Influences of Parental Networks on Child Development

In our paper, Brassard and I took care to distinguish the indirect from the direct influences

of the parents' network on the development of the child. Indirect influences are those that affect

characteristics of parents, who in turn affect the child through their own childrearing

attitudes and behaviors. Direct influences involve face-to-face contact between parent's network

member and child, and changes in the child that occur as a function of that contact.

Only touched upon briefly in the article were the personal networks of the children themselves.

These, we felt, could be expected in the preschool years to overlap

heavily with the networks of their parents, but would in all probability become