SOCIAL CLASS, CHILD REARING PRACTICES, AND CHILD BEHAVIOR.

Several recent studies have raised interesting questions about the relation of social class position to child-rearing practices. This study, carried out in Chicago, Illinois, in the early 1940s, found the middle class to be generally more severe in weaning and toilet training, and to restrict and put more demands upon the child. Later studies have found several differences, primarily in the direction of more permissiveness by middle class mothers than the Chicago study described. The larger study on stress caused by the arrival of a second child in the family of which this was a part required 50 of the mothers to be expecting a second child at the time of the first interview, and the remaining 24 control families to be matched on a group basis by occupation of father, neighborhood, age and sex of child. Thirty-six middle-class and 38 working-class mothers were interviewed in 1953 about their child-rearing practices. The available evidence is consistent with the notion that a change in child-rearing practices has taken place, and that this change is due to the different reference groups used by the two classes.