This study investigates the relationship between parents' attitudes toward their child, themselves, childrearing and their marriage, and their child's self concept. The subjects were 62 middle class preschool children (3-1/2 to 5 years old) and their parents. The instruments used in the interviews with the children and their parents were (1) the Brown IDS Self-Concept Referents Test as a measure of the child's self concept; (2) Gordon's Use of Parental Authority scale, which asks parents to describe their use of authority, as a measure of the kind and amount of authority exercised by the parents; and (3) two 6-item attitude scales as measures of parents' attitudes toward their children and themselves. It was found that mothers who advocated more control tended to have sons with higher self concepts, that both mothers and fathers of girls advocated significantly more control than mothers and fathers of boys, and that significant negative relationships were found between the boys' self concept measure and the mothers' ratings of both their boys and themselves. The discussion of the results includes comments on the possible causal relationship of marital satisfaction to use of authority and to self concept. Data are presented in three tables. (Author/BH)