Parents' Perceptions of Actual and Ideal Child-Rearing Practices

Abstract

A Q-sort of statements of parenting behaviors was used to examine 22 male and 40 female middle-class parents' perceptions of actual and ideal parenting behaviors with respect to their preschool child's cognitive, physical, and social development. Parents' perceptions of actual vs ideal parenting did not differ significantly with respect to highly endorsed and least endorsed statements. Parents appeared more certain of their actual parenting and its relation to their children's social development, followed by intellectual development, and least certain of its relation to children's physical development. A cluster analysis revealed that parents distinguished between aspects of development, but also that they perceived important interrelationships among them, especially between social and intellectual development. Parents gave little attention to child-rearing practices associated with physical development, perhaps because of their belief that preschool-aged children spontaneously engage in a wide variety of physical activities.

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