A review of children's reports of parent behaviors.

The literature on children's reports of parent behaviors was analyzed in terms of a model combining features from Schaefer and Seigelman. Three orthogonal factors—Loving (Acceptance-Rejection), Demanding (Psychological Control), and Punishment—and the intersecting planes of the first two factors describe the traditional domain of parent-child interactional variables as reported by children. However, process variables such as perceived parental consistency, delay of reward, etc., and noninteractional variables such as parental social sex role, etc., are not described by the combined model. The model was applied to empirical findings, and the children's reports of parent behaviors were shown to be different for mother-report and father-report and to be related clearly to the sex, social class, and behavior of the children. Suggestions are presented for additional research which is relevant to both theoretical and applied goals. Interpersonal family experiences are recognized as important influences on the child's psychological development, and considerable empirical research has been generated from the interpersonal model. Two major streams of research seem evident: (a) relating objectively described parental behaviors and attitudes to child response and (b) studying the child's perception of parents from a phenomenological point of view. Most of the empirical literature has focused on the former, and a number of research programs and reviews testify to the significant influence of parental factors on child behavior (Becker