New Directions in Analyses of Parenting Contributions to Children's Acquisition of Values

Traditional theories of how children acquire values or standards of behavior have emphasized the importance of specific parenting techniques or styles and have acknowledged the importance of a responsive parent-child relationship, but they have failed to differentiate among forms of responsiveness, have stressed internalization of values as the desired outcome, and have limited their scope to a small set of parenting strategies or methods. This paper outlines new directions for research. It acknowledges the central importance of parents and argues for research that (1) demonstrates that parental understanding of a particular child's characteristics and situation rather than use of specific strategies or styles is the mark of effective parenting; (2) traces the differential impact of varieties of parent responsiveness; (3) assesses the conditions surrounding the fact that parents have goals other than internalization when socializing their children, and evaluates the impact of that fact; and (4) considers a wider range of parenting strategies.