Intergenerational transmission of shyness, or the social process through which shy characteristics or behavioral patterns demonstrated by parents are passed on to their children, has received recent empirical attention and has suggested a positive relationship between levels of shyness in parents and children. One factor that may relate to this relationship is the attitudes parents hold toward having a shy child. The present study sought to illuminate several questions surrounding parental attitudes toward shyness and the presence of withdrawn, inhibited behavior in children. It was hypothesized that: a) parental attitudes toward shyness and shyness in parents would interact to influence inhibited behavior in children; and b) childrearing practices would serve as a mediator in the anticipated relationship between parental attitudes toward shyness and inhibited behavior in children. Results indicated a significant positive relationship between parental attitudes toward shyness and withdrawn, inhibited behavior in children, as well as a series of significant relationships between parental attitudes toward shyness and specific parenting strategies. No significant moderational or mediational effects were found, however. / Master of Science

Although behavioral inhibition has been found to be relatively stable, such stability has not always been shown. Moreover, although an association between parental shyness and child behavioral inhibition has been reported, this relationship is imperfect and indirect. The present study proposed that one factor that may impact these relationships is the attitudes parents hold toward having a shy, inhibited child. Although shyness is typically regarded as a negative and maladaptive trait, it is not necessarily viewed as problematic by all parents. The present study investigated a series of ten specific hypotheses that centered around the notion that variations in parental attitudes toward shyness may lead some parents to encourage and other parents to discourage behaviors typically associated with shyness in their young children. Using a longitudinal design, the present study examined the relations among the constructs of parental attitudes toward shyness, child behavioral inhibition, childrearing strategies, and parental shyness over a span of two years in a sample of 3 to 6 year-old children and their parents. Results revealed several interesting and valuable findings. Maternal attitudes toward shyness emerged as a moderator of the relationship between behavioral inhibition at Time 1 and Time 2. Maternal attitudes toward shyness also emerged as a significant moderator of the relationship between maternal shyness and child behavioral inhibition. However, childrearing strategies did not mediate the relationship between maternal attitudes toward shyness and behavioral inhibition in children as predicted. / Ph. D.

A família além de vivida cotidianamente, é pensada, refletida e pesquisada com diferentes enfoques e objetivos, por diferentes perspectivas teóricas, práticas e metodológicas. Para se estudar a família é preciso antes de tudo desnaturalizá-la e recuperar sua própria história, pois os modelos que hoje temos são resultados de processos de transformação da forma de se ver e educar a criança, como também do contexto social, histórico e cultural em que vivemos. Isso inclui o fenômeno da Violência Doméstica, e mais especificamente o uso de violência física de pais contra filhos, que apesar das modificações ocorridas na visão da criança e das práticas educativas na família ao longo do tempo, sempre existiu e persiste de forma endêmica em nossos dias, constituindo um problema de saúde pública, e requerendo estratégias de intervenção por parte dos serviços de saúde e desenvolvimento social. O presente projeto tem o objetivo de investigar, junto a pais e mães com histórico de violência física contra seus filhos, a visão sobre o que é educar uma criança, sobre seu papel de pai/mãe e sobre as conseqüências de seus comportamentos sobre o filho. Busca, dessa forma, trazer contribuições para uma melhor compreensão do problema da agressão física de pais contra filhos, necessária a programas de intervenção que ultrapassem ações punitivas e de cunho imediatista, visando transformações nas relações familiares a partir da consideração da ótica do agente agressor. Os entrevistados são pais e mães denunciados por agressão física contra os filhos ao Conselho Tutelar da cidade de Barretos ? SP. O modelo de entrevista utilizado é denominado ?história de vida temática?, que prevê inicialmente o relato da história de vida do entrevistado, complementada por um conjunto de tópicos previamente definidos pelo pesquisador. Optou-se pela não delimitação prévia do número de sujeitos, utilizando-se o ponto de saturação. Dessa maneira, foram realizadas seis entrevistas, tendo sido gravadas, transcritas e analisadas qualitativamente. A análise dos dados aponta inconsistências entre as concepções parentais a respeito do que é educar e de seu papel como educadores e as práticas educativas que utilizam com os filhos no cotidiano. Evidencia dificuldades dos pais em utilizar recursos educativos alternativos à punição física e uma naturalização cultural do bater como forma de colocar limites e disciplinar a criança; aponta também a falta de suporte social e econômico dos pais como fatores de risco e de estresse, e a necessidade de implementar programas de intervenção que promovam a integração entre suas concepções e práticas como educadores. / Nowadays, family is investigated, studied and the object of research of many theoretical perspectives, with different goals and methodologies. However, in order to study the family it is necessary to rescue its history, because the present models we have are the final result of a complex process of social, historical and cultural transformation, and also changes in the ways we see the childhood, what do parents expect from their children and the childrearing practices used to get to the educational goals. Domestic violence is included in all this process, especially the physical violence that parents use against their children, and that constitutes a public health problem in our context. The main objective of this research is to investigate points of view of parents that use physical violence against their children, their conceptions about the educational process, their role as parents and the consequences of their actions in the child?s development. In this direction, it searches contributions to understand the problem of physical violence of parents against their children, to improve intervention programs that overcome punitive actions, seeking effective transformation in family relationships, considering the parent?s point of view. The study was performed in a city of State of São Paulo through interviews with three mothers and three fathers from different families, that had been disclosed for physical violence against their children. Methodology was constructed in a qualitative perspective, using a model of semi-structured interview called ? Thematic Life History?, where participants expose their personal history since their childhood, followed by a previously defined list of topics. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and qualitatively analyzed. Data analysis revealed that parent?s conceptions are not corresponding to their every day actions with their children; the difficulty of parents at knowing or using alternative and non-violent chidrearing practices and a cultural and historical naturalization of the use of physical punishment to establish limits and discipline the child. It also points out the parents` low social and economical support as a risk factor and as the cause of stress for the studied families as well as the necessity of changes in intervention programs to offer the possibility of joining parents conceptions and practices, aiming the improvement of child`s positive global development.

This thesis examines the powerful appeals to psychology that are made in contemporary popular debate in Britain about parents. It focuses on the political implications of psychological discourse and the knowledge claims on which it rests. Using feminist and discourse theory, it critically examines psychological discourse, psychology as a knowledge practice, and considers the dilemmas of feminist knowledge production given the practices and relations it bolsters. Constructions of mothers and fathers in parenting magazines and news-media images of lone mothers, lesbian mothers and `absent fathers' are found to be profoundly gendered and conservative (hetero-gender normative) in spite of the rhetorical shift towards the genderneutral discourse of `parents'. Gender essentialist and identity/status-bound understandings are most striking where people's `fitness to parent' is questioned, often implicitly, which suggests that such understandings are naturalised in representations of parents who are not problematised. It is argued that the notion of `fitness to parent', rather than contributing to discussion of parent-child relationships, obscures how impoverished popular debate is, because it has little ideological coherence despite its mobilisation of judgemental scrutiny and powerful condemnation. Ideas about `unfit' parents do not, by exclusion, define a culturally ideal parent, but their implicit nature paves the way for common-sense appeals which deny their value-bases, reducing opportunities to challenge normative assumptions or superficial identity categories. `Second wave' feminist analyses of family ideology are employed, but are criticised from a feminist post-structuralist perspective which highlights the limitations of `identity' (for prematurely foreclosing understandings of subjectivity and desire), and of `social influence' as a model of individual-society relation. A critique of identity politics is employed to highlight how parental identities deployed in popular debate are imbued with psychological presumptions, without necessarily referring to psychologically/emotionally meaningful qualities of relationships between parents and children. Instead, a relational, performative approach to thinking about parents, and a psychosocial approach for considering the politics of cultural discourses are advocated. An examination of recent social policy debates suggests that the former may be gaining in persuasive value and impact on policy. Examining the authority of contemporary childrearing expertise suggests that arguments about parents are persuasive when they refer to psychological issues, whether or not they make explicit claims to expert knowledge. Paradoxically, as pop psychology becomes ubiquitous in Western cultures, the rising status attributed to the emotional realm can provide a means of contesting expert psychology, by undermining the valorisation of objectivity. However, the `psychologisation' of contemporary social life reinforces psychology's conceptual framework, which can, in turn, naturalise its conventional epistemology. This dilemma is explored in two spheres: feminist research and research with child participants. It is argued that feminists, and those critical of psychology's modernist foundations, might employ their `expert' warrant strategically in public debates about parents, but should also expose the politics of psychological knowledge. Similarly, despite theoretical limitations, identity politics might be put to good effect, such as to help children's voices be heard today. Finally, it is argued that, today, psychology is powerful, not only through experts or professionals, but as expertise, such that people draw on psychological discourses in their own reflexive projects of the self. Thus, psychological discourses, including implicit notions of fitness to parent, are implicated in the construction of contemporary parental subjectivities.

Ngā Kupu Whakataki: Abstract The study focuses on identifying how the reconstruction of the whānau and its approach to childrearing through the colonisation of Māori society can be perceived within the experiences of the case study of four generations of one whānau. A kaupapa Māori approach to research provided a framework for members of our whānau to socially construct their realities regarding the dynamics of our four generation whānau collaboratively. Socio-cultural theoretical frameworks were used to analyse approaches to whānau and childrearing.

In this thesis I examine the representation of parents and schoolmasters and the conflicts between them in vernacular drama in Reformation England. This was a period of growth in public schooling and a time when numerous treatises on education and childrearing were in circulation in England. Prevailing pedagogical theory privileged the schoolmaster's authority over that of the parents, and set paternal authority over that of the mother. It sought to limit maternal power to the domestic sphere and the infant years, yet the drama examined here suggests that mothers, not fathers, were usually the parent in control of their children's education. The conflicts inherent in these oppositions are played out in drama dealing with schooling and childrearing; each of the works examined here participates in and contributes to public debate over school education and parenting practices in early modern England. The thesis conducts a close textual and contextual analysis of the representation of schoolmasters and parents and of parent-school relations in seven English plays. A variety of dramatic genres is represented: public drama (Love's Labour's Lost, Patient Grissill, The Winter's Tale), school drama (Nice Wanton, July and Julian, The Disobedient Child), and private royal entertainment (The Lady of May). The plays are explicated in terms of the Tudor school culture and the negotiation of authority between fathers, mothers and schoolmasters. The thesis draws extensively on sixteenth-century school dialogues and vulgaria and on education treatises, which were available in English in Tudor England, in particular the writings of Erasmus, Vives, Ascham, Mulcaster, Elyot, Brinsley and Becon. School records provide information on school conditions and curricula, the duties and qualities of schoolmasters and the role of schools in civic and public performances. The thesis addresses issues of gender, childrearing, public education and parental and pedagogical authority in the second half of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

The study reviewed the provision of childbirth and parenting education in the ACT for indicators of effectiveness and needs. Users (n = 207) and providers (n = 7) were surveyed for information on educational and administrative aspects of the service. An original design questionnaire was based on the PRECEDE framework (predisposing, reinforcing and enabling factors in educational diagnosis and evaluation) and the social model of health. Items were drawn from the relevant literature, concerning individual, social and service delivery elements of the health fields concept interpreted for pregnancy, childbirth and parenting. Individual factors were related to Maslow's hierarchy and the valuing approach to health education. The provider survey covered information on organisational elements, comprising inputs, processes, products, outputs and outcomes of childbirth education. The study comprised a literature review, cross-sectional non-experimental surveys of users and providers, and a needs assessment combining information from each of the three sources. Descriptive statistical techniques, analysis of variance and valuing analysis were used to extract information on effectiveness indicators and needs from the user data. Comparisons were made between present and past users, and between women of different ages, experience of pregnancy and preferences for public or private methods of education for childbirth. No evidence was found of individual differences in the women's attitudes, beliefs and values that could be attributed to education. However, users expressed strong approval and positive views of the service and its providers. The level of personal health skills, confidence and emotional preparatiqn they achieved through childbirth and parenting education did not fully meet their expectations. The survey also found that the organisation of childbirth and parenting education has not developed professionally like other health services. Service goals and objectives are ill-defined; planning and coordinating are inadequate for an integrated maternal health care system. The service's main resources are its highly motivated and dedicated teachers and clients. Several recommendations are made for educational and administrative measures to enhance service effectiveness within present organisational constraints, based on the needs identified by the study.

The lack of sociological research on adult/child stratification in children’s books and the impacts books make in the lives of children and adults, especially in regards to socialization, are important reasons to investigate this medium. Through a conflict and feminist perspective, as well as utilizing a cultural diamond framework, this research examines the representations of power disparities between adults and children, and the structures of childrearing within the cultural object of 64 bestselling children’s picture books from 1993 to 2008. I employed content analysis to evaluate appearances of gender, age, race, parental behaviors, and childrearing structures. My findings demonstrate that gender and age disparities prevail, non-white main characters remain invisible, males as main adult characters exhibit higher rates of parental behaviors, and concerted cultivation child rearing structure is present in illustrations. Future research should focus on other aspects of the cultural diamond to gain deeper knowledge of cultural meanings.

This study investigates the childrearing skills of the fictional characters Mr. And Mrs. Bennet in Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice, as well as their impact on the storyin general and on their children in particular. The spouses are first presented anddescribed individually, then as a married couple and finally as parents. This final andmajor part of the discussion conentrates on the oldest and the youngest of the Bennetdaughters especially, but touches briefly upon the other three as well. In performing thisanalysis, behaviouristic and psychoanalytical theories have been employed, in additionto biographic material on the author and historical accounts on childrearing, in order todetermine what aspects of the Bennet children's personalities and conduct should beascribed to their parents' handling of them. The results show that the Bennet parets failalmost completely in raising their daughters into healthy individuals, which should betheir aim according to the psychoanalytical model, and also in training them to becomethe functional, marriable ladies that they would have to be for their parents to beconsidered successful from a behaviouristic perspective. Their failure to secure a stableeconomy for their daughters adds to this. Not all the Bennet couple's efforts result infailure, however, and they both have traits to recommend them. Still, their treatment oftheir daughters affect both them and the course of events in the novel negativelly.

This thesis examines the discursive messages and specific practices that Latino families use to transmit messages about culture, race, and racism. Scholars have not fully explored the complexity and range of practices and discourses that are involved in Latinos’ ethno-racial socialization. The use of the phrase “ethno-racial socialization” is important because it combines the concepts of racial socialization and ethnic socialization in an effort to account for how the lived experiences of Latinos who mostly think of themselves as a racial group, are treated as one race, and thus, discuss race with family members. This research explores this process using twelve in-depth, semi-structured interviews with seven U.S. born children of immigrants between the ages of 18-30 and five of their parents (3 immigrant, 1 migrant, and 1 U.S. born). The immigrant families were middle-class and had at least one parent that was born in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, or Puerto Rico. To theoretically ground the project, I draw on Annette Lareau’s concepts of concerted cultivation and the accomplishment of natural growth, which are two major frames to describe how middle-class and lower-class families socialize their family members. I apply this framework to strategies of ethno-racial socialization and develop through the concepts of ethno-racial concerted cultivation and the accomplishment of natural growth, which, I argue, respectively correspond to ‘explicit’ and ‘implicit’ socialization approaches to conveying messages about culture, race, and racism. I argue that ethno-racial concerted cultivation and the accomplishment of natural growth stand in opposite ends of a continuum of approaches to instilling messages related to race and ethnicity. In some cases, the strategies can be mutually reinforcing because a practice that can be considered ethno-racial concerted cultivation can create opportunities for the accomplishment of natural growth to occur (and vice versa). Intra-familial differences in how family members socialize their children mean that they receive diverse and at times contradictory messages about culture and race from different family members such as parents and extended family members. The differences in how family members use ethno-racial socialization strategies are further heightened due to the experiences of the family member (such as their maintenance or rejection of immigrant culture and experiences with racial discrimination or lack thereof) and family structure (such as the varying messages children receive in single-parent households with extended family members living in the home, two-parent households, and households with transnational family ties). The young adults who were consistently exposed to encouraging and empowering messages that implicitly or explicitly emphasized a sense of commitment, belonging, and identity to the ethno-racial group experienced the most positive outcomes, some resulting in cultural capital, such as: racial literacy, preparation for bias, ethnic/racial identity, language skills, access to co-ethnic networks, cosmopolitanism, social flexibility, and social capital (in the form of familial capital). The young adults who did not receive consistent messages or who received messages that promoted anti-blackness or erased the importance of their immigrant family’s culture experienced some of the following outcomes: limited racial literacy, ambiguous ethno-racial identity, limited Spanish skills, limited access to co-ethnic networks, and parent-child conflict. Overall, this research illustrates how ethno-racial socialization in Latina/o families does not easily fit into one discrete model of socialization, but rather is a complex, multi-layered interplay of mechanisms that draw on both ethno-racial concerted cultivation and the accomplishment of natural growth approaches. This interplay also brings sometimes conflict due to the various and, at times, opposing messages that children receive from different family members.