Chapter 14 Textbook notes

Because child maltreatment is embedded in families, communities, and society as a whole,

efforts to prevent it must be directed at each of these levels. Many approaches have been suggested, from teaching high-risk parents effective child-rearing strategies to developing broad social programs aimed at improving economic conditions and community services. We have seen that providing social supports to families is effective in easing parental stress. This approach sharply reduces child maltreatment as well. A trusting relationship with another person is the most important factor in preventing mothers with childhood histories of abuse from repeating the cycle with their own youngsters. Parents Anonymous, a U.S. organization with affiliate programs around the world, helps child-abusing parents learn constructive parenting practices, largely through social supports. Its local chapters offer self-help group meetings, daily phone calls, and regular home visits to relieve social isolation and teach responsible child-rearing skills. Early intervention aimed at strengthening both child and parent competencies can improve parenting practices, thereby preventing child maltreatment. Healthy Families America, a program that began in Hawaii and has spread to 430 sites across the United States and Canada, identifies families at risk for maltreatment during pregnancy or at birth. Each receives three years of home visitation, in which a trained worker helps parents manage crises, encourages effective child rearing, and puts parents in touch with community services to meet their own and their children's needs. In an evaluation in which over 600 families were randomly assigned to either intervention or control groups, Healthy Families home visitation alone reduced only neglect, not abuse. But adding a COGNITIVE COMPONENT dramatically increased its impact. When home visitors helped parents change negative appraisals of their children——-by countering inaccurate interpretations (for example, that the baby is behaving with malicious intent), and by working on solving child-rearing problems—-physical punishment and abuse dropped sharply by the end of one year of intervention. Another home-visiting program shown to reduce child abuse and neglect is the Nurse-Family Partnership, discussed on page 220 in Chapter 5. Still, many experts believe that child maltreatment cannot be eliminated as long as violence is widespread and harsh physical punishment is regarded as acceptable. In addition, combating poverty and its diverse correlates——family stress and disorganization, inadequate food and medical care, teenage parenthood, low-birth-weight babies, and parental hopelessness——would protect many children. Although more cases reach the courts than in decades past, child maltreatment remains a crime that is difficult to prove. Usually, the only witnesses are the child victims or other loyal family members. And even when the evidence is strong, judges hesitate to impose the ultimate safeguard against further harm: permanently removing the child from the family. There are several reasons for their reluctance. First, in the United States, government intervention into family life is viewed as a last resort. Second, despite destructive family relationships, maltreated children and their parents usually are attached to one another. Most of the time, neither desires separation. Finally, the U.S. legal system tends to regard children as parental property rather than as human beings in their own right, and this also has stood in the way of court-ordered protection. Even with intensive treatment, some adults persist in their abusive acts. An estimated 1,700 U.S. children, most of them infants and preschoolers, die from maltreatment each year. When parents are unlikely to change their behavior, the drastic step of separating parent from child and legally terminating parental rights is the only justifiable course of action. Child maltreatment is a distressing and horrifying topic. When we consider how often it occurs in nations that claim to place a high value on the dignity and worth of the individual, it is even more appalling. But there is reason to be optimistic. Great strides have been made over the past several decades in understanding and preventing child maltreatment.

Adults who are infertile, who are likely to pass along a genetic disorder, or who are older and single but want a family are turning to adoption increasing numbers. Those who have children by birth, too, sometimes choose to expand their families through adoption. Adoption agencies try to ensure a good fit by seeking parents of the same ethnic and religious background as the child and, where possible, choosing parents who are the same age as typical biological parents. Because the availability of healthy babies has declined (fewer young unwed mothers give up their babies than in the past), more people in North America and Western Europe are adopting from other countries or accepting children who are past infancy or who have known developmental problems. Adopted children and adolescents—-whether or not they were born in their adoptive parents' country—-tend to have more learning and emotional difficulties than other children, a difference that increases with the child's age at time of adoption. And whereas children adopted prior to their first birthday are as securely attached to their parents as nonadopted children are, those adopted later show higher rates of attachment insecurity. Various explanations exist for adoptees' more problematic childhoods. The biological mother may have been unable to care for the child because of problems believed to be partly genetic, such as alcoholism or severe depression, and may have passed this tendency to her offspring. Or perhaps she experienced stress, poor diet, or inadequate medical care during pregnancy. Furthermore, children adopted after infancy are more likely than their nonadopted peers to have a preadoptive history of conflict-ridden family relationships, lack of parental affection, neglect and abuse, or deprived institutional rearing. Finally, adoptive parents and children, who are genetically unrelated, are less alike in intelligence and personality than are biological relatives——-differences that may threaten family harmony. Despite these risks, most adopted children fare well, and those with preexisting problems usually make rapid progress. In a study of internationally adopted children in the Netherlands, sensitive maternal care and secure attachment in infancy predicted cognitive and social competence at age 7. And children with troubled family histories who are adopted at older ages generally improve in feelings of trust and affection for their adoptive parents, as they come to feel loved and supported. By adolescence, adoptees' lives are often complicated by unresolved curiosity about their roots. Some have difficulty accepting the possibility that they may never know their birth parents. Others worry about what they would do if their birth parents suddenly reappeared. Adopted teenagers also face a more challenging process of defining themselves as they try to integrate aspects of their birth family and their adoptive family into their emerging identity. Nevertheless, most adoptees appear well-adjusted as adults. When parents have been warm, open, and supportive in their communication about adoption, their children typically forge a positive sense of self. And as long as their parents took steps to help them learn about their heritage, young adults who were adopted into a different ethnic group or culture usually develop identities that are healthy blends of their birth and rearing backgrounds. Clearly, adoption is a satisfying family alternative for most parents and children who experience it. Good outcomes can be promoted by careful pairing of children with parents and provision of guidance to adoptive families by well-trained social service professionals.

According to recent estimates, about 20 to 35 percent of lesbian couples and 5 to 15 percent of gay couples are parents, most through previous heterosexual marriages, some through adoption, and a growing number through reproductive technologies. These figures underreport actual numbers, as many gay and lesbian parents are reluctant to disclose their identities. In the past, because of laws assuming that homosexuals could not be adequate parents, those who divorced a heterosexual partner lost custody of their children. Today, some U.S. states hold that sexual orientation in itself is irrelevant to custody. A few U.S. states, however, ban gay and lesbian couples from adopting children. Among other countries, gay and lesbian adoptions are legal in Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Iceland, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Uruguay. Most research on homosexual families is limited to volunteer samples. Findings indicate that gay and lesbian parents are as committed to and effective at child rearing as heterosexual parents and sometimes more so. Also, whether born to or adopted by their parents or conceived through donor insemination, the children of homosexuals did not differ from the children of heterosexuals in mental health, peer relations, or gender-role behavior. Two additional studies, which surmounted the potential bias associated with a volunteer sample by including all lesbian-mother families who had conceived children at a fertility clinic, also reported that children were developing favorably. Likewise, among participants drawn from a representative sample of British mothers and their 7-year-olds, children reared in lesbian-mother families did not differ from children reared in heterosexual families in adjustment and gender-role preferences. Furthermore, children of gay and lesbian parents are similar to other children in sexual orientation: The large majority are heterosexual. But some evidence suggests that more adolescents from homosexual families experiment for a time with partners of both sexes, perhaps as a result of being reared in families and communities especially tolerant of nonconformity and difference. In support of this view, a Dutch investigation found that 8- to 12-year-old children of lesbian parents felt slightly less parental pressure to conform to gender roles than did children of heterosexual parents. The two groups were similar in other aspects of gender identity. At the same time, the children of lesbian parents reported greater sexual questioning——less certainty about future heterosexual attractions and relationships, though the group difference was mild. A major concern of gay and lesbian parents is that their children will be stigmatized by their parents' sexual orientation. Most studies indicate that incidents of teasing and bullying are rare because parents and children carefully manage the information they reveal to others. But in an Australian study, even though most third to tenth graders were guarded about discussing their parents' relationship with peers, nearly half reported harassment. Overall, children of gay and lesbian parents can be distinguished from other children mainly by issues related to living in a nonsupportive society.

When families slip into poverty, effective parenting and children's development are profoundly threatened. Consider Zinnia Mae, who grew up in a close-knit black community located in a small southeastern American city. As unemployment struck the community and citizens moved away, 16-year-old Zinnia Mae caught a ride to Atlanta. Two years later, she was the mother of a daughter and twin boys, and she had moved into high-rise public housing. Zinnia Mae worried constantly about scraping together enough money to put food on the table, finding baby-sitters so she could go to the laundry or grocery, freeing herself from rising debt, and locating the twins' father, who had stopped sending money. Her most frequent words were, "I'm so tired." The children had only one set meal——breakfast; otherwise, they ate whenever they were hungry or bored. Their play space was limited to the living-room sofa and a mattress on the floor. Toys consisted of scraps of a blanket, spoons and food cartons, a small rubber ball, a few plastic cars, and a roller skate abandoned in the building. At a researcher's request, Zinnia Mae agreed to tape-record her interactions with her children. Cut off from family and community ties and overwhelmed by financial strain and feelings of helplessness, she found herself unable to join in activities with her children. In 500 hours of tape, , she started a conversation with them only 18 times. The constant stressors that accompany poverty gradually weaken the family system. Poor families have many daily hassles——bills to pay, the car breaking down, loss of welfare and unemployment payments, something stolen from the house, to name just a few. When daily crises arise, parents become depressed, irritable, and distracted; hostile interactions increase; and children's development suffers. Negative outcomes are especially severe in single-parent families, in families who must live in poor housing and dangerous neighborhoods, and in homeless families——conditions that make everyday existence even more difficult, while reducing social supports that assist in coping with economic hardship. Besides stress and conflict, reduced parental involvement and depleted home learning environments (like that of Zinnia Mae) profoundly affect poor children's cognitive and emotional well-being. As noted in earlier chapters, poverty that begins early and persists has devastating effects on children's physical and mental health, intelligence, and school achievement. Despite their advanced education and greater material wealth, affluent parents——those in prestigious occupations with six-figure annual incomes—-too often fail to engage in family interaction and parenting that promote favorable development. In several studies, researchers tracked youths growing up in high-SES suburbs. By seventh grade, many showed serious problems that worsened in high school. Their school grades were poor, and they were more likely than low-SES youths to engage in alcohol and drug use and to report high levels of anxiety and depression. Furthermore, among affluent (but not low-SES) teenagers, substance use was correlated with anxiety and depression, suggesting that wealthy youths took drugs to self-medicate—a practice that predicts persistent abuse. Why are so many affluent youths troubled? Compared to their better-adjusted counterparts, poorly adjusted affluent young people report less emotional closeness and supervision from their parents, who lead professionally and socially demanding lives. As a group, wealthy parents are nearly as physically and emotionally unavailable to their youngsters as parents coping with serious financial strain. At the same time, these parents often make excessive demands for achievement. Adolescents whose parents value their accomplishments more than their character and emotional well-being are more likely to have academic and emotional problems. For both affluent and low-SES youths, a simple routine——-eating dinner with parents——is associated with a reduction in adjustment difficulties, even after many other aspects of parenting are controlled. Interventions that make wealthy parents aware of the high costs of a competitive lifestyle and minimal family time are badly needed.

Although authoritative parenting is broadly advantageous, ethnic minority parents often have distinct child-rearing beliefs and practices that reflect cultural values and family context. Let's take some examples. Compared with Western parents, Chinese parents describe their parenting as less warm and more controlling. They are more directive in teaching and scheduling their children's time, as a way of fostering self-control and high achievement. Chinese parents may appear less warm than Western parents because they withhold praise, which they believe results in self-satisfied and poorly motivated children. High control reflects the Confucian belief in strict discipline, respect for elders, and socially desirable behavior, taught by deeply involved parents. Chinese parents report expressing affection and concern and using induction and other reasoning-oriented discipline as much as American parents do, but they more often shame a misbehaving child, withdraw love, and use physical punishment. When these practices become excessive, resulting in an authoritarian style in psychological or coercive control, Chinese children display the same negative outcomes as Western children: poor academic achievement, anxiety, depression, and aggressive behavior. In Hispanic families, Asian Pacific Island families, and Caribbean families of African and East Indian origin, firm insistence on respect for parental authority is paired with high parental warmth——-a combination suited to promoting competence and strong feelings of family loyalty. In one study, Mexican-American mothers living in poverty who adheres strongly to their cultural traditions tended to combine warmth with strict, even somewhat harsh, control——a style that served a protective function, in that it was associated with reduced child and adolescent conduct problems. Although at one time viewed as coercive, contemporary Hispanic-American fathers typically spend much time with their children and are warm and sensitive. In Caribbean families that have immigrated to the United States, fathers' authoritativeness——but not mothers'——-predicted preschoolers' literacy and math skills, probably because Caribbean fathers take a larger role in guiding their children's academic progress. Although wide variation exists, low-SES African-American parents tend to expect immediate obedience. But like findings just reported for a Mexican Americans, when African-American families live in depleted, crime-ridden neighborhoods and have few social supports, strict control may have a positive effect, preventing antisocial involvements. Other research suggests that black parents use firm control for broader reasons—-to promote self-reliance, self-regulation, and a watchful attitude in risky surroundings, which protects children from becoming victims of crime. Consistent with this view, low-SES African-American parents who use more controlling strategies tend to have more cognitively and socially competent children. Recall, also, that a history of physical punishment is associated with a reduction in antisocial behavior among African-American adolescents but with an increase among Caucasian-American adolescents. Most African-African parents who use strict, "no-nonsense" discipline use physical punishment sparingly and combine it with warmth and reasoning. The family structure and child-rearing customs of many minorities buffer the stress and disorganization caused by poverty. As the Cultural Influences box above illustrates, the extended-family household, in which one or more adult relatives live with the parent—-child nuclear family unit, is a vital feature of ethnic minority family life that has enabled many families to tear children successfully, despite severe economic deprivation and prejudice. Extended family ties provide yet another example of the remarkable capacity of families to mobilize their cultural traditions to safeguard children's development under conditions of high life stress.

Sibling rivalry tends to increase in middle childhood. As children participate in a wider range of activities, parents often compare siblings' traits and accomplishments. The child who gets less parental affection, more disapproval, or fewer material resources is likely to be resentful and show poorer adjustment over time. For same-sex siblings who are close in age, parental comparisons are more frequent, resulting in more quarreling and antagonism. This effect is particularly strong when parents are under stress as a result of financial worries, marital conflict, single parenthood, or child negativity. Parents whose energies are drained become less careful about being fair. Perhaps because fathers, overall, spend less time with children than mothers do, children react especially intensely when fathers prefer one child. Although conflict rises, most school-age siblings continue to rely on one another for companionship, assistance, and emotional support. When researchers asked siblings about shared daily activities, children mentioned that older siblings often helped younger siblings with academic and peer challenges. And both offered each other help with family issues. But for siblings to reap these benefits, parental encouragement of warm, considerate sibling ties is vital. The more positive their relationship, the more siblings resolve disagreements constructively, turn to one another for emotional support and concrete forms of assistance, and contribute to resilience in the face of major stressors, such as parental separation and divorce. When siblings get along well, the older sibling's academic and social competence tends to "RUB OFF ON" the younger sibling, fostering higher achievement and more positive peer relations. But destructive sibling conflict in middle childhood is associated with detrimental outcomes, including conflict-ridden peer relationships, anxiety, depressed mood, and later substance use and delinquency, even after other family relationship factors are controlled. Providing parents with training in mediation——how to get siblings to lay down ground rules, clarify points of agreement and disagreement, and discuss possible solutions——increases siblings' awareness of one another's perspectives and reduces animosity. And direct intervention with sibling pairs, in sessions that teach emotional understanding, perspective taking, emotional self-regulation, and conflict management, enhances positive interaction and reduces the need for parents to intervene in siblings' negative emotional exchanges. Like parent-child relationships, sibling interactions adapt to development at adolescence. As younger siblings become more self-sufficient, they accept less direction from their older brothers and sisters, and sibling influence declines. Also, as teenagers become more involved in friendships and romantic relationships, they invest less time and energy in their siblings, who are part of the family from which they are trying to establish autonomy. As a result, sibling relationships often become less intense, in both positive and negative feelings. Despite a drop in companionship, attachment between siblings, like closeness to parents, remains strong for most young people. Overall, siblings who established a positive bond in childhood continue to display greater affection and caring, which contribute to more favorable adolescent adjustment. Older siblings frequently offer useful advice as their younger teenage brothers and sisters face challenges in romantic relationships, schoolwork, and decisions about the future. Consistent with the high value girls place on emotional closeness, sisters report greater intimacy with their siblings than brothers do, and sister—-sister pairings tend to be the closest. Culture also influences quality of sibling relationships. In one study, Mexican-American adolescents who expressed a strong Mexican cultural orientation resolved sibling conflicts more cooperatively—-compromising rather than controlling or confronting—-than did those more oriented toward U.S. individualistic values. Sibling interaction at adolescence continues to be affected by other relationships, and vice versa. Teenagers whose parents are warm and supportive and who have a history of caring friendships have more positive sibling ties. And in bidirectional fashion, warm adolescent sibling relationships contribute to more gratifying friendships. Finally, mild sibling differences in perceived parental affection no longer trigger jealousy but, instead, predict greater sibling warmth. Perhaps adolescents interpret a unique relationship with parents, as long as it is generally accepting, as a gratifying sign of their own individuality.

Although sibling relationships bring many benefits, they are not essential for healthy development. Contrary to popular belief, only children are not spoiled, and in some respects, they are advantaged. U.S. children growing up in one-child and multichild families do not differ in self-rates personality traits. And compared to children with siblings, only children are higher in self-esteem and achievement motivation, do better in school, and attain higher levels of education. One reason may be that only children have somewhat closer relationships with parents, who may exert more pressure for mastery and accomplishment. Furthermore, only children have just as many close, high-quality friendships as children with siblings. However, they tend to be less well-accepted in the peer group, perhaps because they have not had opportunities to learn effective conflict-resolution strategies through sibling interactions. Favorable development also characterized only children in China, where a one-child family policy has been strictly enforced in urban areas for more than three decades to control population growth. Compared with agemates who have siblings, Chinese only children are advanced in cognitive development and academic achievement. They also feel more emotionally secure, perhaps because government disapproval promotes tension in families with more than one child. Chinese mothers usually ensure that their children have regular contact with first cousins (who are considered siblings). Perhaps as a result, Chinese only children do not differ from agemates with siblings in social skills and peer acceptance. The next generation of Chinese only children, however, will have no first cousins. China's birth rate, at 1.5 per woman overall and .7 in its largest cities, is now lower than that of many developed nations. As a result, its elderly population is rapidly increasing while its working-safe population has leveled off——an imbalance that threatens the country's economic progress. And because sons are more highly valued than daughters, the policy has resulted in an epidemic of abortions of female fetuses and abandonment of girl babies, yielding a vastly skewed population sex ratio (130 male births for every 100 female births) that jeopardizes social stability. Consequently, China is considering relaxing the one-child policy, but it is now so culturally ingrained that couples say they would not have a second child, even if offered the opportunity.

In several studies, low-SES families were randomly assigned vouchers to move out of public housing into neighborhoods varying widely in affluence. Compared with their peers who remained in poverty-striven areas, children and youths who moved into low-poverty neighborhoods showed substantially better physical and mental health and school achievement. Unstable inner-city neighborhoods with dilapidated housing; schools, parks, and playgrounds in disarray; and lack of community centers introduce stressors that undermine parental warmth, involvement, and monitoring and increase parental harshness and inconsistency. In such neighborhoods, family violence, child abuse and neglect, children's problem behavior, youth antisocial activity, and adult criminality are especially high. In contrast, strong family ties to the surrounding social context——as indicated by contact with friends and relatives, organized youth activities, and regular church, synagogue, or mosque attendance——reduce family stress and adjustment problems. How do links between family and community reduce stress and promote child development? One answer lies in their provision of SOCIAL SUPPORT, which leads to the following benefits: Parental self-worth. A neighbor or relative who listens and tries to relieve a parent's concern enhances her self-esteem. The parent, in turn, is likely to interact in a more sensitive and involved manner with her children. Parental access to valuable information and services. A friend who suggests where a parent might find a job, housing, or affordable child care helps make the multiple roles of spouse, provider, and caregiver easier to fulfill. Child-rearing controls and role models. Friends, relatives, and other community members may encourage and demonstrate effective parenting practices and discourage ineffective ones. Direct assistance with child rearing. As children and adolescents participate in their parents' social networks and in youth-oriented community activities, other adults can influence children directly through warmth, stimulation, and exposure to a wider array of competent models. In this way, family-neighborhood ties can reduce the impact of ineffective parenting. Nearby adults can also intervene when they see young people skipping school or behaving antisocially. The Better Beginnings, Better Futures Project of Ontario, Canada, is a government-sponsored set of programs aimed at preventing the dire consequences of neighborhood poverty. The most successful of these efforts, using a local elementary school as its base, provided 4- to 8-year-olds with in-class, before- and after-school, and summer enrichment activities. Workers also visited each child's parents regularly, informed them about community resources, and encouraged their involvement in the child's school and neighborhood life. And a community-wide component focused on improving the quality of the neighborhood as a place to live, by offering leadership training and adult education programs and organizing neighborhood safety initiatives and special events and celebrations. Evaluations as children reached grades 3, 6, and 9 revealed wide-ranging benefits compared with children and families living in other poverty neighborhoods without this set of programs. Among these were parents' sense of improved marital satisfaction, family functioning, effective child rearing, and community involvement; and gains in children's academic achievement and social adjustment, including positive relationships with peers and adults, prosocial behavior, self-regulation, and a reduction in emotional and behavior problems. No researcher could possibly study all aspects of the social systems perspective on the family at once. But throughout this chapter, we will continually see examples of how its interlocking parts combine to influence development.

Among the family's functions, socialization centers on children's development. Parents start to socialize their children in earnest during the second year, when toddlers are first able to comply with their directives. As children get older, parents gradually step up socialization pressures, but they vary greatly in how they go about the task. In previous chapters, we have seen how parents can foster children's competence——by building a parent-child relationship based on affection and cooperation, by serving as models and reinforcers of mature behavior, by using reasoning and inductive discipline, and by guiding and encouraging children's mastery of new skills. Now let's put these practices together into an overall view of effective parenting. CHILD-REARING STYLES are combinations of parenting behaviors that occur over a wide range of situations, creating an enduring child-rearing climate. In a land-mark series of studies, Diana Baumrind gathered information on child rearing by watching parents interact with their preschoolers. Her findings, and those of others who have extended her work, reveal three features that consistently differentiate an effective style from less effective ones: (1) ACCEPTANCE of the child and INVOLVEMENT in the child's life, which establishes an emotional connection with the child; (2) BEHAVIORAL CONTROL of the child through expectations, rules, and supervision, which promotes more mature behavior; and (3) AUTONOMY GRANTING, which encourages self-reliance

The family in its most common form—-an enduring commitment between a man and a woman who feed, shelter, and nurture their children until they reach maturity——arose tens of thousands of years ago among our hunting-and-gathering ancestors. From an evolutionary perspective, the human family enhances survival by ensuring a relatively even balance of male hunters and female gatherers within a social group, thereby providing protection against starvation at times when game was scarce. An extended relationship between a man and a woman also increased male certainty that a newborn baby was actually HIS offspring, motivating him to care and provide for mother and child and to invest in child rearing in order to increase the odds of child survival. Larger kin networks that included grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins formed, increasing the chances of successful competition with other humans for vital resources and providing assistance with child rearing. Besides promoting survival of its members, the family unit of our evolutionary ancestors performed the following vital services for society: Reproduction. Replacing dying members Economic services. Producing and distributing goods and services Social order. Devising procedures for reducing conflict and maintaining order Socialization. Training the young to become competent, participating members of society. Emotional support. Helping others surmount emotional crises and fostering in each person a sense of commitment and purpose.

As societies became more complex, the demands placed on the family became too much for it to sustain alone. Other institutions developed to assist with some of these functions, and families became linked to larger social structures. For example, political and legal institutions assumed responsibility for ensuring societal order, and schools and religious institutions extended the family's socialization function. And although some family members still carry out economic tasks together (as in family-run farms and businesses), this function has largely been taken over by institutions that make up the world of work. Despite sharing some functions with other institutions, the family continues to assume primary responsibility for three important ones especially concerned with children: reproduction, socialization, and emotional support. Researchers interested in finding out how families fulfill these functions take a SOCIAL SYSTEMS PERSPECTIVE, viewing the family as a complex set of interacting relationships influenced by the larger social context.

The AUTHORITARIAN CHILD-REARING STYLE is low in acceptance and involvement, high in coercive behavioral control, and low in autonomy granting. Authoritarian parents appear cold and rejecting. To exert control, they yell, command, criticize, and threaten. "Do it because I said so!" is their attitude. They make decisions for their child and expect the child to accept their word unquestioningly. If the child does not, authoritarian parents resort to force and punishment. They also hold excessively high expectations that do not fit the child's developing capacities. Children of authoritarian parents are more likely to be anxious, unhappy, and low in self-esteem and self-reliance. When frustrated, they tend to react with hostility and, like their parents, resort to force when they do not get their way. Boys, especially, show high rates of anger and defiance. Although girls also engage in acting-out behavior, they are more likely to be dependent, lacking interest in exploration, and overwhelmed by challenging tasks. Children and adolescents exposed to the authoritarian style typically achieve poorly in school. However, because of their parents' concern with controlling their behavior, they tend to achieve better and to commit fewer antisocial acts than peers with undemanding parents——that is, those whose parents use one of the two styles we will consider next. Notice how the authoritarian style suppresses children's self-expression and independence. In addition to unwarranted behavioral control ("Do what I say!"), authoritarian parents often engage in PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTROL, in which they attempt to take advantage of children's psychological needs by intruding on and manipulating their verbal expressions, individuality, and attachments to parents. In an attempt to decide virtually everything for the child, these parents frequently interrupt or put down the child's ideas, decisions, and choice of friends. When they are dissatisfied, they withdraw love, making their affection or attention contingent on the child's compliance. Children and adolescents subjected to psychological control exhibit adjustment problems involving both anxious, withdrawn and defiant, aggressive behaviors. Once again, boys are more likely than girls to respond with rebellious and antisocial acts. And having had few opportunities for exploration, they are impaired in identity development once they reach early adulthood. The PERMISSIVE CHILD-REARING STYLE is warm and accepting but uninvolved. Permissive parents are either overindulgent or inattentive and, thus, engage in little behavioral control. Instead of gradually granting autonomy, they allow children to make many decisions for themselves at an age when they are not yet capable of doing so. Their children can eat meals and go to bed whenever they wish and can watch as much television as they want. They do not have to learn good manners or do household chores. Although some permissive parents truly believe in this approach, many others simply lack confidence in their ability to influence their child's behavior. Children of permissive parents tend to be impulsive, disobedient, and rebellious. Compared with children whose parents exert more behavioral control, they are also overly demanding and dependent on adults, and they show reduced task persistence, poorer academic achievement, and more antisocial behavior. The link between permissive parenting and dependent, non achieving, rebellious behavior is especially strong for boys. The UNINVOLVED CHILD-REARING STYLE combines low acceptance and involvement with little behavioral control and general indifference to issues of autonomy. Often these parents are emotionally detached and depressed, so overwhelmed by life stress that they have little time or energy for children. They may respond to the child's immediate demands for easily accessible objects while failing to engage in strategies to promote long-term goals, such as establishing and enforcing rules about homework and social behavior, listening to the child's point of view, providing guidance about appropriate choices, and monitoring the child's whereabouts and activities. At its extreme, uninvolved parenting is a form of child maltreatment called NEGLECT. Especially when it begins early, it disrupts virtually all aspects of development. Even with less extreme parental disengagement, children and adolescents display many problems, including school achievement difficulties, depression, anger, and antisocial behavior.

As with other correlational findings, the relationship between the authoritative style and children's competence is open to interpretation. Perhaps parents of well-adjusted children are authoritative because their youngsters have especially cooperative dispositions. Children's characteristics do contribute to the ease with which parents can apply the authoritative style. Recall from earlier chapters that temperamentally fearless, impulsive children and emotionally negative, difficult children are more likely to evoke coercive, inconsistent discipline. At the same time, extra warmth and firm control succeed in modifying these children's maladaptive styles. And with fearful, inhibited children, parents must suppress their tendency to overprotect and take over solving the child's social problems——-practices that, as we saw in Chapter 10, worsen the shy child's difficulties. Instead, inhibited children benefit from extra encouragement to be assertive and to express their autonomy.

Exposure to stressful life events and inadequate parenting magnifies the problems of temperamentally difficult children. Easy children, who are less often targets of parental anger, also cope better with adversity. These findings help explain sex differences in response to divorce. Girls sometimes respond with internalizing reactions such as crying, self-criticism, and withdrawal. More often, children of both sexes show demanding, attention-getting behavior. These declines in psychological well-being contribute to the poorer academic achievement of children of divorce. But in mother-custody families, boys are at slightly greater risk for serious adjustment problems. Recall from Chapter 13 that boys are more active and noncompliant——behaviors that increase with exposure to parental conflict and inconsistent discipline. Research reveals that long before the marital breakup, sons of divorcing couples display higher rates of impulsivity, defiance, and aggression——behaviors that may have been caused by their parents' marital problems while also contributing to them. As a result, more boys enter the period of turmoil surrounding divorce with reduced capacity to cope with family stress. Perhaps because their behavior is more unruly, boys of divorcing parents tend to receive less emotional support from mothers, teachers, and peers. Furthermore, the cycles of coercive interaction between angry, defiant sons and their divorced mothers soon spread to sibling relations, compounding adjustment difficulties. After divorce, children who are challenging to rear generally get worse. Most children show improved adjustment by two years after divorce. Yet overall, children and adolescents of divorced parents continue to score slightly lower than children of continuously married parents in academic achievement, self-esteem, social competence, and emotional and behavior problems. Children with difficult temperaments who were entrenched in family conflict are more likely to drop out of school, to be depressed, and to engage in antisocial behavior in adolescence. And divorce is linked to problems with adolescent sexuality and development of intimate ties. Young people who experienced parental divorce——especially more than once—-display higher rates of early sexual activity and adolescent parenthood. Some experience other lasting difficulties——reduced educational attainment, troubled romantic relationships and marriages, divorce in adulthood, and unsatisfying parent-child relationships. This, divorce can have consequences for subsequent generations. The overriding factor in positive adjustment following divorce is effective parenting——how well the custodial parent handles stress and shields the child from family conflict, and the extent to which each parent uses authoritative child rearing. Where the custodial parent is the mother, contact with fathers is also important. In the United States, paternal contact has risen over the past three decades, with about one-third of children today experiencing at least weekly visits. The more paternal contact and the warmer the father-child relationship, the less children of divorce react with defiance and aggression. For girls, a good father-child relationship protects against early sexual activity and unhappy romantic involvements. High father-child contact, however, occurs more often in families where mother-child relationship is positive and divorced parents are courteous and cooperative. Several studies report that outcomes for sons are better when the father is the custodial parent. Fathers' greater economic security and image of authority seem to help them engage in effective parenting with sons. And boys in father-custody families may benefit from greater involvement of both parents because noncustodial mothers participate more in their children's lives than do noncustodial fathers. Although divorce is painful for children, remaining in an intact but high-conflict family is worse than making the transition to a low-conflict single-parent household. However, more parents today are divorcing because they are moderately(rather than extremely) dissatisfied with their relationship. Research suggests that children in these low-discord homes are especially puzzled and upset. Perhaps these youngsters' inability to understand the marital breakup and grieve over the loss of a seemingly happy home life explain why the adjustment problems of children of divorce have intensified over time. Regardless of the extent of their friction, parents who set aside their disagreements and engage in effective coparenting greatly improve their children's chances of growing up competent, stable, and happy. As Figure 14.5 shows, in a study of 8- to 15-year-olds, young people who experienced both high parental acceptance and high consistency of discipline had the lowest levels of adjustment problems. Caring extended-family members, teachers, siblings, and friends also reduce the likelihood that divorce will result in long-term difficulties.

Awareness that divorce is highly stressful for parents and children has led to community-based services aimed at helping them through this difficult time. One such service is DIVORCE MEDIATION, a series of meetings between divorcing couples and a trained professional aimed at reducing family conflict, including legal battles over property division and child custody. Research reveals that mediation increases out-of-court settlements, effective coparenting, sustained involvement of both parents in their children's lives, and parents' and children's feelings of well-being. In one study, parents who had resolved disputes through mediation, as opposed to an adversarial legal process, were still more involved in their children's lives 12 years later. To further encourage parents to resolve their disputes, parent education programs are becoming common. During several sessions, professionals teach parents about the positive impact of constructive conflict resolution and of respectful, cooperative coparenting on children's well-being. Because of the demonstrated impact of parent education on parental cooperation, courts in many U.S. states may require parents to attend a program. JOINT CUSTODY, which grants each parent an equal way in important decisions about the child's upbringing, is becoming increasingly common. Children usually reside with one parent and see the other on a fixed schedule, similar to the typical sole-custody situation. In other cases, parallel share physical custody, and children move between homes and sometimes between schools and peer groups. These transitions can be especially hard on some children. Joint-custody parents report little conflict—-fortunately so, since the success of the arrangement depends on coparenting. And their children, regardless of living arrangements, tend to be better-adjusted than their counterparts in sole maternal-custody homes. Finally, many single-parent families depend on child support from the absent parent to relieve financial strain. All U.S. states have procedures for withholding wages from parents who fail to make these payments. Although child support is usually not enough to lift a single-parent family out of poverty, it can ease its burdens substantially. Noncustodial fathers who have generous visitation schedules and see their children often are more likely to pay child support regularly. And increases in contact with the child and in child support over time predict better coparenting relationships

Longitudinal evidence indicates that among children of diverse temperaments, authoritative child rearing in the preschool years predicts maturity and adjustment a decade later in adolescence, whereas authoritarian or permissive child rearing predicts adolescent immaturity and adjustment difficulties. And a variant of authoritativeness in which parents exert strong behavioral control becoming directive but not coercive——yields just as favorable long-term outcomes as a more democratic approach. Parental directiveness may stem from parents' personalities, child-rearing beliefs, or children's needs. Indeed, as the findings on temperament and parenting just mentioned illustrate, some children, because of their dispositions, require "heavier doses" of certain authoritative features. Over time, the relationship between parenting and children's attributes becomes increasingly bidirectional as each participant modifies the actions of the other and, on the basis of past interactions, forms expectancies for the other's behavior. Consider, for example, an investigation of the consequences of parental monitoring that followed adolescents from ages 14 to 18. The more parents knew about their child's whereabouts and activities, the greater the decline in delinquent acts over time. And the greater the decline in delinquency, the more parents increased in knowledge of their teenager's daily life. What explains these bidirectional associations, in which parental monitoring promotes responsible youth behavior, which in turn leads to gains in parental knowledge? Parents who exert appropriate oversight are likely to parent effectively in other ways as well, giving adolescents both less opportunity and less reason to engage in delinquency. And parents who take proactive steps to intervene in their teenager's antisocial acts set the stage for a more positive parent-child relationship, in which teenagers are more willing to provide them with information. In contrast, when monitoring is lax and delinquency rises, parent-adolescent interaction may become increasingly negative. As a result, parents may further disengage from parenting, both to avoid these unpleasant exchanges and to reduce contact with a child whom they have come to dislike. Most children and adolescents seem to view the affection, appropriate control, and respect for self-determination that make up authoritative child rearing as a well-intentioned parental effort to increase their competence. As a result, even hard-to-rear youngsters gradually respond to authoritativeness with cooperation and maturity, which promote parents' pleasure and approval of the child, sense of self-efficacy at child rearing, and likelihood of continuing to be authoritative. In sum, authoritative child rearing seems to create a POSITIVE EMOTIONAL CONTEXT for parental influence in the following ways: Warm, involved parents who are secure in the standards they hold for their children provide models of caring concern as well as confident, self-controlled behavior. Children are far more likely to comply with and internalize behavioral control that appears fair and reasonable, not arbitrary and excessive. Parents who combine warmth with rational and reasonable behavioral control are likely to be more effective reinforcing agents, praising children for striving to meet their expectations and making good use of disapproval, which works best when applied by an adult who has been warm and caring. By making demands and engaging in autonomy granting that fit with children's ability to take responsibility for their own behavior, authoritative parents let children know that they are competent individuals who can do things successfully for themselves. In this way, parents foster favorable self-esteem and cognitive and social maturity. Supportive features of the authoritative style are a powerful source of resilience, protecting children from the negative effects of family stress and poverty. Still, a few theorists remain convinced that parenting has little impact on child development. They claim that because parents and children share genes, parents provide children with genetically influenced child rearing that does little more than enhance children's built-in propensities.

Because authoritative parents continually adapt to children's increasing competence, their practices change with children's age. A gradual lessening or control and increase in autonomy granting promote favorable development. In middle childhood, the amount of time children spend with parents declines dramatically. Children's growing independence means that parents must deal with new issues. As one mother described it, "I've struggled with how many chores to assign, how much allowance to give, whether their friends are good influences, and what to do about problems at school. And then there's the challenge of keeping track of them when they're out——or even when they're home and I'm not there to see what's going on." Despite these new concerns, child rearing becomes easier for parents who established an authoritative style during the early years. Reasoning is more effective with school-age children because of their greater capacity for logical thinking and their increased respect for parents' expert knowledge. And children of parents who communicate openly and engage in joint decision making when possible are more likely to listen to parents' perspectives in situations where compliance is vital. As children demonstrate that they can manage daily activities and responsibilities, effective parents gradually shift control from adult to child. They do not let go entirely but, rather, engage in COREGULATION, a form of supervision in which parents exercise general oversight while letting children take charge of moment-by-moment decision making. Coregulation grows out of a warm, cooperative relationship between parent and child based on give-and-take. Parents must guide and monitor from a distance and effectively communicate expectations when they are with their children. And children must inform parents of their whereabouts, activities, and problems so parents can intervene when necessary. Coregulation supports and protects children while preparing them for adolescence, when they will make many important decisions themselves. Although school-age children often press for greater independence, they also know how much they need their parents' support. In one study, fifth and sixth graders described parents as the most influential people in their lives, often turning to them for affection, advice, enhancement of self-worth, and assistance with everyday problems

The impact of family relationships on child development becomes even more complicated when we consider that interaction between any two family members is affected by others present in the setting. Recall from Chapter 1 that Bronfenbrenner called these indirect influences the effect of THIRD PARTIES. Researchers have become intensely interested in how a range of relationships——-mother with father, parent with sibling, grandparent with parent——-modify the child's direct experiences in the family. In fact, as the Social Issues: Health box on page 570 reveals, a child's birth can have a third-party impact on parents' interaction that may affect the child's development and well-being. Third parties can serve as supports for development, or they can undermine it. For example, when parents' marital relationship is warm and considerate, mothers and fathers are more likely to engage in effective COPARENTING, mutually supporting each other's parenting behaviors. Such parents have more secure attachment relationships with their babies, and they praise and stimulate their children more and nag and scold them less. Effective coparenting, in turn, fosters a positive marital relationship. In contrast, parents whose marriage is tense and hostile often interfere with one another's child-rearing efforts, are less responsive to children's needs, less consistent in discipline practices, and more likely to criticize, express anger, and punish. Clearly, communication and emotions generated in the marital relationship "spill over" into the parent-child relationship.

Children who are chronically exposed to angry, unresolved parental conflict have myriad problems related to disrupted emotional security and emotional self-regulation. These include both internalizing difficulties (especially among girls) such as blaming themselves, feeling worried and fearful, and trying to repair their parents' relationship; and externalizing difficulties (especially among boys), including anger and aggression. Furthermore, in research carried out in nations as diverse as Bangladesh, China, Bosnia, and the United States, parental conflict consistently undermined good parenting by increasing criticism and belittling of adolescents and decreasing monitoring of their whereabouts and activities. These parenting practices, in turn, heightened youth behavior problems. Yet even when parental arguments strain children's adjustment, other family members may help restore effective interaction. Grandparents, for example, can promote children's development both directly, by responding warmly to the child and helping with caregiving, and indirectly, by providing parents with child-rearing advice, models of child-rearing skill, and sometimes financial assistance. Of course, as with any indirect influence, grandparents can sometimes be harmful. When quarrelsome relations exist between grandparents and parents, parent-child communication and children's adjustment may suffer.

As the horizontal lines in Figure 14.2 reveal, children's mental test performance did not decline with later birth order——a finding that contradicts the belief that having more children depresses their intellectual ability. At the same time, the differences among the lines show that the larger the family, the lower the scores of all siblings. The researchers also found that the link between family size and children's IQ can be explained by a strong trend for mothers who score lower in intelligence to give birth to more children. In other NLSY research, among children of bright, economically advantaged mothers, the family size-IQ correlation disappeared. This suggests that low SES contributes powerfully to the lower IQs of both mothers and children in large families. Other evidence confirms that rather than parenting quality declining as new children are born, parents reallocate their energies. In a longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of Canadian two-parent families, new births led to a decrease in maternal affection toward older siblings, though most mothers probably remained generally warm. At the same time, the consistency of parenting——the extent to which mothers insisted that older children meet their expectations for mature behavior, such as completing chores, doing homework, and treating other respectfully——rose over time. After a new baby joined the family, mothers seemed to reorganize their parenting practices to best meet all their children's needs. In sum, although many good reasons exist for limiting family size, the concern that additional births will reduce child-rearing effectiveness and, thus, children's intelligence and life chances is not warranted. Rather, young people with lower mental test scores—-many of whom dropped out of school, live in poverty, lack hope for their future, and fail to engage in family planning—-are more likely to have large families. For adolescents with these risk factors, educational and family planning interventions are crucial.

Despite declines in family size, 80 percent of North American and European children grow up with at least one sibling. Siblings influence development both directly, through relationships with one another, and indirectly, through the impact of an additional child on parents' behavior. In previous chapters, we examined some consequences of having brothers and sisters, including effects on early language development, personality, self- and social understanding, and gender typing. Now let's look closely at the quality of the sibling relationship. The arrival of a baby brother or sister is a difficult experience for most preschoolers, who——realizing that they must now share their parents' attention and affection——often become demanding, clingy, and deliberately naughty for a time. Attachment security also typically declines, especially for children over age 2 (old enough to feel threatened and displaced) and for those with mothers under stress. Yet resentment is only one feature of a rich emotional relationship that soon develops between siblings. Older children also show affection and sympathetic concern—-kissing and patting the baby and calling out, "Mom, he needs you," when the infant cries. By the end of the first year, babies usually spend much time with older siblings and are comforted by their presence during short parental absences. Throughout childhood, children continue to treat older siblings as attachment figures, turning to them for comfort in stressful situations when parents are unavailable. Because of their frequency and emotional intensity, sibling interactions are unique contexts in which social competence expands. In the second year, toddlers often imitate and join in play with their brothers and sisters, and between their second and fourth birthdays, they gradually take more active roles. Siblings who are close in age relate to one another on a more equal footing than parents and children. They often engage in joint pretend, talk about feelings, tease, deceive, and——when conflicts arise——call attention to their own wants and needs. The skills acquired through these experiences contribute to understanding of emotions and other mental states, perspective taking, moral maturity, and competence in relating. Consistent with these outcomes, positive sibling ties predict favorable adjustment, even among hostile children at risk for social difficulties. Nevertheless, individual differences in sibling relationships emerge soon after the new baby's arrival. Certain temperamental traits—— high emotional reactivity or activity level——increase the chances of sibling conflict. Parenting is also influential: Maternal warmth toward both children is related to positive sibling interaction and to preschoolers' support of a distressed younger sibling. And mothers who frequently play with their children and head off potential conflicts by explaining the toddler's wants and needs to the preschool sibling foster sibling cooperation. In contrast, maternal harshness and lack of involvement result in increasingly antagonistic sibling relationships. Finally, a good marriage is linked to preschool siblings' capacity to cope adaptively with jealousy and conflict. Perhaps good communication between parents serves as a model of effective problem solving. It may also foster a generally happy family environment, giving children less reason to feel jealous.

Throughout our discussion of family transitions, we have considered many factors, both within and outside the family, that contribute to parents' capacity to be warm, consistent, and appropriately demanding. As we turn to the topic of child maltreatment, we will see that when these vital supports for effective child rearing break down, children——and their parents——can suffer terribly. Child maltreatment is as old as human history, but only recently has the problem been widely acknowledged and research aimed at understanding it. Perhaps public concern has increased because child maltreatment is especially common in large industrialized nations. In the most recently reported year, about 700, 000 U.S. children (10 out of every 1000) were identified as victims. Because most cases go unreported, the true figures are much higher. Child maltreatment takes the following forms: Physical abuse. Assaults, such as kicking, biting, shaking, punching, or stabbing, that inflict physical injury Sexual abuse. Fondling, intercourse, exhibitionism, commercial exploitation through prostitution or production of pornography, and other forms of sexual exploitation Neglect. Failure to meet a child's basic needs for food, clothing, medical attention, education, or supervision Emotional abuse. Acts that could cause serious mental or behavioral disorders, including social isolation, repeated unreasonable demands, ridicule, humiliation, intimidation, or terrorizing Neglect accounts for 78 percent of reported cases, physical abuse for 18 percent, emotional abuse for 9 percent, and sexual abuse for 10 percent. These figures sum to more than 100 percent because a single case report can include more than one form. Child welfare authority investigations suggest that from 45 to 90 percent of cases involve multiple types of maltreatment—-on average, three kinds. Parents commit more than 80 percent of abusive incidents. Other relatives account for about 5 percent. The remainder are perpetrated by parents' unmarried partners, school officials, camp counselors, and other adults. Mothers engage in neglect more often than fathers, whereas fathers engage in sexual abuse more often than mothers. Maternal and paternal rates of physical and emotional abuse are fairly similar. And in an especially heartrending 18 percent of cases, parents jointly commit the abusive acts. Infants and young preschoolers are at greatest risk for neglect, preschool and school-age children for physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. But each type occurs at every age.

Early findings suggested that child maltreatment was rooted in adult psychological disturbance. But although child maltreatment is more common among disturbed parents, it soon became clear that a single "abusive personality type" does not exist. Parents who were abused as children do not necessarily become abusers. And sometimes even "normal" parents harm their children! For help in understanding child maltreatment, researchers turned to the social systems perspective on family functioning. They discovered that many interacting variables—-at the family, community, and cultural levels—contribute. Table 14.3 summarizes factors associated with physical and emotional abuse and neglect. Within the family, children whose characteristics make them more challenging to rear are more likely to become targets of abuse. These include premature or very sick babies and children who are temperamentally difficult, are inattentive or overactive, or have other developmental problems. Child factors, however, only slightly increase the risk. Whether such children are maltreated largely depends on parents' characteristics. Maltreating parents are less skillful than other parents in handling discipline confrontations and getting children to cooperate in working toward common goals. They also suffer from biased thinking about their child. For example, they often evaluate transgressions as worse than they are, attribute their baby's crying or their child's misdeeds to a stubborn or bad disposition, and feel powerless in parenting——perspectives that lead them to move quickly toward physical force. Once abuse begins, it quickly becomes part of a self-sustaining relationship. The small irritations to which abusive parents react——a fussy baby, a preschooler who knocks over her milk, or a child who will not mind immediately——soon become bigger ones. Then the harshness increases. By the preschool years, abusive and neglectful parents seldom interact with their children. When they do, they rarely express pleasure and affection; the communication is almost always negative. Most parents have enough self-control not to respond with abuse to their children's misbehavior or developmental problems. Other factors combine with these conditions to prompt an extreme response. Unmanageable parental stress is strongly associated with maltreatment. Abusive parents respond to stressful situations with high emotional arousal. And low income, low education (less than a high-school diploma), unemployment, alcohol and drug use, marital conflict, domestic violence, overcrowded living conditions, frequent moves, and extreme household disorganization are common in abusive homes. These conditions increase the chances that parents will be too overwhelmed to meet basic child-rearing responsibilities or will vent their frustrations by lashing out at their children. The majority of abusive and neglectful parents are isolated from both formal and informal social supports. Because of their life histories, many have learned to mistrust and avoid others and are poorly skilled at establishing and maintaining positive relationships. Also, maltreating parents are more likely to live in unstable, crime-ridden neighborhoods with few links between family and community, such as parks, recreation centers, and religious institutions——living conditions that heighten parenting stress and, thus, the likelihood of physical abuse. These families lack "lifelines" to others and have no one to turn to for help during stressful times. Cultural values, laws, and customs profoundly affect the chances that child maltreatment will occur when parents feel overburdened. Societies that view violence as an appropriate way to solve problems set the stage for child abuse. Although the United States has laws to protect children from maltreatment, widespread support exists for use of physical force with children, as we saw in Chapter 12. Many countries——including Austria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Israel, Latvia, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and Uruguay——have outlawed corporal punishment, a measure that dampens both physical discipline and abuse. Furthermore, all industrialized nations except the United States and France now prohibit corporal punishment in schools. The U.S. Supreme Court has twice upheld the right of school officials to use corporal punishment. Fortunately, 20 U.S., states have passed laws that ban it. The family circumstances of maltreated children impair the development of attachment, emotional self-regulation, empathy and sympathy, self-concept, social skills, and academic motivation. Over time, these youngsters show serious adjustment problems, including school failure, severe depression, aggressive behavior, peer difficulties, substance abuse, and violent crime. Emotional and behavior problems often persist into adulthood. How do these damaging consequences occur? Recall our discussion in Chapter 12 of hostile cycles of parent-child interaction. For abused children, these are especially severe. Also, a family characteristic strongly associated with child abuse is partner abuse. Clearly, the home lives of abused children overflow with adult conduct that leads to profound distress, including emotional insecurity. Furthermore, demeaning parental messages, in which children are ridiculed, humiliated, rejected, or terrorized, result in low self-esteem, high anxiety, self-blame, depression, and efforts to escape from extreme psychological pain—-at times severe enough to lead to attempted suicide in adolescence. At school, maltreated children present serious discipline problems. Their noncompliance, poor motivation, and cognitive immaturity interfere with academic achievement, further undermining their chances for life success. Finally, repeated abuse is associated with central nervous system damage, including abnormal EEG brain-wave activity, fMRI-detected reduced size and impaired functioning of the cerebral cortex and corpus callosum, and atypical production of the stress hormone cortisol—-initially too high but, after months of abuse, often too low. Over time, the massive trauma of persistent abuse seems to blunt children's normal physiological response to stress. These effects increase the chances that abused children's cognitive and emotional problems will endure

Over the past several decades, births to unmarried mothers in industrialized nations have increased dramatically. Today, about 40 percent of U.S. births are to single mothers, more than double the percentage in 1980. Whereas teenage parenthood has recently declined, unwed motherhood among women in their twenties and older has risen, especially among those in their thirties and forties in high-status occupations. But these higher-SES, older single mothers are still few in number, and little is known about their children's development. In the United States, African-American young women make up the largest group of never-married parents. About 64 percent of births to black mothers in their twenties are to women without a partner, compared with 28 percent of births to white women. African-American women postpone marriage more and childbirth less than women in other U.S. ethnic groups. Job loss, persistent unemployment, and consequent inability of many black men to support a family have contributed to the number of African-American never-married, single-mother families. Never-married African-American mothers tap the extended family, especially their own mothers and sometimes male relatives, for help in rearing their children. For about one-third, marriage——not necessary to the child's biological father——occurs within nine years after birth of the first child. These couples function much like other first-marriage parents. Their children are often unaware that the father is a stepfather, and parents do not report the child-rearing difficulties usually associated with remarriage that we will discuss shortly. Still, for low-SES women, never-married parenthood generally increases financial hardship. Nearly 50 percent of white mothers and 60 percent of black mothers have a second child while unmarried. And they are far less likely than divorced mothers to receive paternal child support payments. Consequently, many children in single-mother homes display adjustment problems associated with economic adversity. Furthermore, children of never-married mothers who lack a father's consistent warmth and involvement show less favorable cognitive development and engage in more antisocial behavior than children in low-SES, first-marriage families. But marriage to the child's biological father benefits children only when the father is a reliable source of economic and emotional support. For example, when a mother pairs up with an antisocial father, her child is at far greater risk for conduct problems than if she has reared the child alone. Over time, most unwed fathers——who usually have no more than a modest education and are doing poorly financially——spend less and less time with their children. Strengthening social support, education, and employment opportunities for low-SES parents would greatly enhance the well-being of unmarried mothers and their children. Between 1960 and 1985, divorce rates in Western nation's rose dramatically before stabilizing in most countries. The United States has experienced a decline in divorces over the past decade, largely due to a rise in age at first marriage. Nevertheless, the United States continues to have the highest divorce rate in the world. Of the 45 percent of American marriages that end in divorce, half involve children. At any given time, one-fourth of U.S. children live in single-parent households. Although most reside with their mothers, the percentage in father-headed households has increased steadily, to about 12 percent. Children of divorce spend an average of five years in a single-parent home——almost a third of childhood. For many, divorce leads to new family relationships. About two-thirds if divorced parents marry again. Half of their children eventually experience a third major change——the end of their parents' second marriage. These figures reveal that divorce is not a single event in the lives of parents and children. Instead, it is a transition that leads to a variety of new living arrangements, accompanied by changes in housing, income, and family roles and responsibilities. Since the 1960s, many studies have reported that marital breakup is stressful for children. But research also reveals great individual differences. How well children fare depends on many factors: the custodial parent's psychological health, the child's characteristics, and social supports within the family and surrounding community.

Family conflict often rises around the time of divorce as parents try to settle disputes over children and possessions. Once one parent moves out, additional events threaten supportive interactions between parents and children. Mother-headed households typically experiences sharp drop in income. In the United States, 27 percent of divorced mothers with young children live in poverty and many more are low-income, getting less than the full amount of child support from the absent father or none at all. They often have to move to lower-cost housing, reducing supportive ties to neighbors and friends. The transition from marriage to divorce typically leads to high maternal stress, depression, and anxiety and to a disorganized family situation. Declines in well-being are greatest for mothers of young children. Predictable events and routines——meals and bedtimes, household chores, and joint parent-child activities——usually disintegrate. As children react with distress and anger to their less secure home lives, discipline may become harsh and inconsistent. Constant with noncustodial fathers decreases over time. Fathers who see their children only occasionally are inclined to be permissive and indulgent, making the mother's task of managing the child even more difficult. The more parents argue and fail to provide children with warmth, involvement, and consistent guidance, the poorer children's adjustment. About 20 to 25 percent of children in divorced families display severe problems, compared with about 10 percent in nondivorced families. At the same time, reactions vary with children's age, temperament, and sex. Preschool and early school-age children often blame themselves for a marital breakup and fear that both parents may abandon them. Hence, they are more likely to display both anxious, fearful and angry, defiant reactions than older children and adolescents with the cognitive maturity to understand that they are not responsible for their parents' divorce. Still, many school-age and adolescent youngsters also react strongly, experiencing depressed mood, declining in school performance, becoming unruly, and escaping into undesirable peer activities, such as running away, truancy, and early sexual activity, particularly when family conflict is high and parental supervision is low. Some older children——-especially the oldest child in the family—-display more mature behavior, willingly taking on family and household tasks, care of younger siblings, and emotional support of a depressed anxious mother. But if these demands are too great, these children may eventually become resentful, withdraw from the family, and engage in angry, acting-out behavior.

In contrast, good child care enhances cognitive, language, and social development, especially for low-SES children——effects that persist into elementary school and, for academic achievement, into adolescence. In a study that followed 400 very low-income children over the preschool years, center based care was more strongly associated with cognitive gains than were other child-care arrangements, probably because good-quality child-care centers are more likely to provide a systematic educational program. At the same time, better-quality experiences in all types of child care predicted modest improvements in cognitive, emotional, and social development. What are the ingredients of high-quality child care for preschoolers? Large-scale studies identify several important factors: group size (number of children in a single space), care-giver-child ratio, caregivers' educational preparation, and caregivers' personal commitment to learning about and caring for children. When these characteristics are favorable, adults are more verbally stimulating and sensitive to children's needs. Applying What We Know on page 598 summarizes characteristics of high quality early childhood programs, based on standards devised by the U.S. National Association for the Education of Young children. Unfortunately, much U.S. child care is substandard: too often staffed by underpaid adults without specialized educational preparation, overcrowded with children, and (in the case of family child care) unlicensed and therefore not monitored for quality. And child care is expensive: For U.S. families with just one preschooler, it consumes, on average, 29 percent of the typical earnings of a single mother and 10 percent of the earnings of a two-parent family. In contrast, in Australia and Western Europe, government-subsidized child care that meets rigorous standards is widely available, and caregivers are paid on the same salary scale as elementary school teachers. Because the United States does not have national child-care policies, it lags behind other industrialized nations in supply, quality, and affordability of child care

High quality child care is vital for parents' peace of mind and children's well-being, even during middle childhood. An estimated 5 million 5- to 14-year-olds in the United States are SELF-CARE children, who regularly look after themselves for some period of time during after-school hours. As Figure 14.6 shows, self-care rises dramatically with age. It also increases with SES, perhaps because of the greater safety of higher-income neighborhoods. But when lower-SES parents lack alternatives to self-care, their children spend more hours on their own. Some studies report that self-care children suffer from low self-esteem, antisocial behavior, poor academic achievement, and fearfulness. Others show no such effects. Children's maturity and the way they spend their time seem to explain these contradictions. Among younger school-age children, those who spend more hours alone have more adjustment difficulties. As children become old enough to look after themselves, those who have a history of authoritative child rearing, are monitored by parental telephone calls, and have regular after-school chores appear responsible and well-adjusted. In contrast, children left to their own devices are more likely to bend to peer pressures and engage in antisocial behavior. Before age 8 or 9, most children need supervision because they are not yet competent to handle emergencies. Also, throughout middle childhood and early adolescence, attending after-school programs with well-trained staffs, generous adult-child ratios, and skill-building activities is linked to good school performance and emotional and social adjustment. Low-SES children who participate in "after-care" programs offering academic assistance and enrichment activities (scouting, music and art lessons, clubs) show special benefits. They exceed their self-care counterparts in classroom work habits, academic achievement, and prosocial behavior and display fewer behavior problems. Unfortunately, good after-care is in especially short supply in low-income neighborhoods, and children from the poorest families are least likely to participate in enrichment activities. A survey of a large, nationally representative sample of U.S. parents revealed if programs were available in their neighborhoods, many would enroll their children. A special need exists for well-planned programs in poverty-stricken areas——ones that provide safe environments, warm relationships with adults, and enjoyable, goal-oriented activities.

Today, U.S. single and married mothers are in the labor market in nearly equal proportions, and more than three-fourths of those with school-age children are employed. In Chapter 10, we saw that the impact of maternal employment on early development depends on the quality of child care during parents' working hours, the continuing parent-child relationship, and fathers' participation in caregiving. The same is true in later years. In addition, the mother's work satisfaction has a bearing on how children fare. When mothers enjoy their work and remain committed to parenting, children show favorable adjustment—-higher self-esteem, more positive family and peer relations, less gender-stereotyped beliefs, and better grades in school. Girls, especially, profit from the image of female competence. Regardless of SES, daughters of employed mothers perceive women's roles as involving more freedom of choice and satisfaction and are more achievement- and career-oriented. Parenting practices contribute to these benefits. Employed mothers who value their parenting role are more likely to use authoritative child rearing and coregulation. Also children in dual-earner households devote more daily hours to doing homework under parental guidance and participate more in household chores. And maternal employment often leads fathers——-especially those who believe in the importance of the paternal role and who feel successful at rearing children——-to take on greater child-care responsibilities. Paternal involvement is associated with higher intelligence and achievement, more mature social behavior, greater gender-stereotype flexibility in childhood and adolescence, and generally better mental health in adulthood. But when employment places heavy demands on a mother's or father's schedule or is stressful for other reasons, children are at risk for ineffective parenting. Working many hours or experiencing a negative workplace atmosphere is associated with reduced parental sensitivity, fewer joint parent-child activities, and pooper cognitive development throughout childhood and adolescence. Negative consequences are magnified when low-SES mothers spend long days at low-paying, menial, or physically taxing jobs——conditions linked to maternal depression and harsh, inconsistent discipline. In contrast, part-time employment and flexible work schedules are associated with parents' enhanced satisfaction with family life and good adjustment in children and adolescents. By preventing work-family life conflict, these arrangements help parents meet children's needs. In dual-earner families, the father's willingness to share child-care responsibilities is a crucial factor. If he helps little or not at all, the mother carries a double load, at home and at work, leading to fatigue, distress, and little time and energy for children. Fortunately, compared to three decades ago, today's U.S. fathers are far more involved in child care. But their increased participation has resulted in a growing number of fathers who also report work-family life conflict. Employed parents need assistance from work settings and communities in their child-rearing roles. Part-time employment, flexible schedules, job sharing, and paid leave when children are ill help parents juggle the demands of work and child rearing. Equal pay and equal employment opportunities for women also are important. Because these policies enhance financial status and morale, they improve the way mothers feel and behave when they return home at the end of the working day.

Over the past several decades, the number of young children in child care in the United States has steadily increased to more than 60 percent. Over half of 3- to 6-year-olds not yet in kindergarten are cared for in child-care centers, with the remainder in family child-care homes or looked after informally by a relative or their friends. But nearly one-fourth of preschoolers, most from low-income families, experience several types of care at once, transitioning between two——and sometimes more than two——settings each day. In addition to a changing cast of caregivers, children in multiple care settings must cope with longer hours in child care. With age, children typically shift from home-based to center care. Children of higher-income parents and children of very low-income working parents rely on care by relatives because they are not eligible for public preschool or government-subsidized center child care. Recall from Chapter 8 that early intervention can enhance the development of economically disadvantaged children. As noted in Chapters 1 and 10, however, much U.S. child care is of poor quality. Refer to Chapter 10, pages 441-442, for a discussion of the negative consequences of exposing infants and toddlers to substandard child care and to many weekly hours of child care. Preschoolers, as well, suffer when placed in poor quality child care, especially for long hours, scoring lower in cognitive and social skills and higher in behavior problems. Externalizing difficulties are especially likely to endure through middle childhood and into adolescence after extensive exposure to mediocre care. And when children experience the instability of several child-care settings, the emotional problems of temperamentally difficult preschoolers worsen considerably.

Families in industrialized nations have become more diverse. Today, there are fewer births per family unit, more adults who want to adopt, more lesbian and gay parents who are open about their sexual orientation, and more never-married parents. Further, high rates of divorce, remarriage, and maternal employment have reshaped the family system. In the following sections, we discuss these changes in the family, emphasizing how each affects family relationships and children's development. As you consider this array of family forms, think back to the social systems perspective. Note how children's well-being, in each instance, depends on the quality of family interaction, which is sustained by supportive ties to kin and community and by favorable public policies. In 1960, the average number of children per American woman of childbearing age was 3.1. Currently, it is 2.1 in the United States, 1.9 in the United Kingdom, 1.8 in Australia, 1.7 in Swedish, 1.6 in Canada, 1.4 in Germany, and 1.3 in Italy and Japan. In addition to more effective birth control, a major reason for this decline is that a family size of one or two children is more compatible with a woman's decision to divide her energies between family and work. The tendency of many couples to delay having children until they are well-established professionally and secure economically also contributes to smaller family size. Furthermore, marital instability plays a role: More couples today get divorced before their childbearing plans are complete. Finally, caring for children and providing them with opportunities is expensive----yet another contributing factor to a smaller family size. According to a conservative estimate, today's new parents in the United States will spend about 280,000 dollars to rear a child from birth to age 18, and many will incur substantial additional expense for higher education.

Popular advice to prospective parents often recommends limiting family size in the interests of "child-rearing quality"——-more parental affection, attention, and material resources per child, which enhance children's intellectual development. Do large families really make less intelligent children, as prevailing attitudes suggest? To find out, researchers turned to a large, two-generation longitudinal study. Starting in 1972, the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) followed a representative sample of several thousand U.S. 14- to 22-year-olds; in 1986 the children of the original participants were added to the investigation. Because both cohorts took intelligence tests, the researchers could examine the relationship of sibling birth order within families to IQ, to find out whether having additional children depresses children's intellectual functioning.

Life in a single-parent family often is temporary. About 60 percent of divorced parents remarry within a few years. Others cohabit, or share a sexual relationship and a residence with a partner outside of marriage. Parent, stepparent, and children form a new family structure called the BLENDED, or RECONSTITUTED, family. For some children, this expanded family network is positive, bringing greater adult attention. But most have more adjustment problems than children in stable, first marriage families. Switching to stepparents' new rules and expectations can be stressful, and children often regard steprelatives as intruders. How well they adapt is, again, related to the overall quality of family functioning. This depends on which parent forms a new relationship, the child's age and sec, and the complexity of blended-family relationships. As we will see, older children and girls seem to have the hardest time. Because mothers generally retain custody of children, the most common form of blended family is a mother-stepfather arrangement. Boys tend to adjust quickly, welcoming a stepfather who is warm, who refrains from exerting his authority too quickly, and who offers relief from coercive cycles of mother-son interaction. Mothers' friction with sons also declines as a result of greater economic security, another adult to share household tasks, and an end to loneliness. Stepfathers who marry rather than cohabit are more involved in parenting, perhaps because men who choose to marry a mother with children are more interested in and skilled at child rearing. Girls, however, often have difficulty with their custodial mother's remarriage. Stepfathers disrupt the close ties many girls have established with their mothers, and girls often react with sulky, resistant behavior. But age affects these findings. Older school-age children and adolescents of both sexes display more irresponsible, acting-out behavior than their peers not in stepfamilies. If parents are warmer and more involved with their biological children than with their stepchildren, older children are more likely to notice and challenge unfair treatment. And adolescents often view the new stepparent as a threat to their freedom, especially if they experienced little parental monitoring in the single-parent family. When teenagers have affectionate, cooperative relationships with their mothers, many develop good relationships with stepfathers following remarriage——-a circumstance linked to more favorable adolescent well-being.

Remarriage of noncustodial fathers often leads to reduced contact with their biological children, especially when fathers remarry quickly, before they have established postdivorce parent-child routines. When fathers have custody, children typically react negatively to remarriage. One reason is that children living with fathers often start out with more problems. Perhaps the biological mother could no longer handle the difficult child (usually a boy), so the father and his new partner are faced with a youngster who has behavior problems. In other instances, the father has custody because of a very close relationship with the child, and his remarriage disrupts this bond. Girls, especially, have a hard time getting along with their stepmothers, either because the remarriage threatens the girl's bond with her father or because she becomes entangled in loyalty conflicts between the two mother figures. But the longer children live in father-stepmother households, the closer they feel to their step-mothers and the more positive their interaction with them becomes. With time and patience, children of both genders benefit from the support of a second mother figure. Parenting education and couples counseling can help parents and children adapt to the complexities of blended families. Effective approaches encourage stepparents to move into their new roles gradually by first building a warm relationship with the child, which makes more active parenting possible. Counselors can offer couples guidance in coparenting to limit loyalty conflicts and provide consistency in child rearing. And tempering parents' unrealistic expectations for children's rapid adjustment—-by pointing out that building a unified blended family often takes years—-makes it easier for families to endure the transition and succeed. Unfortunately, the divorce rate for second marriages is even higher than that for first marriages. Parents with antisocial tendencies and poor child-rearing skills are particularly likely to have several divorces and remarriages. The more marital transitions children experience, the greater their adjustment difficulties. These families usually require prolonged, intensive therapy.

During adolescence, striving for AUTONOMY——a sense of oneself as a separate, self-governing individual——becomes a salient task. Autonomy has two vital aspects: (1) an EMOTIONAL COMPONENT——relying more on oneself and less on parents for support and guidance——and (2) a BEHAVIORAL COMPONENT——making decisions independently by carefully weighing one's own judgment and the suggestions of others to arrive at a well-reasoned course of action. Autonomy is closely related to adolescents' quest for identity. Young people who successfully construct personally meaningful values and life goals are autonomous. They have given up childish dependency on parents for a more mature, responsible relationship. A variety of changes within the adolescent support autonomy. In Chapter 5, we saw that puberty triggers psychological distancing from parents. In addition, as young people look more mature, parents give them more freedom to think and decide for themselves, more opportunities to regulate their own activities, and more responsibility. Cognitive development also paves the way for autonomy: Gradually, adolescents solve problems and make decisions more effectively. And an improved ability to reason about social relationships leads adolescents to DEIDEALIZE their parents, viewing them as "just people." Consequently, they no longer bend as easily to parental authority as they did when younger. Think back to what we said in earlier chapters about the type of parenting that fosters achievement motivation, identity formation, and moral maturity. You will find a common theme: Effective parenting of adolescents strikes a balance between CONNECTION and SEPARATION. In diverse ethnic groups, SES levels, nationalities, and family structures (including single-parent, two-parent, and stepparent), warm, supportive parent-adolescent ties that make appropriate demands for maturity while permitting young people to explore ideas and social roles foster autonomy——predicting high self-reliance, effortful control, academic achievement, work orientation, favorable self-esteem, social competence, ease of separating in the transition to college. Conversely, parents who are coercive or psychologically controlling interfere with the development of autonomy. These tactics are linked to low self-esteem, depression, drug and alcohol use, and antisocial behavior——outcomes that often persist into adulthood. Nevertheless, parents often report that living with teenagers is stressful. Earlier we described the family as a SYSTEM that must adapt to changes in its members. The rapid physical and psychological changes of adolescence trigger conflicting expectations in parent-child relationships. In Chapter 12, we noted that interest in making choices about personal matters strengthens in adolescence. Yet parents and teenagers——especially young teenagers——differ sharply on the appropriate age for granting certain privileges, such as control over clothing, school courses, going out with friends, and dating. Parents typically say that the young person is not yet ready for these signs of independence at a point when the teenager thinks they should have been granted long ago! Consistent parental monitoring of the young person's daily activities, through a cooperative relationship in which the adolescent willingly disclosed information, is linked to a variety of positive outcomes——-prevention of delinquency, reduction in sexual activity, improved school performance, and positive psychological well-being. Parents' own development can also lead to conflict with teenagers. While their children face a boundless future and a wide array of choices, middle-aged parents must come to terms with the fact that their own possibilities are narrowing. Often parents can't understand why the adolescent wants to skip family activities to be with peers. And teenagers fail to appreciate that parents want the family to be together as often as possible because an important period in their adult life—— child rearing——will soon end. Immigrant parents from cultures that place a high value on family closeness and obedience to authority have greater difficulty adapting to their teenagers' push for autonomy, often reacting more strongly to adolescent disagreement. And as adolescents acquire the host culture's language and are increasingly exposed to its individualistic values, immigrant parents may become even more critical, prompting teenagers to rely less on the family network for social support. The resulting ACCULTURATIVE STRESS is associated with a decline in self-esteem and a rise in anxiety, depressive symptoms, and deviant behavior, including alcohol use and delinquency. Throughout adolescence, the quality of the parent-child relationship is the single most consistent predictor of mental health. In well-functioning families, young people remain attached to parents and seek their advice, but they do so in a context of greater freedom. The mild conflict that typically arises facilitates adolescent identity and autonomy by helping family members learn to express and tolerate disagreement. Conflicts also inform parents of adolescents' changing needs and expectations, signaling a need for adjustments in the parent-child relationship. By middle to late adolescence, most parents and children achieve this mature, mutual relationship, and harmonious interaction is on the rise. The reduced time that Western teenagers spend with their families——for U.S. youths, a drop from 33 percent of waking hours in fifth grade to 14 percent in twelfth grade——has little to do with conflict. Rather, it results from the large amount of unstructured time available to teenagers in North America and Western Europe——on average, nearly half their waking hours. Young people tend to fill these free hours with activities that take them away from home—-part-time jobs, a growing array of leisure and volunteer pursuits, and time with friends. But this drop in family time is not universal. In one study, urban low- and middle-SES African-American youths showed no decline from childhood to adolescence in hours spent at home with family——a typical pattern in cultures with collectivist values. Furthermore, teenagers living in risky neighborhoods tend to have more trusting relationships with parents and adjust more favorably when their parents maintain tighter control and pressure them not to engage in worrisome behaviors. In harsh surroundings, young people seem to interpret more measured granting of autonomy as a sign of parental caring.

Study after study confirms that the authoritative style predicts favorable development in children and adolescents varying widely in SES and culture. At the same time, SES and ethnic differences in parenting do exist. As SES rises and falls, parents and children face changing circumstances that affect family functioning, with each component of SES (educational attainment, occupational prestige and skill, and income) contributing. Researchers have yet to unravel these specific influences. Education and earnings are powerfully influential, with occupation playing a lesser but nevertheless important role. SES is linked to timing of parenthood and to family size. People who work in skilled and semiskilled manual occupations (for example, construction workers, truck drivers, and custodians) tend to marry and have children earlier, as well as give birth to more children, than people in professional and technical occupations. The two groups also differ in child-rearing values and expectations. When asked about personal qualities they desire for their children, lower-SES parents tend to emphasize external characteristics, such as obedience, politeness, neatness, and cleanliness. In contrast, higher-SES parents emphasize psychological traits, such as curiosity, happiness, self-direction, and cognitive and social maturity. These differences are reflected in family interaction. Parents higher in SES talk to, read to, and otherwise stimulate their babies and preschoolers more. With older children and adolescents, they use more warmth, explanations, inductive discipline, and verbal praise; set higher academic and other developmental goals; and allow their children to make more decisions. Commands ("Do that because I told you to"), criticism, and physical punishment all occur more often in low-SES households. Education contributes substantially to these differences. Higher-SES parents' interest in providing verbal stimulation and nurturing inner traits is supported by years of schooling, during which they learned to think about abstract, subjective ideas and, thus, to invest in their children's cognitive and social development. At the same time, greater economic security enables parents to devote more time, energy, and material resources to nurturing their children's psychological characteristics. In contrast, high levels of stress sparked by economic insecurity contribute to low-SES parents' reduced provision of stimulating interaction and activities as well as greater use of coercive discipline. Because of limited education and low social status, many low-SES parents feel powerless in their relationships beyond the home. At work, for example, they must obey the rules of others in positions of authority. When they get home, their parent-child interaction seems to duplicate these experiences——-but now they are in authority. Higher-SES parents, in contrast, typically have more control over their own lives. At work, they are used to making independent decisions and convincing others of their point of view. At home, they are more likely to teach these skills to their children

Think back to the CHRONOSYSTEM in Bronfenbrenner's theory. The interplay of forces within the family is dynamic and ever-changing, as each member adapts to the development of other members. For example, as children acquire new skills, parents adjust the way they treat their more competent youngsters. To cite just one example, turn back to Chapter 4, page 147, and review how babies' mastery of crawling leads parents to engage in more game playing and expressions of affection, as well as restriction of the child's activities. These changes in child rearing pave the way for new achievements and further revisions in family relationships. Parents' development affects children as well. As we will see later, the mild increase in parent-child conflict that often occurs in early adolescence is not solely due to teenagers' striving for independence. This is a time when most parents have reached middle age and conscious that their children will soon leave home and establish their own lives——are reconsidering their own commitments. While the adolescent presses for greater autonomy, the parent presses for more togetherness. This imbalance promotes friction, which parent and teenager gradually resolve by accommodating to changes in each other. Indeed, no social unit other than the family is required to adjust to such vast changes in its members

The social systems perspective, as we noted earlier, views the family as affected by surrounding social contexts. As the MESOSYSTEM and EXOSYSTEM in Bronfenbrenner's model make clear, connections to the neighborhood and the larger community——both FORMAL ORGANIZATIONS, such as school, workplace, recreation center, child-care center, and religious institution, and INFORMAL SOCIAL NETWORKS of relatives, friends, and neighbors——-influence parent-child relationships.

The social systems perspective on family functioning grew out of researchers' efforts to describe and explain the complex patterns of interaction between family members. As you will see, it has much in common with Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, discussed in Chapter 1. Family systems theorists recognize that parents do not mechanically shape their children. Rather, as you already know from earlier chapters, BIDIRECTIONAL INFLUENCES exist, whereby family members mutually influence one another. The very term FAMILY SYSTEM implies a network of independent relationships. These system influences operate both directly and indirectly. Recently, as I passed through the checkout counter at the supermarket, I witnessed two episodes, each an example of how parents and children directly influence each other: Four-year-old Danny looked longingly at the tempting rows of candy as his mother lifted groceries from her cart onto the counter. "Please, can I have it, Mom?" Danny begged, holding up a package of bubble gum. "Do you have a dollar? Just one?" "No, not today," his mother answered. "Remember, we picked out your special cereal. That's what I need the dollar for." Gently taking the bubble gum from his hand, Danny's mother handed him the box of cereal. "Here, let's pay," she said, lifting Danny so he could see the checkout counter. Three-year-old Meg sat in the shopping cart while her mother transferred groceries to the counter. Suddenly Meg turned around, grabbed a bunch of bananas, and started pulling them apart. "Stop it, Meg!" shouted her mother, snatching the bananas from Meg's hand. But as she turned her attention to swiping her debit card, Meg reached for a chocolate bar from a nearby display. "Meg, how many times have I told you, don't touch!" Prying the candy from Meg's right little fist, Meg's mother slapped her hand. Meg's face turned red with anger as she began to wail.

These observations fit with a wealth of research on the family system. Studies of families of diverse ethnicities show that when parents are firm but warm (like Danny's mother), children tend to comply with their requests. And when children cooperate, their parents are likely to be warm and gentle in the future. In contrast, parents who discipline with harshness and impatience (like Meg's mother) tend to have children who resist and rebel. Because children's misbehavior is stressful for parents, they may increase their use of punishment, leading to more unruliness by the child. In each case, the behavior of one family member helps sustain a form of interaction in another that either promotes or undermines children's well-being