COMPARISON OF CHILDREARING ATTITUDES OF MOTHERS AND FATHERS OF EMOTIONALLY DISTURBED ADOLESCENTS

Abstract

There has been an increasing amount of interest in the nature of the parent-child relationship over the past two decades, as reflected by the broadening scope of experimental literature devoted to the investigation of various types of childrearing practices and their correlates in personality development (2, 4, io). It is a generally accepted axiom that a child's mother and father exert a considerable influence on the establishment of his characteristic style of need expression. This seems to be based, in part, on the parents' primary position among all of the child's interpersonal relationships and to the pervasiveness of their contact with the child during the early formative years. Many studies have focused on the mother's relationship to her child (1, 6, 8, 12) and, in addition, a few on the father-child relationship (3, 7). However, there has been little reported work on a comparison between the childrearing attitudes of mothers and fathers. One reason for this seems to be the lack of a suitable instrument for a direct comparison of these attitudes.