Parenting theories Flashcards
Nuclear families
consist of parents (including single parents) and their children. The nuclear family is a highly private structure unique to modern societies. Large migrations from rural areas into newly industrialized cities contributed to a shift from extended-family farm life to nuclear-family patterns. Close, intimate relationships between parents and children have a greater importance. For children living in a singleparent nuclear family, grandparents and other members of the extended family often appear to be an important source of support.
Extended families
consist of parent (again including single parents) and their children as well as other kin, who may include grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles and others. Less personal relationship is central to the extended family-pattern and bind children to their ancestral line. This arrangement is more common when families are experiencing economic stress, when the mother is young and single or when cultural traditions and values are consistent with extended-family living arrangements. Young economically disadvantaged minority children are particularly likely to benefit from the problem-solving and stress-reducing resources provided by the extended family.
Allocare-giving
child care and protection provided by group members other than the parents. Allocaregivers may include a child’s siblings, uncles aunts, and grandmothers, as well as non-kin such as foster children who live within the group.
Cooperative-breeding
In addition to humans, many species form networks of support in which nonparental individuals contribute resources toward rearing the young - that is, networks of allocaregivers - a practice referred to as cooperative breeding. It results not only in more numerous births and larger, healthier offspring but also in prolonged periods of childhood dependency, since offspring can take longer to mature without becoming too burdensome to their mothers, who are busy producing new offspring. Evolutionary theroists who study cooperative breeding, argues that we grow big brains because we have long childhoods, and we have long childhoods because we have families.
Levine’s three major goals shared by parents the world over
- The survival goal: to ensure that their children survive, by providing for their health and safety. This is the most urgent goal, it is not until the safety and health of their children appear secure that parents can focus on the other two goals.
- The economic goal: To ensure that their children acquire the skills and other resources needed to be economically productive adults.
- The cultural goal: to ensure that their children acquire the basic cultural values of the group.
The way parents raise their children reflects the extent to which any of these goals is threatened by the local ecology.
Nonsense-parenting
Often practiced by African American single mothers. The parenting style is characterized by a mixture of high parental control, ncluding physical restraint and punishment, and warm affection. It is used more frequently by mothers who live in urban areas, and by mothers who are better educated. Nonsense parenting is a protective response to the threats - social as well as physical - that urban life poses for children. Similarly, better-educated mothers may have higher aspirations for their children and consequently exert high levels of control over their behavior to see that they do what is needed to succeed.
Authoritative parenting pattern (Baumrind)
Parents who follow an authoritative pattern set high standards for their children’s behavior and expect them to respect established limits, but they also recognize that their children have needs and rights. They tend to be warm and also responsive, willing to consider their children’s point of view. Authoritative parents are less likely to use physical punishment and less likely to stress obedience to authority as a virtue in itself. These parents attempt to control their children by explaining the basis for their rules or decisions and by reasoning with them. Authoritative parents encourage their children to be independent but socially responsible.
Authoritarian parenting pattern (Baumrind)
The parents try to shape, control and evaluate the behavior and attitudes of their children according to a set traditional standard. They stress the importance of obedience to authority and discourage their children from engaging them in verbal give-and-take. Comparatively lacking in the expression of warmth and responsiveness, they tend to favor punitive measures to curb their chldren’s behavior whenever it conflicts with what they believe to be correct.
Children of authoritarian parents tend to lack social competence in dealing with other children. They frequently withdraw from social contact and rarely initiate social interaction. In situations of moral conflict, they tend to look to outside authority to decide what is right. These children are often characterized as lacking spontaneity and intellectual curiosity.
Permissive parenting pattern (Baumrind)
The parents exercise less explicit control over their children’s behavior, either because they believe children must learn how to behave through their own experience or because they do not take the trouble to provide discipline. They give their children a lot of leeway to determine their own schedules and activities and often consult them about family policies. Although they tend to be warm, these parents do not demand the same levels of achievement and mature behavior from their children.
Children of permissive parents tend to be relatively immature; they have difficulty controlling their impulses, accepting responsibility for social actions and acting independently.
Dynamic approach to parenting styles (Heidi Keller):
compared parenting styles in Germany and India. They found that there was significant cultural differences in the mother’s parenting goals, as well as in how they talked to and played with their babies. To a greater extent than German mothers, Indian mothers emphasized the importance of learning self-control and talked more often to their babies about other people’s feelings and needs and the social consequences of their actions. German mothers, in contrast, tended to emphasize the importance of developing self-confidence and talked more about their babies’ own internal states and personal needs.
Bell (1968) Control theory
- Two types of parental control behaviour, contingent on the child’s behaviour.
1) Upper limit control
2) Lower limit control - A criticism of the theory is that it does not account for interactions which are in equilibrium.
Upper limit control (Bell)
refers to parental behaviour designed to reduce or redirect behaviour of the child that exceeds parental standards of intensity and frequency. Upper limit control may be invoked when the child behaves in a noisy, intense or uncontrollable manner.
Lower limit control (Bell)
refers to parental behaviour designed to stimulate the child to action. Children who behave in an unusually quiescent manner may evoke lover limit control behaviour from parents.
- Interacting parents and children have hierarchically organised behaviour repertoires which are mutually dependent. Each participant is assumed to control the other participant’s behaviour by first imposing a lower and an upper limit on his or her behaviour, then undertaking compensatory behaviours to influence frequency, intensity and appropriateness of these behaviours.
- Examples of such compensatory actions on the part of the parent are disciplinary techniques but also means of stimulating the child if his or her behaviour falls below the lower limit.
