Radicalism and the Organization of Radical Movements

of self-direction and aggression, while in the sex area mothers tend to move toward permissiveness regardless of class position or grandmother's degree of strictness. The findings in this area probably reflect a general societal trend toward a more permissive orientation toward sex. Although many women with extremely strict mothers move toward permissiveness, this group appears to be the most strict, when comparisons are made within classes. That is, the strictest mothers tend to reproduce the child-rearing patterns of their own mothers. Whether or not other social characteristics are associated with this lack of change has not yet been determined. Inconsistencies among different measures of maternal role could be attributed to the varying degrees of specificity of items measuring role-concept and role-performance. The more general the items the more the response distribution reflects permissive norms. We suspect that variation in generational change according to specificity of item indicates a transitional period in which authoritatively supported permissive norms are superimposed upon relatively strict internalized norms. We expect, then to find an association between inconsistency among scales, strictness rating of grandmother, and social mobility. The pressures for conformity to authoritative norms are assumed to be greater for socially mobile women attempting to establish themselves in the middle-class milieu. The precise relationship among these variables will be reported in a subsequent paper. In view of these findings, we suggest that it is extremely hazardous to generalize from one aspect of the maternal role to another. A prediction that a mother's handling of anger will be consistent with her handling of sex play would have failed miserably. Future research on child-rearing and maternal behavior will thus require more elaborate conceptualization than has characterized it to date.