Abstract
Beliefs about parents’ influence on their children's behaviour have developed over the last 300 years. During this century multiple socio-economic, ideological and technological changes have combined to leave expert and lay person alike in a sea of confusion and ambiguity about optimal parent-child relationships. While fashions in child rearing change, the mother is usually accorded responsibility for the child's behaviour and social skills. In this study parents attending a multidisciplinary pediatric clinic were asked their opinion of the source of their child's emotional or behavioural problem. Describing confusion and conflicting advice, most parents had concluded that the problem had multiple roots. Between male and female parents, however, a marked difference was evident in the attribution of responsibility to themselves or their spouses and in their formulation of the nature of parental deficiencies.