Determinants of Parenting Flashcards
What did Crouter et al., 2001 found about overwork and overload?
About the way a parents working life may spill over into family life, and in particular, parenting. 197 dual-earner families with 2 target siblings. Split low work hours (50< hours), medium (51-60 hours), and high (60 +). Families interviewed in homes and asked about daily activities during 7 nightly phone calls. Marital love, perspective taking, & marital conflict all affected by role overload but not work hours. Quantity of work wasn’t making a difference to marital relationships, it was quality of time that was important.
Father-adolescent relationship - time spent with adolescents was unaffected. Fathers less accepting, & relationships characterised by less effective perspective-taking in context of high work hours and high role overload. Less good quality father-adolescent relationships when men were feeling both overloaded and having high work hours.
What is Belsky’s Process Model (Belsky, 1984)?
Proposed parental quality will be determined by - parental personal resources (e.g. mental health, attachment history, what education you have received), children’s characteristics (how children elicit behaviours from their parents, child temperament), contextual stress and support (environment, work load, economic circumstances, social network of support). Proposed parental personal resources were the most important, then contextual support, then children’s characteristics.
What is supportive evidence of Belsky’s Process Model (parental contribution)?
Younger, and especially teenage mothers, less sensitive parenting.
Depressed mothers more disruptive and hostile, less able to regulate their own emotions and therefore less able to be an appropriate parent to their child.
Inter-generational transmission of child abuse - if had a secure attachment with your own parent, more likely to develop this same attachment with your own children.
What is supportive evidence of Belsky’s Process Model (child contribution)?
Difficult temperament associated with less optimal parenting, boys are more at risk of this. More likely to be the recipients of harsh discipline from their parents. This starts to become apparent as the child gets older - although at first parental personal resources may be more prominent when the child is younger, child contribution becomes more important as the child gets older.
What is supportive evidence of Belsky’s Process Model (contextual factors)?
Marital relationship is principle support system for parents - the whole model is mainly about mother quality, as opposed to overall parental quality. Social network is also beneficial. Matenral employment and especially satisfaction with that status affects child rearing. Not so much whether a mother works or how many hours she works that is predictive of parent child quality, but whether she is satisfied with her working situation.
What are determinants of father-child attachment security?
Belsky, 1996 - 126 first-born sons and their fathers (overall, 60% secure). Looking at attachment security. Examined father characteristics, infant attributes, and social-contextual factors at 10 months and SS was conducted 3 months later. Fathers’ personality, the marital relationship, and work-family interface all influenced attachment security in expected ways. Found that infant temperament was not predictive of attachment security.
What did Bluestone and Tamis-LeMonda, 1999 find?
114 African American mother of children 5-12 years, working and middle-class sample. 29% married. Looking at child-cantered parenting (e.g. being responsive). Interviewed via phone. Assessed by child-centred parenting, letting situation go, and reasoning. Some prediction e.g. of negative childrearing history predicting PDI, but this was not overwhelming – shows that these factors are not overwhelming. Parental mental health was the biggest predictor.
What did Atzaba-Poria and Pike, 2008 find?
125 families (English and Indian origin). Home visits in West London. Parenting measured via home observations and semi-structured interviews. Found more warmth toward girls than boys (modest not overwhelming effect size), children with a more difficult temperament received more harsh parenting. For English fathers marital quality didn’t seem to make a difference, if stressed at work it lead to more strict parenting, lower SES was a moderate/substantial risk factor for fathers using harsh discipline. For Indian fathers, marital relationship was more of a protective factor for harsh discipline (better marital relationship), job spillover was not related, lower SES was also not related.
What is the nature of nurture in determinants of parenting?
“Environmental” measures can be treated as phenotypes in genetic research. Can find genetic influence - this can elicit different types of parenting. If genetic influence is found, there are 3 possible explanations: self-report measures may be genetically “biased”, genetic factors may influence environmental risk exposure, the so-called environmental measure may be truly influenced by genetic factors.
What did Rowe’s pioneering studies find?
Looked at affective components (how warm/critical parent was) and control. Rowe found that the affective component of parenting was substantially heritable, but control was not. This means that mothers of fraternal twins may be more warm and less critical to one twin and not the other, but control is similar across both twins. Whereas, parents of identical twins are treated in very similar ways for both affective side and control side. This therefore suggests that the affective side is heritable. Control, however, is not elicited by genetics. Subsequent studies have replicated these results, across age, and using “objective” measures of parenting.
What did Plomin, Reiss, Hetherington, and Howe 1994 find?
Sample of 720 sibling pairs in the US with two siblings between 10-18 years. Extensive measures of parenting made by the parents and adolescents: positivity, negativity, and control. Results for mothers and fathers very similar. Found there was evidence of moderate genetic influence, some shared environment, and lots of non-shared environment. Children reporting about their parents was a unique perspective not shared by their sibling. All inferred by how genetically similar the children were, and how similar the parenting was that they received. When mothers asked about their parenting, they report much more consistency across their children. Parents also say they are identical in terms of control, no genetic influence – however, genetic influence was found.
What are implications of this research?
Finding genetic influence is strong evidence for “child effects,” or in Belsky’s model, child characteristics being an important determinant of parenting. This is in terms of normative parenting, in terms of neglect and violence, there is no genetic component. Even when find child characteristics are predictive of parenting, this does not mean the children are responsible for the parenting they receive. All of this was based on child-based designs. What if a twin study of parents showed genetic influence?
What did Smith (2010) find - reading
Supportive and controlling parenting and child responsiveness observed during 2 free-play sessions with toddlers. Mothers completed questionnaires about personality and contextual sources of stress and support. Found more maternal supportive behaviours were predicted by higher levels of child social responsiveness. More maternal control was associated with lower SES, more work outside home, more extraversion, more neuroticism. Therefore, examining how multiple determinants of parenting relate to different aspects of parenting behaviour is necessary.
What did Capaldi, Pears, Kerr, and Owen (2007) find? - reading
Focused on fathers’ negative discipline practices with children. Found men’s poor and harsh discipline practices were predicted by partners’ problem behaviour and negative discipline practices.
