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Care for Self
"We
cannot give what we do not have. Self-care is the foundation for caring
about others."
Judith A. Graham,
Human Development Specialist, University of Maine.
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. A parent who feels interpersonally connected and supported will find it natural to nurture a child.
Critical CARE FOR SELF Practices
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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 of CARE FOR SELF :
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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 form husbands/partners (Crnic & Greenberg, 1990).
Isolated and limited contact with social support systems are factors in troubled families. High-risk, multiproblem 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 & 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, Leavitt, Deets, & Quigley, 1991). Supportive, close relationships serve as "buffers" to stress that might otherwise cause a breakdown in effective parenting (Quinton, Rutter, & 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 & Mittelstaedt, 1993). Support from the family of origin is often found to be more important than boyfriend or spouse 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, Borkowski, Whitman, & Schellenbach, 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 was also 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, 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, Staff, & Connors, 1991; Szykula, Mas, Crowley, & Sayger, 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, Roach, & Colbert, 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 & Brownell, 1984).
Supportive 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 & Roopnarine, 1992).
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, Murphy, Farris, Ssmith, Richters, & Walters, 1991) as well as older children (Kandel, 1990). Adolescents are more likely than younger children to notice the difference between their parents (Johnson, Shulman, & Collings, 1991).
References
Ahmeduzzaman, M., & Roopnarine, J. L. (1992). Sociodemographic factors, functioning style, social support, and fathers’ involvement with preschoolers in African American families. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 54, 699-707.
Barratt, M. S., Roach, M. A., & Colbert, K. K. (1991). Single mothers and their infants: Factors associated with optimal parenting. Family Relations, 40, 448-454.
Cochran, M., & Henderson, C. (1990). Network influences upon perception of the child: Solo parenting and social support. In M. Cochran, M. Larner, D. Riley, L. Gunnarsson, & C. Henderson, Jr. (Eds.), Extension families: The social networks of parents and their children (pp. 119-130). London/NewYork: Cambridge University Press.
Coffman, S., Leavitt, M. J., Deets, C., & Quigley, K. L. (1991). Close relationships in mothers of distressed and normal newborns: Support, expectancy confirmation, and maternal well-being. Journal of Family Psychology, 5(1), 93-107.
Crittenden, P. M. (1985). Social networks, quality of child rearing, and child development. Child Development, 56, 1299-1313.
Crnic, K. A., & Greenberg, M. T. (1990). Minor parenting stresses with young children. Child Development, 61, 1628-1637.
Furstenberg, F. F. (1981). Implicating the family: Teenage parenthood and kinship involvement. In T. Ooms (Ed.), Teenage pregnancy in a family context. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Jennings, K. D., Staff, V., & Connors, R. E. (1991).Child Development, 62, 966-978.
Johnson, B. M., Shulman, S., Collings, W. A. (1991). Systemic patterns of parenting as reported by adolescents: Developmental differences and implications for psychosocial outcomes. Journal of Adolescent Research, 6(2), 235-252.
Jouriles, E. N., Murphy, C. M., Farris, A. M., Smith, D. A., Richters, J. E., & Walters, E. (1991). Marital adjustment, parental disagreements about child rearing, and behavior problems in boys: Increasing the specificity of the marital assessment. Child Development, 62, 1424-1433.
Kandel, D. D. (1990). Parenting styles, drug use, and children’s adjustment in families of young adults. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 52, 183-196.
Luster, T., & Mittelstaedt, M. (1993). Adolescent mothers. In T. Luster & L. Okagaki (Eds.), Parenting: An ecological perspective (pp. 69-99). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Nath, P. S., Borkowski, J. G., Whitman, T. L., & Schellenbach, C. J. (1991). Understanding adolescent parenting: The dimensions and functions of social support. Family Relations, 40, 411-420.
Quinton, D., Rutter, M., & Liddle, C. (1984). Institutional rearing, parenting difficulties, and marital support. Psychological Abstracts, 14, 107-124.
Richardson, R. A., Barbour, N. B., & Bubenzer, D. L. (1991). Bittersweet connections: Informal social networks as sources of support and interference for adolescent mothers. Family Relations, 40, 430-434.
Saulneir, K. M., & Rowland, C. (1985). Missing links: An empirical investigation of network variables in high-risk families. Family Relations, 34, 557-560.
Shumaker, S. A., & Brownell, A. (1984). Toward a theory of social support: Closing conceptual gaps. Journal of Social Issues, 40(4), 11-36.
Szykula, S. A., Mas, C. H., Crowley, J., & Sayger, T. V. (1991). Maternal social support and prosocial mother-child interactions. Journal of Family Psychology, 5(1), 82-92.
