Firstly, we will look at how mothers affect their children’s behaviour. There has been an enormous amount of work conducted in this area. To begin with John Bowlby considered that a strong attachment to a mother figure was necessary for an individual’s psychological well being in infancy and in later life. Failure to form this attachment or loss of an existing attachment was termed ‘maternal deprivation’ and could result in serious emotional and mental health problems. Bowlby believed the mother figure provided the model for all future relationships (the internal working model). If the child suffered maternal deprivation this would lead to unsatisfactory relationships in later life. Therefore for Bowlby, the influence of this first relationship is of the utmost importance in shaping healthy development and gives us a blueprint for all future relationships.
Ainsworth and Bell, 1970, believed the sensitivity of the mother in responding to the infant’s signals determined the security of infant attachment. They developed the ‘strange situation’ experiment which measured infant attachment types. Children were found to be one of three types - insecure-resistant, secure or insecure-avoidant. Those who were securely attached were likely to develop in a healthy normative way, those who were insecurely attached were more likely to develop disturbing behaviour patterns and have problems with relationships in later life.
Murray and Stein, 1991, conducted studies into another area of maternal sensitivity and looked at how infants were affected by their mother’s facial expressions, level of attention and level of synchronicity. They found when mothers were sensitive to their children and able to accurately predict their child’s mental state, the child was more likely to be securely attached and therefore less likely to develop disturbing behaviour.
To further support this view we can use Murray’s study, 1992, which found children whose mothers suffered from postnatal depression, i.e. mothers who did not sensitively engage with their children, who may have been distracted and non responsive, were more likely to develop behavioural problems.
This study was criticised by Cox who conducted her own studies into postnatal depression and found that not all depressed mothers fail to engage sensitively with their child. The study found post natal depression was just one factor in the mother-infant relationship, and mothers who had poor relationships with their children and subsequently children with disturbing behaviour, were more likely to have problems in their marriage, be younger when they got married and their own parents were not particularly sensitive or responsive. Hence depression as a conduit to childhood behavioural problems is not clear cut and has many other factors influencing it. (Page 72, Chapter 2, Children’s Personal and Social Development, Woodhead, Rhodes and Oates).
The attitude of the mother to the child has also been found to have implications for childhood development. Studies by Stern-Bruschweiler-Stern, 1989 and Bor et al, 2003, found that if the mother had a negative attitude to her child at 6 months then the child was more likely to have disturbed behaviour later on. (Page 73, Chapter 2, Children’s Personal and Social Development, Woodhead, Rhodes and Oates).
A study by Dadds and colleagues, 2003, found that when a mother attributes ‘bad’ behaviour to the child, and ‘good’ behaviour to outside causes, the child is more likely to display disturbing behaviour. (Page 75, Chapter 2, Children’s Personal and Social Development, Woodhead, Rhodes and Oates). Therefore when the mother displays a negative attitude towards her child, the result is more likely to be negative behaviour. This is reminiscent of basic labelling theory. The mother believes the child to be disturbed, reacts to the child as if the child is disturbed, the child believes the label and behaves as expected to behave and this may lead to a vicious circle of behavioural problems.
We have seen how the mother may affect the child’s behaviour, we now look at the role of the father.
Recently, with the increasing involvement of fathers in childcare, studies have been carried out into the various effects fathers may or may not have on their offspring. A NICHD (2000) study found that factors such as the father’s age, personality, profession and quality of marital relationship all had some effect on childhood behaviour. As with mothers, they found that when fathers engaged sensitively with their child, normative development was more likely. (Page 75, Chapter 2, Children’s Personal and Social Development, Woodhead, Rhodes and Oates).
Studies (Jaffee et al, 2003; Scott, 1998; Deklyen et al 1998) found that:
- fathers who displayed antisocial behaviour themselves were harmful to their child’s development and it was better for the child if the father did not live with them,
- absent father or fathers who were not involved in childcare also had a detrimental effect, and
- strong links between alcohol / drug problems, violence and low social status in fathers and poor childhood development.
On a more positive note Flouri and Buchanan, 2003, found that positive fatherly involvement at the age of 7 helped to prevent behavioural problems in later childhood.
It appears that the father can have as much an affect on the child as the mother. The child may imitate antisocial behaviour they see their father displaying, they may feel rejection at the absence of their father and the absence or presence of a male role model also may have a significant influence on their development.
The parental role seems to be pivotal in whether a child develops disturbing behaviour. A supportive and responsive relationship between parent and child appears to encourage normative development, whilst a negative, critical, non-receptive relationship seems to be a key factor in the development of disturbing behaviour. However, although this assumption is supported by many studies this explanation is perhaps too simplistic and ignore other factors. A key ‘other factor’ is the child themselves.
In a relationship between two people, both drive the nature of the relationship and have an affect on it. Therefore the child themselves must be seen as a contributory to their own development. Children are increasingly being recognised as active drivers rather than passive receivers. The way they behave affects the way they are treated by their caregivers. Their temperament also determines their behaviour and again how they are cared for. A difficult infant may agitate an otherwise calm parent and the parent may not respond positively to the infant. The infant then does not receive the sensitive parenting it requires and becomes more difficult.
In contrast an ‘easy’ child will be more likely to have a relaxed and easy going parent, and therefore a harmonious household and an environment more conducive to healthy development.
We can now look a very important factor in childhood development – Sameroff’s transactional model. A diagram of the model is reproduced below (taken from page 81, Chapter 2, Children’s Personal and Social Development, Woodhead, Rhodes and Oates)
(E stands for the social environment. C represents the child over different time periods)
This model shows the interactive nature of childhood development. The child interacts with their environment in their very early years. This interaction then continues and shapes their interaction at a later stage, and this continues. Each and every interface with their environment, which includes caregivers, home, school, culture, society and so on, determines the nature of their development and the nature of their future development.
Therefore if a child begins poorly, through social circumstances, health or quality of parenting for example, then this is likely to continue in the same way, unless some form of intervention is used. Imagine a child is born to a parent who themselves came from a dysfunctional family, whether it took the form of abuse or simple neglect, the parent will not have an effective working model of how a family or parent should be, and therefore will lack the necessary skills to be a sensitive and responsive parent. Their parenting will then be weak and their own child could possibly develop disturbing behaviour.
If however the original parent was emotionally intelligent and aware of their lack of parenting skills and had access to a way of learning those skills then they could improve those skills, become a better parent, their child would be less likely to develop disturbing behaviour. The transactions though poor to begin with, would become more positive and future interactions more positive in turn.
We can see therefore that childhood development is not a one-way street, between parent and child, but instead a two-way interaction that continually adjusts and changes. Disturbing behaviour at this point then is not solely to be blamed on parents but is more likely to be the result of how the child and parent interact, both with equal importance.
Thus can parents be blamed for disturbing behaviour? Can they be held fully responsible? To say yes would be to ignore the wide range of factors which affect a child’s development. We would have to ignore the child itself. We would have to ignore the environment (school, health, family, culture and society) in which the child is developing. We would have to agree that a combination of the parent’s genes and type of parenting wholly dictates how the child behaves.
As discussed in this essay, this appears not to be the case. Parenting and childhood development is not simplistic. Disturbing behaviour does not seem to have one cause, rather, many different contributing factors and each of those factors is dependent in turn on another set of factors and this builds into a tangled and complex matrix. Parents do have an important role and should accept some responsibility for their children’s behaviour but not all. In general it seems to be the environment as a whole in which the child grows which determines the likelihood of disturbing behaviour.
To misquote that old adage – the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A child is made and shaped by their parents but they are unique individuals continuously interacting with their environment in both an active and passive manner. Blame for disturbing behaviour cannot therefore be apportioned to any one single factor.
References:
Woodhead, M; Rhodes, S; Oates, J ‘Disturbed and Disturbing Behaviour’ in Ding, S; Littleton, K (eds) Children’s Social and Personal Development Oxford, Blackwell / The Open University.
Cooper, T and Roth, I ‘Challenging Psychological Issues’ in Milton Keynes, The Open University.
