Psychology for Dummies (42 page)
Read Psychology for Dummies Online
Authors: Adam Cash
Tags: #Psychology, #General, #Body; Mind & Spirit, #Spirituality
Ever wonder why so many people get depressed during the holidays? Maybe they’re not looking forward to going into debt to finance all those gifts. The holidays may remind other people about how lonely they are. I’ve got an alternative explanation though: The holidays are when a lot of us get together with family. Families are pretty good at embarrassing us in front of our dates by pointing out our weight and receding hairlines or belittling our pitiful salaries. That can pretty depressing! Fortunately, families are good for some things.
A
family
consists of at least two people related by blood, marriage, or adoption. Doesn’t it seem like American families have changed over the last 20 years? A lot of American marriages end in divorce. Children are learning to have two sets of parents, half-siblings, and split holidays. Even though the modern face of the family has changed, many of the basic functions of a family have not.
The
McMaster model of family functioning
breaks down six major components of, you guessed it, family functioning:
Problem solving:
The family’s ability to resolve issues and maintain family functioning.
Communication:
The clarity and directness of information exchange in a family. You knew that this one was coming.
Roles:
Involves the different behaviors of and responsibilities between each family member, including meeting basic needs, performing household tasks, and providing emotional support and nurturance.
Affective responsiveness:
Each of the individual family member’s ability to express and experience a wide range, intensity, and quality of emotions.
Behavior control:
The rules and standards of conduct. We could never belch at the dinner table in my family.
Overall family functioning:
Addresses whether a family can accomplish its daily tasks across the other five areas. If you had to give your family a grade, what would it be?
A good friend of mine recently had a baby. Just when I was about to offer him some psychological advice on parenting, he started talking about all the advice people had been giving him and how it bothered him. I kept my opinion to myself. “Crying opens up their lungs.” “Don’t give them a pacifier.” There are almost as many opinions on how to raise your children as there are people on the planet. Fortunately, psychologists have been trying to simplify things.
Baumrind took on the task of trying to boil down parenting into something a little more manageable She came up with three main parenting styles:
authoritarian, authoritative,
and
permissive.
Authoritarian:
These parents are rigid and dictatorial. Some kids feel like prisoners in their own families — their parents are overly strict, rigid, and don’t listen to anything that the children have to say. They’re like the drill sergeants of parenting. What they say goes, and there’s no discussion about it. Unfortunately, all that toughness tends to backfire. Authoritarian parents tend to have children that are either overly passive or excessively rebellious and sometimes hostile. They could learn a lot from the next style of parenting.
Authoritative:
These folks tend to approach parenting with a more democratic style. Parents from previous generations often criticize how “today’s” parents try to reason with their children too much. “What that kid needs is a good spanking!” Authoritative parents listen to their children and allow them to have input, while maintaining parental authority and control. Children seem to thrive in this environment, and they tend to act more sociable, feel more capable, and be more well-adjusted in general as they grow up.
Permissive:
There are two types of permissive parents:
•
Indulgent:
Ever been to one of those backyard, beer parties in high school? Well I haven’t either, but from what I hear they can get pretty wild. I’ve always wondered where those kids’ parents are. Oh, I get it; they’ve got the “cool parents.” Indulgent parents are involved with their children but shy away from taking an authoritative role and instilling discipline. They sometimes even enable their children to engage in questionable behavior because they don’t want to alienate their kids.
•
Indifferent:
These parents are more neglectful. This indiffer- ence can be due to many factors, including career, drugs, or self-centeredness. Either way, permissive parents tend to have children who often report feeling ill equipped for dealing with the demands of growing up.
Children of divorceThere’s been a lot of controversy over the effects of divorce on children. Many parents stay together “for the sake of the kids.” Most research tends to show that children are not necessarily adversely affected by the divorce of their parents. Boys, though, have been found to do a little worse than girls in the long run. However, the most important predictor of how children will cope with a divorce is the nature of the marriage. If the parents always fight and have a tumultuous relationship while married, the divorce is also likely to go poorly. Researchers often advise couples to not argue or discuss divorce-related issues in front of children and to keep overall conflict to an absolute minimum.
