Families come in all shapes and sizes: single parents, same-sex parents, extended families with shared parenting, foster and adoptive parents, and a birth mother and father. No matter what the home setup, academics agree that parenting principles are common among them, and that teaching children to love and respect themselves and others and how to exist in harmony with others is fundamental to a child's ability to thrive and develop into a happy and healthy adult.
Type of Parenting
In "Science of Parenting: Good Parenting," published in January 2011 by Iowa State University, Douglas Gentile, et al., found that authoritarian parenting, in which children are expected to obey and be seen and not heard, is a far less effective method than an authoritative one in which a parent teaches and sets boundaries, as well as develops a warm and close relationship with a child. The authors note that parents switch between authoritative, authoritarian and permissive models of parenting depending on the situation, but that the bedrock of the healthy parent-child relationship is one of mutual love and respect.
Training Parents
Mary Huser, et al., of the University of Wisconsin found that parenting skills blossom with good parenting education in people who might have lacked sufficient positive parental reinforcement in their own lives. Their 2008 fact sheet, "What Research Tells Us About Effective Parenting Education Programs," highlights the benefits to parents and their children of healthy, loving and communicative parenting guidance that not only helps parents develop as parents but also teaches children what parenting means. Parenting programs lead to fewer incidences of problematic behavior in children and, by example, help to instill in children the skills they need should they eventually decide to become parents.
Child Development
Given that a 3-year-old child's brain is twice as active as that of an adult, a good parent ensures that her child receives positive affirmations of her child's existence from the day of her birth. Encouraging neural development of the five senses lays down pathways that form the basic wiring upon which all future experience hangs, and creates a network of templates that inform future conscious and unconscious thought and behavior.
Encouraging Responsibility
Difficult though it might be, a parent's role involves preparing his child for an eventual flight from the nest. When a parent nurtures his child's talents, teaches the difference between right and wrong and instills a sense of personal responsibility and individuality, his child will most likely develop the social tools and skills to make his own way in the world as a useful and healthy member of society.
Guidance and Discipline
William Raspberry, in his article "Ultimate Child Abuse Experts Who Equate Spanking With Brutality Are Nuts" for the "Orlando Sentinel" in 1989, said in respect to parental discipline: "... the denial of love is the ultimate brutality." It's a sentiment echoed by Jack Westman, Ph.D., professor emeritus in psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin, who says boundary-setting is important in a child's development, adding that if those lessons are delivered without love and positive regard, a child's behavior might be negatively impacted and lead to manipulative or unsocial traits.
References
- Iowa State University Extension; Science of Parenting: Good Parenting; Douglas Gentile, et al.; January 2011
- Harvard Medical School; Harvard Mental Health Letter; Effective Parenting : Parent Training and Developing More Effective Parents;
- University of Wisconsin --- Madison Extension; What Research Tells Us About Effective Parenting Education Programs; Mary Huser et al.; January 2008
- North Dakota State University Extension; Family Science; Understanding Brain Development in Young Children; Sean Brotherson; April 2005
- University of Wisconsin -- Madison; Parenting in America; Growing Together -- The Key To Creative Parenting; Jack C. Westman, M.D.; 1998
- "Orlando Sentinel"; Ultimate Child Abuse Experts Who Equate Spanking With Brutality Are Nuts; William Raspberry; March 1989
