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Current findings on parental influences provide more sophisticated and less deterministic explanations than did earlier theory and research on parenting. This chapter outlines key features of contemporary approaches to studies of parental socialization. The authors show how current researchers have, for some time, been identifying and responding to the very challenges pointed to by recent critics. They pay particular attention to research designs that estimate inherited and other dispositional factors, as well as experiential ones, in estimating influence. They also describe several lines of evidence that address issues of causality regarding the scope and nature of parental influences. Finally, the authors discuss responsible conclusions about the significance of parenting can be based on only the emerging body of research findings that incorporate both individual and social factors and their interrelations.