Social Development Essay

Describe the impact that parent have on children’s social development.

Babies come into this world with physical, and emotional dependencies to others and learn about the world around them, including about themselves through early human interactions. The role of the parents is to provide a solid, supportive foundation to facilitate interactions creating a secure, loving environment for the child to grow. At the core of the infant’s healthy social development is the mother-child relationship. Parenting style and how well the mother respond to child’s sensory social signals, effect child’s aptitude to bond to others including to their peers. However, other factors are important, such as father involvement, mother’s mental state and peers support.

Diana Baumrind (1967), concluded that parents present three distinct parenting styles – authoritative, authoritarian and permissive. Every form represents the level of control exercised by the parents over the child, and also an indication of children self-regulating agency, and sense of self. Children acquire social competencies and regulate their behaviour in response to their parent’s awareness of their needs to participate. For instance, Authoritarian parents set inflexible rules without justifying their decisions to their children (because I said so attitude) and exercise absolute control over them, punishing any deviation from the rules, regardless of child’s opinions and feelings. As a consequence to this condescending parenting style, children do not develop an ability to express feelings and, therefore, may detriment to their capacity to interact with peers (Fielder, 2008). They also show distinct social characteristics such as rebellious, less social competence and low self-esteem (Darling, 1999). On the other hand, authoritative parents, have established a reciprocal relationship with their children, setting clear rules, but at the same time evaluating them in relation to their feelings. Because parents foster a sense of participation and flexibility, children relating to this

and Martin, J.A. 1983). Indulgent parents are very responsive to their children opinion and wishes, however, without providing them with any development structure, such as establishing a daily routine (bedtime routine, homework routine, dinner routine) or family rules. Children coming from indulgent families present opposing characteristics, such as high self-esteem, enhanced social skills and yet, egocentric, impulsive and irresponsible (Darling, 1999). Fielder (2008) suggested that irresponsible attitude may have an effect on the child ability to interact with peers, because children of such characteristics do not consider the consequences of their actions. In like manner, neglected children are coming from families that are both unresponsive and undemanding. Parents relating to this category, are emotionally uninvolved, unsupportive and unresponsive. As a result of this defective parenting style, children struggle to develop social skills, and therefore generally are avoided by their peers, and later become more isolated. Not being able to form an emotional attachment to a prominent figure (caregiver or friend) neglected children develop an aggressive, antisocial, impulsive behaviour (Wendy L. G. Hoglund, Christopher E. Lalonde, and Bonnie J. Leadbeater,