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Apologists
for the contemporary world of fatherlessness tirelessly
assure us that family structure does not matter. So long
as family processes remain warm and open, they assert,
children will do just fine in their mother-only families.
Exposing the folly of such reasoning probably was not
the objective of the Texas A & M sociologists whose
study of "constructive parenting" recently appeared
in The Journal of Marriage and the Family. It happens
to have been the result, nonetheless.
Using
three waves of data collected between 1971 and 1997 from
individuals growing up in the Houston area, the authors
of the new study looked for the correlates and consequences
of good parenting. In the baseline statistical model initially
employed in this study, the researchers found that "parental
education and growing up in an intact family predicted
higher scores of adolescent perception of receiving good
parenting" (p < .001 for both variables). In the
full statistical model later applied to the same data,
the researchers further established that "growing
up in an intact family also predicted better interpersonal
relations and more active social participation."
Nor
should anyone underestimate the importance of good parenting
in fostering favorable outcomes among children: "the
adolescent perception of good parental upbringing predicted
less psychological disturbance, better interpersonal relations,
and more active social participation in early adulthood.
Interpersonal relations and social participation in early
adulthood predicted a higher score in constructive parenting
in middle adulthood."
Good
parenting-and all the good things that come as a result
of it-can, of course, be found in some single-parent homes.
But this new study should make quite clear that the parenting
processes that deserve the label "constructive"
show up most often in the family structure we call "intact."
(Source:
Zeng-Yin Chen and Howard B. Kaplan, "Intergenerational
Transmission of Constructive Parenting," Journal
of Marriage and the
Family 63[2001]: 17-31.)
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