Parenting Styles and Child Development

Parenting Styles

• Parenting styles involve dimensions of control and emotionality.
• There are four main parenting styles: Authoritative, Authoritarian, Permissive, and Uninvolved.

Authoritative Parenting

• Characterized by warmth, involvement, and responsiveness.
• Shows pleasure and support of a child's constructive behavior.
• Considers the child's wishes, solicits opinions, and offers alternatives.
• Sets clear standards, communicates them effectively, and enforces them firmly.
• Shows displeasure at bad behavior.
• Expects mature, independent, age-appropriate behavior.
• Plans cultural events and joint activities.
• Parents are likely to have socially competent children.
• Parents in good marriages are more likely to be authoritative.
• Parents who adapt well to stressful situations are more authoritative.
• Parents with memories of unhappy or unstable childhoods are more authoritarian.

Authoritarian Parenting

• Shows little warmth or positive involvement and does not solicit or consider child's desires or opinions.
• Enforces rules rigidly without clear explanations.
• Shows anger and displeasure.
• Confronts children regarding bad behavior using harsh, punitive discipline.
• Views the child as dominated by antisocial impulses.
• Children are likely to be fearful and moody.
• Parents score lower in agreeableness and struggle with perspective-taking and empathy.
• Parents living in dangerous neighborhoods are more likely to be authoritarian to protect their children.

Parenting Style Subtypes

• Two subtypes of parenting are: No-Nonsense and Attachment.

No-Nonsense Parenting

• High control, affection, and warmth, considered a subtype of authoritarian parenting.
• Uses physical restraint and punishment, but physicality does not necessarily mean abuse.
• Most common in Black single mothers, it is a method for protecting children from unsafe environments.

Attachment Parenting

• Learning to read a child's cues and respond appropriately.
• Putting the child at the center of the approach.
• Results in good physical and emotional regulation.

Permissive Parenting

• Moderately warm.
• Glorifies free expression of impulses and desire.
• Does not communicate rules clearly or enforce them.
• Ignores or accepts bad behavior.
• Disciplines inconsistently and yields to coercion and whining.
• Hides impatience and anger and makes few demands for mature, independent behavior.
• Children are likely to be uncontrolled, noncompliant, and exhibit aggressive behavior.

Uninvolved Parenting

• Self-centered, neglectful, and unresponsive.
• Pursues self-gratification at the expense of the child's welfare.
• Tries to minimize the costs (time, effort) of interaction with the child.
• Fails to monitor the child's activity (whereabouts, companions).
• Children may be depressive, anxious, emotionally needy, and aggressive with poor academics.
• Anxious, depressed, and obsessive parents are more likely to be negative, rejecting, and uninvolved.
• Less education is associated with more authoritarian and neglectful parenting styles.

Emotions

• Emotions can be primary or secondary.
• Primary emotions emerge early in life and don't require introspection or self-reflection (fear, joy, disgust, surprise, sadness, and interest).
• Secondary emotions emerge in the second year of life and depend on a sense of self and awareness of others' reactions (shame, guilt, jealousy, embarrassment, and empathy).

Biological Perspective on Emotion

• Emotional expressions are innate and universal, rooted in human evolution, and based on anatomic structures.
• Infants begin to smile at 46 weeks post conception, regardless of environmental exposures.
• Each emotion is expressed by a distinct group of facial muscles.
• The left brain dominates motivation for approach (positive emotions like joy), while the right brain dominates motivation for avoidance (withdrawal, fear).

Learning Perspective on Emotion

• Explains individual differences in emotional expression.
• Includes classical conditioning, modeling, and operant conditioning.

Functional Perspectives of Emotion

• The purpose of emotions is to help people achieve their social and/or survival goals.
• Emotions impel children moving toward goals (approach/joy) or away from unwanted stimuli (fear/avoidance).
• Emotional signals provide feedback that guides other people's behavior.
• Past memories of emotions guide new behaviors and responses in situations.

Development of Joy

• Reflexive smiles are an upturned mouth seen in newborns (not a real smile).
• Reflexive smiles promote caregiving and attachment in parents and prompts them to provide auditory, visual, and tactile stimuli.
• Infants smile in response to external stimuli at 3-8 weeks and smile more with their primary caregiver/familiar people when smiled at or given other positive stimulation.
• Infants display a social smile at 2-6 months, an upturned mouth in response to a human face or voice specifically.
• A Duchenne smile reflects genuine pleasure, crinkles around the eyes, raises the cheeks, and is usually reserved for primary caregivers.

Shyness

• Shyness is higher arousal around novel people or social situations.
• Can be caused from fear or self-consciousness.
• Fearful shyness is fear in response to social situations.
• Positive shyness is positive facial expression at the time of an avoidant behavior.
• Smiling can help children diffuse arousal or discomfort.
• Children use positive facial expressions to regulate emotions.
• They engage in head aversion or closing off to diffuse arousal, signaling affiliation, interest, and appeasement.

Attachment

• Attachment is defined as enduring social-emotional relationships with a primary caregiver.
• Historically the mother is usually the caregiver and acts as a secure base, providing security and protection.
• Children who form an attachment are said to be more likely to survive.
• Attachment experiences become internalized.
• Securely attached children have expectations of secure attachment.
• Attachment Styles are the way individuals attach or relate to others.
• Babies develop attachments based on what's adaptive within their environment.
• Babies without the opportunity to develop attachments may be apprehensive of strangers offering help or care.
• Babies who have attachment adapt to caregivers because they trust they will provide food and safety.

Mary Ainsworth: The Strange Situation

• It examined what will a child do when they are separated from their caregiver.
• In particular how do they react to the caregiver returning and what patterns can be seen.
• Most kids are securely attached, even if it takes them a few minutes to fully calm down after their return.
• Avoidant attached children's parents provided care reluctantly or in a hostile way, so the child doesn't trust the caregiver very well.
• Anxious attached children's parents are sometimes there and dependable, leading the child not knowing what to expect, causing the child to be nervous and clingy.
• Secure Attachment is 60-65% showing the baby smiles and is happy.
• Avoidant Attachment is 20% showing the baby may ignore the caregiver.
• Anxious Attachment is 10-15% showing the baby is difficult to console.

Internal Working Model

• Internal Working Model is described as a set of expectations about caregivers availability and responsiveness in time of stress.
• It's conceivable people grow to believe there will be people they can trust.
• It can cause the inability to trust or feel people will give enough attention, leading to mistrust.
• Continuous stability in relationships matter all through childhood, not just the first 3 years of life.

Theories of Attachment - Learning

• In Drive Reduction the mother becomes the attachment figure because she reduces babies primary drive of hunger.
• The child associates the mother with being satiated.
• When fathers offer play or stimulation while mothers offer food, the child is more likely to attach to the father as they prefer tactile stimulation over food.
• Operant conditioning leads to attachment development based on visual, auditory, and tactile stimulation.
• Stimulation is very important through all 5 senses.
• Attachment is not automatic, but it takes months for the baby to learn who to trust.

Ethological Theory

• Was influenced by the theory of imprinting and is an understanding of attachment from an evolutionary perspective.
• When geese are first born they look for something, and when they find something moving they follow it.
• The parent is considered a safety zone the infant that can retreat for comfort. There is a critical period where the babies must make the attachment.
• The three features are the active role played by the baby's early signaling systems, the development of mutual attachments, and the knowledge that the relationship that is formed is more than behavior and lasts forever.

Cross-Cultural Research and Caregivers

• Cross-Cultural research has confirmed that a lot of Attachment theory is universal.
• Infants attach to at least one caring adult.
• Secure attachment is more common than insecure attachment.
• Attachment security positively predicts competence.
• Competence looks different across cultures.
• Security is established differently across cultures.
• Caregivers should offer close contact, be insightful, and offer sensitive and responsive caregiving.
• Good caregiving should continue as the child grows.
• It is important for children to attach to multiple adults for better chances of survival.
• A balance is needed because children can sense when an adult is distracted therefore, it is important to weigh the cost versus the benefits.
• Most children have a primary caregiver, then secondary caregivers.
• Fathers should touch, kiss, talk to, and hold infants as much as mothers when given the opportunity.
• More likely to participate in caregiving when the mother supports their involvement, views them as competent, or the mother is unavailable.
• Fathers spend four to five times more time playing with infants than caring for them. They engage in more physically arousing and unusual games.

Hormones

• Testosterone in women, in short term, can be linked to more aggressive or protective behaviors.
• It increases during pregnancy, infants protection. It decreases gradually after birth.
• They also display maternal behavior that decreases after birth in order to engage in nurturing caregiving.
• Testosterone declines during pregnancy in men.
• Fathers display lower testosterone than non-fathers.

Hormones and their impact on parenting

• Lower testosterone has been shown to promote caregiving and inhibits mating behaviour.
• It is likely to lead to more infant-directed vocalizations.
• More likely to occur in fathers who have lower testosterone.
• Estradiol increases during pregnancy in women, spiking to the highest rate before childbirth.
• This leads to the onset of maternal behaviour.
• Levels decrease after childbirth, but still quiet elevated.
• Fathers display higher estradiol than non-fathers at whatever stage of fatherhood, which helps with childrearing.
• Higher levels of closeness result in wanting to give or receive that closeness more.
• Larger declines in testosterone and estradiol led to a larger contribution to household and infant care tasks postpartum.
• Marriage intimacy led to decreases in testosterone. Partners report more support.
• Oxytocin, the 'cuddle' hormone, is released when feeling physically close or attached.
• It Increases parasympathetic influence of the vagus nerve (rest and digest). Signals safety. Helps feel safe and want to feel safe. Implicated in social engagement and eye gaze
• It facilitates trust, empathy, enhances processing of social information, overcoming stressful experiences, and anxiety.
• High levels of oxytocin occur in the mother, father and infant during skin-to-skin contact.
• Results in supporting and regulating hormones leading to being more responsive and flexible. High levels lead to more affectionate & stimulatory behaviours.
• V is important is important for attachment activating the possessive and aggressive side.

Oxytocin Studies

• Following neglect there is very little oxytocin but a lot V- increased expression with decreased oxytocin.
• Wismer Fries et al. (2005) studied Romanian and Russian kids.
• Kids were less responsive, insecure attachment, low in oxytocin, did not get the increased oxytocin from physical attention, increased cortisol, did not identify facial expressions nor have V with strangers.
• Working parents: full time care leads to high rates of insecure attachment, however this is not always the case.
• Depends on the attention the parents provide after and the support.
• secure children are effective problem solvers, exploratory, and can engage in symbolic play.
• positive empathic and have a healthier self view.
• Long term secure attachment can falter over time.

Fong et al study

• (2017)
• Children were 17 months.
• Those with low cortisol sought additional stimulation. These children also experience lower fear/ responsiveness to cues that inhibit problem behaviors.
• This group was found to have secure attachment.

Couple Subsystems

• Politeness, cooperation, honesty, hard work
• Indigenous parents socialize children to respect cultural traditions to be proud of their heritage.
• Stop personalizing child is done.
• When parents are warm and loving and socializing is effective.
• Parents can be hostile from their resolutions and the child internalizes what that situation represents.
• As kids get older they become more polite and cooperative due to the standards being set.
• Child must use models for reinforcement.

Divorce

• Divorce has effects on self esteem, aggression, and compliance.
• The effects are average in all families as families are a system that must adapt and protect one another.
• Children see that there are differences in divorce regarding marital discord.
• If there is no marital discontent well-being decreases. If there is a great deal of discontent it is a welcome solution in the family (positive thing).

Parental system

• When parents are warm, relationship increases but if they are rejected that is a social-emotional out-pour.
• When a parent wants the baby they tend to use their words. When a situation occurs a damino effect happens between people.
• Parents who are angry tend to be from prior parental situations. This means its more of a transactional behavior than a fixed situation. Children who have negative actions or reactions as toddlers will most likely be aggressive.

Spanking

• The More you give the action the child's control will decrease. Externalising behavior, physical interaction will eventually occur.

Families

• Share child tasks on more evenly.
• They are emotional for relationships.
• See less problems as these children have the same likelihood of gay people in their society
• Daughters will most likely relationships when adults, in most relationships women sexuality is more fluid.
• Most studies say gender wont affect care however there is a gender to care that must be established.

Family situations

• Single families in 2016 had 90% of families They are responsible for care and support.
• Normally have less issues that are very common in all relationships in that family however tend to have more health issues depending on circumstance.
• Parents spend little time with children in normal pregnancy cycles children can respond.
• All children want the same level of communication but those can be divided based on what will occur between them.
• Older children tell the young kids about things. They look them with perspective.
• There is jealousy between the family members. they see they way between family and attention.
• As children reach puberty their lives increase in similarity and decrease with parental tension.
• During this time most of them talk about dating and appearance.
• During these times and they see themselves they become emotional.