- ecological systems approach: emphasizes interpreting parenting style in light of cultural and contextual factors like socioeconomic status and cultural values. This view paints the family as being an ecosystem: each element must be interpreted in light of all other elements.
-Parenting styles are associated with different outcomes across different cultures. For example, the authoritarian parenting style is
associated with better outcomes in Chinese American families than in European American families. some have hypothesized that the difference in outcomes here is linked to differences in the attitudes driving the parenting behavior. For example, Chinese American parents who are authoritarian may be this way because they want to train their children, while European American parents who are authoritarian may be this way because they want to control their children.
- Differences in parenting
behavior are also linked to differences in socioeconomic status. low-income families used twice as much language that forbids actions (for example, "Don't do that"), and used one-sixth as much positive feedback as high-income families. These differences in parenting style aren't stable. They can differ from day to day, or after life changes (for example, getting a new job). One theory for these differences is that when times are tough (and the child's survival and basic well-being are perceived
to be in threat), it is adaptable to be more controlling. In some cases, being more controlling is not adaptive, but still emerges due to difficulties in the environment: a parent who has very little time, or is often exhausted, will likely be unable to provide his or her child with the same level of positive input as a parent who has a low-stress situation.
- Finally, it is important to note that parenting styles can be changed, at least partially, via training and interventions. While most
of this research is relatively recent, there are some findings that some (but not all) parenting interventions can be effective in improving children's outcomes.
- modest, but here are some ways that a parent's interaction with his or her child influences the child's behavior. Also, even when parental differences in interaction with their child are factored out, there are still tendencies for children who were exposed to higher levels of testosterone to
prefer male-typical toys. This relationship has also been found between levels of testosterone in the mother's blood and the child's toy preference (this finding is important because unlike fetal testosterone levels, which parents may be made aware of, a mother's blood testosterone is something she is unaware of).
- In all of these studies, exposure to testosterone could not account entirely for children's play behavior. Other studies have revealed other important influences—for example,
while a firstborn child's gender role is best predicted by the parental interaction that he or she has, younger siblings' gender roles are best predicted by those of their older siblings.
- In short, even for well-studied phenomena like the formation of gender roles, there are many complex and interacting properties that influence a child's gender role qualities.
birth order and intelligence: main effect for family size, main effect for birth order (these
effects are small)
-Building on the idea that understanding the role of siblings is important to understand family dynamics (in general) and a child's outcomes, we next consider the effect of birth order on outcomes.
- The graph above shows normed intelligence scores (with 0 being the average, and the numbers indicating standard deviations). Each line represents data for families of x size (where x is the highest number the line reaches). So, in the Dutch graph, the bottom red line
represents families of nine people; the second-from-bottom purple line indicates families with eight people, and so on.
- There are two things to be observed. First, because the lines slope downward, we know that across all family sizes children who are born later in the birth order have lower intelligence scores. Second, while there are certainly important differences between, for example, families that have only one child and those that have eight, these differences alone can't account for
this effect (we know this because, even though the intelligence of a firstborn from a big family tends to be lower than the intelligence of a firstborn from a small family, each line on this graph indicates a particular family size, and within each line we see a birth-order effect).
- It is important to note that while these effects are present and statistically reliable in large populations, they tend not to show up in smaller populations, and also tend to indicate very small differences in
average intelligence. So, it does seem to indicate something real about the effect of birth order on cognitive outcomes, but it certainly isn't the case that all firstborns are the smartest in their family, or that the differences in intelligence—as predicted by birth order—are big enough to make any practical difference.
- Putting aside the question of whether birth-order effects are meaningful, we now ask why they appear.
Notably, family size does not predict outcomes very well. Only children aren't more likely to be spoiled, and while there is an association between family size and poor outcomes (larger families tend to have worse outcomes), this effect is at least partially mediated by socioeconomic status, and large families from high-income backgrounds do not show worse outcomes.
While in the United States, many families are nuclear (meaning they include the parents and the children); in other countries, families are extended (meaning they include grandparents, cousins, and others). Differences in family structure of this type will almost certainly influence outcomes—child care might be easier to obtain in extended families, but nuclear families are less likely to have to be restructured (for example, when a grandparent dies or ages, this will often greatly influence the structure of the extended family).
connection between education and divorce rate
-There are lots of questions to
ask about divorce and how it influences the family (for example, "Will it influence younger versus older children more?" "Boys versus girls?" "How does having a nuclear versus extended family influence the effects of divorce?").
There are many studies on this issue, and while the results are somewhat mixed, there are several relatively frequent patterns:
1) Divorce is associated with problems for children, although this may actually affect only a few children.
2) Young boys show more
problems than young girls. This may be related to girls' tendency to internalize problems (like getting depressed), while boys have a tendency to show externalizing problems like bullying), so the boys' problems may just be more obvious.
3) Effects of divorce tend to be long term.
4) Explicit conflict is what's most problematic for the child. Small marital problems don't seem to influence children's outcomes. But overt conflict seems to be more harmful than divorce.
5) Some of the
negative outcomes associated with divorce may be genetic: parents who are violent may be more likely to be divorced, and children of these parents may be more likely to be violent.
6) Findings about stepparents are mixed, but in general, stepparents do seem to be less invested in their stepchildren, and tend to have worse relationships with their stepchildren.