Parental ideas and their role in childrearing: the idea-behavior connection

The relation between parental ideas and actions is an old and troublesome issue in socialization research. Parental ideas are assumed to play an important role as determinants of parental actions and the issue has received increasing attention. In this article, the idea-behavior dilemma is dealt with. In order to help glimpse underlying assumptions and build an accurate understanding of the role that childrearing ideas play in parents’ functioning, a review of several empirical approaches and studies is presented and limitations of current idea-behavior research are highlighted. Throughout the discussion, the complexity of the idea-behavior links is exposed and attention is called to the theoretical and practical importance of research connecting parents’ ideas and their behaviors for understanding, predicting and changing parental behavior. Finally, a perspective for the study of parents’ ideas is presented.