Family Contribution to Affective Development in Middle Childhood

In addition, parents may make inferences, called attributions, about the causes of children’s misbehavior, such as whether a behavior was intentional or accidental. The more intentional a negative behavior is seen to be, the more angry parents become. Such negative attributions may, in turn, influence parents’ expectations about school-age children’s future coping behaviors. If they view their children’s behavior as intentional, parents are more likely to view problem behaviors as influenced by personality traits (internal attribution) than by environmental circumstances (external attribution) (for a review of parental attribution, see Grusec & Mammone, 1995).

Children’s resistance to parental control has been shown to directly predict middle childhood behavior problems (Bates, 2000). When researchers examined the effects of family factors on fifth- and sixth-graders’ self-control, they found that the quality of mother-child interactions and mothers’ self-control were related to the self-control of the school-age children themselves, regardless of the number of parents or number of siblings in the home (Zauszneiwski, Chung, Chang, & Krafcik, 2002).

Many studies have demonstrated that school-age children’s self-esteem is enhanced by parental practices that

• Offer acceptance, approval, affection, and involvement.
• Treat the child’s interests and problems as meaningful.
• Give the child reasons for rules and enforce limits fairly.
• Encourage children to uphold high standards of behavior.
• Use noncoercive forms of discipline, such as denial of privileges.
• Take into account the child’s opinions in decision making. (Baumrind, 1978; Coopersmith, 1967; Harter, 1996a)

Researchers have found that open communication between parents and children between ages 5 and 10 is related to lower levels of harsh discipline and higher levels of positive child adjustment in middle childhood (Criss, Shaw, & Ingoldsby, 2003). In addition, parenting that involves the granting of autonomy along with high levels of involvement and modest levels of structure from parents has also been associated with academic competence, general conduct, and positive psychosocial development in adolescence (Gray & Steinberg, 1999a). For African American, Asian American, and Latino American students, however, this style of parenting is not as strong a predictor of academic success and other positive outcomes as it is for European Americans (Chao, 2001; Steinberg, Dornbusch, & Brown, 1992).