Chapter 12 - Raising Children: Promises and Pitfalls (EY)

1) Summary

Contemporary parenting roles:

Prenting does not come naturally but it is a set of learned behaviors. Although parenting can be very rewarding, it is also not an easy task. Role theory is implied to explain family dynamics. For example parents may experience role conflicts while juggling work and parenting. Similarly, parents may experience role strain when dealing with two conflicting roles, such as parenting mutliple children with different needs. Some sources of role strain come from unrealistic role expectations, decreased authority, increased responsibility, and high parenting standards.

Motherhood comes with many conflicts and role strains. The society expects the mothers to have mothering abilities naturally and media romanticises mothering with unrealistic standards such as devoting their entire time to raising children. Also media shows celebrity mothers that are not representative of moms in the society. Fatherhood is characterized by conflicts and strains as well. There are breadwinners who only take the economic load of childrearing, autonomous fathers that distance themselves completely, and involved fathers that parent their children in multiple aspects. In addition, some fathers may also experinence postpartum depression due to the difficulties of parenting and some fathers who believe that mothers are better at parenting may not have intimacy with their children.

Some theories of child development

Mead sets 3 stages for child development; it starts with imitation, swithes to play around age 2 with language development, and turns into games around school age. Piaget characterizes the starting stage as the sensorimotor that is based in early senses and abilities such as learning object permanence. It continues woth preoperational stage around age 2 with symbolic development and concrete operational stage around age 8 where they can see other's views, cause effect etc. Finally around age13 children can grasp abstract concepts in the formal operational state. Erikson characterized stages that go beyond child development and these stages are: trust-mistrust (age 1), autonomy (age 2), initiative-guilt (age 4), industry-inferiority (age 6), identity-confusion (age 13), intimacy-isolation (age 20), generativity-self absorption (age 30), integrity-despair (age 65)

Parenting variations by ethnicity and social class

Reading prepares children for school and allows parents share their time with their children. Latino parents are least likely to read to their children but expect theri children to graduate from college at the same levels as others. Another activity parents can do with children is to take their children to outings, parks, zoos etc, and it seems white parents are more likely to engage in such activities than others. The author also implicates that these differences may come from differences in family structure such as single parenting. We also learn that white parents are less likely to closely monitor their children's activities as other groups. However, it seems that the more educated the parents are the more restrictive they are for television viewing.

Low-socioeconomic status (SES) families are not able to provide their children with resources and in the case they are young parents they may lack the maturity and skills for effective parenting. Also some children may undergo adultification. Middle-SES families provide more for their children; fathers may stick to jobs that they hate, mothers are more involved with their children. The higher the SES of the family, the more they can provide opportunitie, books , toys for their children. Parents in high-SES may engage in more activities with kids, read more and spend more time with them and can provide extracurricular activities.

Parenting changes over the course of life

Parenting infants is very demanding. Co-sleeping with an infant is a practical solution to attend to the needs of a child but is not recommended by the pediatricians due to safety risks. Due to high demands of infant care mothers are very exhausted. On the other side fathers may be pushed aside by maternal gatekeeping. There are also many baby myths such as; early motor achievements are indicative of intelligence, the more stimulation the baby gets the better, babies will be spoiled if you pick them while crying, talents surface early in life, and children are immune to parental conflicts.

Parenting children involves more communication than infants. Children are more expressive and they come with different personalities and behavior patterns. One problem these days seems to be that the parents are overmedicating their children to correct their behaviors. Similarly, some experts believe that children are overprogrammed and there is less free play thus less imaginative development.

Parenting teenagers are more troubling times than earlier stages. A perfect child-parent relationship can get sour during this period. Some propose that raging hormones may be the reasons but some others propose that less parental supervision and staying up late may make underdeveloped brains of adolescents make it harder to monitor their behavior. Helicopter parents are not good solution to the problem either. Instead being good role models is more important. Due to role overload most parents claim that it is hard to monitor their children. Still, most teenagers reach adulthood without major problems. Teeneagers that do best later in life have the 5Cs; character, competence, confidence, connection and caring.

Parenting never ends and continues even if the nest is empty. Most people leave the nest in early 20s but some boomerang kids bounce back for various reasons. And in some cases adult children require parental care until later in life due to disabilities or other valid reasons.

Parenting in lesbian/gay families

Growing up in same-sex families is not that different from heteroxesual families and these children face similar situations. What seems to be most important is the parenting style and relationship with the children rather than the sex of the parents.

Styles and discipline

There are four main types of parenting. Authoritarians provide low support but high control. Permissive parents are the opposites by providing high support but little control. On the other hand authoritative parents both support and control their children at higher levels whereas uninvolved parents don't care for supporting or monitoring their children. According to studieuthoriative parents raise the most successul and self-sufficient children. However, most families exert multiple styles depending on times and situations.

Parents still engage in verbal or corporal punisments. According to research, corporal punishment is more harmful in the long run that other forms such as removing the temptation for the misbehavior, time-outs etc. It sends the wrong message to the child that it is ok to hit people you love or the child may feel not loved.

Child care arrangements

Absentee fathers are increasing in the society. Some negative consequences involve economic and social deprivations since the mother is the sole source for income and parental involvement.

Latchkey kids are increasing as well due to higher rates of parents working outside home simultaneously. For children with working parents relatives or child-care centers take care of the children. Higher income parents may afford child-care centers more than others. However day care is controversial. Some believe that putting a child to a daycare is responsible for many problems later such as obesity or poor school performance, although most of these claims seems to be not true.

Current issues and children's well being

Most children's content on TV are empty and non-educative even if they were aimed to be so. It is also found that many children spend too much time watching TV. Parents also do not spend as much time with more educative activities such as reading to their kids. Children in US are also exposed to more food ads on TV. Also, child-poverty rates are high in US. But in general, many children live in countries with high air pollution rates and where law permits, they may be exposed to second-hand smoking. If the child's welfare is at risk, they may be placed in foster care, however they may still encounter problems such as abandonement and rapidly changing enviroments.

2) Interesting aspects

I only knew about Piaget's child development theory before but I thought Erikson's theory was very interesting and and more comprehensive.

3) Discussion

On page 326 the author states that Latino families are less likely than white, black and asian parents to read to their children. However, later in the page it attributes this reading less to the children problem to single motherhood and multigenerational family structures that are common in black, latino and asian cultures. First, black and asian children are not less likely than white children in getting their reading needs to be met. Second, single mothers may be busy and tired but it doesn't mean they will not read and spend time for their children as any other working parent who is also tired and busy. I think the book sometimes stereotypes some groups more than it needs to. Similarly, the book was implying later that boys raised by single mothers may be exposed to corporal punishement more than other children. Maybe this is true for some cases but I don't appreciate the claim that single mothers have less money and resources to relieve boredom of children, as a result punish their misbehaving children physically (page 340).

Do you agree with the book that single mothers are not great parents in general or that the book

overgerenalizes this group?

Eser Y.