How long-lasting parental conflict in a marriage can influence children while growing up in the home - Essay Example

Order No 192259 Topic Discuss how long-lasting parental conflict in a marriage can influence children while growing up in the home. Prepared by ID: 10131 Date: 01-12-2007 Order No.: 192259 Topic: Discuss how long-lasting parental conflict in a marriage can influence children while growing up in the home. 1. Introduction Sibling relationships, the basic formers of attitudes, are a fundamental part of parent fro growing of the children (Bossard, 1954). Each parent plays a valuable role in child rearing. Every child needs too emotionally healthy parent who are mature and who love each other without quarreling. Parents are imperative to children for emotional support, protection, guidance, gender identity and their basic trust and confidence in them and in the world. So, the long-lasting and continuous exposure to parental conflict is highly detrimental to children's happiness and growth means that the dissolution of high-conflict marriages can be helpful for children (Lovell & Cummings, 2001). Child development is a hypothetical growth which depends on parents' sensitive behabiours that necessitates for the growing up of the child. Child development with a concentration upon psychological development seems to deny maturational, i.e., physical, psychological, motor, and neurological. In this research paper argued that child development and psychological processes in children are likely to be highly affected by the long-lasting parental conflict in a marriage. Various levels of analysis (e.g., economic, political, institutional, educational) of the effects of the long-lasting parental conflict in a marriage on adults and children in families. The specific gap addressed in this paper is to further the conceptualization of the psychological, sociological, and familial processes in children that may be affected by the long-lasting parental conflict in a marriage in families. A related goal is to place these conceptualizations in terms of a broader framework for understanding the complexity of the processes underlying the impact of the conflict. Many parents assume that as long as their voices are children are not raised, their children will remain unaware of the conflict at hand. 2. Literature Review The general idea known as "child development" originated a generation ago as an interdisciplinary movement, not as a discipline in itself. Over the past several decades, a growing body of research has focused on the conflict in the family and how those conflicts affect children. Henry W. Maier, decided that any theory to be included in his book Three Theories of Child Development had to deal with personality development as a continuous and sequential process, starting with child's status as an infant and dealing with each subsequent stage of psychological growth: early childhood, childhood, and adolescence. Much of the more work has been devoted to parent behaviour as the antecedent and to child behabiour as the consequent. While we are nothing the impact of the paternal attitude on the child it well for us to consider the view of the child has of his parents several studies indicate that children have definite ideas about their relationships with their parents. Freudian theory has it that the relationship of the child to his parent of the opposite sex is critical in the development of his personality. Evidently, too, the strength of the mother or father plays an important part. The study will examine the differential effects of the parents on the child's development. Mother-father relationships have an almost direct bearing on the child. (Hoffman, & Lippitt, 1960). 3. The long-lasting marital conflict's Psychological Hypothesis As the study illustrates, the long-lasting marital conflict can affect children's development. At first, mother entered into the infant's with equal influence, as the mother's temporary substitute or as some one with some nurturing purpose- or as a deterrent to his nurture. As the infant gains trust in his parents, his environment and his way of life, he starts to discover that his behabiour is his own; he asserts a sense of autonomy. The attitudes of mothers and the particular forms of mal-adjustment of disturbed children have been extensively investigated by a team of research workers led by Becker and Peterson (Becker, et al., 1959). The exploration of difference in child behabiour and parental attitude relationships when younger and older children within the age range were compared. One sample (Peterson, et al., 1961) was between five and six and the other between six and 12 years of age (Peterson, et al., 1959). A guiding hypothesis throughout the series of studies was that the influence of the father was at least as intimately related as that of the mother to the occurrence and form of maladjustive tendencies in the child. The attitudes of fathers were even more intimately related to maladjustive tendencies in their children than were those of the mothers. The major finding was that harshness and cold aggressiveness in their fathers related to both forms of long-lasting parental conflict and mal-adjustment. The mother or father who attempts to live out his own childhood frustrations through his child creates for the latter many tensions which are most difficult to reconcile. It is noted that the younger child needed paternal love and kindness to prevent or at least, to ameliorate both conduct and personality problems. No significant differentiating characteristics of the parents could be related to the distinction between conduct and personality problems categories into which their children had been placed. In contrast, when older children were treated with considerable firmness, there was a reduction in the prevalence of conduct disorders. Parents of problem and non problem children were compared, but this time they were the bases of personality inventory scores and interviews. The children were again placed in either the conduct or the personality problem group. As compared with the parents of the normal children, the parents of the clinic patients were typically maladjusted. The maladjustments took different forms in the parents of conduct problem children and those of personality problem children. Over-restrictive controlling and thwarting fathers had children who were excessively shy and timid (personality problems). At last, the study indicates the child's feeling of rejection generates a vicious cycle in the parent-child relationship. The child becomes anxious and insecure about whether or not his parents always engaged themselves in quarrel. The Vicious Cycle can be diagramed as in Figure 1: Source: The vicious cycle in parent-child relationships. (From Hallowitz & 1959). Parental deprivation is quite different in atmosphere and in effect from that experienced by the rejected child. In rejection, hostility is directed toward the child by one or both parent. For this reason, child feels unwanted by parents. 4. Results and Concluding Discussion The long-lasting parental conflict in a marriage can influence children while growing up in the home is the problems in developed country. Since 1980, the long-lasting parental conflict rate in a marriage has increased gradually in developed society. This increase reflects the growing problem of long-lasting parental conflict in a marriage in the last 25 years for the developed nation. The fathers of disturbed children were more preoccupied with bodily complaints and diseases, gloomier in outlook, less matured and more impulsive, and more depressed and anxious than the fathers of the normal children. The mothers of disturbed children were also less matured and more impulsive, more depressed and anxious, while at the same time they were less honest and more inclined to act out their aggressive impulses than the mothers of the normal children. Mothers and fathers need to be whole people. On occasion they need to get away from their children. This not only contributes to their own developments but often provides the opportunity to see children in their proper perspective. Over concerned is often the net result of complete emotional investment in the life of a child. Vicarious satisfaction gained at the expense of one's development places a heavy burden on the child, who must satisfy not only his parents but also himself. It is not just the event of long-lasting parental conflict in a marriage that causes negative consequences for the children involved. The presence of parental conflict also is a growing problem that concerns many children through they are grown up in their home. Conflict within the marriage thus affects the child due to changes in the social environment of the family and also through direct exposure to long-lasting parental conflict in a marriage. (Lovell & Cummings, 2001). Marital conflict has been identified as a risk factor that increase the probability of many adjustment problems in children, including both externalizing disorders, such as noncompliance and aggression, and internalizing disorders" such as depression, anxiety, and withdrawal (Lovell & Cummings, 2001). This study spends a psychological approach to deem the special effects of conflict and conflict processes on children in the case of long-lasting parental conflict in a marriage. Such approaches are clearly needed to more fully understand the effects of the long-lasting parental conflict in a marriage in developed countries on children and families. Moreover, we strongly encourage the development of collaborative efforts, uniting teams of specialists from a variety of fields and subjects, towards the goal of achieving such comprehensive analyses (Lovell & Cummings, 2001:11). It is not only the event of divorce that causes negative consequences for the children of divorce but also marital conflict and/or violence that may affect the reaction experienced by children involved in divorce. Bibliography Becker, W. C., D.R. Peterson, L. A. Hellmer, D. J. Shoemaker, & H. C. Quay. (1959). Factor in Parental Behaboour in Children. J. Consult. Psychol., 1959. pp. 23, 107-118. Bossard, J. H. S. (1954). The Sociology of Child Development. New York:Harper, 1954. D. Hallowitz & B. Stulberg, The vicious cycle in parent-child relationship breaks down. Soc. Casewk, 1959, p.40, 269.) Hoffman, L., and Lippitt, R. (1960). The Measurement of Family Life Variables. In R. Mussen (ed.), Handbook of Research Methods in Child Development. New York: Wiley, 1960. Lovell, L. Erin. & Cummings, E. Mark. (2001). "Conflict, Conflict Resolution and the Children of Northern Ireland: Towards Understanding the Impact on Children and Families", Kroc Institute Occasional Paper Series 21:OP:1. Dec. 2001. Retrieved from http://kroc.nd.edu/ocpapers/op_21_1.PDF Owen, M.T. & Cox, M.J. (1997). Marital conflict and the development of infantmother attachment relationships. Journal of Family Psychology, 11, 152-165-lecture. Peterson, D. R. W. C. Becker, D. J. Shoemaker, Zelda Luria, & L. A. Hellmer. Child Behabiour Development Problems and Paternal Attitutes. Child Development, 1961, p 32, 151-162. Peterson, D. R., W. C. Becker, L. A. Hellmer. D. J. Shoemaker, & H. C. Cuay. (1959). Parental Attitudes and Child Adjustment. Child Development, 1959, p 30, 119-130. Henry, W. Maier, (1965). Three Theories of Child Development. Harper & Row: New York, p. 4-200. Read More