PARENTAL DISCIPLINARY

PATTERNS A N D SOCIAL
COMPETENCE IN CHILDREN

DIANA BAUMRIND
Institute of Human Development
University of California, Berkeley

In the United States today, parents rather than the state have
primary responsibility for socializing their young. Socializa-
tion is an adult-initiated process by which the young person
through education, training, and imitation acquires his culture
as well as the habits and values congruent with adaptation to
that culture. There is no way in which parents can evade having
a determining effect upon their children's personality,
character, and competence. Children are not the originators
of their own actions in the sense that their parents are or
should be. Adults can contribute to their own development
by altering the stimuli that impinge upon them, and by defining
objectives for themselves which, once formulated, then
structure their actions. Children, on the other hand, will be
presented with stimuli and asked to accomplish goals formu-
lated for them by upbringers. Adult caretakers will play a
determining role in the way their children develop, either
consciously and conscientiously or by default. Several
researchers (Spence, 1966; Siege1 and Konn, 1959) have found
that nonreaction by adults is most frequently interpreted by

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Tfie program of research ~lisciissedhere bvas

supported by the IVil1iat)i T. Gratir Fouridation arid the National
Institute of Cliild Health arid Hirriiari Development under Research
Grant H D 02228.
YOUTH & SOCIETY, Vol. 9 No. 3, March 1978
0 1978 Sage Publications. Inc.

I2391
[240] YOUTH & SOCIETY / MARCH 1978

children as approval. For example, nonreaction by an adult

when a child behaves aggressively results in an increased
incidence of aggressive acts. Children whose parents relinquish
their authority do not thereby become more independent and
nonconforming, but instead are more likely to become depen-
dent upon the norms of the peer group (Bronfenbrenner,
’

1970).
Adult members of the same culture or subculture d o not
always agree exactly about values, nor about the values they
wish to inculcate in their children, nor on how children should
be reared so that they become responsible members of their
society. In the discussion that follows, a number of philo-
sophical points of view that have guided parents’ attempts to
socialize their children will be presented. Then research
findings and conclusions that explore the impact that various
parental disciplinary practices have o n children at successive
developmental stages will be presented and discussed. Finally,
1 will suggest future research directions.

A U T H 0 RITA R1A N , PERM IS SI 1’E, AN D

AUTHORITATIVE DISCIPLINE

AUTIIORITXRIAN DISCIPLINE

Until the 1940s in America, most parents believed that by

maintaining order within the family they were upholding a
higher order to which they, too, submitted. This higher
order was defined by religiously mandated cultural tradition.
An example is the bask upon which Susannah Wesley, mother
of the founder of Methodism, legitimated her authority in
the eighteenth century:

As self-will is the root of all sin and misery, so whatever

cherished this in children insures their after-wretchedness and
irreligion; whatever checks and mortifies it promotes their
 Baumrind / PARENTAL DISCIPLINARY PATTERNS [241]

future happiness and piety. . . . So that the parent who studies

t o subdue it [i.e., self-will] in his child, works together with
God in the rcnewingand saving a soul. The parent who indulges
it does the devil’s work [quoted in Gesell, 1930: 30-311.

These early Puritans, the British Empiricists of the seven-

teenth and eighteenth centuries such as Locke (1952), and
the Behaviorists of the current century (Watson, 1928) see
the application of socialization pressures as both appropriate
and necessary. Perceiving children to be dominated by
uncivilized urges or else as “tabulae rasae,” they believe that
the only way in which children can be acculturated involves
the application of parental power through reinforcement
contingencies. Recent proponents of this view adopt the
learning theorists’ dictum that all complex behavior patterns,
particularly social behaviors, are learned because of the
positive or negative consequences with which they have been
associated, and consequently they propose that socially
competent behaviors can only emerge when they have been
shaped by socialization agents. Thus, behaviorists and tradi-
tionalists stress both the need for learning and the duty of
parents to make uncompromising demands of their chi1dre.n.

PERMISSIVE DISCIPI.IKE

The challenge to the legitimacy of parental authority is

relatively new, culminating in the United States in a small
but vocal Children’s Rights movement. The antithetic view
to what we pejoratively call authoritarianism dates from the
influential writing of the eighteenth-century philosopher
Rousseau (1952) and is still promoted by Neil1 and such
followers as Farson (1974) and Holt (1974) in the Children’s
Rights movement. To such persons, the child has a natural
tendency to self-actualization-left to itself the child will
learn all it needs to know and will turn to conventionally
approved modes of behavior when and if it wishes to do so.
By opposing natural tendencies, the parents are preventing
[242] YOUTH & SOCIETY / M A R C H 1978

the expression of the child’s capacity for self-actualization

and, thus, by implication, making him less of a person. To
quote Neill (1960: 105, 114, 115, 139):

Self-regulation means the right of a baby to live freely, without

outside authority in things psychic arid somatic. It means that
the baby feeds when it is hungry, that it becomescleanin habits
only when it wants to; that it is never stormed at or spanked,
that it is always loved and protected.
I believe rhar to impose anything by authority is wrong. llie
child shoutd not do ariyrliiiig until he conies to the opinioti-
his owii opitiion-that it sholdd be done.
Every child has the right to wear clothes of such a kind that it
does not matter a brass farthing if they get messy or not.
Really, any man or woman who tries t o givechildren freedom
should be a millionnaire, for it is not fair that the natural
carelessness of children should always be in conflict with the
economic factor.

Any attempt to shape the child’s behavior prematurely, Neill

and his followers argue, involves an unnatural and unnecessary
infringement on the child’s freedom and results in neurosis
and insufficiency.
However, in recent years there seems to have been an
increasing disaffection with permissive upbringing. As Spock
(1957: 2) himself put it in his introducticjn to the second edition
of his classic baby book, “A great change in attitude has
occurred and nowadays there seems to be more chance of a
conscientious parent’s getting into trouble with permissiveness
than strictness.” Psychoanalysts have been among those
attacking the permissive model. The analyst Lederer (1964:
72-73), for example, has this to say:

Particularly among the psychologically sophisticated . . .

certain characteristic pedagogical attitudes, supposedly
psychoanalytically based, can be observed.
There is the fear of inhibiting the child, of causing repressions-
as if repressions, rather than necessary conditions of civilized
 Baumrind / PARENTAL DISCIPLINARY PATTERNS [243]

living, were some diabolic evil: the corresponding need to

permit the child unlimited self-expression-even where this
becomes quite insufferable to the adult and anxiety-provoking
.
for the child . . a fear of spontaneous reactions, based o n
a corresponding need t o analyze the oedipal implications of
every emotion. . . . And thus it would seem that this our
“century of the child” has deprived the child of a-responsible
-parent.

AUTHORITATIVE DISCIPLINE

A parent or educator does not, however, have t o choose

between permissive and authoritarian discipline. In my studies
of preschool children (Baumrind, 1967; Baumrind and Black,
1967), a pattern of discipline was identified and discussed
in two theoretical contributions (Baumrind, 1966, 1968) which
I call “authoritative control.” The following observations
from Rambusch (1962: 49-50, 51, 63), describing the Montes-
sori method, illustrate the way in which authoritative control
can be used to resolve the antithesis between pleasure and
duty, and between freedom and obligation in the classroom or
home setting:

The discipline resides in three areas in a Montessori

classroom: I t resides in the environment itself which is con-
trolled; in the teacher herself who is controlled and is ready
to assume a n authoritarian role if it is necessary; and from the
very beginning it resides in the children. It is a three-way
arrangement, as opposed to certain types of American educa-
tion in which all of the authority is vested in the teacher, or
where, in the caricature of permissive education, all of the
authority is vested in the children.
When a child has finished his work he is free to put it away,
he is free t o initiate new work or, in certain instances, he is
free to not work. But he is not free to disturb or destroy what
others are doing.
In a Montessori class the teacher does not delude herself into
believing that her manipulation of the children represents
their consensus of what they would like to do. If she is manipu-
lating them insofar as she is determining arbitrarily that this
[244] YOUTH & SOCIETY / MARCH 1978

must be done at this time, she is cognizant of what she is

doing, which the child may or may not be.
the responsibility in selecting matter for the child to learn is
placed in the hands of those adults who are aware of what
the culture will demand of the child and who are able to
“program” learning in such a way that what is suitable for the
child’s age and stage of development is also learnable and
pleasurable to him.

SUXlXlARY DESCRIPTION

The prototypic characteristics of authoritarian, permissive,

and authoritative disciplines may now be summarized as
follows.

The aiithoritarian parent values obedience as a virtue and

favors punitive, forceful measures to curb self-will at points
where the child’s actions or beliefs conflict with what the
parent thinks is right conduct. The authoritarian parent
believes in keeping the child in a subordinate role and in
restricting his autonomy, and does not encourage verbal give
and take, believing that the child should accept a parent’s
word for what is right. Authoritarian parents may be very
concerned and protective or they may be neglecting.

The permissive prototype of adult control requires the

parent to behave in an affirmative, acceptant, and benign
manner towards the child’s impulses and actions. The
permissive parent sees him- or herself as a resource for the
child to use as he wishes, but not as an active agent responsible
for shaping and altering the child’s ongoing and future
behavior. The immediate aim of the idiologically aware
permissive parent is to free the child from restraint as much
as is consistent with surviva1:Some permissive parents are very
.protective and loving, while others are self-involved and offer
freedom as a way of evading responsibility for the child’s
development.
 Baumrind / PARENTAL DISCIPLINARY PATTERNS [245]

‘he authoritative parent, as identified in my studies,

,mpts to direct the child’s activities in a rational issue-
mted manner. He or she encourages verbal give and take,
res with the child the reasoning behind parental policy, and
cits the child’s objections when the child refuses to
form. Both autonomous self-will and disciplined con-
nity are valued by the authoritative parent. Therefore,
parent exerts firm control when the young child disobeys,
does not hem the child in with restrictions. The authori-
ve parent enforces the adult perspective, but recognizes
child’s individual interests and special ways. Such a parent
rms the child’s present qualities, but also sets standards for
Ire conduct, using reason as well as power and shaping by
men and reinforcement to achieve parental objectives. But
parent does not base his or her decisions on group
sensus or the individual child’s desires.
,uthoritative discipline tends to foster in children a
:icular kind of social competence which is associated with
:ess in Western society. This kind of social competence is
zd imtrimetital cotnpetence.

INSTRUhlENTAL COhlPETENCE,
XEFLECTION OF hlAINSTREAhl AhlERICAN VALUES

NSTREAXI AXIERICAS VALUES

‘he defining characteristics of instrumental competence

:ct American mainstream character and values as these
z been shaped by the requirements of capitalist production
r the past 250 years.
‘he unique strengths of the white bourgeois family
:loped to accommodate the organization of production in
.talist society. The early bourgeois family of the seven-
ith century was the basic unit of society. The sovereignty
aternal power guaranteed the individual rights and private
12461 YOUTH & SOCIETY / MARCH 1978

ambitions of the family collective. In contrast to the feudal

system, which had separated spiritual and economic life,
human meaning was now to be found in the secular world of
production and family. Within the family the spiritual
values of personal integrity and the Puritan exaltation of filial
and marital love reinforced the secular values of hard work,
thrift, rationality, and deferral of gratification to produce
an effective vehicle both of private ambition and social order.
With the rise of the factory system in the eighteenth century,
however, a schism was created between spiritual and secular
values. The introduction of machinery required members of
both the bourgeoisie and proletariat to identify themselves
with a mechanized, disciplined labor process. The individual
rhythm of the family was replaced by the uniform rhythm
of machines, and the working class was instructed to fulfill-
ment of contracts on time, methodical work habits, and
scrupulous attention to detail. As a free man the wage laborer
had to be constrained by a stringent conscience-thus the
rise of Methodism, which preached repression, discipline, and
social hierarchy. By the nineteenth century, with the imposi-
tion of industrial capitalism, both owner and worker were
alienated from the economic machine that society had become.
The doctrine of Malthusian overpopulation represented
nature as cruel and alien to man, and vicious capitalist compe-
tition made society seem cruel and alien as well. The cluster
of values Max Weber called the Protestant Ethic arose from,
and furthered, the remarkable economic growth of the nine-
teenth century. The simplistic utilitarianism of Bentham was
balanced by a romantic exaltation of the inner life, especially
of the artist. The individual defended his subjectivity against
a mechanistic social order with a romantic vision of utopian
socialism. The family became the refuge of individuality and
humane values, while WASP competencies and values devel-
oped to rationalize the attainment of material advantages
and social power. Most white American youth were eager t o
embrace these values and become socialized into this cultural
mi 1i eu .
 Baumrind / PARENTAL DISCIPLINARY PAlTERNS 12471

It should be noted that today many youths from mainstream

3milies are not eager to embrace the Protestant Ethic because
hey doubt that conformity with its d i c t u m still guarantees
uccess. Middle-class parents d o not necessarily have the
esources to offer their children sufficient social rewards to
ompensate them for conformity with middle-class norms.
dany youths believe that the future will require a capacity to
.dapt to a reduced material standard of living, and to get on
vith others in a communal noncompetitive spirit. Some believe
hat those attributes which facilitate survival under adverse
onditions in an urban ghetto or rural farming community are
ust the qualities needed for survival in a postindustrial
sra threatened more by abundance and overproductivity of
:hildren and goods than by scarcity and underconsumption.
While remaining open to the claims of conflicting temporal
tnd subcultural values, we should not downgrade the values
lefining instrumental competence. These attributes fall into
he following two broad categories which appear antithetical,
mt which reflect the eternal contradictions of social living:

(1) At one pole we have other-oriented, rule-following tendencies

which enable the individual to cooperate altruistically with
peers and comply with authority.
(2) At the opposite pole we have individualistic, autonomous,
agentic tendencies which enable the individual to take per-
sonal responsibility for his or her own life, to reject normative
rules when these rules threaten the common good, and to be an
active agent of personal change.

All humans as social beings have the capacity for coopera-

:he, compliant behavior and for innovative, active behavior.
Zhildren must first become socialized into their society so
:hat with maturity they may innovate and dominate their
:nvironment. At early stages behaviors appear mutually exclu-
;ive which with maturity become integrated. The mature adult
recognizes that the resolution of tensions between conflicting
values is intrinsic to decision-making and is able to integrate
immediate gratification with self-control to assure future
1248) YOUTH & SOCIETY / MARCH 1978

success, conserve viable tradition yet be socially innovative,

and coordinate what is good for the self with the common
good. The objectives of socialization are that the child learn (1)
to delay gratification without denying sensilal pleasures, (2) to
decenter without denying the claims of self-realization, and
(3) when mature, t o conform responsibly to just laws while
acting as an agent of change of unjust laws. Instrumental
competencies are those that accomplish these objectives.

IKSTRI~XIEXTAI.COhlPETESCE

The use of the term “instrumental competence” derives from

Talcott Parsons’ distinction between instriiiiie,ital~c,ictio,ts
and expressive j k r i ct ions. 1n st ru men t a 1 fun ct ions a re

oriented to the achievement of a goal which is an anticipated

future state of affairs, the attainment of which is felt t o promise
gratification; a state of affairs which will not come about
without the intervention of the actor in the course of events.
Such instrumental or goal-orientation introduces an element
of discipline, the renunciation of certain immediately potential
gratifications, including that to be derived from passively
“letting things slide” and awaiting the outcome. Such imme-
diate gratifications arc renounced in the interest of the pro-
spectively larger gains to be derived from the attainment of
the goal, an attainment which is felt t o be contingent on
fulfillment of certain conditions at intermediate stages of the
proccss [Parsons, 1951: 48-49].

By expressive functions Parsons (1951: 49) refers to activi-

ties where “the primary orientation is not to the attainment
of a goal anticipated for the future, but the organization of
the ‘flow’ of gratifications (and of course the warding off
of threatened deprivations).” Parsons regards expressive
functions (such as receptivity, nurturance, and empathy) as
traditionally feminine, and instrumental functions (such as
assertiveness, ambition, self-discipline, and objectivity) as
traditionally masculine. As Parsons points out, traditionally
 Baomrind / PARENTAL DISCIPLINARY PA‘TTERNS I2491

masculine qualities, whether one is male or female, further

success in competitive achievements; those fittest to survive
and flourish with the least dependence upon others are those
who perform instrumental functions in the most competent
manner.
In my preschool studies, social competence in the child is
defined by such attributes as social responsibility, inde-
pendence, achievement orientation, and vigor. Socially
responsible behavior is friendly rather than hostile to peers,
facilitative rather than disruptive of others’ work, and
cooperative rather than resistive of adult-led activity. By late
childhood, the qualities of objectivity and self-control are
important correlates of social responsibility. Independence is
behavior that is ascendant rather than submissive, goal-
oriented rather than aimless, and self-determining rather than
conforming. Achievement orientation is behavior in which the
child seeks rather than avoids intellectual challenge, and
solves problems persistently ,and efficiently rather than
inefficiently and impulsively. Vigor refers to the child’s vitality
and energy level. These, then, are the characteristics that
traditionally have defined instrumental competence in
Western society.

SOCIALIZATION PRACTICES ASSOCIATED WITH

INSTRURIENTAL CORIPETENCE AT .
SUCCESSIVE DEVELOPhIENTAL STAGES

Socializing agents have the complex task of adjusting

their demands and disciplinary methods flexibly to the
developing capacities of the child so as to encourage social
responsibility without discouraging independence and
individuality.
Let us now review some of the major changes that take
place in the developing child to which parents must respond
[250]YOUTH & SOCIETY / MARCH’ 1978

if their disciplinary practices are to secure compliance as

well as social competence in their children.

INFANCY

During infancy the child is helpless and entirely dependent

upon responsive, nurturing caretakers for sustenance and
proper stimulation. Parents in turn are subject to necessary
intrusive demands by the helpless infant. Advice to parents
on infant care reflect the controversy on lenient versus
strict disciplinary practices.
While the views on infant care practices of the early
twentieth-century American behaviorist Watson (1928) are
no longer widely held, the antithetical Freudian viewpoint is
equally discredited. Watson believed that the child’s total
personality and character were the outcome of particular
conditioning experiences. Proper moral education and
preparation for adult life began for Watson in infancy with a
strict feeding and toileting regimen and progressed to unde-
viating regularity in nursery school.
By contrast, the psychoanalytic view in vogue in the 1940s
and 1950s prescribed full gratification for infantile sucking,
excretory, and genital needs to promote secure and healthful
adult personalities. This meant prolonged breast feeding
on self-demand schedules, gradual and late weaning, and late,
lenient toilet training. Spock‘s 1946 edition of Baby and Child
Care advocated such infant-care practices and the extension
into early childhood of lenient disciplinary practices.
Yet the avalanche of studies on the effects of infant-care
practices did not support the supposed harmful effects of such
restraints on the child as scheduled feeding, early weaning, and
early toilet training that were advocated by Watson. For
example, Freud’s major theorizing about maturity demands
centered on toilet training efforts. Freud argued that attempts
to discourage incontinence coincided with a period when the
 Baumrind / PARENTAL DISCIPLINARY PATTERNS [251]

anal area was invested with large amounts of sexual energy,

and that overindulgence or overrestriction during this period
would have enduring influences on the child’s personality.
Harsh toilet training, for example, would result in children
or adults who were obstinate, compulsive, neat, and punctual.
Hetherington and Brackbill (1963) who investigated the rela-
tionship between toilet training experiences and subsequent
personality characteristics found, contrary to the predictions
of psychoanalytic theory, no evidence that the relevant per-
sonality traits occurred together, or that they bore any con-
sistent relation to the children’s toilet training experiences.
But Watson’s view of the infant as totally passive and
reactive is also discredited by modern theories and researchers.
Contrary to Watson’s view, we now believe that the infant
from the beginning is intrinsically motivated to experience
novel stimuli (Hunt, 1965) and to produce an effect on the
environment that gratifies social as well as bioiogical needs
(Watson, forthcoming). Through the handling of the infant’s
biological needs, parents teach him that there is a world
outside himself to which he must relate in order to satisfy
his needs. Through waiting, infants can become aware that
there are beings outside themselves who minister t o their needs.
While it is true that prolonged and repeated deprivation of
the infant’s biological needs may cause needless suffering and
even, eventually, total apathy (Spitz and Wolf, 1946),
nevertheless, brief temporary thwarting is not cruel and may
be beneficial if it serves to energize the infant. For example,
when a ten-month-old girl has to crawl across the room to her
father to obtain a cookie he is holding, she is contributing
to her own rewarding state, and her father is presumably
contributing to the development of his daughter’s sense of
her own effectance. Conversely, noncontingent positive

’
stimulation with infants has been shown (Watson, 1971)
t o reduce overt instrumental activity. Infants were exposed
for two weeks to a mobile that turned periodically unrelated
[252] YOUTH & SOCIETY / MARCH 1978

to their behavior, while other infants were exposed to a mobile

that turned contingent on head movement. Infants who had
viewed the mobile turning noncontingently made no effort
to make the mobile move when given the opportunity, while
those who had previous opportunity to affect the mobile
made the effort to d o so, after six weeks with no interim
exposure to the mobile. Watson demonstrated that learning
to behave instrumentally is associated with the intrinsic
rewards of producing an effect on one’s own. In infancy, good
physical care and sustaining the natural exploratory activity
of the youngster are primary socialization tasks.

PRESCllOOL CfIILDREN

For students of psychosocial development, the transition

from infancy to early childhood signifies a n important change
in the nature of the major tasks of socialization. Parents
become far more than caretakers and begin to assume a
directive role, labeling behaviors as laudable or blameworthy
and positively reinforcing the former while negatively reinforc-
ing the latter. The preschool child’s rapid physical matura-
tion permits self-control of bodily functions. His rapid
cognitive development and language acquisition allow parents
to use verbal and symbolic reinforcers rather than concrete
ones to shape their young children’s immediate behavior.
Parents may encourage the young child to act contrary to fact
whereas previously they were limited to reinforcing the
behavior the infant had already started to perform. Since
parents’ behavior can be encoded and recalled, it can be
emulated. Parents can begin to influence their young children
by the qualities they model as well as the behaviors they rein-
force. However, reinforcement, both positive and negative,
continues as a powerful tool for shaping behavior. Contrary
to some thinking, it is possible for parents to reinforce
behavior contrary to what they are modeling. For example,
children punished aggressively for aggression d o become less
 Baumrind / PARENTAL DISCIPLINARY PAlTERNS 12531

rather than more aggressive. Provided that punishment is not

brutal, one investigator (Sears, 1961) found that the more
preschool children are punished for aggression as preschoolers,
the less likely they are to be aggressive as preadolescents.
Similar findings have been reported by other investigators
(Gottschalk and Greenfield, 1967; Lesser, 1952), although
one investigator (Eron et al., 1963) found the reverse
association.
In my three studies of preschool children, airthoritative
paretital practices were particularly effective in the control of
undesirable behavior, including aggression. I n the first study
(1967), three groups of normal preschool children differing
in social and emotional behavior were identified in order that
the child-rearing behavior of their parents could be contrasted.
Conclusions from that particular study can be summarized
very briefly as follows:

(I) Parents of the children who were the most socially responsible
and independent were themselves controlling and demanding;
but they were also warm, rational, and receptive t o the child’s
communication. This unique combination of high control and
positive encouragement of the child’s autonomous a n d
independent strivings was called atitlioriiath~e parental
behavior.
(2) Parents of children who, relative to the others, were dis-
content, withdrawn, and distrustful, were themselves
detached and controlling, and somewhat less warm than
other parents. They were called atiihoriiariati parents.
(3) Parents of the least socially responsible and independent
children were themselves noncontrolling, nondemanding, and
relatively warm. These \vere called pert~issi\vparents.

In my second study (Baumrind, 1971a), subpatterns ofthese

three prototypic patterns of parental authority were identified,
and the social and emotional behavior of their preschool
children contrasted. In this study, too, authoritative parents,
[254] YOUTH & SOCIETY / MARCH 1978

compared t o other patterns studied, were found to facilitate

the development of instrumental competence in young
children, defined by high scores o n both social responsibility
and independence.
During the preschool years, consistent contingent reinforce-
ment and regularity help promote security and the belief that
the world can be a safe, predictable place.
As Maslow (1954: 86) put it,

A n indication of the child‘s need for safety is his preference

for some kind of undisrupted routine or rhythm. He seems
to want a predictable, orderly world. For instance, injustice,
unfairness, or inconsistency in the parents seem to make a child
feel anxious and unsafe. This attitude may not be so much
because of the injusticeperse or any particular pains involved,
but rather because this treatment threatens to make the world
look unreliable, or unsafe, o r unpredictable. Young children
seem to thrive better under a system . . . in which there is a
schedule of a kind, some sort of routine, something that can
be counted upon, not only for the present but also far into the
future.

Because the preschooler’s social-conventional reasoning is

limited, it is not likely that under the age of five t o seven
children profit much from the use of itidtrriive disciplinary
techniques that involve love withdrawal o r explanations of the
consequences of transgressions upon other persons. Power
assertive techniques, by contrast, are those comprising
commands and the verbal or physical punishment of trans-
gression. Hoffman (1960) reports that inductive disciplinary
techniques facilitate the internalization of social rules and
thus encourage socially competent moral behavior more
effectively than d o power assertive techniques. But Hoffman’s
subjects, o n the whole, were elementary school children rather
than preschoolers. In a n observational study of 2M-year-olds,
Lytton and Zwirner (1975) found that compliance t o parental
demands was maximized by power assertive techniques,
 daumrind / PARENTAL DISCIPLINARY PATTERNS [2551

whereas compliance following mild suggestions or reasoning

occurred less frequently. Furthermore, there was a significant
correlation between the probability of immediate compliance
to parental rules and general compliance to internalized rules
in the absence of parental prohibitions, suggesting that those
youngsters who were dealt with assertively behaved appro-
priately even when there were no specific instructions to d o
so. The relative unimportance of reasoning compared with
power assertion with these 21/2-year-olds suggests that explana-
tions and rationalizations may only become important in the
later preschool years.
It is frequently assumed with preschoolers that the more
warmli, the better. But in none of my three studies of
preschool chldren was warmth by itself a significant predictor
of child behavior, although parents of the most competent
children were warm as well as controlling. In fact, passive-
acceptant and overprotective parental practices were asso-
ciated with childhood dependence in my studies. Parents
whose children were independent were rated low on passive-
acceptance and high on maturity demands. Paternal puni-
tiveness was in fact associated positively with independence
in girls. These findings concerning the negative effects of a
high degree of passive-acceptance on children (girls in
particular) of various ages are supported by observations of
several other investigators (Hoffman, Rosen, and Lippit,
1960; Kagan and Moss, 1962; Rosen and DAndrade, 1959).
For example, Crandall, Preston, and Rabson (1960) indicate
that intellectually striving children had parents who while
generally affectionate and nurturant also were critical and
overtly rejecting. Crandall (1972: 38-39) suggests:

Perhaps internality at later developmental stages is best

predicted by some degree of maternal “coolness,” criticality,
and stress, so that offspring were not allowed to rely on overly
indulgent affective relationships with parents but were forced
to learn objective cause-effect contingencies, adjust to them,
[256]YOUTH & SOCIETY / MARCH 1978

. and recognize their own instrumentality in causing those

outcomes. . . . It is possible that this cluster of behaviors,
together with the criticality and lack of affection cited above
may have served to thrust the child “out of the nest” and into
more active contact with his physical and social world.

A number of studies with young children (Finkelstein and

Ramey, 1975; Foster and Vietze, 1975; Millar, 1972; O’Brien,
1969; Watson, 1971) have analyzed the effects of noncon-
tingent positive stimulation on later performance in a situation
in which the stimulation is contingent o n behavior. T h e
responses are highly consistent with those obtained with
aversive stimulation. The young child avoids situations which
clearly are uncontrollable as though they were aversive, even
when the stimuli would otherwise be experienced as positive.
In a very interesting paper, Watson (forthcoming) suggests
that learned helplessness resulting from noncontingent
positive stimulation can reduce intrinsic motivation and may
indeed contribute t o the clinical syndrome of depression.
There is, of course, dramatic evidence with animals (Maier,
Seligman, and Solomon, 1969; Seligman, Maier, and
Solomon, 197 1) that noncontingent aversive stimulation
can eliminate all adaptive instrumental initiative, even
resulting in death. Watson (forthcoming) suggests that less
dramatic but similar depressing effects on initiative and
mood can occur following noncontingent positive stimulation.
I would extend the model t o include noncontingent approval.

E A R L Y SCHOOL AGE

By age seven, according t o Piaget, the child has reached

the age of reason o r concrete operations. T h e child who has
attained concrete operations can now etiipatliize arid assume
the roles of others, thus becoming aware that others have
their own perspective different from the selfs (Powell, 1971;
Selman, 1971). Children now actively want t o elicit approval
of others and even t o d o the right thing for its own sake
 Baumrind / PARENTAL DISCIPLINARY PATTERNS [257]

(Kohlberg, 1971). At this age, unlike younger ages, social

approval and disapproval as well as inductive methods of
reasoning would seem particularly appropriate and effective.
Childrearing practices which focus on the system of social
relations rather than on commands may well facilitate role-
taking in the child of this age. Parents who use positive
induction statements, i.e., who bring their own and others’
emotional responses to the child’s behavior, to the child’s
attention, will foster in the child the ability to make inferences
about how others feel as well as provide a model of role-
taking. At this age an important influence on children to
behave prosocially is the assignment by parents to them of
responsibilities for others’ welfare (Staub, 1975). Responsi-
bility assignment not only appears to enhance prosocial
behavior, but when parents make clear to children that their
actions in caring for others have positive consequences,
they are also reinforcing their internal locus of control and
sense of effectance. The reinforcing effect of having produced
an effect may then make prosocial behavior intrinsically
reinforcing.
The possible advantages of argtinientative discourse in the
cognitive development of primary school children, particularly
girls, are highlighted by recent analyses of family discussions
among parents and nine-year-olds from our longitudinal
study. The ways in which families discuss and resolve ethical
.
dilemma situations were analyzed sequence by sequence.
Direct challenges by a parent of the point of view expressed
by the other parent or the child proved to be an effective
indicator of cognitive training in the home and correlated
with self-assertion in the child in the school setting. Also,
challenges to the child’s point of view rather than nondirective
probes or supportive statements improved the product of the
family discussion conducted in the laboratory. When family
members disagreed rather than supported each other the
product was most differentiated, i.e., the largest number of
reasons were put forward for each ethical question discussed
[258] YOUTH & SOCIETY / MARCH 1978

and there was greater distinctiveness in these reasons. These

results suggest that the child’s ability to reason logically and
to argue effectively is improved by argumentative discourse
and verbal give and take between parents and children.
High niaturifj, demands throughout childhood should
enhance social competence and an internal locus of causality.
Parents who induce their children to “try” what they “can”
d o and to test their limits in order to learn what they cannot
d o without suffering negative consequences will, in Heider’s
theory (1952), be teaching the cognition of “can” through
action. Participation in household tasks or outside work will
provide a reality basis for high self-esteem. Parents will
discourage internal locus of causality, however, by urging
young children to do what they cannot d o even with effort.
Children with a history of failure have reduced expectations
of success and lack a sense of personal agency. Too-high
competence demands, then, will contribute to reduced
expectations of success and unwillingness to try, while too-
low competence demands will lead to underachievement. For
children to obtain satisfaction from success they must be
able to attribute their success to their own efforts rather
than to extrinsic forces such as parental demands. In general,
then, high competence and maturity demands should promote
internality, but only if demands are not unrealistically high
and the child can claim personal responsibility for his or her
success as well as failure. The most important socialization
processes in childhood are parental control, maturity
demands, and use of reasoning.

ADOLESCENCE

Ciiaracteristics. Early adolescence is a period of major

stress, biologically, cognitively, and psychosocially. Major
biological changes occur that radically alter the body chemistry
and appearance and thus the body image. Self-centeredness
peaks in early .adolescence (Elkind, 1967) and is expressed
 Baumrind / PARENTAL DISCIPLINARY PATTERNS I2591

in concern about personal appearance and social approval.

Early adolescents must adapt to a new stage of social reality,
leaving the relative security of grade school for the demanding
and heterogeneous environment of junior high school.
Major role changes take place in early adolescence: depen-
dency upon parents is relinquished, childhood status given up,
and a new set of normative reference groups, values, and
behaviors is developed. At this age, psychosocial competence
even more than intelligence may determine successful school
achievement (Finger and Silverman, 1966).
In order to compensate for still very strong feelings of
helplessness, the early adolescent may adopt a pseudo-
independent stance, rebelling in the service of emancipation.
Parents then may assume mistakenly that the early adolescent
is really capable and desirous of substantial autonomy and
withdraw their own commitment. Firm family structure and
reassuring rituals of obedience to the authority of family and
tradition may provide the support needed by the early
adolescent. Low parental involvement even more than
parental harshness may be associated with negative outcomes
and low self-esteem at this age (Rosenberg, 1965). If accus-
tomed parental control is withdrawn at this time of heightened
stress, the adolescent may in distress turn to the peer group
for support. Peer norms may support antisocial behavior,
including use of drugs and alcohol.
Adolescents who have negotiated the transition between
concrete and formal operational thought are in limbo between
the safe, concrete reality of childhood and the indeterminate
existential reality of adult commitment. Liberated from the
literal reality to which they were confined as children but not
yet constrained by adult commitment to work and love
relations, adolescents can be omnipotent in imagination
but remain relatively impotent in action. Newly awakened to
the imperfection and hypocrisy of the adult world but with
freedom born of nonengagement and noncommitment, the
youth may reject and criticize this world in a way adults
may find irritatingly naive or refreshingly idealistic.
[260]YOUTH & SOCIETY / MARCH 1978

Cotirpliatice iiirlr parental directives. During childhood,

power is asymmetrical in the family unit. That is, parents’
ability to exercise control over the child and to restrict his
autonomy exceeds that of the child in reciprocal interaction
with his parents. Parents, by virtue of physical size, experi-
ence, and control over the sources of supply can, in most
instances where there is a divergence, carry out their wishes
despite the resistance of the child, and the child cannot do
likewise. Parents vary, of course, in the extent to which they
acknowledge the asymmetry of their power, or are effectively
able to use power. Piaget’s (1965) analysis of the development
of the idea of justice suggests that the child’s organization of
a moral order is based upon power in the early years. In the
mind of the young child, power legitimates the parent’s right
to exercise authority. The child has not yet reached the level of
cognitive development where he can legitimate authority or
object to its imposition on a principled basis.
By early adolescence, however, the young person is capable
of formal operational thought. Parental power based on
coercion is not enforceable and cannot be legitimated. Family
power should become more symmetrically distributed when
the child reaches adolescence. The optimum magnitude of
control decreases and of independence-granting increases with
the age of the child. While at all ages a control attempt by one
person towards another results in psychological forces both
to comply and to resist, by adolescence the forces to resist
become an important counterforce to compliance because they
reflect a stage-appropriate drive towards independence. The
forces to comply and to resist are somewhat different in the
adolescent period relative to earlier developmental periods.
The following summarizes some of these forces.
1. Adolescents from traditional families who have inter-
nalized traditional values will, while they continue to live at
home, conform more than other adolescents to parental
standards and not display much psychological reactance.
Adolescents may be reactively stimulated to noncompliance by
 Baumrind / PARENTAL DISCIPLINARY PATTERNS [261]

real or imagined curtailments of their freedom to act.

However, adolescents who hold traditional values may
continue to accept as legitimate rather high levels of parental
control, while rebellious, nonconforming adolescents may
reject even moderate exercise of parental control. Adolescents
who have settled on certain symbols of nonconformity with
parental values in order to express their independence will
defend these symbols on principle. Thus, if adolescents define
drug use or long hair as a right or as a symbol for a lifestyle,
appeals to contrary parental norms and standards will not be
viewed as legitimate expressions of parental power.
Where traditional values hold, adolescence tends to be a
less turbulent period of development. Kandel and Lesser
(1969), in a survey of several thousand American and Danish
adolescents, showed that Danish parents exercised greater
control during childhood but imposed far fewer rules on
adolescents. Because of this exercise of control in early child-
hood, Danish adolescents were able to behave in an approved
fashion without external constraints. Similar results were
found by Karr and Wesley (1966) in their comparison of
German and American child-rearing practices from infancy
through adolescence. In an interesting study of social norms
and authoritarianism, one investigator (Kagiticibasi, 1970)
showed that her subjects in the United States who scored high
on content areas of authoritarianism (i.e., great respect for
authority and high value placed on obedience) were more likely
to suffer from the authoritarian personality syndrome (i.e.,
dogmatic and intolerant attitudes, motivated by repressed
anger, emotional coldness, and a sense of impotence) than
their Turkish counterparts, As the author notes, obedience
to justified authority is a basic code of decency and morality
in Turkey and part of a historical tradition still valued.
Obedience derived from social norms carries different over-
tones than the unquestioned obedience and submission, mixed
with repressed hostility, that is associated with the authori-
tarian personality.
[262]YOUTH €3 SOCIETY 1 MARCH 1978

Within American society, families who maintain a strong

belief system and a traditional family structure have adoles-
cents who conform. Youths from homes in which both parents
are religious and abstainers from alcohol are more likely to
internalize an abstinence norm and refrain from drinking
after making the transition from home t o college environment
(Campbell, 1964). Youths who demonstrate compliant
dependence on their parents and whose parents d o not smoke
internalize the smoking prohibitions of their parents (Clausen,
1966). Similarly, adolescent drug use is least prevalent among
traditional families who both discipline their children and
spend much time with them, and for whom religion plays
a n ongoing part in family and community life (Blum et al.,
1972). Middle-class youths who remain encapsulated within a
traditional family structure in a traditional community often,
in fact, circumvent the adolescent crisis altogether, as d o
many lower-class youths whose lives are given meaning by
the struggle to survive.
2. The status-envy hypothesis of Burton and Whiting
(1961) that adolescents are motivated to identify with the
characteristics of parents whose privileges and status they
envy should hold provided that they are required to conform
to parental demands in order to obtain the privileges which
parental status can confer. The status-envy hypothesis is
supported by the work of several investigators (Douvan,
1963; Gold, 1963; Smelser, 1963). For example, Douvan
showed that the adolescent daughters of middle-class women
who were happily employed were themselves more ambitious
and more admiring of their mothers.
3. Parental exploitation will render power illegitimate in
the minds of adolescents and lead to rejection of parental
authority. Parental exploitation, according to Elkind (1967),
includes (a) vicarious satisfaction of parental impulses through
the child’s acting-out, (b) parental demands for achievement
which are unrelated to the child’s interests or abilities but
which bolster the parents’ own egos, ( c ) slave labor, (d) role-
 Baumrind / PARENTAL DISCIPLINARY P A T E R N S [2631

reversal in which the parent acts like a child, and (e) using
children t o proclaim parents' own moral rectitude when the
parent is in the public eye.
4. At all ages, but particularly by adolescence, harsh,
exploitive, arbitrary treatment by parents is strongly asso-
ciated with antisocial rather than prosocial aggression (Glueck
and Glueck, 1950; McCord and McCord, 1958) and with
discord with parents (Baumrind, 1967, 197la; Bowerman and
Elder, 1962). These findings hold equally for delinquent
adolescent males and females (Bandura and Walters, 1959;
Hetherington, Stouwie, and Ridberg, I97 1; McCord,
McCord, and Zola, -1959; Wittman and Huffman, 1943, and
for all ages studied (Becker et al., 1959; Martin and Hethering-
ton, 1971; McCord, McCord, and Howard, 1961; Winder and
Rau, 1962). They hold for both middle- and lower-class
families. Harsh parental treatment may convince the adoles-
cent that morality is inevitably arbitrary and self-serving,
thus providing a rationale in experience for amorality or
moral realism, and noncompliance. Punitive approaches to
discipline, including verbal and physical abuse and unrea-
sonable deprivations of privilege, are associated with low
expressions of guilt, and an external orientation to transgres-
sion and noncompliance, particularly in adolescents.

Adolescent alienatioii. Alienation refers to the young

person's feeling that none of the options available to him is
satisfactory and that he has no power to affect or alter these
options. It is the equivalent in adolescence of the learned
helplessness in infants and young children discussed earlier.
The unifying theme of the lifestyle of the alienated youth
is unbelief and rejection of trusting, optimistic, socially
responsible, other-oriented values; a rejection of concern for
others' and one's own future welfare. Impotence is a major
source of alienation: adolescents with a sense of their own
power. are more likely to express a strong commitment to
occupational and ideological choices and to possess a self-
[2641 YOUTH & SOCIETY / MARCH 1978

concept based on an internal, as opposed to an external,

frame of reference (Marcia, 1967).
Existential despair and disappointment with their own
lives appear to characterize the parents of alienated youths.
Thus, parents of Keniston's (1965) eleven alienated Harvard
youths were afflicted with existential despair. These young
men described their mothers as talented charismatic women
who renounced vocational interests, channeling their efforts
instead through their husbands and sons. Fathers were
described as frustrated and disillusioned.
Block's (1972) analysis of the causes of societal rejection
among a subject pool drawn from the San Francisco Bay Area
suggests that parents of alienated students are overinvolved
with their children and disappointed with their own lives.
The child-rearing orientation of parents whose children
rejected both their families and society lacked coherence;
mothers tended to be permissive and overly involved in some
areas, yet demanded submission and compliance in others.
Fathers described their relationships with their children as
ambivalent and conflicted.
Chlidren from whom too much is expected or who are
neglected or brutalized will regard themselves as victims
or pawns of society. Such children will have no reason to
behave morally or to conform since their interests are in
fact antithetical to those of the group. Such children will
treat most human beings as outsiders exactly as the human
species treats the animal species as outsiders, i.e., as means
towards the end of personal survival rather than ends in
themselves. The apathetic, alienated, or sociopathic personality
is generally a result of noncontingent punishing socialization
practices, but in a less socially destructive form may also
result from noncontingent acceptance and approval.
 Baumrind / PARENTAL DISCIPLINARY P A T E R N S [265]

S U RI hl A R Y C 0 N C L U SI 0N S

I will now summarize my conclusions involving parental

disciplinary procedures in facilitating the development of
social competence in children and adolescents.
Speaking generally, authoritative child-rearing proved
to be the most effective pattern of parental authority with
the children I have studied. However, “authoritative parental
control” was not the only effective pattern which emerged
from my preschool data. Two other patterns of control
emerged which seem to have beneficial effects on preschool
girls. One, a quasi-authoritarian mode of control, emerged
from the study of black girls in the sample (Baumrind, 1972).
Black daughters of authoritarian parents, when compared with
white girls, were significantly more independent and domi-
nant. The socialization practices which characterized these
black families, while authoritarian by white standards,
reflect traditional values within the black culture which
appear to be beneficial in that culture. These data suggest
that where high control is normative, as it is in the black
community, nondemocratic control can be associated with
independence. in girls.
The second pattern, a harmonious deemphasis on either
high or low control, revealed the importance of another
lifestyle, parallel rather than counter to the culture, in
facilitating the development of social responsibility and
purposiveness in girls (Baumrind, 1971b). The harmonious
parent, while he or she almost never exercised control,
seemed t o lime control in the sense that the child generally
took pains to intuit and to do what the parent wanted. The
atmosphere in these families was characterized by harmony,
equanimity, and later rationality. While permissive parents
avoided exercising control but were angry about not having
control, and authoritarian and authoritative parents exercised
[266] YOUTH & SOCIETY / MARCH 1978

control willingly, harmonious parents focused not upon

control issues, but upon achieving a quality of harmony in
the home and upon developing principles for resolving
differences. The effects of harmonious child-rearing patterns
on children appeared sex-related. The six daughters of har-
monious parents were extraordinarily competent. When
compared to others, these girls were achievement-oriented,
friendly, and independent. By contrast, the two boys whose
parents were classified as harmonious, while cooperative,
were notably submissive, aimless, not achievement-oriented,
and dependent. The harmonious pattern of child-rearing
seemed to produce dysfunction in boys, if one can say much
about two cases, while the effect in girls was entirely positive.
I present these suggestive findings with harmonious and
quasi-authoritarian families, although they are each based
on a very small sample, to illustrate the danger in holding
up one particular pattern of parental discipline as the only
ideal.
Dispassionate generalizations from the research data that
contain advice to parents and educators are difficult to
make because they are inevitably based on a particular
implicit value system. Nonetheless, I will offer such generali-
zations with the caveat that each caretaker must evaluate
their applicability to his or her own life situation.
Authoritative, traditional, and harmonious patterns of
upbringing appear to be more beneficial to young children
than restrictive, authoritarian, or permissive patterns. In
my studies both authoritarian and permissive parents tended
to articulate an image of what their child was like that was
not realistic or flexibly responsive to the developing compe-
tencies in the child. These parents appeared to construct a
fiction about what their child was like and to relate to that
fiction rather than to the actual child. By contrast, authori-
tative and harmonious parents were inclined to see the rights
and duties of parents and young children as complementary
rather than identical. They believed that as parents they
 Baumrind / PARENTAL DISCIPLINARY PATTERNS [267]

should be receptive to and aware of the child’s needs and

views before making any attempt to alter the child’s actions.
They saw the child as maturing through stages with quali-
tatively different features; however, they did not describe this
maturational process as an automatic unfolding, but rather
as subject to modification by interaction between the child
and the child’s socializing agents. Authoritative and har-
monious parents, by comparison with other parents inter-
viewed, made frequent reference to the child’s stage of develop-
ment to sustain their current practices. These parents were
particularly aware that children’s concepts of right and wrong,
and their ability to handle absence of restraint, changed with
age. They were, relative to other parents, free of ideologies
that would deter them from changing as the child matured.
They tended to look upon the control aspects of their parental
role as facilitative of competence, and, therefore, of inde-
pendence in the child. In effective-as contrasted with
ineffective-homes, the duties and rights of the parent were
seen as reciprocal to the duties and rights of the child. While
authoritarian parents viewed children as having responsibilities
similar to those of adults and permissive parents viewed
children as having rights similar t o those of adults, authori-
tative parents saw the balance between the rights of parents
and of children as a changing function of stage of develop-
ment, and as an expression of the norm of reciprocity. Both
exploitation and indulgence of the child were viewed as viola-
tions of this norm. By recognizing reciprocity as a pattern
of mutually contingent exchange of gratification and as a
generalized moral norm, the more effective parents in our
studies facilitated the development of mature cognitive and
moral judgment and action in the child.
In my view, the duties and rights of parents are the reciprocal
of the duties and rights of children. The welfare of all con-
cerned and the moral norm of reciprocity require that
children give something of value for what they receive from
their caretaker. This reciprocal relationship between parent
[268] YOUTH & SOCIETY / MARCH 1978

and child is the origin in fact and experience of the social

contract. As Rousseau in 1762 put it:

The most ancient of all societies, and the only one that is
natural, is the family: and even so the children remain attached
to the father only as long as they need him for their preserva-
tion. As soon as this need ceases, the natural bond is dissolved.
The children, released from the obdience they owed to the
father, and the father, released from the care he owed his
children, return equally to independence [Rousseau, 1952:
3871.

At each age, then, the duties and rights of parents and children
differ, finally approximating the balance which characterizes
adult relations.

FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS

1 will close by pointing t o areas of research concerning the

effects of socialization practices that I think have particular
promise in the clarification of future social policy issues.
First, we need to explore subculture variations in values
defining social competence. The focus of my own work and
that of most of my colleagues has been on instrumental
competence, a definition of social competence restricted t o
the qualities that facilitate successful adaptation by middle-
class white Americans to industrial society. But subcultures
within our society vary as to what they believe t o be appro-
priate behavior in a mature person or at a given developmental
stage. For example, there is general consensus among Western
thinkers that individuals with a n internal locus of causality,
i.e., who hold themselves rather than forces outside themselves
as largely responsible for their own successes and failures, are
at a higher developmental level than those with a n external
lpcus. This bias is based on Western preference for indi-
vidualism at the expense of cooperation. In a differently
 Baumrind / PARENTAL DISCIPLINARY PATTERNS [269]

organized society, such as a Mexican society, external rather

than internal locus of causality could be and in fact is preferred.
For example, Ramirez and Castaiieda (1974) criticize social
scientists and educators who assume on the basis of their
theories of motivation that Mexican American culture
interferes with the intellectual and social development of
Chicano children. They agree, on the basis of their own
research with the Witkin Rod and Frame Test, that Chicano
children are in general more field dependent than Anglo
children, but argue that the child-rearing style of Mexican
American families which encourages field dependence also
encourages communal, religious, and family values antagon-
istic to competitive and individualistic Anglo values. Mexican
parents value in their children different qualities than those
valued by Anglo parents, and, therefore, they stress obedience
and punish aggression (McCluskey et al., 1975).
Moreover, subcultural characteristics such as field-
dependence and noncompetitiveness, seen as deficits in one
historical period, may confer advantages in another. We
should, therefore, expand our definition of social competence
to include attributes not now thought of as instrumental.
For example, I have suggested elsewhere (Baumrind, forth-
coming) that there are four important and related areas in
which black Americans might excel by virtue of their cultural
heritage and hardship conditions. These four areas are (a)
strong kinship bonds and adaptability of family roles, (b)
expressive skills, (c) metacommunicational skills, and (d)
role-playing skills. As our society as a whole moves through
this current transitional period into a relatively unknowable
future it is important that we keep open all viable options
in the way of lifestyles, competencies, and values.
Second, there is and should be increased interest in the
differential shaping of sons and daughters by their parents,
much of which is unconscious and unintended. If we are truly
interested in helping girls to become more self-assertive,
independent, and aggressive, and boys to become more tender,
[270]YOUTH & SOCIETY / MARCH 1978

nurturant, and compassionate, we must first understand the

contribution parental socialization practices make to the
formation of these characteristics and what parents would
have to d o to change sex-typed behavior if that were their
wish. For reasons we do not fully understand, the effects of
certain socialization practices appear sex related. Thus, in
our study in progress of family interaction processes with
high-IQ 9-year-old boys and girls, the most competent and
intelligent boys were characterized by their compliance with
parental authority, while the most competent and intelligent
girls were characterized by their equalitarianism with parents.
These competent, intelligent girls were most likely to reverse
roles with their parents, i.e., to command, prohibit, or
question their parents. For girls we found some trade-off of
compliance and self-assertion, with the latter quality stimu-
lated by some degree of argumentativeness in the parent-child
relationship.
Third, more longitudinal research is required to determine
what, if anything, parents can do to prevent such serious
negative outcomes in adolescence as alcohol and drug abuse.
Use of consciousness-altering drugs remains an important
cause as well as symptom of identity diffusion and existential
void among adolescents. Habits and values established in early
childhood may be suppressed or lost as a result of prolonged
ingestion of psychedelic agents. Reality, after prolonged drug
use, may seem relative, shifting, and impermanent. To what
extent does such a perception of reality interfere with the
formation of a stable sense of self in adolescence? The effects
of prior socialization experiences on the drug-using adolescent
are almost entirely unknown and deserve serious investigation.
Preventive research into the causes of juvenile substance
abuse and delinquency with the objective of preventing such
negative outcomes will view these symptoms within the
context of normal development and habit formation. Will
such positive habitual behaviors as jogging and meditation
prevent negative addictions? Also, we might reconsider our
 Baumrind / PARENTAL DISCIPLINARY PATTERNS [271]

present view that drug abusers are sick rather than immoral,
and entertain the possibility that substance abuse is a moral
as well as a medical problem.
Fourth, we need to study the profound changes that are
taking place in the structure of the family as a consequence
of women’s liberation from the home, the increased number
of single-parent families, and the decreased symbolic value
of having children. Until the present decade, parents were
compensated for the very real discomforts and sacrifices
of self entailed in rearing children by material and symbolic
rewards. In passing on their culture and values to their
adolescent children, parents could achieve symbolic immor-
tality. But childrearing is no longer a reliable source of
personal meaning. In this postmodern era, adolescent children
may damage rather than enhance their parents’ self-esteem
by repudiating their central values. Further erosion of parental
authority, if it should occur, is Iikely t o be accompanied by
an increase in rejection by parents of adolescents; adults
may well abandon their parental role earlier in the life-cycle.
The reduction of legal adult status to age 18 may be a first
important step designed to liberate parents from their
children. The investigation of these and other secular trends
will be of major concern to the student of socialization effects
in the future.
Fifth, and last, we ought t o focus on exceptional compe-
tence, not only on average human development or upon
deviance and insufficiency. I t is important to know how
parental practices contribute to full self-realization in
adolescents and adults and, in particular, to internal locus
of causality, a sense of personal agency, self-reflective action,
and an autonomous sense of social responsibility.
Since the family may be the social unit most responsive to
rational influence, its importance as the unit of socialization
should be underlined. There are many positive lifestyles and
more .than one route by which each can be reached.
However, there are routes parents take that reliably lead in
 [272] YOUTH & SOCIETY / MARCH 1978

a direction opposite to the one that was intended. Even

parents who value social conformity may reject unquestioning
obedience in favor of principled conformity. Similarly,
most parents who highly value personal autonomy d o not
welcome the consequences of "unmitigated agency." A sig-
nificant contribution of the behavioral scientist, then, is to
assist parents to understand the unintended consequences of
their intended acts within the family setting.

REFERENCES

BANDURA, A,, and R. H. WALTERS (1959) Adolescent Aggression: A Study of

the Influences of Child-Training Practices and Family Interrelations. New York:
Ronald Press.
BAUhlRlND. D. (forthcoming) "Subcultural sariations in values defining social
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Diana Baiiniritid is a research psjcliologisr ar rlie Iristirure of Ifunian Develop-

ment and principal invesrigarorf o r a program of longirutlinal research inves-
rigaritig rlie faniilial antececletirs of Jevelopnienral cotnperence srrpporred a1
presenr by rlie h'arional Itisrirure on Drug Abuse. the It'. T. Grant Foundorion.
atid the A'arional Science Foundation. Iier professiutial inreresrr ericonipass
social cognilion and moral arid erhical discourse as nell as socializorioii
processes and rheir effecrs. tlvr itiiporratir piiblicarions incltrrle a research
tnotio~raphenrirlerl "Cirrrvnr Parrerns of Paretiial A urhorir.l"( Developmental
Psychology hlonograph, 1971). several cririques of rhe erhical pracrices and
professional coder governing research. social coiiiiiietiiaries such as "Culeiiiati
11: Adniixrure of Utopian Fantasy and Soimd Social Invenrion" (School
Review. 1971). and wirings uii atlolescence. inclurling Early Socialization
and Adolescent Competence (General Learnitig Press, 1975).