ABSTRACT
The British psychiatrist Donald Winnicott argued that parents only needed to be good enough; such parents provide all the necessary parental ingredients for successful development. Parents who raise their children in dangerous inner-city neighborhoods adopt different parenting practices than families living in the suburbs. US parents rear their children to become independent, autonomous, and instrumental. The attributes of effective parents can be organized under the five arenas of parental influence, they are, the attachment arena, social learning arena, social interaction arena, teaching arena and environment arena. Since the mid-1980s, researchers in increasing numbers have been using the parental beliefs approach to investigate the cognitive attributes inherent in competent parenting. Behavioral parent-training programs have been found to be effective in producing immediate behavioral changes in children. Different types of parent education program attempt to make parents more competent by teaching new behaviors, childrearing skills, or interactional styles.
