4 Confounded variables: sensitive skin

4.1 Parental behaviour

A moment's reflection will convince you that parental behaviour differs from one family to another. The effect that different parental styles have on the development of the recipient offspring is very difficult to establish. In part this is to do with the host of other differences between families, not least their genetics and socio-economic status. But also the difficulty arises because to determine cause and effect requires prolonged and intrusive observations of a sort that is not possible on human families. However, such observations are possible in other animals and they shed light on the impact of parenting on the developmental path.