This report is the fourth in a series of seven, all of which are concerned with coping styles of school children in the U.S.A., Brazil, Mexico, England, West Germany, Italy, and Yugoslavia. For this study, a lengthy structured interview was held with the mothers of 10 percent of the 6,400 children who had been tested in Stage I of the Cross-National Study of Coping Styles and Achievement, and with the mothers of 80 of the 800 children tested in Germany in Stage III. In half of these families, in all countries except Germany, the father was also interviewed, separately. The interview was designed to elicit the parent's description of the child's coping style and coping effectiveness, in and out of school; the parent's child-rearing practices; the parent's own coping style; and the parent's aspirations and expectations for the child, educationally and vocationally. The interview transcripts were coded, then scaled, yielding highly reliable scores for 58 variables. These parent-derived scores were then correlated with relevant Stage I measures of the children, and the mothers' scores were correlated with the fathers' scores. The dominant finding was the notable lack of validity of the parent reports. The major conclusion was that parents, in all countries, were a very unreliable source of information about the hopes, efforts, coping style, or performance of their children. (Author)