It is a common assumption in child psychiatry that the personality and attitudes of parents exert a fundamental influence on the developing child. This hypothesis merits careful examination. The authors were particularly interested in testing it in relation to aberrant personalities and undeniable psychiatric disorder in childhood. Theoretically there are two main methodological steps;

1. (i) The proving of a correlation between parental and childhood variables. The present paper concentrates on this step.

2. (ii) experimental or other studies to demon strate causal relationships between these variables.