Associations between Parental Agreement Regarding Child-Rearing and the Characteristics of Families and Children in Sweden

Abstract

The parents of 128 Swedish preschoolers were independently interviewed concerning their child-rearing attitudes and values, and a parental agreement index was computed as suggested by Block, Block, and Morrison (1981). Mothers and fathers disagreed on a substantial number of items, with mothers showing more expressive and fathers more instrumental concerns. There were few differences between the parents of girls and boys. As in the Block et al.'s (1981) research, parental agreement was associated with marital quality. Parental agreement was also associated with contemporaneous and earlier maternal reports of ego-resiliency in both boys and girls, as well as with maternal reports of ego-control in girls only. There were no significant correlations between parental agreement and measures of intellectual development in either boys or girls. The results suggest that parental agreement may have a less general and a less gender-differentiated impact on psychological functioning in contemporary Sweden than was true in the United States when Block et al.'s (1981) data were gathered 20 years ago.

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