Proximal family processes
Parent-child interactions are also important for internalised behavioural outcomes,
such as emotion and understanding. For example, conflict and its negotiation can also
be seen as an aspect of discipline and intrusiveness. Parent-child conflict during the
toddler and pre-school years is normal. It is a large part of all early relationships with
caregivers and because it typically involves children’s experiences with and
observations of emotion, conflict is likely to be an important context in which social
and emotional understanding is developed (Dunn, 1988).
Conflict can be thought of as a co-constructed process, wherein both parent and child
create shared meaning out of their interactions. Hence it can be seen as either
constructive (involving high levels of negotiation, justification and resolution) or
destructive (not involving these positive strategies). While constructive conflict and
the positive strategies employed therein can be seen as being developmentally
positive, destructive conflict, in contrast, is often seen as a marker of dysfunction in
relationships.
Authoritative parenting (in contrast to authoritarian or permissive parenting, see
Baumrind, 1973), is marked by warm, but firm, parenting styles coupled with high
expectations. Negative parenting practices are marked by harsh and/or inconsistent
discipline, punitiveness (e.g. verbal punishment and physical restraint) and
intrusiveness (e.g. mother taking over a task from her child.)
Many studies have found correlations between disciplinary styles in these terms and
subsequent child development. For example, Steinberg et al. (1995) finds an
association between authoritative parenting and academic success from early
childhood through adolescence, independent of gender and socio-economic status.
Negative parenting practices, on the other hand, predict negative child behavioural
(Brenner & Fox, 1998; Bradley et al. 2001) and cognitive outcomes (Egeland et al.,
1993; Fagot & Gauvain, 1997).
A causal perspective on these findings is consistent with Patterson’s (Patterson, 1986;
Patterson et al., 1989) model of the development of antisocial behaviour, which
specifically implicates poor parental use of discipline as the first step in a
developmental sequence that leads to potential conduct disorders.
An alternative view however, might simply suggest that the relation operates in the
other direction; children with more problematic behaviours require more discipline
(Bell, 1968). Steinberg et al. (1994) respond to this concern with a value-added model
in which the change in developmental outcomes over a one year period is shown to
relate to parenting practices, conditional on the initial level of the outcomes. This
indicates, for example, that given the parenting style at period 1 and the level of the
outcome at period 1, those children with more authoritative parenting will gain more
over the year in terms of academic achievement and psychosocial development than
those whose parents are reported as exhibiting authoritarian, indulgent or neglectful
parenting. This method reduces the possibility that the results follow from a causal
pathway in which the child’s behaviour provokes the response of the parent rather
than the other way around, since with this estimation strategy the parenting style
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