Parenting Styles and Dimensions

Table 4.1 provides an overview of the studies to be discussed in this section of the chapter. In most instances the samples for the research have consisted of predominantly White parents and children from the United States, Canada, or England; when this was not the case, Table 4.1 indicates the nature of the sample. The Child Measures column is limited to the theory-of-mind measures that were the main outcome measures of interest in all of the studies. In some instances other relevant child measures were included, and in these cases I consider the additional measures when the study is discussed.

A Few Preliminary Points

A first point is that all of the studies reviewed are correlational—that is, they measure but do not experimentally manipulate parenting practices and child outcomes. Because they are correlational, they cannot establish cause-and-effect relations with certainty. The usual assumption—which is the usual assumption in parenting research in general—is that significant correlations reflect the effects of parental practices on children’s development. It is possible, however, that the causal direction is the reverse—that it is children who are affecting their parents. Perhaps, for example, children with relatively advanced theory-of-mind skills elicit particular kinds of treatment from their parents. This is a possibility that is explicitly considered by several of the researchers whose work is reviewed here (Guajardo, Snyder, & Petersen, 2009; Pears & Moses, 2003; Ruffman et al., 1999). It is also possible that some third factor accounts for the parent-child correlations. One possibility under this heading is shared genes: Perhaps relatively intelligent parents favor particular parenting practices; these parents pass intelligence-enhancing genes on to their children, and these children therefore perform relatively well on cognitive measures, including theory of mind. If so, we would have an effect of parents—not, however, of parenting.

Table 3.2 summarized various ways to address the directionality and third- factor issues. The main possibilities in the former case are longitudinal and experimental studies. This literature contains three longitudinal studies (Rohrer, Cicchetti, Rogosch, Toth, & Maughan, 2011; Ruffman, Slade, Devitt, & Crowe, 2006; Symons & Clark, 2000); experimental studies have yet to appear. Statistical controls for third-factor alternatives (e.g., parent education level) do appear in a number of studies. The adoption design has not yet been used, however, and thus shared genes remain a possible explanation for parent-child relations.

A second issue concerns measurement of parental practices. All three of the general approaches to the measurement of parenting appear in the studies considered in this section: home observation, lab observation, and verbal report.

Table 4.1 Studies Relating Parenting Style or Parenting Dimensions to Theory of Mind

(continued)

Table 4.1 Continued

Table 4.1 Continued

The majority of studies, however, have used verbal report, and in this respect they mirror the general parenting literature. The majority have also used a single approach to measurement, although a few reports do provide a convergence of methods within the same study (Guajardo et al. 2009; Hughes, Deater-Deckard, & Cutting, 1999; Hughes & Ensor, 2006; Murray, Woolgar, Briers, & Hipwell, 1999). Finally, it is rare, even in reports that talk about parenting styles, to find a full assessment and discussion of all four of the Baumrind styles. It is interesting, in this respect, to note that a recent article by Baumrind (2013, p. 12) refers to “definitional drift” in the conception and measurement of parenting styles. There is certainly some drift in the studies considered here.

As Table 4.1 shows, the preschool period has been by far the most common focus for research, and the false belief task has been by far the most common developmental outcome. As other chapters will show, the literature as a whole does include other age periods (although almost always younger rather than older) and a wider range of theory-of mind outcomes; the present studies, however, are limited on both dimensions. A further point is that in all instances the variations in false belief that are examined are variations in rate of development, which, as noted in Chapter 2, is the usual approach to individual differences in the theory-of-mind literature. Thus in most of the studies to be reviewed, relatively good theory of mind means relatively fast mastery of false belief.