Contemporary research on parenting: The case for nature and nurture.

2000/01/01 by W. Andrew Collins, Eleanor E. Maccoby, Laurence Steinberg +2 · 7 citations
Social Sciences · Psychology · #Early Childhood Education and Development #Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development #Child Welfare and Adoption

paper · doi:10.1037/0003-066x.55.2.218

openalex publication_date 2000/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01

Abstract

Current findings on parental influences provide more sophisticated and less deterministic explanations than did earlier theory and research on parenting. Contemporary research approaches include (a) behavior-genetic designs, augmented with direct measures of potential environmental influences; (b) studies distinguishing among children with different genetically influenced predispositions in terms of their responses to different environmental conditions; (c) experimental and quasi-experimental studies of change in children's behavior as a result of their exposure to parents' behavior, after controlling for children's initial characteristics; and (d) research on interactions between parenting and nonfamilial environmental influences and contexts, illustrating contemporary concern with influences beyond the parent-child dyad. These approaches indicate that parental influences on child development are neither as unambiguous as earlier researchers suggested nor as insubstantial as current critics claim.

Citations

• Psychosocial resilience and protective mechanisms.
• Long-term effects of parental divorce on parent-child relationships, adjustment, and achievement in young adulthood.
• Where is the child's environment? A group socialization theory of development.
• Does Neighborhood and Family Poverty Affect Mothers' Parenting, Mental Health, and Social Support?
• Nature-nurture reconceptualized in developmental perspective: A bioecological model.
• Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences
• Parenting through change: An effective prevention program for single mothers.

Cited by

• Child Development and Evolutionary Psychology
• Why are Children in the Same Family So Different? Nonshared Environment a Decade Later
• Continuity of genetic and environmental influences on cognition across the life span: A meta-analysis of longitudinal twin and adoption studies.
• Longitudinal impact of two universal preventive interventions in first grade on educational outcomes in high school.
• Maternal reading and teaching patterns: Associations with school readiness in low‐income African American families
• Positive Conceptions of Perfectionism: Approaches, Evidence, Challenges
• Developmental psychology [wikipedia]