Family Relationships Ch.14

The Family Families form a system of interacting elements Parents and children influence one another ‐ Parents influence their children both directly and indirectly ‐ Children influence their parents ‐ Children’s behaviors, attitudes, and interests affect how their parents behave toward them

In the systems view, families, parents and children influence each other and parent-child relations are influenced by other individuals and institutions

Culture School Work Extended Family Neighborhood Religious Organizations Family Mother Father Children

Function of Families Survival of offspring ‐ Families help to ensure that children survive to maturity by attending to their physical needs, health needs, and safety Economic function ‐ Families provide the means for children to acquire the skills and other resources they need to be economically productive in adulthood Cultural training ‐ Families teach children the basic values in their culture

Parental Socialization Parents as direct instructors ‐ Parents may directly teach their children skills, rules, and strategies and explicitly inform or advise them on various issues Parents as indirect socializers ‐ Parents provide indirect socialization in the course of their day-to-day interactions with their children Parents as providers and controllers of opportunities ‐ Parents manage children’s experiences and social lives, including their exposure to positive or negative experiences, their opportunities to play with certain toys and children, and their exposure to various kinds of information

Parenting Dimensions There are two general dimensions of parental behavior ‐ The degree of warmth and responsiveness that parents show their children ‐ The amount of control parents exert over their children

Warmth and Responsiveness At one of the spectrum are parents who are openly warm and affectionate with their children At the other end of the spectrum are parents who are relatively uninvolved with their children and sometimes even hostile toward them

Parental Control Parents’ efforts to supervise and monitor their children’s behavior Effective control ‐ Setting standards that are appropriate for the child’s age ‐ Showing the child how to meet the standards ‐ Rewarding the child for complying to these standards Parents should enforce the standards consistently ‐ Children and adolescents are more compliant when parents enforce the rules regularly Effective control is also based on good communication ‐ Parents should explain why they’ve set standards and why they reward or punish as they do

Parental Styles (Baumrind) Authoritarian parenting ‐ High parental control with little warmth Authoritative parenting ‐ A fair degree of parental control with being warm and responsive to children Indulgent-permissive parenting ‐ Warmth and caring but little parental control Indifferent-uninvolved parenting ‐ Neither warmth nor control

Children with authoritarian parents typically have lower grades in school, lower self-esteem, and are less skilled socially Children with authoritative parents tend to have higher grades and be responsible, self-reliant, and friendly Children with indulgent-permissive parents have lower grades and are often impulsive and easily frustrated Children with indifferent-uninvolved parents have low self-esteem and are impulsive, aggressive, and moody

How Can Parents Influence Their Children? Direct Instruction ‐ Telling a child what to do, when and why Learning by Observing (modeling) ‐ Learning what to do by watching ‐ Learning what not to do (counterimitation) Feedback ‐ Parents indicate whether a behavior is appropriate and should continue or should stop

Feedback Reinforcement ‐ Any action that increases the likelihood of the response that it follows Punishment ‐ Any action that discourages the reoccurrence of the response that it follows

Negative Reinforcement Trap Parents often unwittingly reinforce the very behaviors they want to discourage ‐ First step: The mother tells her son to do something he doesn’t want to do ‐ Second step: The son responds with some behavior that most parents find intolerable ‐ Third step: The mother gives in – tells the son he doesn’t need to do as he was initially told as long as he stops doing the behavior that is so intolerable

Punishment Works Best When: Administered directly after the undesired behavior occurs, rather than hours later An undesired behavior always leads to punishment, rather than usually or occasionally Accompanied by an explanation of why the child was punished and how punishment can be avoided in the future The child has a warm, affectionate relationship with the person administering the punishment

Drawbacks to punishment Punishment is primarily suppressive: if a new behavior isn’t learned to replace it, the old response will come back. Punishment can have undesirable side effects: ‐ Children become upset as they are being punished which makes it unlikely that they will understand the feedback that punishment is meant to convey. ‐ When children are punished physically – they often imitate this behavior with peers and younger siblings.

Children who are spanked often use aggression to resolve their disputes with others and are more likely to have behavior problems

Parenting behavior and styles evolve as a consequence of the child’s behavior. Children’s behavior helps determine how parents treat them and the resulting parental behavior influences children’s behavior, which can in turn cause parents to again change their behavior.

This reciprocal influence lead many families to adopt routine ways of interacting with each other. Some families end up running smoothly (parents and children cooperate, anticipate each other’s needs, and are generally happy). Some families end up in trouble (disagreements are common, parents spend much time trying to unsuccessfully control their defiant children, and everyone is often angry and upset).

Children’s Influence Parental warmth gradually changes as children develop ‐ Hugs and kisses work with toddlers not with adolescents Parental control gradually changes as children develop ‐ Parents gradually relinquish control and expect children to be responsible for themselves

Attractiveness Mothers of very attractive infants are more affectionate and playful with their infants than are mother of infants with unappealing faces Why? ‐ An evolutionary explanation would propose that parents are motivated to invest more time and energy into offspring who are healthy and genetically fit and therefore likely to survive ‐ Attractiveness could be seen as an indicator of these characteristics

Marriage and Divorce

Divorce Nearly half of all first marriages end in divorce ‐ Every year approximately one million American children have parents who divorce Divorce is distressing for children because it involves conflict between parents and usually separation from one of them

Family Life After Divorce Children usually live with their mothers ‐ About 15% of children live with their fathers after divorce How does life change (based on the Virginia Longitudinal Study)? ‐ First few months after divorce, many mothers are less affectionate toward their children ‐ Two years after the divorce, mother-child relationships improve, particularly for daughters ‐ Six years after the divorce, children in the study were adolescents ‐ Family life continued to improve for mothers and daughters ‐ Family life was problematic for mothers and sons

Impact of Divorce on Children Children whose parents had divorced fare poorly compared to children from intact families in: ‐ School achievement ‐ Conduct ‐ Adjustment ‐ Self-concept ‐ Parent-child relations Children adjust to divorce more readily if their divorced parents cooperate with each other, especially on disciplinary matters ‐ Children benefit from joint custody if parents get along

Divorce’s Influence on Development The absence of one parent means that children lose a role model, a source of parental help and emotional support, and a supervisor Single-parent families experience economic hardship ‐ Creates stress and often means activities once taken for granted are no longer available Conflict between parents is extremely distressing to children and adolescents ‐ Particularly for children who are emotionally insecure

Which Children are Affected? The overall impact of divorce is about the same for boys and girls ‐ However, divorce is more harmful when it occurs during childhood and adolescence than during preschool or college years With regard to parents’ remarriage, young adolescents appear to be more negatively affected than younger children ‐ Young adolescents’ struggles with issues of identity are heightened by the presence of a new parent who has authority to control them and is a sexual partner of their biological parent

Children and their Peers: Play

Peer Relations Children’s skills at interacting with peers improves rapidly ‐ Children are becoming increasingly self-aware, more effective at communicating, and better at understanding the thoughts and feelings of others

What are some benefits of play? Play and social development go hand and hand. Play offers many opportunities to be with other children and to share, take turns, disagree, and compromise (Mitchell and Davis, 1992). While at play, children are increasing their self awareness and are becoming more involved in cooperative play.

Benefits of play Emotionally, children develop greater self awareness and they are more able to predict the emotions of others. According to Huffnung (1997) children will develop empathy or the ability to appreciate the feeling of others and understand their point of view. ‐ If one child begins an activity, it is likely that his friends will want to follow along.

Developmental Sequence of Cognitive Play Play CategoryDescriptionExamples Functional Play Simple, repetitive motor movements with or without objects. Especially common during the first 2 years of life. Running around a room, rolling a car back and forth, kneading clay with no intent to make something Constructive Play Creating or constructing something. Especially common between 3 and 6 years. Making a house out of toy blocks, drawing a picture, putting together a puzzle Pretend Play Acting out everyday and imaginary roles. Especially common between 2 and 6 years. Playing house, school, or police officer; Acting out storybook or television characters

Parten's Five Types of Play Mildred Parten (1932) was one of the early researchers studying children at play. She focused on the social interactions between children during play activities. Recent research suggests that children do not necessarily spend more time in social types of play as they get older, but rather their play within each category becomes more cognitively mature (Berk, 2004)

Parten's Five Types of Play Onlooker behavior ‐ Playing passively by watching or conversing (or asking questions) with other children engaged in play activities. These children seem to move closer to a group rather than watching whatever momentarily catches their attention.

All by myself play… Solitary independent - Playing by oneself. ‐ A child plays alone with objects. Even if the child is within speaking distance of others, the child does not alter her or his play or interact with others.

Solitary Play – Good or Bad? Some forms of solitary play are signs that children are uneasy interacting with others ‐ Wandering aimlessly ‐ A child that goes from one preschool activity to the next, as if trying to decide what to do ‐ They just keep wandering, never settling into play with others or into constructive solitary play ‐ Hovering ‐ A child stand nearby peers who are playing, watching them play but not participating

Parallel Play Playing, even in the middle of a group, while remaining engrossed in one's own activity. ‐ Children playing parallel to each other sometimes use each other's toys, but always maintain their independence. ‐ “He plays beside rather than with the other children" (Parten, 1932).

Associative Play When children share materials and talk to each other, but do not coordinate play objectives or interests. ‐ All the children in the group are doing similar activities, but specific roles and goals are not defined.

A Group Effort Example: When several children make sand castles at the beach, they may share the job of making walls and digging the moats, and perhaps consult with one another about digging a channel to these. BUT…as members of the group lose interest and wander off, others may joining the activity.

Cooperative play This type of play occurs when children organize themselves into roles with specific goals in mind ‐ They help each other accomplish a joint venture, such as selling lemonade or building a fort for their “club” Think back…What are some examples of YOUR cooperative play?

Cooperative Play Example: while playing hospital they assign the roles of doctor, nurse, and patient. Each member of the group remains with the task until it is finished or the group decides together to go on to other activities.

The progression from solitary to parallel to associative to cooperative play reflects the child's growing ability to sustain his interests and relate to other children. Click on the picture for a video on play

Typical 1 ½-year-oldTypical 4-year-old Parallel PlayAssociative PlayCooperative Play

Sociodramatic Play As children develop the ability to represent experiences symbolically, pretend play becomes a prominent activity. ‐ Pretend play is when children act out various roles and themes in stories that they create themselves. By the age of four or five, children's ideas about the social world initiate most pretend play.

Sociodramatic Play Actions in play often reflect real world behavior, they also incorporate children's interpretations and wishes. Through dramatic play, children learn to assert themselves in a way to build their competence in later adult roles (Elkind, 1981). ‐ Children explore and rehearse social roles they have observed in society ‐ A child learns basic life skills such as cooperation, negotiation and compromise through play. Click for a video on this type of play!

Is there any value to sociodramatic play? When children play dress-up they are taking on the role of someone else. By doing this, children must try to think and behave in a manner appropriate to their pretend persona. Such Sociodramatic play also helps them to understand others and develop feelings of empathy.

Thanks for a great semester!!!