W10 Parenting

Intended Learning Outcomes

• Understand the basic goals and developmental stages of parenting.

• Describe the four broad approaches to parenting and their potential effects.

• Identify some of the key factors influencing parenting style.

Goals & Stages of Parenting

Parenting

• The strategies used in child rearing, how parents consistently respond to their children.

• One of the (potential) major developmental tasks of adulthood.

• The other side of the attachment coin.

Parenting Goals

According to the APA, the basic goals of parenting across cultures are:

• Ensuring health and safety

• Preparing children for adult life

• Transmitting cultural values

Self-Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017)

• A well researched theoretical framework incorporating six mini-theories

• Basic psychological needs theory - autonomy, competence, and relatedness

• Relationships motivation theory - focus on mutually autonomy-supportive nature of close relationships

How Do Parents Develop?

• Parents have to continually adapt to changing roles

• Galinsky (1987) set out 6 stages of parenthood

  • Image-making (planning & pregnancy)

  • Nurturing (birth – 2 years)

  • Authority (toddler/pre-school)

  • Interpretive (school)

  • Interdependent (adolescence)

  • Departure (moving away)

Parenting Styles

Does Parenting Style Matter?

• Parenting style is more associated to outcomes in teenage years (subjective wellbeing, self-esteem, health, tendency to risky behaviours) than other factors, e.g., social class (Chan & Koo, 2011)

• But children are affected by many different influences, and over-focus on parenting leads to judgement, anxiety, and a tendency to overlook the child’s autonomy.

Autonomy-Supportive Parenting

• Autonomy is positively related to well-being, even in collectivist cultures (Yu et al., 2018)

• Research suggests that a parenting style which supports the child’s autonomy is associated with:

  • higher self-esteem and lower depressive symptoms during major educational transitions (Duineveld et al., 2017)

  • ability to deal with academic demands, social expectations, and school environment (Ratelle et al., 2021)

  • specifically for LGB adults, lower internalized homophobia, lower shame, anxiety, depression, and higher self-esteem (Legate et al., 2019)

Baumrind’s Parenting Styles

• Diana Baumrind (1967, 1971, 1991) extensively studied parenting styles

• She defined four broad approaches to parenting based on two intersecting dimensions:

  • Responsiveness / acceptance

  • Demandingness / control

• Concluded that this could reliably predict children’s social, emotional, and cognitive functioning

Four Parenting Styles:

• Authoritative: parents are both responsive and demanding

  • Encourage independence of children but set limits on their behavior

  • Expect age-appropriate behavior from children and use reasonable and fair punishment for misbehavior

  • Children of authoritative parents tend to be successful, well-liked, generous, and independent

• Permissive: parents are responsive to the child’s needs but not demanding of the child’s behavior

  • Nurturing and accepting of the child but have low expectations for the child’s behavior or achievements and avoid discipline

  • Children of permissive parents tend to be immature and impulsive, short-tempered, unaccustomed to rules, and insensitive to other people

• Authoritarian: parents are demanding but not responsive to the child’s needs

  • Restrictive, controlling, children are expected to follow rules without explanation or feedback

  • Aggressive punishment may be used

  • Children of authoritarian parents tend to be low in self-esteem, anxious in unfamiliar situations, and have underdeveloped or externally focused morality

• Disengaged: parents are neither responsive to the child’s needs nor demanding of their behavior

  • Emotionally unsupportive, low in warmth, generally uninvolved

  • Can be associated with addiction, parents prioritizing selves, parents’ lack of support

  • Children of disengaged parents tend to be emotionally withdrawn in social situations, attempt to provide for themselves, lack an internal sense of discipline

Influences on Parenting

• Influences on parenting are complex and interrelated

• Belsky (1984) developed the Determinants of Parenting Behavior Model:

  • Parent characteristics

  • Child characteristics

  • Contextual factors

Influences on Parenting: Parent characteristics

• Personality

• Age

• Knowledge about child development

Influences on Parenting: Child characteristics

• Temperament

• Birth order

• Gender

• Bidirectional

Influences on Parenting: Contextual Factors

• Financial situation

• Neighbourhood

• School

• Religion and politics

• Level of support

• Autonomy in childbearing decisions

• Stress

Influences: Autonomy-Supportive Parenting

• Recent research suggests that autonomy-supportive parenting is associated with:

  • prenatal autonomous childbearing (Nachoum et al., 2021)

  • parental need satisfaction (Rodriguez-Meirinhos et al., 2021)

• Controlling parenting associated with:

  • controlled prenatal motivation (Nachoum et al., 2021)

  • parental need frustration (Rodriguez-Meirinhos et al., 2021)

• BUT tempered by high levels of parental mindfulness

Parental Employment

• Parental weaving techniques (strategies for reconciling work and family demands) contribute to child well-being

• Work-family conflict impacts negatively on child health (Ohu et al., 2018)

  • Indirectly through parental self-regulatory resources

  • Self-regulatory resources matter most when job autonomy is low and/or job demands are high

Resilience

• When basic fundamental needs are met, people are better able to meet the basic fundamental needs of others (including children).

• When they are thwarted, this tends to be paid forward to others creating a vicious cycle

• But this pattern can be interrupted

Key Terms

• Authoritative

• Authoritarian

• Permissive

• Uninvolved

• Bidirectional

• Autonomy

• Basic psychological needs theory