Although the influence of patterns of childrearing and parent-child relationships may be long-lived and far-reaching, it is not clear that parents and children have a similar understanding for judgment about parental behavior. An exploratory investigation was conducted to examine the degree and type of dissatisfaction with parental nurturing present in a normal achieving population. Graduate and undergraduate students at a midwestern urban university (N=197) answered questions describing their perceptions of their parents' childrearing behaviors and how they would have liked to have changed their family when they were growing up. Subjects rated their parents on a five-point scale on 16 questions representing the two critical dimensions in parenting patterns of caring--hostility/neglect and autonomy--domination/manipulation. The results revealed that 80% of respondents had some dissatisfaction with their families when they were growing up. Forty-one percent reported feeling that their emotional needs were unfilled. In comparing retrospective parent behavior scores given by subjects to their mothers and fathers, the dissatisfaction was reflected in father scores more than in mother scores. Dissatisfied subjects gave their parents lower scores in nurturing behavior and in encouraging child autonomy than did satisfied subjects. These findings have implications for educators who develop parent-participation programs. (NB)