Family, Culture, and Community
By: Maria Bello
Family
Family plays a significant role in a child’s cognitive, social, and emotional development. It is imperative that parents model good behaviors and norms so that their children can learn good habits that they will have throughout their lives. Effective parenting provides children with good values, support, security, coping skills, and helps them build strong relationships.
Family structures
Nowadays families are made up of different structures and arrangements. Among these are the traditional composition of mothers and fathers, those made up of divorced parents, single parents, parents and step parents, extended families, adoptive families, and foster care. It is important to always keep in mind that the structure of the family is not what matters, rather it is the support and care that these families provide to their children. Below you will find information regarding the statistics of family structures in the United States.
Children living with two married parents: 67%
Research shows that a child living with both parents tend to achieve higher educational levels and present less behavior problems than children who are raised from different families structures.
Children living with their mother only: 23% living with their father only: 3%
Some single parents lack the time to provide adequate supervision and assist their children with their homework. Children might experience a lack of love, affection, and patient from their single parents.
Children living in arrangement families: 4%
Grandparents or foster parents can become the primary guardians of a child. The aforementioned parenting style has to rely on building strong bonds with the child so he can feel secure and protected.
Parenting Styles
The different parent styles have an impact on child development. It is important that parents have a balance between love and discipline to help their children become self-regulated. There are four types of strategies that parents use to raise their child. Authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and uninvolved parenting styles.
Authoritative: these parents tend to hold high expectations but at the same time nurture their children characterize this style.
Authoritarian: under this style of parenting, children tend to be less confident or lack social skills. This is due to the existence of strict rules and harsh punishment for breaking those rules.
Permissive: These parents have few rules and create an environment of inconsistency. There is a lack of demands and expectations placed on their children. Children’s consequences of living under this style of parenting results in low self-esteem and lack on self-confidence.
Uninvolved: this particular parenting style is characterized by neglectful parenting and indifference to their child’s needs. Children raised by uninvolved parents have emotional problems, feel fear and stress due to lack of family support. This has also shown to result in children’s substance abuse in later years.
Forming Partnership with Families
When this type of relationship is fostered between the school and home, parents and teachers will feel more appreciated at the program and both will be aware of each other’s role in the child’s education. Certainly, this partnership will not be established from the onset, but rather it will need to be built over time. By respecting, encouraging, and taking parent’s ideas and suggestions into the consideration when planning activities, it will help construct productive partnerships. It will be of great benefit to form this relationship based on mutual respect. Respecting their choices, feelings, and concerns will help to empathize with families and their way of life. In addition, it will allow me to learn different things about the children’s culture and allow them to share these customs with other families in my classroom. Teachers and families should have the same goal with regards to children’s success. That is why, it is important that a positive connection be created and maintained between both parties.
Keep parents inform about their children’s accomplishment by having meetings, writing letters, making a phone call, sending emails and creating websites.
Culture
Culture can be defined as a set of characteristics that identify a particular group of people, among these are their values, traditions, religion, and language. Culture affects the way we think, learn, and at the same time influences our expectations. Since we live in a multicultural world we need to learn how to treat everyone equal and respect his or her opinions. Teachers must be responsive to children’s linguistically and culturally contexts. It is important that educators understand how to best respond to these needs. Children need to acquire language so they can achieve a proper level of cognitive and linguistic development. Children will learn and feel more comfortable when their home language is being acknowledged. A way to do it is by sharing stories that are in the home language of those children that are in the classroom.
We have to look at the definition of culture competence as a factor for helping educators to be effective with children’s cultural needs. For that reason it is important that teachers gain knowledge and skills that promote diversity among students. It is important for every teacher to create an environment of acceptance in the classroom and one where individual differences are celebrated.
Types of culture:
Individualistic
This cultural group encourages independence, values personal goals, and puts emphasis on personal achievements.
Collectivistic Culture
These cultures tend to see themselves as members of groups. They are categorized as being cooperative, compliant to authority figures, and invest in-group accomplishment.
Immigration
Children that come to USA from different ethnicities have to go through the process of acculturation. Below you will find the different forms of acculturation:
- Assimilation: Children are incorporated into the dominant culture.
- Rejections: Individuals have little need to interact with new society.
- Selective Adoption: Children adopt new customs but still celebrate theirs.
- Bicultural Orientation: People retain their original culture but at the same time acquire belief from the new culture.
The neighborhood where our children are being raised can positively or negatively affect their well-being. It is children’s tendency to want to gather with their friends around the community to play or do different activities. Parents must be aware of the behaviors and activities that will help their children engage with the members of the community. Unfortunately, some families coming from a low socioeconomic status expose their children to live in a neighborhood that can be surrounded with people who have bad habits such as the consumption of drug. For that reason, it is imperative that parents and teachers provide extra care and support for children living under these circumstances. They have to be involved and encourage them to keep themselves occupied in positive things.
Recommendations for working with children from low-income families:
- Encourage children to get involved in sports or extracurricular activities
- Be a mentor
- Provide them with school supplies
- Encourage students to challenge themselves
- Make expectations clear so that children understand them
For more information on this topic, please visit the links below
The Amazing World of Child Development 