The ideas of parents concerning the development, upbringing, and education of their
children have become a subject that has produced a lot of work in developmental
research in recent years. However, there still remain grey areas and contradictions
which need to be further clarified. While trying to steer clear of the fragmentary
nature of research done in this area, this paper analyses a wide-ranging set of
ideas of differing content. An attempt is then made to find elements that help
characterise the overall pattern of these ideas. The study also tries to clarify the
amount of weight that should be given to each of the determining variables that go
to make up parents' ideas (educational background, professional status, rural or
urban residence, previous experience as parents), while at the same time analysing
the degree of concurrence, or lack of it, existing within the married couple. Three
classes of parents are seen to exist (traditional, modern, and paradoxical) and the
educational background is seen to be the variable that contributes most to
determining their ideas. The impact of the several background variables depends on
the type of parent being considered.
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