Parental age and university students': Perceptions of parental acceptance-rejection

Does the age of a father or a mother at the birth of a child influence the child's perception of the father's or the mother's level of acceptance or rejection? This question arises in the context of earlier work by Daniels and Weingarten (1982) and recent literature (Garrison, Blalock, Zarski, & Merritt, 1997; Parke, 1995) suggesting a preponderance of advantages for the deferral of parenthood for the parent and perhaps for the child. However, the work of Morris (1988) suggests a preponderance of disadvantages to older parenting (over age 35) from the point-of-view of the child. The present study thus was designed to ascertain - from the point-of-view of the child - whether or not parental age at childbirth influences the child's perception of one of the two major dimensions of parenting style - parental acceptance-rejection - for both fathers and mothers.