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 motor

Running around a
movements with or
room, rolling a car back
Functional without objects.
and forth, kneading clay
Play Especially common
with no intent to make
during the first 2 years
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
 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!!!