Parenting Practices, Child Adjustment, and Family Diversity

Authors: Amato P.R.¹; Fowler F.²

Source: Journal of Marriage and Family, Volume 64, Number 3, August 2002 , pp. 703-716(14)

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Abstract:

The authors used data from Waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) to test the generality of the links between parenting practices and child outcomes for children in two age groups: 5–11 and 12–18. Parents' reports of support, monitoring, and harsh punishment were associated in the expected direction with parents' reports of children's adjustment, school grades, and behavior problems in Wave 1 and with children's reports of self-esteem, grades, and deviance in Wave 2. With a few exceptions, parenting practices did not interact with parents' race, ethnicity, family structure, education, income, or gender in predicting child outcomes. A core of common parenting practices appears to be linked with positive outcomes for children across diverse family contexts.

Keywords: diversity; family structure; gender; parenting; race; social class

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2002.00703.x

Affiliations: 1: Department of Sociology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802 ( ), Email: pxa6@psu.edu 2: Department of Sociology, University of Nebraska—Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588-0324

Publication date: 2002-08-01