Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Parental Leadership: The Mary Poppins Metaphor, Brad Van Alstyne

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Existing theories on leadership are usually based on efforts we are familiar with in which leaders are easily defined (work, war, sports, etc). Little analysis to date has been placed on the role of parents as leaders outside of the social sciences where the focus of the research is usually an offshoot of psychology or childhood development. The parent as leader is a unique focus in that there are several qualities of the parent role that are quite different from that of the typical supervisory roles we normally discuss, while at the same time it would be foolish to think …