Chapter 12

Summary:

Chapter 12 revolves around raising children and discusses the promises and pitfalls that also occur. This chapter begins by discussing the contemporary parenting roles. This section discusses how rather than a parent performing a role they internalize it. Here, it is mentioned that parenting does not come naturally and that it is neither instinctive nor innate. This part stresses that it is just as much a learning process for both parents as it is for the child. Continuing through the chapter some rewards and difficulties of parenting are mentioned. In this section role conflict, the frustration and uncertainties a person experiences when the expectations of two or more roles are incompatible, and role strain, something which involves conflicts that someone feels within a role are discuss along with unrealistic role expectations, decreased authority, increased responsibility and high parenting standards, are all mentioned. The next section of this chapter discusses motherhood and compares its ideal and realistic roles, followed by fatherhood and its ideal and realistic roles. Chapter 12 continues with discussing some theories of child development. Some of the theories that this includes are Mead’s theory of the social self, which includes a discussion of the generalized other (people who do not have close ties to a child but who influences the child’s internalization of society’s norms and values), Piaget’s cognitive development theory, and Erikson’s psychosocial theory of development. This leads us into discussion of how parenting varies by ethnicity and social class. This section begins its discussion with parenting across racial-ethnic families and states that an important variable in a child’s well-being is the type and amount of interaction that occurs between the child and his/her parents. Interaction can involve anything from reading a bed time story to a child to taking them out on errands and on outings with you. Also brought up in this section is the discussion on monitoring children’s activities such as their television viewing and how often, the times of day, and what types of programs the children are watching. On a similar topic parenting and social class is also discussed in this section. Benokraitis introduces the idea of socioeconomic status which is an overall rank of an individual’s position in society based on income and also discusses the three SES types as referring to families. There are low-SES families, middle-SES families, and high-SES families. The next section of this chapter covers parenting changes over the life course which contains parenting infants and babies, parenting children, parenting teenagers, parenting in the crowded empty nest, and parenting in later life. Within the discussion of parenting infants and babies, the distinction between expecting a baby and having a baby was discussed. Here, the demands of infants, fatigue, stress, and co-parenting, along with some myths about babies were discussed. Some of the myths included that you can tell in infancy how bright a child is likely to be later on, the more stimulation a baby gets, the better, parents who pick up crying babies will spoil them, special talents surface early on or not at all, and parental conflicts don’t affect babies. Under the section of discussing parenting children, Benokraitis addressed daily interaction, parents’ and children’s inputs, if childhood is too medicalized and if children are over-programmed. Because adolescence is a time of a lot of change for the child it also affects the parents. In the parenting teenagers section of this chapter it discusses these changes in parent-child relationships, the helicopter and problem parents, which are the parents who hover over their kids, micromanaging every aspect of their lives, and most teenagers faring well. Teenagers faring well deals with factors such as role overload, a feeling of being overwhelmed by multiple commitments. Within the parenting in the crowded empty nests, things such as recent trends, why adult children are moving back to the nest, and the relationships between parents and boomerang children occur and affect both the child’s and parent’s way of life. Slightly switching topics, Chapter 12 begins discussing parenting in lesbian and gay families. In this section both types of relationships are discussed such as children with lesbian and gay parents, and parents with gay and lesbian children. The next section of this chapter discusses parenting styles and discipline. This relates to emotions. Like this section begins, “Someone once said that children may not remember exactly what you did or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel.” Within this section parenting styles, which is a general approach to interacting with and disciplining children are discussed. There are four styles, authoritarian, permissive, authoritative, and uninvolved, which vary on two dimensions, support and control. Support, which is sometimes called responsiveness, refers to the amount of affection, acceptance, warmth, and caring that a parent provides to a child, whereas control, is the degree of flexibility a parent shows in guiding a child’s behavior. Further describing the parenting styles, the chapter offers us definitions for each. Authoritarian style is often very demanding, rigid, and punitive. These parents typically show their children little warmth and support. Permissive parenting involves parents who are usually warm and responsive but undemanding. Authoritative parenting involves parents who are demanding and impose rules and standards of behavior but they are also responsive and supportive, and uninvolved parenting is neither supportive nor demanding; they are just indifferent. After each of these were described, this section of the chapter also discussed which parenting style is the most effective and the different forms of discipline that some may take. Some of the types of discipline listed were verbal punishment and corporal punishment along with whether or not it works and what a parent should do. The next section of the chapter discussed child care arrangements, specifically absentee fathers and latchkey kids. A latchkey kid is a child who returns home after school and lets themselves in to an empty house or apartment, where they are alone and unsupervised until their parents or another adult comes home. This further brings the chapter to discuss who is minding the kids. Here, child care patterns and characteristics along with effects of child care on children and parents are discussed. The final main section of this chapter is current social issues and children’s well-being. Within this section the impact of electronic media is discussed along with how children may be at risk, and even foster care. The foster care section discusses some of the problems that children experience such as they are only a short-term care until children can be adopted or returned to their biological parents. Although this section covered the problems, it also discussed the benefits of foster home, one of which was that many children will experience physical and emotional safety while being in one.

What was interesting/what did I learn:

As I read the chapter, I found the distinction and connection between role conflict and role strain as something very intriguing. It is interesting to think that both of these things could be happening at the same time, but yet if they don’t that they would still be just as stressful dealing with just one of them. I also found it interesting that there is so much that can lead to role strain. It seems as if it would be virtually impossible to accomplish anything without feeling some strain and/or conflict for that matter.

Question:

When the chapter discussed helicopter parenting, I felt like I could relate this to my family. My mother seemed to be like this with my older brother, the first born. Do you think that this type of parenting only comes out in specific situations or is it generally the same for all children of some parents? For example, do you think it is more prevalent with the first born, do you think it is more prevalent in girls or boys, etc.?