The family - beyond attachment Flashcards
dimensions of parenting
- expressed affection
- involvement
- conflict
- control
- monitoring
- teaching
- Security - Attachment Theory (Bowlby 1968, 1973, 1980)
Diana Baumrind (1973)
- Assessed four dimensions of parenting:
- control
- nurturance
- clarity of communication
- maturity demands
- In combination, these yield four distinct parenting styles.
Baumrinds parenting styles model
- Authoritative - high responsiveness and high demandingness
- Permissive - high responsiveness and low demandingness
- Authoritarian - high demandingness and low responsiveness
- Neglectful - low responsiveness and low demandingness
parenting styles
- Authoritarian: high on control & demandingness (assertion of parental power, and expect their orders to be obeyed without explanation), low on nurturance & responsiveness (rarely praise or show pleasure at child’s achievements)
- Children display low levels of independence and social responsibility.
- Permissive: high on love & affection, but exercise limited control, and place few demands on children
- These children tend to be aimless, immature, lack impulse control and self-reliance, as well as lacking in social responsibility and independence.
- Authoritative: high levels of warmth and achievement demands. Firm, but non-punitive control, and open communication between parents and children.
- These children are most competent: self-reliant, socially responsible, keen to achieve, cooperative
- Rejecting-neglecting: disengaged style. Parents are neither responsive nor are they demanding. They may be actively rejecting, or simply neglect their child-care responsibilities.
- Most harmful to children, resulting in low levels of cognitive and social competence.
parenting style -> adolescent school performance (Dornbusch et al, 1987)
- Data collected from 7,836 adolescents in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1985.
- Questionnaires of:
- Authoritarian parenting - E.g., in their family communication, the parents tell the youth not to argue with adults; parents are correct and should not be questioned
- Permissive parenting - E.g., hard work in school is not important to parents; there are no rules concerning watching television
- Authoritative parenting - E.g., they emphasize that everyone should help with decisions in the family; parents tell the youth to look at both sides of issues
beyond school performance
· In Western samples, authoritative parenting styles have been linked to:
- adaptive behaviours and fewer behaviour problems
- higher subjective wellbeing
- higher self-esteem and life satisfaction
- lower depression
- lower substance and alcohol (mis)use in adolescence
· To name a few….
cross-cultural differences
· predominance of WEIRD samples
· Baumrind’s categories are applicable across cultures but parents in non-Western cultures may endorse different styles of parenting (Sorkhabi, 2005)
· Recent cross-cultural review found similar results for West compared to Indian studies BUT also cultural shift occurring in Indian families from authoritarian to more authoritative parenting practices (Sahithya et al, 2019)
· Sociocultural differences within countries may be overlooked.
· Chinese American parents in US more likely to be more authoritarian, and this was related to neighbourhood disadvantage (Lee, Zhou, Main, Tao & Chen, 2014)
· Lin et al. (2022) used open-ended questions to explore ‘What is it to be an ideal parent?’ with over 8,000 mothers and over 3,500 fathers from 37 countries and attempted to determine parenting culture zones based on shared ideal-parent beliefs.
· Parenting ideals of being “loving and patient”, “caring”, “listening” or “being present” in English and French-speaking countries
· “Being responsible”, “proper-demeanour-focused” and “family-focused” in the Majority World (Africa and Asia)
· BUT a lot of variation within countries too based on parental educational level
decolonising parenting research
· Raval (2023) – coloniality in parenting (and other psychology!) research is reflected in:
- dominant groups being the focus of the research and the researchers;
- the types of research questions being asked
- the types of research methods being used
- beliefs, behaviours and practices of the dominant groups being considered the norm and desirable – “studying down” or “epistemological violence”
- Need to focus on efforts to generate and elevate local knowledge and indigenous practices; not- overgeneralise; question dominant approaches to generating knowledge; allow participants to decide what to study /what research questions are relevant; to understand parenting from a cultural resource rather than a deficit framework
current perspectives
· Research shifting towards studying parenting in terms of dimensions rather than global styles; more specificity
· Domain-specific models – parenting as multifaceted and situationally determined
· Greater emphasis on the role of child-driven processes (e.g. legitimacy beliefs; adolescent disclosure)
· Greater consideration of how the effects of parenting on children’s development are mediated or moderated by different beliefs and the different meanings behaviours have in different cultural contexts.
parent -> child effects
· Love
- Anger
child -> parent effects
· Some of this is appropriate, responsive parenting
- Adaptation to different developmental stages
· Some is about children’s growing agency
· Some is about how children’s individual temperaments and behaviour may elicit different parenting responses and strategies
systems theory (Minuchin, 1985)
· Wholeness: a system is an organised whole that is greater than the sum of its parts
· Integrity of subsystems: Systems are composed of subsystems that may be studied in their own right
· Circularity of influence: all components are mutually interdependent, change in one has implications for all
· Stability and change: systems are open to outside influences that may change it
marital functioning -> child adjustment (Stroud, Meyers, Wilson and Durbin, 2015)
· Study testing ‘spillover’ effects from marital relationship to family interactions and child adjustment
· Marital functioning (relationship)– range of self and partner-report measures and coding of conflict discussions
· Family interactions – videotaped observations of triadic (child with both parents) and dyadic (child with each parent separately) interactions
· Child adjustment – internalizing and externalizing behaviour – parent- report questionnaire Child Behaviour Checklist (Achenbach & Resorla, 2000)
functioning vs structure
· Dominant focus on two-parent heterosexual family structures
· Key findings in family research apply to different family forms
· Family functioning and relationship quality (e.g. warmth / communication) is more important for child adjustment than family structure
summary
· There is more to parenting than attachment!
· Baumrind’s Parenting Styles have been very influential
· There is a wealth of research linking parenting styles to different outcomes for children
· Important to consider cross-cultural applicability
· Bidirectionality (parent -> child effects and child -> parent effects)
· Family Systems Theory – complex interplay between parenting relationship, parent-child relationships and child adjustment
- ‘Spillover’ effects
