Children's help seeking: The role of parenting

Ninety-nine families with a school-age child participated in this study, aimed at analysing the relationship between parenting and children's help seeking. The parenting data included self-reports on parents' child-rearing principles and behavioural observations during parent–child interactions. To test help seeking, the children were placed in a problem-solving situation and had the opportunity to seek help from the experimenter. For girls, higher levels of parental nurturance were linked to longer thinking times preceding help seeking and to lessened capacity to reuse previously received help. For boys, higher levels of fathers' emotional warmth were related to higher rates of irrelevant help seeking.