Social Work with Rural Peoples (3rd ed.), Ken Collier,Vancouver, BC: New Star Books, 2006, Paper

This qualitative study explored how White parents who identify as antiracist apply antiracism principles to parenting their White children. Participants discussed how they attempt to incorporate antiracism values into their parenting, their children’s racial awareness, and the impact of race and racism on their children. Our findings indicate significant inconsistencies between antiracist values and parenting practices. The main difference between antiracist White parents and nonantiracist-identified White parents was awareness. Although antiracist White parents overall conveyed an awareness of racism as a system of unearned privileges, there was minimal modeling of antiracist action.     

Families With Young Children: A Review of Research in the 1990s

Research conducted in the past decade on families with young children concentrated on 5 broad topics: (a) the transition to parenthood; (b) the importance of maternal sensitivity for children's attachment security and subsequent adjustment and social competence; (c) the effectiveness of particular parenting styles and practices; (d) interparental, familial, and broader societal factors influencing parenting behaviors and child adjustment; and (e) the impact of family structure and household composition on children's well‐being. Our review documents substantial diversity in family structures, parenting arrangements, and childrearing values and practices both within and across ethnic and racial groups. Collectively, the evidence suggests that in most families with young children, parents and children seem to be doing well. We conclude that substantial work is required to expand the study of families with young children beyond mother‐child dyads in White, middle‐class, two‐parent, first‐marriage families.     

Parenting practices of Somali immigrant mothers in Alberta

This paper provides insights into the little-explored gendered perspective of the parenting practices of Somali immigrant mothers in a Canadian province (Alberta). We use a critical ethnographic methodology and a transnational feminist framework. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten Somali mothers aged 18 to 50. Mothers were interviewed about their parenting practices in a post-migration context, including challenges. Our results show immigrant mothers combine their cultural values with new values from Canada that they find effective. We find gendered differences in how parenting experiences are perceived. Our results suggest the need for anti-racist and culturally safe health, education, and child policies and practices.     

Parenting Practices,Child Adjustment,and Family Diversity

The authors used data from Waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) to test the generality of the links between parenting practices and child outcomes for children in two age groups: 5–11 and 12–18. Parents' reports of support, monitoring, and harsh punishment were associated in the expected direction with parents' reports of children's adjustment, school grades, and behavior problems in Wave 1 and with children's reports of self‐esteem, grades, and deviance in Wave 2. With a few exceptions, parenting practices did not interact with parents' race, ethnicity, family structure, education, income, or gender in predicting child outcomes. A core of common parenting practices appears to be linked with positive outcomes for children across diverse family contexts.     

A Model of Family Background,Family Process,Youth Self-Control,and Delinquent Behavior in Two-Parent Families

Using data from a national sample of two-parent families with 11- and 12-year-old youths (N = 591), we tested a structural model of family background, family process (marital conflict and parenting), youth self-control, and delinquency four years later. Consistent with the conceptual model, marital conflict and youth self-control are directly related to delinquent behavior, and parenting is linked with delinquency through its relationship with youth self-control. Males are at a greater risk of delinquency compared with females, a relationship that is explained by lower levels of self-control. Contrary to the hypothesized model, parenting practices and youth self-control do not mediate the relationship between marital conflict and delinquent behavior, and parenting practices and male gender have no direct relationship with delinquency. Implications for social work practice are discussed.     

Parenting Practices,Autonomous Motivation,and Adolescent Diet Habits

Guided by self‐determination theory, the aim of this study was to examine whether adolescents’ autonomous motivation for making healthy diet choices mediates the association between parenting practices regarding diet and adolescent food choices. We analyzed data from the NCI FLASHE study, a survey of demographically diverse parents and their adolescent children (N = 1,646 dyads). Path models supported self‐determination theory’s assertion that indirect, encouraging parenting practices fostered internal motivation; in contrast, regulation was both positively and negatively linked to motivation depending on the model. Models also yielded direct paths between parenting practices and healthy and unhealthy diet choices. Overall, regardless of what predicted motivation, adolescents’ autonomous motivation was linked with their consumption of healthier foods and drinks. As such, cultivating a sense of internal motivation during these formative years may put young people on a path toward healthy patterns of self‐regulation later in life.     

Parenting Practices,Family Obligation,and Adolescents’ Academic Adjustment: Cohort Differences with Social Change in China

This study examined possible changes in the functions of parenting practices across different historical time points in terms of the effects of parenting practices on adolescents’ academic adjustment and their indirect effects via family obligation values. This study used a time‐lagged design that recruited Chinese high school students in 2010 (N = 1,040) and 2018 (N = 1,302). Structured equation modeling revealed the total effects of acceptance/involvement and strictness/supervision on academic adjustment and their indirect effects through family obligation values were positive and statistically equivalent across cohorts. However, the indirect effect of psychological autonomy granting on academic adjustment through family obligation values was negative in 2010 (in rural) but was not statistically significant in 2018 (urban and rural). These findings indicate that along with the sociodemographic change toward Gesellschaft (e.g., more urbanized, wealthier, higher level of education), psychological autonomy granting tends to exert less negative influence on adolescents’ adjustment in the later cohort.     

An analysis of the relationship between parenting self-efficacy,the quality of parenting,and parental and child emotional health

ABSTRACT

The relationship between parenting self-efficacy, the quality of parenting, and parental and child emotional health has been conducted with Caucasian families and young children. The purpose of this study was to examine these relationships in ethnically diverse and impoverished families with children who have behavior problems. We examined the relationships between parenting self-efficacy, parenting practices, child externalizing problems, and caregiver depression. Participants included 213 caregivers of children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), who rated their parenting self-efficacy and completed questionnaires on parenting practices (APQ and FAD); child externalizing behaviors (Iowa Connors Inattention and ODD subscales); and caregiver depression (CESD). Data were examined using Chi-Square tests, a Linear Regression, and a One-Way ANOVA. Results demonstrate parenting self-efficacy was positively associated with positive parenting and inversely associated with inconsistent discipline. Among parents who perceived themselves as being a “better than average parent,” there was a greater percentage of youth who met cutoff for inattention problems as compared to youth who did not meet this cutoff. Lastly, depression scores were lowest for caregivers identifying as below average parents. This study underscores the need for involving parents and enhancing parenting self-efficacy in interventions targeting Disruptive Behavior Disorders.     

Experiencing parenthood,care and spaces of hospitality

Drawing on research conducted in Australia and the United Kingdom, this paper explores how parenting and care provision is entangled with, and thus produced through, consumption in hospitality venues. We examine how the socio‐material practices of hospitality provision shape the enactment of parenting, alongside the way child‐parent/consumer‐provider interactions impact upon experiences of hospitality spaces. We argue that venues provide contexts for care provision, acting as spaces of sociality, informing children's socialization and offering temporary relief from the work of parenting. However, the data also highlight various practices of exclusion and multiple forms of emotional and physical labour required from care‐providers. The data illustrate children's ability to exercise power and the ways in which parents’/carers’ experiences of hospitality spaces are shaped by their enactment of discourses of ‘good parenting’. Finally, we consider parents’/carers’ coping behaviours as they manage social and psychological risks associated with consumption in such public spaces of leisure.     

Expanding “Irish Family” Repertoires: Exploring Gay Men's Experiences as Parents in the Republic of Ireland

ABSTRACT

This article explores gay men's parenting experiences and practices in order to seek insight into how gay men accept or challenge heterosexual family norms and how “family” is understood in the Irish context. It is based on small-scale qualitative research (interviews) with seven gay fathers. Despite the limited routes to parenthood for gay men in Ireland, the research findings indicate that the participants enjoy parenting and that they are motivated in their parenting practices. The gay fathers in this study are participative parents who have made significant decisions in their lives in order to prioritize their children's welfare. The diversity of family constellations and care arrangements that surround gay fathering in Ireland can expand family and care repertoires beyond the traditional biparent heterosexual norm. Gay fathers in Ireland appear to enjoy some security at the private familial level and in the responses from their families and communities, but they are keenly aware that nontraditional families are given less status in Irish society. Unlike other jurisdictions, gay parenting is not articulated by the gay fathers in this research as a rights-based argument. Instead, these Irish gay fathers are de facto activists who seek to “humanize” gay parenting.     

Adolescent Work Intensity and Substance Use: The Mediational and Moderational Roles of Parenting

The dialectic between the adolescent quest for autonomy and parents’ desire to regulate this quest are explored by examining the extent to which the association between adolescent work intensity and substance use is mediated and moderated by parenting practices. Results using data from the National Survey of Youth and Religion (N = 3,290) show that the association between work intensity and alcohol use is mediated by parenting practices. There is also limited support for the moderational role of parental monitoring with respect to heavy drinking. Finally, connections among work intensity, parenting practices, and substance use are pronounced for adolescents younger than 16 years of age. These findings suggest the importance of a multifaceted view of parenting practices that both shape and are shaped by their adolescent’s search for independence.     

Parenting Style,Child Emotion Regulation and Behavioral Problems: The Moderating Role of Cultural Values in Australia and Indonesia

Abstract

Research has shown that the congruence of parenting styles with cultural values, rather than parenting styles alone, impacts child adjustment. This study examined if parents’ cultural values moderate the relationships between parenting styles and child outcomes across both an individualist culture (Australia) and a collectivist culture (Indonesia). Three hundred and eighty-seven parents of 2–10-year-old children from both countries reported their parenting styles, the importance of the collectivistic values (security, conformity, and tradition), and their child's emotion regulation and behavioral problems. In both countries, authoritative parenting was associated with higher child emotion regulation and lower levels of behavioral problems, and authoritarian parenting was associated with lower child emotion regulation and higher levels of behavioral problems. Although cultural values did not moderate the relationship between authoritarian parenting and child adjustment, in both countries greater importance placed on tradition attenuated the positive effect of authoritative parenting on child outcomes.     

Parenting and Perceived Maternal Warmth in European American and African American Adolescents

Traditional conceptualizations of parenting style assume certain associations between parenting practices/philosophies and parental warmth. This study examines whether those links are similar for European American and African American adolescents. Two hundred and ninety‐eight early adolescents and their mothers reported on discipline and control practices, decision‐making practices, and parenting philosophy, which were used to predict adolescents’ reports of maternal warmth. The moderating role of ethnicity was examined after controlling for gender, age, and socioeconomic status. Although some practices predicted warmth similarly across groups, several practices predicted warmth in ways consistent with parenting style theory only or more strongly among European American adolescents. The findings suggest differences in the interpretation of or context surrounding discipline‐ and autonomy‐related practices in these groups.     

Posttraumatic Stress and Depression in the Nonoffending Caregivers of Sexually Abused Children: Associations With Parenting Practices

Caregiver mental health is a known correlate of parenting practices, and recent research indicated that parental depression following childhood sexual abuse disclosure is associated with concurrent parenting difficulties. The present study extended this line of research by investigating posttraumatic stress symptoms and depression in a sample of caregivers (N = 96) of children who experienced sexual abuse recruited from a child advocacy center as well as parenting practices reported by both caregivers and their children (mean age = 10.79 years, SD = 3.29; 79% female). Twenty-four percent of caregivers met criteria for presumptive clinical depression, clinically significant posttraumatic stress, or both. Results indicated elevated caregiver-reported inconsistent parenting in the context of clinically significant distress across symptom groups; children reported particularly elevated inconsistent parenting for caregivers with posttraumatic stress only. Caregiver depression was associated with low self-reported positive parenting and caregiver involvement in addition to self-reported inconsistencies. Directions for future research are offered to further elucidate the relationships between caregiver mental health and parenting practices following childhood sexual abuse.     

Social Class and Parenting: Classic Debates and New Understandings

Many scholars pinpoint the family as one of the most important loci of class differences and see parenting in particular as a mechanism for the reinforcement and reproduction of class variation. In this article, the authors explore the role of educational background, occupations, family resources, state surveillance, and culture in explaining how and why parenting practices vary by class backgrounds. The article reviews research that focuses on class‐based cultural norms and values, as well as research that argues that structural conditions and access to resources are more important than culture in influencing parenting norms, beliefs, and outcomes. The authors then discuss recent research that suggests that rather than seeing culture and structure as dichotomous, in fact, culture and structure are intertwined and it is through seeing them as mutually reinforcing factors that we can best make sense of class‐related parenting differences.     

Social Demographics,the School Environment,and Parenting Practices Associated with Parents' Participation in Schools and Academic Success among Black,Hispanic, and White Students

This study explored social demographic factors, school environmental factors, and parenting practices that are associated with child academic success and school-based involvement among the parents of Black, Hispanic, and White students. Analysis of 12,426 parents who completed the National Household Education Surveys-Parent and Family Involvement Survey revealed that parent's participation in school is linked to better grades and is associated with supportive schools and positive parenting practices. The study also revealed that parents who were Black and Hispanic, non-native English speakers, lived in unsafe neighborhoods, and had less than a high school education were less likely to visit the school. The article suggests culturally responsive strategies for school leaders and parent advocates to engage parents in their children's education.     

Coparenting in Intact and Divorced Families: Its Impact on Young Adult Adjustment

ABSTRACT

This study examined the potential mediating roles of coparenting and parenting practices on the relationship between marital status and young adult adjustment in intact and divorced or separated families. Participants were 340 undergraduate students from intact and divorced or separated families who completed questionnaires that tapped a range of adjustment factors (mental health, fear of intimacy, work ethic, self-esteem, delinquency) along with coparenting and parenting practices. Data were analyzed via structural equation modeling. Results suggest that coparenting and parenting practices, including parental hostility, parental cooperation, mothering, and fathering, are important partial mediators of the relationship between marital status and young adult adjustment. Intervention and legal implications are discussed.