Parenting and Child Development Essay

their lives (American psychological association, 2013).

From talking, reading to making values, parents have an enormous influence over a child development. They play an enormous role in the development of social and cognitive abilities that children need for success in school and life. They strong provide a solid foundation and a good start for optimal child development and overall growth. However, they should understand that children also have their temperaments, which they come to this world with, and it is their role as parents to provide them with an interface for interaction with the world to prepare the child to attain complete independence (Bornstein and Bornstein, 2007). Although the rapid changes in the world has subjected parenting to various changing styles, it is important to note that no matter the type of parenting style chosen, the scientific goals of child development should remain stable. This paper, therefore, wishes to explore the impact of parenting on child development. It will discuss the concepts of tiger parenting and helicopter parenting and their influence on children development.

How parents respond to and discipline their children greatly affects the children cognitive and social development. Factors that influences child a development process stem from a mixture of some stimuli that they encounter, whether from individuals or the surroundings. They can influence your children either positively or negatively. The type of parenting style that a parent used on the child will greatly influence children’s lives. Parenting styles differ in four areas including parent’s nurturance or warmth, communication skills, discipline strategy and maturity expectations. There are three types of parenting styles including authoritarian, permissive and authoritative parenting which influence children school competence, antisocial behavior,

violence, delinquency, sexual activity, depression, and self-perception (Bornstein and Bornstein, 2007).

The level of parent involvement may lead to positive or negative outcomes in child development. Several attempts have been made by various scholars to warn of the dangers of parental over-involvement. Today, helicopter parenting has become a new cultural phenomenon (Kim et al, 2013). Helicopter parents are those parents who are extremely obsessed with their children and tend to get themselves over- involved in almost all aspects of their lives (Schiffrin et al. 2014). They break all the acceptable barriers of parental participation, cross lines and overstep boundaries to be with their children. Psychologists say that the main point of parenting is to help grow children capable of making good choices and decisions on themselves and taking adult tasks but not growing children who will always remain dependent on their parents to make decisions for them or sort out their problems. Studies indicate that parents become over-involved in their children’s life for various purposes. First, most of them are anxious about the children’s future success and think it upon them to clear every path that they require making it smooth for them to be successful. This makes them to keep different kinds of connections with their children even when they have grown into adults. Secondly, the emotional gaps from social life and marriages contribute to helicopter parenting. Parents who are emotionally needy will always keep their children as close as possible to fill their emotional gaps and experience the closeness they are longing for (Padilla et al. 2012). Psychologists argue that parents should recognize the purpose of parenting is to offer support and not to

control a child. Children’s as they grow and become independent adults, their need for autonomy increases, thus, they should adjust their involvement levels and control to certain developmental levels.

Recent studies indicate that helicopter parenting may have several adverse effects on a child development. According to self-determination theory, helicopter parenting violates a child’s basic psychological needs leading to negative outcomes. The theory identifies three innate fundamental needs that are necessary for healthy development and functioning of human beings. The first component is the need for autonomy or the desire for making one’s choices. The second component is the need for competence or a feeling of confidence in a person’s ability and accomplishments while the third is the need for relatedness or the need for feeling part of a genuine and caring relationship. The fulfillment of these three components of psychological needs is important in the achievement of greater satisfaction in life and reduces the levels of anxiety and depression experiences as a result of over-controlling (Schiffrin et al. 2014). Helicopter parenting reduces children autonomy and competence and can result in undermined relationships between themselves and their child.

Over-involved parents may create anxiety, depression and decreased levels of perseverance in their children. Children of these patients may often fell less competent and unprepared to manage life and the stressors that come along with it. Over-involvement parenting may cause children to indicate high levels in internalizing problems and cause detrimental psychological adjustments problems when transitioning to adolescence. Research studies have also indicated that parents may at times apply inappropriate and anxiety driven tactics which not only poses a compromise to children autonomy but also threaten their personal growth, mastery

and attitudes because they are often a reflection of parent’s critical attitudes (Schiffrin et al. 2014). For instance, when parents praise their children for good well but when they do not manage to bring home the grades they want they behave cold and withdraw their affection. This behavior may affect the children’s perceptions and has a corrosive impact on their attitudes towards their parents, their individual development and may ruin the child relationship with others. Researchers argue that being over-involvement emotionally and criticism in family relationships go hand in hand but how they are handled will determine their effects on relationships.

Intense and intrusive parent involvement has negative outcomes, especially in students. Many college administrators are worried about students well-being followed by increased parental control and increased levels of involvement to the extent of making surprise visits to schools to check on their children and even getting involved Graduate admission programs in disguise that they are the on paying their children fees and should k now how they are progressing. They are raising serious concerns on the increased inability of parents to limit their involvement levels and control of their children as they grow up. A study conducted to identify the effects on helicopter parenting by looking at self- determination among college students indicated that parental behavioral control has several negative effects on student well-being outcomes. Helicopter parenting behaviors causes children to experience diminished sense of personal autonomy; interfere with sense of competence because they communicate lack of trust in their abilities, interfere with their confidence levels especially when solving problems because they indicate inability for student’s to solve problems by themselves, and decrease the level

of relatedness which may lead to children drifting away from their parents (Schiffrin et al. 2014). On the other hand, over-involved parents may facilitate healthy child development. Some scholars believe that children brought up by over-involved parents have appropriate developmental structures that support academic excellence, emotions, better social outcomes and building of positive relationships with peers and experience minimal behavioral problems at school. Additionally, they have better pre-social and less adolescent transition problems.

Another new type of parenting that has caused a huge fuss among psychologists is the tiger parenting. This type of parenting came into the limelight after the publication of a book by Amy Chua, a law professor, called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. The book details how she did not allow her two daughters to attain grades lesser than an A, watch television, play computer games, play dates or have sleepovers (American psychological association, 2013). According to her, this type of parenting practiced which mostly among the Asian families has helped her daughters attain academic excellence. However, this form of parenting has received much criticism with many people viewing it as a type of authoritarian parenting style. Tiger parenting is, however, different from authoritarian parenting. Tiger parenting is the process through which parents use high negative parenting strategies and positive parenting strategies (Kim, 2013). By negative strategies, we are referring to use of strict rules while positive parenting strategies refer to support and warmth. Tiger parenting allows parents to utilize positive parenting strategies within the negative strategies to raise their children.

Although tiger parenting has been cited as the main reason behind academic success among Asian-American students, research indicates that these should have

low levels of GPA than children raised by supportive parents. Studies have also indicated that children brought up by tiger moms show high maladaptive outcomes including poor social skills, depression, and anxiety. Tiger parenting has serious negative cognitive effects. Tiger parents set an enormous and unreasonably high expectation that they expect their child to meet (Kim, 2013). Another study conducted on Chinese-American indicates that children who experience this form of parenting have increased levels of anxiety, stress and depression as well as decreased self-esteem. Research indicated that many high-achievers Chinese-American is experiencing huge mental struggles as a result of their parents always insist of academic excellence and any failures met with high emotions. Students struggle from comparison with other students of family members as well as the cultural gulf between themselves and their parents. Another research study has also indicated that tiger parenting has poor developmental outcomes, high degree of unhappiness, low self-esteem, increased chances of showing depressive symptoms, feeling of alienation and face high levels of academic pressures. Tiger parenting also makes it impossible for children to develop social skills necessary to interact with the outside world, and may lag behind when time comes, and they have to face the real world (Kim et al. 2013). However, some researchers believe it, in some instance plays a positive role. They say that it may help stimulate a child sense and encourage them to push the envelope even in situations that they initially thought they cannot excel (American psychological association, 2013). They also warn parents that excessive use of tiger parenting may break their relationships with their children and instead should employ positive parenting that encourages

communication, appreciation of children good behaviors, avoidance of unnecessary pressures among others.

The way you raise your child can influence positive developmental outcomes or negative developmental. Parenting is a crucial aspect of child development. Parenting helps in the development of a child cognitive abilities and building of healthy relationships. It helps support a child physical, social, emotional, intellectual and financial from childhood to adulthood. Parenting styles are an important development of their children’s cognitive abilities, ethical values, beliefs, coping defenses among others. The choice of a parenting style is also crucial in determining the type of developmental outcomes that can be expected from a child. Becoming too much over-involved in the case of helicopter parenting may interfere with proper development of cognitive abilities. It interferes with the child sense of autonomy, interferes with their confidence levels as well as their desire of greater satisfaction in life (Schiffrin et al. 2014), leading to broken relationships between parents and child, hinder children ability to internalize and solve problems and also hinder their ability to handle adult tasks. Similarly, using strict rules and emotionally unsupportive tiger parenting method does not they will always lead to positive developmental outcomes in children because they too have their shortcoming including increased chances of showing depressive symptoms, low self-esteem, poor parent-child relationships among others.

In conclusion, it is undisputable that parenting is an important avenue through which a child knows how to interact and connect with individuals and the external. It plays a crucial part in building strong, solid foundation and a good start for child development. In choosing a parenting style, parents should pay close attention to a style that promotes child health

and safety, allow for the transmission of cultural values and that will help prepare their children to become better members of the society who can make informed decisions on their own. Parents should be able to control their levels of involvement in their lives to foster good relationships and confidence in children. Also, parents should also recognize that child too have their temperaments when parenting.

References

1. American psychological association (2013) Tiger parenting’ doesn’t create child prodigies, finds new research. Print version: pg 16
2. Bornstein, L., & Bornstein, M. H. (2007). Parenting styles and child social development. Encyclopedia on early childhood development, 1-4.
3. Kim, S. Y. (2013) What is “tiger” parenting? How does it affect children?. An examination of a parenting practice growing in popularity. Print version.
4. Kim, S. Y., Wang, Y., Orozco-Lapray, D., Shen, Y., & Murtuza, M. (2013). Does “tiger parenting” exist? Parenting profiles of Chinese Americans and adolescent developmental outcomes. Asian American Journal of Psychology, 4(1), 7.
5. Padilla-Walker, L. M., & Nelson, L. J. (2012). Black hawk down?: Establishing helicopter parenting as a distinct construct from other forms of parental control during emerging adulthood. Journal of adolescence, 35(5), 1177-1190.
6. Schiffrin, H. H., Liss, M., Miles-McLean, H., Geary, K. A., Erchull, M. J., & Tashner, T. (2014). Helping or hovering? The effects of helicopter parenting on college students’ well-being. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 23(3), 548-557.