Updated for the 6th edition, January 2006

What to study

p. 456: Note mutual shaping between parents and children; children contribute to their own development because of their own temperaments and personalities.

pp. 456–457: Know that the ecological systems perspective is. Interaction and interdependence of the child and the many nested systems he lives in. Review systems theory from Chapter 1,  Table 1-2 on p. 15 and Fig. 1-3 on p. 18. Note and be able to define the italicized terms defining the systems perspective in this section: complex and organized, identity, stability, morphogenesis, equifinality, interdependence, homeostasis, and boundaries.

p. 458: The marital system. Quite a bit in this chapter is probably not going to be surprising. Note that the relationship between parents predicts relationship between parents and children.  Parents with good relationships with each other have good relationships with their children: affection, sensitivity, and competent childrearing practices. Describe the results of the Katz and Gottman study.

p. 458: Understand direct and indirect pathways of the effects of parental conflict on children. p. 459-460: Hostile interactions between parents predicts children’s internalizing and externalizing behavior. Which sex of child is more susceptible to the effects of family disharmony? According to Hetherington and Stanley-Hagen, why is this?

p. 460: What is the immediate effect of a new baby on the marriage relationship? How does having a child with a disability or difficult temperament affect a marriage?

p. 462: Note that “all of a sudden the air rings with “No!” “Don’t and “Stop” when children begin walking and exploring their worlds. Note reinforcement and modeling are used by parents to control them, but is modeled behavior always effective in producing behavior a parent wants?
How do parents manage children’s environment in ways that affect social development?

Dimensions of parental behavior.
p. 462–465: Note the two major dimensions of emotionality (= warmth, love, affection) and control (disciplinary style). Note that parental warmth motivates socialization: Children with warm parents want to please them and are distressed at the prospect of losing parents’ love. Why is physical punishment more effective with warm parents?

p. 463: parental warmth and nurturance are associated with parent responsiveness and with children’s security, self-esteem, and internalization of parental standards. (Internalization means that children do what parents want not because of external sanctions but because of an internal sense of right and wrong.) Why would warm parents have children who internalize parental standards? (See above.)

Control: p. 463: define power-assertive discipline. What are the results of this style of discipline? (Note the short term advantages versus the long term disadvantages.)  Note children resist control by adults as they get older. (Surprise!!) Parents respond with more reasoning and bargaining as child shifts to self-control. Notice that parents ability to monitor children declines as they get older (another surprise!).
pp 463-464: Notice that children become better able to respond to long term rewards (the importance of getting a college education) than short term rewards (a piece of candy) or short term punishment as they get older. What mix of factors does the text identify as key to parents’ effectiveness as socialization agents?

Parenting Styles: p. 464: Understand Figure 11-2. Note the two major dimensions of emotionality and control discussed in the previous section are now used to define the space of 4 different parenting styles. Understand the four parenting styles and their correlates (i.e., what are the children with the different styles of parent like?). Note especially the correlates of Uninvolved parenting on p. 465, and see Table 11-1.

p. 467: Note that children’s temperament can influence the parenting style. Give an example of how this might work. Note also that parenting styles have different effects in different ethnic groups. When does the authoritative style work best? When does the authoritarian style work best?

Box 11–2: Do you think that Chinese families are really authoritarian as defined in the previous section? How does Chao (1994) explain the restrictiveness of Chinese parents? What is the contrast between Asian culture and Western culture described in the second to the last paragraph of the box?

Birth order: p. 470: What are first-born children like?  What are the effects of birth of a new baby on the amount of interaction between mother and father, and between parents and older children?

 p. 472: How do parents’ disciplinary styles differ with firstborn children? Note that older children, especially girls, often supervise younger children. pp. 472-473: Older children are also dominant to their younger siblings and are both more antagonistic toward younger children and more nurturant toward them. What is the typical change in sibling relationships in adolescence and adulthood?

pp. 474: What did Friese (1990) find about mothers who told stories of nurturance or rejection about their own childhood? Note that family rituals are associated with well-functioning families. What are some of the associations between family rituals and child outcome (Cicchetti & Toth, 2006)?

p. 475: Note increase in poverty since the 1970s;  the U.S. made a major effort to eradicate poverty beginning in the 1960s, but, as several studies have shown, the results have been more rather than less poverty.

p. 476: What did Conger and Elder find on the effects of stress on the family?

p. 477: Understand the cycles of disadvantage idea. Note the health and educational achievement correlates of poverty. (Re educational achievement, the results are not corrected for child factors like IQ; problems like being retained in grade and dropping out of high school are also influenced by IQ, and books like The Bell Curve argue that part of the cycle of disadvantage is that lower IQ people are more likely to end up in poverty because they get low paying jobs. A major part of the reason their children drop out of school is that they also have lower IQ. One way to illustrate this would be to place IQ in a box at the left of Figure 11-7 on p. 476: IQ influences adverse economic conditions.)

p. 477-478: What are the 5 pathways whereby poverty may affect child development?  Notice Figure 11-7 as a good illustration of the systems view of family functioning related to poverty. Does added income help?

p. 478: Note that ethnic minority families are more ethnocentric than European-Americans and place more emphasis on the extended family, interdependence, cooperation, mutual obligation, sharing and reciprocity within the family. This is sometimes called a collectivist culture, whereas European-Americans tend to be more individualistic.

p. 479: Note that ethnic differences in achievement remain even when social class is controlled. What does Steinberg think explains the achievement patterns?  Hint: Steinberg's explanation begins with the fact that both African-American and Asian-American parents are authoritarian and yet there are large differences in achievement between the groups. How does the text criticize this interpretation?

pp. 480-481: Note but don’t bother memorizing the data on increase in divorce and single parenting. Figure 11-8: Note that ethnic differences in living with a single parent mirror ethnic differences in academic achievement discussed on the previous page. What percentage of black versus white mother-headed households live below the poverty line?

Marital transitions. p. 484: Note that the effects of divorce are a function of quality of life preceding divorce. Describe the typical consequences in the first year after divorce.
What typically happens in the second year? Are children better off in a conflict-ridden marriage or a well-functioning single-parent household? (Of course, the key here is "well-functioning"; as the section on p. 485 shows, many single-parent households are not well-functioning.)

p. 485: Despite the tendency toward improvement in the second year, custodial mothers are more likely to have problems. What are they?
Note that disciplining children is more difficult in single-parent homes, especially mothers trying to discipline sons ("escalating, mutually coercive exchanges")..
Note that some experts suggest that father have custody of boys. What are their reasons?

p. 486: Parenting problems are more like to continue in the second year and beyond for what types of children?
Note that divorced mothers and their daughters are likely to have very close relationships.
What types of post-divorce practices are best for child outcome? Obviously, it’s not good for the parents to continue fighting.

p. 486: Remarriage is ticket out of poverty for women. How does the adjustment of sons differ from daughters in response to a stepfather?
Note that stepparents take a less active role in parenting; stepfathers are particularly uninvolved. (It’s not stated in the text, but it’s well known that stepfathers are more likely than natural fathers to sexually abuse their stepdaughters.) What age is especially difficult for accepting step-parents?
Notice that stepmother families have more adjustment problems than stepfather families overall, probably because they take a more active role in discipline.

p. 487: What percentage of children of divorce have long-term problems? What conditions are associated with better outcomes?
Note that problems are particularly severe in the immediate aftermath of divorce. What are the most common problems? Notice that sometimes there are “delayed effects” that do not become apparent until adolescence. Notice also that the onset of adolescence seems to “trigger” problem behaviors.

p. 487:  What types of sex-related behavior are more common in girls whose parents are divorced? (Note that divorce in one generation is linked to divorce in the next.)
Note that divorced mothers are ineffective in controlling their  sons, spend less time with their sons, and monitor them less. Not surprisingly, this is linked with more antisocial behavior among the boys.

p. 488: What are the long term effects of divorce on children’s education and economic prospects? Figure 11-10 Note that divorce in childhood is linked to premature death in children.

It should be noted that the social and academic consequences of divorce may be mediated by genetic factors. In other words, people who are prone to divorce for genetic reasons (irritability, aggressiveness, lack of impulse control, lack of warmth and affection) would be more likely to have children with similar problems independent of divorce itself. It is known that low-IQ people are more likely to get divorced. Low IQ in the parents could lead to poor economic prospects, tension in the marriage, and eventually divorce. Then the children also have low IQ and therefore they don’t do well in school.

Teenage pregnancy.
p. 493: Note sexual behavior in the US occurs earlier and people marry later. 50% of teens have sex by age 16.

See Figure 11-12 for ethnic differences. Ethnic differences in proneness to teenage pregnancy are in the same order as ethnic differences in school achievement and in proneness to living with a single parent: African American, Hispanic American, European American. African Americans initiating sexual activity sooner, less likely to use contraceptives, less likely to get married. Rates for all groups declining, with African-Americans declining the greatest percentage..
“Bad things tend to go together”: Note the large number of suggested “causes”: poverty is perhaps the largest correlate, but, again, this is not necessarily causal and may be influenced genetically.
Early sexual behavior is linked to declining school achievement and sexually transmitted diseases.

p. 493: Note the quotation on school performance of the children of teenage mothers. Could the results also be influence by genetic factors?

What is the cycle of disadvantage that begins with teenage childbearing? I.e., what are the children like?

p. 494: Are teenage mothers good mothers? What are teenage fathers like?
 

Child Abuse
p. 495: Notice (but do not try to remember) the very large number of abused children. Amazingly, 1400 children died from abuse in 2002.

p. 495: What are some of the risk factors for child abuse? What are the ethnic differences in child abuse and how does the text explain this? (Note the same rank order of ethnic groups that we have seen for other variables, such as teenage child-bearing.)

p. 496: The risk factors are expanded to include sex of parent, family size, age of child, and physical disability. Why might physical disability be associated with child abuse?

What two factors are more commonly found in parents who abuse? The text resumes this thread at the bottom of the page where it notes that parents who abuse are relatively isolated from friends and family and have conflicts with their spouses.

What characteristics of the child are associated with abuse? Notice that children who are abused are more likely to have birth defects and other abnormalities (like irritability, negative emotionality) and that parents often feel that the child is abusing them. This would be an example of the transactional model of environmental influence.

p. 497: Abusive parents often have unrealistic attitudes about parent-child relationships and about expected behavior. For example, they may think that a 3-year old is capable of making his bed and straightening up his room. Notice that abusers are more likely to experience both a crying baby and happy a aversive.

pp. 498: What were the differences between the child abuse prone neighborhood and the non-child abuse prone neighborhood? Note especially the findings of Garbarino & Sherman (1980).

Consequences of abuse: p. 499: Insecure attachment, aggression against other children and wariness of caregiving adults among pre-schoolers. What problems do abused children have as they advance through the school years? Note that long term effects of abuse are most likely if the children stay in a “low-income environment with multiple stresses and few supports available.” Sexually abused children tend to have inappropriate sexual behavior.