ABSTRACT
That variations in many developmental outcomes can be at least partly accounted for by individual differences in parenting quality is a premise that has widespread empirical support. (Baumrind, 1970; Clarke-Stewart, 1973; Isabella and Belsky, 1991; Tamis-LeMonda, Bornstein, Baumwell, and Damast, 1996). Conceptualizations of competent parenting, however, will by necessity depend on the specific child outcomes of interest. Language development, for example, appears to be best fostered by caregiving environments rich in language inputs, tailored to the child’s developmental level, and responsive to the child’s bids to communicate (Bornstein and Tamis-LeMonda, 1997; Warren and Walker, in press). Parent-provided language mastery experiences and parental responsivity to child behavior are similarly important for promoting children’s intellectual development (Bornstein and Tamis-LeMonda, 1989; Carew, 1980; Tamis-LeMonda et al., 1996), and to these we can add the adequacy with which parents structure their children’s environments to be intellectually stimulating (e.g., in terms of providing appropriately stimulating play materials and variety in daily stimulation; Bradley, 1999). Attachment theorists, by contrast, would likely define competent parenting in terms of parental sensitivity, or the ability of the parent to read and respond contingently and appropriately to infant distress, bids for comfort, and cues for interaction and withdrawal (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall, 1978; Belsky, 1999). Conceptualizations of parenting competence would also differ in relation to age-related differences in children’s developmental competencies and specific needs.
