Mothers influence parenting of daughters

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Aug. 10 (UPI) -- Mothers tend to parent as their mothers did but fathers don't seem to use their moms as parental role models, U.S. researchers said.

Ohio State University researchers tracked parents in the 1990s on how often parents spanked, read to and showed affection to their children. They compared the results to how the parents were treated by their own mothers.

Study co-author Jonathan Vespa, a doctoral student in sociology at Ohio State University, said the researchers used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth -- men and women ages 14-22 in 1979 were interviewed annually from 1979 to 1994 and every two years from 1996 forward. A second survey tracked the children born to mothers in the original survey.

The second generation of mothers closely followed what their mothers did. However, the study showed generational changes in parenting practices, with great increases in the amount of reading and affection shown to children today, while there were reductions in spanking.

The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in San Francisco.