Note:
The comments below follow a discussion on guidelines for
good parenting that were developed through a conference of
the National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development in 2001.
Responsiveness and Demandingness
There are hundreds of studies that support the
major guidelines put forth by the National Institute. Behind a great
number of those studies is the original work of Diana Baumrind, a
developmental psychologist at U.C. Berkeley. She identified two major
factors in parenting style and named these: parent responsiveness and
parent demandingness.
Responsiveness includes everything that
the parent does to express love for the child, comfort the child, aid
the child in learning new things, and in general, respond to the child’s
needs....
Demandingness is Baumrind’s term for all
the things that parents do to actively shape their children’s behavior.
This includes setting firm limits and rules, setting up consequences for
breaking the rules, and enforcing those consequences. It also includes
parent monitoring of the children. This involves not only knowing where
they are and whom they are with, but also knowing, as they grow older,
whether chores are done, and whether homework and school projects are
done....
Because the categories “responsiveness” and
“demandingness” seem to be especially memorable and meaningful, we will
organize our discussion of good parenting practices under these two
basic ideas. In doing this, we will try to use descriptions from both
the National Institute guidelines and from Baumrind’s work, beginning
with the guidelines.
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