• a family is a group that has at least one adult who is responsible for providing basic necessities as well as love, support, safety, stability, and opportunities for learning

• families are crucial to the development of children

Family Structure

• family structure is the number of and relationships among the people living in a household

Changes in Family Structure in the United States

More Children Live with Single or Unmarried Parents

• the likelihood that a child in America will live with a single parent is greater for some racial and socioeconomic groups than others & children of parents with college degrees are much less likely to live with a single parent

• single parents are much less likely than married parents to spend time with children

First-Time Parents Are Older Than in the Past

• older first-time parents tend to have more education, higher-status occupations and higher incomes than younger parents

• also more likely to have planned the births, and have financial resources for raising a family as well as being less likely to get divorced within 10 years if they are married

• more positive parenting, especially on the side of men who delay parenting until ages 30 or later

Teenagers as Parents

• Growing up in a disadvantaged household, doing poorly in school, having low expectations of attending college and having sexual intercourse for the first time before 14 years old are all predictive of both boys and girls becoming parents as teenagers.

• Living with both biological parents and being involved in school activities and religious organizations reduce risk of teen childbearing.

More Children Live with Grandparents

• These families tend to be poorer than others as grandparents have to take care of children with fixed retirement incomes

• More likely to experience a range of emotional and behaviour problems

• Difficult to have an appropriate social support network for grandparents and grandchildren

Families Are Smaller

• This is because women are delaying pregnancies due to careers & birth control is more accessible.

• Fewer children have siblings.

Family Structures Are More Fluid

• There is a high rate of divorce which means a lot of children experience repeated changes in family structure through the parent and parent’s partners entering and exiting their lives

• This creates instability which can lead to development of behaviour problems

Same-Sex Parents

• more and more same-sex couples have become parents

• children with same-sex parents are not different from those of different-sex parents in terms of mental health, behaviour and achievement

• these children are similar to their peers in their sexual orientation, gender identity, how gendered their behaviour is and their romantic and sexual behaviour as adolescents

• there is no evidence of a causal link between parent’s sexual orientation and children’s development across a range of domains

Divorced Parents

• the parenting style of newly divorced parents compared to those who are not divorced tends to be more irritable and led by coercion rather than warmth, emotional availabilty and consistency

• this is unfortunate because children adjust best to the divorce if their parent is supportive and emotionally available

• divorce disrupts children’s routines and social networks which causes a lot of stress and undermines positive parenting and enjoyable family interactions

• children of divorce are more likely to experience deprssion and sadness, have lower self-esteem and be less socially responsible and competent

• parental conflict has been linked to increased emotional & behavioural problems in children and adolescents

• if parents were engaged in high levels of conflict while married, divorce can result in positive outcomes

Stepparents

• Positive relationships with each parent (custodial biological, noncustodial biological, and stepparent) can have independent positive benefits on children

• Conflict between stepfathers and stepchildren tends to be greater than between fathers and biological offspring

• stepmothers generally have more difficulty with stepchildren than stepfather, perhaps because mothers are expected to take an active role in parenting and children reject stepmothers

• hostile feelings of the noncustodial parent towards the stepparent may encourage the child to behave in a hostile or distant manner with the stepparent

• the success or failure of stepfamilies is affected by the behaviour and attitudes of all involved parties

Family Dynamics

• Family dynamics are the way in which family members interact through various relationships: mother with each child, father with each child, mother with father, and siblings with each another

Parenting

• socialization is the process through which children acquire values, standards, skills, knowledge and behaviours regarded as appropriate for present and future roles in their culture

Discipline

• discipline is the set of strategies and behaviours parents use to teach children how to behave

• discipline is considered more effective if it leads to a permanent change in the child’s behaviour because the child has learned and accepted the reasons for the desired behaviour (internalization)

• reasoning focused on the effects of a behaviour on other people is called other-oriented induction. It is particularly effective in promoting internalization

• reasoning is the most common form of discipline and most parents say they use reasoning on a regular basis

• internalization happens when parents apply the right amount of psychological pressure on children

• punishment is a stimulus that follows a behaviour to reduce the likelihood it will happen again, and most of them fall in the category of discipline techniques that apply too much psychological or physical pressure on children. They are not effective at promoting internalization.

• physical punishment is not effective at teaching children how to behave and is linked with a range of unintended consequences

Parenting Styles

• parenting style is the constellation of parenting behaviours and attitudes that set the emotional climate of parent-child interactions

  1. the degree of parental warmth and responsiveness

  • parents who are warm are affectionate with their children

    2. the degree of parenting control and demandingness

  • how quickly and appropriately parents respond to children’s needs, request, for assistance or distress

• there are 4 styles of parenting related to support and control: authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and uninvolved

• authoritative parenting is a style that is demanding but also warm and response

  • these parents set clear standards and limits, monitor behaviour and are firm. they allow children autonomy, are not restrictuve or intrusive, and engage in calm conversation and reasoning with children. they are attentive to children’s concerns and needs and communicate openly. they are measured and consistent instead of harsh and want their children to be socially responsible, assertive, and self-controlled.

  • children of these parents are competent, self-assured and popular with peers. They accept their parent’s socialization efforts and are relatively high in social and academic competence, self-reliance and coping skills.

• authoritarian parenting is a cold and unresponsive parenting style. These parents are high in control and expect children to comply without question. They enforce their demands through exercising parental power and use threats, punishment and psychological control.

  • ex. interrupting children, conditional love, guilting children, belittling worth, and invalidating their feelings

  • children of these parents tend to be low in social and academic competence, unhappy and unfriendly and low in self-confdience

  • is has also been linked with children’s inability to cope with everyday stressors and with high levels of depression, aggression, delinquency, and alcohol problems

• permissive parenting is a style that is responsive to children’s needs and wishes in an overly lenient way. Permissive parents do not require children to regulate themselves or act appropriately. These children tend to be impulsive, low in self-regulation, high in externalizing problems, and low in school achivement. As teenagers, they engage in more school misconduct and drug or alcohol use than peers with authoritative parents

• uninvolved parenting is a style that is low in both demandingness and responsiveness to children. These parents do not set limits for children, are rejecting or neglectful of their children, are focused on their own needs instead of theri childrens.

  • children of these parents have disturbed attachment relationships as toddlers and have problems with peer relationships when they are older. As teenagers, they exhibit a wide range of problems like low academic competence, internalizing problems, substance abuse, and risky sexual behaviour

• parenting style has an effect on children’s adjustment but children’s behaviour sometimes shapes parents’ typical parenting style

• recent research has moved away from the idea that parents have a single style and instead that what style parents exhibit depends on contextual factors

Differences in Mothers’ and Fathers’ Interactions with Their Children

• mothers are more likely to provide physical care and emotional support than fathers

• fathers in modern industrialized cultures spend more of their time playing with children than mothers

• the degree of maternal and parental involvement in parenting and nautre of parents’ interactions with children vary as a function of cultural practices and factors like how much parents are away from home and how much time children are at home

• the effects of mothers’ and fathers’ parenting on child development are the same

• warm and responsive parenting is universally beneficial for children

The Child’s Influence on Parenting

• children actively shape the parenting process through their behaviour and expressions of temperament

• children who are disobedient, angry or challenging make it more difficult for parents to use authoritative parenting than children who are compliant and positive

• how children behave with their parents can be due to a number of factors like temperament which is genetic

• the ways children do not comply and externalize problems is also a factor

  • parents become frustrated, they escalate their negative punishment behaviours, which evokes even more negative behaviour from children (coercive cycles)

  • by adolescence such patterns are more influenced by the child than the parent

  • Over time the bidirectionality of interactions between a parent and child continues the cycle

  • bidirectionality is a key factor in parent-child relationships that have a pattern of coperation, positive affect, harmonious communication, & coordinated behaviour

Sibling Relationships

• Siblings influence on another’s development and functioning of large family system in positive and negative ways

• siblings are playmates, sources of support, instruction, security, assistance and caregiving

• sibling relationships are similar to peer relationships but can also be like parent-child relationship

• siblings can be rivals and sources of mutual conflict

• high levels of sibling aggression and conflict predict low self-regulation & risky sexual behaviour

• when parents are taught how to mediate sibling conflicts, siblings learn constructive means of conflict resolution

• sibling’s relationships are less hostile and more supportive when their parents are warm and accepting of them

• they also have closer relationships with each other if they are treated similarly

• cultural values play a role in children’s evaluations of and reactions to differential parental treatment

• siblings get along better if parents get along with each other

• siblings whose parents fight with each other are likely to have more hostile interactions because they are modeled iengative behaviour and are less sensitive in their efforts to manage their children’s interactions with one another

• rivalry and conflict between siblings tend to be higher in divorced & remarried families than non-divorced families even between biological siblings

  • they may compete for parental affection and attention

• the quality of sibling relationships differs across families depending on the ways parents interact with each child and with each other as well as children’s perceptions of their treatment by other family members

Child Maltreatment

• child maltreatment is an action or failure on the part of a caretaker that results in physical or emotional harm to a child or puts the child at risk of serious harm

  • includes neglect

  • any adult can mistreat a child

• neglect - failure of the caregiver to provide necessary food, water, shelter, clothing, medical care, or supervision

• physical abuse - any behaviour that results in non-accidental physical injury of a child

• emotional abuse - a pattern of behaviour in which a caregiver demeans, rejects, repeatedly criticizes, or withholds love from a child or communicates to a child that they are worthless, unloved or unwanted

• sexual abuse - sexual acts or sexual exploitation involving children, including inappropriate touching and exposure to sexual content like pornography

• many abused children experience more than one form of maltreatment which is known as polyvictimization

Risks for Maltreatment

• parent’s lack of knowledge about child’s needs and abilities

• strong negative reaction to stress

• family’s low income

• inadequate housing and material resources

• social isolation

• parental alcohol and other drug dependence

• whether parent is in an abusive romantic relationship

• some U.S. states consider exposure to domestic violence a form of maltreatment because of the trauma the exposure of it can inflict on children

• parents with a history of being maltreated are twice as likely as those without a maltreatment history to maltreat their own children, but not all who were abused become abusers themselves (71% of these adults do not maltreat their own children)

Consequences of Maltreatment

• children who are maltreated experience a range of immediate outcomes that can include physical pain and injury, hunger, cold, physical discomfort and fear or anxiety

• these effects emerge as early as 3 months old and maltreated infants are at risk of developing disorganized attachment patterns to their caregivers

• children who are victims of maltreatment are at increased risk of developing cognitive delays, antisocial behaviours and engaging in risky behaviours in adolescence and into adulthood

• maltreatment increases the likelihood that a child will be diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder in later in age and these disorders will be more severe and harder to treat

• children who are victims of physical abuse show a heightened response to anger cues which manifests in increased aggressive behaviour, changes in brain functioning and other physiological responses that are typical responses to threats and increased negative emotion

  • these responses may be highly adaptive for the survival of children growing up in chaotic homes but they can lead to mental, behavioural and physical health problems later in life

• the more chronic the abuse, the worse the outcomes for a child later in life (higher rates of substance abuse, violent delinquency, and suicide attempts)

• child maltreatment also leads to significant health consequences from negative effects on the immune system in childhood to increased rates of coronary heart disease

• most children survive maltreatment and have healthy lives

  Preventing Child Maltreatment

  • strengthen economic situation of families

  • change social norms to promote positive parenting

  • provide quality early education to children

  • enhance parenting skills

  • intervening to help children and prevent recurrence of maltreatment

Family Socioeconomic Context

Cultural Contexts

• parents beliefs about what optimal child development is and how they decide to act with their children has a strong basis in their culture

• culture reflects the beliefs and practices linked with a family’s country, religion, ethnic group, race, or affiliation

• research has looked at the degree to which parents in different cultures engage in specific disciplinary practices and the degree to which similar parental behaviours affect child outcomes across different cultures

• a study of families in 8 countries has found that mothers and children in each of the countries reported high levels of positive discipline which suggests that both positive discipline and warm parenting are favoured by parents across cultures

• some researchers have argued that the extent to which a disciplinary technique predicts negative or positive outcomes depends on how normative it is in their wider culture

Economic Contexts

• income influences what parents can buy for their children, including quality goods, experiences, food, clothing, medicine and shelter

  • low-income children experience a range of material hardships the majority of high-income children will never

• income influences the amount and quality of time parents spend with their children

  • low-income parents may need to work multiple jobs which makes it difficult for them to “invest” in their children through taking them to classes and helping them with their homework

  • having difficulty making ends meet can create stress for low-income parents which leads to depression, irritability, harsh parenting and marital conflict

  • adequate family income matters for what it can buy, the stress it can take away

• children in poverty have lower academic achivement, more mental health problems, more behavioural problems, and more health problems than their higher-income peers

• families at risk of becoming homeless increases the stressors parents and children experience

• homeless children suffer a range of negative outcomes due to missing school or frequently changing them and suffer more from health and behavioural problems

• low-income parents are twice as likely as high-income parents to be afraid their child will get shot or in trouble with the law and all worry their child will be bullied and have alcohol or drug problems

  • these fears likely stem from the qualities of the neighbourhoods they live in

• if high-achiveing parents put extra pressure on their children, the psychological costs may take away from the material benefits

  • children living in high-income families actually have higher rates of drug use, delinquent behaviour and mental health problems compared with those of their low-income peers

• while children in high-income families do not experience the stress of survival that low-income children do, there is more than a single pathway to maladaptive outcomes (equifinality)

• cultural differences in the importance placed on literacy and cognitive growth account for differences in mothers’ caregiving activities

Parent’s Work Contexts

• one or both parents work outside the home to support their children and the workplace environment can provide parents with a sense of accomplishment and social network which can improve thier mental health which improves their parenting but it can also cause stress which impacts their home relationships

• more mothers work outside the home now, which has raised a variety of concerns about diminishing quality of maternal caregiving and that the mother-child relationship would suffer

  • others worry children who are left to their own devices would get into trouble academically and socially

• research does not support the idea that maternal employment has negative effects on children’s development, and some suggests that early maternal employment is associated with better adjustment at age 7 for some families

• studies of maternal employment extending beyond infancy reveal effects that maternal employment can have on children’s development

• mothers who worked more often at night spent less time with their teenagers and their teenagers had a lower-quality home environment which predicted higher levels of risky behaviour among the adolescents

  • similar negative effects were not found in cases where mothers worked evening shifts that allowed them greater knowledge of their children’s wherabous

Family-Leave Policies

• the bulk of the responsibility of caring for young children fell to mothers but as more women are in the workforce, they cannot stay home to take care of children. Therefore, there is family leave but many only take it if they can afford the loss of income. Paid parental leave allows women to recover from pregnancy, childbirth and to care for newborns, and allows both parents to bond with their babies, decreasing infant mortaility, increasing vaccination rates and reducing child maltreatment

Childcare Contexts

• a majority of children of high-income working parents are cared for in organized childcare centers or preschools

• the majority of children in low-income families are cared for by family members others than parent

Adjustment and Social Behaviour

• a number of investigators have found that children in childcare do not differ in problem behaviour from those cared for at home

• a study showed that the number of hours per day a child is in care or the number of changes in caregivers the child experiences in the first 2 years of life predicts lower social competence and more noncompliance with adults

• children in extensive childcare were viewed to exhibit more problem behaviours like aggression, anxiety, depression and noncompliance

• the more hours of nonrelative care predicted greater risk-taking and impulsivity at age 15

• the finding that greater time in childcare is related to increased risk for adjustment problems does not apply to children from very low-income, high-risk families

  • longer time in childcare has actually found to have positive effects related to the child including better adjustment

• physical aggression is less common among children who were in group childcare than among those who were looked after by their own families

• high-quality childcare with programs designed to promote children’s later success are very beneficial as children who participate in these programs show improvements in social competence and declines in conduct problems

• background characteristics of children who are in childcare for long hours differ from those who are in childcare for less hours, so cause-and-effect relations cannot be assumed

• the number of hours spent is less relevant than the quality of childcare

Cognitive and Language Development

• high-quality childcare can have a positive effect on children’s functioning in cognitive and language development

• the number of hours in childcare did not correlate with cognitive or language development when demographic variables were taken into account, but higher-quality childcare that took specific efforts to simulate children’s language development was linked to better cognitive and language development in the first 3 years of life

• children in higher-quality childcare scored higher on tests of pre-academic cognitive skills, language abilites and attention than those in lower-quality care

• essentially, child care, unless it is of low quality, provides greater cognitive stimulation than is available in some low-income homes

Availability and Quality of Childcare

• there are established standards to ensure a childcare center is safe for children and promotes their development

• children in a form of childcare that met these guidelines scored higher on tests of language comprehension, readiness for school and had fewer behavioural problems at 36 months of age

• unfortunately, many report it is difficult to find high-quality and affordable childcare because most do not meet the recommended minimal standards

• Countries are recognizing public funding for preschool programs can promote children’s development and help working families