The Parental Comparison Level Index: A Measure for Assessing Parental Rewards and Costs Relative to Expectations.

This article presents the rationale for and initial findings concerning the development of the Parental Comparison Level Index (PCLI). The necessity for the development of a new method for assessing the experience of parenthood is based on the conceptual limitations within the extant research. The PCLI is based on the interpersonal processes highlighted by social exchange perspectives, with a particular focus on the role that expectations and comparative processes play in the evaluation of relationships. Data collected on 439 parents (169 fathers and 270 mothers) offer strong support that the PCLI contains two highly reliable subscales: reward and cost. The data also provide evidence for the validity of the subscales because they covary in expected ways with two measures of marital quality and variations in the family life cycle. Key Words: measurement, parental costs, parental rewards, parental satisfaction, parenthood, social exchange theory. Widespread changes in the structural characteristics of contemporary American families have encouraged social scientists to rethink "the family" as a social form, to debate the characteristics and qualities of functional families, and to work to dispel the myths and monolithic view of contemporary family life (e.g., Bernardes, 1993; Cheal, 1993; David, 1993). In spite of all the attention to the complexity and diversity found within families, relatively little research exists that makes the experiences of contemporary parents the unit of analysis (Goetting, 1986; Rossi, 1968). What research there is has been criticized for employing measures that lack an adequate conceptual or psychometric foundation (Goetting, 1986; Sabatelli & Waldron, 1995). Although it has been almost 30 years since Rossi (1968) called for research on concepts like parental satisfaction, it is clear that there has been a lag in the efforts to develop theoretically grounded and psychometrically sound measures of concepts that provide insight into the experience of parenthood. This article discusses the development of a new measure designed to assess parents' satisfaction with parenthood. The scale, the Parental Comparison Level Index (PCLI), is based on the interpersonal processes highlighted within the social exchange framework, with a particular focus on the role that expectations and comparative processes play in the evaluation of relationships (Nye, 1979; Sabatelli, 1984, 1988; Thibaut K Sabatelli & Waldron, 1995). Both of these reviews revealed that efforts to obtain direct information about how parents perceive one of the most important roles of adult life were complicated by the absence of conceptually grounded measures of the parental satisfaction construct. For example, in many of the studies focusing on parental satisfaction, this complex construct is not defined (Bird & Bird, 1984; James, Schumm, Kennedy, Grigsby, & Shectman, 1985; Risman, 1986) or only nominally defined (e.g., Buehler, Hogan, Robinson, & Levy, 1985/1986; Lerner & Galambos, 1985). This absence of conceptual precision results in a number of different operational indicators being used to assess parental satisfaction. In some studies, parental satisfaction is assessed by asking questions about the respondent's happiness with their children and their views on the quality of the relationship they have with their children (Bowen, 1982; Chilman, 1979). Other studies ask parents about the burdens they experience as parents (Goldsteen & Ross, 1989; Pittman & Lloyd, 1988, Pittman, Wright, & Lloyd, 1989). Still other studies infer the presence of parental satisfaction by simply asking parents if they believe that parenting is important (Chilman, 1980). Each of these conceptual approaches to the assessment of parental satisfaction provides only a limited perspective on how this role is experienced because each one fails to tap a theoretically grounded and inclusive conceptualization of satisfaction. …