Shifting Patterns of Parental Authority, 1900–1980

Abstract

It is widely believed that parents in contemporary Western industrialised societies are less able or willing to control their children's behaviour than those of previous generations. This is evidenced in the blaming of parents for a variety of social ills — a recurring refrain among Conservative politicians and newspaper columnists. Some go so far as to suggest that parental authority has collapsed (except, implicitly, in their sort of families: usually middle class, white, privately educated). We challenge this view through a discussion of the changing economic, social and political contexts of parenting. This paper identifies changes in the nature of parental authority and control in Western capitalist industrial societies within the twentieth century, using primary source data from New Zealand and Scotland1 and secondary material from other English speaking countries.