Coping with Difficulties in Parenting Situations – Parental Control, Obedience Enforcement and Directiveness

Abstract

IntroductionThis paper presents the results of research on how parents cope with difficulties they experience in parenting situations. These are subsequent studies in a series of studies on the influence parents have on their children (Szymanska, 2009a, 2008b, 2012a, 2011; Szymanska, 2015). In these studies, the parents' ways of coping with difficulties are limited to such behaviors as: directiveness, obedience enforcement, and teaching the child rules of proper behavior (Parental Control). These are behaviors from the circle of parental influence, yet parents can use much more diverse behaviors when faced with experienced difficulties, such as seeking the assistance of a psychologist, that of the child's grandparents, etc.The ways parents cope with the difficulties that were selected for this study can be justified in the literature. They have long been of interest regarding the connection between experienced difficulties and parents' influences (Bugental & Happaney, 2000). Parents' reactions to a given parenting difficulty have been the subject of many studies. Researchers measured the influence of parenting difficulties on the use of aggressive and authoritarian behaviors towards the child (Bugental & Happaney, 2000), and teachers' and parents' attitudes towards 'difficult' children (Bugental & Shennum, 1984; Czwartosz, 1989; Porcbska, 1982). An experienced parenting difficulty is also distinguished as one of the reasons for mistakes that are made by parents (Gurycka, 1990).Moreover, the results concerning parental influences, such as parental control, directiveness and the parents' communication style with the child have extensively been analyzed worldwide (Baumrind, 1983; Baumrind & Black, 1967; Baumrind, 1966; Bugental & Shennum, 1984; Goodman, Bartfoot, Frye, & Belli, 1999; Perkins Quamma & Greenberg, 1994; Stewart & Rubin, 1995; Del Vecchio & O'Leary, 2008). The results of these studies have led to contradictory conclusions. According to a study by Pettit and colleagues (Pettit, Dodge, & Brown, 1988) and the research of Krasno and Rubin (Krasno & Rubin, 1983), parents' directiveness is not related to their children's social competence. In contrast, the results of Rose-Krasnor and colleagues (Rose-Krasnor, Rubin, Booth, & Coplan, 1996) showed that the directiveness of parents is associated with the social behavior of their children. Studies by Carlson-Jones and colleagues (Carlson-Jones, Rickel, & Smith, 1980) showed, however, that the directive behaviors of mothers are associated with the aggressive behaviors of their children. This discrepancy results from the different definitions of directiveness in either European, American, and Australian culture (Ray & Lovejoy, 1988; Szymanska, 2008a). These differences will be shown in this article.So far, studies have revealed that there are significant differences in how these influences are applied in the Polish group of mothers and fathers of well-behaved and badly-behaved children (Szyma?ska, 2009c, 2009b). The badlybehaved children are a group of children who have externalizing and internalizing problem behaviors. Children with internalizing problem behaviors are shy, sad, withdrawn, experience difficulty in concentration, etc. Children with externalizing problem behaviors refuse to follow the rules, are destructive and aggressive towards other children, and behave impulsively. The well-behaved children behave extraordinarily well according to their kindergarten teacher. They have no problem behavior.The analysis revealed the interaction effect between the gender of the parent and the child's behavior when demanding obedience from that child. In the group of parentsof well-behaved children, the fathers demanded that their children comply with their orders. In the group of parents of badly-behaved children this was the opposite, i.e. discipline in the home was required by the mothers (Szymanska, 2009c). …