One criticism of Diana Baumrind's classification of parenting styles is that she:

• A. Ignored the impact of parental discipline on children's emotional development.
• B. Focused primarily on middle-class, White families, limiting the generalizability of her findings to other cultural or socioeconomic groups.
• C. Emphasized the role of genetics over environmental influences in child development.
• D. Included too many parenting styles, making the classification overly complex and difficult to use.

Answer: (B)

Verified step by step guidance

1. Step 1: Understand the context of Baumrind's parenting styles, which primarily categorize parenting into authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and neglectful styles based on responsiveness and demandingness.
2. Step 2: Recognize that Baumrind's research was conducted mainly with middle-class, White families, which may limit how well her findings apply to families from different cultural or socioeconomic backgrounds.
3. Step 3: Consider common criticisms of psychological research, such as sample bias and lack of cultural diversity, which can affect the generalizability of results.
4. Step 4: Evaluate each answer choice by comparing it to known critiques of Baumrind's work, noting that the main criticism is about the narrow demographic focus rather than ignoring discipline, genetics, or complexity of classification.
5. Step 5: Conclude that the key criticism is that Baumrind's classification focused primarily on middle-class, White families, limiting the generalizability of her findings to other cultural or socioeconomic groups.