Psychological and Behavioral Effects of Poor Parenting on Children - Research Paper

Introduction

Parenting refers to the child-rearing process that promotes a child's intellectual, emotional, social and physical development. This process serves to instill values and mold the children into decent humans. Also, parenting concerns the complexities of raising a child and not necessarily the biological identity. Therefore, the guardian of a child plays a significant role in shaping their lives and influences their character. Parents have the responsibility of ensuring that their children receive the best possible care and are provided with the basic needs. The style of parenting, however, evolves with time causing a change in the approach of parental responsibility. Caretakers should, therefore, endeavor to ensure that the process positively impacts the child's outcome. The quality of this process influences the outcome of the children into adulthood and determines their quality of life. However, parents use different methods of child rearing depending on factors such as wealth, social class, income, and culture.

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Poor parenting reflects negatively on the child and could remain in adulthood. This happens since parenting is such a vital pillar of a child's growth and development. Parents that fail to develop a positive relationship with their children cause them to become defiant and erratic. Parenting, therefore, influences the behavior of children and causes them to misbehave whenever raised poorly. Although there are factors that affect the style of parenting, these factors do not impact the consequences of poor parenting. Children that are poorly raised turn out negatively regardless of their socio-economic status. Such facts emphasize the need by parents to exercise great caution in how they raise their children. Although children develop a character of their own and learn from various sources, poor parenting causes psychological and behavioral problems that can have long term effects.

Discussion

According to Rick (Nauret), a negative style of parenting leads to child aggression. This article is based on research conducted by the University of Minnesota on 260 mothers together with their children since birth until they got to their first grade. During this time, the researchers assessed the children's difficult temperament and how they were raised between the first six months. The research was informed by parent reports and observation. Then again, the observations continued when the children were between 2 and 3 years old whereby the observers watched as the children did challenging tasks with their mothers that required assistance. Finally, the researchers sought to get feedback from parents and teachers on the children's behavior when they got to kindergarten.

The study's hypothesis was that both negative parenting and difficult child temperament caused parent-child conflict during the toddler stage and conduct issues at school age. However, the findings revealed that negative parenting had the most impact during infancy. Negative parenting according to the research included things such as rough handling and negative emotions towards the children. The study established that continued conflict between the infants and their mothers developed into behavioral problems. The implication there was that the situation deteriorated over time.

Additionally, negative parenting caused toddlers to develop high levels of anger that triggered more hostility from the mothers. The study concluded that negative parenting during infancy results in conduct problems that manifest during elementary school. The research, therefore, recommended that there should be interventions that target negative parenting to help curb behavior issues in children (Nauert Ph.D.).

Hostile parenting affects the children and influences them to lead lives that involve hostility. This hostility is often triggered for parents with children that have a difficult temperament. These children tend to be unpredictable and react with outbursts to situations when things do not go their way. They also are at a higher risk for emotional and social problems. These problems could create barriers for the child affecting their ability to build relationships and ability to learn. Such shortcomings could persist into a person's adulthood affecting how they associate with others. However, temperament cannot be changed; therefore parents need to guide their children into positive conduct. According to (Rettew), one way to deal with difficult temperament is through override strategies. Here, the parent employs a no negotiation policy that sets a reasonable limit which once exceeded, consequences are applied. Another way to cope with temperament is sensitive parenting which reduces the risk of emotional and social problems. Parents should, therefore, create buffer zones for their children against social-emotional problems by creating allowances for temperaments.

Another study sought to establish the relation that negative and positive child rearing has to depressive symptoms in children. A section on the report mentions findings from different research of 10,000 adults where half of the people that experienced severe mental disorders started experiencing the symptoms before they were 14 years. This study, however, focused on the correlation between positive and negative parenting and symptoms of depression. The researchers studied 515 both male and female children in elementary and middle school, ages between 7 and 11 years. In this investigation, the researcher examined two models - one being a cumulative effects model where both supportive and harsh behavior represented parallel parenting dimensions that contributed to depressive symptoms in children. The other was the moderation model whereby depressive symptoms are bolstered by low levels of positive care and weakened by high levels of the same (Dallaire, Pineda, and Cole).

The research contained three hypotheses, one being that supportive and harsh parenting would present independent parenting dimensions. The other was that low levels of supportive parenting and high levels of harsh parenting would relate to depressive symptoms supposing the two parenting dimensions remained orthogonal. The third hypothesis was that positive parenting would moderate the relation between negative parenting and the symptoms. After the investigation and analyzing the findings, the researchers established that there was a high correlation between harsh parenting and depressive symptoms. The other observation found that supportive parenting was negatively related to depressive symptoms. This implies that lower levels of positive parenting would result in depressive symptoms.

In conclusion, the research indicates that children raised through critical parenting are likely to experience depressive symptoms. The study, therefore, suggests family interventions should be employed to reduce these depressive symptoms in children. One way to achieve this is by increasing supportive parenting and decreasing harsh parenting (Dallaire, Pineda, and Cole).

Depression has severe effects on children. A child in a depressed mood could become dysfunctional or get into suicidal behavior. In such a case, the child needs immediate psychiatric consultation to help in dealing with the situation. According to (Koplewicz and Klass), depression in children could be a chronic condition that has a significant impact on social, family and intrapsychic life. Depressive symptoms in children include; irregular sleep patterns and eating disorders. If left unattended, depression causes feelings of hopelessness and children to have rocky relationships with their siblings, friends, and family. Therefore, it is important to find help early before the symptoms get worse. The same happens to children that live with depressed parents. Depression affects parenting causing the caretaker to ignore things like health and psychological functioning of the child. Parents living with depression need to find help through treatment since it reduces the negative impact of the condition. Once assisted, the parents can now engage in positive parenting practices and this benefits the affected child through the recovery process.

An article by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reviews seven papers commissioned by the organization on parenting and the link to conduct problem by children. The first review in the article is a report on parenting and the outcome it has on children. The reports highlight several outcomes on children some of them being social competence and educational achievement. , and evidence has shown that parental involvement contributes to performance. Regard social competence the report revealed that; children raised in an environment with familial warmth and without conflict developed better social skills. Another outcome examined in the report was children's sense of self-worth that is influenced by the form of parenting. Findings concerning mental health and behavior in this report were that risky health behaviors came from parental influence. Also, children raised in extreme parenting circumstances were likely to experience psychological disturbance (Utting).

Besides the outcomes, the article also reviews various findings from the report. The first one is the quality of the family relationship. It was established that families that have a secure attachment bond between the parents and their children there is a stable relationship. The quality of this relationship also influences the children's social patterns into adulthood. Harsh and supportive parental dimensions are significant in children's lives and are not affected by age. The researchers of the report also observed that genetic factors influence the parent-child relationship. There was however some disparity across cultures and subpopulations on the association between the quality of family relationship and the well-being of the children. Also, due to the difference in child temperament, the report concludes that there cannot be a single style that said to suit all children. Similar to the other reports, (Utting) suggests that there should be interventions whenever the quality of the parent-child relationship is weak since it affects the outcome of the children.

In a different research, parenting has been found to have an impact on the resilience of the children. Resilience is realized when a family member achieves a favorable outcome when faced with trouble. It teaches the children to focus on strengths and how to leverage them, instead of finding problems to solve. The research also has shown that resilience exists in several domains such as emotional, behavioral, educational, and social. Some of the ways that parents contribute to developing resilience in children are through warm and responsive parenting. However, certain environments such as family violence make resilience for the child difficult. Academic institutions are another source of resilience to children especially those from poor backgrounds. This is achieved through programmes such as the educational stimulus and support by teachers. Additionally, children that live in cohesive communities can find help outside the family to obtain resilience (Utting).

Another supporting view on resilience is by Flora Richards-Gustafson on her article about the results of poor parenting on children. Bad parenting promotes poor resilience in children. Such resilience results from lack of coping skills that are taught by the parent and failing to protect the child from extreme experiences. A child with poor resilience is unable to handle failure and lacks the ability and mental strength deal with negative emotions in a healthy way. Growing up with this attitude creates adults that lack life coping skills. Low resilience also affects the mental safety of the children since they tend to...