Chapter 14B - Parenting Flashcards
PARENTING
PARENTING is the biological and social process that involves raising and educating a child from birth to adulthood. It shows substantial cultural and interpersonal variability, still its primary goal is transmitting children the essentials skills to survive in a specific environment.
The relationship between parents and child is ASYMMETRICAL - especially in the first years, as the child still needs to develop the appropriate cognitive skills - yet RECIPROCAL.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is an accord that has been ratified by hundreds of countries - but the US - and that is based on 4 guiding principles:
- All children have the same rights and are of equal worth;
- Every child has the right to have his or her basic needs fulfilled;
- Every child has the right to protection from abuse and exploitation;
- Every child has the right to express his or her opinion and to be respected.
PARENTAL TASKS and LEVINE’s UNIVERSAL PARENTING GOALS
Good parents should provide:
- BASIC NEEDS, such as food, clothes and shelter;
- LOVE and support;
- Structure and ROUTINE;
- EDUCATION;
- Societal VALUES.
LEVINE’s conducted cross-cultural studies and devised a model of UNIVERSAL PARENTING GOALS. These goals are hierarchically ordered - failure to achieve the basic ones will interfere with the subsequent goals. Despite cultural variability, such universal goals are:
1) Ensuring health and survival;
2) Prepare children to economically sustain themselves as adults;
3) Value the potential of each child by focusing on her individual characteristics.
Modern CHANGES in PARENTING
In the last decades - thanks to the developments in BIRTH CONTROL - PARENTING has increasingly become a planned phenomenon. Many adults decide when they would like to become parents and consider how parenting will fit with their economic situation - there is a tendency to have fewer children and at a later age.
Studies show a positive correlation between PUBLIC SPENDING on FAMILY WELFARE and FERTILITY RATES.
STAGES of PARENTING
As children grow up, PARENTING changes and adapt to different needs and challenges:
1) In INFANCY, parenting focuses on providing routines caregiving, which allows the infant to develop the first self-regulatory skills - the formation of an attachment bond is the result of sensitive caregiving;
2) In CHILDHOOD, parenting focuses on monitoring the children’s life outside of the family and on supporting academic achievement;
3) In ADOLESCENCE, parenting focuses on promoting the adolescents’ sense of responsibility and independence - moderate conflict is an intercultural invariant.
BAUMRIND’s PARENTING classification
BAUMRIND identified 4 PARENTING STYLES, which vary on two dimensions - WARMTH and DEMANDINGNESS:
1) Children of AUTHORITATIVE PARENTING - which scores high on both dimensions - are self-confident, happy, they take responsibility and tend to do well in school.
2) Children of AUTHORITARIAN PARENTING - which scores high on demandingness and low on warmth - are well-behaved, do well in school, show low self-esteem and a lack of social skills.
3) Children of PERMISSIVE PARENTING - which scores high on warmth and low on demandingness - show impulsivity, no respect for authority, good self-esteem and good social skills.
4) UNINVOLVED PARENTING scores low on both dimensions - children show self-esteem, low school performance, lack of social skills, risk-taking behaviors.
Critiques to this model maintain that:
1) Parents can adopt different parenting styles in different situations - many parents use a combination of techniques rather than a single technique, and often each individual of a parenting couple approaches parenting differently;
2) This model lacks cross-cultural validity - authoritarian parenting does not have such negative outcomes in non-Western cultures, where discipline is highly praised;
