Parents' social expectations as correlates of children's peer relations

Graduation date: 1987Recent peer relations studies that have included\ud parents as subjects have pointed to supporting behaviors\ud performed by parents and their role in the development of\ud children's peer relations. Findings from these studies\ud have been similar to explanations of expectation effects.\ud That is, expectation holders support their expectations by\ud behaving in ways favorable to expected outcomes. Two\ud models developed to explain parent and teacher educational\ud expectation effects were used in this study to help\ud explain parents' social expectations. A questionnaire was\ud developed assessing parents' perceptions of their\ud children's peer relations and parents' expressed levels of\ud importance regarding children's peer relations. These\ud measures were correlated with three sociometric measures of\ud children's peer relations and children's and teacher's\ud perceptions of children's peer relations. The sample\ud consisted of 76 families whose children were enrolled in\ud two university-based child development preschool programs. Findings from this study indicated that mothers' and\ud fathers' perception scores of their children's peer\ud relations were significantly and positively correlated\ud with children's acceptance rating scores but inversely\ud correlated with children's rejection scores. The level of\ud importance expressed by fathers, but not mothers,\ud regarding their children's peer relations was\ud significantly correlated with all three sociometric\ud measures. There were no significant differences in\ud parents' scores as a function of parent or child gender,\ud but the accuracy of mothers' perception scores appeared\ud influential in determining mothers' level of importance\ud scores. Less accurate mothers had significantly higher\ud importance scores than more accurate mothers. Parents'\ud perception scores did not correlate significantly with\ud either children's or teacher's perception scores.\ud These findings suggest that a relationship exists\ud between parents' social expectations and children's peer\ud relations. Continued research in the area of children's\ud peer relations which includes parents as subjects is\ud needed