3.2: Development of Parents
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How Parents Develop
Check-in Time!
Have you ever thought about parenting? What are some of your ideas about what makes a "good enough" parent? How have your experiences shaped your ideas?
Parenting is a complex process in which parents and children both impact one another. There are many reasons that parents behave the way they do. The multiple influences on parenting are still being explored. Proposed influences on parental behavior include:
- parent characteristics
- child characteristics
- contextual and sociocultural characteristics
Parent Characteristics
Parents bring unique traits and qualities to the parenting relationship that affect their decisions as parents. These characteristics include a parent’s age, gender identity, personality, developmental history, beliefs, knowledge about parenting and child development, and mental and physical health. Parents’ personalities also affect parenting behaviors. Parents who are more agreeable, conscientious, and outgoing are warmer and provide more structure to their children. Parents who are more agreeable, less anxious, and less negative also support their children’s autonomy more than parents who are anxious and less agreeable. Parents who have these personality traits appear to be better able to respond to their children positively and provide a more consistent, structured environment for their children.
Parents’ developmental histories, or their experiences as children, can also affect their parenting strategies. Parents may learn parenting practices from their own parents. Fathers whose own parents provided monitoring, consistent and age-appropriate discipline, and warmth are more likely to provide this constructive parenting to their own children. Patterns of negative parenting and ineffective discipline also appear from one generation to the next. However, parents who are dissatisfied with their primary caregivers’ approach may be more likely to change their parenting methods when they have children.
Child Characteristics
Parenting is bidirectional. Not only do parents and caregivers affect their children, but children influence their parents/primary caregivers as well. Child characteristics, such as gender identity, birth order, temperament, and health status, can affect child-rearing behaviors and roles. For example, an infant with an easy temperament may enable caregivers to feel more effective, as they are easily able to soothe the child and elicit smiling and cooing. On the other hand, a cranky or fussy infant can elicit fewer positive reactions from caregivers and may result in parents feeling less effective in the role. Over time, parents of more challenging children may become more punitive and less patient with their children. Many parents who have a fussy, difficult child have been found to be less satisfied with their relationships and have greater challenges in balancing work and family roles. Thus, child temperament is one of the child characteristics that influences how caregivers behave with their children.
Another child characteristic is the child’s gender identity. Some parents assign different household chores to their children based on their child’s gender identity. For example, older research has shown girls are more often responsible for caring for younger siblings and household chores, whereas boys are more likely to be asked to perform chores outside the home, such as mowing the lawn. Research has also demonstrated that some parents talk differently with their children based on their child’s gender identity, such as providing more scientific explanations to their sons and using more emotion words with their daughters. These cultural practices impact the way in which parents see their children and the children see their role in the family and in society.
Contextual Factors and Sociocultural Characteristics
The parent-child relationship does not occur in isolation. Sociocultural characteristics, including economic hardship, religion, politics, neighborhoods, schools, and social support, can also influence parenting. Parents who experience economic hardship tend to be more easily frustrated, depressed, and sad, and these emotional characteristics can affect their parenting skills.
Culture can also impact parenting behaviors in fundamental ways. Although promoting the development of skills necessary to function effectively in one’s community, to the best of one’s abilities, is a universal goal of parenting, the specific skills necessary vary widely from culture to culture. Thus, parents have different goals for their children that mostly depend on their culture. In our early learning programs in America, there is a tendency to focus on children's independence. This is not so for all cultures. Some cultures see the value of interdependence. This is often referred to as collectivism. This is where the family places the group over the self. This is an important concept to think about as the children and families you will serve, have differing goals for their children that must be acknowledged and valued.
These differences in parental goals are influenced by the culture of the family and their sense of belonging in their communities. The roles of an early learning professional is to acknowledge the complexities of parenting and to provide support that is culturally appropriate for each of the children and families they serve. It is crucial that early learning professionals acknowledge those complexities and do not think of parenting as a one size fits all.
The Six Stages of Parenthood - Ellen Galinsky
In the 80's, Ellen Galinsky, a researcher who studies changing family dynamics, was one of the first scholars to emphasize the development of parents themselves, how they respond to their children’s development, and how they grow as parents. Parenthood is an experience that transforms one’s identity as one takes on new roles. Children’s growth and development force parents to change their roles. They must develop new skills and abilities in response to children’s development. Galinsky identified six stages of parenthood that focus on different tasks and goals:
Stage 1:
The Image-Making Stage (prospective parents) - They enter this stage when the family is planning for a child. They are considering what it means to be parents and their plans for the future. They (a) think about and form images about their roles as parents, (b) contemplate what will emerge as a result of parenthood, and (c) prepare for changes associated adding an infant to their family. Prospective parents develop ideas about what it will be like to be a parent and what type of parent they want to be. Individuals may evaluate their relationships with their own parents as a model for their upcoming roles as parents.
Stage 2:
The Nurturing Stage (infancy) - This is the stage that occurs after the birth of the baby or after a baby may join a family through adoption. A parent’s main goal during this stage is to develop an attachment relationship with their baby. Parents must adapt their romantic relationships, their relationships with their other children, and their relationships with their own parents to include the new infant. Some parents feel attached to their baby immediately, but for other parents, this occurs more gradually. Parents may have imagined their infant in specific ways, but they now have to reconcile those images with their actual baby. In incorporating their relationship with their child into their other relationships, parents often have to reshape their conceptions of themselves and their identity. Parenting responsibilities are the most demanding during infancy because infants are completely dependent on caregiving.
Stage 3:
The Authority Stage (toddler and pre-school) - During this stage, parents make decisions about how much authority to exert over their children’s behavior. Parents must establish rules to guide their child’s behavior and development. They have to decide how strictly they should enforce rules and what to do when rules are broken. Parents create rules and figure out how to effectively guide their child’s behavior.
Stage 4:
The Interpretive Stage (middle childhood) - During this stage, parents interpret their children’s experiences as they are increasingly exposed to the world outside of the family. Parents answer their children’s questions, provide explanations, and determine what behaviors and values to teach. They decide what experiences to provide their children in terms of schooling, neighborhood, and extracurricular activities. By this time, parents have experience in the parenting role and often reflect on their strengths and weaknesses as parents, review their images of parenthood, and determine how realistic they have been. Parents have to negotiate how involved to be with their children, when to step in, and when to encourage children to make choices independently.
Stage 5:
The Interdependent Stage (adolescence) - During this stage, parents must redefine their authority and renegotiate their relationship with their adolescent as the children increasingly make decisions independent of parental control and authority. On the other hand, parents do not permit their adolescent children to have complete autonomy over their decision-making and behavior, and thus adolescents and parents must adapt their relationship to allow for greater negotiation and discussion about rules and limits.
Stage 6:
The Departure Stage (early adulthood) - During the departure stage of parenting, parents evaluate their entire parenting experience. They prepare for their child’s departure, redefine their identity as the parent of an adult child, and assess their parenting accomplishments and failures. This stage forms a transition to a new era in parents’ lives. This stage usually spans a long time period from when the oldest child moves away (and often returns) until the youngest child leaves. The parenting role must be redefined as a less central role in a parent’s identity.
Cultural Considerations
Despite the interest in the development of parents, little research has examined developmental changes in parents’ experiences and behaviors over time. Thus, it is not clear whether these theoretical stages are generalizable to parents of different races, ages, cultures, and religions, nor do we have empirical data on the factors that influence individual differences in these stages. In evaluating these ideas, early learning professionals must consider the many differences that exist among parents and use these ideas as more of a guide in understanding parents points of view.
References:
"Parenting and Family Diversity" by Diana Lang is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
"Child, Family, and Community" by Rebecca Laff and Wendy Ruiz is licensed under CC BY 4.0