Conflict as a Context for Understanding Maternal Beliefs About Child Rearing and Children's Misbehavior: New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, No. 86

Complaints, disputes, disagreements, arguments--whatever terminology is applied, conflicts between parents and their children are a ubiquitous feature of daily family life. These conflicts play a pivotal role in both individual development and the maintenance of family relationships. In this issue of New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, the authors examine mothers? thoughts about, during, and in response to conflict, and reveal how those maternal beliefs impact children?s development. Chapters shed light on mothers? responses to and thoughts about sibling aggression; the role of cultural climate in mothers? use of physical punishment; how mothers? parenting goals and causal attributions vary across child gender and type of transgression; and the relation between maternal beliefs and preschoolers? behaviors with peers. This is the 86th issue of the quarterly journal New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development.

PAUL D. HASTINGS is visiting fellow in the Section on Developmental Psychopathology, National Institutes of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland. CAROLINE C. PIOTROWSKI is associate professor of family studies and director of the Child Development Centre at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada.