5A. Family: Roles and Time Management 

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this chapter, you will be able to understand the family's responsibility pertaining to finances, work, and home life.

A Structural Functionalist Look at Family Resources

Since the earliest human record, the family has been a group of persons committed to meeting one another’s economic needs. This is a vital function of the modern family. As newborns enter the family, they are fed and clothed and are protected and nurtured into childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. When they leave home, they continue to receive economic support, typically even into the college experience (Padilla-Walker et al., 2012). Many adults receive financial help from family even after they graduate college, marry, and enter the workplace (Padilla-Walker et al., 2012).

Functionalists would say that the family serves many functions for a society. Among them are replacing members of society by giving birth to and socializing children, regulating sexual activity, supporting family members economically, providing a place for society’s members to feel loved and secure, and providing a sense of social status in society (University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing, 2016).

Work and Home

There is often a debate between spouses and partners about what is a need and what is a want. A need is something important to our health and well-being. A want is something we’d like to have. The trick of being united in your budget and spending choices is to work together, communicate about needs and wants, and to yield to one another’s wants at times. 

Unfortunately, there is no universal standard of a true need versus a true want. It depends on each individual family member. 

What about household and workplace tasks? 

When one considers the day-to-day lives of women in today’s marketplace, and perhaps more importantly in their personal lives, the concept of what women do as their contribution to the functioning of families and of society becomes important. Instrumental tasks are the goal-directed activities that link the family to the surrounding society, geared toward obtaining resources. This includes economic work, breadwinning, and other resource-based efforts. Expressive tasks pertain to the creation and maintenance of a set of positive, supportive, emotional relationships within the family unit. This includes relationships, nurturing, and social connections needed in the family and society. Today, women typically do both types of tasks while men still focus more on instrumental tasks. 

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, both males and females combined their economic efforts in homemaking. Most of these efforts were cottage industry-type where families used their family’s labor to make products they needed such as soap, thread, fabric, and butter. When the factory model of production emerged in Western Civilization, the breadwinner and homemaker roles became more distinct from each other. A breadwinner is a person who earns wages outside of the home and uses them to support the family. A homemaker is a person, typically a woman, who occupies her life with mothering, housekeeping, and being a wife while depending heavily on the breadwinner. Since World War II more and more women have become breadwinners or co-breadwinners. Not as many men have made the move into the homemaking role. If we look at the changes in family functions overtime, we see that prior to the Industrial Revolution there were many more functions of a family. All education, including religious, took place within the family when they lived too far from a town and the family was the center of economic activity (producing goods needed for the family). Today we send our children to school and religious education classes and we buy our clothes, soap, and food at a store.

The following table illustrates the labor force participation rate for women in 2022 in the United States.

Table 1: Labor Force Participation Rate for Women, by Age, 2022

(Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, 2023)

Labor-force Participation on a Global Scale

Between 2019 and 2020, the world global women’s labor-force participation rate declined by 3.4%, as compared to 2.4% for men. Women have been (re-)entering the workforce at a slightly higher rate than men since then, resulting in a modest recovery in gender parity. Between the 2022 and 2023 editions, parity in the labor-force participation rate increased from 63% to 64% (World Economic Forum, 2023). 

Figure 1: Gender Gap in Labour-force Participation, 2006–2023

Women working outside the home often face the challenge of balancing a heavier load than men in balancing work and family. This is partly due to the childbearing and rearing years and the many interruptions associated with such tasks. Women are more likely than men to take time off or reduce their work hours to care for a child or family member. While it impacts their careers, 90% of them report not regretting doing so (Parker, 2015).

Work and Home: Roles and Time Management

Balancing work and home responsibilities is challenging, especially for full-time working mothers. Among all working parents with children under age 18, more than half (56%) say it is difficult for them to balance the responsibilities of their job with the responsibilities of their family (Pew Research Center, 2015).

Table 2: Six-in-Ten Working Moms Say Balancing Job and Family Is Difficult

Most parents who are married or living with a partner with whom they share at least one child say that, in their household, the mother does more than the father when it comes to certain tasks related to their children. These tasks include managing their children’s schedules and activities, caring for sick children, and taking on more household chores and responsibilities.

Table 3: More Balance in Households with Two Full-Time Working Parents, but Many Still Say Mother Does More

The division of labor between mothers and fathers is more even when it comes to disciplining and playing or doing activities with children. In households where both parents work full time, mothers and fathers tend to share some responsibilities more equally. However, parents in households where both parents work full-time report that mothers are doing more than fathers when it comes to managing their children’s schedules and activities. 

Table 4: In Two-Parent Households, Most Say Mothers Do More When It Comes to Scheduling and Sick Days

5B. Parenting

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this chapter, you will be able to do the following:

• Define parenting.

• Explain the process of socialization.

• Apply behaviorism to parenting.

• Define parenting styles

Functions of Parents

Parenting is the process of nurturing, caring for, socializing, and preparing one’s children for their eventual adult roles. Parenting is a universal family experience that spans the history of the human family and every culture in the world.

Newborns are not born knowing all the nuances of proper behavior, how to meet expectations, and everything else needed to become a member of society. While interacting with family and friends, a newborn typically acquires their needed socialization by the time they reach young adulthood.

Parents serve many functions that play a crucial role in a society’s endurance and success at many levels. Parents function as caregivers to the children in their families, thereby providing the next generation of adults. They typically protect, feed, and provide personal care for their children from birth through adulthood.

Parents function as agents of socialization for their children. Socialization is the process by which people learn characteristics of their group’s norms, values, attitudes, and behaviors. From the first moments of life, children begin a process of socialization wherein parents, family, and friends establish an infant’s social construction of reality which is what people define as real because of their background assumptions and life experiences with others. An average US child’s social construction of reality includes knowledge that he or she belongs, can depend on others to meet their needs, and has privileges and obligations that accompany membership in their family and community.

For the average US child, it is safe to say that the most important socialization takes place early in life. Primary socialization typically begins at birth and moves forward until the beginning of the school years. Primary socialization includes all the ways the newborn is molded into a social being, capable of interacting in and meeting the expectations of society. Most primary socializations are facilitated by the family, friends, school, and various forms of media.

Parents function as teachers from birth to grave. They teach hygiene skills, manners, exercise, work ethic, entertainment, sleep, eating patterns, study skills, dating, marriage, parenting skills, and more. Parents usually teach their children at every age and mentor them through examples and actions into successful roles of their own.

Parents function as the guardians of their children’s lives. They select schools, medical care, teams, daycare, and a myriad of other services for their children. The law considers the parents to be simultaneously accountable for the nature of their parenting efforts and legally entitled to rights and privileges that support and protect them. Parents are not at liberty to treat their children beyond the bounds of state and local laws, but within those laws they have tremendous freedoms to parent according to their conscience and values.

Parents function as mediators between their children and the community at large. They act as the adult decision-maker in many matters for their children. They also act in defense of their children if misbehaviors are an issue in the community, schools, and other organizations. They act in the role of advocacy to ensure the best opportunities for their child.

Of the world's 140 million births that occurred in 2016, about 15 percent—or 21 million—were children born out of wedlock. This global average, however, does not reflect the enormous variation in the proportion of births outside of marriage across countries and regions.

The United States has over 40 million children ages 0–19. Figure 1 shows the age groups with numbers in each group. The preschool ages of 0–5 have 10,258,000 children with slightly more boys than girls (about 105 boys per 100 girls are born every year). The 5–9 year olds only have 9,806,000 children which represent kindergarten through 4th grades. The 10–14 age group, pre to early teens, has 9,792,000. And finally, the 15–19 age group has 10,487,000 children in it. These numbers reflect birth trends that transpired years before.

Figure 1: Numbers of US Children in Various Age Groups, 2008 (Office of the Assistant Secretary For Planning and Evaluation, 2009).

Most women and men in the United States become parents at some point in their adult lives. This might include being a parent to a birth child, adopted child, stepchild, or unrelated child that the adults raise as their own. All of these parents who care for children parent according to their parenting paradigm. Parenting paradigms are conceptual patterns or ideas that provide the basis of parents’ strategy in the parenting role. These paradigms can be habitual, based on how the parent was parented (or not parented) as a child. They can also be formal, being derived from self-help books or formal education. These paradigms also tend to come from how parents define their roles, what they are trying to accomplish in the long run, and how effectively they perform their parenting role.

Children and Socialization in Japan

As we consider the socialization of American children, the experience of Japan offers a valuable lesson.

Japan’s culture emphasizes harmony, cooperation, and respect for authority. Socialization in Japan is highly oriented toward the teaching of these values, greatly stressing the importance of belonging to a group and dependence, instead of individual autonomy and independence. This is especially true in Japanese schools, which as two sociologists write, “stress the similarity of all children, and the importance of the group” (Schneider & Silverman, 2010, p. 24). Let’s see how this happens (Hendry, 1987; Schwalb & Schwalb, 1996).

From the time they begin school, Japanese children learn to value their membership in their homeroom, or kumi, and they spend several years in the same kumi. Each kumi treats its classroom as a home away from home as the children arrange the classroom furniture, bring in plants and other things from their own homes, and clean the classroom every day. At recess, one kumi will play against another. In an interesting difference from standard practice in the United States, a kumi in junior high school will stay in its classroom while the teachers for, say, math and social science move from one classroom to another. In the United States, of course, the opposite is true: teachers stay in their classrooms, and students move from one room to another.

Other practices in Japanese schools further the learning of Japanese values. Young school children wear the same uniforms. Japanese teachers use constant drills to teach students how to bow, and teachers have the children repeatedly stand up and sit down as a group. These practices help students learn respect for authority and help enhance the sense of group belonging that the kumi represents. Whereas teachers in the United States routinely call on individual students to answer a question, Japanese teachers rarely do this. Rather than competing with each other for a good grade, Japanese schoolchildren are evaluated according to the performance of the kumi as a whole. Because decision making within the kumi is done by consensus, the children learn the need to compromise and to respect each other’s feelings.

Because the members of a kumi spend so much time together for so many years, they develop extremely close friendships and think of themselves more as members of the kumi than as individuals. They become very loyal to the kumi and put its interests above their own individual interests. In these and other ways, socialization in Japanese schools helps the children and adolescents there learn the Japanese values of harmony, group loyalty, and respect for authority. If American children learned these values to a greater degree, it would be easier to address violence and other issues facing the United States.

Childhood Dependence

The goal of parents from a developmental perspective is ideally to raise independent, capable, and self-directed adults who can succeed in their own familial and non-familial roles in society. Generally speaking, a child’s independence is very low until adolescence. Teens exert their independence in a process called individuation. Individuation is the process of separating oneself, one’s identity, and one’s dependence on others, especially on parents. Children begin separating from parents in their second year, and gradual efforts at independence are visible as children master certain self-care processes during childhood. Table 1 shows the levels of independence and a child’s own ability to nurture others over certain stages of the life course.

Table 1: Children’s Independence and Their Ability to Nurture Others Over Certain Life Course Stages

Parenting between birth and age 18 requires a solid understanding of how a child develops and matures through childhood and into their young adult roles. Psychologists have studied child development for years. Jean Piaget (pronounced pee-ah-jay), Sigmund Freud, Eric Erickson, John B. Watson, George Herbert Mead, Charles Cooley, and others have developed theories that guide crucial research on children and how they develop. Since we can’t cover them in detail, let’s discuss a few core ideas that can guide parents and their efforts.

Newborns to 5-year-olds have little to no independence. In other words, left alone in the wilderness, most could not survive. In a home with an adult caregiver, most 0–5-year-olds can learn to take care of some of their own needs. They desire independence but do not yet have the thinking, muscle movement, or growth in place for it. Most have little to offer in terms of real nurturing, yet many develop nurturance in their play activities.

The children in the 6–12 year old group are growing physically and developing emotionally and intellectually. They become functional in their independence and, if called upon, can assist parents and others with various tasks. They develop the ability to provide the care-giving of younger children, but they lack the reasoning skills required for the adult level of nurturing.

In the 13–18-year-old group, abstract reasoning skills begin, and children grow into complex reasoning, synthesis of related ideas, and emotional complexity. Most teens could survive without an adult caregiver, but it would be difficult. They can typically nurture others to some degree. Generally speaking, due to hormonal fluctuations, their emotional nature is volatile and extreme in terms of highs and lows.

Reading some of the details of these three age categories, you begin to see that the same parenting strategies would not work very well for each of the groups of ages discussed above. On top of that, individual children vary even within the same family on which parenting approach is most effective.

Once children attain the age of young adulthood, leave home, and/or completely individuate, they enter a role of being independent while perpetually dependent to some degree. Young adults in this generation continue to depend heavily on their parents for advice, resources, money, food, and other forms of support. Their independence would most accurately be described as increasingly higher as they prepare for their own adult roles. Their ability to nurture emotionally, and in other ways, is increasingly higher as well.

Once children become parents, they enter the roles of mother and father and join the ranks of tens of billions of parents who’ve lived before them and fundamentally attempted to do the same things for their children. Young parents often see their own parents as a tremendous resource of experience and knowledge. Studies show that young parents adjust better when they have access to support from friends and family. Simply put, they benefit a great deal from having a listening ear and someone to share words of parental wisdom. These adults are independent and can nurture, especially with support.

Finding the Balance Between Control and Freedom

With all of this variety and diversity of development and growth, how can parents plan for and properly perform their parenting roles? The answer is to find a handful of parenting paradigms and approaches that will work with children. There are a few core approaches that originate from the classical and contemporary parenting scientists. Figure 2 shows one useful model created from many research studies using a number of parenting paradigms. This model leads to an ideal outcome of having raised children who are independent co-adults.

Many families have a tradition of just surviving the traumas, addictions, heartaches, and tragedies that preceded them in their upbringing. The base of this model presents the two strategies of first, urging individuation and second, avoiding enmeshment with your children. Individuated children can distinguish between the consequences of their own behaviors and consequences of others.

An individuated child develops his or her own taste in music, food, politics, and so on. This child sees their family as one among many social groups they belong to (albeit one of the more significant ones). An example would be an individuated child fully realizing that their  drug-addicted brother has made his own choices and must live with them, and that brother’s behavior may be embarrassing at times but does not reflect the nature of the rest of the family members. Individuated children have also developed enough independence to strike out on their own and assume their own adult roles.

Figure 2: An Ideal Parenting Approach for the First 20 Years of Life.

It is very wise to avoid relationship patterns of enmeshment. Enmeshment between parents and children occurs when they weave their identities so tightly around one another that it renders them both incapable of functioning independently. Many parents create this pattern in their relationship when they assume that their child is an extension of themselves. Enmeshed parent-child relationships often have very weak boundaries and unhealthy interdependence that lingers into adulthood. Think of spaghetti noodles over-boiled to the point that they form one large gooey mass of paste. They would be considered enmeshed or entangled with one another.

Parents who allow their children to make most of their own choices give their children opportunities for growth and development which contribute to high individuation and low enmeshment. Examples might include “Which T-shirt do you want to wear for school today?” “What would you like to drink with your dinner?” Or, “let’s sit down together and set some guidelines for how to be safe on a date.” Children of all ages respond well to parental attempts to promote independence, individuation, and self-sufficiency. They may not understand it while young, but parents who allow the individuality of their children to develop and who avoid seeing and treating their children as simply extensions of themselves, empower their children to move out on their own and accept adult roles.

Many studies have focused on how much support and how much control children should be given by their parents. Generally speaking, parents with high levels of support for children and their interests will find the most favorable outcomes. If parents want their children to grow up healthy, accomplish individual goals, become a contributing member of society and avoid delinquency, then supporting those children in as many ways as possible is a good idea.

However, support alone is not enough. Children also need guidance and control. They need their parents to set healthy limits and enforce consequences when these limits are exceeded. They need parents involved in their lives enough to be very specific about limitations and rules. They need parents to be in charge. There is a generational effect that relates to this support and control approach.

Figure 3 shows another issue related to high support and moderate control-caring for the next generation. Many parents grew up under circumstances limited by emotional, financial, or unmet social needs. Where abuse and addiction were involved, they too often grew up as caregivers rather than dependent children. When this happens, the children grow into adulthood with childhood deficiencies.

Thus as adults, these individuals enter the ranks of parenthood looking to have their childhood needs be met by their children. This can create a parenting legacy where the children, grandchildren, and even great grandchildren are nurturers and caregivers to their parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents (look at the red arrows in Figure 3). Even if a parent was not raised in a highly supportive and moderately controlling home, and even if he or she has unmet childhood needs, the essential task at hand is to provide for and nurture their own children and grandchildren (see blue arrows in Figure 5).

The challenge is to break the chain of counter-caregiving. Parents who seek professional counseling often learn that unmet childhood needs are like water, long passed under the bridge, which cannot ever truly be recaptured. However, their approach to filling their children’s needs and supporting and controlling in a healthy manner can actually provide some healing for the parent and ultimately reverse the unhealthy pattern or tradition.

Figure 3: The Healthy Way to Nurture Down the Generational Lines: Fill the Cups of Your Children and Their Children.

Behaviorism and the Cognitive Model

The next level in the model presented in Figure 3 is called behaviorism. Behaviorism is a theory of learning that simply states that children will repeat behaviors that they perceive to bring a desired reward while ceasing behaviors that they perceive bring punishments. All of us tend to maximize our rewards while minimizing our punishments. The behaviorism approach to parenting is a powerful paradigm when it comes to raising smaller children. Reasoning skills are not advanced in preschoolers. A preschooler may understand the dangers of busy streets and traffic risks, but when one tells a small child not to play near one, they typically cannot process all the nuances of the dangers that might occur.

A 4-year-old will learn better from a parent who makes him come in for 10 minutes of time out if he forgets and goes near the street again. He may say that his ball rolled into the street and he simply retrieved it. Ten minutes to a small child may feel like hours; therefore, this can be a strong punishment to a child who wants to play. It can be argued that an angry swat on the behind is also going to be perceived as a punishment. This is true; however, numerous studies consistently indicate that non-spanking approaches to disciplining a child are effective. 

Behaviorism is for many parents a guiding strategy that focuses the parent’s attention on effective parental intervention efforts that work well and often work quickly. The key in using this approach is to know your child well enough to know what he or she defines as a reward or a punishment. Some children are sensitive to parental criticism and will respond well to a disappointed look or tone of voice. Other children respond better to giving or withdrawing privileges (Xbox, cell phone, TV, or playtime with friends). Once you get an idea of where your child stands on rewards and punishments, then you can selectively use that as a reward or punishment.

The behaviorism formula is relatively simple once you’ve identified your particular child’s rewards and punishments. If you want a child to learn a new habit or improve on a skill, motivate her with a reward. For example, if she puts her own clean laundry away for a week, you’ll let her pick out her next outfit at the store (then really let her pick it out no matter what you think about it). You can also add unexpected rewards. For example, you notice that your son is playing well with his little sister and you come in and praise them both with a treat for playing well together. This rewards desirable behaviors in unexpected ways and can be a powerful reinforcer for desired behaviors.

You can also withhold rewards when misbehavior occurs. For example, a child who gets an hour of video game time after his chores and homework are finished, might lose his hour on a day where he forgot to do his homework. Likewise, grounding may be applied for other behaviors and consequences.

The core of the most effective rewarding and punishing system is to connect the reward or punishment to the natural consequence of the behavior. In other words, when a teen stays out past their curfew, grounding them from their friends is the natural consequence. It helps to logically punish the behavior to the desired outcome. If you want a child to behave in a public setting, reward the child while they are behaving, reinforcing the desired behavior. Many well-meaning parents wait until the child is frustrated and misbehaving to break out the treats. When they do this, they are rewarding misbehavior with treats.

Table 2: Examples of Rewards and Punishments for Children.

One of the findings about behaviorism is that it works best for younger children and should be complemented with a logical or thinking-based approach called the cognitive model as the children get older. The cognitive model of parenting is an approach that applies reason and clarification to the child in a persuasive effort to get them to understand why they should behave a certain way. After age seven, children develop more reasoning skills. Children younger than that will try to understand but tend to benefit more from short statements and behavioral rewards and punishments. Teenagers and young adults have developed abstract reasoning skills. They can think and reason complex matters and therefore can carry on conversation and present their case while understanding their parents’ case.

The cognitive model is a relief for many parents who complain that behaviorism feels too much like a bribe or extortion (because the parents are using that paradigm to get desired results). An answer to this concern is that when someone bribes or extorts another, they are typically doing it for selfish reasons. When parents use rewards and punishments with smaller children, the desired outcome is typically supportive of the child and the child’s development and growth. It’s not a bribe to help someone be a better or more mature person.

Finally, remember that children (and adults) tend to do what rewards them while avoiding what punishes them. If they typically speed to work without getting caught, they continue to speed. If they did get caught and accumulated points against their license, say with the threat of losing it if they got one more ticket, then slowing down to avoid the punishment becomes more appealing. We tend to avoid repeating behaviors that punish us in undesirable ways.

Behaviorism and cognitive approaches fail with some children, especially when their emotions override their reason and their judgment. Teenagers have very emotional decision-making processes that often require tremendous patience from parents. Even when a child’s behaviors and thinking are irrational and based more on emotional approaches, these paradigms still work better than none at all or better than simply spanking or grounding.

The next step in the model shown in Figure 2 is to assimilate children early into responsibility and eventually into their adult roles. Parents often don’t want to let their children suffer. But they eventually learn that a child’s failures are not a bad thing. It can be a powerful learning experience for a child to fail when trying out for a team, a play, or a job. Their mistakes inform their ability to learn and improve according to their strengths and weaknesses. There are a few parenting types that support children learning from their own efforts and a few others that are more interference in that process.

Types of Parenting

Rescue or helicopter parents are constantly interfering with their children’s activities. They continuously help with homework (or do it for the child), seek special favors for their children from teachers and/or coaches, rush in before the child can fail to extract the child from the risk of failing, or make sure the child never has to face any consequences for his or her actions. Rescue parents undermine their child’s self-worth by removing their child from any risk of failure in the pursuit of success. This makes the child feel incapable of doing things on his or her own. Rescue parents raise children who are dependent, non-individuated, and often enmeshed.

Dominating Parents over control and coerce their children. They typically demand compliance and are harsh and overly strict in their punishments. They continuously force their children to dress and act as the parent’s desire. They force their children’s choices of friends, hobbies, and interests. They also use humiliation and shame to make the child comply. These dominating parents make the children prisoners of their control and dependent upon the parent or someone who eventually replaces the parent (such as a dominating spouse).

Mentoring Parents tend to negotiate and share control with their children. They typically let the small things be decided by the child (clothing, class schedules, and hobbies). They also tend to set guidelines and negotiate with their children on how to proceed on various important matters (minimum age to date, when and what type of cell phone to acquire, and when to get a driver’s license). They often give the child choices. For example, a parent might say, “I can’t afford to get you a car of your own, but if you don’t mind too much driving the old family van, I’ll share the insurance expenses with you.” Or for a younger child, the parent might say, “You can wear your T-shirt or tank top, but you can’t go shirtless to the park because the sun might harm your skin.”

Figure 4 shows a photomontage of parents and children. As you look at the photos of parents and their children, think about how they represent the myriad opportunities for children to take on and accept responsibilities. Parents find that even early in the preschool years, children can take on small chores and tasks around the house. If doing chores is defined as positive and rewarding, children can learn to work side by side with their parents in house and yard work. Such skills are invaluable in our day. Employers struggle to find teens and young adults who have experience working and fulfilling assigned tasks adequately.

Generally speaking, when parents and children work together on mundane tasks, there is a much higher likelihood of establishing a bond and an emotional connection than if family members are just watching TV or playing on the computer. Much research has shown that, with most women being in the labor force, men and children have more opportunities than ever before to perform house and yard work. Doing work together as parents and children can be a very bonding and growing experience for both.

Figure 4: Photo Montage of Parents and Children.

Parents trying to raise their children to be responsible co-adults may need to know what being a co-adult child means. Co-adulthood is the status children attain when they are independent, capable of fulfilling responsibilities and roles, and confident in their own identities as emerging adults. The opposite of co-adulthood is simply adult dependent children, many of whom are enmeshed with their parents and other family members.

A co-adult is independent, but that does not imply that she or he is no longer in need of support and guidance. Just the opposite is true. Many studies of college-aged young adults show a continuing reliance on their parents until their mid to late twenties. Psychologists’ studies suggest that the United States young adult has a fully mature brain around the mid to late twenties (Sharma et al., 2013).

Parents are not the only ones who socialize another family member. Studies have shown that children socialize parents as well. Parents go through dramatic changes in anticipation of and accommodation to a newborn. Newborns come with round the clock needs. Sure, parents buy the bottles, diapers, toys, and so on. However, the baby sets the standards for how they like to be fed and when. The baby sets the sleep patterns (especially in the first six months). The baby conditions the parents to hold them, play with them, and interact with them on their own terms.

Sure, parents socialize the baby at the same time, but the baby, with very little conscious effort, sets the rules of much of the caregiving game because he or she cries when unhappy or needs are unmet and smiles and giggles when things turn out as they want them to be. Thus, the parents are rewarded by giggles and smiles while being punished by crying and tears. It becomes easy to acknowledge that parents who want to provide the best care for their children are indeed socialized by each child to meet that child’s needs in a certain way.

When the child socializes the parent, it is not planned at first. It is just their way of surviving. When the parent socializes the child, much of the parent’s own upbringing, own understandings about what a parent is supposed to do, and what the experts are saying comes into play. This is why it is so important for parents to carefully consider how they socialize the child’s sense of self-worth.

Self-worth vs. Shame

Self-worth is the feeling of acceptance a child has about his or her own strengths and weaknesses, desirable and undesirable traits, and value as an individual. To sociologists, self-esteem or the high or low appraisal is not as important today as it was thought to have been 20 years ago. There is innate value in being unique and an individual. Parents are in a prime position to teach their children to see a balance in how they value themselves.

One of the most demeaning messages sent to children from their parents is a message of shame (McCarthy, 2020). Shame is a feeling of being worthless, bad, broken, or flawed at an irreparable level. Some parents raise their children in the same shame-based manner that their parents used on them. Shaming children will never yield the positive outcomes parents want in their children. Shame is at the core of addiction, be it alcohol or drugs, TV or gambling, eating or shopping. Addiction is a natural expectation for people who define themselves as permanently broken or flawed. Recovery programs focus specifically on how to help the addicts accept themselves in a broken state (like most non-shamed people already do). Shame is not the same as guilt. Guilt is a feeling of remorse for doing something wrong or not having done what one should have done. Guilt may be healthy while shame rarely is. Shame used to be used as an emotional tool devised to control and sometimes break the will of a child so that he or she would conform to the parent’s will. Many of those Baby Boomers use shame today on their children and grandchildren. Shaming a child teaches them to accept their permanently broken status and give up hope on finding the joy of their own uniqueness and talents. Parents don’t have to use shame, even if their parents did it to them. Parents are the significant others of their children. Significant others are those other people whose evaluation of the individual are important and regularly considered during interactions. Parents are in a prime position to teach healthy self-worth or toxic shame and worthlessness. Especially for their preschool children, parents teach their children how to see value in themselves and to see balance in how they find out what they are good at in life.

Parents avoiding shame teach their children how to learn from failures and mistakes. They teach them how to be patient and work hard at their goals. When the outcome goes in an undesirable way, these parents console their child and reinforce that child’s uniqueness and value as an individual. These parents teach their children not to draw hasty conclusions too early in life. When the children have tried and tested their talents and limits enough and launch out on their own, they can take not only a positive evaluation of themselves into their adult roles, but also a process of balancing their strengths and weaknesses in the big picture of their lives.

The process leading up to a healthy self-worth is easy to grasp. Look at Figure 5 to see a metaphor on how we measure our self-worth by weighing our ideal expectations against our real or actual performance. The key to understanding self-concept is to understand that balanced self-concept works the same way as balanced weights. The same can be said of those who try to balance too high of an ideal expectation in a role because they’re most likely to perform less than expected in their actual performance in this role. Again, balance between ideal and actual is crucial. In this example, imagine that you are looking at the self-concept formed by a young female college graduate. She has been accepted into a prestigious corporate internship role and has actually been labeled the intern.

If this young professional woman was raised to be fair to herself and others in seeing the balance of her worth in terms of reasonable shoulds and oughts, she will be more accurate in learning from her successes and failures rather than simply chalking them up as more evidence of her core worthlessness. The goal is to help children learn to set reasonable goals and see one’s efforts as objectively as possible. As parents, your definition of self-worth will shine on your children in direct and indirect ways. They will see how you keep the balance or don’t keep the balance. Make a concerted effort to value your children. Express that value to them often (some suggest that you should express it daily). Make a concerted effort to console them in their grief when they feel they might have let themselves or others down. Then, teach them how to see their worth in terms of being good at some things (like most) and not so good at others (like most) (Spielman et al., 2020).

Attachment Styles

Psychosocial development occurs as children form relationships, interact with others, and understand and manage their feelings. In social and emotional development, forming healthy attachments is very important and is the major social milestone of infancy. Attachment is a long-standing connection or bond with others. Developmental psychologists are interested in how infants reach this milestone. They ask questions such as, How do parent and infant attachment bonds form? How does neglect affect these bonds? What accounts for children’s attachment differences?

Researchers Harry Harlow, John Bowlby, and Mary Ainsworth conducted studies designed to answer these questions. In the 1950s, Harlow conducted a series of experiments on monkeys. He separated newborn monkeys from their mothers. Each monkey was presented with two surrogate mothers. One surrogate monkey was made out of wire mesh, and she could dispense milk. The other monkey was softer and made from cloth, and this monkey did not dispense milk. Research shows that the monkeys preferred the soft, cuddly cloth monkey, even though she did not provide any nourishment. The baby monkeys spent their time clinging to the cloth monkey and only went to the wire monkey when they needed to be fed. Prior to this study, the medical and scientific communities generally thought that babies become attached to the people who provide their nourishment. However, Harlow (1958) concluded that there was more to the mother-child bond than nourishment. Feelings of comfort and security are the critical components to maternal-infant bonding, which leads to healthy psychosocial development.

Building on the work of Harlow and others, John Bowlby developed the concept of attachment theory. He defined attachment as the affectional bond or tie that an infant forms with the mother (Bowlby, 1969). An infant must form this bond with a primary caregiver in order to have normal social and emotional development. In addition, Bowlby proposed that this attachment bond is very powerful and continues throughout life. He used the concept of secure base to define a healthy attachment between parent and child (Bowlby, 1988). A secure base is a parental presence that gives the child a sense of safety as he explores his surroundings. Bowlby said that two things are needed for a healthy attachment: The caregiver must be responsive to the child’s physical, social, and emotional needs, and the caregiver and child must engage in mutually enjoyable interactions (Bowlby, 1969).

While Bowlby thought attachment was an all-or-nothing process, Mary Ainsworth’s (1970) research showed otherwise. Ainsworth wanted to know if children differ in the ways they bond, and if so, why. To find the answers, she used the Strange Situation procedure to study attachment between mothers and their infants (Ainsworth & Bell, 1970). In the Strange Situation, the mother (or primary caregiver) and the infant (age 12–18 months) are placed in a room together. There are toys in the room, and the caregiver and child spend some time alone in the room. After the child has had time to explore her surroundings, a stranger enters the room. The mother then leaves her baby with the stranger. After a few minutes, she returns to comfort her child.

Based on how the infants and toddlers responded to the separation and reunion, Ainsworth identified three types of parent-child attachments: secure, avoidant, and resistant (Ainsworth & Bell, 1970). A fourth style, known as disorganized attachment, was later described (Main & Solomon, 1990). The most common type of attachment—also considered the healthiest—is called secure attachment (Figure 9.14). In this type of attachment, the toddler prefers his parent over a stranger. The attachment figure is used as a secure base to explore the environment and is sought out in times of stress. Securely attached children were distressed when their caregivers left the room in the Strange Situation experiment, but when their caregivers returned, the securely attached children were happy to see them. Securely attached children have caregivers who are sensitive and responsive to their needs.

With avoidant attachment, the child is unresponsive to the parent, does not use the parent as a secure base, and does not care if the parent leaves. The toddler reacts to the parent the same way she reacts to a stranger. When the parent does return, the child is slow to show a positive reaction. Ainsworth theorized that these children were most likely to have a caregiver who was insensitive and inattentive to their needs (Ainsworth et al., 1979).

In cases of resistant attachment, children tend to show clingy behavior, but then they reject the attachment figure’s attempts to interact with them (Ainsworth & Bell, 1970). These children do not explore the toys in the room, as they are too fearful. During separation in the Strange Situation, they became extremely disturbed and angry with the parent. When the parent returns, the children are difficult to comfort. Resistant attachment is the result of the caregiver’s inconsistent level of response to the child.

Finally, children with disorganized attachment behaved oddly in the Strange Situation. They freeze, run around the room in an erratic manner, or try to run away when the caregiver returns (Main & Solomon, 1990). This type of attachment is seen most often in kids who have been abused. Research has shown that abuse disrupts a child’s ability to regulate their emotions.

While Ainsworth’s research has found support in subsequent studies, it has also met criticism. Some researchers have pointed out that a child’s temperament may have a strong influence on attachment (Gervai, 2009; Harris, 2009), and others have noted that attachment varies from culture to culture, a factor not accounted for in Ainsworth’s research (Rothbaum et al., 2000; van Ijzendoorn & Sagi-Schwartz, 2008). 

Self-Concept

This section is taken from Psychology 2e (Spielman et al., 2020).

Just as attachment is the main psychosocial milestone of infancy, the primary psychosocial milestone of childhood is the development of a positive sense of self. How does self-awareness develop? Infants don’t have a self-concept, which is an understanding of who they are. If you place a baby in front of a mirror, they will reach out to touch their image, thinking it is another baby. However, by about 18 months a toddler will recognize that the person in the mirror is themself. How do we know this? In a well-known experiment, a researcher placed a red dot of paint on children’s noses before putting them in front of a mirror (Amsterdam, 1972). Commonly known as the mirror test, this behavior is demonstrated by humans and a few other species and is considered evidence of self-recognition (Archer, 1992). At 18 months old, they would touch their own noses when they saw the paint, surprised to see a spot on their faces. By 24–36 months old children can name and/or point to themselves in pictures, clearly indicating self-recognition.

Children from two to four years old display a great increase in social behavior once they have established a self-concept. They enjoy playing with other children, but they have difficulty sharing their possessions. Also, through play children explore and come to understand their gender roles and can label themselves as a girl or boy (Chick et al., 2002). By four years old, children can cooperate with other children, share when asked, and separate from parents with little anxiety. Children at this age also exhibit autonomy, initiate tasks, and carry out plans. Success in these areas contributes to a positive sense of self. Once children reach six years old, they can identify themselves in terms of group memberships: “I’m a first grader!” School-age children compare themselves to their peers and discover that they are competent in some areas and less so in others (recall Erikson’s task of industry versus inferiority). At this age, children recognize their own personality traits as well as some other traits they would like to have. For example, 10-year-old Layla says, “I’m kind of shy. I wish I could be more talkative like my friend Alexa.”

Development of a positive self-concept is important to healthy development. Children with a positive self-concept tend to be more confident, do better in school, act more independently, and are more willing to try new activities (Ferrer & Fugate, 2003; Maccoby, 1980). Formation of a positive self-concept begins in Erikson’s toddlerhood stage, when children establish autonomy and become confident in their abilities. Development of self-concept continues in elementary school, when children compare themselves to others. When the comparison is favorable, children feel a sense of competence and are motivated to work harder and accomplish more. Self-concept is reevaluated in Erikson’s adolescence stage, as teens form an identity. They internalize the messages they have received regarding their strengths and weaknesses, keeping some messages and rejecting others. Adolescents who have achieved identity formation are capable of contributing positively to society (Erikson, 1968).

Parenting Styles

What can parents do to nurture a healthy self-concept? 

Diana Baumrind thinks parenting style may be a factor. The way we parent is an important factor in a child’s socioemotional growth (Baumrind, 1971, 1991). Baumrind developed and refined a theory describing four parenting styles: authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and uninvolved. With the authoritative style, the parent gives reasonable demands and consistent limits, expresses warmth and affection, and listens to the child’s point of view. Parents set rules and explain the reasons behind them. They are also flexible and willing to make exceptions to the rules in certain cases—for example, temporarily relaxing bedtime rules to allow for a nighttime swim during a family vacation. Of the four parenting styles, the authoritative style is the one that is most encouraged in modern American society. American children raised by authoritative parents tend to have high self-esteem and social skills. However, effective parenting styles vary as a function of culture and, as Small (1999) points out, the authoritative style is not necessarily preferred or appropriate in all cultures (Small, 1999).

In authoritarian style, the parent places high value on conformity and obedience. The parents are often strict, tightly monitor their children, and express little warmth. In contrast to the authoritative style, authoritarian parents probably would not relax bedtime rules during a vacation because they consider the rules to be set, and they expect obedience. This style can create anxious, withdrawn, and unhappy kids. However, it is important to point out that authoritarian parenting is as beneficial as the authoritative style is in some ethnic groups. For instance, first-generation Chinese American children raised by authoritarian parents did just as well in school as their peers who were raised by authoritative parents (Russell et al., 2010).

For parents who employ the permissive style of parenting, the kids run the show and anything goes. Permissive parents make few demands and rarely use punishment. They tend to be very nurturing and loving, and may play the role of friend rather than parent. In terms of our example of vacation bedtimes, permissive parents might not have bedtime rules at all—instead they allow the child to choose their bedtime whether on vacation or not. Not surprisingly, children raised by permissive parents tend to lack self-discipline, and the permissive parenting style is negatively associated with grades (Dornbusch et al., 1987). The permissive style may also contribute to other risky behaviors such as alcohol abuse (Bahr & Hoffmann, 2010), risky sexual behavior especially among female children (Donenberg et al., 2002), and increased display of disruptive behaviors by male children (Parent et al., 2011). However, there are some positive outcomes associated with children raised by permissive parents. They tend to have higher self-esteem, better social skills, and report lower levels of depression (Darling, 1999).

With the uninvolved style of parenting, the parents are indifferent, uninvolved, and sometimes referred to as neglectful. They don’t respond to the child’s needs and make relatively few demands. This could be because of severe depression or substance abuse, or other factors such as the parents’ extreme focus on work. These parents may provide for the child’s basic needs but little else. The children raised in this parenting style are usually emotionally withdrawn, fearful, anxious, perform poorly in school, and are at an increased risk of substance abuse (Darling, 1999).

Parenting styles influence childhood adjustment, but could a child’s temperament likewise influence parenting? Temperament refers to innate traits that influence how one thinks, behaves, and reacts with the environment. Children with easy temperaments demonstrate positive emotions, adapt well to change, and are capable of regulating their emotions. Conversely, children with difficult temperaments demonstrate negative emotions and have difficulty adapting to change and regulating their emotions. Difficult children are much more likely to challenge parents, teachers, and other caregivers (Thomas, 1984). Therefore, it’s possible that easy children (That is, social, adaptable, and easy to soothe) tend to elicit warm and responsive parenting, while demanding, irritable, withdrawn children evoke irritation in their parents or cause their parents to withdraw (Sanson & Rothbart, 1995).

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