Part 2:
The Model in Depth

Of the National Extension Parent Education Model of Critical Parenting,
by Charles A. Smith et al.
See the Preface for information on use and distribution of this document.

In this section, each of the categories of parent skills is examined in more detail. This overview includes a brief description of the category, a list of descriptors or keywords and critical priority parent practices identified in the model. Examples of more specific program objectives also are provided.

Examples of potential objectives are presented to illustrate the types of more specific skills that could flow from the broader, more general priority practices. They are essentially a "shopping list" to stimulate the creativity of a parent educator. Many more objectives could be created focusing on parents of children at different ages, and with different needs. Appreciation of and sensitivity to cultural practices is critical for designing specific objectives. Some of the examples of program objectives included here are specific in terms of changes in parental behavior. Others are more cognitive and less behavioral. It is up to the program developer to decide the types of program impacts they want to emphasize.

A review of the research also is provided for each priority practice category. Each category also includes a brief review of the research literature. Research was selected to give the reader a general sense of what we know about the critical practices identified in that category. The review is a starting point for those who would like to establish a thorough research base for their parent education efforts.

Care for Self

Caring for oneself means knowing and understanding oneself, managing life's demands, and establishing clear direction. Although not impacting children directly, Care for Self provides a backdrop of security, support, predictability, and purpose that indirectly influences the lives of everyone in the family. For example, a parent who has established a sense of purpose in parenting will be more comfortable establishing criteria for choosing guidance strategies. A parent who is motivated in her or his own life will be more capable of motivating a child. And a parent who feels interpersonally connected and supported will find it natural to nurture a child.

While Care for Self does not necessarily precede other parenting practices, it is quite possible to begin developing these skills before an individual becomes a parent. In many cases, these self-care concerns must be addressed before a parent can begin to concentrate on the child and the behaviors more directly related to parenthood.

Care for Self is closely connected with Advocate, a cluster of skills that enable parents to reach out to other institutions and the community. Care for Self focuses on the parent's needs and well-being while Advocate focuses on the needs of the child. Caring for oneself is not only a critical parenting skill, but a skill for life.

Critical Care for Self Practices

• Manage personal stress.
• Manage family resources.
• Offer support to other parents.
• Ask for and accept support from others when needed.
• Recognize one's own personal and parenting strengths.
• Have a sense of purpose in setting child-rearing goals.
• Cooperate with one's child-rearing partners.

Examples of Specific Program Objectives for Care For Self

The following parent behaviors serve as examples of more specific outcome objectives based on the critical practices for Care for Self:

• Identify three personal signs and sources of stress.
• Describe four different methods for coping with stress and four methods for reducing stress.
• Set a specific goal for improved time management.
• Create and follow a household budget.
• Identify five formal and informal sources of personal parenting support.
• Establish a balance between support that is offered to others and support that is requested from others.
• Report an increased number of personal parenting strengths.
• Report increased parenting self-confidence.
• Define four goals for one's parenting "career."
• Identify six principles that guide their decisions in parenting.
• Discuss three parenting issues with the child's other parent(s) or parent figure(s) and set shared goals.
• Demonstrate effective communication strategies for dealing with value

What We Know about Care for Self

Minor parenting hassles, not only major life events, appear to be important sources of stress. Experiencing many daily hassles is associated with more child behavior problems, lower social competence, and greater maternal stress. Daily parenting hassles include, for example, interruptions and disruptions due to parenting, the child's nagging or irritability, and the constant need to perform routine tasks. Hassles predicted less responsive and more controlling child behavior during interaction. Both friendship and community support consistently acted to moderate the relationship between daily hassles and the mother's interaction with the child. The data indicated that mothers need both instrumental and emotional support from husbands/partners (Crnic and Greenberg, 1990).

Isolation and limited contact with social support systems are factors in troubled families. High-risk, multi-problem families tend to have networks that are smaller than average. There is a dynamic relationship between individuals and their environment which is influenced by the richness of their support network (Saulnier and Rowland, 1985). Cochran and Henderson (1990) found that mothers' perceptions of their children became more positive as a function of how many kinfolk they included in their primary network. This relationship was strongest for mothers who had less than a high school education.

Close relationships lead to a secure base from which an individual can cope with stress. Support effectiveness may depend on the degree to which there is a match between the particular support function and individual needs. People expect exchange of support (reciprocity) and have expectations regarding the provision of support (trust). Support needs and partners' abilities to meet needs change over time and situation. Under conditions of duress, a supportive person can provide a secure base for a distressed parent (Coffman et al., 1991). Supportive, close relationships serve as "buffers" to stress that might otherwise cause a breakdown in effective parenting (Quinton, Rutter, and Liddle, 1984).

Social support is especially critical for adolescent parents. There is substantial evidence that social support is positively related to the quality of care teen mothers provide for their children (Luster and Mittelstaedt, 1993). Support from the family of origin is often found to be more important than boyfriend or spouse support in influencing maternal attitudes and skills. Becoming a parent may place a teen out of synchrony with other life course transitions. Developmental tasks of adolescents as individuals and as parents are contradictory (Nath et al., 1991).

Many low-income families are able to maintain supportive networks, but large networks can be a liability. The source of support itself can be a stressor. Supportive networks are an essential element of survival in very low-income neighborhoods. Social support also can be a source of stress, however. For example, mothers of adolescent parents may provide essential child care of their grandchildren while undermining their daughters' independence. It is important to consider the source of support; the frequency of contact; qualitative differences in types of support, such as emotional/supportive, instrumental/material, information/referral, as well as the extent of reciprocity in the relationship. The type of help that is needed most may be a function of a person's situation, but what actually is available may depend on the nature of the network. The quality of the contacts predicted whether or not parents maltreated their children. Only those mothers who perceived others as willing and able to meet their needs and who saw themselves as competent to enlist their help were judged by others in the group to be parenting adequately. It also was important that they were able to establish reciprocal relationships and express empathy (Crittenden, 1985).

Mothers who are more satisfied with their personal networks and those with larger "maternal networks" (systems of support specifically for parenting) show more parenting skill, while those who view children as acting out and report low rates of supportive social contact have less frequent prosocial mother-child interaction. Although personal and maternal networks overlap, mothers tend to have larger personal networks than maternal ones. Concerning their maternal networks, they tend to be more satisfied with the help offered directly to their children and less satisfied with the advice they receive. Those who are more satisfied with their networks report a greater sense of well-being and have been observed to be more likely to praise their children and are less intrusive (Jennings et al., 1991; Szykula et al., 1991).

Parents living with adult relatives may not develop strong parenting skills. It is better if those other adults provide educative rather than exploitative support. Richardson et al., (1991) called this a "developmental double bind." Support is important, and living with other adult relatives can help parents attain various types of crucial support, but it also may make it difficult for young parents to develop maturity and parenting competence. Furstenberg (1981) identified two patterns of support from families: educative and exploitative. In examining families with teen parents, it is possible to identify parents who help the teens to care for their children and gradually allow them to take over the jobs they can handle. In contrast, other families assume responsibility for all tasks and do not allow the teen autonomy or decision-making power. Clearly, educative support helps the teen mother to assume responsibility when she is ready (Barratt, et al., 1991).

There is a "norm of reciprocity" that may make it difficult for some parents to accept support from others. The norm of reciprocity assumes that someone who receives help from others will eventually return the favor. This means that people who believe they will not be able to return the favor may not seek help. Unfortunately, people with the fewest resources to help others may be the most in need of help from others. This norm appears to be less important with family and intimate relationships (Shumaker and Brownell, 1984).

Support social networks are important for African American family life as well as other different ethnic groups. Support from friends, church members, neighbors, and co-workers positively influence self-esteem and personal efficacy, parent-child relationships, and the ability to deal with social problems. Extrafamilial support is associated with socialization responsibility and child care for men regardless of ethnic group (Ahmeduzzaman and Roopnarine, 1992).

Parents who provide mutual support will seek consensus in important decisions about childrearing. When parents use incompatible approaches with their children, the children may show lower self-esteem, problems adapting to school, and lower school achievement. Mothers and fathers may respond differently to developmental changes and demands and display incongruent or disparate patterns of control and influence. Child-rearing disagreements between parents are correlated with behavior problems in three- to six-year-olds (Jouriles et al., 1991) as well as older children (Kandel, 1990). Adolescents are more likely than younger children to notice the difference between their parents (Johnson et al., 1991).

Understand

To Understand children, their development, needs, and uniqueness is vital for parents. Each child is different, not only in abilities, but also in the extraordinary way that he or she sees the world. Understanding children can result in less conflict in relationships with them. Understanding is also an important part of helping children become secure and healthy people. Children are not likely to become caring, loving people if they have not experienced understanding from people who are close to them.

Critical Understand Practices

• Observe and understand one's children and their development
• Recognize how children influence and respond to what happens around them.

Examples of Specific Program Objectives for Understand

The following parent behaviors serve as examples of more specific outcome objectives based on the critical practices for Understand:

• Describe the stages of physical, cognitive, and social development of childhood and adolescent development.
• Understand how parents and children influence each other in different ways throughout childhood and adolescence.
• Evaluate the reasonableness of their expectations in terms of a child's developmental level.
• Create a developmentally appropriate environment for children that allows for movement, play, and creativity.
• Know when children can be expected to be toilet trained, to stay at home alone, to prepare meals alone, to leave home for short periods, to go on dates, or to drive a car.
• Understand that infants and preschoolers are naturally curious and active and that sitting quietly for a long time is unreasonable.
• Match the difficulty of learning activities to the developmental levels of children.
• Understand the basic needs of children: physical needs (sleep, food), emotional needs (love, acceptance, security, guidance, control, independence, and respect for self and others), social needs (friendship, companionship), intellectual needs (intellectual stimulation, thinking new thoughts), spiritual needs (the need to know that we are part of something bigger than ourselves), and creative needs (need to express self).
• Draw on one's own childhood experiences to respond with more compassion and understanding of children.
• Observe and interpret their children's behavior and use that information to make adjustments in parenting behavior.
• Understand that each child is different and unique from others.
• Observe their children and the purposes underlying their behavior (i.e., looking at their faces, watching their actions, listening to them, being attentive to their feelings, and identifying patterns of behavior).
• Listen to nonverbal indicators as well as verbal language of children.
• Consider external factors that affect their children's behavior.
• Evaluate their own parenting behavior and to use this insight to change their behavior.
• Identify consequences of substance use and abuse (including smoking, alcohol, and drugs) for a developing fetus.
• Identify the consequences of nutritional decisions for a developing fetus.

What We Know about Understand

Different parents have different beliefs about the causes of their children's behavior. Mothers of only children are more likely to view their own childrearing as influential while parents of multiple children are more likely to see genetic causes as significant. Parents also are more likely to emphasize their own childrearing if the child is perceived as doing well and deny self-attribution when the child has problems. Attributing a child's behavior to environmental forces or genetics may be self-protective for a parent but could discourage direct action by the parent to help the child (Himelstein et al., 1991).

Parents will be more effective if they are knowledgeable about their own child, child development, and childrearing. What parents know about children's development is positively related to their skills in designing a supportive learning environment and to their ability to interact in ways that stimulate development. Providing parents with information about child development is a highly cost-effective human service that enhances the knowledge base of parents and others in the parent's personal social network who also interact with the child (Stevens, 1984; Schmitt, 1987). In addition, being perceptive about a child's individuality and the "fit" between a child's temperament and the environment are critical for enhancing a child's development and well-being (Lerner, 1993).

In a summary of the research, Belsky (1984) concluded that "sensitive" parenting, attuned to children's capabilities and to the developmental tasks they face, promotes emotional security, behavioral independence, social competence, and intellectual achievement. After his examination of the literature, Powell (1991) concluded that children's intellectual performance is better when mothers hold accurate judgments about their child's intellectual abilities. Parents' knowledge of difficult developmental phases can help them provide for their children's needs while preventing abuse. Schmitt (1987) identified seven developmental problems with children that are likely to cause problems for parents: colic, awakening at night, separation anxiety, normal exploratory behavior, normal negativism, normal poor appetite, and toilet training problems. A parent's knowledge of the range of normal child behavior and appropriate responses is very important.

Fulton et al.,(1991) found that adolescent mothers gained significant knowledge of infant development as a result of their participation in a parent education program. By the conclusion of the program, the adolescent mothers also demonstrated lower scores on a test measuring inappropriate interactions with children. Researchers concluded that knowledge of child development could prevent potential child abuse.

Cook (1991) found four parental attributes that contributed to expertise with infants: awareness of the child's goals and needs in a problem situation; developmentally sensitive understanding of the child and developmentally appropriate childrearing responses; responsiveness to cues from the child; and providing opportunities for the child to be selfdirective.

Parents use observation and comparison to understand their children. When asked about their sources of information about their children, parents will use comparisons to other children of the same age. Such comparisons may be favorable ("She's advanced compared to other kids," or "He's doing what his brothers did at that age") or unfavorable ("He can't do what other kids can do," or "My other kids could do that when they were her age"). These informal appraisals allow parents to conclude whether their child's development is typical or atypical (Glascoe and MacLean, 1990).

A parent's knowledge of child development is affected by culture, family, and generation. These systems are interdependent. A parent's knowledge is affected by culture, family, and generation which then influences his or her behavior. For example, a mother whose family has excessively high or low expectations of children may treat her child differently from the mother who receives more appropriate expectations from her family. A mother's knowledge is often based on her own mother's knowledge. Parents from different cultures will respond differently to information they receive about children (Sistler and Gottfried, 1990). Cultural context does influence the way parents think about their children, their parenting goals, and values (Okagaki and Divecha, 1993).

Children thrive when the environment suits their own personal style. Children choose the environments that are most comfortable for them. Being aware of different children's needs for stimulation may be very important for their development. One child may need a very active, stimulating environment while another (even within the same family) may thrive in a very orderly, peaceful environment. Much of the difference in styles between children is temperamental and not subject to outside change (Scarr and McCartney, 1983).

Parents who understand their children are likely to create an environment that challenges them, one that is neither boring because it expects too little nor distressing because it expects too much (Hunt and Paraskevopouls, 1980).

Difficult child temperament, especially during infancy, can undermine parental functioning. If they view their infant as having a "difficult" temperament, parents are likely to spend less time with them and be less responsive to their cries. Some parents may be better prepared because of their own temperament to manage children who cry frequently and react negatively to environmental stimuli (Belsky, 1984).

Parental beliefs and expectation influence a child's experience and behavior. Phillips (1987) identified parent appraisals of a child's academic performance as more influential in the child's academic selfperception than even objective indicators such as report cards. Judgments of children's performance made by parents are clearly very important to a child's developing self-perception. The practice of labeling problem behavior may be disabling, even self-fulfilling. Such labeling may be very common in family settings (Philips, 1987; Valins and Nisbett, 1987; Harter, 1982; Covell and Abramovitch, 1987).

Several researchers found that children were likely to see themselves as the cause of parental anger but not for parental happiness, sadness, or fear. Perhaps the stresses of family living may make parental anger prominent in the child's experience of the parent. Parents may, unfortunately, blame children more frequently for their anger than for other emotions. Children may over-react to messages of parental anger, generalizing it to broad disapproval. Such perceptions_and misperceptions_may maintain a damaging family cycle of misunderstanding and hurt (Harter, 1982; Covell and Abramovitch, 1987).

Guide

The Guide component of the model focuses on the development of personal strength in children and the benevolent expression of authority by parents. Parents are faced with a difficult balancing act in establishing authority: to use their power to identify, introduce, and enforce reasonable limits while gradually giving freedom to children by encouraging them to be appropriately responsible for themselves. Parents have the responsibility to use their superior knowledge and wisdom to set limits that protect their children and show concern for the welfare of others. They may want to teach their children to inhibit destructive behavior and engage in more prosocial or worthwhile action.

Children, on the other hand, seek freedom from such constraint even as they need guidance and structure. Their growth as individuals depends on making choices and facing the consequences of their own decisions.

Assistance with this difficult task of communicating values, nurturing self-control, and responding to misbehavior is a common request by parents. This clear desire for assistance provides the rationale for making Guide one of the components of the model.

The Critical Guide Practices

• Model appropriate desired behavior.
• Establish and maintain reasonable limits.
• Provide children with developmentally appropriate opportunities to learn responsibility.
• Convey fundamental values underlying basic human decency.
• Teach problem-solving skills.
• Monitor children's activities and facilitate their contact with peers and adults.

Examples of Specific Program Objectives for Guide

The following parent behaviors serve as examples of more specific outcome objectives based on the critical practices for Guide:

• Make confident discipline decisions based on knowledge of options.
• Increase thoughtful or reflective responses to a child's misbehavior while decreasing impulsive reactions.
• Increase the use of prevention and guidance and decrease the use of punishment, especially spanking, in their use of discipline.
• Implement a four-step sequence for responding to misbehavior.
• Identify why limits are important.
• Understand that limits are based on values.
• Evaluate whether limits are based on values.
• Define misbehavior and learn to use three critical questions to determine whether misbehavior is taking place.
• Learn reasons why children misbehave.
• Learn how to use prevention as part of a discipline strategy.
• Differentiate between cruelty and reasonable consequences.
• Understand when consequences are necessary.
• Use reasonable consequences appropriate to the misbehavior.

What We Know about Guide

The most effective discipline style involves a delicate balance between parental warmth/acceptance and parental control/strictness.According to Diana Baumrind (Maccoby and Martin, 1983) this authoritative pattern of parenting includes the following elements:

1. Expectations for mature behavior from children and clear limits;
2. Firm enforcement of rules and standards, using commands and sanctions when necessary;
   
3. Encouragement of children's independence and individuality;
4. Open communication between parents and children, with parents listening to children's points of view, as well as expressing their own; encouragement of give-and-take;
   
5. Recognition of rights of both parents and children.

A clear, reasonable structure provides security and stability. In ten years of working with distressed families in a treatment program, the Patterson group (Maccoby and Martin, 1983) found that the lack of compliance by aggressive children is central to family dysfunction. In order to help parents reestablish their authority they instituted a program on child management with the following characteristics:

1. Clear understandings of what would be considered acceptable and unacceptable behavior are established;
   
2. Children's behavior would be closely monitored so that both compliance and noncompliance with the understood rules can be noted quickly and consistently;
   
3. Consistent reasonable responses to the misbehavior would be established;
   
4. Positive consequences for the child's prosocial behavior would be emphasized.

Program developers believed that once parents established their influence in obtaining compliance from their children, they would be able to teach self-help and prosocial skills more effectively.

Hoffman (1975) advocates a "victim centered" discipline that encourages children to repair the damage they have done, apologize, and show concern for the victim's feelings. Children who experience this form of discipline are viewed by their peers as being kind people. Victim-centered discipline uses person-oriented instead of position-oriented reasoning (Bearison and Cassel, 1975). Person-oriented reasoning draws attention to the experience of those involved_their feelings, thoughts, needs, and intentions ("Hitting hurts. See how much your sister is crying now. She is sad."). Position-oriented reasoning makes an appeal based on rules ("You are not supposed to hit your sister.") or status ("Because I said so.").

An authoritative discipline style is associated with a variety of positive outcomes for children. Baumrind (1991) found that authoritative parents were more likely than parents who were authoritarian or permissive to have children who were socially responsible and independent.

Children's moral development in grades 1-10 was best predicted by a parental discussion style that involved a give-and-take discussion and supportive interactions, combined with the presentation of higher-level moral reasoning (Walker et al., 1991). Authoritative parenting across ethnic groups also is associated with academic success by adolescents (Dornbusch et al., 1987; Steinberg, et al., 1989) and positive peer relationships (Dekovic and Janssens, 1991; Lamborn and Mounts et al., 1991).

Competent adolescents have parents who exercise reasonable control but who are flexible and encourage independence (Lamborn et al., 1991; Montemayor, 1986). Adolescents who abstain from using drugs have parents who maintain control by clarifying appropriate behavior, reinforce with praise and encouragement, and maintain warm, caring relationships (Baumrind, 1991; Coombs and Landsverk, 1988).

Dubow and his colleagues (1987) found that childrearing styles characterized by acceptance and a less dominating approach to punishment, and identification of the child with the parent are associated with higher levels of adult ego development twenty-two years later. Direct control techniques in both teaching and in response to a child's misbehavior are negatively related to the child's academic success at four, five, six, and twelve years of age (Hess and McDevitt, 1984).

A nationally representative sample of 3,346 American parents with a child under eighteen living at home found that 63 percent of the parents reported instances of such verbal aggression as swearing and insulting the child. Children who experienced frequent verbal aggression from parents exhibited higher rates of verbal aggression, delinquency, and interpersonal problems than other children (Vissing et al., 1991). Children four to eleven years of age who received frequent and/or severe punishment committed more aggressive transgressions (toward siblings, peers, adults outside family) and were more likely to oppose parental interventions than children who received infrequent and/or mild punishment (Trickett and Kucynski, 1986). Larzelere (1986) found a direct positive relationship between spanking and child aggression against others. But when mild or moderate punishment was coupled with reasoning, child aggression did not increase.

In a study reported recently in the Harvard Medical School Mental Health Letter, adults who had been raised with harsh physical discipline were found to be almost three times as likely to develop depression or alcoholism as were those whose parents had brought them up in gentler ways (Mellinger, 1989).

McCord (1983) compared over a forty-year period abused, neglected, and rejected boys with boys who experienced love and nurturing. Children who were not actively nurtured had higher rates of juvenile delinquency. About half of the abused and neglected children who were convicted of serious crimes became alcoholics, or suffered from mental illness. They also died at a younger age than those who were nurtured as children.

Consistency in guidance is important for children. Montemayor (1986) found that ineffective parents punish more than they reward although use of punishment and reward is inconsistent. Maltreating parents have been found to use ineffective and inconsistent punishment and discipline (Reid et al., 1981; Kimball et al., 1980).

Guidance is part of a relationship in which each person influences and is influenced by the other. Minton et al., (1971) studied disciplinary encounters in the homes of ninety two-year-olds. Mothers' initial responses to physical or verbal aggression, temper tantrums, or harm to household objects were initially mild in tone. Pressure on the child was escalated to a more forceful level if the child did not comply to the initial effort. Mothers responded more firmly at the outset of a conflict if they had to use force to gain the child's compliance in a prior conflict.

A child's propensity to comply and avoid defiance may be affected by the extent to which the mother's control strategies allow the child a degree of autonomy. Children are more likely to comply if they perceive they are participating in a reciprocal relationship. Their mothers are clear about what they want while listening to their children's desires. They show respect for their children's autonomy and individuality. These mothers reason, persuade, suggest, and adapt their requests to what they think their children will accept (Crockenberg and Litman, 1990).

Competent and cooperative adolescents will elicit authoritativeness in parents while difficult-to-manage children can trigger parental aggression or neglect (Lamborn et al., 1991).

Ineffective discipline choices are associated with a variety of personal and family stressors. Adolescent mothers who had experienced rejection and physical punishment during childhood and little or no support from a partner after birth were more likely to exhibit angry and punitive parenting. Their children were more angry, more noncompliant, and more emotionally distanced from mothers than were children of nonpunitive mothers (Crockenburg, 1987).

Child misbehavior is associated with marital conflict (Reid and Crisafulli, 1990). Parental isolation also can contribute to parent-child conflict. A national survey of 6,000 households revealed that single parents are more likely to use abusive forms of violence toward their children than are parents in dual-caretaker households. Abusive violence appeared to be a function of poverty in mother- but not father-headed homes. In households where one parent does all the disciplining_whether it is the mother or the father_punishment is likely to be more severe (Mellinger, 1989).

Parents who are abusers are more likely than those who are not to have been abused as children (DePanfilis and Salus, 1992). Also, they are more likely to have experienced more stressful life events in the preceding twelve months (Smith and Adler, 1991). The more physical punishment a parent experienced as a child, the higher the proportion who engage in abusive violence toward their own children and spouses (Herzberger and Tennen, 1985; Straus, 1990).

Substance abuse also can contribute to a high-risk environment for children. Drug abusing mothers have experienced cycles of victimization themselves and have few job skills, poor self-esteem, and, often, many children. Drugs can interfere with the user's ability to parent (DePanfilis and Salus, 1992).

Certain situations cause overload, frustration, and parental retribution. Parents of three- and four-year-olds were more likely to report probable spanking for physical aggression by the child than for any other area of misbehavior (Sims and Mason, 1991). Due to their size and immaturity, young children are particularly vulnerable to maltreatment. For children living in high risk families, innocent acts of colic, awakening at night, separation anxiety, normal exploratory behavior, normal negativism, normal poor appetite, and toilet training resistance can trigger dangerous or even deadly abuse. Difficult-to-manage children can be at risk for abuse if their parents are isolated and overloaded with stress.

Having a history of abuse as a child, being a single parent, or having a difficult-to-manage child, for example, does not necessarily mean that a parent will become an abuser. However, when these risk factors are combined with stress overload and social isolation, the result is a potentially explosive environment in the family.

The ideology of physical punishment is currently in a stage of transition. Carson (1989) found that 80 to 90 percent of the population considers parents to have not just the right, but the moral obligation to spank or slap. Nonspanking parents tend to be the objects of social control efforts by friends and relatives in the form of polite but pointedly expressed doubts about consequences for the child. Parents have to develop socially acceptable accounts to justify their unwillingness to use physical punishment to themselves and others.

About 90 percent of the parents in a 1975 National Family Violence Survey expressed at least some degree of approval of physical punishment (Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz, 1980). Dibble and Straus (1980) found that 82 percent of parents expressed at least some degree of approval of slapping or spanking a twelve-year-old.

Wauchope and Straus (1990) found that more than 90 percent of parents of children three and four years of age used physical punishment; physical punishment is still being used with 33 percent of fifteen-year olds. Enormous variation exists in how often children experience physical punishment.

This violent paradigm of the dominant culture may be changing, however. In their New Hampshire Child Abuse Survey, Moore and Straus (1987) found that almost half of the parents interviewed strongly disagreed with the statement, "Parents have a right to slap their teenage children who talk back to them." According to a more recent National Public Opinion survey conducted by the National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse, 72 percent of the American public believes that physical discipline of a child can lead to injury (Cohn, 1990). Carson (1989) found that 40 percent of parents who regularly spanked their children thought that spanking was rarely, if ever, effective. One out of three felt guilty and blamed themselves after spanking a child. The more parents use physical punishment, the greater the percentage who worry that they might be carried away to the point of child abuse (Frude and Goss, 1979).

Advocates of physical punishment may, however, resist change and ignore alternatives. Cudaback (1992) found that those who believe in physical punishment express significantly less desire for information about discipline.

Nurture

To Nurture children may be the most important contribution parents can offer their children. Nurturing by parents predicts that a child will develop into a competent and healthy adult. Nurturing can be challenging because a family's emotional resources often are overextended. Children also have different needs and different preferences for nurturing behavior. By learning to attend to their children's needs, by building a positive relationship, and by sending consistent messages of love and support, parents can be effective nurturers.

Critical Nurture Practices

• Express affection and compassion.
• Foster children's self-respect and hope.
• Listen and attend to children's feelings and ideas.
• Teach kindness.
• Provide for the nutrition, shelter, clothing, health, and safety needs of one's children.
• Celebrate life with one's children.
• Help children feel connected to family history and cultural heritage.

Examples of Specific Program Objectives for Nurture

The following parent behaviors serve as examples of more specific outcome objectives based on the critical practices for Nurture:

• Plan and engage in activities that bring mutual enjoyment with their children.
• Express their feelings of affection in both word and action.
• Take the time to talk with children to help them feel significant as well as to develop their verbal, intellectual, and social skills.
• Understand and implement strategies for becoming involved with children, such as appropriate play with a child, moving to a child's level (on the floor to play), using a gentle tone of voice, and reading books with a child.
• Show respect for each member of the family, including children.
• Adjust the way they talk with children to show respect for the child's age and affirm the child's dignity and worth.
• Provide sincere praise.
• Maintain a healthy balance between encouragement/nurturance and discipline/setting limits so that the overall feeling of the parent-child relationship is positive.
• Help children develop a sense of heritage based on experiences shared about ancestors.
• Help children develop a sense of spirituality by involving them in related activities in the home and/or community.
• Show sensitivity to how each child interprets parental love, including taking time to do things that the child enjoys and taking time to understand the child's feelings.
• Listen more responsively to children.
• Give significance to children's place within the family by discussing the circumstances surrounding their births and the selection of their names.

What We Know about Nurture

Effective parental nurturing may be the single best predictor of successful child outcomes. Nurturance has been variously called support, love, acceptance, affection, and warmth. Rollins and Thomas (1979, p. 320) have defined this construct as "behavior manifested by a parent toward a child that makes the child feel comfortable in the presence of the parent and confirms in the child's mind that he is basically accepted and approved as a person by the parent." For decades, nurturance has been identified as a key variable in childrearing (Symonds, 1939; Becker, 1964; Baumrind, 1967).

Research in parent-child attachment (Ainsworth, 1978) stresses the importance of prompt and sensitive responding by parents to children's needs. Nurturance becomes the basis for a continuing relationship. Maccoby and Martin (1983) suggested in their review of research that the combination of warm, nurturant parenting together with clear standards and reasonable control resulted in children who are competent, responsible, independent, confident, achievement-oriented, and able to control aggression. Belsky (1984) found that attentive, warm, and nonrestrictive maternal behaviors contributed to the intellectual development of young children. High maternal warmth is a protective factor against risks associated with peer rejection and behavior problems among six-year-old children (Patterson, et al., 1989).

Parental encouragement of emotional expressiveness was positively associated with competence in preschool children as assessed by teacher ratings (Roberts and Strayer, 1987). Coombs and Landsverk (1988) found that warm feelings of closeness with parents, both mothers and fathers, typified adolescent abstainers from drugs. Fathers who developed and maintained warm relationships, compared with those that did not, experienced greater success in inhibiting drug involvement. In his review of the research, Dix (1991) indicated that there was considerable evidence that the more positive the emotions parents experience and express, the more favorable is the caregiving environment for children. Nurturance has so consistently been found to be important in the raising of children that it has sometimes been called the super-variable in parenting.

Nurturing has both direct and indirect impacts on children. In addition to its primary effects, nurturance has been shown to impact how other parenting behaviors influence children (Darling and Steinberg, 1993; Pettit and Mize, 1993). For example, a child will respond more positively to the disciplinary efforts of a nurturing than a punitive parent. Parents who nurture their children are likely to be more powerful models for other behaviors they hope to encourage in their children (Eisenberg, 1992). Parents can engage in specific nurturing behaviors and establish a nurturing environment.

Absence of parental nurturing can impair child competence. In a summary of the research, Denham (1989) concluded that infants and toddlers cope poorly with stress when mothers are emotionally nonresponsive or express mostly negative emotions. Mothers who express much positive effect and whose emotional style is resourceful, enthusiastic, and optimistic have infants who exhibit more positive affect and social behavior. Infants who grow up in this environment are less likely to be depressed as nine-year-olds.

Six-year-olds who are insecurely attached to their mothers are more likely to be reported by their teachers as having behavior problems in school (Cohn, 1990).

Bulimic behavior in adolescents was found to be positively correlated with inconsistent affection by parents (Scalf-McIver and Thompson, 1989). Adolescent mothers who believed that babies are likely to become spoiled if the mother is responsive and affectionate were less supportive than those who believed that infants should be talked to and given considerable leeway in exploring their surroundings (Luster and Rhoades, 1989).

Parental nurturing is clearly linked to prosocial behavior. ZahnWaxleret, et al., (1979) found that parents who responded positively to their children's upset had children who responded positively to upset in others and were more often prosocial in their behavior. In contrast, Main and George (1985) reported that toddlers who were abused by their parents became emotionally distressed by their peers' emotional upset and attacked them physically and verbally.

Nurturance alone may be insufficient to promote generosity and helping. When used in combination with modeling, high standards for altruism and victim-centered reasoning, nurturance can be a powerful catalyst for prosocial behavior (Eisenberg, 1992).

Motivate

Motivate includes the parenting practices which promote intellectual development in children. Parents who take their responsibility as their children's teacher seriously, and who perform their teaching functions effectively and sensitively throughout their children's lives, are more likely than other parents to have children who become confident and skilled learners and who attain high levels of educational achievement.

The Motivate cluster of skills is closely related to Guide and Nurture. Parents who are the most successful motivators lovingly nurture and guide their children respectfully and sensitively. The parenting practices promoted in the Motivate cluster may be especially responsive to parent education. Parents can learn how to facilitate learning effectively.

The Critical Motivate Practices

• Teach children about themselves, others, and the world around them.
• Stimulate curiosity, imagination, and the search for knowledge.
• Create beneficial learning conditions.
• Help children process and manage information.

Examples of Specific Program Objectives for Motivate

The following parent behaviors serve as examples of more specific outcome objectives based on the critical practices for Motivate:

• Identify why they are the first and potentially the most important teachers for their children.
• Establish a home environment conducive to learning.
• Help their children acquire knowledge and skills they need to become responsible, contributing young people and adults.
• Stimulate their children's curiosity and desire to learn.
• Increase their children's confidence as learners.
• Promote their children's preparation for success in school.
• More accurately identify their children's learning patterns and learning needs.
• Engage their children in more language-rich activities.
• Increase the number of appropriate learning experiences they provide for their children.
• Use more encouraging and supportive responses to their children's learning efforts.
• Establish more realistic, achievable homework and study rules.
• Play more learning games with infants and preschoolers.
• Increase interest in, and knowledge of, their children's schools and school achievement.
• Interact more effectively with their children's schools and teachers.

What We Know about Motivate

Children need opportunities to learn. Infants, preschoolers, and school-age children are more likely to become skilled and motivated learners if their parents provide them with opportunities for a variety of experiences which stimulate sensory, physical, and intellectual learning (Caldwell and Bradley, 1979; Honig, 1979).

In their summary of the research, Amato and Ochiltree (1986) found child competence to be associated with a variety of parental behaviors. Able parents encourage their children to explore and interact with the environment. They give their children responsive and realistic feedback. They are warm and supportive. They have high expectations for their children and assist with schoolwork. They also take an active problemsolving approach to resolving conflict and create an environment that is relatively free of overt conflict between family members.

Steinberg et al., (1989) found that the three aspects of authoritative parenting_acceptance, psychological autonomy, and behavioral control_may enhance an adolescent's work orientation and ultimately school success. In his review of the research, Powell (1991) pointed out that the most beneficial teaching strategies stimulate the child's own thinking and encourage active, verbal engagement of a task.

In a study of parent beliefs about their children's academic experience, Powell and Peet (1992b) found that a majority of parents are worried about their child's future, and approximately one-third do not expect their child will attain what the parent considers to be an ideal position for the child. They also found that a parent's contributions to children's learning are most effective when incorporated into daily family routines.

Learning is enhanced by responsiveness. Teaching is most effective if provided by parents/caregivers who are aware of and responsive to their children's specific learning patterns, needs, and capabilities. Controlling and restrictive parents undermine children's intellectual development by restricting children from freely exploring their environment (Clarke-Stewart, 1973; Dornbusch et al., 1987; Gottfried, 1983; Jennings and Conners, 1989; Ramey and Finkelstein, 1978; Sparling, 1980).

Language and literacy skills are probably the most important predictors of children's educational success. Children whose parents have promoted their language and literacy throughout preschool and early school years are most likely to achieve in school and beyond (Becker, 1985; Clarke-Stewart, 1977; Greaney, 1986; Hess and Holloway, 1984; Honig, 1982; Laosa, 1982; Tizard and Hughes, 1984).

Children who have access to reading and writing materials, who have parents who read frequently to them and take them to the library have been found to be more skilled readers than children who do not experience these encouragements (Powell, 1991).

Home-school collaboration is critical. When parents collaborate with their children's teachers, these children are more likely to adjust to and succeed in school (Cotton and Savard, 1982; ERIC Clearinghouse, 1985; Hamilton and Cochran, 1988; Schmitt, 1986; Rodick and Henggeler, 1980).

Reasonable and positive expectations build a foundation for success. Children are more likely to be achieving learners if their parents have high but reasonable learning expectations for them (Coopersmith, 1967; Phillips, 1987; Steinberg, Elmen, and Mounts, 1989). "Hothousing," exerting inappropriate levels of achievement pressure on young children, creates an artificial environment and is likely to be counterproductive (Sigel, 1982).

Parents have a role as interpreters of objective confidence feedback for their children. Children incorporate their parents' impressions of their capabilities into their own self-appraisal of their academic competence. Parent's opinions are even more important than actual records of achievement (Philips, 1987).

Advocate

In addition to skills for directly facilitating the growth and development of themselves and their children, effective parents connect with community resources and work to increase the probability that their children's and family's needs will be met. They seek out programs, institutions, and professionals that provide services important to their children and/or family. They represent their children's needs to those organizations or individuals to facilitate a linkage between that community service and the child. When policies and procedures in the community impede children's growth or make it difficult for families to function, advocate parents speak up and take action to change those policies.

Children whose parents Advocate for them are less likely than other children to get lost between the cracks or to be offered services that simply do not fit. Parents who advocate establish a thread of connections between home and the community, building a harmonious and responsive environment for children. As the number of advocate parents increases, the quality of the community environment for children increases.

Critical Advocate Practices

• Find, use, and create community resources when needed to benefit one's children and the community of children.
• Stimulate social change to create supportive environments for children and families.
• Build relationships with family, neighborhood, and community groups.

Examples of Specific Program Objectives for Advocate

The following parent behaviors serve as examples of more specific outcome objectives based on the critical practices for Advocate:

• List four characteristics of a high quality community service program or agency.
• Describe a process to follow to find high quality child care.
• List five family needs and the community services that could help meet those needs.
• Write a letter to a legislator concerning an issue important to children and/or families.
• Establish a Mother's Day Out program.
• Establish a babysitting cooperative.
• Contact their children's school and set up a parent-teacher conference.
• Join and contribute to a parent advisory group.
• Make a list of concerns and questions to take to a well-baby visit.
• Make a phone call to an agency to ask for information.
• Fill out a form for services.
• Communicate with a teacher about something that is going right and something that is going wrong.
• Improve parent-caregiver relations.
• Describe parent rights regarding the Freedom of Information Act.

What We Know about Advocate

A basic function and responsibility of parents is to advocate with the wider community on the behalf of one's own and all children. Alvy (1987) describes five interrelated functions and responsibilities of parenting. In addition to such roles as establishing and maintaining a home and providing for the social-emotional and intellectual growth of children, he outlines the tasks of linking with the wider community and speaking up for the needs of one's own children in general.

Parents need to have certain attitudes, abilities, and knowledge to be effective advocates. If parents do not believe in themselves and their ability to effect change, they may not even try to get involved in formal social systems. Because that involvement requires communication and could lead to conflict, they should have skills in those areas. Their involvement is most likely to be effective if they understand how political, educational, legal, and medical systems operate (Small and Eastman, 1991).

Parents typically turn to agencies only after their informal networks have proven to be inadequate. Community services are related to greater life satisfaction for adult mothers, but support from family and friends appears to be more important for teen parents (Nath et al., 1991).

Teen parents may feel more insecure about their competence and are more likely to depend on their adult mothers to guide them through the services available to them. Isolated teen parents are likely to be especially at risk because they may lack the confidence to initiate contact with agencies that could provide critical support.

Community services should be part of a system of supporting families in meeting the needs of the parents and children, instead of stepping in only when they have failed. Nurturing children is the interdependent responsibility of the family, state, volunteer community agencies, and private economic sector. There is a need to rebalance responsibility for children among the multiple players, not just between the family and state. What can government and community do to enhance a family's capacity to help themselves and others?

Weiss (1990) examined the historical nature of the relationship between families and institutions designed to provide support as well as numerous reports of recent commissions and study groups. She concluded that a coherent system of family-oriented, as opposed to child- or bureaucracy-oriented services and a broader public and institutional commitment to strengthening families is needed. Communities must assume a moral obligation for the well-being of all children.

Mothers with good expressive skills and strong support systems are more likely to enroll in and benefit from programs. Expressive mothers are more likely than others to contribute verbally and to form friendships with others in parent education programs. Mothers who feel confident about their ability to control events in their lives are more likely to enroll, experience less difficulty, and be more flexible in attitudes. Mothers with extensive networks are more responsive to home-based parent education and more likely to form friendships with others who are involved. Too many reality factors in the environment make it difficult to attract, retain, and positively influence parents in an educational setting (Powell, 1986).

Parents of special-needs children face many of the same stressors as other parents and many unique ones. They may receive the most significant help from each other. Isolation can be particularly harmful to families with developmentally-delayed children; parents must cultivate supportive relationships based on mutual need. The demands of caring for a developmentally-delayed child tax the resources of any parent. Building collaborative networks is especially important for these parents (Schilling et al., 1984). Seventy-five percent who experience a wide range of chronic conditions said they had difficulty understanding their children's diseases or wanted more information about them, such as the nature of the condition, daily management, and child development (Hymovich and Baker, 1985). Parents can inform each other about services available from various government agencies. By linking together with other parents with similar challenges, they can make their voices heard by those involved in public policy and program delivery.

Printed and learn-at-home materials can connect parents with an information network. Parents who receive newsletters or learn-at-home materials report interest in learning more about children and parenting. This allows parents to access the information network. The great majority of parents who received age-paced newsletters and who completed evaluation questionnaires indicated that newsletters were useful in promoting their self-confidence as parents, improving their knowledge of child development, and increasing their ability to be effective, nurturing parents (Cudaback et al., 1985).

Contact with professionals can significantly influence beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge of parents. Physicians exchanged knowledge and information with Hispanic parents and influenced the beliefs of those parents regarding the abilities and rights of their physically handicapped children (Shapiro and Tittle, 1990). The value of such contact with physicians, nurses and other professionals is in changing parents' misconceptions about the nature of their children's disabilities and developing more positive beliefs about disabled people in general. Support from informal networks of relatives and friends is more important in meeting emotional needs.

Making good choices about community services requires information, resources, and ability to access the services. Those parents who are most likely to use low-quality child care are those who do not know how to identify quality, those who have few choices and limited access, and those with limited incomes to afford high-quality care. Therefore, families likely to use low-quality child care are those with low incomes (those with the lowest incomes may qualify for support and special programs, but the slots are limited); parents of infants; parents with nontypical working hours; and parents with children for whom there are limited settings, such as parents of school-age children, parents of sick children, and parents of special needs children (Adams, 1990).

Effective education involves dialogue, critical literacy, a consideration of the learner's social context, and education for change. Teachers and learners should learn from each other, should work at pulling apart and understanding materials rather than simply memorizing them, and should study the system and how it can be changed. It is not enough for parents to simply learn information; they need to gain skills for making a difference in the larger system (Shor, 1987).

An empowerment approach may be initially uncomfortable for parents. Structure and direction may be necessary during the early stages of introducing an empowerment approach. As parents become more comfortable with the approach, they will begin to ask each other questions, give helpful ideas, and develop their own models and conceptualizations (Shor, 1987).

Parents frequently view their children's participation in out-ofschool activities as a way to complement their academic achievement. Community services are not only for parents. Parents may want their children to participate in community-based activities to improve their academic performance, to develop individual responsibility, to develop morally, and for pure enjoyment (Powell and Peet, 1992a).



Part 1: Foundations
Part 3: Implementing the Model
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