A FACTOR ANALYTIC STUDY OF CHILD-REARING BEHAVIORS
G. A. Milton · Child Development · 1958
Fundamental to most theories of personality development is the assumption that parents display consistent modes of behavior which serve as antecedent conditions for the behavior of their offspring. A variety of descriptive terms have been used to denote these assumed behavioral consistencies, such as over-indulgent, authoritarian, permissive, castrating, etc., but these terms do not always lead to efficient description because they may sometimes connote combinations of behavior which are not empirically consistent nor mutually exclusive. The purpose of the present study was to derive, by means of a factor analysis, some dimensions which may underlie parental child-rearing behaviors. Factor analytic procedures have proved useful in exploratory studies of this type in other areas of psychology, and a few similar studies have been attempted in the area of child development (i, 3, 5). The discovery of consistent dimensions which underlie the child-rearing practices of parents would seem to be of the utmost importance to the understanding of the effects of parental behavior upon the personality development of the child.