Parents Are the Primary Cause of Disturbed and Disturbing Behaviour in Their Children Essay

P arnts be the primary cause of disturbed and disturb doings in their peasantren this essay leave alone look at severalize for and against this claim. It provide start by explaining the meaning of the phrase disturbed and move behavior and then move on to explain the spot that parents p reside in the cause of disturbed or disturbing demeanour within their clawren. In the past theorists would gravel agreed with this phrase, having good evidence to punt their theories. altogether this is now considered by many to be a naive see to it of a electric shavers development.The essay will look at three different flummoxs, the health check model, the societal environment model and the transactional model. It will conclude by looking at the share of the child in the process and looking at whether there is conclusive evidence to support this claim. at that place is a large minority of children who find certain component part difficult to adfair to and because of this th eir demeanour is considered by others to be difficult, withdrawn, disturbed or even bizarre. Parents of these children may expound them as being hard to bear away, demanding, and aggressive.People who work with these children for example teachers or health e reallyplacesee workers could consider them to have deportmental conundrums. The expression disturbed and disturbing conduct is very unclear, it arouse have several meanings at one time. matchless suggestion could be that the child is the victim of incompetent or scurrilous parenting. Then another(prenominal) suggestion is that the child is the cause of the problem with deportment that needs to be contained. What is meant by a problem? Childhood signs of psychological abnormality are, by and large, manifestations of behavioural, cognitive and emotional responses common to all children.Their tonus of being dysfunctional lies in their in discriminate intensity, frequency and persistence (Herbert, 1991, p. 13). Children are said to present problems when their behaviour falls out of the range of gross profit margin and age-appropriateness. That range maybe to a greater extent(prenominal) or less wide depending two on the context and the attitudes of those making such judgments. To put it bluntly, many children are only seen as having problems when they become a problem to others. So, whose problem is it? Where does the problem reside (Chapter, 2, p. 63)?Individuals have different perspectives of the problem. From the medical view the problem might be described in terms of disorders which locates the problem firm within the child as part of their psychological make-up. The approach to word was to prescribe medication or psychotherapy. This model was very predominate during the 40s and 50s which came under much criticism. Emotional and behavioural difficulties were not considered within the medical model. The social environment model was mensural not to put labels like disturbed on to the child .As the medical model focuses the problem within the child the social environment model sees the problem as being outside the child for example a poor home situation, incompetent or abusive paternal wish or inadequate battleground at school. Bowlbys theory of maternalistic deprivation is a good illustration of this perspective, which was highly influential in the 1950s in the construction of post-war social policy on the functions of the family and specially the role of women, as mothers, in promoting childrens mental health (Chapter, 2, p. 8).Referring to children and their behaviour there is a very common phrase used in everyday life I blame it on the parents. This spanned many generations accept that the explanation for childrens bad or disruptive behaviour lay firmly within the home environment and the quality of parenting. Believing this take the attention from the child themselves and the role that they might play in their behaviour and it to a fault removed the attenti on from society and its responsibility for the welfare of the child. just about meaning(a)ly, this belief is not just a feature of a detail ideology it has become a foundation stone for some psychological theories about the processes of typical and disturbed development (Chapter 2 Pg 69). Kessen (1979) alerts us to the circumstance that some ideologies masquerade as psychological knowledge, information which is extremely cardinal when taking into account look into links between mother and child descents and the development of disturbed behaviour.Many studies have suggested that disturbed/disturbing behaviour in children can be related to difficulties in the relationships with their mothers, which may study the mothers mental states (Murray and Stein, 1991 Garver, 1997 Wakschlag and Hans, 1999 Halligan et al. , 2004). Maternal responsiveness is important to an infant as is a mothers mind-mindedness (the ability to know what is going on in their infants mind) but this slight re sponse can be affected by different factors. star example would be postnatal depression.A study done by Murray (1992) found that 18-month-old infants whose mothers had suffered from postnatal depression were more likely to be assessed as insecurely attached in the strange situation. This was more prevalent in boys. Insecure attachment has been consistently linked with psychological difficulties (Greenberg et al. , 1993 Sund and Wichstrom, 2002). Murray to a fault found that children of depressed mothers were more likely to have difficulties such as temper tantrums, eating problems, have trouble sleeping and be over clinging.This could suggest that infant nature may excessively be create problems. However not all depressed mothers develop difficulties in their relationships with their matter (Cox et al. , 1987). Although maternal depression is one pathway to behavioural difficulties there is another research has been carried out which traces the origins of antisocial behaviour t o harsh and inconsistent discipline and ineffective parental control strategies which unwittingly reinforce the childs negative, coercive behaviour (chapter, 2, P. 73).In disturbed relationships the people involved not only put up towards each other but they also prize about each other. They both have an internal working model of the relationship which meaning that the cognitive as well as the social and emotional dimensions of the relationship need to be taken into account. In an Australian large-scale longitudinal study they found that mothers who had negative attitudes towards their infants at 6 months old were more likely to report behaviour problems when their children were 5 old age old, especially for boys (Bor et al. 2003).The perplexs also have a role in carry off giving. A fathers child-rearing beliefs, working hours, personality and age predicted fathers caution giving activities. Fathers were more likely to assume do by giving responsibilities if they had more p ositive personalities and were younger. They also assumed more care giving responsibilities when they contributed demoralise proportions of family income and were employed for fewer hours. Also marital intimacy predicted fathers care giving activities with fathers more involved when mothers reported more imitate marriages (Research summary 3, chapter, 2, p. 6). more than of the research which has explored fathers roles in shaping childrens behaviour has focused on the relationship between antisocial behaviour in fathers and childrens development. There is now strong evidence that there is a significant relationship between the two (Deklyen et al. 1998 Margolin and Gordis, 2000 Jaffee et al. 2003). Absence or low familiarity of the father has been shown to be associated with poor outcomes for children (Scott, 1998 Carlson and Corcoran, 2001).Research shows that a fathers involvement at age 7 protected against psychological maladjustment in adolescents from break families. For boys , early father involvement protected against later delinquency as measured by the childs history of trouble with the constabulary (Flouri and Buchanan, 2002) and for girls, father involvement at aged 16 protected against resultant psychological distress (Flouri and Buchanan, 2003). Many studies have focused only on the amount of father involvement, neglecting the quality of the relationship (Research summary 4 pg 77).Although it is important to acknowledge the role of the parents involvement in their childrens adjustment we need to recognise that the child also has a role in the process. Attitudes about some styles of parenting as being the cause of unpredictable child behaviour, reflects a social environment perception seeing the child as a passive victim of circumstances. Traditional questioning of the effectuate of environmental variables on childrens development and adjustment has been challenged through discordant researches.In a report from a study carried out by Sears et al. they offered a social environment interpretation, arguing that it was the combination of parents permissiveness and punitiveness that caused their children to become aggressive. A highly permissive style means that children do not have clear guidance on appropriate behaviour, where as a highly punitive style means that, at the same time, they may have been frustrated by bouts of severe punishment (chapter, 2, p. 79). Bell (1968) argued persuasively for changing the direction of effect.He maintained that it was the childs temperamental characteristics that determined how aggressive he or she was and that it is the parental disciplinary approach that attempts to adapt the childs behaviour. Johnston et al. s research illustrates the dangers of presuming concomitant directions of causality. It would be wrong to assume that environmental risk factors would be in some sense causing childrens problems. There could be some circumstances where the characteristics of the child could add to family stress, changing parental attitudes and influencing maternal behaviour.The relative influence of parenting behaviour versus child behaviour will vary, correspond to the characteristics of the child and of the parent and the circumstances affecting both (chapter, 2, p. 80). It is clear that children can have both direct and indirect influences on their environment. Children and environments can also share transactional relationships. Consider a child who is easily upset and also hard to soothe, the so called difficult temperament.Such a child with a parent who has a good social support network an a well-provided home and is relatively easily able to contain the childs distress and minimise upsetting experiences, may end up experiencing only brief and infrequent periods of upset and evoking a lot of supportive, sensitive care giving from the environment. The same child, however, might evoke a very different kind of care giving in a more stressed household with a parent who is less able to behave sensitively and protectively and reacts to the childs distress in too emotional ways.Thus environments can differ in their reactivity to childrens behaviour (Method and Skills Handbook pg 41). Chess and Thomson introduced the concept of goodness of fit to describe the transactional relationship between child and environment. As they state, goodness-of-fit results when the childs capacities, motivations and temperament are adequate to master the demands, expectations and opportunities of the environment (Chess and Thomas, 1984, p. 80). Looking at the evidence presented above it is inconclusive that parents are the primary cause of disturbed and disturbing behaviour in their children it is important to reaffirm that there are denary pathways to disturbed behaviour and that maternal and paternal behaviour represent just two among a constellation of social context, family and parental risk factors that have been found to be associated with childhood difficultie s (chapter, 2, p. 77).The evidence presented by Murray and Stein, 1991 Garver, 1997 Wakschlag and Hans, 1999 Halligan et al. , 2004 stating that disturbed/disturbing behaviour in children can be related to difficulties in the relationships with their mothers, is refuted by Cox et al. saying, not all depressed mothers develop difficulties in their relationships with their offspring. The issue is not about whether the direction of effect runs from child to mother or from mother to child it is about their mutual influence as partners in a relationship.Children as well as parents play an active role in the process of development (chapter, 2, p. 80). In summary any particular problems that a child might present need to be unsounded in terms of the demands of the context, the history of similar experiences faced by the child and the history of the adult who finds the childs behaviour disturbing (chapter, 2, p. 64).