Policy vs. Theory

Everyone has their own thoughts and beliefs on children. Often people will form these ideas without consulting the research that has been done on child development over the field's history. Parenting styles are a wonderful example of an area that most people have a strong opinion on. People still practice all the parenting styles illustrated by developmental researchers even though the data shows one style to work best.  The major danger in illustrating that relationship to the public is that these studies do only show a relationship. We cannot say that one true parenting style causes kids to turn out better than the others, just that kids in these households turn out better on average. Your average layperson may not understand that causation does not equal correlation. Also, it may not be entirely feasible for every single parent in the nation to follow one parenting style. Implementing laws that punish parents for not following a style could lead to even worse outcomes in the children of these parents. A law like this one would also hold one specific group of parents above all others and could cause parents who don't fall into this category to feel inadequate. The best thing that we can do as professionals is to inform the public of the things that they can to do to increase the chances of their child's success without being overly judgmental or punitive. Using popular references to describe psychological phenomena is a great way to convey ideas to the general public. It helps to frame these issues to laypeople in terms that they can relate to or understand more clearly. I think that people are more likely to listen to and practice the suggestions that professionals make when they can understand the ideas better.