essay on role of parents in our life

Importance of Parents in Life

Table of Contents

Introduction

“There are no bad children, just bad parents”. The importance of Parents in one’s life is quite evident from this eminent quotation. Parenthood is a responsible venture and there’s no debate on that topic.

In this fast-paced era, it is quite difficult for parents to mark their presence in their children’s life.

Millennial children who are exposed to versatilities of distractions find it difficult to find a connection with the ordinary. Not to mention children are quite blinded by the reign of the virtual world. 

Importance of Parents in Life - PDF

Child development lies its root in their parents. Nothing can overcome the rigidity of a child’s upbringing. A parent thereby acts as a visionary to their children. Some important points that talk about the importance of parents in child growth towards education are mentioned in the below Downloadable PDF.

Parents play a pivotal role in their children’s life. They are the pillars of support, guidance, and love. Family is where life begins and love never ends. No matter how old a child gets there’s nothing more comforting and soothing than their parent's arms.

The role of parents in a child’s life is beyond the idea of prompting.

Parenting takes action long before a child’s birth and eventually parents become their children’s alter ego and vice-versa. There is nobody like them who can shape and mould a child’s behavior and development. 

So parents should never seize to inspire and assist their children and thereby parents should strive to be the best teacher in their child’s life.

Maintaining a good Parent-Child relationship is the first step towards wise parenting. Right from the birth of their offspring, parents should be aware of the enormous reliability and accountability in their child’s life.

Studies show that a foetus’ character development is succumbed by the alterations in its mother’s thoughts during pregnancy. Not giving the proper guidance and love can seriously affect a child’s life and can have serious impacts that will lead to character defects.

The parent is the child’s first teacher and will remain a consistent mentor in a child’s life.

What is the role of Parents in a Child's life?

To develop skills.

Parenting is a never-ending skill. Once you sign for it there’s no looking back. You will have to take charge and make the most of your time. Parenting and child development are in a symbiotic relationship.

When one flourishes, the other automatically finds balance. And this is the basic rule of every parent-child relationship.

Parents contribute to the cognitive, socio-cultural, physical, mental, and spiritual development of an individual. Parental values and expertise play a vital role in the healthy upbringing of a child in all these areas. 

The foundation of all beliefs 

The profile of cognitive abilities, beliefs, ethical values, coping defenses, and salient emotional moods that characterize each child at each developmental stage is the result of diverse influences operating in complex ways.

Most students of human development agree that the most important determinants of the different profiles include the inherited physiologic patterns that are called temperamental qualities, parental practices and personality, quality of schools attended, relationships with peers, the ordinal position in the family, and, finally, the historical era in which late childhood and early adolescence are spent.

As children develop from infants to teens to adults, they go through a series of developmental stages that are important to all aspects of their personhood including physical, intellectual, emotional, and social.  

Support and guidance

The proper role of the parent is to provide encouragement, support, and access to activities that enable the child to master key developmental tasks. A child’s learning and socialization are most influenced by their family since the family is the child’s primary social group. Happy parents raise happy children.

Child development lies its root in their parents. Nothing can overcome the rigidity of a child’s upbringing. A parent thereby acts as a visionary to their children.

There’s nothing worldly that comes close to the sacrifices of parenthood. What parents do for their children out of love will always have an indelible remark on the child’s life.

A child who has never ceased to receive a balanced upbringing will continue to advance for the rest of their lives.

Parents also play a major role in the self-confidence of their children. If you want to increase the self-confidence of your child, read 6 Simple Tips to Build Self-Esteem and Confidence your Child.

Providing a good lifestyle

Education is one of the landmarks in a child’s development. A good education will hand over a rewarding career to the person and thereby they can serve society and return its bounties.

It is imperative to know how parents influence the lives of their offspring and plays an important role in the child’s physical, mental, financial, emotional, and career development.

How can Parents become successful in their roles?

The importance of parents is something that children should comprehend involuntarily. It is not something that can be put forward as a moral or ethical question.

Studies show that apart from earlier times, contemporary parents have a higher chance of failure to maintain a good relationship with their children despite the nuclear family setups that we have these days.

Here is how you can build a successful rapport with your child. 

Communication is the key

Be it any relationship, communication is the foundation. Talk to your child about topics other than school and studies. This helps in contributing to better bondage between both parties. 

Engage in activities with them 

You inevitably spent quality time with your loved ones. In this case, do something with your kid that is exciting for them. This will eventually help them polish their interests. 

Apologize when you mess up

Transparent and candidness can do wonders in your relationship. Throw away your ego and apologize for your mistakes. So that the child can stand up for themselves during future endeavors. 

How can parents' actions influence their children?

A recent study shows that parents who actively interact with children help them develop crucial cognitive skills, life skills, and eventually thrive to be successful. Parents contribute to developing focus, concentration, and self-control in their children.

They also improve critical thinking, empathy, perspective, making connections, and communicating. With a supportive parent, a child never regrets taking risks and this prepares a self-directed child. Parents' interactions have a huge impact on the child’s development, be it physical or mental.

Apart from genetic inheritance, children have a tendency to mimic their parents in almost any field. This increases the liability of a parent to be a role model for their children. The efforts from a parent’s side have great effects on their children. 

Even though each child is different and special in their capabilities, parents are the ones who can shape and assist their children without fail. It is the responsibility of parents to ensure a safe and sound environment for their children.

“The attitude that you have as a parent is what your kids will learn from, more than what you tell them. They remember what you are''; these words by Jim Henson alarm us about the role of Parents in a child’s life and justifies the impact and influence of parents in a child’s life. 

Parenting is sometimes about finding happiness in sacrifices. And these sacrifices will not seize to rapture you in the long run. A child with a remarkable upbringing will never fail to make their parents proud. Parents are responsible to provide the necessary food, clothing, shelter, and medical care insofar as they are able.

They are equally responsible for providing sound education and sound knowledge of their religion as well as the moral training of their children. In the same way, children are responsible to appreciate their parent’s promising efforts to ensure a good life for them.

Having said all these, parenthood is not just about sacrifice, it is also teaching your child to master their life on their own.

They should hand over responsibilities for their children so that they learn problem-solving skills at a young age. This will reduce the chances of being left out when they hit adulthood. 

Parents play a pivotal role in their children’s lives and each of their actions will solely depend upon the parenting techniques adopted by their parents. Our future is our children and in order to ensure a better tomorrow, we have to train and shape our children with care and love.

So it’s imperative that every parent decode their child’s peculiarities and assist them in their overall development and thereby contributing to a better tomorrow. When a child is happy, then parents are happy. Parents do almost all the things to make their child educated and well respected in society.

Whatever the situation or whatever is the problem that a child faces in life, parents should try and motivate and inspire them by their own examples to make a tough into good. Parents try to make the balance in their child’s emotional persistence that helps to improve tough situations faster. 

Importance of Parents' in developing Math

Parents play a major role in improving mathematical skills in their children. The most important thing is daily mathematical reasoning.

Early education experts stress reading to children every day, and math should be part of a daily regimen as well.

Since most parents use math in some form every day, they should be able to help their children develop mathematical reasoning without going too far out of their way to design lessons or learn more math themselves.

Parents can help their children apply maths in daily activities like shopping and this brings a lot of difference in their logical skills.

• The parent-child relationship is important because it lays the foundation for the child’s personality, life choices, and overall behavior. It can also affect the strength of their social, physical, mental, and emotional health. 
• Children who have a healthy relationship with their parents are more likely to develop positive relationships with other people around them. They can establish secure bonds and friendships with peers. 
• The healthy involvement of parents in their children’s day to day life helps ensure that their kids can perform better socially and academically.

About Cuemath

Cuemath, a student-friendly mathematics and coding platform, conducts regular Online Classes for academics and skill-development, and their Mental Math App, on both iOS and Android , is a one-stop solution for kids to develop multiple skills. Understand the Cuemath fee structure and sign up for a free trial.

25,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. Take the first step today

Meet top uk universities from the comfort of your home, here’s your new year gift, one app for all your, study abroad needs, start your journey, track your progress, grow with the community and so much more.

Verification Code

An OTP has been sent to your registered mobile no. Please verify

Thanks for your comment !

Our team will review it before it's shown to our readers.

• School Education /

Essay on Parents: Free Samples for School Students

• Updated on  
• Nov 6, 2023

Robert Brault once said, ‘A parent’s love is whole no matter how many times divided.’ Our parents mean everything to us. From birth to the day we become financially independent, our parents have always been there for us, formulate our thoughts and make or change the decisions in our lives. Parents play a crucial role in a child’s emotional, social, intellectual, and physical development. We celebrate important days like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day to honour and respect our parents. No words can describe the efforts and the hardships they go through. Therefore, today we will be providing you with an essay on parents to help you understand their importance in our lives and their role in shaping our future.

Table of Contents

• 1 Essay on Parents in 100 Words
• 2 Essay on Parents in 200 Words
• 3 Essay on Parents in 300 Words

Also Read: Parental Pressure: Care But Not Too Much

Essay on Parents in 100 Words

Also Read: Importance of Education in Our Life

Essay on Parents in 200 Words

Also Read: National Parent’s Day 2023

Essay on Parents in 300 Words

Ans: It’s very easy to write an essay on parents, all you need to do is highlight every aspect of your life where your parents have supported you. You can start by mentioning your early school days when you were having difficulties with your classmates or teacher, and how beautifully your parents helped you. Real-life examples will give value to your essay as it will portray the emotional bond between you and your parents.

Ans: Mere words cannot describe the importance of parents in our lives, as they always try to do their best. Our parents offer us the life which they ever dreamed of so that we can have a flourishing future. They are the primary source of moral guidance for us. They impart values, ethics, and principles that shape our understanding of right and wrong, contributing to the development of a strong moral compass.

Ans: Here are 5 lines on parents: Parents are the guiding lights that illuminate the path of a child’s life; They provide unconditional love, which forms the bedrock of our emotional well-being; Through their nurturing presence, parents provide a sense of security and stability; They serve as role models, imparting values and morals that shape our character; Parents are the first teachers, introducing us the wonders of the world.

Related Articles

For more information on such interesting topics to help you with your school, visit our essay writing page and follow Leverage Edu .

Shiva Tyagi

With an experience of over a year, I've developed a passion for writing blogs on wide range of topics. I am mostly inspired from topics related to social and environmental fields, where you come up with a positive outcome.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Contact no. *

Connect With Us

25,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. Take the first step today.

Resend OTP in

Need help with?

Study abroad.

UK, Canada, US & More

IELTS, GRE, GMAT & More

Scholarship, Loans & Forex

Country Preference

New Zealand

Which English test are you planning to take?

Which academic test are you planning to take.

Not Sure yet

When are you planning to take the exam?

Already booked my exam slot

Within 2 Months

Want to learn about the test

Which Degree do you wish to pursue?

When do you want to start studying abroad.

January 2024

September 2024

What is your budget to study abroad?

How would you describe this article ?

Please rate this article

We would like to hear more.

Have something on your mind?

Make your study abroad dream a reality in January 2022 with

India's Biggest Virtual University Fair

Essex Direct Admission Day

Why attend .

Don't Miss Out

• My Parents Essay

500 Words Essay On My Parents

We entered this world because of our parents. It is our parents who have given us life and we must learn to be pleased with it. I am grateful to my parents for everything they do for me. Through my parents essay, I wish to convey how valuable they are to me and how much I respect and admire them.

My Strength My Parents Essay

My parents are my strength who support me at every stage of life. I cannot imagine my life without them. My parents are like a guiding light who take me to the right path whenever I get lost.

My mother is a homemaker and she is the strongest woman I know. She helps me with my work and feeds me delicious foods . She was a teacher but left the job to take care of her children.

My mother makes many sacrifices for us that we are not even aware of. She always takes care of us and puts us before herself. She never wakes up late. Moreover, she is like a glue that binds us together as a family.

Parents are the strength and support system of their children. They carry with them so many responsibilities yet they never show it. We must be thankful to have parents in our lives as not everyone is lucky to have them.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

While my mother is always working at home, my father is the one who works outside. He is a kind human who always helps out my mother whenever he can. He is a loving man who helps out the needy too.

My father is a social person who interacts with our neighbours too. Moreover, he is an expert at maintaining his relationship with our relatives. My father works as a businessman and does a lot of hard work.

Even though he is a busy man, he always finds time for us. We spend our off days going to picnics or dinners. I admire my father for doing so much for us without any complaints.

He is a popular man in society as he is always there to help others. Whoever asks for his help, my father always helps them out. Therefore, he is a well-known man and a loving father whom I look up to.

Conclusion of My Parents Essay

I love both my parents with all my heart. They are kind people who have taught their children to be the same. Moreover, even when they have arguments, they always make up without letting it affect us. I aspire to become like my parents and achieve success in life with their blessings.

FAQ of My Parents Essay

Question 1: Why parents are important in our life?

Answer 1: Parents are the most precious gifts anyone can get. However, as not everyone has them, we must consider ourselves lucky if we do. They are the strength and support system of children and help them out always. Moreover, the parents train the children to overcome challenges and make the best decision for us.

Question 2: What do parents mean to us?

Answer 2: Parents mean different things to different people. To most of us, they are our source of happiness and protection. They are the ones who are the closest to us and understand our needs without having to say them out loud. Similarly, they love us unconditionally for who we are without any ifs and buts.

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

• Travelling Essay
• Picnic Essay
• Our Country Essay
• Essay on Favourite Personality
• Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
• Essay on Knowledge is Power
• Essay on Gurpurab
• Essay on My Favourite Season
• Essay on Types of Sports

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

The Importance of Parenting in Influencing the Lives of Children

• First Online: 07 December 2018

Cite this chapter

• Matthew R. Sanders 3 &
• Karen M. T. Turner 3  

10k Accesses

36 Citations

The quality of parenting children receive during childhood and adolescence plays a major role in influencing their developmental competence and ultimately their life course trajectories. The parent–child relationship has a pervasive impact on children, and affects many different areas of development including language and communication, executive function and self-regulation, sibling and peer relationships, academic attainment, and mental and physical health. This chapter provides an overview of evidence showing how parenting influences children’s development. In addition, we explore how the broader ecological contexts of parents’ lives influence parenting practices and family relationships. Proximal determinants of parenting (e.g., the parent–child relationship) and more distal factors (e.g., cultural and community context) combine to influence the quality of parenting children receive. We argue that evidence-based parenting support that is delivered at a whole of community level and is attuned to the broader ecological context of modern parenting is needed to promote competent parenting and to reduce the adverse effects of poor parenting on children. Policy-based investments in evidence-based parenting programs have great potential to enhance life course outcomes for both children and parents that can have major economic benefits to the entire community.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Durable hardcover edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation . Oxford: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Google Scholar  

American Academy of Pediatrics. (2016). Poverty and child health in the United States. Pediatrics, 137 , 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2016-0339

Article   Google Scholar  

Anda, R. F., Felitti, V. J., Walker, J., Whitfield, C. L., Bremner, J. D., Perry, B. D., … Giles, W. H. (2006). The enduring effects of abuse and related adverse experiences in childhood. A convergence of evidence from neurobiology and epidemiology. European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 256 (3), 174–186. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00406-005-0624-4

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2017). Australia’s Welfare 2017 , Australia’s welfare series no. 13. AUS 214 . Canberra, ACT: AIHW.

Baumrind, D. (1971). Current patterns of parental authority. Developmental Psychology Monographs, 1 (4), 1–103. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0030372

Belsky, J. (1984). The determinants of parenting: A process model. Child Development, 55 , 83–96.

Biblarz, T. J., & Stacey, J. (2010). How does the gender of parents matter? Journal of Marriage and Family, 72 (1), 3–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2009.00678.x

Biglan, A. (2015). The nurture effect: How the science of human behavior can improve our lives and our world . Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.

Bornstein, M. H., & Bohr, Y. (2011). Immigration, acculturation and parenting. In R. E. Tremblay, M. Boivin, & R. D. V. Peters (Eds.), Encyclopedia on early childhood development Retrieved from http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/immigration/according-experts/immigration-acculturation-and-parenting

Bornstein, M. H., & Bradley, R. H. (Eds.). (2014). Socioeconomic status, parenting, and child development . New York, NY: Routledge.

Bright, M. A., & Thompson, L. A. (2018). Association of adverse childhood experiences with co-occurring health conditions in early childhood. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 39 (1), 37–45.

PubMed   Google Scholar  

Brody, G. H., Stoneman, Z., & Flor, D. (1996). Parental religiosity, family processes, and youth competence in rural, two-parent African American families. Developmental Psychology, 32 (4), 696–706. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.32.4.696

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1986). Ecology of the family as a context for human development: Research perspectives. Developmental Psychology, 22 (6), 723–742. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.22.6.723

Bronfenbrenner, U., & Morris, P. A. (2006). The bioecological model of human development. In Handbook of child psychology (pp. 793–828). New York, NY: Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470147658.chpsy0114

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Brotman, L. M., Basrjas-Gonzalez, R., Dawson-McClure, S., & Calzada, E. (2018). In M. R. Sanders & A. Morawska (Eds.), Handbook of parenting and child development over the life span . New York, NY: Springer.

Calam, R., & Wittkowski, A. (2017). Parents with serious mental health problems. In M. R. Sanders & T. G. Mazzucchelli (Eds.), The power of positive parenting: Transforming the lives of children, parents and communities using the triple P system . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Cartmill, E. A. (2016). Mind the gap: Assessing and addressing the word gap in early education. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3 (2), 185–193. https://doi.org/10.1177/2372732216657565

Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. (2016). From best practices to breakthrough impacts: A science-based approach to building a more promising future for young children and families . Boston, MA: Author.

Collins, W. A., Maccoby, E. E., Steinberg, L., Hetherington, E. M., & Bornstein, M. H. (2000). Contemporary research on parenting: The case for nature and nurture. American Psychologist, 55 (2), 218–232. https://doi.org/10.1037//0003-066X.55.2.218

Crnic, K., & Ross, E. (2017). Parenting stress and parental efficacy. In K. Deater-Deckard & R. Panneton (Eds.), Parental stress and early child development . New York, NY; Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55376-4_11

Crumbley, J., & Little, R. L. (1997). Relatives raising children: An overview of kinship care . Washington, DC: Child Welfare League of America.

Dadds, M., Moul, C., Hawes, D., Mendoza Diaz, A., & Brennan, J. (2015). Individual differences in childhood behavior disorders associated with epigenetic modulation of the cortisol receptor gene. Child Development, 86 (5), 1311–1320. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12391

Darling, N., & Steinberg, L. (1993). Parenting style as context: An integrative model. Psychological Bulletin, 113 (3), 487–496. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.113.3.487

Deater-Deckard, K., Wang, Z., Chen, N., & Belland, M. A. (2012). Maternal executive function, harsh parenting, and child conduct problems. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 52 (10), 1084–1091. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2012.02582.x

Drazen, Y. N. (2015). Child behavior and the home environment: Are crowding and doubling-up bad for kids? Presented at the Society for Social Work and Research 19th Annual Conference: The Social and Behavioral Importance of Increased Longevity, SSWR. Retrieved from https://sswr.confex.com/sswr/2015/webprogram/Paper23510.html

Duncan, G. J., Magnuson, K., & Votruba-Drzal, E. (2014). Boosting family income to promote child development. The Future of Children, 24 (1), 99–120. https://doi.org/10.1353/foc.2014.0008

Endendijk, J. J., Groeneveld, M. G., Pol, L. D., Berkel, S. R., Hallers-Haalboom, E. T., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & Mesman, J. (2017). Gender differences in child aggression: Relations with gender-differentiated parenting and parents’ gender-role stereotypes. Child Development, 88 (1), 299–316. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12589

Evans, G. W. (2003). A multimethodological analysis of cumulative risk and allostatic load among rural children. Developmental Psychology, 39 (5), 924–933. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.39.5.924

Evans, G. W., Rhee, E., Forbes, C., Allen, K., & Lepore, S. J. (2000). The meaning and efficacy of social withdrawal as a strategy for coping with chronic residential crowding. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 20 (4), 335–342. https://doi.org/10.1006/jevp.1999.0174

Felitti, V. J., Anda, R. F., Nordenberg, D., Williamson, D. F., Spitz, A. M., Edwards, V., … Marks, J. S. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14 , 245–258. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-3797(98)00017-8

Fung, J., Wong, M. S., & Park, H. (2018). Determinants of parenting: Cultural background and religious beliefs. In M. R. Sanders & A. Morawska (Eds.), Handbook of parenting and child development over the lifespan . New York, NY: Springer.

Garai, E. P., McKee, L. G., Peisch, V., & Forehand, R. (2016). Disciplining. In R. J. R. Levesque (Ed.), Encyclopedia of adolescence (pp. 1–11). New York, NY; Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32132-5_34-2

Geffner, R., Igelman, R. S., & Zellner, J. (Eds.). (2014). The effects of intimate partner violence on children . New York, NY: Routledge.

Gravningen, K., Mitchell, K. R., Wellings, K., Johnson, A. M., Geary, R., Jones, K. G., … Field, N. (2017). Reported reasons for breakdown of marriage and cohabitation in Britain: Findings from the third National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal-3). PLoS One, 12 (3), e0174129. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0174129

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Greenfield, P. M., Keller, H., Fuligni, A., & Maynard, A. (2003). Cultural pathways through universal development. Annual Review of Psychology, 54 , 461–490. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.54.101601.145221

Groh, A. M., Roisman, G. I., van IJzendoorn, M. H., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & Fearon, R. P. (2012). The significance of insecure and disorganized attachment for children’s internalizing symptoms: A meta-analytic study. Child Development, 83 , 591–610. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01711.x

Haggerty, K. P., McGlynn-Wright, A., & Klima, T. (2013). Promising parenting programs for reducing adolescent problem behaviors. Journal of Children’s Services, 8 (4), 229. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCS-04-2013-0016

Halford, K., Rhoades, G., & Morris, M. (2018). Effects of parental relationships on children. In M. R. Sanders & A. Morawska (Eds.), Handbook of parenting and child development over the life span . New York, NY: Springer.

Hart, B., & Risley, R. T. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children . Baltimore, MA: Brookes.

Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1992). American parenting of language-learning children: Persisting differences in family-child interactions observed in natural home environments. Developmental Psychology, 28 (6), 1096–1105. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.28.6.1096

Harvard Center on the Developing Child. (2016). From best practices to breakthrough impacts: A science-based approach to building a more promising future for young children and families . Retrieved October 24, 2017, from https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/from-best-practices-to-breakthrough-impacts/

Haslam, D. M., & Penman, N. (2018). Parenting support in the workplace. In M. R. Sanders & T. G. Mazzucchelli (Eds.), The power of positive parenting: Transforming the lives of children, parents and communities using the Triple P System (pp. 262–271). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Hayes, A., Weston, R., Qu, L., & Gray, M. (2010). Families then and now 1980-2010 . Australian Institute of Family Studies. Retrieved from https://aifs.gov.au/publications/families-then-and-now-1980-2010

Healy, K. L., Sanders, M. R., & Iyer, A. (2015). Parenting practices, children’s peer relationships and being bullied at school. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 24 , 127–140. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-013-9820-4

Hirsh-Pasek, K., Adamson, L. B., Bakeman, R., Owen, M. T., Golinkoff, R. M., Pace, A., … Suma, K. (2015). The contributions of early communication quality to low-income children’s language success. Psychological Science, 26 (7), 1071–1083. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615581493

Hoghughi, M. S., & Long, N. (2004). Handbook of parenting: Theory and research for practice . London: Sage.

Hughes, K., Bellis, M. A., Hardcastle, K. A., Sethi, D., Butchart, A., Mikton, C., … Dunne, M. P. (2017). The effect of multiple adverse childhood experiences on health: A systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet Public Health, 2 (8), e356–e366. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(17)30118-4

Hughes, K., Lowey, H., Quigg, Z., & Bellis, M. A. (2016). Relationships between adverse childhood experiences and adult mental well-being: Results from an English national household survey. BMC Public Health, 16 (1), 222. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-016-2906-3

Janssen, H. J., Weerman, F. M., & Eichelsheim, V. I. (2017). Parenting as a protective factor against criminogenic settings? Interaction effects between three aspects of parenting and unstructured socializing in disordered areas. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 54 (2), 181–207. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022427816664561

Karoly, P. (1993). Mechanisms of self-regulation: A systems view. Annual Review of Psychology, 44 , 23–52. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ps.44.020193.000323

Kirby, G., & Hodges, J. (2018). Parenting of preschool and school-aged children. In M. R. Sanders & A. Morawska (Eds.), Handbook of parenting and child development over the life span . New York, NY: Springer.

Kirby, J. N. (2015). The potential benefits of parenting programs for grandparents: Recommendations and clinical implications. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 24 (11), 9200–3212. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-015-0123-9

Kirby, J. N. (2016). The role of mindfulness and compassion in enhancing nurturing family environments. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 23 (2), 142–157. https://doi.org/10.1111/cpsp.12149

Kraft, M. A., & Rogers, T. (2015). The underutilized potential of teacher-to-parent communication: Evidence from a field experiment. Economics of Education Review, 47 , 49–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2015.04.001

Lee, C. M., Smith, P. B., Stern, S. B., Piché, G., Feldgaier, S., Ateah, C., … Dennis, D. (2014). The international parenting survey–Canada: Exploring access to parenting services. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, 55 (2), 110–116.

Lundahl, B., Risser, H. J., & Lovejoy, M. C. (2006). A meta-analysis of parent training: Moderators and follow-up effects. Clinical Psychology Review, 26 (1), 86–104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2005.07.004

Maccoby, E. E. (2015). Historical overview of socialization research and theory. In J. E. Grusec & P. D. Hastings (Eds.), Handbook of socialization theory and research (2nd ed., pp. 3–32). New York, NY: Guilford.

Maccoby, E. E., & Martin, J. A. (1983). Socialization in the context of the family: Parent–child interaction. In P. H. Mussen & E. M. Heatherington (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology (Vol. 4, 4th ed., pp. 1–102). New York, NY: Wiley.

Marmot, M., & Bell, R. (2012). Fair society, healthy lives. Public Health, 126 (Supplement 1), S4–S10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2012.05.014

Marmot, M., Friel, S., Bell, R., Houweling, T. A., Taylor, S., & Commission on Social Determinants of Health. (2008). Closing the gap in a generation: Health equity through action on the social determinants of health. The Lancet, 372 (9650), 1661–1669. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(08)61690-6

McDowell, D. J., & Parke, R. D. (2009). Parental correlates of children’s peer relations: An empirical test of a tripartite model. Developmental Psychology, 45 , 224–235. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014305

McQuillan, M. E., & Bates, J. E. (2017). Parental stress and child temperament. In K. Deater-Deckard & R. Panneton (Eds.), Parental stress and early child development (pp. 75–106). New York, NY: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55376-4_4

Mejia, A., Calam, R., & Sanders, M. R. (2012). A review of parenting programs in developing countries: Opportunities and challenges for preventing emotional and behavioral difficulties in children. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 15 (2), 163–175. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10567-012-0116-9

Mejia, A., Calam, R., & Sanders, M. R. (2015). Examining delivery preferences and cultural relevance of an evidence-based parenting program in a low-resource setting of Central America: Approaching parents as consumers. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 24 , 1004–1015. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-014-9911-x

Metzler, C. W., Sanders, M. R., Rusby, J. C., & Crowley, R. N. (2012). Using consumer preference information to increase the reach and impact of media-basedparenting interventions in a public health approach to parenting support. Behavior Therapy, 43 (2), 257–270. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2011.05.004

Miller, W. R., & Rollnick, A. (Eds.). (2002). Motivational interviewing: Preparing people for change (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Montag, J. L., Jones, M. N., & Smith, L. B. (2015). The words children hear: Picture books and the statistics for language learning. Psychological Science, 26 (9), 1489–1496. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615594361

Moore, T. G., Arefadib, N., Deery, A., Keyes, M., & West, S. (2017). The first thousand days: An evidence paper – Summary . Parkville, VIC: Centre for Community Child Health, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.

Morawska, A., & Mitchell, A. (2018). Children’s health, physical activity and nutrition. In M. R. Sanders & A. Morawska (Eds.), Handbook of parenting and child development over the life span . New York, NY: Springer.

Morawska, A., Sanders, M., Goadby, E., Headley, C., Hodge, L., McAuliffe, C., … Anderson, E. (2011). Is the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program acceptable to parents from culturally diverse backgrounds? Journal of Child and Family Studies, 20 (5), 614–622. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-010-9436-x

Morawska, A., Winter, L., & Sanders, M. R. (2009). Parenting knowledge and its role in the prediction of dysfunctional parenting and disruptive child behaviour. Child: Care, Health and Development, 35 (2), 217–226. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2214.2008.00929.x

Mosier, C. E., & Rogoff, B. (2003). Privileged treatment of toddlers: Cultural aspects of individual choice and responsibility. Developmental Psychology, 39 (6), 1047–1060. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.39.6.1047

National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine. (2016). Parenting matters: Supporting parents of children ages 0-8 . Washington, DC: Author.

Oakley, M., Farr, R. H., & Scherer, D. G. (2017). Same-sex parent socialization: Understanding gay and lesbian parenting practices as cultural socialization. Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 13 (1), 56–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/1550428X.2016.1158685

Patterson, C. J. (2017). Parents’ sexual orientation and children’s development. Child Development Perspectives, 11 (1), 45–49. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12207

Patterson, G. R. (1982). Coercive family process . Eugene, OR: Castalia.

Powell, D. R., Son, S.-H., File, N., & San Juan, R. R. (2010). Parent–school relationships and children’s academic and social outcomes in public school pre-kindergarten. Journal of School Psychology, 48 (4), 269–292. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2010.03.002

Prinz, R. J., Sanders, M. R., Shapiro, C. J., Whitaker, D. J., & Lutzker, J. R. (2009). Population-based prevention of child maltreatment: The U.S. Triple P system population trial. Prevention Science, 10 (1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-009-0123-3

Prinz, R. J., Sanders, M. R., Shapiro, C. J., Whitaker, D. J., & Lutzker, J. R. (2016). Addendum to: Population-based prevention of child maltreatment: The U.S. Triple P system population trial. Prevention Science, 17 (3), 410–416. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-016-0631-x

Rowe, M. L. (2012). A longitudinal investigation of the role of quantity and quality of child-directed speech in vocabulary development. Child Development, 83 (5), 1762–1774. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01805.x

Ryan, R., O’Farrelly, C., & Ramchandani, P. (2017). Parenting and child mental health. London Journal of Primary Care, 9 (6), 86–94. https://doi.org/10.1080/17571472.2017.1361630

Sameroff, A. (Ed.). (2009). The transactional model of development: How children and contexts shape each other . Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Sameroff, A. (2010). A unified theory of development: A dialectic integration of nature and nurture. Child Development, 81 (1), 6–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01378.x

Sampaio, F., Barendregt, J. J., Feldman, I., Lee, Y. Y., Sawyer, M. G., Dadds, M. R., … Mihalopoulos, C. (2017). Population cost-effectiveness of the Triple P parenting programme for the treatment of conduct disorder: An economic modelling study. European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 27, 933–944. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-017-1100-1

Sanders, M. R. (2018). The future of evidence based parenting support programs. In M. R. Sanders & T. G. Mazzucchelli (Eds.), The power of positive parenting: Transforming the lives of children, parents and communities using the Triple P System (pp. 504–532). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Sanders, M. R., Baker, S., & Turner, K. M. T. (2012). A randomized controlled trial evaluating the efficacy of Triple P Online with parents of children with early-onset conduct problems. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 50 (11), 675–684. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2012.07.004

Sanders, M. R., Burke, K., Prinz, R. J., & Morawska, A. (2017). Achieving population-level change through a system-contextual approach to supporting competent parenting. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 20 (1), 36–44. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10567-017-0227-4

Sanders, M. R., Healy, K. L., Grice, C., & Del Vecchio, T. (2017). Evidence-based parenting programs: Integrating science into school-based practice. In M. Thielsking & M. D. Terjesen (Eds.), Handbook of Australian school psychology: Bridging the gaps in international research, practice, and policy (pp. 537–551). New York, NY: Springer.

Sanders, M. R., Kirby, J. N., Tellegen, C. L., & Day, J. J. (2014). The Triple P-Positive Parenting Program: A systematic review and meta-analysis of a multi-level system of parenting support. Clinical Psychology Review, 34 (4), 337–357. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2014.04.003

Sanders, M. R., & Mazzucchelli, T. G. (2018). The power of positive parenting: Transforming the lives of children, parents and communities . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Scott, S. (2012). Parenting quality and children’s mental health: Biological mechanisms and psychological interventions. Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 25 (4), 301–306. https://doi.org/10.1097/YCO.0b013e328354a1c5

Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Care. (2011). Growing up our way: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander practices matrix . Melbourne, VIC: Author.

Seo, D., Patrick, C. J., & Kennealy, P. J. (2008). Role of serotonin and dopamine system interactions in the neurobiology of impulsive aggression and its comorbidity with other clinical disorders. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 13 (5), 383–395. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2008.06.003

Shwalb, D. W., & Hossain, Z. (Eds.). (2018). Grandparents in cultural context . New York, NY: Routledge.

Spera, C. (2005). A review of the relationship among parenting practices, parenting styles, and adolescent school achievement. Educational Psychology Review, 17 (2), 125–146. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-005-3950-1

Spock, B. (1946). The common sense book of baby and child care . New York, NY: Duell, Sloan and Pearce.

Van Mourik, K., Crone, M. R., De Wolff, M. S., & Reis, R. (2017). Parent training programs for ethnic minorities: A meta-analysis of adaptations and effect. Prevention Science, 18 (1), 95–105. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-016-0733-5

Wang, Y., Huang, Z., & Kong, F. (2017). Parenting stress and life satisfaction in mothers of children with cerebral palsy: The mediating effect of social support. Journal of Health Psychology . https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105317739100

Waters, S. F., Virmani, E. A., Thompson, R. A., Meyer, S., Raikes, H. A., & Jochem, R. (2010). Emotion regulation and attachment: Unpacking two constructs and their association. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 32 (1), 37–47. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-009-9163-z

Weissman, M. M., Pilowsky, D. J., Wickramaratne, P. J., Talati, A., Wisniewski, S. R., Fava, M., … Cerda, G. (2006). Remissions in maternal depression and child psychopathology: A STAR* D-child report. Journal of the American Medical Association, 295 (12), 1389–1398. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.295.12.1389

Wilson, D. S., O’Brien, D. T., & Sesma, A. (2009). Human prosociality from an evolutionary perspective: Variation and correlations at a city-wide scale. Evolution and Human Behavior, 30 (3), 190–200. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2008.12.002

Yee, A. Z. H., Lwin, M. O., & Ho, S. S. (2017). The influence of parental practices on child promotive and preventive food consumption behaviors: A systematic review and meta-analysis. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 14 (47), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12966-017-0501-3

Youngblade, L., & Belsky, J. (1995). From family to friend: Predicting positive dyadic interaction with a close friend at five years of age from early parent-child relations. In S. Shulman (Ed.), Close relationships and social-emotional development (pp. 35–62). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Zemp, M., Milek, A., Cummings, E. M., & Bodenmann, G. (2017). Longitudinal interrelations between dyadic coping and coparenting conflict in couples. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 26 (8), 2276–2290. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-017-0742-4

Download references

The Parenting and Family Support Centre is partly funded by royalties stemming from published resources of the Triple P—Positive Parenting Program, which is developed and owned by the University of Queensland (UQ). Royalties are also distributed to the Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences at UQ and contributory authors of published Triple P resources. Triple P International (TPI) Pty Ltd. is a private company licensed by UniQuest Pty Ltd. on behalf of UQ, to publish and disseminate Triple P worldwide. The authors of this chapter have no share or ownership of TPI. TPI has no involvement in the writing of this chapter. Matthew R Sanders is the founder of Triple P and receives royalties from TPI. He is a consultant to Triple P International and an employee at UQ. Karen Turner receives royalties from TPI and is an employee at UQ.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Parenting and Family Support Centre, School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Matthew R. Sanders & Karen M. T. Turner

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Matthew R. Sanders .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Parenting and Family Support Centre School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Matthew R. Sanders

Alina Morawska

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature

About this chapter

Sanders, M.R., Turner, K.M.T. (2018). The Importance of Parenting in Influencing the Lives of Children. In: Sanders, M., Morawska, A. (eds) Handbook of Parenting and Child Development Across the Lifespan . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94598-9_1

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94598-9_1

Published : 07 December 2018

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-319-94597-2

Online ISBN : 978-3-319-94598-9

eBook Packages : Behavioral Science and Psychology Behavioral Science and Psychology (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Parents — Parents are the Most Influential Factors in Our Lives

Parents Are The Most Influential Factors in Our Lives

• Categories: Family Relationship Parents

About this sample

Words: 701 |

Published: Aug 31, 2023

Words: 701 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Formation of values and beliefs, early childhood development and learning, impact on career choices, emotional and social well-being, challenges to parental influence, the everlasting impact.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Prof Ernest (PhD)

Verified writer

• Expert in: Life

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

6 pages / 2942 words

3 pages / 1408 words

1 pages / 407 words

5 pages / 2219 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Parents

In the nuanced tapestry of modern family dynamics, the concept of financial allowances predominantly trends towards the younger members, primarily as a means to teach financial responsibility and independence. However, an [...]

Parenting is a lifelong journey filled with challenges, joys, and responsibilities. Being a good parent involves more than just providing for your child's basic needs; it requires nurturing their emotional, social, and [...]

Child development is a fascinating and complex journey, shaped by various factors such as genetics, environment, and parenting. To gain deeper insights into this intricate process, I had the opportunity to interview a parent and [...]

Obesity in children in the US and Canada is on the rise, and never ending because new parents or parents with experience, either way tend to ignore what is happening with their child. A study at UCSF tells us that “A child with [...]

When I look back into my past I remember that my family and I lived in Egypt. Both me and my sister, Judi were born there. We had a nanny who didn’t speak English and our mom’s English wasn’t very strong back then either. I [...]

Many a times we often hear becoming a parent changes everything. One has to understand that having a baby is not only about welcoming a new member into a family or having to juggle between work life and social life. Time spent [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Parenting Matters: Supporting Parents of Children Ages 0-8 (2016)

Chapter: 1 introduction, 1 introduction.

Parents are among the most important people in the lives of young children. 1 From birth, children are learning and rely on mothers and fathers, as well as other caregivers acting in the parenting role, to protect and care for them and to chart a trajectory that promotes their overall well-being. While parents generally are filled with anticipation about their children’s unfolding personalities, many also lack knowledge about how best to provide for them. Becoming a parent is usually a welcomed event, but in some cases, parents’ lives are fraught with problems and uncertainty regarding their ability to ensure their child’s physical, emotional, or economic well-being.

At the same time, this study was fundamentally informed by recognition that the task of ensuring children’s healthy development does not rest solely with parents or families. It lies as well with governments and organizations at the local/community, state, and national levels that provide programs and services to support parents and families. Society benefits socially and economically from providing current and future generations of parents with the support they need to raise healthy and thriving children ( Karoly et al., 2005 ; Lee et al., 2015 ). In short, when parents and other caregivers are able to support young children, children’s lives are enriched, and society is advantaged by their contributions.

To ensure positive experiences for their children, parents draw on the resources of which they are aware or that are at their immediate disposal.

___________________

1 In this report, “parents” refers to the primary caregivers of young children in the home. In addition to biological and adoptive parents, main caregivers may include kinship (e.g., grandparents), foster, and other types of caregivers.

However, these resources may vary in number, availability, and quality at best, and at worst may be offered sporadically or not at all. Resources may be close at hand (e.g., family members), or they may be remote (e.g., government programs). They may be too expensive to access, or they may be substantively inadequate. Whether located in early childhood programs, school-based classrooms, well-child clinics, or family networks, support for parents of young children is critical to enhancing healthy early childhood experiences, promoting positive outcomes for children, and helping parents build strong relationships with their children (see Box 1-1 ).

The parent-child relationship that the parent described in Box 1-1 sought and continues to work toward is central to children’s growth and

development—to their social-emotional and cognitive functioning, school success, and mental and physical health. Experiences during early childhood affect children’s well-being over the course of their lives. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when children’s brains are developing rapidly and when nearly all of their experiences are created and shaped by their parents and by the positive or difficult circumstances in which the parents find themselves. Parents play a significant role in helping children build and refine their knowledge and skills, as well as their learning expectations, beliefs, goals, and coping strategies. Parents introduce children to the social world where they develop understandings of themselves and their place and value in society, understandings that influence their choices and experiences over the life course.

PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY

Over the past several decades, researchers have identified parenting-related knowledge, attitudes, and practices that are associated with improved developmental outcomes for children and around which parenting-related programs, policies, and messaging initiatives can be designed. However, consensus is lacking on the elements of parenting that are most important to promoting child well-being, and what is known about effective parenting has not always been adequately integrated across different service sectors to give all parents the information and support they need. Moreover, knowledge about effective parenting has not been effectively incorporated into policy, which has resulted in a lack of coordinated and targeted efforts aimed at supporting parents.

Several challenges to the implementation of effective parenting practices exist as well. One concerns the scope and complexity of hardships that influence parents’ use of knowledge, about effective parenting, including their ability to translate that knowledge into effective parenting practices and their access to and participation in evidence-based parenting-related programs and services. Many families in the United States are affected by such hardships, which include poverty, parental mental illness and substance use, and violence in the home. A second challenge is inadequate attention to identifying effective strategies for engaging and utilizing the strengths of fathers, discussed later in this chapter and elsewhere in this report. Even more limited is the understanding of how mothers, fathers, and other caregivers together promote their children’s development and analysis of the effects of fathers’ parenting on child outcomes. A third challenge is limited knowledge of exactly how culture and the direct effects of racial discrimination influence childrearing beliefs and practices or children’s development ( National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2000 ). Despite acknowledgment of and attention to the importance of culture in

the field of developmental science, few studies have explored differences in parenting among demographic communities that vary in race and ethnicity, culture, and immigrant experience, among other factors, and the implications for children’s development.

In addition, the issue of poverty persists, with low-income working families being particularly vulnerable to policy and economic shifts. Although these families have benefited in recent years from the expansion of programs and policies aimed at supporting them (discussed further below), the number of children living in deep poverty has increased ( Sherman and Trisi, 2014 ). 2 Moreover, the portrait of America’s parents and children has changed over the past 50 years as a result of shifts in the numbers and origins of immigrants to the United States and in the nation’s racial, ethnic, and cultural composition ( Child Trends Databank, 2015b ; Migration Policy Institute, 2016 ). Family structure also has grown increasingly diverse across class, race, and ethnicity, with fewer children now being raised in households with two married parents; more living with same-sex parents; and more living with kinship caregivers, such as grandparents, and in other household arrangements ( Child Trends Databank, 2015b ). Lastly, parenting increasingly is being shaped by technology and greater access to information about parenting, some of which is not based in evidence and much of which is only now being studied closely.

The above changes in the nation’s demographic, economic, and technological landscape, discussed in greater detail below, have created new opportunities and challenges with respect to supporting parents of young children. Indeed, funding has increased for some programs designed to support children and families. At the state and federal levels, policy makers recently have funded new initiatives aimed at expanding early childhood education ( Barnett et al., 2015 ). Over the past several years, the number of states offering some form of publicly funded prekindergarten program has risen to 39, and after slight dips during the Great Recession of 2008, within-state funding of these programs has been increasing ( Barnett et al., 2015 ). Furthermore, the 2016 federal budget allocates about $750 million for state-based preschool development grants focused on improved access and better quality of care and an additional $1 billion for Head Start programs ( U.S. Department of Education, 2015 ; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2015 ). The federal budget also includes additional funding for the expansion of early childhood home visiting programs ($15 billion over the next 10 years) and increased access to child care for low-income working families ($28 billion over 10 years) ( U.S. Department

2 Deep poverty is defined as household income that is 50 percent or more below the federal poverty level (FPL). In 2015, the FPL for a four-person household was $24,250 ( Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, 2015 ).

of Health and Human Services, 2015 ). Low-income children and families have been aided as well in recent years by increased economic support from government in the form of both cash benefits (e.g., the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit) and noncash benefits (e.g., Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), and millions of children and their families have moved out of poverty as a result ( Sherman and Trisi, 2014 ).

It is against this backdrop of need and opportunity that the Administration for Children and Families, the Bezos Family Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Health Resources and Services Administration, the U.S. Department of Education, the Foundation for Child Development, the Heising-Simons Foundation, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) requested that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine empanel a committee to conduct a study to examine the state of the science with respect to parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices tied to positive parent-child interactions and child outcomes and strategies for supporting them among parents of young children ages 0-8. The purpose of this study was to provide a roadmap for the future of parenting and family support policies, practices, and research in the United States.

The statement of task for the Committee on Supporting the Parents of Young Children is presented in Box 1-2 . The committee was tasked with describing barriers to and facilitators for strengthening parenting capacity and parents’ participation and retention in salient programs and services. The committee was asked to assess the evidence and then make recommendations whose implementation would promote wide-scale adoption of effective strategies for enabling the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices. Given the multi- and interdisciplinary nature of the study task, the 18-member committee comprised individuals with an array of expertise, including child development, early childhood education, developmental and educational psychology, child psychiatry, social work, family engagement research, pediatric medicine, public and health policy, health communications, implementation science, law, and economics (see Appendix D for biosketches of the committee members).

WHAT IS PARENTING?

Conceptions of who parents are and what constitute the best conditions for raising children vary widely. From classic anthropological and human development perspectives, parenting often is defined as a primary mechanism of socialization, that is, a primary means of training and preparing children to meet the demands of their environments and take advantage

of opportunities within those environments. As Bornstein (1991, p. 6) explains, the “particular and continuing task of parents and other caregivers is to enculturate children . . . to prepare them for socially accepted physical, economic, and psychological situations that are characteristic of the culture in which they are to survive and thrive.”

Attachment security is a central aspect of development that has been

defined as a child’s sense of confidence that the caregiver is there to meet his or her needs ( Main and Cassidy, 1988 ). All children develop attachments with their parents, but how parents interact with their young children, including the extent to which they respond appropriately and consistently to their children’s needs, particularly in times of distress, influences whether the attachment relationship that develops is secure or insecure. Young chil-

dren who are securely attached to their parents are provided a solid foundation for healthy development, including the establishment of strong peer relationships and the ability to empathize with others ( Bowlby, 1978 ; Chen et al., 2012 ; Holmes, 2006 ; Main and Cassidy, 1988 ; Murphy and Laible, 2013 ). Conversely, young children who do not become securely attached with a primary caregiver (e.g., as a result of maltreatment or separation) may develop insecure behaviors in childhood and potentially suffer other adverse outcomes over the life course, such as mental health disorders and disruption in other social and emotional domains ( Ainsworth and Bell, 1970 ; Bowlby, 2008 ; Schore, 2005 ).

More recently, developmental psychologists and economists have described parents as investing resources in their children in anticipation of promoting the children’s social, economic, and psychological well-being. Kalil and DeLeire (2004) characterize this promotion of children’s healthy development as taking two forms: (1) material, monetary, social, and psychological resources and (2) provision of support, guidance, warmth, and love. Bradley and Corwyn (2004) characterize the goals of these investments as helping children successfully regulate biological, cognitive, and social-emotional functioning.

Parents possess different levels and quality of access to knowledge that can guide the formation of their parenting attitudes and practices. As discussed in greater detail in Chapter 2 , the parenting practices in which parents engage are influenced and informed by their knowledge, including facts and other information relevant to parenting, as well as skills gained through experience or education. Parenting practices also are influenced by attitudes, which in this context refer to parents’ viewpoints, perspectives, reactions, or settled ways of thinking with respect to the roles and importance of parents and parenting in children’s development, as well as parents’ responsibilities. Attitudes may be part of a set of beliefs shared within a cultural group and founded in common experiences, and they often direct the transformation of knowledge into practice.

Parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices are shaped, in part, by parents’ own experiences (including those from their own childhood) and circumstances; expectations and practices learned from others, such as family, friends, and other social networks; and beliefs transferred through cultural and social systems. Parenting also is shaped by the availability of supports within the larger community and provided by institutions, as well as by policies that affect the availability of supportive services.

Along with the multiple sources of parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices and their diversity among parents, it is important to acknowledge the diverse influences on the lives of children. While parents are central to children’ development, other influences, such as relatives, close family friends, teachers, community members, peers, and social institutions, also

contribute to children’s growth and development. Children themselves are perhaps the most essential contributors to their own development. Thus, the science of parenting is framed within the theoretical perspective that parenting unfolds in particular contexts; is embedded in a network of relationships within and outside of the family; and is fluid and continuous, changing over time as children and parents grow and develop.

In addition, it is important to recognize that parenting affects not only children but also parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents’ lives; generate stress or calm; compete for time with work or leisure; and create combinations of any number of emotions, including happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger.

STUDY CONTEXT

As attention to early childhood development has increased over the past 20 years, so, too, has attention to those who care for young children. A recent Institute of Medicine and National Research Council report on the early childhood workforce ( Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2015 ) illustrates the heightened focus not only on whether young children have opportunities to be exposed to healthy environments and supports but also on the people who provide those supports. Indeed, an important responsibility of parents is identifying those who will care for their children in their absence. Those individuals may include family members and others in parents’ immediate circle, but they increasingly include non-family members who provide care and education in formal and informal settings outside the home, such as schools and home daycare centers.

Throughout its deliberations, the committee considered several questions relevant to its charge: What knowledge and attitudes do parents of young children bring to the task of parenting? How are parents engaged with their young children, and how do the circumstances and behaviors of both parents and children influence the parent-child relationship? What types of support further enhance the natural resources and skills that parents bring to the parenting role? How do parents function and make use of their familial and community resources? What policies and resources at the local, state, and federal levels assist parents? What practices do they expect those resources to reinforce, and from what knowledge and attitudes are those practices derived? On whom or what do they rely in the absence of those resources? What serves as an incentive for participation in parenting programs? How are the issues of parenting different or the same across culture and race? What factors constrain parents’ positive relationships with their children, and what research is needed to advance agendas that can help parents sustain such relationships?

The committee also considered research in the field of neuroscience,

which further supports the foundational role of early experiences in healthy development, with effects across the life course ( Center on the Developing Child, 2007 ; National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2009 ; World Health Organization, 2015 ). During early childhood, the brain undergoes a rapid development that lays the foundation for a child’s lifelong learning capacity and emotional and behavioral health (see Figure 1-1 ). This research has provided a more nuanced understanding of the importance of investments in early childhood and parenting. Moreover, advances in analyses of epigenetic effects on early brain development demonstrate consequences of parenting for neural development at the level of DNA, and suggest indirect consequences of family conditions such as poverty that operate on early child development, in part, through the epigenetic consequences of parenting ( Lipinia and Segretin, 2015 ).

This report comes at a time of flux in public policies aimed at supporting parents and their young children. The cost to parents of supporting their children’s healthy development (e.g., the cost of housing, health care, child care, and education) has increased at rates that in many cases have offset the improvements and increases provided for by public policies. As noted above, for example, the number of children living in deep poverty has grown since the mid-1990s ( Sherman and Trisi, 2014 ). While children represent approximately one-quarter of the country’s population, they make up 32 percent of all the country’s citizens who live in poverty ( Child Trends Databank, 2015a ). About one in every five children in the United States is now growing up in families with incomes below the poverty line, and 9 percent of children live in deep poverty (families with incomes below 50%

of the poverty line) ( Child Trends Databank, 2015a ). The risk of growing up poor continues to be particularly high for children in female-headed households; in 2013, approximately 55 percent of children under age 6 in such households lived at or below the poverty threshold, compared with 10 percent of children in married couple families ( DeNavas-Walt and Proctor, 2014 ). Black and Hispanic children are more likely to live in deep poverty (18 and 13%, respectively) compared with Asian and white children (5% each) ( Child Trends Databank, 2015a ). Also noteworthy is that child care policy, including the recent increases in funding for low-income families, ties child care subsidies to employment. Unemployed parents out of school are not eligible, and job loss results in subsidy loss and, in turn, instability in child care arrangements for young children ( Ha et al., 2012 ).

As noted earlier, this report also comes at a time of rapid change in the demographic composition of the country. This change necessitates new understandings of the norms and values within and among groups, the ways in which recent immigrants transition to life in the United States, and the approaches used by diverse cultural and ethnic communities to engage their children during early childhood and utilize institutions that offer them support in carrying out that role. The United States now has the largest absolute number of immigrants in its history ( Grieco et al., 2012 ; Passel and Cohn, 2012 ; U.S. Census Bureau, 2011 ), and the proportion of foreign-born residents today (13.1%) is nearly as high as it was at the turn of the 20th century ( National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2015 ). As of 2014, 25 percent of children ages 0-5 in the United States had at least one immigrant parent, compared with 13.5 percent in 1990 ( Migration Policy Institute, 2016 ). 3 In many urban centers, such as Los Angeles, Miami, and New York City, the majority of the student body of public schools is first- or second-generation immigrant children ( Suárez-Orozco et al., 2008 ).

Immigrants to the United States vary in their countries of origin, their reception in different communities, and the resources available to them. Researchers increasingly have called attention to the wide variation not only among but also within immigrant groups, including varying premigration histories, familiarity with U.S. institutions and culture, and childrearing

3 Shifting demographics in the United States have resulted in increased pressure for service providers to meet the needs of all children and families in a culturally sensitive manner. In many cases, community-level changes have overwhelmed the capacity of local child care providers and health service workers to respond to the language barriers and cultural parenting practices of the newly arriving immigrant groups, particularly if they have endured trauma. For example, many U.S. communities have worked to address the needs of the growing Hispanic population, but it has been documented that in some cases, eligible Latinos are “less likely to access available social services than other populations” ( Helms et al., 2015 ; Wildsmith et al., 2016 ).

strategies ( Crosnoe, 2006 ; Fuller and García Coll, 2010 ; Galindo and Fuller, 2010 ; Suárez-Orozco et al., 2010 ; Takanishi, 2004 ). Immigrants often bring valuable social and human capital to the United States, including unique competencies and sociocultural strengths. Indeed, many young immigrant children display health and learning outcomes better than those of children of native-born parents in similar socioeconomic positions ( Crosnoe, 2013 ). At the same time, however, children with immigrant parents are more likely than children in native-born families to grow up poor ( Hernandez et al., 2008 , 2012 ; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2015 ; Raphael and Smolensky, 2009 ). Immigrant parents’ efforts to raise healthy children also can be thwarted by barriers to integration that include language, documentation, and discrimination ( Hernandez et al., 2012 ; Yoshikawa, 2011 ).

The increase in the nation’s racial and ethnic diversity over the past several decades, related in part to immigration, is a trend that is expected to continue ( Colby and Ortman, 2015 ; Taylor, 2014 ). Between 2000 and 2010, the percentage of Americans identifying as black, Hispanic, Asian, or “other” increased from 15 percent to 36 percent of the population ( U.S. Census Bureau, 2011 ). Over this same time, the percentage of non-Hispanic white children under age 10 declined from 60 percent to 52 percent, while the percentage of Hispanic ethnicity (of any race) grew from about 19 percent to 25 percent ( U.S. Census Bureau, 2011 ); the percentages of black/African American, American Indian/Alaska Native, and Asian children under age 10 remained relatively steady (at about 15%, 1%, and 4-5%, respectively); and the percentages of children in this age group identifying as two or more races increased from 3 percent to 5 percent ( U.S. Census Bureau, 2011 ).

The above-noted shifts in the demographic landscape with regard to family structure, including increases in divorce rates and cohabitation, new types of parental relationships, and the involvement of grandparents and other relatives in the raising of children ( Cancian and Reed, 2008 ; Fremstad and Boteach, 2015 ), have implications for how best to support families. Between 1960 and 2014, the percentage of children under age 18 who lived with two married parents (biological, nonbiological, or adoptive) decreased from approximately 85 percent to 64 percent. In 1960, 8 percent of children lived in households headed by single mothers; by 2014, that figure had tripled to about 24 percent ( Child Trends Databank, 2015b ; U.S. Census Bureau, 2016 ). Meanwhile, the proportions of children living with only their fathers or with neither parent (with either relatives or non-relatives) have remained relatively steady since the mid-1980s, at about 4 percent (see Figure 1-2 ). Black children are significantly more likely to live in households headed by single mothers and also are more likely to live in households where neither parent is present. In 2014, 34 percent of black

children lived with two parents, compared with 58 percent of Hispanic children, 75 percent of white children, and 85 percent of Asian children ( Child Trends Databank, 2015b ).

From 1996 to 2015, the number of cohabiting couples with children rose from 1.2 million to 3.3 million ( Child Trends Databank, 2015b ). Moreover, data from the National Health Interview Survey show that in 2013, 30,000 children under age 18 had married same-sex parents and 170,000 had unmarried same-sex parents, and between 1.1 and 2.0 million were being raised by a parent who identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual but was not part of a couple ( Gates, 2014 ).

More families than in years past rely on kinship care (full-time care of children by family members other than parents or other adults with whom children have a family-like relationship). When parents are unable to care for their children because of illness, military deployment, incarceration, child abuse, or other reasons, kinship care can help cultivate familial and community bonds, as well as provide children with a sense of stability and belonging ( Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2012 ; Winokur et al., 2014 ). It is estimated that the number of children in kinship care grew six times the rate of the number of children in the general population over the past decade ( Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2012 ). In 2014, 7 percent of children lived in households headed by grandparents, as compared with 3 percent in 1970 ( Child Trends Databank, 2015b ), and as of 2012, about 10 percent of American children lived in a household where a grandparent was present ( Ellis and Simmons, 2014 ). Black children are twice as likely as the overall population of children to live in kinship arrangements, with about 20 percent of black children spending time in kinship care at some point

during their childhood ( Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2012 ). Beyond kinship care, about 400,000 U.S. children under age 18 are in foster care with about one-quarter of these children living with relatives ( Child Trends Databank, 2015c ). Of the total number of children in foster care, 7 percent are under age 1, 33 percent are ages 1-5, and 23 percent are ages 6-10 ( Child Trends Databank, 2015c ). Other information about the structure of American families is more difficult to come by. For example, there is a lack of data with which to assess trends in the number of children who are raised by extended family members through informal arrangements as opposed to through the foster care system.

As noted earlier, fathers, including biological fathers and other male caregivers, have historically been underrepresented in parenting research despite their essential role in the development of young children. Young children with involved and nurturing fathers develop better linguistic and cognitive skills and capacities, including academic readiness, and are more emotionally secure and have better social connections with peers as they get older ( Cabrera and Tamis-LeMonda, 2013 ; Harris and Marmer, 1996 ; Lamb, 2004 ; Pruett, 2000 ; Rosenberg and Wilcox, 2006 ; Yeung et al., 2000 ). Conversely, children with disengaged fathers have been found to be more likely to develop behavioral problems ( Amato and Rivera, 1999 ; Ramchandani et al., 2013 ). With both societal shifts in gender roles and increased attention to fathers’ involvement in childrearing in recent years, fathers have assumed greater roles in the daily activities associated with raising young children, such as preparing and eating meals with them, reading to and playing and talking with them, and helping them with homework ( Bianchi et al., 2007 ; Cabrera et al., 2011 ; Jones and Mosher, 2013 ; Livingston and Parker, 2011 ). In two-parent families, 16 percent of fathers were stay-at-home parents in 2012, compared with 10 percent in 1989; 21 percent of these fathers stayed home specifically to care for their home or family, up from 5 percent in 1989 ( Livingston, 2014 ). At the same time, however, fewer fathers now live with their biological children because of increases in nonmarital childbearing (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015).

In addition, as alluded to earlier, parents of young children face trans-formative changes in technology that can have a strong impact on parenting and family life ( Collier, 2014 ). Research conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows that, relative to other household configurations, married parents with children under age 18 use the Internet and cell phones, own computers, and adopt broadband at higher rates ( Duggan and Lenhart, 2015 ). Other types of households, however, such as single-parent and unmarried multiadult households, also show high usage of technology, particularly text messaging and social media ( Smith, 2015 ). Research by the Pew Research Center (2014) shows that many parents—25 percent in

one survey ( Duggan et al., 2015 )—view social media as a useful source of parenting information.

At the same time, however, parents also are saturated with information and faced with the difficulty of distinguishing valid information from fallacies and myths about raising children ( Aubrun and Grady, 2003 ; Center on Media and Human Development, 2014 ; Dworkin et al., 2013 ; Future of Children, 2008 ). Given the number and magnitude of innovations in media and communications technologies, parents may struggle with understanding the optimal use of technology in the lives of their children.

Despite engagement with Internet resources, parents still report turning to family, friends, and physicians more often than to online sources such as Websites, blogs, and social network sites for parenting advice ( Center on Media and Human Development, 2014 ). Although many reports allude to the potentially harmful effects of media and technology, parents generally do not report having many concerns or family conflicts regarding their children’s media use. On the other hand, studies have confirmed parents’ fears about an association between children’s exposure to violence in media and increased anxiety ( Funk, 2005 ), desensitization to violence ( Engelhardt et al., 2011 ), and aggression ( Willoughby et al., 2012 ). And although the relationship between media use and childhood obesity is challenging to disentangle, studies have found that children who spend more time with media are more likely to be overweight than children who do not (see Chapter 2 ) ( Bickham et al., 2013 ; Institute of Medicine, 2011 ; Kaiser Family Foundation, 2004 ).

The benefits of the information age have included reduced barriers to knowledge for both socially advantaged and disadvantaged groups. Yet despite rapidly decreasing costs of many technologies (e.g., smartphones, tablets, and computers), parents of lower socioeconomic position and from racial and ethnic minority groups are less likely to have access to and take advantage of these resources ( Center on Media and Human Development, 2014 ; File and Ryan, 2014 ; Institute of Medicine, 2006 ; Perrin and Duggan, 2015 ; Smith, 2015 ; Viswanath et al., 2012 ). A digital divide also exists between single-parent and two-parent households, as the cost of a computer and monthly Internet service can be more of a financial burden for the former families, which on average have lower household incomes ( Allen and Rainie, 2002 ; Dworkin et al., 2013 ).

STUDY APPROACH

The committee’s approach to its charge consisted of a review of the evidence in the scientific literature and several other information-gathering activities.

Evidence Review

The committee conducted an extensive review of the scientific literature pertaining to the questions raised in its statement of task ( Box 1-2 ). It did not undertake a full review of all parenting-related studies because it was tasked with providing a targeted report that would direct stakeholders to best practices and succinctly capture the state of the science. The committee’s literature review entailed English-language searches of databases including, but not limited to, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Medline, the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), PsycINFO, Scopus, and Web of Science. Additional literature and other resources were identified by committee members and project staff using traditional academic research methods and online searches. The committee focused its review on research published in peer-reviewed journals and books (including individual studies, review articles, and meta-analyses), as well as reports issued by government agencies and other organizations. The committee’s review was concentrated primarily, although not entirely, on research conducted in the United States, occasionally drawing on research from other Western countries (e.g., Germany and Australia), and rarely on research from other countries.

In reviewing the literature and formulating its conclusions and recommendations, the committee considered several, sometimes competing, dimensions of empirical work: internal validity, external validity, practical significance, and issues of implementation, such as scale-up with fidelity ( Duncan et al., 2007 ; McCartney and Rosenthal, 2000 ; Rosenthal and Rosnow, 2007 ).

With regard to internal validity , the committee viewed random-assignment experiments as the primary model for establishing cause- and-effect relationships between variables with manipulable causes (e.g., Rosenthal and Rosnow, 2007 ; Shadish et al., 2001 ). Given the relatively limited body of evidence from experimental studies in the parenting literature, however, the committee also considered findings from quasi-experimental studies (including those using regression discontinuity, instrumental variables, and difference-in-difference techniques based on natural experiments) ( Duncan et al., 2007 ; Foster, 2010 ; McCartney et al., 2006 ) and from observational studies, a method that can be used to test logical propositions inherent to causal inference, rule out potential sources of bias, and assess the sensitivity of results to assumptions regarding study design and measurement. These include longitudinal studies and limited cross-sectional studies. Although quasi- and nonexperimental studies may fail to meet the “gold standard” of randomized controlled trials for causal inference, studies with a variety of internal validity strengths and weaknesses can collectively provide useful evidence on causal influences ( Duncan et al., 2014 ).

When there are different sources of evidence, often with some differences in estimates of the strength of the evidence, the committee used its collective experience to integrate the information and draw reasoned conclusions.

With regard to external validity , the committee attempted to take into account the extent to which findings can be generalized across population groups and situations. This entailed considering the demographic, socioeconomic, and other characteristics of study participants; whether variables were assessed in the real-world contexts in which parents and children live (e.g., in the home, school, community); whether study findings build the knowledge base with regard to both efficacy (i.e., internal validity in highly controlled settings) and effectiveness (i.e., positive net treatment effects in ecologically valid settings); and issues of cultural competence ( Bracht and Glass, 1968 ; Bronfenbrenner, 2009 ; Cook and Campbell, 1979 ; Harrison and List, 2004 ; Lerner et al., 2000 ; Rosenthal and Rosnow, 2007 ; Whaley and Davis, 2007 ). However, the research literature is limited in the extent to which generalizations across population groups and situations are examined.

With regard to practical significance , the committee considered the magnitude of likely causal impacts within both an empirical context (i.e., measurement, design, and method) and an economic context (i.e., benefits relative to costs), and with attention to the salience of outcomes (e.g., how important an outcome is for promoting child well-being) ( Duncan et al., 2007 ; McCartney and Rosenthal, 2000 ). As discussed elsewhere in this report, however, the committee found limited economic evidence with which to draw conclusions about investing in interventions at scale or to weigh the costs and benefits of interventions. (See the discussion of other information-gathering activities below.) Also with respect to practical significance, the committee considered the manipulability of the variables under consideration in real-world contexts, given that the practical significance of study results depend on whether the variables examined are represented or experienced commonly or uncommonly among particular families ( Fabes et al., 2000 ).

Finally, the committee took into account issues of implementation , such as whether interventions can be brought to and sustained at scale ( Durlak and DuPre, 2008 ; Halle et al., 2013 ). Experts in the field of implementation science emphasize not only the evidence behind programs but also the fundamental roles of scale-up, dissemination planning, and program monitoring and evaluation. Scale-up in turn requires attending to the ability to implement adaptive program practices in response to heterogeneous, real-world contexts, while also ensuring fidelity for the potent levers of change or prevention ( Franks and Schroeder, 2013 ). Thus, the committee relied on both evidence on scale-up, dissemination, and sustainability from empirically based programs and practices that have been implemented and

evaluated, and more general principles of implementation science, including considerations of capacity and readiness for scale-up and sustainability at the macro (e.g., current national politics) and micro (e.g., community resources) levels.

The review of the evidence conducted for this study, especially pertaining to strategies that work at the universal, targeted, and intensive levels to strengthen parenting capacity (questions 2 and 3 from the committee’s statement of task [ Box 1-2 ]), also entailed searches of several databases that, applying principles similar to those described above, assess the strength of the evidence for parenting-related programs and practices: the National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices (NREPP), supported by SAMHSA; the California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare (CEBC), which is funded by the state of California; and Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development, which has multiple funding sources. Although each of these databases is unique with respect to its history, sponsors, and objectives (NREPP covers mental health and substance abuse interventions, CEBC is focused on evidence relevant to child welfare, and Blueprints describes programs designed to promote the health and well-being of children), all are recognized nationally and internationally and undergo a rigorous review process.

The basic principles of evaluation and classification and the processes for classification of evidence-based practices are common across NREPP, CEBC, and Blueprints. Each has two top categories—optimal and promising—for programs and practices (see Appendix B ; see also Burkhardt et al., 2015 ; Means et al., 2015 ; Mihalic and Elliot, 2015 ; Soydan et al., 2010 ). Given the relatively modest investment in research on programs for parents and young children, however, the array of programs that are highly rated remains modest. For this reason, the committee considered as programs with the most robust evidence not only those included in the top two categories of Blueprints and CEBC but also those with an average rating of 3 or higher in NREPP. The committee’s literature searches also captured well-supported programs that are excluded from these databases (e.g., because they are recent and/or have not been submitted for review) but have sound theoretical underpinnings and rely on well-recognized intervention and implementation mechanisms.

Other reputable information sources used in producing specific portions of this report were What Works for Health (within the County Health Rankings and Roadmaps Program, a joint effort of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin); the What Works Clearinghouse of the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Services; and HHS’s Home Visiting Evidence of Effectiveness (HomVEE) review.

In addition, the committee chose to consider findings from research using methodological approaches that are emerging as a source of innovation and improvement. These approaches are gaining momentum in parent-

ing research and are being developed and funded by the federal government and private philanthropy. Examples are breakthrough series collaborative approaches, such as the Home Visiting Collaborative Innovation and Improvement Network to Reduce Infant Mortality, and designs such as factorial experiments that have been used to address topics relevant to this study.

Other Information-Gathering Activities

The committee held two open public information-gathering sessions to hear from researchers, practitioners, parents, and other stakeholders on topics germane to this study and to supplement the expertise of the committee members (see Appendix A for the agendas of these open sessions). Material from these open sessions is referenced in this report where relevant.

As noted above, the committee’s task included making recommendations related to promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective strategies for supporting parents and the salient knowledge, attitudes, and practices. Cost is an important consideration for the implementation of parenting programs at scale. Therefore, the committee commissioned a paper reviewing the available economic evidence for investing in parenting programs at scale to inform its deliberations on this portion of its charge. Findings and excerpts from this paper are integrated throughout Chapters 3 through 6 . The committee also commissioned a second paper summarizing evidence-based strategies used by health care systems and providers to help parents acquire and sustain knowledge, attitudes, and practices that promote healthy child development. The committee drew heavily on this paper in developing sections of the report on universal/preventive and targeted interventions for parents in health care settings. Lastly, a commissioned paper on evidence-based strategies to support parents of children with mental illness formed the basis for a report section on this population. 4

In addition, the committee conducted two sets of group and individual semistructured interviews with parents participating in family support programs at community-based organizations in Omaha, Nebraska, and Washington, D.C. Parents provided feedback on the strengths they bring to parenting, challenges they face, how services for parents can be improved, and ways they prefer to receive parenting information, among other topics. Excerpts from these interviews are presented throughout this report as “Parent Voices” to provide real-world examples of parents’ experiences and to supplement the discussion of particular concepts and the committee’s findings.

4 The papers commissioned by the committee are in the public access file for the study and can be requested at https://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/ManageRequest.aspx?key=49669 [October 2016].

TERMINOLOGY AND STUDY PARAMETERS

As specified in the statement of task for this study ( Box 1-2 ), the term “parents” refers in this report to those individuals who are the primary caregivers of young children in the home. Therefore, the committee reviewed studies that involved not only biolofical and adoptive parents but also relative/kinship providers (e.g., grandparents), stepparents, foster parents, and other types of caregivers, although research is sparse on unique issues related to nontraditional caregivers. The terms “knowledge,” “attitudes,” and “practices” and the relationships among them were discussed earlier in this chapter, and further detail can be found in Chapter 2 ).

The committee recognized that to a certain degree, ideas about what is considered effective parenting vary across cultures and ecological conditions, including economies, social structures, religious beliefs, and moral values ( Cushman, 1995 ). To address this variation, and in accordance with its charge, the committee examined research on how core parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices differ by specific characteristics of children, parents, and contexts. However, because the research on parenting has traditionally underrepresented several populations (e.g., caregivers other than mothers), the evidence on which the committee could draw to make these comparisons was limited.

The committee interpreted “evidence-based/informed strategies” very broadly as ranging from teaching a specific parenting skill, to manualized parenting programs, to policies that may affect parenting. The term “interventions” is generally used in this report to refer to all types of strategies, while more specific terms (e.g., “program,” “well-child care”) are used to refer to particular types or sets of interventions. Also, recognizing that nearly every facet of society has a role to play in supporting parents and ensuring that children realize their full potential, the committee reviewed not only strategies designed expressly for parents (e.g., parenting skills training) but also, though to a lesser degree, programs and policies not designed specifically for parents that may nevertheless affect an individual’s capacity to parent (e.g., food assistance and housing programs, health care policies).

As noted earlier in this chapter, this report was informed by a life-course perspective on parenting, given evidence from neuroscience and a range of related research that the early years are a critical period in shaping how individuals fare throughout their lives. The committee also aimed to take a strengths/assets-based approach (e.g., to identify strategies that build upon the existing assets of parents), although the extent to which this approach could be applied was limited by the paucity of research examining parenting from this perspective.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

A number of principles guided this study. First, following the ideas of Dunst and Espe-Sherwindt (2016) , the distinction between two types of family-centered practices—relational and participatory—informed the committee’s thinking. Relational practices are those focused primarily on intervening with families using compassion, active and reflective listening, empathy, and other techniques. Participatory practices are those that actively engage families in decision making and aim to improve families’ capabilities. In addition, family-centered practices focused on the context of successful parenting are a key third form of support for parenting. A premise of the committee is that many interventions with the most troubled families and children will require all these types of services—often delivered concurrently over a lengthy period of time.

Second, many programs are designed to serve families at particular risk for problems related to cognitive and social-emotional development, health, and well-being. Early Head Start and Head Start, for example, are means tested and designed for low-income families most of whom are known to face not just one risk factor (low income) but also others that often cluster together (e.g., living in dangerous neighborhoods, exposure to trauma, social isolation, unfamiliarity with the dominant culture or language). Special populations addressed in this report typically are at very high risk because of this exposure to multiple risk factors. Research has shown that children in such families have the poorest outcomes, in some instances reaching a level of toxic stress that seriously impairs their developmental functioning ( Shonkoff and Garner, 2012 ). Of course, in addition to characterizing developmental risk, it is essential to understand the corresponding adaptive processes and protective factors, as it is the balance of risk and protective factors that determines outcomes. In many ways, supporting parents is one way to attempt to change that balance.

From an intervention point of view, several principles are central. First, intervention strategies need to be designed to have measurable effects over time and to be sustainable. Second, it is necessary to focus on the needs of individual families and to tailor interventions to achieve desired outcomes. The importance of personalized approaches is widely acknowledged in medicine, education, and other areas. An observation perhaps best illustrated in the section on parents of children with developmental disabilities in Chapter 5 , although the committee believes this approach applies to many of the programs described in this report. A corresponding core principle of intervention is viewing parents as equal partners, experts in what both they and their children need. It is important as well that multiple kinds of services for families be integrated and coordinated. As illustrated earlier

in Box 1-1 , families may be receiving interventions from multiple sources delivered in different places, making coordination all the more important.

A useful framework for thinking about interventions is described in the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine (2009) report Preventing Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders among Young People . Prevention interventions encompass mental health promotion: universal prevention, defined as interventions that are valuable for all children; selected prevention, aimed at populations at high risk (such as children whose parents have mental illness); and indicated prevention, focused on children already manifesting symptoms. Treatment interventions include case identification, standard treatment for known disorders, accordance of long-term treatment with the goal of reduction in relapse or occurrence, and aftercare and rehabilitation ( National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2009 ).

The committee recognizes that engaging and retaining children and families in parenting interventions are critical challenges. A key to promoting such engagement may be cultural relevance. Families representing America’s diverse array of cultures, languages, and experiences are likely to derive the greatest benefit from interventions designed and implemented to allow for flexibility.

Finally, the question of widespread implementation and dissemination of parenting interventions is critically important. Given the cost of testing evidence-based parenting programs, the development of additional programs needs to be built on the work that has been done before. Collectively, interventions also are more likely to achieve a significant level of impact if they incorporate some of the elements of prior interventions. In any case, a focus on the principles of implementation and dissemination clearly is needed. As is discussed in this report, the committee calls for more study and experience with respect to taking programs to scale.

REPORT ORGANIZATION

This report is divided into eight chapters. Chapter 2 examines desired outcomes for children and reviews the existing research on parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices that support positive parent-child interactions and child outcomes. Based on the available research, this chapter identifies a set of core knowledge, attitudes, and practices. Chapter 3 provides a brief overview of some of the major federally funded programs and policies that support parents in the United States. Chapters 4 and 5 describe evidence-based and evidence-informed strategies for supporting parents and enabling the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices, including universal and widely used interventions ( Chapter 4 ) and interventions targeted to parents of children with special needs and parents who themselves face adversities

( Chapter 5 ). Chapter 6 reviews elements of effective programs for strengthening parenting capacity and parents’ participation and retention in effective programs and systems. Chapter 7 describes a national framework for supporting parents of young children. Finally, Chapter 8 presents the committee’s conclusions and recommendations for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective intervention strategies and parenting practices linked to healthy child outcomes, as well as areas for future research.

Ainsworth, M.D.S., and Bell, S.M. (1970). Attachment, exploration, and separation: Illustrated by the behavior of one-year-olds in a strange situation. Child Development, 41 (1), 49-67.

Allen, K., and Rainie, L. (2002). Parents Online. Available: http://www.pewinternet.org/2002/11/17/parents-online/ [October 2016].

Amato, P.R., and Rivera, F. (1999). Paternal involvement and children’s behavior problems. Journal of Marriage and Family, 61 (2), 375-384.

Annie E. Casey Foundation. (2012). Stepping Up for Kids: What Government and Communities Should Do to Support Kinship Families . Available: http://www.issuelab.org/permalink/resource/12484 [October 2016].

Aubrun, A., and Grady, J. (2003). Two Cognitive Obstacles to Preventing Child Abuse: The “Other Mind” Mistake and the “Family Bubble . ” Washington, DC: Cultural Logic.

Barnett, W.S., Carolan, M.E., Squires, J.H., Brown, K.C., and Horowitz, M. (2015). The State of Preschool 2014 . New Brunswick, NJ: National Institute for Early Education Research, Rutgers Graduate School of Education.

Bianchi, S.M., Robinson, J.P., and Milkie, M.A. (2007). Changing Rhythms of American Family Life: Table 4.1 . New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Bickham, D.S., Blood, E.A., Walls, C.E., Shrier, L.A., and Rich, M. (2013). Characteristics of screen media use associated with higher BMI in young adolescents. Pediatrics, 131 (5), 935-941.

Bornstein, M.H. (1991). Cultural Approaches to Parenting (The Crosscurrents in Contemporary Psychology Series) . Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Bowlby, J. (1978). Attachment theory and its therapeutic implications. Adolescent Psychiatry, 6 , 5-33.

Bowlby, J. (2008). A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development . New York: Basic Books.

Bracht, G.H., and Glass, G.V. (1968). The external validity of experiments. American Educational Research Journal, 5 (4), 437-474.

Bradley, R.H., and Corwyn, R.F. (2004). “Family process” investments that matter for child well-being. In A. Kalil and T.C. DeLeire (Eds.), Family Investments in Children’s Potential Resources and Parenting Behaviors That Promote Success (pp. 1-32). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Bronfenbrenner, U. (2009). The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Burkhardt, J.T., Schroter, D.C., Magura, S., Means, S.N., and Coryn, C.L.S. (2015). An overview of evidence-based program registers (EBPRs) for behavioral health. Evaluation and Program Planning, 48 , 92-99.

Cabrera, N., and Tamis-LeMonda, C. (2013). Handbook of Father Involvement: Multidisciplinary Perspective (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Routledge.

Cabrera, N. J., Hofferth, S. L, and Chae, S. (2011). Patterns and predictors of father-infant engagement across race/ethnic groups. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 26 (3), 365-375.

Cancian, M., and Reed, D. (2008). Family Structure, Childbearing, and Parental Employment Implications for the Level and Trend in Poverty . Madison: University of Wisconsin-Madison, Institute for Research on Poverty.

Center on Media and Human Development. (2014). Parenting in the Age of Digital Technology: A National Survey . Evanston, IL: Northwestern University.

Center on the Developing Child. (2007). A Science-Based Framework for Early Childhood Policy: Using Evidence to Improve Outcomes in Learning, Behavior, and Health for Vulnerable Children . Cambridge, MA: Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University.

Chen, F.M., Lin, H.S., and Li, C.H. (2012). The role of emotion in parent-child relationships: Children’s emotionality, maternal meta-emotion, and children’s attachment security. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 21 (3), 403-410.

Child Trends Databank. (2015a). Children in Poverty . Available: http://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=children-in-poverty [May 2016].

Child Trends Databank. (2015b). Family Structure . Available: http://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=family-structure [October 2016].

Child Trends Databank. (2015c). Foster Care . Available: http://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=foster-care [May 2016].

Colby, S., and Ortman, L. (2015). Projections of the Size and Composition of the U.S. Population: 2014 to 2060. Available: http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p25-1143.pdf [May 2016].

Collier, A. (2014). Perspectives on parenting in a digital age. In A.B. Jordan and D. Romer (Eds.), Media and the Well-Being of Children and Adolescents (pp. 247-265). New York: Oxford University Press.

Cook, T.D., and Campbell, D.T. (1979). Quasi-Experimentation: Design & Analysis Issues for Field Settings . Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Crosnoe, R. (2006). Mexican Roots, American Schools: Helping Mexican Immigrant Children Succeed . Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.

Crosnoe, R. (2013). Preparing the Children of Immigrants for Early Academic Success . Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute.

Cushman, P. (1995). Constructing the Self, Constructing America: A Cultural History of Psychotherapy . Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley.

DeNavas-Walt, C., and Proctor, B.D. (2014). Current Population Reports: Income and Poverty in the United States: 2013 . Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau.

Duggan, M., and Lenhart, A. (2015). Parents and Social Media: Mothers are Especially Likely to Give and Receive Support on Social Media . Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.

Duggan, M., Lenhart, A., Lampe, C., and Ellison, N.B. (2015). Parents and Social Media . Available: http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/07/16/parents-and-social-media/#fn-13802-1 [October 2016].

Duncan, G.J., Ludwig, J., and Magnuson, K.A. (2007). Reducing poverty through preschool interventions. The Future of Children, 17 (2), 143-160.

Duncan, G.J., Engel, M., Claessens, A., and Dowsett, C.J. (2014). Replication and robustness in developmental research. Developmental Psychology, 50 (11), 2417-2425.

Dunst, C.J., and Espe-Sherwindt, M. (2016). Family-centered practices in early intervention. In B. Reichow, B. Boyd, E. Barton, and S. Odom (Eds.), Handbook of Early Childhood Special Education . New York: Springer.

Durlak, J.A., and DuPre, E.P. (2008). Implementation matters: A review of research on the influence of implementation on program outcomes and the factors affecting implementation. American Journal of Community Psychology, 41 (3-4), 327-350.

Dworkin, J., Connell, J., and Doty, J. (2013). A literature review of parents’ online behavior. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychological Research on Cyberspace, 7 , 2.

Ellis, R.R., and Simmons, T. (2014). Coresident Grandparents and Their Grandchildren: 2012 . Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau.

Engelhardt, C.R., Bartholow, B.D., Kerr, G.T., and Bushman, B.J. (2011). This is your brain on violent video games: Neural desensitization to violence predicts increased aggression following violent video game exposure. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47 (5), 1033-1036.

Fabes, R.A., Martin, C.L., Hanish, L.D., and Updegraff, K.A. (2000). Criteria for evaluating the significance of developmental research in the twenty-first century: Force and counter-force. Child Development, 71 (1), 212-221.

File, T., and Ryan, C. (2014). Computer and Internet Use in the United States: 2013 . American Community Survey Reports, ACS-28. Available: https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/2013computeruse.pdf [October 2016].

Foster, E.M. (2010). Causal inference and developmental psychology. Developmental Psychology, 46 (6), 1454-1480.

Franks, R.P., and Schroeder, J. (2013). Implementation science: What do we know and where do we go from here? In T. Halle, A. Metz, and I. Martinez-Beck (Eds.), Applying Implementation Science in Early Childhood Programs and Systems (pp. 5-20). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.

Fremstad, S., and Boteach, M. (2015). Valuing All Our Families: Progressive Policies That Strengthen Family Commitments and Reduce Family Disparities . Washington, DC: Center for American Progress.

Fuller, B., and García Coll, C. (2010). Learning from Latinos: Contexts, families, and child development in motion. Developmental Psychology, 46 (3), 559-565.

Funk, J.B. (2005). Video games. Adolescent Medicine Clinics, 16 (2), 395-411.

Future of Children. (2008). Parenting in a Media-Saturated World . Available: http://www.futureofchildren.org/futureofchildren/publications/highlights/18_01_highlights_05.pdf [October 2016].

Galindo, C., and Fuller, B. (2010). The social competence of Latino kindergartners and growth in mathematical understanding. Developmental Psychology, 46 (3), 579-592.

Gates, G.J. (2014). LGB Families and Relationships: Analyses of the 2013 National Health Interview Survey . Available: http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/lgbfamilies-nhis-sep-2014.pdf [May 2016].

Grieco, E.M., Trevelyan, E., Larsen, L., Acosta, Y.D., Gambino, C., de la Cruz, P., Gryn, T., and Walters, N. (2012). The Size, Place of Birth, and Geographic Distribution of the Foreign-Born Population in the United States: 1960 to 2010 . Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau.

Ha, Y., Magnuson, K., and Ybarra, M. (2012). Patterns of child care subsidy receipt and the stability of child care. Children and Youth Services Review, 34 (9), 1834-1844.

Halle, T., Metz, A., and Martinez-Beck, I. (Eds.). (2013). Applying Implementation Science in Early Childhood Programs and Systems . Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.

Harris, K.M., and Marmer, J.K. (1996). Poverty, paternal involvement, and adolescent well-being. Journal of Family Issues, 17 (5), 614-640.

Harrison, G.W., and List, J.A. (2004). Field experiments. Journal of Economic Literature, 42 (4), 1009-1055.

Helms, H.M., Hengstebeck, N.D., Rodriguez, Y., Mendez, J.L., and Crosby, D.A. (2015). Mexican Immigrant Family Life in a Pre-Emerging Southern Gateway Community. National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families. Available: http://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Hispanic-Center-Unidos-Report.pdf [May 2016].

Hernandez, D.J., Denton, N.A., and Macartney, S.E. (2008). Children in immigrant families: Looking to America’s future. Society for Research in Child Development , 22 (3), 3-22.

Hernandez, D.J., Macartney, S., and Cervantes, W. (2012). Measuring social disparities via the CWI: Race-ethnicity, income, and immigrant status. In K.C. Land (Ed.), The Well-Being of America’s Children (vol. 6, pp. 77-120). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.

Holmes, J. (2006). John Bowlby and Attachment Theory . New York: Routledge.

Institute of Medicine. (2006). Examining the Health Disparities Research Plan of the National Institutes of Health: Unfinished Business . G.E. Thomson, F. Mitchell, and M. Williams (Eds.). Board on Health Sciences Policy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Institute of Medicine. (2011). Early Childhood Obesity Prevention Policies . L.L. Birch, L. Parker, and A. Burns (Eds.). Committee on Obesity Prevention Policies for Young Children. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. (2015). Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation . L. Allen and B.B. Kelly (Eds.). Committee on the Science of Children Birth to Age 8: Deepening and Broadening the Foundation for Success; Board on Children, Youth, and Families. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Jones, J., and Mosher, W.D. (2013). Fathers’ involvement with their children: United States, 2006-2010. National Health Statistics Reports, 71 , 1-22.

Kalil, A., and DeLeire, T. (Eds.). (2004). Family Investments in Children: Resources and Parenting Behaviors That Promote Success . Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Kaiser Family Foundation. (2004). The Role of Media in Childhood Obesity. Available: https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/the-role-of-media-in-childhood-obesity.pdf [October 2016].

Karoly, L.A., Kilburn, M.R., and Cannon, J.S. (2005). Early Childhood Interventions: Proven Results, Future Promise . Available: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG341.pdf [May 2016].

Lamb, M.E. (2004). The Role of the Father in Child Development (4th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Lee, S., Aos, S., and Pennucci, A. (2015). What Works and What Does Not? Benefit-Cost Findings from the Washington State Institute for Public Policy. Doc. No. 15-02-4101. Olympia: Washington State Institute for Public Policy.

Lerner, R.M., Fisher, C.B., and Weinberg, R.A. (2000). Toward a science for and of the people: Promoting civil society through the application of developmental science. Child Development, 71 (1), 11-20.

Lipinia, S.J., and Segretin, M.S. (2015). Strengths and weakness of neuroscientific investigations of childhood poverty: Future directions. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9 (53), 1-5.

Livingston, G. (2014). Growing Number of Dads Home with the Kids . Available: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/06/05/growing-number-of-dads-home-with-the-kids/ [October 2016].

Livingston, G., and Parker, K. (2011). A Tale of Two Fathers: More Are Active, but More Are Absent . Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.

Main, M., and Cassidy, J. (1988). Categories of response to reunion with the parent at age 6: Predictable from infant attachment classifications and stable over a 1-month period. Developmental Psychology, 24 (3), 415-426.

McCartney, K., and Rosenthal, R. (2000). Effect size, practical importance, and social policy for children. Child Development, 71 (1), 173-180.

McCartney, K., Burchinal, M., and Bub, K.L. (2006). Best practices in quantitative methods for developmentalists. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 7 (3), 1-150.

Means, S.N., Magura, S., Burkhardt, J.T., Schroter, D.C., and Coryn, C.L.S. (2015). Comparing rating paradigms for evidence-based program registers in behavioral health: Evidentiary criteria and implications for assessing programs. Evaluation and Program Planning Evaluation and Program Planning, 48 (1), 100-116.

Migration Policy Institute. (2016). U.S. Immigration Trends . Available: http://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/us-immigration-trends#children [June 2016].

Mihalic, S.F., and Elliott, D.S. (2015). Evidence-based programs registry: Blueprints for healthy youth development. Evaluation and Program Planning Evaluation and Program Planning, 48 (4), 124-131.

Murphy, T.P., and Laible, D.J. (2013). The influence of attachment security on preschool children’s empathic concern. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 37 (5), 436-440.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2015). The Integration of Immigrants into American Society . Panel on the Integration of Immigrants into American Society, M.C. Waters and M.G. Pineau, Eds. Committee on Population, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/21746.

National Research Council and Institute of Medicine. (2000). From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development. J.P. Shonkoff and D.A. Phillips (Eds.). Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development. Board on Children, Youth, and Families; Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

National Research Council and Institute of Medicine. (2009). Preventing Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders among Young People: Progress and Possibilities . M.E. O’Connell, T. Boat, and K.E. Warner (Eds.). Committee on the Prevention of Mental Disorders and Substance Abuse Among Children, Youth and Young Adults: Research Advances and Promising Interventions; Board on Children, Youth and Families; Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Nelson, C.A. (2000). The neurobiological bases of early intervention. In J.P. Shonkoff and S.J. Meisels (Eds.), Handbook of Early Childhood Intervention (2nd ed., pp. 204-227). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. (2015). 2015 Poverty Guidelines . Available: http://aspe.hhs.gov/2015-poverty-guidelines [December 2, 2015].

Open session presentation. (2015). Perspectives from Parents . Presentation before the Committee on Supporting the Parents of Young Children, June 29, Irvine, CA.

Passel, J.S., and Cohn, D. (2012). Unauthorized Immigrants: 11.1 Million in 2011 . Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.

Perrin, A., and Duggan, M. (2015). Americans’ Internet Access: 2000-2015 . Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.

Pew Research Center. (2014). Internet Use Over Time . Available: http://www.pewinternet.org/data-trend/internet-use/internet-use-over-time [November 2015].

Pruett, K. (2000). Father-Need . New York: Broadway Books.

Ramchandani, P.G., Domoney, J., Sethna, V., Psychogiou, L., Vlachos, H., and Murray, L. (2013). Do early father-infant interactions predict the onset of externalising behaviours in young children? Findings from a longitudinal cohort study. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines, 54 (1), 56-64.

Raphael, S., and Smolensky, E. (2009). Immigration and poverty in the United States. The American Economic Review , 41-44.

Rosenberg, J., and Wilcox, W.B. (2006). The Importance of Fathers in the Healthy Development of Children: Fathers and Their Impact on Children’s Well-Being . Washington, DC: U.S. Children’s Bureau, Office on Child Abuse and Neglect.

Rosenthal, R., and Rosnow, R. (2007). Essentials of Behavioral Research: Methods and Data Analysis (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw Hill.

Schore, A.N. (2005). Attachment, affect regulation, and the developing right brain: Linking developmental neuroscience to pediatrics. Pediatrics in Review, 26 (6), 204-217.

Shadish, W.R., Cook, T.D., and Campbell, D.T. (2001). Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference . Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Sherman, A., and Trisi, D. (2014). Deep Poverty among Children Worsened in Welfare Law’s First Decade . Washington, DC: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Shonkoff, J.P., and Garner, A.S. (2012). The lifelong effects of early childhood adversity and toxic stress. Pediatrics, 129 (1), e232-e246.

Smith, A. (2015). U.S. Smartphone Use in 2015 . Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.

Soydan, H., Mullen, E., Alexandra, L., Rehnman, J., and Li, Y.-P. (2010). Evidence-based clearinghouses in social work. Research on Social Work Practice, 20 (6), 690-700.

Suárez-Orozco, C., Suárez-Orozco, M.M., and Todorova, I. (2008). Learning a New Land: Immigrant Students in American Society . Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Suárez-Orozco, C., Gaytán, F.X., and Kim, H.Y. (2010). Facing the challenges of educating Latino immigrant origin youth. In S. McHale and A. Booth (Eds.), Growing up Hispanic: Health & Development of Children (pp. 189-239). Washington, DC: The Urban Institute.

Taylor, P. (2014). The Next America. Available: http://www.pewresearch.org/next-america/#Two-Dramas-in-Slow-Motion [May 2016].

Takanishi, R. (2004). Leveling the playing field: Supporting immigrant children from birth to eight. The Future of Children, 14 (2), 61-79.

U.S. Census Bureau. (2011). National Intercensal Estimates (2000-2010) . Available: http://www.census.gov/popest/data/intercensal/national/nat2010.html [February 2016].

U.S. Census Bureau. (2016). Living Arrangements of Children . Available: http://www.census.gov/hhes/families/files/graphics/CH-1.pdf [July 2016].

U.S. Department of Education. (2015). Fiscal Year 2016 Budget: Summary and Background Information . Available: http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget16/summary/16summary.pdf [October 2016].

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2015). HHS FY2016 Budget in Brief . Available: http://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/budget-in-brief/index.html [October 2016].

Viswanath, K., Nagler, R.H., Bigman-Galimore, C.A., McCauley, M.P., Jung, M., and Ramanadhan, S. (2012). The communications revolution and health inequalities in the 21st century: Implications for cancer control. Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, 21 (10), 1701-1708.

Whaley, A.L., and Davis, K.E. (2007). Cultural competence and evidence-based practice in mental health services: A complementary perspective. The American Psychologist, 62 (6), 563-574.

Wildsmith, E., Alvira-Hammond, M., and Guzman, L. (2016). A National Portrait of Hispanic Children in Need. National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families. Available: http://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/2016-15HispChildrenInNeed.pdf [May 2016].

Willoughby, T., Adachi, P.J., and Good, M. (2012). A longitudinal study of the association between violent video game play and aggression among adolescents. Developmental Psychology, 48 (4), 1044-1057.

Winokur, M., Holtan, A., and Batchelder, K.E. (2014). Kinship care for the safety, permanency, and well-being of children removed from the home for maltreatment. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews . Available: http://www.cochrane.org/CD006546/BEHAV_kinship-care-for-the-safety-permanency-and-well-being-of-maltreated-children [May 2016].

World Health Organization. (2015). 10 Facts About Early Childhood Development as a Social Determinant of Health . Available: http://www.who.int/maternal_child_adolescent/topics/child/development/10facts/en/ [October 2016].

Yeung, W.J., Duncan, G.J., and Hill, M.S. (2000). Putting fathers back in the picture: Parental activities and children’s adult outcomes. In H.E. Peters, G.W. Peterson, S.K. Steinmetz, and R.D. Day (Eds.), Fatherhood: Research, Interventions and Policies (pp. 97-113). New York: Hayworth Press.

Yoshikawa, H. (2011). Immigrants Raising Citizens: Undocumented Parents and Their Children . New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

This page intentionally left blank.

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the family—which includes all primary caregivers—are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger.

Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting.

Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

READ FREE ONLINE

Welcome to OpenBook!

You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

Show this book's table of contents , where you can jump to any chapter by name.

...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

Switch between the Original Pages , where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter .

Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

View our suggested citation for this chapter.

Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

Get Email Updates

Do you enjoy reading reports from the Academies online for free ? Sign up for email notifications and we'll let you know about new publications in your areas of interest when they're released.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PARENTS

May 21, 2022

“All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my mother.”  – Abraham Lincoln

Parents play an irreplaceable role in the lives of their children. This relationship has a profound impact on a child’s mental, physical, social and emotional development as well as their overall well-being and happiness. Parents help us in every step of our life. “Even when young children spend most of their waking hours in child-care, parents remain the most influential adults in their lives,” writes Jack Shonkoff, a board-certified pediatrician who sits on the faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “The hallmark of the parental relationship is the readily observable fact that this special adult is not interchangeable with others,“ he notes. “A child may not care about who cuts his hair or takes money at the store, but he cares a great deal about who is holding him when he is unsure, comforts him when he is hurt, and shares special moments in his life.”  The relationship between parents and their children impacts children not just in childhood but throughout their entire lifetime. It affects all areas of a child’s life, including health and development, educational progress and professional opportunities as well as life choices.

One of the main roles of parents is providing encouragement, support and access to activities that enable a child to master key developmental tasks.  A child’s learning and socialization are most influenced by their family since the family is the child’s primary social group. Providing and supporting a child with education is one of the landmarks in a child’s development.  A good education will help provide a rewarding career to the person and thereby they will positively contribute to society.  Parents are also their children’s biggest cheerleaders and give them unconditional love.  

Some of the facts about the importance of parent involvement are:

• Children who have parental support are likely to have better health as adults
• Students with involved parents tend to earn higher grades, have better social skills, and are more likely to graduate and go on to post-secondary education
• Children are more likely to be socially competent and have better communication skills when they have parents who are sensitive to their needs and emotions
• Teens who are monitored by their parents are less likely than teens with “hands-off” parents to smoke, drink and use drugs.

Maintaining a good parent-child relationship is crucial to wise parenting.  Starting right from the birth of a child, parents should always be aware of the enormous impact they have on their children’s lives.  Their impact sets the stage for raising a confident, educated and secure young adult who is ready to face the challenges of life.

Blog , Grade 6-8 , Grade 9-12 , Grade K-5 , The Many Faces of Gifted

Abraham Lincolm , Abraham Lincoln , Abraham Lincoln quote , child development , Harvard Graduate School of Education , IEA , Jack Shonkoff , parent , parent child relationship , parental involvement , pediatrician , wise parenting

GIFTED RESOURCES

Connect with Us:

© 2022 Institute for Educational Advancement | 569 South Marengo Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91101 Phone: (626) 403-8900 Fax: (626) 403-8905

Privacy Overview

Privacy Policy - Terms and Conditions

My Parents: Paragraph on Parents | 100 to 500 + Words | Their Responsibilities, Parents Health Insurance & Influence

This page provides examples of the ‘ paragraph on parents ‘, including both short and long compositions.  My Parents stand as the cornerstone of my life. Their responsibilities range from ensuring our well-being through parents health insurance to molding our character and values. 

Table of Contents

Paragraph on parents- 100 words “my parents: the foundation of my life”.

My Parents are like guiding stars, of my life. They provide guidance, love, and support while also setting boundaries. Parents play an important role in their children’s social, academic, and emotional development.  They teach their children what it means to be a good citizen and how to treat others. Parents also play an important role in their child’s education.

They can help choose the right school for their child and can encourage the child to learn. Parents can also help their children make good choices when it comes to spending their money. We should understand that parents have a lot of responsibilities and obligations.  One of the most important roles is they keep their children safe. For this they take a lot of measures like teach children them about safe driving habits, setting good examples for them, and monitoring their food habits etc.

Parents face many challenges in bringing up their children. Parenting requires a lot of time, effort, and patience. So we should be very much thankful to our parents.

Paragraph on Parents- 150 Words – Parents Responsibility: More Than Just Care and Affection

My Parents are more than just a wonderful gift in my life. Life without parents cannot be imagined. They are always very loving and caring. My father is Mr. Raj Singhania and my mother is Ms. Savitri Singhania. My father is a businessman and a great designer. He is a very kind and hardworking person. He loves me dearly and takes care of all my needs. Sometimes he brings beautiful gifts for me, he takes me out, and fills my life with happiness and joy, he even helps me with my homework.

My mother stays at home, she’s very caring too-taking care of the house, cooking tasty food for all of us, taking me to school in the morning, taking me to the park in the evening telling me interesting stories at bedtime and helping with my homework as well. I am very dear to my parents and love them dearly as well both by respecting them a lot too-I don’t know what I would do without them when I grow up-I will take care of them also.

My Parents” Paragraph on Parents- 200 Words

Parents are an a wonderful gift given to us by God . Parents provide us mental and emotional support as well as they guide us to reach our full potential. In addition, parents play a very important role in helping children learn how to behave and how to socialize. Parents also help children develop skills such as problem solving, social discipline , and self-discipline.

Parents provide children with a good environment. This enables the children to develop their skills and talents. Parents are crucial in raising children. They provide them with the love and support they need to grow into strong individuals. Parents also teach their children about morals, values, and discipline. They set an example for their children and help them learn how to be responsible for themselves.  Parents do everything they can to help their children reach their goals and live a fulfilling life.

Though the task of parenting is hard to balance like work, family, and other responsibilities, but it is worth it in the end. Parents are responsible for raising their children and giving them the best possible upbringing. So the children must understand the sacrifices of their parents and must take a great care of their parents.  

Parents Essay: The Foundation of Our Lives

Introduction

Parents responsibility goes beyond giving birth; they play a great role in shaping our life. They are responsible for their well-being, happiness and education. It is not easy to be a parent, but it is an important job. Parents should do everything they can to help their children grow up to be successful adults.

When raising children, parents remain patient and consistent. They also provide guidance and support when it is needed. They are also aware of their child’s feelings and reactions, and do what they can to encourage healthy relationships. A good relationship between a parent and child helps the child develop empathy and communication skills.

Parents sometimes have fun with their children too. There are many things that parents do together that will make the relationship stronger. One way to have fun with your child is to take them on outings or enjoy activities that they enjoy. Parents should also make time for themselves so that they can recharge and spend more time with their children in the future.

Parents Responsibility in Nurturing the Next Generation

The parents responsibility in a child’s life is paramount, guiding them through every stage. The parents provide the foundation for their child’s early development, and the child in turn benefits from this strong foundation. Parents set an example for their children and help to shape their character. They play a large role in their children’s lives by providing guidance and support throughout the years.

A child needs love and nurturing from both parents, but it is especially important that the father plays an active role in his child’s life. Studies have shown that a father’s involvement in his child’s life has a positive effect on the child’s development. Fathers offer encouragement and support, help to teach values, and provide models of how to be responsible adults.

Fathers are also often better equipped to provide guidance in areas such as academics and athletics. Fathers can provide critical feedback on their children’s school work, which can help them develop skills needed for success in life. Fathers also have an important role in helping their children develop healthy habits such as eating right and getting exercise.

Tips for communicating with your parents

Tips for communicating with your parents are explained here- Some things to keep in mind when speaking with your parents are as follows:

• Listen carefully. Make sure you give your parents the opportunity to explain what they are saying before you respond.
• Be willing to compromise. It is important that you and your parents can work together to come up with a solution that works for both of you.
• Be respectful. Do not argue with your parents or push them around. Show them respect by listening and trying to understand their point of view.

How to make your parents feel comfortable when they’re around you?

When parents are around their children, it is important for them to feel comfortable. This can be a difficult task for some parents, but there are ways to make them feel more at ease. One way to do this is to show them that you care about them and want to have a good relationship with them.

Additionally, make sure that you are honest with them and let them know what you expect from the relationship. Finally, be respectful of their time and do not monopolize their attention.

Parents Responsibility Reflected in Diverse Parenting Styles

Every parent, in their unique style, showcases their parents responsibility and beliefs in nurturing their child. There are four main parenting styles: authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and neglectful.

Authoritative parenting is when a parent takes charge and gives clear instructions to their child. This type of parenting is most common in traditional families with a father as the head of the household. Authoritative parents set boundaries and expect their children to obey them. They also often have high expectations for their children and expect them to be successful in life. Authoritative parents are usually strict with their children and may be demanding.

Authoritarian parenting is when a parent doesn’t take charge but instead gives their child lots of rules to follow. This type of parenting is often found in single-parent households or households with an absent father. Authoritarian parents give their children little choice in what they do and how they do it. They also frequently discipline their children using physical punishment or verbal abuse. Authoritarian parents are often neglectful of their children and don’t provide them with adequate resources or emotional support.

Permissive parenting is when a parent allows their child to do whatever he or she wants without any constraints. This type of parenting is found more

Parents Health Insurance: Safeguarding Children’s Development

Parents are the pillars of a child’s life. They shape their growth and future. Just as one carefully designs a parent’s room, the influence and guidance of parents are meticulously crafted for the well-being of their children. They are the first educators of their children and guide them in the formation of their personalities and character.

Parents must be patient, consistent, and loving while raising their children. Proper parenting is essential to ensure that children grow into successful adults.

Here are a few ways parents influence their children’s development:

-Parenting styles can vary greatly, but there are some common principles that all parents should follow to provide a healthy home environment for their children. These principles include setting clear expectations, providing structure and discipline, and modeling good behavior.

Children learn best when they feel safe and secure. When parents are able to establish trust with their children, they can open up communication channels that help them understand the world around them. This type of relationship is important for developing positive self-esteem and self-confidence.

Providing opportunities for exploration is another important way that parents can help their children develop intellectually. Children need to try new things in order to learn about the world around them. This can be done by exposing them to different cultures, arts and crafts, and other activities.

Parents Essay: The Significance of a Strong Bond with Children

Parenting, like parents’ medical insurance, offers protection and guidance to a child, and it is important for parents to have a good relationship with their children. A good relationship between parents and children allows for a child to develop emotionally and mentally, as well as learn how to behave appropriately.

A good relationship between parents and children can be achieved through communication, which involves sharing feelings and thoughts with one another. It is also important for parents to spend time with their children, providing them with positive reinforcement and modeling appropriate behavior. When parents model appropriate behavior for their children, they are teaching them how to behave in society.

There are many benefits that result from a good relationship between parents and children. One of the most significant benefits is that a good relationship between parents and children provides children with emotional security. When a child feels secure in his or her relationships, he or she is less likely to experience anxiety or stress.

Additionally, a good relationship between parents and children helps children develop self-esteem. When children feel confident about themselves, they are more likely to succeed in life. Furthermore, a good relationship between parents and children helps create close bonds between the family members. When families are strong, they are better

Parents Responsibility and Vision: Defining Your Parenting Style

The role of parents, much like the blueprint in parents room design, shapes and defines a child’s life. It can be challenging, but it is also incredibly rewarding. There are many different types of parents, and each has their own strengths and weaknesses. Some parents are very strict while others are more lenient. Some are very hands-on while others let their children lead more independent lives. The key is to find the parenting style that works best for you and your child.

There is no single right way to parent, and the best way to find out what works for you is to experiment. If you find that you are struggling with a certain parenting style, try to change it gradually over time. Don’t try to force things in the opposite direction; that will only create chaos and conflict. Just take small steps in the new direction, and eventually you will find yourself on the right track.

Above all else, remember that parenting is a partnership between you and your child. You should always put your child’s best interests first, and try to be as understanding as possible when they make mistakes or need help behaving correctly. Above all else, be patient and consistent with your parenting techniques, and your child will eventually

How to Raise a Good Child

Raising a good child is not as easy as it seems. There are plenty of ways to go wrong, and even more ways to go right. To help parents out, here are five tips for raising children that come from experience and observation:

1. Set high standards for your child. It’s important to have expectations for your children, and make sure they understand why these standards are important. This will help them be motivated to meet them. 2. Teach your child how to manage their emotions. it’s important that they know how to control their anger, frustration, and sadness. This will help them develop good problem-solving skills, and stay calm in difficult situations. 3. Encourage your child’s creativity and imagination. These can be powerful tools, so let your kids use them! Play with them and allow them to explore different ideas. 4. Help your child develop a healthy relationship with food. Make sure they eat plenty of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and avoid junk food and sweets completely. This will help them maintain a healthy weight throughout their lives. 5. Teach your child about respect for others. This is one of the most important lessons a child can

As a parent, it is your duty to provide the best possible environment for your children. You are their first teacher and role model, and it is your responsibility to set an example for them. It is also up to you to make sure that they have all the resources they need in order to succeed both in school and in life.

This essay will outline some of the ways that you can help ensure that your children receive the support they need from you. Thank you for reading!

Related Posts

The Role of Parents in Children’s Life Essay

Background information, bio-psych-soc analysis of mr. lopez life, personal observation and recommendations.

Mr. Manuel Lopez, a retired eighty-year-old man who was formerly in the army is now living at Sanger, California. The jovial man hardly looks his age. His mind is fresh and appears to remember every step of his life He is the last-born in a family of five.

At infancy, his father left for the United States in search for better livelihood Manuel remembers his father with a smile on his face, as he states, “He would send us money every time he had a job”. At the age of eight, when his father secured a reliable job, the family moved from Guadalajara, Mexico to Sanger, California.

The journey was challenging in a new environment with hostile tribes and local residents. Mr. Lopez shook his head as he remembered how his older brothers could protect their mother when men who would try to steal personal items from her attacked her. It seemed almost impossible to find Mr. Lopez’s father. However, after three weeks of traveling and searching, the family reunited again.

After the reunification of the family, numerous disasters attacked them. The greatest tragedy that Mr. Lopez experienced was the death of his most beloved brother, Julian. Mr. Lopez looked engrossed in his thoughts as he spoke of this brother. He explained how this deceased brother was his favorite member of the family. This brother always had time to talk and Mr. Lopez could talk about anything in his life.

Mr. Lopez’s mother was equally affected and sobbed for days without any comfort. She felt as if it was her fault travel during a sunny season that was more likely to dehydrate the children. She believed Julian had died of dehydration. The circumstances at the death of Julian could not allow the family to give him a decent burial, since they were traveling and hardly new anyone who could assist them.

Mr. Lopez along with other family members tried to dig a grave for their brother using tree branches, rocks and their hands. Despite Mr. Lopez’s time in the army since he was seventeen, he noted that the experience was horrific and unforgettable. When their father learned about the death of Julian, he could not believe it. Mr. Lopez’s father blamed their mother for the misfortune.

Despite efforts by other family members to convince their father that that was a mistaken assumption, he insisted on placing blame on Mr. Lopez’s mother. It was the start of a history of family disagreements. The father was determined to see Mr. Lopez get formal education. , After enrolling in school, financial challenges caused Mr. Lopez to leave school after only five months.

Since the age of nine, Mr. Lopez did not receive formal education until he joined the army at the age of seventeen.

Mr. Lopez started a stable relationship while in the army, with the woman he felt would become his wife. At a tender age, a committed relationship was difficult for Mr. Lopez and he preferred to date more than one woman progressively. One day at a local bakery, he met a woman who moved his heart and he fell in love with her. He looked forward to becoming her husband.

While he was serving in the army, this woman would regularly write to him and she patiently waited for him to finish boot camp. After his formal training, the young couple was in love, and decided to get married and start a family.

Mr. Lopez remembered promising himself that he would raise morally upright children who would not be ashamed of lacking good clothing, food, and housing, as he had during his childhood. He remembered that his father hardly bought him new clothes but he would wear clothing that he inherited from his older brother.

The first-born that Mr. Lopez was blessed with was a bouncing baby boy whom they named Julian after Mr. Lopez’s deceased brother. The young Julian grew up to be strong and closely resembled the dead uncle. Later, they were blessed with three daughters. In order to fulfill his dream of raising morally upright children, Mr. Lopez worked hard to provide food, clothing, and housing.

All the children were able to get quality college education and became employed in stable jobs, they are all doing well in their current lives and Mr. Lopez states, “I am a proud father of four and a grandfather of ten, and I lived my life well”.

Although Mr. Lopez hated the living situation at his own childhood home, he was able to learn from his personal challenges and his mother always held the attitude that everything in life is attainable if someone believes and works hard.

This was evident within the family when the parents had to work in more than two jobs just to give the family basic amenities. When he was bringing up his own children, Mr. Lopez instilled the value of hard work and a positive attitude on what one is doing. The children adopted the value like fish and their natural dependence on water.

Mr. Lopez singles out serving in the military for approximately twenty-two years as the greatest achievement that he has ever attained. He also confidently notes that it gives him joy to have been married to his beautiful wife for over sixty years. He thanks God to have fulfilled his dreams of seeing his children and grand children live well.

The jovial man points out that the hardest moment that he suffered was when he lost his beloved brother during the journey to the United States. The loss happened after he suffered the departure of his father even before a father-son bond was well developed.

The old man who seemed to have lived his dreams, looks into the future with a smiling face, as he notes that he is looking forward to traveling to many countries and enjoying his retirement with his grandchildren. He states that he always has a great story to share with the grandchildren.

During the summer, they like to visit him and listen to his life experiences. Lopez values his health and sees a doctor every time he feels that he may not feel well. Although he is not as physically active as he was when he was stationed at the army base, Mr. Lopez likes walking for long distances.

Mr. Lopez advices young people, through his view that when one lives well in their current life; then a door of happiness is opened during their older years. He advises that although people have different cultures, the most vital thing is to respect the others’ way of life and to aim at living in harmony. He laments that despite modern globilisation, there are some elements of discrimination towards specific people, such as African Americans.

An individual’s hereditary perspectives and their socialization skills shape their character. Childhood experiences have an influence on adolescence as well as in adulthood. Human behavior is a primary component of biological and socialization development. People are born with specific character traits that are dominant and are inherited within a family.

As one matures, an individual’s environment can help shape their character, attitude and personality. During human development, there are a number of identified stages that shape the direction of a person’s life. Mr. Lopez’s childhood shaped and defined some of his achievements.

There are some attributes that were instilled in his family than even at old age have a dominant effect on his life (Schriver, 2011; 23). This section will make use of pertinent theories to interpolate how human development affects his later life.

Erikson’s Developmental Stages

According to Erikson’s Developmental Stages theory, human beings undergo different stages in life. In every stage, there is the need for the child to become a morally upright child. During infancy, children need to have their emotional development shaped and focused by their parents. Emotions are cognitive traits, which involve the complex psycho-physiological experiences of an individual.

Emotions also define human feelings, attitudes, behaviors, and perception. Emotions are shaped by biochemical (internal/hereditary) and environmental (external/socialization) factors (Maybe you should include a specific text/citation). During the establishment of a single family, which is the noblest societal element, a child should develop a secure attachment to both parents.

It is the time to build trust and love for the child. In the case of Mr. Lopez, the father had to leave the family when he was a toddler, and it was the initial emotional strain that has been noted. When his father left, the child was not able to have proper emotional development with his primary father figure.

This can explain why he had difficulty developing relationships during his earlier years in the United States, since he hardly had a stable relationship. He felt that women were out to disappoint him and could not be trusted.

During childhood, when the child is expected to be bonding and developing relationships with his or her peers, the greatest tragedy happened to Mr. Lopez; the death of Julian, his beloved brother. Mr. Lopez noted that his brother had taken the responsibility of as a father figure and Mr. Lopez felt cared for and loved in the family.

Julian’s death resulted in emotional injury to Mr. Lopez. During the middle of his childhood, when other children were busy reading and building relationships, Mr. Lopez was working on the farm trying to make ends meet.

During this stage, he lacked interpersonal connections, the development of friendships, and less social interaction. This can be noted as the reason why in the interview, he never seemed to have value for other people he did not know, since he was more focused on what he has achieved.

During late adolescence, Mr. Lopez’s life took a different angle. Despite having being brought up in a family that made his psychological development unstable, he got a chance to enroll in the military. At this stage, a person is expected to be developing stable relationships and live in groups. In the army, he got the chance to co-exist with a group of soldiers where life was more bearable.

According to army regulations, one’s life is dictated to following superiors’ orders. Human beings develop mode of behavior from factors arising from socialization right from childhood adulthood; the nature of leadership and experience at military camps led to Lopez behavior modification.

This is when someone is able to take control of his life and change his life for the better. It is in this stage that Mr. Lopez realized he had been lost while dating a number of women, so he decided to concentrate on one woman (Robertson, 2010; 34).

Human values, beliefs and morals are largely influenced by society, culture, and hereditary factors. Societies have different mechanisms that are geared to re-enforcing certain behavior that is deemed acceptable. When Julian died, the culture of the family was revealed, and they believed that someone had to be given a decent burial. Later on, Mr. Lopez names his first child after the late brother that show affection and love.

However, as human beings interact with each other and change their lifestyle, they can also be compelled to change their mode of belief through behavior modification, which in most cases conflicts with previously instilled values. There was cultural value that Mr. Lopez placed on the son by using his brother’s name shows how gender differences have been developed in the community.

The boy child is seen to be the future caretaker of the family, through the way Mr. Lopez’s father acted and how they saw the boy as the breadwinner. Being a man or a woman is not wholly defined by biological aspects of an individual but goes further to include social, economical, political, culturally and other social aspects. Social aspects define the idea that sex is given biologically but its roles and expectation, which are seen to be different.

This has been agreed by psychologists, sociologists its and political scientists. Femininity and masculinity are socially and historically constructed; these aspects define the characters and life either female or male has to play in the society. The society of Lopez reinforced the differences and masculinity was seen to be more prestigious.

According to Erikson’s Developmental Stages theory, the age of Lopez is the time of reflection; this is where someone is willing to discuss his achievements and failures in life. It is the ages when someone accepts life the way it has been and is willing to advice and offer an insight about what he feel about his life.

When Lopez was being interviewed, he was jovial and willing to offer information, and he could lighten up when discussing his success. He could also talk in a cautious tone when he speaking of an experience that made him or others suffers. This is the stage that one seems to be more willing to look for peace and love with the universe. He does not want to hurt and also deals with health issues occasionally.

At this stage, one does not have the time to evaluate what other people did to him that might have caused him any problems but reflects on how he has changed other people’s life for the better (Fabes, 2003; 123).

Peck’s Theory of Psychological Development

According to Peck’s Theory of Psychological Development a person’s experiences during middle adult hood has an influence on his later life. The theory bring about four main areas that need to be developed, and young adults need to have health socializing than sexualizing in human relationship. (Zastrow & Kirst-Ashman, 2004;56)

When Lopez got into the army, his perception of women changed, he valued them and decided to have one woman as the sole lover. Despite the change, the family had initiated the role that men has to play in a relationship, they were supposed to take care of their families and incase the wife was to work it should be to support the man.

The value and direction of how love grows is seen when Lopez met his wife at a bakery, when he states that he felt he would like to marry her. The feeling that he got is what he developed and ended up having her as the beloved wife. When looking at the woman, other than when he was dating a chain of women, he saw the potential of a wife and eventually a family came out of the situation.

This perception goes in line with what Peck’s Theory of Psychological Development states that for one to have a healthy and good old age, he must have socialized effectively (Zastrow & Kirst-Ashman, 2004). Knowing one’s roles in a family is also brought out.

According to Peck’s Theory of Psychological Development, at young adulthood, people should be valuing wisdom instead of physical power. From the way he was brought up, Lopez refused to raise his children in the same way he was brought up. He was wise enough to note that he had the role of breaking the poverty chain that seemed to have lasted in their family, and this was through hard work and bringing up his children well.

This required more wisdom than power since his parents could work multiple jobs but yet they hardly could provide for the family. At his old age, he reflects and sees the success he has attained and praises his efforts and wisdom.

The theory states that at the stage of young adulthood, a person needs to have the ability of emotional flexibility (Zastrow & Kirst-Ashman, 2004). This can be seen in Mr. Lopez’s life when he was able to single out the woman he loved and concentrated on her alone. He may have been emotionally attached to other women but when he met this future wife to be, his emotions were flexible enough to date and keep her.

When he got his first child, Lopez was able to transfer his emotional attachment form his dead brother to the newborn and his family. The result was a man who now at the age of eighty sits and smiles on what he has achieved in life. He has been able to develop morally upright children and offered them the best he could attain in life. At young adulthood life, a person is needed to have mental flexibility instead of having a rigid mind.

With Mr. Lopez, he did not blame his parents for the misfortunes he might be going through in life, and he did not allow his mind to be cheated. However, he looked life through positive eyes and endeavored to offer the best to his children.

Both supporters of nature theory and empiricism theory agree that nature and nurture shapes human behavior, the contentious issue is which of the two is most dominant, from what can be seen in Mr. Lopez’s life, realizing when someone is crucial assists in making the right decisions about one’s life (Zastrow & Kirst-Ashman, 2004).

Fowler’s Theory of Faith Development

The theory defines the ultimate or most profound basis of beliefs that have been shaped during one’s life. As someone grows, there are some traits, beliefs, attitudes and developed values, which can be seen in someone’s personality.

Personality is used to refer to a long lasting pattern of behavior that an individual portrays. One’s personality can address the following questions or situations: Why are some people too terrified of talking in the public when others enjoy it? Why do some people become involved in dangerous activities when others do not?

Why do people react differently when faced by unique conditions? The answer to such questions determines the character that someone has that is different from the others.

In the case of Mr. Lopez, he was brought up in poverty and hard work, commitment and family unity were valued. Although the family did not encourage the best from their children, there are reasons that reinforce positive attributes in Mr. Lopez. Through observation and what his mother kept advising, the value of hard work was instilled in Mr. Lopez. It is through the hard work that he achieved greatness in life.

A person’s personality is the sum of hereditary (biological) factors and socialization attributes. When a child is born, there are some traits, which he or she gets from the parent. They are mostly emotional tone traits. The environment the child is brought up in shapes belief, attitudes, behavior and perception, which is done through socialization.

There are times that a person may deviate from expected behavior. He starts portraying pervasive chronic psychological disturbances and his life is affected by the disturbances. In such a case, the person is said to be suffering from personality disorder, and this could have occurred in Mr. Lopez after losing his brother (Robbins, Chatterjee & Canda, 2006).

However, instead of allowing it to bring him down, it was a source of inspiration, the tragedies that befell the family in search for their dad portrays how the family was valued (Robbins, Chatterjee & Canda, 2006;23).

David Levinson developmental stages in adulthood

The theory is of the opinion that when a person is ideally brought up, then between the ages of zero years and twenty, he should be under the care of guidance parent or guardian. This does not mean that he is depending primarily on them but they should be there to offer guidance and help shape his life(Canda, Chatterjee & Robbins, 2006).

According to the theory of human behavior, human behavior is shaped by socialization that a person has undergone (Canda, Chatterjee & Robbins, 2006). The choice of one’s actions, attitudes, perception and personality are shaped by the socialization that starts before a child’s birth and is unending. At birth, a child is seen as innocent.

Mentors, peers and the environment around him or her shape the character and attitude he or she develops. Supporters of this theory do not discount that hereditary factors affect human behavior but are of the opinion that they do not matter.

Their influence is only that a person has to be born with some attributes that are reshaped and changed by the environment they are brought up. They are of the opinion that environmental factors are responsible for human behavior. For example, no man was born a criminal but the criminality in him or her was developed through the process of socialization.

Between the ages of zero until twelve years, a person should be developing his life skills and widening his intelligence in the preparation for their future life. In the case of Mr. Lopez, this was the time that his family had strong issues, so he never got the chance to go to a school. He worked in the farm when his peers were attending school and enriching their academic well-being.

The effect that was brought up in the life of Lopez is that of a person who became bitter with life and looked forward to developing the life that he would value. The many problems and the way he lived without getting the right basic human needs motivated him to bring up children who got all they wanted, and he stated he looked forward to be a better father.

At young adulthood, which is past seventeen years, the theory observes that a person is open to outside influences through mentors and shaped by ones dreams and passion. During this age, Mr. Lopez was in the military. The military is an institution of discipline and they demand that one has to get guidance for their own life.

The role that a soldier is expected to play after deployment also called for someone who can pioneer his own life to a desired destiny. It was at this time with such guidance that Mr. Lopez was able to have a stable relationship. With the drive and passion that he had in raising children better than the way he was brought up, the old man had to work hard and keep with the needs of the military force.

At old age, as suggested by the theory, Lopez has no worries from life, he looks forward to traveling, and he looks back at his efforts and is happy for what he has attained. He is seen as a man who has no bitterness in life and accepts situations as they come (Canda, Chatterjee & Robbins, 2006; 45).

Psychodynamic theory

The theory rests in the works of Sigmund Freud. It theorizes that a human being is made up of inborn traits and experiences that the person has had in early times. When a child is born, some aspects are inherited from the parents. These attributes affect the child at an early stage and later in life, while some characteristics lead to development of certain traits in future.

For example, how one looks like is inherent from parents but will have an effect on one’s self esteem at different levels in different stages in life. In the case of Mr. Lopez, he had little time with his father at infancy, so he thus had to emotionally connect with Julian who died along the way to the states, and the traumatizing effect has been seen in Mr. Lopez’s life as he remembers his brother.

When Mr. Lopez was bringing up his children, he had the passion and dedication to shape their lives in a different pathway and offer them the best. The success of this decision can be seen in Mr. Lopez’s current happiness. He is emotionally connected with his children and his passion to live longer can be attributed to this relationship.

Symbolic and Functionalism theory

Symbolic theory states that after birth, a child is introduced to a family setting; this is where the child gets the initial socialization and life lessons starts (Berzoff, Melano & Hertz, 2008;67). It is through the family that children learn values, adapt to certain norms, have ideologies and get a sense of belonging. In the Lopez family, the value of hard work and determination was highly valued and developed.

According to symbolic theory, people perform certain duties from the feeling they have towards others. It is within the family, which is considered a social institution that children learn to listen and respect adults, parents and values other people’s opinions.

The sense of identity and belonging comes into being as the child gets emotional and psychological development. The reinforcements that are both negative and positive at this stage affect the later life of the child.

According to functionalism theory, the family is seen as the noblest unit of a society where norms and values are learned, and it develops a collective conscience among its members.

Differences in gender and roles are divided in the family and the child gets to use the pathway that seems to be most preferred by the parents and the society. All along Mr. Lopez believed men had the role of taking care of the family, they had to work for the good of the family and were needed to go an extra mile for the family (Berzoff, Melano & Hertz, 2008).

The character, attitude, behavior, and personality that an adult have are shaped from childhood all throughout to old age, by inborn traits and socialization attributes. To have a morally upright society, parents should ensure that they create an environment that allows for proper emotional, psychological, and social development.

The family is the simplest unit of a society that should be source of love, inspiration, trust and affection. Parents should create such an environment. They should guide and nurture their children for their good and the good of the society. Creating a good environment means training a child with the right values, attitude, and perception like respect for others, and self drive.

After the attributes have been instilled in the child, the next important phase in adolescence is to ensure that the external environment does not distort the values. The parent should always be there to meet adolescent’s worries and explain the matters that may bring controversy in the child.

During late adolescence and early adulthood, people should get mentors to assist then forge and identity in life effectively. The mentor should be given the role of shaping the young adult is life and create good relationships that can allow sharing of experiences and problem solving. Young adults should not shy away from sharing their feelings and what they think about a situation. This will help to build a morally upright society.

Structure developed by communities, government, and international communities should offer an environment where the youth can learn good morals, ethics, and values. On the other hand, they should have punishments for deviant people. When every stakeholder performs his role effectively, then people are likely to look back at their life in old age and be filled with joy from what they have attained.

Berzoff, J, Melano, L., & Hertz, P. (2008). Inside out and outside in: Psychodynamic clinical theory and psychopathology in contemporary multicultural contexts . Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson.

Canda, E., Chatterjee, P.,& Robbins, S. (2006). Contemporary Human Behavior Theory: A Critical Perspective for Social Work . New York: Pearson Education, Inc.

Fabes, R. (2003). Emotions and the Family . New York: Routledge.

Robbins, S.P., Chatterjee, P., & Canda, E.R. (2006). Contemporary human behavior theory: A critical perspective for social work . Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Robertson, D.(2010). The Philosophy of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy: Stoicism as Rational and Cognitive Psychotherapy . London: Karnac, 2010..

Schriver, J. (2011). Human Behavior and the Social Environment: Shifting Paradigms in Essential Knowledge for Social Work Practice. Boston: Pearson.

Zastrow, C.H. & Kirst-Ashman, K.K. (2004). Understanding human behavior and the social environment . Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning, Inc.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, December 9). The Role of Parents in Children’s Life. https://ivypanda.com/essays/role-parents-in-childrens-life-essay/

"The Role of Parents in Children’s Life." IvyPanda , 9 Dec. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/role-parents-in-childrens-life-essay/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'The Role of Parents in Children’s Life'. 9 December.

IvyPanda . 2023. "The Role of Parents in Children’s Life." December 9, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/role-parents-in-childrens-life-essay/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Role of Parents in Children’s Life." December 9, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/role-parents-in-childrens-life-essay/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Role of Parents in Children’s Life." December 9, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/role-parents-in-childrens-life-essay/.

• Jose Ignacio Lopez' Methods and Missions Case
• Julian of Norwich: Anchoress and Mystic
• “Of Wolves and Men” by Lopez Barry & Lopez Barry Holstun
• Response about Landscape and Narrative by Barry Lopez
• Pernille Spiers-Lopez as a Global Director and Leader
• Mrs. Lopez’s Case: Reflective Listening
• Christ's Sufferings in Julian of Norwich's Interpretation
• Experiential Dimension: Julian of Norwich and Michael Harner
• Racial Inequality in Sports: Lopez's and Chin's Articles
• Julian Sher’s Book “Somebody’s Daughter”
• Erik Erickson. Trust versus Mistrust
• The Impact of Ecological Factors on Child Development
• Childhood Friendship and Psychology
• Personal Reflection on Parenting
• The Mental, Physical and Psychological Impacts of Advertising on Children

parentsOpedia

The Parenting Platform

Importance Of Parents In Life

The importance of parents in life is depending on our sanskars and thinking. They play the biggest role in our development. Father and mother play an important role in our mental, physical, social, financial and career development. Parents are the most precious gift of God for us. They help us in every step of our life, they trained us very hard style for future challenges. Parents are living for us, they are real God and our first teacher parenting a child is not easy. We should respect them and their decisions in life.

IMPORTANCE OF PARENTS WHEN WE’RE CHILD 

In the development of the child, they play many roles. They provide everything that is helpful in our development like milk, fruits, proper food from time 2 time for our physical growth and sometimes they don’t have the money for the things that we want but they manage to provide all those things to their child which are beyond their capacity to provide. They teach and explain practically and theoretically about the rituals and sanskars which are helping today in our life. 

PARENTS HELP TO MAKE US EDUCATED

Parents do almost all the things to make us educated and well respected in society. They work hard day and night for their children education and feel proud of us when we got good marks . their guidance and support help us to live the life we always wanted. 

GUIDE IN ADOLESCENCE 

This is the most tensioned situation for parents and most enjoyable for teenagers. We do lots of mistakes in this age, we try to convince parents every time for our activities with the outer world such as outing with friends, living with a friend and doing other activities that parents think is not a good and bad company of people and friends drive our life in the wrong direction. So in this age, It is really important to us that we should communicate about our feelings to parents and parents also need to talk to their kids in teenage. 

WHEN WE’RE IN TOUGH SITUATIONS 

When we did something wrong they scold us but they support us in a difficult time in life. They try to make a balance in our emotional persistent that helps to improve the tough situation faster. They are the real leader in our life and never show off this to us and never dominate our feelings. They are only who support us in each and every step in our life with smiles and happiness. 

IMPORTANCE OF PARENTS IN DECISIONs 

When we’re confused in life they help us what to do or what not to do? They help us in taking the important decision of life like marriage, job, business, etc. They want a happy life for us  

So, It is important that we should love and respect their feelings, follow and remember their guidance and those compromises which they are doing or did for us. Respect your parents, believe in them and please share the importance of parents in life with others.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Related Posts

Why stop using the behaviour clip chart, love and respect for parents.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Behav Sci (Basel)

Parental Socialization and Its Impact across the Lifespan

Jose antonio martinez-escudero.

1 Department of Methodology of Behavioral Sciences, Faculty of Psychology, University of Valencia, 46010 Valencia, Spain; se.vu.inmula@2seramoj (J.A.M.-E.); se.vu.inmula@etivos (S.V.); [email protected] (F.G.)

Sonia Villarejo

Oscar f. garcia.

2 Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Valencia, 46010 Valencia, Spain

Fernando Garcia

Classical studies have found that parental warmth combined with parental strictness is the best parental strategy to promote children’s psychosocial development. Nevertheless, a growing set of emergent studies has questioned the benefits of parental strictness. The present study examined parental socialization and its short- and long-term impact on the psychosocial development of adolescents and adult children. The sample consisted of 2150 Spanish participants, 623 adolescents (12–18 years), 619 young adults (19–35 years), 502 middle-aged adults (35–59 years), and 406 older adults (60 years or older). Families were classified into one of four typologies (indulgent, authoritative, authoritarian, and neglectful). Psychosocial development was examined with five indicators (physical and family self-concept, nervousness, empathy, and internalization of social values of benevolence). The results show a common short- and long-term pattern between parenting styles and psychosocial development: the indulgent style equaled or even surpassed the authoritative style, whereas the neglectful and authoritarian styles were associated with low scores. The present findings were discussed by considering the importance of the cultural context in family socialization. Additionally, the long-term impact of parental socialization seems to be crucial, even in adulthood.

1. Introduction

Parental socialization consists of parents’ influence on their children, in order to, among other objectives, encourage them to learn to inhibit actions that may be annoying or harmful to others and, at the same time, acquire behaviors that society demands, including consideration for others, self-reliance, accepting responsibility, and skills that will help them to become competent adults [ 1 ]. As socialization theorists explain, modern societies cannot rely on the ubiquitous, permanent, and indefinite presence of police or supervisors (for example, parents or caregivers) to ensure that individuals conform to social norms [ 2 , 3 ]. For this reason, the parents’ own socializing actions must lead the child to a certain degree of self-regulation (i.e., self-control) with regard to social norms. There comes a time when parental socialization ends: the teenager is now an adult. Unfortunately, not all children reach the socialization goals and become responsible adult members of their society [ 4 , 5 ].

In the study of parental socialization, Diana Baumrind defined a tripartite model based on the interaction between affection, communication, and control, yielding three parenting styles: authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive [ 6 ]; these three parenting patterns corresponded to three modes of parental control, the authoritative control, the authoritarian control, and the lack of control (i.e., permissive control) [ 7 , 8 ] (see Figure 1 ). However, the theoretical framework proposed by Maccoby and Martin (1983) [ 1 ] became the referential model for the study of parental socialization using two theoretically orthogonal axes, warmth (also called responsiveness, acceptance, or affection) and strictness (also called demandingness or imposition), and four styles [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ].

( a ) Theoretical tripartite model ‘Y’; Representation of the tripartite model ‘Y’ proposed by Diana Baumrind [ 7 ]. ( b ) Theoretical fourfold model based on the two orthogonal dimensions; Representation of the fourfold model in which parenting practices and styles are examined within the two orthogonal dimensions [ 1 , 11 , 14 , 15 , 16 ].

It is important to note that scholars for these two orthogonal parental dimensions used different labels, although their operationalization was very similar. Historically, the warmth dimension has been labeled by early scholars as acceptance [ 17 ], assurance [ 18 ], nurturance [ 19 , 20 ], warmth [ 21 , 22 ], or love [ 14 ]; all of these labels have a similar meanings to acceptance/involvement [ 15 ]. The strictness dimensions has also been labeled as domination [ 17 ], hostility [ 18 ], inflexibility [ 22 ], control [ 14 , 23 ], firm control [ 24 ] or restriction [ 21 ]; all of these labels have a similar meanings to strictness/supervision [ 15 ]. In this sense, although schoolars have worked from different theoretical perspectives (e.g., behaviorist and Freudian theory), they described a simmilar parenting patterns [ 3 , 11 , 25 ]. As Steinberg noted (2005, p. 71), “responsiveness was often operationalized using measures of parental warmth and acceptance, while demandingness came to be defined with respect to parental firmness" [ 24 ]. The four parenting styles are defined by combining the two orthogonal dimensions: authoritative parents (high warmth and high strictness), authoritarian parents (low warmth and high strictness), indulgent parents (high warmth and low strictness), and neglectful parents (low warmth and low strictness) [ 26 , 27 , 28 ]. The empirical validation of the Maccoby and Martin model (1983) [ 1 ] with a sample of more than 10,000 adolescents and their families [ 15 ] showed the need to distinguish between two types of "permissive" parents: indulgent (with warmth) and neglectful (without warmth).

The fourfold theoretical parenting model (i.e., authoritative, indulgent, authoritarian and neglectful) emphasizes the need to examine the combined effects of the two parental dimensions (i.e., warmth and strictness) in order to accurately analyze the relationship between parental socialization and child adjustment [ 15 ]. The two parental dimensions would express two types of persistent patterns in parental strategies, theoretically defined as independent or orthogonal constructs (they are not related, and parenting in one of them does not allow us to know what parenting will be like in the other). Furthermore, the fourfold theoretical parenting model also helps researchers to organize different parenting practices according to these parental dimensions [ 1 , 11 ] (see Figure 1 ). For example, parenting practices based on psychological control are characterized by high strictness and low warmth, which are related to authoritarian parents [ 29 ]; parenting practices of behavioral control are characterized by high strictness and high warmth, which are related to authoritative parents [ 30 ]. Parenting practices such as reasoning and dialogue to limit the child’s incorrect behaviors are positively related to the parental warmth dimension, which is related to authoritative and indulgent parents [ 31 ]. Different empirical studies have tested the organization of different parental practices on the two main parental dimensions across different cultural contexts as United States [ 30 ] or Europe [ 32 , 33 ] (see Figure 2 ). In general, the main findings from these studies agreed on the organization of different parental practices on the two main parental dimensions. Furthermore, the analysis of the impact of parenting practices on child adjustment is quite accurate in examining them within the general context of the parenting style (see Darling and Steinberg, 1993) [ 11 ]. For example, monitoring was originally identified as a parenting practice related to parental efforts to watch over their children as a form of strict or firm control [ 34 , 35 ]. Overall, parental monitoring predicted a wide range of adjustment outcomes. Nevertheless, most of the relationships between monitoring and adjustment outcomes can be explained by children’s spontaneous disclosure of information to their parents (authoritative parenting), but not by parents’ tracking and surveillance efforts (authoritarian parenting) (see Stattin and Kerr, 2000; Kerr and Stattin, 2000) [ 36 , 37 ].

Representation of the fourfold model in which parenting practices and styles are examined within the two orthogonal dimensions in the Spanish cultural context. ( a ) Garcia et al., 2015; Empirical study of Garcia et al., 2015 [ 32 ]. ( b ) Tur-Porcar et al., 2019; Empirical study of Tur-Porcar et al., 2019 [ 33 ]. Note. [APM] The Authoritative Parenting Measure, APM [ 15 , 38 ]. [BAR] The Psychological Control Scale – Youth Self-Report, PCS-YSR [ 39 ]. [s-EMBU] The S(hort)-EMBU [ 40 , 41 , 42 ]. The measures of Tur-Porcar et al. 2019 are from Child Reports of Parental Behavior Inventory, CRPBI [ 43 , 44 ].

Empirical research on parental socialization, mainly in Anglo-Saxon cultural contexts with European-American middle-class families, indicates that authoritative parents produce children with better psychosocial development, compared to children from the other three types of families [ 3 , 6 , 11 , 15 ]. However, results of studies with ethnic minorities from the United States, for example, Chinese-Americans [ 45 , 46 ], Hispanic-Americans [ 47 , 48 ], or African-Americans [ 49 , 50 ], as well as studies in Arab societies [ 51 , 52 ], question the idea that authoritative parenting (parental strictness with warmth) is always the most appropriate parental socialization style. These studies show that the authoritarian style (parental strictness without warmth) is positively related to some indicators of psychosocial development in children and adolescents.

Likewise, a growing set of studies, carried out mainly with families from European [ 53 , 54 ] and Latin-American countries [ 55 , 56 ], suggests that the indulgent style (parental warmth without strictness) is associated with equal or even greater psychosocial development than the authoritative style [ 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 ]. Children with indulgent parents, compared to their peers in authoritative families, show equal or even better adjustment and competence indices on indicators of optimal psychosocial development, such as self-concept [ 53 , 54 ], emotional regulation [ 61 ], school competence [ 62 ], internalization of values [ 63 ], including self-transcendence (universalism and benevolence) and conservation (security, conformity, and tradition), or connectivity with the environment [ 64 ], and protection from problems such as substance use [ 65 ], alcohol consumption [ 66 ], personal maladjustment indicators [ 67 ], and emotional maladjustment, including nervousness and hostility [ 58 ], sexist attitudes [ 68 ], and cyber-aggression and cybervictimization [ 69 ].

The parental socialization literature shows discrepant results about the relationship between parenting styles and child development, depending on the ethnic, socioeconomic, or cultural context where parental socialization takes place [ 9 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 ]. Additionally, although the impact of parental socialization is known to be crucial for the child, once adolescence is over and it is necessary to have the skills demanded by the adult world [ 1 , 74 , 75 ], few studies have examined long-term parental socialization beyond adolescence. Most of these studies have been limited to young adults [ 58 ], or adolescents and older adults have been compared using different adjustment criteria [ 76 ]. Although developmental theorists have highlighted the importance of early socialization experiences on development well beyond adolescence [ 3 , 77 ], less is known about the links between parenting and developmental outcomes in adulthood [ 76 ]. This may be due to the many non-normative influences in adulthood or the time elapsed since the early socialization experiences [ 78 ]. Therefore, a crucial question is whether differences in development, in both adolescent and adult children, can be consistently related to parenting styles. In the present study, the relationship between parental socialization styles (i.e., indulgent, authoritative, authoritarian, and neglectful) and short-term and long-term psychosocial development in adolescents and adults (young, middle-aged, and older) was examined through a wide range of indicators (physical and family self-concept, nervousness, empathy, and internalization of social values of benevolence). Importantly, some previous parenting studies have examined these indicators of psychosocial development, but in isolation rather than simultaneously. Overall, these indicators have been identified as important for psychosocial development. Physical self-concept, which includes self-perceptions about physical appearance and physical performance, is positively related to physical fitness [ 79 ] and a protective factor against eating disorders [ 80 ] or food neophobia [ 81 ]. Family self-concept, which includes self-perceptions about feeling loved and appreciated by the family, is positively related to general self-esteem [ 82 ] or secure attachment [ 83 ]. Nervousness is an indicator of emotional instability that is linked to aggressive behaviors or alcohol consumption [ 84 , 85 ]. Empathy, which involves sharing someone else’s perceived emotion—“feeling with” another [ 86 ], is related to more prosocial behaviors and less aggressive behaviors [ 87 ]. The values of benevolence are part of the self-transcendence values, identified in the Swartz theoretical framework as being strongly connected to prosocial behaviors and empathy [ 88 , 89 ]. In particular, benevolence values might be more connected to empathy than the other nine social values proposed by Swartz [ 90 ]. Based on previous studies, children from indulgent families are expected to show equal or even better psychosocial development on all the indicators than children from authoritative families, whereas children from neglectful and authoritarian families are expected to obtain the worst adjustment on all the indicators.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. participants and procedure.

The present study involved 2150 adolescent and adult children ( M = 35.63, SD = 20.67), 1262 women (57.7%) and 888 men (58.7%): Adolescents ( n = 623, 361 women, 59.7%) from 12 to 18 years old ( M = 16.57; SD = 1.72); young adults ( n = 619, 366 women, 59.1%) from 19 to 35 years old ( M = 23.68 SD = 3.87); middle-aged adults ( n = 502, 322 women, 64.1%) from 36 to 59 years old ( M = 48.30; SD = 6.32); and older adults ( n = 406, 213 women, 52.5%) over 60 years old ( M = 68.66: SD = 7.80). Applying an a priori power analysis [ 91 , 92 ], the minimum sample required was 2150 observations to detect a power of 0.89 (α = 0.05; 1 - β = 0.95), with a medium-low effect size, f = 0.17, estimated value with the ANOVAs on a univariate F test of the four parenting styles [ 15 , 93 ]. Following previous studies on socialization with adolescent children and adult children, a similar procedure was followed for data collection in this study [ 5 , 58 , 63 ]. In short, adolescents were recruited from high schools that were selected randomly from the complete list of high schools; young adults from university undergraduate courses; middle aged-adults from city council neighborhoods; and older adults from senior citizen centers that were selected randomly from the complete list of senior citizen centers. Data collection was conducted during the 2017–2018 and 2018–2019 academic years. All the participants in this study: (a) were Spanish, as were their parents and their four grandparents; (b) lived in nuclear families with two parents, a mother or female primary caregiver and a father or male primary caregiver; (c) participated voluntarily, both adolescents and adult children, with the prior consent of their parents to participate in the case of the adolescents; (d) filled out the self-report paper-and-pencil questionnaires. According to the Declaration of Helsinki, the protocol was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Program for the Promotion of Scientific Research, Technological Development, and Innovation of the Spanish Valencian Region, the public institution that supports the present research. This study was also approved by the College Research Ethics Committee (CREC) of the Nottingham Trent University (NTU, Nottingham, UK; Project No. 2017/90).

2.2. Measures

2.2.1. parental socialization.

The parental warmth dimension was measured with the 20 items on the Warmth/Affection Scale, originally developed by Rohner (1978) [ 94 ] and widely used in parenting studies [ 95 ]. This scale offers a reliable measure of the degree to which children experience involvement and affection from their parents (Examples of items: “Say nice things to me when I deserve them” and “Are really interested in what I do”), and it also has an adult version (Examples of items: “Said nice things to me when I deserved it” and “Were really interested in what I did”). An alpha coefficient of 0.945 was obtained. The parental strictness dimension was measured with the 13 items on the Parental Control Scale, originally developed by Rohner (1978) [ 94 ], and widely used in parenting studies [ 96 ]. This scale offers a reliable measure of the degree to which children experience control with firmness, demand, and severity by their parents (Examples of items: “Give me certain jobs to do and will not let me do anything else until I am done” and “Want to control whatever I do”), and it also has an adult version (Examples of items: “Gave me certain jobs to do and would not let me do anything else until I was done” and “Wanted to control whatever I did”). An alpha coefficient of 0.904 was obtained. Both parental measures use a Likert-type response scale that ranges from 1 “almost never true” to 4 “almost always true”. Higher scores on the two parental measures represent high parental warmth and strictness.

The four parenting styles were defined following the dichotomization procedure based on the median of the scores on each of the two parental dimensions (i.e., warmth and strictness) and examining them simultaneously: Authoritative families scored above the median on both parental dimensions, neglectful families scored below the median on both parental dimensions, indulgent families scored above the median on parental warmth and below the median on parental strictness, and authoritarian families scored below the median on parental warmth and above the median on parental strictness [ 5 , 15 , 46 ].

2.2.2. Psychosocial Development

Physical and family self-concept. These two dimensions of self-concept were measured with the family and physical scales of the AF5 Self-Concept Questionnaire [ 97 ]. The AF5 is a widely validated questionnaire in samples of adolescents and adults [ 98 , 99 , 100 ] in several countries, such as Spain [ 99 ], Portugal [ 100 ], Brazil [ 101 ], Chile [ 102 ], China [ 103 ], or the United States [ 104 ]. The AF5 theoretical factorial structure (i.e. multidimensional) is invariant across Western and non-Western societies [ 101 , 103 , 104 ]. The physical component refers to the individual’s perception of his/her condition and physical appearance (Example item: “I like the way I look). An alpha coefficient of 0.782 was obtained. The family component refers to the individual’s perception of his/her integration, involvement, and participation in the family environment (Example item: “My family would help me with any type of problem”). An alpha coefficient of 0.816 was obtained. Both measures of self-concept, with six items each, use a Likert-type response scale ranging from 1 “Strong disagreement” to 99 “Strong agreement”. Higher scores on both measures indicate a higher sense of family and physical self-concept.

Nervousness. It was measured with the 8 items on the nervousness scale of the Psychosocial Maturity Questionnaire [ 5 , 58 , 105 ]. Nervousness refers to the lack of emotional stability and anxiety in situations in everyday life (Example item: “My mood changes easily”). The scale uses a Likert-type response format ranging from 1 “Strongly disagree” to 5 “Strongly agree”. Higher scores on this scale indicate a higher degree of nervousness. An alpha coefficient of 0.778 was obtained.

Empathy. It was measured with the 5 items on the empathy scale of the Psychosocial Maturity Questionnaire [ 5 , 58 , 105 ]. Empathy refers to understanding others and considering other views apart from one’s own (Example item: “I am sensitive to others’ feelings and needs”). An alpha coefficient of 0.672 was obtained. The scale uses a Likert-type response format ranging from 1 “Strongly disagree” to 5 “Strongly agree”. High scores on this scale indicate a high degree of empathy.

Internalization of social values. The benevolence values were measured with the 5 benevolence scale items on the Schwartz Value Inventory [ 89 , 106 ]. The values of benevolence refer to the care of family relationships and values such as forgiveness (Example item: “Forgiving (Willing to pardon others)”). An alpha coefficient of 0.740 was obtained. The scale uses a Likert-type response format ranging from 1 “Opposed to my values” to 99 “of supreme importance”. Scores on this scale indicate that a high priority is given to benevolence values.

2.3. Plan of Analysis

A MANOVA (multivariate factorial analysis of variance) (4 × 2 × 4) was performed on the five indicators of psychosocial development (physical and family self-concept, nervousness, empathy, and internalization of social values of benevolence), with parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, and neglectful), sex (women vs. men), and age (adolescents, young adults, middle-aged adults, and older adults) as independent variables. Univariate F tests were applied to all the sources of variation where statistically significant differences were found on multivariate tests. The significant univariate results were followed by post-hoc Bonferroni comparisons for all the possible pairs of averages [ 5 , 107 , 108 ].

3.1. Parenting Styles

Participants were distributed in the four family types (see Table 1 ). On parental warmth, children from indulgent ( M = 73.47; SD = 4.63) and authoritative ( M = 72.45, SD = 4.37) families scored higher than children from authoritarian ( M = 55.00; SD = 10.04) and neglectful ( M = 57.04; SD = 9.52) families. On parental strictness, the children from authoritative ( M = 40.05, SD = 5.00) and authoritarian ( M = 41.90; SD = 5.52) families scored higher than the children from indulgent ( M = 28.35, SD = 5.57) and neglectful ( M = 28.25, SD = 5.79). The results from the correlation analysis confirmed the orthogonal theoretical assumption; the correlation between the two parental dimensions (i.e., warmth and strictness) was modest, r = −0.268, R 2 = 0.072, less than 8%, p < 0.001 (the range in the shared variance, i.e., R 2 , is from 0 to 1).

Distribution of participants by parenting style.

3.2. MANOVAs Multivariate Analysis

Statistically significant differences were obtained for the main effects of parenting style, Ʌ = 0.742, F (15, 5836.2) = 44.45, p < 0.001; sex, Ʌ = 0.881, F (5, 2114.0) = 57.34, p < 0.001; and age, Ʌ = 0.895, F (15, 5836.2), = 16.02, p < 0.001 (see Table 2 ). The interaction effects between parenting styles and sex also reached the level of statistical significance, Ʌ = 0.985, F (15, 5836.2) = 2.17, p = 0.006; as did the effects between parenting styles and age, Ʌ = 0.958, F (45, 10562.0) = 2.00, p < 0.001; and between sex and age, Ʌ = 0.987, F (15, 5836.2) = 1.87, p = 0.021.

Multivariate factorial analysis of variance (4 a × 2 b × 3 c ) for the indicators of psychosocial development (physical and family self-concept, nervousness, empathy, and internalization of social values).

a a 1 , indulgent, a 2 , authoritative, a 3 , authoritarian, a 4 , neglectful; b b 1 , male, b 2 , female; c c 1 , adolescents, c 2 , young adults, c 3 , middle-aged adults, c 4 , older adults.

3.3. Parenting Styles

On the psychosocial adjustment criteria, the indulgent style was related to equal or even better scores than the authoritative style, whereas the lowest scores corresponded to the neglectful and authoritarian styles (see Table 3 ). (i) On physical self-concept, an interaction effect between parenting style and sex was found, F (3, 2118) = 2.82, p = 0.037 (see Figure 3 ). Although women always scored lower than men, a similar pattern was seen when examining parenting styles. In men, indulgent and authoritative styles were related to better physical self-concept than neglectful and authoritarian styles. In women, indulgent and authoritative styles were associated with the highest scores, whereas the authoritarian style was associated with the lowest scores. (ii) On family self-concept, an interaction effect between parenting style and age was found, F (9, 2118) = 5.49, p < 0.001 (see Figure 1 ). The indulgent style was related to higher scores than the authoritative style, a trend that was observed within the groups of teenagers and young adults. The authoritative style was associated with higher scores than the authoritarian and neglectful styles. Finally, the lowest scores on family self-concept were related to the authoritarian style, a trend that was observed in the groups of teenagers and young adults, but not in middle-aged adults, whereas in the group of older adults, the lowest scores corresponded to the neglectful style. (iii) In the case of nervousness, the children from indulgent and authoritative families obtained lower scores than their peers from authoritarian and neglectful households. (iv) For empathy, an interaction effect between parenting style and age was found, F (9, 2118) = 2.80, p = 0.003 (see Figure 1 ). Among the adolescents, the indulgent style was related to the highest scores on empathy, and the lowest scores corresponded to the authoritarian and neglectful parenting styles, with the authoritative style in an intermediate position. Similarly, in adult children, the indulgent and authoritative styles were associated with the highest scores (in all three groups), whereas the lowest scores corresponded to the authoritarian (in young adults) and neglectful (in young, middle-aged, and older adults) styles. (v) On the internalization of social values of benevolence, children with indulgent and authoritative parents reported higher scores than children from authoritarian and neglectful families.

Interaction effects between parenting style and sex. ( a ) Physical self-concept. Interaction effects between parenting style and age. ( b ) Family self-concept, and ( c ) Empathy.

Means, standard deviations (in parenthesis), F values, and Bonferroni’s test across parenting styles on the indicators of psychosocial development (physical and family self-concept, nervousness, empathy, and internalization of social values of benevolence).

Note: Bonferroni test α = 0.05; 1 > 2 > 3 > 4.

3.4. Sex-and-Age-Related Differences

Statistically significant sex differences were found on the five psychosocial development criteria examined (see Table 4 ). On physical self-concept, men scored higher than women. On family self-concept, an interaction between sex and age was found, F (3, 2118) = 3.79, p = 0.010 (see Figure 4 ). Women indicated a higher family self-concept than men, a trend that was observed in adolescents and young adults and, to a lesser extent, in middle-aged adults (in older adults, men and women scored the same). On nervousness, empathy, and social values of benevolence, women scored higher than men.

Interaction between sex and age. Family self-concept.

Means, standard deviations (in parenthesis), F values, and Bonferroni’s test between women and men on the indicators of psychosocial development (physical and family self-concept, nervousness, empathy, and internalization of social values of benevolence).

Note: Bonferroni test α = 0.05.

Statistically significant differences in age were found on the five psychosocial development criteria examined (see Table 5 ). On physical self-concept, adolescents and young adults obtained higher scores than middle-aged adults, who, in turn, scored higher than older adults. On family self-concept, examining the sex profile by age (see Figure 4 ), the highest scores in women corresponded to the age group of adolescents and young adults, whereas the men who scored the highest were the young adults. On nervousness, adolescents and young adults scored higher than middle-aged and older adults. On empathy, young adults and middle-aged adults reported higher scores than adolescents and older adults. On priority given to benevolence values, middle-aged adults and older adults obtained the highest scores, whereas the lowest scores corresponded to adolescents (older adults exceeded young adults).

Means, standard deviations (in parenthesis), F values, and Bonferroni’s test across age groups on the indicators of psychosocial development (physical and family self-concept, nervousness, empathy, and internalization of social values of benevolence).

Note: Bonferroni test α = 0.05; 1 > 2 > 3; a > b.

4. Discussion

This paper examined the relationship between parenting styles (indulgent, authoritative, authoritarian, and neglectful) and psychosocial development (physical and family self-concept, nervousness, empathy, and internalization of benevolence social values) in the short term in teenagers, and in the long term in adult children (young adults, middle-aged adults, and older adults). The measures of the parental dimensions (i.e., warmth and strictness) were modestly correlated, confirming the orthogonality theoretical assumption. The results of this study show a common pattern in the short and long term in the relationship between parenting styles and psychosocial development. The indulgent style (parental warmth without strictness) appears to be the optimal style, associated with equal or even better results than authoritative parenting (parental warmth with strictness), whereas the styles with a lack of parental warmth (authoritarian and neglectful) are related to low scores on the psychosocial development criteria examined.

In general, the results of the present study indicate that the indulgent and authoritative styles were related to better psychosocial adjustment indicators than the authoritarian and neglectful styles. In the case of physical self-concept, examining the profile of parenting styles by sex, we observed that, although men showed a higher physical self-concept than women, parenting styles characterized by warmth (indulgent and authoritative) were related to a higher physical self-concept in both men and women. With regard to family self-concept, examining the profile of parenting styles by age, we observed that the indulgent style was related to a higher family self-concept than the authoritative style (in adolescents and young adults), and the authoritative style was associated with a higher family self-concept than the authoritarian style. Regarding the parenting styles without parental warmth, children raised in authoritarian families obtained the lowest family self-concept scores (although this trend was only observed in adolescents and young adults). In the case of empathy, the profile of parenting styles by age revealed that the indulgent style was related to equal or better results (in adolescents), whereas neglectful and authoritarian parenting styles were related to less empathy (in middle-aged adult children and older adults, those who were raised by neglectful families indicated the lowest empathy). In relation to benevolence, parenting styles characterized by warmth (indulgent and authoritative) gave a higher priority to this social value than parenting styles characterized by lack of warmth (neglectful and authoritarian).

An important question that has been widely examined in the parenting literature for years has to do with the best parenting strategy to promote optimal psychosocial development [ 5 , 6 , 11 ]. The influence of parents on children is usually captured through parental warmth and strictness, both defined as orthogonal (i.e., unrelated) dimension [ 1 , 11 ]. The results from the present study confirm other previous research from studies mainly conducted in European [ 53 , 54 , 57 ] and Latin-American countries [ 9 , 55 , 56 ], where indulgent parenting (i.e., warmth without strictness) is related to equal or even better results than authoritative parenting (i.e., warmth with strictness), thus extending the evidence about the benefits of indulgent parenting to five important indicators of psychosocial development. Nevertheless, the present findings also contradict the commonly accepted idea about the benefits of parental strictness combined with parental warmth for child development, based mainly on results from studies conducted with middle-class European-American families [ 6 , 11 , 15 ]. In these studies, children and adolescents from authoritative families have greater psychosocial development on different indicators than their peers from the other households [ 1 , 4 , 24 ]. It seems that children from families characterized by warmth and strictness (i.e., authoritative parenting) do not always develop the best competence and adjustment in all cultural contexts. For example, some previous research in ethnic minorities from the United States [ 46 , 49 ] as well as from Asian and Arab countries [ 51 , 52 ], revealed some benefits related to authoritarian parenting (i.e., warmth without strictness). Therefore, a particularly pressing issue is the different impact of the parenting styles depending on the child’s cultural background [ 11 , 71 ].

Another main contributions of this study is that it provides empirical evidence about the consistent links between parenting and psychosocial development, not only in the short term in adolescent children, but also in the long term, beyond adolescence, when parental socialization has ended, using five indicators of key psychosocial development in adolescence and adult life: the individual’s perception of him/herself in the physical and family environment (physical and family self-concept), the individual’s emotional stability (captured with an indicator of mismatch, that is, nervousness), the ability to understand and understand others (empathy), and the internalization of social values (priority given to benevolence). Theorists on parental socialization point out that during the socialization process, parents exert their influence on children through practices of affection, dialogue, reasoning (parental warmth), and firm or restrictive practices (parental strictness), in order to achieve one of the main objectives of socialization: for the child to become a responsible adult [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]. The findings of the present study show that, in both adolescents and adults (young, middle-aged, and older), the differences in psychosocial development can be theoretically predicted by the parental socialization style. Of the few previous studies that examined the long-term impact of parental socialization, most of them focused on young adults [ 58 ], they were conducted in countries with an Anglo-Saxon culture, or they compared adolescents and older adults using different adjustment criteria [ 76 ]. Therefore, the present study allows a more exhaustive comparison by using five identical key psychosocial criteria and examining the impact of short-term and long-term socialization in three groups of adults. In addition, although it is not the main objective of the study, our results coincide with sex and age differences found in some previous studies [ 58 , 63 , 109 ].

Adolescence is frequently characterized as the developmental period in which the physical and social status of a child changes to that of an adult [ 110 ] (p. 112). Adolescents are not yet adults, and their parents act as socializing agents by using practices based on warmth and strictness. The present study showed important age-related differences in the developmental indicators examined in adolescents and adults, but also among young, middle-aged, and older adults, confirming some results from developmental studies about age-related differences across the life span [ 78 , 111 ]. In adolescence, but especially in adulthood, there are many influences (e.g., biological, personal, social and cultural) on development [ 57 ]. Despite these influences, at least in adolescence, previous parenting studies showed that differences in competence and adjustment among adolescents can be consistently related to parenting styles—in the same cultural context—[ 11 , 71 ]. Much less is known about what happens in adulthood. Nevertheless, as in some previous emergent studies, the main findings revealed that differences in competence and adjustment among adult children are also related to parenting. As in most of the previous studies with adult children [ 112 , 113 ], the present study follows a cross-sectional design, and so the results should be considered preliminary. Longitudinal evidence is more difficult to obtain for adult children, but the few longitudinal studies [ 114 ] have also revealed consistent links between parenting and adult development.

This study has strengths and limitations. The use of the four-typology parental socialization model provides a common framework with which to compare the results of research conducted in different countries around the world. The impact of parental socialization is examined beyond adolescence, with three groups of adult children and five psychosocial development criteria. Therefore, in addition to contributing to the current debate on the best parental socialization strategy, the findings of this study allow us to verify whether differences in psychosocial development between adults are also theoretically predictable based on parenting styles. As study limitations, it should be noted that the responses were provided by the adolescents and adult children [ 115 ], although there is evidence suggesting lower social desirability in children than in their parents [ 116 ]. Additionally, participants from the present study only include Spanish families and their adolescent and adult children. Therefore, future studies should extend these findings by examining parenting in immigrant families or ethnic minorities in Spanish society. In addition, the results of this study should be interpreted with caution, without inferring causal relationships or excluding possible third variables (especially considering the time elapsed for older adults), although these results are similar to those found in other studies with adolescents.

5. Conclusions

This study makes a valuable contribution to the current international debate about the suitability of parental socialization styles [ 72 , 73 , 117 ]. On the one hand, the findings of this work coincide with a set of studies, mainly carried out in countries in Europe [ 53 , 54 ] and Latin America [ 55 , 56 ], suggesting that the indulgent style is the optimal parental socialization style. However, the findings of the present study do not coincide with the classic studies mainly carried out with samples of middle-class European-American families [ 3 , 6 , 11 , 15 ]. The cultural context where socialization occurs seems to be decisive in the relationship between parental socialization styles and the children’s pattern of competence and adjustment. Future studies should examine the most appropriate parental strategy to socialize children considering families from different ethnic and cultural contexts [ 118 , 119 , 120 , 121 ], as well as different individual characteristics of the children [ 122 , 123 ].

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, J.A.M.-E., S.V., O.F.G. and F.G.; methodology, J.A.M.-E., S.V., O.F.G. and F.G. and; software, J.A.M.-E., S.V., O.F.G. and F.G.; validation, J.A.M.-E., S.V., O.F.G. and F.G.; formal analysis, J.A.M.-E., S.V., O.F.G. and F.G.; investigation, J.A.M.-E., S.V., O.F.G. and F.G.; resources, J.A.M.-E., S.V., O.F.G. and F.G.; data curation, J.A.M.-E., S.V., O.F.G. and F.G.; writing—original draft preparation, J.A.M.-E., S.V., O.F.G. and F.G.; writing—review and editing, J.A.M.-E., S.V., O.F.G. and F.G.; visualization, J.A.M.-E., S.V., O.F.G. and F.G.; supervision, J.A.M.-E., S.V., O.F.G. and F.G.; project administration, J.A.M.-E., S.V., O.F.G. and F.G.; funding acquisition, O.F.G. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

This research was partially funded by grants ACIF/2016/431 and BEFPI/2017/058, which provided funding for a research stay at the Nottingham Trent University, UK (Valencian Regional Government, and European Social Fund), and FPU16/00988 (Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, Government of Spain).

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Importance of Parents in our Life

by Ipsita Sinha | Aug 28, 2019 | Parenting | 0 comments

When a child is born, parents are the ones who assure unconditional love to them. The importance of responsible parenthood in our lives is something we have gathered ever since we were born into this world. A child learns the ways of the world through the eyes of his/her parents and gains knowledge to mediate through difficulties with the help of their guidance. The upbringing of children is entirely dependent on the parent’s love and care. Whether it is mental or physical growth, emotional or social development, career or financial establishment, our parents help us in every possible way. This shows the value of parents in our life . Whether it is a small decision on which storybook to read from next to making the right career choice, their help is unconditional. Ask about the value of parents to those who have lost theirs at a very early age. They know the hardships and struggles to lead a life without parents.

The importance of parents can be seen in different aspects of life. Parents have a high influence on children in many ways including how they walk, talk or act in front of others. In India, the younger generation still follows the advice given by their elders. So, they are like the roots which will make us strong enough to sustain any storm that can come in our life. The truth is that our parents are essential parts to help us overcome our insufficiencies and improve our attributes. Although it is a hard job, the importance of good parenting matters. The role of parents in education differs from the role of others, where the parents work multi-functionally depending on the role.

Types of Parenting:

There are different types of parenting like gentle parenting, authoritative parenting, and more; It depends on them to be the one for their kids. There are really lot of pros when it comes to Effective Parenting Practices. Like:

• Will create a healthy relationship between the parents and kids
• Helps in improving the mental health of the kid.
• Will build their skills in discipline, responsibilities, and more. 
• Self-confidence would be upscaled.
• Emotional development would be healthy.

Their contributions to a child’s development:

The importance of parents in a child’s development is the key to a better life and the strength in his/her character. The role of parents in students life / our life is a very significant one. They help us shape into better individuals and drive a child to develop as the best individual.

1. Unconditional love by them

We all know that god can’t be present everywhere so he made parents. These divine souls our parents are the ones who shower real love on us. They share our sorrows to reduce the pain. They multiply our happiness with their presence.

Love and care are equally vital elements and food for the soul like food and shelter is for every human being’s physical self. The ones who remain away from parents’ love may become a loner and face many tough times in their lives.

2. Parents’ guidance during the adolescence phase

Every child will go through the adolescence phase when they are teenagers and they feel a huge generation gap with their respective parents during this time. It is a tricky phase for parents as well. Parents often think that their children are still young and childish. They are prone to making mistakes by involving themselves in the wrong situations. This is where their parental instincts kick in, wanting to protect their children from harm’s way. Whereas the children who are now little grown-ups think they can manage themselves as they now want to exercise their freedom of choice and weigh out the pros and cons of the decisions they make by themselves. And they fail to understand the mentality of parents who don’t allow them to go on outings with friends, night outs or picnics to faraway places etc.

Communication is the key secret to this solution. Both parents and children should share all their inner feelings and desires so that things get easier.

3. Moral support by Parents

Having parents by our sides gives us moral support for every hurdle that we face. If a small kid falls and gets hurt, the mother provides immediate mental support and consoles the child. Even though our failures, you will never see them let you down, rather, they provide you with all the support and guidance you need to get back up on your feet. If a man ever faces difficulty at any point in time, his parents give the initial moral support and strength to tackle the situation.

Failure can come to us anytime and it is quite obvious for all of us. The knowledge given by our parents helps us to survive and manage that scenario.

4. Financial support by Parents

Many privileged people get financial support from their parents which helps to establish themselves in their careers or future endeavours. Sufficient financial assistance from parents allows them to perceive their hobbies or education without worrying about money. Having experienced the world, they also give their children financial advice so they can manage their expenses while saving their money for the future. 

Young people can achieve good posts in their parent’s company or with support they can even start up a new business.

5. Role of Parents in our Education

Parents’ endless effort to earn a living so that they can provide a proper education to their children is worth mentioning. When the child gets good marks in examinations, happiness can be seen on the faces of the parents.

Parents are the child’s first teachers in the early years. So learning starts from home and then follows to school. Parents make us understand the value of education through an exciting and meaningful learning process. Here they also establish the morals and values that we must nurture as an individual in society and garner the respect of those we meet which is a core element in every individual’s life. 

They pay attention to the minute requirements of a child by exploring nature, playing or doing activities , reading or cooking and spending many more precious moments together. T his is not just to teach them these activities but for them to enhance and sharpen their life skills that are a vital part of our lives.

6. Family support given by our Parents

Life surprises us at times and we face some failures. Parents are the biggest support when failures like divorce or accidents occur. They provide instant support and strength to deal with our failures and resume our normal life. Their efforts to make your lives easy signifies the important role of parents in your life . Similarly, we have seen a lot of times serious effects on the children of divorced parents as they become depressed in life.

Family support can be a great advantage. We even learn prayers, spirituality and other aspects to build our strength back after failure. Also, joint families are a real help when we are becoming parents. Our mother, grandmother or mother-in-law is very experienced in any queries related to childbirth and pregnancies . Their support during our pregnancy days or the initial days after childbirth is like a boon for us.

In India, where the family follows traditional family rules, parents also help us to make us understand the requirement and awareness of marriage. They even solve many minor or major compatibility issues between couples.

7. The basis for all beliefs

Each child’s profile of cognitive abilities, beliefs, ethical ideals, coping mechanisms, and prominent emotional states at each developmental stage is the consequence of several factors acting in complicated ways.

The most critical determinants of the different profiles, according to most students of human development, are inherited physiologic patterns known as temperamental attributes, parental practises and personality, school quality attended, friendships with peers, ordinal family place, and, finally, the historical era in which late childhood and adolescent years are spent.

Role of Parents in child’s confidence build up and in child’s success

Parents always want their children to succeed in life. So, they keep forcing us to follow the right path. We can see all over the world many successful human beings who are giving credit to their parents. Numerous success stories depict the guidance and advice given by parents. We can even write in detail an essay on parents role in our life .

The sole objective of parental encouragement is to build and boost their child’s confidence so that they grow up to be an independent respectable person. The child should become self-responsible and can easily climb the ladder of achievement. The importance of parents in our lives is so vast that in every step, and every milestone they are there to cheer us for any accomplishments and achievements we make, encouraging us to move further and become the best. This helps us become confident in ourselves and our potential in the talents we manifest in our lives. With this, you can figure out the role of parents in child life .

Childhood is the most precious period of life where we gain all kinds of experiences. We keep the lessons learned during this phase of life in our minds forever. Security and safety are the fundamental requirements for parents when a child is born. Children who grow up in a state of fear due to aggressive or impulsive parents find it hard to lead life properly.

Parents let their love flow through their verbal expressions, a touch of appreciation and various encouraging actions. Efficient and successful parents can convey their love to their children.

Our responsibilities towards our Parents

There are uncountable thoughts that can crowd our minds to show the importance of parents in our lives. More appropriately, parents are actually living for their children.

In this present world, how many of us are truly caring for our aged parents? Ask this question to yourself!

This is the time we should start realizing their worth and take a lot of care with an ample amount of love and kindness. We now know the value of parents and the compromises as well as sacrifices they make just so we can achieve our dreams and live the life we want. Our responsibility is to see them always smiling in their old age taking care of them just the way they took care of us, never once complaining. Take their blessings before they leave us as much as they can.

How to take care of your ageing parents

• Acknowledge their problems
• Please include them in every process
• Spend time with them
• Motivate them to work out or work out with them
• Encourage them to go out with people of their age
• Make sure their nutrition and sleep are up to the mark

Simple ways to make parents happy/Our duties for ageing parents

Be obedient:.

Obeying your parents isn’t something that you do only when you’re younger. Obey them in every stage of your life, however old you may be, always listen to them and carry out whatever they may ask of you.

Be Respectful:

Respecting your parents shows good character and your love for them. While you may have grown into your own person and might clash with your ageing parents, always try to respect them no matter what.

Be Grateful:

Being thankful and grateful for everything your parents have done for you is of utmost importance. Parenting a child can be hard, but parents do an amazing job of it, so show and tell them.

Be Helpful:

Always help your parents in life in different ways. It can be something small like with home chores, or it can be in a big way with getting them a new place or helping with any debts they may have.

Make them Proud:

Parents are happiest when they see their children achieve things in life. While these achievements may vary from family to family, always remember what they’ve taught you and abide by them to keep the family’s name.

Follow These Kind Gestures To Make Your Parents Feel Special

If you are planning to make your parents feel special, you can follow these kind gestures.

Share Memories

There are a tonne of wonderful experiences and priceless memories between all of the family members. You can share and recollect them with your parents to have a good time.

Celebrate Occasions

You can celebrate and cherish festive occasions with your parents to feel them so bonded. By celebrating and arranging for special occasions, you can get to know the role of parents in your life .  

Prepare Meals For Them

Consider the meals that your parents always look forward to and that make them happy. To make them feel special, you can prepare their favorite homemade meals for them. While preparing food, you can think about the importance of parenting .

Plan a Vacation With Them

If you want to create unforgettable memories together with your parents then what can be more worthwhile than planning a vacation with them? You can relax your parents from the daily domestic chores through a beautiful vacation. 

The parent-child connection is crucial because it shapes a child’s personality, life choices, and general conduct. It may also impact their physical, social, mental, and emotional well-being. Children are observant learners and inculcate everything they see which is why children who have a good relationship with their parents are more likely to form better and healthy relationships with others. Likewise, with their classmates, they can form solid ties and friendships.

Parents who are actively involved in their children’s daily lives are more likely to see improvements in their children’s social and academic performance.

others. Likewise, with their classmates, they can form solid ties and friendships.

Parents who are actively involved in their children’s daily lives are more likely to see improvements in their children’s social and academic performance.

1. What is the importance of parents in our life?

Parents are the primary caregivers for a child when he/she is born. The importance of the bond between parents and children can not be articulated in words. In addition to being pure and selfless, this relationship lays the foundation for the overall personality of a child and influences his/her perspective while forming various other relationships in life. ( 1 )  Parents reinforce feelings of dependability, love and care in a child that go a long way in helping a person trust people and become trustworthy as well.

2. Why are parents the best?

If you want me to explain the importance of parents in the family cannot be discounted. They are a child’s protectors, nurturers, guides and mentors. When the kids are young, they indulge the child in various minor games and act like a child to bring a smile to their kid’s faces. Subsequently, parents assume the role of a friend, teacher and companion as their child grows up and transverses through various stages of life.

3. Why are parents the best role models?

There is no undermining the fact that parents are the first heroes of their children. Parents personify the very essence of life as perceived by their little child. As a matter of fact, a newborn can identify his/her mother’s body fragrance and consequently responds by mouthing or some other action.  

Since parents have the closest and the most intimate encounters with their children in their formative years, it is safe to say that they are the best role models for their children. 

4. How can parents support their child’s goals?

Parents can encourage their children to creativity and active learning. They can help to set their kid’s goals and visualise how to address the problems ahead.    

5. How to maintain a positive emotional connection with my parents?

You can smile positively at your parents to let them know how you care about their well-being. Your body language can improve your relationship and can set the tone for your communication with your parents.  

• About the Author
• Latest Posts

About Ipsita Sinha

A friendly mother, an engineering graduate, a teacher and a romantic genuine person in heart recently discovered a writer in me. Being a mommy blogger, thoughts keep flooding in my mind. I love to explore my life with new things including parenting and motherhood. I truly believe in the saying "keep your eyes on the stars and feet on the ground".

• 60 Best Baby Boy Birthday Themes - January 14, 2021
• 15 Best Parks in Hyderabad - April 28, 2020
• How to Cope with Prodromal Labor - March 29, 2020
• Best Places to Visit in Hyderabad for Kids - November 11, 2019
• Best Places to Visit in Pune - October 24, 2019
• 15 Best Places in Bangalore for Kids to Visit - September 20, 2019
• 13 Best Boating Places in Bangalore - August 29, 2019
• Importance of Parents in our Life - August 28, 2019

Our Contributors

Latest Post

Top 10 Tips for Good-Quality Sleep For A Relaxed Mind

Unveil Face Massage Benefits For Brighter & Glowing Skin

Menstrual Hygiene 101: Essential Tips for a Healthy Period

Best Home Remedies for Pain During Periods

10 Postnatal Exercises That You Should Try After Pregnancy

Prepare with Ease: Maternity Hospital Bag Checklist

Understanding the Stages of Labour - What To Expect During Delivery?

50+ Heartfelt Holi Wishes For Your Loved Ones

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar

Student Essays

Essays-Paragraphs-Speeches

Paragraph on Parents- Role of Parents in our Life

Leave a Comment

Paragraph on Parents:  Parents are the real world to children. They are the support, strength and power to children. Parents are the best people in their children’s life. They are the one who guide children and teach them morals.

List of Topics

Parents spend a lot of time with their children and teach them different things. They also show them how to behave in different situations. Parents are an important part of a child’s life and they should be thanked for all that they do for their children.

>>> Read Also : ” Short Paragraph On My Mom”

Love and Sacrifices of Parents for Children:

Parents always sacrifice their own needs for the sake of their children. They do everything possible to make their children happy and comfortable. They never hesitate to go an extra mile for their children. They also shower unconditional love on their children which helps them to grow up into responsible adults. Parents are the best example for their children and they should always try to set a good example for their children to follow.

Parents give their children everything they need to grow and develop into happy, healthy and successful adults. They give them love, care, support, attention and guidance. They also teach them values and principles which help them to become good citizens of the society.

Children should always remember to thank their parents for everything they do for them. They should show their gratitude by being obedient, respectful and responsible. They should also try to make their parents proud of them by doing well in their studies and career.

Parents are the most important people in a child’s life. They should be loved and respected for all that they do for their children. Children should also try to set a good example for their parents to follow. Thank you parents for everything!

Short Paragraph on Parents:

Parents are the first and most important teachers in a child’s life. They play a crucial role in shaping their children’s values, beliefs, and behavior. Parents provide unconditional love, support, and guidance to their children through every stage of their development. They teach them essential life skills such as communication, problem-solving, and decision-making.

Moreover, parents are responsible for instilling good habits and morals in their children. They set an example for their kids to follow by showing them how to be respectful, kind, and responsible individuals. Parents also play a significant role in helping their children develop self-confidence and self-esteem.

As children grow older, parents continue to guide and support them through difficult situations, providing a safe and nurturing environment for them to thrive. It is essential for parents to be actively involved in their children’s lives and to communicate openly with them, creating a strong bond and fostering a healthy relationship.

In conclusion, parents are not only the primary caregivers but also the first educators of their children, shaping them into well-rounded individuals who can contribute positively to society. As such, it is crucial for parents to prioritize their role and invest time and effort into raising their children with love, care, and guidance.

Beautiful Paragraph on Parents:

Parents are often considered to be the backbone of a family. They are the ones who guide and support us through every step of our lives, from childhood to adulthood. Parents are selfless beings who put their children’s needs before their own.

They sacrifice their time, energy, and resources to ensure that their children have a bright future. Their unconditional love is unmatched and irreplaceable. They teach us important values, instill good morals, and help shape us into responsible individuals.

Despite all the challenges they face, parents never give up on their children and continue to be a source of strength and motivation. We should always cherish and appreciate our parents for everything they do for us, as there is no one like them in this world. Their love and support are truly priceless.

As we grow older, it becomes even more evident how much our parents mean to us. They have been there for us through all the ups and downs, providing a stable foundation and unwavering support. It is often said that parents are our first teachers, and this couldn’t be truer.

From learning basic life skills to gaining knowledge about the world, our parents are our first source of education. They have a wealth of experience and wisdom that they pass on to us, helping us navigate through life’s challenges.

Moreover, parents also play an important role in shaping our personalities and character. They lead by example and teach us valuable lessons such as honesty, kindness, and perseverance. We learn from their actions and words, and they continue to be our role models throughout our lives.

It is important for us to not take our parents for granted and show them love and gratitude every day. They have made countless sacrifices for us, and it’s only fair that we reciprocate their love in the best way possible.

Paragraph on Parents Love:

Parent’s love is one of the purest forms of affection that exists in this world. It is a selfless and unconditional love that knows no boundaries. A parent’s love for their child begins from the moment they find out about their existence, and it only grows stronger with each passing day.

Parents are our first teachers and our biggest supporters. They sacrifice everything for their children, without expecting anything in return. They are always there to comfort us when we’re feeling low and celebrate with us during our happiest moments. Their love is constant, unwavering and everlasting.

No matter how old we get, a parent’s love never fades or diminishes. It remains just as strong and pure as the day it first blossomed. As we grow older, we begin to understand and appreciate the sacrifices our parents have made for us. We realize that their love for us is beyond measure and cannot be repaid.

The bond between a parent and child is unbreakable. It is built on a foundation of trust, understanding, and unconditional love. A parent’s love serves as a guiding light in our lives, providing us with love, support, and guidance when we need it most. It gives us the courage to chase our dreams and the strength to overcome any obstacles that come our way.

In a world where love can often be conditional, a parent’s love remains pure and unchanging. It is a reminder that no matter what happens in life, we will always have someone who loves us unconditionally.

So let us cherish and appreciate the love our parents have for us, for it is truly one of the greatest gifts we will ever receive in this lifetime. So, never take their love for granted and always remember to show them how much they mean to you.

Let us also strive to pass on this unwavering love to our own children someday, for it is a legacy that should be treasured and passed down from generation to generation. The love of a parent truly knows no bounds and is one of the most precious gifts we have in this world.

So, let us never forget to express our gratitude and love towards our parents every day, for their love truly makes this world a better place.

Mother and Father Comparison Essay:

Mother and father are two of the most important figures in a child’s life. They both play different roles, but ultimately have the same goal of raising their child to be a responsible and successful individual.

When it comes to nurturing, mothers tend to be more emotional and sensitive compared to fathers who are more logical and practical. Mothers are known for their unconditional love and care, while fathers are often seen as the disciplinary figure in the family.

In terms of communication, mothers are known to be better listeners and more patient when it comes to understanding their child’s thoughts and feelings. Fathers, on the other hand, tend to be more direct and straightforward in their communication style.

When it comes to household responsibilities, mothers are usually the primary caregivers while fathers are often the breadwinners. However, with changing societal norms and roles, both parents now often share these responsibilities equally.

It is also important to note that every mother and father have their own unique way of parenting. Some mothers may be more strict while some fathers may be more nurturing. It is not fair to generalize and say that one is better than the other as both roles are equally important in a child’s development.

In conclusion, while mothers and fathers have different approaches and strengths when it comes to parenting, their love for their child remains constant. Both play crucial roles in shaping a child’s character and it is their combined efforts that contribute to a child’s well-being and success.

>>>>> Read Also : “Paragraph On My Grandmother ”

Q: What makes a good parent paragraph?

A: A good parent is loving, supportive, patient, and provides a safe environment for their child’s physical and emotional development. They offer guidance, set boundaries, and promote positive values, while also nurturing their child’s individuality.

Q: Why are parents important (10 points)?

• Parents provide emotional support and love.
• They offer guidance and role modeling.
• Parents instill values and morals in their children.
• They ensure a child’s basic needs are met.
• Parents contribute to a child’s education and intellectual growth.
• They offer a sense of security and stability.
• Parents play a vital role in a child’s social development.
• They encourage independence and responsibility.
• Parents help shape a child’s identity.
• They provide lifelong emotional bonds and support.

Q: How do I write an essay about my parents?

A: To write an essay about your parents, start by describing their background and personalities. Discuss their roles in your life, the values they’ve instilled in you, and the impact they’ve had on your development. Share personal anecdotes, memories, and lessons learned from them. Conclude by expressing your gratitude and love.

Q: How to describe your parents?

A: When describing your parents, consider their physical appearance, personality traits, occupations, and hobbies. You can also delve into their values, beliefs, and the roles they play in your life. Use descriptive language and specific examples to paint a vivid picture of who they are and how they’ve influenced you.

Related Posts:

Reader Interactions

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

2018 Theses Doctoral

Essays on the Role of Parents in Educational Outcomes and Inequality

Chan, Eric Wai Kin

Parents have been shown to be a crucial driver in a child's educational outcomes in both the economics and education literature. However, researchers have yet to understand the roles that educational interventions, information, and policies might have on parental behavior and engagement toward their child's education and, in turn, how to effectively promote parental engagement for the benefits of children. In my dissertation, I examine how educational interventions and policies can impact the behavior and decision-making of parents and in turn affect student achievement. Specifically, I add to the scholarly literature evidence on (a) how being identified as gifted student affect parental levels of engagement and time investments, (b) how timely information about academic progress might change parental behaviors and improve educational outcomes, and (c) how immigrant mothers react to an expansion of pre-K specifically targeted at their children. Chapter one examines the short-term and long-term effects of an elementary school gifted education program in California that clusters 6-8 gifted students in classrooms. While I examine the academic effects of the program, I emphasize the analysis on the role of parent engagement and time investments in the lives of gifted children. While the gifted education literature has studied the causal effects of programs, there is limited evidence on how parent engagement might change as a result of these programs and its potential as a mechanism for achievement effects. Therefore, this study contributes to the economic debate of whether parent engagement is a complement or substitute to education quality. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity approach, I primarily find small to no evidence on short-term academic effects, but stronger effects on longer-term course-taking and college outcomes. On the parent side, I find that while most parents are not more engaged overall, parents of minority gifted children and low-socioeconomic students are. The implication is that there is heterogeneity in the manner by which parents react behaviorally to students that are identified as gifted. In Chapter two, a joint paper with Peter Bergman, we run a randomized controlled trial in West Virginia examining the effects of a high-frequency academic information intervention on middle and high school student' academic outcomes. In this field experiment, we send out three types of alerts to parents - weekly missing assignments, weekly class absences, and monthly low grade average - during the 2015-16 school year. We find that the intervention reduces course failures by 38%, increases class attendance by 17%, and increases retention. We find no evidence that test scores improve, but find that there are significant improvements on in-class exam scores. The evidence of improvement in test scores show that there are information frictions between parent and child, and thus parents may have inaccurate beliefs about their child's abilities due to a lack of complete information. Chapter three examines the maternal labor supply and pre-K enrollment effects of a bilingual pre-K policy implemented in Illinois during the 2010-11 school year, which came after the implementation of a statewide universal pre-K program in 2007. Research has shown the importance of quality preschool in the development of a child, with minorities particularly sensitive to the prevalence of quality early childhood education. In this study, I exploit variation in a policy mandating that any school with at least twenty identified English Language Learner student of a particular language is required to open up a bilingual classroom for those students. Using multiple control groups and various difference-in-differences specifications, I find that there is little to no change in maternal labor supply among Hispanics and recent immigrants, including the probability of being in the labor force, hours worked per week, and wage and salary income. However, I also find a significant and robust increase of 18-20 percentage points in the enrollment of 3- and 4-year old children into pre-K programs in Illinois. This result shows that, even in a state where there is universal access to pre-K, the design of such policies might not have sufficient reach to high-need parents. Taken together, this dissertation helps deepen our understanding of the various roles parents might affect educational outcomes and inequality. As my results demonstrate, there are various ways which help and incentivize parents to react in a manner that will improve childhood and long-term outcomes. Whether by programs, information, or public policy, the tools are many, yet it is crucial that scholarly work continues to dive deeper into how parents, children, and other stakeholders react.

• Education and state
• School management and organization
• Educational equalization
• Education--Parent participation

More About This Work

• DOI Copy DOI to clipboard

Essay on Family Life And Responsible Parenthood

Students are often asked to write an essay on Family Life And Responsible Parenthood in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Family Life And Responsible Parenthood

Introduction to family life.

Family life is a shared journey with our loved ones. It’s about living together, sharing happiness, sadness, and learning from each other. It’s also about helping each other grow and become better people. In a family, we learn to love, care, share, and respect others.

Understanding Responsible Parenthood

Responsible parenthood means taking care of your children’s needs. This includes their physical needs like food and shelter, and their emotional needs like love and support. Parents should also teach their children good values and guide them to become good people.

Link Between Family Life and Responsible Parenthood

Responsible parenthood shapes family life. When parents take care of their children’s needs and teach them good values, they create a happy and healthy family environment. This helps the children grow up to be responsible and caring adults.

Importance of Responsible Parenthood

Responsible parenthood is important because it affects the children’s future. If parents do not take care of their children’s needs or teach them good values, the children may grow up to be unhappy or irresponsible adults. But if parents are responsible, the children will likely grow up to be happy and responsible.

In conclusion, family life and responsible parenthood are closely linked. Responsible parents create a happy and healthy family environment. This helps their children grow up to be responsible and caring adults. So, responsible parenthood is very important for a happy and healthy family life.

250 Words Essay on Family Life And Responsible Parenthood

What is family life.

Family life is the time we spend with our close relatives, such as our parents, siblings, and sometimes our extended family. This time is filled with love, care, and learning. We share our daily experiences, joys, and sorrows with our family. It is in the family that we first learn to talk, to move, and to behave in a certain way.

The Role of Parents

Parents play a crucial role in family life. They are the ones who provide for the family’s basic needs like food, shelter, and clothing. They also give emotional support, guide their children, and teach them right from wrong. Parents are the first teachers in a person’s life.

What is Responsible Parenthood?

Responsible parenthood means that parents do their best to raise their children well. They try to give their kids a good education, teach them good manners, and help them become good people. Responsible parents also make sure their children are healthy and safe. They take care of their children’s needs and guide them as they grow up.

Why is Responsible Parenthood Important?

Responsible parenthood is important because it affects the future of the children and the society they live in. When parents are responsible, they help their children grow into responsible adults. These adults then contribute positively to society. On the other hand, if parents are not responsible, it can lead to problems for the children and the society.

In conclusion, family life and responsible parenthood are closely linked. They both play a big role in shaping the future of children and society. Therefore, it is important for parents to be responsible and for families to spend quality time together.

500 Words Essay on Family Life And Responsible Parenthood

Understanding family life.

Family life is the first school where we learn about love, respect, and values. It is a special place where we grow and develop our personalities. In a family, we experience emotions like happiness, sadness, anger, and forgiveness. It helps us understand the world in a better way.

Family life is not only about living together under one roof. It is about sharing, caring, and supporting each other in good and bad times. It is about celebrating small moments of joy and overcoming difficulties together.

Parents play a vital role in family life. They are the pillars that hold the family together. They provide us with love, care, and guidance. They teach us about right and wrong. They help us develop our skills and talents. They prepare us for the challenges of life.

Parents also provide us with basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter. They ensure that we get a good education. They help us understand our responsibilities towards our family and society.

Responsible Parenthood

Being a parent is not an easy job. It requires a lot of patience, understanding, and love. Responsible parenthood means taking care of the physical, emotional, and mental well-being of children. It means providing them with a safe and nurturing environment.

Responsible parents guide their children in making good decisions. They teach them about the importance of honesty, kindness, and respect. They help them develop a sense of responsibility and self-discipline.

The Impact of Responsible Parenthood on Family Life

Responsible parenthood has a positive impact on family life. It creates a healthy and happy environment for children. It strengthens the bond between family members. It promotes mutual respect and understanding.

When parents fulfill their responsibilities, children feel loved and secure. They develop a positive attitude towards life. They become confident and responsible individuals. They learn to value relationships and respect others.

In conclusion, family life and responsible parenthood are closely related. They play a crucial role in shaping the future of children. They help them become responsible and caring individuals. They prepare them for the challenges of life. Therefore, it is important for parents to understand their responsibilities and fulfill them with love and care.

Family life and responsible parenthood are not just about fulfilling duties. They are about creating a world full of love, respect, and understanding for our children. They are about making a difference in their lives and helping them become better individuals.

So, let’s cherish our family life and strive to be responsible parents. Let’s create a beautiful world for our children. Let’s make them proud of us. Let’s make the world a better place for them.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Family Life
• Essay on Family Is The Foundation Of Society
• Essay on Family Is My Strength

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

What Is the Role of Parents in a Child’s Life? (by age group)

By: Author Jeff Campbell

Posted on Last updated: December 4, 2023

Categories Parenting

As a father of 3 daughters, there are so many different things I could be doing with them, so I’ve wondered what is the role of parents in a child’s life?

Here’s what I learned:

The role parents play in the lives of their kids is to provide a loving & stable home environment. But we must model the behavior we expect in them. Parents should also lay the groundwork for children’s emotional, cognitive & physical development and not expect the school system to take full responsibility for that.

But there’s a great deal more that goes into parenting and the crucial role parents play in the lives of their kids, so let’s dig in further.

In this article, we’ll dive deep into the world of parenting.

We’ll explore parenting styles and how different ones affect kids differently. But we’ll also look at the crucial ways our bad habits affect them. Ultimately, we’re examining the role of parents in a child’s life.

As parents, one of the things we rely on the most is recommendations from other trusted sources. That’s the reason I created a page on my website for Top Parenting Resources (click to see my page) .

I have compiled what I believe to be the absolute best parenting resources out there on a wide variety of needs. So no matter what your parenting challenge, I bet you’ll find a solution there.

Want to skip to the specific tips by age ranges? Just click the box below with the age of your choice!

How do parents affect child behavior?

Kids learn at a young age by watching what we do.

How we treat others and especially our spouse is critical. Everything you say and do is being watched, studied, and will eventually be mimicked.

Even as kids grow older and begin to understand some of your poor choices and know they are bad, they may still copy the behavior. So, children of smokers or drug addicts often take up the habits themselves despite knowing the dangers.

But even more than habits, if your child sees you berating waiters or flipping off bad drivers, guess what behaviors you are programming into them?

So, while we will never be perfect, we need to understand that the choice to be a parent means paying closer attention to our own flaws and behaviors and striving to do better.

When you make a mistake, own it. Apologize to your kids for it and explain why it was wrong. If your child hurts your feelings, however, that requires a much different response.

Kids WILL hurt our feelings from time to time. HOW we respond to that can make ALL the difference, so take a moment and review my recommended steps on what to do when Your Child Hurts Your Feelings (click to read on my site) .

What do parents provide?

All parents, like all people in general, are different.

That being said, there are some basic societal expectations that most of us would consider the bare minimum of what parents should be doing and providing for their kids, such as:

• Provide food and clothing
• Make a loving and stable home environment
• Put the kid’s needs first most of the time
• Provide physical affection to your kids
• Connect as a family
• Ensure your kids get a good education both at school and at home (it can’t all fall to the school)

What should parents do for their child?

Beyond those basic necessities, there are some great things parents can do to grow their children in a healthy way.

• Model the behavior you expect in them (no one likes a hypocrite)
• Set limits, boundaries, and guidelines for them
• Limit technology usage for them and you
• Have dinner together as often as possible (ideally at the dinner table with no electronics)
• Do things together as a family
• Also, have some times where one parent spends quality time with one child
• Don’t discipline out of anger and don’t do it in a way that makes your child afraid of you

You’ll notice I mentioned the use of technology twice there.

These days almost all kids LOVE smartphones, tablets, video games, and other devices. A little of that is fine, of course, so I’m not recommending you nix it altogether. But the overuse can have DEVASTATING effects.

So if you aren’t sure, take a moment and review the Benefits of Limiting Screen Time (click to read on my site) .

Do parents know what is best for their child?

“Best” is a pretty subjective term.

Parents are people. By our very nature, people are imperfect, so ALL parents are imperfect too.

We make mistakes, have moments of weakness, can be selfish, have regrets, do stupid things, and sometimes do things to damage our relationships with others.

So all that is to say that while MANY, if not most parents genuinely have their child’s best interests at heart , they aren’t perfect and don’t have all the answers.

But I can say as a parent to 3 daughters, that while not perfect, my life experience and my wife’s life experience is significantly larger than my daughter’s.

So while they may not always agree with our choices, I can say we genuinely make our decisions under the guise of doing what’s best for our kids.

Every parent is different and many parenting experts disagree on what the best way to parent is.

That being said, there are some things that most experts agree on which can help you be a better parent. Learn more about the Parenting Styles Preferred by Child Psychologists (click to read my article which reveals that) .

The crucial role of explaining “why” to kids

One thing that helps is to explain the “why” behind decisions that kids don’t agree with.

Many of us may have grown up with parents or grandparents who simply barked orders and expected blind obedience. “Because I said so” was a common parenting phrase for the authoritarian parent.

In reality, that’s a terrible way to parent .

It’s terrible because it teaches kids to be afraid of you. But it also doesn’t inform them as to why what you’re asking them to do is important. Lastly, it teaches them that to get what they want, they have to do it behind your back.

Explaining the “why” behind the request changes everything.

Explaining why you told them no:

• Shows them you respect them enough to explain yourself (because I said so is the worst answer on the planet)
• Helps them understand why the decision was made
• Makes them less frustrated
• They may still disagree but it won’t likely negatively impact their opinion of you

Taking the time to explain “why” is one of the things that authoritative parents do.

The authoritative parenting style (not to be confused with the fear-based authoritarian style) gives clear boundaries, structure, and guidelines in a loving way.

Check out all the Examples of Authoritative Parents do and see why many experts think it’s the best way to parent. Just click that link to read it on my site.

Why parents are important in our life?

Ultimately parents SHOULD  be the most important people in their kid’s lives.

That being said, I know from personal experience that’s not always the case. In my own life, I grew up with an Alcoholic Father (click to read my article) . I never doubted his love for me, but it certainly complicated my and my brother’s childhood.

But for MANY kids, parents play an incredibly vital role in their development and well-being. This is due to:

• Parents are your safety net for when life gets you down
• They are your first and best teachers
• Parents love you unconditionally
• They champion you and lift you up
• Parents sacrifice for your benefit

These days, with the divorce rate as high as it is, some kids sadly don’t live in a 2 parent household. That’s not to make single parents feel bad; I grew up with a single mom and am divorced myself.

But it’s undeniable that kids just do better in life with 2 parents fully involved in their life. So even in the face of divorce, don’t ever forget the Benefits of Father Involvement (click to read on my site) .

Even in a reduced capacity, kids need both parents actively involved. And if we need to sacrifice to make that happen or put aside differences with our ex, then that’s what needs to happen.

Do all parents love their child?

Sadly no. Not all parents love their child or are even fully capable of love.

Parents, as I mentioned above, are just people. As people, we are inherently flawed and sometimes damaged from our own childhoods.

It’s possible for anyone to overcome anything with time, effort, focus, and help. But, not all damaged people will want to change or even recognize the need. Some of those people become parents themselves.

For some of us damaged people, becoming a parent brings out the best in us, and helps get us on track with being the person we were truly meant to be. That was certainly true for my wife and me who both grew up with a lot of parental challenges.

In my wife and my case, becoming a parent helped solidify our relationship. But it also showed us enough light that it helped push us towards other forms of self-betterment, such as:

• Quitting drinking
• And other physical and mental health practices

But sometimes becoming a parent makes a person’s issues worse.

Becoming a parent can sometimes make addictions worse and can drive the couple apart. Childhood issues often destroy our self-esteem and feelings of self-worth. And for some new parents, those feelings get worse rather than better.

Sometimes parents don’t even love themselves and so, aren’t even capable of really loving another. I go into great detail on this phenomenon in a newer article called Why Do Some Parents Not Care? (click to read on my site) .

The good news is that anyone can change at any time. We CAN make the choice today to be a better parent tomorrow.

The role of parents from birth through toddler age

From the time of birth through toddler years (1 year to 3 years), the role of parents is seemingly quite simple.

Obviously safety is of huge importance as kids are curious about everything. But beyond that, this age is crucial for them feeling love and connection with you. If they don’t form that bond and feel that love and connection, they may never be able to really feel it with others when they are older.

So you can’t snuggle them enough. Or tell them “I love you” enough. 

In 2010, a study by Duke University Medical School was published. That study had been started 30 years earlier with the intent of measuring the impact on a mother’s affection as the child moved into adulthood.

They found that “High levels of maternal affection at 8 months were associated with significantly lower levels of distress in adult offspring”.

The study rated the mothers on a scale from 1 to 5, from “negative” to “extravagant.”

About 10% of the mothers had low levels of affection with their child. 85% of moms showed a “normal” amount of affection for their kids. Lastly, about 6% showed very high levels of love and affection with their children.

Fast-forward 30 years later, and the psychologists at Duke interviewed all of those kids, now well into adulthood.

The adults whose mothers rated “extravagant” or close to a 5 on the scale were far more well-balanced emotionally. Compared to the others in the study, they had less anxiety, less stress, and less aggressive personalities. 

So at this age, aside from baby-proofing the house, your job is to love them unconditionally as much as possible.

The role of parents for pre-k kids

As kids enter the pre-k years (2 1/2 to 4 1/2), they are starting to explore the world a lot more.

They still need, want, and crave that love from their parents that I outlined above. But their needs are growing along with their bodies. One of the key things happening at this stage is independence. 

Kids will naturally want to start doing things on their own and unassisted.

As parents, we will naturally want to help and to keep them safe. These are good instincts. But we have to balance that with not helicoptering too much. They have to learn to try and fail as we won’t always be there to catch them.

There are a number of great strategies for helping kids learn to play independently. I break them all down in a recent article , including the 1 thing guaranteed to improve their resilience and confidence.

Just click the link to read that on my site.

The so-called “ terrible twos ” are happening at this stage too. The reason they are called that as our kids are starting to feel a lot of complicated feelings. But they lack the ability to communicate them properly.

So it’s not uncommon for something they want to come out as a yelled command on the 1st request.

As parents, we have to take a lot of deep breaths. Then we have to ask them to repeat their question more positively. But avoid pointing out what was wrong. Instead, repeat their question the way you would like it to be asked.

Rinse and repeat (a lot).

Lastly, this is also the age where a mother’s day out program 2 or 3 days a week can help weary moms or dads catch a much-needed break, but it also helps the child too. Being in a social setting helps them learn how to play well with others, learn to share, and navigate the world without you.

The role of parents for elementary school ages

Elementary age is generally ages 5 to 11; kinder through 5th grade in most schools these days.

This age is also the fastest cognitive growth period for the brain. All kinds of things are happening mentally, including the speed of processing, the ability to problem-solve, remembering how to do things.

Amazingly, our brains are at 90% of their adult weight by 6 years of age.

The independence felt in the previous age bracket is only growing here. They will be making friends and wanting to have sleepovers. Parents once adored start to be seen a little less cool. 

But this is also a crucial age for helping our kids learn right from wrong.

After all, they will be around a wide variety of kids, some of whom will have behaviors we don’t approve of. As with the previous ages, we have to balance between keeping them safe and letting them learn from their mistakes and feel consequences.

But as they age into elementary school, some mistakes are worse than others. 

Make sure to monitor things like screen time and set strict limits. Encourage outdoor play. And definitely don’t let them get social media accounts at this age. The hard reality for parents of kids at this age is that sometimes we can do the right thing, and sometimes we can have them like us.

But we can’t always do both at the same time.

The role of parents for tweens

Just like the terrible twos, parents of tweens get a lot of attitude. Tweens are defined as ages 8 to 12.

I know, as my wife and I not only have a toddler but 2 tween daughters. The irony is that at this age, they act like they don’t need us (and sometimes like they don’t like us). But they need us now, as much as they ever did.

Middle school brings a lot of new challenges. 

Sex and drugs become part of the conversation. Online predators ramp up. Bullying, social pressures to conform, different cliques at school and eating disorders all start to ramp up.

For girls, this is often when they start their cycle , which can start as young as age 9. If you have tween daughters who haven’t started their cycles yet, I have a recent article that breaks down all the signs it’s about to start. 

Believe me, that brings a whole new level of challenges to your parenting, so it’s good to look out for the symptoms. Just click that link to read it on my site.

Arguably, middle school is more challenging than high school because it’s so different from elementary school. And by the time kids hit high school, they’ve gotten adjusted.

So now, at this age where you often aren’t even sure if your kid still likes you, you must be strong.

Set clear boundaries and guidelines. Have set consequences for poor choices. Hold them to those. Kids will NEVER tell you they want boundaries, guidelines, or structure. But they CRAVE those things.

Life challenges even the best of us. But for those kids who grew up with free-range parents who let them get away with anything, life can be especially unkind.

The role of parents for teens

Our job as parents for kids of all ages is to prepare them for how to live in the real world without us. But now, in these last years before adulthood, that’s truer than ever.

As kids enter the teen years, many of the tween challenges continue to grow:

• They’ll make friends with kids you don’t like
• Seeking approval from their peers
• Increased peer-pressure for sex and drugs
• They rarely want to hang out with you
• Increased interest in the opposite sex (or same-sex)
• They’ll act as if you can’t understand what they are going through
• They feel everything very intensely

As much as we might want to clamp down on their freedom, monitor their every action, and eliminate the friends we think are bad influences, that doesn’t work.

No, at this age that will only push them away and make them want to do those things more.

Instead, we have to remain calm; avoid escalating or trying to match their emotional outbursts. Explain the reasons behind decisions, but involve them in the decision making process. Allow them even more freedoms than when they were tweens, but have greater consequences for poor choices.

By now, they may have smartphones and social media accounts. But you can install parenting monitoring apps to help ensure nothing is getting too far out of hand. 

Did I cover all your questions about the role of parents in a child’s life?

In this article, I took an in-depth look into the different types of parents and how they parent their kids.

We examined some of the basic things parents should be providing their kids, and why parents are crucial for a child’s development.

Specifically, we examined the role of parents in a child’s life. None of us parents are perfect. The best we can hope for is to keep trying, keep learning, and to not make the same mistakes twice.

What is your biggest parenting struggle?

There’s a lot that goes into being a good parent, so whether father or mother, I highly recommend you take a moment and check out my post on the 23 top Qualities of a Good Father (click to read on my site) .

None of us are born knowing how to be a good parent, but the good news is that countless parents before us have made a lot of mistakes and figured a lot of it out for us if we just listen.

If you like this post, please follow my Parenting board on Pinterest for more great tips from myself and top parenting experts!

• Recent Posts

• Sagittarius Man & Gemini Woman Love and Sex Compatibility - January 31, 2024
• Taurus Ascendant Rising Personality Traits in Men (Guide) - January 31, 2024
• How to Seduce and Attract a Sagittarius Man (Seduction Tips) - January 31, 2024

How to avoid turning into your parent? Just say ‘no’ to annoying behavior | Opinion

I never met my father-in-law, but I truly believe I know him.

My husband and his late father seem extremely alike, based on family discussions and a comparison of photos. The two even looked alike.

Imagine my surprise when I began to catch a view of my husband as a character in a series of television commercials about turning into your parent. Yes, it’s true, my husband is turning into his father, or someone’s dad, in so many ways.

(BTW, my husband knows how I feel about this behavior transformation. He’s read this column.)

This advertising campaign is probably familiar to many of us, especially when we compare the TV husband’s character traits to our own dad. How does this happen to someone? One can easily turn into their parent simply by acting old-fashioned and finding it difficult to become contemporary. These TV spots are hilarious, until you step back and think, hey, I know that person.

More: Guest: The 'name' we give our fathers remains relevant throughout our lives and beyond.

Apparently, in my family and probably in many others, the behavior outcome is learned from the previous generation.

My husband, as an example, and his father set the pace in the family dynamic and how to enforce it. Their word was the word. Don’t ask again, even politely.

In fairness, both were great fathers and had to put up with wild and fun kids. They were devoted church-going individuals who attended services every time the doors were opened.

If something needed a repair, they fixed it or lined up a friend who knew how to do it. Or they jerry-rigged a suitable alternative.

My interest in these television spots has taken me to a new level of understanding of both my husband and fathers everywhere. I have developed an appreciation for the hard work that actor-life coach Dr. Rick and the supposed parents have accomplished to make these storylines so realistic.

The actors are spot on in portraying dads in just about any family. Their costumes are for real. Sleeveless sweaters, white undershirts, wrinkled khaki pants and fidgety mannerisms.

In my view, these TV spots are progressive. They make sense and offer sound advice.

• Don’t introduce yourself to restaurant waiters.
• Try not to draw attention to yourself for scoring a good parking spot at a football game. Park and move on.
• Get familiar with the silence button on your phone. Use it.
• Appear more confident in shopping malls. Don’t act like you’ve never been to one.
• Don’t pull an item from the shelf and ask the clerk what they would take for it. The price is the price, unless you are thrifting or shopping a garage sale.
• Fast food is expensive. Face it. You can’t get a hot dog for 10 cents anymore. Just accept it and don’t make a big deal about it.

More: Andrea Chancellor: How my Granny ‘hoarded’ in a good way

The commercials get at the core of our parents’ silly behaviors. The one where the guy proudly shows off his automobile carpet is great. Especially when we learn he doesn’t even own that car anymore.

For verification, here’s a real-life scenario starring my husband. As we pull up to a restaurant, he gets out of the car to scope it out. The place inside is dark. No visible "open" sign. He tries to pull the door handle to open the door, but it doesn’t budge. This place is locked up. Not open for business.

So, my husband ramps up his investigation, walking up and down the storefront windows cupping his hands around his eyes, looking inside in an attempt to get someone to come to the door.

There’s little we can do to avoid turning into our parents, really. They are our role models. Just grin and bear it.

Is it possible I have turned into my mom? She was dramatic, cute and always up for fun. Becoming one’s parent can’t be all that bad, I guess.

Andrea Chancellor has more than 20 years in newspaper and magazine journalism and 20 years in public relations.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

One Thing Parents Can Control

By Esau McCaulley

Contributing Opinion Writer

My father was a long-haul truck driver. He piloted one of those eighteen-wheelers that had a horn that could raise the dead. As a kid I longed to join him on his journeys and discover something of the world beyond Huntsville, Ala., where we lived.

Despite his numerous promises, he never took me along. That failure, and the addictions of his that defined much of my childhood, gave me an education of a different sort. I learned that the world could be cruel and disappointing.

Now that I am a father, I struggle with how much of that hard world to reveal to my sons and daughters. I recognize the privilege in even considering this. Parents of children in Gaza and Ukraine do not have the luxury of deciding whether to tell their young ones of evils done and all the good left undone. Bombs descending from above indifferent to the innocence of youth have become their instructors.

I believe that we all have a moral duty not to turn away from such suffering. During dinner my family and I have talked and prayed about war, poverty, racism and injustice. My hope is that if we instill a sense of empathy in our children, they might create a better world than the one we have made.

It is not just the global upheaval that gives me pause. It is my own mistakes. Not one of us escapes those high-pressure early years of parenthood unscathed. There are always words that we wish that we could unsay, decisions made that we would reconsider if time ran backward. What unfulfilled promise will haunt my children? What will they have to forgive?

Childhood memories rush upon us awakened by a smell or a song or certain times of year. The scent of fried chicken takes me back to my grandmother’s house. I can almost hear the crunch it made when I took a bite. Every time I pass an eighteen-wheeler on the Interstate, I remember my father. Fall reminds me of the anxiety I felt when I knew that I had to go back to school without any new outfits or shoes, hoping I wouldn’t be mocked. I am 44 years old, and I still remember the hard thumps in my chest.

Parents cannot shield their children from the world’s cruelty or our failures, but we can try to counter those things. We can provide moments that may become positive recollections to sit alongside harsher ones.

I have never understood people who complain about poor families buying a nice TV or shoes or taking their children out to eat. Is it all to be drudgery? Are struggling families not allowed to have dessert? I remember my mother buying us candy at the gas station, having decided that since we were already broke, we might as well take the happiness when we could get it.

Since December, my family and I have been abroad while I am on a research sabbatical in England. My 9-year-old son, Peter, a huge soccer fan, dreamed of seeing a Premier League match. He was persistent in the way only elementary school children can be. He arrived in Britain a Manchester City fan, but I couldn’t get tickets. When I managed to secure two Tottenham Hotspur seats, he immediately switched allegiances.

Watching Peter’s eyes widen as he approached the stadium, joy emanating from his tiny frame, was like that first ray of light after a downpour.

Son Heung-min, who is also a standout on the South Korea national team, is the Spurs’ star and captain. Our seats seemed to be in the part of the stadium filled with Koreans. The red, blue, white and black South Korean flag and the national pride it represented rippled in the wind beside Hotspur flags. The team itself was gloriously international with players from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America all working together on the beautiful game. For a moment, sport had united us and my son got to see the world as friendly and good.

Between the chants and songs , the crowd was kind to the cute, curly-haired American kid, making us feel as welcome as if we had been fans all our lives. After falling behind 1-0, the Spurs came rushing back to score three goals in the final 15 minutes to seal the victory. One fan said to Peter, “Now you have to come back every week to make sure we keep winning.” If he could, he would. If I had the power to make every day like that one, no price would be too high.

It is hard to predict the impact of these experiences. Parents can only make deposits of joy. We cannot control when our children will make the withdrawals. Did my mother know that I would always remember that one time she took us all to the (now defunct) Opryland U.S.A. theme park in Nashville? I am not sure what the Hotspur game will mean to my youngest son two decades from now. But that day he was happy, and knowing that will have to be enough.

Parenting is always an exercise in hope, a gift given to a future we cannot see to the end. At some point, if God is merciful, our children will continue forward without us, left with the memory of love shared and received.

We are entrusted with the awesome responsibility of introducing our children to the world and the world to our children. We cannot and should not shield them from all difficulty. But it’s also necessary, periodically, to be a bit irresponsible, to spend a little too much on a soccer game so they remember that alongside the darkness, sometimes there is light. Come on, you Spurs .

Esau McCaulley ( @esaumccaulley ) is a contributing Opinion writer and the author of “ How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South ” and the children’s book “ Andy Johnson and the March for Justice .” He is an associate professor of New Testament and public theology at Wheaton College.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

Secret Life of Mom

10 Signs You're a Toxic Parent But Don't Realize It

Posted: April 20, 2024 | Last updated: April 20, 2024

Fighting in front of Others

A sign that you or your spouse, if not both, maybe a toxic parent is when you often argue in front of your children and other family members. It’s normal to have differing opinions and to talk about them openly with eachother. However, the exchanges should be private, maintaining a respectful environment. And in the form of a conversation rather than an argument. On the other hand, if things get heated, it’s best to take a cooling-off period and revisit the topic when both parties have had time to reevaluate.

Read More:  If a Friend Uses These Toxic Phrases, It Might Be Time for a New Friend

A Toxic Parent is Overly Critical

Most parents want to help their children succeed. However, a sign of a toxic parent also includes how much criticism or praise is given. While children need to be realistic about their strengths and weaknesses, they also need encouragement and support from their parents. Children will face endless reality checks from future educators and employers and everyday encounters with others. Rather than pointing out the flaws in everything they do, try highlighting what they are good at-perhaps encouraging them to continue to work on the skills they wish to improve.

Discouraging Goals or Hobbies

A toxic parent tends to discourage their children from pursuing goals and passions or trying something new. This well-intended kind of behavior generally stems from a fear of failure. But more often than not, the pain of letting ourselves and others down is much worse than the actual failure. Therefore, a parent who reminds their child they’re still proud or understands they might feel sad or disappointed, allowing children to feel their feelings, is on the path to avoiding being a toxic parent.

A Toxic Parent Prevents Emotions

As previously mentioned, it’s important to allow children the space to feel sad or disappointed when they haven’t accomplished a task or goal, after working so hard to achieve it. Furthermore, this applies to all feelings. Children need a safe space to share their thoughts, concerns, needs, and wants. After all, they’re still learning about the world around them, and processing so much in a day can be taxing, even for adults.

Toxic Jokes

It’s not unusual for family members to give one another a “hard time,” but it’s important to understand that there are lines that can become overstepped. When this happens, it can be detrimental to children and their confidence, Both in the world and in themselves. Therefore, one who is hoping to avoid being a toxic parent should also avoid making jokes that are hurtful or degrading. In other words, think about how you’d feel if you were on the receiving end of the joke. If it seemingly upsets, hurts, or causes you any emotional damage, it will likely feel the same for children.

Read More:  20 times women took down toxic men in truly majestic fashion

A Toxic Parent doesn’t have a Clue

In the same way that a hurtful joke can cause long-term damage, so too can a toxic parent who cannot recognize the way their actions might affect their child. As previously mentioned, children are learning about the world and themselves. As a result, they’re bound to make mistakes along the way. Undesirable behaviors should be addressed sooner rather than later, but it’s important to note the difference between making a mistake and something that has become a habit. Instead, a toxic parent will berate a child, sometimes endlessly, rather than take the time to be understanding and help their child find better ways to navigate their feelings, struggles, or future situations that may be similar.

Role Reversal

Another sign that you may be a toxic parent is reflected in what you expect from your child. Some parents expect their children to take on adult responsibilities such as acting therapists, personal assistants, or providers. Sadly, these expectations only add to the stress of growing up and experiencing everything from learning that you have feelings and opinions but very little freedom to hormone changes.

Arguably, placing blame on a child can fall into the category of role reversal. However, it’s much more. Placing blame on a child not only requires them to take on adult tasks, but it can also cause long-term and negative mental health impacts. They’ll eventually start to question their worth, if not their sanity. It can cause a child to feel they’re in the wrong or will never be good enough. They may feel unworthy of love from you or others and unworthy of happiness or success.

No Boundaries

Another behavior that may reflect a toxic parent is one in which boundaries become skewed. Whether a parent allows the child to establish boundaries then ignores them or refuses to let boundaries be set in the first place. Interestingly, role reversal and placing blame can become evident in these instances as well. For example, a parent may become frustrated by a child who enters without knocking but may also be guilty of the same behavior. Thereby expecting their children to respect their boundaries without offering the same courtesy. Or a parent may choose to engage in a conversation with their child that crosses a line or isn’t appropriate, such as venting about the other parent or money troubles.

A Toxic Parent is Always Negative

It’s never a bad idea to be prepared for the worst-case scenario. Nor is it a bad idea to be realistic about what might go wrong, including facing challenges rather than denying their existence. Yet some people spend all of their time questioning the intentions of others. They worry about possible failed outcomes or the dangers of every situation. Rather than live in the moment, recognize that things are as likely to go well as they are to fall apart, and choose to see that there is some good to be found everywhere.

Healing is Key

Life is incredibly challenging for everyone, particularly concerning parent and child relationships. In most cases, parents love their children more than anything and oppositely. Yet parents and children rarely see eye to eye, in many cases, because somewhere inside most parents lies a hurt child who had a toxic parent, guardian, or other adult in their lives. It’s essential to both heal from these things and put yourself in the shoes of others, in this case, children. This will help to give a new perspective on how you treat others, as well as how you view yourself. In turn, you’ll create a more loving and understanding life, setting a great example for future generations. Showing them how peaceful and rich life can become when it’s lived in forgiveness, understanding, and encouragement.

Read More:  5 Signs You Grew Up in a Toxic Family and Might Need Some Time Apart From Them

• “ 6 Signs You're A Toxic Parent But Don't Realize It. ” Higher Perspectives .
• “ Toxic Mother: Definition, Signs, and How to Cope. ” Very Well Mind . Brittany Loggins. April 12, 2023.

The post 10 Signs You're a Toxic Parent But Don't Realize It appeared first on Secret Life Of Mom .

More for You

Stephanie Sparks, former pro golfer and Golf Channel host, dead at 50

Former Red Sox player Dave McCarty tragically dies at the age of 54

Ranking the 21 'American Idol' winners

The films everyone should see at least once before they die, according to critics

Russia Issues Furious Warning After Ukraine Aid Bill

We Ordered 7 Fast-Food Breakfast Sandwiches to Find the Best One

20 of the Most Dangerous Foods From Around the World

Roman Gabriel dies at age 83

The Coolest Car From the Year You Were Born (1945-1995)

10 most ‘overpriced’ tourist attractions in the world – and three are in the US

Top 24 Short Actors Who Made a Big Impact

10 Countries To Live Outside the US That Are So Cheap You Could Quit Your Job

Our 15 Best Banana Bread Recipes to Bake and Share

7 CDs You Probably Owned, Threw Out and Now Are Worth Bank

Entire IRGC command wing in Syria was eliminated in strike, Bloomberg reveals

‘So Help Me Todd' Creator & Cast React To Series Cancellation

If You See Black Residue on Your Cast-Iron Skillet, This Is What It Means

25 Actresses Who Aced the Art of Playing Villains

Thousands of Canary Island residents take to streets of Tenerife to demand tourism action

Coca-Cola and Pepsi add new soda flavors, cancel another