chapter summary:

Family Dynamics

• How well a family fulfills its functions depends on its family dynamics: all the family members influence one another, and the nature of their interactions shapes children’s development.

The Role of Parental Socialization

• Parents socialize their children’s development through direct instruction; through their modeling of skills, attitudes, and behavior; and through their managing of children’s experiences and social lives.
• Researchers have identified several types of parenting styles related to the dimensions of warmth and control. Authoritative parents are supportive and relatively high in control; their children tend to be socially and academically competent. Authoritarian parents are low in warmth and high in control; their children tend to be relatively low in social and academic competence, unhappy, and low in self-confidence. Permissive parents are responsive to their children’s needs and wishes and low on control; their children tend to be low in self-control and in school achievement. Rejecting-neglecting parents are low in demandingness, support, and control; their children tend to have disturbed attachment relationships during infancy, poor peer relations during childhood, and poor adjustment in adolescence.
• The significance and effects of different parenting styles or practices may vary somewhat across cultures.
• Parenting styles and practices are affected by characteristics of the children, including their attractiveness, behavior, and temperament.
• Parents’ beliefs and values tend to differ across social classes, such that lower socioeconomic status tends to be associated with authoritarian parenting.
• Economic stressors can undermine the quality of marital and parent–child interactions, increasing children’s risk for depression, academic failure, disruptive behavior, and drug use.
• Homeless children are more likely than other children to show delays in cognitive and language development, to have academic difficulties, and to show problems in adjustment.

Mothers, Fathers, and Siblings

• Mothers typically interact with their children much more than fathers do, and fathers’ play tends to be more physical than mothers’ play. However, the nature of parent–child interactions differs across cultures.
• Siblings learn from one another, can be sources of support for one another, and sometimes engage in conflict. Siblings get along better if they have good relationships with their parents and if one of them does not feel that their parents treat him or her less well than they treat his or her siblings.

Changes in Families in the United States

• In the United States today, adults are marrying later, more children are being born to single mothers, and divorce and remarriage are common occurrences.
• Adolescent parents come disproportionately from impoverished backgrounds and families with cold, uninvolved parents. Adolescent mothers tend to be less effective parents than older parents, and their children are at risk for behavioral and academic problems, delinquency, and early sexual activity. Children of adolescent mothers fare better if their mothers have more knowledge about parenting and if the children themselves have a warm, involved relationship with their fathers.
• Mothers who delay childbearing tend to be more responsive with their children and to enjoy motherhood more than do mothers who have their first children in their teens and 20s.
• Parental divorce and remarriage have been associated with enduring negative outcomes such as behavioral problems for a minority of children. The major factor contributing to negative outcomes for children of divorce is hostile, dysfunctional family interactions, including continuing conflict between ex-spouses.
• Parental depression and upset, as well as other types of stress associated with single parenting, often compromise the quality of divorced parents’ interactions with their children.
• Conflict is common in stepfamilies. Children often are hostile toward stepparents, and stepparents usually are less involved with their stepchildren than are biological parents. Children do best if all parents are supportive and use an authoritative parenting style.
• There is no evidence that children raised by lesbian or gay parents differ from children of heterosexual parents in their sexual orientation or adjustment.

Maternal Employment and Child Care

• Children and mothers reap some benefits from maternal employment, and maternal employment has few negative effects on children if they are in child care of acceptable quality and are supervised and monitored by adults.
• Experience with nonmaternal care has small negative effects on the quality of the mother–child relationship for some young children, especially if they are in child care for long hours, the quality of care is low, and their mother is insensitive.
• Child care is associated with a small increase in negative problem behavior for children from working- and middle-class families, especially if they are not in a high-quality program, but it may be associated with improvements in adjustment for low-income children.
• Children in high-quality care do better in their cognitive and language development than children in low-quality care. Whether child care has positive or negative effects on children’s functioning probably depends in part on the characteristics of the child, the child’s relationship with his or her mother, and the quality of the child-care situation.