Professional Documents
Culture Documents
DOI 10.1007/s10804-011-9129-8
Introduction
There are two major ways to study the relationship between
childhood experiences and adult characteristics: (a) longitudinally tracking the same individuals from childhood to
adulthood and (b) asking adults to report memories of their
childhood experiences and their current adult characteristics. The former is a more highly regarded way to examine
C. A. Blondin ! J. L. Cochran ! E. J. Oh !
C. M. Taylor ! R. L. Williams (&)
Educational Psychology and Counseling, The University of
Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-3452, USA
e-mail: bobwilliams@utk.edu
123
Adult reflections on childhood may not be entirely objective but those reflections may profoundly affect other
aspects of adult lives. Asking adults to retrospectively
report events from their childhood gives researchers access
to a multitude of childhood experiences that would otherwise be lost if only longitudinal data were used. The current research is based on the assumption that retrospective
research is a reliable and valuable way to determine how
adults experienced childhood. Consistent with this
assumption, MacDonald et al. (2009) found that lifestyle
characteristics and physical activity could be accurately
recalled for a period of 25 years in samples of both
younger and older adults.
205
were positively associated with adult liberalism. Additionally, childhood personality tendencies predicted adult
personality characteristics similar to the childhood patterns: Adult liberals were rated as being bright, having
wide interests, and tending toward non-conformity,
whereas conservatives were rated as uneasy with ambiguity, traditionally sex-typed, and moralistic.
Although their findings present clear trends regarding
early childhood and adult personality characteristics of
liberals and conservatives, Block and Block (2006)
acknowledged that aspects of their available sample may
limit the generalizability of their findings. The parent
sample was diverse with respect to social class and education level but relatively small (n = 128 children) and
skewed toward liberalism. The authors also noted that the
study was conducted in one location (Berkeley and Oakland, California) widely recognized for its liberalism.
Additionally, the authors acknowledged that the correlations
between nursery school descriptors and adult liberalism
conservatism measures may be considered unimpressive
(correlations mainly in the 0.20s to 0.40s).
Other than these acknowledged limitations, Block and
Blocks (2006) methods appear sound and comprehensive.
All the ratings were done independently by individuals or
sets of individuals without knowledge of the overall design
and the expectations of the study. Furthermore, the ratings
were based on extensive contact with the participants. For
example, the two sets of three teachers who judged the
personality characteristics of the youngsters had been with
the children daily over a 7-month period. The six psychologists who rated the adult characteristics had done
extensive interviewing or observing of the participants. The
psychologists did their ratings independently of and prior
to the assessment of liberalism and conservatism. Assessment of political ideology included self-assessment,
agreement with positions usually distinguishing liberal
from conservative views, and other scales related to
political rights, political activism, conservatism, and liberalism. Certainly, the assessment of childhood personality
tendencies, adult personality characteristics, and adult
political ideology was broadly based, greatly decreasing
the probability of bias resulting from singular measures of
variables.
To our knowledge, the Block and Block (2006) study is
the only published longitudinal investigation of how
childhood characteristics translate into adult political ideology. The study was conducted over approximately a
20-year period. Such studies, particularly with the methodology used by Block and Block, are labor-intensive. For
that reason in particular, the study deserves much attention
in the empirical literature on the development of conservatism and liberalism. Nonetheless, their skewed sample
and the small to medium correlations between childhood
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C. A. Blondin et al.
207
Method
Participants
Students in the teacher-education program of a Southeastern American University (N = 232) responded to an
inventory that included all the measures targeted in this
study. In this sample, 168 of the participants were women
and 64 were men. With respect to academic classification,
most of the participants were 2nd- and 3rd-year students:
1st year (n = 18), 2nd year (n = 113), 3rd year (n = 65),
4th year (n = 27), and graduate students (n = 9). Most of
the participants had been reared in two-parent homes: two
parents (n = 128), single parent (n = 20), and not indicated (n = 84).
Procedures
Students responded on an out-of-class basis to an inventory
containing all the measures included in the study. This
inventory was posted at the course website at the beginning
of the semester. Students were given scan forms on which
they indicated their answers to the items on a 5-point scale
spanning strongly representative to strongly non-representative, very often to never, or strongly support to
strongly oppose. Item responses to the combined inventory
were electronically scanned into a comprehensive data file.
With the exception of an integrated conservative-liberal
scale, high scores on each scale represented support for the
concept assessed (i.e., authoritative parenting, authoritarian
parenting, childhood insecurity, childhood confidence, and
adult stressors). An integrated conservative-liberal scale
was scored in the direction of a liberal political orientation,
with higher scores representing liberalism and lower scores
representing conservatism.
Targeted Measures
Items on the authoritarian and authoritative parenting
subscales were adapted from a larger instrument that also
included a measure of permissive parenting (Burl 1991).
Burl reported that the testretest reliability of the
authoritarian and authoritative scales over a 2-week period
ranged from 0.78 to 0.92 and their Cronbachs alphas
ranged from 0.82 to 0.87. In our adaptation of the scale, we
used the term caretaker(s) to represent the primary
person(s) (mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, other
relative, and/or acquaintance) who had reared the student.
We assumed the person(s) portrayed as the caretaker(s) in
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208
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C. A. Blondin et al.
Results
The primary questions addressed in the study were
(a) whether retrospective assessment of parenting styles
would complement the relationships highlighted in the
Block and Block (2006) longitudinal study and (b) whether
the relationships reported by Block and Block between
childhood tendencies and political ideology would be
found in a retrospective investigation with a Southeastern
U.S. college sample. Whereas the Block and Block study
was a prospective longitudinal study conducted over a
period of 20 years, our study first assessed college students retrospective perceptions of treatment from their
parents and their own levels of insecurity vs. confidence
during childhood and then assessed their contemporaneous
perspectives of their stressors and political ideology as
adults.
Parenting Styles and Psychological Measures
in Childhood and Adulthood
Although Feld (1995) suggested that parentchild relationships were linked to childhood personality characteristics, as well as adult personality and political orientations,
his study did not explicitly assess authoritarian versus
authoritative parenting styles. Table 1 indicates that
authoritative parenting in our study was negatively correlated with childhood insecurity and positively correlated
with childhood confidence (p \ .001). On the other hand,
authoritarian parenting was positively related to childhood
insecurity (p \ .001) but not significantly related to
childhood confidence. The two parenting styles evidenced
opposite relationships with adult stressors: authoritative
parenting was negatively related to magnitude of adult
stressors (p \ .001), whereas authoritarian parenting was
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Table 1 Overview of correlations between parenting styles, childhood psychological tendencies, and adult psychological tendencies (N = 232)
Parenting styles
Authoritative
Authoritarian
Childhood tendencies
Adult variables
Stress
Political
-0.21**
-0.18*
Authoritative
Authoritarian
Insecurity
-0.25**
-0.43**
Child insecurity
Child confidence
Adult stress
Confidence
0.39**
0.19**
-0.11
0.20**
-0.05
-0.50**
0.34**
0.09
-0.24**
0.00
0.04
* p \ .01; ** p \ .001
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C. A. Blondin et al.
Item means
SD
15
-14.12
0.000
15
-14.02
0.000
15
-8.69
0.000
15
-5.75
0.000
15
-10.01
0.000
Conservative
55
1.56
1.05
61
4.16
0.93
Conservative
55
1.78
0.96
Liberal
61
4.05
0.78
Conservative
55
2.82
0.88
Liberal
61
4.07
0.66
Conservative
55
2.47
0.90
Liberal
61
3.51
1.02
Conservative
55
1.82
0.80
Liberal
61
3.43
0.92
Conservative
Liberal
55
61
2.53
3.38
1.10
0.86
15
-4.65
0.000
15
-10.40
0.000
15
-9.54
0.000
15
-8.42
0.000
15
-11.42
0.000
15
-10.29
0.000
1155
-29.92
0.000
Conservative
55
1.96
0.96
Liberal
61
3.82
0.96
Conservative
55
3.33
0.90
Liberal
61
4.66
0.57
Conservative
55
2.31
1.02
61
3.92
1.04
Same-sex marriage
Conservative
55
2.09
1.36
Liberal
61
4.48
0.85
Ten commandmentsa
Conservative
55
1.60
0.87
Liberal
61
3.41
1.00
Sig.
Liberal
Liberal
Political preference
t ratios
Possible range
Conservative
55
24.27
3.39
Liberal
61
42.87
3.30
123
Liberal
(n = 61)
Sig.
Authoritative
38.05
34.38
0.01
Authoritarian
34.42
32.95
ns
Child insecurity
Child confidence
10.24
15.15
11.00
14.93
ns
ns
Adult stress
32.73
33.00
ns
ns non-significant
Discussion
Our retrospective measures of childhood parenting and
early childhood psychological tendencies proved to be
significantly related to one another and predictive of
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predicted adult stress. Both the directionality and magnitude of these correlations were different, with childhood
insecurity more strongly linked in a positive direction with
adult stress than childhood confidence was linked in a
negative direction with adult stress.
Prediction of Adult Political Perspectives
To this point in our analysis, our findings would be substantially consistent with those reported by Block and
Block (2006) and Feld (1995) regarding the inter-relationships between parenting styles, childhood well-being,
and adult psychological characteristics. However, these
previous researchers also found significant relationships
between most of these variables and adult political ideology. Feld reported that parenting behavior experienced by
adult liberals tended to be more supportive than parenting
experienced by adult conservatives. Block and Block found
that early childhood characteristics significantly predicted
adult political ideology. Our study generally did not confirm the relationships of parenting and childhood characteristics with adult political ideology.
Due to abundant differences in methodology and sample
composition between our study and those of Block and
Block (2006) and Feld (1995), the failure of retrospective
measures of childhood parenting and psychological security to predict adult political ideology should not be considered a challenge to the earlier longitudinal findings.
Without question, Block and Blocks methodology was
more diverse and psychometrically stronger than our
methodology. A precise replication of their methodology
might have produced findings similar to theirs. However,
two-decade follow-ups similar to those of the Block and
Block and Feld studies will likely appear infrequently in
the literature due to the practical challenges of the longitudinal approach (e.g., keeping track of participants living
in diverse locations over a period of several years).
What accounts for the differences between our findings
and those of Block and Block (2006) is not entirely clear.
One possibility is that regional differences contributed to
differences in results. Our students generally came from a
cultural background considered highly conservative in
national voting patterns since 2000, whereas the Block and
Block sample came from one of the most liberal regions in
the country (Dave Leips Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections - 2008 n.d.). A liberal political orientation would be
largely incongruous with the cultural background of most
of our students, whereas the liberal orientation in the Block
and Block study would have been highly consistent with
the cultural background of their participants.
Being out of step with mainstream political values in
ones culture may contribute to tension in relationships
with family members, friends, and acquaintances outside of
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212
a university setting. Coming from a conservative background and attending a university where liberal ideas are
explored is a psychologically different experience than
coming from a liberal background and attending a university where liberal ideas predominate. This incongruity
for our liberal students with respect to their cultural
background and their college experience may have blurred
some relationships between political ideology and other
variables in the study.
Despite the surface appeal of the cultural-incongruity
argument, our assessment of adult stressors did not support
that notion. Specifically, if holding political views counter
to the mainstream in ones culture contributes to tension in
relationships, that difference should have been evident in
the respective stress levels of our conservative and liberal
students. However, the stress means of the two political
groups did not differ. The latter finding might be attributable to how conservatives and liberals handle incongruity
between their beliefs and cultural influences. Previous
research suggests that liberals may be more open to such
incongruity than are conservatives. This tolerance of
incongruity might temper the stress liberal students would
otherwise experience from this incongruity (Jost et al.
2003, 2007; Sibley and Duckitt 2008).
Another possible explanation for the differences in
findings between our study and those of Block and Block
(2006) was that our measure of political ideology did not
adequately differentiate students political values. Students mean responses to political items tended to be
centrist, with relatively low standard deviations. However,
when we compared the political means of the top and
bottom quartiles on the political measure, we found that the
groups differed significantly on the overall political measure and on every item subsumed in that measure. But
when we then compared these groups on all the other
variables, we found that they differed significantly on only
one variable, authoritative parenting, with the conservative
group regarding their parents as having been more
authoritative than did the liberal group. Therefore, our
measure appears to have clearly differentiated the most
conservative and the most liberal students with respect to
specific political issues, even though those two groups did
not differ significantly on most other variables.
Concluding Perspectives
Researchers who investigate highly sensitive sociopolitical
issues in one region of the country should be cautious about
generalizing their findings to other regions. However, it is
important to underscore that virtually all of our relationships between parenting styles, childhood insecurity/confidence, and adult stressors would complement the Block
and Block (2006) findings. Nonetheless, political ideology
123
C. A. Blondin et al.
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