Abstract
In recent years, there has been an expansion of our views of the cast of individuals who influence the socialization of infants and children. Over the past decade, we have watched a shift away from an exclusive focus on the mother-child dyad as the primary unit of analysis. During the 1970s, the father came to be portrayed as an active and competent contributor to infant caregiving and development (Lamb, 1976; Parke & O’Leary, 1976; Pedersen & Robson, 1969), and by the end of the decade, the father-mother-child triad was beginning to receive the attention that it deserved—both theoretically (Lewis, 1979; Lewis & Weinraub, 1976; Parke, Power, & Gottman, 1979) and empirically (Belsky, 1980; Pedersen, 1980). Families, in turn, were increasingly recognized as functioning within a variety of other social systems, including both formal and in?formal support systems, as well as cultural systems (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Cochran & Brassard, 1979; Parke & Lewis, 1981). Currently, we are attempting to move beyond the recognition of this embeddedness of families and to begin to delineate (1) the links between these social systems; (2) the functions that different systems play; and (3) the impact of variations in the amount and the quality of contact on family functioning and child development.
Preparation of this chapter was sup?ported by NICHD Grant HEW Ph5 05951, NICHD Training Grant HDO 7205-01, and the National Foundation March of Dimes.
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Tinsley, B.R., Parke, R.D. (1984). Grandparents as Support and Socialization Agents. In: Lewis, M. (eds) Beyond The Dyad. Genesis of Behavior, vol 4. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9415-1_8
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