. K. 542 Stanley v. Illinois (1972) 467
Silinskas, G. 270 state: assistance to family 24–26; best interests of the
Silk, J. S. 52 child and 19–22; childcare issues and 320, 339;
Simons, R. L. 166 custody of child and 21; ethical issues and 16–24;
Simpkins, S. D. 247, 298–299, 352, 356–357, 362 family and 17–22; intervention into family life
situational compliance 38, 42 22–24
Skinner, B. F. 18, 123–124 state-ordered medical treatment 475
Skoe, E. E. 106 Stattin, H. 298
Skype 383 Steele, C. M. 219
Slowiacek, M. L. 48 Steinberg, L. 45–46, 56–57, 370
Smart Beginnings program 454 Steiner, R. P. 47–48
smartphones 382–383, 389–390 STEM (science, technology, engineering,
Smetana, J. G. 123, 132, 141–143 mathematics) field 247–249, 259–261, 260, 270
Smith, K. E. 41 Stifter, C. A. 285
Smith v. Smith (2007) 482 Stokes, C. E. 534
social capital 350 Strawbridge, W. J. 542
social class 325–326, 355 Strayer, J. 55
social-cognitive theory 129 stress: of child 333, 337; of family and childcare
social competence of child 278 choices 328; management 163–164, 333; of parents
social contract 4 290, 532, 542–543; poverty-related 319, 449–450
social conventions 130 Stright, A. D. 285
social determinants of health, screening for 436, Strong African-American Families Program, The
440–441 (SAAF) 165–166
social domain theory 130–131 Strouse, G. A. 392, 395
socialization of child: character and, developing structural-development theory 124–126, 128–131
11–14; competence and, parents’ responsibility structural equation modeling (SEM) 259, 261–262
in developing 11–12, 14–15; culture and 15–16; Structured/Balanced childcare settings 325
defining 12; discipline of child and 9; domain- structured parenting style: in behavior regulation 41–42;
specific model of 128; emotion 103–104; ethical in emotion regulation 53–54; in internalized self-
issues and 11–16; moral behavior 106–110, 112; regulation 50; scaffolding and 41; in self-regulation
parental and academic motivation 243; resilience of of child 39, 41–42, 50, 53–54
child and, promoting 164–166 Study of Early Childcare and Youth Development 370
social knowledge, constructing 130 Sturge-Apple, M. L. 292
social learning theory 71, 92–93, 124, 127–128 Sullivan, A. D. W. 386
social sciences and religious/spiritual issues 517–518 Suomi, S. J. 172
Society for Research in Child Development 173 Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program
society and resilience of child 173 (SNAP) 25, 500
569
Index
supportive parenting style 41, 46–47, 49–53; see also Triple P Program 448
involved/supportive parenting style Tripp, G. 145–146
Survey of Income and Program Participation 352 Trominsdorff, G. 41
surveys on organized youth activities 351–352 Tronick, E. 165
Survey of Well-Being of Young Children (SWYC)- Troseth, G. L. 392
Family Questions 436 trust 13
Sustainable Development Goals 160 Turiel, E. 130
Swank, P. R. 41
Swanson, J. 283 Uecker, J. E. 525
Swingler, M. M. 40 Ulber, J. 102–103
symbolic play 197 unconstructive noncompliance strategies 12
Syracuse Family Development Research Program UNICEF 496
(FDRP) 322–333 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the
Systematic Training for Effective Parenting (STEP) Child (CRC) 4, 80, 82, 160, 466, 493
program 448 universalist theory 6
University-Based Child and Family Consortium 508
tablets, digital 382–383, 394 Urban, J. B. 349
Tankersley, L. 291 U.S. Census Bureau 368
Tarasuik, J. 394 U.S. Department of Agriculture 349
Tate, E. 296 U.S. Department of Education 351
Taylor, A. 304 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 320,
Taylor, J. H. 108–109, 135 433–434
Taylor, Z. E. 131 U.S. Department of Labor 339
technoference 388–391 U.S. General Social Surveys (GSS) 530
technology, new waves of 400–401; see also digital U.S. Office of Personnel Management 339
age issues U.S. Supreme Court 19, 467–468, 472–474, 477–478;
tech talk 396 see also specific decision
television 380–382, 388–389, 392–393 Utrecht University 321
temperament of child 77–78, 336
Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) 25, values of parents 360–361, 520–521, 529–532, 545
168–169, 501, 506 Vandell, D. L. 295, 353, 370
Tenenbaum, H. R. 269 Van Petegem, S. 46, 54
termination of parental rights 470–471 Van Ryin, M. J. 170
Tesch-Römer, C. 230 Vansteenkiste, M. 46, 54
Tesla, C. 297 Vasquez, A. C. 246
Thatcher, J. Y. 538–539 Vaughn, B. E. 40
theistic triangulation 539 “veil of ignorance” 6–7
theological values, socially conservative versus Verbal Interaction Project’s Mother-Child Home
progressive 520–521 Program 205
Theunissen, F. E. 141 Vernberg, E. M. 300
Thompson, R. A. 144–145, 280 Vest, A. E. 362
Tilton-Weaver, L. C. 298, 300 video chats 383, 396–397
time-use diaries 353 Video feedback Intervention to promote Positive
Toddler Environment Rating Scale (ITERS-R) 322, Parenting and Sensitive Discipline (VPP-SD) 81
331 Video Interaction Project (VIP) 204, 399, 445–447
Tolman, E. C. 247 video, prerecorded 380–382
Tomasello, M. 102–103 Villarreal, B. 268
Tomasik, M. J. 542 Vinik, J. 128, 135
Tools of the Mind curriculum 205 virtual reality 401
To, S. 135–136, 143 vocalizations, infant 195; see also language
training programs for parents: discipline of child 81– Vygotsky, L. S. 189, 217, 221
82; Oregon Model of Parent Management training
170; prosocial development of child 110–111 Wainryb, C. 107–108
Tran, A. Q. 141 Wald, M. S. 10, 23–24
transactive dialogue 107, 125 Walker, L. J. 107–109, 135
translational research to facilitate parenting 543–544 Walsh, W. F. 107
trans youth 336, 481–482 Wang, Q. 143
trauma 158 Wang, S. J. 300
570
Index
Ward, R. T. 49 Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) 472–473

warm parenting style 108–109, 281, 361 Wolchik, S. 103
Warneken, F. 102 Wold, B. 352
War on Poverty 506 Wolfinger, N. H. 527
Wasilewski, J. 542 Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program 25,
Watson, J. B. 123–124, 216 340, 389, 451
Watt, H. M. G. 248 Wong, M. S. 280
Weber, E. K. 141 Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Battery 259, 265
Weber, R. A. 297 Wood, D. 41
WE-CARE model 436 work-site parenting 339
Weikart’s High/Scope project 322 World Health Organization (WHO) 159
Weininger, E. B. 355 Worsfold, V. L. 6–7
Weinstein, N. 382, 398 Wrightman, J. 55
WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and Wright, O. 271
democratic) nations 191, 200–201 Wu, V. C. 268
Weiser, D. A. 253
Weis, G. 41 Xu, M. 47–48
Weiss, C. H. 508
Weiss, L. 55 Yali, A. M. 541
welfare system, child 476–477, 500–502 Yang, S. 135–136, 143
well-child visit 433–436, 437–439, 440–441 Yelen, Janet 320
Weyand, C. 541 Yoon, J. E. 45, 134
Whipple, N. 41 Yorgason, J. B. 386–387
Whiting, B. B. 102
Whiting, J. W. M. 102 Zack, E. 394
Wigfield, A. 247 Zahn-Waxler, C. 292
Wilcox, W. B. 527 Zero to Three 398
Wilson, J. Q. 12 Zeytinoglu, S. 40
Wilson, M. 40 zone of proximal development 217–218
Winsler, A. 525 Zosh, J. M. 392
Winterbottom, M. R. 244 Zuffianò, A. 110
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Edited by Marc H. Bornstein

Preface to the Third Edition ix

1 The Ethics of Parenting 3

2 Parenting and Children’s Self-Regulation 34

3 Parenting and Child Discipline 65

4 Parenting and Children’s Prosocial Development 91

5 Parenting and Moral Development 122

6 Parenting to Promote Resilience in Children 156

7 Language and Play in Parent–Child Interactions 189

8 How Parents Can Maximize Children’s Cognitive Abilities 214

9 Parenting of Children’s Academic Motivation 242

10 Parents and Children’s Peer Relationships 278

11 Choosing Childcare for Young Children 319

12 Parenting and Children’s Organized Activities 347

13 Parenting in the Digital Age 380

14 Parenting the Child in School 410

15 Parenting and Children’s Health Care 431

16 Parenting and the Law 465

17 Parenting and Public Policy 491

18 Parenting, Religion, and Spirituality 515

BIOLOGY AND ECOLOGY OF PARENTING is Volume 2 of the Handbook. For parent-

Courtney L. Ball is a PhD candidate in Developmental Psychology at the University of Rochester.

Amy Governale is a PhD candidate in Developmental Psychology at Loyola University Chicago.

Alan L. Mendelsohn is a General and Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrician and Associate Profes-

Judith G. Smetana is Professor of Psychology, Director of the Developmental Psychology PhD

Robert J. Sternberg is Professor of Human Development in the College of Human Ecology at

Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda is Professor of Applied Psychology in the Developmental Psychol-

Ross A. Thompson is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Davis.

Wendy M. Williams is a Professor in the Department of Human Development at Cornell Univer-

protectionist, liberationist, and developmentalist approaches to understanding children’s best interests.

The Ethical Obligations of Parents

The Rights of Children

The Moral Norms of Reciprocity and Complementarity

A Mixed Rule-Utilitarian Justification for Parental Authority

The Child’s Best Interest Criterion for Determining Ethical Parenting:

Parents’ Developmental Responsibilities: Shaping Children’s

through their socialization efforts (Baumrind, 1998). Socialization is an adult-initiated process by

Parents, Children, and the State

The State and the Family

Public and Private Ordering of “the Best Interests of the Child”

State Intervention into Family Life

Tomasello, M. (2016). Cultural learning redux. Child Development, 87, 643–653.

A Self-Determination Theory Perspective on Self-Regulation

Facilitating Environments—Parenting From an SDT Perspective

Autonomy Supportive Versus Controlling Parenting

Internalized Behavioral Self-Regulation in Younger Children

Behavioral Self-Regulation in Older Children

Autonomy Support Versus Control and Self-Regulation

Involvement and Self-Regulation

Parental Conditional Regard and Self-Regulation

Structure and Self-Regulation

Autonomy Supportive Versus Controlling Parenting

Facilitating Internalized Emotion Regulation

Challenges in the Study of Parenting and Children’s Self-Regulation

Specifying the Roles of Mothers and Fathers

Conceptualizing the Role of Parents in Cultural/Ethnic

adjustment in European-American adolescents than in African-American adolescents, and Wang,

Including Multimethod Assessments of Parenting and Self-Regulation

Historical Considerations in the Study of Parental Discipline

Central Issues in Understanding Parental Discipline

Different Forms of Parental Discipline

Methods of Study of Parental Discipline