Follow-up of patterns of child rearing subjects

Of the 379 individuals whose parents had participated in the Sears, Maccoby, and Levin (1951-1952) P̲atterns of Child Rearing ̲study, 118 (58 females, 60 males) were reinterviewed and retested in 1978. Forty of these participants were from the original working-class sample, and 78 from the middle-class sample. At the time of the original study the participants were 5 years of age. All participants were thus 30- to 31-years old at the time of the present study, and all were living in the New England area.

All participants were interviewed in person and responded to questions about their general life history, educational attainment, and occupational status. A variety of other background and demographic characteristics was explored, including parents' occupation, spouse's occupation, sibling configuration, religious orientation, and hobbies and interests. Respondents were also asked about the most important qualities or lessons they wished to teach their children, the problems of child rearing, the major influences on their life other than their parents, and their opinions on certain social issues (such as gay rights).

Seventy-eight of the 118 participants also responded to a number of paper-and-pencil instruments: the Rokeach Value Survey; six Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) picture cues; Rest's Defining Issues Test; Gough's Adjective Check List; Rosenthal's Auditory Profile of Non-Verbal Sensitivity (PONS); and a questionnaire containing a compendium of questions borrowed from need for approval, locus of control, and just world tests, as well as a large number of demographic questions.

The Murray Center holds copies of interview summaries and TAT protocols, original completed paper-and-pencil instruments, as well as computer-accessible data. This study is a follow-up of Sears, Maccoby, and Levin's Patterns of Child Rearing, 1952-58 (A235). Other follow-ups of this sample, also available at the Murray Research Center, are: Nowliss, 1963-64 (A570), Crowne, Conn, Marlowe, & Edwards, 1965 (A572), Edwards, 1968 (A575) and McClelland & Franz, 1987-88 (A1012).