A psychologist reports that authoritative parents tend to have well-behaved children, and suggests that the parenting style influenced the children's personality development. Before we accept this conclusion, it would be most important to check whether the same results also occur in:

Authoritarian parenting.

Explanation:

Authoritative parenting is the best form of parenting when compered to the other form of parenting and Authoritarian parenting in particular.

Authoritative parenting is a type of parenting characterized by high responsiveness and high demands, while authoritarian parenting is high demanding and low responsiveness, Although both authoritative and authoritarian parents place high demands on the children, they are quite different in what they try to control.

Children raised by authoritarian parents.

Explanation:

Authoritative parents raise their children by instilling values like respect and independence in them. They set standards and rules and try to help children develop through love and positivity, taking their needs into consideration.

The authoritarian parent on the other hand enforces rules and expects the children to obey or get punished.

Before accepting the psychologist's report that children raised by authoritative parents are well behaved, they should be compared with children raised by authoritarian parents.

as university of miami psychologists debra lieberman and adam smith pointed out in a recent article in the journal current directions in psychological science, humans have social and psychological mechanisms to deter incest. with very few exceptions, marriages between brothers and sisters and between parents and their children are verboten in every human culture. the primary psychological anti-incest mechanism is the yuck response. even the idea of sex with their mom or dad, bro or sis is upsetting to most people. the psychologist jonathan haidt has found that nearly everyone is repelled by the prospect of brother-sister sex, even in hypothetical situations in which there is no chance of pregnancy).

the biological cost of incest

this raises an interesting question: just what’s so bad about incest? sure, having sex with your dad or your sister seems gross — but why? some anthropologists have argued that incest taboos are learned social conventions. this explanation, however, doesn’t make sense to me as it does not explain the widespread existence of anti-incest mechanisms in creatures ranging from cockroaches to chimpanzees. second, the incest taboo is about as close to a universal law as human moral rules get.

why should mechanisms to avoid incest be so widespread both in nature and across human societies? the answer is simple. the problem with having sex close with relatives is that there is an astonishingly high chance that your offspring will be born with a serious birth defect.

this can !    

- jack watson