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
Neighborhood
Family
Work
Father
Mother
School
Extended
Family
Children
Religious
Organizations
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 Category
Description
Examples
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-old
Parallel Play
Associative Play
Typical 4-year-old
Cooperative 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.
Click for a video on this
type of 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.
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!!!