| Summary: | There exists convincing evidence to support the view that parenting style is important to child development. There has been increasing attention paid to the antecedents of parental behaviour and the extent to which previous experience of being parented influences subsequent parenting. This is an area dominated by quantitative research. Evidence suggests the transgenerational transmission of attachment style, and modelling of behaviour has also been implicated in the process oftransmission. In addition, several mediating factors have qeen identified. However, across the spectrum of adaptive and problematic parent-child relations, there has been a failure to clarify which factors determine transgenerational continuity or discontinuity of parenting. Whilst theoretical models emphasise the reciprocal nature of parent-child relations, there has been a lack of empirical validation oftransactional models. There has been a lack of attention paid to parents' perspectives regarding factors that influence their parenting. The present study adopted a qualitative methodology in order to explore parents' and grandparents' experiences of parenting and the extent to which the parents were influenced by the way in which they were parented. A community sample was utilised. Four mother-grandmother and' one fathergrandmother white British dyads participated in individual semi-structured interviews regarding their parenting and grandparenting experiences. Ail of the parents lived with partners. Three parents had two children and two parents had three children. Each parent-grandparent pair of interviews was analysed together using interpretative methodological analysis. The superordinate theme and six sub-themes suggest the potential importance of confiding relationships in which parents have opportunities to reflect on past experiences of being parented. The extent to which this .is possible appears to influence opportunities to integrate new ideas about parenting from sources /
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