Family Relationships

Ch.14
 The Family
Families form a system of interacting
elements

Parents and children influence one another

‐ Parents influence their children both directly and
indirectly

‐ Children influence their parents

‐ Children’s behaviors, attitudes, and interests affect how
their parents behave toward them
 In the systems view, families,
parents and children influence
each other and parent-child
relations are influenced by other
individuals and institutions
Culture
Neighborhood

Family
Work Father Mother

School

Extended
Family Children

Religious
Organizations
 Function of Families
Survival of offspring
‐ Families help to ensure that children survive to maturity by
attending to their physical needs, health needs, and safety

Economic function
‐ Families provide the means for children to acquire the skills and
other resources they need to be economically productive in
adulthood

Cultural training
‐ Families teach children the basic values in their culture
 Parental Socialization
Parents as direct instructors
‐ Parents may directly teach their children skills, rules, and strategies and
explicitly inform or advise them on various issues

Parents as indirect socializers

‐ Parents provide indirect socialization in the course of their day-to-day
interactions with their children

Parents as providers and controllers of opportunities

‐ Parents manage children’s experiences and social lives, including their
exposure to positive or negative experiences, their opportunities to play
with certain toys and children, and their exposure to various kinds of
information
 Parenting Dimensions
There are two general dimensions of parental
behavior

‐ The degree of warmth and responsiveness that

parents show their children

‐ The amount of control parents exert over their

children
Warmth and Responsiveness
At one of the spectrum are parents who are
openly warm and affectionate with their
children

At the other end of the spectrum are parents

who are relatively uninvolved with their
children and sometimes even hostile toward
them
 Parental Control
Parents’ efforts to supervise and monitor their children’s
behavior

Effective control
‐ Setting standards that are appropriate for the child’s age
‐ Showing the child how to meet the standards
‐ Rewarding the child for complying to these standards

Parents should enforce the standards consistently

‐ Children and adolescents are more compliant when parents enforce
the rules regularly

Effective control is also based on good communication

‐ Parents should explain why they’ve set standards and why they
reward or punish as they do
 Parental Styles (Baumrind)
Authoritarian parenting
‐ High parental control with little warmth

Authoritative parenting
‐ A fair degree of parental control with being
warm and responsive to children

Indulgent-permissive parenting
‐ Warmth and caring but little parental control

Indifferent-uninvolved parenting
‐ Neither warmth nor control
Children with authoritarian parents typically have
lower grades in school, lower self-esteem, and are
less skilled socially

Children with authoritative parents tend to have

higher grades and be responsible, self-reliant, and
friendly

Children with indulgent-permissive parents have

lower grades and are often impulsive and easily
frustrated

Children with indifferent-uninvolved parents have

low self-esteem and are impulsive, aggressive, and
moody
How Can Parents Influence Their Children?

Direct Instruction
‐ Telling a child what to do, when and why

Learning by Observing (modeling)

‐ Learning what to do by watching
‐ Learning what not to do (counterimitation)

Feedback
‐ Parents indicate whether a behavior is appropriate and should
continue or should stop
 Feedback
Reinforcement
‐ Any action that increases the likelihood of the
response that it follows

Punishment
‐ Any action that discourages the reoccurrence of
the response that it follows
Negative Reinforcement Trap
Parents often unwittingly reinforce the very behaviors
they want to discourage

‐ First step: The mother tells her son to do something he

doesn’t want to do

‐ Second step: The son responds with some behavior that

most parents find intolerable

‐ Third step: The mother gives in – tells the son he doesn’t

need to do as he was initially told as long as he stops doing
the behavior that is so intolerable
Punishment Works Best When:
Administered directly after the undesired behavior
occurs, rather than hours later

An undesired behavior always leads to punishment,

rather than usually or occasionally

Accompanied by an explanation of why the child was

punished and how punishment can be avoided in the
future

The child has a warm, affectionate relationship with

the person administering the punishment
 Drawbacks to punishment
Punishment is primarily suppressive: if a new
behavior isn’t learned to replace it, the old
response will come back.

Punishment can have undesirable side effects:

‐ Children become upset as they are being punished

which makes it unlikely that they will understand
the feedback that punishment is meant to convey.

‐ When children are punished physically – they often

imitate this behavior with peers and younger
siblings.
 Children who are spanked often
use aggression to resolve their
disputes with others and are more
likely to have behavior problems
Parenting behavior and styles evolve as a
consequence of the child’s behavior.
Children’s behavior helps determine how
parents treat them and the resulting
parental behavior influences children’s
behavior, which can in turn cause parents
to again change their behavior.
This reciprocal influence lead many families
to adopt routine ways of interacting with
each other.

Some families end up running smoothly

(parents and children cooperate, anticipate
each other’s needs, and are generally happy).

Some families end up in trouble

(disagreements are common, parents spend
much time trying to unsuccessfully control
their defiant children, and everyone is often
angry and upset).
 Children’s Influence
Parental warmth gradually changes as
children develop
‐ Hugs and kisses work with toddlers not with
adolescents

Parental control gradually changes as

children develop
‐ Parents gradually relinquish control and expect
children to be responsible for themselves
 Attractiveness
Mothers of very attractive infants are more
affectionate and playful with their infants than are
mother of infants with unappealing faces

Why?
‐ An evolutionary explanation would propose that
parents are motivated to invest more time and
energy into offspring who are healthy and
genetically fit and therefore likely to survive

‐ Attractiveness could be seen as an indicator of

these characteristics
Marriage and Divorce
 Divorce
Nearly half of all first marriages end in
divorce
‐ Every year approximately one million American
children have parents who divorce

Divorce is distressing for children because it

involves conflict between parents and
usually separation from one of them
 Family Life After Divorce
Children usually live with their mothers
‐ About 15% of children live with their fathers after divorce

How does life change (based on the Virginia Longitudinal

Study)?

‐ First few months after divorce, many mothers are less

affectionate toward their children

‐ Two years after the divorce, mother-child relationships

improve, particularly for daughters

‐ Six years after the divorce, children in the study were

adolescents

‐ Family life continued to improve for mothers and

daughters
‐ Family life was problematic for mothers and sons
 Impact of Divorce on Children
Children whose parents had divorced fare poorly
compared to children from intact families in:
‐ School achievement
‐ Conduct
‐ Adjustment
‐ Self-concept
‐ Parent-child relations

Children adjust to divorce more readily if their

divorced parents cooperate with each other,
especially on disciplinary matters

‐ Children benefit from joint custody if parents get

along
Divorce’s Influence on Development
The absence of one parent means that children lose
a role model, a source of parental help and
emotional support, and a supervisor

Single-parent families experience economic

hardship
‐ Creates stress and often means activities once
taken for granted are no longer available

Conflict between parents is extremely distressing

to children and adolescents
‐ Particularly for children who are emotionally
insecure
 Which Children are Affected?
The overall impact of divorce is about the same for boys and
girls

‐ However, divorce is more harmful when it occurs during

childhood and adolescence than during preschool or
college years

With regard to parents’ remarriage, young adolescents

appear to be more negatively affected than younger children

‐ Young adolescents’ struggles with issues of identity are

heightened by the presence of a new parent who has
authority to control them and is a sexual partner of their
biological parent
Children and their Peers:
Play
 Peer Relations
Children’s skills at interacting with peers
improves rapidly

‐ Children are becoming increasingly self-aware,

more effective at communicating, and better at
understanding the thoughts and feelings of
others
 What are some benefits of play?
Play and social development go hand and
hand.

Play offers many opportunities to be with

other children and to share, take turns,
disagree, and compromise (Mitchell and
Davis, 1992).

While at play, children are increasing their

self awareness and are becoming more
involved in cooperative play.
 Benefits of play
Emotionally, children develop greater self
awareness and they are more able to predict
the emotions of others.

According to Huffnung (1997) children will

develop empathy or the ability to appreciate
the feeling of others and understand their
point of view.

‐ If one child begins an activity, it is likely that his

friends will want to follow along.
 Developmental Sequence of
Cognitive Play
Play Category Description Examples

Simple, repetitive
Running around a
motor movements with
room, rolling a car back
Functional or without objects.
and forth, kneading
Play Especially common
clay with no intent to
during the first 2 years
make something
of life.
Creating or constructing Making a house out of
Constructive something. Especially toy blocks, drawing a
Play common between 3 and picture, putting
6 years. together a puzzle
Acting out everyday Playing house, school,
and imaginary roles. or police officer; Acting
Pretend Play
Especially common out storybook or
between 2 and 6 years. television characters
 Parten's Five Types of Play
Mildred Parten (1932) was one of the early
researchers studying children at play. She
focused on the social interactions between
children during play activities.

Recent research suggests that children do

not necessarily spend more time in social
types of play as they get older, but rather
their play within each category becomes
more cognitively mature (Berk, 2004)
 Parten's Five Types of Play
Onlooker behavior
‐ Playing passively by watching or conversing
(or asking questions) with other children
engaged in play activities.

These children seem to move closer to a

group rather than watching whatever
momentarily catches their attention.
 All by myself play…
Solitary independent - Playing by
oneself.

‐ A child plays alone with objects.

Even if the child is within speaking

distance of others, the child does
not alter her or his play or interact
with others.
 Solitary Play – Good or Bad?
Some forms of solitary play are signs that children are
uneasy interacting with others

‐ Wandering aimlessly
‐ A child that goes from one preschool activity to the next, as if
trying to decide what to do
‐ They just keep wandering, never settling into play with others or
into constructive solitary play

‐ Hovering
‐ A child stand nearby peers who are playing, watching them play
but not participating
 Parallel Play

Playing, even in the middle of a group,

while remaining engrossed in one's own
activity.

‐ Children playing parallel to each other

sometimes use each other's toys, but always
maintain their independence.

‐ “He plays beside rather than with the other

children" (Parten, 1932).
 Associative Play
When children share materials and talk
to each other, but do not coordinate
play objectives or interests.

‐ All the children in the group are doing similar

activities, but specific roles and goals are not
defined.
 A Group Effort

Example: When several children make sand

castles at the beach, they may share the job of
making walls and digging the moats, and
perhaps consult with one another about
digging a channel to these.

BUT…as members of the group lose interest

and wander off, others may joining the activity.
 Cooperative play

This type of play occurs when children

organize themselves into roles with specific
goals in mind

‐ They help each other accomplish a joint venture,

such as selling lemonade or building a fort for
their “club”

Think back…What are some examples of

YOUR cooperative play?
 Cooperative Play
Example: while playing hospital they
assign the roles of doctor, nurse, and
patient.

Each member of the group remains with

the task until it is finished or the group
decides together to go on to other
activities.
 The progression from solitary to
parallel to associative to cooperative
play reflects the child's growing
ability to sustain his interests and
relate to other children.

Click on the picture for a video on play

 Typical 1 ½-year-old Typical 4-year-old

Parallel Play Associative Play Cooperative Play

 Sociodramatic Play
As children develop the ability to represent
experiences symbolically, pretend play becomes
a prominent activity.

‐ Pretend play is when children act out various roles

and themes in stories that they create themselves.

By the age of four or five, children's ideas

about the social world initiate most pretend
play.
 Click for a video on this
type of play!

Sociodramatic Play

Actions in play often reflect real world behavior, they

also incorporate children's interpretations and wishes.

Through dramatic play, children learn to assert

themselves in a way to build their competence in later
adult roles (Elkind, 1981).

‐ Children explore and rehearse social roles they have observed

in society

‐ A child learns basic life skills such as cooperation, negotiation

and compromise through play.
Is there any value to sociodramatic play?
When children play dress-up they are taking
on the role of someone else. By doing this,
children must try to think and behave in a
manner appropriate to their pretend persona.

Such Sociodramatic play also helps them to

understand others and develop feelings of
empathy.
Thanks for a great
semester!!!