20 RECONSTRUCTING COMMON SENSE Metaphors of Bidirectionality in Parent-Child Relations LEON KUCZYNSKI SUSAN LOLLIS YUIKO KOGUCHI The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking. It is for this reason that the critical thinking of the physicist cannot possibly be restricted to the examination of concepts of his own specific field. He cannot proceed without considering critically a much more difficult problem, the problem of analysing the nature of everyday thinking. Albert Einstein (1936) Contemporary research in parent-child rela- tions is increasingly guided by bilateral and relational models of parent-child relationships (Kuczynski, Chapter 1, this volume; Lollis & Kuczynski, 1997). Some propositions, such as bidirectional causality and the active agency of children, are so well accepted that they have achieved the status of self-obvious assertions. Longstanding researchers in the field, however, will remember a time, dominated by unidirec- tional models of socialization, when these assumptions were not so obvious. Early asser- tions that influence is inherently bidirectional (Sears, 1951), that children cognitively con- struct their knowledge (Piaget), that the infant shapes the child-rearing practices of the parents (Rheingold, 1969), that there is an inescapable effect of children on associations between parental “antecedents” and “child outcomes” (Bell, 1968), and that parent-child relationships were both a product of and a context for parent- child interactions (Hinde, 1979) were all ini- tially difficult to assimilate and continue to be difficult to implement in empirical research (Collins, Maccoby, Steinberg, Hetherington, & Bornstein, 2000). Authors’ Note: Preparation of this chapter was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. 421 20-Kuczynski.qxd 01-11-02 4:53 PM Page 421