Parenting Practices, Child Adjustment, and Family Diversity

The authors used data from Waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) to test the generality of the links between parenting practices and child outcomes for children in two age groups: 5-11 and 12-18. Parents' reports of support, monitoring, and harsh punsihment were associated in the expected direction with parents' reports of children's adjustment, school grades, and behavior problems in Wave 1 and with children's reports of self-esteem, grades, and deviance in Wave 2. With a few expeptions, parenting practices did not interact with parents' race, ethnicity, family strucutre, education, income, or gender in predicting child outcomes. A core of common parenting practices appears to be linked with positive outcomes for children across diverse family contexts.