Family Flashcards
What are the values of parenting?
The nurture of children’s development
The promotion of their personal health and well-being
The protection of children from the risks of violence; substance abuse and economic insecurity
The instilling of a sense of personal responsibility for ones own and ones family’s future
What is the difference between family type and processes?
Type is who we are raised by but that’s less important than the processes which refers to quality of care
What are the three theories about parenting behaviour?
Diana Baumrind and Maccoby and Martin - a typology of parenting
Nancy Darling and Laurence Steinberg - parenting style as context
Rand Conger et al - parenting as a component of a process model of effects on children
What is Baumrinds view on parenting?
She believes that children experience differences in the rules parents apply and how they are enforced
Emphasis on the influence of how they are enforced on differences in children’s development
Emphasises an overarching PARENT STYLE instead of parenting behaviours
What are parenting styles?
Parent behaviours and attitudes that set the emotional climate of parent-child interactions
How did Maccoby and Martin expand Baumrind’s theory?
Describe the styles as a continuum and that they converge on two dimensions :
1) emotional responsiveness
2) control/demandingness
What is Darling and Steinberg’s parenting style as context theory?
Parenting style affects children’s development by:
> the goals toward which socialisation is directed
> the parenting practices used by parents to attain goals
> the parenting style or emotional climate within which socialisation occurs.
Goals and values orient a parents behaviour towards their child, for example they might want them to be independent when they leave or kind and selfless.
The extent to which a parent is warm and responsive to their child will in turn influence their willingness to be socialised by them in the future.
Warmth and responsiveness will also interact with the parents behaviour and the adolescents outcome.
Family structure
The number of people and the relationships among the people living in a household
Those with biggest influence on child have most contact, financially support and raise the child
Changes can be continuous and gradual - but sudden changes can occur e.g death, divorce or birth
Changes in family structure in US
Percent whose immediate family are biological has rapidly decreased
First time parents a re older on average (advantages are better education, more financially stable, more mature and more likely to be planned)
More children living with grandchildren - tend to be poorer, more old fashioned parenting style
Family sizes are smaller now
More fluid - increase in divorce
More transitions for children - affects development
Same sex parents
Research consistently shows that children of same sex parents are no different to those of heterosexual parents, including sexual orientation and the degree to which their behaviour is gender-typed.
Divorced parents impact on child development
Child most likely live with one parent that’s recently single - financial strain and reduced quality time
Stress placed on parent - less warmth and affection
Might move to new neighbourhood and school - disruption of routine
Parental conflict - if reduces after divorce may be beneficial
Increased risk but most children don’t suffer greatly
Cherlin et al (1991)
Conducted a US and UK longitudinal study and found that children of divorce between 7 and 11 had more behavioural problems and lower academic attainment but once they accounted for behaviour problems, academic achievement and family distress before divorce the effect of divorce were non significant.
Step parents - impact on child development
Simple structure or complex/blended
Can be stressful and lead to adjustment issues - depends on relationship/bond formed
Can have close relationship - best when everyone gets along
On average there’s greater conflict between stepparents and children than biological (parent investment hypothesis)
Attitude of noncustodial parent is very influential
Family dynamics
The way in which family members interact through various relationships is known as family dynamics.
This determines how well the family functions in general and how this contributes to the child’s development.
Socialisation
The process through which children acquire the values, standards, skills, knowledge and behaviours that are regarded as appropriate for their present and future roles in their particular culture.
Parents often have long-term goals in mind when socialising children e.g wanting them to be honest or hardworking etc.
Discipline
Set of strategies and behaviours parents use to teach children how to behave appropriately and is only effective if the child stops the behaviour and learns the desired behvaiour through internalisation.
To teach empathy and consequences other-oriented induction is most commonly used emphasising the hurt caused to another person.
Internalisation works best when the correct amount of psychological pressure is placed on the child, too little and they discount parents message and too much and they stop the behvaiour only in fear of being caught by parents
Punishment
A negative stimulus that follows a behaviour to reduce likelihood of reoccurrence.
There are many forms such as time outs, yelling, withdrawing affection, but many studies demonstrate they apply too much psychological pressure and fail to cause internalisation.
Parenting style and key dimensions
Refers to the parenting behaviours and attitudes that set the emotional climate in regard to parent-child interactions, such as parental responsiveness an demandingness.
Two key dimensions are the degree of parental warmth and responsiveness and the degree of parental control (monitoring and managing behaviour) and demandingness (expectation of conformance)
What are Baumrind’s 4 parenting styles?
Authoritative – (do as I ask) high in demandingness and supportiveness (warm), set clear standards and limits, firm with enforcing them but allow considerable freedom within limits and are attentive and responsive to their needs and respect their perspectives. Measured and consistent in discipline.
Authoritarian – (do as I say) high in demandingness but low in supportiveness, non-responsive to needs and force demands through power and threats. They are oriented toward obedience and expect unquestioned compliance.
Permissive – (do what you want) high in responsiveness but low in demandingness. Responsive to needs but do not require them to act appropriately.
Uninvolved – (I don’t care what you do) low in both demandingness and responsiveness, generally disengaged.
Outcomes of parenting styles
Children of authoritative parents tend to be competent, independent, self-assured, popular with peers, and low in antisocial behaviour.
The children of authoritarian parents tend to be low in social and academic competence, unhappy, unfriendly and low in self- confidence.
Children of permissive parents tend to be impulsive, and low in social achievement. As adolescents they engage more in misconduct and drug use.
Children of uninvolved parents haven’t got a good internal model of relationship functioning and tend to have problems with peer relationships, exhibit antisocial behaviour etc.
Rutter (2010)
States we need to recognise the interplay between inner psychological stressors and external social circumstances.
We also must remember that parents are people and any understanding of parenting needs to take into account factors that facilitate or interfere with good parenting.
Conger et al (1994)
Studied effects of a mid western farming crisis in which the price of wheat crashed which thousands of families relied on and so were plunged into an economic crisis.
It proved difficult to link how this resulted in child adjustment issues empirically.
He found parents were depressed due to economic pressure which results in limited capacity to have a meaningful relationship as you lack the emotional resources which can cause marital conflict and cause family problems that impact the child.
This demonstrates you cannot protect a family from external stressors.
Differences in mother and father interactions with their children
Fathers are more involved now than in the past
Mothers still tend to spend more time (might be due to laws) and offer more physical and emotional care and fathers play more
Cultural differences - Sweden, Malaysia and India fathers reported less playing
Childs influence on parenting
Children who are disobedient, angry our challenging make it more difficult for parents to use an authoritative style
Cause coercive cycles - child’s behaviour elicits frustration in parents leading to punishments that escalate behaviour
Bidirectional relationships
Sibling relationship
Playmates and sources of support, instruction, caregiving and security
Can be peer like or parent like
Can also be rivals = conflict
Reduced if treated equally
Pastorelli et al (2016)
Found that mothers and children in several different countries reported high levels of positive discipline e.g inductive reasoning suggesting warm and positive parenting in preferred across cultures. There are clear similarities in teaching
about good and bad behaviour and rates of
love withdrawal; however there are some clear cross country
differences in how often parents yell or scold,
threaten punishment, take away privileges and use physical punishment (Gershoff et al. 2010).
Cultural differences in parenting
Several studies have shown that African American’s spank their children more than European.
There are some differences between the positive impact on the child’s development of different parenting styles for example in China there is a weaker positive effect of authoritative parenting compared to European and even show more authoritarian styles as they believe child owe unquestioned obedience.
Economic context
Low income children face a range of material hardship and get less quality time with parents
Parents are more stressed
Tend to live in a more dangerous neighbourhood- fear for safety
Equifinality
The phenomenon that there is more than a single pathway to maladaptive outcomes.
E.g high income children whose parents spend less time with them
Childcare
Increase in mothers working leads to demand for childcare
Controversy - attachment theory (disrupts formation of bonds)
Experiences vary depending on child and quality fo care
Can be good for learning social skills but can also lead to imitation of problem behaviours (social learning theory principle)
Averdijk et al (2012) found association between quantity of time spent i day care and problems at follow up, its important to note quality of care may vary greatly between different places.
Interplay between maternal sensitivity and quality of day care
Gomajee et al (2018)
Followed 1428 children from pregnancy to age 8 and divided them into three groups; child-minder, centre-based childcare and informal childcare (parents/grandparents/friends).
The study is longitudinal and follows a good proportion of lifespan but is specific to childcare in France.
Findings indicated that compared with children from informal care those who attended centre-based childcare has a lower likelihood of having high level of emotional symptoms, peer relationship problems and low prosocial behaviours.
Those who were looked after by a child-minder had a higher likelihood of following a high trajectory of conduct problems. Attendance of centre based childcare for more than 1 year was especially protective of high levels of emotional, peer related difficulties and low prosocial behaviour.
