Women mimic their own mothers' parenting practices. But men?

Where does one learn to become a parent? Besides trial-and-error, the assumption is that people parent similar to how they were raised by their parents. A new study shows that is true for women: They tend to mimic what their own mothers did. Fathers, however, don't seem to use their moms as parenting role models.

Researchers at Ohio State University studied how often parents in the 1990s spanked their children, read to them and showed affection. Their practices were compared to mothers'.

"We were surprised that mothers seem to learn a lot about the parenting role from their own mothers, but fathers don't follow their mothers as much," Jonathan Vespa, a co-author of the study, said in a news release. "Although more women were entering the workforce then, they still did the lion's share of parenting and childcare.... There was good reason to expect that fathers would have learned parenting from their mothers."

The study did not measure whether men learned parenting from their fathers. So that is certainly possible. "We really need to learn a lot more about how fathers learn to parent," Vespa said.

The study also reflected some big changes in parenting practices between the generations. The most recent generation of parents reads more to their kids, shows more affection and spanks less. Fathers who were spanked as children appeared especially reluctant to spank their own children.

"If parents really just learned from their own parents, we wouldn't witness such dramatic generational shifts as were seen in this study," Vespa said.

The data were collected from the National Longitudenal Survey of Youth and included 1,133 young adult parents of the mothers from the original survey in 1979. The study was presented today at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Assn.

-- Shari Roan
 
Photo credit: Peter Lennihan / Associated Press

Comments

[Swifter]

The main thing I learned from observing my mother was:

1) Don't drink to excess.
2) Don't get married or have children.

[bluedevil]

When did a boy ever learn to be parent from their mother? A father is suppose to teach his son to be a man and a father. And the man in the picture for this article looks like a tool.

[Barbara GREEN]

In my day of raising children 50's and 60's mostly Moms did the raising and Dad worked and really the Dads didn't do much else regarding the children. I know my boys have an completely different way with their children, and are doing a much better job with their children than their Dad did.

[Aletheia]

I realize he said his piece to a reporter bent on translating sociology for the masses but, boy, Jonathan Vespa came off as someone who does research so that we can all walk away with something that totters between over-generalization and inanity. The study has a relatively interesting core. Today's mothers seem to be imitative of their own. But, because they didn't research the other half of the equation so as to be able to answer the question of from where/whom do today's fathers draw their parenting skills, the study rings hollow.

Inasmuch as they reveal anything about how the current generation of fathers learned their parenting skills or chose to depart from past example, the study's results should necessarily lead Vespa and his collaborators to the obvious next step. In fact, they apparently did. These academics seem to be part way there when they admit, via Vespa, that the previous generation of fathers and their parenting techniques deserve a look. Vespa might take the results and inferences to be drawn a step further, however, and question his sociologically overbroad assumption that mothers were doing the "lion's share of parenting and child care" during the 70s, 80s, 90s. As a father now and a boy then, I know my family's structure undercut that assumption then and belies it now. The fathers I knew then were active, emotionally involved, considerate parents in situations where mothers were and were not model partners in parenting. But, I'd venture to say that, even if the scholars here were to look into more "traditional" families from the period (those families, presumably, looked like something between Father Knows Best and mom climbing the corporate ladder by day and doing housechores at night), they'd find fathers were doing plenty of parenting from which young boys learned lessons (positive and negative). That is, "parenting," even if it didn't look like the motherly "parenting and child care" they're fixated on.

[Lee B.]

I'm glad fathers are doing a better job these days. I know plenty of people - including me - who would never emulate their abusive, negligent, or self-absorbed parents, male and female.