CHILD BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS AND PARENTAL ATTITUDES1

Abstract

If modern personality theory and clinical practice have any basis in fact, the importance of parental attitudes in the origin of behavior problems among children can be assumed. The nature of the relationships between parent and child behavior, however, cannot merely be assumed, but must either be derived from or confirmed by empirical research. For some time, the investigators have been engaged in a program of study designed to clarify certain associations between parental characteristics and behavior tendencies of children. The work parallels a great deal of previous research in this area, but differs from most of the latter in the systematic inclusion of variables derived from examination of fathers. In most contemporary research, and in the usual clinical management of child behavior problems, emphasis on the maternal influence is overwhelmingly strong. Consequent neglect of the attitudes and other qualities of fathers has, until now, been justified only by assumption or convenience, and the assumption has seemed to us to require test. Two studies (I, 5), involving the examination of characteristics of both parents in reference to certain behavior tendencies among children, offered such a test and yielded, among others, the following results: i. Contrary to general assumption, the attitudes of fathers were at least as intimately related as the attitudes of mothers to the occurrence and form of maladjustive tendencies among children.

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