Chapter 12

Chapter 12
(Raising children)

Summary:

• The chapter begins with discussing the contemporary parenting roles that have evolved in this society over time. Just as a child is born, so is a parent. The adult has to learn all the rules of becoming a parent so they can efficiently take care of their child. The rewards and difficulties of parenting vary in each and every way. But one of the hardest difficulties a parent goes through is role conflict: this is when separate roles collide with each other and cause extreme strain and stress among the person/parent. These roles differ between mother and father in interesting ways. Myths that state mothering comes naturally is said to cause great strain to females when they face adversity or hardships when first taking care of their child. While fathers may have to deal with balancing and choosing their fragmented roles which include breadwinner fathers, autonomous father and involved fathers.
  
• Mead's has a social self theory that states "as a child matures, he or she understands the role of the generalized other, or people who done have close ties to the child but who influence them." Piaget's cog development theory focused on the growth of a child effort to understand his or her world and how they play an active role in learning. Erickson's psychosocial theory concentrated on the "entire lifespan rather than just childhood."
• Parenting across racial ethnic families was discussed along with social class (socioeconomic status) and how they both effect the environment as well as the cultural awareness that a child comes to learn obtain in their years.
  
• The book continues to discuss the ideology of parenting pertaining to the relationship a parent has to their child. Daily interactions & parent-child (and vice versa) inputs are vital to a healthy relationship. But as time tells us, children change as they grow up; teenagers. They are notable contenders with their parents as this age range since they feel they want to be more independent. This also changes when children leave the home and the 'empty nest' theory coems into play, but it takes another left turn when/if the children come back as grown adults and request to live with the parents again. This brings many difficulties to the household even if it is for a temporary stay. The chapter continues with discussing the different discipline styles each parent can play and how they differ in the child's growth and maturation.
  

New interesting fact:

• "Depression is said to be higher among economically disadvantaged mothers than higher income mothers because of the stresses of poverty and unhappy relationships." This was surprising to me because i didn't think that poverty had such an effect on one's view of happiness. I know it effects your attitude, but ones true happiness shouldn't be a pure reflection on your current circumstances because those circumstances can always change. It should be a factor, but not the core of happiness. That is just my opinion though.

Question:

• Do you think that unhappy relationships are more prevalent in poor households just because of their economic state, or are they more or less prevalent in rich/wealthy households too?
  

Chapter 12

1) Chapter 12 was about raising children. The first section was about contemporary roles that parents play. Then there were different theories about how children develop presented. The theories of Mead, Piaget, and Erikson were included. Next, it talked about variations in parenting, depending on social class and ethnicity. The part after that was about changes in parenting throughout life, and the adjustments that may need to be made. Then, the book talked about gay and lesbian families and parenting. The next section was about different styles of parenting and discipline. Next, there was a part about options for arranging childcare and the effects of it. Last, social issues and well being of children currently were discussed.

2) One thing I thought was really interesting was the parent about myths about babies. The first myth mentioned was that you can tell how smart a baby will be later on in life. The second was that more stimulation is always better. The third was that picking up babies spoils them. The fourth was that if a baby will have special talents they will always develop early. And the last was that conflicts between parents don’t affect babies. I thought this was a very good idea to include this part in the book. The reason I found it so interesting was because I think that these 5 things, are commonly thought to be true by parents, even though all of them were proven to be false.

3) One question I had was about different cultures and their babies. The book mentioned Latino families read to their kids less, but are very likely to expect them to graduate from college. Why do people think this is? Could it be just a stronger emphasis on independence? Or is there more to it?

Natalie LaBarbera

Summary
Parenting is a major responsibility and becoming a parent will alter your life forever. Parenting has many pros and cons including role conflict, role strain, unrealistic role expectations, decreased authority, increased responsibility, and high parenting standards. Parenting varies by many factors as well including social class, race or ethnicity, age of the parents, and family size. The parenting styles and discipline that parents use vary from the authoritarian style, permissive style, authoritative style, and uninvolved style. These styles involve disciplines that parents must determine which will be the most effective for their children. The two examples explained in the chapter were verbal punishment and corporal punishment. While there are many other ways to discipline children, the entire chapter encompasses how parents raise their children and how it impacts their lives forever.

New, Interesting, or Unusual Items Learned
I found the chart on on Pg. 321 very interesting when mothers and fathers were compared in the past. I also found the chart on Pg. 326 about the percentage of children who are read to by race or ethnicity of a child very interesting. It's odd in my eyes that white children are read to the least because I was always read to when I was growing up.

Question/Concern
What are the effects on a child whose parents both work and hire outside help from when they are a baby to a teenager? Do these children respect their parents differently than the caregiver or is there any life-changing impact at all?

Brian Bitner

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.

Chapter 12: Raising Children: Promises and Pitfalls

Summary
CONTEMPORARY PARENTING
A Parent is Born
Some Rewards and Difficulties of Parenting: role conflict and role strain, unrealistic role expectations, decreased authority, increased responsibility, high parenting standards
Motherhood and Fatherhood: Ideal versus Realistic Roles
SOME THEORIES OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT
Mead's Theory of the Social Self
Piaget's Cognitive Development Theory
Erikson's Psychosocial Theory of Development
PARENTING VARIATIONS BY ETHNICITY AND SOCIAL CLASS
Parenting across Racial-Ethnic Families: spending time with children and monitoring children's activities
Parenting and Social Class: low-ses families, middle-ses families, and high-ses families
socioeconomic status (SES)- overall rank of an individual's position in society based on income, education, and occupation
PARENTING CHANGES OVER THE LIFE COURSE
Parenting Infants and Babies: the demands of infants, fatigue, stress, and co-parenting, some myths about babies
Parenting Children: daily interactions, parents' and children's inputs, is childhood too medicalized?, are children over-programmed?
Parenting Teenagers: changes in parent-child relationships, helicopter and problem parents, most teenagers fare well
Parenting in the Crowded Empty Nest: recent trends, why are adult children moving back to the nest? relationships between parents and boomerang children, parenting in later life
PARENTING IN LESBIAN AND GAY FAMILIES
Children with Lesbian and Gay Parents
Parents with Gay and Lesbian Children
PARENTING STYLES AND DISCIPLINE
authoritarian style- very demanding, rigid, and punitive
permissive style- warm and responsive but undemanding
authoritative parenting- impose rules and standards of behavior, but they are also responsive and supportive
uninvolved parenting- neither supportive nor demanding because they're indifferent
Which Parenting Style Is the Most Effective?
Discipline: verbal punishment, corporal punishment, does corporal punishment work?, what's a parent to do?
CHILD CARE ARRANGEMENTS
Absentee fathers: economic deprivation, social deprivation
Latchkey kids
Who' Minding the Kids?: Childcare patterns and characteristics, effects of child care on children and parents
CURRENT SOCIAL ISSUES AND CHILDREN'S WELL-BEING
The Impact of Electronic Media
Children at Risk
Foster Care: problems and benefits

Points of Interest
The part on the chapter focusing on punishment and spanking reminded me of what we are talking about in psychology. We have been learning about positive/negative reinforcement and positive/negative punishment along with the effectiveness of these teaching tactics. Our psychology book also goes over how to make these teaching tactics effective and the results of aggressive punishment such as a negative attitude toward the punisher.

Questions
On page 325, there is a picture of a little girl filling up her truck. My grandpa told me my mother used to sit in their backyard when she was very little and play with this pile of red bricks for hours on end. Does anyone recall any interesting activities they used to do as a child that may seem odd to look back on?
How does everyone feel about the car chip on page 332? Does it give parents too much power? Or are these parents just take precautions? Also, on page 334, an article mentions that "Some college students have simply left their GPS-enabled cell phones under their dorm room beds when they went off with friends." Is this taking it too far?
On page 334, the author brings up how adult children are moving back into their homes after being away. Are you planning on moving back home after college for awhile? Why?
Which style of parenting do you feel is most effective and why? What styles were your parents?

Chapter 12 blog

Chapter 12 is all about raising children, which has many rewards but also some costs. The chapter begins by discussing the interactions that different family members have with one another. Often in sociology, Role Theory is used to explain these different patterns of interaction. Role conflict occurs when someone plays many conflicting roles and as a consequence experiences frustration. Role strain is when someone experiences conflict within a role. An example of role strain may be when a parent wants to be both a friend and an authority figure to their child at the same time. Some more potential difficulties of parenting may include unrealistic role expectations, decreased authority, increased responsibility, and high parenting standards. The next concept discussed is both motherhood and fatherhood. The book notes Kathleen Gerson’s three basic types of fathers. These are breadwinner fathers, autonomous fathers and involved fathers. The chapter goes on to describe different theories of development. These include Mead’s theory of social self with involves the infant as a black slate who is developed through interactions with others, Piaget’s cognitive development theory and Erikson’s psychosocial theory of development. The book also notes that parenting styles differ across ethnicity and social class. Differences between races may include time spent with children, and the monitoring of children’s activities. The book continues to explain that parenting changes over the life course. The book points out the four parenting styles that have been noted by social sciences. The four different parenting styles are Authoritarian, Permissive, Authoritative and Uninvolved. Discipline of children is also discussed within this chapter. There is a general consensus within the scientific community that other disciplinary methods are considered more effective than physical punishment. Another issue discussed in this chapter is that of current social issues and what effect they have on a child’s well being. One of these issues is how advances in electronic media effects a child’s well being. According to the chapter, 68% of children younger than two years old watch 2-3 hours of television daily. In homes where the TV is constantly on, parents tend to spend less time reading to their children. The chapter concludes asserting that changes regarding child rearing practices have occurred throughout the past decade that include both the inclusion of fathers in child rearing and unfortunately more at-risk children.

Something New/Interesting

Something new that I learned was something in the section on foster care. A new program for foster children involves contacting the child’s biological non-resident father and giving him custody. This father hadn’t lived in the home the child had been removed from and sometimes doesn’t even know that the child existed. In a study of 4 states, 46% of such contacted fathers became involved in getting custody of the child.

Discussion Point

Once again it seems as if the United States is trailing other industrialized countries in important indicators of well-being. As pointed out in this chapter , the US is ranked first among 16 industrialized countries with the greatest proportion of children living in poverty. Why do you think this is?

-Ali Mosser

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.