Nurture
Publications
How to Talk to Kids...
Family
Issues Fact Sheets
The Growing Years
Gender Project
UMAINE Extension
Home
UMCE
Publications
UMCE
Counties
Wonderwise Parent
CYFERNet
(Children, Youth and Families Education and
Research Network)
Nurture
"Children learn from their parents the qualities and values we envision as humane in our society." Arlene M. Fulton, Child Development Specialist, Oklahoma State University.
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
|
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:
|
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 (Baumrind, 1967; Becker, 1964; Symonds, 1939).
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 aggressiveness. 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, Cohn, & Kao, 1989).
Parental encouragement of emotional expressiveness was positively associated with competence in preschool children as assessed by teacher ratings (Roberts & 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 who 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 & Steinberg, 1993; Pettit & 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 effect 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 & 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 & Rhoades, 1989).
Parental nurturing is clearly linked to prosocial behavior. Zahn-Waxleret, Radke-Yarrow, and King (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).
References
Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1978). Patterns of attachment. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Becker, W. C. (1964). Consequences of different kinds of parental discipline. In M. L. Hoffman & L. W. Hoffman (Eds.), Review of child development research, Vol. 1. (pp. 509-535). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Belsky, J. (1984). The determinants of parenting: A process model. Child Development, 55, 83-96.
Cohn, D. A. (1990). Child-mother attachment of six-year-olds and social competence at school. Child Development, 61, 152-162.
Coombs, R. H., & Landsverk, J. (1988). Parenting styles and substance abuse during childhood and adolescence. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 50, 473-482.
Darling, N., & Steinberg, L. (1993). Parenting style as context: An integrative model. Psychological Bulletin, 113(3), 487-496.
Denham, A. A. (1989). Maternal affect and toddlers’ social-emotional competence. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 59(3), 368-376.
Dix, T. (1991). The affective organization of parenting: Adaptive and maladaptive processes. Psychological Bulletin, 110(1), 3-25.
Eisenberg, N. (1992). The caring child. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Luster, T., & Rhoades, K. (1989). The relation between child-rearing beliefs and the home environment in a sample of adolescent mothers. Family Relations, 38, 317-322.
Maccoby, E. E., & Martin, J. A. (1983). Socialization in the context of the family: Parent-child interaction. In P. H. Mussen (Ed.) Handbook of child psychology, Vol. IV (pp. 1-101). New York: John Wiley.
Main, M., & George, C. (1985). Responses of abused and disadvantaged toddlers to distress in agemates. Developmental Psychology, 21, 407-412.
Patterson, C. J., Cohn, D. A., & Kao, B. T. (1989). Maternal warmth as a protective factor against risks associated with peer rejection among children. Developmental Psychology, 1, 21-38.
Pettit, G. S., & Mize, J. (1993). Substance and style: Understanding the ways in which parents teach children about social relationships. In S. Duck (Ed.), Understanding relationship processes, Vol. 2: Learning about relationships. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Roberts, W., & Strayer, J. (1987). Parents’ responses to the emotional distress of their children: Relations with children’s competence. Developmental Psychology, 23(3), 415-422.
Rollins, B. C., & Thomas, D. L. (1979). Parental support, power, and control techniques in the socializations of children. In W. R. Burr, R. Hill, F. I. Nye, & I. L. Reiss (Eds.), Contemporary theories about the family, Vol. 1 (pp. 317-364). New York: The Free Press.
Scalf-McIver, L., & Thompson, J. K. (1989). Family correlates of bulimic characteristics in college females. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 45(3), 467-472.
Zahn-Waxler, C., Radke-Yarrow, M., & King, R. (1979). Childrearing and children’s prosocial initiations toward victims of distress. Child Development, 50, 319-330.
