Over the weekend the Los Angeles Times ran a story about what sociologists now know about how men and women learn to parent. The new findings, presented at the American Sociological Association’s annual meetings suggest that women tend to use their own mothers as parenting role models, while men do not.

The LA Times reports…

Researchers at Ohio State University studied how often parents in the 1990s spanked their children, read to them and showed affection. Their practices were compared to mothers’.

“We were surprised that mothers seem to learn a lot about the parenting role from their own mothers, but fathers don’t follow their mothers as much,” Jonathan Vespa, a co-author of the study, said in a news release. “Although more women were entering the workforce then, they still did the lion’s share of parenting and childcare…. There was good reason to expect that fathers would have learned parenting from their mothers.”

The study did not measure whether men learned parenting from their fathers. So that is certainly possible. “We really need to learn a lot more about how fathers learn to parent,” Vespa said.

The study also reflected some big changes in parenting practices between the generations. The most recent generation of parents reads more to their kids, shows more affection and spanks less. Fathers who were spanked as children appeared especially reluctant to spank their own children.

“If parents really just learned from their own parents, we wouldn’t witness such dramatic generational shifts as were seen in this study,” Vespa said.

Read more from the LA Times.

The story was also picked up by US News & World Report today, which elaborated on the study’s findings, specifically on fathers.

“There was good reason to expect that fathers would have learned parenting from their mothers,” Vespa explained. “These fathers were growing up in the [1970s and 1980s] and received much of their parenting from their mothers. Although more women were entering the workforce then, they still did the lion’s share of parenting and child care,” he added.

“We really need to learn a lot more about how fathers learn to parent,” Vespa said.

As for generational parenting practices, the researchers found significant changes with much more reading and affection shown to children today, and less spanking.

“While parents, particularly women, are learning many parenting practices from their mothers, there [are] also a lot of new practices they are picking up from the broader culture,” Vespa said.

Read more from US News & World Report.

This study was also picked up, a week later, by the New York Times. Read here.