Mind-Mindedness, a parent’s tendency to attribute thoughts and intentions to his or her child, is related to numerous child outcomes including infant attachment security and child social-cognitive development. Despite established research, the construct is still developing and current research continues to provide clarification. This study sought to contribute to the clarification of mind-mindedness in three main ways. First, the present study examined within-parent consistency with respect to mind-mindedness, parenting stress, and parenting style. Results indicated that parenting stress and parenting style tended to covary for two children in the same family, whereas mind-mindedness did not. Additionally, parents tended to experience different levels of parenting stress or utilize different parenting strategies between their two children. By contrast, significant differences for mind-mindedness were not found. Secondly, the present study examined the relation between mind-mindedness and parenting stress. Results supported an inverse relation between mind-mindedness and parenting stress for the older child. Results also revealed a positive relation between mind-mindedness and parental distress for the younger child; this was specifically relevant for children age 30 months and younger. Multiple interpretations for this finding are explored. Third, this study examined the relations between parenting style, parenting stress, and mind-mindedness. Results indicated two general trends: For the younger children, when parents thought about their child in a more mind-minded manner, they also tended to utilize more authoritative parenting strategies; this parenting style was also related to lower parenting stress. For the older children, when parents thought about their child in a more mind-minded manner, they also tended to utilize less authoritarian parenting strategies as well as experience less parenting stress as related to parent-child dysfunctional interactions. The findings of this study support previous findings regarding mind-mindedness and parenting stress as well as contribute to an improved understanding of the consistency of parenting constructs between two children in the same family and the relation between parenting stress and parenting style. These findings also raise questions for future research with respect to mind-mindedness in very young children. Future research areas and implications are discussed. / Graduate

Early childhood represents a critical period for the development of social skills and abilities that enhance social competence. One of the main aspects that contribute to this development is the parent-child relationship. The purpose of this study is to explore this area of the parent-child relationship by focusing on parenting personality and parents’ perceptions. The aim of this study was to investigate whether parents’ personality could influence the parent-child relationship and consequently predict social competence in young children. Parents’ personality related to the five personality dimensions as delineated by the Five Factor Model. Parents’ perceptions focused on Attachment, Discipline Practices, Involvement, Parenting Confidence, and Relational Frustration. The study consisted of 62 parents of children between the ages of three and six years old. Participants were asked to fill out three questionnaires, the Parenting Relationship Questionnaire for Pre-schoolers (PRQ-P), the Neuroticism Extraversion Openness-Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI), and the Social Competence Scale (SCS). The five personality dimensions were found to be significantly correlated with parenting perceptions of the parent-child relationship and the preschool child’s social competence. For example Neuroticism, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness were significantly related to Parenting Confidence, however only Neuroticism and Agreeableness correlated significantly with social competence in children. More specifically, Neuroticism was negatively related to Emotional Regulation and Agreeableness was positively related to Prosocial Behaviour. In addition to this regression analyses showed that the parent-child relationship, personality, and social competence were strongly mediated especially with regards to Neuroticism, Parenting Confidence as well as Relational Frustration and Emotional Regulation. Implications of the findings and recommendations for future research were discussed.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University / This study is concerned with eight alcoholic adult patients at the Washingtonian Hospital. The parent-child relationships of these adult patients, when they were children, will be investigated to gain some understanding as to the factors involved in their present alcoholism.

The Study of Relationship among bullying beha-viors, Emotion Management and parent-child rela-tionship of the Adolescents Abstract The aim of this study is to investigate the traditional bullying and cyberbullying phenomenon of adolescents in Kaohsiung. This study looks forward to understanding the frequencies of bullying, type of neglect, and the correlation among bullying, par-ent-child relationship and emotion management. The data was collected by means of questionnaires, and the participants were public and private senior high schools and vocational high schools students, junior high school students and high grade elenentary school students. The measurement applied in this study included Parent-child Relation-ship Scale, Emotion Management Scale and Bullying behavior Scale . There were 848 questionnaires given out and 837, effective ones returned. The effective received rate is 98%. They were analyzed by describe statistics, Independent-Sample t-test, One Way Anova, and Pearson Product -moment Correlation. The results of the study are listed as follow: 1. At present, 20% to 30% of the Adolescents who had been bullied or seeing the bully-ing incident in school bullying, and 10% to 20% of the students have ever suf-fered cyberbullying. 2. For the part of school bullying in the Adolescents, boys are more likely to become perpetrators, victims and bystanders than girls and junior high schools than the elemen-tary and high schools. 3. The higher frequency of Internet surfing and more time spend in Internet are more likely to become perpetrators, victims and bystanders. 4. For the part of school bullying in the Adolescents , living with mother are more likely to become perpetrators, victims and bystanders than living with their parents. 5. The higher parent-child relationship could help reduce to become perpetrators, victims, and the Adolescents who obtained more higher Emotion Management would had higher bystanders¡¦ experiences.

Recent and ongoing research has demonstrated the alarming likelihood of children from low-income homes and from ethnic minorities to read at much lower reading levels than their peers. Additionally, reading ability is related to the earliest of emergent literacy skills, which can be measured in young children before they enter formal schooling. The home environment, including the available resources, support for literacy and school, and the parent-child relationship, plays an important role in promoting the development of emergent literacy skills. More research is needed, however, to inform programs and researchers about the specific relationship between the home environment and emergent literacy development. The current study was conducted using a sample of 122 preschool children enrolled in ERF enriched preschool classrooms in one school located in a Southwestern state. The study investigated the power of three variables of the home literacy environment (HLE) (i.e., Family Reading and Writing, External Resources, and Daily Activities) to predict three emergent literacy outcomes (i.e., receptive oral language, alphabet knowledge, and name writing) using canonical correlation analysis (CCA). The study also used commonality regression analysis to examine the shared and unique variance in these emergent literacy outcomes accounted for by the variables of the HLE and the parent-child relationship. The results of the CCA did not find the variables of the HLE to have a statistically significant relationship with the emergent literacy outcomes. Missing data techniques were used to account for incomplete data, and he results were closer to obtaining statistical significance when the more advanced method of multiple imputation was used to account for missing data, with the p-value decreasing from .751 with listwise deletion to between .094 and .504 with multiple imputation. The second analysis of the study, the commonality regression analysis, did find home variables to account for unique and shared variance in the emergent literacy outcomes, particularly in preschool name writing. Specifically, the External Resources scale of the Familia Inventory (Taylor, 2000) uniquely accounted for the smallest amount of variance (i.e., .1 percent) in name writing, while the scores of the PCRI uniquely accounted for the largest amount of variance (i.e., 3.4 percent). When combined together, however, the predictor variables accounted for larger amounts of variance in name writing ability. The Familia Inventory scale of External Resources accounted for the smallest amount of variance when combined with the other predictor variables (i.e., 21.5 percent) while the scores on the PCRI accounted for the largest combined amount of variance, accounting for 31.4 percent of the variance in name writing ability. These results complement and extend on existing research. The findings, limitations, and implications of the results of this study are discussed.

Youth sport relies on parents to volunteer for positions at all levels of the organization. Among these volunteer positions, the volunteer-coach is often responsible for the creation and delivery of most services in youth sport. The current scope of youth sport would be unattainable without parents’ continuous support; therefore, recruitment and retention of these parent-volunteer-coaches is a critical task for youth sport organizations. Parents, however, do not respond to volunteer service as would be predicted from current volunteer literature (Kim, Chelladurai, & Trail, 2007). Perhaps is the behavior of volunteers in the youth sport setting is due to their identities as parents. The presence of their children in a youth sport setting has always been assumed to be a primary motivator for parents to volunteer as youth sport coaches. This research used narrative analysis (Polkinghorne, 1995), identity theory (Stryker, 1968, 2000) and inductive coding to interpret the experiences of parent-volunteer-coaches in the youth sport setting. The inductive coding analysis yielded two groups of roles available within the youth sport setting: aspirational roles and avoided roles. The narrative analysis yielded seventeen parent stories by identifying the central plot that connected important events to role choices. Five groups of stories--History, Prior Arrangements, Crucible, Right Role, and System--resulted from an examination of the similarities among the plots. Ultimately, the role choices made in response to tension in each plot led to choosing the volunteer-coach role. These results suggest that the experience of youth sport volunteer coaching is not primarily based on a relationship with the organization. These volunteer stories rarely included the organization as the most important influence on their experience; instead, parent volunteer experiences were driven by identities that led to role choices within the parent-child relationship. Role choices were not static throughout the volunteer experience; several parents continued to shift the roles played in response to changes in perceptions of the context. Youth sport organizations that recognize the impact of the parent-child relationship can design volunteer recruitment and retention programs leading to greater satisfaction for parents while at the same time fulfilling the organizational need for dedicated volunteers. / text

The Chinese parent-child relationship is remarkably close throughout the lifespan. Parents get involved in planning their child’s career, social activities, and even marriage. For their point, when adult children attain financial stabilities, they support aging parents in various ways. This report reviews this strong bond as a moral responsibility between parents and children that parents sacrifice for their children unconditionally. In return, children pay back their moral debts to parents by fulfilling filial piety, including doing well in school, respecting family members and supporting parents. However, the traditional parent-child relationship may have changed after the one-child policy due to the shift in family structure, and new roles of only children in the family. Thus, moral responsibilities continue to capture the attention of experts interested in family structure in general and Chinese society in past. / text

Parents constantly experience contradictions because children’s development may lead to new or surprising interactions that fail to fit parents’ current ways of thinking about their children. This qualitative study used a dialectical perspective of contradictions from social relational theory to explore how contradictions instigate parental change (Kuczynski & Parkin, 2007; Kuczynski, Pitman, & Mitchell, 2009). Forty families with children aged 8-13 participated in open-ended interviews that were analyzed with thematic analysis. Results revealed that contradictions occurred because of parents’ own incompatible or inconsistent thoughts and/or behaviours, and children’s behaviours. Parents processed and managed contradictions with description, information gathering and reflecting, and acting on contradictions. The nature of the outcome of parents’ contradictions included: outcome not evident, outcome in process, partial strategy or temporary solution and contradiction is resolved. Surprise, sadness, anxiety, stress, and anger were the emotions associated with contradictions. Analyses indicated that parents constantly experience contradictions and few are fully resolved.

Magister Artium (Child and Family Studies) - MA(CFS) / Alcohol abuse in youth is an ever growing problem in South Africa. The phenomenon leads to a variety of other problems, including the relationships that these youth have with their parents. The aim of the study was to explore the parent-child relationship in youth abusing alcohol. The first objective of the study was to explore and describe alcohol abuse in youth and the parent-child relationship from the youth’s perspective. The second objective was to explore and describe alcohol abuse in youth and the parent-child relationship from the parents’ perspective. A qualitative research approach has been used. Non probability purposive sampling has also been employed. The sample comprised of youth between the ages of 18-25 from a township area in the Western Cape, as well as a number of parents. The data collection process took place in the form of one-to-one interviews. The data analysis was done by means of coding and identification of themes. The findings revealed that factors such as family boundaries, relationships, economic factors, and problem and risk behaviour negatively influenced parent-child relationships in youth abusing alcohol. The recommendations had a strong emphasis on social work intervention that focus on strengthening family relationships. Youth were also advised to join programmes as a direct intervention for their alcohol abuse.

Magister Artium (Social Work) - MA(SW) / Early childhood development has been recognised to be the most important contributor to long-term social and emotional development. Whatever occurs in a child‘s life in the early years may be an indicator of the child‘s developmental trajectory and life-course. Therefore positive parenting is paramount to foster quality parent-child interaction. However, previous research shows that for parents to adopt a positive parenting style, some degree of parental knowledge is required. The aim of this study was to compare the relationship between knowledge of child development and parenting styles in low and high socio-economic groups of parents in early childhood development centres. The study used a mixed methods approach with a two-phased sequential exploratory design. A systematic review was conducted in phase 1 followed by a quantitative study for phase 2. The sample consisted of N = 140 parents with children between 2-5 years old from low and high socio-economic groups. The participants completed the Knowledge of Infant Development Inventory (KIDI-P) and Parenting Styles Dimension Questionnaire (PSDQ). Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation were used to analyze the data. Findings of the study show that the authoritative parenting style is the prevalent parenting style in both low and high socio-economic groups. Furthermore the results indicate that parents are fairly knowledgeable across all subscales for both the low and high socio-economic group with a significant difference in degree of knowledge with the high socio-economic group being more knowledgeable than the low socio-economic group. The findings also show that there in no correlation between knowledge of child development and authoritative parenting styles. However correlations do exist between the other variables.