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Parents often influence their sons towards the choice of unsuitable careers, either from motives of social snobbery, from a desire that the boy shall ‘follow in his father's footsteps,’ or from other motives, which are sometimes as estimable as they are misguided. But the only person qualified to choose a career for a boy is the boy himself; the function of parents, careers masters and vocational advisers is to provide him with the data (both about himself and about the occupation) which will enable him to make his choice judiciously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on a study related to the attitudes of the high school students towards racial discrimination in the U.S. The results highlight the importance of negative stereotypes in influencing discriminatory attitudes of white high school students, as indicated by the direct association between tendency to discriminate and both prejudice and perceived nonconformity. An attempt was made to keep the prejudice and nonconformity scales independent, but considerable overlap remains. This overlap resulted in prejudice eliminating non- conformity from the multiple regression equation. A second and related finding is the importance of parental influence in shaping the perceptions and attitudes of high school students. Parents' pressure to discriminate showed a strong zero-order correlation with tendency to discriminate and was the second most important variable in the multiple regression equation. Furthermore, the significant correlation between parents' pressure to discriminate and prejudice suggests that parents are important agents in the transmission of stereotypes, which in turn may then lead to attitudes favorable to discrimination and ultimately to discriminatory behavior. A third major finding is that anxieties concerning future interaction with blacks play an important role in producing attitudes favorable to racial discrimination.

A lack of field research pertinent to current social power theory and a lack of knowledge about the determinants of parental influence upon adolescents prompted a study of parental influence based on a theoretical model of social power. A questionnaire administered to tenth-grade students in four public high schools and freshmen in two state universities provided data on power variables suggested by the model and on paternal and maternal influence in the educational and heterosexual areas of life. The power variables reflecting the adolescent's general orientation to turn to the parent for direction, his belief in the parent's possession of useful knowledge, his acceptance of the parent's legitimate right to exert influence, and his perception of decisions as difficult are related more strongly than the other power variables to parental influence. Predicted statistical interactions among the power variables are generally absent. Implications for the study of social power and of parent-adolescent relationships are discussed and suggestions for further research are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some commentators have considered the concept of a distinct adolescent peer culture a myth, while recent evidence suggests that adolescents tend to be peer-conforming in making certain kinds of choice and parent-conforming in other kinds of choice. As indices of the emergence of an adolescent subculture, a question about teenagers relations with parents, teachers, and peers and a question about teenage boys attitudes toward going into father's occupation. The transition from a life primarily oriented toward parents to one that is more oriented toward peers undoubtedly occurs, but evidence from the present study indicates that the teenage group is in some respects no more estranged from adults than the pre-teenage group and that standards set in the family may not have been replaced by peer group standards in the high school context to the degree. It was observed that the adolescent child is not as closely related to his family as he was earlier or that today's adolescent is less involved in family life than the adolescent of generations past. But one may ask whether it is useful or appropriate to think of adolescents as comprising distinct social systems without taking account of both the student's attachment to his family.

Perceived predominance of influence by one parent over the other as reflected in the work-value orientations of college women was studied. The Parental Influence Inventory and a modified form of the Work-Values Inventory, based on a recent factorial study of the work-values of women, were administered to 315 college women. Results: (a) Perceived parental influence is highly related to the socio-economic status of the family (as indicated by the occupational level of the father), and only in this relationship was it significant. (b). Fathers who are engaged in professional work and whose level of education and training is superior to that of the mother exert a greater influence on the female child but she does not appear to introject the father's work-value orientation, rather, it is the father's idealized goals for the daughter that are internalized. (c) The girl who identifies with the mother more often comes from a home where the father works at the skilled or unskilled level, and where work is a more realistic possibility for the women, and orientations are therefore stronger on all work-values. The notion that women workers of lower-socio-economic status seek extrinsic values in work and that those of upper-socio-economic status seek intrinsic values is not supported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the importance of parental discipline and control in the study of parent-child behavior. Discussion of the concept of influence technique; Types of influence techniques used by parents to control or modify the behavior of their children; Criteria used to determine the degree of power assertiveness in an influence technique.