Parental Belief Systems

The Psychological Consequences for Children

Irving E. Sigel, Ann V. McGillicuddy-DeLisi, Jacqueline J Goodnow

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• Topic: Psychology
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317783824
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Research on the topic of parent beliefs, or parent cognition, has increased tremendously since the original publication of this volume in 1985. For this revised second edition, the editors sought to reflect some of the new directions that research on parent cognition has taken. By offering a greater variety of topics, it gives evidence of the intellectual concerns that now engage researchers in the field and testifies to the expanding scope of their interests. Although a unique collection because it reflects the diversity that exists among major researchers in the field, it evinces a common theme -- that the ideas parents have regarding their children and themselves as parents have an impact on their actions. This emphasis on parents' ideas shifts the focus on sources of family influence to ideas or beliefs as determinants of family interactions. The implication of this way of thinking for practitioners is that it suggests the shift to ideas and thoughts from behavior and attitudes.

I

Focus on Normal Families of Young Children

1	Reflection-Enhancing Parenting as an Antecedent to Children’s Social-Cognitive and Communicative Development

James L. Applegate

University of Kentucky

Brant R. Burleson

Purdue University

Jesse G. Delia

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

INTRODUCTION

In the first volume of Parental Belief Systems (Applegate, Burke, Burleson, Delia, & Kline, 1985), we reported an investigation of individual differences in parenting strategies grounded in a constructivist theory of communication. That investigation provided a systematic analysis of a range of parental communication behaviors that we argued had functional significance for children’s social-cognitive and communication development. We defined these variations in terms of the reflection-enhancing quality of parenting strategies. Reflection-enhancing parenting strategies were presented as realizations of a more general person-centered orientation to communication identified in our previous research as a salient dimension of individual difference in communicative development for children and adults across a variety of contexts (see reviews in Applegate, 1990; Burleson, 1989).

Briefly, reflection-enhancing messages encourage recipients to consider the causes and consequences of their own and others’ actions. These messages also encourage recipients to see how actions both grow out of and create psychological and affective states. Our study found that although socioeconomic status (SES) and social-cognitive ability both contributed to mothers using reflection-enhancing messages, the strongest and most direct associations were between individual levels in social cognition and uses of reflection-enhancing communication. These empirical associations suggested a more general analysis of the relations between cultural factors, cognition, and individual differences in communicative behavior.

This chapter further elaborates our analysis of relationships between cognition and communication. Although our previous study examined how individual differences in social cognition contributed to differences in communicative behavior, this chapter considers how differences in the communicative practices of parents may affect children’s social-cognitive and communicative abilities. Specifically, we report an investigation of the impact of variations in reflection-enhancing parental communication on individual differences in children’s social-cognitive and communicative development. The background to our general approach and the rationale for our expectations in this investigation can be briefly sketched by considering three topics: (a) the relationship of our work to traditional analyses of parental discipline and nurturance, (b) the processes through which we believe reflection-enhancing parental communication facilitates children’s social-cognitive and communicative development, and (c) the specific socialization model tested in the present investigation.

Reflection-Enhancing Communication in Disciplinary and Nurturance Contexts

Many theorists have suggested that the manner in which parents interact with their children is one of the most powerful determinants of children’s social competencies (see Maccoby & Martin, 1983). Although few studies have examined how parental behaviors affect the development of specific functional communication competencies, parental behavioral styles have been found to predict children’s competencies related to prosocial and antisocial behavior (Feshbach, 1975; Zahn-Waxler, Radke-Yarrow, & King, 1979), moral reasoning and moral conduct (Brody & Shaffer, 1982), and general social-cognitive and interactional skills (Parke, MacDonald, Beitel, & Bhavnagri, 1988). Virtually all of these studies focused on either parental disciplinary or nurturant behavior.

Several conceptual systems have been used in characterizing types of parental discipline (e.g., power-assertive/inductive, authoritarian/authoritative, position-centered/person-centered, parent-centered/child-centered, punishment-oriented/reasoning-oriented; see the review by Rollins & Thomas, 1979). Of the various analyses of parenting strategies expressing these distinctions, our analysis of “reflection-enhancing” communication embodies much of what Baumrind (1989) identified as differences between authoritarian and authoritative parenting and Hoffman (1977) described as power-assertive and inductive parenting. Power assertion/authoritarian parenting refers to the use of physical punishment or the exercise of material power over the child (e.g., threatening loss of privileges), and induction/authoritative parenting is reflected in offering reasons to the child for changes in conduct (particularly reasons concerning the consequences of action). Thus, power-assertive/authoritarian parenting seeks to control the child’s behavior through the use of negative reinforcement whereas inductive/authoritative parenting seeks to influence the child’s behavior through the use of reasoning, especially reasoning about how acts (or their consequences) affect others. Numerous studies indicate that the frequent use of power assertion is associated with increased aggression by children whereas the frequent use of induction is associated with the internalization of self-guiding moral principles and the display of altruistic behavior (see the reviews by Brody & Shaffer, 1982; Maccoby & Martin, 1983).

Applegate and colleagues (1985) integrated Hoffman’s discussion of parental discipline with Bernstein’s (1974) more general analysis of interaction within family systems. Bernstein suggested that different modes of interaction both express and are organized by the assumption of similarity or uniqueness in the psychological experiences underlying social relations. The communicative style Bernstein termed the elaborated code both reflects and fosters the assumption that the motivations, intentions, and feelings of individuals are, at least to some extent, unique. This style thus “presupposes a sharp boundary or gap between self and others which is crossed through the creation of speech which specifically fits differentiated others” (Bernstein, 1974, p. 147). In contrast, the communicative style Bernstein termed the restricted code both reflects and fosters the assumption that the identities of others and the meanings of their actions are given in socially defined roles occupied in particular contexts. This latter style thus discourages language use that expresses or adapts to the unique perspectives of others. Instead, communication is based on culturally shared definitions of situations that specify the legitimate roles of participants, authority relations inhering in these roles, and behavioral norms governing conduct between role occupants (e.g., parent and child, teacher and student).

Applegate and colleagues (1985) extended Bernstein’s analysis and suggested that parental disciplinary efforts can be scaled on a continuum for the extent to which they embody the pursuit of goal structures that encourage children to reflect on the nature of their transgressions, the consequences of their actions, and how their conduct might affect others psychologically. As in much of our other work, messages defined as more sophisticated within Applegate et al.’s hierarchic system were those with more differentiated and complex sets of goals responsive to the array of exigencies present in the situation addressed (for general discussions see Applegate, 1990; Burleson, 1987, 1989; O’Keefe & Delia, 1982). Applegate and colleagues found the level of “reflection-enhancing” disciplinary strategies associated appropriately with measures of mothers’ social class and social-cognitive development and unassociated with such potentially confounding variables as verbal fluency and verbal intelligence (see Applegate et al., 1985).

The general framework articulated by Applegate and colleagues provides a parallel approach for the analysis of parents’ nurturant behavior. Although nurturance has not received as intensive study as discipline as an antecedent to children’s communicative competencies, several recent studies suggest its potential importance (e.g., Finnie & Russell, 1988; Roberts & Strayer, 1987; see the review by Radke-Yarrow & Zahn-Waxler, 1986). However, parental nurturance is an even less differentiated concept than control or discipline. Broad definitions, including provision of praise, help, endearments, encouragement, and positive affection, provide categorical distinctions similar to those employed in the study of parental control (such as power assertion vs. induction). The distinctions drawn in work on nurturance are generally less specific and focused (e.g., warm/cold or accepting/rejecting). Although these global dimensions may capture the general tenor of parental behavior, they do little to specify the constituents of “warm,” “accepting,” or “nurturant” behavior. Further, these global dimensions are not sensitive to the functional context in which nurturance is manifested by parents as they pursue specific interactional goals with their children.

Applegate and colleagues (1985) argued that nurturance can be examined by identifying a class of situations faced in the normal routine of parenting in which nurturance plays a central role and then deriving an abstractive principle and set of categories for identifying and ordering the goal configurations expressed in messages produced in addressing specific situations within the class. They investigated situations in which the parent must deal with the emotional distress of the child (as, e.g., when the child has not been invited to a classmate’s party). The possibility of nurturing the child through comforting is a manifest feature of these events. Messages addressing such contexts can be conceptualized as varying in the extent to which they acknowledge and legitimize the child’s feelings and encourage the child to seek an understanding of his or her feelings. Applegate and colleagues developed a hierarchically ordered coding system for the goal structures evidenced in parents’ comforting messages. The system scores such messages for the extent to which they grant legitimacy to the distressed child’s feelings and encourage the child to reflect upon and seek an understanding of his or her feelings and the circumstances producing them. The construct validity of this approach to the analysis of comforting behavior was supported by Applegate et al.’s (1985) finding that maternal use of messages legitimizing and encouraging reflection on feelings is positively associated with indices of social-cognitive development and unassociated with the potentially confounding factors of verbal fluency and verbal intelligence.

The Impact of Reflection-Enhancing Communication on the Child

There are several reasons for believing that the message qualities indexed by our analyses of reflection-enhancing parenting should affect children’s social and communicative development. Some reasons are obvious from mainstream psychological research on social development. Baumrind (1989), Hoffman (1977), and Sigel (1985; Sigel & McGillicuddy-DeLisi, 1984) have examined particular features of parental communication for their effects on specific qualities of children’s cognitive development. Sigel (1985) and his colleagues, for example, focused on the impact of “distancing” behaviors of parents (demanding the children mentally separate themselves from their environment) on children’s representational abilities (i.e., the abilities to anticipate outcomes, de-center, and so on). Other research has singled out the inductive and reflection-enhancing quality of strategies as related to development of (a) specific role-taking and problemsolving abilities, (b) development of consequential thinking, and (c) general level of social skill and peer acceptance (Hart, de Wolf, Royston, Burts, & Thomasson, 1990; Hart, Ladd, & Burleson, 1990; Jones, Rickel, & Smith, 1980; Pettit, Dodge, & Brown, 1988; Putallaz, 1987).

The perspective guiding our own work also suggests effects for parental communication on children but differs from the previous approaches in its conception of (a) the key features of parental messages that are of interest, (b) the structures in the child being affected by the parental messages, and (c) the process through which parenting communication affects children. First, as was just detailed, parental communication is studied as reflecting differential goal configurations. The analysis of these goal configurations involves considering not just context-defining instrumental goals, but also the extent and manner through which subsidiary goals involving instrumental, identity, or relational concerns are addressed. Identification of the complexity of strategic behavior is a central aspect of our analysis of reflection-enhancing parental communication. Person-centered and reflection-enhancing messages are not simply more “inductive” or “authoritative”; they are more functionally and structurally complex forms of behavior (see O’Keefe & Delia, 1982).

For example, the command, “Go to bed right now!” issued by a parent to a recalcitrant child is a relatively simple form of behavior in that it is oriented to a single goal: getting the child to go to bed. In contrast, what we have termed person-centered and reflection-enhancing messages would, in this situation, not only pursue the goal of getting the child to go to bed, but also might reflect the goals of eliciting the child’s reasons for wanting to remain up, getting the child to understand why he or she needs rest, helping the child envision consequences likely to be experienced if he or she doesn’t get sufficient rest, and so-forth. Reflection-enhancing messages thus constitute more complex forms of behavior. In addition to pursuing a primary instrumental goal...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction to the First Edition
• Introduction to the Second Edition
• Part I Focus on Normal Families of Young Children
• Part II Focus on Normal Families of Adolescents
• Part III Focus on Atypical Families
• Part IV Focus on Model Building of Parent Cognition
• Part V Focus on Cultural Perspectives of Parent Cognition
• Part VI Focus on a Methods Issue
• Author Index
• Subject Index