Relationships between Authoritarian Attitudes in Delinquent Girls and the Authoritarian Attitudes and Authoritarian Rearing Practices of Their Mothers

Authoritarian attitudes of 70 lower-class, adolescent, delinquent girls were assessed and related to the authoritarian attitudes and authoritarian rearing practices of their mothers. The mothers' rearing practices and attitudes were measured by their direct report and indirectly by their daughters' perceived mothers' report. Although the measures of authoritarian attitudes and authoritarian rearing practices were moderately correlated, only the authoritarian attitudes of the mothers were consistently and significantly related to the authoritarian attitudes of their daughters. The discussion of results contained some hypotheses relating the identification process to ethnocentric and authoritarian attitude development which are suggestive of future research.