Raising young children has always been hard, but evidence suggests that it may be getting harder. The isolation of the pandemic, the pressures to fulfill exacting parenting standards, and the ...explosion of "expert" parenting advice on social media have fueled the rise of "gentle parenting," an approach that pivots away from older, discipline-heavy parenting typologies and which promises the development of happier, healthier children. Despite the popularity of gentle parenting, it has received no empirical scrutiny. The current study represents the first systematic investigation of what gentle parenting entails. Data were gathered from a sample (N = 100) of parents of at least one child between the ages of 2 and 7 from the Midwest, Southeast, and Southwest. Approximately half (n = 49) of the sample identified as "gentle parents." Inductive analyses identified this approach as one that emphasizes high levels of parental affection and parents' and children's emotion regulation. Gentle parenting appears to be distinct from other established measures of parenting approaches in its emphasis on boundaries, yet the enactment of those boundaries is not uniform. Overall, gentle parents reported high levels of parenting satisfaction and efficacy, but a subset of gentle parents who were highly critical of themselves reported significantly lower levels of efficacy than the rest of the sample. Statements of parenting uncertainty and burnout were present in over one-third of the gentle parent sample. Implications are discussed for future research and increased support for those who identify as gentle parents.
Parenting opportunities: Apologizing Walters, Anne S.
The Brown University Child and Adolescent Behavior Letter,
March 2023, 2023-03-00, 20230301, Volume:
39, Issue:
3
Journal Article, Newsletter
Recently, I listened to a two‐part podcast about apologizing by Harriet Lerner and Brene Brown (2020), based on Lerner's book (2017) on the topic. Two concepts from the podcast have continued to ...resonate with me. One is the act of apologizing itself, and the other is curiosity. So, this month's commentary will focus on apologies, and we will return to curiosity at a later date.
Der Zusammenhang von elterlichem Erziehungsverhalten, Temperament und sozialphobischer Symptomatik im Erwachsenenalter ist bislang ungeklart. In vorliegender Studie untersuchten wir diese Beziehung ...und formulierten auf Basis vorheriger Studien folgende Hypothesen: Soziale Phobiker (SP) im Vergleich zu Kontrollen erinnern starkere elterliche Kontrolle und geringere Fursorge, zudem zeigen sie hohere Schadensvermeidung und geringere Selbstlenkungsfahigkeit. Genannte Faktoren konnen einen signifikanten Anteil des Schweregrads der Symptomatik erklaren.404 SP wurden mit 82 gesunden Probanden verglichen. Psychische Diagnosen (Strukturiertes Klinisches Interview-I), soziale Angstlichkeit (Soziale Phobie Inventar), Depressivitat (Beck Depressions Inventar), elterliches Erziehungsverhalten (Parental Bonding Questionnaire) und Personlichkeit (Temperament und Charakter Inventar) wurden erfasst. SP und Kontrollen wurden mittels Kovarianzanalyse (Kovariaten: Alter, Geschlecht, Bildung, BDI) verglichen (Bonferroni-korrigiert). Anhand einer linearen Regression wurden Erziehungsverhalten und Personlichkeit als Pradiktoren fur den Schweregrad der sozialen Phobie untersucht.SP zeigten im Vergleich zu Kontrollen eine verminderte Fursorge von Vater (p < 0.001, d = 0.51) und Mutter (p < 0.001, d = 0.37) sowie eine vermehrte Kontrolle der Mutter (p < 0.003, d = 0.27). Zudem zeigten sie im Personlichkeitsinventar ein vermindertes Neugierverhalten (p < 0.001, d = 0.65), eine verminderte Selbstlenkungsfahigkeit (p < 0.001, d = 0.76) sowie eine erhohte Schadensvermeidung (p < 0.001, d = 1.47). Die Pradiktoren elterliches Erziehungsverhalten und Personlichkeit erklaren 32.7% (korrigiertes R.sup.2) der Varianz des Sozialen Phobie Inventars (Kontrollvariablen Alter und Geschlecht 1%). Mutterliche Fursorge (beta =-0.166, p = 0.002), vaterliche Kontrolle (beta = 0.224, p < 0.001), Schadensvermeidung (beta = 0.376, p < 0.001) und Selbstlenkungsfahigkeit (beta =-0.164, p = 0.001) waren signifikante Pradiktoren.SP erinnern hohe mutterliche Kontrolle und geringe elterliche Fursorge und zeigen ein durch hohe Verhaltenshemmung und wenig Selbstwirksamkeit gepragtes Personlichkeitsprofil. Vaterliche Kontrolle, geringe mutterliche Fursorge im Zusammenspiel mit genanntem Personlichkeitsprofil konnen ca. ein Drittel der Gesamtvarianz des Schweregrades der sozialphobischen Symptomatik erklaren. Die Ergebnisse verdeutlichen die Relevanz von Erziehung und Personlichkeit fur Diagnostik und Therapie der sozialen Phobie.
Objective
To explore through the lens of the theoretical framework whether parents achieved any forms of improved parenting during the pandemic; in what way parents improved, if any; and what led to ...improved parenting.
Background
The COVID‐19 pandemic and its repercussions gave rise to multiple challenges and hardships confronting children and parents. The ways parents handled the parenting demands varied. The research documented the presence of both unhealthy and nurturing parenting behaviors during the pandemic. During this course in which parents responded to the parenting demands, some facets of parenting (e.g., parenting practices, parenting cognitions) were subject to change. The current study placed the focus on positive parental changes, if any.
Method
The study employed a phenomenological approach. Fourteen parents (female = 12; White = 8; Black = 4, and Asian = 2; 11 of 14 were upper‐ to lower‐middle‐class families) constituted the sample. One‐on‐one semistructured interviews were conducted over Zoom for data collection. Thematic analysis was performed for data analysis.
Results
Four themes were constructed: targeted parental responses and changes, refined parenting skills and practices, enhanced understanding of parenting, and unsettled parenting styles.
Conclusion
Some parents achieved improved parenting (e.g., refined parenting skills, a new understanding of childrearing). Whether and to what extent parents bettered themselves were conditional on whether and how far parents went to adapt or adjust their parenting.
Implication
Although substantially improving parenting skills appears to be difficult, parents can still bring benefits to family by bettering themselves incrementally. Practitioners need to be a source of reinvigoration for parents who aim to improve their parenting and family equilibrium, particularly in the context of a crisis.
Ascertaining whether and the extent to which different aspects of parenting are associated with prosocial behaviors could inform parenting programs in cultivating healthy development. Multilevel ...meta‐analyses (k = 124) involving children and adolescents were conducted to examine associations between parenting and prosocial behaviors while accounting for demographic and study characteristics. Authoritative parenting (r = .174, p < .001) was associated positively whereas authoritarian parenting (r = −.107, p < .001) was associated negatively with prosocial behaviors. These associations remained robust across infancy, childhood, and adolescence in both individualistic and collectivistic cultures. These associations also were invariant across child and parent gender. Moderating effects relevant to the type of prosocial behaviors under examination were identified. Authoritative parenting was associated positively with general, public, emotional, anonymous, dire, compliant, and other specific types of prosocial behaviors (e.g., sharing), but associated negatively with altruistic prosocial behaviors. Authoritarian parenting was associated negatively with general and altruistic prosocial behaviors, but not other specific types. Moderating effects relevant to study design and informant of parenting were found. No moderating effects were identified for the informant and target of prosocial behaviors. Associations of permissive (r = −.096, p < .01) and neglecting parenting (r = −.054, p = .543) remain unclear due to insufficient number of studies and publication biases. Implications for theories, research, and practice are discussed.
Metodos Se utilizaron datos de 21 783 participantes de las oleadas 1 (2011) y 2 (2013) del Estudio Longitudinal de Salud y Jubilacion de China, que tambien participaron en la Encuesta de Antecedentes ...Vitales CHARLS de 2014 para calcular una medida previamente validada de la capacidad intrinseca. Se tuvieron en cuenta 11 factores de los primeros anos de vida y se investigo su asociacion directa con la capacidad intrinseca de los participantes mas adelante en la vida, asi como su asociacion indirecta a traves de cuatro factores socioeconomicos actuales. Se utilizo la regresion lineal multivariable y la descomposicion del indice de concentracion para investigar la contribucion de cada determinante a las desigualdades en la capacidad intrinseca.
The psychological well-being of parents and children is compromised in families characterized by greater parenting stress. As parental mindfulness is associated with lower parenting stress, a growing ...number of studies have investigated whether mindfulness interventions can improve outcomes for families. This systematic review and meta-analysis evaluates the effectiveness of mindfulness interventions for parents, in reducing parenting stress and improving youth psychological outcomes.
A literature search for peer-reviewed articles and dissertations was conducted in accordance with PRISMA guidelines in the PsycInfo, Medline, PubMed, CINAHL, Web of Science, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and ProQuest Dissertations & Theses databases. Studies were included if they reported on a mindfulness-based intervention delivered in person to parents with the primary aim of reducing parenting stress or improving youth psychological outcomes.
Twenty-five independent studies were included in the review. Eighteen studies used a single group design and six were randomized controlled trials. Within-groups, meta-analysis indicated a small, post-intervention reduction in parenting stress (
= 0.34), growing to a moderate reduction at 2 month follow-up (
= 0.53). Overall, there was a small improvement in youth outcomes (
= 0.27). Neither youth age or clinical status, nor time in mindfulness training, moderated parenting stress or overall youth outcome effects. Youth outcomes were not moderated by intervention group attendees. Change in parenting stress predicted change in youth externalizing and cognitive effects, but not internalizing effects. In controlled studies, parenting stress reduced more in mindfulness groups than control groups (
= 0.44). Overall, risk of bias was assessed as serious.
Mindfulness interventions for parents may reduce parenting stress and improve youth psychological functioning. While improvements in youth externalizing and cognitive outcomes may be explained by reductions in parenting stress, it appears that other parenting factors may contribute to improvements in youth internalizing outcomes. Methodological weaknesses in the reviewed literature prevent firm conclusions from being drawn regarding effectiveness. Future research should address these methodological issues before mindfulness interventions for parents are recommended as an effective treatment option for parents or their children.
This 4-year, multi-informant longitudinal study (N = 480, initial age: 15) investigated the interplay between parental support, behavioral and psychological control, and adolescents' emotion ...regulation development. We examined reciprocal effects between parents and children, mothers' versus fathers' unique roles in emotion regulation development, and sex differences. Multi-informant data allowed us to compare effects of adolescent-perceived and parent-reported parenting. Finally, innovative analyses allowed us to disentangle between-family differences from within-family predictive processes. Parenting and emotion regulation were associated at the between-family and within-family levels, especially according to adolescent reports. Support primarily played a role between mothers and adolescents, and perceived behavioral control between fathers and adolescents. Sex moderation revealed that support played a more prominent role in mother-daughter than mother-son relationships, and that daughters experienced greater behavioral control. Child effects outnumbered parent effects, which might reflect the increasing equality of adolescent-parent relationships. Finally, adolescent-perceived parenting was a stronger correlate of emotion regulation than parent-reports, suggesting that adolescents' perceptions are a relevant source of information for research and practice. Consistent with the self-determination theory perspective on parenting, emotion regulation flourished when adolescents felt like mothers provided support, and fathers loosened behavioral control. These results are in line with the notion that mother-child relationships are supportive attachment relationships, whereas fathers provide "activation" relationships, challenging adolescents to regulate emotions autonomously by providing less explicit structure.
Callous-unemotional (CU) traits increase risk for children to develop severe childhood aggression and conduct disorder. CU traits are typically described as highly heritable, and debate continues ...about whether the parenting environment matters in their etiology. Strong genetically informed designs are needed to test for the presence of environmental links between parenting practices and CU traits. Our objective was to determine whether parental harshness and parental warmth were related to children's aggression or CU traits when accounting for genetically mediated effects.
We examined 227 monozygotic twin pairs (454 children) drawn from population-based and at-risk samples of twin families, leading to oversampling of twins living in poverty. We computed multi-informant difference scores combining mother and father reports of their harshness and warmth toward each twin, and differences in mother reports of each twin's aggression and CU traits.
Twin differences in parental harshness were related to differences in both aggression and CU traits, such that the twin who received harsher parenting had higher aggression and more CU traits. Differences in parental warmth were uniquely related to differences in CU traits, such that the twin receiving warmer parenting evidenced lower CU traits. These effects were not moderated by child sex, age, or family income, with the exception that the relationship between differential parental harshness and differential child aggression was stronger among low-income families.
Parenting is related to child CU traits and aggression, over and above genetically mediated effects, with low parental warmth being a unique environmental correlate of CU traits.
Abstract Background This study examines whether authoritative parenting style (characterized by warmth and strictness) is more protective against adolescent substances use than authoritarian ...(strictness but not warmth), indulgent (warmth but not strictness) and neglectful (neither warmth nor strictness) parenting styles. Emergent research in diverse cultural contexts (mainly Southern European and Latin American countries) questions the fact that authoritative would always be the optimum parenting style. Design Multi-factorial MANOVAs. Participants A sample of 7718 adolescents, 3774 males (48.9%), 11–19 year-olds ( M = 14.63 year-olds, SD = 1.9 years) from Sweden, United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic. Measurements Parenting style dimensions (warmth and strictness) and adolescent substance use (alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs); additionally another three adolescent outcomes were also measured (self-esteem, school performance and personal disturbances) all of them related in the literature with substance use. Findings Both indulgent and authoritative parenting styles were associated with better outcomes than authoritarian and neglectful parenting in all the countries studied. Overall, our results support the idea that in Europe the indulgent parenting style performs as well as the authoritative one since adolescents’ scores in the youth outcomes were equal (on substance use and personal disturbances) or even better (on self esteem and school performance) than for authoritative parenting style. Conclusions Parenting styles relate to substance use and other outcomes in the same way in different countries explored. The so-called indulgent parenting style appears to be as good as the authoritative in protecting against substance abuse.
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