Types of parental pairs: interdependence of parental attitudes in the dyad

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to analyse the types of parent pairs in the context of the interdependence of parental attitudes in the dyad. Parental attitudes are one of the basic forms of parental educational influence. They are a tendency for the specific behaviour of mother and father towards the child, a tendency to be care about, think about and behave (verbally and non-verbally) in a certain way towards the child. This tendency undergoes a slow change as the child develops. The article discusses several typologies of parental attitudes and parenting styles, with particular emphasis on the typology of parental attitudes described by A. Roe, which had a significant impact on empirical and theoretical work on parental attitudes and became the basis for creating the research method used in the study of 208 adolescents: 115 girls and 93 boys, the results of which are presented in this article. The results indicate that in the Polish families residing in large cities there are five types of parental dyads that can be reduced to three types: (1) both loving parents; (2) both demanding parents and (3) a loving parent and a rejecting parent.