The psychology of parental control: How well‐meant parenting backfires

The Psychology of Parental Control: How Well-Meant Parenting Backfires. Wendy S. Grolnick. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 2003. 182 pp. ISBN 0-8058-3540-7. $45.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-8052-3541-5. $23.00 (paper). It would be difficult to overstate the contribution that Wendy Grolnick has made with her volume The Psychology of Parental Control: How Well-Meant Parenting Backfires. The value is seen at multiple levels. First, Grolnick succeeds admirably in the very difficult task of writing at a level that does justice to both the science in which her work is solidly grounded, and to her goal of communicating to audiences who are unfamiliar with the research, unequipped to interpret it, or uninterested in its detail. The occasional use of personal anecdotes warms a text rich in information, systematic in its coverage, and deliberate in its effort to clarify the importance and utility of the information. Grolnick's book can and should be read by a broad array of professional and lay audiences, not the least of which are parents and educators. The value of the book is evident also at an academic level, indeed at multiple sublevels. The scope of the volume is impressively ambitious. Tackling the historically thorny but highly relevant area of parental control is ambitious in and of itself, but to move beyond just reviewing past work to integrating discrepant conceptualizations and findings, and then to use theory as a guide is very admirable. To then move to distinguishing types and effects of parental control, to trace their pathway to child competence (via internal motivation), and to contextualize and predict facilitative and inhibiting forms of control renders the volume much more whole than most treatments of this topic. Further, to do so by employing information from a variety of disciplines or theories (e.g., psychology, sociology, political science, evolution) communicates an important awareness of the complexity of the topic and the value that can be found in multiple approaches. Grolnick's ambition is, at times, courageous. Invoking a theory (Self-Determination Theory) that so firmly attributes agency and inherent competence to children will make some more behaviorally oriented scholars uncomfortable, but it will ring familiar and meaningful to others who share this view. In addition, as Grolnick notes, her challenge to cultural relativism will irritate many a scholar, but again, it will be understood and welcomed by many who are finding evidence for commonality in human functioning, at least at the basic levels of socialization that Grolnick deals with. Because parental control of children has always had (and to a large extent still retains) a complexity that includes no shortage of vagaries and inconsistencies in conceptualization, measurement, and interpretation, any effort to explain parental control must be judged on the extent to which the effort has cleared up some of the confusion. In this regard, Grolnick's distinction between being "in control" versus being "controlling" is interesting. Any attempt to use the distinction in parent training would require substantial explanation, but once understood, it could be quite helpful. (Several times in the early portions of the book, it is not completely clear which form of control Grolnick refers to when she uses the term, and this interrupts the generally smooth flow of her arguments.) In the beginning chapters, the distinction between these facilitative (in control) and inhibiting (controlling) renditions of control is central-and apparently crucial-to the intent of the book. However, the latter chapters do not include nearly the same emphasis on this conceptual clarification. Clearly, Grolnick favors "autonomy support" as the more accurate and useful conceptualization of facilitative control (and she does impressively well at explaining and justifying her position), but relaxing the emphasis on the earlier clarification makes one wonder how useful the clarification actually is. …