Chapter 11 Parenting

1. Chapter 11Parenting

2. Roles Involved in Parenting Parenting involves: • Caregiving—providing physical care • Boomerang generation: young adults who have moved back in with their parents after having lived on their own • Providing emotional support • Teaching

3. Parenting Roles Parenting involves: • Providing economic resources • Protecting • Oppositional defiant disorder: children fail to comply with the requests of authority figures • More likely to develop when not closely monitored

4. Parenting Involves • Promoting healthy living • Fostering rituals: building a sense of family cohesiveness

5. Choices Perspective • Not to make a parental decision is to make a decision. • All parental choices involve trade-offs. • Regretted parental decisions may be reframed.

6. Choices Perspective Basic Parenting Choices: • Whether to have a child • The number of children • The interval between children • The method of discipline and guidance • The degree to which parents will be invested in the role

7. Transition to Parenthood • Transition to parenthood: period from the beginning of pregnancy through the first few months after the birth of a baby • Sociobiologists suggest that the attachment between a mother and her offspring has a biological basis. • Oxytocin: a hormone released from the pituitary gland during the expulsive stage of labor that has been associated with the onset of maternal behavior in lower animals

8. Transition • Baby blues: transitory symptoms of depression 24 to 48 hours after the baby is born • Postpartum depression: a severe reaction following the birth of a baby usually in the first month after birth • Postpartum psychosis: a rare reaction where the mother wants to harm her baby

9. Transition • Gatekeeper role: term used to refer to the influence or control of the mother on the father’s involvement and relationship with his children • Particularly pronounced after a divorce • Fathers and mothers benefit from the father’s involvement in parenting.

10. Transition • Research consistently reveals that having a child has a negative effect on marital happiness. • The negative effect is worst during the teen years. • Children tend to increase marital stability.

11. Transition

12. Parenthood: Some Facts • Views of children differ historically. • 13th-16th centuries: innocent, sweet, and source of amusement • 16th-18th centuries: in need of discipline and moral training • Today: focus of parental attention • Helicopter parents constantly hover over their children to ensure their success.

13. Parenthood Facts • Permissive parents are high on responsiveness and low on demandingness. • Authoritarian parents are high on demandingness and low in responsiveness. • Authoritative parents are both demanding and responsive. • Uninvolved parents are low in responsiveness and demandingness.

14. Effective Parenting • Give time, love, praise, and encouragement. • Be realistic. • Avoid overindulgence: giving children too much, over-nurturing and providing too little structure. • Monitor activities and drug use.

15. Effective Parenting • Set limits and discipline children for inappropriate behavior • The goal of discipline is self-control. • Time-out: a noncorporal form of punishment that involves removing the child from a context of reinforcement to a place of isolation • Provide security.

16. Effective Parenting • Encourage responsibility. • Teach emotional competence: capacity to experience emotion, express emotion, and regulate emotion. • Provide sex education and teach nonviolence. • Menarche: first menstruation signaling a woman’s fertility • Establish the norm of forgiveness.

17. Single-Parenting • Forty percent of births in the U.S. are to unmarried mothers. • It is important to distinguish between a single-parent family and a single-parent household. • Binuclear family: child lives in single-parent household but remains connected to the other parent.

18. Single-Parenting • Single mothers by choice are usually middle to upper class, mature, will-employed, and dedicated to mothering.

19. Single-Parenting Single parents face challenges: • Responding to the demands of parenting with limited help • Meeting adult emotional needs • Meeting adult sexual needs • Coping with the lack of money • Ensuring guardianship • Obtaining prenatal care

20. Single-Parenting Single parents face challenges: • Coping with the absence of a father • Avoiding negative life outcomes for the child • More likely to drop out of school, get pregnant before marriage, have drinking problems, and get divorced themselves