Parenting Cognitive Development from 1950 to 2000: The Insitutional Effects of Mass Schooling on the Social Construction of Parenthood.

A pivotal idea in this paper is that prevailing notions of childhood have changed over time in the U.S. Specifically, I show that changes have occurred in parent behaviors regarding cognitive development of their young children and argue the growing trend in the parenting of cognitive development in young children in the latter half of the 20th century is largely attributable to the institutionalization of mass schooling. This paper examines parenting cognitive development from 1951 to 2001 in four ways. First I briefly review three related literatures: 1) the sociological literature on changes in parenting in the U.S. during the 20th century; 2) the research literature on changes in the U.S. during the 20th century in expert literature to parents on cognitive development of children; and, 3) the research literature on parental involvement in schooling. Next, I present analysis of data on parents from Patterns of Childrearing 1951-52, the Detroit Area Study 1963, and the National Household Education Surveys 1991 and 2001 to show the changes in parent behaviors around the cognitive development of their children in the U.S. in the 50 year span from 1951 to 2000. Third, I demonstrate the changing impact of household income and mother?s education as evidence of the overall influence of mass education on norms and behaviors of parents. Finally, I describe the normative nature of parenting cognitive development by the beginning of the 21st century using the National Household Education Survey 1991, 1993, 1996, 1999, and 2001 and speculate on its implications for the sociologies of parenting and education, as well as a neo-institutional analysis of schooling. The results show parents increasingly spend time more time engaging in activities related to cognitive development over the second half of the 20th century so that by 1991 it is normative behavior. In addition, mother?s education becomes an increasingly better predictor of parenting cognitive development over the latter half of the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]