Separating Dimensions of Parenting From Targets of Parenting.
The distinction between parental control and structure has the potential to facilitate appropriate empirical evaluation of the full range of children’s experience at which parenting is directed. The multiple-forms approach often conflates dimensions of parenting with the target of parenting. For example, psychological control involves the pressuring, intrusive, and dominating dimension of parenting in regard to what children think and feel, whereas behavioral control involves the guiding dimension—what we have described as structure—of parenting in regard to children’s activities. Such a framework does not allow researchers to examine parental control in terms of children’s behavior or parental guidance (i.e., structure) in terms of children’s thoughts and feelings . In contrast, as we noted earlier, the distinction between control and structure is not tied to the target of parenting, thereby making it is possible to examine the full range of children’s experience with resp...