Parent-Child Relationships: A Review, 1970-1979

The present review includes a brief summary of the state of research at the beginning of the decade of the 1970s, identified 10 of the emerging and re-emerging substantive issues of the decade, examines selective major reviews of the literature on specific aspects of parent-child relationships, and reviews several of the methodological issues which have been discussed in relation to research examining parent-child relationships. The research of the 1970s reflects a move away from a unidirectional model toward a reciprocal model of causality. The importance of studying a broader context of interaction than mothers and children or fathers and children in isolation has been emphasized repeatedly. Finally, the present review includes brief summaries of literature in which emphasis is given to factors not usually considered by researchers of parent-child relationships, e.g., physiological influences on child behavior, the effect of the law on the way adolescents and parents define their relationships with each other, and the influence of relationships between parents and children on children 's sexuality.