A Naturalistic Approach to the Study of Parenting

SYNOPSIS

We study parenting within the context of the family—its natural environment—using direct observations and repeated sampling, to describe the real-time unfolding of situations and responses to them. Longitudinal studies attempt to model the long-term impact that different styles of parenting have on the psychological and physical development of offspring. But behavioral, emotional, and biological responses to parenting occur in the moment, with an immediate impact on the child. We are interested in how those short-term responses come to influence developmental and health processes that play out over longer time spans. Our approach, which integrates measures of neuroendocrine and immune system function, has implications for researchers and practitioners.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors are grateful to the WT Grant Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for supporting much of the work described in this paper.