ABSTRACT
For much of the twentieth century, childrearing attitudes enjoyed the role of being the preeminent parenting construct. Researchers in the first half of that century believed that attitudes of parents held the key for unraveling the mystery of human development. How could childrearing attitudes reveal so much? Early investigators believed that childrearing attitudes determined parental behavior as well as more subtle family nuances such as the emotional climate (Darling and Steinberg, 1993). In turn, parental behavior was thought to determine child outcome in a unidirectional way (Holden, 1997). Consequently, the key for understanding development, it was believed in the 1930s through the 1950s, was to focus on childrearing attitudes.
