6.3 Families as Context in Early Childhood

Parenting Styles

The way parents influence the social development of young children was first studied by Diana Baumrind, who identified three unique approaches to parenting based on their degree of warmth and structure (Baumrind, 1966, 1971). These parenting styles differ in the levels of strictness and warmth shown to children (Maccoby & Martin, 1983) (see Figure 6.11).

Figure 6.11 Even current parenting trends often fall clearly along Baumrind’s original two major parenting dimensions of warmth and structure (Kuppens & Ceulemans, 2019). (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY 4.0 license)

One of the original three styles identified by Baumrind (1966) was authoritarian parenting and is characterized by a high level of structure, meaning the parents provide boundaries, rules, and discipline to their children, but also a low level of warmth. These parents can be described as taking a rules-focused approach; they prioritize having their children follow rules and obey adult directions. Authoritarian parents are less likely to negotiate with their children and instead direct and demand, without leaving room for compromise. A metaphor for the authoritarian parent is the brick wall—it is firm and has no give—which reflects how such a parent might be inflexible and uncompromising.

Children of authoritarian parents may become wary around authority figures and hesitant to speak up for themselves when there are misunderstandings, or they may become more likely to rebel as they grow older. However, in some situations, a strong protective figure may be helpful.

The term authoritative parenting refers to a more democratic, less rigid, and more gentle than authoritarian parenting. In this second parenting style characterized by Baumrind, parents take a relationship-focused approach in which they provide a moderate to high level of structure for their children, but also a high level of warmth and emotional support. Authoritative parents are more likely to talk things out with their children, model communication and conflict resolution skills, and offer explanations for their rules and disciplinary practices. A metaphor for the authoritative parent is a drum—it is firm but also flexible—which reflects the way such a parent is responsive and reactive to the needs of their child while still providing boundaries. Children of authoritative parents tend to develop skills related to compromising, coping, and understanding the needs of others (Haslam et a., 2020).

Baumrind’s third parenting style is permissive parenting and describes parents who display high levels of warmth but low levels of structure. These parents often take a child-focused approach to making decisions and navigating conflict. They often prioritize ensuring their child’s happiness by providing rewards, stimulation, and praise, and avoiding discipline and punishment. They are less likely to refuse their child’s requests and often relax their own guidelines to fit the child’s preferences. A metaphor for the permissive parent is gelatin dessert—it is highly moldable and movable without a defined shape or form—representing how such a parent will change themselves to please their child. Children of permissive parents may struggle to form compromise and conflict resolution skills (Tavassolie et al., 2016), particularly because they are accustomed to having things their way.

A fourth parenting type, uninvolved parenting, was not identified by Baumrind but was added by Maccoby and Martin (1983). This style is characterized by low structure and low warmth. Uninvolved parents tend to provide little attention, discipline, or support for their children and take a parents-focused approach. They often prioritize their own experience with little regard for the child, which is why this parenting style is sometimes referred to as neglectful parenting. Sometimes uninvolved parenting arises due to unforeseen circumstances, like major medical, economic, or domestic concerns that are beyond a parent’s control. Sometimes parents are struggling with mental health concerns, addictions, or substance misuse. Other times they are just disengaged, perhaps due to an unwanted pregnancy or custody placement. A metaphor for an uninvolved parent is a ghost—someone who is often absent in their children’s lives. Children of uninvolved parents grow up with little guidance and are at risk of forming negative coping strategies, behavioral patterns, and developmental outcomes.

Predictors of Parenting Styles

Parenting styles describe parents’ behaviors, of course, but they may arise from bidirectional interactions with other family members. For example, a parent or caregiver is often stricter with one child and more lenient toward another. This difference could be based on the children's temperaments, perceived genders, or other factors. A child who attempts to push boundaries may influence a parent to provide more structure; a child who is anxious and nervous may lead a parent to show more warmth and encouragement (Figure 6.12). Moreover, parenting styles can shift as adults grow and develop; younger parents may start as permissive and grow to take on more authority. Conversely, parents with high expectations may adjust their standards and relax their demands as they grow older. Further, many children grow up with more than one caregiver and may experience different parenting styles from each.

Figure 6.12 Many parents prioritize showing warmth but also provide structure to their children. (credit: "Secure Attachment" by Kerry Ceszyk/Flickr, CC BY 4.0)

Infant-caregiver attachment style may also influence parenting styles. In 4.4 Social Development in Infants and Toddlers, you learned about the infant attachment styles called secure, insecure avoidant, insecure ambivalent, and disorganized. A parent who has a secure and close relationship with their child might be more likely to talk things out, provide rationales, and demonstrate an authoritative style. In comparison, a parent who has a more strained relationship with their child may choose to discipline and criticize their child as a main mechanism of influence. Finally, a parent who has an overly clingy and dependent child may attempt to use gentle encouragement and reward.

Additional Parenting Styles

The four parenting styles discussed so far were identified along the axes of warmth and structure. A third axis of support for autonomy was discussed by Cline and Fay in 1990. Autonomy is our sense of independence and control over ourselves. Parents who display a high support for autonomy often allow their children to try new challenges, take on new responsibilities, and overcome their own obstacles (Robichaud et al., 2020). Parents who exhibit low support for autonomy may prevent their children from facing hardship, readily solve dilemmas for their child, or interfere in common daily tasks. Parents with especially low support for autonomy have been labeled "helicopter parents" because they hover over their children, intrude inappropriately in their daily lives, and prevent the development of conflict resolution and coping skills. Other names for this parenting style are "steamroller parents" and "snowplow parents." These parents anticipate upcoming obstacles and clear the path, so their children do not encounter any friction or hardships.

Allowing children to resolve minor inconveniences, conflicts, and challenges has been shown to have developmental benefits. Children who are permitted to work through their own obstacles are more likely to gain a sense of resilience, self-efficacy, and positive social skills. Children who rely on their parents to monitor and interfere may be more dependent, nervous, and anxious in new situations (Neubauer et al., 2021). Overall, children benefit best in an environment that provides high levels of warmth, structure, autonomy, and stability.

Positive Reinforcement and Rewards

Although reinforcement tends to be effective, in some situations it can undermine children’s motivation. Reinforcement works best when it is novel and unexpected, and less well when it has become routine. It is also most effective when delivered immediately, such as praise and a hug given immediately after a chore has been completed, and not an hour later or at the end of the day.

Finally, reinforcements should be small and intangible, such as praise, body language, and attention, rather than large and tangible like toys, food, money, or stickers. Much of the time, children are happy to receive small tokens of encouragement rather than large gestures. Although tangible rewards can help motivate a child to start a new behavior, such as putting away their toys at the end of the day, they don’t help to sustain the behavior over the long term. Rather, intangible rewards, along with feelings of pride, confidence, and connectedness with others, are the leading motivators for sustaining long-term habits.

In several studies between 1979 (Loveland & Olley) and 1999 (Deci et al), children were divided into two groups and asked to draw and color pictures. In one group, children were offered no tangible rewards, only praise and encouragement from researchers. In the other group, children were offered money for each picture completed. Children who were offered no tangible reward spent more time on their pictures, colored and drew in more detail, and showed higher levels of pride, contentment, and joy. In comparison, children who were paid completed more pictures, but they did so more quickly and used less detail. Moreover, children in this group displayed lower levels of joy and pride in their work. These experiments demonstrated that offering a tangible reward for a behavior that otherwise would be motivating in and of itself can actually compromise and decrease motivation (Figure 6.15).

Figure 6.15 Children learn effectively when they are rewarded with praise and attention for their efforts (Werchan et al., 2023). (credit: modification of work “Modern art?” by Harald Groven/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

A tangible reward like money is a form of extrinsic motivation, or an external reason or consequence for a behavior. In comparison, drawing a picture for its own sake carries intrinsic motivation, an internal reason for completing a behavior because the behavior itself brings joy, a sense of accomplishment, or connectedness. Intrinsic motivation is linked with long-term motivation and the formation of healthy habits.

Punishment and Discipline

Although reinforcement tends to be more effective than punishment, there are situations in which punishment may be more appropriate. For instance, if a child is performing a dangerous act and is at risk of harm, a parent’s intervention to discourage future dangerous behavior is warranted. Much like reinforcement, punishment can be an intangible response such as a facial expression, verbal comment, or body language, and it can also be tangible, such as penalties, chores, or the removal of privileges.

When a child’s behavior is punished or disciplined, it is optimal to offer the punishment immediately after the behavior, so children can clearly understand the connection between their behavior and the consequence. It is also best for the caregiver to have a healthy, positive relationship with the child and to remain calm but firm. If the parent or caregiver becomes frustrated or upset, this emotion will escalate the situation and decrease the likelihood that the child will learn from the punishment.

For punishment to be most effective, the penalty should also be logical and match the behavior it is discouraging. Natural punishment is what happens when a caregiver does not interfere and lets nature takes its course. For instance, if a child is stacking chairs, climbs on them, and falls off, the natural punishment is the physical pain and discomfort from falling off the chairs. For safety reasons, however, natural punishment is not always ethical, safe, or moral. Logical punishment results when a caregiver intervenes and responds to a child’s behavior in a way that offers a rational consequence for their behavior (Mageau et al., 2018). For instance, a young child who throws their juice will need to help clean it up, and a child who pushes another will need to say they are sorry. Often, logical punishment helps children to understand connections as well as cause and effect and may need to be applied only a small number of times.

Logical punishment is more effective than illogical punishment, which is a penalty that does not conceptually fit a targeted behavior. Examples may include: yelling at a child who spills juice, spanking a child who draws on a wall, or sending a child who is overly loud from excitement to an extended time-out. These uses of illogical punishment might frustrate the child and teach them not to do these behaviors, but it will likely require more trials and attempts to successfully discourage the target behavior. In some cases, use of illogical punishment does not discourage a child from performing the undesired behavior, but rather teaches them not to be caught doing it, and may negatively affect their trust for and relationship with their caregiver.

Corporal Punishment

One type of discipline that relies on the use of bodily control is corporal punishment. Corporal punishment is physical punishment and can include things like slapping the back of a child’s hands, restraining a child, and spanking or hitting a child. Spanking, or hitting a child’s backside with an open hand, a belt, a switch, a wooden paddle, or another object, was relatively common for many years. In 1975, more than 85 percent of households surveyed said it was a main discipline or punishment technique. Starting in the 1980s, spanking started to decrease in popularity, with verbal discouragement, time-outs, and the ignoring of problematic behavior gradually increasing as strategies. As of 2017, spanking was still used in an estimated 37 percent of U.S. households (Mehus & Patrick, 2021; Finkelhor et al., 2019).

Many individuals who were spanked develop healthy relationships with their parents and are not abusive as adults. However, this positive finding cannot be credited to spanking. In fact, research has found no direct association between spanking and positive outcomes. Compared to children who were not spanked by their parents, children who were spanked display more aggressive and disruptive behaviors and have slower vocabulary development in early childhood (Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor, 2016). As outlined in Table 6.2, several research studies have consistently found use of corporal punishment to be highly associated with a range of negative outcomes for children.

Starting in 1979, Sweden made spanking and corporal punishment illegal. In 1990, the United Nations passed the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which 196 countries have ratified—more than have signed on to any other human rights treaty (United Nations, 1990). In addition, seventy-two countries have passed legislation to make spanking and corporal punishment illegal.

The only United Nations member state that has not yet ratified the Rights of the Child is the United States. Spanking also remains legal in the United States, despite advice from the Academy of American Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association that states corporal punishment is ineffective and leads to more defiance, aggression, and risk of child abuse (AAP, 2018; Glicksman, 2019).

Child Abuse and Neglect

Despite being illegal in more than 100 countries, corporal punishment in isolation is not considered child abuse. However, much of the research indicates that it has negative outcomes highly similar to those of child abuse, and that young children have similar negative responses to both (Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor, 2016).

Child abuse is drastic, harsh treatment that compromises and undermines the healthy development of a child. Child abuse can take several forms, including physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect (Norman et al., 2012). Physical abuse includes the intentional bodily harm and injury of a child, often as an act of intimidation, punishment, or frustration. Sexual abuse is the inappropriate touching, photographing, or disrobing of a child. Emotional abuse consists of unrestrained and severe yelling, tormenting, intimidating, controlling, or demeaning of a child. Finally, neglect is failure to provide the necessities of life or the support to flourish and develop healthfully, and it can include physical neglect such as withholding food, shelter, new clothing, and hygiene products, or emotional neglect such as withholding attention and love. Young children between the ages of three and six years old who are experiencing abuse or neglect are more likely to act out at daycare or preschool. They appear overly tired, strained, or worn out, and have difficulty playing with same-aged peers; they also may cry more frequently for unexplained reasons. Table 6.3 presents the prevalence of abuse in the United States as a percentage of the population aged zero to seventeen, though it should be noted that many researchers believe that child abuse and neglect are still underreported (Massullo et al., 2023).

Children who experience maltreatment are at elevated risk for emotional problems such as anxiety and depression, and behavioral problems such as ADHD, conduct problems, and aggression. Moreover, children who experience abuse and neglect are more likely to struggle academically, cognitively, and with interpersonal relationships. Over the lifespan, child abuse and neglect are related to increased prevalence of psychological disorders such as bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, PTSD, and substance abuse (Felitti et al, 1998; Morris & Hays-Grudo, 2023). Finally, long-term stress associated with child abuse increases the risk of inflammatory physical diseases such as heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers (Lippard et al., 2019). Broadly speaking, early childhood traumatic experiences—whether from abuse, unstable home environments, unsafe environments, or natural disasters—can increase multiple child development risks. However, early intervention and support can foster resilience in children regardless of the type of adverse experience (National Child Traumatic Stress Network, 2024; Masten & Barnes, 2018).

In most regions of the United States and Canada, child abuse and neglect can be reported by calling Child Protective Services (CPS). CPS is an organization that includes social workers who can meet with families and help provide resources to prevent further abuse. Services include access to counseling, anger management classes, addiction services, unemployment services, housing and shelters, and food banks. More than a third (37.5 percent) of households with children between the ages of zero and seventeen experience a visit from Child Protective Services in the United States (Kim et al., 2017). In many countries, health-care and educational professionals are required to report suspicions of abuse and neglect, but they may encounter barriers to reporting, miss signs of abuse, or feel that they lack appropriate training to confidently report concerns (Gubbels et al., 2021; Perrigo et al., 2023)

A common misconception is that CPS seeks to remove children from their parents in all cases. However, social workers are trained to use removal as a last resort only, and often keeping families together in a safe situation is the main goal. Moreover, family separation for Indigenous and racialized children is known to be problematic. Indigenous children make up 50 percent of those in foster care in Canada despite being only 5 percent of the population (Newland, 2021)

The Benefits and Drawbacks of Siblings

Having a sibling in the home during early childhood has been associated with increased opportunities for play, support, and emotional bonding. A sibling who is close in age (within five or six years) can offer companionship in new situations, healthy challenges in learning conflict resolution and communication skills, and knowledge about the world. Younger siblings tend to observe their older siblings, and are quick to learn behavioral skills such as self-feeding, dressing, and outdoor play. Older siblings also benefit and show higher levels of empathy, perspective taking, and leadership from mentoring their younger sibling (Borairi et al., 2023).

However, sibling conflict and sibling rivalry are exceedingly common. Observational studies in young children’s homes find about eight conflicts per hour (Tucker & Finkelhor, 2015). Siblings often tease, jeer, and taunt each other, share sarcastic, cynical, or contemptuous facial expressions, and push, pull, and physically control one another. Although sibling conflict may be alarming, most of the time it allows for healthy relationship development. Intense emotional distress and risk of physical injury tend to be rarer than other forms of sibling conflict, but caregivers need to know their children and understand when to intervene to ensure their safety. Sibling rivalry tends to decrease if siblings have complementary temperament styles and better communication skills, if both receive love and attention from their parents, and if parents do not have an explicit favorite.

Family Size

Sibling relationships become more complex in larger families. Overall, families with fewer children tend to have more financial resources, time, and attention to dedicate to each child, whereas larger families with more children tend to have fewer resources but more rules and more requirements for each child to contribute to chores and household duties (Blaabaek et al., 2020). Although children in larger families do not receive as much one-on-one focus from their parents, they receive more companionship and interactions from their siblings (Figure 6.17).

Figure 6.17 Children in large families spend less time one-on-one with parents but more time socializing with their siblings. (credit: modification of work “family” by Alyssa Sieb/nappy, Public Domain)

Children without siblings often engage in much more interaction with parents and other adults and less with same-age peers. Although some believe that single children are spoiled and lack development in empathy, sharing, and conflict resolution, research has not supported this description. Instead, single children tend to have high levels of empathy and kindness, self-esteem, and achievement (Goisis et al., 2023). Those with access to same-age peers through daycare or preschool often also show high levels of social competence, friendliness, and conflict resolution skills. The one area in which single children may struggle is communication with other children, because they may be more familiar and comfortable with speaking to adults.

Birth Order

Sigmund Freud’s contemporary and colleague Alfred Adler was the first psychologist to hypothesize about birth order effects, which are personality and behavioral characteristics assumed to derive from being the oldest, middle, or youngest sibling in a family (Adler, 1964). According to Adler, the oldest child is more responsible, conservative, achievement-driven, and leader-like. The middle child or children are thought to be emotionally withdrawn, jealous, stubborn, and avoidant. The youngest child is a good-humored, fun-loving entertainer who lives for the moment.

Although birth order has been linked with academic achievement, with younger siblings less likely to attend post-secondary education, research indicates that this may be an effect of parent-child quality time rather than birth order (Price, 2008). Older siblings may benefit from having more individual attention from their parents before their next sibling is born, and later children may lack that advantage (Booth & Kee, 2009).

Overall, empirical research on birth order effects has not supported the birth-order theory. This may be due to the complexity of studying siblings. To conduct large-scale scientific research, researchers would need many families with a similar family structure, perhaps two married parents and three children under the age of eighteen. However, the gender and age of the siblings, the age differences between them, whether they were biological, step-, or adoptive siblings, and whether they lived together full-time or part-time would also influence the findings of the study. Families are so incredibly diverse that leading experts in the area have commented on how difficult it would be to find any evidence for birth order effects.