Determinants of Parenting

Question 1

Crouter et al - overwork and overload

Answer 1

Looked at how work hours and role overload affect marital relationship and the father-adolescent relationship

Method - 197 dual earner families with 2 target siblings 10-16 year olds. Either low work hours, medium or high
Families interviewed in their home and asked about daily activities during 7 nightly phone calls

Results:
martial relationship - less time spent with partner for high work group, marital love, perspective taking and martial conflict all affected by role overload by not work hours
father-adolescent relationship - time spent unaffected, fathers less accepting and relationship characterised by less effective perspective taking but only when high work hours and high role overload - no impact of fathers working a lot on its own

Question 2

What is role overload?

Answer 2

When you can’t get your work out of your head, so it impacts relationships
This is more important than number of hours worked

Question 3

What is Belsky’s process model?

Answer 3

Using child abuse literature, Belsky proposed that parental quality will be determined by:
Parental personal resources - education they had
Childs charactertistics - e.g. temperament
Contextual stress and support - SES

Question 4

What did supportive evidence show for parental contribution?

Answer 4

Younger and teenager mothers - less sensitive parenting
Depressed mothers - more disruptive and hostile
Intergenerational transmission of child abuse - relationship with parent impacts your own relationship with spouse

Question 5

What did supportive evidence show for child contribution?

Answer 5

Difficult temperament associated with less optimal parenting - boys more at risk of harsh parenting

Question 6

What did supportive evidence show for contextual factors?

Answer 6

Marital relationship is a principle support system for parents
Social network also beneficial
Maternal employment and satisfaction with job esp - affects child rearing
Fathers role has changed - used to be to bring home money

Question 7

What factor did Belsky believe was most important?

Answer 7

Parental contribution
Contextual factors
Child contribution

It is a buffered system, things don’t have to be perfect to have a good parent child relationship

Question 8

Do the factors which are most important in Belsky’s model change as children get older?

Answer 8

Yes - parents personal characteristics, especially mental health is very important for young children

As children get older to adolescence, the Childs own characteristics become more important in the parent child dynamic

Question 9

What did Belsky find in 1966?

Answer 9

Looked at 126 first born sons and their fathers - most secue
Examined father characteristics, infant attributes and social context factors at 10 mothers, and then 3 months later
Fathers personality, martial relationship and work interface all influenced attachment security in expected ways
Infant temperament was not related to secure attachment - this varies from study to study

Question 10

What did Bluestone and Tamis-LeMonda find?

Answer 10

114 African American mothers of children 5-12 years, working and m/c sample, 29% married
mothers interviewed
Parenting dimensions inventory (PDI):
child centred parenting
letting situation go 
reasoning 

Associations between parenting correlates (maternal education, SES, depression, childrearing) and child centred parenting, letting situation go and reasoning all modest to moderate - risk factors, not determinisitc

Maternal depression important, look after yourself first (more depressed = less child centres parenting, less reasoning)

Question 11

What is the PDI?

Answer 11

Parenting dimensions inventory (PDI):
child centred parenting - uses reasoning, non restrictive attitude, physical punishment
letting situation go - response to misbehaviour
reasoning - discipline response to misbehaviour

Question 12

Comparing English and Indian families - Pike and Poria, 2008

Answer 12

125 families with children, home visits in children
Wanted to see differences in English and Indian families
Parenting measured via home observations (Warmth) and semi-structured interviews (harsh discipline). Also looked at contextual factors (marriage, job spillover and SES) and child factors (gender, emotionality)

Results: modest effects, temperament of child difficult receiving less warmth. no differences between English and Indian apart from on parental harsh discipline.
English fathers - for martial relationship there was no difference. But for job spillover and SES, there is a strong correlation, risk factor for father using harsh parenting (More SES, less harsh)
Indian fathers - marital relationship is a protective factor for Indian fathers, so the better the relationship, the less harsh discipline. But job spillover and SES didn’t have an impact

Question 13

Is there a difference in smacking children from 10 years ago?

Answer 13

10 years ago people would admit to smacking their children whereas now they wouldn’t

Question 14

What did Schneider believe?

Answer 14

Cross-cultural research needs to be done more, because it is very important - society and norms have changed very much, so need to be careful with research, things that used to be important are no longer important

Question 15

What does nature of nurture refer too?

Answer 15

Environmental measures can be treated as phenotypes in genetic research - for example, harsh discipline and warmth from parents could be caused by children genetic contribution eliciting different types of parenting

Question 16

If genetic influence is found, what are the explanations?

Answer 16

Self report measures are genetically biased
Genetic factors influence environmental risk exposure (people attracted to drama by genes, so expose themselves to more drama)
The environmental measure by be truly influenced by genetic factors

Question 17

Rowe - affective and controlling parenting

Answer 17

Adolescent twin - questionnaires about what mum and dad are like
Found that affective component of parenting was heritable but control was not

If ask non identical twins about parents, parents might be less warm to one and more warm to another, but control is similar across children

If ask identical twins, they say they are treated the same in affective and control - shows the affective component is heritable

Genetic component of make up elicits more harsh critical parenting, but they are consistent in their control

Question 18

Plomin et al - sample of siblings

Answer 18

720 siblings, twins, full siblings half siblings, unrelated siblings
Measures of parenting made by the parents and adolescents (positivity, negativity and control)

Teenage report on mother - evidence of moderate genetic influence, some shared environment but mostly non shared environment - everything they reported unique to self, not shared by sibling

When mothers asked about parenting - report more consistency, say they are positive with both children, but the children report distinctive differences. Mothers don’t treat them differently, but when they do, it reflects genetic propensities

Question 19

Implications of genetic influence

Answer 19

Strong evidence for genetic effects being an important determinant of parenting - talking about normative parenting though, can’t blame victims, predicts parenting but not responsible for the parenting they receive, parents are responsible

If a twin study of parents showed genetic influence, the implication is that it reflects the parental personal resources

Question 20

What did Smith et al look at?

Answer 20

Multiple determinants of parenting: predicting individual differences in maternal parenting behaviour with toddlers - looked at parent personality, contextual source of stress and support and child effects to individual differences in maternal parenting

Question 21

What did smith et al find?

Answer 21

Neuroticism was negatively related to maternal supportive behaviour and positively associated with maternal controlling behaviour
More maternal social support = more support
More maternal supportive behaviours was predicted by higher levels of child social responsiveness
More maternal control was associated with lower SES, more work outside the home, more extraversion
Shows you need to examine multiple determinants of parenting relating to different aspects of parenting

Question 22

Smith et al: sample and measures

Answer 22

140 mothers and toddlers, aged between 30 and 36 months
Middle class, highly educated
Videotaped two mother child interactions which were coded

Question 23

Smith et al: which determinants were most highly correlated with one another? and which determinants correlated with maternal supportive behaviour?

Answer 23

Neuroticism with aggreeableess

Maternal supportive behaviour:
neuroticism, social support, child responsiveness

Question 24

What did Capaldi et al look at?

Answer 24

Intergenerational and partner influences on fathers negative discipline
Cross generational study of at risk men, focussed on fathers negative discipline with their 2/3 year olds

Question 25

What did Capaldi et al find?

Answer 25

Mens poor and harsh discipline practises were predicted by partners problem behaviour (substance use and antisocial behaviour) and negative discipline practises and poor discipline experienced in the family of origin

Use of poor and harsh disciplines in G1 was associated with lower levels of SES in G2 and with the mens risk behaviour assessed later on

Mothers negative discipline practises were associated with their own risky behaviour but not with fathers, whereas fathers negative discipline was associated with both their own and their parents risk behaviour

Strongest correlate of fathers poor and harsh discipline was mothers risk behaviour