Proximal family processes
However, this is not necessarily an effect of education as the prior emotional
development of the parents may underlay both their educational success and the
warmth of their parenting.
Developmental research has also demonstrated an association between maternal
education and the mother’s parenting behaviour in terms of the disciplining strategies
adopted. For example, Fox et al. (1995) found that scores from maternal ratings of
discipline frequencies were consistently higher (i.e. greater use by parents of corporal
punishment, e.g. spanking and yelling) for women with less education. In addition,
younger mothers, mothers with two or more children living at home, unmarried
mothers and those from middle as opposed to upper middle SES reported more
frequent discipline. Studies of maternal intrusiveness have also documented
statistically significant relations between intrusive behaviour and various measures of
educational and economic status (Bee et al., 1969; Bradley, 1993; Phinney &
Feshbach, 1980).
One frequently used strategy to discipline a child, especially a younger one, is
spanking (Day et al., 1998). Research from the US shows that, in terms of attitudes
towards spanking, adults who are college graduates are less likely than adults without
a high school diploma or an equivalent to say that spanking a child is sometimes
necessary. In 2000, 66% of men who were college graduates agreed that spanking is
sometimes necessary compared to 87% of men with less than a high school education.
Among women, 55% of college graduates agreed that it was sometimes necessary to
spank a child, compared to 80% of those who did not graduate from high school.
Van Bakel et al. (2002) considered the determinants of the quality of parenting
defined in terms of the quality of the support the parent provided their infant and
overall quality of their parental interactive behaviour. Testing a sample of 129 parents
and their 15 month old infants, they found that parental education explained
significant and unique portions of the variance in the observed quality of parental
behaviour.
The authors argue that parental intelligence is related to the quality of parenting (see
also Baharudin & Luster, 1998; Bradley, 1993; Watson et al., ; Whiteside-Mansell et
al., 1996). Higher educated parents might therefore be expected to provide better
quality care than lower educated parents simply because they are likely to score more
highly on intelligence tests. They note, however, that higher educated parents may
also provide more supportive childcare for other reasons. During their years of college
or university education and functioning in higher qualified jobs with more
responsibilities, they may have acquired other important attitudes and competencies
such as tolerance or the ability to plan tasks. There are thus many channels for inter-
generational benefits of learning.
2.2.3 Summary
Overall, positive parenting styles are strongly associated with positive outcomes for
children. However, the causality in the correlational evidence is unproven. Parenting
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