Parental Locus of Control and the Assessment of Children's Personality Characteristics

Abstract

The relationships between different parental locus of control orientations and their children's personality characteristics of locus of control, anxiety, intelligence, achievement, and behavioral adjustment were examined for 134 fourth-grade children and their parents. Correlational results showed that mothers' locus of control was more Consistently related to their children's Characteristics than was the fathers' locus of control although this depended somewhat on the sex of the children. Further analyses revealed that parents who were both high in external locus of control had children who scored high in anxiety and low in intelligence. However, sets of parents in which at least one of the spouses was internally controlled had children who did not differ in their personality characteristics. Results indicate that further investigative research is warrented on how parenting attitudes and behaviors affect the development of such personality characteristics in children.