Gardner F E
Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, London, England.
J Abnorm Child Psychol. 1989 Apr;17(2):223-33. doi: 10.1007/BF00913796.
Traditional interview studies of inconsistent parental discipline show a strong link with young children's conduct problems. Observational studies of inconsistency show weaker links with problem behavior and suffer from methodological problems. This study proposed a new observational definition of parental inconsistency, which analyzed whether mothers follow through their demands during sequences of mother-child conflict. A home observational study showed that mothers of conduct-problem preschoolers acted inconsistently during a greater proportion of conflict episodes than did their normal counterparts. There was a strong correlation between inconsistency and amount of family conflict. Inconsistency varied as a function of the context from which conflict arose. Results are discussed in terms of both coercion (Patterson, 1979) and predictability theories of problem behavior (Wahler & Dumas, 1986).
传统的关于父母管教不一致的访谈研究表明，这与幼儿的行为问题有很强的关联。关于不一致性的观察性研究显示，其与问题行为的关联较弱，且存在方法上的问题。本研究提出了一种新的关于父母不一致性的观察性定义，该定义分析了母亲在母子冲突过程中是否坚持其要求。一项家庭观察研究表明，有行为问题的学龄前儿童的母亲在更大比例的冲突事件中表现出不一致，而正常儿童的母亲则不然。不一致性与家庭冲突的数量之间存在很强的相关性。不一致性因冲突产生的背景不同而有所变化。研究结果将根据强制理论（帕特森，1979年）和问题行为的可预测性理论（瓦勒和杜马斯，1986年）进行讨论。
