What is Parenting?

1. What is Parenting?

2. Parenting • Parenting: is providing care, support, and guidance that can lead to a child’s healthy development.

3. Important Terms • Biological Parents- The parents to which the child was born • Stepparent-A parent gained when one of the original parents remarries • Adoptive Parents- Persons who accept legal responsibility for children who were not born to them, raising them as their own • Foster Parents- Adults who temporarily accept responsibility and provide care for children who would not otherwise have a safe, secure home.

4. The Impact of Parenting • Parenting is perhaps one of the most important job anyone can have. It’s impact is far reaching affecting individuals, families and society not only in the present, but for years to come. • What you do as a parent helps shape the future. Imagine dozens of new born babies in the hospital. Each filled with possibility and potential. Now fast forward 50 years. What will each baby be like?

5. Why Study Parenting • There are many good reasons to study parenting. • Gain information to help you decide whether you want to become a parent. • Become a better parent if you do have children someday. • Learn parenting skills that may be helpful in a career you choose. • Update your skills and knowledge about parenting as new information emerges. • Increase your understandings and appreciation of your own parents and caregivers. • What else?

6. Parenting Yesterday and Today • Each generation of children and families face different problems. • Past: 1600’s children were sent away at to live with other families to learn a trade. • In the last half of the 1800’s, many children worked in factories or other businesses for up to 16 hours a day, earning a few pennies an hour! • Between 1890 and 1900, more than one in ten American babies died before their first birthdays. Until the invention of penicillin in 1950, many children died of infections that are well controlled today.

7. Current Issues Affecting Parenting • Working Parents • Safety • Technology • Over scheduling

8. Why do people create families? • For physical safety and shelter. • For love, affection, and emotional support. • For raising children in a stable setting. • For economic stability. • For comfort and support when family members become aged and ill. • Another vital function of the family is to ensure that values – strongly held beliefs and ideas about what is important- are passed on from one generation to the next.

9. Family Structures • There are many types of families. The four basic structures are: • A mother, father, and one or more children form a nuclear family. • Relatives other than parents and children comprise an extended family, which includes grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Sometimes extended families share households. • One parent and that person’s children form a single-parent family. • When a single parent marries, a blended family is formed.

10. Families and Culture • Culture refers to the customs and traditions of a specific group of people. Your cultural background can be a product of several factors, including your ethnic heritage, where your parents and grandparents lived, where you grew up, and where you live now.

11. Family Life Cycle • Many families with children go through a series of stages that family researchers call family life cycle. There are seven stages. • Individual- takes place during young adulthood. During the individual stage, a person begins to separate from the family and gets ready to live independently. • Marriage- When another person joins someone in marriage they form a new family. The couple blends their expectations, values, and vision of the future.

12. Family Life Cycle • Childbearing- When children are added to a family, a couple must adjust to their new roles as parents. • Parenting- Raising children can be challenging. Parents’ commitment to each other and their communication, problem solving, and decision-making skills become very important during this stage of the families life cycle.

13. Family Life Cycle • Launching- the launching stage begins when the first child leaves, and ends when the last child leaves. • Middle Years- After their adult children leave home ad establish their own lives, parents often need to adjust to their empty nest, their home without children. • Senior Years- A time when many people look back over their lives and review all they have learned and experienced.

14. 7 Family Life Cycles

15. Building Strong Families • Express Love and Acceptance • Spend Time Together • Show Respect • Build Trust • Establish Traditions • Communicate • Resolve Conflicts • Ask for Assistance