Within the fields of child development and child clinical psychology, recognition is growing of the important role that families, in particular parents, play in the growth and development of children. Compared with a simplistic unidirectional view, researchers and clinicians increasingly have conceptualized parent-child influences from a more realistic transactional pattern or a systems perspective.For example, developmental researchers such as Baumrind, Maccoby and Martin,and Schaefer have consistently found that healthy child development is most likely to occur in the context of high levels of parental warmth and acceptance, consistent behavioral control, and acceptance and encouragement of individuality and psychological autonomy. Consideration of parental influence is, however, important when development is disrupted in some way.
