How Do Parents

Learn to be
Parents

Subtitle goes here

 Format of the
presentation
• Introduction

• Factors affecting parenting/ Different perspectives on

parenting
– Evolutionary perspective

– Biological perspective

– Socio-cultural factors

• Practical Implications

• Challenges

• Critical evaluation
 Introduction
• “Parenting is the process of developing and
utilising the knowledge and skills
appropriate to planning for, creating,
giving birth to, rearing and/or providing
care for offspring" (Morrison,1978)

• Latin word ‘Parere’- To bring forth/develop

Four super ordinate categories of
human parental care giving
(Bornstein, 2002)

• Ways in which parents provision and

organize the
infant’s physical world
Stages of Parenthood
(Galinsky,1987)
Galinsky (1980)
 Evolutionary perspective
of parenting
• Central to the survival of many species of animals,
including all mammals and many birds (Rosenblatt, 1965)
• Evolutionary biologists

– individuals to get their genes into the next generation,

they must make investments in mating and, following
conception, parenting (Hamilton, 1964; Trivers, 1972).
• Universal among mammals and, depending on the species-
typical pattern of such investment, influence show
offspring are reared and relationships among the sexes.
• Homo sapiens and parenting
Theories
• Darwin- NATURAL SELECTION-REPRODUCTIVE FITNESS
– Children are parent’s most direct route to genetic immortality.
Reproductive fitness most directly served by a person’s having
children who grow up to become reproductive members of the
community
– This includes not only the physical means necessary for survival (e.g.,
food, shelter), but also the means by which a child develops
competencies in the social groups in which humans live.
– These patterns are observed in nonhuman mammals, birds, and
social insects, indicating that self-awareness is not ordinarily involved.
 Parental investment
theory (Trivers ,1972)
• “Any investment by the parent in an individual offspring
that increases the offspring’s chance of surviving (and
hence reproductive success) at the cost of the parent’s
ability to invest in other offspring” (Trivers, 1972)

• Parental investment is limited, and parents have to

make choices on how to allocate their resources among
their offspring

• Evolutionary theory
– human parents are not expected to invest equally in
each of the children in their household
• Genetic relatedness in order to maximize their own
reproductive fitness, parents should prefer to invest in
children to whom they are genetically related (Alexander,
1974; Trivers, 1972)

• Parents favour their own biological children over

genetically unrelated stepchildren. Step children receive
less care and investment compared to genetic children
(e.g., Anderson, Kaplan, Lam, & Lancaster, 1999; Marlowe,
1999)

• Children living with a stepparent are much more likely to

be physically abused or neglected than children living with
two biological parents (e.g., Daly & Wilson, 1996)

• Reproductive Value (i.e., the child’s probable future

reproductive
• success)
• In order to maximize their own inclusive fitness,
parents should allocate more care, resources, and
attention to offspring who have the highest chance
of future reproductive success (Mann,1992;
Scrimshaw, 1984)

• Degree of parental investment is influenced by a

child’s health status and reproductive value.
– For example: mothers of high-risk infants shorten
the duration of breastfeeding and interbirth intervals
compared to mothers of infants with higher survival
prospects (Bereczkei, 2001).
– when presented with both a healthy and an
unhealthy twin, mothers bias their investment
toward the healthy twin (Mann, 1992)
• Human mothers invest more in their children than fathers.
This is partly due to the difference in potential rate of
reproduction between men and women. Because of internal
gestation and obligatory postpartum maternal care, the rate
with which women can reproduce is considerably lower than
the potential rate of male reproduction (CluttonBrock, 1991)

• The reproductive success of women is more strongly

influenced by investment in offspring, whereas men can
benefit reproductively by directing their efforts towards
gaining additional mates rather than investing in existing
children (Trivers, 1972).

• Women are 100% sure of their maternity, men can never be

fully certain of their paternity. Fathers who are unsure about
their paternity may be reluctant to invest in their putative
children
• For most species, including humans, females invest
more heavily in their offspring than males do

• Darwin’s (1871) theory of sexual selection

• The end result is mammal males typically invest

more in mating than in parenting, whereas the
reverse pattern is found for females

• The greater initial investment by females is what

sets in motion two differing strategies - finding and
maintaining a mate and rearing subsequent
offspring.
• In greater than 95% of mammals, males provide
little or no postnatal investment to their offspring
(CluttonBrock, 1991).

• Human males are an exception to the typical

mammalian pattern

• Social forces in today’s world influence the

degree of paternal investment, but the overall
pattern is still that of women devoting more of
their time to child care than men do, even in the
most enlightened families
 Neurobiology of
Parenting
• Studies of animal models and fMRI
• A complex interaction of multiple
neuroendocrine systems.
• Two specific systems in promoting and
maintaining maternal behavior:
– The dopaminergic reward processing system
(Champagne et al , 2004; Strathearn et al , 2008;
Ferris et al , 2005)
– The oxytocinergic system (Bartels and Zeki,
2004; Champagne et al , 2001; Levine et al , 2007)
Role of Oxytocinergic system

• Oxytocin- A neuromodulatory hormone produced in

the hypothalamus
– Associated with the onset of maternal behavior, as
well as peripheral actions in stimulating uterine
contraction during labor and milk ejection during
lactation
– Released in response to stimuli such as infant
suckling, somatosensory touch, or even the sight or
sound of a nursing mother’s infant (Lucas et al ,
1980; McNeilly et al , 1983; Johnston and Amico,
1986; Uvnas-Moberg et al , 1993).
• OT release during birth, breastfeeding and skin-to
-skin contact between mothers and newborns is
related to higher maternal responsiveness, lower
maternal stress and more optimal mother-infant
bond

• The administration of OT antagonists disrupts the

development of maternal behaviour (Pedersen et
al, 1985)
Role of Dopaminergic system

• Both animal and human research (Numan and

Woodside, 2010) suggests that responses to infants
form a model motivational system using Dopamine (DA)
and Oxytocin (OT) rich pathways.
• Dopaminergic neurons which originates in the
brainstem’s ventral tegmental area substantial nigra,
project to the ventral and dorsal portion of the striatum
as well as to the medial prefrontal cortex.
• Natural reward – related stimuli, including food, sex and
faces of one’s partner or child activates the brain reward
system (Aharon et al, 2001; Strathearn et al, 2008)
• In mothers, the initial experience of pleasure and
activity in these brain circuits when exposed to their
own infant’s cues may increase the salience of their
infant’s stimuli and promote greater attention and
bond formation to ensure continuous engagement in
sensitive caregiving (Strathearn et al,2008)
• Oxytocin receptors are located in the ventral striatum,
and receptor binding is linked functionally to maternal
behavior in the rat (Olazabal and Young, 2006a).
• Oxytocin may link social cues, such as infant facial
expressions, with dopamine associated reinforcement
pathways.
Neuro- biological base of
fathering
• Similarities in neural mechanisms between sexes
• Mothers
– Decreased estrogen and increased oxytocin and
prolactin
– Driven by pregnancy, parturition, lactation and
infant contact, and are important for maternal
behaviour
• Fathers
– Similar but not identical
– Increased estrogen, oxytocin, prolactin and
glucocorticoids
– Induced by contact with the mother and the offspring
• oxytocin levels in human fathers are positively
related to the amount of affection the father
displays toward his infant
• Reduced testosterone, along with elevated estrogen and
oxytocin levels, might facilitate affiliative behavior in
primate fathers, whereas increased testosterone levels
in rodents seem to support parental aggression toward
nest intruders
• Human fathers engage in interactions that involve
proprioceptive and stimulatory contact and their play is
often directed toward active exploration of the
environment (Lamb,1976; Parke and Sawin,1976)
• Species-typical stimulatory play of human fathers
induces OT release and natural variations in paternal
stimulatory contact would be expressed in systematic
changes in paternal OT
• In conclusion, infant contact itself seems to modulate
endocrine systems and activate neural circuitry in
fathers in a manner that is strikingly similar to that in
mothers.
Other Factors which
Influence Parenting
 Culture and parenting/
parenting style
• Set of distinctive patterns of beliefs and behaviors
that are shared by a group of people and that serve
to regulate their daily living - shape how parents
care for their offspring

• Culture helps to construct parents and parenting,

and maintained and transmitted by influencing
parental cognitions that in turn are thought to
shape parenting practices (Bornstein & Lansford,
2010; Harkness et al., 2007)
• Culture influence parenting patterns and child
development from very early in infancy
– When and how parents care for infants,

– The extent to which parents permit infants freedom to

explore,
– How nurturant or restrictive parents are,

– Which behaviors parents emphasize(Benedict, 1938;

Bornstein, 1991; Erikson, 1950; Whiting, 1981)

• Two modes of parenting- Culture common and

culture-specific
 Culture Specific- parenting
• Culture-specific influences on parenting begin long before
children are born, and they shape fundamental decisions
about which behaviors parents should promote in their
children and how parents should interact with their children
(Bornstein, 1991; Whiting, 1963)

– The United States and Japan are both child-centered modern

societies with equivalently high standards of living and so
forth. But American mothers try to promote autonomy,
assertiveness, verbal competence, and self-actualization in
their children, whereas Japanese mothers try to promote
emotional maturity, self-control, social courtesy, and
interdependence
• Different parenting cognitions and practices may
serve the same function in different cultural contexts

– An authoritative parenting style (high warmth, high control)

leads to positive outcomes in European American school
children,

– An authoritarian parenting style (low warmth, high control)

leads to positive outcomes in African American and Hong

Kong Chinese school children (Leung, Lau, & Lam, 1998).

Culture-common parenting
• Many parenting cognitions and practices are likely to be
similar across cultures; indeed, similarities may reflect
universals even if they vary in form and the degree to
which they are shaped by experience and influenced by
culture
• When a particular parenting cognition or practice serves
the same function and connotes the same meaning in
different cultures, it likely constitutes a universal.
– Caregivers in (almost) all cultures routinely adjust their
speech to very young children making it simpler and more
redundant, presumably to support early language
acquisition; child-directed speech constitutes a universal
that adults find difficult to suppress (Papoušek & Bornstein,
1992)
• The mechanisms through which parents likely affect children are
universal

• Attachment theorists - Children everywhere develop internal

working models of social relationships through interactions with
their primary caregivers and that these models shape children’s
future social relationships with others throughout the balance of
the life course (Sroufe & Fleeson, 1986)

• Social learning theorists - Identified the pervasive roles that

conditioning and modeling play as children acquire associations
that subsequently form the basis for their culturally constructed
selves. By watching or listening to others who are already
embedded in the culture, children come to think and act like them
 Parents personality and early
experiences
• Parenting also reflects transient feelings as well as
enduring personality traits (Lamb and Easterbrooks,
1981)

• Features of personality favourable to good parenting

might include empathic awareness, predictability, non
intrusiveness, and emotional availability (Martin, 1989)

• Perceived self-efficacy and parenting

– Parents who feel competent are reinforced and thus motivated
to engage in further interaction with their infants, which in turn
provides them with additional opportunities to read their infants’
signals fully, interpret them correctly, and respond appropriately;
the more rewarding the interaction, the more motivated are
parents to seek “quality” interaction again (Teti and Candelaria)
• Intergenerational transmission
– Purposefully or unintentionally one generation may
psychologically influence the parenting beliefs and behaviors of
the next (Van IJzendoorn, 1992)
– A mother’s experiences with her own mother may have long-
range effects on her own personality and parenting (Smith and
Drew)

• Mothers who had secure and realistic perceptions of their

attachments to their own mothers are themselves more
likely to have securely attached infants (Main, 1991)
• A dynamic view
– personality factors that influence parenting are also molded by
contemporary experiences. Thus children as well as contextual
settings help to shape parental beliefs and behaviors
Socio economic status

• Low SES adversely affects mothers’ psychological functioning and

promotes harsh or inconsistent disciplinary practices (Conger,

McMarty, Yang, Lahey, and Kropp, 1984; McLoyd and Wilson, 1990;

Simons, Whitbeck, Conger, and Wu, 1991)

• Higher-SES mothers’ encouragement in language undoubtedly

facilitates self-expression in children; higher-SES babies produce

more sounds and later words than do lower-SES babies (Hart and

Risley, 1995, 1999; Papouˇsek et al., 1985).

Challenges in learning
to be parent