Coparenting

• Coparenting refers to the various people that team up and collaborate in the parenting process.

• Can include biological parents, supportive family members or friends, and other adults who play a key role in parenting.
• It represents a serious and ongoing commitment to the parenting of a specific child.
• In military families,  the deployed parent is sometimes described as ‘coparenting from a distance’. 
• Affects how parenting is presented and perceived in legal system and in media.

DIVERSITY IN CONTEMPORARY 
FAMILY FORMS AND STRUCTURES

Military Families

• Coparenting at a distance
• Support networks and social cohesiveness contribute to emotional resilience 

DIVERSITY IN CONTEMPORARY 
FAMILY FORMS AND STRUCTURES

Blended Families

• Formed when at least one of the adult partners remarries
• Include children of one or both remarried adults
• Children may have a biological as well as a stepparent
• Challenges may include: 
• Complicated extended family network
• Difficulty establishing stepparenting roles
• Unique developmental tasks involved in forming a new and cohesive family identity

DIVERSITY IN CONTEMPORARY 
FAMILY FORMS AND STRUCTURES

Families with Renested Adult Children

• When adult children return to their family of origin
• Boomerang Kids
• May involve changing family rules and establishing new boundaries
• Sandwich Generation: parents responsible for offspring as well as own parents (i.e. grandparents)

DIVERSITY IN CONTEMPORARY 
FAMILY FORMS AND STRUCTURES

Kinship Families: Custodial Grandparents and Grandchildren

• Includes grandparents (and other extended family members) who are caring for related children
• Each of the three generations involved in this family type make unique contributions and face unique challenges

ETHNIC DIVERSITY AND
CONTEMPORARY FAMILIES

• Ethnic identity influences the organization and functionality of family systems
• Ethnic diversity encompasses peoples’ values, how their families operate as a social system, how they socialize their children, and how they use resources to promote family functioning
• Emic (culturally specific) perspective (rhymes with scenic)
• Etic (culturally universal) perspective (rhymes with poetic)
• Ethnocentrism: judging people from the perspective of our own cultural heritage
• Ethno-blocking: the process of describing the American population in terms of five major ethnicities

changes occur as both the child and parent grow and develop over time.

child and parent impact each other and give feedback in response to each other’s behavior. Communication and influence flow both ways.

Lifespan Parenting

parenting interactions are manifested in children’s character, behavior, and competency throughout the lifespan.

• John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth
• Having consistent, loving parents or significant reliable caregivers allows development of trust foundation and attachment
• Interruptions may include maternal deprivation, separation anxiety
• Instinctive attachment; biological need
• Strengthened by care and responsiveness Initial studies conducted in orphanages
• Harry Harlow wire-mesh and terry-cloth surrogate mothers study with infant monkeys
• Results pointed to infant need for contact comfort

• Microsystem: environments provided by family, peers, school, neighborhood
• Mesosystem: interactions between first and all other systems, facilitates communication between microsystem and exosystem
• Example: academic performance and social interactions are influenced by child’s family life and vice versa.
• Exosystem: government agencies, community programs, employment setting of parents.
• Macrosystem: larger culture including broad, generalized beliefs, behavior patterns, and value systems of a particular society
• Chronosystem: organization of events and changes over the life span of an individual at a particular historical time.

social roles of family members and how the family integrates with other social institutions

• Structural functionalism
• General systems theory application to humans
• Families operate in ways similar to other systems in nature
• Helps to explain processes of making decisions, setting goals, establishing rules to regulate behavior
• How families respond to change Subsystems of each system

• Wholeness
• Interdependence
• Patterns
• Reciprocal
• Interaction and Feedback
• Boundaries
• Entropy
• Equifinality
• Adaptation

• serve to regulate behavior of members and allow members to anticipate each other’s behavior
• Rules (implicit-unspoken, explicit-known, stated, negotiable, non-negotiable), roles, communication styles (verbal, nonverbal, contextual)

establish limits that distinguish a family system from all others and differentiate the members within the family systems

disorder or chaos in system functioning that results from lack of information or input from outside the system as a means of a resolving a crisis or problem

families share common goals but members reach these goals in different ways

changes and adjustments that allow the family to continue to function effectively

• Ernest Burgess
• Family as ‘unity of interacting personalities’
• Wholeness and interdependence
• Family as dynamic system; responds to changes within and outside of system
• Describes how families change in association with the passage of time
• Family members share common processes of developmental changes that occur over time due to stressors that force them to adapt and undergo transitions
• Complex and multigenerational family systems
• Intergenerational family systems with each generation at a different point in the lifespan facing unique challenges

• Erik Erikson
• Mental change as process throughout life span (extension of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical approach)
• Each stage of life has its own ‘psychosocial crisis’
• Trust vs. Mistrust
• Autonomy vs. Shame/Doubt
• Initiative vs. Guilt
• Industry vs. Inferiority
• Identity vs. Role Confusion
• Intimacy vs. Isolation
• Generativity vs. Self-Absorption
• Integrity vs. Despair
• Significant others assist or inhibit the developmental progress at each stage
• Psychosocial attitudes or feelings resulting from how well a person can meet and master a particular stage

• Explains how learning may occur when there is no visible reinforcer or reward
• Individual responds to complex stimuli by forming associations between appropriate and inappropriate behavior
• Conscious thought assists in shaping behavior and actions

• Jean Piaget
• How humans come to know and understand the world
• Cognition based on schemes
• Two basic schemes formed in infancy and childhood: 
• Sensorimotor schemes – based in motor acts
• Cognitive schemes – based in symbolism and abstract reasoning

• Lev Vygotsky
• Emphasizes self-efficacy and self-esteem
• Social interaction is basis of child’s learning
• A child’s culture shapes his or her way of thinking about and understanding the world
• Children are curious and actively involved in learning
• More Knowledgeable Other (MKO)
• Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
• Children use language to power mental development
• Scaffolding Assertive and supportive care
• Interdependence is central to development

Authoritarian Styles

• Firmly grounded in traditional child rearing methods
• Relies predominately on controlling children’s behavior
• Values obtaining children’s immediate and long-range obedience to wishes of parent.
• Obedience is obtained in numerous ways
• Physical punishment and other forceful means are often used to gain the child’s cooperation
• Parents intimidate children rather than promote healthy feelings of self-worth
• Concepts: Poisonous pedagogy and toxic parenting
• Associated with Failure to Thrive (FTT)

Permissive Styles

• Avoids excessive control
• Does not enforce obedience to externally defined standards
• Allows children to regulate their own activities
• Parents believe that they should respond to their children as individuals and encourage them to be autonomous 
• Incorporates reasoning and manipulation rather than overt demonstrations of power to gain children’s cooperation
• Parents allow greater latitude in children’s behavior
• Children are consulted often to allow them to voice their own opinions
• Children are expected to learn from their mistakes

Fetal alcohol syndrome

Teratogen

Infant death rate

Infant Mortality

•  Child mortality rates were extremely high in historic and prehistoric times:
• According to archeological findings, about half of children never reached adulthood.
• Child mortality very high until recent 20^th century medical advances.

• Assimilation – occurs when new information is incorporated into existing theme
• Accommodation – occurs when an existing theme is modified to match reality
• Parents provide social and physical experiences that create

• Jerome Bruner
• Cognitive development parallels physical development
• Children must learn to represent environment in different ways to learn how to think creatively; three ways
• Enactive (action based)
• Iconic (image based)
• Symbolic (language based)
• Parent-child interactions and cultural technologies promote mental development
• Parents should provide stimulating language experiences
• Children are capable of learning anything that is properly organized

Social Learning Theory

• Albert Bandura
• Emphasizes influences of modeling and observation for learning a variety of social behaviors and roles

• Observational learning: People (and children, in the context of parenting) can learn from social observation
• Intrinsic reinforcement: Internal mental states are part of this learning process
• The modeling process: Several factors can play a role in this process, such as the participants, attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation. Learning something does not necessarily imply that it will result in a change in behavior

Continuum Between
Nurture and Structure

• Warmth/responsiveness (Nurture) and control/demand (Structure)

• Authoritative styles: high in warmth, high in control
• Authoritarian styles: low in warmth, high in control
• Permissive styles: high in warmth, low in control
• Neglectful styles: low in warmth, low in control

• Authoritative styles promote healthy, socially responsible outcomes for children

• Acceptance rather than rejection and firm policies
• Critical thinking skills, individuality, and self-initiative
• Models of desired behavior and attitudes
• Explanations of the reasons for rules and policies

Demanding parents 

use authoritarian style, require children to believe that they must live their lives according to the adult’s standards and ideas about what is acceptable and appropriate, use guilt and manipulation

Critical parents

criticize and judge to achieve control over children, motivates parents and children to maintain a high degree of family secrecy, children and adults suffer from low levels of personal esteem

Overfunctioning parents

 feel overly responsible for a child’s actions and manage almost every aspect of a child’s life, behavior may arise out of a deep fear of abandonment

Disengaged parents

are emotionally uninvolved, appear to be too busy or self absorbed to function adequately as a parent

Ineffective parents

are incapable of meeting the needs of children and accepting the responsibilities of parenting

Abusive parents

 harm children emotionally, physically, and even sexually