The social context of parenting: mothers’ inner resources and social structures

Abstract

Parenting occurs within families and communities and is shaped by parents’ internal resources and the structures that surround their life. Utilising a large national data-set, Understanding Society, this study examined the extent to which variation in mothers’ personality, cognitive ability and well-being, as well as structural and background factors is associated with affective and dialogic parenting and homework support. The findings revealed that psychosocial and structural factors had differential effects on aspects of parenting. Although mothers’ well-being, personality and cognitive factors exerted small-to-modest effects, filial and neighbourhood interactions and background factors emerged as strong predictors for affective and dialogic parenting and homework support. These findings have implications considering that families’ social contexts, in the form of social support networks and neighbourhood connectedness, are shrinking in the face of global recession and disappearing national resources and public services.