ABSTRACT
It is a truism that dealing with small children is not just a matter of deciding what is the best thing to do and then doing it. Nor are the compromises merely between the parents’ principles and the child’s personality. Anyone who talks to large numbers of parents must be struck by the recurrent theme: ‘Of course, I should like to behave differently over this, but with things as they are ….’ Probably the majority of parents must at some time be faced with circumstances, temporary or permanent, which are not in harmony with their aims and intentions in bringing up their children, and which may be directly erosive of their principles. It is clear that one cannot hope to understand the demands which parents make upon their children, nor the restrictions which they try to enforce, without taking account of the total social context within which any particular family is embedded.
