Chapter 12 Raising Children: Promises and Pitfalls

Summary

This chapter discussed parenting, alternative methods that child receive care such as through daycare centers and foster care, child development, and social ideas surrounding these issues.

The first step of becoming a parent is internalizing one’s role as a parent. Seeing oneself as a parent and letting other see one as a parent helps to manage expectations. The parental role is a role to take care of a child and entails a number of commitments such as being willing to take an active part in the child’s development. This role and its corresponding expectations may conflict with other roles and other expectations that a parent may have; for example, roles that they have through their job or through their hobbies – this is called role conflict. Even within one role, there may be irreconcilable pressures, or role strain. Within the role of parent there are a number of parenting styles and discipline methods. The book recognizes Authoritarian, Permissive, Authoritative, and Uninvolved styles of parenting that differ with regard to parental support and parental control. The book notes that Authoritative style seems most effective. Parents also differ in the extents to which they use verbal and or corporal punishment to discpline their children. Most parents use verbal punishment; the book shows that corporal punishment works but only for the short term. It suggests alternative ways that children can be disciplined, such as by re-directing their attention. The book also shows how parents are different not only with regard to these parenting styles and discplinary methods which are easily modified – but by less modifiable characteristics such as their ethnicity and social class. For example, 51% of black children live with single mothers, latino children mostly stay with relatives to be watched rather than daycare centers, and the more money, education, and prestigious occupation that a family has, the more that they are able to improve the “life chances” of their children. Homosexuality is another characteristic that distinguishes parents and parenting strategies. Confronting the question of whether homosexual parents are as adept as heterosexual parents, the book postulates that what really matters is the extent to which the parents are supportive and willing to take care of their children, not gender or sexual orientation.

The book discusses two main methods of child care that are beyond the parents – daycare for temporary care from parents and foster care for permanent care away from parents. It is shown that both of these have social stigmas attached, but also include some often unacknowledged benefits. For children in foster care are satisfied with their emotional and physical security as well as the lovingness of their foster parents and children of daycares derive a great deal from social interactions with other children.

The child’s development under the care of parents or some other means may be understood various ways and may be riddled with various difficulties. Theories for understanding child’s development have been proposed by Mead, Piaget, and Erikson (for a summary of their findings, see Table 12.1). Concerns about the raising and the development of the child include their over-medicalization, over-programming by parents, their disobedience as adolescents, and the ‘boomerang’ nature of kids who have already moved away from home. Social issues have been raised such as the proper age, frequency and content for a child’s tv watching, as well as issues of obesity and health.

What I learned

What I took away most from this chapter were the categorizations of parenting styles and of fathers. I would support these categorizations as affective ways not only of understanding general trends in parenting behaviors, but as an affective way of understanding categorized parents’ behaviors beyond parenting (i.e. these labels define more than the type of parent that one is; to a certain extent they define the type of person that one is generally). It would be interesting to assess what macro-level factors influence which of these parenting styles that one falls under. I have often heard people draw relations between their parent’s parenting style – especially parental control – and their ethnicity. It would also be interesting to see how parents might be categorized with respect to their exercise of moral convictions in domestic life.

Questions/Concerns

This statement bothered me: “The more money parents have, the more they can spend on education, health care, reading materials, and other expenses that enhance life chances (pg. 327-328). What exactly is meant here by “life chances,” is unclear. Perhaps we could finish the statement by saying “life chances for the child to do what it is that he or she desires to do.” If this is the case, I would argue that the amount of money in the parents’ bank account does not influence the child nearly as much as the amount of support that the child receives. Education and reading-material needs can be met at the public library for free. Higher education is based on loans and is financial accessible to almost anyone nowadays. That health care is available does not enhance the ability of a child to do what they want to do, it rather prevents health issues from interfering with their ability to do what they want to do – there is a significant difference between support and noninterference. The main factor affecting whether a child does what he or she wants to do is not at the meta level; it is not economic nor racial nor any other meta level or social determinant– it is whether the child has in them – individually – a motivating force. My personal view is that it is the parent’s main job not to instill this motivating force but to help the child cultivate it. Everything else is secondary.

The concept of adultification – or the process by which children prematurely assume adult responsibilities – inspired a question for me. In the past people matured earlier (we might only need to say, people matured); when is it time to become an adult – not in terms of age, but relative to life-experiences? Furthermore, what are some macro-level factors that are responsible for the delayed, often permanently delayed, maturity of young peoples? In answering one or both of these questions, one should stay conscious of the ways in which the concept of adulthood is socially constructed.