Journal of Pedialric Psychology, Vol. 21, No. 3, 1996. pp. 433-446 Child-Rearing Difficulties Reported by Parents of Infants and Toddlers' Marion O'Brien 2 Universiry of Kansas Received May 2, 1994; accepted July 21. 1995 Surveyed a nonclinical sample of 413 parents of infants and toddlers about child- rearing difficulties, child behavior problems, and their own needs for support. Despite their high educational and income level, the parents surveyed reported raising young children to be a difficult task. Most concerns centered on children's irritating but developmentally typical behavior such as whining, noncompliance with adult requests, and interruption of adult activities. Parental reports of difficulties were highest for parents with more than one child and when children were past their second birthday. KEYWORDS: infants and toddlers; child-reanng difficulties; child behavior problems; parent needs. Both popular perceptions and epidemiological studies of the prevalence of child behavior problems suggest a steady increase in the number and intensity of school-age children's problem behaviors in recent years (Achenbach & Howell, 1993; Rahim & Cederblad, 1984). Separate studies of preschool children's be- havior problems conducted in Great Britain over several decades indicate a 'This research was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, under award HO24U8000I. Portions of this work were presented at the Eighth International Conference on Infant Studies, Miami Beach, Florida in May 1992, and the biennial conference of the Society for Research in Child Development, New Orleans, Louisiana, in March 1993. The author thanks all the families who participated in the project, Melissa Boisen for assis- tance with data collection, and Janice Chazdon and Samantha Chnsty-Dangermond for help in preparation of the manuscript. 2 AII correspondence should be addressed to Marion O'Brien, Department of Human Development and Family Life, 4001 Dole, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66045. 433 0I46-K69.V96/O6O0-O43JJO9 50/0 C 1996 Pfcraim PuMishmg Cotporaion Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jpepsy/article/21/3/433/913084 by guest on 15 February 2022
Transcript
Journal of Pedialric Psychology, Vol. 21, No. 3, 1996. pp. 433-446
Child-Rearing Difficulties Reportedby Parents of Infants and Toddlers'
Marion O'Brien2
Universiry of Kansas
Received May 2, 1994; accepted July 21. 1995
Surveyed a nonclinical sample of 413 parents of infants and toddlers about child-rearing difficulties, child behavior problems, and their own needs for support.Despite their high educational and income level, the parents surveyed reportedraising young children to be a difficult task. Most concerns centered on children'sirritating but developmentally typical behavior such as whining, noncompliancewith adult requests, and interruption of adult activities. Parental reports ofdifficulties were highest for parents with more than one child and when childrenwere past their second birthday.
KEYWORDS: infants and toddlers; child-reanng difficulties; child behavior problems; parentneeds.
Both popular perceptions and epidemiological studies of the prevalence of childbehavior problems suggest a steady increase in the number and intensity ofschool-age children's problem behaviors in recent years (Achenbach & Howell,1993; Rahim & Cederblad, 1984). Separate studies of preschool children's be-havior problems conducted in Great Britain over several decades indicate a
'This research was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of SpecialEducation Programs, under award HO24U8000I. Portions of this work were presented at the EighthInternational Conference on Infant Studies, Miami Beach, Florida in May 1992, and the biennialconference of the Society for Research in Child Development, New Orleans, Louisiana, in March1993. The author thanks all the families who participated in the project, Melissa Boisen for assis-tance with data collection, and Janice Chazdon and Samantha Chnsty-Dangermond for help inpreparation of the manuscript.
2AII correspondence should be addressed to Marion O'Brien, Department of Human Developmentand Family Life, 4001 Dole, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66045.
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similar trend among 3-year-olds. In 1975, Richman, Stevenson, and Grahamestimated 7% of 3-year-old children to exhibit moderate to severe behaviorproblems, whereas in 1993, Stallard reported a prevalence of 10% using a similarparent-report method. In addition, Stallard (1993) found that 16% of the parentshe surveyed reported having "a lot of concern" about their 3-year-olds' behavior,suggesting that substantial numbers of parents are distressed about their youngchildren's behavior even though the children do not meet clinical cutoff scores onbehavior checklists.
Longitudinal research using the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achen-bach & Edelbrock, 1983) with 2- to 18-year-old children in the United Statesindicates that behavior problems are not transient or variable. Instead, 2- to3-year-old children who score within the clinical range on the CBCL at one timepoint tend to continue to show significant behavior problems across several years(Stanger, McConaughty, & Achenbach, 1992; Verhulst & van der Ende, 1992).Similarly, among British children birth to age 5, some types of behavior prob-lems, such as night waking and temper tantrums, are reported by parents to bepersistent difficulties (Jenkins, Owen, Bax, & Hart, 1984) and to be related tochildren's health status (Hart, Bax, & Jenkins, 1984). In a longitudinal study ofAustralian children who were not clinic-referred, the majority were rated bymothers as stable over time in either having behavior problems or having noproblems, whereas only 21% were considered to have "transient" problems(Prior, Smart, Sanson, Pedlow, & Oberklaid, 1992). Given the consistency overtime in children's behavior problems, early identification in the infant, toddler,or preschool years could add significantly to our ability to implement effectivepreventive interventions.
Many health care professionals believe children who are ill or who havechronic health problems exhibit negative or difficult behavior because of theirillness (Mattson & Weisberg, 1970; Stern & Arenson, 1989; Stern, Ross, &Bielass, 1991). Furthermore, there is a widespread perception that mothers pam-per children who have illnesses, thus contributing to continued behavior prob-lems (Estroff, Yando, Burke, & Snyder, 1994; Walker, Ford, & Donald, 1987).Yet when families with a child who is ill are compared with control families,usually there are no differences in parents' reports of concerns, their satisfactionwith child rearing, or their approach to discipline (Davies, Noll, DeStefano,Bukowski, & Kulkarni, 1991; levers, Drotar, Dahms, Doershuk, & Stem,1994). These discrepancies between professional views and parents' experiencemay be attributable to a lack of information about normative patterns of behavioron the part of pediatric health care providers.
Few reports on the nature or prevalence of problem behaviors in U.S.infants and toddlers, or about the response of parents to troublesome childbehavior, have been published in recent years. This is somewhat surprising,given the widespread perception of 2-year-old children as difficult and demand-
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Child-Rearing Difficulties 435
ing and the theoretical importance placed on the role of early childhood, andparticularly early parent-child relationships, in later development (Lamb, Ket-terlinus, & Fracasso, 1992; Rutter, 1987). Achenbach, Edelbrock, and Howell(1987) used parents' descriptions of their 2- and 3-year-old children's behaviorproblems to suggest six possible clinical syndromes, but did not report thefrequency with which these can be identified in the general population. Severaldescriptive studies of parental reports of their young children's behavior havebeen carried out in Britain, generally focusing on specific problem areas such asteething, sleeping, eating, toileting problems, temper tantrums, and high activitylevel (Jenkins et al., 1984; Ounsted & Simons, 1978; Richman et al., 1975;Stallard, 1993). None of these studies included information regarding parents'response to their children's behavior or parents' perceptions of the difficultiesinvolved in parenting infants and toddlers.
The present study was designed to provide a description of the nature ofchild-rearing problems experienced by middle-class U.S. parents of infants andtoddlers in the 1990s. A nonclinical sample of more than 400 parents wassurveyed regarding the kinds of day-to-day events they find irritating, the catego-ries of child behavior they consider to be problems, and the nature of their needsfor assistance with parenting. These normative data can provide a benchmarkagainst which clinicians can evaluate parents' complaints about their youngchildren, as well as suggesting areas of potential intervention or education forparents.
METHOD
Subjects
The participants in this study were 413 parents living in a Midwesternsuburban area and identified through birth records as having a child who waseither 9, 18, 27, or 36 months of age. All families recorded as having a child ofthe target age who were still living in the county were sent a packet of question-naires along with a description of the purposes of the study. Of 1,273 packetsmailed out, 454 (35.7%) were returned. Forty-one subjects were not included inthis report because of a large amount of incomplete data, inaccurate or indeter-minable child age information, or the presence of a child or other family memberwith a disability, which might create sets of problems or child-rearing difficultiesthat would not be comparable to other families. The sample was predominantlymiddle-class (89.1%) and European American (97.1%), and almost all the re-spondents (98.8%) were married, with two parents living in the household. Thechildren on whom data are reported included 238 males (57.6%); 32.4% wereonly children, 46% had one older sibling; and the remaining 21.5% had two or
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436 ' O'Brien
more older siblings. Mothers ranged in age from 21 to 43, with a mean of 31.6years, and 59.6% of the mothers were employed outside the home.
Of the 413 families whose data are included in this report, 22 returnedquestionnaires completed by the father. Initial analyses were carried out to deter-mine if the fathers' responses differed systematically from those of mothers. Asno differences were found, the fathers' and mothers' questionnaires were com-bined into a single sample. (Throughout this report, the entire sample is referredto as "parents" and at times as "mothers," even though some fathers are in-cluded.)
Measures
Parenting Daily Hassles (Crnic & Greenberg, 1990). This measure lists 20situations that are likely to occur in households with young children. Respon-dents are asked to indicate the frequency with which each situation occurs in theirhousehold using a 4-point scale (rarely, sometimes, a lot, constantly), and alsohow much of a hassle the situation is to them using a 5-point scale (1 = nohassle; 5 = big hassle). Based on Crnic and Greenberg (1990), six variables werecomputed from this scale. A total frequency score was calculated as the sum ofthe frequency ratings across all 20 items, and a total intensity score was calcu-lated as the sum of the hassle ratings. Cronbach's alphas on these total scoreswere reported by Cmic and Greenberg as .81 for frequency and .90 for intensity.In the present sample, the alphas were .82 and .81, respectively. Frequency andintensity scores for two subscales were also calculated (see Table I for the itemsincluded in each subscale). The Parenting Tasks subscale included 8 items in-volving time- or energy-consuming parental duties and the Challenging Behaviorsubscale included 7 items describing child behavior that often presents diffi-culties to parents. Crnic and Greenberg did not report alphas for these subscales;in the present study, the alpha for Parenting Tasks frequency was .64 and forintensity .63, and alpha on the Challenging Behavior subscale was .66 forfrequency and .68 for intensity.
Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory (CB1; Eyberg & Ross, 1978; Robinson,Eyberg, & Ross, 1980). This measure lists 36 child behaviors that may beidentified as problems; for each, parents are asked to indicate the frequency ofoccurrence and whether or not the particular behavior is a problem for them. Inthis study, the original frequency scale was modified from a 7- to a 3-point scale(never, sometimes, often); because these results are not comparable with othersin the literature, they are not reported here. Only the parents' reports of whetheror not they consider each item a problem are included in the analyses. In a largenonclinical sample of children ages 2 to 17, Burns, Patterson, Nussbaum, andParker (1991) reported a Cronbach's alpha of .91 for the problem scale. In thepresent study, coefficient alpha was .91.
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Child-Rearing Difficulties 437
TaWe I. Means and Standard Deviations for Frequency and Intensity of Daily Hassles
Item
1 Cleaning up toys & food"11 Need to keep a constant eye
on children*8 Kids demand to be played with
or entertained''2 Kids nag, whine, complain''
12 Kids interrupt adults'"15 Difficulties getting privacy5 Hard to find babysitters3 Mealtime difficulties4 Kids don't listen*
10 Kids, interfere with adult chores"16 Kids are hard to manage in public*9 Kids resist bedtime*6 Kids' schedules"
17 Hard to leave for outings on time"20 Running extra errands for kids"14 Frequent changes of clothes"13 Changing plans because of
"Items making up the Parenting Tasks subscale.''Items making up the Challenging Behavior subscale
Parent Needs Survey. An inventory of expressed parent needs was adaptedfrom a survey developed by Seligsren and Darling (1989) for use with parents ofchildren with disabilities. The survey was adapted for families of typical childrenby eliminating items addressing children's special needs and adding 5 items(improving parent's education or skills, information about toys, time to keep inshape, information about household safety, and help in dealing with stress). Theresulting instrument was a 20-item list of possible needs; for each item, parentsindicated whether they had no need for help, would like some help, or reallyneeded help. A total needs score was then calculated by summing the number ofitems on which parents indicated any need for help.
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438 O'Brien
RESULTS
Descriptive Data
Means and standard deviations for the Frequency and Intensity scores ofitems making up the Parenting Daily Hassles scale are shown in Table I; thepercentage of parents reporting each of the behaviors on the Eyberg Child Behav-ior Inventory to be a problem for them is shown in Table II; and the percentage of
Table II. Percentage of Parents Reporting Child Behavior to be a Problemon the Child Behavior Inventory
Item
15 Whines9 Refuses to obey unless threatened
12 Gets angry when doesn't get own way4 Refuses to eat food presented
10 Acts defiant17 Yells or screams29 Interrupts
1 Dawdles in getting dressed13 Has temper tantrums7 Refuses to go to bed on time2 Dawdles at mealtime6 Slow getting ready for bed8 Does not obey house rules on own5 Refuses to do chores
33 Has difficulty entertaining self28 Constantly seeks attention18 Hits parents16 Cries easily23 Teases other children11 Argues with parents about rules25 Verbally fights with siblings14 Sasses adults27 Physically fights with siblings
3 Poor table manners35 Overactive or restless20 Careless with toys32 Fails to finish task22 Lies24 Verbally fights with peers31 Short attention span19 Destroys toys30 Easily distracted26 Physically fights with peers36 Wets the bed34 Difficulty concentrating21 Steals
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Child-Rearing Difficulties 439
parents reporting a need for assistance with each of the items on the needs surveyis reported in Table III.
Family Demographic Factors
Initial analyses were run to test for differences associated with child genderand family demographics. No differences based on child gender were found forany of the measures. Correlation coefficients between maternal age and thesummary variables from the Parenting Daily Hassles scale were low in magni-tude, ranging from - . 08 to .27. Analyses of the role of maternal educationindicated that mothers with some college reported a lower intensity of dailyhassles than those with either less or more education, F = 6.07, p < 01, andmothers with only a high school education reported needing help in more areas oftheir lives than did college-educated mothers, F = 8.49, p < .001. The samplewas relatively homogeneous with regard to other potentially important demo-graphic factors such as marital status and socioeconomic status (SES) based onfather's job classification; thus, these factors were not analyzed.
Child Age and Family Size
Multivariate analyses of variance, with follow-up univariate tests and Scheffe'post hoc comparisons, were used to test for differences associated with child age
Table III. Percentage of Parents Reporting a Need for Assistance
Item
13 More time for self18 Time to get in shape20 Help in dealing with stress7 Information about behavior problems1 Someone who can babysit6 Someone to talk to about child-rearing problems4 More money3 Information about child development
11 More friends with children my child's age15 More time to be with child9 Information about nutrition or feeding5 Information about childcare8 Bigger/better house or apartment
16 Improving own education or skills14 Problems with spouse19 Information about household safety10 Problems with rclatives/fnends/neighbors2 Better medical care
17 Toys for my child12 A car or other transportation
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440 O'Brien
(4 groups) and family size (3 groups: 1 child, 2 children, and 3 or more children)on all measures. Because of the number of analyses conducted, only resultssignificant at the .01 level are reported.
Parenting Daily Hassles. Child Age (4) X Family Size (3) multivariateanalyses of variance were carried out on the total hassles scores and on thesubscales measuring Parenting Tasks and Challenging Behavior. For the totalfrequency and intensity scores, there was not a significant Child Age x FamilySize interaction, Hotelling's F(\2, 788) = 1.38, or main effect for Child Age,Hotelling's /r(6, 788) = 2.15, but the main effect for Family Size was signifi-cant, Hotelling's F(4, 788) = 8.64, p < .001. Univariate results indicated thatboth the frequency, F = 15.67, p < .001, and intensity, F = 12.85, p < .001, ofhassles varied with Family Size. Post hoc tests showed that parents' reportedfrequency of daily hassles was significantly lower in families with only 1 child,M = 36.9, SD = 5.8, than in families with 2, M = 40.5, SD = 6.8, or 3 or morechildren, M = 41.6, SD = 6.3. Similarly mothers with one child perceived theintensity of hassles to be lower, M = 39.3, SD = 9.3, than did those with 2,M - 45.4? SD = 9.9, or 3 or more children, M = 47.1, SD = 10.6. Nointeraction effect or main effect for age of child was found for the Parenting Taskssubscale; not surprisingly, however, there was a highly significant main effect forFamily Size, Hotelling's F(4, 788) = 13.12, p < .0001. Univariate and post hoctests showed that both the frequency, F = 23.59, p < .0001, and intensity, F =18.14, p < .0001, of Parenting Tasks increased linearly with the number ofchildren in the family. For parents with 1 child, Parenting Tasks frequencyaveraged 14.3 (SD = 2.8); with 2 children, 15.3 (2.9), and with 3 or morechildren, 16.6 (2.9). Parenting Tasks intensity scores followed a similar pattern:1 child, M = 14.6, SD = 4.0; 2 children, M = 16.3, SD = 4.1; and 3 or morechildren, M = 18.1, SD = 4.3. A significant Child Age x Family Size interac-tion was found for the Challenging Behavior subscale, Hotelling's F(12, 788) =2.34, p < .01. Univariate results indicated that this result was accounted for bythe Challenging Behavior intensity scale, which is graphed in Figure 1. Forfamilies with 1 child, increasing Child Age was associated with a linear increasein the reported intensity of Challenging Behavior, whereas families with 2 ormore children perceived Challenging Behavior to be equally intense across allages studied. The frequency of Challenging Behavior increased with Family Sizebut was not systematically related to Child Age. Parents with 1 child had averageChallenging Behavior frequency scores of 14.4 (SD = 2.9), significantly lowerthan those with 2 children, 15.9 (3.3), or those with 3 or more children, 15.5(2.7).
Child Behavior Inventory. An ANOVA was used to analyze for the effects ofChild Age (4) and Family Size (3) on the number of problems reported by parentson the Child Behavior Inventory. The interaction of Child Age with Family Sizewas not statistically significant, F(6, 401) = 1.91, but both main effects were
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Child-Rearing Difficulties 441
20
15-
10-• • X - - three or more chidren
— O — two children
• onechBd
-18 27
Age in Months of Youngest Child
36
Fig. I. Mean Challenging Behavior Intensity scores for families of varying size whose youngestchild is 9. 18, 27, or 36 months of age.
significant: Child Age, F(3, 401) = 12.2, p< .0001; Family Size, F(2, 401) =10.5, p < .0001. Across all sizes of families, child behavior problems wereperceived as increasing in frequency from 9 months (M = 4.9, SD = 6.1) to 18months {M = 6.8, SD = 5.5) to 27 months (M = 9.8, SD = 7.8), and thendeclining slightly at 36 months (A/ = 8.9, SD = 6.3). Parents with I childperceived their children to have fewer behavior problems (M = 5.0, SD = 5.3)compared with those having 2 (M = 7.7, SD = 7.0) or 3 or more children (M =9.2, SD = 7.4). Because there are two items on the CBI that involve siblingdifficulties, these analyses were run again omitting these items, which would notbe applicable to parents with only 1 child. The results were essentially identicalto those reported above using the total problem score.
Parent Needs Survey. The number of areas in which mothers reported a needfor help did not vary by Child Age or Family Size. Thus, even though mothers ofolder children and those with larger families perceived child-rearing to be more
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442 O'Brien
difficult and saw their children as having more problems, they were not morelikely to report a need for help with parenting.
Correlations Among Measures. Pearson product-moment correlation coeffi-cients were calculated to determine the interrelationships among the measuresused. All correlations were statistically significant at a .0001 level, given therelatively large sample. The two summary measures from the Daily Hasslesscale, frequency and intensity, were correlated with each other at .69. Correla-tions between these measures and the total problem score from the CBI were .41for the frequency of hassles and .53 for the intensity scale. Parents' reportedneeds correlated with the frequency of hassles at r = .31, with the intensity ofhassles at r = .33, and with the total CBI problem score at r = .29.
Maternal Employment
As 60% of the sample responding to the survey were employed mothers, therole of out-of-home work in mothers' perceptions of child-rearing problems wasof interest. T tests comparing employed with at-home mothers indicated noeffects of employment on any of the summary measures from the Parenting DailyHassles scale or the Child Behavior Inventory. Mothers who were employed didreport a marginally higher number of areas of need, M = 10.85, SD = 5.83,compared with at-home mothers, M = 9.49, SD = 5.36, /(411) = 2.42, p < .05.This difference, although statistically reliable, translates into only slightly morethan one additional area of need. In general, mothers of young children reportsimilar difficulties and needs for help with child-rearing regardless of their workstatus.
DISCUSSION
It is clear from the results of this survey that parenting infants and toddlers isperceived as a difficult task, even by relatively affluent and well-educatedmiddle-class parents with healthy and typically developing children. Parents'reports of their day-to-day experiences on the Daily Hassles scale show that theyfind both the frequency and the intensity of child-rearing demands to be consid-erably more troublesome than a sample of parents of 5-year-olds surveyed byCrnic and Greenberg (1990). In addition, almost a quarter (95 or 23.0%) of theparents surveyed reported their children to have 12 or more problems, placingthem above the recommended clinical referral score for 2-year-olds and olderchildren on the Child Behavior Inventory (Eyberg & Ross, 1978). Although notall of these children should necessarily be considered at high risk for laterbehavior disorders, this finding suggests that a substantial number of middle-class parents could benefit from information about appropriate behavior manage-ment approaches. Although it has been often suggested that routine pediatric care
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Child-Rearing Difficulties 443
should include a greater focus on child behavior and parent education (Chamber-lin, 1974; Christophersen, 1986; Howard, 1991), this recommendation is rarelyheeded (Glascoe, MacLean, & Stone, 1991; Triggs & Perrin, 1989). Pediatricpsychologists may need to increase their efforts to educate pediatricians about theimportance of anticipatory guidance for parents while their children are infantsand toddlers.
The difficulties and problems reported by the families in this survey wererelatively consistent, suggesting that many concerns were shared by thesemiddle-class parents of children from infancy through the early preschool years.On the CBI, more than 40% of all parents reported children's whining to be aproblem for them. Other problems reported by more than a third of all familieswere children's refusing to obey unless threatened and getting angry when theydon't get their own way. Children's refusal to eat food presented was the fourthmost common problem reported. Also, about 30% of all parents reported severalproblems suggesting that their children are sometimes out of control or defiant.On the Daily Hassles scale, approximately a third of all parents reported the samedifficulties: finding babysitters; nagging, whining, and complaining; children'srefusal to do what they are asked; and the difficulty of managing children inpublic. Continually cleaning up messes of toys or food was a complaint of 25%of the parents, and kids interrupting adults of 20%. Most of these problems arerelatively mild annoyances, but they can escalate into more serious concerns aschildren grow.
It is interesting to compare these parents' reports of common problems witha description of 2-year-olds with minor pediatric illnesses (Mattson & Weisberg,1970). While they were sick, children were described as "clinging" and "whiny,"insisting on physical closeness, frequently interrupting mothers' activities, irrita-ble, intolerant to frustration, and unable to occupy themselves. All of thesebehaviors are also typical of healthy toddlers. Thus, pediatric health care pro-viders should not automatically assume that parents' reports of difficulties withtheir children, that come up when the child is being treated for a medical prob-lem, are related to the child's illness.
The results of the present study indicate that parents with two or morechildren find parenting more difficult and challenging than do parents of onechild. This may be related simply to the increased demands placed on parentswho have several young children in the household. It also appears from this studythat parents perceive their 2-year-olds to be more difficult than infants, I-year-olds, or 3-year-olds. Parents' reports of problem behaviors were highest in thepresent sample when children were just past their second birthday. Similarly, theChallenging Behavior subscale of the Parenting Daily Hassles measure showed apeak at 27 months. From the results of this study, it is not possible to determinewhether the reputation of the "terrible 2s" biases parents' perceptions of theirchildren's behavior, or alternatively, the combination of the typical toddler'sincreased mobility, emotional lability, and newfound autonomy may in fact pose
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considerable difficulties for parents, even those with substantial educational andFinancial resources.
Most parents in this sample recognized a need for help with the difficult taskof parenting, suggesting that today's parents may be particularly open to inter-vention and education efforts. Parents of young children also expressed a needfor more time for themselves (83.3%) and time to get in shape and look nice(76.5%). These needs were cited equally often by mothers who were full-timehomemakers as by mothers employed outside the home. In general, althoughemployment of both parents is typically seen as placing stress on the family(Jordan, Cobb, & McCully, 1989; Sperry, 1993), employed mothers in thissample did not report more child-related difficulties or behavior problems thannonemployed mothers.
Because the families surveyed in this study were contacted by mail and onlyslightly more than a third of those receiving packets returned them, the results ofthe survey must be interpreted cautiously. The demographics of the sampleindicate that some categories of families may have chosen not to participate,limiting the generalizability of the findings. For example, essentially all thefamilies responding were intact, two-parent families of European American an-cestry. Most had college degrees and were of middle to upper middle-class SES.This was expected at the outset because the suburban area where the surveyswere distributed is relatively homogeneous and highly affluent. Thus, the resultscan be seen as reflecting the views of well-educated parents who have adequateincomes to support their families.
In general, the task of parenting is not one for which adults in our societyare specifically trained. Parent education efforts are more often remedial thanpreventive, even though it seems likely that early establishment of effectiveparenting practices would be more successful in reducing the incidence of childbehavior problems than later efforts to change negative or coercive patterns ofinteraction. The results of the survey presented here can help professionalsidentify areas of concern to a large number of parents and target education effortsin directions that parents are likely to find most useful. In addition, these resultsindicate categories of infant and toddler behavior that are irritating to parents butthat do not necessarily suggest psychopathology. These data thus provide anormative comparison against which to evaluate parental reports of child behav-ior problems and child-rearing difficulties.
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