CHAPTER 11
RAISING CHILDREN IN A DIVERSE AND
MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY
I. Parents in Modern America
A. Overview
The concept of childhood as different from adulthood did not emerge until the seventeenth century. American
society does not offer parents or stepparents much psychological or social support. Although rearing children may be a
joyful and fulfilling enterprise, parenting today takes place in a social context that can make child rearing an enormously
difficult task. Today’s parents face a myriad of questions and dilemmas that parents just a few decades ago would not
have imagined. Still, there are some advantages of modern parenting. Many parents have higher levels of education,
especially in the areas of child development. And, because families are smaller, parents' tasks are fewer. At the same
time, there are at least eight features of the social context of child rearing that can make parenting more difficult:
1. The parenting role typically conflicts with the working role.
2. Parenting requires learning attitudes and techniques that are from those of former generations.
3. Parents must rear their children in a pluralistic society with diverse and conflicting values.
4. The emphasis on the malleability of children tends to make parents feel anxious and guilty.
5. Child rearing experts sometimes disagree among themselves.
6. Although parents are given full responsibility for raising successful children, their authority is often
questioned.
7. Middle-age or "sandwich" generation parents often find themselves especially pressed as role conflicts
arise between parenting and caring for elderly parents.
8. Many families are composed of combinations other than the idealized nuclear family model.
B. Transition to Parenthood
The text reports that many new fathers and mothers are worried about becoming parents. Social scientist
Alice Rossi has analyzed the transition to parenthood and asserts that it is more difficult than the transition to other adult
roles for several reasons:
1. Cultural pressure encourages adults to become parents even though they
may not really want to.
2. Most first parents approach parenting with little or no previous
experience in child care.
3. Unlike other adult roles, the transition to parenthood is abrupt.
4. Adjusting to parenthood necessitates changes in the couple’s emotional and sexual relationship.
II. Mothers and Fathers: Images and Reality
A. Old and New Images of Parents
1. Mothers are expected to assume the responsibility of primary psychological parent for children.
2. The concept of good dad and bad dad.
a. Good dads or “new” dads are actively involved with their children.
b. Bad dads are the “deadbeat” dads as shown in the media.
3. Some fathers are neither competent nor desirous of nurturing children.
4. Racial and ethnic stereotypes portray the black matriarch, aloof or absent black fathers, and macho,
authoritarian Latino fathers. However, these images are all myths.
5. New images of mothers and fathers find both equally involved in all aspects of parenting.
B. Mothers and Fathers: What Do They Do?
1. Mothers typically engage in more "hands on" parenting and take full responsibility for children, while fathers are
viewed as "helpers".
2. From the child's point of view, fathers are more novel, exciting, physical, and unpredictable.
3. Fathers view their still-powerful breadwinning role as an important contribution to their children.
C. Sharing Parenthood
1. Research on shared parenting parents, who hold similar parenting identities, finds factors that may influence
parental decisions to share parenting. (Ehrensaft)
2. Most parent-sharing couples report their relationship is strengthened.
3. Shared parenting does create some strains.
III. Authoritative Parenting
A. Parents and stepparents will gradually establish a parenting style: a general manner of relating to and
disciplining their children. Psychologist Diana Baumrind distinguished among three parenting styles:
1. authoritarian–characterized as low on emotional nurturing and support but high on parental direction and control.
2. laissez-faire–characterized as low on parental direction or control, but may be high on parental emotional
nurturing.
3. authoritative–characterized by encouraging the child’s individuality, while setting and enforcing rules and limits.
B. Is Spanking Ever Appropriate?
There is a great deal of controversy over whether spanking has positive or negative effects.
C. The Resilient Child
1. The hope that child development offers to parents who make mistakes is that children can be surprisingly
resilient.
2. Many children who experience adversity in childhood reach adulthood with a strong commitment to family life.
3. Self-righting tendency- whereby children who have a sociable personality, self-esteem derived from a particular
talent, a support network, and above all, a good relationship with one caring adult, can emerge into adulthood in good
shape despite childhood adversity.
IV. Social Class and Parenting
A. The Family in an Unpredictable Economy
There is less predictability and more inequality in today’s families
B. Poverty-Level Parents
1. In 2002, about 12 % of Americans were at the poverty level.
2. Children make up 39% of the poor.
3. Welfare reform was partly motivated by the belief that cutting welfare aid to single mothers would result
in fewer female-headed families.
4. The majority of poor parents have homes and these men and women are employed yet many "working poor"
have irregular and unpredictable hours and no medical insurance.
5. Poverty-level parents and their children have poorer nutrition, more illnesses, and limited access to quality
medical care and legal services.
6. Homeless parents move often and have little in the way of a helpful social network.
C. Blue-Collar or Working-Class Parents
1. Blue-collar parents have declined both in number and in resources.
2. Blue-collar parents are more likely than middle- and upper-class parents to be strict disciplinarians and to
push their offspring into independent adulthood.
D. Middle- and Upper-Middle-Class Parents
1. Incomes have grown for middle-class parents, who have experienced increased economic uncertainty.
2. Upper-middle class parents have the money to fit the idealized cultural image of the self-sufficient nuclear
family
3. Upper-middle-class parents often produce “hurried children” who are forced to assume too many challenges
too soon.
V. Racial/Ethnic Diversity and Parenting
A. Race and ethnicity affects parents' options and decisions.
B. African American, Hispanic and Asian American attitudes, behaviors, and hopes for their children are similar to
those of other parents in their social class.
C. Native American parents have been described as exercising a laissez-faire parenting style that borders on
neglectful.
D. More than one-third of Hispanics had not completed high school and were not enrolled. Hispanic parents are
more hierarchical in their parenting style.
E. Asian American parents may utilize the Confucian training doctrine.
F. According to the 2000 census, there are nearly seven million Americans of mixed race. Rearing biracial or
multiracial children has challenges and rewards.
G. Ethnicity is often associated with religious belief.
H. Rearing children in a white-dominated society creates situations that white families never encounter, regardless
of social class.
VI. Newly Visible Parenting Environments
A. Gay Male and Lesbian Parents
1. Gay men and lesbians can become parents in several different ways.
a. Some have children from previous marriages.
b. Some seek parenthood as single adoptive or birth parents.
2. Gay and lesbian parents have tried to legalize their parenting relationships with varying results.
3. Research finds children of homosexual parents to be well adjusted, with no noticeable differences from children
of heterosexual parents.
B. Grandparents as Parents
1. Grandparenting styles vary and are shaped by health, employment status, and personality.
2. Becoming a primary parent requires adjustment for grandparents.
C. Foster Parents
1. A significant portion of foster care is family foster care.
2. It is estimated that between 500,000 and 700,000 U.S. children are in foster care.
3. There is a shortage of foster parents today.
4. About 40 percent of foster children eventually go onto welfare rolls or into prison, but over half do not.
VII. Parents and Adult Children
A. Parents and Young Adult Children
1. Parenting does not end when a child reaches legal adulthood; children benefit
from parents’ emotional support and encouragement through their twenties and after.
2. More and more young adult children either do not leave the family or return to it. Parents who
anticipated increased intimacy or personal freedom may be disappointed when the nest doesn’t empty.
3. Although a residence-sharing agreement can help temporarily, the goal of the majority of parents is for
their adult children to move on.
B. Independent Adults and Their Parents
Relationships between parents and their children last a lifetime. Marriage, and then parenthood, redefine the
relationship between parents and children.
VIII. Toward Better Parent-Child Relationships
A. Studies generally show that good parenting involves at least four factors:
1. adequate economic resources
2. being involved in a child’s life and school
3. using supportive, rather than negative, communication between partners
4. having support from family and/or friends
B. Parents need to be willing to seek professional help when their efforts seem to be unsuccessful.
Marriages & Families, 9th Edition
Lamanna/Riedmann
© 2006 by Thomson Wadsworth, a part of The Thomson Corporation