Parenthood is often thought of as a natural or instinctive process. With the birth of a baby, the parent is expected somehow to be fully equipped to raise a child with love and skill, Yet increasing awareness of the magnitude of such problems as child abuse and neglect, emotional disturbances in children, and adolescent pregnancies and runaways has forced the realization that parenthood is at best a difficult process and at worst an experience of failure and a source of stress and disability for many families. In response to this awareness, many programs and approaches for aiding parents in their tasks and roles are being offered. But despite the proliferation of child rearing literature and parent education enterprises, knowledge of the fundamental processes that under-I thank the following for their contributions to my thinking, for access to clinical and other resources, for technical assistance, and for editorial guidance:

Mothers whose children had been sexually abused reported experiencing serious psychological symptoms following disclosure of the abuse. Over a one-year period, their emotional status improved. Strong relationships between mothers' reports of their own and their children's symptoms were accompanied by persistent discrepancies between maternal and direct assessments of the children's emotional states. Findings suggest that addressing maternal distress is important to the study and treatment of child sexual abuse.

A cognitive‐developmental analysis of parental reasoning on child‐rearing issues is presented and applied in two controlled studies of parents of abused or neglected children. Significant differences in parental awareness were found between urban parents and their controls; this relationship is sustained in a rural sample, controlling for child handicap as well as for other familial characteristics.