Question

1. Discuss evidence indicating that acceptance/responsiveness is a significant dimension in parental childrearing practices that has a marked impact on a number of developmental outcomes.
2. Do some parental disciplinary styles related to better developmental outcomes than others? Discuss.

Answer 1

1. Parental childrearing practices:

• Parents nurture their children and educate them with moral values, cultures, and traditions.

• Ethnic and cultural beliefs play a vital role in raising the children from early childhood to adulthood.

• Raising the children depends on several factors such as ethnicities, cultural diversity, religious perceptions, and cognitive thinking abilities.

• Knowledge and awareness enhance the children’s cognition, learning, and development from early childhood to adulthood.

Responsiveness is an important dimension in parental child-rearing practices because:

Authoritative parents:

• Authoritative parents have a high perception of success and maturity in their children. They are kind-hearted and responsive to their children.

• Parents have high responsiveness and benevolence for their children.

• Parents nurture their children equally compared to other children. They do not compare their children with the success of other children in the society.

The behavior of children under authoritative parenting styles is:

• Children behave more joyful and happily

• They do not depend on others to carry out daily activities.

• They develop confidence and self-respect.

• They respect other people’s attitudes and perceive other people equally.

Autocratic parenting:

• Parents nurture their children with dominance and pride.

• They perceive their children to follow their parental guidance and obey their rules.

• Parents often use negative reinforcement techniques such as the punishment to bring discipline to their children.

• Parents are less responsive to meet the demands of their children.

The behavior of children is:

• Children are less active socially.

• They are prone to suffer from mental problems.

• They often depend on others to carry out daily activities.

• They seem to be joyful.

Permissive parenting:

• Parents meet their children’s wants, desires and fulfill their needs.

• They are not willing to produce social norms for their children.

• They do not nurture their children to obey the regulations of the society.

The behavior of children is:

• Children behave anti-socially with other people

• They listen to other people’s problems in the society.

• They do not follow the regulations of the society.

2. Effectiveness of parental disciplinary style:

• Authoritative parenting helps to promote equality and love among the children. Parents show kindness and selfless love towards their children.

• Racial and cultural differences in society affect how children react to the authoritative parenting style.

• For example, Lucie, an African student of psychology, attends a college in New Jersey where her peers do not support and trust her. Hence, Lucie becomes depressed and thinks negatively about the consequences that people dislike her. Hence, her academic performance has worsened in the present year. Thus, the authoritative parenting style does not always prove to be effective.

• However, students belonging to Asian ethnic cultures performed better when they were exposed to the authoritative parenting style. Hence, cultural differences affect how children respond to different parenting styles.

• Parents often find it challenging to nurture children with subtle personality types. Hence, parents change their styles towards the authoritative parenting style.

• Hence, parents often use an autocratic parenting style to nurture their children with low responsiveness.

• However, authoritative parenting is productive as compared to other parenting styles.

Conclusion:

• We have analyzed the responsiveness as an important dimension in parent child-rearing practices.

• Authoritative parenting styles are the most effective among other parenting styles.

• We have discussed parenting style with the example of differences in ethnicity and cultures.