Marketing Scoops: Never Show Your Kids Weakness & Other Parenting Myths Debunked

Edith Pritchett/The Guardian

Is screen time really that bad? Should you swear in front of your kids? And is it possible to undo your mistakes? Experts tackle the big parenting questions of our time

Don’t post pictures of your children online.. FALSE There’s a difference, says the psychotherapist Stella O’Malley, author of What Your Teen Is Trying to Tell You, between creating interesting content, and being an excessive over-poster – people who are posting almost every day, rather than just on special occasions or when something funny or cute is going on.

“It’s become a universal truth that it’s a bad thing to post pictures of your children online: but I did it, and I don’t regret it. The important thing is to be sensitive, respectful and to appreciate that your child will one day grow up and have their own ideas.” Always remember that your child isn’t just an extension of you – some parents forget that at times, says O’Malley…Continue reading…

By: Joanna Moorhead

Source: Never show your kids weakness … and other parenting myths, debunked | Parents and parenting

Critics:

Unlike many stressful situations and events, parenting stressors tend to be long-term, repetitive, and can create chronic stress that manifests both in psychological and physiological ways. Extensive cross-cultural research has found that parenting stress is associated with parenting and child behaviors, various parenting-related cognitions, and the parent’s and child’s physiological states.

Abidin has presented a non-exhaustive model and a measure that attempts to define the major components of parenting stress, and the impact of these stressors on parenting behavior and their child’s development. The model concentrates on proximal variables related to the execution of the parenting role: the perceived behavioral characteristics of the child, the parent’s self-cognitions, and their perceptions of the familial and friend support available to them.

These proximal factors in turn connect with other aspects of the child’s and the parent’s interpersonal milieu. There are several operational definitions and ways of measuring aspects of parenting stress.Many of these have shown good reliability and criterion validity across a range of different samples, establishing evidence of generalizability.

The Parenting Stress Index (PSI), the most widely used measure of parenting stress, has shown associations with a wide range of parenting behaviors and child outcomes and has been used in hundreds of published studies. Since the fourth edition of the PSI has been translated in over 30 languages, cross-cultural replications of the PSI factor structure have been published using normative samples from several countries.

Copies of these measures and their test manuals may be obtained from the respective publisher. The goal is to provide a brief overview of the construct of parenting stress for a broader audience, given that the topic is likely to be of interest and importance across a wide range of medical and research contexts.

Parenting is a human universal across time and culture, and the construct connects with psychological development, socialization of children, education, health (including when either person in the parent-child dyad experiences other illness or injury), and a wealth of other issues. The overview concludes with links to resources for learning more, or for incorporating measures into other programs of research.

The construct of parenting stress builds on the seminal works of both Selye and Lazarus. Selye demonstrated that a physiological response occurred in the body by phenomenological events like physical environmental stimuli. Although not always maladaptive, the stress in parenting is more likely to be maladaptive, especially when the stress is severe or chronic.

Further, he demonstrated that, regardless of the sources of stress, the greater the number of stressors, the larger the body’s physiological response.That finding suggested that parenting stress would need to be understood and measured by considering multiple variables.

Lazarus articulated the connection of perceptions to emotions and subsequently to both the physiological response and the likely behavioral responses of individuals. Parenting stress thus conceived is not simply a reaction to observable events but the interpretations and other cognitions of the parent relative to the events. The Lazarus model suggests four stages of the stress reaction:

Recognition of an environmental demand,
The perception of the demand in terms of whether it is perceived as a threat,
Whether or not the individual believes they have the resources to cope with the event. This process is instantaneous and is essentially an unconscious response.
Based on stage three, the nervous system responds by either relaxing or preparing to flee or fight.

Thus, the works of Selye and Lazarus provide conceptual frameworks for understanding the links between emotion perception, stress, and coping. Multiple evidence-based measures of parenting stress have been developed. Kirby Deater-Deckard, in the volume Parenting Stress, presented the first comprehensive articulation of the research on parenting stress concerning the characteristics of parents, the parent-child relationship, and parents’ coping behaviors.

Since Deater-Deckard’s work, there has been a rapid expansion of research documenting the linkage between parenting stress and a wide variety of important issues related to family functioning and child development and behavior. The summary below provides a brief sampling to illustrate the breadth of impact parenting stress has on members of the core family system.

It is an illustrative review extracting some examples from a recent more comprehensive review (with its own formal literature review search and extraction process) to concisely introduce a range of topics. Parenting stress has been demonstrated to be predictive of abusive mother’s behavior towards their children during free play and task situations, parents’ verbal harshness, demanding and controlling behaviors, and parents’ level of warmth and engagement with their child.

Parents’ level of stress has been found to be predictive of the development of problem behaviors in children, children’s aggressiveness, callous-unemotional traits in children, and children’s coping competence. Barroso et al. conducted a major review and meta-analysis of the parenting stress literature, which revealed that parenting stress is a major factor with parents coping with their children’s behavior.

Children whose parents exhibit high levels of parenting stress display difficulties in executive functioning, lower levels of academic competence, and other behavioral problems in school. Parenting stress has been associated with elevated cortisol and oxytocin levels both in parents and their children.

These are well-established chemical markers of an individual’s mental and physical health. Mothers who exhibit high levels of parenting stress also display a failure to care for their own health needs while also overusing pediatric healthcare services for their children. Parenting stress has also been associated with parental brain functioning, epigenetic DNA methylation, and parent-child behavioral synchrony, and brain synchrony.

Parents with elevated stress levels have significantly higher non-compliance rates for their treatment and the medically necessary care of their children. They also are early terminators of psychological treatments for their children. The quality of the parents’ relationship is a central variable in terms of child outcomes. The level of parenting stress experienced by parenting partners is associated with the child’s physical and mental health.

In most families with more than one child, parents will adjust their parenting styles according to what their child best responds to, however, a high level of differential parenting can have negative effects on children. The effects that differential parenting has on families differs, but in general there are usually negative effects on both children.

The severity of effects is more extreme for the child who is viewed as disfavored. The “disfavored” child generally has a variety of personal development issues such as low self-esteem and depression. The favored child tends to have higher self-esteem and more friends in school. However, studies show that both favored and disfavored children tend to have problems with interpersonal relationships, as well as problems with managing their emotions.

A high level of differential parenting also influences how siblings treat one another, and the level of conflict in the sibling relationship.Research shows that this is due in part to children imitating their parents’ behaviors. One theory being discussed in relation to differential parenting is social comparison. Social comparison is the outcome of adolescents comparing the treatment they receive from their guardians versus the treatment their siblings receive.

While these comparisons on treatment may be subconscious, it is vital to a child’s formation of self-worth and their perceived role within the family dynamic. As the years go on and adolescents grow and mature, their perception of differential parenting within their household becomes prominent and plays a role in forming one’s own identity.

If the adolescent views inequitable treatment intentional or not on behalf of the guardian’s report have shown internalized symptoms of depression, anxiety, etc., and external outburst such as risk-taking, and delinquency to non-verbally communicate to a guardian unfair treatment. Parental differential treatment is seen by researchers as “arguably a subjective phenomenon” because it is based on perception.

Much research has still yet to be completed on this subject but based on what is known can be attributed to the social comparison arising from differential parenting.

González-Cámara, Marta; Osorio, Alfonso; Reparaz, Charo (2019). “Measurement and Function of the Control Dimension in Parenting Styles: A Systematic Review”

(2012). “The critical role of nurturing environments for promoting human well-being”. American Psychologist. 67 (4): 257–271.

“Disorganized Attachment: How Disorganized Attachments Form & How They Can Be Healed”.

Firestone, Lisa (30 July 2015). “7 Ways Your Childhood Affects How You’ll Parent”. Psychology Today.

“The critical role of nurturing environments for promoting human well-being”. American Psychologist. 67 (4): 257–271. Weymouth, Bridget; Fosco, Gregory; Feinberg, Mark (2017).