Parenting

This well-conceived and well-timed volume is the first to bring together in one place the results of research on parents and children conducted from the perspective of an ecological paradigm. The number and scope of investigations explicitly or implicitly employing an ecological model has increased substantially over the past two decades, with attention focused on the family system as the primary context of child rearing and its dynamic linkages with other key contexts affecting development, both immediate -- child care, school, parents' workplace, neighborhood -- and more remote -- class and culture. To date, research reports dealing with these phenomena, as well as topical reviews, have been widely scattered across journals and edited volumes directed at particular disciplines, making it difficult to obtain an integrated picture of the enterprise as a whole. This volume, however, enables readers to view the full range of this domain through its judicious selection of relevant studies, rich and rigorous interpretation and integration of research findings, and promising directions and concrete hypotheses for future research. It demonstrates that the complex task of considering the combined influence of several factors can be accomplished, bringing new knowledge and opening new vistas for the realization of human potential.