Children's Parents

Abstract

Abstract This chapter surveys central issues concerning children's parents. The chapter first addresses the two faces of parenting, parenting as a phase of adult development and parenting as an instrumental activity vis‐à‐vis children. Next, the chapter briefly overviews the origins of parenting studies, theories of parenting, and future directions in parenting research. The following two sections of the chapter address the principal actors in the human drama of caregiving, mothers, fathers, and children's other principal caregivers, and, then, cognitions and practices that principally instantiate parenting. With the actors, attitudes, and actions associated with parenting introduced, arguments for the meaningfulness of parenting effects are then evaluated in correlational designs and various kinds of experiments that demonstrate the value of parenting (challenges to parenting effects from behavior genetics and group socialization theory are also addressed). Parents and parenting vary tremendously, and determinants of parenting are a major issue in the field; the multicausal origins of parenting in characteristics of parents, characteristics of children, and contextual characteristics are explored next. The chapter closes with some practical issues‐;for example neglect, abuse, and parenting interventions‐;before reaching more general conclusions.

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