At a time when parents are coming under ever greater scrutiny and criticism for the way they bring up their children, a new report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation challenges some of the commonly held assumptions about parents and parenting.
While many 'parenting' studies concentrate on aspects such as discipline and opportunities for learning, Parenting in Ordinary Families: Diversity, complexity and change focuses primarily on the quality of the relationship between parent and child.
The study is based on responses to eight 'parenting' questions asked of mothers participating in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC).
Researchers Andrea Waylen and Sarah Stewart-Brown combined these responses into a scoring system embracing mothers' attitudes, feelings and behaviour towards their child, which they then used to assess the way that parenting changes within different social and cultural groups during the child's early and middle childhood, and in response to the mother's health and social circumstances (see Further Information).
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