Children of stress and children of happiness - Parents as children's social environment

Parents are examined as a significant social environment for children at the transition from childhood to adolescence, The empirical basis is provided by a nationwide representative survey among about 700 children aged 10 to 13 carried out in 1993 by means of standardized oral interviews and by a parallel written survey among the mothers and fathers of these children (triads). Cluster analyses allow to differentiate four groups of children according to the subjectively perceived parental environment: children with conflict-parents with control-parents with partner-parents and with ''easy-going'' parents These four environments are empirically examined as to different familial contexts (quality of the marital relationships structural and situational stress within the family, etc.) and to relations with the children's personality development and their mastering of life. Conflict-parents and partner-parents prove to be opposite environments with regard to socialization and pedagogical concepts Whereas, in the first case, children grow up under conditions of stress and with less satisfactory results in the second case, favorable conditions of socialization accumulate.