Lecture 12

• Good parenting takes time and effort

  → Approx. 50% of fathers and 25% of mothers feel like not spending enough time with their children

  → Both mothers and fathers spent more time with their children than the previous generation of parents
• Not just quantity of time spent with children important for children’s development— quality of parenting important:


  e.g., maternal scaffolding, sensitivity, and support for autonomy linked to better executive function in preschool children
• Parenting styles (Baumrind)


  • Healthy families are demanding (rules) and responding (warmth)

  • Baumrind and many others found that children with authoritative parents were more academically successful, well-adjusted, and kind

  
• Criticism on parenting styles Static versus dynamic

  Parenting is less static and more bidirectional and child-evoked than Baumrind assumes
• Criticism on parenting styles Individual differences

  • Parenting styles can vary from child to child
• Baumrind's perspective


  • Western middle-class perspective
• Collectivistic cultures


  • Emphasize interdependence & needs of others
• Authoritarian parenting in collectivistic cultures

  • More restraining behaviors, obedience
• Individualistic cultures


  • Emphasize autonomy, self-reliance/-interest
• Authoritative parenting in individualistic cultures

  • To promote independence
• Cultural differences in parenting in the Netherlands

  • Study of 2nd generation Turkish immigrant families (Yamam et al., 2010)
• Turkish mothers were less supportive and less authoritative and more intrusive in their control strategies than native Dutch mothers
• Factors influencing parenting styles:

  • Genes

  • How parents were raised

  • Same type of parenting: continue or not?

  • Socio-economic conditions and education

  • Lower SES: more emphasis on obedience and respect for authority

  • Environment

  • E.g., dangerous environment → more authoritarian

  • Culture

  • E.g., respect for parents important → more authoritarian
• Helicopter parents


  =Developmentally inappropriate levels of control and assistance („overparenting“)

  • Micromanagement of children‘s life → closely monitoring activities

  • Mainly authoritative parents, sometimes authoritarian
• Effects on child of helicopter parents

  • Negative self-perceptions

  • Low self-efficacy

  • Prone for medication usage for anxiety and depression

  • High levels of narcissism

  • Poor coping skills

  • Lower levels of self-perceived autonomy and competence

  • More depressive symptoms

  • Lower life satisfaction
• Young children’s reaction to new sibling:

  mothers typically pay less

  attention to firstborns after new baby arrives than before its birth

  → Firstborn can become more demanding, more dependent and clingier, and may develop problems with sleeping, eating, and toileting routines, even secure attachments can become insecure

  → Most firstborns adapt well, minority have difficulty coping
• Sibling rivalry


  normal part of sibling relationships

  • Sibling relationships friendlier and less conflicted if mothers and fathers get along well as a couple and respond warmly and sensitively to all children

  • Children accept that differences in treatment can be fair if they are based on differences in age and competencies

  • Relationship characterized by both closeness and conflict
• Emotional support siblings


  Brothers and sisters confide in one another, often more than in their parents, protect and comfort one another
• Caregiving, siblings


  Siblings babysit and tend young children
• Teaching, siblings


  Siblings feel a special responsibility to teach, and younger siblings actively seek their guidance
• Social experience, siblings


  In interactions with siblings, especially skirmishes, children learn how to take others’ perspectives, read others’ minds, express feelings, negotiate, and resolve conflicts → can have positive effects on social cognitive skills and social competence

  also negative effects possible, e.g., influence one another to use drugs
• Gay and lesbian families


  • Relationships usually egalitarian, share of responsibilities, division of labor based on who is especially talented at or does not mind doing certain tasks

  →Parenting: two involved parents, biological parent often leading role
• Gay and lesbian families, Effects on development of child

  • Lesbian mothers tend to hit children less, engage more in imaginative and domestic play, otherwise similar to heterosexual mothers

  • Children better developmental outcomes than children living with a single mother, no different than children living with two heterosexual parents

  • Sexual orientation of children similarly distributed as in children of

  heterosexual parents, but more flexible in thinking about sexual identity issues

  → Effective parenting at least as likely as for heterosexual parents
• Divorce: Consequences


  Children with divorced parents on average are more likely to show:

  • Academic problems

  • Externalizing problems, take drugs

  • Internalizing problems, low self-esteem

  • Less social responsibility, less competent intimate relationships, become sexually active at an earlier age, associate with antisocial peers, less securely attached as young adults

  • But: large individual differences!

  • Majority of children (75%) do not have significant adjustment problems: Many children do well in school and do not have psychological problems
• Divorce: Research challenges


  Interpretation problems in research of divorce effects on children:

  • Third confounding factor?

  • Lower finances

  • Fights

  • Shared genes

  Not the divorce itself, but a high degree of conflict affects development

  negatively
• Divorce: Should parents stay together for the sake of the children?

  • Conflict in nondivorced families associated with emotional problems in

  children

  • Unhappy, conflictual marriage can erode the wellbeing of children:
• • Unhappy, conflictual marriage can erode the wellbeing of children:

  1. Move to divorced, single-parent family might reduce conflicts and thus enhance child’s wellbeing → Divorce can be advantageous

  b) Diminished resources and increased risks associated with divorce

  might be accompanied by sustained or increased conflict → Retaining

  unhappy marriage can be best choice for children

  ➔ Difficult to determine how “ifs” will play out when parents either remain

  together in an unhappy marriage or become divorced
• Divorce: Shared custody


  Shared custody good IF high quality of care of both partners
• Preventing negative effects of divorce

  • Adequate financial support

  • Good parenting by the custodial parent

  • Good parenting by the noncustodial parent

  • Minimal conflict between parents (or at least protect children from it)

  • Additional social support

  • Minimal other changes

  • Personal resources

  → Intervention programs
• Reconstituted families


  • 3 common types:

  • Stepfather

  • Stepmother

  • Blended/complex

  • With time, children adjust well in a simple stepfamily

  • Function well in comparison with children in conflictual non-divorced

  families and children in complex stepfamilies

  • > 75 % of adolescents in long-established simple stepfamilies described relationships with stepparents as “close” or “very close”
• Corporal punishment


  • National survey of U.S. parents with 3- and 4-year-old children:

  • 26 % of parents reported spanking their children frequently

  • 67 % reported yelling at their children frequently

  • A study of more than 11,000 U.S. parents:

  • 80 % of parents reported spanking by the time children reached kindergarten

  • Use of corporal punishment is legal in every state in the United States

  • Physical punishment is illegal in 41 countries, mainly to provide children with protection from abuse and exploitation (in The Netherlands: illegal since 2007)
• Long-term effects of corporal punishment

  • Higher levels of aggression later in childhood and adolescence
  • Mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, substance use
  • Poorer intellectual and moral functioning
• Longitudinal study of toddlers

  • Spanking, but not verbal punishment, at age 1 associated with more aggressive behavior at age 2 and lower mental development scores at age 3
  • Physical punishment led to later aggressive behavior and intellectual delay even with early behavior and mental development controlled
• Episodes of physical punishment sometimes turn into child abuse
• Why not even „little corrective tap“ as punishment?

  • Presention of out-of-control models for handling stressful situations → Children may imitate this behavior

  • Punishment can instill fear, rage, or avoidance, also from parents

  • Punishment tells children what not to do rather than what to do → constructive feedback instead

  • Parents might unintentionally become so angry when punishing the child that they become abusive
• Alternative forms of disciplining:

  • Training in positive parenting based on Skinnerian principles of

  reinforcement can have long-lasting, positive effects on both child behavior

  and parent adjustment

  →Positive reinforcement far preferable to any punishment

  • Handling misbehavior by reasoning with child → explaining consequences of child’s actions for others

  • Psychological control

  • Use guilt and gratitude to control behavior

  • Time-out

  • Child is removed from setting that offers positive reinforcement

  • Common technique

  • Current discussion about negative consequences
• Types of Child Maltreatment

  • Physical abuse

  • Child neglect (physical, emotional)

  • Sexual abuse

  • Emotional abuse

  • Child neglect most common form

  • Types can be found separately, but often occur in combination

  • Emotional abuse almost always present when other forms

  identified
• Statistics child sexual abuse

  • Prevalence childhood sexual abuse varies

  For men and women

  Prevalence in men might be higher than reported?

  Lower likelihood of reporting sexual abuse

  Fear of being stigmatized as homosexual

  Poorer recognition of sexual abuse

  For different countries

  • E.g. Research in South-Africa shows notoriously high prevalence
• Risk factors child abuse

  • Parents with psychopathology:

  • Personality disorders

  • Depression

  • Addiction/ Substance abuse

  • Other psychiatric problems (e.g., psychosis)

  • Life/Parenting stress

  • Low SES / education

  • Domestic violence

  • Lack of social support

  • Personal experience of child abuse → intergenerational transmission

  • Children’s vulnerabilities (premature, medical issues)
• Potential consequences of child maltreatment

  • Emotion dysregulation (underregulation and/or overregulation)
  • Attachment problems
  • Lower social competence (withdrawal and/or aggression) → relationship problems
  • Lower self-esteem
  • Lower school performance
  • Personality pathology: E.g. borderline personality disorder, anti-social PD
  • Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
  • Internalising problems (anxiety, depression)
  • Externalising problems (aggression, delinquency, substance abuse)
  • Sexual problems (in case of sexual abuse) or sexual risk taking
  • Suicidal ideation and attempts
  • Increased risk for diabetes, lung disease, malnutrition and vision problems