ABSTRACT
This chapter provides some of the diverse studies. It discusses the nature of the household as well as in the perception and treatment of children over time. Two issues in the relationship between parents and children: parental responsibility for early child care and parental control of children should also be considered. While most Western families have always been small and nuclear, the sharp boundary between the modern American family and the rest of society is a recent development. Child developmentalists sometimes portray the nature and capabilities of the young as invariant across cultures and over time, without taking into consideration how much of the behavior of those children can be explained by parental and societal expectations. The social context of parenting and child development is very much affected by the nature of residence in which the child is reared.
