Children's evaluation of parenting practices

The study investigates the differences between pre-adolescents and their parents reports of the parenting practices. Five key domains of parenting behaviours were assessed using the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire - Parent and Child Forms. Pre-adolescents perceived their mothers more involved than fathers. Parents judged themselves as more involved than children perceived them. Parents’ responses for affective parenting were more positive than children ones. Children indicated parents more poor in monitoring than parents did, and fathers did more than mothers. It isn’t clear whose perceptions – parents’ or pre-adolescents’ – more accurately reflected the parenting practices going on at home, but these data suggest that the perceptions are as important for comprehending parenting outcomes as the actual behaviours.