ABSTRACT
It is our intention to examine the extant literature concerning the parents of children who can be identified as behaviorally inhibited during the toddler period and as socially withdrawn from early childhood through early adolescence. After a brief note on research design and measurement in this field, we then proceed to defining and contrasting the constructs of social and emotional competence and incompetence; as one might expect, behavioral inhibition and especially social withdrawal are viewed as manifestations of social and emotional incompetence. Then, we briefly describe a number of theories that have drawn parents into the developmental equation in which pathways to children’s behavioral overcontrol are predicted. Thereafter, we describe research in which (1) the quality of the parent–child relationship, (2) parental beliefs or ideas about the development of social competence and withdrawal, and (3) parenting practices are associated with the expression of childhood behavioral inhibition and social withdrawal. In doing so, we examine factors that may influence the types of parent–child relationships, parental beliefs, and parenting behaviors that are associated with the development of behavioral inhibition and social withdrawal.
