Article Critique #2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Article Critique #2 - Essay Example Suchman and Luthar have collaborated on several related projects in the past. Self-referencing in this case is acceptable because other sources are credible. This 2007 article is related to prior work done by the authors and the different studies apparently support one another. The authors assert that parental control results in better behavior outcomes for children, and parental warmth results in better psychological outcomes. Mothers in the study were taken from a population participating in methadone treatments, and randomly assigned to either control-training group therapy or warmth-training group therapy. The group therapy lasted for 24 weeks and the children and mothers completed assessments a total of seven times during the study. A total of 98 mother-child pairs participated all the way through the study. The authors’ hypotheses were that mothers who exhibited greater control over their children’s behavior while still allowing them to be autonomous would have children with fewer behavioral issues, and that mothers who exhibited warmth toward their children would have children who were better adjusted. The findings of the study proved that these assumptions were true, to a degree. Since all the data was self-reported, the mothers and children saw themselves differently. For instance, children who rated their mothers high on the parental control scale were not looked at by their mothers as having fewer problems, but the children’s self-report showed they had fewer problems with behavior. And, when both mothers and children rated the mothers high on the warmth scale, those children reported greater problems with internalizing behaviors such as depression. Obviously, children view their mothers differently than they view themselves; one reason for this could be that the mothers were trying to make changes in their parenting styles and the children were not yet responding in line with the parents’ changes. The randomized assignment of the