Chapter 11
Parenting
Roles Involved in Parenting
Parenting involves:
• Caregiving—providing physical care
– Boomerang generation: young adults who have
moved back in with their parents after having
lived on their own
• Providing emotional support
• Teaching
Parenting Roles
Parenting involves:
• Providing economic resources
• Protecting
– Oppositional defiant disorder: children fail to
comply with the requests of authority figures
– More likely to develop when not closely
monitored
Parenting Involves
• Promoting healthy living
• Fostering rituals: building a sense of family
cohesiveness
Choices Perspective
• Not to make a parental
decision is to make a
decision.
• All parental choices
involve trade-offs.
• Regretted parental
decisions may be
reframed.
Choices Perspective
Basic Parenting Choices:
• Whether to have a child
• The number of children
• The interval between children
• The method of discipline and guidance
• The degree to which parents will be invested
in the role
Transition to Parenthood
• Transition to parenthood: period from the
beginning of pregnancy through the first few
months after the birth of a baby
– Sociobiologists suggest that the attachment
between a mother and her offspring has a
biological basis.
• Oxytocin: a hormone released from the pituitary gland
during the expulsive stage of labor that has been
associated with the onset of maternal behavior in lower
animals
Transition
• Baby blues: transitory symptoms of
depression 24 to 48 hours after the baby is
born
• Postpartum depression: a severe reaction
following the birth of a baby usually in the first
month after birth
• Postpartum psychosis: a rare reaction where
the mother wants to harm her baby
Transition
• Fathers and mothers benefit from the
father’s involvement in parenting.
• Gatekeeper role: term used to
refer to the influence or control
of the mother on the father’s
involvement and relationship
with his children
– Particularly pronounced after a
divorce
Transition
• Research consistently reveals that having a
child has a negative effect on marital
happiness.
• The negative effect is worst during the teen
years.
• Children tend to increase marital stability.
Transition
Parenthood: Some Facts
• Views of children differ historically.
– 13th-16th centuries: innocent, sweet, and source of
amusement
– 16th-18th centuries: in need of discipline and moral
training
– Today: focus of parental attention
– Helicopter parents constantly hover over their
children to ensure their success.
Parenthood Facts
• Permissive parents are high on responsiveness
and low on demandingness.
• Authoritarian parents are high on
demandingness and low in responsiveness.
• Authoritative parents are both demanding
and responsive.
• Uninvolved parents are low in responsiveness
and demandingness.
Effective Parenting
• Give time, love, praise, and
encouragement.
• Be realistic.
• Avoid overindulgence:
giving children too much,
over-nurturing and
providing too little
structure.
• Monitor activities and drug
use.
Effective Parenting
• Set limits and discipline children for
inappropriate behavior
– The goal of discipline is self-control.
– Time-out: a noncorporal form of punishment that
involves removing the child from a context of
reinforcement to a place of isolation
• Provide security.
Effective Parenting
• Encourage responsibility.
• Teach emotional competence: capacity to
experience emotion, express emotion, and
regulate emotion.
• Provide sex education and teach nonviolence.
– Menarche: first menstruation signaling a woman’s
fertility
• Establish the norm of forgiveness.
Single-Parenting
• Forty percent of births in the U.S. are to
unmarried mothers.
• It is important to distinguish between a singleparent family and a single-parent household.
• Binuclear family: child lives in single-parent
household but remains connected to the
other parent.
Single-Parenting
• Single mothers by choice are usually middle to
upper class, mature, will-employed, and
dedicated to mothering.
Single-Parenting
Single parents face challenges:
• Responding to the demands of parenting with
limited help
• Meeting adult emotional needs
• Meeting adult sexual needs
• Coping with the lack of money
• Ensuring guardianship
• Obtaining prenatal care
Single-Parenting
Single parents face challenges:
• Coping with the absence of a father
• Avoiding negative life outcomes for the child
– More likely to drop out of school, get pregnant
before marriage, have drinking problems, and get
divorced themselves