Lecture 5: Family Contexts

Question 1

family [3]

Answer 1

• A social unit, usually composed of adult spouses and their children.
• Share economic, social, and emotional rights and responsibilities.
• Sense of commitment and identification.

Question 2

function of families [4]

Answer 2

• Social contact
• Interpersonal bonds; intense (usually positive/high levels of all emotions) and enduring.
• Shared past (memories) and future (expectations).
• Standard we use for judging and comparing against future relationships.

Question 3

family systems [6]

Answer 3

• Extends beyond moms, dads, and siblings.
• Interdependent members and subsystems (e.g. mother-child, sibling-sibling).
• System for socialization: parents teach children the different standards of behaviour, attitudes, motivations, etc. that are considered socially appropriate.
• 1990s: Bidirectional influences and multidirectional pathways; i.e. different ways for members of families to influence one another.
• Direct influences; e.g. praise, criticism, talking back influences how parents view and treat their kids.
• Indirect influences; e.g. father limits quality of interaction between mother and child by being emotionally dependent on mother, taking away resources from the child.

Question 4

functional vs. dysfunctional family systems [5]

Answer 4

• Well-functioning families: good spousal and parent-child relationship, supportive parents, cooperative and responsible children.
  
  • Doesn’t mean no conflict, but able to overcome conflict and adapt to social and environmental stressors.
• Dysfunctional families: unhappy marriage, irritable parents, antisocial children.
• Difficult to change once dysfunctional.
  
  • Dysfunctional families marked by inability to adapt, making them very resistant to change.

Question 5

family typologies [5]

Answer 5

• Largely based on intimacy, autonomy, warmth, discord.

1. Cohesive: balance between autonomy and intimacy, warmth and lack of discord, offer children choices, explain why things happen (not just “because I said so”).
2. Disengaged: lacking intimacy, low warmth, withdrawal from one anther, low autonomy, disorganized interactions heavy in negativity and discord, little support and acceptance.
3. Enmeshed: moderate intimacy, too much dependency and low autonomy, no clear boundaries among members about what’s appropriate, intrusive parenting, hostility among members, discord between married couple.
4. Authoritarian: low intimacy and autonomy, expectations that children should obey parents (much like authoritarian parenting).

Question 6

effects of parental conflict [8]

Answer 6

• Direct effects:
  
  • Intense and destructive: insecurity, depression, anxiety, behaviour problems, relationship problems, poor emotion regulation.
    
    • Less likely to make friends at school, modelling destructive behaviour from parents.
• Indirect effects:
  
  • Child rearing practices affect child’s development.
  • Sometimes parents aren’t in agreement about parenting styles, leads to different affects on child.
• Parenting styles (angry, intrusive) and reciprocal links;
  
  • If one parent is angry and intrusive and one isn’t, over time the child will like the other parent more and depend on them more, leading to even more conflict between two parents.

Question 7

family distress model [5]

Answer 7

• Proposes that family distress is highly correlated to SES.
  
  • Lower SES is related to negative parenting style, marital discord, harsher discipline, reduced higher level language use, limited emotional language use.
• Economic disadvantage impacts child development; psychological distress and disinvolved parenting.
• Psychological distress in parents: worrying about whether they can provide for their children; children worrying about being punished if their parents are too stressed.
• Family-systems oriented perspective; stress from parents leads to marital discord, which then leads to more conflict.

Question 8

impact of new baby on families [5]

Answer 8

• Shift toward traditional division of labour?
• Often accompanied by decreased marital satisfaction.
  
  • Men not feeling taken care of by their wives.
  • Women dealing with mental and physical aftermath of birth, not being able to return to work lowers self-efficacy.
• If the baby has a difficult temperament, exacerbates the effect of decreased marital satisfaction.

Question 9

Lindbolm et al. (2014) [8]

(hint: family typologies and newborns)

Answer 9

• Measured ways different family typologies responded to newborns; completed surveys during pregnancy, 7 months after birth, and 12 months after birth.
• Cohesive families (35%): experience increased intimacy and autonomy, positive growth after birth of baby.
• Disengaged families (5%): experience generally decreased intimacy and autonomy, higher levels of stress, almost exacerbated levels of arousal and responses to stress.
• Enmeshed families (11%): decreases in intimacy.
• Authoritarian families (14%): stronger boundaries between family members and clarified roles, stabilized the system.
• Other categories of family typologies:
  
  • Escalating crisis families (4%): more levels of conflict between parents that spend a shorter amount of time together.
  • Discrepant families (15%): loss of intimacy between parents, fathers felt more negative than mothers, more distancing in relationship.

Question 10

Hollenstein et al. (2016) [7]

(hint: triad model)

Answer 10

• Triadic model; focusses on system between mother, father, and child (discounting sibling effects).
• Measured over 100 children, large portion of whom were depressed, in problem solving situations:
  
  • Diversity (range of emotions)
  • Flexibility (number of changes in affect)
  • Unpredictability in interactions between triads
  • Discrepant stress: how many times there were 3 different affective states at once between triad
  • Matchen states: identical affective states between triad.
• Families with depressed children demonstrated more diversity, higher unpredictability, longer disrepant durations, and shorter matched states.
  
  • Could be because depressed children tend to have muted reactions and emotions, meaning the child would have different reactions from parents and parents would be trying to socialize child to react in proper ways.

Question 11

functions of socialization [3]

Answer 11

• Control, regulate; well-socialized kids will be able to control their reactions and regulate their emotions.
• Promote growth; develop skills in the child’s zone of proximal development (things they develop with some guidance).
• Uphold social order; ultimate goal is to help children internalize the attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviours of the larger society.

Question 12

learning theory of socialization [7]

Answer 12

• Child learns through reinforcement by parent or environment.
• Parenting practices more important than parenting style.
• Examples of parenting practices:
  
  • Control; not characterizing as authoritarian, just how much control there is
  • Physical punishment
  • Sanctions
  • Setting rules/failure to enforce rules

Question 13

Sears, Maccoby, & Levins (1957) [10]

(hint: learning theory)

Answer 13

• Identified seven patterns of parenting practices:

1. Permisiveness/strictness
2. Family adjustment (to pregnancy)
3. Relationship warmth
4. Responsible child-training orientation; tendency for mother to be attentive and want to train/teach/socialize the child
5. Aggressiveness/punitiveness
6. Perception of husband; not really a practice, but came up a lot in interviews and was related to aggression
7. Orientation toward child well-being

• However, researchers only looked at these factors separately and not in relation to one another.
  
  • No way of knowing whether there are additive effects or how they could be unrelated to one another (because they definitely should be).

Question 14

psychodynamic model of socialization [7]

Answer 14

• Emphasizes practices (vs. learning theory, which stresses parenting styles)
• Parent-child relationship; includes personality, psychosexual and psychosocial development
• Constrain instincts and encourage self-control
• Emphasis on unidirectional parent to child influence
  
  • Feelings → practices (may mean something different to parent and child) → meaning → different impacts on parent-child relationship based on interpretations
• Grouping of parenting practices
• Bridge gap between attitudes and behaviours

Question 15

Schaefer (1959): circumplex model [4]

Answer 15

• Two-dimensional, circular model
• Based on axis of autonomy vs. control and love vs. hostility
• Different dimensins of feelings from parents interact to form different parenting styles

Question 16

two dimensional approach to socialization [4]

Answer 16

• What we use today
• Focus on warmth (love vs. hostility) and control (autonomy vs. control) as two central styles of what parenting can look like
• Produce consistent results over time

Question 17

authoritative parenting [4]

Answer 17

• Controlling but flexible
• Warm, responsive, supportive
• Democratic: solicits opinions, offers alternatives (negotiation)
• Expects mature, age-appropriate behaviour; changes expectations depending on age of child

Question 18

authoritarian parenting [5]

Answer 18

• Controlling and restrictive
• Little warmth and involvement
• Lacks sensitivity
• Harsh, punitive: confronts child, forceful tactics
• View of child as primitive, dominated by antisocial impulse; why they have to control the child so much

Question 19

permissive parenting [5]

Answer 19

• Little control: free expression of impulses
• Moderate warmth, high responsiveness
• Poor monitoring, inconsistent discipline; no communicated rules and lack of follow through with punishment
  
  • Will ignore antisocial behaviours of children
• Few demands, yielding to coercion from the child, hides anger

Question 20

uninvovled parenting [4]

Answer 20

• Low control, low responsiveness
• Self-gratification is priority, purses at expense of child (e.g. substance abuse problems)
• Little monitoring: minimize costs (time, effort, money spent on child)
• Psychological issues; internalizing problems, emotional needs, etc.

Question 21

Baumrind (1967): types of child outcomes [4]

Answer 21

• Authoritative parents: energetic-friendly; social/cognitive competence
• Authoritarian parents: conflicted-irritable; average competence, fearful, moody
• Permissive parents: impulsive-aggressive; low competence, aggressive
• Uninvolved/neglectful parents: similar to impulse-aggressive but with added noncompliance and emotional volatility

Question 22

Deci & Ryan (2000): self-determination theory [6]

Answer 22

• Seeks to understand human motivation for behaviour
• Internalization of values important to socialization
• Relatedness to agent; more internalization of values from family and close friends
• Developmental competance; what age am I and should I know better?
• Sense of autonomy; actually being given autonomy to internalize vs. always being forced to do it.
• Behaviours depend on extent to which the value behind the behaviour is internalized by the individual (i.e. acting of own volition)

Question 23

four different types of internalization [9]

Answer 23

• Research has found that the more external motivation you have to act according to society’s rules, the less self-esteem you have, because you don’t have the autonomy and the authority to develop these thoughts as your own
• External: comply for external reasons (rule, reward, punishment)
• Introjected: comply for seeking approval
  
  • Different from seeking reward because you don’t necessarily expect explicit approval, more like social acceptance
• Identified: comply because personally important
  
  • Not yet “I’m a person who doesn’t hit” but “it’s important that I don’t hit”
  • Isn’t my own value completely/doesn’t come naturally yet, but is important to me
• Integrated: behave in line with set of values
  
  • No longer just complying, comes naturally to you

Question 24

internalization and parenting style [6]

Answer 24

• Parenting style creates emotional context, which determines child’s willingness to be socialized
• Authoritative parenting → high internalization of values
• Direct route; clearly communicating with child
  
  • Expressing goals and values they want to socialize their children in
  • Also often demonstrate value-consistent behaviour, providing more direct instruction for child
• Indirect route; how child acts at T1 influences parent behaviour at T1 then T2, influences how child acts at T2, etc.

Question 25

parenting dimensions: **responsiveness to distress** [3]

Answer 25

* How the parent reacts when child is upset * Insensitive vs. sensitive * Relations to emotion and social competence

Question 26

parenting dimensions: **warmth** [2]

Answer 26

* Expression of positive affect * Relation to responsiveness, attachment security

Question 27

parenting dimensions: **control** [6]

Answer 27

* **Psychological**; guilt induction, withdrawing love, insensitive responses to the child * Related to internalizing problems (e.g. anxiety depression), low self-esteem and lack of perceived control; don’t know that they can be loved * **Behavioural**; reasonable rules (e.g. setting curfew and enforcing it strictly, monitoring what friends they have * Usually doesn’t threaten the child’s autonomy, unless it gets to a point of doing things like pulling them out of school * **Physical**; negative relationship between physical control and aggression will depend on how bad the physical punishment is * Children tend to be more aggressive; learned through mirroring

Question 28

**parenting dimensions and cultural context** [3]

Answer 28

* e.g. Physical control in African American families; doesn’t have many negative effects because it’s seen as more normal and acceptable, even by children * e.g. Academic achievement & parenting in Asian American families * Values of achievement tends to be externalized, and identified at the most, but not really ever integrated because there’s often the use of behavioural and physical control

Question 29

**domains of socialization** [6]

Answer 29

* There are different domains socialization can occur in, leading to different levels of internalization depending on what domain it occurred in 1. Control 2. Protection from distress/relief from distress 3. Group participantion; interaction with value in physical manifestation of it (e.g. volunteering) 4. Guided learning; teaching/coaching of value without there being a bad action by child (as in control) 5. Mutural reciprocity; expectation that if you're prosocial, others will be prosocial towards you

Question 30

**modern research on changing parenting characteristics** [6]

Answer 30

* Bugental (2002): parenting cognitions, attributions (positive/negative intentions) * Heightened arousal depletes cognitive resources, meaning parents can't contemplate situation in a balanced way * Reframing (attributions), seeing if there's a more benign reason for the behaviour * Duncan (2007): mindfulness in parent-child relationship * Characterized by: non-judgmental openness, present-attention, emotional awareness * Related to: parent-child affective quality, child management