Families, Risk, and Competence

Michael Lewis, Candice Feiring, Michael Lewis, Candice Feiring

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317778813
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The problems of studying families arise from the difficulty in studying systems where there are multiple elements interacting with each other and with the child. How should this system be described? Still other problems relate to indirect effects; namely the influence of a particular dyad's interaction on the child when the child is not a member of the dyad. While all agree that the mother-father relationship has important bearing on the child's development, exactly how to study this--especially using observational techniques--remains a problem. While progress in studying the family has been slow, there is no question that an increase in interest in the family systems, as opposed to the mother-child relationship, is taking place. This has resulted in an increase in research on families and their effects. This volume, by leading figures in child development on families, attests to the growing sophistication of the conceptualization and measurement techniques for getting at family processes. The third in a series that aims to address topics relevant to the developmental problems and developmental disabilities of retardation, this volume is divided into two parts. Section 1 presents basic family processes and approaches for describing family dynamics. It deals with these issues from a broad perspective, including studying families at dinner, families in different cultural contexts, and the understanding of family in nonhuman primates. Section 2 looks at family processes in the service of studying families at-risk. The risk factors include poverty, malnutrition, and developmental delay and retardation. The study of family processes in these contexts provides data on family dynamics as well as how these dynamics impact on the children's developing competence. This volume will be informative for researchers, clinicians, and educators from a variety of disciplines and settings. The editors' aim is to bring a greater clarity to issues concerning the family life of children and highlight new research and possibilities for intervention.

I

THE NATURE OF FAMILY ENVIRONMENTS

In order to study the child and its family, we need to go beyond the dyad and the study of the parent–child interaction. Because we recognize that children are born to families made up of a varying number of people and functions, we are confronted by multiple ways, perspectives, and methods with which to describe the family. Lewis and Feiring (chap. 1, this volume) discuss how a systems approach is helpful in describing families. This approach, allowing for multiple elements, each interacting and influencing others, provides a framework for what they called a “social matrix system” (Lewis & Feiring, 1979). In their chapter, they focus on how different members of the family provide different functions directed to the goals that families set for themselves. Of particular interest is their concern for both direct and indirect interactive effects and how indirect effects are necessary to consider when studying a multielement system.

In chapter 2, Ramey and Juliusson provide a unique opportunity to understand the family from multiple perspectives: direct videotaped observations of interactions over multiple occasions, family members’ perceptions of these videotaped interactions, self-reports of family members’ experiences in the family, as well as observers’ ratings of family dynamics. Of particular interest are the similarities between married families and divorced single-mother families. Quite striking from this research is the support for the notion of families as dynamic systems in which multiple paths are available in achieving a homeostatic balance.

Implicit in the study of families is the belief that studying the family system is likely to provide greater coherence in its effect on the child’s development than studying elements in isolation. Feiring and Lewis (chap. 3, this volume) explore this question by studying how aggregating family views, rather than examining the views of individual members alone, is related to school competence. They examine family views by looking at the aggregate of beliefs about the family’s intellectual environment within the family and also by looking at the disagreement between family members. By addressing the question of whether multiple family members’ perspectives at the individual, dyadic, and entire family level are related to adolescent competence, they offer a multilevel approach for describing family systems and their impact on child development.

Although the context of other members of the family or group is likely to influence the child’s development, Rosenblum (chap. 4, this volume), working with nonhuman primates, argues for the more traditional view of the major importance of the mother for the baby monkey’s development. Recognizing the effect of the environment surrounding the mother–infant dyad, however, Rosenblum forcefully argues that although the maternal–child dyad is influenced by exogenous factors, it is still the dyadic relationship itself that supports, alters, and forms the competence of the developing infant. He sees the mothers’ primary function in three areas: the modulation of arousal, the mitigation of environmental uncertainty, and the mediation of kinship relations.

Parke et al. (chap. 5, this volume) consider how the family is a central context for the socialization of skills and knowledge in social contexts outside the family. They present findings that examine a three-tiered model that suggests the modes by which parents may influence their children’s peer relationships. Parents are viewed as affecting peer relationships through childrearing practices and interactive styles, a mode of influence that is often indirect. Parents also directly influence peer relationships in their role as educators by giving advice on managing relationships and by acting as gatekeepers to specific types of friends and settings for interaction.

In order to understand how families operate, it is necessary to observe how they function in different cultures. Lamb, Leyendecker, and Schölmerich (chap. 6, this volume) explore family differences in Euro-American and Central American families. Although there are major differences between these cultures, there are many similarities in the mother–infant interaction. One important difference between the cultures is the different everyday experiences of the infants; daily life is quite structured and predictable for the Euro-American infants, whereas the daily lives of the Central American infants are less routinized. The study of cultural differences is clearly a valuable way to explore how families affect children’s development.

How the developing child forces a reconsideration of the factors important for a home environment that facilitates competence, as well as issues of measurement, are addressed by Bradley and Whiteside-Mansell (chap. 7, this volume). To promote optimal development, family systems must function to sustain viability, stimulate skills, support the child’s self-sustaining capacities, and control inputs to maximize the fit between the child’s and the other’s social agendas. How families carry out these functions and how to measure them varies as the child ages and depends on cultural, socioeconomic, and ethnic considerations.

In general, the chapters in this volume share the common premise that families have multiple functions and that their structure and processes have important consequences for the child’s development. Although a variety of theoretical and measurement models are offered, there remains much work to be done; of particular importance is the need to understand and articulate those measures of family functions best related to children’s competence.

1

The Child and Its Family

Michael Lewis

Candice Feiring

Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
New Brunswick, NJ

The newborn human infant enters a world filled with networks, the most immediate and important of which is the family. Soon, the infant’s network includes significant others beyond the family including friends, teachers, and eventually mates. Moreover, the first network is embedded in other networks that form larger reference groups such as a clan, social class, or religious group. Still larger networks can be imagined that are made up of geographical regions and countries or cultures. These networks are interconnected and exert influence on each other. They form the ecology of development (Bronfenbrenner, 1986). Each of these separate networks, as well as the entire system of networks, operates under general systems principles and therefore, possesses the characteristics of systems (Von Bertalanffy, 1967).

It is to this changing array of people, institutions, behaviors, and goals that the infant is born, and it is in this array that the development and socialization of the child takes place. As we noted (Lewis & Feiring, 1978), the socialization of the infant is the process of learning to become a member of these different networks. The task of the socializer(s), then, is to teach the child the rules of membership. This teaching can be carried out through a variety of procedures, some of which are direct, as in didactic information exchange, and some of which involve more indirect interaction, such as modeling, imitation, and referencing (Feinman & Lewis, 1983; Feiring, Lewis, & Starr, 1984; Lewis, 1979b; Lewis & Feiring, 1981).

In order to study the child and its family, we need to go beyond the dyad and the study of the mother–child relationship (e.g., Lewis, 1984; Lewis & Rosenblum, 1974). As soon as we realize that the child develops in a social nexus rather than in just the mother–infant dyad, we are confronted by how to talk about the family. The nature of the family requires that we consider a systems analysis. A corollary to this problem is the issue of how to describe the forces acting on and being acted on by the child. When we discuss interactions that involve more than two actors, we are forced into a consideration of what we called “direct and indirect forces or effects” (Lewis & Feiring, 1981, 1992).

In this chapter, we first discuss a general systems approach to family life, including in it what we learned about the child’s social nexus. In the next section, we focus on the forces, both direct and indirect, that must exist when multiple family members, rather than the mother–child dyad, are considered. Using information from families at dinner, we give examples of both these direct and indirect effects that act on the children in the family setting.

A SYSTEMS APPROACH

Systems, in general, and families, in particular, can be characterized by a number of features: (a) there are more than two elements or family members; (b) those elements are interdependent; (c) the elements are nonadditive and thus, the sum of the individual elements does not equal the total system of family; (d) elements of the system change and yet maintain the system; and (e) systems and families are goal-oriented.

Elements

Systems are composed of sets of elements. In the family, an element represents each individual member—mother, father, child—or it can represent dyads—mother–child, father–child—or even triads when there is more than one child in the family. When considering units larger than the family, families themselves can become the elements of the system. In a family of 4 (2 children), there are a total of 4 simple elements, 6 dyads, and 4 triads, or a total of 14 possible elements. The potential array of different social elements that infants experience that can influence them, and are influenced by them, is large. Unfortunately, there are almost no data on the changing number of different social contacts and their frequency and intensity as a function of the child’s age (Lewis, Young, Brooks, & Michalson, 1975). This scarcity of data applies to other potentially important figures. For example, there are few data as to the number of grandparent, aunt, or uncle experiences, and there is no real count of sibling contacts. Information regarding these relationships is also missing. Clearly, the number of others the child interacts with needs study, especially in the light of changing childrearing practices. We collected data on the social networks of over 117 three year olds (Feiring & Lewis, 1988). The children in our sample had approximately 5.8 friends. In addition to mother, father, and siblings, the children came in contact with an average of 9.6 relatives, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Mothers reported that these children came in contact with almost all the people the mother would include as important in her social network, including her friends. The number of adults other than family that the child made contact with was 7.1. On the average, 3.2, 4.4, and 4.4 relatives, friends, and adults (other than parents) are seen at least once a week. These data reflect what we observed at that time. Given the changes in the social structure of the society in the last two decades, these figures are likely to have changed. Nevertheless, for some infants the only significant relationship may be between the mother and infant, whereas for others, it may include fathers, caregivers (as in daycare), siblings, peers, and relatives such as grandparents. Having considered multiple significant relationships, it is now possible to ask which ones exist, how they differ, and what are their potential consequences.

People in the Child’s Network

Mothers are the primary focus in attachment theory, but children form important relationships and attachments with individuals other than their mothers. In this section, we introduce other figures such as fathers, siblings, grandparents, and peers. The role of mothers in young children’s lives need not be discussed in detail. Mothers are the primary caretakers, even today when many fathers take an active role in childrearing and many mothers hold jobs outside the home. It is the mother who usually buys clothes for the child, arranges for child care (whether it be hiring a babysitter or taking the child to a child-care center), makes medical appointments, and takes the child to the pediatrician’s office. Also, even when the child is under someone else’s care, the person who normally takes the mother’s role is usually someone else’s mother.

Fathers. The research literature, although still dominated by studies of mother–child, brought into focus some of the roles fathers play in children’s lives. Four questions were directed toward the father–child relationship. Each of these is discussed, albeit briefly.

1. Can fathers do what mothers do? One important question raised about fathers is whether there is any biological difference between mother and father care for the very young. Perhaps mothers take care of infants better than fathers? Parke and O’Leary (1975), in their work with fathers and newborn infants, demonstrated that fathers’ care—the interaction patterns between fathers and children—is similar to mothers’ care. Thus, one would say that fathers care for their very young infants. Although fathers provide care, it is apparent that, in general, they do not, especially in the case of a young infant under 9 months or so. Even the increased multiple roles assumed by the mother (mother, worker out of the home, wife) does not seem to lead to a major increase in fathers’ involvement (Feiring & Lewis, 1984; Russell & Russell, 1987).

2. What do fathers do that is different from mothers? Although fathers have been shown to be equally capable of caring for the young, there are differences in their interaction patterns that distinguish them from mothers. Whereas maternal interactions are likely to center around child-care activities such as feeding, changing diapers and clothes, bathing, and other caregiving and maternal activities, fathers’ interactions are more likely to include physical playful activities. Studies have shown fathers engage in more rough and tumble, bouncing, and tickling activities than do mothers (Lamb, 1976; Lewis & Weinraub, 1976; Parke, MacDonald, Beitel, & Bhavnagri, 1988). Although mothers play with their young children, their play is likely to be less active and arousing than that of father. Moreover, as the children become older, the father’s role is likely to increase, mostly as a function of the declining need for caregiving activities and the increasing needs for exploration, play, and self-initiated action or efficacy vis-à-vis the physical environment. Mackey (1985) showed that across many cultures fathers’ interactions with young children in public places are quite different than those that can be seen in the home. Although not sufficiently studied, fathers’ involvement with their children is probably considerably greater in public than at home, whereas mothers’ involvement may be the reverse. This change in roles by situations, with mothers dominating in the home, may be responsible for our rather limited view of fathers’ interaction patterns. By studying children in their homes, we inadvertently reduced the paternal role.

3. What are the direct versus the indirect effects of the fathers? In exploring the roles of fathers and mothers, most studies observed the interactional patterns of family members. Such patterns, which directly involve the child with the father, are called “fathers’ direct effects” (Lewis & Feiring, 1982). Of these, we already mentioned that play and exploration are major areas of interaction. It is also interesting to note that fathers, more than mothers, were influenced by the sex and birth order of their children. In studying families at dinner, Lewis and Feiring (1981) found that the father talked more to first- than later-born and more to male than female children at the table. Fathers also affect their children’s lives indirectly by impacting the lives of their wives (Lewis, Feiring, & Weinraub, 1981). These indirect effects include emotional support of the mother. The interdependent nature of the child–parent and parent–parent subsystems are amply demo...