ABSTRACT
My comments highlight sociologists’ and psychologists’ distinctive perspectives on the study of parent-child relations. 1 There are certainly numerous differences in the approaches of the two disciplines to this important topic. Most obviously, psychologists concentrate on the early years, with major emphasis on the parent-child dyad; sociologists usually focus on subsequent periods of the child’s life— parent-child relationships in adolescence, youth, young adulthood, and even later—within the context of the family as a unit of social organization.
