A Consideration of the Cognitive Activities of Parents and Their Role in the Socialization Process Parental Cognition and Socialization: Questions, Methods, and Significance

Although there is a large and diverse literature concerned with socialization, little work has been done on how parents think about children or how the cognitive activities of parents influence the parent-child interaction sequence. A concep­ tual framework that explicitly recognizes the central role of parental cognition in the socialization process is presented. This framework posits a set of cognitive variables that intervene between the child behavior presented as a stimulus to the parent and the parental response. These intervening variables consist of affective and cognitive structures that influence cognitive processes and which, in turn, may be modified by background factors.