Lecture 7: Contexts of development Flashcards
The Family: child-rearing styles
Baumrind et al
- uthoritative
- Authoritarian: controlling/strict style where little autonomy given to children. Low acceptance for what they are and their abilities. View that parent isn’t coming down to level of the child and engaging with them
- Permissive: high acceptance of child, but not enough control and too much autonomy, isn’t given enough boundaries at certain ages: could be very involved in child’s life or not involved much
- Uninvolved: neglecting the child, letting them get on with things
Child rearing styles-developmental outcome
- Authoritative: High self-esteem; task persistence; moral maturity and academic achievement
- Authoritarian: Anxious; low self-esteem; lower academic achievement but fewer anti-social acts
- Permissive: disobedient; lack self-control; demanding of adults; poorer academic achievement; more anti-social behaviour
- Uninvolved: Developmental deficits across the spectrum, e.g., cognition, attachment, academic achievement, antisocial behaviour
Limitations to child-rearing styles approach
• Studies show a correlation-causality can be bi-directional
• Some researchers believe parenting to have little effect:
o Siblings show little similarity in personality/temperament, so if were be all and end all would expect more similarities
o Children more likely to be similar to peers
• Impact of wider community
Influences of family unit
- ‘myths’ around IQ and number of siblings
- larger=lower IQ
- however Size correlation disappears when only consider mothers with high IQ and SES (
Gay families
-no difference to children with heterosexual parents
Divorces families
Immediate effects
-conflict, drop in income, parental stress, behavioural problems
Long term:
-improve after adjustments around 2 years
• Negative effects minimised by
a. High father-child contact / warm father-child relationship
b. High acceptance/High consistency of discipline: try to make both homes similar in terms of how discipline and parent the children
• Key is putting the child first
Child maltreatment: risk factors
Parent Characteristics
• Mental instability; alcohol/drug abuse; beliefs about disicpline; poor education
Child Characteristics
• Premature baby; difficult temperament
Family Characteristics
• Poverty; social isolation; physical abuse of mother; poor housing; employment problems
Community
• Few resources, e.g., parks, child-care centres, community centres. Culture of violence.
Consequences
• Depression, aggressive behaviour, delinquency
Why?
• Parents modelling inappropriate behaviour
• Abuse leads to low self-esteem, & anxiety
• Repeated abuse can lead to CNS damage
Prevention of child mistreatment
Family support
• Financial
• Family tax credit/child allowance
• Home visits
• General emotional/social support; link to other community support – led to decreased violence and increased parental confidence
• When linked to ‘cognitive’ support, improvements increased substantially
• Parenting classes: parents that tend to go are the ones that recognise there is a problem, ones you want to target aren’t the ones that’ll attend
• Prosecution/Removing child from family
Peers
-sociometric techniques-ask who they like and dislike-to assess peer acceptance
4 categories:
- popular
- rejected
- controversial
- neglected
Bullying
Victims
- passive: rejected, withdrawn children
- proactive: tend to be rejected-aggressive
Bullies
- ‘controversial’
- proactive
- outcomes of aggressive acts judged positively, view aggression in a more positive manner
Reactive
hostile attribution: it’s the child equivalent of did you just spill my pint, always assumes acts negatively meant. Over attribute negative intent. Because they assume everyone else is out to get them they then bully as a reaction to how theyre perceiving people are behaving around them
