Determinants of recall of parental rearing behavior. The influence of age or loss of parents by separation or death.

In a study of 562 psychiatric inpatients and 251 healthy controls, relationships between age of proband and related life events (divorce of parents, death of a parent) and the perceived parental rearing have been investigated. The inverse relationships obtained could be explained by the higher number of divorced parents among younger subjects with negatively experienced parental rearing practices on the one hand and an idealization of the parents who had died on the other hand. In psychiatric patients these relationships and differences were more pronounced pointing to the importance of parental rearing as a vulnerability factor for mental problems during adulthood. The necessity to control for age in studies of perceived parental rearing became obvious by the present results.